Introduction

The concept of accessible tourism is based on the philosophy of Design for All. Touristic products and services, information materials and the complete environment and infrastructure should be designed in a way that they are usable for the largest group of tourists possible. Nevertheless Design for All is often misunderstood to be a ‘Design for people with disabilities’ (Darzentas & Miesenberger, 2005). The fact that Design for All intends to consider the requirements of many different user groups with and without disabilities within a single product or service clearly shows that this view is wrong. Quite the contrary, because Design for All intends to serve all customers it should become part of the mainstream design practice, rather being than identified as a design for ‘the disabled’ (Darzentas & Miesenberger, 2005). Applying the Design for All approach to the tourism industry means that everyone, regardless of whether they have any disabilities or not, should be able to travel to the country, within the country and to whatever place, attraction or event they should wish to visit (Neumann & Reuber, 2004).

There is a clear intention of people with disabilities to travel. Scientific studies (e.g. Neumann, 2002) have shown that the intensity of people with disabilities travelling in general is only a little below average, while the intensity of travelling within their native country is clearly above average. However the travel experiences of people with disabilities prove that their holidays are often negatively affected by physical inaccessibility of transportation, accommodation and infrastructure and incomplete or inadequate information materials including badly designed or inaccessible web pages (EDF, 2001). Due to their special requirements, the travel planning of people with disabilities is normally characterised by a more detailed information enquiry than known for travellers without disabilities (Pühretmair, 2004). The lack of reliable information has been identified as a main reason that prevents people with disabilities and other travellers with accessibility requirements from travelling (Stumbo & Pegg, 2005).