Marburg News: Access city award, 2012: Marburg is among the top four in Europe

Access city award, 2012: Marburg is among the top four in Europe

We have the following quote about Marburg from the poet and collector of fairytales Jacob Grimm: "In Marburg, one must move one's legs, and climb upstairs and downstairs!” This peculiar topography - a medieval city on a mountainside, with cobblestone streets - was also to be mentioned by City Commissioner Dr. Kerstin Weinbach in Brussels, at the presentation of the access city award in 2012, as an example of the multiple challenges facing the Marburg city administration as it moved to make the city barrier free. Unfortunately, Ms. Weinbach’s flight to the European capital, in which she was to be accompanied by the chairman of the Handicapped Advisory Council, was cancelled due to a technical problem of the aircraft.

The European Union have called upon cities across Europe with more than 50,000 inhabitants to compete for the access award in 2012. In twenty-three countries, juries selected 114 European cities, of which eight got onto the shortlist: Grenoble, France; Cracow, Poland; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Olmouc, Czechia; Salzburg, Austria; Santander, Spain; Terrassa, Spain; and Marburg. At the beginning of December, during the conference of the European Day of Disabled Persons, Salzburg was declared the winner. Marburg was under the last four.

The title is awarded annually to cities which have provided barrier freedom in fundamental aspects of inner-city life, and implemented it with comprehensive approaches in the following four areas:

· barrier freedom in buildings with public spaces
· barrier freedom in public transport and the associated infrastructure
· barrier freedom in communications and information technology, and
· barrier freedom in public services and facilities.

The historic city on the Lahn, harks back not only to the tradition of St. Elizabeth, who chose Marburg as her place of residence after she was widowed, and here continued her charitable work until her death. The city also has many blind school pupils and university students at the Academy for the Blind, some of whom go on to study at the University of Marburg, or enter professional training.

Blind people in Marburg are supported by advanced traffic technology, including traffic lights with signals and vibration devices, coloured curbstones or raise stones on walkways. Here, various demands for barrier freedom for different affected groups must be reconciled. For example, a curbstone is a necessary means of orientation for blind people, but it is at the same time a barrier to people with wheelchairs.

Barrier freedom in the four key areas according to which the award was given is only one aspect. In Marburg, the everyday life of people with and without disabilities is shown in many aspects of town life. A blind person may get angry if his or her white cane gets caught in the spokes of a bicycle while crossing the Mensa Bridge, where bicycles are banned for good reason; that anger may be assuaged when a fellow student offers a hand. In a bus, another young blind man is annoyed at having been offered a seat, since he sees no reason why he can't stand just as well as anyone else. The university town is thus showing its commitment not only in Brussels, but in the day-to-day attitude of its citizens.