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vendredi 5 août 2011

A promenade, with scooter

Judith Mahoney Pasternak est écrivain et vit entre New-York et Paris. Elle nous accompagné lors de notre balade le long des quais de Seine, voici son récit:

As a New Yorker transplanted to Paris I’m very conscious of the many ways in which my adopted country and city are improvements over the ones I came from. One eats better in Paris (and for less money); the cultural life is more vibrant; there are more people protesting in the streets when the people they elected do wrong. But accessibility for people with disabilities—not so much.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of watching a brave woman in the motorized wheelchair called a “scooter” join a promenade along the banks of the Seine. For a kilometer or so, we traversed a narrow walkway—I don’t think I could have been comfortable in the heavy scooter so close to the drop into the Seine—but it got worse. Perhaps every 100 metres, a stanchion in the middle of the pavement required her to maneuver around it, on the water side because there wasn’t room for the chair on the wall side. At one point, one of the participants had to help guide the scooter, only inches away from the edge.

I wish I could meet challenges with her élan. Perhaps, though, Paris will have the will soon to make more mobility available even for those without her extraordinary courage.

—Judith Mahoney Pasternak

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