All Aboard Tampa Adventure Awaits, Tourism’s New Era of Accessibility
PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID HUNTER, GROVE IMAGES, DAVID COFFMAN WRITTEN BY: CRISTINA DEPTULA
TAMPA IS FOR EVERYONE Traveling while disabled often involves extra planning to figure out which locations and attractions are accessible. “It can be scary to spend eight hours flying somewhere and then not know if you’ll be able to get around once you land,” says influencer Chelsea Bear, who lives with cerebral palsy. “I’d call places in advance, especially those in older buildings, to see if they were really going to be accessible to me, and see if they needed to do any sort of planning to accommodate me when I got there.” Leaders in Tampa Bay’s tourism space have gone out of their way to make that research easier and streamline disabled travelers’ journeys, rolling out a virtual red carpet for people with disabilities that begins on their website. This includes participation by influencers—like Bear—who describe their experiences in Tampa. “We’ve assembled quite a team of local bloggers, visitors, ambassadors, who represent the disabled community and who want to highlight to the broader community how accessible Tampa Bay is,” says Visit Tampa Bay president Santiago Corrada. “The message is that Tampa is a place for everyone, no matter your history or ethnicity, or who you love, or your disability.” Corrada formerly worked as a teacher for children with disabilities and has a passion for accessibility, so this project is close to his heart. He hopes that tourism organizations in other locales follow their lead.
W here in the United States can you meet an African penguin, sail on a pirate water taxi, nosh on signature Spanish- Cuban cuisine, and encounter history inside a shipping container? How about rolling gourmet cigars, perusing Etruscan antiquities, letting your little ones give a CT scan to a monster, and touring an opulent turn-of-the-century railroad resort, all within a few days? That’s all possible in Tampa Bay, Florida! And state agency Visit Tampa Bay enables accessible tourism making it easier for people with disabilities to enjoy travel.
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