Access For All!

The steps of the project

A lot remains to be done so as to make sure that the access to counselling and support for women and girls with disabilities becomes more barrier-free. The following steps and measures were part of the Access for All!-project.

1. Counselling and support for counsellors in the women’s counselling centres

In concrete terms, women’s counselling centres need to remove barriers and create access so as to counsel and support women and girls with disabilities. The support system needs to be opened up.

It is an important step to make the women’s counselling centres competent and support them in their endeavours for accessibility and also target group-specific services.

Some documents and information have been provided for professional counsellors and other interested parties. This includes:

Likewise, it is important to make people more sensitive to the issue so as to make them more aware that women and girls with disabilities need better protection against violence and need counselling and support.
For barrier-free access alone is not enough. Specific services of the women’s counselling centres also need to approach women and girls with disabilities directly.

Moreover, we offer presentations and seminars on various topics within the context of the Access for All!-project.

2. Create access – Barrier-free information for women and girls with disabilities

Some women and girls with disabilities but also professionals and caregivers know little about existing support and counselling services. They do not know whom they can contact for help. Some target group-specific barrier-free documents were compiled within the context of the Access for All!-project to change this:

  • A leaflet and a poster in plain language: "NO! to violence against women and girls with disabilities";
  • Information in German sign language;
  • Information in an audio format for blind and partially sighted women and girls.

Women and girls with disabilities shall thus get better information about everything that is violence, how they can defend themselves and where they can find help and support.

The documentation can be ordered from the bff.

3. Strengthening cooperation and networks

It is vital to establish and improve cooperation and networks with institutions supporting disabled people as well as self-help associations and organisations for people, and especially women, with disabilities.

An advisory council was set up for the Access for All!-project. It comprises important players from the political arena, self-help groups and welfare organisations. The Council has an advisory function and will give advice and support to the project. An opportunity for exchange, cooperation and further networking has thus been created.

4. Promoting the right to live without violence – implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

With its Access for All!-project, the bff promotes the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

To this end, the bff is a member of the second expert committee “Civil Rights and Liberties and Protection Rights, Women, Relationships, Family and Bioethics” of the coordination mechanism within government. This committee is affiliated to the Federal Government Commissioner for the concerns of people with disabilities. Various issues are dealt with in a total of four expert committees so as to propose specific measures for implementing the CRPD. Violence against women with disabilities has been determined as one key issue.

In the context of the Access for All!-project, the bff is also a member of the BRK alliance, which is a broad alliance of civil society organisations. Its objective is to provide critical comment on the first national report of the Federal Republic of Germany on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by publishing a “parallel report”.

More than 70 organisations have teamed up in the alliance. They represent a broad range of German associations, which are active in the field of disability policy.

Just like the national report, the parallel report shall be submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva. It will illustrate the real life situations of about 10 million young and old people with disabilities in Germany.

You will find further information in German on the BRK alliance here:

www.brk-allianz.de