On February 25 and March 4, BKA visited Vitebsk and Grodno with training for public transport drivers on how to interact with people with various types of disabilities. We invited public transport drivers, people in wheelchairs, people with visual impairments and a speaker in zoom that informed about how to interact with people with mental disabilities.
We focus not only on the drivers of public transport, but also on the conductors – they sell the tickets to the passengers in public transport, they are always in the public transport. We believe that this category is very important because the driver will not run out of transport to help people with disabilities if there is a conductor also inside.
Irina Potyakina made a welcoming speech to the audience and then the training began. The first speaker spoke about how to interact with people with mental disabilities. Next, people with disabilities of the musculoskeletal system in a wheelchair spoke about the difficulties they face, how they move around the city and how to interact with people of this type of disability. A medical worker also spoke, and he gave a master class on a wheelchair, he showed how to use it. The last speaker was a visually impaired person, who told what difficulties he faces in public transport and how to improve the situation.
We also distributed questionnaires to the training participants to collect feedback for the analysis of our training.
The last part of the training included a practical part with a wheelchair. The medical worker in Vitebsk showed how to properly bring the wheelchair into the transport with and without a ramp, how and where to place the wheelchair in the transport, how to properly take it out of the transport. Drivers also tried it in practice, they drove them in, put them inside the transport and took them out.
All participants of the training were impressed and satisfied with the training.
99 percent of the participants were satisfied with the training.
