Joint with other units, a Christian volunteer service center in Jiangsu Province organized a public welfare activity of promoting the world of accessibility on December 3, International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
On that day, Reed’s Home Volunteer Service Center, Zhenjiang Municipal People’s Procuratorate, and Zhenjiang Association of the Physically Disabled Persons launched the event, reported the Center.
At the beginning of the activity, Yin Simin, a volunteer from the procuratorial cloud platform, and Tu Jing, a person with cerebral palsy from Reed’s Home, took wheelchairs to public places for the travel experience. In front of a barrier-free ramp leading to the underground passage of a square, neither of them can freely go up and down with their own strength, in need of the assistance of volunteers to pass. A disabled person who passed by in a wheelchair managed to go downhill carefully, but his several attempts to climb the hill alone failed.
Then, two groups of volunteers accompanied Tu Jing and Yin Simin to two nearby large-scale commercial complexes to carry out real-life experiences respectively. They also encountered many problems, such as people in wheelchairs could not reach the main entrance or pass normally in some business areas, or reach the public toilets where barrier-free ramps were too steep.
After the real-life experience, a symposium was jointly held by the Procuratorate and Reed's home on the construction of a barrier-free environment, attended by family members of disabled people and volunteers who put forward suggestions for improvement.
Participants generally believed that a barrier-free environment included not only passages and facilities but also a good social environment. The whole society should advocate full respect for disabled people, avoid discrimination, and encourage them to be self-reliant. At the same time, they called for great attention to some problems, such as the lack of barrier-free passages in some urban complexes, and the lack of barrier-free signs that make it inconvenient for the disabled to enter and exit.
Since 2020, the city's procuratorial organs have filed and handled 52 public interest litigation cases on barrier-free environment construction and promoted the implementation of more than 60 barrier-free facility renovations, rectifying more than 100 cases, such as illegal occupation of blind roads for production, operation, construction site enclosure, and stacking.
On the day of the event, 15 cerebral palsy network partner organizations jointly carried out onsite advocacy activities in Beijing, Sichuan, Jilin, Guangxi, Guizhou, Fujian, Hunan, Henan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Anhui, and Hebei. The Chaoyang Volunteer Team of Jiangsu University of Science and Technology and the college students of Xinghuo Volunteers of Zhenjiang College also carried out online accessibility advocacy activities.
- Translated by Abigail Wu
