Since 2019 our association has been involved in the organization of Barrier-free Tourism Day. We are part of the organising committee and one of the main engines of the event. Our tasks cover a lot from organising programmes, bringing together volunteers, marketing, contacts, involving international participants. Our members are very active in creating the event, including as members of the organising committee.

The Barrier-Free Tourism Day was held for the first time in 2017 in Orfű. This place is one of the most popular tourist destinations with amazing location, four lakes and numerous beach, sports and leisure activities.

In addition to organizing an all-day cheerful festival, our main goal is to provide experiences to disabled people who otherwise cannot or only with difficulties can experience them.

This event contribute to let everyone have fun the same as a disabled or an able bodied person, as a child or an adult, while exploring that disabled people are the same people like us and we are able to help each other, and helping others is wonderful.

Inclusion is a main purpose, sensitizing the society to be, live and fun together disabled and able bodied people.

Social sensitization basically means that we let the able bodied society know disabled people’s abilities, opportunities and how can we help them. But we, the organizers are also thinking in another perspective: disabled people also need to get to know able bodied people’s attitude, why they are helping them the way they’re doing, and they need a lot of information about needs and everyday life of disabled people.

The fact that our guests came from all over the country, and on every previous occasion we had 700 participants in Orfű shows our events’ success. In 2019 our event became international which brought new guideline, new programmes and even a new place.

The Barrier-free Tourism Day usually has accompanying programs like professional day, conference or barrier-free trip.

Traditionally the date is always the first weekend of September!

The Barrier-free Tourism Day offers experience programs to disabled people, their relatives, their assistants and even able bodies people can participate. The following programmes are included in the repertoire:dragon boating, boating, sailing, fishing, motorcycling, horse riding, horse-drawn carriage and driving a car for visually impaired people. Furthermore, other events also add colour to the program, like craft fair, concerts, shows, events for children and buffet. We ensure free lunch every year for disabled people, their assistants and our enthusiastic volunteers.

The place is barrier-free, including the toilets.

About 30 volunteers helping us every year, they assist in administration, giving lunch, during the programmes and our strong male volunteers occasionally provide support in participating for disabled people (for example lifting them in the boat, up to the horse, getting into the car, the motorcycle or the carriage). Volunteers are always welcome, principally our previous ones and the ones from Baranya County Volunteer Center, but high school students are also common help, and we can also account for as the usual compulsory community service in Hungary as well. We’d like to have more college students as volunteers, especially with social or tourism-related studies.

The event’s main organizers: Gyeregyalog.hu Nonprofit Association, People First Association Pécs, Orfű Tourist Association. Disabled people had advantaged role in the organizer committee.

We’re constantly sharing news on the Facebook page:(https://www.facebook.com/turizmus.akadalymentes/). If you have any questions or you’d like to be our volunteer, feel free to contact us via email (akadalymentes.turizmus.nap@gmail.com).

Hidden city Tor-Tour
A barrier-free tour in the city centre of Pécs       

First, some background information on the creation of our Hidden City Tor-Tour:
accessibility is a fundamental problem for people with disabilities, especially if the areas declared accessible by able bodied society, from their point of view are not accessible.

People with disabilities have the right to and should have the same quality of life as their healthy peers. Being excluded from certain areas of life due to their disabilities is not acceptable.

Tourism is such a quality-of-life-improving but isolated area, which is of great importance for people with disabilities from a leisure, health and community-building point of view.

In recent tourism research, accessible tourism has played no, or hardly any role, which indicates the necessity to open up and do further research in this field. We prefer to talk about inclusive tourism, not barrier-free or accessible torusim, which term has a broader meaning, better showing what this branch of tourism is all about. Inclusive tourism is accessible to everyone, so the target group is much wider than people with disabilities. It is extended to everyone who needs a barrier-free environment, including the elderly, families with small children, or those with temporary injuries. Tourism is still problematic for these target groups in some countries, and it is not clear to accommodation providers, travel agencies and other tourism operators to involve them as potential consumers. Unfortunately, these countries also include Hungary.

With the support of the organization Strengthening Civil Organisations, the People First Association has developed in 2019 a new, attention-grabbing, accessible guided tour in Pécs, then introduced in 2021 as a regular tourist attraction, in cooperation with the Tourinform office in Pécs.

The aim of the tour is to sensitize and engage society. People with disabilities do not want to participate in tourism separately. They would like to participate in tourism together with their able-bodied peers.  

Accessible/inclusive tourism is an excellent opportunity for the two groups to collaborate, which is also the most successful way of sensitizing.

We want to achieve implementation based on broad partnership, with the involvement of professional and non-governmental organizations, city government as well as the general public, which would support social inclusion, so important to us.

A barrier-free environment is not only good for people with disabilities!

It is essential to influence city marketing from the point of view of people with disabilities, and the innovation. In the guided tour, we take advantage of the markedly felt phenomenon that that tourists are looking for novelty and unusual experiences. They are also looking for a different approach exploring a city.

The Hidden City Tor-Tour shows the city through a different lens. It shows participants how people with disabilities can visit certain tourist attractions in the city and what kind of tricks they need to play at times in order to reach their destination. Participants can experience first hand what is possible and what is impossible for people with disabilities, what kind of compromises they need to make, what it means not to give up, as well as all the feelings that arise in the process.

All of this is intended with a touch of irony, though. We have no intention of communicating negativity, rather we would like to have some fun and create good impressions. We would like to put the focus on the ingenuity, creative and positive attitude, and the incredible will of people living with disabilities, as well as sensitise able-bodied participants and educate them about how they can be of help.

For maximum effect we will provide various equipment for adventurous participants, such as you can try out sightseeing in a wheelchair, we give you glasses that model visual impairment, we present hearing impairment with earplugs, you can use a white stick to touch curbs and guide lanes, you can walk with a guide dog.

Length of the tour: about 90 minutes

We will offer a variety of tours with professional guides.

Basic plan
(in good weather): visiting the attractions of the historic downtown and viewing them through a different lens.

Route: Széchenyi square – Mosque – Cathedral square – Barbakán – Széchenyi square – Király street – (ILP Café)

Tours always end with a conversation, possibly in a café, since evaluation, getting to know the opinions of the participants is an essential element of social sensitization and involvement. 

We have come up with several types of tours, we can adapt to target groups or requests, and we also have our own exciting versions.

Target groups:
1. Tourists visiting the city
2. Business and professional tourism (MICE), as a side event to conferences, as Pécs- Best practice, and for Corporate events.
3. Local residents. On the one hand through thematic tours organised monthly or quarterly, and on the other hand through less formal, playful tours for groups of school children, involving sensitizing games. 

We consider it a great achievement that we were able to include the Hidden City Tor-Tour among the permanent thematic tours of Pécs, in partnership with the Irány Pécs/Tourinform office:
Permanent tourist offer

Additional goals:
Our further aims include sensitising, informing, and getting the general public involved. An important goal is inclusion and the full participation of people with disabilities in society, as well as educating people regarding disabilities.

The active support of people with disabilities should play a role in the city marketing of Pécs, which would positively influence the city’s perception both domestically and internationally. We would like Pécs to become an exemplary city in its approach to people with disabilities, so we can be proud of our city in this respect as well.

Through the press and social media, we are hoping to gain wide publicity for the issue of inclusive tourism and the city.

In the long run, this project will provide employment opportunities in accessible tourism for local residents living with disabilities. Our tour guides are always our professionally prepared members with disabilities. Participants will acquire new skills, knowledge, experience as well as a “profession”. By making the project sustainable in the long run, participants are given the opportunity to become active members of society, at the same time we offer an innovative tourism service in Pécs.

Through this project we are building a network of partners, and fostering open-minded cooperation between non-governmental organizations, the city and tourism organizations.

Prices of tours:
2500HUF/person
Group discount if min. 10 people buy tickets at the same time:
2000 HUF/person

The Hidden City Tor-Tour and our Barrier-free Pécs Database are closely linked. During the Hidden City walks, we show you some locations that we have already explored in the database. We talk about how the database works: we present accessible sites and make suggestions for improvement. We will also show you how much we have achieved with this, how many venues have become barrier-free that were not available before. The Hidden City without the Barrier-free Pécs Database would be just a pleasant walk. Thus, building on the database, we not only show what is not accessible, but also tell you what and how we do for accessibility.

A brief insight into a two-minute video coverage on our Youtube channel:
Come for a walk with us in Pécs! Barrier-free

The project’s name:

If there’s no barrier, we’re coming too! 🙂 project

About the project in a nutshell:

The problem that the project offers to deal with:

Accessibility is a basic problem for disabled people, especially when by the society barrier-free declared areas are from disabled perspective not barrier-free.  Disabled people must have the chance and right to live with the same qualities of life as able bodied people. It is not acceptable that they are excluded from certain areas of life by cause of their disabilities.

Turism for example is a quality of life improvement but to the disabled people closed area which would be just as important to them owing to freetime activities, medical reasons and community boosters. It is visible that this topic is important because in the current tourism researches don’t have any role the barrier-free tourism.

Our goal with this project is to let disabled people take part in a narrower and broader interpretation of tourism, exploration of areas which are not experienced by  disabled or just very rarely.

The sensitization and involvement of society is very important. We would like to take part in tourism with our able bodied partners not without.

The goal of the project:

Spending free time effectively in barrier-free circumstances in Pécs and nearby, with social inclusion.

– Organizing the 3rd Barrier-free Tourism Day, making it international and more known, sensitization of the society

– Exploration of barrier-free tourist routes and making them more popular, making it a part of the city’s marketing and local tourism, involving the population

– Giving advice to sport and event organizer agencies, offices, schools in barrier-free touristic/sport topics by our professionally prepared disabled colleagues. Giving advice how to make accomodations in Orfű and Cserkút barrier-free.

– It is important to influence the city’s marketing by the sight of disabled people, the innovation, this serves the above mentioned activities the “Hidden City downtown guidance from barrier-free sight” project component, where our members give experiences to tourists and local interesteds (schools, organizations, local residents).

Thank you all, ECK/SCO!

The mid-term report can be read in Actions menu!

FOF2019,

Grants to Aid the Professional Programme of Local, Regional and National Organisations of Persons with Disabilities

Name of the project: Barrier-free Pécs

Funded by: Equal Opportunities of Persons with Disabilities Non-profit Ltd.

Time frame: 1. September 2019 – 30. June 2020
Due to the coronal virus epidemic it was extended until 31 of August 2020.

About the project:

The project explores important places in the city of Pécs with an eye on their accessibility. The places surveyed include restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, sport and cultural facilities. The explorations are carried out by our members living with a disability and experienced in the field. All barrier-free places are entered into a database and published online and in media outlets, for user both in Hungary and abroad.

Our main goal is inclusion, bringing together able-bodied and disabled people, including locals as well as tourists, sensitising society, and encouraging networking between residents of the city, tourists and local businesses

Our motto: Accessibility is not only advantageous to the disabled!

The idea of the project came from our members. They wanted to be able to use public social and recreation facilities, without being segregated from society. However they were not aware of barrier-free places in the city. Funded by Pécs Community Foundation, at the end of November 2018, we started a pilot project exploring more than 30 places, including restaurants, cafés, hotels, shops, and public institutions.

To read more about this project go to: http://peoplefirst.hu/projects/pecs-jovoje-alap-2018-kozossegi-kreativitas-projektek/,

To find the list of barrier-free places go to http://peoplefirst.hu/akadalymentes-pecs/

The pilot project needs to be continued, as it fills a gap, and is widely supported by the public and those interested in creating a barrier-free environment.

An important goal of the project is sensitising society, raising public awareness of what truly a barrier-free environment is – as opposed to places that tick the boxes but are in reality not usable by people with a disability. We would also like to bring awareness to the daily lives of people living with disabilities. We want disabled people to become a part of the city, we want to meet them in cinemas, theaters, restaurants, gyms, and on tourist trails, together with able-bodied people. We want to change the general attitude from ‘there is no need to make this place accessible, as disabled people don’t come here anyway’ to ‘if we have a barrier-free environment people with disabilities will also visit’.

We need to be aware that people living with a disability are also members of our consumer society. Hotels, restaurants, cinemas, leisure centres, and organizers of cultural and sport events can and should count on them as potential guests.

Widening the scope of our sticker project:

We have extended our explorations and advice services to cater for the needs of people with auditory and visual impairment. We are exploring more cultural and sport facilities, tourist attractions, tourist trails and important public institutions.

We would like other regions in the country to follow suit. We are more than happy to share our expertise and experience.

The Project’s name:
“Pécs is liveable as a barrier-free city”

Supproted by: Pécsi Közösségi Alapítvány (Pécs Community Foundation)

Co-supported by: “Pécs  City  for  wheelchair users  – Promoting Inclusion through  both Improved  Wheelchair Accessibility  and Community building” –  Funded by the C.S. Mott Foundation under the Global Challenges Local Solutions Program run by the Academy for the Development of Philanthrophy in Poland

Its duration: 22.11.2018 – 31.08.2019

About the project in a nutshell:

Members of People First Association Pécs  have formed teams of two (consisting of a handicapped and an able-bodied person) and started  visiting restaurants, cafes, hotels, shops and public institutions in Pécs to map barrier-free places. They will talk to the owners to let put a sticker – which we designed – on the doors just like Visa or MasterCard. The sticker is 10×10 size, not ostentatious, not too colorful, not distracting but shows that the place is barrier-free so handicapped people can easily enjoy what the place has to offer just like other people.

In case the place has a truly (not only in the image of society “no stairs, so it must be barrier-free”) barrier-free toilet – which is because of basic needs is just as important as it is with our able bodied fellow-creature – a WC sign appears in the lower right corner of the sticker as well. If the toilet isn’t barrier-free, the WC sign don’t appear on the sticker.

If the establishment is not fully accessible but improving its accessibility is possible and the owners of the establishment are open to it, we will be happy to support them with advice regarding the sourcing and installation of ramps, handrails etc., as well as help with official procedures.

In return the Association does not expect any financial compensation from the restaurants/cafés, moreover we will display it in a map-mode on our website, as well as through the wheelmap.org website all over the world (!), and we would like to achieve it similarly on the urban media sites.

Later we will extend this project to food and clothing stores.

All of this greatly contributes Pécs, as an assessment of barrier-free livable city, it’s also a tourist attractant factor, because our disabled people are travelling the same amount and with the same enthusiasm like everyone else. Especially if a city specifically encourages them to do so and if they type Pécs on the international wheelmap.org they will be welcomed by many barrier-free restaurants/cafés that we have evaluated.

A barrier free society is not only advantageous to the disabled; young mothers with prams, the elderly, and those with temporary injuries also benefit.

Let’s make Pécs barrier free!

Expanding the scope of activities of the project is made possible by the continued support of Academy for the Development of Philanthrophy in Poland funded by the American C.S. Mott foundation. Owing to their support Pécs Közösségi Alapítvány is able to involve other organizations in their project entitled ‘Pécs City for wheelchair users – Promoting Inclusion through both Improved Wheelchair Accessibility and Community building activities’ . Their new partners, Speckó Escape Room and Social Inclusion Studies, University of Pécs, are participating in the project between 1. January – 30. June 2019.

Interim report on the progress of the project (April 2019)

As part of our project we have visited more than 30 restaurants, cafés, hotels, shops and public institutions. Most of these have proven to be either fully or partially barrier-free, unfortunately with the exception of most toilets.

Some of the establishments are still awaiting final assessment, either because we need one last visit to check if the adjustments resulted in a fully barrier-free environment or because we are waiting for an official response (from banks, post offices, McDonald’s restaurants, etc.).

We find the general attitude of people very positive, we are mostly welcomed and business owners are happy to help. Before giving the sticker to an establishment, we evaluate not only the design of the building but also the attitude of the management and staff.  It is also a “barrier-free conditions” for us.

We post pictures of and a detailed report on every single business we visit on our Facebook site (People First HU) and our Instagram account (peoplefirstpecs). On the home page of our website we included a link to Pécs on wheelmap.org, a worldwide map, visited mostly by European wheelchair users, where all wheelchair accessible places we evaluated  and photo documented can be found.
We are going to mark all wheelchair accessible places not yet on the map.

We have and will continue to make all barrier-free establishments of Pécs visible on the international website. This is an important step in attracting tourist to, as well as helping them get around Pécs.

The project’s name:
European Peer counselor Training in Accessible Tourism,
Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Its duration: 01.11.2018.-30.04.2021. (extended due to Covid situation: 31.08.2021.)

A program with the participation of five countries, in which the People First Association takes part as the co-partner of the  Hungarian partner – Zöld-Aktív Szociális Szövetkezet/Green-Active Social Cooperative.

The main objective of the project is the training of Peer Counselor trainers from the community of disabled people or people with special needs, with providing inclusion and equal opportunities. There are three groups which help with the development of the training methodology: the adult trainers, the disabled people who are prospective trainers and tourism experts. During the project the disabled trainers will be able to give advice and train in the topic of accessible tourism in all aspects of tourism (transportation, accommodation, gastronomy, free-time activities, tourist guides, city decision-makers and designers). In the future they will be able to work as trainers and consultants in tourism.

The five participant countries and partners:
Germany – VSBI, Verein zur sozialen und beruflichen Integration e.V.
Germany – KHuF, Kopf, Hand und Fuss gGmbH
Spain – Probens, Asociación para el Estudio y promoción del Bienestar Social
Hungary – Zöld-Aktív Szociális Szövetkezet
Italy – Unione Montana Alta Langa
Croatia – Slap, Udruga za kreativni razvoj

The hungarian partner works out the projects methodology: how the peer consulting and the mentoring in the field of accessible tourism is organized. From the initial preparations the People First Association has been helping the project with its personal experience and experts. The Association has been participating in the development of peer counselor trainings and pilot trainings with tourism persons, the members of this association will be the prospective trainers.

Read our final report on the project’s activities and results and how to proceed in the Reports menu here: Final report Peer-AcT