DANOVA Project Completed at Budapest's Main Airport 

With the completion of the DANOVA project, Ferenc Liszt International Airport has become the first European airport to provide an independent indoor navigation application for blind and visually impaired passengers. Thanks to the development, implemented with EU funding, unaccompanied orientation and navigation at Budapest's main airport has become easier for users than ever before.

A statement by the management company Budapest Airport has also installed tactile walking surface indicators along 1,100 meters of passenger areas, at a cost of EUR 31,000 from its own budget.

There are more than 30 million blind and partially sighted people in Europe alone, yet more than 96% of European transport systems are still not fully accessible for visually impaired people, especially in the Danube region. Many blind and partially sighted passengers find it very difficult, and in some cases even impossible to travel by air, rail or urban public transport. “DANOVA - Innovative transport services for blind and partially sighted passengers in the Danube Region,” funded by the European Union’s Interreg Danube research and development framework program, aims to make air, water and land public transport fully and independently accessible to blind and partially sighted passengers.

Budapest Airport has joined the transnational initiative and the international consortium of 14 partners, together with the Center for Budapest Transport (BKK). As part of the DANOVA project, Budapest Airport is providing an indoor navigation application to facilitate independent travel. In addition to the software, the airport operator has invested 31 000 EUR in a project of its own, in order to place tactile walking surface indicators along 1100 meters in the transit area of Terminal 2.

Budapest Airport and BKK also involved the Hungarian Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted and the Central Hungarian Regional Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired in the planning of the project, to ensure that the development should be fully adapted to the needs of the blind and partially sighted.

The chief communications and government relations officer for Budapest Airport, Katalin Valentínyi stated that they are committed to promoting equal opportunities; "we therefore pay special attention to the needs of our passengers with disabilities. The majority of the airport has always been accessible, and we together with our contracted medical partner, we have provided all the help and support we can for blind and partially sighted passengers. In the framework of the DANOVA project, a dedicated navigation app is being added to the range of services supporting accessible travel, and we are particularly proud that Budapest Airport’s participating staff members have acquired the skills needed to help visually impaired people in a two-day workshop.”