Including elderly and disabled in intelligent transport systems development and application

In many cases, those who develop intelligent transport systems (ITS) have in mind the "mean user", ignoring "special users" or "elderly" ones. The research project TELSCAN financed by the European Commission aimed to ensure that projects of the transport sector of the Telematics Applications Programme will consider the needs of the elderly and disabled (E&D). TELSCAN has applied a type of "active" cooperation with the other projects, which has produced the following main results: 1) Identification of needs of different groups of E&D users in relation to travelling. 2) Design guidelines of systems. 3) Evaluation methodology including E&D users. 4) 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.