New Year's Eve Accessibility Info

Each year, the Sydney New Year’s Eve event is viewed by more than a million people around Sydney Harbour and more than a billion people worldwide.  

Courtesy of City of Sydney

The City of Sydney aims to produce an experience of Sydney New Year’s Eve that is safe, inclusive, accessible and enjoyable for all.

Whether you join the 1.6 million spectators on the Sydney Harbour Foreshore, or take part from the comfort of your own home, here is some useful information to welcome in the New Year. 

Top tools to plan your night!

·     Your one-stop-shop for everything accessible – sydneynewyearseve.com/accessibility

Vantage point mobility access information and route maps for selected locations sydneynewyearseve.com/vantage-points

 The official 2014 Sydney New Year’s Eve App brought to you by Telstra –  sydneynewyearseve.com/app

   

Other ways to be part of the night

Audio Description – A live audio description will be broadcast on 2RPH from 7.45pm on 1224AM, 100.5FM, 2RPH digital and online at 2rph.org.au. Highlights including 9PM Family Fireworks, Harbour of Light Parade and Midnight Fireworks Display will be audio described live from the foreshore by professional audio describers, bringing the 2014 Sydney New Year’s Eve program to life for listeners.

Tips for Planning a Fabulous (Accessible) Holiday

 

(Image courtesy of http://topbillinmusic.com/)

Today's post is a contribution from Jason Ballerini, who has previously posted his story on DisCo. Jason is a keen traveller and recently took a trip to Bali. Here are some of his general and flying tips for travel from his personal experience as a wheelchair user. 

Jason Ballerini

Tips for Planning a Fabulous (Accessible) Holiday

General Tips: 

1. Plan ahead and book early. Accessible resources are limited, so if you require a wheelchair accessible cabin or hotel room, make reservations early to avoid
   disappointment - several months in advance if possible.
2. When making any type of reservation, whether it be for a hotel, medical
   equipment, a van, or an attraction, ask VERY SPECIFIC questions. Don't let someone get away with answering you with a quick "yes, we are wheelchair accessible,"
   because a lot of times they really aren't. Let them know exactly what requirements you are looking for and make sure that the reservations agent understands what you mean.
3. Always check and double check reservations. Nothing is more frustrating than thinking you have a reservation for something when you don’t.

 Before You Go:

1. When booking a flight, be very specific about your situation and the requirements you need i.e. an aisle seat, bulkhead seats, seats beside each other, what type of wheelchair you use (manual or electric, wet cell or dry cell batteries), and whether you will need assistance boarding the plane.
2. If you have a choice between a direct, non-stop flight and a slightly cheaper flight that has connections, take the non-stop flight. You may save a little money by choosing the connecting flights, but the money you save often isn't worth the hassle of having to change planes and the potential problems that go along with it. Changing planes means that the baggage handlers have to handle your wheelchair one more time, and unlike the first leg of your trip where you can show the people who take your chair how they should handle it, you can't give any instructions to the next handlers. There is also more possibility of luggage being lost temporarily if you have to change planes. Connecting flights can also cause issues if for instance, your first flight is a couple hours late departing, you may miss your connecting flight. 
3. Have your wheelchair or scooter routinely serviced before you go so that you are sure everything is in working order for the trip. Bring some extra wheelchair or scooter parts (such as tyre tubes) along on your trip in case you run into trouble during your travels. It is also a good idea to bring some basic tools (screwdriver, allen keys, duct tape, etc.) along in your checked
   baggage in case you need to do a little repair work on your chair at your destination. 
4. If there are sensitive or delicate areas on your wheelchair that you will not be able to remove and take with you into the cabin of the plane, put labels on these areas so that the baggage handlers know not to touch or remove them. For instance, label the brakes with a big piece of tape, including up and down arrows indicating which way the brakes go to engage or disengage the chair to assist the handlers.
5. Check and double check your reservations i.e. seats beside each other, aisle seat, aisle chair etc.

 At The Airport:

1. When you are checking in for your boarding passes and they are tagging your luggage and wheelchair(s), ask them to "gate-check" the wheelchair you are sitting in. Then they will put a tag on your wheelchair that tells the baggage handlers at your destination to immediately bring your wheelchair to the gate (the door of the plane) rather than bringing it to the baggage claim. This way you can immediately transfer back into your wheelchair outside the door of the plane at your destination rather than having to sit in an airport wheelchair first, and be pushed to the baggage claim by an airport official to meet up with your chair. Note that it is not guaranteed that they will be able to bring your wheelchair back to the gate at your destination as it depends on whether or not there is an elevator nearby to bring the wheelchair up from the cargo hold. If not, they automatically just bring it to the baggage claim.
2. When the check-in agents are tagging your luggage, a lot of agents like to tag the checked luggage of a person with a disability with priority stickers so that they are the first bags off of the airplane and therefore the first bags on the baggage carousel. However, people who need wheelchair assistance are always the last ones off of the airplane, so, if you see the checks-in agents putting priority stickers on your checked baggage, you might just want to tell them that it's not necessary (unless of course you would like it).
3.  Immediately after you transfer out of your wheelchair (and before they take it away), remove any loose or vulnerable parts from your wheelchair and take them onto the plane with you. Baggage handlers are notorious for manhandling wheelchairs. They love to take apart anything they can, so it is important to remove loose parts of your chair and just store them with you on the plane. This includes things like a joystick and footrests. You don't have to put them in your carry-on luggage - just place them in the overhead compartment above your seat.
4. Secure any loose or moveable parts on your wheelchair that you can not take on the plane with you before they take your chair away to the cargo hold. For instance, if you are checking an electric wheelchair that has a swing-away joystick (or some other moveable part), tape it together so that it is secure and unable to swing out or move.
5. For those using electric wheelchairs, take the batteries out of your wheelchair personally at the airport. If your batteries do not come out of your chair, make sure you disconnect them and show the airport handler who will be taking your chair away that they are disconnected. 

 In flight:

1. Using the bathroom. No matter what the airlines tell you, bathrooms on board airplanes are not very accessible - especially for someone who might require assistance from a caregiver. They are incredibly small and can really only fit one person. You may find it helpful to firstly plan what you eat and drink that day so that you have less need or do not have to use the bathroom during the flight. If you think it is inevitable that you will need to use the bathroom at some point, try at the very least to use the bathroom inside the airport just before you board the plane so that you have less need to use the one on the plane during the flight. The bathroom in the airport will be bigger and far easier to use than the one on the plane. If you do have to use the bathroom on the plane during the flight, it should not be a problem for most airlines. The general practice is that the flight attendant will bring the onboard wheelchair to your seat and help you wheel to the bathroom, although if you require help inside the bathroom and transferring into the chair, you must provide your own caregiver to assist you for that. If you think you may have to use the bathroom on the plane during the flight, make sure to follow up with the airline at the time of reservation and again a few days prior to the flight to clarify their policy and ensure that they will have an onboard wheelchair on your flight.         

Diana Palmer Speaking at the Access Tourism NZ conference

Our wonderful Managing Director, Diana Palmer, spoke at the recent Access Tourism NZ Conference on the 4th of October 2010. As our organisation is branching out into the Accessible Tourism Industry this was a very interesting Conference for us to take part in.

We pride ourselves on our ability to find the information needed for people to have accessible holidays, in terms of accommodation, travel, equipment, resources and services, etc. Please check out the video of the speakers below. Well done to Diana for your great work!

Quality Accessible Tourism

This is quite an interesting article taken from the Business 21C Website about Tourism in Australia for people with access difficulties. The tourism industry really needs to be aware of the issues around tourism in terms of allowing for all individuals. We want everyone to be ABLE to experience Australia. There is a video so go to the site and check it out. Join in the discussion, let me know what you think about Accessible Tourism!!!!

Accessible tourism: linking demographic change and social sustainability to business success

Cities and organisations have responsibilities for citizens of all abilities. Associate Professor Simon Darcy asks, how can spaces, places and experiences be framed to provide an equality of experience?

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities guarantees people with disabilities access to all areas of citizenship. The 650 million people with disabilities and estimated 1.2 billion people over the age of 60 by 2020 are both a significant challenge and market opportunity for cities and service industries.

I led a research team in the Visitor Accessibility in Urban Centres project funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism.

The research focused on accessible tourism – covering visitors with mobility, vision or hearing impairments or learning difficulties – who are estimated in the report to account for 11% of the total tourism spend in Australia.

The motivation behind the study was to discover the quintessential experiences of Sydney, as the national tourism gateway, from the point of view of the accessible tourism market.

The findings have been broad-ranging with the potential to be ground breaking. The research looked not simply at what accessible tourists ‘can’ or ‘can’t do’, but at the quality of experience they have when they do their tourist thing in and around Sydney’s central business district, Rocks area and Harbour foreshore.The aim was to create a process incorporating universal design and inclusive practice for developing information, marketing and promotion approaches that would provide tourists with access needs with a framework to make informed choices for their tourism intineries.



The project was based on a participatory action approach that worked with major industry stakeholders and service providers to identify what first rate accessible experiences existed and to create an understanding that these are valuable offerings to travelers with access needs.

Many of the service providers had not considered tourism as a component of their operations. What was exciting about this study was that no new accessible experiences were created for the project, instead all the experiences identified were already occurring within the stakeholder and service provider operations, and needed to the reframed within an accessible tourism context and collaboratively marketed.

Accessible tourism is about access for tourists with a range of impairments, from the most readily recognizable needs of wheelchair users for continuous pathways to attractions, way-finding routes and so forth, to alternative communication strategies for people with vision and hearing impairments. Strategies that benefit people with disabilities often translate into benefits for other sectors of the community including people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, families with children in prams and employees who require safer working environments.


The starting point of the study was to consider what would any tourist visiting Sydney want to experience: the views, the Manly Ferry, fish and chips by the water, a sense of the history of the original colony, perhaps. The restricted starting point of what people with disabilities can or can’t do was ignored. After all, few tourists want a list of do’s and don’ts. They want accurate information to enable informed decisions about how to enjoy the city they are visiting. The accessible building blocks of any trip were brought together – transport providers, wayfinding maps, toilet locations – so that planning could be done in the one the virtual location.

The next step involved discovering 20 accessible destination experiences that could be used for tourists with access needs. The Art Gallery of New South Wales’ popular monthly Auslan (Australian sign language) interpreted after-hours gallery tour, allows hearing impaired visitors to engage with the guides and the venue more thoroughly than any written guide ever could; The Royal Botanic Gardens’ Aboriginal Heritage guided tour where people with vision impairments can touch and feel the plants – crush the leaves between their fingers, appeals to an innate desire of many tourists to engage in a sensory experience of a new place, its food, the wine, the song and dance, the aromas.

The report also uncovered opportunities for deeper understanding of the experience of tourists with access needs, and to improve the service offerings. One bugbear, particularly for mobility impaired travellers is finding suitable and enjoyable accommodation.

In Sydney, a key feature of quality accommodation is a view. Yet in the whole of the Sydney CBD and tourist district, there are currently only four accessible hotel rooms that have a Sydney Harbour view and six with a Black Wattle Bay view. Architects may meet the building requirements by including accessible accommodation, but these are often located in the least attractive part of the hotel – near the delivery dock or loading bay, or over a back lane. Such rooms simply do not provide a quality Sydney experience. One hotel actually converted a room with a view to cater for celebrity wheelchair user Christopher Reeve’s visit in 2003, but converted it back to non-accessible once he had left.

On the other hand, some hotels have understood the opportunities of the accessible tourism market, even catering for cultural differences in what is understood by ‘accessible’ in different parts of the world. Wheelchair users from western cultures are most likely, for example, to expect access to a roll-in shower. In Asian cultures, however, wheelchair users will expect to have a bath, and will look for accommodation with transfer-over baths. Some of the big chains have successfully developed a niche market servicing these customers.

The Visitor Accessibility in Urban Centres report, has a wider application, both in establishing the value of the accessible tourism dollar to the Australian economy through using mainstream economic modeling techniques in conjunction with Professor Larry Dwyer of UNSW. The economic modeling showed that tourists with access needs already accounted for a significant 11% of tourist spending, or $4.8bn. Yet they encountered many constraints to what most other members of the public visiting the city would consider to be essential.

The final aspect of the research was to create the www.sydneyforall.com portal that provides quality information for tourists with access needs looking for accessible destination experiences. The portal also provides opportunities for collaborative marketing and branding activities for the organisations and experience providers. In the 18 months of operation, it has received over 20,000 hits from 110 countries and has received a number of awards for access innovation. The City of Sydney has recently provided a further grant to extend the precinct cover to Darling Harbour and to include an accessible accommodation section.

Ultimately, accessible tourism in Sydney is an issue of equity, economics and citizenship. Quite simply if cities and service providers are not preparing for the ageing of the population and the increasing expectations of people with disabilities, they are not acting in a socially sustainable manner. Dr Darcy’s report argues that in meeting the needs of this significant group of visitors tourism providers can strengthen their business across all market segments and build a niche within a dynamic and ever evolving group of travellers.