Policies and Processes for Accessibility from a UD Perspective: The Integrated Approach Supported by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (IT)

Abstract

With Regional Law no. 10 of 19 March 2018 (General principles and implementing provisions on accessibility), the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia has set itself the objective of improving urban accessibility throughout the regional territory, in order to guarantee equal conditions for everyone to enjoy open spaces and the built environment. The improvement of accessibility is conceived as a long-term objective, to be implemented in stages, according to an incremental development project model. Still today, when work is carried out to eliminate architectural barriers, designers adopt an approach that looks at the 'barrier/disability' binomial, identifying 'dedicated' solutions and tackling the problem of accessibility in relation to specific targets of users whose ability to access and use spaces and environments is assessed in relation to the capability of a person generically defined as 'normally able'. In contrast, in a barrier-free approach, designers are called upon to adopt a broader perspective, to look at the variety of people who make up a real community (extended user base), and to consider different physical conditions, ages, abilities and capacities (motor, sensory and cognitive), from the early stages of the project. In order to promote change and to impart this change of approach, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia has envisaged integrated actions, aimed, as a whole, at accompanying the process that guides the project culture towards a progressive adherence to the methodological criteria of Universal Design, introducing, at the same time, support measures aimed at financing the Municipalities of the Region both for the preparation of barrier elimination plans (PEBAs) and the implementation of the interventions identified in those plans. Among the envisaged actions, the most important is a general accessibility mapping, which includes the adoption of a terminology system (accessibility ontology) integrated in a specific computer application, through which the municipalities will be able to detect architectural barriers, in a homogeneous way, over the entire regional territory.