Government of the Republic of Serbia
Author: Snježana Jolić (Social Inclusion Blog)
Accessibility of public transport to persons with disabilities is a grave problem in our country, but as my experience teaches me, we are not alone in it. Public transportation has not been entirely resolved even in some countries that are far ahead of us in rights and quality of life of persons with disabilities. With respect to the countries in the region, the situation varies. I thnik that the most progress was made in Slovenia and Croatia. I think, but I might be wrong that Belgrade is the only city in Serbia that has the problem of transportation of persons with disabilties resolved to some extent. However, in addition to metropolitan transport, the problem is bigger for inter-city and international carriers. This was the reason for our little delegation including myself, Vidan Danković from the Association for Revision of Accessibility and Miomirka Grcić as my assistant to take a trip to London in June.
We faced first problems already when organising the trip as we had to find an airline that provided the service of using oxygen bottles on their flight. Most of the low-budget airlines do not have this service or may allow personal device to be taken on board. However, the airlines that do have oxygen bottles charge them from EUR 50 to 150 per flight. I do not understand why they charge for something that already exists in every airplane, but neither why is there a limit to the number of persons with disabilities on flights. So it often happens that you need to postpone your flight or take it earlier, if all the seats are filled on the flight you wanted to take. Be that as it may, we still embarked the plane to London. (…)
The text in its entirety can be found on the Social Inclusion Blog.
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