Including elderly and disabled in intelligent transport systems development and application.

A great number of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are currently under development or in relatively early stages of application, aiming to increase the efficiency of transport systems, but also meet better the user needs. In many cases those who develop ITS applications have in mind the "mean user" ignoring the part of the population which is the "special users" or "elderly" ones, who are estimated to be more than 31% of the European population by the year 2030. The research project TELSCAN financed by the European Commission aimed to safeguard that projects of the transport sector of the Telematics Applications Programme will consider the needs of Elderly and Disabled (E&D). TELSCAN has applied a type of "active" cooperation with the other projects, which has produced the following main results: Identification of needs of different groups of E&D users in relation to travelling. Design guidelines of systems. Evaluation methodology including E&D users. Development of systems in cooperation with other projects. The research project TRAVEL-GUIDE also financed by the European Commission focuses on the development of guidelines for the provision of information by traffic information and traffic management systems where among others E&D are participating in planned pilots. This paper is aiming to present the methodology and main results of TELSCAN as well as how E&D issues are dealt with in TRAVEL-GUIDE.