Creative Europe/MEDIA
We have continued to collect and call for feedback from our members in the EU, about the practice of national film funding agencies, on the basis of the questionnaire we have provided.
We have started to prepare the ‘right of access to culture’ component of the PARVIS project, in particular our related awareness raising twitter campaign in September, which connects to our campaign to promote responsible funding to the film industry.
Miscellaneous
We engaged in contacts with MEP Miriam Lexmann (EPP Group, Slovakia) for an interview in the upcoming edition of our ‘Focus’ newsletter, on the European Disability Card. Incidentally, this led us to be consulted by her on amendments to the opinion of the EMPL committee for the PETI report on ‘The protection of persons with disabilities through petitions: lessons learnt’.
On 10 May, on Twitter, we launched the first of a series of 10 awareness-raising videos, focusing on the right to accessible health for blind and partially sighted persons, based on article 25 of the UNCRPD, as part of the European Commission-funded PARVIS project, together 10 EBU member organisations. On 27 May, we repeated this communication, this time jointly with our participating members and with the video also available in 9 other languages.
On 31st May, ideas for advocacy were brought to the PARVIS e-workshop on accessible healthcare.
Events
We attended the following events:
- The EDF-Facebook roundtable on the European Accessibility Act (20 May). Our contribution, by way of intervention ‘from the floor’, concerned implementation through defining standards, and consisted in stressing that DPOs don’t necessarily have the technical expertise on accessibility, yet they have an interested to be consulted about the needs of persons with disabilities, to ensure that their lived experiences are translated into standardisation language with user-friendly standards; and that currently the work of standardisation bodies itself is insufficiently inclusive. In what became a pretty central point of the roundtable, the Commission’s representative argued that any legal process is complex and requires expertise, but acknowledged that the process needs to be more clear and inclusive.
- The EDF European Year of Rail 2021 conference “Towards independent and spontaneous rail travel for all” (27 May). This event essentially was a stock-taking exercise of the legislation in place, of the remaining gaps and problems and the challenges ahead. The current revision of TEN-T Regulation was put forward by the European Commission’s DG MOVE as particularly relevant to address inclusive mobility (all transport modes), with a focus on city nods.
- The International Transport Forum 2021 Virtual Summit (17-28 May), represented by Thierry Jammes (CFPSAA) and Erwin Denninghaus (DBSV). Our participation focused in particular on the following moments: the Focus session: ‘Looking towards the 2022 Summit: Transport for Inclusive Societies’; the Fishbowl session: ‘Modern travel and the digital divide: Bridging the gap’; and the Virtual Ministers' Roundtable: ‘Regulatory challenges of automated and connected driving’.