The city of Luxembourg has won the 2022 Access City Award for becoming more accessible to persons with disabilities. The city has made accessibility a priority, implementing a wide range of innovative solutions and improvements that follows a ‘Design for All’ approach to make access easier for everyone, including for persons with disabilities. It has also made information about political decisions more accessible by making key council meetings available in sign language, on top of spoken language and accessible transcription.
The city of Helsinki in Finland and the city of Barcelona in Spain are the second and third place winners. A special mention was given to Leuven in Belgium for mainstreaming accessibility, including in the digital area, and to Palma in Spain for improving access to the physical environment, including beaches and parks.
To mark the European Year of Rail, the Commission has awarded a special mention to Porto in Portugal for improving the accessibility of its train stations.
Vassilis Louziotis, AGE member ( 50+ Hellas, Greece) engage into the Task Force on age-friendly environments was part of the EU Jury:
“This was the first time I was asked to join the European jury for the awards. I was really impressed by some of the specific projects designed and implemented by some cities. They certainly represent good practices which can serve as examples for others. The main subject was making cities accessible to people with disabilities, but many of the participating cities made special effort to include older people as well. While I was reading and discussing each city’s file, I was amazed by the dedication of so many people in large and small cities, in their effort to make their cities truly accessible for all citizens and visitors.”
