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Abstract: Accessible tourism is a crucial topic for the development of a more inclusive society, enhancing tourism among people with special needs (PwSN). The absence of suitable information and the mainly negative attitudes of tourism staff appear in the literature as the major barriers that PwSN face in obtaining memorable tourism experiences. To overcome these barriers, information systems (IS) arise as potential solutions. Essentially, these systems should provide PwSN with the right type of information, at the right time. However, due to the diversity of accessible requirements, the conceptualization of tourism information systems can be a rather difficult task. The major challenge of this work is to introduce a methodological approach to design and develop an information system in this area which integrates accessibility issues. This methodology can contribute to the development of an IS which is capable of eliminating travel constraints that the accessible tourism market (ATM) faces when participating in tourism activities. This accessible information system (AIS) will also help tourism producers develop customer-oriented services. The methodological process can be understood as an exploratory participatory approach characterized by the utilization of complementary data collection techniques and by the use of various information sources, data analysis methods and perspectives (e.g. demand, supply, governmental entities, and higher education institutions). Furthermore, the application of this methodological concept can help future investigators and developers understand the main characteristics of the ATM, alongside its main stakeholders, allowing a better perspective of how the platform should behave to fulfil a set of determined user requirements.
Keywords: accessible information systems (AIS), people with special needs (PwSN), accessible tourism (AT), user-centred design (UCD)
1.Introduction
Accessible tourism (AT) is important to develop a more inclusive society, enhancing tourism among people with special needs (PwSN) (e.g. people with disabilities and those with other special needs) (Kastenholz, Eusébio and Figueiredo, 2015). Despite the extensive literature on tourism experiences in the tourism field (Campos et al., 2018) no studies exist on co-creation of tourism experiences for the accessible tourism market (ATM). The absence of suitable information and the mainly negative attitudes of tourism staff appear in the literature as the major barriers that PwSN face in obtaining memorable tourism experiences (Daniels et al., 2005). Unfortunately, these travel constraints are frequently ignored by tourism supply...