Accessibility of Public Sector Institutions for People with Special Needs in Polish Regions

Marcin Janusz, Marek Piotrowski (), Emilia Kwiatkowska, Mariola Grzybowska-Brzezińska and Kamil Maciuk
Additional contact information
Marcin Janusz: Department of Economic Policy, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Oczapowskiego 4, 10-719 Olsztyn, Poland
Marek Piotrowski: Department of Economic Policy, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Oczapowskiego 4, 10-719 Olsztyn, Poland
Emilia Kwiatkowska: Spatial Planning Office of the Lodz Region in Lodz, Regional Territorial Observatory, al. Piłsudskiego 12, 90-051 Lodz, Poland
Mariola Grzybowska-Brzezińska: Department of Market and Consumption, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Cieszyński Sq. 1/327, 10-720 Olsztyn, Poland
Kamil Maciuk: Department of Integrated Geodesy and Cartography, AGH University, 30-059 Krakow, Poland

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 22, 1-13

Abstract: Social inclusion is one of the important conditions for sustainable socio-economic development. However, one of the paths leading to social inclusion is to ensure a high level of accessibility of institutions for people with special needs. The study described in the present paper examined the accessibility of Polish public sector bodies based on data from government reports (comprehensive study). Accessibility is a feature that should be offered as a complementary service offered to both individuals and legal entities during epidemic emergencies and beyond. The limited accessibility of public institutions is a significant obstacle to the full well-being of the population. Indicating differences in the spatial dispersion of this phenomenon in Poland was the basis for undertaking research for this article. Three areas of accessibility were tested: physical (architectural) accessibility, digital (web) accessibility, and ICT accessibility. A synthetic measure of accessibility was constructed for the study and used to rank Polish voivodeships (provinces, NUTS 2) from highest to lowest. Clustering was used to identify similar regions. The highest- and lowest-scoring regions were the Mazowieckie voivodeship (capital city—Warsaw) and the Podkarpackie voivodeship (capital city—Rzeszów), respectively. Legal accessibility requirements are the biggest driver of further accessibility improvements for voivodeships.

Keywords: accessibility; public institutions; digital exclusion; digital divide; information society; TOPSIS; NUTS 2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/15842/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/15842/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:22:p:15842-:d:1278052

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().