Accessibility
The Estonian expert in the EBU task-group on the accessibility of payment terminals (EBUPAY), now designated as main leader of the group, said it aims to present a first draft of recommendations to the Commission for Liaising with the EU ideally by the end of the year.
On 4 October, MEP Langensiepen's report on the AccessibleEU resource centre was overwhelmingly approved by the European Parliament. It well pushes in the direction of bringing the EU closer to having an agency for accessibility like the US Access Board. At the Disability Platform meeting, the Commission representative reacted to say that its specifications in its call for tenders (now closed) for AccessibleEU are in line with the Parliament’s recommendations.
On 11 October, we attended the EDF-W3C (WAI) event on the lack of expertise to implement the Web Accessibility Directive. Our message was threefold:
- In a longer-term perspective, IT experts must be trained on accessibility and persons with disabilities themselves must be involved in relevant training and employment.
- To cope with the current lack of expertise, the feedback from persons with disabilities should be boosted, through calls for tenders to create web accessibility test panels, possibly by type of disability, that could operate and exchange experience across the EU (to maximise resources).
- In any case, public authorities should give more than lip service to web accessibility is and recognise that expertise and feedback are available at a cost, and not suppose that organisations of persons with disabilities or activists can deliver as part of their pushing for web accessibility.
Our Estonian member was also represented, with Jakob Rosin as one of the programmed speakers.
On 19 October, we attended the 3rd EDF European Accessibility Act implementation Peer Support meeting – State of play and next steps after the deadline for national transposition. We learn that despite the 26 June deadline for transposition, only 13 MS have notified transposition measures. A Commission contractor is analysing transposition so far. A proper conformity check will come later, in next 2 years. The good news is that the European standardisation bodies have accepted the European Commission’s standardisation request. The national member organisations of EU level DPOs are called to be involved in the process at national level, through the forming of the position of the national standardisation bodies. The work is expected to start in early 2023.
Concerning household appliances and addressing the related gap in the EAA, the following angle was suggested: inform DG GROW of the Commission if there are national rules in one or more Member States, that create barriers in the EU Internal Market, because of diverse legislative requirements across the EU. This was not considered to be the case at the time of the EAA. So, we should be spotting and pushing for national legislation about accessibility of household appliances, as this is bound to create the sort of discrepancies that the Commission is watching out for.
Equality
On 29 September, the European Commission published a toolkit to guide public employment services in promoting the participation of persons with disabilities in the employment market. It relates to the recently published Disability Employment Package. On 5 October we circulated toolkit to our members, together with a description and positive assessment of the Package.
On 20 October, the organisation representing Public Employment Services of the EU organised a webinar on "Improving labour market access for people with disabilities". We will be kept informed of the results.
Social security and welfare
We are still waiting for the comparative stud – announced in the EU Disability Rights Strategy – on social benefits for persons with disabilities in Europe, to be published. From its presentation in the Disability Platform, there is no doubt that I will determine our future advocacy. The setting of a dedicated task-group is envisaged, to analyse and pinpoint issues for campaigning.
Mobility
The public consultation on the future EU-wide Disability Card is expected in early 2023. We learned at the Disability Platform that the French example of card is considered to be “very inspiring", as far as the material scope is concerned.
29/09: positive feedback from Eurocities the EBU position paper for the EU Mobility Week 2022, on our concerns regarding driverless vehicles. They fully endorse the principles we advocate from a local authority perspective and will share our recommendations – either by taking them on board or by involving us – in their related activities.
Good news from the European Transport Safety Council: discussions are going on within the European Commission on the establishment of an EU road safety agency, and that the idea is ‘gaining ground’.
Miscellaneous
On 1-2 October, in Prague, EBU held the annual meeting of its Commission for Liaising with the EU, to report on main campaigning issues at EU level and prepare future actions.
On 6 October, we attended the quarterly meeting of EDF with its member organisations, to exchange namely on priorities for 2023. EDF’s work on the consequences for persons with disabilities of the rise of costs of living was presented.
On 13 October, in follow-up to our response in March to a call for evidence on Making the EU Statistical System Fit for the Future, we responded also to a public consultation on the revision of the legal framework for European statistics. We stressed the lack of common definition of disability, and the need to have disaggregated data sets in this respect, namely, to monitor the relevant SDGs (specifically people at risk of poverty and social exclusion, and people in long-term unemployment).
On 18 October, we participated in the European Commission’s Strategic Dialogue online meeting, on the Council Recommendation on developing framework conditions for social economy. Invited to indicate three key needs, we said:
- Secure the level of funding to disabled people’s organisations, to ensure that it is not a victim of budgetary restrictions in the current crisis.
- Also secure the funding for initiatives to train persons with disabilities and to insert them in the job market. In this respect, the digital transformation that is shaping tomorrow’s world, and indeed the job market, deserves particular attention, because without accessible technologies and digital skills, jobs will be even less available for visually impaired people than they are today.
- Address the increased cost of living as it specifically affects persons with disabilities, e.g., the assistive tools and technologies which are paramount to their inclusion.
On 24 October, we circulated to our members, for information and further circulation, the European Commission’s Toolkit for Inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care.
On 25 October, we participated in the 3rd plenary meeting of the EU Disability Platform. About the Disability Employment gap, we intervened to welcome that, as part of the effort to develop new disability indicators for the EU Social Scoreboard and the European Semester Sustainable Development Goals, the disability employment gap was added in 2021 as a new headline indicator of the Social Scoreboard, to track progress; and to deplore, however, that the indicators used by the EU for its next report to monitor UN Sustainable Development Goals still fail to include a disability breakdown on long-term unemployment, despite Article 31 of the UNCRPD. The Commission pointed out, in reply, that it publishes every year the unemployment rates on the EMPL portal – which we will look into.