CRPD/C/GC/2 and markedly compromises their access to services, including health and education (para. 39). The importance of accessibility was reiterated by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its general comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities, cultural life and the arts. 7. The World Report on Disability Summary, published in 2011 by the World Health Organization and the World Bank within the framework of the largest consultation ever and with the active involvement of hundreds of professionals in the field of disability, stresses that the built environment, transport systems and information and communication are often inaccessible to persons with disabilities (p. 10). Persons with disabilities are prevented from enjoying some of their basic rights, such as the right to seek employment or the right to health care, owing to a lack of accessible transport. The level of implementation of accessibility laws remains low in many countries and persons with disabilities are often denied their right to freedom of expression owing to the inaccessibility of information and communication. Even in countries where sign language interpretation services exist for deaf persons, the number of qualified interpreters is usually too low to meet the increasing demand for their services, and the fact that the interpreters have to travel individually to clients makes the use of their services too expensive. Persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities as well as deaf-blind persons face barriers when attempting to access information and communication owing to a lack of easy-to-read formats and augmentative and alternative modes of communication. They also face barriers when attempting to access services due to prejudices and a lack of adequate training of the staff providing those services. 8. The report, Making Television Accessible, published in 2011 by the International Telecommunication Union in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies, highlights that a significant proportion of the one billion people who live with some form of disability are unable to enjoy the audiovisual content of television. This is due to the inaccessibility of content, information and/or devices necessary for them to access those services. 9. Accessibility was recognized by the mainstream ICT community since the first phase of the World Summit on Information Society, held in Geneva in 2003. Introduced and driven by the disability community, the concept was incorporated in the Declaration of Principles adopted by the Summit, which in paragraph 25 state, “the sharing and strengthening of global knowledge for development can be enhanced by removing barriers to equitable access to information for economic, social, political, health, cultural, educational, and scientific activities and by facilitating access to public domain information, including by universal design and the use of assistive technologies”. 2 10. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has considered accessibility as one of the key issues in each of the 10 interactive dialogues it has held with States parties during the consideration of their initial reports, prior to the drafting of the present general comment. The concluding observations on those reports all contain recommendations concerning accessibility. One common challenge has been the lack of an adequate monitoring mechanism to ensure the practical implementation of accessibility standards and relevant legislation. In some States parties, monitoring was the responsibility of local authorities that lacked the technical knowledge and the human and material 2 See “Declaration of Principles: Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium”, adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society at its first phase, held in Geneva in 2003 (WSIS-03/GENEVA/DOC/4-E), para. 25. 3