Over 1 billion people globally experience disability: I in 7 people. So, the question of how we ensure that transport is accessibility and inclusive around the world is vital to explore. This podcast features an interview with Charlotte V. McClain-Nhlapo – Global Disability Advisor at the World Bank Group. Charlotte's TED Talk has received over 10,000 views.
The discussion explores what exclusion looks like in the context of transport for people with disabilities and what sort of challenges are out there.
As Charlotte leads the Global Disability agenda at the World Bank, she explains what the World Bank doing to ensure that the transport projects it supports capture the demands and needs of disabled people; and gives a view as to what the World Bank worries about when programming its road transport projects.
Technology and innovation are changing the complexion of transport for everyone, the discussion explores how advances in technology can help people with disabilities to travel. Charlotte explains how well she thinks that people with hidden disabilities are supported in developed and developing countries.
The Department for International Development and the Department for Transport in the UK are organising a session on disability inclusive road transport at the World Road Congress in Abu Dhabi in October this year, Charlotte explains what messages she hopes this session can deliver.
Charlotte said in the interview: ‘Diversity is part of our human experience and it’s also about understanding that the onset of disability happens at many stages of our lives: people are born with disabilities, people acquire disabilities later in life, and then there is disability that comes with the onset of ageing. So it’s a part of our life span and for us not to plan for that seems very limiting from a planning point of view’.
