Legiland, V. Ibáñez, the Gallareta workshops and the Easy Reading Club of the Casal de la Gent Gran de Premià de Dalt were also awarded projects.
The AMPANS Easy Reading and Cognitive Accessibility team has been recognized with the first Good Practices Award granted by the Catalan Easy Reading Association, a non-profit organization founded in 2003 that works to make reading, culture and information accessible to everyone, with special attention to people with reading difficulties. The ceremony of the 14th edition of the Easy Reading Good Practices Awards took place this week at the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona.
Montse Barat, pedagogical coordinator of the Occupational Service at
Fundació AMPANS and representative of the project “
Network of ER clubs and Cognitive Accessibility” dynamizes 9 ER clubs in collaboration with the public libraries of Bages. These clubs are aimed at people with intellectual disabilities, while AMPANS carries out training activities aimed at library staff to improve accessibility to libraries. “
We work with adults with intellectual disabilities. Before learning about Easy Reading, these people had a bad memory of reading and a total rejection of education. Thanks to Easy Reading, they have managed to change this view and enjoy the books they read.” Barat adds that
“our goal is to create open reading clubs, where everyone can participate. A space that guarantees full inclusion and accessibility“.
Montse Barat also explained the new objectives of the foundation to improve accessibility. Creating a task force formed by people with intellectual disabilities, librarians and professionals of the organization, to analyse the libraries and to present an action plan to improve the cognitive accessibility of these public cultural spaces.
The Awards aim to recognize and give visibility to initiatives of the territory that promote reading and favour the cognitive accessibility of the population, among them and in first position in this edition, the AMPANS initiative. Also awarded at the same ceremony were Legiland, a gamified digital platform to motivate and accompany personalized reading, and the Social and Labor Development Area of Talleres Gallarreta Lantegiak in the Basque Country.
The award ceremony
The event began with a guided tour of the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona, winner of the International Award for the Best Public Library in the world. Montse Ayats, head of the National Book and Reading Plan, spoke about the importance of Easy Reading in the Plan. Ayats stressed that Easy Reading has a key role to play in the successful implementation of the Plan. “Among the measures that we are going to promote are the publication of a manual of good practices on Easy Reading, as well as the promotion and dissemination of all the work that has been done and will be done in the field of Easy Reading“, concluded Montse Ayats.
