New Tourist Information Service Launched For Deaf People In The Valencian Community

THE tourism department of the Valencian community has launched a pilot video interpretation service for deaf or hearing impaired tourists.

The project is in collaboration with the Federation of Deaf People of the Valencian Community (Fesord CV).

The objective of this project, a pioneer in all of Spain, is to guarantee the best coverage and inclusion of information and reception services for tourists travelling through the Valencian Community.

“We believe in integration and in tourism for all”, said the Tourism Minister, Nuria Montes on Monday, July 31.

“Accessibility in tourism is one of the strategic lines that we are going to continue working on from the government of the Valencian community”, she said.

The service consists of simultaneous or consecutive interpretation, by audio visual means, of tourist information requests in person from deaf tourists or those with hearing disabilities, and the response to said requests by the staff of the tourist information offices, either in Spanish sign language (LSE), or in shared international code, as appropriate.

The service is in online format and is available until December 31 of this year, from 10.30am to 6.30pm on Tuesday to Saturday.

At present there are 60 offices, distributed in 51 municipalities of the Valencian Community, which offer this translation-interpretation service in sign language.

The number of municipalities and offices that provide this service is increasing every day.

At the moment, 18 municipalities in the province of Alicante, 20 in the province of Castellón and 13 in the province of Valencia are part of the project.

The tourist information office of the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in Valencia city centre was the first to install the technology.

“It is a successful project of public-private collaboration, and both parties have converged on a common objective, that of enabling people with hearing disabilities to have a first-class care service order”, said Nuria Montes.

In order to use this service, access will be provided to a platform called SVIsual, managed by the Federation of Deaf People of the Valencian Community.

The user will be assisted in person by tourist information staff, who will access the SVIsual platform from a device equipped with a WebCam, headphones and microphone.

Staff will make the call to the SVIsual service.

The video interpreter who answers the video call will perform the corresponding interpretation between the staff and the deaf person, enabling communication between the two.