What would our life be like if we were visually impaired or disabled? Every time when I come upon such people I ask myself that question and the fair answer is that I wouldn’t probably make it even in the course of few days. The fear of the dark is fully justified, especially if it is the everyday life of a person, as he or she faces constant challenges, such as stepping out of their own home. Bulgaria’s infrastructure has not been adjusted to the needs of people with disabilities and they cannot use it safely. That is why their communities get capsulated and suffer a lack of social inclusion. Their problems are always the last thing that the rulers care about. Today we introduce social entrepreneur Evgeni Mitev who has taken over the uneasy task to assist visually impaired people. One of the initiatives that he participates in is a German one and is named Dialogue in the Dark. Here is more from Mr. Mitev:

“It all started back in 2014 when I attended a social entrepreneurship event in Strasbourg. I saw a room there that people entered and which was completely darkened. The door sign read Dialogue in the Dark. I was inside with five other strangers, led by a visually impaired person. They gave us the white canes and we entered through an entrance with a full swing. Then several tasks followed. We tried to do some job in complete darkness – without being able to use our eyes. That was totally outside my comfort zone. When I stepped outside and I talked to the people it turned out that that was one of the initial and most sustainable social enterprises in Europe. It is called Dialogue and has started with Dialogue in the Dark – events, organized and led by visually impaired people. There are now other formats as well, such as Dialogue in Silence and Dialogue with Time – respectively for deaf people and people aged over 80.”

In 2015 Evgeni and his team had the chance to develop the project in Bulgaria as well. They had meetings in the dark in 4 cities with people from different social circles – actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, municipality representatives. Roles turned there – those who could see became visually impaired and relied on their intuition mainly. However, their license expired in 2016 and they continued in the area of social entrepreneurship for visually impaired people.

“Our goal is to open jobs for such people, to encourage them to be confident and pro-active. This is the opposite of what the state has as attitude towards disabled citizens. Those are labeled and seen as something different. At the same time such people have many talents and they need our support to develop them. A small group of people will work in the sphere of sound engineering and audio description. The latter is something like sound subtitles. Sound description is an additional channel where a voice over explains to the visually impaired what happens in a movie.”

The subject of disabled people’s accessibility to public life gets more and more up-to-date in Europe.

Work with disabled people requires lots of patience and the results are not always immediate. This however shouldn’t be an obstacle for those who have devoted themselves to the cause and who want to make the life of such people a bit better and a bit safer. These people are a part of our society and they require respect and support.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev