2023-08-28 03:59:36
The organizing committee promises an inclusive competition and solutions to the thorny issue of transport. One year before the Paralympic Games, the associations are not reassured, and point to obstacles such as the adaptation of hotel rooms.
On the edge of Paris, between Saint-Ouen and Saint-Denis, an atypical district is currently growing. 100% of the accommodation will be accessible to people with disabilities, well beyond the 20% provided for by law. The Olympic and Paralympic Village, which will become a residential area following the Paris 2024 Games, is intended to be a model for adapting to the needs of the thousands of athletes who will participate in the Paralympic Games in one year, from August 28 to September 8.
“We have the feeling of thinking regarding the city of 2030”rejoices Solideo, the public body in charge of the works, in The Parisian. But what regarding the spectators? The organizers expect 350,000 people with disabilities over the duration of the two competitions. And their conditions of accommodation, travel and reception in the stands raise more concerns. In January, the president of APF France Handicap was worried regarding a “disaster scenario” In The Sunday newspaper.
Volunteers trained for the occasion?
The associations do not express any particular concern regarding sports infrastructure, where many adaptability works are planned. “We ask ourselves a lot of questions regarding the training of volunteers”, explains on the other hand Annette Masson, president of the association Tourisme et handicaps. Helping people with disabilities to move around the venues of events requires specific knowledge.
“For example, a wheelchair cannot be handled forwards, so as not to risk causing the person to fall.”
Annette Masson, President of the Tourism and Disabilities Associationat franceinfo
“To guide a blind person and make him feel safe, she continues, we do not take her arm, it is she who takes that of her guide.” Annette Masson also alerts visitors from all over the world to the need to know the vocabulary of disability in English. Training has already taken place for the volunteers who will assist the Paralympic athletes. But most of the work remains to be done, because the selection of volunteers is not complete.
An unreadable housing offer
But before taking their place in the stands, the spectators concerned will have to find accommodation. A quest that has more obstacles when it needs to be adapted. “France is lagging behind”lamented Patrice Tripoteau, deputy general manager of APF France Handicap, in The world. The latter estimates the number of adapted rooms in the Paris region at only 3,500. The Interministerial Delegation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Dijop) mentions for its part 4,500 rooms in Paris, not counting the rest of Ile-de-France. A count difficult to establish: in April, the government launched a consultation to draw up “an inventory” accessible hotels and restaurants.
An official online platform, Accèslibre.beta.gouv, is supposed to serve as a directory. At least for a French-speaking audience, since it is not available in any other language. On the online menu, the choice is not wide and does not reflect the reality of the offer, which is already insufficient. No hotel or restaurant is listed in Saint-Denis, the city of the Stade de France. And this, while several establishments close to the enclosure ensure, on their own sites, that they are equipped to accommodate people with reduced mobility. Of the “accessibility ambassadors” must be deployed to convince hoteliers to register on the platform or to undertake work to adapt their rooms.
Responsible for awarding a label certifying that an establishment is adapted to the needs of all people with disabilities, Annette Masson observes daily pitfalls among hoteliers who think they are equipped.
“Professionals say they have adapted rooms, but when you ask them what that means, they only talk regarding motor disabilities.”
Annette Masson, President of the Tourism and Disabilities Associationat franceinfo
However, each form of disability requires different accommodations. People who are hard of hearing, for example, need a visual alarm signal in the event of a security alert. For the government, there is still time to start work in the hotel and catering industry: 100 million euros from the disability plan will be devoted to it, explains the entourage of the Minister Delegate for Tourism, Olivia Grégoire, in The Parisian. In this context, hoteliers will be able to apply for aid from October. But many visitors have already taken their tickets and are now looking for suitable accommodation.
The metro, an insurmountable obstacle
Another major difficulty, once there: access to transport, the only black spot noted by observers following the last Para-athletics World Championships, in July, which were a test. “It allowed us to see that there were still a lot of things to settle”explains the director of operations of the competition, Adrien Balduzzi, in The world. Particularly in airports, which have had to “adapt to cope with a volume of para-sport material that did not always correspond to that estimated”.
In July, Nicolas Savant-Aira, disabled table tennis champion, recounted on LinkedIn the failures of the reception at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle having led, according to him, to the breakage of an armchair of one of the members of the ‘French team :
“I wish the greatest courage to all the delegations that will come next year.”
Nicolas Savant-Aira, parapongeon LinkedIn
If the athletes will do without public transport, the spectators will not escape it. They will come up once morest the limits of the Paris metro, which associations have been denouncing for a long time. They took note from 2017, the year of the designation of Paris as host city, of the absence of a project to remedy this: “Given the age of the network, the work is indeed considered too complex, too expensive and non-priority”wrote then the president of the APF, Alain Rochon, and the president of the Paralympic committee, Emmanuelle Assmann, in a letter to the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe. “It is not a question of money, but of technical infeasibility to respect the safety criteria”explained Ile-de-France Mobilités to franceinfo.
Equipping the stations with lifts and fire shelters of the right size is not necessarily impossible, concluded in 2021 a study by the network manager concerning line 6. But the bill is estimated at 700 million euros and the works would take at least six years, according to Valérie Pécresse, the president of Ile-de-France Mobilités, quoted by The Parisian. Too late, therefore, for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, during which the accessible metro map will be limited to the most recent stations and line 14, if the elevators and escalators are not out of order. Annette Masson pleads for the creation of an application to inform in real time of the functioning of these essential infrastructures and to avoid unpleasant surprises for users.
Shuttles to compensate for shortcomings
Real progress has been made on other lines, in particular the RER and Transiliens. Ile-de-France Mobilités promises 268 stations adapted to accommodate people in wheelchairs by 2025 (without committing to a number by the Games) and claims to have already returned RER A and B 100 % accessible, even if the system asks to notify the station agents in advance. The bus network has also been improved, in particular to raise the pavements at the level of the vehicle access ramps. In practice, despite these efforts, the overflow of passengers on the lines that will serve the Olympic sites may complicate access.
“The idea is not to bet on transport [en commun] for people in wheelchairsrecognized the managing director of Ile-de-France Mobilités in 20 Minutes. For them, the organizers intend to set up a system of shuttles, which the spectators concerned will have to reserve, and which will connect the sports sites and the six major Parisian stations. But its implementation still raises questions: by what means will people reach the starting points of the shuttles? Will these circulate at the latest times of the events? And above all, where can you find enough suitable vehicles, when the existing offer must already meet other needs?
The organization will have to be an incentive, as the government has been with taxis, for example. Aid has been voted by the National Assembly to finance up to 40% the acquisition by drivers or their companies of vehicles adapted to wheelchairs. With the ambitious objective of increasing from 200 to 1,000 vehicles by the Games. “It remains a bandage on a wooden leg”regrets Juliette Pinon, project manager for the Games within Uriopss Ile-de-France, which brings together associations from the social and health sector. “These taxis will remain following 2024, but they will have a cost per person”, much higher than that of public transport. It remains thatThis change in supply might “building up a legacy” of the event, hoped the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, in 2022. And to make Paris sustainably more welcoming for visitors with disabilities.
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