REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ICEVI EUROPEAN CONFERENCE, ‘LIVING IN A CHANGING EUROPE’
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED(ICEVI) EUROPEAN CONFERENCE
Tá lúcháir mhór orm bheith i bhur measc inniu ag an ócáid speisialta seo agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh don fáilte a raibh fíor agus flaithiúil.
Good morning everyone, thank you for the welcome and to Fr. William Stuart of St. Joseph’s Centre for the Visually Impaired here in Dublin for the kind invitation to join the Seventh European Conference of the International Council for the Education of the Visually Impaired. To each delegate I extend the traditional Irish welcome, especially to newcomers to Dublin and to Ireland - Céad Míle Fáilte - a hundred thousand welcomes. It is reassuring to know that you have travelled from throughout Europe to share your perspectives and expertise in the discussions which form the Conference core. You share a common purpose and a common passion for the education of our visually impaired citizens is your concern and your vocation.
Growing up as sister to a profoundly deaf brother, I learnt early how the world and its complex infrastructure is too often and too easily designed for the hearing by the hearing, for the mobile by the mobile, for the sighted by the sighted. In a family where my brother had four brothers and four sisters all hearing, all of us became accustomed, as we chattered to one another, to the tug on our elbows which said, ‘Remember me’. Disability brings its own inevitable challenges, the world adds its own thoughtless and needless challenges and you, along with many others, try to bring about a world where those challenges can be transcended, reduced in scale, managed or overcome.
Recent decades have seen significant changes for those with disability. There have been manifest improvements in advocacy, organisation, legislation, infrastructure, facilities, opportunities and outcomes. Our society here in Ireland has a new level of disability consciousness and a stronger rights-based culture than ever before. The world of research and technology is expanding the possibilities at a rate never before experienced. Yet it is a journey that is still in its opening chapters. Those changes already embedded were wrought by determined and relentless effort and many of you played a role in bringing them about. You are here because the next chapters have yet to be written and so they need the combined brainpower, insight, experience and analysis of those who understand this area best and who are in a position to carefully delineate the next steps to even more intuitive, spontaneous and effective resources and opportunities for those who are visually impaired.
When the question is asked here, what are the changing demands for the person with a visual impairment, the first thing that confronts us is that visual impairment may be the only thing that connects your target audience, for each is an utterly unique individual with ambitions, talents, skills, dreams, aspirations, circumstances and conditions. Each has the right to expect that his or her community will afford the same opportunity to blossom, to relish life, to contribute, as is afforded to those who do not have a disability. Education is the key to developing, harnessing and harvesting that human potential. Two hundred years after the birth of Louis Braille, his seminal work has vastly expanded the communication reach of the visually impaired. It was a technology customised for the blind but in today’s world there is a mass of evolving technology which can be and needs to be put at the service of the visually impaired student and adult learner among others.
Our learning environment is also changing with more and more disabled students able to access mainstream schools. It is two hundred years since the first schools for the visually impaired were created in Ireland. They were built and developed out of concern and care but for many years had an emphasis on trades rather than broad, intellectual development and they also had their physical limitations particularly for children who could not access education locally.
I still remember the devastating anger and resentment of a deaf five year old when he realised he was being left at a boarding school one hundred miles from his home and the aching guilt and loneliness experienced by his parents and siblings. That story was repeated for deaf, visually impaired and for deaf/visually impaired children all over this country. Then there was the return at the end of each term as a stranger who had no regular friends in the street. Who knows the personal hardships and sacrifices endured in the name of education, but endured precisely because that education was so essential, a part of life’s journey, the source of strength, self-confidence, skill and success. Today we know that the educational experience for those with disability is improving all the time and set in an educationally and personally more comprehensive environment. First and second-level educational opportunities extend much more seamlessly into third and fourth-level and into a wider range of vocational training. For those who acquire a disability, including visual impairment later in life, it is essential that there exist education and training support services to help them adapt successfully and positively to their new environment and I know that these issues are very much on your minds.
Your focus on all aspects of the educational experience of the visually impaired allows us to hope for great things ahead in terms of technical innovations, pedagogy, quality of education and quality of educational experience, over a lifetime. Those with disability cannot afford to be left behind by our changing world and their ready access to first-class education and training is directly related to the fullness of their lived lives, their access to employment, their peace of heart and mind, their social integration, their sense of being valued for the gifts that they alone can bring to the world around us.
Around this time last year, I hosted a Forum on Disability at Áras an Uachtaráin, the house of the President, here in Dublin. It was chaired brilliantly by my good friend, Professor Michael Schwartz, himself profoundly deaf from birth, something that has not hindered him from becoming a highly acclaimed professional in the field of disability law and advocacy. He likes to remind audiences that when he was first diagnosed as deaf as a little child the professionals of the day advised his parents that he was also likely to be intellectually slow and that they should not expect too much of him. The professional orthodoxy of the time tyrannised many families into acceptance of second-class citizenship for their children with disability. Fortunately for Michael his parents were unimpressed and charted their own course for their son. The key and passionate message from that day’s discussion was "nothing about us without us”, for as a society our best education about disability has come from those with disability themselves. They have rightly insisted on the decommissioning of perceptions and prejudices which combined to build barriers behind which their talents were wasted and their lives half-lived. They are rightly intent upon mainstreaming the best possible facilities and opportunities for themselves. This Conference will hopefully help do that for the constituency that is the visually impaired.
You each bring to this Conference a wealth of knowledge and experience in this special field. Each carries a unique piece of the jigsaw puzzle we need to piece together to be able to get the whole picture. Hopefully you will leave here with new ideas and insights, new friendships and networks which will, in the coming months and years, translate directly into the lives of men, women and children with visual impairment right across Europe. I wish you well in that endeavour and thank you for making this cause your vocation. I also thank you for creating an international forum, a conduit through which each country has this chance to learn and to share, to draw from deeper wells.
Sé mo ghuí go mbeidh rath ar an obair atá le déanamh agaibh - every good wish with your endeavours.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.