Скачать или смотреть Monument now accessible to wheelchair users

(12 Aug 2004) SHOTLIST

1. Various wide of Acropolis main entrance and tourists
2. Sign saying "Entrance for people with disabilities"
3. Person on wheelchair making their way around Acropolis
4. Various of elevator
5. Woman wheeling onto elevator
6. Various of woman lifted by elevator
7. Woman wheeled off elevator
8. Wide shot of elevator from below
9. Interior shot from elevator
10. Various of tourists, including woman in wheelchair after exiting elevator
11. SOUNDBITE: (Greek) Spiros Stavrianopoulos, president of the Hellenic Paralympic Committee:
"I have been (in a wheelchair) for about 23 years after an accident. Until then, I was one of those who came to the Acropolis and I must confess to gaze from below is not the best thing."
12. Pan up from people in wheelchairs to Parthenon
13. Man in wheelchair enters glass elevator
14. Man in glass elevator
15. Man gets out of glass elevator on lower level on Acropolis outside museum
16. Exterior of museum with wheelchair lift at right; sign reads "museum" in Greek
17. Various of people in wheelchairs in museum
18. SOUNDBITE (Greek) Petros Tatoulis, deputy culture minister:
"We materialised our decision and the need the country had in light of the Games of 2004 to hand over this entire mechanism that makes access possible for people with a handicap."
19. Wide shot Parthenon with the flags of Greece, Athens, the International Olympic Committee and the Athens 2004 Organising Committee
waving
20. Medium shot Parthenon with cauldron for Olympic flame and podium in front

STORYLINE

For thousands of years, disabled people were excluded from one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, forced to gaze at the monuments from the entrance below unless they could find a team of people to carry them up the steep, rocky hill.

Now, as part of an effort to make the capital more accessible during the Aug. 13-29 Olympics and Sept. 17-28 Paralympics, disabled people can at last visit the Acropolis, hoisted over the monument's massive, 25-metre-high (82-foot-high) northern wall in a specially constructed open-air elevator.

The 2,500-year-old Parthenon, the icon of Athens' ancient glory atop the Acropolis hill, is one of the world's most visited sites.

But for anyone with mobility problems, the steep climb up the hill in the blazing heat and the dozens of steps leading into the monument made it a no-go area.

That changed with the addition of a Swedish-made elevator _ a cage-like structure similar to elevators used at construction sites that runs on steel scaffolding attached to a part of the Acropolis' northern wall.

To get there, wheelchair users must be pushed up a path before reaching a flight of steps.

A wheelchair lift then carries them up to the elevator for the 50-second vertical ride to the top of the wall.

Once there, they roll off onto a platform and down a path near the ancient Erechtheion, one of the site's better known monuments with a distinctive porch supported by statues of young women known as Caryatids.

Greece has been criticised in the past for not providing enough access to public building and ancient sites for disabled people.

It has in been trying to improve conditions ahead of the Olympics.

The elevator runs on electricity, and includes a manual break that can be used to lower it to ground level in the case of a power cut.

Although a temporary structure, the elevator will remain in place after the Olympics, and officials hope to eventually replace it with a permanent lift.



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