Travelling with a Disability - Obstacles, Challenges and Rewards

Abstract

This paper looks at the issues of travelling with a disability; what kind of obstacles and challenges do a disabled individual and a family with children with disability face that abled person may not even think about? How rewarding in participating in tourism is for disabled people?

Keyword; Disability, Family, Children, benefits of a holiday

Having a yearly holiday trip to an exotic destination may be thing taken for granted for many of us. For people disabilities it is totally different story. This market is not minor and will be growing in size in the next decades as people are expected to live longer and old age brings disabilities, communicable diseases are expected to decrease, medical technology improves all the time and child mortality improves.(Yau et al. 2004) "Desire to travel is the same for persons with or without a disability". (Yau et al. 2004, p.947) Still, this market is often ignored and literature from this area is narrow. Tourism could help disabled people in many ways by encouraging them to travel and providing more facilities.
Disability is in general divided into two strands; social and medical. The medical model explains disability as "resulting from physical or mental impairment". (Dowling & Dolan, 2001, p. 23) Blichfeldt and Nicolaisen (2011) explains medical model as "stable and narrow notions of abnormality and deficiency in medical terms". (p. 80) The social model concentrates on the disabled individual more than the medical model, giving them the voice. It explains disability resulting from social organisation rather than from impairment.
Individuals with disability face many more obstacles than individuals with no disability in their every day life. Considering holiday making, it is considerably more challenging for people with disability. Holidays are proven to be beneficial for disabled people as reliefing and renevaling, mental heathl benefits, social interaction, broadening experiences, developing independence and strengthening family relationships. (Hazel, 2005) There are many barriers in participation for disabled people. Smith (1987, in Yau et al. 2004) indentifies three main barriers: environmental (attitude, architecture, ecology); interactive (skill challenge incongruities and communication); and intrinsic (individual's physical, psychological or cognitive functioning). The first experiences in tourism are the most important ones, but also the hardest ones that indicate whether the person will continue taking holidays. The worst experiences might even stop disabled people from travelling ever again.

Tourist with disability goes through different stages during the process of participating in tourism. These stages are highly personal and define person's development as a tourist. (Yau et al. 2004) In the beginning, the support of family and travelling partners are very important giving a disabled person more encourage to participate in tourism and not hide from the surrounding world. Tourism can help a disabled person to live more independently and learn from their selves through the trips. Disabled person wanting to travel, there is three options available; to use the services of a regular travel agent, find a tour agent that caters to a disabled travellers or plan the whole trip independently. (Cavinato and Cuckovich)

Families with disabled children experience range of inequalities compared to the families without disabled children. These are faced in everyday life but also holiday making is a lot different for these families and require more effort. First and the main issue the families with children with disabilities face is the funding for holiday; families with disabled children often live in poverty and with single incomes as the mother usually stay home taking care of the disabled child while the father has to do longer hours to provide the income. Lack of funding, inflexible care arrangements and the prejudices of others are the main concerns of families with disabled children. They cause stress to the carers of disabled children and the effect on family welfare is adverse. (Dowling and Dolan, 2001) Obtaining social services available is long, slow, time consuming, complicated and a source of intense anxiety and frustration. Because of the process being so complicated, "families with disabled children often miss out on experiences that others take for granted" (p. 31), like going on family holiday. It takes a lot of effort and more courage from disabled individuals and families to travel but often the experience is a rewarding one.

Bibliography

Blichfeldtand, B. S. and Nicolaisen, J.. (2011). Disabled travel: not easy, but doable. Current Issues in Tourism. 14 (1), 74-102.
Dowling M. and Dolan L.. (2001). Families with Children with Disabilities - Inequalities and the Social Model. Disability & Society. 16 (1), 21-35.
Yau et al.. (2004). TRAVELING WITH A DISABILITY: More than an Access Issue. Annals of Tourism Research. 31 (4), 946-960.

Important internet sites

Tourism for All, 2008, [online] Avalable at: www.tourismforall.org.uk [Accessed 04.05.2011]
Pigs Will Fly, 2008 [online] Available at: http://www.pigswillfly.com.au/?p=451 [Accessed 04.05.2011]

The author of this paper has attempted to outline the issues of travelling with a disability. The author states that an annual holiday is taken for granted by most of us but not the disabled; however the author should also recognise that people with a disability are not the only group of people who might encounter barriers.
The point is also put forward that people with a disability have just as much desire to travel as someone without one. Perhaps a relevant area to explore is how the fears and worries of the disabled may overcome the desire to travel.
The author makes an excellent point when saying we should encourage the disabled to travel and offer more facilities. However I would have found an expansion helpful; such as offering suggestions on how to encourage them, i.e. organised trips by knowledgeable disabled organisations; and also suggestions for facilities at tourism sites or accommodation.
It is mentioned within this paper that for those with a disability, holiday making is challenging. The author could add to this by giving the reader an idea of the challenges that might occur, i.e. a lack of facilities, poor staff attitude or lack of information available for the disabled when planning a trip.
The author highlights the fact that a consequence of a bad experience is often that disabled people stop travelling. It would be interesting to hear the author's suggestions on how this could be overcome and how we could encourage the disabled to travel again.
I agree with the author that tourism and planning a trip can help a disabled person feel more independent. Planning a trip could help bring a sense of control.
Toward the end of this paper financial difficulties are mentioned for families with disabled children wanting to take a holiday, and how the father often works longer hours while the mother stays at home. It would be interesting to have additional examples on how single parent families deal with this situation. The author could suggest alternatives to waiting for help from social services, such as sponsored fundraisers or applying to organisations for disabled children for support.
Overall I found the topic very relevant to tourism today; people should be made more aware of the barriers for the disabled as they are a growing market and their needs must be addressed. The author makes good points and it would be interesting to see them elaborate on these further.