Accessible Tourism – understanding blind and vision-impaired tourists’ behaviour towards inclusion

Abstract

Purpose The physiological and psychological issues that limit people with vision impairment make it difficult for them to participate in tourism activities and enjoy the various benefits of tourism. This study aims to construct a theoretical model of the tourism-influencing factors that can lead to problems for people with vision impairment to meet their travel desires and improve their enjoyment of life. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a mixed-methods approach. A theoretical model of the tourism-influencing factors for people with vision impairment was constructed based on grounded theoretical analysis of interviews and was then tested in a quantitative survey. Findings In the first stage, a new theoretical model of the tourism-influencing factors for people with vision impairment was conducted. In the second stage, five research hypotheses arising from the theoretical model were tested in a quantitative survey. The results show that internal psychological perception, perceived behavioural control and perceived social intention have a significant positive impact on the tourism intention behaviour of people with vision impairment. However, subjective norms do not significantly influence the tourism behaviour intention of people with vision impairment. Originality/value The right to tourism should be available to disabled as well as to able-bodied people. Few tourism research studies have focused on people with vision impairment, and the influencing factors on the behaviour of people with vision impairment have not received due attention. This study extends the theoretical model of the theory of planned behaviour and provides a new perspective for understanding the travel behaviour intention of people with vision impairment.

The accessibility of beaches for blind people and their guide dogs: accessible tourism and inclusion in Spain

“…Moreover, tourist destinations should provide personalized information and content through touchscreen devices with braille, audio description in different languages and talk-to-text. These initiatives will encourage blind people and their families to enjoy the beaches (Qiao et al , 2023).…”

“…Accessible tourism requires cooperation between many interested parties to enable blind people and those with other disabilities to commute independently (Buhalis et al , 2012). Accessible tourism must provide mobile, visual, auditory and mental accessibility for people with disabilities, so they can move independently, equally and with dignity during holidays (Popović et al , 2022; Qiao et al , 2023). A tourist destination’s accessibility must tackle appropriated information of accessible facilities for people with disabilities.…”

Search strategies in accessible tourism, barrier-free tourism, disabled tourism and easy access tourism literature

“…There are as many interpretations of the concept of AT as there are authors who have contributed to the subject (Darcy and Dickson, 2009; Devile and Kastenholz, 2018; Liasidou et al , 2022; Pasca et al , 2022; Qiao et al , 2023; Rahmafitria et al , 2023; Scheyvens and Biddulph, 2018; Thomas, 2018). Among them, the proposal by Darcy and Buhalis (2011) enjoys widespread acceptance:…”

Accessible tourism: how people with vision impairment and blindness experience tourism and “see” the invisible

“…Conversely, research on PwVIB's tourism experiences is scarce, as a systematic literature review by Noghan et al (2023) found only seven papers addressing the topic. While these studies provide insights on issues such as embodied experiences (Small et al, 2012;Richards et al, 2010), sensory aspects of the experience (Riofrio-Grijalva et al, 2020), intention to travel (Qiao et al, 2023a) and embodiment and sensory compensation (Qiao et al, 2023b), individually and collectively they fail to deliver a comprehensive explanation of how PwVIB form and perceive their tourist experience. Thus, a significant knowledge gap exists in terms of understanding the psycho-cognitive processes underlying how PwVIB experience, perceive and interpret tourism, preventing providers from designing appealing, relevant and experiential experiences.…”