A TRAVEL TREND ON THE HORIZON

by Scott Rains.
Director of Programs/Services SeniorNet
Commendation for Commitment to Principles of Cultural Diversity from Santa Clara University
Editor: The Rolling Rains Report.
www.RollingRains.com

The goal of Universal Design is to create all products and environments to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation.

I am quadriplegic and I have a dream.

It is a dream as noble as the impetus behind the Pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela; as insistent as the beckoning of Mecca to the haji; as deep as the desire to journey to Jerusalem; as all-encompassing as the attraction of Kumba Mela in India. It is the dream of travel.

Travel, even the dream of travel, speaks to the imagination. This past year demonstrated once again that imagination drives the engines of commerce even as it fuels the spirits of pilgrims, artists, and designers. Travel for people with disabilities, a long-deferred dream, now receives global attention at a level that promises to make it economically sustainable. One rediscovered philosophy of design is making this transformation possible.

Sheikh Mohammed has announced a goal of attracting three million travelers with disabilities to ultra-modern Dubailand even while Japan has quietly transformed Takayama City into a barrier-free destination of choice that retains the charm of this city steeped in tradition. Tasmania saw the launch of an island-encompassing circuit of fully accessible lodgings known as the Devil's Playground.  Sun City International Community takes the trend even further. They offer residents of their residences for seniors in China the opportunity to travel to their senior properties outside the country on a time-share basis.

In the past year, as business gave voice to the dream that travel would be barrier-free and set in motion a renaissance of design, I have been carried along on a pilgrimage to destinations not of my own choosing - but still deeply satisfying and beneficial.

Conferences on travel and disability sprung up simultaneously over the past twelve months on every continent but Antarctica . In fact, the popularity of the topic created several dilemmas in my personal travel itinerary that might seem familiar to the frequent traveler.

By choosing to work with students from Rhode Island School of Design to evaluate their human-centered design for a wheelchair-accessible eco-resort in the Caribbean I was unable to accept an invitation to speak at Brazil 's first national conference on barrier free tourism and hospitality outside Porto Alegre . While launching the Asia Pacific Accessible Travel League at the First International Conference on Accessible Travel in Taipei , Taiwan I was able to attend neither the European Union's conference on universally usable travel information sponsored by the One-Stop Shop for Accessible Tourism in Europe (OSSATE) in London nor the Culture for All conference in Berlin . As Mexico held a national conference on tourism without barriers in Mazatlan , I was on the schedule at the Third International Conference on Peace Through Tourism in Pattaya , Thailand as a panelist on travel and Universal Design.

It is that final concept - Universal Design - that runs like a grand protagonist through this global drama of the emergence of barrier-free travel as a business objective. Businesses have rediscovered a secret of Universal Design's utility as a roadmap to lifelong social participation by children, people with disabilities, and seniors. It creates as well as satisfies a new customer base. It allows for business models that are at once economically sustainable and socially beneficial.

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