FCB Lisboa promotes inclusive tourism with Wheelchange Tours

May. 16, 2019

There are many ways to make tourism more inclusive. This could be one of them: a system that allows you to couple a wheelchair with a bicycle. With it, a person with reduced mobility can become a tourist guide.

The prototype - created with a piece made in Spain that allows wheelchairs to be attached to bicycles - was presented in March by the Portuguese Secretary of State for Tourism, as part of the Bolsa de Turismo de Lisboa investment programme. Ana Mendes Godinho considers this idea - born from an FCB Lisboa insight -  as "meeting all the requirements to be materialized."

One in three people in the world has special accessibility needs, be they definitive or temporary. In Portugal only, there are approximately 1 million people with special needs, 2.5 million elderly people, 550 thousand children under 5 and thousands more people with temporary or definitive limitations.

Edson Athayde, CEO and Creative Director of FCB Lisbon, who developed this concept over the course of a year with his team, making the most of the know-how acquired in previous collaborations with the Paralympic Committee and the National Institute for Rehabilitation, says:

"This is an idea for Portugal which sees the tourism industry as a priority. An idea that can create a new profession in the tourist business for people with motor disabilities, and that can be replicated elsewhere."

 

Since no one gets far on their own, this concept has been put at the disposal of those who want to materialise it, from town-halls to private initiatives.

The Wheelchange Tours states that this is "an open source project. You can use it any way you'd like, without having to pay royalties. You can even use it to create something new. The important thing is to help make the World a more inclusive place, one where all can work and collaborate without hindrance".