Re-conceptualizing barriers to travel by people with disabilities

This paper proposes a four-tiered hierarchy to understand better the nature and effects of barriers, constraints and obstacles to travel faced by people with disabilities. Previous studies tended to aggregate barriers into a single group and further, some research associated barriers faced by all tourists as being unique to people with disabilities. The failure to recognise the complex, yet subtle interplay between tourism and different types of barriers results in the tendency to see people with disabilities as a homogeneous group where a one size fits all solution applies. In reality, they are a heterogeneous cohort who face the same types of barriers as everyone, some barriers that are common to all people with disabilities, those that are unique to each disability dimension and specific impairment effects that are individualistic.