The Equality Association organized a debate on the topic "Designing digital tools for people from vulnerable categories and people with disabilities", which is part of the SIGNAL project and aims to encourage solutions in the digital world for greater independence and active inclusion of people with various disabilities.
The debate, which took place on April 9 at the Biljana Beličanec Cultural Center, covered the challenges of people with disabilities in the digital world, including the importance of technology as a key to better accessibility of digital and internet tools in offering public services to all citizens, as well as possible solutions for improving digital accessibility in the Municipality of Kisela Voda and opportunities for a replicable solution in the area of the City of Skopje and wider throughout Macedonia.
“This event is a significant step in building a more acceptable and inclusive digital environment for all citizens, but above all for raising awareness of the services that we would like to facilitate communication with people with disabilities,” said Gere Tripkov, president of the Equality Association and organizer of the project.
The AccessiScan tool for assessing the accessibility of websites was presented at the debate. Stefan Kuzmanovski, the expert in web accessibility and digital tools, presented its functions, which can be used by those responsible for state and local government websites to check their functioning in terms of accessibility.
Kristijan Lazarev, as a visually impaired person and president of the Association for Accessibility and Inclusion, whose expertise is focused on the accessibility of the Internet and digital products, shared his personal experiences and the challenges faced by these fellow citizens in the digital world, emphasizing the urgent need to adhere to accessibility standards when creating websites and digital tools.
“The Municipality of Kisela Voda, through its long-standing cooperation with the Equality Association, works dedicatedly and supports initiatives to improve accessibility and inclusive practices in all areas. The need to work on accessibility in the digital world is more than necessary, in order to enable greater inclusion of our fellow citizens with disabilities. “- said the advisor to the mayor of the Municipality of Kisela Voda, Sasho Jovanoski.
As part of the project, a questionnaire has been opened to collect opinions and suggestions from the affected community regarding the needs for greater digital accessibility of the services and their services, available until April 20 at the following link: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ACCESSIBLE DIGITAL TOOLS.
The participants present, including people with disabilities and their loved ones, parents, guardians, and assistants, had the opportunity to provide their own suggestions, in order to better respond to the existing needs of the community and to point out to the creators of websites and digital tools that they should strictly respect the standards of accessibility and non-discrimination.. Among the participants the idea of developing a tool that would convert unintelligible speech was pointed out among people with disabilities in clear and understandable speech, which would facilitate their communication and integration. Additionally, it was pointed out guidelines and solutions for transforming speech into sign language interpretation by an avatar or real-time interpreter.
The SIGNAL project is being implemented in cooperation with the Vision Plus Association and with the support of the Municipality of Kisela Voda. More information is available on the Equality Association profiles: Facebook, Instagram and on the official website: Equality Association.
