Accessible tourism in Brazil: an exploratory study about the public policies and the process of inclusion of persons with disabilities

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges of society Brazilian is confronting the issue of equality and social exclusion. It is estimated that there are approximately 45 million people with disabilities in Brazil (IBGE, 2010), many of them still unable to enjoy leisure and tourism activities due to their physical limitations and lack of adaptation of the environment. The purpose of this article is to verify if public policy focused tourism for people with disabilities (PWD) have been able to meet demands for inclusion these  segment, also seeks the perception of these people as to the inclusion process. The focus of this study, therefore, refers to people who were born or have acquired some kind of permanent limitation, not being object of this survey people who have had temporary physical limitations and/or sporadic or who have reduced mobility. In terms of methodology, a exploratory and qualitative research was made with interviews of semi-structured scripts.  The participants of study were nine managers chosen from representatives of government, of representatives of the tourist trade and of associations of people with disabilities. From the interviews with the public, given the diversity of actions and their characteristics, it proposed the classification of programs/government actions. As result, the research shows that the government has to attack the problem and sought to create and implement policies directed to this segment. However, people with disabilities consider that what has been done is not enough to include them really in tourist activities and say they are not being heard enough. All disabled associations mentions that the limitations/difficult environment hamper achievement of tourism. It was noticed also that the private sector does not consider the disabled person as a consumer public and that are not done research to understand the profile and the needs of this segment. Both the private sector as PWD associations, showed little knowledge regarding the legislation and policies that involve tourism to this segment. It was concluded that, in general, the groups tend to pass on part of their responsibility to other groups: the Government claims it can not do everything alone; since entrepreneurs do not seem very interested and place the onus of lack of accessibility to the government.