Preparations for the Olympics and Paralympics and inclusion of people with disabilities: the Australian experience

Preparations for the Olympics
and Paralympics and inclusion of people with disabilities: the Australian
experience

Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM

Human Rights Commissioner and Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner

Australia

There is substantial attention in the international community being directed
at present to the human rights of people with disabilities. An international
convention on human rights and disability is being actively considered
through the United Nations system. I would have been attending a regional
meeting in Beijing in April this year as part of this process but this
was cancelled because of the SARS outbreak. (It is relevant to note in
this context that people who have or who may have infectious diseases
are also entitled to protection against unjustified discrimination, and
in Australia the Disability Discrimination Act covers these people, while
recognising that reasonable measures may be taken to protect public health.)

Internationally, the case for a human rights Convention specifically
dealing with people with disabilities seems strong, to give clearer guidance
to national efforts to protect and promote human rights for people with
disabilities than is provided by the existing general human rights Covenants,
and more authority and profile for disability issues than is provided
by the existing non-binding instruments on disability already adopted
by the General Assembly (the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons,
the Declaration on the Rights of Mentally retarded Persons, and the Standard
Rules for the Equalisation of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities).

In Australia, substantial measures have already been undertaken to protect
and promote equal rights for people with disabilities - inspired by international
developments on human rights including the International Year of Disabled
Persons in 1981, as well as by activism by people with disabilities themselves.
Legislation at the national and also at the State (or provincial) level
requires equal treatment and non-discriminatory access in a range of areas
including employment, education, access to buildings, public transport
and access to government services and information.

Australia's hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2000 provided
interesting tests of progress in moving towards a society that includes
people with disabilities as equal participants.

The Olympic Games have become the biggest non-military event on our planet.
The scale and complexity of the event is further increased by the Paralympic
Games being conducted in the same venues immediately afterwards, as they
were in Sydney and will be in Athens and Beijing.

It is well known that the Games provide a test and a showcase for a city
and a nation's ability to stage large and complex events and to welcome
the world's diverse people. Among many other challenges, they provide
a huge test for how prepared we are to deal with the fact that human diversity
inherently includes people with disabilities.

Many disability access issues involve very practical details, that require
detailed and careful planning. Before that and most fundamentally, though,
there needs to be this recognition of people with disabilities as part
of the public who will be seeking to participate in the Games experience,
and a commitment to ensuring that they can participate.

The experience in Sydney of planning and delivering Games intended to
be accessible to people with disabilities has been documented in a post-Games
report by the Olympic Co-ordination Authority. This report remains available
at www.oca.nsw.gov.au/html/accessadvisory.stm for the benefit of people
planning future Olympics and other large events. It details and evaluates
strategies used and offers suggestions for improvement in future events.
A range of resources on disability access issues, used in or based on
the experience of planning and delivering the Games, are also available
at www.oca.nsw.gov.au/access/html/default.cfm .

This paper does not seek to present all of this material in detail but
to draw out some key issues and lessons.

The Paralympics highlighted the need to deal with issues of disability
access and inclusion, but it would be a serious mistake to view these
issues as only relevant to the Paralympics and not the Olympics.

Among visitors to both Games - and also among the volunteers who contributed
so much to Sydney's success - there were people with disabilities in large
numbers.

Although only a small number of mainstream Olympic athletes would have
a disability raising access issues, accessibility in facilities for athletes
(including accommodation and food service) was also required because the
same facilities were to be used by Paralympians and Olympians

People attending the Games will be looking for accessibility in accommodation;
booking and ticketing facilities and information; transport to venues
(and at venues where there are long distances between different events
at the one venue); food outlets and toilet facilities at venues; as well
as in the many other aspects where a host city will be seeking to welcome
visitors, such as restaurants and cultural venues.

Even with the long planning processes for an Olympics, not all of these
issues may be addressed in time, particularly those concerning accessibility
of facilities in the society more broadly away from games venues. After
all, it has taken centuries to build a society which did not effectively
include people with disabilities. It may be hard to change all of that
in a few short years even with the huge and dedicated effort that goes
into planning an Olympics. But working towards the Olympics did provide
a major focus for addressing access issues in Australia, particularly
in the areas of public transport, hotel accommodation and other building
access issues.

Some of the lessons from the Sydney Olympic experience were these:

• Planning and design for disability access will also benefit many other
  participants. For example, older people attending the Games may have
  similar access needs - in limited mobility and in restricted sight or
  hearing - to people with more obvious disabilities. Clear information
  for the benefit of people who have difficulty reading or understanding
  complicated information will benefit everyone in complex or crowded
  environments.
• Disability access issues are easier and cheaper to address if access
  is built into planning and design from the start, instead of access
  issues having to be fixed later on. For example, the Sydney organising
  committee failed to give enough consideration early on to the information
  needs of blind and vision impaired people in the ticket booking process,
  and suffered an embarrassing loss in a discrimination complaint by a
  blind man because the ticket book was not available in Braille and the
  main Games website was not constructed to be accessible to blind people.
  The man complained because he wanted to be able to choose which events
  to attend with his children like anyone else could do. The evidence
  was that an accessible website would have been relatively simple to
  produce if the issue had been addressed in time. The decision on this
  complaint - ordering the payment of $20,000 damages to the complainant
  - is available in the complaint decisions section of the Human Rights
  and Equal Opportunity Commission website www.humanrights.gov.au/disability_rights
  .
• Action to address access issues needs to start years ahead of an Olympics.
  For example, Sydney began replacing its bus fleet with accessible low
  floor, ramp fitted buses 5 years ahead of the Games - partly in response
  to complaints under disability discrimination legislation, partly to
  avoid embarrassment in not being able to cater adequately for Paralympic
  requirements, and partly because of an awareness that accessible vehicles
  would perform better in the mass movement tasks required during the
  Games. Even so, Sydney still did not have enough of its bus fleet accessible
  by the time of the Games to meet demands without difficulties. The time
  remaining until Beijing's Olympics and Paralympics is in this sense
  not very long.
• Consultation with people with disabilities as part of all planning
  and implementation processes is an essential part of identifying access
  issues to be addressed, and in deciding on how best to address them.
  The material already referred to from the Olympic Coordination Authority
  details the consultative processes used for the Sydney Olympics.
• This includes mechanisms for complaints about access issues, to ensure
  that people responsible for facilities and events are informed of problems
  that arise, during preparations and even during the running of the Games.
  Even the best planning process may not be able to identify and solve
  all access issues in advance - just as with other aspects of a large
  venture such as the Games. But where complaints identified issues even
  at a late stage, in many cases it was possible to come up with solutions,
  including through providing additional human assistance to make up for
  limits in available equipment or infrastructure.
• In some instances, all that was needed were mechanisms for consultation
  and feedback to ensure that organisers were aware of disability issues
  and solutions. But it was also important in some instances to have an
  underpinning of legal rights, through disability discrimination law
  as well as through other provisions such as access requirements in building
  law, to ensure that disability issues were taken seriously before they
  became a problem or an embarrassment in the running of the Games.

Finally, changes made to provide accessibility and inclusion during the
Games will have lasting benefits for the host city and nation and for
visitors long after the Games are over. Less tangibly, but perhaps equally
important, it was clear that the Paralympics as a celebration of the abilities
of people with a disability had a positive impact on public attitudes
to and awareness of disability issues in Australia. Let us hope for similar
results from future Olympics and Paralympics in other countries into the
future.