The project's purpose is the development of a new service aimed at promoting access to cultural heritage and tourism activities for people with special needs.
The number of people who, despite having such a desire and the economic means, do not travel for fear of meeting difficulties is very high. In Italy alone, about 6 million potential travelers have serious or mild forms of disability, and considering the progressive aging of the population, it is expected that this number will rapidly increase over time.
The design idea is based on the principle that the assessment of the real conditions of accessibility and usability of a destination must be entrusted to the end user, who, knowing their own characteristics, their own needs, their own limits and desires, must be able to personally compare all of their needs with the parameters of the offer.
To this end, the proposers will create and test a technologically advanced and innovative information system, which will allow the user to live and concretely verify, right from the planning stage of any visit or trip, the real conditions of accessibility of a cultural / touristic system.
The project starts from an R&D activity aimed at identifying the special needs expressed by people with different types of disabilities, the elderly, etc. based on the logic of the ICF (Int. Classification of Functioning, Disability & Health). Particular attention will be paid to the critical aspects that emerged during subsequent mapping activity of the structures, infrastructures and services that make up the cultural / touristic offer system, which will be carried out with the use of a specifically studied Google Map technology.
Annuity
Goals
Through virtual display, the prototype will allow the user to set their own physical requirements and project them into a cultural site, a hotel, or simply a path in the streets, accurately capturing evaluation elements which are deemed relevant by him to determine the conditions of accessibility and usability of the context.
With the emergence of a still unexpressed question, the system demonstrates significant development potential in the field of sustainable tourism and the access to cultural assets, with an important employment impact on the reference territories, especially for young people.
Intended for
Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR)
People with special needs (people with different types of disability, the elderly, etc)
Culture and turistic places
Research output
- Creation of a panel and blog for the organization and interaction with potential tourists with special needs.
- Definition of a reference framework for user types, for comparison with the real conditions of the tourist offer centers and for establishing effective profiles of system users.
- Knowledge of the value of the material and immaterial information on the offer centers, necessary to establish, on the one hand, the relationship between the procedures adopted at the offer centers and the reliability of the analyzes performed through GOFORIT and, on the other , the costs and benefits for the offer centers, particularly important for hotel facilities. Based on these results, the other offer centers will be able to know the potential value of a possible economic return, or the potential cost, deriving from participation in the GOFORIT initiative.
- Definitions and models for PICT: results, fundamental for the project, which define, as a whole, an original production, specific for the intended applications, which is not currently reflected on the market.
- Sensor systems suitable for GOFORIT purposes and immersive virtual reality technologies
suitable for users with special needs. - ICT GOFORIT platform: main result of the project, for which 4 successive releases are expected.
- System for collecting information from heterogeneous sources;
