We invited Gangwon Kimm, the chief of the Human Rights Policy of The Disabled Rights & Interests Problem Research Institute, and Kyung-hee Kim, a senior researcher of the ICT Based Public Transportation Research Department of the Korea Railroad Research Institute. They presented ‘the disabled’s mobility rights’ and ‘the development of technology to vitalise the use of audio guides for the visually impaired’, respectively.
Gang-won Kim, the chief of the Human Rights Policy, examined the reality of restricting mobility rights depending on disability types and the status of transports that disabled persons can use and suggested how to improve their mobility rights. He pointed out that it’s necessary to change the perspectives of disability and “not to consider disability personal misfortune or problems but to consider it the issues that a society has.” Therefore, he highlighted that we should not divide between the disabled and the non-disabled and guarantee mobility rights as human rights.
Senior researcher Kyung-hee Kim introduced the technologies developed to vitalise audio guides installed in railway stations based on the Act on Promotion of The Transportation Convenience of Mobility Disadvantaged Persons. Audio guides are attached to public transports and buildings so that the visually impaired can identify their locations via sound. The researcher contributes to developing repeaters using a smartphone application to reinforce the visually impaired persons’ mobility rights, and their commercialisation for enabling the elderly, tourists, etc., to use public transport conveniently.