Nicolas Mérille is the national advisor on issues of accessibility for APF France Handicap, an association founded in 1933 by four victims of polio and which now, with a staff of around 15,000, champions the rights of the disabled and provides them with a wide range of medical and social services. Asked to describe the daily obstacles for a disabled person navigating Paris, Mérille suggested with a tinge of humour that it would take three hours to detail.
Everything takes time, much more time, for a disabled person in comparison to the able-bodied. At the Paralympic Games unfolding in Paris, the sites of the sporting events are, naturally, accessible for the disabled, notably those using a wheelchair. But to get there is another matter.
Mérille cited the example of a wheelchair user travelling to the Arena Bercy, one of the capital’s major sports sites in both the Olympics and Paralympics, from the headquarters of his association situated on the Place d’Italie, about two kilometres away. For an able-bodied person, travelling to the stadium would take an average 11 minutes using the Metro (one line, via four stations in all), while a wheelchair user would need 45 minutes to get there “taking two different buses” which, unlike the Metro, have wheelchair access ramps (which Mérille said too often do not work).
In the runup to the Games, the labour, health and solidarity ministry presented the events as representing “a unique opportunity to create a positive dynamic at the service of a more inclusive society”.
“France is getting ready to welcome more than 350,000 visitors who are in a situation of handicap, and 4,400 Parasports men and women,” it continued. “It is crucial to ensure the best experience possible for handicapped spectators. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are, in that sense, veritable accelerators for making infrastructures accessible, and a vehicle for the evolution of behaviour.”
But beyond the good intentions, wrote the chairwoman of APF France Handicap in an opinion article published by French daily La Croix in August, the reality is that “Paris does not meet requirements concerning accessibility for handicapped persons”. She argued that recognition of the problem on the part of public authorities is “real but tardy”, and that while there has been progress “to allow people with reduced mobility to get around […] these measures are only palliative solutions: accessibility must be planned through an action plan, and even after the Games are over”.
It is estimated that close to one million people in the Greater Paris region, the Île-de-France, which includes the capital and its outlying départements (counties), live with a physical handicap, and for those who are most disabled, negotiating pavements, using public transport, and accessing healthcare services and shops, can be a daunting struggle. “It is an undeclared form of segregation,” commented Nicolas Mérille, “a grave infringement of the freedom to come and go.”
Amid the daily challenges for the disabled using public transport, Mérille describes the underground Metro train network as the biggest problem. “In Paris, between three and four Metro stations are renovated every year and the issue of accessibility is not taken into account,” he said. “It’s scandalous.”
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Only 9% of Metro stations, the newest, are accessible for wheelchair users. These are line 14, which crosses Paris and into the suburbs northwards and southwards, and stations along the extensions made to north-south line 4 and centre-east line 11.
By way of explanation for the low number of accessible Metro stations, the Paris public transport operator, the RATP, cites financial, technical and regulatory difficulties in transforming an ageing network. However, a third of stations along the London Underground network, the oldest in the world, are accessible for wheelchair users, while nearly all the underground stations in the Spanish city of Barcelona have been made accessible, and in Japan, 95% of Tokyo’s underground stations are accessible.
Earlier this year, APF France handicap wrote to Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France regional council and head of the region’s public transport authority, Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), to raise the question of the accessibility of Metro stations. The association received no reply, but in early August, Pécresse told the press that dealing with the issue would be made a priority “challenge”.
Mérille approved of the tramway service which circles the capital, which he described as “the most satisfying” of the public transport network in terms of accessibility, but not the buses. Buses operating within and close to Paris have two spaces per vehicle for wheelchairs, while in the outer suburbs just one space is allocated. Not all bus stops are accessible, and while the vehicles are fitted with a sliding ramp mechanism which the driver sends out to the pavement if a wheelchair user is waiting to board or descend, Mérille said these can often prove faulty and unable to be deployed because they are not properly maintained.
The RER express commuter trains – linking the suburbs with the capital, which they criss-cross – are notably more accessible than the Metro, following a 1.5-billion-euro makeover since 2008. With 165 stations currently adapted for wheelchair users, out of a total of 241, another 44 are earmarked to join them after renovations. But other problems remain: because of the gap between the train and the platform, boarding and exiting carriages requires the assistance of a member of staff, which can take a while to organise.
It is the same story with the national overhead rail network. French railways operator SNCF requires wheelchair users to turn up for their train at least 30 minutes before its departure (while able-bodied passengers are allowed onto the platform up to two minutes before departure). “If you arrive 25 minutes beforehand, it is not obliged to carry you,” said Mérille. If a wheelchair occupant is using public transport to reach a station (in Paris, the more expensive option is taking one of the around 1,000 converted taxis that operate in the capital), any of the potential obstacles described above can lead them to miss their train – in which case the only safe solution is to allow for an inordinate amount of time.
Inaccessible GPs
Beyond the issues of transport, another important sector where accessibility is lacking is that of healthcare. Mérille described GPs private practices as “one of the worst” examples of inaccessibility. He said his association had contacted the French medical association, the Ordre des Médecins, about the problem. “Councillors at the Ordre des Médecins told us word for word that ‘To carry out renovation work is expensive, and people with a handicap require more time during a consultation. Also, they are a poor section of the public, so we’re not certain to be paid our fees,’” recounted Mérille. “That’s violent!”
He added that in France, there are twice as many cases of breast cancer among women with all types of handicaps than in able-bodied women. Furthermore, “The testing centres are not accessible, neither are mammographs, and that has a grave impact on people’s lives”.
Businesses flouting accessibility requirements
The most recent legislation on the accessibility of establishments open to the public dates from 2005. The definition covers private businesses like shops, restaurants, hotels and music venues, and public establishments like town halls, schools and sports centres. The law required all of them to meet the new standards of accessibility by the end of 2024. “We’re not on time,” admitted Fadila Khattabi, junior minister for the disabled, in an interview earlier this year with regional daily La Provence. According to Khattabi’s office, 900,000 of such establishments out of a total of about two million have carried out or begun carrying out the required renovations.
Mérille said the biggest problem lies with the smaller establishments, “the greengrocer, the tobacconist, the restaurant owner”, with a relatively limited clientele. “The bakery chains are supposed to meet the rules by September whereas the neighbourhood baker, who’s not part of a franchise, is supposed to have done so since 2018 […] I don’t have the figures, but one has only to take a look around their neighbourhood in Paris to realise the situation.
The different businesses and establishments concerned by the 2005 legislation, called ERPs (for Espaces/Établissements Recevant du Public), can be exempted from the requirements on four grounds: when the transformation work is economically disproportionate, or when it is technically unfeasible, when the building is classified as of historic interest, or when a property co-ownership committee opposes the transformation of the common spaces. “Often, where nothing has been done, the managers [of the ERP] have not planned to carry out the work nor sought a dispensation,” said Mérille. He slammed the state “which doesn’t do its job of controlling and punishing”, adding: “In France, there have been three laws concerning handicap, not completely put into application, in 49 years.”
In April 2023, the Council of Europe denounced “a violation by France of the European Social Charter because of the failure of the authorities to adopt effective measures within a reasonable timeframe with regard to the access to social support services and to financial support, the accessibility of buildings, facilities and public transport, as well as to develop and adopt a coordinated policy for social integration and participation in the life of the community by persons with disabilities.”
The Council concluded that the European Social Charter had also been violated “because of the failure of the authorities to adopt effective measures to remedy the problems related to the inclusion of children and adolescents with disabilities in mainstream schools and to access to health care services for persons with disabilities. In addition, there is a violation of Article 16 on the ground that the shortage of support services and the lack of accessibility of buildings and facilities, as well as public transport, causes many families to live in precarious circumstances, and thus amounts to a lack of protection of the family”.
Mérille hopes that the Paralympic Games will cause “a shockwave” and awareness about the reality of being disabled. He would have wanted the Paris Games to leave what he called “a heritage” of improvements to accessibility, and which go beyond the requirements of legislation. But, he added, “for the moment the heritage is very, very little”.
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The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse