People with disabilities have often been treated, wittingly or unwittingly, as secondclass citizens, excluded from public spaces, excluded from education, and excluded, to a significant extent, from life.

Public transport, for example, is taken for granted by most people, and practically everyone who uses it has complained from time to time about overcrowding, overpricing and the general conditions of the vehicles. But the complaints of people with disabilities are generally more aimed at the real issues of accessibility . . . because, without taking cognisance of the special needs of disabled people, the transport providers could be, however unwittingly, denying a section of society access not only to transport, but to a form of independence that properly designed public transport can offer.

The Disability Act of 2005 has gone some way to ensuring that any future developments are accessible to people with disabilities, but there is still a large amount of legacy infrastructure which was built without taking the needs of disabled people into account. This is why it is imperative that transport providers not only commit to purchasing only accessible vehicles into the future, but that they also embark on a replacement programme for any elements of their services which are not accessible (including public buildings, etc).

It makes life easier, however, for a transport company to be accessible if it is starting from scratch . . . as happened with Luas, the pride of Dublin's transportation system.

"It was, of course, a big bonus that we could design a system with accessibility issues to the fore, " said Jim Quinlan, chief architect with the Railway Procurement Agency. "The general awareness within the railway industry, in terms of accessibility, is much higher than it would have been before, and manufacturers are creating vehicles which are low floor. They are also aware of issues in terms of the visibility of displays. In fact, there are in place a lot of well-established guidelines for a lot of these areas."

The RPA was in a position to cherry-pick the best of guidelines and legislation from around the world, including best practice in the US, the UK and France. It also consulted with disability groups in Ireland regarding their specific needs and requirements before settling on a final design, and carried out some dynamic testing of the trams with wheelchairs and dummies before the trams were put into service.

While Luas could be designed with accessibility in mind from the outset, and Dublin Bus is approaching completion in terms of its fleet upgrading process, there are still a number of accessibility issues facing people with disabilities in modern Ireland. And many of these are outside of the sphere of public transport.

For example, education, which is one of the pillars upon which society is founded, is surprisingly unequal when it comes to disabilities.

"Third level is actually more accessible than secondlevel, " said Ann Heelan, executive director of AHEAD, the Association for Higher Education Access and Disability.

"And the University sector is very different from the Institute of Technology (IT) sector in terms of access, with some blatant discrimination in the IT sector."

While some of this discrimination is purely infrastructural (older buildings lacking wheelchair access, etc) or equipment based (a lack of assistive IT), there is a more widespread form of inaccessibility in terms of attitudes and the ability to deal with people's disabilities.

"There is a culture among educational establishments which comes across as a fear of disability, " said Heelan.

"By and large, the educational system is geared towards traditional students, and academic staff are not sure how to handle people with disabilities. They need somebody in the colleges to advise them, because often there is a willingness there, but the teachers don't know how to support people with disabilities, and don't know how to ask them what they need themselves."