Autonomia EXPO

Autonomia EXPO: the exhibition, the challenge, the reason behind it

The reason for the organization of Autonomia EXPO is in fact a wish, our wish, for a great celebration of disability, technology, aesthetics and culture, something that is obvious through the website of Autonomia EXPO, but also through www.DISABLED.GR and the DISABILITY NOW magazine which both support this event.

The most known enterprises which sell products and services for people with disabilities, for rehabilitation and independent living will have a stall at the Autonomia EXPO, while it is implicit that Autonomia EXPO is not going to confine itself to the traditional standards and the traditional disability stereotypes.

There will be stalls of accessible hotels, companies of informatics which provide adapted equipment and accessible PC systems, companies which provide recreation services, rehabilitation centers, telecommunication systems, new and traditional technological achievements and everything else that concerns people with severe or less severe disabilities.

Autonomia EXPO won’t solely display the products and services which address people with disabilities. It’s also an exhibition of disability itself, of the “other” disability which is elegant, capable, productive, developmental and able to get what belongs to it.

During its 3 days of duration, Autonomia EXPO will host the best artistic bands and groups which take action round and in the community of people with disabilities and reflect the aesthetics and the culture of the Disability as an experience and as a difference in life conditions.

Autonomia EXPO and the elderly

Autonomia EXPO is valuable also for the older people, because it tries to accommodate solutions and technologies that address primarily the human requirements and secondarily the major types of disabilities.

Thus, particular technologies such as the systems of condoms, legbags and waterworks management, accessibility features for buildings, automatisms for environmental control, independent living aids and specialized recreation services, don’t concern solely people with typical disabilities but they also concern larger groups of people, users and consumers and one of these groups, perhaps the largest one, is the group of the older people.

Why launching @utonomia EXPO?

Since 2000 a lot of efforts took place for the implementation of exhibitions that would address either the shops of orthopedic and disability products or the community of Greeks with disabilities.

All these attempts were focused on the enterprises that trade and sell products and services for customers with disabilities or the organizations and associations of disabled people; they didn’t pay attention though to the community of disabled people itself, their achievements and their special consuming requirements.

However, the most important is that none ever tried to “bring people together”. This is what Autonomia exhibition wished to do: “to bring people together”.

Thus, around March 2006, we came up with the idea of @utonomia and the need for DISABILITY NOW to organize this exhibition, since it’s the only organization which stands within the community of disabled people and consists a genuine advocate of adapted technologies, of accessible ways of living, of innovation and of the “other” disability: The disability which dares to produce culture!