A/HRC/34/69 advocacy and effective participation by such persons. The combination of accessible meetings, accessible information and a meeting assistant ensured meaningful participation. Accessible meetings had to be inclusive and appropriately paced, with regular breaks and use of plain language with full names rather than acronyms. Trained meeting assistants put information in large font, went over the meeting papers in advance and provided explanations if required, among other tasks. 33. The President of the Mongolian National Federation of the Blind, Gerel Dondovdorj, said that persons with disabilities needed to participate in decision-making processes. In Mongolia, organizations of persons with disabilities had actively promoted the creation of disability policy councils within national ministries and in Ulaanbaatar City. Those organizations had actively participated in drafting legislation on the rights of persons with disabilities on the basis of the Convention and submitted written reports to the Committee. Persons with disabilities living in rural areas confronted challenges to participation. The fluctuating political scenario resulted in appointed officers lacking proper knowledge about the rights of persons with disabilities. All stakeholders needed technical assistance on such matters as knowledge of good practices, comparative policy analysis, training guidelines and training of trainers on the principles of the Convention. 34. Magistrate Pascal Benga Tonangoye of the Court of Auditors of Gabon said that the country’s laws dealt only briefly with disabilities, and inclusion remained exclusively on paper. Education was free and obligatory, but three out of four children with disabilities could not read or write. There was a school for children who were hard of hearing, but it lacked infrastructure. Access to health care was expensive, physical assistance was not available and treatment of and statistics on persons living with disabilities were insufficient. There was no knowledge about the implementation of the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled Persons) Convention, 1983 (No. 159) of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and few public servants were persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities could not have legal recourse in certain cases of discrimination, and there was a need for access to Braille and sign language. 35. The President of the Arab Union for the Blind, Khalid Al Nuaimi, stated that there was a lack of infrastructure and policies to meet the needs of the visually impaired in the Middle East. He called for increased dialogue and participation. The Arab Union for the Blind had organized workshops on social, cultural and legal issues. It had provided stipends for pharmacological interventions in countries with insufficient availability, promoted pedestrian mobility and created rehabilitation and training centres. It had supported the translation of laws into Braille, facilitated access to Internet banking and conducted studies on how to expand job opportunities for the visually impaired. There was a need for increased awareness on the challenges that visually impaired persons faced, for accurate statistics on the nature of visual disabilities and for training for professionals. 36. During the interactive dialogue, representatives of Brazil, Down Syndrome International, Epidemic of Knowledge Campaign, Include Me Too, Inclusion International, Indigenous Persons with Disabilities Global Network, International Federation of Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, World Blind Union, World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, and World of Inclusion took the floor. They discussed accessibility as a fundamental human right; article 29 of the Convention on the right to vote and guardianship laws; harassment and bullying of children with disabilities; the need for quality access to information; participation of youth in decision-making; role of the Sustainable Development Goals in achieving equal participation; development of skills to enhance participation; information on political campaigns, educational texts and medical information; restructuring of data compilation methods and reliable statistics; vulnerability of indigenous persons in the context of climate change; participation and empowerment of family members of persons with disabilities. 10