(re)envisioning tourism and visual impairment

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 1097–1116, 20100160-7383/$ - see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Printed in Great Britain

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2010.04.011www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures

(RE)ENVISIONING TOURISM ANDVISUAL IMPAIRMENT

Victoria Richards,Annette Pritchard,

Nigel MorganUniversity of Wales Institute, Cardiff, Wales, UK

Abstract: Tourism scholarship has failed to engage seriously with disability issues. This paperpresents a critical analysis of the tourism encounters of individuals with vision problems andthe positive impacts these can have on their emotional well-being, as well as the challengesthey encounter whilst travelling. Eight focus groups were conducted with four social and sup-port groups for people with visual impairment. Their tourism experiences are discussedunder the themes of: embodied tourism encounters; inhospitable tourism spaces; navigatingtourism environments. The study is located within the emerging hopeful tourism scholarshipparadigm and underpinned by a research philosophy which promotes dignity, respect, equal-ity and social justice in and through tourism scholarship and practice. Keywords: visualimpairment, embodiment, disability, hopeful tourism scholarship, citizenship. � 2010 ElsevierLtd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

This paper argues for more critical analysis of disability and citizen-ship issues in tourism scholarship through its examination of the tour-ism experiences of individuals with visual impairment. Despite theexponential growth in tourism knowledge over the past half century,Tribe’s (2009, p. 3) contention that ‘‘many areas have remained stub-bornly underdeveloped’’ is no more true than in this area; indeed, thefield of tourism research has barely scratched the surface of disability.This paper calls for a greater engagement from tourism scholars withdisability research and advocates enquiry framed by emancipatory dis-ability research which strives to have a meaningful impact on the livesof individuals with disabilities. It presents the findings of a qualitativestudy based on focus groups to illustrate this approach and is locatedwithin ‘hopeful tourism scholarship’, an emerging paradigm withinthe field which advocates linking critical thinking, pedagogy and actionto enhance social justice (Ateljevic, Morgan, & Pritchard, 2007; Ren,

Victoria Richards is pursuing a doctoral study of the tourism experiences of people withvisual impairment (the Welsh Centre for Tourism Research, the University of Wales Institute,Cardiff, Colchester Avenue, Cardiff, CF23 7XR. Email <[email protected]>). AnnettePritchard’s research focuses on tourism and social justice; tourism and gendered visualrhetoric; hopeful tourism scholarship; destination marketing. Nigel Morgan’s researchinterests are destination marketing; tourism and social justice, hopeful tourism scholarship.

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1098 V. Richards et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 37 (2010) 1097–1116

Pritchard & Morgan, in press). The paper is therefore framed by thevalues of ethics, alterity and equality (Netto, 2009) and guided by Aris-totelian principles of ‘‘truth, responsibility for actions and rightactions’’ (Tribe, 2002, p. 315), recognizing that theory, action andpractices are inextricably entwined since intellect alone ‘‘movesnothing’’ (Aristotle in Tribe, 2002, p. 316).

As hopeful tourism scholars we seek to ‘‘illuminate the spaces of thepossible where we can work to sustain our hope’’ (Hooks, 2003, p. xvi,italics in original) and create just and socially inclusive tourism enquiryand practice. Such scholarship challenges us to work against the exclu-sion and occlusion of under-empowered voices in our societies. More-over, it requires us as tourism educators and researchers to aspire toadvocacy scholarship which promotes human dignity, human rightsand just societies. Here, the challenge is to confront ableist powergeometries (Kitchin & Law, 2001) which prevent people with disabilitiesfrom fully participating in and contributing to tourism, an activity whichis considered part of contemporary experience in more developedeconomies (Cole & Morgan, in press). In this, we expose how peoplewith disabilities are excluded from full participation in society throughthe social production (Kitchin, 1998) and design of space (Imrie, 1996;Imrie & Hall, 2001) and illuminate how social justice can be attained inand through tourism. We begin by contextualizing our study in disabil-ity research debates in tourism and beyond, before exploring tourismexperiences of people with vision problems and concluding with anagenda for tourism researchers working on disability and citizenship.

TOURISM RESEARCH AND VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

Disability is a neglected subject within tourism enquiry and cognatefields (Aitchison, 2009). In recent years, however, there have been at-tempts to address this and Darcy (2002) detects an emerging interestamongst tourism scholars, probably in response to the greater ‘visibility’of disability issues in mainstream societies. More developed economieshave been increasingly enacting legislation at national and suprana-tional level (such as the European Union) to provide for the needs ofpeople with disabilities. For instance, in the United Kingdom theDisability Discrimination Act (2005) now requires premises such astourist attractions and accommodation operations to take reasonablesteps to ensure that their facilities are accessible to people with disabili-ties (legislation which will be streamlined when the Equality Billbecomes law in 2010 (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legisla-tive-framework/equality-bill/). At the same time, national and localgovernment agencies responsible for tourism development have alsobeen charged with widening access to tourism opportunities, mostrecently as part of a social justice agenda which recognizes tourism par-ticipation as a right of citizenship (Royal National Institute of BlindPeople, 2009).

Yet, despite these moves and the notable efforts of a few academicsin this field, particularly Simon Darcy (e.g., Darcy, 2002; Darcy &

V. Richards et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 37 (2010) 1097–1116 1099

Taylor, 2009), disability research remains on the margins of tourismscholarship. Recent relevant studies include those of Shaw and Coles(2004), which addresses disability and the United Kingdom tourismindustry, Miller and Kirk (2002), which discusses disability legislation,Hunter-Jones (2004) which examines the barriers to holidaying foryoung patients with cancer and Daruwalla and Darcy (2005), which ex-plores personal and societal attitudes towards disability. Much of theextant research however, is market rather than holistically person-centred, such as the study by Ozturk, Yayli, and Yesiltas (2007), whichassesses the Turkish tourism industry’s ability to meet the needs of peo-ple with disabilities and several studies which evaluate the accessibilityof the web to such individuals (e.g., Shi, 2006; Williams & Rattray, 2005;Williams, Rattray, & Grimes, 2006). This is perhaps unsurprising giventhat much tourism research remains system world knowledge (Habermas,1987), rooted in neo-liberal philosophies, which prioritize and reify themarket, promoting ‘‘a particular set of values—performativity, consum-erism and profitability over all others’’ (Tribe, 2009, p. 4).

Within this tourism and disability literature, studies which examinethe holiday experiences of people with visual impairment and theirfamilies are elusive. Examples include the studies by Packer,McKercher, and Yau (2007), Yau, McKercher, and Packer (2004) andSmall, Darcy, and Packer (2007). The first two are qualitative studiesof the experiences of individuals with mobility and visual impairmentsin Hong Kong, whilst the latter investigates the tourism experiences ofthose who are vision impaired in Western Australia and focuses on thetypes of holidays taken and positive and negative experiences. Theseproved to be related to: preparation and accessing information; navi-gating the physical environment; the knowledge and attitudes ofothers.

Why then is the relationship between tourism and visual impairmentso under-researched? If one concept can be said to have gripped theimagination of the tourism academy more than any other, then it mustsurely be the tourist gaze. Urry’s seminal work has shaped many subse-quent studies since its publication in 1990. Whilst Urry (along with oth-ers) has since explored issues of embodiment and the senses, tourismstudy has found it difficult to look beyond the gaze. Selanniemi (2001)has suggested that this occularcentrism is probably a result of the dis-tinction between the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ senses in the western philo-sophical tradition, since in the Aristotelian hierarchy of senses, sight,hearing and smell were classified as human senses, whilst taste andtouch were regarded as animal senses. As a result, the tourist gazehas triumphed whilst the sensuous embodied tourist has been margin-alized (see Crouch & Desforges, 2003; Johnston, 2001; Jokinen &Veijola 2003; Veijola & Jokinen, 1994).

In our sighted world most people would empathize with the newlyblind woman who asked the blind-from-birth poet, memoirist and aca-demic Stephen Kuusisto ‘‘Why travel anywhere if you can’t see?’’(Kuusisto, 2006, preface p. x). In Eavesdropping, Kuusisto eloquently an-swers this question and presents soundscapes that capture details fromour world which sighted people barely register. He describes how he


goes sight-seeing by ear in places as varied as Iceland and Venice and,transporting his readers into his aural realm, he ‘‘makes clear how col-ourful, even visionary, the sensory field of the blind can be’’ (Soodik,2006). He can only see slivered fragments and patterns but ‘‘in his lyr-ical memoirs, he adds volumes to the experience of being human andenriches the reader’s appreciation for the manifold aspects of sensorylife’’ (Soodik, 2006).

Any tourism experience is a constellation of tiny, individual and col-lective experiential moments and emotions, which build into an overallimpression and, later, a memory. Clearly, ‘‘emotion has the power totransform the shape of our lives, expanding or contracting our hori-zons’’ and, as Bondi, Davidson, and Smith (2005, p.1) explain, theseemotions are socio-spatially mediated and articulated. In those studieswhich have unpicked the intimate corporeal nature of the tourist expe-rience, its emotional and sensual aspect is clearly apparent (Small,2007). Visual appreciation is undoubtedly part of the tourist experi-ence, but it is just one element of those encounters and its impact isentwined with those of the other senses (Small et al., 2007). For in-stance, studies (e.g., Dann & Jacobsen, 2003) reveal the central rolethat taste and smell play in tourism experiences. Indeed, smells (bothpleasant and unpleasant) are evocative of times and places as the senseof smell is the most ancient, the most basic of our senses; it requires nojourney through the thalamus (the brain’s sensory conductor) to beprocessed but links directly into our emotions and memories.

Tourism as it is commonly understood and practiced is a form of com-moditized pleasures and these—whether tastes, touches, smells, sounds,spectacles or sensations—are sensual and embodied (Pritchard &Morgan, in press). We experience and enjoy the world through oursense organs, we gratify and indulge our physical appetites and manyof us seek out certain places for our holidays ‘.. . . because there is ananticipation . . . of intense pleasures, either on a different scale orinvolving different senses from those customarily encountered’ (Urry,2002, p. 3). The warmth of the sun on our skin, the call of seabirds,the smell of unfamiliar food markets, the sights and sounds of a bustlingcity or the taste of exotic foodstuffs are all common memories of holidaytimes. For instance, in the study by Small (2007), tourists recount howthey remember the smell and sound of meat sizzling on a spit and thesweet taste of water drawn from an outside well. Thus, the tourist expe-rience should be seen as a series of corporeal, embodied encounterswhich embrace all the senses and, as we will discuss in the findings ofthe qualitative study reported here, there are ‘‘genuine problems andchallenges which can attach to having bodies/psyches that are differentfrom mainstream ‘norms’’’ (Butler & Parr, 1999, p.2).

Disability Research, Paradigms and Politics

In this section of the paper we discuss how the politics of disable-ment have challenged traditional perspectives on disability and outlinethe principal models which have dominated disability studies. Various


disabled activists and academics discuss elsewhere the emergence ofthe disability movement and the politics of disability (see Finkelstein,2004; MacFarlene, 1994; Oliver, 1990; Oliver, 1995; Oliver, 2004). Sim-ply put, engagement with disability has been dominated by two mod-els—the ‘‘medical model’’ of disability and the ‘‘social model’’ ofdisability. These provide frameworks for understanding the way inwhich people with impairments experience disability, although asFinkelstein (2004) argues, such models provide insights rather thanunderstanding. Until relatively recently, the medical model of disabilitydominated how people with disabilities were treated by society. In thismodel, people with disabilities were seen as ‘ill’, in need of medicalattention and welfare, people who were unable to fully participate inthe world and therefore needed to be excluded from it (Barnes &Mercer, 2005).

Thus, disabled people were depersonalized, institutionalized andhidden away from a society which saw no real imperative for change.During the 70s, however, disability activists began to challenge suchviews and focus on a ‘disabling society’ which excluded people with dis-abilities. For example, in 1972 the Union of the Physically Impairedagainst Segregation became the first disability liberation group in theUnited Kingdom. This group argued:-

. . . In our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disabil-ity is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnec-essarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled peopleare therefore an oppressed group in society (UPIAS 1976, cited in Finkel-stein, 2004, p. 14)

This challenge to ableist oppression and exclusion produced the dis-ablement movement (Oliver, 1990) which has been at the forefront of‘‘the struggle to redefine citizenship and social justice with referenceto embodiment’’ so that civil rights can be exercised by human beingswith all kinds of bodies (Kitchin & Law, 2001, p. 288). This politics ofdisablement found intellectual expression in the social model of dis-ability, a model, ‘owned’ by people with disabilities and grounded inanalysis from their own perspective. In essence, ‘‘by providing a differ-ent way of looking at ourselves and others, [it] establishes everyoneis equal and demonstrates that it is society which erects barriers’’(Disability awareness in action, 2009). More recently, the social modelof disability has itself been critiqued because of its tendency to ‘absent’the body from its interpretations (Finkelstein, 2004). As a result, sup-port is growing for a ‘sociology of impairment’ which would take intoaccount the relationship between our bodies, selves and environments(Freund, 2001). ‘‘Once attention has been drawn to the body, eitherthrough illness or impairment, it can become a focal point for the per-sonal analysis of social interaction’’ (Howe, 2009, p. 493) and bodilyexperiences thus involve struggling with both social barriers and the ef-fects of an impairment (Thomas, 2002). This embodiment perspectiveurges us to create space for the corporeal, embodied nature of experi-ences in the social paradigm (Shakespeare & Watson, 2001). In essenceit requires us to recognize that disability is part of the human condition


and that societies are not divided between able bodied and disabledpeople since the former are simply temporarily able people who(through accident, illness or ageing) will join the ranks of the latterfrom time-to-time or permanently.

In this paper, we advocate critical and emancipatory disability re-search in order to promote people with disabilities’ individual and col-lective empowerment and their full participation in society as a humanright. The universal establishment of human rights is the single mostimportant political development of recent decades and approachesbased on human rights principles and the social model of disabilityare ‘‘mutually reinforcing’’ (Bickenbach, 2001, p. 567). Both arefounded on values of equality, dignity, respect and social justice andcentral to our approach is ‘‘the consideration of the individual andtheir impairment within the socially constructed disability environ-ments’’ (Darcy & Taylor, 2009, p. 420). Enquiry with these philosoph-ical underpinnings is associated with qualitative rather thanquantitative methodologies (Barnes, 2003, 2004) and the study dis-cussed below is based on focus groups with four groups of people withvisual impairment, all of which were met on two occasions to ensure aniterative interaction.

Research Methodology

Emancipatory Disability Research emerged in 1991 following a seriesof Joseph Rowntree Foundation (an independent development and so-cial research charity) seminars. These acknowledged that this researchapproach is characterized by seven core principles: control; account-ability; empowerment; the social model of disability; rigour; the choiceof methods; the role of experience (see www.social-model.org.uk).Here, individuals with visual impairment are our co-researchers, itera-tively guiding and informing our research and analysis (although notin this case involved in our writing). As such, we aspire to conformto Barnes’ (2004) test of truly emancipatory research, namely that itis empowering and creates knowledge that has meaningful and practi-cal outcomes for people with disabilities. This philosophical commit-ment is not surprising given the professional background of thestudy’s lead researcher. As a rehabilitation/mobility and developmentofficer working in the United Kingdom’s social service and charity sec-tors she strove to enable and empower visually impaired individuals,thereby maximizing their independence and diminishing their socialexclusion. The challenges she encountered and the knowledge shegained in these activities have continued to inform her research andraise her awareness of her own reflexivity and embodiment as aresearcher.

This had consequences not only for the research philosophy but alsofor its practical conduct. Fifteen years of working for and with peoplewith visual impairment makes one acutely aware of the restrictions ofour sighted world. In this respect, when meeting people experiencinglow vision the physical location and positioning of focus group settings

http://www.social-model.org.uk


are crucial considerations if one is to maximize personal communica-tion and understanding. It is good practice to allow such individualsto sit with their backs to the light, to verbalize visual gestures, to usenames frequently and to provide regular but appropriate auditorysounds. Such techniques and communication skills will enhance theoverall inclusion of the whole group. In addition, as the researchendeavoured to gather rich, in-depth insights, it was essential to iden-tify interested individuals and then to secure their commitment to par-ticipate. Such agreement is more likely if focus group members arerecruited from places where people meet routinely to talk and socialize(Holbrook & Jackson, 1996) and here the lead researcher contactedfour existing support groups with which she formerly had a profes-sional relationship.

These groups consist of individuals with visual impairment who meettogether to socialize, share experiences and provide mutual support.They are: a group of individuals experiencing a particular eye condi-tion (macular degeneration); a group experiencing dual sensory loss;a group of gardening enthusiasts; and a group of younger people(the ‘Pioneers’). All the focus group discussions took place at the offi-ces of a national charity for visual impairment (under the auspices ofwhich these groups organize) with the exception of the discussionswith the Pioneers, which took place in a local public drinking barwhich they frequent. In total 27 adults of varying ages with visualimpairment (and in some cases with additional disabilities such ashearing loss) agreed to share their views and experiences, togetherwith five sighted volunteers who support them (see Table 1). As the

Table 1. Composition of Focus Groups

Focus Group Numberof visionimpairedpeople

Numberof sightedvolunteers

GenderBalance

AgeRange

Vision impairedpeople’s

employmentstatus

MacularDegeneration

Support Group

11 1 2 male10 female

60–79 All retired

Dual Sensory LossSupport Group

5 (4 also withhearingloss)

2 (plus anorganiser)

3 male5 female

30–89 Mixture ofretired andnot working

Gardening SocialClub

5 2 4 male3 female

40–65 Only 1 in paidemployment(for voluntarysectororganisation)

Youth Social Group‘‘The Pioneers’’

5 0 2 male3 female

30–59 1 in paid and 1in voluntaryemployment,3 not working


members of each group were our co-researchers, the lead researchersimply introduced the topic, facilitated the interaction and interjectedopen questions to probe deeper and further (Gibb, 1997). However, asthe research is imbued with an emancipatory approach which recog-nizes and values the situated researcher (Westwood, Morgan, &Pritchard, 2006), she also felt it appropriate to at times place herselfwithin the group and to contribute to the discussions, sharing herown knowledge about visual impairment as a qualified rehabilitationofficer.

The process of contacting the groups and setting up the sessions wasinformed by ethical considerations, in particular with regard to mutualagreement, accessible communication and information and anonym-ity. Each session was taped with the groups’ permission and transcribedin full. The tapes were analysed group by group to identify the mostcommonly discussed areas which became the three themes we discussbelow. After the transcripts were analyzed, the groups were met againin order to obtain their feedback on our interpretations, an approachwhich elicited a very positive reaction. The individuals’ given nameshave been replaced with pseudonyms to guarantee anonymity,although this raises a number of questions over the co-researcher’svoice and the ownership of co-produced research material. It has beenargued that the principal beneficiaries of social research are theresearchers themselves (see Barnes, 2004) and Grinyer (2002) con-tends that academics underestimate the extent to which research par-ticipants wish to be acknowledged in published research. Thisacknowledgement would enable them to retain a sense of ownershipof their stories and will be a consideration in our future researchprojects.

The initial and follow-up focus group sessions were conducted withthe four groups between January and March 2008 and each sessionlasted approximately one hour (thus there were eight focus groupsin total). The transcripts of each session were thematically analyzedbut it soon became apparent that many themes were inextricablylinked, making it difficult to contain them under discrete headings.For instance, mobility and orientation (i.e., getting out and about)can involve learning new skills such as maximizing remaining vision,learning to use a white cane or a guide dog. This in turn can dependupon an individual’s ability, confidence, and motivation, an accessibleenvironment (e.g., safe places to cross a busy road in a tourism destina-tion), other people’s awareness (e.g., airline cabin crew) and so on.However, to achieve some clarity and in line with the social model ofdisability, the findings are discussed here under three main themeswhich emerged: embodied tourism encounters; inhospitable tourismspaces; navigating tourism environments.

Experiencing Tourism with a Visual Impairment

The focus groups reveal that our co-researchers perceive a numberof benefits of holidays and breaks away from home, in common with


the experiences of sighted people (McCabe, 2008; Small et al., 2007).These include: opportunities for social interaction and relaxation;experiencing different climates, cultures and countries; and generallya change from routine environments. The discussions also reinforcethe multi-sensory nature of the tourist encounter. Of course, whenindividuals are deprived of one sense, they rely more heavily on theirremaining ones. Thus, Lisa talks about her reliance on her othersenses, particularly touch, sound and kinaesthetic skills (being ableto sense and feel something) whilst on holiday in the mountainsand when visiting historic sites. She talks of how she shuffles her feetto feel the different textures on the ground, tilts her head to maxi-mize the vision in her left eye and reaches out to find handrails anddoor knobs by scanning her surroundings. On holiday her apprecia-tion of indoor attractions is limited, particularly where objects are cutoff, for example behind glass—‘‘I just switch off, it doesn’t do any-thing for me’’—as she is dependent upon tactile and auditory infor-mation and her imagination. Outside the experience is verydifferent:

I can’t see the detail outside but it’s not just a building, it’s the history.A church, it’s old, this place has a lot of energy. . . you just get the sense thatsomething lived there, things actually happened here. Also the environment,heat of the sun, other noises, the quiet. . . it’s really being able to appreciatewhat you can pick up around you. Sighted [people] just see or is that ageneralization?

Our co-researchers talk about past holidays and day trips and discusstheir positive and negative points as the majority of them had takensome form of holiday, short break or day trip since their vision had be-come impaired. It is significant to note that members of two of the so-cial groups—the gardening enthusiasts and The Pioneers—had doneso on a regular basis as mechanisms exist for them to enjoy organizedtourism activities. These two groups are ‘social’ rather than ‘support’groups as part of their role is to encourage social interaction; thusthe gardening group for example organize two annual overnight socialtrips. In contrast the support groups simply meet to share their expe-riences and support each other in coping with their vision loss (partic-ularly where it is recent).

Whilst the benefits of their tourism experiences were discussedacross all four groups, it quickly became apparent that there is a gen-eral sense of frustration with service providers’ lack of understandingof vision impairment and their failure to treat them as individuals aswell as people with poor vision. Indeed, our co-researchers are forth-right in suggesting that experience differed according to each individ-ual and that people with visual impairment are first and foremost acollection of individual people who are as idiosyncratic as anyone else(see Duckett & Pratt, 2001). Thus, whilst our study set out to explorethe tourism experiences of our co-researchers holistically, it is the phys-ical and emotional challenges they face in negotiating tourism spacesand places which dominated the focus group conversations, as the fol-lowing sections discuss.


Not Just About Vision—Embodied Tourism Encounters

‘‘Our bodies are what people react to . . . they mark us out as differ-ent from other people’’ (Valentine, 2001, p. 44). In this study ourco-researchers continually speak of the ways in which, as people withvisual impairment, they feel disregarded and ignored. The sightedworld in which they live regards them and therefore treats them as ahomogeneous group rather than as individuals, whose visual impair-ment is only a part of their identities and not representative of theirwhole selves. Moreover, although they share this bodily condition,the extent and nature of each individual’s sight loss differs, even whenpeople have the same eye condition. During a lengthy discussion onthis issue amongst the gardening enthusiasts comments include:‘‘not everyone has got a [total] sight loss, [we have] . . . different levelsof sight’’; ‘‘my side vision has gone’’; ‘‘my central vision has gone’’;‘‘On my left [I have] very little [sight] but I get by and my left centralvision has gone’’; ‘‘mine’s a mishmash of everything and just fading’’.

These descriptions highlight the fact that there are a range of visualimpairments and eye conditions, yet sighted people treat people withvisual impairment as a homogenous group; as Jill remarks about air-lines: ‘‘They’re so intent on selling the seat on the aircraft that I don’tthink they pay enough attention to the person.’’ Such treatment wasnot only a charge levelled at the tourism industry, but typified many so-cial interactions. One co-researcher, Jackie comments that even peopleshe knows well talk about her in the third person in her presence.‘‘When I go out with my friends it’s ‘let’s put her over there.’ Some-times I keep my mouth shut but I haven’t lately. I don’t want to bebumbled about, I’m a person first.’’

It is estimated that 314 million people worldwide live with low visionand blindness (Vision 2020 website, Accessed 01.03.09) and, of all thesenses, people fear losing their sight the most; indeed, in a UnitedKingdom opinion poll 90% of the respondents said this (see Stephens,2007). And yet wider society demonstrates very little awareness of thepsychological and emotional impacts of sight loss which can and oftendoes lead to depression, loneliness and anxiety (Stephens, 2007). Suchimpacts vary, however, especially as sight loss is not a linear process andcan involve periods of deterioration and improvement, even on a dailybasis. Consequently there is a real danger that individuals may disen-gage from the many possibilities and potentialities of life which sightedpeople take for granted because of the ways in which our everyday envi-ronments marginalize and literally disable people with disabilities,whether this is socially, economically or politically.

One member of the macular degeneration support group (Elsie) de-scribes a day trip organized by the Help the Aged charity as a terribleexperience, blighted not only by her low vision but also by her friends’attitudes: ‘‘I couldn’t see anything—it was a horrendous day’’. Herfriends assumed that she would not enjoy going into the shops onthe trip as she couldn’t see. Hence they left her outside. She did notobject to this, saying ‘‘there was no point as I can’t see anyway’’ but,if her friends had been more aware of the nature of her condition,


she may have felt encouraged to use the little sight she does have. Insuch ways are people’s life experiences severely circumscribed by theattitudes of those sighted people around them and their bodies—those‘‘sites of potentiality, process and practice’’ (Blackman, 2008, p. 5)—controlled by the actions of others.

Lisa, a confident young woman and seasoned tourist, describes howshe is severely challenged by the corporeal and embodied nature oftourism encounters. Her account of travelling overseas by aeroplanewith her children is full of anxiety and stress. As someone with visualimpairment she requires assistance but such was the poor quality ofthat service that it has become a major barrier to her travelling againin the future:

. . .if I . . . went on a plane I gotta have assistance, I just can’t do that journeywithout assistance. I would never go again, no I don’t want that stress, it’sthat anxiety and fear of how ‘do I do that journey again? Oh my God I’vegot to do this coming back and I’m in a foreign country’.

Travel by aeroplane is also a major source of frustration and angerfor two people in the young people’s support group. Margaret andJoe describe how the disability policy of an airline effectively strippedthem of their dignity and their independence and made them feel‘‘a fraud’’ when they were travelling. As people with low vision, theywere forced to sit in a wheelchair in order to be assisted through theairport and to the aeroplane, during which time they were also leftin the dark—presumably because the employee assumed that theyhad no sight at all. Thus, the actions of the airline actually created atemporary deterioration in their remaining sight. Margaret explainsthat:

. . .at the airport one person had to go in a wheelchair or else they wouldn’t takeyou. It was a nightmare, a horrible feeling. I was in the dark and I couldn’tsee. And of course when I got on the plane they thought I couldn’t walk.

Other people in the focus groups also speak of being visually im-paired in a sighted world and the negative impact others’ expectationsof how they should look and act have on their own self-perceptions.Some speak of being made to ‘‘feel a fraud’’ either because they donot use social signifiers of visual impairment such as a guide dog orwhite stick or because they do not conform to sighted people’s stereo-typical expectations. Bethan, a guide dog owner who is always accom-panied by her husband on holidays comments, ‘‘If you’ve a cane or adog, people are more open to you; otherwise they don’t always under-stand you’ve got something wrong.’’ Other people’s reactions can havefar-reaching repercussions on individuals’ self-efficacy, that is their ownperceptions of their worth and value, potentially leading to furtherwithdrawal from society and life enhancing engagements.

Thus, in the experiences of these people with visual impairment, wecan see how Foucault’s conceptualization of disciplinary power ‘‘actson and through an individual’s self forming practices so those individ-uals come to want or desire certain ways of being and doing for them-selves’’ (Blackman, 2008, p. 25). In this sense they are effectively


engaging in exclusionary and isolating self monitoring and regulatorypractices. As Jackie movingly comments:

Because my eyes look perfect in front they [i.e. other people] don’t believe thatI’m blind so I’m getting that I don’t want to go out sometimes, I don’t wantto mix with anybody. It doesn’t matter what disability it is, I feel as if [it’s]‘‘you there’’ when I go out with friends or ‘‘we’ll put you in a corner’’. NoI’m still Jackie underneath [voice is shaky and emotional], put the eyes backand the ears, I’m still Jackie, I am a person and I don’t want to be squashedand that’s why I’m finding they tend to talk to you as if your brain’s not work-ing and I don’t like that.

Through our embodied encounters, however, we can also challengethese exclusionary practices by resisting or protesting such disciplinarypowers. Lisa describes her experience at a local tourist attraction (aninteractive exhibition about Dr Who, a popular television series filmedin Cardiff, South Wales):

It’s not accessible to anybody with any sensory problem, visually impaired orhard of hearing, it’s just an absolute nightmare. So I went to the receptionistand I said ‘do you have any facilities to help me go around because my kidsand friends of mine had gone off?’ She tried to explain the exhibition to mebut she wasn’t doing a particularly good job at it and it wasn’t her fault—she’snot used to that sort of thing. So the receptionist said to me, ‘it’s not worth usemploying somebody to do something like that for your sort of people’ [emphasisadded]. Then she went and got the manager and he took me round and I madehim work for his money [laughing].

Inhospitable Tourism Spaces—The Need for Awareness Training for HospitalityStaff

A general lack of awareness of the complexities of sight loss was aconstant theme in the focus group discussions. Everyone in the groupsconsistently spoke of the need for awareness training for tourism andhospitality staff and even for family and friends. Awareness training fo-cuses on how visual impairment affects every aspect of people’s livedexperiences and the life worlds they inhabit and, importantly, are ex-cluded from. Rather than focusing on the medical condition per se,it concentrates on teaching practical skills and promotes understand-ing of how a person experiences the world (Wales Council for theBlind, 2008). Based on our co-researchers’ experiences, it seems veryfew tourism organizations engage in such awareness training. Perhapsthis is hardly surprising since the sector is dominated by small to med-ium-sized enterprises, but in their experience, even employees in large,multi-national companies have a low awareness of the issues facing peo-ple with visual impairment.

This low level of awareness is compounded by the policies such com-panies adopt. Our co-researchers recognize that some staff may neverhave previously met a people with visual impairment in their personaland professional life. Nancy (a sighted helper) said, ‘‘I mean it’s nottheir fault [the staff], none of us know until we actually start working;we are not aware of the problems if we don’t have them ourselves’’. For


instance Braille, the system of written communication used by peoplewith low or no vision, is described by Elen as the ‘‘proverbial response’’of tourism organizations to the perceived needs of a person with visualimpairment. As she points out: ‘‘. . .it’s like all these Braille signs . . .they say ‘oh we’ve got all our signs in Braille’ which is all very well[but] unless you know where to look for the sign how are you goingto read the Braille?’’

Thus, even when organizations and individual employees are inter-ested in assisting people with low vision, their lack of knowledge andtraining often means that their well-meaning efforts are undermined.Braille is a writing system using a combination of raised dots but if theyare flattened or stored underneath other heavy items, the dots will becompressed and rendered useless. Thus, Eric describes how a restau-rant he visited tried to cater for diners with low vision but had failedto explain to its staff how a person actually uses Braille. As he explains:‘‘Training the staff is a big part of it. . . they had a Braille menu buthe’d [the waiter] put it in his pocket and sat on it, it was no use tome then!’’

Whilst many sighted people are aware of Braille, few probably realisethat only four percent of visually impaired people can actually read itwhilst many more people with low vision would prefer large print,audio formats, mobile phones, email and accessible WebPages (WalesCouncil for the Blind, 2008). John explains his severe difficulties read-ing travel brochures, screens and information signs; he comments‘‘. . .some things you can cope with but with things like brochures it’sembarrassing and you feel a nuisance’’. Similarly, hotel restaurant me-nus are a constant source of frustration and embarrassment. Murielregularly visits the same hotel in Southwest England but constantlyhas to ask for assistance as she has difficulty reading the menu. Shedoes not necessarily want the waiter to read to her everything on theextensive menu but equally she does not want to appear ungratefulwhen he does:

The thing is they have a wonderful menu and they will read it out to you. . .there are nine varieties of a simple thing. Just something at the beginningwould be sufficient for me. It makes you feel a bit self-conscious when the waiteris reading it out to you. . . they want you to try everything.

Navigating Tourism Environments—Moments of Anxiety and Fear

Our co-researchers commented that there are relatively simple mea-sures a reflexive tourism sector could implement which would consid-erably enhance the experience of tourists with visual impairment.These include: clear edging of steps; good colour contrast on materi-als; suitable lighting; contrasting handrails; clear signage. Take lightingas an example; in a sighted world restaurants and hotels use moodlighting to create ambiance and atmosphere, yet for individuals withlow vision such environments generate anxiety, which at its worst cancreate real fear. Bethan, a member of the dual sensory group, speaks


of her particular problems on holiday with lighting levels as her sight isworse at night and her overall experience is compounded by her par-tial hearing loss. The physical nature of the lighting in hotels and res-taurants causes her to feel anxious and afraid, uncertain of what toexpect and how she will cope, despite being accompanied by herhusband:

We went to Spain for our special anniversary and we went to the Caribbeanand it was very dark in some of those places. My husband explained the situ-ation and every night we went into the restaurant they provided one table witha light and candle light, they were extremely good and they expected nothing inreturn, you know they just wanted to help you so I had no complaints but goingin I get quite nervous. ‘It’s no good, I’m not going to see’, that is what my mindis saying inside. . . I just force myself to do something but the fear is in thethroat.

Similarly, Jackie speaks of going for dinner with a sighted friend: ‘‘itwas like going into the dark, it was really stressing me out, couldn’tfathom out what I was eating’’. Likewise, Margaret says of walking intoa restaurant: ‘‘Perhaps a lot of people get the pleasure when they areeating in the dark [laughter] . . .we say to the person leading us incan you give us a table where there is some light?’’ Low lighting levelsare not only the outcome of mood lighting but also of energy savinglight bulbs increasingly common in hotels:

Evan: Energy light bulbs in hotels, they don’t give us much light do they? Goodfor the environment but not us.Judy: You could take your own light bulbs [laughter].Evan: Maybe they would change it if maybe you said just change the bulb then,only while you’re there.Robert: Every hotel we go into it’s got a light by the bed as a reading light, it’sgot a standard light in the corner but never a light in the middle of the room.[All agree and talk at once] I mean it could be midday and it’s like bloody mid-night. You just can’t get enough light in the room.Elen: It’s got to be uniform where the light switches are. Sometimes you actuallyhave to go into the room and find where the bed is for example, and which sideof the bed the switches are on; until you know where it is to find it.

Navigating the physical environment is an essential part of travel forsomeone with visual impairment, whether the journey is taken alone orwith others, and whether the distance travelled is to a nearby seasideresort or to the other side of the world (Small et al., 2007). It is theunfamiliarity of the environment which creates feelings of anxiety,which can escalate into fear of the unknown. Like many people withvisual impairment, individuals in this study use memory, mind map-ping, and environmental clues to deal with physical obstacles and haz-ards they encounter—‘‘you have to memorise’’ says Elsie. Navigating bymemory is a core skill used by people with low vision, whether theymemorize a specific route or the layout of rooms, buildings and wholeareas; once they have memorized a place they can move around it withconfidence and ease; as Muriel comments: ‘‘I was more used to the liftthan I was with the stairs but I had been before when I could see so Iknew where I was going.’’


The constant high levels of concentration people with visual impair-ment people need when they are navigating familiar places by memoryand especially when they are in new surroundings is very clearlyexhausting. It takes a significant physical and psychological toll on peo-ple’s bodies, as Robert notes, ‘‘I can only go as far as my memory willlet me. I just can’t wander; I’ve got to pay attention to where I am.’’ ForElen being out and about on holiday is physically draining, ‘‘. . . it’sscary enough anyway, new places, new surroundings. All the timethere’s obstacles in your way. . . your memory is so tick tick tick. WhenI get home I feel like taking my head off, that’s how I feel’’.

When the sighted world disables people with visual impairmenteither through employees’ and managers’ poor awareness or organiza-tions’ failures to make basic adaptations to the physical environment,people’s life experiences are circumscribed and they are forced intopolicing their own behaviour. Ultimately many people with visualimpairments simply choose to opt out of the anxiety and stress of travelbecause of the lack of empathy of the sighted world. If individuals withlow vision decide to travel, they are also conscious that this can increasethe burden of care on their friends and family. In Muriel’s case herpartner has no sight at all and unfamiliar terrain is difficult:

We’d love to go on coach trips but when we get off the coach we don’t knowwhere to go and I can’t read the signs. If people give me vague directions like‘‘just go down there and turn right’’ I can’t follow them—I don’t find it a lot offun really.

CONCLUSION

Tourism participation is increasingly being recognized as a right ofcitizenship by many governments and supranational organisations suchas the European Union and United Nations (Minnaert, Maitland, &Miller, 2009). The European Union recently welcomed Regulation(EC) 1107/2006 which stipulates that: ‘‘disabled people and peoplewith reduced mobility have the same right as any other citizens to freemovement’’ (Royal National Institute of Blind People, 2009). Similarlythe United Nations 2006 Treaty on Rights for the Disabled draws spe-cific attention to the role of cultural activities in promoting citizenship,well-being and life quality. The extent to which such policies are en-forced however is highly dependent on a reflexive tourism industryand academy, for it is the latter which is engaged in developing thepractitioners of the future (Tribe, 2002).

We have seen here how, when the sighted world fails tourists with vi-sual impairment through organizations’ inabilities to provide stafftraining and inclusive physical environments, those individuals’ tour-ism (and life) experiences are circumscribed. Moreover, many of ourco-researchers prefer to remain at home and forgo the multi-sensoryenjoyments of tourism rather than negotiate the anxiety and stress oftravel in an unsympathetic, unaccommodating sighted world. This re-turns us to hopeful tourism scholarship’s principles of critical thinking,


responsibility and action we referred to in the introduction. Despitethe increasing legislative drive, people with disabilities still participatesignificantly less in cultural life—which encompasses tourism, sport,the arts and leisure (Darcy & Taylor, 2009). At the same time, disabilityresearch remains marginalized in tourism scholarship, partly as a resultof the neo-liberal values which dominate mainstream tourism scholar-ship. This in turn is compounded in the case of visual impairment re-search as a result of the continuing grip exerted by the tourist gaze onthe tourism academy’s collective imagination and the attitude of manysighted people that people with low vision derive limited enjoymentfrom travelling—why travel if you cannot see (see Kuusisto, 2006)?

In order to address this marginalization, we advocate a three part in-ter-related agenda for tourism researchers and educators to encom-pass: advocacy scholarship; greater dialogue with disability studiesand disability activists; a sharper focus on the embodied tourist withdisabilities. As hopeful tourism scholars we embrace the emancipatoryresearch approach favoured by disability rights groups and activists.Taken together, both approaches challenge us to collectively and indi-vidually confront inequality in tourism’s material or symbolic domains.In this, we not only need to strive to create just and socially inclusivetourism enquiry and practice but also to embrace advocacy scholarshipand seek to empower others to work against exclusionary practices. Wemust reflect on the potential policy implications of our work and onwhat we as tourism researchers and educators might do to challengethe status quo and seek to influence the tourism sector.

Too often, argues Walker (2004, p. 1), ‘‘research seems to be con-ducted for its own sake’’, with no positive impact on people’s lives. Thisis in fact, crucial to the hopeful tourism scholarship agenda. We sug-gest that tourism researchers aspire to advocacy scholarship that pro-motes human dignity, human rights, and just societies. Involvingpeople with disabilities in the research process and engaging with theiragendas is likely to provide greater scope for studies that challengeinjustice. It also creates spaces to challenge negative stereotypes of peo-ple with disabilities as inactive, dependent and disengaged and allowsacademics to work in partnership with them in advocacy researchwhich can lead to positive social change.

We can only achieve this through the second item on our suggestedagenda, namely closer dialogue with disability studies scholars andabove all with our co-researchers—people with disabilities them-selves—who urge us to ensure that research captures the individualityof their experiences. The co-researchers in this study remind us thatpeople with visual impairment are heterogeneous, characterized bymany points of difference and are as idiosyncratic as everybody else.Such recognition resonates with developments in disability studieswhich have recently ‘‘turned to the exploration of disability as a com-ponent of individual identity’’ (Howe, 2009, p. 491). In our study, peo-ple with visual impairment tell us that they continue to be treated bysociety as a homogeneous group, defined by people’s perceptions oftheir disability. This requires a transformation in how people with


vision problems are perceived by society, the tourism industry and thetourism academy.

This demands a move away from essentialist and totalizing categoriesor labels. The experiences of people with visual impairment in thisstudy suggest a hugely complex world where personal, social and envi-ronmental factors interact to produce different experiences. Whilst sev-eral individuals spoke of their enjoyment of tourism—encounteringnew experiences, cultures and people—their experiences also confirmfor them that the tourism industry (like others) tends to collectivelyproblematize and marginalize them, at times subjecting them to stan-dardized responses which undermine their confidence and well-beingand strip them of dignity and respect. Above all, this study reminds usof the embodied nature of the tourism encounters of people with vi-sual impairment. The co-researchers in our study tell us of the very realfears, discomforts and irritations they experience in those encountersas well as noting the importance of their other senses—tactile, auditoryand olfactory—in enhancing them.

Finally, future research needs to explore the concept of the embod-ied tourist with visual impairment to reveal and bring into sharper fo-cus their embodied experiences, addressing interactions with tourismspaces, environments and people. In doing this, we as tourism schol-ars need to allow for a broader conception of people’s experiencesand life stories (e.g., the differing experiences of individuals whohave grown up with vision impairment and those who experiencedlife before their sight loss) within the context of the co-researchers’‘‘life world’’ (Smith & Hughes, 1999). At the same time, as research-ers and educators we would do well to recognize that society is notdivided between able bodied and disabled people since the formerare simply temporarily able people. All of us are/will be disabledeither temporarily or permanently through accidents, illnesses or asa result of ageing. Once we recognize this and see disability as partof the human community, we can begin to see disabled people as‘us’ rather than ‘them’ and endeavour to co-create knowledge withus/them rather than doing research ‘on’ them. Only then will we be-gin to create tourism knowledge communities which contribute toinclusive and just societies in which all human beings with all kindsof bodies can realize their life potential.

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(re)envisioning tourism and visual impairment

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