“Pedestrian red, boulevard du Montparnasse”, “welcome to the administrative center”, “access by double automatic door”.
This Thursday, the City of Paris distributed free of charge to visually impaired people nearly 90 universal remote controls allowing them to activate information from some 10,400 sound beacons that equip Parisian pedestrian crossings.
In the village hall of the town hall of the 11th arrondissement where the distribution is organized, Borovi, an octogenarian who has been visually impaired for 3 years, is delighted with this “interesting” technology.
He knows that this new tool will not prevent him “from not trusting cars which tend to go through red lights”.
Read alsoParis 2024: transport facing the challenge of disability… and it is not won
“Due to a lack of information, these remote controls have difficulty becoming part of customary practices even though they allow the visually impaired to move around autonomously and safely in urban spaces,” underlines Pierre Ciolfi, president of the Paris committee of the Valentin Haüy association helping people with visual disabilities, which also distributes these remote activation boxes in its premises in the 14th arrondissement.
These remote controls offer a manual mode and an automatic mode allowing you to call on any nearby box and therefore know the location of the 20,700 Parisian pedestrian crossings that are equipped with them.
“They operate throughout the national territory and also allow us to activate the sound beacons of administrative buildings to direct us towards a human reception point,” explains Pierre Ciolfi.
2,500 sound boxes for complex crossings
Between now and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the City of Paris should install 2,500 new sound modules on so-called complex crossings.
This concerns in particular the crossing of two pedestrian crossings or crossings in two stages where the successive lights are not synchronized.
The installation of these boxes was considered in conjunction with the French Confederation for the social promotion of the blind and amblyopic, so as to create “sound corridors” reducing the risk of confusion.
This sound information is also present in the new sanisettes currently being deployed.
Order available on the City website
Present at the event, Lamia El Aaraje, deputy mayor (PS) in charge of universal accessibility and people with disabilities, revealed other upcoming measures to make the daily lives of visually impaired people easier.
“We are studying the possibility of installing sound boxes to signal the extent of construction sites on the roadway as well as in bus stops to improve accessibility,” declared the elected official.
While awaiting their completion, visually impaired Parisians can receive their universal remote control free of charge by ordering it on the City of Paris website.