National Council on Disability
Federal Advisory Committee International Watch
Conference Call Minutes
September 6, 2007
12:00 p.m. Eastern Time

Present

Kathleen Martinez
Joan Durocher
Bob Brauker
Anne Hayes Cindy Lewis
Mary Keogh
Michele Magar
Don Galloway
Catherine Townsend
Rik Opstelten
Anne Hayes
Cappie Morgan
Eric Rosenthal
Sylvia Caras
Betsy Valnes
Karen Heinicke-Motsch
Judy Brewer
Judith Heumann

I. Roll Call and Welcome

II. Amend/Approve the Agenda (Kathleen Martinez)

Judy Brewer (IW member) has been added to the agenda to discuss the harmonization of IT standards.  

FY’08 International Watch Schedule of Conference Calls (Joan Durocher)     

Ms. Durocher stated that this would be the last teleconference for the fiscal year and that she will be establishing a new schedule for the next fiscal year.  Meetings, including conference calls, are public and need to be noted in the Federal Register. She added that if the International Watch membership is satisfied with the current schedule (the first Thursday of every other month at 12:00 p.m. eastern time), in consultation with the Liaison to International Watch, Kathleen Martinez, this schedule will be continued in the next fiscal year with the first conference call commencing on November 1, 2007.

Ms. Magar (member of public) asked about the possibility of holding the meetings on a more frequent basis.  Ms. Durocher agreed to discuss this possibility with NCD’s Liaison.

The International Watch members on the call expressed assent to continuing the conference calls in the same manner, schedule, and frequency.

International Disability Rights Monitoring Project: The Europe Report (Mary Keogh)          

Ms. Keogh reported that the countries included in the Europe report are Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. She stated that the report is going to be launched or published towards the end of the month (September).

The study was funded primarily through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and through partnership funding from foundations in Spain, the Irish government, and Handicap International (HI).

Report follows:

IDRM Europe Report – Summary of findings

Legal protections:

• Most of the countries provided adequate basic legal protections – these protections include specific disability legislation and also other protections such as anti- discrimination legislation e.g Ireland has a disability law and an anti-discrimination law that covers people with disabilities

United Nations Convention/Optional Protocol

• 4 of the countries have signed both the CRPD & its optional protocol (Finland, Spain, Armenia, Germany)
• 6 countries have signed the CRPD only (Greece, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Turkey)
• 4 countries have not signed either (Bulgaria, Estonia, Russia, Serbia)

Disability Definition

• Research found that various defintions of disability are used throughout the region and the definitions are related to the different models of disability that are used. Defintions used are related to incapacity to work; social welfare entitlements
• Medical model predominates in countries such as Armenia and Bulgaria where identification of disability lies solely with medical agencies.
• Netherlands and Serbia exclude people with pyscho social disabilities from their defintions of disability used

Disability Population

• Official data available throughout the region with the exception of Finland and Serbia. Serbia using WHO estimates, Finland with a legal framework that prevents collection of data on disability
• Majority of countries report disability ranging from between 8 percent & 14 percent. UK has the highest disability rate at 18.2 percent. Armenia & Bulgaria record disability figures at 4.6 and 3.3 percent respectively
• The majority of countries data collections emerged in the mid 1990’s
• 6 countries gather data through official census, while other countries collect data through special surveys e.g Spain

Employment

• People with disabilities experience high rates of unemployment and this rate varies from country to country. For example, in Serbia only 13 percent of people with disabilities are in employment. In the UK, 48 percent of people with disabilities are employed.
• Data collection on people with disabilities and employment varies, for example in Poland and Armenia, if a person with a disability is in receipt of social welfare benefits, they are not counted as unemployed.
• Over half of the countries in the region have qouta systems for employing people with disabilities

Education

• In the majority of countries, the right to education for all children is protected by legislation. However, in practice resources, inaccessible transport and learning material result in this protection not being realised

Institutionalization

• Involunary institutionalization remains in existence throughout the region on the grounds of personal safety or issues relating to public security. For example in Germnay between 2000 – 2002 there were 20,000 forced commitments to institutions per year out of a total population of 18 million inhabitants.
• In Spain, it was found that sterilzation and clinical experiments on people with disabilities were admissable in certain cases
• Some countries have no montoring systems for institutions, recent reports for Bulgaria stated that people with disabilities treatments in these institutions amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment
• Occurrence of abuses, mistreatment of people with disabilities living in institutions throughout the region is unknown

Some other interesting findings:

• Civic & Political participation – data on the accessibility of polling stations is not widely available through the region. Many barriers exist preventing people with disabilities realising their right to vote. There are some good models of practice in Poland where its National Electoral Office provides data on accessible stations
• Within the region there has been some progress made on disability & development issues. Finland has inclusive development policies and a recent study showed that they allocated approximately €32.3 million on disability specific co-operation
• Independent living is growing support in the region while half of the countries report that provision of independent living exists in their current laws, there is a growing support officialy for it.

V.  IT Harmonization (Judy Brewer)

Ms. Brewer discussed how IT harmonization relates to the CRPD, as the CRPD declares ICT a right for people with disabilities.  The implementation process is providing various opportunities to raise awareness and encourage policy development and pursue improved accessibility. 

Ms. Brewer stated that the biggest challenge is having the resources to be able to follow up on the opportunities as they rise and to track the new developments that are coming along.  She stated that one thing that has come out of the Convention is the G3ICT.  G3ICT has provided some opportunities for presentations and discussions among government representatives, some industry representatives, some disability organization representatives, and an opportunity to present resources that are available for web accessibility and for other kinds of information technology.  It has also provided an opportunity to talk about harmonization and regional national policy development on technology accessibility issues.  There is an upcoming meeting in November which will be a good opportunity for those who have been involved in the development of the CRPD.

Ms. Brewer added that in talking a few months ago with OAS (Organization of the American States) representatives there were five new policy initiatives within the past year in Latin America and different countries that were all around information technology accessibility and that had all been informed in some way by the CRPD.

Ms. Brewer stated from an information communications technology accessibility field point of view there’s a movement towards harmonization to improve the existing accessibility guidelines and standards to the greatest extent possible.  The standards bring multiple benefits for accessibility and one of the benefits is that it allows developers to design and produce technology once for multiple markets instead of having to spread their development effort across conflicting requirements for multiple products and services.

W3C is the Worldwide Web Consortium and within that is the web accessibility initiative.  W3C is the leading standards organization for web technology.  We developed accessibility guidance for web content which is the information received on websites for browsers and for offering tools used to create accessible content.  We are also working on accessibility improvement for some of the more advanced and dynamic technologies you can get on websites.

Ms. Brewer also gave a brief overview of the JTC1 (joint technical committee).

In Europe, there’s a formal mandate on information technology accessibility that has been started this year, and they are also doing standards inventory.

New Business

Ms. Durocher stated that she just received an invitation to the 3rd biennial award ceremony of the Thomas J. Dodd award for International Justice and Human Rights.  Mental Disability Rights International is receiving the award this year for their work for their efforts in advancing the cause of international justice and global human rights for persons with mental disabilities.  Ms. Durocher congratulated International Watch member Eric Rosenthal for his achievements in this area.

Karen Heinicke-Motsch (member of public) stated that the community based rehabilitation guidelines are being published by WHO (World Health Organization) and that there has been good participation in establishing the guidelines. The CBM has over 100 years of experience supporting projects for and with people with disabilities in the global south.  They are supporting over 200 projects around the world and more than 1,000 projects through local partners in over 100 countries.

She added that many of there strategies and concepts are in line with the CRPD itself. Guidelines are useful in terms of marginal communities in rural areas as a vehicle for implementing the Convention.  The guidelines themselves are currently out in the field for validation after a process of 160 authors contributed to the different topics.  They are currently being validated in 24 countries with development organizations, some disability specific organizations and some government organizations all involved in the review process.  She stated they are also also specifically soliciting comment and review form the DPO’s (disabled people organizations).  The validation will be over in November of this year and when this committee meets in December to review the comments that have come in, we will begin working on the next draft and then it will go to peer review.

Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.