The last meeting of the partners of the cross-border project “DANOVA – Innovative transportation services for blind and partially-sighted passengers in the Danube Region” took place in mid-December in Vienna, Austria.
The schedule for December 14, the first day of the conference, included the general presentation of the project implementation, the Capitalization Strategy for the transfer and adaptation of the identified solutions, reports on the third workshop with stakeholders, and the results of the implementation of innovative services for blind and partially-sighted passengers. Other data, such as the transnational evaluation report, the recorded performance and the financial report, were also presented.
December 15 was the day of the last meeting for the Danova project. The conference was attended by special guests: the president of the Austrian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted, representatives of the Austrian Ministry of Transport, and the European Disability Forum. All participants focused on addressing one matter: the access of blind and partially-sighted people to innovative services. The meeting included discussions on the perspective of European consumers, accessibility to air travel, road safety and automated vehicles, as well as accessible mobility for all. Following the competition organized within the project, the GuideMe application was declared the winning idea. The project included conversations with visually impaired passengers, who reported on the many challenges faced in relation to the interaction with people and inaccessible infrastructure.
The professor from the Vienna University of Technology delivered a speech about accessibility in the academic environment. This experience was attempted by students who tried to spend a few hours in a wheelchair, moving around the building, in urban spaces or in public transport. The experiment helped the young people understand the difficulties their disabled colleagues face from day to day, such that, after graduation, the new specialists will develop projects in full knowledge of these circumstances.
The DANOVA project aims to improve the accessibility of airports, seaports, train/bus stations to blind and partially sighted people by developing a set of new services and competencies to allow them to have full access to all transportation information, facilities, and services. Many blind and partially sighted passengers find it extremely difficult, and in some cases even impossible, to use conventional transportation such as airplanes, buses, trains, or public transport. Some of the reasons are: the lack of equal access to visual or written information; staff is often not trained to adequately support and communicate with blind and partially sighted passengers; the lack of accessible infrastructure for these people; variance in the existing national accessibility laws in different countries, etc.
The main objective of DANOVA is to meet these needs and utilize an appropriate transnational approach. As a way of doing so, best practices and solutions were studied; a Capitalization Strategy was developed, to support decision-makers in the transfer of knowledge and solutions; stakeholders were involved in the process of designing a new transnational transport system concept in the Danube Region, which would be fully accessible to blind and partially sighted passengers; innovative solutions were tested in the countries involved in the project, staff received training on how to use the new services and how to properly assist and communicate with blind and visually impaired passengers.
The consortium of partners, led by Dubrovnik Airport (Croatia), is well-balanced in terms of the involvement of airports, seaports, research institutions, local authorities, and associations representing visually impaired people: Žilina Airport, Budapest Airport, Budapest Transport Centre, University of Maribor, Bulgarian Association for Transfer of Technology and Innovation, Croatian Blind Union, Austrian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted, Dubrovnik Port Authority, Municipality of Maribor, Airports of Montenegro, Port of Kotor, Sarajevo International Airport and Technical University of Moldova.
The Technical University of Moldova was part of this project since February 15, 2021, through the “Road Infrastructure Safety Observatory – OSIR” Research Center within the FUA Department of Transport Infrastructure Engineering, being registered in the Platform for the Management of External Assistance (PGAE), ID8721186315739.
UTM met all requirements of the project and managed to record beautiful results. The members of the UTM team were confident in this project’s value for society and that all acquired experience will certainly bring academic benefit as well. The administration of the University and the representative project team thanks the project partners, institutions and entities that have been with UTM throughout this journey, as well as all the participants within the organized events, and, of course, the Blind Union of Moldova and the administration of the Chisinau International Airport, for the support provided throughout the project.
In conclusion: We, the people, are the ones who are responsible for each other. Today’s circumstances might vary from the ones of tomorrow, but the latter must not be the circumstances in which we just try to survive!
