emergency services to answer emergency calls for the hearing and speech
impaired category, to provide protection for this category, and facilitate their
transactions without the need to rely on others, and employees have been trained
to assist this group by using sign language.
3.2 The Ministry of Labor and Social Development also launched a qualitative
initiative represented in equipping a special computer for the blind with a speaking
program called “Bassar” that enables this category to use computer programs to
read Arabic and English web pages in an easy and clear way, help them to scan
documents and read e-mail, take advantage of modern technology, develop their
ability to communicate, and develop their integration into public and practical life.
3.3 Emanating from its belief in the importance of concerted efforts to ensure that
people with disabilities enjoy all their rights on an equal basis and without
discrimination with others, the NIHR launched the #Let’s_Help_Access
campaign. This initiative aims to invite the honorable public and persons with
disabilities to report and monitor public or private facilities intended for public use
and whose design or surrounding physical environment, make it difficult for this
category to enjoy their right to access and use those facilities on an equal basis
with others.
3.4 This initiative comes to report and monitor any situation that prevents
facilitating access for persons with disabilities to facilities intended for public use,
workplaces, governmental or private establishments, markets, commercial
complexes, or service places, which require that the surrounding streets be
suitable for the use of this category.
3.5 The NIHR would very much like to monitor cases where, for example, there
is absence of corridors/lanes in streets leading to these facilities and complexes
that are designated for the category of people with disabilities, and the failure to
allocate parking spaces for their cars, or the distance from the place of service
provision, locking parking spaces with a barrier that prevents them from being
used, the existence of narrow corridors and doors, which prevents the smooth
passage of wheel chairs, the absence of elevators to upper floors, the lack of
toilets designated for the use of this category, or the presence of any other
obstacles that prevent persons with disabilities from optimal use of the facility or
complex.
3.6 The NIHR initiative, called on citizens, residents, and the honorable public to
actively participate in monitoring these and other cases, determine their location
and time, and report them to the NIHR through its WhatsApp app at 17111666.
These abuses can also be reported through the toll-free hotline 80001144, or
Email at complaint@nihr.org.bh.
3.7 As a result, the NIHR communicated with the concerned authorities in the
Kingdom to inform them of the observed cases, and cooperated with those
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