Paris 2024: 100% accessible neighborhoods

The Paris 2024 Olympics are bringing the concept of augmented accessibility to the fore. What does this mean? How to get organized in the field? AFNOR SPEC P96-000 provides some answers.

Paris has set the course: the 2024 Olympics will be 100% accessible. In other words, 100% accessible neighborhoods. This is a concept that the organizers wanted to lend the seal of standardization, or at least the AFNOR SPEC seal, a pre-normative work process involving a select committee, to share best practices and a common vocabulary. Pascal Mathieu, co-leader of the working group orchestrated by AFNOR, sums up the approach: “The standards, to be published in January 2021, provide a concrete definition of the concept of a universally accessible neighborhood. A neighborhood’s accessibility is not just a matter of getting around and keeping moving, it goes beyond that. Making an environment universally accessible means above all thinking about the services that make it up. This is a fundamentally new approach.

AFNOR SPEC P96-000: a philosophy of continuous improvement

The City of Paris, associations and private-sector players sat down around the standardization table to finalize this standard and, above all, prioritize the actions to be taken. This work “involved all the partners in defining both the approach and its objectives”, explains Yasmina Channaoui, Infrastructure Project Manager at the General Delegation for the Olympic and Paralympic Games and Major Events at the City of Paris. But beware: the standard is supposed to be applicable everywhere, not just in Paris for the 2024 Olympics. This is the strength of this type of document, as Marguerite Bonnin, Standards Project Manager at AFNOR, who steered the meetings for this project, explains: “This document is the key to a philosophy of continuous improvement. It’s a working basis that’s not restrictive, and which enables us to move forward, improve and plan actions, even if this is done in small steps.”

The spirit of Pierre de Coubertin

The AFNOR SPEC P96-000 document therefore facilitates the coordination of different public policy, planning and network management tools to make the city more inclusive, neighborhood by neighborhood, territory by territory. And this applies to both new and existing buildings. If the 2012 London Games were a full-scale test of the NF ISO 20121 standard for responsible events, the City of Paris hopes that the Paris 2024 Games will leave a legacy of enhanced accessibility. Her own way of perpetuating Pierre de Coubertin’s message: that the Olympic Games should be universal vectors of positive change for society.