Legal Environment, National Strategies And Policies For Employment Of People With Disabilities

This paper explores the European disability policy changes since the European Year of People with Disabilities in 2003, when Information Systems Management Institute (Riga, Latvia) within the Leonardo da Vinci framework proposed the project "Ability not Disability in Employment" (2003-2005), which resulted in the study course "Employment of People with Disabilities" for business administration students, managers and entrepreneurs. Drawing on the experience of developing further this study course as part of next two transfer of innovation projects "Increasing Employability of Disabled People" (2008-2010), and "Ability not Disability in Workplace" (2009-2011), as well as the project "PwD Employ - Personal Learning Environment for the Efficient Recruitment of People with Disabilities" (2008-2010), two interlinked modules from this course such as European Strategies and Policies on the one hand, and Legal Environment, National Strategies and Policies on the other, are analysed. Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (2007) and the Decision by the Council of the European Union Concerning the Conclusion, by the European Community, of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2009) as turning points, this paper looks into cross-section of different levels - local and global, national and supranational - regarding national and European disability strategies in general, and the ways they deal with employment of people with disabilities in particular.