It was a day of great significance at Poste Storie, the multimedia exhibition set up in Rome’s Piazza San Silvestro to mark Poste’s 160th anniversary. Last week, an accessible tour for people with sensory disabilities took place in the exhibition space.
An inclusive path
The idea came as part of the ‘Poste Accessibilità – I tutorial di Poste Italiane’ project, winner of the Insieme24SI initiative and sponsored by Giuseppe Pavone’s DTO/Customer Operations/Quality and Customer Experience structure. The visit was organised along two different routes: a sensory visit for visually impaired and blind people, which was attended by blind colleagues and also by Giuliano Frittelli, provincial president of the UICI – Unione Italiana Ciechi e Ipovedenti (Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired) and Amedeo Piva, president of the S. Alessio – Margherita di Savoia – Azienda di Servizi alla Persona Disabile Visiva (Service Agency for the Visually Impaired). The tour designed by Barbara Marsala, an expert in visual impairment and audio description, focused on the creation of a tactile route and an audio description of places, objects and videos, so as to make the exhibition fully accessible to visitors.
Accessibility
The second route took the form of a visit in LIS (Italian Sign Language) for deaf people, and was made possible thanks to the support of Paola Bonifazi, LIS interpreter. The initiative was attended by deaf colleagues from various Italian offices (Rome, Palermo, Trieste and many others) and also by Massimiliano Cascitti, councillor of ENS – Ente Nazionale Sordi (Italian National Agency for the Deaf). The comments from those who visited the exhibition were really enthusiastic: “A beautiful day of inclusion,” commented one blind participant, “because, today, we were able to experience what the word accessibility really means.”
LIS Project counters
The visit to the multimedia exhibition Poste Storie confirmed the attention that the company has always paid to people with sensory disabilities. The creation of a counter offering services in sign language to people with reduced hearing capacity, for example, was one of the cornerstones of the LIS Project, launched by Poste Italiane in a number of post offices nationwide. Staff capable of expressing themselves in Italian sign language assist customers for both normal counter activities – indicated by specific signs – such as paying bills and sending mail and parcels, and counselling activities. For Poste Italiane, this represents a further initiative in the process of raising awareness about deaf culture.
