Creative Europe/MEDIA
We finalised the EBU position paper on MEDIA funding to the European film industry: Promote Equal Access to Culture for Persons with Visual Impairments in the EU. This constitutes the first major development of the campaign for equal access to culture. In this paper, we argue that MEDIA must contribute to the awareness of audio description and audio subtitling among film producers as an element of accessibility for blind and partially sighted persons, and suggest how.
Considerable exchange, namely, at EU level, with the European Commission, the European Parliament rapporteur, EACEA (the Executive Agency that manages the MEDIA funding) and EFAD (the European Association of Film Agencies), but also at national level in Germany, have fed into our position paper and into a dedicated edition of our Focus Newsletter to be published in October.
Accessible lifts
We continued our work, in liaison with ANEC and EDF, to fine-tune our recommendations ahead of the next meeting, in early October, of the CEN/TC 10/WG 7, the EU standardisation body’s working group that is revising the accessible lifts standard.
Miscellaneous
- We continued to be consulted, together with other DPOs, by MEP Katrin Langensiepen, on her report for the European Parliament on the implementation of the Employment Equality Directive in light of the UNCRPD, up to the presentation of her draft report to the EMPL Committee. The contribution of EBU is acknowledged in the report, which we intend to support through communication as good practice in response to our demand: “nothing about us without us”.
- We participated in the EU vs Discrimination campaign closing seminar, on 11 September. On that occasion, the Commission presented “How to put reasonable accommodation into practice — guide of promising practices”, for the implementation of the Equality in Employment Directive.
- We responded to the Commission’s public consultations, respectively on the European Democracy Action Plan, and on the future sustainable mobility strategy (in the latter case essentially to echo and support the EDF response).
- We forwarded to our member organisations in the EU the EDF toolkit for the transposition at national level of the European Accessibility Act, and attended their webinar presenting the recommendations therein contained.
- We participated in the EDF-ENGO meeting of 17 September, where information was exchanged about reaction to the COVID-19 crisis as it affects persons with disabilities.