UITP Launches New Working Group On Accessibility
This week, on 3 December, it was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This day calls attention to the collective responsibility of building a world that is more inclusive, more equitable and more accessible.
For UITP, this annual moment provides an important opportunity to reflect on the progress already made and to take a meaningful step further. This year, that step is the launch of the Working Group on Accessibility, a new initiative designed to strengthen accessibility across the public transport sector and within our own organisation.
Putting accessibility at the centre
Accessibility has always held an essential place in UITP’s wider mission to advance sustainable urban mobility across the globe. An estimated 15 percent of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, and most people experience mobility limitations in everyday situations such as carrying shopping bags, navigating with a pram or using a wheelchair, which underlines the scale of this challenge.
Many of our committees and platforms already work on accessibility, whether through bus and metro operations, demand responsive services, digital innovation or broader policy frameworks. Alongside this sector-wide work, our internal efforts continue to develop. Our new website follows strong digital accessibility standards, ensuring our information is usable and welcoming to all audiences.
This work shows clear progress, yet it also highlights a key point. Accessibility is discussed in many parts of UITP and among many expert groups, but these discussions often take place within distinct modal or thematic silos. Each of these perspectives is crucial, yet the user experience of accessibility is never limited to one mode, one interface or one moment in a journey.
What is needed is a combined approach that speaks to the complete picture.
Why UITP is creating a working group on accessibility
The new working group has been designed to meet this exact need. Rather than duplicating the work already done across the committees, its purpose is to act as a transversal bridge, track all work produced within UITP and provide a focal point for the issue of accessibility.
Its main objective is to ensure that the customer remains at the heart of public transport.
Following the dynamics brought in from UITP’s Horizon 2020 TRIPS project, a key characteristic of this working group will be to ensure that no one is left behind and to recognise the central principle of accessibility advocates, ‘nothing about us without us’.
Its proposed mission is to promote a coherent approach to inclusive mobility across all forms of public transport and on-demand mobility. By doing so, it aims to support accessibility from a physical, digital and organisational perspective, while also encouraging greater social inclusion and employability for people with reduced mobility across the sector.
The added value of such a transversal group is clear. It can help create a door-to-door perspective on accessibility, making sure that interfaces between modes are considered with equal weight alongside rolling stock, fleets, stations, public spaces, information points and ticketing.
It can work to harmonise standards and practices so that universal design becomes a shared principle among operators, authorities, manufacturers and digital service providers.
It can support cross sector collaboration by bringing together user associations and mobility stakeholders to co-develop solutions that reflect real lived experience.
The working group will also be well placed to monitor how new technologies affect accessibility. Innovations such as Mobility as a Service, artificial intelligence, on demand mobility and autonomous vehicles bring new opportunities but can also create new barriers.
A transversal forum offers a way to assess these impacts and encourage inclusive design from the start.
Linking ambition with action
All of these objectives support UITP’s broader commitment to accessible and sustainable mobility on a global scale.
While the launch of the working group marks a major milestone, it also builds on a series of important initiatives carried out in recent years. These efforts, many of them developed with partners across Europe, have strengthened our understanding of accessibility and helped prepare the ground for the work ahead.
These include
- The TRIPs project, which developed a co design approach that allowed people disabled by inaccessible environments to take a leading role in designing accessible and usable transport systems
- The Lecco Declaration on Accessibility
- And the review of the R 107 Directive, where UITP proposed crucial accessibility amendments to the UN Bus Construction Regulation.
These initiatives have contributed valuable insights and practical foundations that now support our current EU funded research activities.
How our ongoing projects are shaping accessible mobility
UITP is advancing accessibility through its current EU-funded research projects, in particular UPPER and GOLIA. Each one brings a different angle, creating a richer understanding of what inclusive mobility can look like.
The UPPER city of Lisbon is testing new wayfinding solutions at one of the city’s most complex bus and metro interchanges. Tactile paths on the ground are combined with NaviLens digital codes that passengers can scan to receive audio guidance, information about nearby services and real-time departure updates. This pilot has been successfully deployed worldwide with examples in Barcelona, New York and Murcia, to name a few.
GOLIA, launched this year, takes a broader system view. Its Social Optimum Mobility Index will help cities assess mobility through a social-equity lens, considering the needs of low-income residents, older people, children, and those with limited mobility. The GO-X digital tools will bring together data from multiple sectors to give a richer picture of what is happening on the ground.
Alongside this, the ENGAGEMOVE toolkit aims to simplify ways for communities and stakeholders to contribute to local mobility decisions. These tools will be tested in Florence, Pilsen, and Antwerp, each city focusing on different aspects of inclusive mobility planning.
These projects show how accessibility can be strengthened both through practical solutions on the ground and through better planning approaches that place social inclusion at their core.
Looking ahead
The launch of the Working Group on Accessibility signals UITP’s commitment to shaping mobility that is accessible to all. It also reflects our ambition to ensure that accessibility becomes a shared responsibility across the organisation.
As our association evolves and our digital tools continue to improve, the working group will play an important role in connecting the many strands of work already taking place both inside and outside our association.
The first meeting of the Working Group took place on 3 December, marking the official kick off of this new chapter.
As the world marked the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, UITP is proud to take this next step and to continue building a public transport sector where accessible mobility is not an aspiration but a lived reality for everyone.
Are you interested in joining the working group? Contact Hilia Boris Iglesia: [email protected]
