Rome, 18 February 2025
The FS Group is among the 10 most inclusive brands in Italy, for the second year in a row, thanks to the accessibility project concerning sales and support services for deaf people - an experimental, free-of-charge, video-interpreting initiative in Italian sign language (LIS), launched in 2024 with Trenitalia.
Once again this year, the company was included in the Top 10 Best Initiatives of the Diversity Brand Index - the only Italian research that measures the brands’ ability to effectively develop a DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility) oriented culture at B2C level. The ten initiatives - assessed by the Scientific Committee and the Security Check Committee and selected for their ability to concretely work on DEIA issues, by also affecting customers’ perception - will be showcased on Thursday 20 February, in Milan, during the eighth edition of the ‘Diversity Brand Summit - Initiatives that change the world’.
'The FS Group continues to strive to build a broad, inclusive, people-friendly social infrastructure. This project represents a further step towards increasingly accessible services - said Gian Luca Orefice, Chief Human Resources Officer of the FS Italiane Group. Video interpreting in Italian sign language is a solution that integrates innovation, inclusion and performance, allowing us to improve accessibility for deaf people and all LIS users. We believe that DE&I is a professional role competence that must accompany our business, in the creation of services increasingly closer to the diversified and plural needs of our customers.’
The project, created with the aim of improving the travel experience and simplifying communication for deaf signalling customers - a community of around 40,000 people widespread throughout Italy - is available in the main Italian stations - Bologna Centrale, Firenze Santa Maria Novella, Genova Piazza Principe, Milano Centrale, Napoli Centrale and Roma Termini - and will be further expanded in 2025 on a national scale, starting with the ticket offices of the High Speed train network.
With this initiative, signalling deaf people can activate a LIS video-interpreting service in about 30 seconds, enabling them to communicate without difficulty with Trenitalia staff for requests for assistance, information on services and any other travel-related needs.
In its first trial year, the project achieved a high satisfaction rate: 100% of deaf customers who used the service expressed high satisfaction - a result achieved thanks to the short waiting times and high quality standards offered.
In addition, to ensure an effective use of the service and high accessibility standards, Trenitalia's staff - approximately 450 people from the High Speed, Intercity and Regional units - have been trained to meet the specific needs of deaf customers.
The project to make sales and assistance services accessible to deaf people is part of a broader plan by the FS Group to make its services more inclusive and responsive to the needs of a diverse clientèle, making its commitment to all people, inside and outside the company, more and more concrete.