Where can visually impaired people find information in Poltava?

Community activists from organizations for people with disabilities in the Poltava community have identified one problem that requires urgent action: information accessibility, especially for visually impaired people. They plan to address this obstacle through a regional advocacy campaign called “Humanitarian Response: Everyone Has the Right to Protection,” which is part of the project “Strengthening the Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Response and Recovery in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

"Of course, there is a lot of interesting information on the internet that could be useful for people with disabilities, but it is mostly general in nature. However, it is practically impossible to find regional news from Poltava that a person with visual impairments could read. There is also a purely technical problem: a lot of infographics are published instead of text material. And such publications remain inaccessible to us, people who have lost their sight," says Poltava musician Maxim Varfolomeev.

Poltava residents know him well thanks to his performances for the city's residents on the central streets and squares of Poltava. But not everyone knows that last fall, at the age of 50+, Maksym enrolled at the V.G. Korolenko Poltava National Pedagogical University to study pop vocals. He is also learning about artificial intelligence and preparing a specialized knitting course for beginners, aimed at the blind. So he knows firsthand the problems that can arise for people with visual impairments when trying to obtain information.

“I want to grow and achieve more in life: for example, go on tour somewhere, perform for people, take part in charity events in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and so on,” Maxim continues.

“It is important that the information needed by people with disabilities is provided in full. So that a person who goes to a humanitarian aid distribution point can understand how to get there and what to do next,” comments Marina Babets, a civic activist and chair of the board of the Poltava regional organization of the Ukrainian Society of the Blind. “So that this person can receive all the necessary information using screen access services and, independently, without the help of others, be able to, for example, apply for humanitarian aid.”

According to her, she has high hopes for solving the problem through an advocacy campaign that Marina and her colleagues are implementing in the Poltava community.

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The project “Strengthening the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities during humanitarian response and recovery in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” is being implemented by the NAPD within the framework of a grant from the International Disability Alliance (IDA). Міжнародного Альянсу людей з інвалідністю (IDA)