La labor desarrollada por el Ayuntamiento de Málaga recibió un apoyo mayoritario frente a los proyectos de Oslo y Estocolmo
25/02/2011.- La ciudad de Málaga ha sido premiada en la categoría de Administración Pública en los premios otorgados por la Fundación “Diseño para Todos” en 2011, que se entregaron la noche del jueves 24 de febrero en Barcelona. Málaga competía con un proyecto de la ciudad noruega de Oslo y otro de la ciudad sueca de Estocolmo. Estos galardones reconocen los esfuerzos de las empresas, entidades y administraciones de todo el mundo para que los entornos, productos y servicios respeten y tengan en cuenta los diferentes aspectos de la diversidad humana, promoviendo de esta forma la participación de todos en la construcción de nuestra sociedad en igualdad de condiciones.
Con este galardón se reconoce la solidez del proyecto del Área de Accesibilidad Universal, sustentado en llevar más de 15 años en la ejecución de actuaciones eficaces que consigan que la accesibilidad sea un elemento visible e imprescindible en nuestra ciudad. La meta es que Málaga sea una ciudad abierta y normalizadora en donde los servicios, productos y entornos se lleven a cabo con el criterio de poder ser usados por todos los ciudadanos, independientemente de sus capacidades o circunstancias personales.
Existen cinco cuestiones diferenciadoras que marcan la gestión municipal en materia de discapacidad:
1- La participación de las personas con discapacidad en la ciudad se potencia con la inestimable colaboración de los colectivos sociales que bajo la figura de la Agrupación de Desarrollo “Málaga Ciudad Accesible”, constituida por 50 Asociaciones, lleva a cabo diferentes actuaciones dirigidas a la mejora de la calidad de los servicios que este Ayuntamiento presta a toda la ciudadanía.
2- En el año 2003 se publican las Ordenanzas de Accesibilidad de la Ciudad de Málaga.
3- En el año 2007 se crea la Concejalía de Accesibilidad Universal, con el impulso y la visibilidad que esto supone para las actuaciones en materia de accesibilidad y normalización, afianzando el carácter transversal de éstas.
4- Plan Estratégico de Accesibilidad de la Ciudad de Málaga 2007-2011. Garantiza la igualdad de oportunidades a los miembros de todos los grupos de la sociedad. Este Plan es la herramienta que contribuye a garantizar la normalización y plena participación en la sociedad a las personas con discapacidad.
5- Presupuestos propios para eliminación de barreras físicas en viario y equipamientos.
Este importante premio llega una semana después de la celebración del II Foro Internacional de Diseño Universal en el Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Málaga (FYCMA), que se celebró entre el jueves 17 y el viernes 18.
DESIGN FOR ALL
El “Design for All” (Diseño para Todas las personas) es la intervención sobre entornos, productos y servicios con la finalidad de que todas las personas, incluidas las generaciones futuras, independientemente de la edad, el género, las capacidades o el bagaje cultural, puedan disfrutar participando en la construcción de nuestra sociedad, con igualdad de oportunidades para participar en actividades económicas, sociales, culturales, de ocio y recreativas y pudiendo acceder, utilizar y comprender cualquier parte del entorno con tanta independencia como sea posible.
Para aplicar el “Design for All” en la concepción de productos y servicios deben tenerse en cuenta dos simples principios: facilitar el uso de los productos y servicios a todos los usuarios y asegurar que las necesidades, deseos y expectativas de los usuarios se tengan en cuenta en el proceso de diseño y evaluación del productos o servicio.
El jurado de estos premios ha estado compuesto por importantes figuras de la accesibilidad del ámbito internacional, como Francesc Aragall, presidente de la Fundación “Diseño para Todos”; Keiji Kawahara, el director ejecutivo de la International Association for Universal Design (IAUD); o el director ejecutivo del Institute for Human Centered Design, Valerie Fletche.
sábado, 26 de febrero de 2011
viernes, 25 de febrero de 2011
IPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy
By EMILY B. HAGER
OWEN CAIN depends on a respirator and struggles to make even the slightest movements — he has had a debilitating motor-neuron disease since infancy.
Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before.
He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it — just barely — and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen. Over the years, Owen’s parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try.
“We have spent all this time keeping him alive, and now we owe him more than that,” said his mother, Ellen Goldstein, a vice president at the Times Square Alliance business association. “I see his ability to communicate and to learn as a big part of that challenge — not all of it, but a big part of it. And so, that’s my responsibility.”
Since its debut in April, the iPad has become a popular therapeutic tool for people with disabilities of all kinds, though no one keeps track of how many are used this way, and studies are just getting under way to test its effectiveness, which varies widely depending on diagnosis.
A speech pathologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center uses text-to-speech applications to give patients a voice. Christopher Bulger, a 16-year-old in Chicago who injured his spine in a car accident, used an iPad to surf the Internet during the early stages of his rehabilitation, when his hands were clenched into fists. “It was nice because you progressed from the knuckle to the finger to using more than one knuckle on the screen,” he said.
Parents of autistic children are using applications to teach them basic skills, like brushing teeth and communicating better.
For a mainstream technological device like the iPad to have been instantly embraced by the disabled is unusual. It is far more common for items designed for disabled people to be adapted for general use, like closed-captioning on televisions in gyms or GPS devices in cars that announce directions. Also, most mainstream devices do not come with built-ins like the iPad’s closed-captioning, magnification and audible readout functions — which were intended to keep it simple for all users, but also help disabled people.
“Making things less complicated can actually make a lot of money,” said Gregg C. Vanderheiden, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has worked on accessibility issues for decades.
Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who wrote recently enacted legislation that will require mobile devices to be more accessible to users with disabilities, said approximately three-fourths of communications and video devices need to be adapted for blind and deaf people. “Apple,” he said in a statement, “is an outlier when it comes to devices that are accessible out of the box.”
The iPad is also, generally speaking, less expensive than computers and other gadgets specifically designed to help disabled people speak, read or write. While insurers usually do not cover the cost of mobile devices like the iPad because they are not medical equipment, in some cases they will pay for the applications that run on them.
In Owen’s case, his grandmother bought him a $600 iPad in August, and his parents have invested about $200 more in software. One day this summer, his finger dangled over the title page of “Alice in Wonderland” on his iPad while his mother hovered over his shoulder in their Brooklyn home. Then, with the tiniest of movements, and thanks to the sensitivity of the iPad’s touch screen, Owen began to turn the pages of the book. “You are reading a book on your own, Owen!” Ms. Goldstein, 44, exclaimed. “That is completely wonderful.”
But while the sensitivity of the iPad’s touch screen makes it promising for Owen, it can be problematic for others, like Glenda Watson Hyatt, a blogger in Surrey, British Columbia, who has cerebral palsy. “When ‘flipping’ screens, sometimes I flip more than one screen,” Ms. Hyatt wrote in an interview conducted by e-mail. “Or I touch what I didn’t intend to.”
Still, Ms. Hyatt said that when she was having trouble chatting with friends at a bar recently, she pulled out her iPad to help communicate and felt normal. “People were drawn to it because it was a ‘recognized’ or ‘known’ piece of technology,” she wrote in a blog post reviewing the device.
At the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord rehabilitation clinic in Atlanta, some teenage quadriplegics have received iPads as gifts, but they do not work well for those who rely on a mouse stick — basically a long pen controlled by mouth.
“It wants to see a finger,” said John Anschutz, the manager of the assistive technology program at Shepherd. “It really requires the quality of skin and body mass to operate.”
For Owen Cain, whose disease is physical, not mental, the iPad has limitations, too. Moving his finger all the way across the keypad remains a challenge, and makes writing difficult. Ms. Goldstein said its versatility and affordability, though, were a boon. He has been experimenting with a variety of applications — Proloquo2Go, which allows him to touch an icon that prompts the device to speak things like, “I need to go to the bathroom”; Math Magic, which helps him practice arithmetic; and Animal Match, a memory game.
“If all you’re worrying about is ‘I can try this program, or I can try that program, I can buy that app or I can buy this app,’ and the investment is so much lower,” his mother said, “then our ability to explore or experiment with different things is so much bigger.”
When Owen was about 8 weeks old, his mother noticed his right arm drooping. It led to a crushing diagnosis: the motor-neuron disease known as spinal muscular atrophy Type 1. A 2003 New York Times article about spinal muscular atrophy said his parents had been told Owen would be “paralyzed for his life, which doctors predicted would last no more than about two years.”
Owen will turn 8 on Nov. 11. While his condition is not expected to worsen, he is extremely sensitive to infection and once nearly died of pneumonia; three specialized therapists and a nurse help keep him alive.
Though he cannot speak, his parents have taught him to read, write and do math. He has an impish sense of humor and a love of “Star Wars.” “He’s a normal child trapped in a not normal body,” said his father, Hamilton Cain, 45, a book editor.
Since he received the iPad, Owen has been trying to read books, and playing around with apps like Air Guitar. And, one day, he typed out on the keypad, “I want to be Han Solo for Halloween.”
OWEN CAIN depends on a respirator and struggles to make even the slightest movements — he has had a debilitating motor-neuron disease since infancy.
Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before.
He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it — just barely — and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen. Over the years, Owen’s parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try.
“We have spent all this time keeping him alive, and now we owe him more than that,” said his mother, Ellen Goldstein, a vice president at the Times Square Alliance business association. “I see his ability to communicate and to learn as a big part of that challenge — not all of it, but a big part of it. And so, that’s my responsibility.”
Since its debut in April, the iPad has become a popular therapeutic tool for people with disabilities of all kinds, though no one keeps track of how many are used this way, and studies are just getting under way to test its effectiveness, which varies widely depending on diagnosis.
A speech pathologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center uses text-to-speech applications to give patients a voice. Christopher Bulger, a 16-year-old in Chicago who injured his spine in a car accident, used an iPad to surf the Internet during the early stages of his rehabilitation, when his hands were clenched into fists. “It was nice because you progressed from the knuckle to the finger to using more than one knuckle on the screen,” he said.
Parents of autistic children are using applications to teach them basic skills, like brushing teeth and communicating better.
For a mainstream technological device like the iPad to have been instantly embraced by the disabled is unusual. It is far more common for items designed for disabled people to be adapted for general use, like closed-captioning on televisions in gyms or GPS devices in cars that announce directions. Also, most mainstream devices do not come with built-ins like the iPad’s closed-captioning, magnification and audible readout functions — which were intended to keep it simple for all users, but also help disabled people.
“Making things less complicated can actually make a lot of money,” said Gregg C. Vanderheiden, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has worked on accessibility issues for decades.
Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who wrote recently enacted legislation that will require mobile devices to be more accessible to users with disabilities, said approximately three-fourths of communications and video devices need to be adapted for blind and deaf people. “Apple,” he said in a statement, “is an outlier when it comes to devices that are accessible out of the box.”
The iPad is also, generally speaking, less expensive than computers and other gadgets specifically designed to help disabled people speak, read or write. While insurers usually do not cover the cost of mobile devices like the iPad because they are not medical equipment, in some cases they will pay for the applications that run on them.
In Owen’s case, his grandmother bought him a $600 iPad in August, and his parents have invested about $200 more in software. One day this summer, his finger dangled over the title page of “Alice in Wonderland” on his iPad while his mother hovered over his shoulder in their Brooklyn home. Then, with the tiniest of movements, and thanks to the sensitivity of the iPad’s touch screen, Owen began to turn the pages of the book. “You are reading a book on your own, Owen!” Ms. Goldstein, 44, exclaimed. “That is completely wonderful.”
But while the sensitivity of the iPad’s touch screen makes it promising for Owen, it can be problematic for others, like Glenda Watson Hyatt, a blogger in Surrey, British Columbia, who has cerebral palsy. “When ‘flipping’ screens, sometimes I flip more than one screen,” Ms. Hyatt wrote in an interview conducted by e-mail. “Or I touch what I didn’t intend to.”
Still, Ms. Hyatt said that when she was having trouble chatting with friends at a bar recently, she pulled out her iPad to help communicate and felt normal. “People were drawn to it because it was a ‘recognized’ or ‘known’ piece of technology,” she wrote in a blog post reviewing the device.
At the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord rehabilitation clinic in Atlanta, some teenage quadriplegics have received iPads as gifts, but they do not work well for those who rely on a mouse stick — basically a long pen controlled by mouth.
“It wants to see a finger,” said John Anschutz, the manager of the assistive technology program at Shepherd. “It really requires the quality of skin and body mass to operate.”
For Owen Cain, whose disease is physical, not mental, the iPad has limitations, too. Moving his finger all the way across the keypad remains a challenge, and makes writing difficult. Ms. Goldstein said its versatility and affordability, though, were a boon. He has been experimenting with a variety of applications — Proloquo2Go, which allows him to touch an icon that prompts the device to speak things like, “I need to go to the bathroom”; Math Magic, which helps him practice arithmetic; and Animal Match, a memory game.
“If all you’re worrying about is ‘I can try this program, or I can try that program, I can buy that app or I can buy this app,’ and the investment is so much lower,” his mother said, “then our ability to explore or experiment with different things is so much bigger.”
When Owen was about 8 weeks old, his mother noticed his right arm drooping. It led to a crushing diagnosis: the motor-neuron disease known as spinal muscular atrophy Type 1. A 2003 New York Times article about spinal muscular atrophy said his parents had been told Owen would be “paralyzed for his life, which doctors predicted would last no more than about two years.”
Owen will turn 8 on Nov. 11. While his condition is not expected to worsen, he is extremely sensitive to infection and once nearly died of pneumonia; three specialized therapists and a nurse help keep him alive.
Though he cannot speak, his parents have taught him to read, write and do math. He has an impish sense of humor and a love of “Star Wars.” “He’s a normal child trapped in a not normal body,” said his father, Hamilton Cain, 45, a book editor.
Since he received the iPad, Owen has been trying to read books, and playing around with apps like Air Guitar. And, one day, he typed out on the keypad, “I want to be Han Solo for Halloween.”
jueves, 24 de febrero de 2011
Nota de Prensa sobre Educación
El FORO DE VIDA INDEPENDIENTE Y DIVERTAD (FVID) muestra su total desacuerdo con la política educativa del Gobierno de Castilla La Mancha
Ante el anuncio de la firma de un convenio por parte de la Consejería de Educación de Castilla La Mancha, y el Comité de Representantes de Personas con discapacidad (CERMI) de esta comunidad, “para dar respuesta a las necesidades educativas del alumnado con discapacidad en el marco de la educación inclusiva” (según nota de prensa), desde el FVID queremos poner de manifiesto lo siguiente:
1.- Que en principio, y salvo que la Consejería de Educación de CLM pueda demostrar lo contrario, las cifras que se presentan no se corresponden con la realidad de la comunidad: ese "90% de alumnos con discapacidad en centros ordinarios", al que alude la Consejera de Educación, y que convierten, -según sus propias palabras-, a Castilla la Mancha, en ejemplo a seguir, no coincide con la realidad en las aulas de los colegios ordinarios, ya que, en esta Comunidad, el destino de estos alumnos con diversidad funcional, es la segregación.
2.- Que no se puede llamar EDUCACION INCLUSIVA, a la modalidad combinada donde los alumnos se educan entre el colegio ordinario y el colegio de educación especial, y esta es, sin embargo, la modalidad por la que se está optando de forma habitual en toda Castilla La Mancha.
3.- Que entendemos que al hablar de recursos destinados a la atención a la diversidad, se refieren únicamente a la construcción o aumento de dotación de los colegios de educación especial, para los que desde esta misma comunidad se destinan dotaciones millonarias, incumpliendo una vez mas los principios de la Convención de la ONU sobre derechos de las personas con discapacidad.
4.- Que al mismo tiempo se anuncia el cierre de las unidades de apoyo que existen en las aulas de los centros ordinarios CP “Hijos de Obreros” de Almadén; CP “San Isidro”, de Daimiel; CP “Romero Peña”, de La Solana y CP “Santa Teresa” de Malagón, acción que nos parecería adecuada, si se dotara a los colegios de los recursos necesarios (tanto humanos como materiales) para que los alumnos con diversidad funcional permanezcan en las aulas en igualdad.
5.- Que desde el FORO DE VIDA INDEPENDIENTE y DIVERTAD entendemos que apartar y segregar a los alumnos con diversidad funcional, negándoles su derecho a una educación en igualdad, es la mejor garantía de convertir a estos niños en futuros dependientes y potenciar así un país de políticas benefactoras, un futuro que necesariamente dará pie a una sociedad demandante de subsidios sociales, y una sociedad donde a las personas con diversidad funcional se les niegue el derecho a una vida independiente.
Por todo ello, desde el Foro de Vida Independiente y Divertad, EXIGIMOS:
1.- Que el gobierno de Castilla La Mancha sea garante del Derecho a la Educación en igualdad de los niños con diversidad funcional y el derecho de los padres a elegir el centro escolar para sus hijos.
2.- El absoluto cumplimiento de la Convención de la ONU sobre DERECHOS PARA LAS PERSONAS CON DISCAPACIDAD (art. 24), , así como de la CONSTITUCION ESPAÑOLA (art. 27), y por tanto el acceso real a la EDUCACION INCLUSIVA de todo el alumnado de Castilla La Mancha con diversidad funcional, en centros ordinarios con los recursos tanto humanos como materiales que sean precisos.
FORO DE VIDA INDEPENDIENTE Y DIVERTAD
DERECHOS HUMANOS ¡YA!
Ante el anuncio de la firma de un convenio por parte de la Consejería de Educación de Castilla La Mancha, y el Comité de Representantes de Personas con discapacidad (CERMI) de esta comunidad, “para dar respuesta a las necesidades educativas del alumnado con discapacidad en el marco de la educación inclusiva” (según nota de prensa), desde el FVID queremos poner de manifiesto lo siguiente:
1.- Que en principio, y salvo que la Consejería de Educación de CLM pueda demostrar lo contrario, las cifras que se presentan no se corresponden con la realidad de la comunidad: ese "90% de alumnos con discapacidad en centros ordinarios", al que alude la Consejera de Educación, y que convierten, -según sus propias palabras-, a Castilla la Mancha, en ejemplo a seguir, no coincide con la realidad en las aulas de los colegios ordinarios, ya que, en esta Comunidad, el destino de estos alumnos con diversidad funcional, es la segregación.
2.- Que no se puede llamar EDUCACION INCLUSIVA, a la modalidad combinada donde los alumnos se educan entre el colegio ordinario y el colegio de educación especial, y esta es, sin embargo, la modalidad por la que se está optando de forma habitual en toda Castilla La Mancha.
3.- Que entendemos que al hablar de recursos destinados a la atención a la diversidad, se refieren únicamente a la construcción o aumento de dotación de los colegios de educación especial, para los que desde esta misma comunidad se destinan dotaciones millonarias, incumpliendo una vez mas los principios de la Convención de la ONU sobre derechos de las personas con discapacidad.
4.- Que al mismo tiempo se anuncia el cierre de las unidades de apoyo que existen en las aulas de los centros ordinarios CP “Hijos de Obreros” de Almadén; CP “San Isidro”, de Daimiel; CP “Romero Peña”, de La Solana y CP “Santa Teresa” de Malagón, acción que nos parecería adecuada, si se dotara a los colegios de los recursos necesarios (tanto humanos como materiales) para que los alumnos con diversidad funcional permanezcan en las aulas en igualdad.
5.- Que desde el FORO DE VIDA INDEPENDIENTE y DIVERTAD entendemos que apartar y segregar a los alumnos con diversidad funcional, negándoles su derecho a una educación en igualdad, es la mejor garantía de convertir a estos niños en futuros dependientes y potenciar así un país de políticas benefactoras, un futuro que necesariamente dará pie a una sociedad demandante de subsidios sociales, y una sociedad donde a las personas con diversidad funcional se les niegue el derecho a una vida independiente.
Por todo ello, desde el Foro de Vida Independiente y Divertad, EXIGIMOS:
1.- Que el gobierno de Castilla La Mancha sea garante del Derecho a la Educación en igualdad de los niños con diversidad funcional y el derecho de los padres a elegir el centro escolar para sus hijos.
2.- El absoluto cumplimiento de la Convención de la ONU sobre DERECHOS PARA LAS PERSONAS CON DISCAPACIDAD (art. 24), , así como de la CONSTITUCION ESPAÑOLA (art. 27), y por tanto el acceso real a la EDUCACION INCLUSIVA de todo el alumnado de Castilla La Mancha con diversidad funcional, en centros ordinarios con los recursos tanto humanos como materiales que sean precisos.
FORO DE VIDA INDEPENDIENTE Y DIVERTAD
DERECHOS HUMANOS ¡YA!
martes, 22 de febrero de 2011
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
