The City of Ljubljana received the bronze Access City Award 2015. This recognition placed us among the most successful European cities in the field of public space accessibility for people with disabilities.

More than 60 European cities participated in this year's competition to receive the Access City Award, which is given out by the European Commission. The city of Borås (Sweden) received the first place award, Helsinki (Finland) was given the second place and Ljubljana was awarded the third place at the solemn award event on 3 December 2014 in Brussels.
Other finalists in the competition were Arona (Spain), Budapest (Hungary), Logroño (Spain) and Luxembourg (Luxembourg).

The first time Ljubljana participated in the Access City Award contest was in 2011 and immediately achieved remarkable success because it was ranked in the final selection of eight cities for “Access City Award 2012” regardless of strong competition of 114 registered cities from 23 countries of the European Union. MOL’s efforts to ensure the accessibility of the city centre (buses equipped with devices for audio and video communication on exit stations, bus stop signs in Braille and touch-sensitive map of the city centre) have convinced the panel that then granted a special award for increased availability of transport and related infrastructure.

Ensuring accessibility to persons with disabilities has for many years been one of the priority and ongoing activities of the City of Ljubljana. These activities are integrated in all areas of activity, especially in the field of spatial planning, development of transport infrastructure, provision of public transport and social activities such as education, culture, sports, social care and health.

Our efforts in this area have already been awarded by the domestic public with the receipt of the “Disabled People Friendly Municipality” document, which was awarded to the City of Ljubljana by the Association of Disabled Workers of Slovenia in 2009. However, international recognition in this field was achieved with the abovementioned “Access City Award 2012”.

“Access City Award” is an initiative of the European Commission designed to provide incentives for achieving fundamental objectives of the European Disability Strategy for the period 2010 – 2020. Its purposes is to highlight and award cities with more than fifty thousand inhabitants which systematically plan and implement measures to improve accessibility of the urban environment for people with disabilities in four key areas: the built environment and public space in the city, public transport and related infrastructure, information and communication, facilities in public use and public services.