On February 18, 2014 CAFE Head of Development in Eastern Europe Elena Karpukhina and CAFE Project Coordinator in Ukraine Oleksandr Ostapa had a meeting with Oleksandr Protsiv, a Director of FC Olympic Donetsk.

Olympic is currently top of the First League in Ukraine, has recently begun serious preparations in order to become a member of the country's Premier League. The club is now reconstructing its home stadium.

CAFE wanted to find out how Olympic would solve the problem of locations and available services for disabled fans. Oleksandr Protsiv said that Olympic wanted to construct a dedicated sector for disabled fans, and gladly accepted CAFE's offer of becoming consultants on accessibility based on the recommendations of the UEFA and CAFE Good Practice Guide “Access for All”.

The head architect of the stadium has already received a set of recommendations from the CAFE.

Oleksandr Protsiv also said that the club was always trying to create welcoming conditions for fans at the stadium. The stadium, which had just one tribune and hosted only 600 supporters, now has four covered tribunes, and will soon be able to welcome five thousand supporters.

Centre for Access to Football hopes that Olympic will do everything possible to allow disabled people to attend home matches without problems.

CAFE presented to the Director of Olympic with a copy of “Access for All” - the UEFA and CAFE Good Practice Guide to Creating an Accessible Stadium and Matchday Experience (available on our website in 13 languages).

A version of this article is also available in Russian.

Published 28/02/2014