SPD President Ms Chia Yong Yong (right) and friends at the Purple Parade

Purple is the new black in the social service world. It is the colour that unifies the sector to raise greater awareness on integrating the special needs community and celebrating its abilities.

Last Saturday, more than 4,000 people turned up at Hong Lim Park for the Purple Parade, organised to commemorate International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) which falls on 3 December every year.

Graced by Mr Lawrence Wong, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, the event was supported by 40 organisations including SPD.

“The Purple Parade gives us a platform to promote greater understanding of disability issues and integration of people with disabilities into mainstream society. We all have different abilities. As a community, let’s work together to focus on our abilities and accommodate our limitations,” said Ms Chia Yong Yong, President of SPD.

Manning a booth, we decided on something fun to suit the carnival atmosphere, and operated a games booth featuring the classics – Pac-Man and Tic-Tac-Toe! We demonstrated how assistive technology devices could be used to help persons with disabilities access games on the computer. The same technology could also be extended to other computer functions such as accessing email and surfing the Internet.

In conjunction with IDPD 2013, we have also put up posters at some SMRT train stations to encourage greater acceptance of people with disabilities. The posters will be up till middle of December.