Recognising International Day of Deafblindness: Interview with Dr. Sanja Tarczay

Description: A Croatian woman with short red hair wearing thick black glasses responds to questions, written in text, using sign language. Her answers are translated by an off-screen interpreter.

Text: Can you tell us about the World Federation of the Deafblind (WFDB)’s campaign to have International Day of Deafblindness recognised?

Dr. Sanja: Okay, thank you very much for the question. First, I have to say that the dream about the International Day of Deafblindness is not new. That started when WFDB was established. That was in New Zealand 2001. I was there present and it was very exciting to see how deafblind persons are leading their own meetings and their own conferences efficiently. One of our milestones was to establish International Day of Deafblindness. The unwritten consensus was that it was 27th of June because that was the birthday of Helen Keller. That’s like an internal date where most of associations of deafblind persons globally celebrated deafblindness or in that week, deafblindness awareness week. However, we wanted to have it officially recognized because that was something that was missing. When I became president of WFDB, I was carrying in my heart this dream that we discussed in 2001, and I started to explore how we can achieve it. I’ve contacted some NGOs who already had their official day within the UN calendar, and I was informed that could be a very long process. Some even fought for 10 years and more, but that didn’t discourage me. I started seriously thinking on how to start with this initiative. In the beginning, we, as I said, that’s the story about Helen Keller. She became an icon of the deafblindness movement. She traveled a lot. She met many representatives and stakeholders. So I decided to follow her path and walk her steps in this initiative. I had a lot of bilaterals, a lot of meetings with different ministries, with different stakeholders and different permanent missions. And we found some partners within NGOs, among them, of course, Sense International as well, that supported us in spreading the information and news. And we realized that we should share and have a collaborative approach to this because that was the key step in order to achieve it. The main process was to find a core group of states within UN who will support this initiative. That was Croatian government and also governments of Jordan and Antigua and Barbuda. They decided to be the core countries within UN who will advocate and start with this initiative on the political level. And it started in June 2024.

Since then, till the June last year, 2025, as I said, we had a lot of meetings, a lot of bilaterals, we met many ministries and permanent missions, and we had a lot of conversations and endorsement of this initiative, those states who we met and their ambassadors and representatives, they were very engaged in starting in this process because political engagement was the key. So last year, it wasn’t even a full year since we started this campaign and this political communication.

So in less than one year, on 16th of June last year, 2025, on the General Assembly of UN, more than 100 countries adopted these initiatives by consensus, which is very interesting and very good in this current geopolitical situation. So that’s how it was decided that it’s 27th of June.

Text: Why was recognition an important goal of the World Federation of the Deafblind?

Dr. Sanja: Why? Because. We all know that many associations of persons with disabilities that were established many, many years ago, for example, World Federation on the Deaf, they were founded in 1951. And that association managed to get rights for deaf persons globally, and they are advocating for that for more than 50, 70 years even, but we established our association 50 years after them because deafblind persons are slower. We just need more time.

And we realized that many countries still didn’t recognize that deafblindness as a unique disabilities within their national framework and legal framework, which is very problematic for many deafblind persons because they cannot acquire deafblind-specific services, plus their parents and members of their families and researchers had many obstacles due to this fact and lack of recognition. Deafblind persons require very specific services, so that’s why. We realized that also the World Health Organization didn’t put deafblindness as a unique disability on their own list of disabilities. So our goal was that with this official recognition, we enforce the visibility and create tools for advocacy for the countries who still don’t have deafblindness officially recognized in order to achieve deafblind rights in those countries as well. And in that manner, we gave them wind in their back so they can endorse this initiative and that they can advocate for their own rights. Because we deafblind persons are not great in numbers, that’s why it’s important that we are unified in order to get our rights. And that’s why this is the day to celebrate deafblindness globally.

Text: What does this recognition mean for people with deafblindness and for future advocacy efforts?

Dr. Sanja: For now, we can already see a lot of ameliorations happening in this area. Inclusion of deafblind persons and engagement of deafblind persons in establishing their own national associations and endorsing the power of the national associations that already exist in different states. Deafblind persons started to advocate more proactively for their rights using this tool. And WFDB in this manner actually created a much richer network of collaborators and endorsers of our initiatives generally. As I said, Sense International is one of them. And that is something that already shows that the future is brighter for us deafblind persons, as well as the people who are working with us in the area of deafblindness. Now, it’s definitely brighter.

And what I can say for the future is something like the story about the turtle and a rabbit. You can see that I have a red and white bracelet and in the middle is this turtle. This turtle is a symbol of us being very slow, but in the end we do achieve our goal and we get where we want.

Text: What does it mean to you, as a person with deafblindness, to have this day recognised?

Dr. Sanja: So, I don’t know if you know but my name, Sanja, in Croatian language, in my national language, means to dream. And once, for me, I’ve heard this interesting sentence that I am a dreamer of the moment, but realist of the future. What does that mean for me personally? It means that all this path that was really not easy, but how Martin Luther always said, when you climb the mountain, and put all that effort in, it’s worthwhile because the view is beautiful.

So that’s why I’m so proud to see that the world of deafblind is not all over the place anymore, so disintegrated, it’s now united and it’s moving toward brighter future within deaf blindness movement. And it’s something that makes me very happy because I know that we are not alone anymore and that we’re not left behind.