Most citizens with disabilities face difficulties accessing polling stations

Most citizens with disabilities face difficulties accessing polling stations

BEIRUT: Many registered disabled voters said they could not could not cast their votes in Sunday's polls due to a lack of provisions to accommodate them. Reports coming in from citizens across Lebanon said that voters in wheelchairs were unable to access polling stations in order to cast their ballots.
There are approximately 68,000 Lebanese voters registered as disabled with the of Social Affairs Ministry, but with most polling stations held in buildings unsuitable for wheelchairs many could not reach the polling booths.
Voting access caused problems for people at a station in Mount Lebanon, with one voter reporting "[There was] no passway for handicapped voters. Where I voted, it was hard even for old people to reach the voting booths."

In Jdeideh too there were reports that it was almost impossible to access the booths in the town's polling stations.
One voter from Tarik Jdideh said there were no facilities provided for the disabled. However, one man in a wheelchair was carried up three levels of stairs in order to cast his vote.
At a polling station in the Beirut III district, the army was on hand to help some of the older voters, but for Mustafa, 56, who has been wheelchair-bound since 2004 after losing the use of his legs in a car accident, it proved more difficult.
"As soon as I approached the building and saw the crowds I knew it was going to be physically impossible for me to get past.

"It is so ridiculous that even now there are few provisions made for people in wheelchairs and it is outrageous that I feel as though I have lost my right to vote because of it. This is the 21st century and something really should be done."
With the polling station on the second floor and with no accessibility ramps or sufficiently wide entrances, Mustafa could not cast his vote in the country's crucial parliamentary elections.
An official at the polling station said: "It is difficult to get up the stairs, but we would try to help if it was needed."

The Lebanese government recently issued a decree that was to provide access to polls for the disabled and allow assistance to be given in the voting process. This is the first decree of its kind in Lebanon.
The decree included criteria for polling stations: They must have parking lots, entrances, corridors, wheelchair ramps, elevators, toilets and voting halls big enough to install curtained booths to ensure privacy.
However, the Lebanese Physically Handicapped Union, sponsored by the International Foundation for Election Systems, conducted a study of the 1,741 polling stations in Lebanon and assessed them according to the ministry's six accessibility criteria. The results revealed that only six polling stations - less that half of 1 percent - out of 1,741 satisfied all the accessibility criteria.