The urban environment accessibility for people with disabilities

The article analyzes the accessibility of facilities and services for people with disabilities in different living environment on the example of the Vologda region. The introductory part presents data on international documents, regulating legal relations in the sphere of social protection of the disabled, world statistics of disability and international experience of providing disable people with equal access to all life spheres.The source material to study the accessibility of facilities and services for persons with disabilities in the Vologda region was the results of the public opinion poll, carried out by ISEDT RAN. The survey aim was to establish the society’s attitude to the issues of integration of people with disabilities, to ensure their equal participation in all life spheres. The positive attitude to people with disabilities is established to prevail among the region’s population. At the same time, there is no interest to meet the challenges of integration, to let people with disabilities equally participate in public life. The respondents with disabilities were the deaf, the blind, persons, requiring constant nurse care and persons, requiring help when moving. The key survey objective was to identify the most significant problems and opinions, concerning the measures effectiveness to create barrier-free environment. The analysis of the obtained data revealed the achievements in ensuring the environment accessibility over the last year, the level of facilities and services adaptation for disabled people in different spheres. The article also offers a rating of the most significant problems for people with disabilities, reveals specificity of accessibility for each categories of the disabled. The final part of the article singles out possible causes of the barriers existence and complexity of their removal in the urban environment, shows a parallel between an income level of people with disabilities and accessibility to different facilities and services.To sum it up, the article suggests some measures to increase the urban environment accessibility for people with disabilities.