EU cities are invited to participate in the sixth edition of the Access City Award - The European Prize for making cities more accessible to people with disabilities and older people.
French Masters student in Disability Research, Eloïse Auffret-Novice, has taken up a 4-month ERASMUS+ traineeship at the ENAT Secretariat in Athens. She will make a study of accessibility and access information for visitors at five of the most notable museums in Greece. Here she introduces the theme of her chosen subject.
Ms. Ana Garcia, founder of Accessible Portugal and ENAT Board Member, has been selected in her personal capacity as member of the EU Low Season Initiative Board, established by the European Commission's Tourism Unit.
The European Union funded project, FastPass, aims to develop and demonstrate a harmonized, modular reference system for European automated border crossing points or "e-gates".
The Access for All project, led by VisitEngland, will develop and promote 7 high quality accessible tourism itineraries. It will do this by:
• supporting tourism businesses through an ‘Access for All Development Process’ to improve information, customer service and facilities for the benefit of people with access needs.
• delivering a mainstream national marketing campaign
It will increase opportunities for people with access needs to take a short break giving them confidence in the accessibility of tourism products and services. Awareness of accessible destinations will be increased improving perceptions of Accessible England and Europe.
ACCESSTOUR is an acronym expressing accessible tourism in a short way. Accessible tourism could be considered disadvantaged in comparison with more traditional mass tourism. In the last years accessible tourism has become synonym of high quality care for persons with special needs and accessible destinations. The project aims at marking out the special qualities of accessibility implemented with effective and user friendly services.
The project "Cosy for You", supported by a web site and a mobile application (C4Y mobile app.) consists in the dissemination of "knowledge" of places, travel goods and services accessible at 360° in the Campania Region, in the South of Italy, starting with five different destinations: Napoli, Pozzuoli and "Campi Flegrei", Sorrento and the Sorrentine peninsula, Vesuvius area and Benevento, including 14 itineraries. It is proposed as best practice to other public and private institutions active in tourism in Italy and worldwide.
The Mobility Unesco Sustainable Tourism (MUST) is configured as a specific action aimed at reducing the restrictions still existing between disabled and non-travellers, and at increasing awareness among tourism operators, for them to develop a methodology that could support the creation and promotion of accessible routes in other destinations.
The general objective of the EWB project is to create a network of entities able to promote and sell tour packages accessible to everyone. All services will be provided in a context where needs of people with special requirements should be attended to and resolved.
This is the Final Report of a wide-ranging study of accessible tourism supply commissioned by the EC Tourism Unit. The study included: visitor and supplier surveys, national legislation review, expert reviews, Web-based research and analysis of accessibility information, transport, infrastructure/facilities and services. Fifteen case studies of accessible tourism destinations were carried out, identifying good practices in business and destination development.
These 15 Case Studies of Accessible Tourism Destinations were commissioned in 2013 by the European Commission as part of the research tender awarded to EWORX S.A., ENAT and VVA, examining the supply side of accessible tourism in Europe.
People with disabilities and older people are considered as an important and growing number of clients for all kind of events and meetings (about 20 % of the population today). Accommodating and supporting their needs and providing accessible services is becoming more and more a success criterion for conferences and events.
