Published in Access Israel on 5/05/2010. Read original article here
The Israel Accessibility Association continues the “Jerusalem is accessible to all” project.
The association, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality and Mayor Mr. Nir Barkat, and the couple Shira and Jay Ruderman who contributed to the financing of the project, is launching the first educational program of its kind in the world in middle schools among ninth graders in Jerusalem. The program is about promoting awareness of the issue of people with disabilities and accessibility.
The goal of the program is actually to create awareness among teens about the issue of accepting difference (people with disabilities), changing attitudes towards people with disabilities, creating awareness and understanding of the importance of the issue of accessibility.
After the successful training day that took place last week at the “Ziv” school in Jerusalem , another training day was held yesterday at the “comprehensive” Gilo school in the Gilo neighborhood of the city.
As part of the training day, the association’s instructors gave a theoretical explanation of the definitions of accessibility, statistics in Israel and examples of basic concepts in the field. In the second part of the day, the students moved between experiential experience stations – where they met people with disabilities who told them about themselves and answered the students’ questions.
Among the practical stops were stations of knowing the world of sign language, experiencing riding in a wheelchair, getting to know a visually impaired person assisted by a guide dog and tasting ice cream with blindfolds.
This time too, the training day was particularly successful, when in the end a large part of the students said that the training “opened their eyes”, presented them with the reality that a large number of people with disabilities in Israel have to deal with and motivated them to take action.