Equality for disabled people by the year 2025?!

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The government have set up the Office for Disability Issues which is there to help ensure equality for people who have a disability. On its report www.officefordisability.gov.uk/equality2025/docs/EQ2025-first-report.pdf
it says,

"By 2025, disabled people will enjoy the same opportunities and choices as non-disabled people, and be respected and included as equal members of society"

Isn't this 2009? Isn't 2025 a whole 16 years away?? What on this earth are they going to do for 16 years before we're given the same basic rights as everyone else!

erm ds be 20 by then you mean got towait that longbefore he can get a dus that does not have steps to board,only day we go out less car is sunday and then only every hrs

Would that be (plus or minus some reshuffle) the same government that said they'd eliminate child poverty by, what was it, 2010?

Yup, seems so. Write to your MPs and ask why it's going to take 16 years to make us equal with other minorities, when the same laws would mostly all apply and all they usually have to do is take out the word 'black' or 'gay' etc and put in the word 'disabled'.

From the same report...

Financial statement 2006?2007

Recruitment costs for their staff £277,037.56
Meetings(not including members? remuneration and expenses)£81,799.14
Members? pay £57,146.20
Members? expenses £23,302.55
Actually talking with disabled people £8,233.14
Other £2,872.06

Total £450,390.65

So, they spent £250,000 hiring people and £80,000 paying them, and only £8,000 talking to anyone with a disability.

May I faint, please?

"By 2025, disabled people will enjoy the same opportunities and choices as non-disabled people, and be respected and included as equal members of society"

Isn't this what the government are trying to persuade us is the case anyway? What could possibly take 16 years?
My DS will be 24 by then. As for me, well - people say life starts in your 40s but I don't think that's quite what they mean

I wondered what that was just flying past the window

Why can't we be equal now?? It's got to be Money. Maybe because they've fouled up just about every aspect of disability equal rights for just about every single one of us for so very long...that they're worried that if they make it properly possible for any of us to sue, they'd be bankrupt in about 2 days?

Riven: ref. university degrees, there are at least two universities in the UK (Birkbeck College in London and the Open University) which require no formal qualifications. Plus, Open University degrees are through Long Distance Learning, so you don't have to attend classes - practically everything takes place electronically. I work at one of these places and know the other well - they're both excellent, and, having taught at two Russell Group universities before, I can tell you that my present, 'non-traditional', students are the best, most motivated learners I've ever seen. Incidentally, the government is now cutting funds from both Birkbeck and Open, but that's another story. Maybe by 2025 (by which time DS will be 19 and me close to retirement, if not already dead) all universities will really be accessible, in more than one sense