In three meetings in Caltanissetta, Syracuse and Catania, Marino Attini, member of the National Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired Union, presented the LETIsmart project, the most advanced Smart City system which allows the full inclusion of visually impaired people, promoting their safety, mobility and independence. An electronic solution at the heart of a Union project in favor of personal autonomy which affects multiple contexts to give a strong signal to the institutions. The idea of making it, in Sicily, a driving force for accessible tourism and the consideration of the regional president Maria Francesca Oliveri, “Autonomy, a universally recognized right, is a continuous challenge for us”
“The Caravan of Autonomy that has crossed Sicily in recent days has the aim of raising awareness among the institutions and the community to improve urban autonomy for the blind and visually impaired, thus recognizing their full right to citizenship” .
Thus Maria Francesca Oliveri, president of the Uici regional council, presented the last appointment of the Caravan, which, after Caltanissetta and Syracuse, with the presidents Alessandro Mosca and Carmelo Fangano, concluded its tour yesterday in Catania, with Rita Puglisi to do the honors of the house.
The protagonist of the meeting was Marino Attini, member of the UICI National Council, who presented the LETIsmart project, the most advanced Smart City system capable of allowing the full inclusion of visually impaired people, promoting their safety, mobility and independence. Attini, president of the Union in Trieste and expert in consumer electronics, was responsible for the idea of the system, patented with SCEN, a leading company in the microelectronics sector and tested by Uici, Irifor (Institute for research, training and rehabilitation in visual impairment) and Aniomap (National Association of personal autonomy mobility orientation instructors).
“LETIsmart – explained Attini – weighs only eight grams, the lightest existing electronic solution, and is placed inside the white stick, not connected to apps or smartphones and is very easy to use: it can be operated with just two buttons. And it integrates, also providing information and connecting with other systems, with what we have created so far to allow blind people to move independently in urban areas: white sticks, tactile insole tiles, tactile maps”.
Attini, yesterday, during a lively meeting with blind and partially sighted people at the UICI headquarters in Catania, underlined how the Union has been developing and perfecting this project for eight years now, involving members, who provide feedback on needs and requirements. in that urban context where complexity also involves safety. LETIsmart, through a system of radio beacons, allows for example to signal to the driver of connected buses that a visually impaired person is waiting at the stop. Or to book a sound traffic light.
“In short – concluded Attini – today this aid represents the national standard, the heart of a project that only the Blind Union could carry out thanks to agreements with the Ministry, the large entities, the Municipalities: there are already around twenty centers Italians where this system works. And, from city to city, we always learn new things.”
“Given how the project was illustrated – added Rita Puglisi, president of the Etna section of the UICI -, we could think of carrying it out together with the Catania municipal administration, but not only, starting for example from our splendid Piazza Duomo and that first pedestrian section of via Etnea which includes the University square. There is a lot of talk about tourism, a fundamental resource for Catania, and accessible tourism is becoming increasingly important. It could therefore be a good opportunity to combine the project with the excellent work that the Lions have done in recent years with the tactile maps of Catania’s monuments”.
Among other things, the meeting was attended remotely by Maurizio Gibilaro, past governor of the Lions Sicily district who, with Uici, created over two hundred and fifty tactile maps of Sicilian monuments.
Massimo Russo, professor of Orientation, Mobility and Personal Autonomy at the Helen Keller Center in Messina, also confirmed that “every radio beacon installed in cities promotes not only the autonomy of the blind but also, particularly in places like Sicily, the growing tourism of the same”.
“The LETIsmart system – he added – is a reality, for example, in Trieste, the city of Attini, and the film shown during the meeting showed how visually impaired people, thanks to this system, move with great ease and above all in absolute autonomy. And since in Sicilian cities, without these aids, those with vision problems do not venture to walk the streets, we must work for their inclusion in the urban environment”.
A battle of civilization, in short, as President Oliveri has long maintained: “Autonomy – she stated – is a universally recognized right, but for us blind people it becomes a continuous challenge. Which we are ready to collect to become full members of this society.”
