Five Years After Tokyo 2020: What the Paralympics Left Behind

Five years after Tokyo 2020, I look back at what the Paralympics left behind in Tokyo, from step-free stations to the accessibility guidelines that shaped Expo 2025 in Osaka.

By Josh Grisdale

Tokyo 2020 was the first time I had ever lived in a city that was getting ready to host the Olympics and Paralympics. Then COVID-19 spread, and nobody knew what would happen. There was a lot of discussion and worry about whether the Games could go ahead at all, and in the end they were pushed back a year. It made for one of the more even…