Access Denied

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Britain's Disability Discrimination Act, passed in 1995, stipulates that businesses — including transport firms — must take "reasonable steps" to remove physical barriers. However, expense is often a powerful deterrent to rectifying outdated or thoughtless planning. According to Stuart Ross, spokesman for Transport for London (TfL), the capital's public transport agency, converting an Underground station can cost between $6 million and $185 million. TfL officials estimate it will take five years to make 25% of stations accessible, and 15 years to make 50% of them accessible. But unlike the Underground, London's buses will all be accessible by next year. And under London's Dial-A-Ride program, disabled people are entitled to an unlimited number of trips in licensed black taxis, subject to availability.

Traveling beyond city limits can prove even more difficult than navigating urban areas, as Louis Pion finds when he takes the train from the Belgian university town of Louvain-la-Neuve near Brussels to his parents' home in Leuze-en-Hainaut, near the French border. The 23-year-old theology student, who has cerebral palsy, telephones the station a day ahead and arrives early to ensure staff set up a ramp so he can board the train in his wheelchair. But rail employees aren't there to work the ramp after 9 p.m. or at weekends. "If I travel, I can't return in the evening," Pion says.

Less than half of Belgium's 245 rail stations are fully accessible to disabled passengers. According to Jochem Goovaerts, a spokesman for the Belgian National Rail Company, many stations are too small or poorly staffed to accommodate wheelchair users — and this is unlikely to improve soon. "We are modernizing a few stations and it is taken into account if possible," he says. Even onboard, says Cleon Angelo, 47, a wheelchair user who heads the disabled-rights group Autonomia in Brussels, the disabled can expect "medieval" treatment.

	That [Renault] is my only mode of transport. Most public transport is just out for me — JULIE FERNANDEZ, London

"When we arrive, we often have to use the delivery entrance," he says. "On most trains there isn't space for wheelchairs, and we are put in the common area where other passengers put their luggage."

Political will and injections of funding could smooth out most problems with public transport. Europe's rich heritage of old buildings throws up knottier problems. A survey last year by the office of Rome city councillor Ileana Argentin, 40, a lawyer with the genetic disease spinal amyotrophy, found that only 20% of public buildings in the city were fully accessible; wheelchair users could enter some areas in a further 60%, and 20% were completely blocked to them. Argentin understands the arguments for conservation — "Imagine if I tried to make the Spanish steps accessible! I'd destroy them" — but she despairs that architects frequently ignore a 1989 law requiring disabled access in all new structures, despite fines of up to €25,000 and possible license suspension.

The scarcity of accessible toilets also deters many wheelchair users from socializing. In Britain, the cerebral palsy charity Scope found that only 66% of 1,300 clubs, restaurants and other facilities had accessible toilets. When Miguel Angel Fernández goes out in Madrid, he sticks to familiar haunts. "You get used to going to the same cafés, bars and shops," says Fernández, 31, paralyzed from the waist down by a motorcycle accident 11 years ago. "Dozens of others are just impossible. Either the doors are too narrow, there are steps to get in and, in most of them, the toilets are up or down a flight of stairs. And even when they are on the same floor, they are too small to take a chair in."

In some countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy, no agency directly polices access, leaving disabled people to enforce what laws there are by suing violators. Briton Bob Ross, who prevailed over discount airline Ryanair in court after he was charged $26 to use a wheelchair at London's Stansted Airport three years ago, says this is unfair. "Even though the legislation is there, the onus is on [disabled] people to take the action, and for many reasons a lot of them can't do that," says Ross, 56, who has cerebral palsy and arthritis. Ryanair appealed the court's decision.