SINGAPORE: “Growing up, I learned very early that the biggest challenge in my life was not my disability but the barriers of diverse kind, especially in the built environment,” said Esther Nagetey, a youth fellow at the International Disability Alliance from Ghana.
Because the school in her community was neither accessible nor safe for her to attend, Nagetey would study in boarding school, separated from her family for months every school year to get a good education.
“I learned this on the streets where even with my white cane, I had to wait for someone to guide me to cross safely,” she added. “I learned this when I had to pay extra on the rent for my apartment so it could be renovated to be accessible for me to live in.”
Nagetey was speaking during a panel discussion at the 61st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, where a new report on disability-inclusive infrastructure was presented by UN Human Rights. The report particularly focusses on housing and transport infrastructure. When inaccessible, transport and housing continue to shut persons with disabilities out of community life.
A 15-to-1 gap in mobility
One in 15 of the planet’s inhabitants are people with disabilities and, although they represent a sizeable portion of the world population they face participation and mobility restrictions up to 15 times greater than others, largely due to inaccessible and unaffordable transport, the report states, citing World Health Organization data.
In a global survey also cited in the report, nearly half of respondents with disabilities said public transport was inaccessible to them. More than a third pointed to negative attitudes among transport staff, and more than a quarter said services simply weren’t available where they lived.
For Ana Vietez, of the Metropolitan Transport of Barcelona, Spain, “accessibility cannot depend on a postal code,” nor is it a quality upgrade or an optional service, but rather a fundamental human right.
She stressed that, under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, States have an obligation to provide access to the physical environment and transportation on an equal basis.
“When a person cannot use public transport, whether urban buses, metro systems or regional trains, because of accessibility barriers, we are not simply speaking about a failed journey. We are speaking about a right whose interruption restricts other rights: the right to education, to work, to health care, to political participation, to culture, and to community life,” Vietez said.
UN Human Rights’ report shows that accessible transport has many benefits. In the United Kingdom, for example, accommodations made to improve accessibility at rail stations encouraged more than a third of wheelchair users to travel more frequently, generating roughly USD 2.40 average returns on investment for every dollar spent.
The cost of adequate housing
In terms of housing, the report also highlights States’ duty to promote universal design for all buildings to enable people with disabilities to live independently and be included in the community. However, it points out, in countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 11 percent of people with disabilities are overburdened by housing expenses compared to 9 percent of people without disabilities.
Further, for people with intellectual, sensory and cognitive disabilities, features such as appropriate lighting, tactile design, clear wayfinding and easy-to-use household equipment are essential but often absent from housing design. However, building full accessibility into homes at the design stage would be more economical for everyone as it adds only around 1 percent to construction costs. Retrofitting the same features after a building is completed can cost 5 percent or more.
Institutionalization remains a persistent problem
Despite decades of advocacy, large numbers of people with disabilities remain in institutional settings rather than living in their communities. The European Commission estimates that more than one million people with disabilities under the age of 65 — and two million over 65 — live in institutions across the European Union alone. The report finds that, in many cases, persons with disabilities are placed in institutional settings not because of their impairments, but due to the absence of community-based support and care and support systems, including accessible
housing and transport.
Justice Natalia Angel-Cabo, of Colombia’s Constitutional Court, pointed out that accessible design as a precursor to independent living is one of the means to prevent the institutionalization of people with disabilities.
“If a person cannot leave home safely, cannot reach transport, cannot access services without extraordinary effort, dependency increases. And dependency is often resolved not through community support, as it should be, but through institutional placement,” she said. “In that sense, inaccessible infrastructure can operate as a silent driver of institutionalization.”
For Angel-Cabo, preventing institutionalization starts with urban planning, housing design, accessible transport systems and public investment.
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Every barrier removed reduces dependency. Every accessible route expands autonomy and, something that is definitely not minor nowadays, it creates social bonds.
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Justice Natalia Angel-Cabo, Constitutional Court of Colombia
The report calls on States to treat deinstitutionalization as an urgent human rights obligation, pairing it with investment in accessible housing, transport and community-based services.
Women bearing the brunt
At the intersection of disability and gender, women and girls with disabilities face disproportionate barriers in both transport and housing. They are more likely to be harassed on public transit, more likely to face barriers to find accessible shelter when fleeing domestic violence, and more likely to face discrimination from landlords.
Women with disabilities are also more likely to experience homelessness or face inadequate living conditions or high housing costs and are disproportionately affected by housing crises.
In Australia, 60 percent of women with disabilities reported being able to use all forms of public transport without difficulty, compared to 66 percent of men with disabilities. While seemingly small, this gap compounds over a lifetime of daily trips.
Women and girls also bear the bulk of unpaid, labour-intensive care and support work, the report states, meaning that inaccessible infrastructure imposes an outsized economic burden on them.
Building autonomy and dignity
The report presents a few good practices from around the globe including in Peshawar, Pakistan, where a bus rapid transit system built with direct input from local organizations of people with disabilities — including ramps, tactile paving and audiovisual information — saw female ridership grow from 2 percent to 30 percent after its launch.
In São Paulo, Brazil, a door-to-door transport service called Atende+ now carries more than 1.7 million passengers annually using a fleet of over 600 accessible vehicles, including some specifically adapted for passengers with autism.
In Iceland, people with visual impairments can hail a taxi and pay only the equivalent of a bus fare. In Finland, a national Housing First policy guarantees permanent rental tenancies with flexible support services attached — an approach the report holds up as a model for combining accessible housing with community inclusion.
In its report, UN Human Rights urges States to embed accessibility standards into all housing and transport legislation, with enforceable timelines and oversight mechanisms. Public-private partnerships in infrastructure, increasingly common as governments contract out transit systems and housing development, should be required to meet human rights standards.
It also calls on governments to fund door-to-door and paratransit services as part of mainstream transport policy, not as niche charity programs, and to ensure that digital systems, from ticketing apps to online housing registries, are accessible to people with sensory and cognitive disabilities.
Further, UN Human Rights recommends addressing stigma, discrimination, and violence against people with disabilities in transport and housing; funding and implementing individualized housing adaptations, with mechanisms to prevent discrimination by landlords and housing providers; and promoting community-based living arrangements that combine accessible housing, transport and establishing care and support systems.
The report also stresses the importance of recognizing and supporting non-States actors who deliver accessible housing, transport and support services, providing them adequate funding and regulatory frameworks.
“When we build without accessibility, we build exclusion into the foundations of our societies. In fact, we plan to discriminate, segregate and marginalize,” Nagetey said. “But when we design inclusively, we build dignity. We build autonomy. We build equality.”