Your Rights

Advocacy homepage

Summary: Provides local groups and individuals with practical guidance on how to set up an advocacy scheme and speaking out for yourself.

• Speaking up - advocacy resource guides

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Everyone has the right to have his or her voice heard.
Everyone has the right to challenge the rules they have to live by.
Just because something is a law or policy, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is right or fair.

If the people who hold the power to make decisions that affect you don’t hear how you are feeling, they will assume that everything is all right.

The only way they are going to know that you are unhappy with something is if they are told. Then they can begin to do something about it.

Always speak up and let them know. Speaking up may lead to changes, which will affect you and others like you.

But speaking up for yourself can be very hard, especially if you are feeling vulnerable or you don’t know your rights.

Speaking up - advocacy resource guides

RNIB has produced two new practical resource guides, downloadable from this page, to help people with sight loss speak up for themselves, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain the services they need.

Speaking up for yourself: How to self-advocate (Word)
provides practical guidance to help people with sight problems to speak up for themselves.

Speaking up together: Establishing an advocacy scheme (Word)
provides easy-to-follow advice for local groups or societies of and for people with sight problems that want to set up their own advocacy scheme.

Both guides will also be of use to anyone wishing to understand advocacy and the important role it plays in protecting the rights of people with sight loss.

Other formats

The resource guides are also available in large print or braille, and on audiotape. Copies can also be supplied on a floppy disk as a plain text file, or as a portable document file (PDF) which can be read on either a Windows PC or Apple Macintosh computer.

Copies of the guides in these formats are free of charge and can be obtained from:

RNIB Customer Services
PO Box 173
Peterborough
PE2 6WS
Telephone: 0845 702 3153
Fax: 01733 371555
Minicom: 0845 758 5691
E-mail: cservices@rnib.org.uk

Content author: SharronLaura.Keightley@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 08/04/2008 18:38