Social workers and people with disabilities from all over the country attended the Ukrainian-wide conference for vision-impaired and blind people in Kharkiv, on November 12th-14th. They discussed options for better conditions for their daily life and work.
According to the press service of the Kharkiv City Council, Kharkiv is one of the leading cities for the infrastructure development for people with disabilities. Kharkiv was the first one to introduce public organizations for blind people, particulary, the Association of Blind Lawyers, Rehabilitation Center for the Blind and Vision Impaired. Also for the first time in Ukraine, Kharkiv installed sound traffic lights and introduced service “Invataxi” (taxi for people with disabilities).
In addition, many city websites are adapted for people with disabilities but there are still a lot of problematic issues. Visually impaired people say that in 2014-2015 the government did not allocate financial assistance for their rehabilitation.
Moreover, visually impaired people need to have an assistant at work, but there is no such statutory provision in Ukraine. They plan to appeal to the government with these and other issues.
