UITP signs a declaration to improve accessibility within public transport (the Lecco Declaration)

UITP has signed a declaration to improve accessibility within public transport. The ‘Lecco Declaration’ (named after the Italian city where the agreement was reached and signed) is a crucial framework aligning key principles that organisations can build on to improve their own implementation of accessibility.

The Lecco Declaration is a framework of key accessibility principles and will enable the development of a Memorandum of Understanding to be signed early next year. 

UITP signes the Lecco Declaration

The Lecco Declaration was signed by UITP Secretary General Mohamed Mezghani, Georgios Kouroupetroglou, President of AAATE (Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology) and Laura Alčiauskaitė, Project Coordinator at the European Network of Independent Living. Each organisation is a partner of the EU-funded project, TRIPS.

The project and its partners have been actively working on co-creation with users who have disabilities, and public transport providers, to develop new design concepts to remove barriers and make public transport more accessible.

The core concepts of the Lecco Declaration are the following: “Freedom of movement is a human right and personal mobility should be guaranteed; Mobility is related to other rights such as participation, education and employment; Public transport is a vector of social and environmental policies and values – connecting places and people to foster social and economic development; Technological developments have the potential to reduce or overcome access barriers by providing new solutions.

“When discussing accessibility, it is challenging to make sure all the different transport stakeholders are on board with such measures and coordinating their efforts. The Lecco declaration is important because it forces the sector to focus their attention on the user. We have to educate the sector that we are not only doing this for persons with reduced mobility, but we are doing this for everyone”, says Mohamed Mezghani, UITP Secretary General.