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I’ve been a frequent user of the Lisbon
Underground for the past 16 years and only now by request of a great
friend of mine I looked at the reality of people with disabilities.
After a brief analysis of the Lisbon Underground and can come to
just one conclusion: it was conceived not to satisfy the needs of
people with disabilities who have to move in a wheelchair but the
so-called “normal” people. Let’s see:
During all these years I only saw one person in a wheelchair using
this means of transportation. Why is it so?
The Lisbon Underground, with its 4 lines, only has half a dozen
stations, out of more than 35, equipped with lifts suitable for wheelchairs.
And these exceptions occur only in new stations like pontinha, Carnide,
Marquês de Pombal (yellow line only), Alameda and Oriente.
To make things worse, these lifts are frequently out of order.
In what signs pointing to the lifts are concerned, they practically
don’t exist. A positive aspect is the fact that, in Pontinha,
the ticket validation machines have a passage for wheelchairs.
In conclusion, this means of transportation is mostly inaccessible
to people with disabilities in a wheelchair, for it wasn’t
conceived thinking about them. Even if insufficient, there is some
degree of concern in making it accessible to “not normal” people,
like blind people, for example. However, there’s still a lot
to be done… A long way to go… Let there be will… We
hope that the stations in construction have the structures to make
them usable by all human beings, and not only by the so-called “normal
people”…
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