Mayor of Reykjavík, Dagur B. Eggertsson has said he will go out and navigate the city center in a wheelchair before the summer is over.
In so doing, he will fulfill a promise he made last autumn, when a disabled man made an online challenge to the mayor to try and go about his daily business in a wheelchair.
Jón Gunnar Benjamínsson put his challenge on Facebook following a frustrating day on Laugavegur, where he could not gain access to at least two places he had tried to visit, due to steps outside.
Dagur B. Eggertsson was quick to accept the challenge; suggesting that new city accessibility committee chair Kristín Soffía Jónsdóttir should come along too, RÚV reports.
In his challenge last autumn, Jón Gunnar said most shopkeepers have the same excuse for not installing wheelchair ramps: that the City of Reykjavík makes it far too difficult for them to do so and that the city thinks only of the land it loses underneath such ramps.
Whether true or not, Jón Gunnar says the situation is ridiculous, and that if it is not true, the city must make that clearer to traders. This, he says, is all the more important following major works along Hverfisgata which seemed to show no concern for accessibility issues at all.
