Investments for All?
Public scrutiny
Completed
łódzkie
Łódź
TUS Fundation, Warszawa, Poland
Vis Maior Fundation, Warszawa, Poland
Taknsmidjan Ltd., Iceland
2014-09-01 - 2016-02-29
277 093,85 PLN
243 000,00 PLN
disability
Project description
During the years 2007-13 Poland spent PLN 264 billion of EU funding on investment. Unfortunately, the needs of people with disabilities (PD) were mostly overlooked and ignored by the investors, as reported by people with disabilities themselves, as well as by the Supreme Audit Office. Buildings were constructed, which were inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, had no system of navigation for the blind, or any way of communicating with the deaf. So far, nobody has undertaken to examine this area and enforce the principle of equal access and non-discrimination. The project’s main objective was to create a minimum standard of accessibility to PD (particularly for public objects), on the basis of the analysis of the EU-financed investments implemented in the years 2007-2013. The audit results were presented in the reports: “Investments for everybody?” and “Can everybody see the same thing?”. The project resulted in designing and broadly consulting the minimum standard of accessibility to people with different disabilities. Furthermore, recommendations were prepared for the investments to be implemented in the years 2014-2020, and a group of activists was trained to effectively safeguard the rights of PD. Publications are available from the project’s website (entitled “The barrier-free website”). The subject of accessibility has become far more important to the Ministry of Economic Development. The Ministry prepared guidelines and a “Handbook for employees of projects and institutions of the system of implementation of the European Funds 2014-2020”, containing a tool for accessibility testing, which was developed by the project. The project was exceptional, in that the minimum standard of accessibility was developed by organisations of people with different disabilities and, consequently, different accessibility needs. Partners brought into the project their knowledge and rich experience in their fields. TUS trained the auditors, co-created the auditing tool and analysed the audits. Vis Maior delivered their knowledge of barriers for people with blindness and impaired vision, as well their synthesising skills, necessary to put together the minimum standard. All partners significantly enhanced their knowledge on accessibility for other groups of people with disabilities.
We use the grant for capacity building