Legislators of Buenos Aires Pass Law to Improve Physical Accessibility
By Eduardo Joly and Silvia Coriat (fundacion@rumbos.org.ar or redi2002@hotmail.com) and edited by Luis Fernando Astorga Gatjens, IID (lferag@racsa.co.cr)
Last December the Congress of Argentina approved, by unanimous vote the Amendment to the Construction Code for the City of Buenos Aires Law 962 (Modificación del Código de Edificación de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (Ley 962) introducing improved accessibility provisions which had been previously eliminated by the Local Government of Buenos Aires.
This law was the results of several years of work undertaken by the Accessibility Division of the of Rumbos Foundation (Fundación Rumbos) and the Disability Rights Network for Disability Rights (Red por los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, REDI) under the direction of Architect Silvia Coriat.
They were able to constitute a team of architects, engineers and persons with several disabilities and representatives of non-governmental organizations. They made a detailed review of the old City Construction Code, chapter by chapter, and point by point, and the first version of the Amended City Code was submitted to the Urban Planning Commission in 1995.
Then the City Council, presented a new and diluted version of the Amendment (which excludes previously proposed disposition to eliminate the obstacles to accessibility found around and inside homes and school buildings). This version was voted in a first round more than a year ago, but the Local Government of Buenos Aires did not include all of the accessibility aspects contained in the original versions of the City Construction Code and the Amendments to the Construction Code (dated 1995) which had been previously presented to the Congressional Commission on Urban Planning (Comisión de Planeamiento Urbano de la Legislatura).
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