On December 3rd, 2020, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth published the State’s Initial Report under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the progress made by the Irish Government in relation to realising the rights of disabled people outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).
VVI (Voice of Vision Impairment) will be participating in providing feedback to the Department through “The Disability Participation and Consultation Network” in co-operation with the Disabled Person Coalition (DPO Coalition), of which VVI is a founder member.
The DPO Coalition has been funded to provide feedback to the Department of Justice on its draft document. The DPO Coalition is currently developing a consultation framework to ensure your opinions are communicated and make a difference. The DPO Coalition, through its member organizations, including VVI, will be asking for your involvement to talk about your lived experience, the challenges you face and the obstacles you are trying to overcome.
VVI currently only has a voluntary staff, but we are committed to doing our best to make sure that the voices of people with a visual impairment (including your voice), are heard.
These consultation meetings will happen early next year and we will be bringing you more news about how to get involved in January.
If you have a visual impairment and are interested in getting involved, or just finding out things as they happen, all you need to do is write to us at info@vvi.ie, and we’d love to have you as a member.
At the same time as this research work is going on, the DPO Coalition will also be developing its own “Shadow Report”. This report is not a Government report, it will be developed by the DPO members to give clear feedback to the UN committee on the members’ views of the Government’s progress.
VVI, ourselves,, will also be preparing our own, independent, shadow report on the State’s implementation of the CRPD, and again, the involvement of as many people with a visual impairment as possible will be greatly valued, and greatly enrich our report.
All of these projects will be an exciting opportunity for us to have our opinions and experience recognised and we look forward to getting you involved.
The members of the DPO coalition are:
As well as VVI (Voice of Vision Impairment), the current members of the DPO Coalition are:
- As I Am
- Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI)
- Irish Deaf Society (IDS)
- National Platform of Self Advocates
- Disabled Women of Ireland (DWI)
Looking forward to hearing from you,
The VVI team