Open House Prague strives to remove barriers that keep people from exploring their city and its architecture. Our motto is Architecture for everybody, therefore, we had special tours prepared for people with hearing or visual disabilities on the weekend of August 7–8. We did not forget about people with a limited mobility or families with strollers either, which is why details about every building include information regarding wheelchair accessibility.
Wheelchair accessibility
The printed guide and the website include icons indicating which building is wheelchair accessible. Some buildings are only partly wheelchair accessible – this information is also included.
Tour for people with hearing disabilities
In collaboration with the Institute of Deaf Studies at Charles University, Czech Union of the Deaf, and Transkript online, we arranged tours with Czech sign language interpretation and with simultaneous transcription:
- Garden of Arts – Sunday 3 p.m.,
- Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry – Saturday 12 p.m.,
- National Library of Technology – Saturday 10 a.m.,
- Štvanice Power Station – Saturday 3 p.m.,
- Vršovice Waterworks in Michle – Sunday 10 a.m.
Admission was free, but it was necessary to register in advance.
Tours for people with visual disabilities
In collaboration with Světluška, a Czech Radio foundation, Teiresiás Center at Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the Technical University in Liberec, Mapy.cz, and Radost House, we arranged a number of special guided tours for people with visual disabilities. The tours took place in the following buildings:
- ARA Palace – HubHub coworking – Sunday 10 a.m.,
- General Pension Institute – Radost House – Saturday 4 p.m.,
- House of Agricultural Education – Saturday 12 a.m.,
- House of the Firemen’s Associatio of Bohemia – Saturday 1 p.m.,
- National Museum of Agriculture – Sunday 5 p.m,
- Štenc House – Opero business club – Sunday 12 p.m.,
- Štvanice Power Station – Sunday 3 p.m.,
- Vzlet – cultural palace of Prague – Saturday 10 a.m.
The tours included tactile maps of the buildings and their surroundings, tactile ground plans of two buildings (Radost House and Štvanice Power Station) and route descriptions for every building. As part of their term work, students at the Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the Technical University in Liberec designed and created 3D models of selected buildings. Admission to the tours was free with no need to register in advance. Visitors accompanied by guide dogs could enter all buildings.
Route descriptions for every building available for download HERE.