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The Girona greenways visual accessibility project received an award at the ninth edition of the European Greenways Awards
12/09/2019
On September 5, the ninth edition of the European Greenways Awards was held in Dikli, Vidzeme (Latvia), where six European greenways initiatives from Latvia, Czech Republic, Austria and Spain were recognized with awards. The Girona Greenways Consortium (Consorci de les Vies Verdes de Girona), a part of the Diputació de Girona, won the second-place prize in the exemplary initiatives category for its greenways visual accessibility project.
The European Greenways Awards were created in 2003 and they are held every two years, with the goal of officially recognizing the initiatives and innovative projects to improve the information and experience for the greenways users all across Europe.
The ninth edition of the awards was organized by the European Greenways Association (EGWA) in partnership with the Vidzeme Tourism Association and with support from the Development Agency of Latvia. The purpose of this event is to promote exemplary initiatives and best practices to share the knowledge and to apply these examples to other greenways across Europe.
In this edition the international panel of judges, who met on July 10 in Brussels, gave out awards for projects in two categories: excellence and exemplary initiatives. In the excellence category they gave awards to projects that created new greenways in Latvia, Czech Republic and Austria. In the exemplary initiatives category, the winners were the Rural Development Association of the Basque Country for its project to revitalize local business along the Montes de Hierro greenway, and the Girona Greenways Consortium for its visual accessibility project along a segment of the Little Train Greenway and the Iron and Coal Route.
The visual accessibility project was developed from a regional tourism promotion plan from the Catalan Government, given to the Girona Greenways Consortium to adapt it into two greenways routes for people with visual impairments. On one hand, they adapted the Little Train II Greenway, that goes from Girona to the Scientific Park (1.5 km), with signs posted in braille and installed a guide that allows blind people to follow this route on their own. On the other hand, they adapted the signs along the Iron and Coal Route into braille, and designed an application for Android and iOS that gives an audio-description of the routes.
Photography: European Greenways Association (EGWA)
