Naples, Marta: “I’m 21 and my wheels are spinning”
Dear mayor, I’m Marta, I’m 21 and my wheels are spinning. I am a girl like many others, but I have something more, I am a person with disabilities and to move I need my wheelchair, my travel companion. My life is difficult, paved with good intentions, but full of obstacles, barriers and a lot of indifference.
I love studying, learning and traveling and I travel a lot, I know many cities in Italy and many other countries well, but I don’t know my city, Naples, well. My beloved city does not love me and does not welcome me! It is difficult to leave the house with my wheelchair, to reach the center, park the car, take a walk, enter a bar. It is almost impossible to use public transport.
When I was attending primary school I was never able to pass between parked cars, in middle school a private driver accompanied me because the municipal transport service assigned at the end of December did not respond to my real needs, I should have been in the transport service and not the other way around. All superiors always with private driver. To reach my school 500 meters from home, going there with the chair would have been impossible.
To choose the university during the orientation I went with my family while my class went on the subway.
And at the university not even talking about it. Despite having passed the admission tests and being exempt from university fees due to my disability, it would have been impossible to reach her or get out of the car. The absence of reserved parking spaces, the absence of parking spaces in general, the absence of the possibility of stopping prevented me from getting out of the car.
The policemen who download you of those images move away while the wheelchair in front of the university is one of those images that I will not be able to forget. I attend an excellent University based in Rome, I am followed by the inclusion service and I don’t have to fight with anyone to park the car, even if I have to pay the full tuition!
After 21 years we have not been able to get rid of the barriers that my parish presents, indeed the disabled parking has disappeared. To park on the reserved spaces at the Central Station, you must block the road network, get out of the car, call the staff and open a chain. A chain that I also found on the walkway with the slide.
In my Naples, on Via Marina there is a huge inscription that welcomes everyone who will include in the city and so it says “Nobody Excluded” … But who are we people with disabilities really in front of the eyes of our administrators?
We are excluded! Often marginalized, isolated, ignored and sometimes segregated!
When will you start looking at us as people who have rights?
I want my city to start becoming inclusive also for people with disabilities, like other European cities where a girl in a wheelchair or a blind girl can go out alone, take a bus, go to university, do shopping, goes into a bar, without hunting for assistants and without being accompanied by family members.
I do not get discouraged, I have a YouTube channel to tell what disability is and what accessibility means, I meet school students to share my experiences and to raise awareness on the subject, I try to make my small contribution.
I appeal to the new Mayor and the new Council that will come and I launch my proposal and my invitation, I would like you to listen to those who live with disabilities because to overcome obstacles and create an inclusive environment and climate it is necessary to start from the experiences of those like me he experiences obstacles and barriers every day together with his family.
Of course, inclusive policies are often implemented, but generally these do not respond to our real needs. The initiatives that are implemented must be measured to verify whether they can easily include inclusion or whether they remain a good one that does not respond to the needs of citizens with disabilities. So I leave my motto to the Mayor, to our representatives and also to every citizen, six words for food for thought: “Make a difference, overcome indifference!”. But in the meantime, while I confidently wait, my wheels are spinning!