Paris 2024: inclusive and accessible Games

Inclusivity and accessibility mean a lot to Paris, even more so this year. The City of Paris wants to make this loud and clear for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.

Nearly 350,000 visitors with disabilities will be coming to Paris. The Games will be an opportunity to demonstrate Paris' expertise in organizing major sporting events and, above all, its ability to call on authorities and political actors with the aim of making it an ecological, supportive and committed city.

Through the "Olympic Transformations" legacy program, Paris wishes to reaffirm its commitment to making this event a shared project that serves local residents and whose benefits will last well beyond 2024.

The strength of the Games, and the momentum they generate, represent an extraordinary opportunity to make Paris a more inclusive city, one that will make a lasting contribution to the fulfillment of Parisians with disabilities, as well as all those who work in or visit the city.

As a sign of this mobilization, the Paris Council has committed to signing eight agreements that will kick-start this dynamic, in collaboration with Paris 2024, the French Paralympic Sports Committee, APF France Handicap, the Departmental Handisport and Adapted Sports Committees and the ASEI association, which supports social and professional integration for children and adults.

This strategy is built around three key goals:

- improve the city's accessibility

- provide access to regular sports activities

- improving the participation of people with disabilities

The first ambition is to use the Games to make Paris more accessible.

Quartiers d'Accessibilité Augmentée (QAA(Improved accessibility neighborhoods)) will be set up in every arrondissement of the capital. These priority accessibility areas will enable people with disabilities to access useful services and facilities: accommodation, transport, shops, schools, public services, cultural and sports facilities. This approach is part of the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy and the Olympic Transformation Program: to ensure that the Olympic Games are accessible to people with disabilities. The APF-France disability association, along with others, will be mobilized to contribute its expertise on the quality of improvements. Once the Games are over, this approach will be gradually extended to other areas of Paris.

This innovative approach will apply to the 17 neighborhoods 17 arrondissements in the first wave of "Embellir votre quartier", each of which will include an enhanced accessibility district. In each "enhanced accessibility" district, reliable, up-to-date information on the level of accessibility of services will be available. All local shops and services will be mobilized to improve or highlight the quality of their welcome and accessibility. The City of Paris, in conjunction with associations, will support the managers of establishments (shops, facilities, etc.) in this process. Municipal facilities in these neighborhoods will also benefit from improvements and measures that enhance their accessibility.

The ultimate aim is to offer a complete and proportionate range of universally accessible services in these districts of enhanced accessibility.

The mobility measures planned for the Games will be continued to create a positive legacy for people with reduced mobility. For example:

- increasing the amount of accessible cabs by 2024;

- the ring road will be transformed for the Games thanks to the Olympic Lanes system, which will dedicate a lane to green travel, including transport for people with disabilities;

- accessible active mobility solutions deployed during the Games will be made permanent.

The second ambition will be to provide access to regular sporting activities, which are a factor in health, well-being and self-confidence, and thus in integration and inclusion.

To make sure that everyone can benefit from this scheme, Paris is becoming a more para-sporting city, with the aim of quadrupling the number of members, which currently stands at 1,200. A network of para-sport clubs has been launched to enable all people with disabilities to take part in sporting activities, from beginners to high-level recreational players. The scheme relies on ordinary sports clubs and volunteers to create and develop para-sports sections and training courses to support disabled people. They are provided with training and communication tools to ensure the best possible welcome for players.

By the end of 2024, the City intends to create 40 Paralympic sections to diversify and increase the number of adapted sports activities available in Paris. The French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF) and the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee are the City's partners in this project. All para-sport, medical and medico-social players are also mobilized to ensure continuity of practice and coverage of the entire area.

New local practice areas will be created for para-sport. Adapted physical activity rooms (SAPAS) will be set up in partnering social and medico-social establishments. These rooms, as well as school sports facilities, will be made available outside of school hours to offer new slots to associations catering for people with disabilities. The City will support Parisian clubs in developing a network of excellence to help the champions of tomorrow.

Through Paris excellence para-sport (PEPS) and the La Relève program, the city will support the careers of all para-athletes wishing to embark on a para-sport project.

In conjunction with the Games, the city has built the Arena Porte de la Chapelle and has renovated the Pierre de Coubertin stadium to make them two exemplary and innovative facilities in terms of universal accessibility. The city will also study the possibility of transforming the Georges Carpentier sports center into a true para-sport performance center.

To open up to young people with disabilities, the city will be strengthening the para-sport dimension of the School Sports Games, and enabling meetings between children from schools and social and medico-social establishments, so that everyone can share their stories and differences and collectively enjoy the Olympic and Paralympic experience.

Paris is a land of sporting events. It must also become a land of para-sport events. Around the Paralympic Games, a strategy for hosting these events will be created, with the aim of making the Handisport Open Paris a major international event, and hosting the World Handisport Athletics Championships in 2023.

The third ambition will be to use the Games as a driving force for disabled participation in sports. With its three-year program, the Cultural Olympiad will have a structuring effect on Parisian cultural policy. People with disabilities are among the most remote from cultural production and offerings. The program will support projects by artists with disabilities, projects promoting the representation of all types of disability, and projects that make facilities accessible so that the emancipatory power of culture benefits everyone.

The Games will have had a direct effect on 150,00 jobs by the end of the event. In collaboration with APF-France Handicap, Paris 2024 and other partners, Paris will offer training and employment access for disabled people. Employment in contracts relating to the hosting of the Games will be promoted, as will entrepreneurial initiatives by disabled people with Paris & Co.

Some 50,000 volunteers will be helping to organize the Games. These volunteers will be the Ambassadors of Paris in 2024. In 2021, the "Volunteers with Disabilities" project will be launched, and its approach will be extended, in conjunction with Paris 2024, to the Games' volunteer program. It will be extended on a long-term basis as part of the Paris Volunteers community, which works to promote the climate, sanitation, civic participation and the fight against exclusion. To ensure a complete, high-quality experience for all, the Olympic and Paralympic Games must be universally conceived. This is why Paris is supporting the organization of the Paralympic Games, so that the city can be organized and designed in the long term as a benevolent tourist destination accessible to all people with disabilities. The experience of spectators and visitors will become the everyday experience of Parisians.

In 2019, the City is committed to a strategy of sustainable and inclusive innovation to support the implementation of the Games' legacy program. This has resulted in support for the creation by Paris & Co of the HUA (Handic'Up Access) incubator, dedicated to technical and social innovation serving people with disabilities and their caregivers. The incubator will cooperate with the APF-France handicap Lab and other innovation players to provide comprehensive support for innovative approaches. This collaboration will also aim to promote entrepreneurial projects led by people with disabilities.