The radio interview on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here on Earth show with Scott Rains and myself is now available:

Interview and Links

Podcast

I’ve just finished an interview with regards to inclusive travel for people with disabilities and accessible.travel on Wisconsin Public Radio on their show “Here on Earth” with Scott Rains. A podcast of the interview will be available in the next couple of day and I’ll post it as soon as I can. In the meantime here’s some information about the interview from Here on Earth.

Today I saw an interesting article named “America’s 10 Most Walkable Cities” from The Daily Green. I’m curious as to whether the 10 most walkable cities are also the most accessible for people with disabilities.

You can vote for the most accessible US city on the accessible.travel Community (it will only take a minute to sign up and it’s completely free). Below is a picture of the accessible.travel Poll with the different city options, you cannot vote here on the blog, please join the accessible.travel Community and go to my profile page to vote.

Craig

Welcome to the March 2009 issue of the Global Access News Travel E-Zine. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to write us and share your travel tips and experiences.

1. ACCESSIBLE TRAVEL

Craig Grimes, who operates the excellent www.accessiblebarcelona.com is now offering a new site, Accessible Travel, http://www.accessible.travel/ It features access information on hotels in San Francisco, as well as Paris, London, Prague and additional European cities. Grimes intends to eventually expand his site to include a host of other destinations, which will surely prove a boon to disabled travelers.

Also mentioned in Global Access News this month is our other web page AccessibleNicaragua:

4. ACCESSIBLE NICARAGUA

Craig Grimes, of Accessible Barcelona and Accessible Travel, takes on access in Nicaragua. It is always so encouraging to see new regions like Nicaragua open up to disabled travelers. At last, we can put Central America on our itineraries. Visit www.accessiblenicaragua.com

Source: GLOBAL ACCESS NEWS TRAVEL E-ZINE, VOLUME X, NUMBER 3, March 2009

Today Access Anything posted a blog post about the accessible.travel Community as well as our sister site Tour Watch.

Access Anything said:

“FOR THE TRAVELER

The newest one is called the accessible.travel Community, created by one of our peers Craig Grimes, based out of Nicaragua and with extensive experience in travel and adventure travel for people with disabilities in not only South and Central America but in the European Union as well. Craig’s dedication to bettering the online information for PWD shows in this community, a hub created for the traveler to share tips on accessible places he or she has been.

accessible.travel is for the traveler, the researcher, those thirsting for accessible information at their fingertips. In order for the information to grow, the network must grow, so we are sharing this new community so that it can do so. We hope you pay a visit and join. With already 105 members and growing, this is soon to be a vast resource and a great meeting location for like minded travelers with similar needs who seek travel locations without barriers.”

Thanks to Craig & Andy Kennedy at Access Anything for their continued support.

A profile about the work of Craig Grimes, Director of accessible.travel, in the Christian Science Monitor.

Matagalpa, Nicaragua – The winding turns, potholes, open sewers, and stray dogs make the streets of this northern Nicaraguan town tough to negotiate – let alone in a wheelchair.

“It’s the worst ever, without a doubt,” says Craig Grimes, with a laugh, as he grasps a signpost to pull his wheelchair up onto a street curb. “A lot of people in Matagalpa don’t know how to use their wheelchairs, because no one has ever taught them. I’ve been showing people in wheelchairs how to get around their own city, and they’ve lived here their whole lives.”

Read more.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Today Time Online publsihed a short paragraph about accessible.travel. Hopefully this is the first of a lot of positive publicty to come our way. Below are a couple of screen shots of the page, to see the full thing please go to Time.

Images taken from Time.

(photo provided by Jani Nayar from SATH)

One of the key destinations for accessible.travel in the US will be New York. Unfortunately for us and for people with disabilities there isn’t very much information out there on the world wide web. Just trying to find a hotel with the right facilities is an absolute nightmare, I went to NYC in July last year and ticked the “wheelchair friendly” search box on a well known booking engine. This was a big mistake and I should have known better, I did email the hotel to confirm the access but they never replied and it would have been very expensive to call the hotel from Nicaragua, so I never did.

I arrived at the hotel at about midnight to be confronted with 6 steps and no alternative entrance. The situation got worse when I realised that the lift was so narrow that my wheelchair wouldn’t go through the doors and they had put me in a room on the fifth floor. All of the ground floor rooms were fully occupied but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway as the bathroom doors were so narrow that I couldn’t get in there either. They ended up putting me in another of their hotels that only had three steps to get into it and a lift that was wide enough for my chair. The hotel didn’t offer me any type of compensation, they didn’t even offer to pay for a taxi to the new hotel. It was only through the generosity of a French backpacker that I managed to get to the new hotel as he carried my rucksack and showed me the way. The service was appalling and the staff were rude, definitely not “wheelchair friendly” nor friendly towards anyone from what I could gather with the arguments from unhappy clients at the front desk.

This is the type of situation that accessible.travel wants to make a thing of the past through providing detailed hotel assessments and photos, so that individuals can make their own decisions as to whether a hotel is suitable for their needs or not.

With this in mind accessible.travel are trying to raise the funding so that I can go on a two week trip there to assess hotels, attractions,  transport facilities, bars and restaurants and are looking for businesses that maybe interested in sponsoring the accessible.travel New York pages.

What we require:

• Return flights to NYC from Central America
• Accessible accommodation at a central NYC location.
• Transport costs.
• Budget for daily sustenance.

I return accessible.travel will supply:

• Company logo with hyperlink to their web site on all New York destination pages.
• Company profile and hyperlink to their web site in the partners page.
• Company logo with hyperlink to their web site in the New York Group of the accessible.travel Community.
• Coverage of the partnership on the accessible.travel Blog.
• Supply of New York data on the company web site if desired with links to the accessible.travel Booking Engine, with payable commissions (subject to agreement of terms and conditions).

The total budget required for the sponsorship deal is $3,000 for all the above benefits.

accessible.travel are especially interested in researching New York at the moment but would also be interested in hearing from any companies that would like to sponsor a different city destination (US or elsewhere). The same offer would apply, for more information please contact me: craig@accessible.travel

Quite possibly the most important part of setting up a travel site for people with disabilities is providing the correct information regarding accommodation facilities and displaying it in a clear manor. On my blog Accessible Everything I have been playing with ideas of how to show hotel information and have also looked at various other web pages that give information in different ways and different levels of detail.

One of the conclusions that I have drawn is that either not enough information is supplied or there is far too much information which could potentially mislead or confuse a potential customer. Another problem that I have noted is that some sites provide so many symbols and icons that it’s hard to remember exactly what they mean.

Below is an example of what an accessible.travel hotel description may look like:

Red Roof Inn Miami Airport,

3401 NW LeJeune Road,

Miami, FL.

Main Entrance:

Ramped or level access to main entrance: Yes

Door Width: 84cm (Double doors = 168cm total door width)

Type of door: Manual pull doors.

Access to public areas:

There is level or ramped access to all public areas of the hotel including the swimming pool, parking and dining areas.

Lift:

There are a total of 3 lifts at the hotel.

Lift door width: 100cm

Lift depth: 141cm

Lift width: 203cm

Are there raised numbers or letters on the lift buttons: Yes (braille)

Is there a verbal announcement at each floor: No

Is there a display indicating which floor the lift is at: Yes

Guest Rooms with Facilities for People with Disabilities:

How many rooms are available for guests that use a wheelchair: 8 in total, 4 with roll in showers, 4 with baths (only 1 room with a roll in shower was assessed for the purpose of this assessment, room 246)

Door width: 84cm

Type of beds available: Double King Size.

Height of bed: 58cm

Clear space under bed: 18cm

Light switch next to bed: Yes

Height of desk: 77cm

Clear space under desk: 75cm

This room also has an inter-connecting door to the next room.

En-suite Bathroom:

Door type: Door opens outwards

Door width: 89cm

Bathing Facilities:

Roll in shower: Yes (wet floor throughout)

Dimensions of shower: 97cm x 150cm (see floor plan)

Wall mounted shower seat provided: No (a free standing seat is available from reception upon request)

Shower handrails: Yes, mounted at a height of 80cm and 84cm

WC:

WC height: 46cm

Clear space beside WC: +100cm

Clear space in front of WC: +100cm

WC handrails: Yes, mounted at a height of 90cm

Sink:

Sink height: 83cm

Clear space under sink: 75cm

Sink length: 50cm

Sink depth: 46cm

Other Bathroom Details:

Is there an emergency call system: No

The bathroom has a tilted mirror above the sink for the use of wheelchair users. It also has a flashing alarm for people with hearing impairments in the bathroom should the hotel need to be evacuated.

Other Information for Guests with Disabilities:

• Signs throughout the hotel have braille for people with visual impairments.
• Smoking and non-smoking rooms are available.
• The hotel airport shuttle service is not currently suitable for wheelchair users.

You can reserve this hotel with accessible.travel

This is an example of how an Accessible.travel city map may look. This map is of accommodation providers in San Francisco that have facilities for people with disabilities. Have a play around with it, move around it, zoom in and out, there are almost 40 properties on the map.
View Larger Map

The above map is a very simplistic idea of what can be achieved. The wheelchair symbols indicate that the accommodation has at least one room with facilities for people with disabilities that has a roll-in-shower, while the standing figure indicates that the hotel only has a bath. This allows the user to only look at the hotels that maybe suitable for their needs. Most people with disabilities tend to prefer or require roll-in-showers as baths are not suitable for their needs. Therefore, rather than having to look through all of the hotel descriptions, this use of symbols can be very helpful.

Within the bubble as you click on the symbol, there is some basic information about the property, such as the address, how many rooms for people with disabilities there are and how many of these have roll-in-showers. I have placed the link of Accessible.travel at the end, but on the actual web site it will say something like “more information” or “hotel assessment” and take the user through to a complete description of the property with photos.

As the web site grow, these maps can also be used more interactively through people with disabilities emailing in reviews of museums, restaurants, attractions and general photos of their trip to the city which can be added to it. This will help create a ownership and also give other people with disabilities confidence in the information given.

Assessment information provided by: Access Nothern California