Sri Lanka: 39 Million Rupees to empower people with disabilities

Before posting this news, we will request all DPOs of Sri Lanka please monitor this project and report to disability movement worldwide about that such a huge amount is really empowering People with Disabilities in Sri Lanka? Are People with Disabilities and their organizations included in this project? We as people with disabilities have more challenges after adoption of UNCRPD. In Pakistan billionaires have been engaged in disability field, want to impose their ideas and trying to use people with disabilities as puppets and obedient slaves. We should encourage such initiatives but with vigilance. Like we are collecting proofs how these business tycoons are thinking about us and treating us. We need more unity in our ranks and be aware what is happening around us and may our movement again not been hijacked by business or medical minded people, those are whitening their black money in the name of disability. 

Global pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has committed Rs 39 million to a new project to  empower persons with disabilities in southern Sri Lanka.

The project will be planned and executed over three years by the Leonard Cheshire Disability Resource Centre (LCDRC) in partnership with GSK Pharmaceuticals Sri Lanka, the country's leading pharmaceuticals and vaccines company. This is the first project involving GSK and the Leonard Cheshire Disability Resource Centre in Sri Lanka.

The project is intended to help about 700 persons with disabilities living in the divisional secretariat of Habaraduwa in the Galle District by promoting several key aspects. These include vital health and rehabilitation programmes that meet a wide range of needs of people with disabilities to reduce the impact of disability; innovative community based services that support persons with disabilities to live inter-dependent lives with others; disabled children's right to a meaningful education; and sustainable livelihood programmes that focus on economic empowerment and self reliance.

The project also seeks to promote awareness and capacity building among rights holders and duty bearers on disability and development, and advocacy and campaigning to ensure, protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities.

Commenting on the company's latest corporate social responsibility initiative, GSK Pharmaceuti-cals Sri Lanka Managing Director, Stuart Chapman said: "We are pleased to extend financial assistance and the equally-important moral support to efforts that seek to empower persons with disabilities in our community to live independently. GSK strongly believes that persons with disabilities also have the same rights to equal opportunities and access to be useful members of society."

"We are confident that this project will help eliminate some of the attitudinal, environmental and institutional barriers to pave the way for a better quality of life with self esteem for persons with disabilities and their families," he said.

Jeevan Kodithuwakku, the Programme Director for the Leonard Cheshire Disability Resource Centre in Sri Lanka said the organisation is grateful for the support of GlaxoSmithKline for this thoughtfully-structured project at a time when many corporate entities are scaling down their commitments in the face of the global economic downturn.

He said that the vision of LCDRC is to create an inclusive, barrier free and rights -based society for persons with disability. One of the key aspects of the project will be to empower 200 young persons with disabilities, to ensure, protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities, to lead a life of dignity through the 'Young Voices' project that seeks to open the door to tomorrow's leaders.

He explained that it had been decided to select about 700 people as beneficiaries in this project to be empowered through the widely-accepted Community-Based Rehabilitation approach (CBR) over a three year period.

According to the figures in possession of the Leonard Cheshire Disability Resource Centre, 5 to 6 per cent of the Sri Lankan population represent persons with disabilities. Only 30 per cent of children in the category receive proper education and about 60 per cent of them remain unemployed.

The Leonard Cheshire Disability Resource Centre was established in Sri Lanka in 2005 to support persons with disabilities affected by the 2004 tsunami. The Disability Resource Centres (DRCs) located in the Colombo, Trincomalee and Galle districts work in the areas of education, livelihoods, health and rehabilitation, advocacy and campaigning and support for everyday living. These DRCs act as information and resource centere and run projects in nearby communities.

India: 50 government websites to be made disabled friendly

Disabled rights groups have approached the IT ministry with a list of 50 government websites like that of the Indian Railways, Central Information Commission and Income Tax Department which they want to be made disabled friendly.
“We have identified 50 organisations and departments in the government. We have sent a proposal to the IT ministry to make sites of these WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines) 2.0 compliant, thereby making them disabled friendly. The ministry has shown a very positive outlook on this,” Javed Abidi, convener of the Disabled Rights Group, told IANS.

According to Abidi, such a move would simplify the Internet interface for people with disability by making the websites compatible with the special software they use to access websites.

“With an aim to enable disabled people to be a part of e-governance, we came to a consensus on the list after discussions with various disability groups across the country. Simple things like booking a rail ticket will be possible for people with visual impairment once the site carries out technical changes,” he said.

Abidi, who is also director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) - an umbrella organisation of various NGOs and civil society organisations working on disability issues - said that 99.99 percent of the estimated 5,000 websites and web portals hosted by the government of India listed by the National Information Centre (NIC) can’t be accessed by people with disability.

At the e-governance conference in Goa Feb 12, it was announced that all government websites would be made WCAG 2.0 compliant.

These government websites would now enable web access to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities and photosensitivity.

The challenge, Abidi said, was to make existing sites WCAG 2.0 compliant and sensitise concerned government departments.

“While the IT ministry initiated immediate action and made India’s largest sites - india.gov.in and bharat.gov.in - accessible to the disabled, the social justice and empowerment ministry continues to drag its feet. It is ironic that it is this ministry that is supposedly nodal for various issues concerning disabled people,” he said.

Abidi added the website of the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH) was not accessible to visually impaired people.

“Similarly, the CCPD (Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities) website is still not accessible to people with disabilities. And they are supposedly the watchdogs for any Disability Act violations that may occur,” he said.

BBC: DANCING ON WHEELS

Ballroom glamour and glitz come to BBC Three as celebrities join forces with wheelchair users in a dancing competition like no other

Singer Heather Small, gold medallist Mark Foster and actress Michelle Gayleare among the celebrities that will be dancing with wheelchair users in a groundbreaking new six-part series for BBC Three uniting wheelchair users and celebrities in a dance competition with a difference.

Actor Kevin Sacre, rugby legend Martin Offiah and presenter Caroline Flackare also set to partner wheelchair users who have never danced before – with only five weeks to master everything from the cha-cha to the paso doble.

The wheelchair users are: Simone, a 22-year-old Cambridge graduate; Diana, a 48-year-old magazine editor and mother; 27-year-old Carolyne, who enjoys nothing more than a night out; James, a cocky 31-year-old whose impressive acrobatic ability puts most able-bodied people to shame; Paul, a 24-year-old festival-goer who is looking forward to Glastonbury this summer; and 23-year-old Harris, who recently got married to a girl he met whilst travelling in Thailand.

They will all be learning the art of Wheelchair Dance Sport, a popular international sport where at least one dancer is a wheelchair user.

Wheelchair Dance Sport is practised widely by athletes in 22 countries, with competitions and championships held across the world.

In Dancing On Wheels (working title), the couples will be compete in the "combi" event where a standing able-bodied dancer partners a wheelchair user.

The winning couple will go on to represent the UK at the Wheelchair Dance Sport European Championships in Israel this autumn.

Lead choreographer Brian Fortuna, a professional ballroom dancer who appeared in the last series of Strictly Come Dancing and who has been teaching wheelchair dancing for the last eight years, will be putting the couples through their paces.

Under the guidance of Brian and some of the other top names in dance, the couples will be trained intensively each week to compete in a variety of exhausting and challenging dance disciplines as they battle for supremacy.

A panel of judges will decide each week which couples stay in the competition.

The judges will then select the two strongest couples who will get the chance to take part in a final dance-off, before a winning couple is chosen to represent Britain in the European Championships in October 2009.

The programme will be shown later this year.