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New ordinance to boost barrier-free hotel rooms ahead of Paralympics

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It stipulates that standard rooms in hotels and lodgings with renovated, newly or additionally constructed floor space of over 1,000 square meters must provide doorways at least 80 centimeters wide and bathroom entrances that are a minimum 70 cm wide.

Fine, well and good, but it does nothing for the existing hotels, only those being renovated and new construction. Not much good here for the Olympics! (Again Olympics.....rolling eyes)

As the existing number of wheelchair-accessible rooms is insufficient to meet demand, the new ordinance is expected to push hotel operators to further renovate standard rooms to make them barrier-free.

Push? How? If there is no schedule for renovation, or plans, why would they do it? The costs are enormous for some of these places and there are probably not enough contractors to go around as well to get the work done in time for the Olympics! (Again Olympics.....rolling eyes)

By subsidizing 80 percent of the costs necessary to make existing rooms barrier free, the Tokyo government expects to secure 2,500 rooms per day accessible by the disabled and the elderly during the games, including newly constructed room

Taxpayers money is going to be used for businesses to make money? I think they will find contractors now, easy money! 80%,

I'll be they will find a way to make that 80% subsidy cover the entire cost of the work being done!

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Up until now, the elderly and disabled have never wanted to visit Tokyo, of course...

ffs

3 ( +3 / -0 )

But. to get to these hotels will still be a chore. There are so many dead end escalator runs in Tokyo stations. 1, 2, 3 escalators then stairs! Absurd.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

If you can turn a wheelchair around inside of a Japanese hotel room, you deserve a gold in wheelchair gymnastics.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

While this new ordinance seems like a big improvement on the surface, I do have some serious concerns.

Apparently it stipulates that doorways must be at least 80 cm and bathroom doors at least 70 cm wide. OK, great, but I'm thinking: Is that it?

In my books, a wide enough entrace doesn't make a wheelchair-accessable room. What about a roll-in shower, a bathroom sink that one can roll under in a wheelchair, a mirror that can be tilted, or extended door handles that can actually be reached by a wheelchair user? What about all the hotel facilities? Will they be accessible?

It doesn't say in the article, so I can't be sure whether those features are required by the new ordinance, or whether it's just a matter of widening a few doorframes here and there.

And when I read that the aim seems to be to create "a large number of rooms that cater to a variety of customer needs", rather than to offer a certain number of rooms that would meet the specific needs of independently travelling wheelchair users, it makes me feel suspicious.

Even more so when I read that "the newly available rooms will not be for the exclusive use of the disabled, the elderly and others who need them".

It seems to me that the end product will be a large number of rooms that on the surface can be sold as "barrier-free", but won't be accessible enough for wheelchair users who travel independently, and which may be occupied by other guests during peak times anyway, meaning that those who really need accessible rooms may still end up with nowhere to stay.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

It's great Japan is doing what the US did in the early 80s.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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