Services and facilities for accessible tourism enabling the disabled tourists

Abstract EN

Since the early 1980s, the information and communication revolution created radical changes in the international tourist industry in all the advanced and developing societies even though the said changes were relatively slow in the developing countries.

Electronic tourism dominated tourist industry on the international level.

For example, identifying tourist Sites electronically has become a reality by connecting the disabled tourists with the information and communication technology (ICT) as a facility to enhance and enrich their capabilities to recognize tourist sites.

Assistive technology includes all the modern technology means used by the disabled to get to know the tourist and archaeological sites, through the various technological techniques incorporated in this digital technology such as adjusted keyboards, software to read the texts shown on the screen through a voice produced by the computer and the technology that enables the disabled to communicate through the computer by means of computers that work by eye movement, in addition to other developed devices by using a number of specialized software like Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote sensing (RS) and Digital Modeling (DM) and other data.

The study indicated that the information and communication technology applications have significant impact pushing the disabled tourism development forward, and empowering the tourists of this category, starting from identifying the tourist sites and ending with remote booking.

However, many Arab countries suffer from weak investment in the infrastructure of the information and communication technology related to the disabled category as this technology is only used as a promotional propaganda, and their tourist offers through their websites lack the modern software that help the disabled to communicate with tourist locations.