I agree with you about everything except what you say about European countries. I use a wheelchair and spent most of 2024 and 2025 traveling and living in Europe—Arcachon and Paris, France; San Sebastián and Bilbao, Spain; and Oxford and London. In France and Spain, every apartment building I stayed in had an elevator but none were big enough for my small manual chair. The San Sebastián one was at the top of six stairs! In Oxford, our apartment building didn’t have an elevator at all—thank goodness we were on the ground floor. This is a universal problem—it needs to be consistently addressed world-wide.
Thanks for sharing this. Did you have a sense of how old the elevators were? My understanding was that the legal cab size in Europe was sized to accommodate a standard wheelchair.
That sounds so hard, though! I can imagine how stressful and inconvenient that must have been.
None of the buildings was built after 1965–Oxford was the newest, probably mid-60s, Arcachon (my husband reminds me) actually DID fit my chair just, and Spain and Paris were probably early 20th century or even older. Elevators seemed old too. I mean, I was grateful for ANY lift—even if my spouse had to carry the chair up. 😀
It was hard but also amazing—how lucky I am to have been able to do that at all.
I agree with you about everything except what you say about European countries. I use a wheelchair and spent most of 2024 and 2025 traveling and living in Europe—Arcachon and Paris, France; San Sebastián and Bilbao, Spain; and Oxford and London. In France and Spain, every apartment building I stayed in had an elevator but none were big enough for my small manual chair. The San Sebastián one was at the top of six stairs! In Oxford, our apartment building didn’t have an elevator at all—thank goodness we were on the ground floor. This is a universal problem—it needs to be consistently addressed world-wide.
Thanks for sharing this. Did you have a sense of how old the elevators were? My understanding was that the legal cab size in Europe was sized to accommodate a standard wheelchair.
That sounds so hard, though! I can imagine how stressful and inconvenient that must have been.
None of the buildings was built after 1965–Oxford was the newest, probably mid-60s, Arcachon (my husband reminds me) actually DID fit my chair just, and Spain and Paris were probably early 20th century or even older. Elevators seemed old too. I mean, I was grateful for ANY lift—even if my spouse had to carry the chair up. 😀
It was hard but also amazing—how lucky I am to have been able to do that at all.
Thank you so much for your advocacy efforts on this. I just signed on to the letter and will be encouraging others to do the same.
Thank you so much! I am excited for people to understand this important issue further