Last May, the 29 capitals that make up the Union of Ibero-American Capitals (UCCI) agreed to work together to reduce the digital divide that particularly affects people with intellectual disabilities. They then scheduled a new meeting to coincide with the week … For people with disabilities, whose main day is celebrated this Wednesday, to share progress and results. Seven months later, the Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Inma Sanz, will travel to Buenos Aires to open the Forum, participate in the technical agendas and, above all, present the capital’s model as a reference.
Thus, from Thursday to Friday, the popular leader will highlight dozens of initiatives that Madrid has been implementing since 2019, when the Madrid Office for Universal Accessibility was created, as well as other more recent initiatives. For example, a woman from Madrid will explain how the council is adapting the municipal website and applications to make it easier to read, with improved text visibility and a virtual assistant. Or also, how the Social Policy Area actually regulates the easy reading of all documents for people with disabilities as well as the parking card management for people with limited mobility.
It will also provide other municipal services that suit the needs of these people, either with this simple reading or with artificial intelligence. Thus, SANS will link the status of the Information and Reception Service (SIA) provided in social service centers, with staff trained in digital accessibility, and which has an application with artificial intelligence that offers information on more than 133 social benefits, with adapted responses. Or the interactive resource guide that helps people with intellectual disabilities and Citizen Service Offices (OAC), which have trained their staff in caring for people with disabilities and the digital divide, in addition to providing care in sign language or creating accessible pathways.
The inaugurator of the event will take the opportunity to present other tools that she believes will also help improve the daily lives of people with intellectual disabilities. Such as easy-to-read literary adaptations of works such as Galdos’s Tristana, Julio Verdi’s Five Weeks in a Balloon or Concha Espina’s Ronda de Galanes, are available in municipal libraries. Another more recent example is the app enabled to track Christmas lights in the capital because, through subjective descriptions, it tells people with disabilities what is displayed in front of them and the meaning of different scenes.
Madrid builds bridges with the Argentine capital
The second Mayor of Madrid will not only participate in the forum, but will use part of her institutional agenda to meet other leaders with whom she shares powers, such as security and emergencies. Therefore, he will hold a double meeting with his equivalent delegate in Madrid, Horacio Jimenez. He will first visit with him the Urban Surveillance Center in the Argentine capital, which is the headquarters through which video surveillance cameras in urban areas are controlled and monitored, with the aim of exchanging experiences on an initiative that the two cities have promoted in recent years. After that, he will participate in another meeting at the Higher Institute of Public Security, the center where Buenos Aires police officers are trained, which will be the equivalent of the regional IFISE in Madrid, as reported to ABC from Cibeles.
She will also meet her counterpart from Buenos Aires, Vice President Clara Muzio, with whom she will hold a meeting at the Government House. At the same time, he will go with the Minister of Human Development, Gabriel Sebastián Merida, to a social inclusion center focusing on addiction and the resulting mental health problems, to exchange experiences regarding Madrid Salud.
The Deputy Mayor will also hold several meetings with her counterparts in Security and Emergency
Finally, he will visit with the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Integration and Development of the South of Buenos Aires the new planning for the south of the city of Buenos Aires called City Park, designed on the one hand to improve the lives of the inhabitants of this area with new infrastructure, services and green spaces, which is equivalent to the rebalancing plans developed in Madrid, and, on the other hand, to develop an urban project for the construction of new houses and neighbourhoods, in line with the urban developments that are also being developed in the capital of Spain.
The visit that Sanz will pay with the technical expert in the field of social policies, family and equality, Ana Buñuel, comes only one month after the visit of the city’s mayor, José Luis Martinez Almeida, who went to the Argentine capital to build bridges between the two cities. The Madrid councilor also participated in the UCCI forum, where he promised that Sanz would open this week’s session.