Over the past six years, I have accompanied my wife during several international trips to about 20 different countries on five different continents. She lives with complete thoracic 5/6 paraplegia and utilizes a wheelchair for mobility. Without many plans, we have wandered around the globe experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly.

Visit Paralympic Cities
One of the best pieces of advice I can give anyone with a disability traveling to an international destination for the first time is to visit a country that has hosted a recent Paralympic Games. You may be able to have a great experience in many countries, but attitudes and access seem to be best in countries following the Games, although at times the experience in any country—even your own—may not be perfect.

For a little background on what creates this trend, we only need to look at the requirements to win an Olympic/Paralympic bid. Every country has to show a plan for transportation as well as facilities to host many different sports. The great benefit for people with disabilities is that this design must also include access for the thousands of athletes with impairments who will come to compete in the

Paralympic Games.
These athletes with disabilities have to be taken into consideration as well as spectators with disabilities, creating accessible viewing areas, and the ever-so-important accessible restrooms. Often the awareness of the need to make the areas around the games accessible extends to popular tourism spots and raises awareness of access and the abilities of people with disabilities throughout the country.

It is not only the architecture and laws that change in these host countries, but it is the attitudinal changes that have the greatest impact. Many of the people who interact with these amazing athletes or have the opportunity to see them in action become humbled by the experience of watching them perform better than many able-bodied individuals could.

There is also the pride that comes from watching their countrymen and women win medals; suddenly this individual with a disability who was their neighbor is transformed into a celebrated hero within their community and nationwide. The connection created to these successful athletes with disabilities often changes the attitude of providing access from being a burden to something they want to do.

Two of the Best: Athens and Barcelona
Athens. My wife and I visited Athens, Greece, a year after it hosted the 2004 Olympic/Paralympic games. Athens is a very old city, so we were expecting to run into several architectural impediments, especially when viewing ancient historical sites. We were actually very impressed after just our first day in Athens. We picked a hotel off of the accessible Metro in the Omonia region of central Athens, and found the downtown was very friendly to both foot and wheeling traffic.

Our biggest surprise on our first day in Athens was locating the accessible wheelchair lift that took us to the top of the Acropolis for FREE!! (This is a very good lesson to remember: I never pay for tickets in another country without my wife sitting in her chair next to me. There is almost always a discount or accessible pamphlet that we would have missed without her being present).

Once on top of the Acropolis, the accessibility designers even installed another wheelchair lift down into the souvenir shop, so we could spend money and access a super-clean, wheelchair-user-only bathroom.  As we discussed the improvements with tour guides and access staff during our few days in Athens, we learned that many of the improvements to the city’s access were made for the 2004 Games.

The city’s design also made it very easy for my wife to maneuver around due to the wide pedestrian-only zones enabling her to cruise down the middle of busy walking streets, unfortunately also allowing her to access entirely too many expensive shops in the Plaka and other shopping districts. If you like shopping and use a wheelchair for mobility I suggest you visit accessible Athens.

Upon leaving we walked the one block from our hotel in Omonia back to the very affordable Metro line that took us directly to our next stop, Pireas (the port city near Athens). Upon arrival we again learned we only had to walk one block to the ferry terminal. It seemed to us as though Greece was spoiling us so we would plan to return.

Barcelona. On the list of good Paralympic host cities we have visited was Barcelona, Spain. If we had visited a year after the 1992 Paralympic Games, our experience would not have been that great. But the Games left a legacy of change for individuals who live in and visit Barcelona. When we visited Barcelona during our honeymoon in 2004, we benefited from the mistakes of the 1992 Spanish Olympic Committee, which realized they had a bit of an accessible transportation problem that required them to borrow a fleet of accessible buses from Germany to shuttle Paralympians around from venue to venue.

This awareness led them to create better access throughout Barcelona, and by our visit in 2004, they estimated that 85 percent of the buses were accessible.

While in Barcelona, we also noticed great numbers of people with disabilities constantly out and about. It was interesting to see this too-often-invisible population everywhere. In Spain, much of the success of their citizens with disabilities has to do with a strong disability organization called ONCE. We randomly arrived in Barcelona during a huge street festival and ONCE hosted a very cool block-long disability awareness obstacle course.

Able-bodied people could try out wheelchairs, walkers, tandem bikes, black-out goggles, etc. This experience gave them an opportunity to understand the obstacles and difficulties people living with a disability face every day. I wanted to go through the course, but it was a popular event with at least a half-hour wait, and I had more important things to do.

My wife and I were heading to a sports bar, and unlike being at home in the U.S. during the Paralympic Games, there was a live broadcast of the 2004 Athens games on a regular station, in a sports bar!!   

Improved Access Trend
From our travels, we have really enjoyed the trend of countries improving access following the Paralympic Games. In traveling around the world we have discovered that architectural blocks can be overcome, but attitudinal barriers are more difficult to bear. When deciding to participate in an activity or even hiring a cab for transport, it is the limiting beliefs that others impose upon people with disabilities that create the most long-lasting negative effects.

When Japan hosted the 1998 Paralympics, its people relied heavily on providing customer service and the power of assisting people with positive human effort to overcome obstacles. I would rather experience this attitude than live in a world that relied 100 percent on mechanical and architectural access.

It is important to allow any person to try for themself, or to help a person succeed; these humanistic elements create a positive impact among all involved. However, a refusal to even allow a person to try can cause irreparable consequences. We have learned on our travels that architectural and attitudinal barriers are often decreased in countries after they have hosted a Paralympic Games, although they still may exist.

Remember to keep a smile on your face. Take heart, too, in the fact that every two years, access and attitudes are improving in a new Paralympic host country.

See Related Articles
Before you travel via plane, see Secrets of Accessible Air Travel—Know Your Rights.

Considering an international vacation?  If so, check out Accessible Travel in Barcelona—Every Traveler’s Paradise information on accessible Spain.