My activity as an International Policy Fellow during the first part of my Fellowship had two distinct - but intimately connected aims. The first aim, which derives from the research oriented component of my project, has been to assess the current level of accessibility of deaf to the visual media in Romania, Hungary and the EU countries as well as the current legislation and policies in the field. The second aim was raising public awareness on the issue in order to build a coalition of political, civil, media and other kind of stakeholders, in order to promote access of deaf and other categories of disabled to the visual media.

During the first months of my fellowship, my attention was also devoted to setting up a working team able to encompass all these fields of research and advocacy activity. This task was made easier by the involvement in the project of the Senzor Foundation, specialised in promoting the rights of deaf and hard of hearing people. Collaborators of the foundation have been involved in the process of gathering data and in conducting interviews. They also helped in involving external collaborators who on their turn could use their own contacts. Thus the making up of project team turned out in fact to be a very important stage of coalition building around the assumed policy objectives. This team includes representatives of deaf and other type of disability advocacy organisations, journalists of written and visual media, academic researchers and policy makers. With the help of the involved journalists, at the start of the project two introductory articles appeared in two journals published in Satu-Mare (Szatmari Friss Ujsag, 20^th January and Gazeta de Nord-Vest, 17^th January 2001 ).

The research work done during this period included:

- Comparative analysis of relevant media and disability legislation in Romania, Hungary and the European Union

- Sociological investigation of deaf (and other disabled) access to the visual media in Romania and Hungary by means of survey of selected television stations and interviews with key media representatives

The survey was based on my own questionnaire (finalised at the end of March) and took place during April and May at national television stations in Bucharest and Budapest and at local television stations in a selected region in the central part of Romania. Interviews have been conducted with program directors and heads of public relation departments as well as with producers of programs dealing with the problems of disabled. The first results of the local TV station surveys have been published in an article in a nationally distributed journal (Erteni a hallhatatlant, [Understanding what you cannot hear] Romaniai Magyar Szo, 23 May 2001).

My external mentor, Mr. Attila Varga, a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Romanian Parliament, helped to open a direct channel of communication to the committees of Law, Culture and Media of the Romanian Parliament and to the Nation Audio-visual Council. My external mentor was of much help also in providing information concerning current legislation in the field and in establishing contacts with television companies. The interviews with television program directors, beyond gathering relevant information, also had the aim to draw attention to the importance of the issue and to the necessity to find solutions.

In the same time, contacts have been initiated with the leaders of the Romanian National Association of Deaf (ANSR) To our satisfaction, the demand to gain access of deaf to the television programs has been included in the official agenda of Deaf Association. In June 2001 the first negotiations on this matter between the representatives of the concerned central TV stations, of ANSR and of the National Audio-visual Council took place in Bucharest. It was agreed that for the next meeting the deaf representatives are going to work out plans for introducing special accessibility procedures in the television programs and will make an assessment of the incumbent costs.

In the second part of my fellowship, I conducted interviews with certain key stakeholders representing policy makers, the organisations of disabled and the media in order to work out a viable strategy for future action. These interviews in fact have been integrated in the day to day coalition building and advocacy work of the Senzor Foundation. In November 2001 a meeting attended by deaf young people, parents of deaf children, representatives of special education of deaf and of the local media took place in Satu-Mare. At this meeting, which was extensively reported in the local press, the idea to set up special information centres for the needs of disabled emerged. It became more and more clear that beyond the necessity to adopt and implement new legal standards and solutions of media accessibility, it would be important to address very concrete local needs acutely perceived by the deaf community. The most important tasks in this regard would be to help improving the general social and cultural environment and changing the predominantly negative perceptions on disability and disabled.

The results of my research confirm that one of the hardest obstacles in implementing effective policy measures in this field is the lack of co-ordination between the initiatives of various organisations, interests groups and other agencies involved in the policy process. In both countries, disability rights are generally perceived and treated as a marginal problem compared to other social and political issues, which are perceived as crucial or important. In order to overcome this discrepancy, there is a need to set up a legal and policy advisory group on disability issues with the task to draw up proposals for legislative and institutional reform, advise decision-makers and help promoting disability issues into the public agenda. Disability and human rights organisations, media leaders, political party and government agency legal experts will be invited to participate in the activity of this group. In medium term, the aim would be to establish a public policy consultative and advocacy centre specialised in disability issues.

During my meetings with disability rights activists and policy makers in Romania and Hungary I investigated the chances of initiating such a public policy centre. It was agreed that European integration process might be effectively used as an incentive to promote more favourable legislation and policies in the disability field. The negotiations for setting up, in the first stage, an advisory group of experts and decision-makers has already started. In 1^st of May 2002 a delegation from Hungary which included experts both from the Government and from disability rights NGO-s visited Romania and hold discussions concerning this subject.

A summary of my fellowship activity until December 2001 is included in my paper Improving Access to the Media for the Population with Disabled Hearing in Romania and Hungary, which forms a chapter of the book Reinventing Media. Media Policy Reform in East-Central Europe (Eds. Miklos Sukosd and Peter Bajomi-Lazar) to be published by CEU Press in 2002. A trilingual volume (in Romanian, Hungarian and English) is summarising the outcome of my fellowship project, being published in Romania with the support of the IPF Programme.

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