As party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the EU and all its Member States have committed to respect the rights of disabled people, including the right to mobility and independent living. In practice, however, these rights have not yet been implemented in large parts of the EU and many of today’s transport systems remain inaccessible. As a consequence, people are unable to access job opportunities, education, social and leisure activities and other services. This limits lifestyle choices, reinforces exclusion from local communities, and ultimately blocks people from participating in society as full and independent citizens.
TRIPS is a 3-year project, launched at the beginning of 2020 and funded by the European Commission through Horizon 2020. Its aim is to make transport in seven European cities – Bologna, Brussels, Cagliari, Lisbon, Sofia, Stockholm, and Zagreb – more accessible for disabled people, older people and everyone, really.
Among other, the TRIPS project aims to:
Propose a co-design approach that allows people, disabled by inaccessible environments, to take the leading role in designing accessible and useable transport systems. By focusing on the experience and needs of disabled people, the project aims to directly address a wide variety of barriers in current urban transport systems. This includes also barriers due to, for example, age, health, or language.
Provide case studies that show how such co-designed mobility solutions can provide inclusive urban transport-for-all in seven example European cities: Bologna, Brussels, Cagliari, Lisbon, Sofia, Stockholm and Zagreb.
To achieve this, the project brings together different people in each city in co-production groups: disabled people’s organisations (ENIL), organisations dealing with transport (UITP), accessibility and assistive technologies (AAATE), and organisations focused on design (TUE). It also includes partners with expertise in strategy and change management (TB), strategic technology development and user-centered design (DLR), and policy and regulatory advice on technologies (TRI). Local partners in the transport ecosystem (Zagreb City, CTM SPA, CARRIS, SRM) are also involved.
In these groups, disabled people, transport providers, city councilors and other people involved in transport work together to find ways to make the transport in the city more accessible.
The Easy-to-read explanation of the TRIPS project is available here (prepared with the support of Inclusion Europe). More information, including project deliverables, is available on a dedicated project website.
Contact person: Laura Alciauskaite, laura.alciauskaite@enil.eu