ABSTRACT
During the last decade, concerning people with disabilities, accessibility was considered one of the most relevant aspects to achieve social participation and a better quality of life. Accessibility plays also an important role in inclusive schools and work integration. The accessibility achievement is related with services and urban space and with more and better functionality security and comfort. Limitations faced by People with disabilities performing activities related with the use of school equipment, instruments, materials and limitations to move around usually leads to restrictions to their social participation and to their inclusion in school activities (Covington et al., 1997; Clarkson et al., 2003). The study of social participation restriction imposed by social organization, beliefs and values and other environmental factors like interaction with services terminals and equipment has become progressively more important putting the focus on the external factors and how they contribute to produce barriers instead of facilitators to people with disabilities social participation taking into account their activity limitations. As environment factors have an important role on the performance level of those people, to study possible solutions to creating the least restrictive environment as possible is then a priority (Goldsmith, 1998; 2001; 2005). In spite of having subscribed documents like the World Program of Action Concerning Disabled People (ONU 1981) and the Standard Rules on Equalization of Opportunities for Disabled People (ONU 1996), where is possible to find clear objectives to be achieved in the near future concerning accessibility, Portugal has experienced difficulties to implement them (Preiser et al., 2001 ). Those difficulties are expressed in the proposal for the National Plan to Promote Accessibility. With the diagnosis made in those documents it is possible to observe that Portugal doesn't have enough data to characterize the majority of the situations presented.
