Travel organisations around the world are making efforts to ensure that travelling is made more comfortable for visitors who are visually impaired or autistic. Traveleyes, a UK-based travel company, specialises in trips for the blind, offering discounted prices for sighted travellers who are paired with blind travellers as their guides. The company was founded in 2004 by Amar Latif, who lost 95% of his eyesight by the age of 18, and was inspired to do so after being turned down by travel providers who refused to make accommodations for him.
Traveleyes offers a range of experiences in various countries such as walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, visiting a big game safari in Eswatini and exploring India’s Golden Triangle. The tours provide tactile experiences such as touch exhibits, and the sighted guides often describe the sites and the areas they visit to the visually impaired.
Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, has launched a Touch and Hear tour for sight-impaired visitors to help them navigate the city with ease. The 90-minute tour is facilitated by the city’s blind and visually impaired community, who provided insights on the route for visitors. Whilst guiding them through the city, monuments and objects speak to the visitors, and participants are also encouraged to touch and feel existing terrain and textures throughout the tour. The tour is open to all visitors, including those who are sighted, and aims to allow visitors to experience Vilnius through sensory exploration.
The Arizona city of Mesa became the first in the US to become Autism-Certified in 2019. More than 85% of families with autistic children report that they cannot take holidays due to a lack of certified options. Certified Autism Centers in Mesa include the Mesa Arts Center, Arizona Museum of Natural History and Mesa Riverview Park. Staff at these centres undertake special training processes that enable them to provide the necessary support to travelers with autistic children, including noise-cancelling headphones and quiet spaces for families where touching exhibitions is possible.
As part of the certification, restaurants and hotels also provide support to support such as noise-canceling headphones and quieter spaces to go to in case of sensory overload. Visit Mesa has other programmes aimed at making tourism more accessible, including Aira, a guided visual interpretation service, Hidden Disabilities, a program aimed at helping people recognise disabilities and Wheel the World, an online booking platform for travellers with disabilities
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