Growing up, Neha Arora didn’t have the easiest time traveling with her family – her father is visually impaired and her mother is a wheelchair user. “We drove 2,000 miles only to find the place was inaccessible or wouldn’t give us the experience we were looking forward to,” says Arora. In 2016 she founded Planet Abled, a travel company that caters to the needs of people with a variety of disabilities, a group the World Health Organization estimates to be 15 percent of the world’s population. Arora isn’t the only one pushing for more thoughtful travel experiences – here’s a look at six companies that are focused on barrier-free travel.

Travel for everyone

Travel for everyone has organized more than 5,000 vacations worldwide for travelers with diverse needs, including cane users, slow walkers, the hearing and visually impaired, travelers with complex health problems such as dialysis and developmental disorders, and wheelchair users. “When multiple sclerosis began to affect my own travel, I researched what resources could help me make trips with my wheelchair,” says CEO Tarita Davenock. “I was shocked to see the lack of services.” Each Travel for All travel plan is accompanied by an accessibility specialist. “We research and inform our customers about the advantages and disadvantages of all regions of the world before we plan the trip so that our customers know what to expect at that destination,” says Davenock. “Careful planning and great attention to detail are the cornerstones for the safety of our vacation.”

A Seaable group tour in Cambodia where travelers visited Wat Phnom temple

Courtesy of Seaable Holidays

Sea holidays

Sea holidays specializes in travel for visually impaired travelers. All trips include trained escorts – who undergo a background check – as well as sports and sensory activities such as horse riding, diving, kayaking, wine tasting, yoga and tactile museum excursions. And everything is thoroughly checked, with escorts, activities and accommodations being tested by the blind before being recommended by the company. While trips are on hold during the pandemic, Seaable Holidays is bringing them back in the summer of 2022.

Travel with easy access

Debra Kerper and her team from Travel with easy access consider most types of physical disabilities in their solo travel and mixed group travel. While Kerper sometimes draws on her own experiences as a wheelchair traveler, she says that every trip must be tailored to the client’s individual needs. To do this, the team spends time getting to know their customers in order to match them with the best vacation choice, visiting hotels and tourist attractions to view, taking cruises in advance, and gathering information from trusted sources to ensure a safe, accessible, and fun vacation Experience.

Planet Abled

Neha Aroras Planet Abled arranges tailor-made tours for people with different disabilities and also plans group tours with non-disabled people. Their trips mostly take place in India and South East Asia, with plans to expand to countries in Europe, and popular activities include rafting, skiing, trekking and wildlife safaris. Some of their extras include assigning a travel companion for the blind, obtaining special permission from museums for customers to touch and feel the items on display, and arranging sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired.

Go Wheel the World

Alvaro Silberstein, the CEO of Go Wheel the WorldHe was paralyzed from the chest down after surviving an accident when he was 18. However, that didn’t stop him from seeing the world – he has now toured 30 countries on five continents. “I realized that people with disabilities should be able to explore places like everyone else,” he says. Most of his clients are adults or seniors with reduced mobility and wheelchair users, and he can arrange individual tours or group tours. Silberstein wants to raise awareness of accessibility and his company pays special attention to details such as bed height, door width and accessibility of bathrooms and compiles this information on the Go Wheel the World website. Their multi-day trips are designed with local tour operators focused on accessible travel and include access to adaptive bikes, beach wheelchairs, and equipment for hiking, skydiving, kayaking, diving, and surfing – they’ve even planned it out Macchu Pichu excursions for wheelchair users. The company makes sure that “the prices are competitive and the prices are the same, regardless of whether the customers have a disability or not,” says Silberstein.

A quiet moment in Sintra, Portugal

Courtesy of Tapooz Travel / Aicha Nystrom

Tapooz travel

Laurent Roffe and Aicha Nystrom have worked for years as a volunteer at an organization that offers people with disabilities outdoor excursions. “We have a lot of friends in wheelchairs as part of our close community,” says Roffe. “I’m a sea kayak guide and [Aicha] is a ski guide and that has always given us great pleasure. The introduction of our accessible travel business was a natural extension of who we are and what we love to do. ”Your company, Tapooz travel, specializes in travel for people with mobility issues, including visual and hearing impairments, rather than cognitive disabilities. If you have a customer with a visual or hearing impairment, make sure there is at least one sign language trained guide or guide who can help with things like reading the restaurant menu and doing voice overs during a site visit . Their network also includes adaptive physical education instructors, sailboat skippers, tribal elders, and massage therapists Hot air balloon operators, all trained to work with travelers with disabilities.