Yes, it was.

I didn’t use public transport so this blog post won’t talk about the accessibility of public transport. Although I have it on good authority that talking buses, trains and the Metro make it a smooth process.

The euro star was a new experience for both myself and my partner, and a completely faultless one at that. Despite not having booked assistance, we were given assistance to go through all areas up until getting on the train. Both sides of travelling, the staff were friendly helpful and made sure we were through safely.

 In addition, when visiting all the attractions, we were ushered through Priority queues and given assistance or support to access the venue. 

Once in Paris, the city itself had positive and negative aspects to its accessibility for a visually impaired or blind person.

First, all crossings were controlled, once you press the button to Wait it says ‘attendez’, meaning ‘Wait’ and then when it is safe to cross, a beeping noise sounds. Furthermore, there was tactile paving beside all crossings and at the top of the stairs where Metro stations were. 

On the other hand, next to all the roads, or at least all the roads we visited, there were cycle paths. Whilst this is great, it means getting in and out of taxis is a bit of a game of chance.

You would expect that the country in which braille was invented would be full of braille, I saw some examples of this when visiting different attractions, and once was offered a braille menu. So that is a positive.

Our tour guide when visiting the Palace of Versailles also took me aside at the beginning to politely ask how she could support me to get the most out of the experience. Which I very much appreciated as she was able to describe things that I wasn’t going to be able to see clearly.

One thing that I personally found confusing, with my level of sight at least, was that many of the buildings look very similar. Whilst I admire and appreciate the architecture of the traditional Parisian buildings, if I were alone, it would be easy for one to get lost.

One pretty amazing thing that wasn’t necessarily specific to Paris, but definitely made things easier were my meta smart glasses. I used these for several things when in Paris, it could identify buildings, and tell me a little bit about them just by asking it what the building was called. It was also able to read and translate menus from French to English, a massive help for somebody whose French is at a very basic level. So if you do have Meta Rayban smart glasses, you definitely need to make the most of them when travelling. 

So in total, I would say for a blind or visually impaired person, Paris is a very accessible city.