For most of us with full use of our faculties, there are frequent opportunities to leave the confines of the city, at least for a little while.
However, for other Ukrainians, those who are limited by sight, sound, or physical incapacities, just venturing into the countryside has been considered an adventure, and until the last few years taking part in extreme sports seemed impossible. Research has now discovered that blind people who dive underwater, and deaf people who ride on bike trails or go rafting down rivers experience extraordinary sensations that can only be imagined by persons without those disabilities.
To demonstrate the new found freedoms of the disabled, the Lviv-based Green Cross organization, a local advocate for the rights of the disabled, organized a 10-day, 230 kilometer rafting trip along the Dnistr River for the disabled, traversing the entirety of Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. The 30 brave souls on the trip included persons with impaired vision, others with musculoskeletal complications and some even totally sightless.
Guided by a highly skilled rafter, Oleksandr Voloshynsky, the participants included a lawyer, a biologist and an artist as well as other persons who, as corporate lawyers describe them, "require accommodations". Until their meeting on the bank of the river, these persons had kept touch only by e-mail, but they soon formed an inseparable team, requiring only occasional shouts of instruction from their tour guide.
 Barbara Felitti, director of the Ukraine Citizen Action Network, which funded the trip, said that nothing of this kind has ever happened before in Ukraine and is virtually unknown in most of the world. Both students and university teachers worked together on a volunteer basis to make the project a reality, just one in a series of events organized by Green Cross to uphold the rights of disabled people to gain access to active leisure activities.
The rafting trip was part of a comprehensive advocacy campaign designed to impact public policy - specifically laws relating to tourism - while expanding access to services for people with disabilities. The project targeted ten types of tourism activityies and the improvement of the overall legislative base. This includes such tourist venues as resorts, sport complexes, sanatoria and summer camps, all of which remain inaccessible to people using wheel chairs as well as other handicaps.
The rafting trip was the first of its kind, but Green Cross has already secured wheel chair ramps at all major Lviv supermarkets, two hotels, several hospitals, and at the train station. One of the most interesting facets of the project is that it demonstrates to both government and the tourism industry that not only are the disabled entitled to improved access, many of them are professionals with relatively high disposable incomes that they are ready and willing to spend in realizing their potential. Indeed, the potential impact of the disabled combined buying power is one of Green Cross's main lobbying points.
During the river trip, each disabled tourist was accompanied by a volunteer - usually a relative or student - whose main responsibilities were unrelated to the sport but entailed such assistance as cooking food, setting up camp, and other non-sports activities. Along the way, the team visited museums, churches, and took rides in the ski lifts of the majestic foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
While it took decades for Western Europe to create favorable tourist conditions for the 12 percent of its citizens who are disabled, Ukraine seems to be off to a good start and an even quicker pace.
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