Shingo Kobayashi
Manager, Business Section, Japan Deafblind Association

It is now three years since the world entered the COVID-19 pandemic, and our Association’s international collaboration activities have come to an almost complete stop. The World Federation of the Deafblind (hereinafter, “WFDB”), to which organizations of the deafblind around the world belong, also repeatedly postponed the Sixth WFDB General Assembly and the Twelfth Helen Keller World Conference, which were scheduled to be held in Kenya in May this year; it has been announced that the Federation’s General Assembly only will be held in late October, while the Helen Keller World Conference will be cancelled. The reasons given are logistical, practical problems due to the aftermath of COVID and difficulties in securing funding and obtaining the information necessary to support visa applications.

The Helen Keller World Conference (the picture is of the 2018 Conference, held in Spain)

Our Association joined the WFDB in 2001, participating in the General Assembly and World Conference held the same year. Since then, we have participated without fail in every one of these meetings, held every four years, and gathered information there. However, bearing in mind that if a deafblind person caught COVID, they would not be able to obtain information or take part in conversations as they wished without an interpreter by their side, we made the decision not to attend this meeting in Africa.

On the other hand, our Association is also working on network construction program for deafblind organizations in Asia. We have been unable to carry out the activities which we originally envisaged, but we conducted a survey to learn about the actual situations for deafblind people in each Asian country during the COVID pandemic, as well as issues as we prepare to build the network, and hope to continue boosting momentum.

Our other activities included sending one deafblind and one able-bodied staff member from our Association, as well as three interpreter-guides for deafblind people, to lobby and brief committee members in the run-up to the first constructive dialogue with Japan under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was held recently in Geneva, Switzerland. Their appeals to the members of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities included the absence of legal provisions for deafblindness and the need for specialized education for deafblind children.

Going back a little further in time, we established Nonprofit Organization, the National Association about Educational Support for the Children and Youth who are deafblind, in 2019. As an organization carrying out support activities for deafblind children primarily in the areas of medical care and education, this NPO has most recently carried out an investigative research project for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and translation and publication of overseas literature about the education of deafblind children.

We also invited the author of a book about the education of deafblind children for a seminar to commemorate its publication (the picture shows a slide used at the seminar).

In addition, in the medical field, we created a network of healthcare facilities which are able to or have experience of involvement with deafblindness, in partnership with the Tokyo Medical Center, National Hospital Organization. We are planning to make this publicly available as a database and expand it.

In terms of organizational initiatives during the COVID pandemic, we enhanced our offering of online subtitles using computer summary writing two years ago, and upgraded our office’s communication lines last year, putting in place an environment allowing stable projection of a sign language interpreting screen online. Through these ways of guaranteeing access to information, as well as enabling deafblind people to receive interpreting from interpreter-guides, they have become able to participate in meetings and seminars online. We believe that such initiatives are extremely important in the sense of ensuring that deafblind people, who face difficulties in gathering information due to the nature of their disabilities, are not left without the information available in society.