UITP has signed a declaration to improve accessibility within public transport. 

The Lecco declaration is a framework aligning key principles that organizations can build on to improve their own implementation of accessibility.

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 organization 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.

“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.”