Europe's On-Line Project
EuropeforAll.com - Putting Accessibility Information On Line
A European body called OSSATE is working on one-stop shopping for on-line accessibility information. Will on-line ever be as good as a phone call to a site operator?
European Experts Considered Accessibility at 2006 Conference
If you were planning a trip to somewhere in Europe, and you had accessibility issues, would you be comfortable relying on on-line information to figure out whether the access would be OK for you? Or would you want to talk to a real person who works at the place you're planning to visit?
Asking whether a tourist site is "accessible" is somewhat like asking, "How long is a piece of string?" The only robust answer is, "It depends."
In May 2006, at a conference in Brussels, Belgium, European experts from OSSATE looked at the question of what "accessible" means.
OSSATE is a European body responsible for creating EuropeforAll.com, which is at the time of this writing apparently not yet up and running. The concept of EuropeforAll.com is to have one-stop shopping for on-line information about accessible tourism throughout Europe.
The 2006 OSSATE conference report summary suggests that a lot of effort goes into creating ideal standards for accessibility, often in consultation with "different disabled user groups, rather than through analysis of actual access problems at existing tourist venues." In addition, there is very little published information about users' actual experiences of accessibility.
So, if most of the energy is going into creating ideal standards, which are nearly impossible to live up to, and not much attention is being paid to actual experiences, what is the likely outcome?
Approaches to Providing Information about Accessibility
Accessibility is a negotiation, an arrangement between the visitor and the tourist site. The visitor knows his own limitations and needs. He needs to know how the site matches these. The OSSATE report talks about the "descriptive" approach, where a site operator provides a comprehensive description to visitors to help them decide whether the access suits them. Is it possible for the site managers to provide enough information on-line for most visitors to determine whether the site will be accessible to them?
As wonderful as the Internet is, some feel that on-line information will never fully replace talking to a real live person who actually works at the tourist site. The OSSATE initiative is tremendous and valuable, but perhaps we will always need the good old-fashioned telephone and its Internet cousin, the free on-line phone call. Perhaps phone contacts will end up being a big part of the eventual EuropeforAll.com website when it's up and running. Or perhaps even more effort must go into supporting and training tourist site operators to deal with accessibility questions.
Your comments are invited. Please join in the discussion of the pros and cons of a database for accessible travel.
August 29, 2007 Update on how Europe for all.com is developing.
All on-line references were current at the time this article was originally published on Suite101.com.
