On the 20th of January a meeting was held in the European Parliament with with Vicepresident of the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs. We explained the current situation of deafblind people in Europe and the lacks this community has.
The European Deafblind Network (EDbN) has recently received the confirmation of the access rights to the European Parliament premises. This condition will provide the necessary steps to explain the requirements and needs of Deafblindness to all the members of the European institutions.
After two years working on the European Deafblind Project, for Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission, the project is getting to an end. The last meeting will be held in Barcelona and offering an open day conference next 20th June. It is expected the attendance of European and Spanish authorities, as well as professionals working on disabilities, from the social services and bound to deafblindness.
On 11 February 2014, EDF presented its manifesto on the EU elections 2014 at the European Parliament. The event was organised in cooperation with the European Parliament Disability Intergroup and gathered a lot of MEPs; all of them expressed their full endorsement to the key priorities of EDF manifesto.
On the occasion of the European Day for people with disabilities (3 December) the European Commission announced that Gothenburg is the winner of the Access City Award 2014. Gothenburg’s commitment to increasing accessibility to transport, housing, work and employment is a good example that other European cities could follow in the future. Priority is given to people with disabilities when accessible homes become available.
This pilot project established by Ádám Kósa MEP and Werner Kuhn MEP aimed at easing the lives of one million deaf sign language users in Europe. The goal of this project is to develop a service concept and later a technology platform and service that can be used by any deaf or hard of hearing citizen within the European Union to assist them with real-time live sign language interpretation by a certified sign language interpreter or/and a real- time captioning service in order to enable independent communication with the institutions of the European Union, such as the European Parliament or the European Commission.
The European Disability Forum met this weekend in Vilnius, Lithuania, gathering together representatives of its member organisations all around Europe, as well as representatives of the Lithuanian Republic and European institutions. On the first day of the Board meeting, a European conference took place focusing on: ‘Disability and sustainable development. A perspective from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’.
Federacion Española de Sordoceguera (Deafblind Spanish Federation) launched today its brand new fund raising campaign in Barcelona, Spain. This campaign aims to promote the awareness of deafblind as a unique disability, to influence for suitable facilities around the nation and as a way to raise the necessary funds to support families, professionals and deafblind people.
The 19th of June 2013 was the date chosen by the European Platform on Deafness, Hard of Hearing, and Deafblindness to debate the Board´s current progresses within the European Disability Forum.
DbI Board met the day before the start of the 8th Deafblind European Conference to discuss a serious of aspects concerning its structure and projects. Gillian Mobey, DbI President, explain all those present at the meeting how much the association has achieved and advanced in the last few years, specially remarking how many countries joined lately DbI. In total 22 countries are DbI members nowadays.
