The Web Accessibility Viewer: a Tool to Assist Travelling Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

According to the Austrian Federal Disability Act, a disability is defined as the effect of a non-temporary physical, mental or psychological impairment that makes it difficult to participate in social or working life. According to a survey conducted by Statistics Austria in 2015 as part of the micro-census, 18.4% of the population were affected by disabilities. Permanent disabilities are strongly age-dependent, so this figure is constantly rising as society ages, making it more important to make tourism, leisure, and recreational activities accessible to this section of society. The EU-Interreg funded project CE-Spaces4All aims at the improvement of accessibility of tourism for persons with disabilities, concentrating on three groups with different requirements: wheelchair users and mobility impaired persons, visually impaired and blind persons, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Public authorities, tourism development stakeholders and persons with disabilities from seven countries are working together in three European pilot regions (Poland, Austria/Czech Republic, Slovenia/Croatia/Hungary) in a capacity building process to improve conditions for accessible tourism development and independent tourism travel. A key element of the project is the Web Accessibility Viewer (WAV) which serves as a tool for policy planners for mapping and visualising barriers. The project partners organised field mapping events to capture barriers on-site in the pilot regions and record them on a map. The WAV is a Geographic Information System (GIS) based online service with a desktop and a mobile application based on QGIS open source software to collect data according to a joint catalogue of barriers developed together with the European Disability Forum, an umbrella organisation of persons with disabilities that defends the interests of over 100 million persons with disabilities in Europe. The WAV includes tourism-related barriers (for example parking, paths, public transport, tourism facilities, points of interest) from all pilot regions categorised by the three groups of persons with disabilities mentioned above supplemented by an easy-to-understand accessibility assessment with a semaphore system (red: not accessible, orange: partly accessible, green: accessible). Photos of the mapped spots are taken by the respective mapping teams and directly linked with the datasets. The WAV is available in English as well as all the national languages of each project partner country. Work with the WAV subsequently resulted in a catalogue of barriers that serves as a starting point for further measures, for example for action plans for long-term territorial cooperation on improving accessibility of the pilot regions. Awareness raising events with local and regional stakeholders complement the agenda of sensitising institutions, companies and public administration related with tourism. This will lead towards a better governance for policy and territorial planning of accessible tourism as well as improvement of public services for persons with disabilities.