EBU Member's Newsletter

With the financial support of the European Commission EBU has produced its Annual Report 2019

Take a look at the monthly updates of our campaign activities, including Marrakesh treaty; accessible lifts, Creative Europe/MEDIA, and more.

After EBU received an anonymous letter from a participant to the 11^th General Assembly, stating that during the event, this person was verbally harassed by an accompanying person of one of the delegates, the EBU Board decided to immediately take action and formed a working group to analyse the situation and address this problem. As it was stressed, EBU has a duty to protect both the staff at the EBU office as well as the people participating in events that EBU organizes and or is actively present.

2020 marks the 25^th anniversary of the Beijing declaration, which is an agenda for female empowerment signed in 1995 by 189 states and is considered until today the key global policy document on gender equality. On EBU level, this June also marked the first anniversary of the Malmö declaration – a document drafted at last year’s GEAR (Gender Equality Awareness Raising) conference.

The GEAR project will continue this year with empowerment and training sessions for visually impaired women in three countries – Austria, Denmark and Slovenia.

EBU Executive Director Lars Bosselmann was interviewed on RNIB connect radio by Allan Russell on 19th June.

Welcome to the June number of the EBU Access Cast.

We are happy to say that from now on you are able to listen our podcast with the transcript which will bring better inclusion to all the listeners with different disabilities, so if you want to read what we said, head over to it!

In the period between 2019- 2020, three training sessions for the inexperienced job seekers with a visual impairment were held in Montenegro. Trainings are a part of the project activities carried out by the European Blind Union, through the activity of ADVISE.( Aiding Young Visually Impaired Seeking Employment) In the period between Dec 2018- May 2020, 4 countries, Spain, Austria, Poland and Montenegro participated.

In Montenegro, two trainings were held in 2019, first on May 15, second on July 18, and one training on June 19, 2020. Third training was planned for March 2020, but the situation with the COVID-19 postponed the training.

On March 16, 2020, Brailleliga /Ligue Braille had to close its offices due to the Covid-19 crisis. During lockdown we continued to help our blind and visually impaired members from a distance. For example, we launched a new initiative “Telephone tales”.

The development of information and communication technologies is opening up the world to visually impaired people. Already having screen reader software, smartphones brought another revolution in equal access, opening up new ways of getting to information and communication. Based upon these, the Hungarian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted (MVGYOSZ) set up TÁVSZEM services in 2019 from EU funds.

The Accessible Airport Award is now open for applications until 17 July 2020.

 The award, given by the European Disability Forum (EDF) and Airport Council International Europe (ACI-Europe) celebrates airports in Europe that have achieved high level of accessibility as well as range and the quality of the assistance services to persons with disabilities. By sharing best practices, we aim to motivate more airports to advance accessibility of air travel.

Applications for the 11th Access City Award competition are now open. EU cities have until 9 September to apply.

EU cities are invited to take part in the Access City Award 2021, the EU Prize for cities accessible to persons with disabilities and elderly people.

Europe has - as so many other regions of the world -been struck by massive lockdowns. Citizens everywhere have been confined and have been compelled to fine meaningful ways to spend their time. This goes for visually impaired persons too. I am sure that many have been Netflix series bingers, including those with partial sight or who enjoy listening to Audio Descriptive films. But there are those who for one or more reasons prefer other ways of spending time in the company of a good book or more. Here, the talking book or podcasts are good ways to keep ourselves entertained, on with the headphones, close out the surroundings, and delve into one's own universe.

But then, there are those who take in culture from writers through their fingers, the braille readers!