November 2019

Latest news from our ongoing campaigns including the Marrakesh Treaty, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, Air Transport, Connected and automated vehicles... and more!

The European Blind Union held its 11th General Assembly in Rome on October 27-30. Bart was invited to record a special edition of the podcast.

As part of its General Assembly proceedings EBU presented the fourth edition of the “Vision for Equality” Award.

The Award is granted every four years to European organisations, institutions, policy makers, enterprises or individuals in recognition of their commitment and ongoing endeavour in the defence and promotion of the rights and improvement of the living conditions of blind and partially sighted people.

After close cooperation for over a year, the Austrian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted was happy to see the Austrian Mail Service set up its first accessible pick-up stations. Now it is possible for visually impaired recipients to get accessible notifications and to collect their parcels independently at the new stations.

The Estonian Blind Union has chosen the most important deeds of the year 2019 that have improved the lives of blind and partially sighted people in Estonia.

On thursday 14^th November 2019, National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) launched Bookshare Ireland which is the country’s largest digital accessible library.

Bookshare Ireland is specifically designed to support students with a visual impairment and print disabilities attending higher or further education by providing instantaneous access to over 500,000 academic books and other materials, in the student’s preferred format (DAISY Audio, DAISY with images, digital braille, PDF and Word). For the first time ever, this guarantees equity of access to the curriculum with their sighted peers.