The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a historic document because of the prominence that it gives to Inclusive Tourism and Inclusive Destination Development.
To hone in on those topics when reading the CRPD head straight for Chapter 30 entitled, Participation in Cultural Life, Recreation, Leisure and Sport. Then backtrack to Chapters 18 through 21 for Liberty of Movement and Nationality through Freedom of Expression and Opinion, and Access to Information.)
The manual Human Rights. Yes! published by the University of Minnesota provides simple analyses and is helpful for those preparing to advocate for ratification of CRPD. Chapter 14 The Right to Sport and Culture has a section called Tourism that is its module on disability and travel.
Before I offer a critique let me begin by noting that two of the three citations for the section are my research and admit that this section could have been better if my original work had provided the authors with a more well-rounded argument. Specifically, my work would have been more adequate if it had clearly distinguished between physical accessibility to venues, fixtures, and facilities and program accessibility to services and other non-physical entities. Only when both are addressed is inclusion possible.
There are also particular experiences in my own life that make a critique of Human Rights. Yes! and similar tools of special significance to me.
As an undergraduate at the University of Washington I was recruited to do statewide education on Section 504 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. I declined the position but retained a keen interest in the process of public education on the rights of my community. As a professional educator at Santa Clara University I was involved in university administration of compliance plans during the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Over the intervening decades I have had numerous opportunities to observe how seemingly small errors in the public education and enforcement processes related to major disability rights legislation can have disproportionately disappointing consequences.
Without serious, systematic, and coordinated efforts to communicate the intent, scope, and consequences of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities this historic moment will slip away and its promise remain unfulfilled.
Human Rights. Yes! succeeds at best practices in course design through good sequencing, defined scope, specific learning goals, appropriate language level, and clear graphic design. In the discussion of tourism it makes clear the unique role of the CRPD in the area of tourism and disability:
Responsible tourism development and tourism that respects the human rights
of persons with disabilities must consider inclusion in planning, designing, and implementing tourism projects. Most important, disabled peoples organizations must participate in such processes and need to engage in accessible tourism advocacy. The CRPD, which is the only major international human rights treaty to explicitly mention tourism, requires States to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to tourism and tourist services.
That is it:
• Affirms Inclusive Destination Development (which is in turn founded on Universal Design)
• Assigns legitimacy to disabled peoples organizations (DPOs)
• Specifies consultative and transparent planning and management processes
• States that the CRPD is unique among human rights treaties in addressing tourism
• Observes that States are required to assure access to tourism and tourist services
Critiquing the training module on tourism as a stand-alone tool and doing so in light of the paragraph quoted and outlined above I find the module’s sidebar to be incomplete and unrepresentative of what it aims to address, namely “The Barriers Faced by Tourists with Disabilities”:
• Inaccessible airport transfer and ill-trained airport staff
• Lack of accessible transport
• Inaccessible hotel rooms
• Professional staff not trained to inform and advise about accessibility issues
• Lack of information about a specific attraction's accessibility (e.g., museums, castles, exhibitions)
• Non-adapted toilets in restaurants and public places
• Inaccessible restaurants and tourist attractions
• Inaccessible streets (e.g., no curb cuts, cars blocking wheelchair access
• lanes)
• Lack of disability equipment rental (wheelchairs, bath chairs, toilet raisers,
• electric scooters)
All these are barriers commonly faced. The question is, “By whom?” The underlying problem is two-fold.
First the examples overwhelmingly reflect those with mobility impairments. Second the examples do not capture the important distinction between physical accessibility (well represented in the examples) and program accessibility (overlooked). (Program accessibility means access to all programs and services offered to non-disabled people once physical barriers are eliminated.)
This list of barriers is followed immediately by “Exercise 14.5: Speaking Up for Accessible Tourism.“ The learning objective of the exercise is, “To examine discrimination in tourism and tourism development and to consider how to take action against it.” I have not field-tested this exercise in role-playing a presentation to a “Tourism Development Board” but I would make some predictions based on experience.
My assumption is that the intended goal of the exercise is to (learn to) convince the board to use their authority in the interest of travelers with disabilities. The chapter’s introductory section stipulates the participation of DPOs for any solution to be legitimate. This suggests a solution-oriented presentation incorporating the foremost cultural product of disability culture for addressing the built environment - the seven principles of Universal Design. Yet the exercise does not present Universal Design either in isolation or as a component of Inclusive Destination Development thus making the logical link to the Board’s area of authority for destination management.
I would predict that by failing to prepare participants with these conceptual tools and by norming the exercise on an implicit person with a mobility impairment the exercise would most frequently result in:
• A laundry list of anecdotal stories of barrier encountered during travel
• A preponderance of physical and attitudinal barriers being recounted
• Superficial reference to or application of Universal Design as a set of mandated measurements (building code specifications) rather than as the design approach with no pre-mandated design solutions
• A scarcity of solutions presented (actionable items that are within the domain of the Board)
• Low participation by exercise participants with non-mobility related disabilities
In fairness to the authors of Human Rights. Yes! the topic of Universal Design is discussed in Chapter 2 on Accessibility. The seven principles are listed. The exercise there explicitly encourages reflection on Universal Design as applied to “people with physical, sensory, learning, intellectual, psycho-social, and multiple disabilities.” Barriers to accessibility are broken down into the four categories of physical, informational, institutional, and attitudinal. However, it would be helpful to review, in Chapter 14, the principles of Universal Design introduced 12 chapters earlier and add some intellectual scaffolding to help participants transition from four abstract categories of barriers to the solution-oriented distinction between physical and program accessibility in tourism. Such a modification would improve the exercise.
For legislative milestones such as CRPD to be sustainable they must be either 1) constantly supported by the legal mechanisms such as monitoring, enforcement, and modification 2) find sustainability outside the legal system or 3) both.
The purpose of the Second International Conference on Inclusive Tourism (ICAT 2007) held in Bangkok in November of 2007 was to promote a rights-based approach to tourism. Citing the the Biwako Millennium Framework for Action towards an Inclusive, Barrier-free and Rights –based Society for Persons with Disabilities (BMF), Biwako Plus Five and the Plan of Action for Sustainable Tourism Development in Asia and the Pacific (Phase II 2006-2012). The message of its opening keynote, “Inclusive Tourism: A New Strategic Alliance for the Disability Rights Movement,” was that the most promising means of sustaining inclusion in tourism outside the legal system is the travel and hospitality industry itself. In fact, the claim was made that the industry is moving rapidly to self-standardize to meet the burgeoning demand for travel by persons with disabilities.
The grassroots and institutional efforts of individuals and DPOs around the world to promote ratification of and educate the public on the implications of CRPD play a pivotal role in shaping the industry’s support. That support will be effective and durable to the extent that DPOs succeed in speaking with a unified voice that reflects distilled cultural wisdom such as Universal Design and represents the current experience of their constituency.
However, their constituencies also have ongoing direct access to the industry as consumers, guests, consultants, travel industry employees, academics, and focus-group participants. The legitimacy of DPOs depends on paying attention to the groundswell of interest in this topic by people with disabilities.
A strategy for success in establishing Inclusive Tourism and inclusive Destination Development practices involves careful attention to constituent education on the part of DPOs. It should provide consumers with disabilities with awareness of their rights. It must also make them competent to offer solutions consistent with the overall interests of those in their community with disabilities other than or more extensive than their own. Careful attention to the training we provide on this subject within our own community can make sustainability of the gains promised by CRPD a reality.
Further Resources:
Full Text of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
http://tinyurl.com/3b72g8
Conference Recommendations from the Second International Conference on Inclusive Tourism (ICAT 2007)
http://www.rollingrains.com/archives/002056.html