National Preventive Mechanism disabilities depends in large part on whether and how they are supported in perceiving their environment, grasping it in the truest sense of the word and exploring it themselves. When minors with disabilities are limited by structural inadequacies and a lack of comprehensive accessibility, inadequate staffing during day or night shifts, poorly adjusted aids or insufficient advancement of mental or practical capabilities, the social development of these minors is hampered in an inadmissible way. Legal protection for minors and adults The use of measures that restrict freedom of mentally disabled or mentally ill adults would also be inadmissible per se without a prior review of alternatives and prompt reporting to the representatives of the residents. This is regulated in the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act, which also enables a review by a court. For children and adolescents this does not apply without exception. An exemption was created for them in the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act. As the Supreme Court has recently stated, the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act is apparently not applicable to institutions and facilities under the supervision of the competent authority for children and youth welfare and protection. Ultimately, however, this means that they currently do not enjoy the same legal protection as adults in comparable situations. Legal protection can depend on coincidences But minors among themselves are also treated differently. Because the area to which the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act applies is defined as referring to the institution or facility, the kind of legal protection a child enjoys in the event of the use of age-atypical measures restricting freedom can depend on coincidences or purely internal organisational allocations. In institutions and facilities supervised by the competent authority for children and youth welfare and protection the legal protection proceedings of the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act do not apply. Children in other facilities that are subject to the supervision of the operator of facilities for persons with disabilities can indeed take advantage of this legal protection. Age-atypical restrictions of freedom represent interference with the right to personal freedom. This right enjoys particular protection in Austria and is constitutionally guaranteed. For a long time, there had been a legal grey zone in the area of institutions and facilities for persons with disabilities with regard to measures that restrict freedom and the protection of personal freedom. It was therefore the goal of the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act to eliminate this grey zone. Differences in legal protection not in conformity with human rights principles 122 For the NPM, this legal situation is not comprehensible, specifically, but not exclusively from the human rights perspective and is also objectively unjustified. From a human rights perspective, the protection of persons with disabilities may not vary, depending on the facility in which the persons are being cared for. In the opinion of the NPM, such a differentiation contradicts the norms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and of the UN