Accessible Applications to Improve the Tourist Experience

Traveling is known to improve a person's well-being and happiness, and tourism experiences should be offered to all types of tourists, including those with different disabilities. At the same time, technology is evolving and tourism applications are spreading. In this paper, we focus our attention on accessible mobile applications that can support a tourism experience. We first reviewed and classified a wide range of applications dedicated to users with visual, hearing, motor, cognitive impairments, and also others dedicated to the elderly. We have included this last category of users as they represent an interesting but at the same time specific target for the tourism industry. To understand how these dedicated apps could be better designed to improve accessibility we have then run a study collecting empirical data through questionnaires proposed to 210 users with diverse cognitive abilities, and to 50 elderly users, respectively. We have investigated and analyzed their approach to using tourist apps, also trying to understand the challenges they most commonly encounter when using them, and discussing possible improvements.