10th anniversary of the European Disability Forum

Even though I’m not in Brussels today, there’s a big event taking place there to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the European Disability Forum. It is a timely reminder for all of us to sign in support of the “1 million for Disability” campaign to combat all forms of discrimination against disabled citizens in Europe.

2007 has been designated the European Year of Equal Opportunities and I really hope that the campaign will reach its 1000th signature before the year is out. We should remember that more than 50 million people in the EU have some sort of disability so please take time to sign this campaign on www.1million4disability.eu/sign.asp?langue=EN

Disabled Access to Live Music

An interesting website was pointed out to me this week in the form of www.attitudeiseverything.org.uk. Their campaign is a simple one - to improve access to live music for the disabled, through developing venues’ facilities so that they can cater sufficiently for each person according to his or her needs.

It’s a campaign very worthy of support. Through cooperating with the music industry - promoters and venues in particular - they have made some impressive improvements in making music more accessible for disabled people. Quite disappointingly, the only venue in Wales to have signed up to the organisation’s ‘Charter of Best Practice’ is Cardiff’s CIA, but I hope that more venues and promoters will choose to take part in this campaign to ensure that disabled people can enjoy the experience of live music as much as everyone else.