The insular institution has started a training calendar to advise technicians and people in charge of urban planning, maintenance and social services throughout the island.
To provide all the town councils of Mallorca with the necessary tools to guarantee universal accessibility. This is the final objective of the training that the Institut Mallorquí d’Afers Socials (IMAS), has started this week, coinciding with the International Week of the Deaf, with the aim that technicians and those responsible for the areas of urban planning, maintenance and municipal social services can know, understand and interpret the current technical legislation so that public spaces and services throughout the island are accessible.
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IMAS makes a universal accessibility manual available to local councils to eliminate physical, sensory and cognitive barriers
The Conseller of Social Welfare of the Consell de Mallorca and president of IMAS, Guillermo Sánchez, inaugurated the first of the training sessions to be held this Friday at Parc Bit and stressed that ‘this training is a sign of the firm will of IMAS to achieve a Mallorca without barriers. The administrations have to set an example and, for this reason, we must guarantee universal accessibility to our spaces, services and information.
‘We have promoted a new Office for the Promotion of Universal Accessibility to provide advice on this matter to all those who request it, monitor municipal accessibility plans and ensure that the regulations are complied with in all cases. We want to ensure that no one feels limited on our island,’ Sánchez concluded.
The island director of People with Disabilities of the IMAS, Maria Francesca Rigo Amengual, also attended this first session during which special mention was made of the regulations on which the IMAS is based, such as Decree 1/2023, of 23 January, regulating universal accessibility in spaces for public use in the Balearic Islands, or Law 8/2017, of 3 August, on universal accessibility in the Balearic Islands.
During the day, the ‘Put yourself in my shoes’ practice was also carried out, where attendees were able to check the obstacles that people with physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities encounter daily, and also jointly reviewed the specific cases that were presented by the town councils.
The training, given by Aspaym professionals, consists of a total of fifteen hours, spread over three five-hour days on the last Friday of September, October and November. In addition to these face-to-face sessions, IMAS has made available to municipal technicians and managers a manual on accessibility in public spaces, designed in digital format and which establishes conditions, requirements and solutions, so that any person can carry out the activities of daily life as independently as possible.
Apart from this initiative, aimed specifically at municipal services, IMAS also has a specific advisory and technical consultancy service on universal accessibility for buildings and private homes. Any person or entity can request an appointment or information through the website www.imasmallorca.net.