Wheelchairs reimbursed at 100%, better accessibility, increase in assistance for support… This Wednesday, April 26, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron detailed several measures aimed at improving the lives of people with disabilities, during the National Conference on Disability which is held every three years. “Our objective is to propose a paradigm shift that meets the expectations of people with disabilities,” assured the opening minister, Geneviève Darrieussecq.
Among the major measures announced, the full reimbursement of wheelchairs from 2024, “an important measure” and “of social justice”, indicated Emmanuel Macron. The President of the Republic also announced that the State would devote 1.5 billion euros to improving accessibility to public places for people with disabilities, a commitment declined before the summer and which will object of programming. “It’s a heavy budget line, some wanted more, many offered less […] it is a substantial budget line which must be followed by effect”, hammered the head of state. In an interview at Figaro this Wednesday, Geneviève Darrieussecq specifies that an envelope of 400 million euros must make it possible by 2027 to make the “158 national priority stations” accessible for all handicaps, motor and sensory, only half being so today .
Transform the school
The school for its part must be “sustainably transformed” to accommodate “all students”, which must go through a “differentiated pedagogy which will benefit everyone”, said his colleague from National Education, Pap Ndiaye. To improve the reception of disabled children in mainstream schools, establishments will be able to experiment with partnerships with mobile teams of specialized educators, speech therapists and psychomotor therapists. At the start of the 2022 school year, 430,000 students with disabilities were enrolled in mainstream schools, i.e. a third more than in 2017. But establishments often struggle to provide them with good support and nearly one in ten remain out of school.
Despite these announcements, the Collectif Handicaps, which brings together 52 associations, had announced the day before that it would boycott the conference, because it criticizes the executive for an “apparent lack of ambition” and “consultation”, and regrets not having obtained the right to directly challenge the Head of State, explained its president Arnaud de Broca. The Elysée replied that the event was prepared for six months, over forty meetings, with 500 speakers.
For its part, APF France Handicap has launched a week of mobilization to “question” the public authorities on the lack of accessibility of establishments open to the public (ERP), only half of which are engaged in a compliance process to accommodate people with disabilities. The stakes are high with the approach of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris next year, because adapted hotels are few in number and only 3% of the 309 Parisian metro stations are accessible to people with disabilities, alerts the APF.