The Austrian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted celebrated this year’s White Cane Day with a number of activities and a very successful cooperation.
The overall topic of this year was Accessibility and Mobility. On a national level, the Austrian Federation produced a folder on safe and independent mobility with chapters on e-scooters, acoustic traffic lights, the problems that blind and partially sighted people face when crossing roundabouts as well as on the always important topic of silent cars.
Most activities throughout the country also focused on traffic and safe mobility for visually impaired people, like the video clips produced by our Carinthian branch, which show visually impaired people in everyday situations and the respective barriers that keep them from independent and safe mobility. Our Salzburg branch asked “What’s ticking?” and focused on the use and misuse of acoustic traffic lights in their campaign. Very successful was the Viennese cooperation with the e-scooter rental company LIME, which decided to send out push-messages to their users in 42 cities, celebrating White Cane Safety Day, as they called it. Their message read: “For White Cane Safety Day we’d like to remind you to ride & park responsibly for the blind and visually impaired”. Such joint activities are very useful in order to reach the general public and we are hoping for future cooperation with companies like LIME to sensitize them, as well as their users, for the needs of blind and partially sighted people.