Ricard López Biography

Ricard López (Catalonia, 1954) founded several organisations to provide specialized support for Deafblind people and their parents.

He is the father of Clara, who was born deafblind in 1991. Since then, Ricard has been facing difficulties such as lack of information and specific and non-specific care for Deafblindness in Catalonia and Spain. He has been lobbying for this disability to be properly acknowledged and attended by governments and society, not only in Catalonia and Spain, but also in Europe and America.

One of his most important achievements was his participation on the claim at the European Parliament that led to the recognition of Deafblindness as a specific disability in 2004. From 2012 to 2014, he has led an EU financed project called “Mapping Opportunities for Deafblind People across Europe”, with the participation of 27 European countries. The outcome was that there were about 3 million deafblind people in Europe.

He is currently working on the “International Classification of Functioning (ICF) for Deafblindness”, a classification of the WHO. This could benefit deafblind people not only by improving their treatment, planning and monitoring of their evolution, but by raising awareness of this disability inside the medical community worldwide. Being and expert on Deafblindness, Ricard can relate to a broad number of different disability situations. He is tirelessly committed to advocate for disability rights and he would bring to EDF the experience acquired.

Present positions in the disability movement:

Founder & President Apsocecat (1999)
President European Deafblind Network (2011, member since 1999)
Co-Founder & President FESOCE (2009) – Spanish Federation for Deafblindness
Co-Founder World Confederation of Parents of the Deafblind (2011)
Co-Founder European Platform of Deafness, Hard of Hearing and Deafblindness (2012)
Board Member Deafblind International (2000)
Preeminent Advisor on the writing of The Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque Reference Manual on Standard proceedings for dealing with Deafblindness (2009)
Member of EDF expert groups on ICT, standardisation, transport and built environment