For two weeks, the Paralympic Village in Milan served as a tangible demonstration of what a truly accessible environment looks like when accessibility is the foundational design principle. Arriving at the village after spending a week navigating Milan’s challenging urban landscape was a profound moment of relief.

Prior to the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games, this reporter, a wheelchair user, spent time scouting venues. This involved constant negotiation with unfamiliar surfaces and jarring cobblestone streets. The transition to the village, with its smooth ramps and seamless transitions, allowed for a deep exhale.

The Village: A City Built for Its Residents

The Milano Cortina 2026 Games utilize three distinct villages across northern Italy: Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, and Predazzo. These serve as the temporary homes for the hundreds of international athletes competing.

Life Inside the Accessible Hub

Within the village, athletes sleep, eat, recover, and train, functioning as a self-contained, temporary city built entirely around their specific needs. During a tour of the complex, which houses approximately 1,500 athletes, the absence of small steps and significant slopes between surfaces was immediately noticeable.

Small details highlighted this commitment. Athletes were seen laughing as a wheelchair user easily maneuvered directly under a picnic table, a feat often blocked by fixed benches elsewhere. Inside, a sensory-free room provided a quiet, dimly lit space for necessary respite.

A standout feature was the complimentary Ottobock center, open twelve hours daily for credentialed personnel needing immediate prosthetic or wheelchair repairs. This service is a stark contrast to the U.S., where such repairs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months.

The Feeling of Being the Norm

Surrounded by disabled people and sitting near the Paralympic agitos, the environment felt rare—a working prototype of an accessibility utopia. Even intimate details, like the readily stocked condoms for athletes, underscored a comprehensive approach to resident needs.

Nordic skier Erin Martin, a full-time wheelchair user staying in the Predazzo village, echoed this sentiment. She noted that for the first time, she entered spaces without feeling like an outlier, but rather as the expected norm.

Small Details, Big Freedom

Martin pointed to the laundry facilities as an example. “At the Village, the athlete laundry machines were front-loading, not stacked, and sitting directly on the ground,” she explained. This meant that during peak times, she could use any available machine independently.

She elaborated that entering most spaces outside the village involves constant uncertainty: accessibility of entry, bathrooms, and internal navigation. “That moment of worry that I usually have wasn’t there when I entered the Paralympic Village,” Martin confirmed.

Accessibility as the Starting Point

This seamless experience was intentional, according to Federica Sechi, one of the village’s designers and organizers. Accessibility was not an add-on but the initial consideration, adhering to Italian accessibility standards from the outset.

Sechi stated that this early integration meant “only minimal adjustments were required in the transition between the Olympic and Paralympic Games.” Furthermore, an internal accessibility team, including disabled athletes and consultants, oversaw every major decision and tested all completed areas.

Flipping the Architectural Default

Sechi’s description reflects a fundamental shift in design philosophy. Traditional architecture assumes a nondisabled body, retrofitting accommodations later. The Village flipped this, starting with the question: what do all potential users need?

This approach requires visualizing disabled people as the default user, not the exception. While athletes noted that even this purpose-built environment had room for improvement in the Alpine villages, its existence proved the larger point.

A Blueprint for the Future

The gap between the village and the world outside its gates highlights what is missing in everyday cities. The village proves that extraordinary infrastructure is possible when disabled individuals are centered in the planning process.

Paralympic snowboarder and media collective co-founder Brenna Huckaby emphasized that access enables achievement. “Everyone should have access to xyz because this is what they have the ability to access with xyz,” she stated regarding top-tier equipment.

The village embodied this access—the right equipment, infrastructure, and imagination combined. Though temporary for two weeks, Huckaby believes these stories should be highlighted as they reflect “what’s possible with disability accommodations and how everyone benefits from them.” This model can and should be permanent elsewhere.