The most significant impact will be on deafblind people’s lives. Deafblind people will have enhanced opportunities for education, health, livelihoods and inclusion within families and community. The advocacy efforts by SI (India) along with the CSOs and networks have had an impact on the government of India’s initiative to draft a new disability law, which for the first time will recognise deafblindness as separate category of disability. This will directly impact India’s estimated 500,000 deafblind population by way of government making budgetary provisions for ensuring the human rights of deafblind people are met. Currently, deafblindness is not recognised by the government and hence there is no government funding available for even the basic human rights to education, health, livelihoods and other fundamental needs.
100 CSOs will have improved technical skills and greater organisational capacity to act as advocates and mentors for other organisations and local networks of parents and deafblind adults. They will have greater information and knowledge of national and international legislations like UNCRPD. Greater CSO capacity will ultimately contribute to a stronger civil society. 1500 Government teachers will have improved capacity to facilitate inclusion of deafblind children into mainstream government schools and thus enabling deafblind children to access their right to education. There will be a cascading effect, with teachers trained, training other teachers. 1500 Parents/family members of deafblind people will have improved capacity and information about the rights of their deafblind children. They will have greater confidence in approaching government services (education, health, social security) and will be able to take informed decisions for their children. There will be a strong national and regional network of parents to give a collective voice to parents/families of deafblind people in the country. The networks will have adequate information on advocacy actions supported by the advocacy toolkit and trainings on national and international legislation like UNCRPD.