European Conference calls for more communication support for Disabled People

For Immediate Release: 26 November 2003

Italy/Milan/JRC (change according to target audience) hosted a major conference on communication support and e accessibility to celebrate the European Year of Disabled People and the Italian Presidency of the EU on 24 and 25 November 2003. The conference was hosted by the Voice project of the European Commission in Ispra Milan.

The conference brought together representatives of the European Commission, deaf and hard of hearing people and other disabled people, television broadcasters Rai and BBC, medical and health professionals, academic institutions and communication and infomation technology specialists from all over Europe to discuss subtitling, sign language and other communication support for deaf, hard of hearing and other disabled people. The conference also featured a range of demonstrations of the latest communication support technology including the Voice projects speech recognition subtitling system.

However, disability groups at the conference also highlighted the need for action to support communication assistence for disabled people on television, in the work place and in the education system.

Conference organiser and co ordinator of the Voice project, Giuliano Pirelli, said: "This very successful conference has shown how new technology has the potential to transform the lives of disabled people but also that more action and support is needed from the EU and national governments to harness this potential."

A major example of this, which was highlighted at the conference, was subtitling. More than one in seven people in Europe have a hearing loss and yet subtitling levels vary greatly from country to country and some have very low levels.

Furthermore, the technical standards to allow disabled people to have easy, comprehensive access to TV as proposed by the CENELEC TV for All report have not yet been implemented. The European Parliament has recently called for action to increase access to television for disabled people and many delegates from deaf and hard of hearing organisations such as EFHOH, FEPEDA, Euro CIU and RNID called for European Commission and member states will take steps to do this during the European Year of disabled people this year.

Proposal of Press Release by
Mark Hoda
RNID Information Officer