Nuriajant
Designing Access is an attitude of True Care for Others
The SUNON
Nuria Cariad, March 2022
I started having problems with Endesa in 2016, when I moved with my family into a new home, and the electricity meter had to be replaced into a new location outside the house. Endesa wanted to charge me around 4 thousand euros to bury the electricity line under the public road, when the current connection was aerial, very cheap to reconnect and in perfect usable condition. I complained for many years and even got the Sindic de Greuges (People’s defender) and the Energy department involved. They agreed with me, and Endesa had to make the aerial connection plus return some moneys wrongly charged, which they never have (around 800 euros).
byone perespacebreakhh
Many other targeted incidents happened in the following years and I decided I would not be bullied and use my skills to fight back. As a trained filmmaker and designer I aimed to construct a discourse that would break the distribution monopoly of Endesa, and so that we would recover the energy sovereignty that got stolen from us when our infrastructures got privatised.
Using Design Futures, I build a website that would inform people about my invention of a Sunon, a social green energy company organised by municipalities and neighbourghoods, using solar panels installed all over the place, like facades, empty municipal land, terraces,…that would aim for the energy sovereignty. I also informed people about their right to decide and build their futures, stated on the Spanish Constitution, and invited them to write a suggestion, proposal, complaint or petition to their councils in order for them to build a Sunon. More than 900 municipalities in Catalonia were linked to the site to make the idea of the Sunon accesible and easy to reach the Councils. Also, I used three languages, Català, Castellano and English for the idea to spread in different countries, as much as possible. I used my international personal channel (Linked in) to reach profiles of many kinds, many in filmmaking, just in case I would not succeed, maybe others would explain the idea in a better way.
The main distribution was through Linked in as I said, but also Whatsapp which went to X through people re-plublishing and commenting. It was a slow-moving campaign, aiming for people to have an opinion and some space for action, nothing impulsive. I got suggested to bring it to mass media TV, but felt against it, due to the fragility of the site, which could had easily collapsed if too many sudden visitors. Altogether is a very cool activist website made by any one customer. Check the site:
On January the 24th, 2024, it was presented in Palau Robert in Barcelona, the creation of a company called l’Energètica of public ownership by the Generalitat de Catalonia government, that aims to use the renewables, like solar, wind, water to get the energy sovereignty for a more sustainable future and more social justice. It will work with municipalities and Councils to take advantage of empty terrains, terraces and any usable space. The Sunon might have inspired it, and I look forward this public company to set things right (starting by reclaiming ownership of distribution cables buried under public roads):
School books adaptations
Nuria Velasco Blaya, October 2021
In Spain the school books are rather expensive, in some schools they are owned by the school, however it is quite normal to spend around 100 to 250 euros in school books per child per course.
In 2010 I found a very BIG problem with school books for children under 8 years old as the typography was very small, a range of 6 to 12 points. Brand new books that were of no use to children with visual impairment. For a couple of years I had to go book by book, scan each page, place it in Photoshop, amplify the pages so the typography would be around size 12-14 points, cut the page to fit into an A4, rebuild a book and print it. All of that, so a child could Access to his right to Education in a normal school. The easy option was a bonded photocopy in A3, only the little hands of the kid could barely manage the size, and it would not even fit in his backpack. To spend so much money to have to deal with such an amount of work, that did not seem a very fair deal.
Soon I learnt another option with the Vox Dictionary. I phoned the Publishers and asked them nicely for a pdf of the dictionary. Instead, they sent me a printed copy with large typography. It was a big dictionary, that could indeed be read and accessed by a visually impaired child. Many thanks to the Publishers for their kindness. It did set up an example which helped us in the next step.
In 2013 we introduced the IPad as a tool to access all the books in the classroom. We tried with a cheap tablet, but broke within a month. The IPad was resilient and had all the accessibility tools within. Next thing was contacting all the publishers of the schoolbooks and ask them for the pdfs of the books. We had to sign contracts to protect the copyright of the schoolbooks. The child could access the books in an amazing fast way, and instead of being an impaired student, he was seen by other students as popular with his tool that by that time, was not yet introduced in classrooms. He became what is today called an “augmented human”.
The next problem was already there, an augmented child, that when it came to writing and reading, was actually behind his fellow colleagues. The crotch not only made him look good because of Apple trademark and design, but also made him believe he could buy normality. One does not buy normality, one builds it. He became Apple addicted, his image was entirely built on it. We had to remove that type of tool for the school and provided him a normal student laptop, as was requested to all students once in secondary. His writing and reading became better, to normal standards. The augmented human was being built in a non-virtual reality, the work and effort was the tool to achieve augmented capacities.
Lesson learnt: it is not about having all the best resources in the world, but about having the right tool for the time needed.
As for my views on Accessibility, I am thankful we found some resources that came with technological advancement and sense, not common sense, quite the opposite, adventurous sense, the one that some school teachers provided, and the publisher I mentioned. Today is normal to license books with a digital license, but back in 2013 that was not the case. So may thanks to make the step forward with us for a more Accessible Education.
The SENGLARS of Vall d’Hebron
WWW.SENGLARS.CAT
Designed and Illustrated by Nuria Blaya, October 2018
In 2018 I had two teenage-boys at home, who needed to practice sport but could not pay the much too expensive fees of sports clubs around the city. So I decided to start a Basket Club in my neighbourghood, as long as there would be enough quorum to pursue the adventure. The idea was an old-fashion one: pay trainner, referees, trips…by raising money through loteries, selling cookies and other cultural activities. Very exciting and fun!
We went into the streets and hang leaflets for a month. We talked to kids and gangs and even mothers who though we were approaching them to complain about their children. After all the work, we only found one person interested.
The truth was brutal: Too many parents without jobs and hope in my neighborhood.
This is how enthusiasm and design skills were not enough to put people together. I still hope one day The Senglars of Vall d’Hebron will become a reality.
Designed by Nuria Blaya, all rights reserved © 2024