I support this motion. There is, of course, a great variety of disability and, in a sense, every disability is unique to the person concerned. Disabled people face issues in accessing education, training, employment and services, whether public or private. It's true that the rights of disabled people have improved over the last 40 years, although given how they were treated in the past, that's not saying a great deal. Laws sought to deal with discrimination in the workplace and in the provision of services, for instance, and I welcome the excellent move in the ALN Bill to a presumption that children with additional learning needs should be educated in a mainstream school, but much remains to be done.

But, for now, I'd like to focus on one specific disability, that of visual impairment. Only one in four registered-blind or partially sighted people of working age is in paid employment, and this number is falling. This figure is even worse for people who are completely blind. Only about one in 10 people with poor functional vision is in paid employment, and whilst there's a huge disability employment gap—that is the difference between disabled people in work, which is 48 per cent, and the general population, 80 per cent—the employment gap for registered-blind and partially sighted people is nearly double that for people with other disabilities. 

A survey by the Royal Society for Blind Children in February this year found that over a quarter of adults believe that blind children have different dreams and aspirations from their sighted peers. According to the survey, there's also a great deal of ignorance about what blind and partially sighted children and adults can do. For instance, 52 per cent of respondents mistakenly believe that blind and partially sighted children won't be able to live alone in adulthood, travel, cook or take care of finances independently, so you can see how they would be disadvantaged in things like housing, employment and other areas if people around them have those beliefs about their capabilities. Only 11 per cent of people thought that being blind or partially sighted made it more difficult for children to make friends, but, very sadly, the RNIB say that two out of five blind children have no local friends to play with.

A range of projects and programmes are in existence. The Disability Discrimination Act is 22 years old—I know it's been superseded now. Disabled people may be entitled to funding to adapt their homes, et cetera, but so far it's clear that not enough is being done to adapt other people's attitudes towards disability, particularly in the workplace. It's already been mentioned that the convention already applies here, but it doesn't seem to have done very much good, and the things that have been done so far haven't made a great deal of change, certainly, to the employment statistics.

So, while I agree with this motion to incorporate the convention into Welsh law, it would have to be on the basis of a much more proactive initiative than we have seen to date to really, really change the attitude of employers and general society towards disabled people.

Many disabled people have fought their way through huge difficulties and challenges with a determination that would put a lot of us to shame, and those are skills that would be valuable to a great many employers. Simply adopting the convention that we are already subject to will make very little difference in itself. We have to adopt the proactive approaches that have been successful in achieving fairer treatment for other minority groups—laws that are enforced, rights that are actively promoted and upheld, not just written down, filed and forgotten.

Finally, there have been disabled people in this country since this country began, yet they're still arguably the most disadvantaged minority group. That's inexcusable and must change. We've done it for others; we must now do it for them. Thank you.