The project RISID, financed by Fondazione Cariplo (under the call ‘Social Research: Science, Technology and Society 2019’), takes advantage of a multidisciplinary research approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods from law, sociology, economics, architecture, engineering and computer science to investigate the potential of smart digital technologies in realising an effective social inclusion of persons with disabilities, while at the same time providing to other end-users free access to useful and updated information and services offered in open access by the University of Pavia.
In order to effectively implement the juridical rules contained in the relevant international conventions and in different EU acts devoted to the right of digital inclusion of persons with disabilities and with the final aim of realizing the same rules at the local level in everyday life, the RISID research group developed a specific digital tool in the University of Pavia: an app for smartphone called ‘SmartInclusion@unipv’ or ‘SI@unipv’ interacting with a wide net of e-beacons, able to tackle the malfunctioning of Wi-Fi and GPS.
The choice made for such one-of-a-kind digital tool was based on the consideration that in the same wonderful but ancient main building of the University of Pavia (so called ‘Palazzo Centrale’) many architectural and technical obstacles impede the physical and digital accessibility due to the same architectural structural limitations, dating back to different ancient ages, since medieval times.
After having identified the useful functions of the future digital tool, thanks to the opinions collected from many possible future end-users participating to a survey prepared by the RISID research group, the long phase of design and implementation of the app started, following the identification of all the relevant points of interest where to install the e-beacons and of the information and services to be shared.
Through the digital tool SI@unipv, the project RISID redefines the physical and communicational borders of the University of Pavia, providing a concrete example of how digital media can render accessible what could be otherwise inaccessible for persons with disabilities.
The case study constituted by SI@unipv allows to investigate the potential and pitfalls of new digital technologies in order to improve the communication and mutual exchange of ideas between the scientific community and the local community, as well as to concretely equip the University of Pavia with a new tool offering multiple services, the main one being the orientation in the Palazzo Centrale primarily for persons with disabilities but also for the entire community.
