Yesterday's meeting of the physically handicapped was timely and necessary.

The Ministry of Health and Family Services deserves credit for putting on the meeting; although they may have been regretting it by the end, given some of the horror stories they heard.

Bermuda's mentally and physically handicapped are often a forgotten group on the Island. As long as they are out of sight, they are out of mind too.

That was amply demonstrated when audience members ? many in wheelchairs ? were told they would have to come up to a microphone to speak.

That, in microcosm, is the problem. Without knowing how difficult it is to be disabled in some way, assumptions, many ludicrous, take over.

From the minor but annoying (a bus driver peeling out of a bus layby when he could not be bothered to wait for a man in a walker to get on the bus) to the truly horrendous (an amputee being cut off from financial assistance and told to get a job when he had applied and been rejected by dozens of employees), the "temporarily able" commit acts of cruelty every day.

What's worse, they don't even realise. It is the banality of their indifference that makes their actions truly horrendous.

That is not to say that efforts have not been made, nor that the conditions that the physically handicapped are better than they were a couple of decades ago.

Former Mayor of Hamilton Cecil Dismont was rightly praised a number of weeks ago when he passed on for the access improvements he had made for Hamilton.

But there are still many buildings and areas in Hamilton that are still inaccessible, including the House of Assembly and the upper floor of the Supreme Court.

Many of the proposals raised at the meeting were common sense, low cost solutions, including improvements for sidewalks and Customs Duty relief for new wheelchairs.

Other proposals, such as an Physical Disabilities Act, would be more complex, but need to be examined.

But there is no doubt that the disabled need to be heard. Their lives are hard enough without having to face indifference every day.