How the upcoming Paralympics are driving accessibility in Paris

With the close of the Paris Olympics, a running joke on social media is that many viewers have been at a loss of how to fill their days.

After all, for two weeks, the French capital became the center of the world, hosting what has been lauded as one of the most successful and innovative games over the last few decades. Between superhuman feats of athleticism, there were tears of joy and tears of disappointment, all against the stunning background of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais and the Seine river. It made for some dramatic and captivating television.

But the excitement isn’t over ⁠— these next few weeks are a short intermission until the Paralympics, which run from August 28 to September 8. The opening ceremony will take place outdoors at Place de la Concorde. Events will be held across some of the same venues that made the Olympics so mesmerizing, including Pont Alexandre III and the Eiffel Tower.

Demand for tickets has also taken off following the close of the Olympics, with locals looking for a way to prolong the collective euphoria experienced throughout the Games. After a slow start, organizers say that sales for the Paralympics average about 1000 tickets an hour, and that events in the most iconic venues ⁠— Versailles and Grand Palais ⁠— are sold out. 

While Paris has hosted three Olympics, this year marks the first time the city is hosting a Paralympic Games. Along with innovative solutions for travelers with disabilities, perhaps the biggest legacy of the Paralympics will be how it’s served as an accelerator to make the cityscape – often described as an obstacle course for travelers with disabilities – more accessible and inclusive through improvements to city infrastructure and transportation. 

Innovative ways travelers with disabilities will experience the Games

To enhance the spectator experience among the estimated 280,000 visitors with disabilities, organizers are introducing a few innovative services that will also mark a few firsts for the Paralympics.

Attendees of events – like blind soccer, wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball – who are blind or visually impaired will be able to follow the action with a tactile tablet Touch2See that offers a live-action, immersive experience. A moving magnet replicates the position of the ball in real time and the tablet vibrates to convey the intensity of the game. Likewise, audio descriptions fed through headsets provide precise information about the plays. Spectators with visual impairments can also use low-vision headsets that look like VR headsets and act like high-powered binoculars, to zoom in on the action for athletic competitions and for the opening and closing ceremonies.

In an Olympic first, the audio description service will also be available via the Olympics app, allowing attendees to listen through their personal smartphones and headsets, with live commentary in both French and English.

And visitors with reduced mobility can motorize their wheelchairs with an innovative solution provided by myomniTrott that involves hooking their wheelchair to a scooter. Users can then travel through the city, moving from one venue to the next, using the biking lanes. 

How the Paralympics are accelerating a more accessible Paris

In the years leading up to the Paralympics, the city of Paris pledged €125 million to improve its accessibility in a frantic bid to make good on its promise of hosting a “Games Wide Open” and to leave no one behind. 

And while it’s made strides in some areas, some say it still falls short in others.

One of the legacies of the Paralympics for Paris is the creation of 17 “augmented accessibility zones” in neighborhoods across the city, where priority routes have been rethought in order to provide a seamlessly accessible, obstacle-free journey from one municipal facility – like a library, museum or sports center – to another. Among other things, that means repairing cracked pavements, widening sidewalks, repainting pedestrian crossings, clearing paths and removing unnecessary obstacles, installing audible pedestrian signals, and improving warning and guide strips.

Similarly, municipal buildings are undergoing a series of improvements that may include lowering the height of reception desks or the installation of hearing loops in large spaces, and an assisted listening technology that transmits audio directly to hearing aids or cochlear implants without the background noise.

Accessible transportation in Paris

One of the biggest pain points for the city of Paris and Olympic organizers has been the city’s transportation offerings.

In 2021, only one in two bus stops were able to accommodate accessibility ramps. Three years, €22 million, and 380 urban restructuring projects later, all but two of the city’s 61 bus lines (line 40 and the Roissybus), and 1750 bus stops are accessible to wheelchair users and those with reduced mobility, while the tram is also fully accessible. The city says the Games accelerated the changes, and that they achieved in three years what would otherwise have taken up to 20 years.

“The significant investment will also be a legacy of the Paris 2024 Games,” the city says on its website.

But for all the progress made on the bus network, the metro system, which is more than a hundred years old, presents significant challenges and obstacles. Currently, only 29 stations, or 9% of the Paris metro system is fully or partially accessible to wheelchair users.

By comparison, London, which has an older and deeper network than Paris, was able to make 18% or double the number of stations accessible by the time of the 2012 London Olympics, as Nicolas Mérille, national accessibility advisor for the APF France Handicap association, pointed out to French news site Franceinfo.

“We hope that the event will create awareness and an electroshock on the fact that the daily life of people with disabilities, particularly in transport, is not at all the same as that of able-bodied people,” Mérille said.

How to find accessible accommodation, restaurants and attractions

Over the years, the city has also been conducting an accessibility audit campaign for hotels and accommodations, shops, restaurants and tourist attractions. So far, more than 450 establishments have been added to the city’s web app MyParisjetaime Handicap. 

Visitors can use filters to find facilities that are adapted to different disabilities, such as hotels and restaurants with access ramps and accessible toilets; museums that are adapted to the visually impaired; and theaters that are adapted to those with hearing impairments.

It’s also worth looking out for the Tourisme & Handicap label when booking stays or restaurants. Managed by the country’s tourism office Atout France, the label is awarded to tourist establishments that meet specific needs of people with various disabilities. Pictograms indicate the accessibility conditions they can accommodate: hearing, mental, motor or visual.

Will Paris continue to drive accessibility improvements after the Games? 

One of the small, but hugely impactful changes during the Paris Olympics was the careful choice of wording before the singing of anthems. Instead of simply instructing spectators to “please stand for the national anthem”, announcers added an important disclaimer at the end: “please stand, if you can.” 

It’s a detail that didn’t go unnoticed by the disability community and which received wide praise for its inclusivity. And while disability rights advocates say that while huge strides have been made to make the city more accessible thanks to the arrival of the Paralympics, momentum must continue with the support of local Parisians and political will.

Adds Mérille: “The Games must not be seen as an enchanted interlude, because there is still a lot to do.”