Activity at EU level has started to slow down in view of the European elections in June and the end of the current Parliament and Commission.
We were invited by the European Economic and Social Committee to contribute an article for their newsletter on the accessibility of the European elections. We focused our contribution on the issue of accessibility of the elections for voters and candidates.
On the subject of the European Elections, from mid-May until the end of the month, EBU launched its #StandForInclusiveEU campaign in all its social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn and X). Through this initiative, our organisation aimed at calling candidates and political parties for action in key areas for blind and partially sighted people across the EU such as access to culture and education, accessibility of the built and digital environment, free movement or political participation. This topic was also covered in episode 7 of our EBU in Action podcast.
At the European Commission Strategic Dialogue meeting of 30 April on fair transition towards climate neutrality, we:
- welcomed the EU’s efforts to assure equal access to quality and inclusive education in order to close the disability employment gap;
- recalled that EBU is active in denouncing the disability benefits trap (people losing disability benefits because they engage in paid employment);
- provided examples of best practices that connect the disability agenda to the green transition agenda, namely our work to promote safety feature features for silent cars (electric and hybrid vehicles) with the AVAS system;
- invited the stakeholders to investigate connecting the issue of the developments in urban mobility to accessibility of new transport solutions, like driverless vehicles; and
- pointed out that building renovation is an opportunity to make houses more accessible, a mix of taking stock of what has been accomplished in the past 5 years and looking at the way forward.
On 7 May we attended the EDF-Microsoft Accessibility Summit, see the dedicated article in this newsletter.
On 13 May we participated in the Commission’s Strategic Dialogue meeting on the Future of the Union of Equality. We:
- acknowledged that the Strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities is a driving force of policy and has already made a remarkable impact in the current mandate;
- invited the Commission to try to avoid the conference-type format for the Disability Platform meetings, to try to keep it as interactive as possible;
- welcomes AccessibleEU is a promising initiative to facilitate input to the EU standardisation process, but the Commission should ensure EU-wide disaggregated data collection on disability, necessary for policymaking and drafting new legislation;
- expressed the need to address the gaps of the Accessibility act (with regard to accessible household appliances) or in relation to the European Disability Card (to address the needs of people who move to another country to live and not only travelling); and
- emphasised that EU could do more to use the leverage of the EU funding to promote good practices in accessibility, e.g. via Creative Europe Programme or the funds aimed at fair transition to climate neutrality.
On 23 May we participated in a European Disability Forum webinar on EU legislation of interest to organisations of persons with disabilities, namely the Equality Bodies Directive, the Anti-trafficking Directive, the Digitalisation of Justice Regulation, and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.
On 28 May we followed a workshop on the new EDF Enforcement Toolkit and how to enforce EU law, focusing on the following three of the mechanisms: the European Parliament Petitions’ Committee, the European Ombudsman, and Equality Bodies.
30/5 DAISY Consortium meeting in Paris, to present our concerns in relation to the item “Countdown to the European Accessibility Act”. We addressed the following three aspects regarding e-books:
- the 5-year extension of the deadline under Art 32(1) of the EAA for products that are used in the provision of a service: how that affects e-books;
- how the EAA addressing e-books does not undermine the efforts to respond to the need for accessible books in various formats, to meet the various needs of visually impaired people; and
- the issue of legacy e-books (‘backlist’), also on the agenda of the EU Inclusive Publishing Forum meeting of 11 June and which we will attend as well.
We were invited and agreed to speak on the Marrakesh Treaty at the Irish National Disability Association’s Annual Conference in October (more on this to follow).