In times of political and social unrest, non-profit organisations can encounter obstacles to implement their mission and objectives. However, when faced with challenges, associations must persevere to reach their goals. This is the message our friends from the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired (Synskadades Riksforbund, SRF) conveyed in the second online EBU member’s webinar, a series that started last summer.
Founded in 1889, SRF’s central office coordinates 23 regional and 110 local branches. SRF’s Advocacy Officer Cecilia Ekstrand provided a comprehensive description of the association budget, funding sources and expenditures, a fine example of how a DPO (Disabled Peoples Organisation) can operate financially.
“Our organisation is deeply committed to the promotion of our communities’ rights in areas such as rehabilitation, employment or digitalisation”, underlined Ms. Ekstrand. “Apart from the work we do in Sweden, we have also engaged ourselves with projects focused in the domain of international cooperation and development”, she added.
However, our Swedish friends’ efforts often face barriers while implementing their action plan, most notably in the area of guiding services. One of Cecilia’s fellow Advocacy Officers, Lennart Karlsson, highlighted the restrictive character of the focus laws on this subject. “We have already flagged this up to the government through our research, as municipalities cannot guarantee these services in a proper way. Even if the current social climate is harsh, we need to make this issue a priority within our country’s political agenda”, he stated. Legal problems are also present in important domains such as education, as the Swedish Education Act doesn’t cover the special needs of visually impaired children and remains too focused on mainstream schools.
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Nonetheless, the challenges mentioned above don’t stop SRF’s officers in pursuing their goal to help improving the lives of blind and partially people in Sweden. “We’re one of the very few organisations who provide legal advice to persons with visual impairment in our country within the context of discrimination cases”, pinpointed Amanda Schulin, the association’s Communications Officer. Additionally, she also talked about how essential it is to bring forward to the media examples of situations where visually impaired people’s rights are not respected in order to raise awareness of what needs to be corrected to ensure the full implementation of the UNCRPD.
Apart from being fully engaged with the values of accessibility, equality and inclusion at a national level, the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired is also active at a European level through the EBU Network. A former partner of the PARVIS Accessible Communications project from 2021 to 2022, they also provide their valuable inputs in forums such as our braille and accessible payment terminals Working Groups.
During the session, they also shared their concerns on widely common challenges across Europe, such as the lack of digital culture among elder blind and partially sighted people. Nevertheless, as stated above, no matter which obstacles stand in front of them, our colleagues from SRF will always be ready to advocate for a better world for our communities in their country and beyond.
You can listen to the full webinar.