Services for the disabled

Services for the disabled are those government or other institutional services specifically provided to enable people who are disabledto participate on equal grounds in society. Some such services are mandated or required by law, some are assisted by technologies that have made it easier to provide the service, others are commercially available not only to disabled people but others who might make use of them.

A complete list of such services would be difficult to assemble, especially as new ones are being invented all the time, and as old services are being delivered in new ways. It may be easier to divide the services by the disability that they help overcome:

• services for the blindinclude
  • seeing-eye dogsbeing admitted to buildings, buses, trains and other locations that dogs normally are not allowed
  • reserving the use of a white cane for blind people only, so that it is obvious to others that someone is actually blind
  • using mobile phone camerasto take pictures of change after a transaction, so that it can be counted by a sighted person who verifies by tone or voice that the change is correct
  • translation of new works into brailleor talking booksor the use of text-to-speechtranslators
    • availability of these in a public libraryor other public institution
    • availability of these in a boot imageconfigured for use by a disabled person
• services for the visually-impairedinclude:
  • large print books
  • basic operating systemand boot imageconfiguration utilities that set computers up with large bold fonts and high-contrast colour combination desktop schemes
• services for the hearing-impairedinclude:
  • admission of hearing aidsto buildings or locations where recording and transmitting devices are not normally permitted
• services for the deafinclude
  • TTYterminals for telephones
  • closed captioningon television
  • simultaneous sign language translation
• services for the mobility-impaired

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990was a landmark U.S. federal governmentmove towards providing services for the disabled in a uniform way all across the country. That legislation has been widely copied in other countries.de:Behindertenhilfe

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Services+for+the+disabled Wikipedia article Services for the disabled.