Information Technology for sustainable and accessible tourism destination

The acceptance of diversity and the pursuit of equity and inclusiveness are important parameters in evaluating good and sustainable local tourism governance. Nevertheless, research into sustainable tourism has so far largely... [ view full abstract ]

The acceptance of diversity and the pursuit of equity and inclusiveness are important parameters in evaluating good and sustainable local tourism governance. Nevertheless, research into sustainable tourism has so far largely ignored accessibility issues. In particular, scant attention has been paid to the role of Information Technology (IT) to overcome accessibility issues. Despite the symbiotic relationship, which exists between IT and sustainable tourism, there has been little research, which has considered how the use of such technology has been employed to make sustainable tourism development a more workable reality.

The goal of this paper is to provide a framework able to analyze the relations between sustainable tourism development, tourism accessibility for People with Disability (PwD) and IT.

To achieve our goal, we will use an inductive multiple-case research design involving PwD in evaluating web accessibility and a content analysis based on websites of tourism destinations which have been recognized by Accessible Tourism Destination Awards, and Sustainable Tourism Destination Awards. The criteria and tools will be taken from the UNWTO Recommendations on Accessible Information in Tourism, using the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) as approach to determining how well a website conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. and evaluate comparable perception, discoverability, understanding and use, capabilities.

Results of this study allow to understanding better the way in which sustainable destinations deal with the issue of accessibility and to realize what prior fields and web tools destinations should implement to achieve social global accessibility.

Findings will help sustainable tourism management to know how to use IT in order to be competitive, sustainable and really welcoming, to gain better reputation and, therefore, to transform the culture of accessibility into a point of strength, an asset, and an item of excellence.