Greek Tourism Ministry Makes Accessibility for People with Disabilities a Top Priority
Ensuring equal access for all topped the agenda of talks between Greek Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni and members of the Panhellenic Association of Paraplegics.
The minister met with the president of the association, Athanasios Viglas, and discussed ways to ensure accessibility and inclusion in tourism. Issues discussed included accessibility infrastructure, the expansion of the “Tourism for All” subsidized holidays program, as well as raising awareness about the needs of people with disabilities.
During the meeting, the two sides agreed to work together on a number of actions and set goals towards ensuring a better standard of living for people with disabilities.
The tourism ministry said in a statement that the conclusions of the meeting will be taken into consideration as part of national tourism planning and when designing future tourism training courses. Additionally, it said, RRF funds will be channeled into actions that upgrade the country’s “Tourism for All” program in order to make it more accessible and inclusive.
Earlier this year, the tourism ministry announced plans to make some 250 beaches all over Greece accessible as part of the “Accessible Beaches for Everyone” program being implemented with EU funding.
Last year, the ministry signed an agreement with the National Confederation of Persons with Disabilities (ESAmeA) to make accessible tourism a priority.
This project was announced (as you say) back in April 2023 and the site had a MyMap with 59 Beaches on the Greek Islands for which installations were promised during the summer with a “digital promotion”.
In anticipation that the presentation would not be “up to scratch” I went ahead and designed my own Web-App https://camoapps.com/accessbeaches/index.html using Kini Beach on Syros as an example and waited to see the results after the summer.
So 6 months later I am reading this new article on GTP that simply repeats a plan is “in the air”, so I revisited the site and found that the MyMap had gone but there were some photos (images only and not panoramas) without any text to give the most basic info eg the NAME of the beach.
And the total of the installations seems to be just 18 of the 59 promised – which probably explains why the MyMap was removed. But it IS a start!
So are you interested in a PROFESSIONAL digital presentation starting with these 18?