"I hope next year's Beijing Paralympics will promote Beijing all over the world as a city accessible to the physically challenged," said Zhao Chunluan, President of the Beijing Disabled Persons' Federation. China's capital is fast becoming accessible to the disabled, and the Paralympics have played a large part in that. The Games have provided a catalyst for the city to build facilities and introduce regulations for future construction, which will allow disabled people to more fully participate in Beijing's social life.

The Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games will be held between September 6 and 17 next year. The elite sports event will include athletes from six different disability categories, including spinal cord injury, amputee, visually impaired, cerebral palsy, les autres, and mentally handicapped. The host cities of the Games are obliged to provide facilities, services and premises accessible to these athletes at the competition stadiums and around the city.

It has been estimated that the Paralympics in Beijing will attract over 4,000 athletes, 2,500 coaches and officials and more than 4,000 journalists from over 150 countries. Athletes and their families will also become tourists during the Paralympics, which will put the accessibility of the city's facilities and its services to the disabled under test.

Accessible environment

Deng Pufang, Chairman of China Disabled Persons' Federation and Executive President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games, was also the winner of the 2003 United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. Suffering from paralysis from the waist down, Deng firmly believes in society's responsibility to empower every citizen, including disabled people. "Physically challenged people need equal opportunities and equal access as well as some aid to eliminate barriers. To create a physically and mentally accessible environment is an important task for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics," he said.

Beijing has already been speedily improving disability access. On May 16, 2004, the National Day for Helping the Disabled, Beijing led all of China in releasing a regional regulation on the construction and management of disability access to public facilities. The regulation stipulates that newly built, expanded and rebuilt public premises, residential premises and roads must include disability access.

In Olympic history, Beijing is the first host city to have only one organizing committee preparing for both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games at the same time. There is one Paralympic Games Department under the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) in charge of coordinating the preparations for Paralympics of all other departments of BOCOG.

Zhang Qiuping, head of BOCOG's Paralympic Games Department, said one special challenge for the preparations is that some tailored reconstruction for Paralympic sports within the Olympic venues could only be finished in the 10-day gap between the closing of the Olympic Games and the opening of the Paralympic Games.

Zhang said that the work of compiling a guide of all disability accessible traffic facilities for disabled people coming to Beijing during the Olympics and Paralymics has also been put off. The reason is that Beijing has embarked on a citywide campaign to improve disability access.

Since August, the Beijing Municipal Government has designated the 16th day of every month as the Day of Disability Access Promotion. All the five Days of Disability Access Promotion in the second half of 2007 have been respectively given a theme. August was devoted to promoting disability access at hotels and restaurants; September at hospitals; October for traffic facilities; November for tourism spots; and December for shopping malls.

Beijing has set up 18 inspection teams looking at disability access, which include 5,000 inspectors made up of handicapped people, senior citizens and social volunteers. Team members have been through a strict training and appraisal process. Their inspection responsibilities include determining whether disability access symbols in public venues meet international norms, whether disabled access facilities operate normally and whether facilities are repaired when damaged. Once a problem is found, the inspectors can require related organizations to redress it according to municipal regulations on the construction and management of disability access at public facilities.