The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) made a recommendation to the Korea Post (Office of Postal Service) that magnification aids such as magnifying glasses should be provided for people with visual impairments at community postal agencies. It reasoned that community postal agencies have a legal duty to provide people with visual disabilities an equal access to information, technology and communications under Article 21 of the Disability Discrimination Act.
In June 2010, Mr. A, leader of a visual disability advocacy group, filed a complaint that people with visual impairments were denied an equal access to postal services at 6 community postal agencies. They were unable to access to postal code booklets as magnifying glasses were not provided.
The Korea Post (Office of Postal Service) explained that it supplied magnifying glasses to all its post offices in accordance with the policy to ensure equal access for people with disabilities in 2009. It further stated that community postal agencies are privately-run and are consigned only to deal with limited postal services such as stamp sales and receiving posts, thus the Korea Post are not obliged to implement the policy to those agencies.
However, the NHRCK concluded that the Korea Post has a duty to ensure equal access to postal information to people with visual impairment through providing adequate magnification aids at community postal agencies, after considering that those agencies function to provide parts of postal services for public convenience, and postal code booklets are postal information provided by the Korea Post (Office of Postal Service).
