Description
Project "We can handle this" aims to lobby for measures and proposals that would ensure compliance with the European Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the visually impaired people who use a guide dog. A group of visually impaired people will undergo a five-day training. They will also become role models and spokespersons of a wider community of the visually impaired people. During the project implementation period, they will visit at least 100 public administration institutions and require disclosure of information which they need in their everyday life, but which is withheld from them. By designing specific measures and organising a roundtable discussion with NGOs and representatives of the relevant public administrations we would like to fix the following problems: access to public buildings for the visually impaired people with guide dogs, providing written information in the wrong form – most written documents don’t take into account the difficulties of the visually impaired to read small or regular print etc. The first benefit for the visually impaired guide dog owners will be the respect of their rights according to the Convention. The group will be trained on how to influence governance related to their everyday life, on how to obtain legislative changes, how to obtain information, how to file complaints, etc. The members of the target group will monitor the situation in their region after having attended the five day training exercise. By offsetting changes in regulations, the project will benefit to the entire community of owners of guide dogs in Slovakia and also the visually impaired people without a guide dog.
Summary of project results
Project „We can handle this“ wanted to ensure free access to buldings, services and information for blind and partially sighted people in Slovakia, even if they use a guide dog as a compensation tool. By signing the European Convention on the Rights of persons with Disabilities, Slovakia promised to prepare regulations to enable them fully use their rights. By the activities of this projects, we showed (through monitoring) this is still not happening. We trained 10 blind and created a manual for 300 others - giving them information, many times not accessible for them, as a tool to ensure their knowledge of their own rights. We wrote letters to institutions and thanks to their answers and monitoring carried out by 7 active blind guide dog holders, we identified some ways of solving their problems. We discussed these concrete suggestions with representatives of Ministries and other institutions at the final roundtable. Two very concrete measures were promised to be incorporated into the Law on compensation tools, as well as other future steps, in cooperation with 3 different institutions. Then it will be on all the blind guide dog owners to defend their own rights. Of course, we will go on in supporting them, but thanks to our training, manual, maybe after going publicly with 1 or 2 concrete cases from our monitoring, they have enough information, abilities and motivation.
Summary of bilateral results