With France's enactment of the Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation and Citizenship of People with Disabilities Act, the country has reformed its accessibility policy. Within a decade, collective transportation services must be made accessible and specialized services are viewed as a substitute for accessible transportation services. When it is technically infeasible to render existing conventional services accessible, transportation authorities must make specialized services available for people with disabilities within three years. Admittedly, the new law benefits from a favorable context. People with disabilities no longer accept to have special treatment, and many technical solutions have already been developed. Lastly, the accessibility issue is now set on the institutional agenda of several organizations. Nevertheless, future decrees may impact its effectiveness and change its objectives. Some shortcomings in the new legal framework can already be identified. It is feared that the priority order between accessible conventional services and specialized services may be reversed at a local level. Conflicting implementation strategies in the same region without coordination and a differentiated implementation throughout the national territory are foreseeable. There are also structural forces such as financial and economic constraints which challenge the legitimacy of the new law. Several tools for local actors should be set on the research agenda to avoid some of these potentical outcomes from coming to fruition.
Samenvatting