Dariusz: Welcome to Under 30 the podcast series by the youth partnership that
brings the research results, explores trends in young people's lives and themes
relevant for youth policy and practice.
In previous episodes of our podcast we have explored different
topics covered in the latest Youth Knowledge Book on Young People,
Social Inclusion and Digitalization.
In this episode, we would like to focus on another topic you can find in the
knowledge book, digitalization and social inclusion of youth with disabilities.
This topic is explored in two articles, which you can find in chapter
three and chapter four of the book.
Today, we are having two authors of these chapters, Roman Banari, who wrote
an article in which he presents the challenges for youth with disabilities
related to accessible technology and provides an insight into how they
can benefit from ICT in order to be included in participatory processes,
education, and the labor market.
And Judit Gombás, who is a co-author of the article on digitalization for
the empowerment of individuals with visual impairments or blindness.
My name is Dariusz Grzemny together with Lana Pasic, from the EU-Council of
Europe youth partnership, we would like to invite you to join us in this episode.
Lana: Today, we are speaking with Roman Banari and Judit Gombás about
two of their chapters in a Youth Knowledge Book and Social Inclusion,
Digitalization, and Young People.
The topic of today's podcast is digitalization and ICT as a support
for young people with disabilities.
So we will start with Roman who will tell us about his chapter in the book.
This is chapter three on digitalization and ICT as a
guarantee for the social inclusion of young people with disabilities.
Roman: Okay, thanks lana.
As a start, I would like to say why I chose this topic in order to make some
bridges, connection between youth with disability and first of all, also I
tend to create connection in the chapter between the young people, civil society
and the governmental structure in order to ensure what strategies and actions are
connected to young people with disability , in order to ensure that young people
with disabilities are not left behind.
So ensuring that the EU standards and national requirements related to social
inclusion of young people are respected.
So giving some, uh, insights on how to ensure that the young people
with disability have to be included in youth actions related to youth
participation in decision-making process and how governmental structure could
ensure what the youth disability, with different forms of disability
hearing or visual, could effectively participate in participation processes.
Also, I tend to make some connection with youth, social inclusion standards
related to smart cities, how these could help, uh, in social inclusion
and participation of young people in the development of our society.
As young people at the present do not play so crucial role in a society as
they are excluded or discriminated due to a lack of information accessible
for them, or a lack of infrastructure.
So due to digitalization and other forms of accessibility of information
or infrastructure, we will ensure that young people are engaged actively
in these forms of participation.
Lana: Thank you Roman.
And, in your chapter, you cover different groups of young people and different
types of disabilities and the tools.
And also you identify some of the tools which are designed
for youth with disabilities.
On the other hand, Judit has taken a very particular approach for her chapter,
with her colleagues Mária Magdolna Flamich and Mária Rita Hoffmann, and
they explored particularly digitalization for the empowerment of individuals
with visual impairment and blindness.
So Judit what is it that you explore in your chapter and how does technology
help young people, but also not only young people with visual impairments
Judit: Yeah.
To share a personal background with you, it's important to say that I am blind.
Maria, my colleague, she's also blind and Maria Rita Hoffmann,
she's a low vision person.
And actually, you know, we experienced in all our life this change.
Let me tell you examples, then it's easier to understand.
Eh, when I started my education, I only had a possibility to use
Braille to do all the reading and writing in, um, my school years.
And I was around 18 when I got my first laptop.
Already, you can imagine what a huge change it was.
I could, for example, simply write my tests on the computer and give
them on a pen drive to my teachers.
So, you know, it meant a lot before that we didn't have, let's say a
language, which we could both use.
So I couldn't read or write, um, you know, normal print.
My teachers couldn't read or write Braille, so that was tough.
So everything like nowadays, what we experience is that it's much,
much, much easier to communicate, thanks to digitalization.
And another very important thing is that it's just uncomparable what an amount of
information blind and low vision people can get a hold of thanks to the internet.
Thanks to the possibility of scanning materials.
So like before that we only had, in the good old days, you know, audio tapes
with audio books or Braille books, but it was just way much less information.
So actually the reason why we chose this topic and we wanted to give what we
wanted to put together a very practical chapter to show our audience in what
ways digitalization can help blind and low vision people, how we are able
to use computers or smart devices.
And so the technology that enables us to be more proficient in our studies, in
work, in free time activities, and so on.
Dariusz: Judit, you quote in the end of your article the director of the
IBM national support center for persons with disabilities who said that for most
people, technology makes things easier and for people with disabilities,
technology makes things possible.
So if you can say a few words what's made possible for people with disabilities
thanks to technology, thanks to ICT.
Or in practical terms, how ICT, how technology, how digitalization is
actually supporting the daily routine or daily tasks, basically your life,
the life of people will disabilities.
Judit: Wow.
I should mention lots of things.
I couldn't be chatting with you now without a screen reader
and an accessible webpage.
So, you know, it's really important that I not only have a screen reader,
but also this page is accessible.
I can read the buttons well, I can use it well, or I can do my shopping.
I can read all the full list of ingredients of the products, if I'm
interested, you know, earlier I just went to the shop, try to find a shop
assistant, told the person what I need.
But I had to be much more focused.
It had to be a very quick process, you know, because the
shop assistants are super busy.
So now I can use a lot of time to read through all the things that
I'm interested in, if the web page of course is accessible, or I can
simply listen to a audio book, on my smartphone when I'm sitting on
the train or the public transport.
So lots of things are possible.
And there's one thing I would love to stress.
Is that, we do need to Braille.
I'm really for using Braille and there are fantastic ways of comparing,
let me say old technology and new technology, so there are devices called
the refreshable Braille display that you can connect to your computer.
So you can simply read in Braille what can be seen on the screen.
And this is very important because, you know, blind students, low vision students
also need to learn, correct spelling.
Also need to learn what a text looks like, for example, and these things
are way easier with a Braille display.
So when you listen to an audio text, you just can't learn spelling.
So, you know, I think what is very important today or these days is to see
that, uh, that we should, um, find a good balance between digitalization and all
the new technology and how to combine it well and efficiently with all technology.
But really I could tell you a super long list of the things that it helps with.
For example with my phone, I can check what bank notes I have in my wallet.
Hungarian forints are all the same size, so there's no other
way for me to recognize them.
Or I can check colors with my smartphone.
So really lots and lots of things.
Dariusz: That's very interesting because usually when we read or hear about people
or young people with disabilities, when it comes to their contact with digital
technologies, there's a lot of focus on what challenges they are facing.
And probably there's a lot of challenges.
And actually when we turn upside down what you just actually said,
this would be the challenges.
That the page is not accessible, that you can not follow, that
you cannot read and so on.
So I think that these are a lot of challenges.
There's a lot of standards that could be applied when it comes
to making technology accessible.
How we actually know about them.
If we are a youth organization, if we are a group of young people and
we want to involve young people, how can we know about these standards?
So Roman, what we actually should start with as let's say youth organization, when
we really want to involve young people with disabilities in our activities, or
give them the space for participation and involve young people, hearing the
voice of young people with disabilities.
Roman: Okay, thanks Darek.
In fact, we can start from our everyday world, where can see without these
standards, without knowing about this.
So we can see accessibility of our offices, of our spaces where do we
tend to organise some activities.
Even our websites could be a observed if we are accessible or not
accessible for those with disability.
So I'm having some filters for accessibility for people with
disabilities, but then when it's coming to more concrete standards, you can
use ISO standards which regulate all steps or how we can use one or other
tools for people with disabilities.
Or some other general principles of accessibility are developed by UN
where we have a possibility to use seven principles of accessibility
related to youth with disability.
But more effectively, I suppose, Judit will support my idea , we have to involve
people with disability in developing these concrete apps or different tools
for people with disability because we are developers, but without knowing exactly
how people with disability feel this, how they use this in their daily life, without
this, we will not prepare any tools which are individualised for each person.
Judit: If I may add something.
Yeah, I absolutely, I fully agree with Roman that we need to
ask persons with disabilities.
And you may say as an NGO c'mon, but I don't know any blind
developers who could give me advice.
I would say no worries about that because I'm pretty sure in each
country there's uh, at least one big organization, but I'm pretty sure in
most countries, there are many big organizations of people with disabilities.
In Hungary I would say to the Federation for the blind and visually impaired,
if we just stay with people with visual impairments, but all other bigger
disability groups have these organizations supporting them and they can give you
practical advice on who to turn to.
So I don't think that, you know, all the NGOs should start trying
to learn all these standards.
On the other hand, it would be really cool to have web developers
who are into the standards and who are aware of the standards.
Unfortunately, my experience is that we, we just don't have many of them.
So I believe it does help a lot if you, as an NGO, for example,
try to find a bigger disability organization who you can turn to.
And another thing is, all these support pages are really important.
So for example, if you want to use, I don't know, zoom in your activities
or any other platform, video conferencing platform before you decide
you can either ask a person with a disability or, or you can check their
support sites to see to what extent those are disability friendly pages.
Roman: If I may add, for example, after this chapter, we asked national youth
council to decide to change our webpage in order to make it accessible, according
to what I presented in this chapter.
So, we found money for this change and the, we made these accessibility standards
for people with disabilities, different kinds of the accessibility standards.
But here I wanted to point out, uh, yeah, we sometimes know how to deal with this
and how to engage our community in order to make some information accessible.
But unfortunately in case of civil society, we have a lot of problems,
uh, related to accessibility because for a world changing or adaptation
of our webpage or even more, offices and so on,we need some resources.
Without having support from a diverse donors or government, we will not
be able to ensure these in practice.
So, for this we tend to have good collaboration with all actors who
are interested in this, in order to ensure tha we are able to make minimal
accessibility standards in our activities.
But without supports, I am not sure if civil society will be
able to conduct and to ensure that we are fully accessible for all.
Judit: Just one more thought.
Earlier Darek, you referred to perhaps you said side effects or negative things.
Now one super big obstacle I would say is, uh, is also a Roman
mentioned the price of things.
So lots of accessibility devices are super expensive.
The refreshable Braille displays that I mentioned before are so, so
expensive at least with Hungarian standards, for example, that very,
very few people have them in Hungary.
And it's also a problem that often developers charge much
higher prices if you ask them to develop an accessible webpage.
Which, you know, should be a basic expectation to have your pages accessible.
I mean, the page that you develop.
So yeah, there's a lot to do, uh, finance wise.
Dariusz: Yeah, this was actually one of my points I wanted to ask
you that this is probably one of the points that discourages a lot
of smaller organizations that maybe do not have enough resources to
standardize, or to keep up with the standards that are available in order
to make the websites accessible.
But I quite liked what you said at the beginning that maybe it's not
important to start with big things.
It's maybe important to start with something that you are able to start with.
And one of the things that doesn't cost anything is actually asking people with
disabilities, what they would need, what would make their life easier or how
it would make it possible for them to be included in what they are doing.
I think this is maybe some kind of advice for policymakers, for people
who are establishing programs that are supporting, financing youth
organizations, to be able to actually support organizations in making things
possible for people with disabilities.
So making the websites or any material that they are producing online,
accessible for people with disabilities.
I think there's a lot good initiatives that are open source that
are free as well that you can use.
Probably they are not so good, but this is also a good start,
maybe for youth organizations.
Lana: I think as technology is a fast changing and developing, and there are
so many tools and artificial intelligence is also developing and supporting
us kind of in using these tools.
But the big moment as well is advocacy and kind of demands
for things to be accessible.
At the youth partnership we have seen through our conversations with young
people as well these kind of questions regarding the materials that we produce.
And these podcast, for example, are just one of the ways in which we try to make
our publication and now research closer to different groups of young people.
And it is also a question of not only accessibility in terms of hearing
things now, instead of reading the book, but also presenting materials
in different languages, using subtitles for some of our videos.
And I think in the youth sector now it's quite expected to use transcripts,
for example, for the videos and for podcasts, instead of just producing the
materials only in one form or one format.
Judit: Yeah.
I think it's very important what you are now saying.
And I believe we just cannot stress enough that, you know, when you hear
the word accessibility, most people immediately think of wheelchairs and
blind people, and we mustn't forget that accessibility is important for everyone.
So, I mean, you may be, I don't know, coming from any country of
the world that say you are moving to Germany, but your standard of
Germany is not high enough yet.
Then for example, a document or a website in easy language is important for you,
helps you a lot, supports your daily life.
I mean, you know, it's not that easy language is only important for
people who we have, I don't know, learning difficulties, for example,
or any other, reading difficulty.
So like, or I don't know accessibility of infrastructure is important for you
if you have a baby in a push chair.
So it's like accessibility means way more than access for people
with disabilities to digitalization or to the infrastructure.
Roman: We need the once again, resources and those who have knowledge,
how to make, for example, easy to read materials for people with
disabilities, with mental (disabilities).
So, here there is another problem, in case of a civil society representatives
who do not have some much money for this.
Yeah, we are interested to promote vis accessibility standards, but as
usually we don't have the knowledge and the expertise, how to do this.
And in case we do not have money for experts, we will not provide this.
And this is a problem of civil society and, my request is to engage
more governments or other state institutions who will contribute to
the accessibility of the youth sector.
Dariusz: Yeah.
I think the resources are important, but I think what's very important is
also the change of mind, , or change a little bit of perspective because I
think that sometimes if you really want to include people with disabilities
in our activities, any activities of any organization or institution,
and then we are applying for funds.
Very often we don't think that we can actually apply for funds
to make things accessible.
And I think that this is like the way of thinking or how you organize our activity.
I mean, always to think about possibility of including the request for funds
that actually would make things accessible for people with disabilities.
And I think that this is the starting point, whether it will be granted
or not, it's another issue, but I think thinking and putting it forward
is the first step that you actually can do, which I think is simple.
Thank you all for your contribution.
And just to remind our listeners, you can find the articles we have been talking
about in chapters three and four of the Youth Knowledge Book on Young People,
Social Inclusion and Digitalization.
Thank you for listening.