29/02/2024
The project "Alternative tourist experience - alternative trip" (ALTER TRIP), which Mobility Bitola implemented in the period from 2021 to 2023, continues to attract the attention of the media, and especially the national service MRTV, whose morning program "Macedonia in the morning" regularly informs the public about our activities. After the completion of the project last year, in the past few months we can already see the first results of its implementation. Precisely on the topic of the accessibility of monuments for persons with disabilities, in the morning broadcast on February 29, 2024, the Bitola correspondent of МRTV Stevche Mitrevski spoke with Ivona Jankova, the manager of the "Alter trip" project of Mobilnost Bitola. In the short conversation, the manager revealed the latest information obtained from the use of ICT tools for accessible tourism in Bitola, developed within the project, as well as about future thoughts and plans in which direction we should move. Namely, according to the data of the experts from GAUS Institute who developed the tactile boards and the digital self-guided tour (with audio and video narration in sign language), the number of users is constantly increasing, and it is interesting that there is also great interest from the local population and domestic tourists, who in this way will enrich their knowledge of their own history. From the international tourists, however, the fact that guests from Turkey will dominate is quite expected, which already gives us a direction that the tools should be enriched and upgraded with at least a few more languages, in addition to Macedonian and English. In that direction, the printed tourist guide for Bitola with Braille, which was produced within the project in 3 languages – Macedonian, English and Greek, can also continue to develop. The most important aspect of this project, according to Jankova, is the Manual on Accessible Tourism which can be downloaded for free from the Mobility Bitola website, and where the main elements of accessibility are shown in a simple, concise and illustrated way. "The least we can all do is to inform ourselves about what accessibility means, so that we can correctly and reliably advertise our products and services, because what is most lacking in almost the entire region is the information that people with disabilities need to to know where they can move and which places they can visit at all", she stressed. Since the call was live, the short time did not allow us to mention another quite significant example of improving the accessibility of the cultural heritage in the region, which is the Toshe Proeski Memorial House in Kruševo. Rated as the most accessible cultural institution in the Pelagonia region, especially in terms of physical accessibility, the museum for our musical legend on October 16 last year also presented a new tactile exhibition intended for the visually impaired. Comprised of 10 items with Braille descriptions and audio narration, the exhibit is constantly available to visitors, and at least one item is currently on tour throughout the country in order to bring Toshe’s rich heritage closer to a larger audience. You can see the conversation on the MRTV website at the following link: https://play.mrt.com.mk/play/570787
