Modeled largely after the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the convention has been ratified by 139 UN members. Within the U.S., which is home to an estimated 58 million Americans with disabilities, a burgeoning bipartisan coalition of human rights activists, disability rights groups, veteran’s affairs organizations, and the private sector is calling for swift U.S. ratification of the convention.

Among the companies and private sector-oriented umbrella groups that have endorsed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities include kitchen-table names like Adobe, Coca-Cola, the Consumer Electronics Association, J.P Morgan, Microsoft, NASCAR and the organization that identifies itself as the “world’s largest business federation,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

These actors are making their collective voices heard with key decision-makers. For example, during the second Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the CRPD in December, Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony in favor of the CRPD was accompanied not just by international legal experts, but also by the IBM Human Ability & Accessibility Center’s Worldwide Director, Frances West.

via Doing Good by Doing Well: Private Sector Gets Behind UN Disabilities Treaty.