Selfadvocatenet.com in support of International Day for Persons with Disabilities on Dec 3rd
This page we will highlight People with Disabilities and their stories. Self Advocates and what this day means. It’s a Day of celebration that include a day to understand what is a disability and their contribution and well struggles have gone through.
We are people too. We to are discriminated in ways that it is unacceptable .
Ablelism we have been aware of it that it discriminates those that are People with Disabilities from many things jobs, places to live our health. Govt priorities in ways last to be priority with we have come along way in our society to get meaningful changes equal level playing field. What is our rights with human rights .
This page is all about disabilities International Day for People with Disabilities Dec 3rd
This year theme is 2022
Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“
What is International day for Persons with Disabilities
The annual observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) on 3 December was proclaimed in 1992 by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3. The observance of the Day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities.
Statement by the Prime Minister on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities
December 3, 2022 Ottawa, Ontario
“More than 6.2 million Canadians have a disability – and many have disabilities that are not visible. Persons with disabilities face discrimination, incur many additional expenses, and often encounter barriers to finding meaningful and well-paid work. We recognize that disabilities are diverse in nature – whether physical, sensory, cognitive, or mental health-related – and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But whatever a person’s needs may be, the Government of Canada is committed to making our country more accessible and more inclusive for everyone.
“Earlier this fall, we launched Canada’s first-ever Disability Inclusion Action Plan, which features concrete programs, policies, and critical investments that aim to improve the lives of persons with disabilities – from achieving financial security, to finding and keeping a good job, to being able to fully participate in their communities. The Action Plan was developed in partnership with the disability community and tackles their key priorities. The government has also followed through on ground-breaking legislation. The Canada Disability Benefit Act, Bill C-22, was tabled in Parliament this summer, and recently passed second reading in the House of Commons with unanimous consent. The goal of the proposed Canada Disability Benefit is to reduce poverty and increase the financial security of working-age persons with disabilities in our country. By the end of the year, we will reach a major milestone toward making Canada’s public service the most accessible and inclusive in the world with the publication of accessibility plans across the federal public service. These plans will help shape the future of Canada’s largest employer and service provider, so that we can build a federal public service that truly reflects the population it serves.
“Around the world, Canada continues to protect and promote the rights of people with disabilities, including through international forums such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization, and the Global Action on Disability Network. Earlier this year, Canada supported the successful election of Dr. Laverne Jacobs to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – the first ever Canadian to serve as a member.
“When everyone can fully contribute to our communities, we all benefit. When persons with disabilities have equal opportunities to work, have the same quality of service from their government, can access the supports and programs they need to enjoy the same quality of life as everyone else, we build stronger communities, a stronger economy, and a stronger country. Today, and every day, I encourage all Canadians to work together to help make our country a more inclusive, equitable, and accessible place to call home.”
This on Justin Trudeau website go to the link here
Recognizing International Day of Persons with Disabilities
A message from CLBC CEO Ross Chilton
On December 3, Community Living BC marks the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). It is being recognized across the world for the 30th year. This annual day of recognition is a time for all of us across British Columbia to honour the important contributions people with developmental disabilities make to their communities.
The theme of this year’s IDPD is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: The role of innovation in fueling an accessible and equitable world“. This theme encourages us to have conversations and find ways to remove barriers and make sure people with disabilities have equal access to participate in all aspects of community life.
The B.C. government has launched the new Accessibility BC Act to help remove barriers to inclusion. You can read about that here.
You can also read the government’s accessibility plan here.
CLBC is also in the process of developing our own accessibility plan. We are working with the people we serve to understand existing barriers and ways to be more accessible, from getting information to visiting our offices and interacting with staff to working for CLBC. We will be sharing information about the opportunity to provide feedback on this in the coming days.
I’m encouraged by the dedication and enthusiasm towards these important efforts to make our province and its many communities accessible and inclusive for everyone.
Read more about International Day of Persons with Disabilities on the United Nations website here and find the official B.C. Government proclamation here.
CLBC and others will be sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #IDPD2022.
This is on CLBC website go to the link here
Community inclusion plan supports people to thrive
In advance of the United Nations’ International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, the BC government and members of the community inclusion sector are releasing a workplan to support people with developmental disabilities to be fully included and thrive in their communities.
The Re-imagining Community Inclusion (RCI) initiative was first launched in May 2018 by the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction in collaboration with community living partners from across British Columbia and resulted in the 2019 report, Re-imagining Community Inclusion. That report provides a vision where “people with diverse abilities thrive fully and equally with everyone.”
Under the direction of Minister Nicholas Simons, the steering committee is co-chaired by Karla Verschoor (Executive Director, Inclusion BC), Ross Chilton (CEO, Community Living BC) and David Galbraith (Deputy Minister, Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction).
The RCI initiative workplan focuses on four key areas to help achieve that vision:
- Develop more flexible housing options;
- Ensure people have more and better employment opportunities;
- Work with partners to improve access to health and mental health services, and
- Ensure services to Indigenous people are Self Determined.
With the idea that everyone has a role to play to build inclusive communities, four working groups developed strategies and activities for each focus area. The working groups involved many individuals, families, community living service providers, Indigenous organizations, advocacy organizations and government (see the workplan for a list of stakeholder groups, working group members and supporters).
In May 2022, the government announced $5.3 million in funding to support projects underway as part of the workplan to improve the quality of life of people with developmental disabilities.
Quotes:
NICHOLAS SIMONS, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction –
“I thank all the steering committee members for their hard work in developing a workplan that moves B.C. towards becoming more inclusive for everyone who lives here.”
KARLA VERSCHOOR, Executive Director of Inclusion BC –
“This plan has the real potential to improve the lives of people receiving support funded by Community Living BC. Creating these four pathways was a genuinely collaborative process. We are encouraged by how the workplan promotes meaningful community partnerships to better serve people in their home communities.”
ROSS CHILTON, CEO of Community Living BC –
“This plan is something to be excited about because it was created with the help of many across our province. The plan identifies specific, achievable strategies that we are all committed to supporting.”
This on CLBC website go to the link here
Disabled people caring for each other can be a radical act
Medical Assisted in Dying that will affect People with Disabilities
Canada’s new Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law
This is what we don’t want we want federal govt to halt the changes now People with Disabilities can be affected by assumptions to income needs to housing needs even just having a disability we request federal govt halt change consult those with disabilities input into so this time Self Advocates we must make a stand today is International Day for People with Disabilities
Being ‘inclusive’ of those with disabilities means valuing them, pope says
This is on catholicnews.com website go to the link here
Watch LIVE here on 5 December from 9am to 12pm (EST
Innovation is what we need for an accessible future
By Chris Barry, President of Microsoft Canada
December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an annual moment to bring awareness to disability issues, promote inclusion, and embrace people of all abilities. Statistics Canada reports that one in five Canadians aged 15 years or older live with one or more disabilities. Even if you do not live with a disability today, that can change as you age or move through life stages. As Dave Dame, our Director of Accessibility says, “one day, we’ll all age into a disability.”
The theme of this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities is “transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world.” Today, we are living through an extraordinary time in history where the true potential of technology is revealing itself. From the launch of the world’s first Malaria vaccine which will save hundreds of thousands of lives to the creation of self-fertilizing crops that are tackling climate change head on, innovation is moving the needle on our most pressing challenges.
At Microsoft, we understand the power of technology and how impactful it can be in creating a more accessible and equitable world where everyone thrives. Our technology is designed with accessibility in mind – it is built with the disability community not for the disability community, and we prioritize technology that the disability community would choose to use. In October, we launched our new Microsoft Adaptive Accessories crafted in partnership with the disability community to help support a variety of unique needs and wants. Recently, we introduced sign language view, a new meeting experience in Microsoft Teams. This feature is especially designed for the Deaf/hard-of-hearing community to keep interpreters and other signers front and centre on calls.
But our commitment to expanding accessibility goes beyond just our technology. We work with other organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem including partners and customers to share what we’ve learned about accessibility and inclusion to help create more opportunities and experiences for people everywhere. This year we joined forces with Haleon, a global leader in consumer health, to expand functionality in the Seeing AI app to provide consumers who are blind, have low vision or low literacy levels with more accessible labelling information across 1,500 consumer health products in the U.S. and U.K. And just this month, we launched the Microsoft Accessibility Nonprofit Tech Accelerator program to provide disability-focused nonprofit organizations with access to enterprise technology and grants to best serve the disability community.
Read below to learn more about two impact-driven Canadian organizations within the Microsoft ecosystem who are promoting disability inclusion and cultivating accessible experiences through technology.
Sense Tech Solutions Inc.
What originally started as a fourth-year engineering project for two University students to make accessing a classroom easier, quickly became a solution that could support disabilities communities across Canada.
In 2018, Robert Ingio and Ali Raza founded SenseTech Solutions, a Toronto-based software company specializing in the development of virtual reality simulations for persons with disabilities. Their initial project involved creating a virtual reality simulation for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind that could capture the challenges that a youth with sight loss might experience when entering a classroom for the first time, like finding their desk. With the addition of a virtual reality headset, a parent could ‘jump in’ to the same simulation and experience those novel challenges through the same perspective as their child.
That deeper understanding and connection between parent and child is what sparked a conversation for Robert and Ali around the opportunities for virtual reality in accessibility. Now their virtual reality solutions help make e-learning accessible and interactive, facilitate job readiness training for people with and without sight loss and help the blind community train and develop skills in simulated high-risk environments like street crossing.
“Microsoft has been a major partner in helping us deliver impactful and accessible software tools to our clients. By embedding Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Azure and Office into our products, we have allowed our clients to engage digital content in an inherently accessible and user-friendly format,” says Ingio. “We look forward to continuing our work with Microsoft as we pioneer new methods of accessing digital content, and further explore how technology can empower users with disabilities worldwide.”
Seleste Technologies
Seleste is a Vancouver-based wearable technology company co-founded in 2021 by Shubh Mittal and Smit Patel, graduates from the University of British Columbia. Shubh’s background in Computer Science and fascination for smart glass technology is what drove him to the world of wearables. After looking more extensively at the research and technology behind smart glasses, he noticed that current products on the market were limited in their capabilities and usefulness for people with disabilities.
This prompted him to consult closely with a friend named Victor who is blind (and is now Seleste’s Chief Technology Officer) to better understand the challenges of living with sight loss or low-vision and discover what features the community could benefit from in smart glasses. Victor’s feedback inspired Shubh’s mission to make access to assistive technology for people with low-vision more affordable, through their very own smart glasses.
Leveraging Microsoft’s Seeing AI technology, Seleste smart glasses feature a small camera to deliver advanced features like call a friend, voice assistance and scene description to better meet the needs of people with low vision today. The Seleste team plans on adding more functionalities to their glasses over the coming years to advance their positive impact within the community.
“We often interview our visually impaired customers about their lives and so many people have told me that they use SeeingAI and how it has helped them get back independence in their lives,” says Mittal. “However, they also tell me that having to hold and point a phone has always been a challenge and limits what they can do. We knew that our glasses solved this problem and so it was always a goal of ours to provide Microsoft’s amazing technology through our glasses. I believe this partnership will give visually impaired people the confidence to take back control of their lives and be able to tackle tasks completely by themselves.”
Lastly, to bring awareness to disability issues is to hear directly from the community. Recently we spoke with Juan Olarte, founder of Digita11y Accessible, about how Microsoft’s assistive technologies helped him reach new levels of productivity at home and in the workplace. Watch Juan’s story here.
More innovation like SenseTech’s virtual reality simulations or Seleste’s smart glasses and listening to stories like Juan’s are needed for an accessible and equitable world. We must all join in the call for accessibility and inclusion and work together on innovative solutions that can uplift all communities and make our society better.
To learn more about Microsoft’s assistive tools and technology, visit microsoft.com/accessibility.
Register for The Include Challenge to learn more about the fundamentals of accessibility
This is on Microsoft website go to the link here
THIS SECTION IS TRAINING VIDEOS EXPLAINS WAYS CAN IMPROVE ON WHEN DEALING WITH DIVERSABILITES.
