A journalist of the Disability Portal, Marijana Canak, spoke at the roundtable discussion Lessons from the Crises: How to stop the social exclusion of people with disabilities and marginalized groups. The roundtable was held on the premises of the Archives of Vojvodina on April 21, 2022. It was organized by MLMDC – Minority and Local Media Development Center within the project Manage the Covid with Care, reasOn, Values, unIty, soliDarity with the support of Europe for Citizens Programme.
The event is a sequence of the roundtable held in 2019. named Culture and Communication, where there were talks about providing accessible information to persons with disabilities.
The main questions for discussion at this year’s round table were: is the voice of people with disabilities sufficiently heard, how much support people with disabilities have from society and the state and the issue of accessibility of cultural content and information to persons with disabilities and marginalized groups during the pandemic.
Marijana Canak spoke about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on informing people with disabilities and marginalized groups.
– Pandemic is a period that enabled us to learn a lot from the experience of persons with disabilities as a society. Inaccessibility of information, denied freedom of movement, increased care for one’s health and the health of others, denial of medical and other services, social distancing and isolation – all the issues the general population faced during an emergency situation for persons with disabilities are everyday challenges in ordinary circumstances. When we talk about informing people with disabilities, it is important that communication channels are accessible: that the content is placed in different formats (audio, video content with subtitles, translation into sign language, description of photography on the Internet) – said Marijana Canak.
Apart from Marijana Canak, the following spoke at the roundtable: Stevan Ristic, president of the steering committee of the Media Association; Jelena Kotevic, senior advisor, Head of the Complaints Department, Commissioner for the Protection of Equality; Vladimira Dorcova Valtnerova, editor-in-chief of the portal Storyteller and Zeljko Bajic, a journalist from Sarajevo. Natasa Heror and Vesna Farkas served as moderators and Ana Keler and Dragana Vrzic as sign language interpreters.
