
Agency	Articul Media
Creative head	Alexandr Obanin
Author of idea	Igor Pustovit, Egor Aristakesyan
Product	Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi
Description	2014 is the year of the Olympic Games in Russia. The Paralympic Games are an event that just as significant. However, the whole world, and Russia itself, displays much more interest in the Olympic Games than in the Paralympics. The Russian society has formed a rather ambiguous attitude toward people with physical disabilities. Paralympic sport is intangible, parathletes do not provoke the same interest that accompanies the performances of regular athletes. Moreover, Russia is like Sparta for persons with disabilities. Steering a wheelchair out into the street is like being thrown into a ravine. There are tragically few public places equipped for wheelchair access and otherwise accommodating for handicapped guests. The goal of the project is promoting the Paralympic Games and increasing fan interest in the Games before their start. Another goal is changing the way society views people with disabilities. The solution: • To demonstrate the positive changes taking place in Russia in the course of preparation for the 2014 Games in Sochi • To show people with disabilities real opportunities for participating in Paralympic sports within “walking distance” from their places of residence In order to achieve this, to create a mobile application that lets all indifferent users add new items to the map of locations that have wheelchair access and accommodate handicapped visitors. The backbone of the application is an interactive map of accessible venues in the territory of Russia. The user just needs to pick a city and a street, and the map will show all the city’s venues. Filters can be applied to find the venues within a certain category – for example, a school or a fitness club. Pressing on the name of the venue brings up all the information about it. Anybody can add venues to the map: you just need to find the venue, take a picture of it, choose a category and list the elements of barrier-free environment. A volunteer moderator of the website checks the information, and then the venue is published. The result: In the few months of project activities, more than 15 000 accessible venues have appeared in 615 cities. Representatives of city governments have started paying attention to this problem, not wanting to be in the bottom of the rating of accessible cities. Thanks to the Map of Accessibility, millions of wheelchair-bound individuals, as well as mothers with infant carriages and strollers, have discovered a barrier-free environment. All the tickets to the Paralympic Games were sold. And, most importantly, the process of changing the way people with physical disabilities are treated in
Advertiser	The One Country Foundation, Sochi-2014 Organizing Committee and Samsung Electronics Russia
Team members	Alexandr Obanin

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