The Paralympics are coming to Paris. Will Paralympians be able to get around?

Anne-Marie d’Acremont is one of France’s top wheelchair basketball and rugby players, having played for the national team in both sports. When she hits the court, she navigates it with ease, snaking between her opponents before taking the ball to the net.

But getting to practice on Paris’ public transportation system is a different story.

“There’s only one metro line that has wheelchair access, and if the elevator is broken, I’m stuck,” says Ms. d’Acremont during a meeting with students at the University of Paris 8 in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. “The station manager will tell me to go to the next stop, which can be a half-mile down the road. But I have no choice. There’s no way I’m missing practice because of that.”

Ms. d’Acremont is the first to say that she has adapted to Paris when Paris doesn’t adapt to her. She’s used a wheelchair for over a decade, since she had Lyme disease as a teen and lost the ability to walk. She doesn’t harp on what she can’t do – only what she can.

Yet as Paris gets set to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer, city officials are under added pressure to improve accessibility and disability rights. The French capital is expected to welcome upward of 350,000 visitors living with a disability during the Games, and its centuries-old underground transportation system is just one of many areas of Parisian life that poses challenges to those with disability.

But more than the Paris Games improving accessibility around the city, Olympic organizers say they want the event to be a catalyst for creating broader awareness and inclusion of the 12 million people in France living with disabilities.

Olympic and Paralympic Games of the past have had an impact on their societies and can provide lessons, but disability rights activists say more needs to be done if Paris is to make true societal change.

“The vision of disability is often either one of misery or heroism,” says Emmanuelle Fillion, a sociologist on disability at the School for Higher Education in Social Sciences in Paris. “It’s not to take away from the merits of our Paralympic athletes, but focusing on their ability to push limits doesn’t help us understand what daily life is like for people living with disability ... or how to create a more inclusive society.”

A new government priority

The rights of disabled people in France have been set forth by two major pieces of legislation in the last 50 years – one in 1975, primarily to orient the sociomedical sector, and another in 2005 to define disability for the first time in France.

But due to various draft laws and exemptions, much of that legislation was never implemented. In a 2021 report, the United Nations called on the French government to “review and bring into line” its disability policies with U.N. conventions.

The current government is hoping to change that. It wants to use the Olympics and Paralympic Games to improve accessibility, and made that a cornerstone of its candidacy to host the Games.

The government has pumped €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) into making the Paris region’s transportation system, shops, and restaurants more accessible by this summer. It will also provide 1,000 taxi drivers with state aid to go toward buying vehicles accessible to wheelchair users and those with reduced mobility, which will be available during and after the Games. Taking cues from the London Games, Paris organizers have consciously promoted the Olympics and Paralympics as one uniform event.

But changing public views about disability has been harder.

“We’ve had to do a lot of trainings and awareness raising,” says Didier Eyssartier, director of Agefiph, an organization that is working with Olympic organizers to provide volunteer and work opportunities to people with disabilities during the Games. “Some employers think someone with a disability won’t be able to do a certain job or that hiring them will be complicated. ... We need to continue changing perspectives.”

Such stereotypes predate Olympic and Paralympic planning and are hard to tackle. According to a March 2024 study by polling center Ifop, 72% of French people associated disability with wheelchair use – compared with the roughly 10% of French people with disabilities who actually use one. Meanwhile, only 8% and 9% associated disability with visual and hearing disabilities, respectively, though people with those make up more than half of France’s population with disabilities. More than three-quarters of those polled felt that disabilities weren’t adequately represented on French television.

Change is slow, but coming. Since the beginning of 2023, two new roles have been created on prime-time television for actors with physical or mental disability. And France’s audiovisual sector is trying to boost awareness after a 2021 report showed that only 0.8% of people with disabilities were represented on television screens.

“Last year, my editor asked me if I would show my wheelchair during my broadcasts,” says Youssef Bouchikhi, who presents a culture program for public broadcaster France Télévisions. “At first I felt strange about it. I didn’t want people to just see that. But now I think it’s a good thing.”

A need to show real progress

There are hopes that the Paralympic Games can make similar strides in raising awareness, as was the case during the London Olympics. In 2012, late-night talk show “The Last Leg” was broadcast alongside the Paralympic Games, featuring three comedians, two of whom are each missing a foot or leg. During the Games, the show brought in more than a million viewers each night. It was so popular that it continued after the Games and has aired more than 320 episodes through this year.

But finding a balance between explicitly addressing disability and normalizing it has been a challenge. Ms. Fillion, the sociologist, says society must be wary of “handi-washing.”

“We can’t show that we’re a disability-friendly place if we don’t then help make daily life easier for someone with disabilities,” she says.

The city of London has struggled to maintain the momentum it gained during the Paralympic Games. While they did lead to a rebuild of several underground tube stations, only one-third of stations currently offer step-free access.

Japan, meanwhile, used its Olympics in Tokyo, which took place in 2021, as a vehicle to overhaul the accessibility of its national rail system, which is now over 90% barrier-free. It also introduced a host of disability laws, including one that explicitly bans discrimination.

As Paris looks ahead to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, organizers still have challenges ahead. President Emmanuel Macron admitted on national television in mid-April that Paris’ public transportation system would not be 100% wheelchair-accessible by the Olympics. And only 830,000 out of the 2.8 million tickets for Paralympic events have thus far been sold.

But if this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic events can push forward the discussion on disability, accessibility, and inclusion, advocates say that’s one step in the right direction.

“Sometimes kids will walk by and point at my wheelchair, and their parents will shush them,” says Ms. d’Acremont. “I’m sure they’re just trying to be nice, but I wish they would come over and ask me about it instead. Disability is not something we need to hide.”