Technology-based approaches for accessible tourism: Using personas to understand stakeholders’ characteristics and motivations

Accessible tourism intends to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to experience tourism activities without constraints. The enhancement of accessible tourism conditions can be facilitated by integrating technology. Notwithstanding, there is great difficulty in understanding the stakeholders of the accessible tourism market, as converting requirements into tangible system functionalities is a complex task. Additionally, it is often necessary to use a multidisciplinary team to overcome logistical constraints to reach the target audience, making the process of creating technologies for this market more challenging. This article aims to explore a user-centered design approach to collect and systematize data in a way that can be useful to support development processes, culminating in the proposal of a set of Personas. The outcomes of a combination of data collection methods (interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups) led to the creation of nine Personas. With these representations, it was possible to establish a common language to fully convey requirements, illustrating the needs and motivations of different groups of stakeholders. The combination of methods leads to the proposal of an assistive solution named access@tour by action. The findings of this study could be used as guidelines to support the creation of future accessible technological innovations, especially in the scope of accessible tourism. • The accessible tourism market is complex and heterogeneous. • Information is a key issue, but developing information technologies is not easy due to the different types of requirements. • Using user-oriented methodologies that integrate the users during development stages is a must. • Personas and scenarios help characterize the accessible tourism market, helping the development of accessible technologies.