The experts in deafblindness from around Europe, who held their first meeting in Glasgow on the 19th and 20th of November 2012, started off this two-year project granted by the Grundtvig Programme of the European Commission. The meeting joined the nine official organisations of the project, coming from eight EU Member States (United Kingdom contributes two organisations), gracefully hosted by Sense Scotland in Glasgow, placing their facilities at the disposal of the 25 participants, who had the chance to visit their centres and services.
In an amiable atmosphere, the different project tasks were assigned to the attending organisations, including the workgroups regarding the Deafblindness domains that need to be worked on.
The domains that have been established are the following: disability rate/demographics, personal and family life, choice and control, access to goods and services, education and lifelong learning, work and employment, and last but not least, incomes and poverty. During the seminar, the concept of “European Deafblind Indicators” was also approved as the main defining concept of the project, which will also be used to name both the website and the final book, which will include the concluding data collected during the two years of investigation. This book will be published in English and the final texts will be supervised by the British organisation Sense UK. The presence of the most notable organisations within the field of deafblindness in their respective countries will guarantee the quality of the results; nevertheless, the members agreed on an enlargement policy to keep the organisations from the five European countries that did not receive funding within the project, as well as other European countries wishing to join this challenging enterprise.