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Martin Heng wrote this thought-provoking article about inclusive versus accessible tourism. What do you think? https://www.newmobility.com/2020/07/big-ideas-in-travel-and-tourism/
newmobility.com
Big Ideas In Travel And Tourism
It’s Time To Move Beyond Access To Inclusion There’s been a lot of talk about “accessible tourism” lately, but is this the right term to use? As a wheelchair user, if somewhere — a cool bar, a significant monument, a … Continue reading
Eleonora, Kamil and tabifolk9 Comments-
I’d actually go one step further than Heng here. We need not only inclusive tourism (that is, tourism developed in response to the needs of users with intersectional identities: gender, race, class, etc.) but also collaborative tourism. In other words, tourism where the guests who travel to and from particular destinations play a direct role in shaping those spaces. In an ideal world, we’d have a way of facilitating such collaborations before ever leaving our homes. So the question for me is, how we can we leverage technology to connect guests and administrators ahead of time while also creating flexible environments that can react and respond to their collective decison-making?
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Wow, thank you Bookman. That’s a great idea. Would this involve some kind of community of visitors, locals and tourism professionals? Or do you see the collaboration more as a one-on-one thing?
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I view collaborative design as a global exercise involving as many actors as want to get involved. If you have an interest in a space – personal, professional, or otherwise – you should have an opportunity to participate in its construction. If you’re interested in what that kind of co-design might look like, you can check out my TED Talk and/or Accessibility Mapping Project. For some reason, I’m having issues posting links here, but if you google my name (Mark Bookman) and either of the above keywords they should come up.
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Hi Mark. I somehow missed your reply earlier. Sorry for that. I imagine that a global exercise would need a suitable platform, while ‘one person to another’ improvements are happening all over the world already, whenever a (potential) guest/visitor and an interested host find each other.
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Here is Mark’s talk. (Sorry, the spam filters were being a little too aggressive)
https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bookman_paralympics_as_possibility
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Great talk! Crowd sourcing is a great way for people to be involved in the creation of accessible places, especially in terms of advice and monitoring.
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To be the devil’s advocate… isn’t there a benefit to focusing on a specific aspect of inclusion (while still teaming up with other advocacy groups of course)?
For example, I know and can speak on accessibility (in a me-centric power wheelchair user perspective), but cannot speak on vegan travel or LGBTQ+ travel, etc. So, I can therefore encourage places/organizations/businesses etc in my area of expertise, I cannot speak for others.
Isn’t it ok for me to focus on the accessibility aspect, and another can focus on the vegan aspect? We will meet at our shared goal of inclusion, but get there via different routes (that often cross paths).
Maybe I’m reading it wrong…
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Indeed, accessibility remains an important part of the story. If I’m reading Martin’s statement right, he only wants to warn against a minimal approach. The real goal is to have everybody’s full participation in our society. We can all add our piece to the puzzle, each based on what we know, to make this the best world possible. By experiencing flaws in the system (or outright discrimination) we can however recognize some of the issues other underserved parts of our society experience. Personally, I only feel comfortable to speak about my personal expertise, but that doesn’t take away that my government and policy makers should keep the bigger picture in mind.
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Very well put 🙂
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