“The Florence Experience”: A multimedia and multisensory guidebook for cultural towns inspired by Universal Design approach

BACKGROUND: In order to plan a trip, tourists with disabilities need to gather and analyse a broad range of information concerning the features of the places and services with which they are going to interact. For these people, tourist guidebook can be an important informative source for knowing a priori the various critical situations they may experience as tourists. Generally, tourist guidebooks for the disabled provide information only for wheelchair users. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the research project is to provide the tourist information both for people with impaired vision and for people with reduced mobility without being a “dedicated” tool for the disabled. METHODS: This article describes, step by step, the communication project, inspired by Universal Design approach, behind The Florence experience: Tour itineraries with supplementary information for the disabled guidebook. RESULTS: The main result of the research project is a multimedia and multisensory bilingual tourist guidebook (in Italian and English) that provides information by means of four separate coordinated supports: paper-based guidebook, web pages, MP3 audio files, and portable tactile maps. CONCLUSIONS: Creating a tourist guidebook for all is a tough challenge that requires a very articulated vision and the cooperation of different fields of knowledge and skills. Despite the limits described in the paper, The Florence Experience guidebook is a considerable step forward with respect of the majority of tourist guidebooks for the disabled which consider only the needs of persons with motor impairments and prevalently those of a generically-defined “wheelchair user”.