Tourism information systems promoting barrier-free tourism for people with disabilities

Abstract

Providing comprehensive accessibility is the major challenge for tourism service providers to address people with disabilities (and older people) as growing consumer groups. Information about accessibility of tourism objects (accommodation, sights, streets, parks, etc.) is equally important as barrier-free tourism information systems to support the booking and decision making process. Consequently, this paper introduces the extension of tourism information systems in a twofold way. First, each tourism object is provided with information about its accessibility realized by additional meta data information. Second, based on user profiles content presentation and user interface navigation are dynamically adapted to the user's individual needs in order to support appropriate search as well as presentation features. © Springer-Verlag 2004.