This document outlines a strategy to promote accessibility awareness by putting people in situations where their abilities are restricted to experience challenges that people with disabilities face. The strategy involves examples like traffic lights that convey accessibility messages, inaccessible store shelves, restaurants that initially provide service only in sign language, guided tours for blind people in parks, celebrities restricting their abilities and writing about the experience, and interactive digital games that simulate disability tasks. The overall goal is to demonstrate to people the importance of accessibility by giving them a taste of disability experiences.
Promoting accessibility awareness through experiential activities
1. To work out the strategy for promotion
of the idea of the global “accessibility”,
that refers to all the spheres of one’s
life.
2. “Everything is accessible for me, that’s why
I’m not thinking about accessibility”.
We have to make people think about the
inaccessibility by putting them into the
situation when their own abilities are
restricted.
3. Appealing to the emotional reaction, we can make people
think about the problems of accessibility of people with
disabilities.
By doing this we will demonstrate how
important it is the ordinary things to be
accessible to every person.
4. Crosswalk
Traffic lights are equipped with Green Light
Messenger. Any time when green light is on,
pedestrian hears a unique message: “Close your
eyes and try to keep it closed during you are
crossing the road. Blind people do it with ease”.
Supermarkets
Unusual store shelves with attractive goods for the
lowest prices can be installed in shops on the height
of 2,5 m. The shelve is decorated with a title: “Hard
to reach? People with disabilities agree with you”.
5. Restaurants and Cafés
First several minutes of service is held on the finger language. The waiter
welcomes guest by gestures and proposes a menu in the same manner. Then a
card with basic signs of finger language is given to the guest. After that the
waiter begins a conversation on the common language.
Parks
Special “Blind Tour” is organized in the park. Any
volunteer is proposed to participate in a special
excursion with a guide-dog.
6. Own Experience
We propose celebrities (singers, sportsmen, actors) to
restrict his or her abilities for a definite period of time
(f.e. to live a day in wheel-chair). All their feelings and
experience are to be described in a social blog.
Examples of tweets:
“My hands are tired of this wheel-chair!” @ScarlettJohansson
“D#mn! I Couldn’t give a simple pass with my eyes
blindfolded!!!” @DavidBeckham
7. Digital Activity
Special internet game will be created. The idea is to complete tasks shown on
display (f.e. “type the phrase with a help of your nose”, “try to lead the cursor
out from the labyrinth with a help of computer mouse controlled by your elbow”
and so on). All the activities are controlled by moderators with a help of web-
camera. When all the tasks are completed, the user sees a message on his
“Great result! P. S. People with disabilities
display:
complete these missions every day”.
8. We make problems, feelings and experience of
people with disabilities accessible for people who’ve
never faced problems of this kind. For receiver it
becomes evident that he or she hadn’t really
understood the problem of accessibility until faced it.
Accessibility begins with understanding.