Thursday 17th December 2020
CALVIÀ TOWN HALL WORKS TO IMPROVE THE ACCESSIBILITY OF THE MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION SPACES BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF ELIMINATION OF ARCHITECTURAL BARRIERS
The objective is to move towards more accessible intellectual, mental, sensory and cognitive spaces
Calvià Town Hall is carrying out a pioneering initiative in the Balearic Islands to adapt municipal public buildings and services to Law 8/2017, on universal accessibility of the Balearic Islands, to encourage all people in Calvià, regardless of whatever different abilities they may have, to interact with the administration and its environment in the most autonomous way possible.
As explained by the Deputy Mayor for Social Cohesion and Equality, Nati Francés, progress is under way, through the Municipality's Accessibility Board, in drafting the new Universal Accessibility Plan for Calvià, a Plan that goes beyond the traditional concept that accessibility has since this concept was limited to eliminating architectonic barriers. For this reason, a special incidence is made in what the Law also envisages, which is to advance, in addition, towards a more accessible intellectual, mental, sensorial and cognitive municipality.
At the moment, a diagnosis of the deficiencies that the municipality of Calvià has in these aspects is being carried out. The fieldwork is carried out by a team of nine people made up of professionals in the field of accessibility and people with different disabilities from the Mater Misericordiae Foundation, Ayuda en Acción and Coordinadora, trained in universal accessibility. The coordination of the study and the preparation of the subsequent Universal Accessibility Plan is carried out jointly by the Calvià Town Hall and by ACCEDES, which was the company that won the competition to carry out the study.
The chosen methodology is analyse different reference and representative places used by the citizens of Calvià in their day-to-day lives, so that, once the necessary conclusions and proposals have been obtained to make them universally accessible, they are easily exportable to the rest of the buildings and municipal areas, both indoors and outdoors. The facilities and spaces that are being audited are the Town Hall building and the Santa Ponça Municipal Social Services Centre, as administrative buildings; the Casal de Peguera and the Puig de Sa Morisca, as references of cultural spaces; Santa Ponça sports centre's playground, as a children's area; the Magaluf athletics track, the Magaluf sports centre and the Santa Ponça indoor pool, as sports references; the CREC of Son Ferrer and the Centre for University Studies of Calvià, as educational facilities, and Son Maties beach as a tourist-type space.
Once the first phase of the study is finished, the results will be reflected in the report that will be worked on at the Calvià Accessibility Board for the drafting of the Plan, which must be subsequently approved by the Plenary.