DUBAI, 23rd October, 2013 (WAM)--The Community Development Authority (CDA) and Dubai Taxi launched today and during a press conference held in Gitex, a new initiative targeting people with the hearing impairment. The new initiative aims to enhance the integration of people with disabilities in the community and to provide additional facilities for deaf.

According to a survey conducted by the Social Care & Community Cohesion at CDA, more than 89 per cent of the people with hearing impairment in Dubai use taxies frequently to go to work, schools or shopping malls, 50 per cent of them find difficulties in communicating with the taxi drivers while 41 per cent of them depend on writing to get their messages across to the drivers.

The new programme includes an application developed on Windows phone platform operating System for Nokia Lumia, provides several services help users ordering taxies and give them the ability to direct the drivers on the routes they want them to follow using voice messages and therefore travel smoothly in Dubai.

The programme also provides educational booklet with illustrations to be used by the taxi drivers, the survey showed that 46% of people with hearing impairment surveyed, think that pictures are the easiest way to communicate with drivers. The booklet includes illustrations for the destinations that the useres might need including shopping malls, hospitals, government buildings and others, additional it includes the possible directions that the user might need and the payment methods he might want to select from, all captioned in Arabic and English.

Ahmed Al Muhairi, CEO, Program & Social Services, CDA, said that its vital to collaborate with the private and government organisations to create and develop tailored solutions that could ease the daily producers of the people with disabilities.

"The initiative was first launched in June 2012, CDA proposed a comprehensive vision for a programme that simplify the communication between the taxi drivers and deaf, this was based on the recommendations of the specialist in the Social Care & Community Cohesion. Dubai Taxi helped bringing this vision to life which we expect that will have very good effect on the targeted sector. Working with the services providers has been always vital for CDA in order to accomplish the full integration of people with disabilities in the community", he added.

Dubai Taxi and as a part of the communication programme will allocate special caps for people with hearing impairment, the drivers will be trained on several ways to communicate with the users including the simple sign language, practical strategies to deal with people with hearing impairment and how to use the booklet.

Ahmed Al Hamadi, Acting CEO of Dubai Transport Corporation said, "We continuously work to offer additional services that address the specific requirements of our customers. Dubai Taxi services have achieved great success with our fleet reaches approximately 3854 vehicles work around the clock, including public holidays. Our caps with red ceiling are well known for being clean and well maintained in addition to the safety features and all are tracked via satellite. People with hearing impairment forms important segment of the community that cannot be overlooked, CDA initiative helped us highlighting their requirements and develop our services to meet these requirements. We hope that the communicating programme will be able to provide add values for them."The new application will be available within Dubai Taxi Apps, users can download it to order cars and select desired destinations using drop down tools.

Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2013.