Did you know, that assistance dogs can diverse, they not only guide visually impaired people? They can also help for mobility-impaired in everyday life, indicate sound for hearing impaired, indicate epileptic or other seizures, but it exist personal assistant dog to help in independent living, and therapy dog who is involved in pedagogical or psychiatric rehabilitation. You need to know that not only the dogs, but also their owners have undergone a hard training and even taken an exam.

The owners of these intelligent dogs can enter anywhere with them lawfully. Yes, anywhere. Although some workers of institutions or even disabled people don’t know exactly the relevant legislation. Most of the false complains or even relegations come from catering units, shops, playgrounds or markets. In these cases they either don’t let the disabled person go in with his dog – but he can’t get by without him- or they make him put a muzzle on the dog. As the above list shows, this way the dog wouldn’t be able to help his owner.  How could he warn the owner about danger if it can’t bark? How could he bring it’s owner an important device if it can’t open it’s mouth? 

And it’s something like again that isn’t a potential, a possibility, it is a must to be provided. The Hungarian Equal Rights Authority takes these offenses as discrimination complaints and begins the administrative procedure against the institution, the operator. 

The law enumerates examples of places where people can bring their assistance dogs (e.g. public transport, shops, supermarkets, catering units, malls, markets, accommodations, playgrounds, public institutions, child institutions.) However, people with disabilities can also enter ALL THE OTHER PLACES with his guide dog which aren’t mentioned in the law. He DOESN’T HAVE TO PUT A MUZZLE on the dog, but he needs to show a distinctive sign on the dog and also the logo of the dog’s training organization. The assistance dog can only be banned from the area if it is endangering others physical safety. Although let’s just say it, this would be very rare in the case of a trained guide dog. 

It’s important to know that the assistance dog is working with it’s owner so however cute or pretty it is it cannot be petted and we shouldn’t take it as an insult if the owner doesn’t let it either.  If we did, we would distract the dog and endanger the safety of the disabled owner. The case is the same when it comes to giving food to the dog. It can only be fed by it’s owner, therefore don’t offer food don’t tempt him. 

Relevant Hungarian legislation:

A segítő kutyák gazdáinak jogait és kötelezettségeit a fogyatékos személyek jogairól és esélyegyenlőségük biztosításáról szóló 1998. évi XXVI. törvény. 

A segítő kutya kiképzésének, vizsgáztatásának és alkalmazhatóságának szabályairól szóló 27/2009. (XII. 3.) SZMM rendelet 

Written by Veronika Pataki. Thanks to Evelin Almádi for your additional thoughts!

Many people know about Braille writing, that it is a writing system consisting of point combinations, and it can be read by touch by visually impaired people. It was developed by Louis Braille, based on 6 points just like the dice.

But it is probably not known that there are separate Braille alphabets for German, English etc.. You probably didn’t know either, that we can display not just letters, but numbers and symbols used in maths, physics, and chemistry, IT signs, sheet music etc.

It is also interesting, that we distinguish full writing, where each braille letter is displayed, and brief writing, where we write the text in abbreviated form.

It is clear, that such a smart system is modern and relevant even in the XXI. century. Braille writing is not only a paper based system but Braille is also available on computers, smart phones, etc..  Braille display is still available if the phone or laptop is not there, or if the battery is flat.

It is also important, that the tactile writing system is the only possibility for blind or visually impaired people to experience INDEPENDENT reading, which is in no way equal to a text read by a speech synthesizer or by another person.

Source: https://jovokilatasai.mvgyosz.hu/

Written by Veronika Pataki

We don’t know which ear can hear, how can hear, even if can hear the hearing impaired person, so talk to him/her always frontwise. Maybe touch him/her gently (!) and wait for eye contact. Don’t turn away later, keep the eye contact, moreover it is easier for them you understand if they can see your full body and body language.

It is needless to shout, over-articulate, use too simple sentences, but gabble is also not good.

For many hearing impaired person it is unpleasant ask back if they didn’t understand something. So, do it you, ask sometimes if they understand you. If not, don’t repeat the same word five times, try another synonym.

Don’t talk at the same time in a company, don’t eat, chewing gum, cover your mouth while talking.

Hearing damage means no way intellectual disability, don’t treat so deaf people. Communicate with them is not easy, but with little attention can be solved even as with able bodied people. 

Krisztina Koltai’s thoughts

Do you remember when we were a child and the doctor discussed with our parents first how ill we are, what our symptoms are?

As an adult, wouldn’t a similar scenario hurt bother or even annoy us? Unfortunately disabled

people still face distinction like that. The doctor, the administrator or even the man of the street would contact the healthy person/assistant that escort them. It’s even typical in case of blind people, maybe because a visually impaired person usually can’t make eye contact with the person who wants to talk to them. Because of that people mostly don’t even bother trying to talk to them, they’d rather talk to the accompanying even if their words aren’t meant for them. If people don’t directly talk to a blind person and they can detect it from the context it obviously hurts their feelings.

Though people living with visual, hearing or locomotor disability can perfectly understand and reply to us.

It is important that we don’t take the chance of disabled people to communicate, to share their opinions and to make responsible decisions! We can make huge differences towards equal opportunity with small things, such as address our message to the disabled person instead of their helpers. The helper’s task is not to speak instead of the disabled but assist her/him.

Thank you Róbert Rauch for your thoughts!

It might be strange that we support straws when every respectable restaurant is withdrawing those environment damaging tubes. Even though they are necessary for most disabled people so because of being barrier-free some cafés will have to keep some in their inventory – in an environment friendly form.

But why do we need straws? I’ll present it for you with an easy example, a personal experience: about six months ago I was at a conference where they didn’t have any glasses for disabled people and I thought that I’m not going to embarrass myself by using a straw, I’ll drink out of the ceramic mug. For the sake of ease I always keep my bag in my lap. Needless to say that after my attempt neither was I nor the stuff in my bag thirsty anymore under the pretext of drying on the radiator.

Inhibited people or people in wheelchairs are not only unable to move their legs but usually they can’t use their hands in all aspects. They’re missing the skill of lifting, squeezing, or they have muscle weakness but there could be many reasons that makes them unable to grip or lift a glass. However, you need to drink.

Nevertheless the mass produced unrecyclable straws are expired. We don’t stand by them either. But there are great alternatives: washable plastic and metal ones, degradable ones. These are not only environmentally conscious – the kind we like – but also appropriate for disabled people as well.

That’s how born at the same time people-, and eco-friendly solutions!

Written by Roland Balogh

Able bodied people walk on them easily. They only get bothered by a wall-mounted car or by the pavement being torn up. The sidewalk for people in wheelchairs though is a real obstacle course.

Getting on the footway in the city centres is easier because of the recessed design of the curbs but it’s much more difficult if there is a berm. The most problematic thing is probably the ascension and the descension of electric wheelchairs because they weigh 100kgs.

And we can’t get relief even if we’re on the pavement. We have to face multitude of barriers: the sidewalk being torn up, asphalt fragments, cobbles, stairs formed in steep streets, car exits, ruptured parts from the roots of trees, uncovered drains, protruding steps, outsourced advertising signs, old quarter’s narrow though ‘romantic’ lanes, cars parked on the footway, bus stop on the sidewalk.

So we are sometimes forced to go (slowly) on the roads willy-nilly with our electric mopeds taking in account the risk of accidents, keeping the traffic, the  driver’s repatriation.

If it’s already like that what can we – people in wheelchairs do? We plan our routes early, we go on roads with little traffic, and we explore the unknown crossroads with the help of Google Map’s street view function.

Written by Zoltán Koppány