By: Sophia von Seebach

 Hilde van der Burg rolls herself into her local Kruidvat to pick up a few essential items. The shelves lightly scrape the sides of her wheelchair as she tries to navigate the store, just barely squeezing through the narrow aisles. Then she comes upon a new end cap advertising a two-for-one deal on men’s deodorant, placed in the middle of the already constricted walkway, forcing her to turn around and find a new path through the store, or abandon her efforts altogether. 

This story is not only a local problem, nor is it applicable to only one wheelchair user in the Netherlands, rather it reflects a larger disparity in government oversight and protection of its disabled citizens. Building codes regarding accessibility are patently lacking in spite of the roughly 2 million residents living with disabilities in the Netherlands. 

“It’s possible I should complain with Kruidvat because they are not accessible, but I don’t want to spend my energy for that,” said 40-year-old wheelchair user, Hilde van der Burg. “So I choose to not go and maybe order online if I really want [something] from Kruidvat or go to another shop, and don’t fight for my rights.” 

However, the existing accessibility regulations make this ‘fight’ a losing battle. Large-scale accessibility initiatives are relatively new in the Netherlands, as it was only in 2023 that the Dutch Constitution was amended to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on disability. The Netherlands was also one of the last EU member states to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2016. 

The accessibility of buildings is often one of the largest obstacles for wheelchair users and people with disabilities. Gelly Sehat, a senior policy officer at the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning, said that new building regulations under the Besluit bouwwerken leefomgeving (Bbl), which was implemented two years ago, guarantee that new buildings will be accessible for people with disabilities. 

The Bbl regulations make this guarantee for new buildings, however these regulations do not require that buildings which were built prior to the Bbl be made more accessible. “As a government, you cannot solve all of the problems,” said Sehat. “You cannot impose people to make their buildings, their dwellings – to have to make it accessible, and it’s not our task, I think.” 

However, some wheelchair users say that the current accessibility regulations do not always make a space accessible. One of the Bbl regulations states that no threshold should exceed two centimeters. Van der Burg said that there are various kinds of wheelchair users, who have different needs and abilities. She said that often these regulations do not take all wheelchair users into account. 

Van der Burg recently visited the newly built town hall in Dwingeloo. “I opened the door of the toilet and there was a change of height of now almost two centimeters,” she said. “According to law, it’s okay [and] it’s not a problem for me, but for lots of people in wheelchairs, it’s a problem.” 

Another obstacle for people with disabilities began in 2015, when the government decentralized most of its healthcare services, including services for people with disabilities. 

“The reasoning behind this was that the local authorities are much better suited to offer tailor made solutions that fit the needs and wants of their communities,” said the press officer of Vicky Maijer, State Secretary for Long-Term and Social Care. Decentralizing these services, however, means the absence of oversight, leaving disabled people vulnerable to discrimination. 

“In the ideal situation, it should not be necessary to have this kind of things in law because everyone thinks about it by himself, but it’s not an ideal situation and we can’t expect that,” said van der Burg. “So then law is necessary, but the law needs to be realistic to the wheelchair users, and it’s not at this time.”