The inaccessible city

SD. "Santo Domingo, the National District, and the urban areas have barriers all over," said engineer Alma Ferrera, the person in charge of accessibility to the area of the National Council on Disabilities (Conadis). From the new infrastructures to the oldest building built with little knowledge of accessibility, which includes the elderly, cardiac patients, those with lumbar ailments, children, pregnant women and persons with some sort of disability.

"Upon inspecting public works, one can realize that there is some good intention on the part of the engineer and the city council; but it seems that there are no criteria. The ramps are poorly designed, there are incoherent places, there are no handrails, there is no protection," she decreed.

People with disabilities

Alexander Benjamin, a lawyer and an employee of the judicial department of Conadis, suffers from spina bifida. He had movement in his legs but his condition has worsened and now he uses a wheelchair. He has a normal live, but costly. "If it is not in a taxi, I cannot move around, because no bus or public car has access," he says, talking about the ramps of buses and the space that should exist for those that use wheel chairs. He has had to reach an agreement with a friendly taxi driver in order to lessen the expense, although "a large part of my salary goes into taxis." Benjamin goes around the streets, and daily faces the low accessibility culture of Dominican engineers and the public lack of order.

"The people do not understand that the sidewalks are for moving around, not for placing big jars, garbage or whatever they feel like," he laments and says that on many occasions he is forced to use the streets because the sidewalks are occupied.

Rafael Antonio Perez Polanco is blind. He lost his sight to glaucoma in 1991 when he was studying for a degree in Economics at the UASD. He is a receptionist at the Conadis. Although he handles himself with great agility, in his condition as a blind person he has hit himself in the chest and in the head walking around the city. "A blind person has the technique to avoid obstacles, but on the sidewalks there are stairs, hanging signs, branches, that cannot be perceived by the cane, the element that allows us to be independent."

Perez Polanco stresses that, besides the signs, there are the holes and spaces in the streets and sidewalks. "If there is a construction in the street, it has to have a rope or something at a distance so that they avoid a person falling; because the blind walk based on experience. In the case of the city, it is frequent for a sidewalk to have some excavation crop up in a question of hours, which is a threat to the blind.

Little attention

Ferrera begs the city governments and the Ministry of Public Works to ask for accessibility inspections in constructions that are underway. "Of the public works, only the Metro can be called accessible regarding ramps and elevators; but in the Metro there are elevators that are not working. After that, no other public work is accessible, and this is serious, because it includes parks, bridges, walkways and boulevards," she stresses.

Regarding the new private constructions projects, Conadis inspected the Sambil and Agora Mall plazas and said that they were totally accessible. "It is good that they seriously took into account the accessibility aspect," she said. Nonetheless, in order to inspect the projects, it is necessary for the engineers and builders to go to Conadis.

"We do not have the capacity to follow up on all of the infrastructure that is being built in the country; to supervise accessibility depends on the interest that they put on it. We have made recommendations and then those who build only fulfill half or definitely do not build them or they are incoherent," she concludes.