Yuval Wagner Chair Access Israel spoke today to more than 460 participants at the ‘Accessible Tourism Day’ Virtual conference organized by the German National Tourist Board (GNTB).
Petra Hedorfer, Chairwoman of the GNTB’s Executive Board said: “The enormous interest in the ‘Accessible Tourism Day’, which is virtual for the first time, not only shows the importance of accessibility as an integral part of inclusive tourism in the future. It also demonstrates the great potential of virtual event. For the first time, experts and interested parties from all over the world had the opportunity to participate live in the trade event beyond the circle of ITB participants. This adds an extra dimension to the established format, although many participants have confirmed to us in advance that they miss the opportunity to participate in person.”
This year, the GNTB is focusing on the planning and implementation of barrier-free offers in tourism facilities, on the communication of barrier-free offers in practice and on barrier-free outdoor offers.
Yuval Wagner from Access Israel shared information of how Israel implemented Accessibility in the tourism industry. Yuval explained about the uniqueness of the Israeli accessibility laws regulation and standards – That deals with physical Accessibility, services Accessibility, employing people with disabilities and accessible technologies like websites applications and automatic machines.
Yuval shared Access Israel’s believe on awareness of decision makers to actually understand the business model of accessibility and why it’s important both for the business and for the tourists with disabilities.
Yuval shared that in Israel every business must have an accessibility coordinator, and has to train the service givers in an experimental activity on how to give service to clients with disabilities, and must publish to the clients all accessibility arrangements.
In the last 16 years Israel’s accessible tourism has advanced a lot and now more than ever enables tourism with accessibility needs.
The present challenge is to be able and enable groups of people with disabilities to travel in Israel.
