International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2026: access to places

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is marked on 3 December. In 2026 it falls on a Thursday, and many schools, social care charities, care homes and health services will be preparing activities for that week.

This article is about a part of inclusion that gets talked about less: access to places. To the café on the corner, the beach, the village church, the football ground. And about what institutions do when the journey is not possible.

What is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

The day was proclaimed in 1992 by the United Nations General Assembly, through resolution 47/3. It puts the rights, wellbeing and participation of persons with disabilities on the agenda in every area of life: at school, at work, in culture, in community life.

Each year the UN chooses a theme. The 2026 theme had not yet been published at the time of writing; the United Nations announces it closer to the day, on the official page. In 2025 it was “Fostering disability inclusive societies for advancing social progress”. When the 2026 theme is out, we will update this article.

Why it matters: the World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people live with a significant disability, about 16% of the world's population, or one in six (WHO, fact sheet on disability and health). In the same fact sheet, WHO writes that persons with disabilities find inaccessible and unaffordable transport 15 times more difficult to use than persons without disabilities. It is a figure that says a great deal about who can, or cannot, get anywhere.

Inclusion also means being able to go places

When people talk about inclusion they think, rightly, of ramps, schools and jobs. Less is said about something simple: going out. Going to see the sea in winter. Going back to the village. Attending Mass in the church where you were married. Going to the match.

For many people with very reduced mobility, this has stopped happening. The wish is usually still there. The problem is that every outing needs adapted transport, more than one person to go along, an accessible place at the other end, time, and a body that can last the day. Anyone who works in a care home, a continuing care unit or a day activity centre knows the effort a group outing takes, and also knows what it is worth when it happens.

Those who stay in their room

There is always someone who does not go. The person who is bedbound. The one who is in pain at every transfer. The one who tires after half an hour sitting up. The one going through a more fragile period who cannot leave the ward.

Teams know these people well and already bring a lot to their rooms: music, reading aloud, conversation, the therapist who comes with a game. But there is one kind of experience that is hard to bring there: being somewhere else. Seeing the horizon. Hearing the noise of a busy street. Looking up and seeing the trees.

The inclusion question here is a concrete one: when the week's activity plan includes an outing, what happens for those who stay behind? There is no single answer, and each institution finds its own.

Places that matter to the person

A place only means something when it belongs to the person. The beach where they spent their holidays, the market where they sold, the sanctuary they visited to keep a vow. Seeing “any beach” can be pleasant; seeing the beach the person has been talking about for years is something else, and it starts a conversation.

That is why the choice matters more than the medium. Who chooses the place? The person, if they can say. If they cannot, someone who knows them well: a relative, the care assistant who is with them every day. We wrote about this in meaningful activity: how a scene is chosen, and about what to do when the place does not exist on video in when the person's place is not in the library.

What a video does not replace

It is worth saying plainly. A 360° video is not accessibility. It does not replace the ramp, the adapted transport, the real outing with the wind on your face. It would be a poor use of technology to let it become an excuse to stop taking people places when that is possible.

Nor is it for everyone. Some people do not like having something on their face, some feel uncomfortable, some simply prefer not to. Including people also means accepting a “no”, without insisting. We talked about that in when a resident declines virtual reality.

What a video can do is more modest: give someone who cannot go a way of being there for a few minutes, with someone beside them they can say to: “look, that's where I used to live”.

Where RVer comes in

RVer is a virtual reality system used in health and social care institutions. Its basis is a library of 360° videos filmed in real places: nature, cities, beaches, sanctuaries, music, everyday activities. It has a lying-down mode for people who cannot sit up (how it works with bedbound people), it works without an internet connection, and it is run by the team through an app that shows, on a phone or tablet, what the person is seeing. It is used by people aged 10 to 100.

Who can use it, and with what precautions, is explained in accessibility in virtual reality: who can use it. For each type of institution, see the pages for residential care homes, hospitals and palliative care.

In short

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2026 is on 3 December; the UN announces this year's theme closer to the date.

Inclusion also means access to places, and there are people for whom going out is no longer possible.

A place only counts if it belongs to the person; the choice comes before the medium.

A video does not replace real accessibility or the outing that can still be made.

The RVer platform's base product is a Class I medical device, registered in EUDAMED and with INFARMED (Portugal). Sessions are run by the institution's professionals, complement existing care and do not replace clinical assessment, treatment or follow-up.