The regulation, which comes into effect on June 1, requires all new public buildings, roads and residential complexes to incorporate into their building plans appropriate access facilities for the disabled.

Existing buildings and roads that currently do not provide disabled access facilities such as ramps at building entrances, special lifts, pavement lanes for the blind and specially-equipped toilets will be required to remedy the situation within the four-year time limit laid down in the regulation.

"The construction of easy access facilities for the disabled represents the civilized level of an advanced city. It is an absolute necessity to facilitate the easy mobility and better involvement in social activities by the elderly and disabled," said Huang Jianzhi, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Construction and Management Commission.

Such a programme, it will estimate to cost about 500 million yuan (US$60.5 million), will benefit not only the city's estimated 520,000 disabled and 2.47 million elderly citizens, but also small children, pregnant women, those temporarily incapacitated and others who have mobility problems.

The move is also a response to the call of the pending Special Olympic Games to be held in the city in 2007 and the World Expo in 2010, said Huang.

Some 220 public buildings, including department stores, hotels, supermarkets, footbridges, stations and wharfs are to be fitted with disabled access facilities. Forty kilometers of pathways for the blind and 1,000 ramps are also in the 2003 pipeline.

In the next four years, more than 25,000 such places will be adapted.

(China Daily May 12, 2003)