The end of the PARVIS project: highlights and successes
As the year 2022 is coming to a close, it is time to reflect on the successes of the 2-year PARVIS project that have enabled EBU to raise awareness of the rights of visually impaired people across Europe, while building visual impairment organisations’ capacities to advocate for them.
The project activities implemented in 9 countries (France, Germany, Lithuania, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden), have ranged from two social media campaigns, info-sessions aimed at visually impaired citizens and a decentralised event with decision makers, to capacity-building activities to support advocacy work of visually impairment organisations in the form of e-workshops and the EBU webinar on non-discrimination.
Furthermore, PARVIS has produced a wide range of accessible audiovisual communications materials, including an awareness-raising podcast as well as videos produced in altogether 17 languages.
PARVIS, of which the target is decision-makers (in the private and public sector), the media and visually impaired citizens, has already seen some positive results:
- Decision-makers have been given a better understanding of obstacles when it comes to realising visually impaired people’s rights in the society and the importance of implementing the UNCRPD.
- Visually impaired citizens have received information on mechanisms they can refer to if they consider their rights have been denied, thus allowing them to conceive of themselves as rights holders.
- Visual impairment organisations themselves have an improved understanding of the UNCRPD and how to best advocate for it.
- PARVIS partners have reported an increase in visibility of their organisations and new cooperation with other organisations in the field of Human Rights at national level.
- Some project partners have produced additional tools based on the project activities, to be used at national level. (e.g., in the Netherlands a flyer is produced with information and tips on participation in political life).
The outputs of the project such as the videos will remain relevant beyond the end of the project, which EBU members will continue to use in their training, awareness-raising and advocacy activities.
In January 2023, the EBU Handbook for High Quality Audio Description on Screen will be published and presented to EBU members in February 2023 in a webinar. More information about this will be communicated to all EBU members at the beginning of the year.
Visit the EBU PARVIS page