Coming to you live from Vilnius, Laura for BBC World Service. One of the biggest problems in our society is integrating disabled people into the community. As a disabled person myself and someone who has many friends with health problems, I have noticed a few issues occur in our society that are related to people with disabilities. First and the most noticeable problem that is especially relevant in schools is bullying. Kids can be cruel, besides, we live in a society, that, it seems, has never in their lives seen someone different from them. Although both me and my two friends that I interviewed have never experienced bullying at school, each of has felt the sneaky looks from people in the street, especially children. It seems to me that this could be the result of lack of communicating from parents, who often don’t raise their children to understand that there are all kinds of differences between people. Secondly, we have an ongoing issue with access to public facilities. Technically, we do have laws and regulations on this, however, in reality it’s not all pretty. The situation is changing from how it used to be a decade ago, but as one of my friends I interviewed, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated, quote: “although some things have changed, the process of change is very slow and there are no systematic changes, which need to happen in order for us to see the difference.” Third and final issue that disabled people often meet in our society is lack of employment. I myself have tried looking for summer jobs here in Lithuania before I finished high school and my efforts brought little to no results. The employers are often pushed away from employing people with disabilities because of lack of understanding of what such person is capable of. I assume it stems from the old stereotypes that if a person is handicapped, let’s say, physically, they have issues with their thought process too, which is generally not true at all. In conclusion, although I myself don’t really notice these issues anymore because I’m so used to it, the situation with integrating disabled people into society in Lithuania could be much better. In my opinion, systematic changes have to take place, rather than a few occasional ones here and there.