In Sassari, architectural barriers for people with disabilities still remain too high. Yet another demonstration occurred yesterday on Viale Umberto, in the Sassari Courthouse branch where Francesca Arcadu, vice president for Sassari of the Italian Union for the Fight against Muscular Dystrophy, was scheduled to sign documents relating to her mother's inheritance. But she and her wheelchair found themselves faced with an insurmountable obstacle.
"A very high bar," Francesca says, "that I couldn't overcome." And here the situation becomes surreal because the paperwork must be signed in any case, but not inside, in the air conditioning, but, given the impossibility of access to the Chancellery, on the street in the scorching heat that has been plaguing the city and the island lately. "About half an hour passed, and all the employees were very kind to me, reminding me, however, that the problem had been reported for some time." And that will remain so because, it seems, a retrofit and the construction of a ramp are not planned anytime soon.
"But I wonder how it's possible to continue like this," Francesca adds, then emphasizing a point: "What if it had been a rainy day, where could I have taken shelter?" A complex situation, this time also aggravated by the emotional burden of the loss of her mother, and which adds to the many other situations in which the lives of people with disabilities are made complicated, if not sometimes impossible, by the myriad obstacles of the city's architecture. "Welcome to civilization," she concludes bitterly.
