RIO DE JANEIRO — Inside the Olympic Park, there are ramps, strategically placed railings, tactile paving inside venues, and more. It’s evident that experts designed the grounds for the Summer Games and Paralympics to be accessible to people with disabilities.
But outside the venues is a different story. For those with disabilities, navigating Rio de Janeiro can range from inconvenient to daunting, something Brett Gravatt can attest to.
Gravatt is a student at Penn State who uses a wheelchair and is part of a journalism class visiting Brazil to help supplement coverage of the Paralympics for The Associated Press. Though the students are staying in a business hotel close to the main grounds, the morning commute for Gravatt through a recently developed neighborhood involves navigating his way down a dirt path, through weeds, rocks and tree roots.
His classmates walk along a sidewalk that is not smoothly paved, but made of flat stones, each several inches high, with a big space between them.
“Separate but equal,” Gravatt jokes, as he makes way to the rapid transit station, which has a handicapped entrance and space on the bus for a wheelchair.
It’s just a taste of what life in Rio — a place with glaring contrasts between haves and have nots — is like, advocates for the disabled community say. While some improvements have been made to the sprawling city of more than 6 million to improve access for all its citizens in the run up to the Olympics and Paralympics, including a new commuter rail line, even organizers agree the situation is far from perfect.
“I mean, officially, all of the venues here are accessible and they are more accessible than anywhere else in the city,” said Mario Andrada, spokesman for the Rio organizing committee. “But if you have an accessibility expert he or she will find a lot of black holes.”
