Art, culture and sport are desirable to promote in society integration of
disabled people (blind, deaf, motor disabled), since favour solidarity and
communication among people.
But principal barriers to knock down for a full social integration of disabled
people are the mental barriers of common people.
For most non-disabled people it is difficult to imagine which are the real
difficulties of disabled in everyday life.
It will be useful to make cross-cultural researches to understand how disabled
people really try to menage their life in free time and in their place of
study and work and what prejudice they receive by common people.
It will be useful that some disabled people would be available to tell about
themselves and how they succeed in realizing integration in society in spite
of the different handicaps, avoiding to close themselves to attend only associations
of people with the same handicap, and this is particularly true for non hearing
people, whose principal difficulty is that of communication.
Don't forget that we are in the era of new-media and multimedial communication
and this penalizes a lot deaf people, even if present technologies and SMS
and e-mail diffusion are changing the way of communicating among people in
the whole society and can allow a better participation and integration of
non-hearing people.
About blind and motorial disabled principal difficulties for a full integration
in society are that of possibility to use the principal product of art, culture,
music, sport and the access to that places.
On one hand handicap vanishes when the different skillful people are among
people all with the same handicap, on the other hand it can create closing
and isolation situation while different able people are among non disabled
ones, situation in which handicap tends to emerge.
Don't forget that not all normal people are ready to interact with disabled
and to admit the same dignity, capacity and opportunity to them.
In Australia and New Zealand the term of different skillful people is
in large use, so it will be useful to study how in that Continent this category
of people lives his handicap in University, in working place and during free-time
and how solves common problems of everyday-life.
It also will be useful to compare those results with researches divided for
typology of handicap among different Member States of the European Union,
in order to create a map of disabled people.
It will be useful to sensibilize common people to these themes by diffusion
of informative leaflets in shops and libraries.
It will be desirable to realize a best education of journalists that could
help to spread projects and information about themes of different skillful
on magazines and journals. It will be desirable also the same diffusion of
news by media, radio and tv and it would be desirable to realize reports and
history of disabled people who succeeded in a full social integration, to
show as example to others that this objective is accessible to a lot of people.
For non-hearing people it is important a larger use of subtitles of television
broadcasts and films in different European Countries. It will be useful the
diffusion of subtitling telephone calls, even if now there is a large diffusion
of videotelephone calls.
For the blind encreasing of initiatives on "tolken book" and services
and registration of universities books will be desirable, and more films and
TV series talk about by radio like E.R. programme tv.
For motorial disabled people there is the classic problem of accessibility
to places of art, culture and sport, which may be overcame if these initiatives
are organized in places of easy access.
It will be useful a work of awakness to sport and cultural corporation to
a level of town council and Province, both Statal and Private corporation
about the best ways of accessibility to these events by blind and motor disabled
ones.
The integration of different skillful is possible to realize if art, sport,
music and culture are accessible to this category of people by work integration
too. About this point I remember that often disabled have level of patience
stress less than non disabled ones. Therefore, to allow this person to realize
a human achievement and expression out of work-places too, like normal people,
I think a time reduction to work it will be useful.
We sustain social approach in opposition to the medical one for integration
of disabled people, so we are interested in showing how art, culture and sport
help integration of disabled people and joined to this diffusion of technological
innovation, among which the VOICE Project for non-hearing people.
The Voice project to subtitle conference can improve integration of these
persons allowing a better social participation.
We need to find technological instruments (for ex. Voice project, Internet,
etc.) and others like art, culture and sport which can help and favour social
integration of disabled people, in prospective to create in Europe a Community
in which different skillful people are well-integrated and can take part actively
in all sectors of civil life, so to political level.
To this aim it will be possible to do some things:
Elena Mauri
emauri_99@libero.it