Protest over disabled access in France before Paris Olympics

An influential disabled rights group in France is boycotting a conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, in protest at the failure to make Paris more accessible ahead of the 2024 Olympics

An influential disabled rights group in France is boycotting a conference on disability Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, amid frustration at years of unmet promises to make Paris more accessible ahead of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The group Collectif Handicaps, an umbrella group for more than 50 organizations advocating for disabled rights, announced hours before the conference in Paris that it would not take part. Its leaders had asked for the opportunity to speak in front of Macron and were refused. The group worries that measures Macron is expected to announce Wednesday will fall short of what is needed.

Even getting to the conference at the Elysee Palace is an ordeal for many people it’s designed to help. The nearest wheelchair-accessible Metro line is about a kilometer (half a mile) away. Public buses in Paris are hard and time-consuming to ride for people with limited mobility.

The 2024 Olympics risk highlighting how inaccessible France is, in contrast to advances in other rich countries.

“We really want the games to be a success,” Pascale Ribes, president of the lobbying group APF France Handicap, said in an Associated Press interview, but France needs “to press on the accelerator” because “a catastrophic scenario is in the offing if we don’t.”

This month, an arm of the Council of Europe, the continent’s foremost human rights body, found France in violation of a European treaty on social and economic rights, citing multiple failings toward adults and children with disabilities.

Macron’s office says the conference is the result of discussions with people with disabilities and others, and aimed at mobilizing all society to find “solutions to transform the daily life of people with disabilities, from school to work and accessibility issues.” It’s unclear what specifically will be announced to help people like Ribes and those who are boycotting.

The looming deadlines of the July 26 to Aug. 11, 2024, Olympics and Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 Paralympics are also upping the pressure.

Olympic organizers say Paris will “provide the best possible conditions for para-athletes and visitors with disabilities.” They say they’re aiming for “an obstacle-free experience for all,” with 100% of venues to be accessible for people with disabilities and all games volunteers to be trained in catering for their needs, so as to “avoid users feeling that they have any kind of disability.”

For people like Ribes, who uses a wheelchair, that seems a remote possibility.

More than a century after Paris inaugurated its first Metro line — for the 1900 Olympics and World’s Fair — most of the capital’s historic subway system is still inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs. On the network of 309 stations, only one line with 13 stations is fully accessible.

Other Olympic cities have done better. In Tokyo, more than 90% of the 758 subway and rail stations were already wheelchair-accessible when it hosted the Olympics in 2021. In 2012 host London, around a third of Tube stations have step-free access. In Barcelona, Olympic host in 1992, transport operator TMB says 153 of its 165 metro stations are accessible.

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