A/HRC/34/58 including sign language interpreters, interpreters for the deafblind, personal assistants and other intermediaries, is a critical component of ensuring the availability of support. Assistive devices and technologies for persons with disabilities should also be available. Accessibility17 2. 51. Support services and arrangements should be accessible to all persons with disabilities, especially the most disadvantaged ones, without discrimination of any kind. States must ensure that support is available within safe physical and geographical reach for everyone, including those living in institutions. All facilities and services providing support, public and private, including information and communications technologies and systems, must be accessible for the diverse disability community. States must take positive measures to ensure that persons with disabilities living in rural and remote areas also have access to support services and arrangements. Dissemination of information about existing services and social protection schemes must also be ensured. 52. Support must be affordable for all persons with disabilities. Support services represent a significant cost for persons with disabilities, preventing them from climbing out of poverty. States must ensure that support is available at nominal or no cost to the maximum extent of their available resources, and take into account the gender disparity in income and access to financial resources. Social protection systems can constitute a powerful strategy to facilitate access to support services for persons with disabilities (see A/70/297, para. 9). Qualifying conditions for accessing support must be reasonable, proportionate and transparent, and should not be limited to those persons protected by social insurance schemes.18 Additionally, States should include the provision of essential assistive devices and technologies in the coverage of national health insurance and/or social protection schemes, on the basis of the World Health Organization priority assistive products list (ibid.). States should also consider waiving import duties and taxes on assistive devices and technologies that are not produced domestically (ibid., para. 48). 3. Acceptability 53. States must take all appropriate measures to ensure that support programmes incorporate a rights-based approach, are provided on a voluntary basis and respect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. All support services and arrangements must be culturally appropriate; sensitive to gender, impairment and life-cycle requirements; and designed to respect the privacy of those concerned. Community-based approaches for the provision of support constitute an effective strategy to ensure the provision of responses that take into account geographical, social, economic and cultural issues. 54. States must ensure that the support made available is of good quality. This requires, inter alia, the implementation of person-centred approaches and the adoption of guidelines and criteria to regulate the delivery of assistance and support services, including standards for training and certification. States should also train and assist families and communities providing informal support, set up monitoring mechanisms to assess the adequacy of support services and arrangements and prevent abuses and violence in its provision. 17 18 It is important to differentiate between the concept of accessibility as defined by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which relates to the capacity of systems to ensure access to services, and accessibility as a human rights principle as referred to in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 19 (2007), para. 24. 13