This year’s State of the European Union had, for the first time ever, real-time interpretation in international sign hosted on its main broadcast channel (external link) – and advertised on the Parliament’s website and the institutions’ social media accounts. This is a step forward in terms of accessibility for deaf sign language users and a way to raise awareness of the need for interpretation in sign language as well as the diversity of Europe’s population and its languages.
We regret, however, that no option for real-time captioning was available, or at least this option were very hard to find – the Forum was not able to locate it. Native YouTube captioning was auto-generated and only in English and marked a step back from last year’s provision of captioning. We call on the European Parliament to reinforce its efforts to provide captioning and ensure that hard-of-hearing persons and others who rely on captioning can follow this landmark debate.
We thank the European Parliament’s President for replying and acting on our letter with important efforts to promote accessibility, and we hope more is done for the next address and all other important events and debates:
- Real-time captioning provided by a professional service provider.
- Interpretation in national sign languages.
We also thank the European Commission for providing a text version of the speech and hope for an easy-to-read version to be made available.
Policy achievements
We note the President’s mention of several files that impact disability rights, including the accession of the EU to the Istanbul Convention, the Pay Transparency Directive, and the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence. The President’s utterance of “No means no” shows strong support for a consent-based approach in this law.
Priorities for 2024
One of the biggest announcements that will impact persons with disabilities is an initiative on employment: a social partners summit in Belgium that could be a springboard to promote employment for persons with disabilities.
Another priority we will closely follow is the global framework on AI built on three pillars: guardrails, governance and guiding innovation. to AI. This will include standards to ensure AI is ethically developed.
We appreciate the Commission’s renewed support to Ukrainians and their commitment to Ukraine’s accession to the EU. We will advocate to ensure that the announced investment for reconstruction is invested in accessible, inclusive ways.
We also welcome the Commission’s commitment to enlargement and are working to ensure persons with disabilities living in candidate countries benefit from the enlargement process.