A social performance by Access Israel in honor of Disability day around the world: “All excuses are over; don’t park in a handicap spot!”
Yuval Wagner, chairman of Access Israel said, “If a 1000 shekel fine does not prevent the phenomenon of disabled parking offenders then I call on the Minister of Transportation to raise the fine.
Every year thousands of fines are recorded by the authorities and police traffic inspectors. The penalty of a crime like this is a 1000 shekel fine. A collected estimate shows that around 20 million shekels is collected from this specific sort of fine, and yet- that does not solve the painful, frustrating, and intolerable issue for hundreds of thousands of handicapped people.
In Israel there are 150,000 people that have all sorts of types of disabilities with handicapped parking privileges. To all those people, handicapped parking spaces are critical. With no handicapped spaces available at all times, the quality of life for those same handicapped people is impaired and their independence is compromised along with their ability to integrate with society.
In honor of disability day all around the world that was declared by the united nations to be on December 3rd, Access Israel had decided to raise awareness of this issue through a social- environmental performance to demonstrate the sense of a person with a disability seeking a parking spot- “All excuses are over; don’t park in a handicap spot!”
On Monday, December 1st, dozens of wheel chairs were parked on 4th street from 7 AM which are the busiest hours including people going about their business and trying to find parking spots in which the only ones left are handicapped parking spots.
The idea behind the social movement was to promote awareness and provide information in an original, environmental, social, artistic and even provocative and outrageous way. It let drivers feel what it is like to be a disabled person trying to get to their destination and find a proper and free parking spot that is also a handicapped spot.
Yuval Wagner, chairman of Access Israel said, “It is incredible that in Israel at the end of the year 2014 there is still no basic social sensitivity towards people with disabilities who require a handicapped parking spot. It is incredible the amount of laws that are broken because of a handicapped parking spot, family members are not permitted to use the handicapped parking tags, not all disabled people can get a handicapped parking tag easily. I call on the Minister of Transportation to increase the handicapped parking offender’s fine. I call on the police and traffic inspectors to continue to enforce the law about handicapped parking spots without compromise and I hope that the awareness will improve in 2015.”
Accessible parking is the first step for disabled people to integrate properly with society and without it true integration for disabled people with not happen, it is important to remember that the first step of integration and integration of the workforce is working with people that have disabilities and reduced mobility and making sure that they have a comfortable parking spot in order to get to where they need to go. Also, a company that does not respect and understand the importance of handicapped parking spots laws will not be able to completely integrate with society.
The performance of “Excuses are over; don’t park in a handicapped parking spot,” represents the difficulties and barriers that are encountered by people with disabilities on a daily bases.
Thank you to the publicist agency for their creative and full contribution to the cause.
Also thank you to everyone who helped:
Society of Yad Sarah, PR- Orna Ben- Chaim, Lauren Kvity and staff of “Kan Bonim”, on their online activity contribution.
Photos: Tom Ganim and Dror Paz. Edited by Jordan and Pixel camera- Yaniv Reshef- media TV, the Israel police and the Access Israel team.
