Acessibilidade das pessoas com deficiência física no espaço público: os estigmas da deficiência e a busca pelo reconhecimento social

Abstract

This study proposes to analyze the forms of appropriation of the public space by people with physical disabilities. The appropriation of the public space presupposes the imbrication of two elements: accessibility and sociability. However, some obstacles do not allow the enjoyment of such elements by people with physical disabilities. The general objective of this research is to identify how people with physical disabilities experience and perceive the relationship between disability, stigma, public space and sociability. The methodologies used were the bibliographical review accompanied by empirical research conducted through interviews and field observation. It has been found that, in general, public spaces are inaccessible for people with physical disabilities. The lack of accessibility varies between the absence of adaptations in the urban structure and the presence of ineffective adaptations, such as narrow or unsafe ramps, preventing people with disabilities from using public spaces with freedom, security and autonomy and to interact socially. This lack of interaction with people with disabilities or the experience of perceiving them always associated with the need of someone else to perform simple acts of daily life is not understood as a social problem of which everyone – State and society – should take responsibility and solve, but as a personal misfortune that is restricted to the individual's body, stimulating the social stigmatization of physical disability. Thus, people with disabilities do not feel as if they are socially recognized, since they are not accepted by society in conditions of normality and, at the same time, they do not perceive themselves as subjects of rights insofar as the public space was not designed or adapted to attend to their specificities and to exercise their rights. However, while they recognize the difficulties imposed, disabled people have been socially and politically organized since the 1980 decade, that contemplates two milestones in the fight of the Political Movement of People with Disabilities: the International Year of People with Disabilities in 1981 and the promulgation of the new Constitution of 1988. One of the most effective strategies, perceived both in literature review and in empirical research, is the creation and operationalization of representative associations. Representative associations facilitates mobilizations of efforts to overcome stigmas, for social recognition of the group represented and for realization of rights formalized in the current law.