Senior Citizens, and Pregnant Women, etc. (APC) to the Minister of Health and Welfare. The
proposed revision prescribes the removal of entrance threshold or any elevation at the entrance
of facility for new construction, expansion and renovation of public facilities such as
restaurants, convenience stores, pharmacies and other public spaces equal to or larger than
50m2. On the related note, the Commission also made recommendation to the Minister of
Strategy and Finance to amend the Restriction of Special Taxation Act to enable tax deduction
for the installation cost for convenience facility dedicated to disabled persons in public facilities.
28. According to a nation-wide research conducted by the Commission, only 9 doubledecker buses in Gyeonggi Province, which started their operation on October 2015, are
equipped with wheelchair-boarding facilities. The study covered 10,730 intercity buses
(express, nonstop express, general types) and 4,635 intra-city buses (metropolis transit
express bus, express city bus and city bus) that were in operation as of 31 December 2016. In
response to the study result, the Committee has submitted a recommendation to the Minister
of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on 3 July 2017, urging the ministry to provide solutions
to the issue. The recommendation included the installation of convenience facilities for
wheelchair in selected express, intercity and intra-city buses currently under operation, and
the provision of advance-reservation bus service for disabled persons.
29. The Commission conducted ex officio investigation in 2015, after following up on the
continued limitation of wheelchair-boarding facilities and staff services in airplane and
limitation of information access to persons with visual and hearing impairments. After the
investigation, the Commission made recommendation, on 13 June 2016, to the Ministry of
Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Airport Corporations and the Airlines that the
necessary services for the use of airport and airlines should be provided to the disabled
persons, and the responding staff trainings should be facilitated. However, despite this policy
recommendation, an online newspaper released that the inconvenience is still widely
prevalent for persons with disabilities (Able News, 15 January 2018). Furthermore, according
to the 2016 survey on the use of airplane conducted by the Disabled Peoples’ International
Korea, 55.1 percent of 107 survey respondents answered that they have felt inconvenience.
30. The result of the Commission’s survey underlined that only 3 ferries were installed
with wheelchair-boarding facilities and 2 ferries were equipped with restroom for disabled
persons out of 41 ferries constructed after the enactment of the Mobility Improvement for the
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