Rome: No place for the physically challenged

And now?

If you are physically challenged and thinking about coming to Italy, think twice before you make the trip. Although some progress has been made - in the sense that many museums now have stair-lifts or platform lifts for wheelchairs, as do some public buildings - in general Italy is still lagging behind in making life easier for people who have some kind of physical disability. In fact, one of the first things you may notice when you come to a major city like Rome, is how few disabled people you see around in general, and of those you do see, how few are getting around on their own. Recently at a downtown Rome restaurant, around 20 blind people gathered for a birthday dinner. But this is most unusual. The majority of disabled people (for one assumes that, proportionately, the numbers are the same as in other countries) seem to stay home with the result that for the rest of the society it's a situation of "out of sight, out of mind".
This is a problem throughout much of Italy but particularly true in Rome and in the more chaotic cities of the Italian South. In Rome, for example, ATAC, the municipal transportation agency, claims 73% of its 2,715 buses are equipped with wheelchair platforms on at least one entrance, but according to statistics compiled goodness knows how, only 700 people in wheelchairs have availed themselves of this service over the last 12 months. (Personally, I have NEVER seen a person in a wheelchair on a Rome city bus. True, I don't use Rome's buses very often, but on the other hand I only go to New York once a year and I have ALWAYS seen several instances of wheelchair access n buses in the two weeks or so that I am there).

And why is that? One reason, say consumer advocates here, is because most of the platforms don't work. But the real sticking point is that because of double-parked cars and other obstacles, buses can rarely get close enough to the curb at most of the city's more than 8000 bus stops. Furthermore, very few sidewalks here have the curb cuts necessary for a wheel chair to gain access to a sidewalk unless the person in the chair is being pushed by a friend, employee or family member.

It's not hard to imagine that the situation is equally unfriendly for anyone who is sightless and one rarely sees blind people out in public. And it's easy to understand why since navigation of sidewalks and crossing would be almost impossible for someone who can't see for the same reasons as above, motorini parked on sidewalks, cars parked on the curb and on the pedestrian stripes that are supposed to mark a pedestrian crossing, unlicensed vendors who set up shop wherever they please. As I have already written, even seeing pedestrians have trouble crossing the streets of the Italian capital and so far no one seems to have thought about equipping traffic lights at formal crossing with the acoustic signals that tell a visually-challenged person that a light is about to turn red or green.

The only real concessions for the handicapped are state-paid companions and parking/driving permits for them and their family members. But not surprisingly in a city where furbizia - cunning - is one of the qualities most prized in human beings, the latter immediately became something to get a hold of no matter how. Between February and September of this year, Rome police checked 1,710 handicapped permits - which allow parking and driving anywhere in the city - and found that 471, more than a fourth, were illegal.

And there are other driving-related problems for the handicapped as well. Recently, a man wrote to the Rome daily, Il Messaggero, to relate that as a person confined to a wheelchair, he had applied for a gotten his own parking space near his residence in Via Alessandria in the Nomentana neighbourhood of Rome. Such parking spaces are marked on both the pavement and by a sign bearing the license plate of the car for which the space is reserved. However, the man said, most days, when he returns from his thrice-weekly dialysis in a nearby hospital he finds someone else has parked in his spot. Even worse, these days when he calls the traffic police, they tell him to be patient because they don't have anyone to send. Have a nice day!

Source: Stranitalia