“Bavaria will be completely barrier-free in ten years,” announced Horst Seehofer in the Bavarian state parliament in November 2013. There is still a little more than a year to go before this deadline. And it is certainly no coincidence that the state government is communicating less aggressively on the subject this year. “Our goal is to continue to implement the high standards of accessibility,” says Social Affairs Minister Ulrike Scharf Süddeutsche Zeitung. Although a specially set up cabinet committee is entrusted with this, freedom with borders instead of unlimited freedom still prevails in Bavaria. But what is the status quo? Overview of a federal state that wants to abolish the barriers, but has to overcome exactly those barriers to do so.
mobility
According to its own statements, the state government provided 789.1 million euros between 2015 and 2021 for the “Barrier-free Bavaria” program. The Ministry of Social Affairs does not quantify how much of this was spent. However, large investments from federal funds with the addition of Bavarian funds flowed into the expansion of stations and trains – both in local and long-distance traffic. According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, around 490 of around 1,070 train stations and stops were fully barrier-free at the end of 2021. In this way, 79 percent of passengers could travel without a barrier. Experts also attribute the progress to the Passenger Transport Act, which even provided for complete accessibility by 2022.
Patricia Koller, chairwoman of the Bavarian Disability Association, criticizes that it is still impossible to use the train with a group of wheelchair users because there is often only one suitable place. “You feel unwanted everywhere,” says Koller, who uses a wheelchair herself. The Ministry of Social Affairs cannot say how many of the more than 40,000 bus stops are barrier-free. Figures are expected to be available later this year.
The digital space
In contrast to the railways, the state and not the federal government is primarily responsible in the digital space. It’s about simple language on government websites or reading aloud functions for information texts. Minister Scharf emphasizes that “a lot has already been achieved for people with disabilities”. Special opportunities “how we can advance inclusion” lie above all in digital accessibility. “We have to seize these opportunities.”
Ruth Waldmann sees these opportunities already gone. “After two years of the pandemic, accessibility in the digital space should have been standard long ago,” says the SPD member of the state parliament. Kerstin Celina, the social policy spokeswoman for the Greens in the state parliament, also believes that the state government has failed to use the pandemic to make progress in (digital) communication. In the vaccination centers, for example, it would have been easy to use sign language interpreters. “I wonder why that failed so catastrophically,” says Celina, pointing out that the interpreters could also have been switched on digitally.
Public buildings
In contrast to information and communication in the digital space – only included in the program by the state government in 2017 – the focus from the beginning was on public buildings. Bavaria is a long way from Seehofer’s promise in this area. According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, around 53 percent of 2,869 “relevant publicly accessible state buildings” were accessible without barriers and equipped with suitable parking spaces and toilets in June 2021.
Municipalities are required to pay attention to accessibility when refurbishing and to refrain from using thresholds of any kind in new buildings. Uwe Brandl, President of the Bavarian Municipal Council, reports from Abensberg that when the new town hall was built there, an attempt was made not only to accommodate people with mobility impairments, but also those with visual impairments. “But you have to be honest: A certain pragmatism is unfortunately part of it.” It’s about “scaling effects”. And the majority of those affected are limited in their movement – regardless of whether it is due to a wheelchair, pram or age.
healthcare
According to the Bavarian Center for Family and Social Affairs, 1.2 million people with severe disabilities live in Bavaria, and a good half are women. According to the Bavarian Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KVB), 180 of the approximately 400 health insurance practices in Bavaria offer barrier-free gynecological consultations. A special, height-adjustable examination chair is required for this. Claudia Spiegel from the social association VDK complains that too few practices are barrier-free. According to the KVB, these are around 3,800 out of around 6,300 for which figures are available. The Green Kerstin Celina is therefore demanding more and stricter specifications. She was “completely aware that I cannot oblige every doctor to remodel his practice”. But as long as there is no pressure, accessibility is “a nice gimmick”.
The Ministry of Social Affairs reports that the planned hospitals, i.e. those clinics that are to provide Bavaria-wide care, are “mostly barrier-free”. Here, special attention is paid to the principle of accessibility during construction work.
educational institutions
In the case of educational institutions, on the other hand, many plans remain on paper, says Claudia Spiegel from the social association VDK. “If you have a principal who doesn’t follow suit, you have a very difficult time as a parent of a child with a disability.” The Free State exerts less influence on schools than, for example, on the health sector. According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, he supports “in the context of municipal financial equalization”. However, the educational institutions essentially concern the area of responsibility of the municipalities. The ministry therefore does not have figures on accessibility in the classroom.
living and building
The situation is different with regard to the apartments, although their conversion is not subsidized as part of “Bavaria barrier-free”. The 2018 microcensus on the housing situation shows that a little more than three quarters of the approximately 5.6 million apartments in Bavaria had a barrier reduction feature. Sounds good. But it’s deceptive, says Claudia Spiegel from the VDK. If the front door is wide enough for a wheelchair user, but he still can’t get into the apartment without a threshold, “that doesn’t help me either. I can’t roll up the stairs either”.
The Bavarian building code regulates how many barrier-free apartments must be in a house. For example, if a building is higher than 13 meters, it needs an elevator. And if a house has an elevator, at least one third of the apartments must be accessible without barriers. Uwe Brandl from the community day calls for more pragmatism. Instead of designing an entire house like this, one could “build at least the entrance areas and the apartments on the ground floor barrier-free”. That would “achieve noticeable success”. The Green Kerstin Celina finds that this contradicts the principle of self-determination and equal treatment. It’s not about providing accessibility within certain limits. “That’s not how thinking changes.”
It is precisely here, “in the area of awareness-raising,” that the state government has attested to success: the progress is “outstanding”. Patricia Koller, on the other hand, reports on disabled toilets that are misused as storage rooms. And in the private sector too, for example in restaurants or at excursion destinations, too little is happening, so more pressure is needed. Claudia Spiegel from the VDK adds that people with disabilities usually think of those in wheelchairs, she points to the criss-crossing of e-scooters in the cities: “A visually impaired person just flies over them,” says Spiegel. There is still a very long way to go before accessibility.