Experiences of tourists with intellectual disabilities: A phenomenological approach

This paper aims to explore ways in which adults with intellectual disabilities experience tourism. The study applies phenomenology and draws on in-depth interviews with participants with intellectual disabilities focusing on their lived experiences of tourism. The tourism experience was significant and meaningful to the participants, in that tourism provided a sense of ‘normality,’ encouraged self-efficacy, and strengthened relational connections. This paper advances theory by conceptualising the nature of the tourism experience through the authentic voices and lived experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities. This lens of intellectual disability addresses a scarcity of representation in existing tourism scholarship, augmenting and advancing inclusive understandings of tourism experiences for these individuals with disabilities

Exploring an ‘Ethic of Care’ in Accessible Tourism

Gilligan’s classic book, ‘In a Different Voice’ (1982), saw the establishment of an ‘ethic of care’ as an alternative approach to moral reasoning. In adopting this ethical stance: relational experiences between the ‘self’ and ‘other’ are humanized; cognizance of the giving and receipt of care is favoured; and, the embedded, interconnected and interdependent nature of individual lives is emphasized. This paper presents an argument in support of the preceding model, as a distinctive methodological approach to tourism scholarship, particularly in exploring relational constructions of travel in the moral domain

Enabling the language of accessible tourism

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The growing body of literature on “accessible tourism” lacks a critical scholarly debate around its specific language use and nomenclatures. To fill this gap, this paper provides a first examination of language. Language provides a unique capability to resist, strengthen and reframe identities of individuals and groups, yet can also reinforce, weaken and perpetuate dominant worldviews of disability. A content analysis examined previous accessible tourism literature with results illustrating that diversity exists amongst the varying terminologies adopted by scholars. Terms were employed loosely, inconsistently and interchangeably, euphemistically with erroneous understandings and nuances. The paper concludes with critical discussion about the power of researchers to (re) produce oppression through language that maligns and misrepresents, or to (re) conceptualise and (re) construct the world we live in with liberating language that facilitates positive social change