Jaime mauricio Gaitán gómez

Jaime Mauricio Gaitan, a communications specialist who is nearly blind, is reclaiming public and commercial spaces for people with visual impairments, leveraging their unrealized potential as consumers and active citizens to gain them greater access to and acceptance in society.

Jaime believes that the power that the visually impaired have as an untapped consumer market, and, as a misunderstood and marginalized voice, is key to their integration into a society from which they have traditionally been excluded. Whereas Colombians with no or highly-limited vision generally keep to themselves–because of discomfort or even fear in mainstream society, or because family-member guardians are ashamed or frustrated with them–Jaime's Red Punto Visión (Vision Point Network) is trying to break through the vicious cycle that keeps them in isolation. By making public and commercial spaces physically accessible to the visually impaired, and by creating economic and cultural incentives for them to begin to enter and utilize these spaces, Jaime intends to integrate them into mainstream society. These efforts both involve the impaired citizens themselves in a broader scope of society than they have ever been part of, and at the same time sensitize the seeing to the realities of the visually impaired–what they offer in addition to what their unique needs are. Using his background as a communications specialist, Jaime is directing much of his effort towards the establishment of Braille signs and relief maps in the important and highly-trafficked public and commercial spaces of Bogotá, Colombia's capital and largest city, such as shopping malls, museums, parks, and specialized bus stations. The spaces' owners, be they private or municipal, are encouraged to sponsor the signs, receiving in return not only the public relations benefit of being associated with providing a service to the visually impaired, but in many cases additional training from Vision Point Network on how to better serve visually-impaired customers. Jaime also sells advertising space above the signs to local businesses, generating income for the signage effort and for Vision Point Network's activities generally. Together with Vision Point Network's other efforts to integrate the visually impaired into professional, educational, recreational and cultural activities–including workshops, brochures and public-awareness campaigns–Jaime is using market-based strategies to bring sellers and buyers, the seeing and the visually impaired, and indeed the nondisabled and the disabled in general, closer together in a more integrated and sensitized culture.

Two hundred fifty thousand Colombians are blind or have low vision, according to a 1993 census. Jaime believes that in actuality, many more suffer from visual limitations that are better than the cutoff level, but are nonetheless impediments in their daily lives. The visually impaired are themselves a subset of the seven million Colombians who suffer from disabilities in general, resulting from congenital causes, accidents, or injuries sustained in Colombia's civil war. Jaime's near-blindness is a result of a congenital glaucoma. The visually impaired are second-class citizens in society. There is little sensitivity among the general population to their particular needs, nor is there much understanding of what they can offer. Furthermore, while Colombia's new and progressive Constitution adopted in 1991 includes guidelines for the accommodation of people with disabilities, including the visually impaired, there has been little concrete action to provide for these members of the population. There are two major organizations in Colombia that address the needs of the visually impaired, but one, a government agency, Instituto Nacional para Ciegos (INCI, the National Institute for the Blind) is primarily involved in consulting, and the other, the private Centro Rehabilitivo para Ciegos (CRAC, the Rehabilitation Center for the Blind), concentrates on rehabilitation efforts for people who have recently lost their sight. Neither is involved in projects to change the de facto circumstances in which the visually impaired live, nor in integrating them into society at large. Consequently, the visually impaired continue with limited opportunities in terms of work, education, recreation, and consumer activity. In particular, with only a very few exceptions, no public spaces in Colombia or in its Andean neighbor countries are outfitted with such basic aids as Braille signs or relief maps to accommodate the visually impaired. To Jaime, this locks the visually impaired in a vicious circle: Out of fear or discomfort, they stay away from these spaces; however, there exists no incentive to make these spaces friendly to the visually impaired since they do not frequent them. Therefore, the visually impaired shun the most significant spaces for public interaction in society, including parks, plazas, shopping malls, museums, and transportation centers. They seldom participate in social activities outside of their homes, and the seeing world undertakes its affairs with little or no consideration or understanding of the visually impaired among them. People with other disabilities (the deaf and those confined to wheelchairs, for instance) are in analogous situations.

Jaime's first aim is to break this vicious cycle by simultaneously making public spaces more accessible to the visually impaired and demonstrating to vendors and other private and public enterprises that the visually impaired are an untapped market of significant potential. To this end, he has begun by allying himself with Fenalco, a consortium of thirty-three Bogotá shopping centers. Braille signs and relief maps have already been installed in the Bulevar Niza shopping center, and three more shopping centers are due to be equipped shortly. Jaime will sell advertising space adjacent to each of the signs and maps, generating revenue for Vision Point Network, and providing the businesses that purchase advertising space a link to the cause of greater access for the visually impaired. He also plans to use his partnership with Fenalco to develop a discount card for visually-impaired consumers, providing them with greater incentives to frequent the affiliated shopping centers, and delivering a new customer base to malls and individual vendors unfamiliar with the visually impaired. Fenalco has also sponsored Vision Point Network brochures and training workshops. Jaime is also expanding the signage effort to non-Fenalco shopping centers and bringing the initiative to other important public spaces of Bogotá. He wants to complement the increased access that the signage will bring with cultural events–such as concerts and other types of performances–that will feature people with visual impairments and other disabilities, but draw audiences composed of both the disabled and people without disabilities as well. While fueling the commercial components of his initiatives, such efforts will also foster a greater integration of the disabled and nondisabled, especially as the disabled stand out for their talents rather than for their limitations.
In addition to targeting commercial and public spaces like malls and parks, Jaime is also pursuing partners for signage in public transportation, seeing those alliances as high-profile opportunities to demonstrate the potential of Vision Point Network's efforts, and key stepping stones to reaching populations in other parts of Colombia as well as internationally. Jaime has found a partner in the Bogotá agency developing Transmilenio, the new bus system that is nearing its completion. The municipality would maintain ownership of the walls and passageways of the fifty-nine stations in the system, but would grant Vision Point Network a concession for the advertising space sold. Jaime is also negotiating for signage space in Bogotá's airport. Furthermore, while Jaime is trying to bring signage to disparate high-traffic public and commercial spaces diffused throughout the city, he is also targeting specific Bogotá communities for multi-tiered interventions. For instance, in the middle-class neighborhood of Usaquén, which is a popular weekend destination for shopping and recreation, local leadership has contracted Vision Point Network to deliver Braille signs and relief maps to its public places, a publicity campaign for the removal of architectural barriers for the visually impaired, and sensitization training of public officials.As complements to these efforts, and as part of its wider sensitization and opportunity-opening campaign, Vision Point Network uses publications and workshops to raise public awareness about the visually impaired among them.
Some twenty-five private and public organizations–including a number of the Fenalco-affiliated malls, the National Museum of Colombia, and a public parks agency–have received workshop training from Vision Point Network on how to better understand and accommodate not only visually-impaired customers, but also employees. At present, the organization provides the workshop training sessions in exchange for a fee, but Jaime expects that income from selling the advertising space associated with the signage will eventually be able to cross-finance the workshops, allowing Vision Point Network to conduct training sessions free of charge to a wider scope of commercial and public organizations. Jaime also counts on good relationships with INCI–which has supported Vision Point Network financially–and CRAC, as well as local organizations for the visually impaired in the Colombian metropolises of Medellín and Barranquilla, for the promotion of his accessibility and sensitization efforts nationally. He is also in conversation with Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE, the National Organization of Blind Spanish People), a large and established Spanish organization for the blind, to support this and other Vision Point Network activities.

Jaime was born with sight, but a congenital glaucoma eventually began to degrade it. Jaime is now completely blind in one eye, but can discern some shapes and forms, including text held extremely close to his face, with his other eye. Having taken a liking to communications at a young age, Jaime continued to work in marketing and public relations in both Bogotá and Caracas, Venezuela even as his vision deteriorated.While traveling in the United States to receive treatment for his eyes, Jaime noted that access for the visually impaired, as well as the public's understanding and acceptance of them, seemed to be greater than in his native Colombia. Jaime recognized that the visually impaired faced challenges in the US as well, but was highly motivated by the realization that it was possible for the visually impaired to be more active members of society than he was accustomed to in Colombia and Venezuela.Jaime made his first entrepreneurial effort on behalf of the blind in 1986, when he founded Fundaver, an organization that administered and channeled cornea donors and their donated specimens, but continued to dedicate himself to his communications career. Then, in 1997, he and two visually-impaired friends, one a psychologist and the other a social worker, founded Vision Point Network, taking advantage of Jaime's significant communications know-how to promote his steadfast belief that the visually impaired should and can enjoy greater access to society at large and better understanding within it.