Accessibility barriers

Containers on reserved parking spaces.

This wheelchair ramp is located next to a tube, which makes it useless for people in wheelchairs.

An accessibility barrier is an obstacle that prevents or hinders the performance of a certain task or activity, thus affecting the full social integration of that person.

Accessibility barriers are divided into two large groups: those present in the physical environment (in nature) and those artificially future by society. The latter, created by man, can be of various types: psychological, cultural, architectural, urban, communication and information, etc.

Technical aids make it possible to remove some physical barriers, but psychological or social barriers can only be removed through education and culture.

It seems that society has realized that in addition to being an ethical issue, creating accessible media can also be beneficial, since anyone can have some kind of disability in the future. In particular, within the scope of the economy and the market, if accessibility to a certain service or product is achieved, the company's potential customers are expanded, which is always beneficial.

An example of an architectural barrier for a person with reduced mobility is a staircase. A technical aid for this case can be a ramp or an elevator, allowing the person who moves in a wheelchair to reach the same destination as through the stairs. In Spain, successive national, regional and local governments have carried out numerous interventions in favor of people with disabilities and have promulgated regulations for the removal of architectural barriers, limiting, for example, the maximum slope of ramps to 12%, although they are very frequent. breaches, even in public services or administrative concession [1] (broken link available at Internet Archive; see history, first and last version)..

Recently, racism has been included among the social barriers, since it can prevent people belonging to ethnic minorities from carrying out daily tasks.