PRESENTATION

Since its creation in 1988, National Spanish Blind Association’s main goal is to promote social integration of people with a physical, psychological, sensorial or mental disability, and improving their life quality, by the implementation of social integration programmes, focusing especially on occupational training, employment and promotion of universal accessibility by the creation of globally accessible environments, products and services.

The aids that the NSBO Foundation gives are discretionary, ex gratia and, in general, free, without rationality or solidarity detriment, without assuming in any case pensions or ever-lasting grants, so it is highly appreciated that the entities who ask for a grant for regular activities provide information, and, if necessary, guarantee that their projects will continue in the future.

In NSBO Foundation they believe that it is essential to work with public and private entities in order to fulfill these goals. They have to work together to design and develop strategies which contribute to improve life quality and social integration of disabled people, and also to improve diversity among our fellow members.

HISTORY

NSBO Foundation for Cooperation and Social Integration of Disabled People was born in february 1988 as an agreement from NSBO’s General Board and is presented to society in September 1988, as a cooperation and solidarity instrument from Spanish Blind towards other collectives of disabled people, and to imrpove their life quality. Besides NSBO, the main disabled people organizations in Spain are present in NSBO Foundation, in their board.

Disabled People Representants Spanish Committee (DPRSC) is also present in NSBO Foundation’s board. It is a platform which groups together the main disabled people organizations in Spain, a lot of which only work regionally. It joins together more than 3000 associations and entities, which represent the 3.8 million disabled people in Spain, as well as their families.Its main financial income comes from  3% of the money earned selling NSBO’s games of chance.

As the core idea, the development of strategic employment generating projects and disabled people formation promotion.And as secondary ideas:

•Direct laboral integration.

•Promotion of actions which improves goods and services’ accessibility.

•Inclusion of disability related actions and strategies in big enterprises’ social responsibility plans.

•Spreading and social sensibilization.

•Promotion and sponsorship of actions which contribute to laboral insertion.

•Projects which help improving disabled people’s life.

FSC INSERT executes the majority of these agreements, especially the ones related to formation and employment, inside FSE’s Discrimination Fighting Operative Programme, co-financed by FSE.

1.APTRA  Application.

APTRA project is an NSBO Foundation project, aiming to improve cooperation and social integration of disabled people, in collaboration with the European Social Fund and the Regional Development European Fund. Three enterprises collaborated with APTRA: Fundosa Social Consulting, VÍA LIBRE and TECHNOSITE.

The initial main goals for this initiative were:

1.Analysing several enterprise environments and laboral positions taken up by disabled people, so as to improve positions’ quality and businesses’ productivity.

2.Handing in the positive experiences  and solutions which were found to human resources bosses, in particular, and social agents in general.

3.Developing a computing tool which supports disabled people’s integration by providing information and recommendations about position-worker adaptation, faced with possible difficulties.

The project is developed in different stages. The first one is the exploration one, when one hundred laboral positions are selected, depending on the disability of the worker taking it up, the disability percentage and the type of position. Afterwards, a study is done, gathering the detected difficulties and the solutions which would be required to solve them.

In the second one the app’s software was developed, and is currently being tested. This application is an interactive computing tool which helps to incorporate disabled people to laboral positions, as it makes everything easier for them.

Tourism for Everybody international Congress

People with a disability are participating in touristic activities more and more due to their increasing social and economic integration. As a result a Tourism for Everybody International Congress has been created. It intends:

•To get together all the touristic agents at national and international scale, so as to convince them that accessibility is a necessity in order for them to keep expanding.

•To spread information about what necessities and possibilities disabled people have as tourists, and thus, as a potential market.

•To analyse accessibility as a quality and competitiveness factor.

•To open discussion forums in order to improve on appropriate development of “Tourism for Everybody” promoting policies.

Thanks to this congress, four projects have been set up:

1.AMOVIL

Leaded by NSBO Foundation, developed by Fundosa Technosite and sponsored by Vodafone Foundation Spain, this initiative aims to help disabled and elderly people, to find accessible mobile phones, which adapt to their necessities and preferences. This is an interactive website which also provides information about  compatible support devices, which have to comply with universal accessibility and design for everybody requirements.

2.ICARUS

Leaded by NSBO Foundation, this project intends to identify, characterise, and give priority to the most satisfactory solutions to improve elderly and disabled people’s access to air transport.

3.Cloud4all

Its goal is to design and develop a platform that will simplify ICT support products’ selection and distribution, as well as to make  natural commonly used new technologies’ accessibility easier.

4.Prosperity4all

This project focuses on new infrastructure development, in order to improve in the support equipment sector and the creation of new technologies accessible on the cloud, improving connection between developer and user and boost new ways of commercialising support equipment.

5.eVIA

eVIA  is a technological Spanish platform which tries to improve health, well-being and social cohesion. eVia acts in various areas: technology in health service, making disabled people’s independent life easier, improve elderly people’s life quality and autonomy, integration of groups in danger of social exclusion, generation of rural development models and no exclusion via technology.

This project has been partly financed by the Industry, Energy and Tourism Ministry.

6.ÆGIS (Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards)

This project is financed by the European Commission and belongs to the seventh ‘Marco’ programme, and is leaded by Sun Microsystems.

Its goal is to determine that third generation technologies offer a standpoint of which accessibility is incorporated in  the main ICT apps and devices.

This standpoint is developed under an open accessibility setting in which design, development and ICT use are considered. Besides, it provides accessibility solution in devices.

The key to the project is to know the user’s necessities and focus on them all the prepared development. There are many types of users, for whom a free software for applications an ICT devices is developed.