Economic benefits of making built environment accessible to persons with disabilities – case study Stockholm – Sweden

Introduction
Acquiring impairment in the natural world, at birth or adventitiously later in life can place any animal’s survival at risk even at the best of times. In the social world, however, experience in managing human frailty has provided us with an amazing cornucopia of interventions that make possible the survival of those possessing the greatest physical and mental deficits. But the body of knowledge gain in the progressing of this advancement has been the property of a narrow assembly of practitioners and academics.

In time, this has crystalised into institutional menus of good practice expected from medical staff in rehabilitation centres, occupational therapists in social services, remedial teachers in special education, and so on. In all these activities, the volume of understanding has increasingly rested on what, until recently, has been unchallenged dogma: that the possession of  impairment lead to social vulnerability. This is despite the fact that history teaches us the opposite: that the natural vulnerability of human beings has significantly shaped development of all the machinery of modern life.

Far from being a burden, our imperfections in relation to other animals might be regarded as one of the essential characteristics that make us human. In this respect persons with disabilities are the most of human beings. The segregation of persons with disability from our non-disabled peers, then, is not only an inhuman act, owing more to exigencies of the natural world than to social world, but the hiatus between specialist knowledge confined to “disablement” and public knowledge concerned with “normality” is no less than the emergency of a profoundly disabling pedagogical barrier in the evolution of human understanding, (Witson, J 1979).

The Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study was to investigate into the benefits of accessible built environment (tourism sites) from the economic perspective and to increase our knowledge of the situation of the persons with disabilities in the tourism industry. To do this, I focused on one of these concerns by describing issues related to making the tourism site non-handicapping for individuals with disabilities and its benefits to both the persons with disabilities, proprietors and the communities at large.

Prior investigating accessibility, one must first have to agree on the level of accessibility on which one will base his/her comparisons. For example, shall one consider a site to be accessible where a wheelchair user with strong arms and hands can move around in a manual chair all by himself or herself? Is one looking at the level of accessibility needed by persons using powered chairs? Shall one assume that the access needs of persons using crutches or canes are also covered by design, which is meant for wheelchair users?

Does one include the access needs of persons with sight and hearing impairments? Shall one also consider the needs of persons with intellectual disabilities who might have difficulties in finding their way in a larger building? Finally, how about those increasing number of people who are becoming allergic to various substances?

Target Group
In accessibility studies, there are four major disability groups that could be the main focus:

1. Orthopaedic: ambulant and non-ambulant (wheelchair users),
2. Sensory: visual, hearing;
3. Cognitive: mental, developmental, learning difficulties;
4. Multiple: combination of any or all of the above.

However, in this study, I opted to concentrate on persons with orthopaedic disabilities. Persons with orthopaedic disabilities are generally those with locomotive disabilities, which affect their mobility. This could result from the impairment of the trunk, the lower limbs or both. Persons with orthopaedic disabilities may also have impairment of the lower limbs and the trunk as well as the upper limbs. As can be seen above, persons with orthopaedic disabilities are further divided into two subgroups; namely:

Ambulant disabled persons: those who are able, either with or without assistance, to walk and who may walk with or without the aid of devices/technical aids such as crutches, sticks, braces or walking frames.

Non-ambulant (wheelchair users); are people who use wheelchairs that are unable to walk, either with or without assistance, and who, except for the use of mechanised transport, dependent solely on a wheelchair for mobility. They may propel themselves independently, or may require pushing and manoeuvring by an assistant. While being unable to walk, the majority of this group are able to transfer to and from a wheelchair. To further narrow down the study and be even more specific on the group of study, the non-ambulant (wheelchair users) was my main focus. Precisely, I concentrated on investigating into the main economic gains enjoy by sites owners/managers who have made their sites accessible by adapting it to the needs of the persons with disabilities.

In relation to the group concerned in this study, an accessible/adoptive tourism sites needs to incorporate level access, ramps, lifts/elevators, handrails and grab bars, larger toilet cubicles, clear sign, sufficiently wide paths, doors, entrances, lobbies and corridors, knee spaces under sink and counters switches and controls in easily reached locations, entrance free of steps and stairs, accessible route through the house, etc.

Irrespective of other fundamental limitations, for example, time, funds, etc, I have chosen to look into free movement within the tourism sites as  an advocate of equal rights and equal opportunities for persons with disabilities.