Rights of persons with disabilities

Integration of persons with disabilities. The Union recognizes and respects the right of persons with disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational integration and participation in the life of the community.

Article 26 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

The 2025 EU Enlargement Report recommends that Ukraine further develop an inclusive environment for persons with disabilities by advancing deinstitutionalization and revising legislation on the rehabilitation of persons with disabilities.

Text as of March 2026

Based on research and human rights practice, the following problems in the exercise of this right in Ukraine can be distinguished:

  1. Physical barriers: ensuring that buildings, streets, and transportation are accessible to individuals with limited mobility. Although relevant legislative requirements exist, they are often general and vague. In practice, these requirements are rarely implemented, particularly for older government buildings and public transport such as trams, trolleybuses, and minibuses.
  2. Social barriers: creating equal opportunities for participation in public life. Stigma against people with disabilities remains a significant issue that requires ongoing public awareness-raising campaigns and policy reform.
  3. Economic barriers: ensuring equal access to employment and entrepreneurship. Some employers meet quota requirements by hiring individuals with disabilities who do not need reasonable accommodations. Compensation for workplace adaptation is inadequate, and reasonable accommodation is not effectively implemented.
  4. Educational barriers: guaranteeing free access to quality education throughout life. Inclusive education is developing, but faces challenges such as low pay for teaching assistants, staff shortages in preschools, and limited support in higher education.
  5. Digital barriers: ensuring equal access to online services and the Internet. Ukraine is developing e-government and digital services, but remote areas with unreliable connectivity continue to face substantial digital barriers. Government websites and e-services do not comply with WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 accessibility standards, as highlighted by the EU Web Accessibility Directive (EU 2016/2102) and the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
  6. Information barrier: ensuring equal access to information and communication technologies regardless of functional limitations, which is now being addressed in Ukraine, but current efforts remain insufficient.

What Ukraine needs to do during its accession to the EU to improve the situation:

  • Enhancing national legislation: key legislative priorities include ensuring access to medical services and social guarantees, adapting housing and infrastructure, developing inclusive education, and safeguarding the rights of persons with disabilities. The primary objective is to shift from a medical model to one that prioritizes autonomy and social inclusion. Legislation should more clearly define the requirements for occupational safety and working conditions for people with disabilities.
  • The right to independent decision-making: changes to civil legislation and practice that limit the legal capacity of the person for the purpose of developing the practice of supporting independent decision-making (shift from substituted to supported decision-making). A program should be established to develop support services and personal assistant roles.
  • Individualization of support and services according to individual needs: current legislation does not differentiate support and services for persons with disabilities based on their actual needs or remaining work capacity. This results in inefficient use of social resources and an ineffective support and service system. Services and support should be tailored to individual needs.
  • Deinstitutionalization: moving from institutional or segregated living conditions to a system that supports inclusion in the local community, with services provided based on the individual’s preferences. Sufficient funding and strong coordination among authorities are essential. European experience indicates that accessibility requirements are most effective when tailored to the needs of specific local communities. Communities should establish local programs that meet shared basic requirements and are supported by state funding. Communities should expand services for people with disabilities and their families, including supported living and family support programs.
  • Development of inclusive education: inclusion should extend beyond schools to preschool and after-school levels. It is also important to ensure access to vocational training to support employment and economic independence. We need awareness-raising campaigns and educational programs to address societal stereotypes.
  • Accessibility of rail transport: EU acquis establishes technical requirements for railway stations, infrastructure, carriage layouts, and designated seating quotas for wheelchair users to ensure rail transport accessibility. Ukrzaliznytsia is making progress in improving accessibility at major stations; however, smaller stations remain largely inaccessible.
  • Rights of women with disabilities: include additional guarantees, representation quotas in supervisory bodies, and maternity protection. Ukrainian legislation does not address gender considerations in the rights of persons with disabilities.
  • Information accessibility: all government websites and their e-services must comply with accessibility standards.
  • Protecting children with disabilities from violence: requires additional safeguards, effective systems for detecting and addressing violations, accessible judicial and extrajudicial remedies, and specialized staff training.
  • Right to housing: new accommodation construction must meet physical accessibility standards for people with disabilities. Programs should also be established to adapt existing buildings to these standards.
  • Political participation: persons with disabilities should have access to voting, accessible election materials such as subtitles and sign language translation, and representation in decision-making bodies.
  • Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) must be enforced:
  • Nataliya Mykhaylenko v. Ukraine (2013) and Gorbatyuk v. Ukraine (2019) — the inability of persons with disabilities to independently appeal restrictions on their legal capacity.
  • Kaganovskyy v. Ukraine (2022) — the ten-day detention in 2017 of an applicant, recognized legally incapable and diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, in the intensive care unit of a state social welfare institution, where he had voluntarily admitted himself in 2014.
  • Kucheruk v. Ukraine (2007) — the ill-treatment of an applicant with chronic schizophrenia by staff at a pre-trial detention centre.

For a comprehensive overview of these issues and the rationale behind our recommendations, please refer to the research section, specifically the document available in Ukrainian: Compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU standards in the field of ensuring the rights of persons with disabilities. If you have any feedback or comments about this material, please send them to: hrmap@ccl.org.ua.

Published materials may be used provided that a mandatory link to the original source is included. @ 2025 Center for Civil Liberties.

Experts

Picture of Yana Bilas

Yana Bilas

lawyer, specialist in the field of international human rights protection, researcher