Breaking barriers: Yasmine’s journey to revolutionise accessible tourism
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When Dr Yasmine Gray recounts the magic of her latest travel adventures, she lights up. A cold rainy day in Dunedin, New Zealand last summer didn’t deter her – it just meant activities moved indoors.
She recalls: “An unexpected find was the indoor ‘Tropical Forest’ teeming with rain forest butterflies at the Tūhura Science Centre, which was both very warm and fascinating.
“The butterflies were drinking the sweat from my son and partner, but on me they landed on my nose and started drinking out of my nostril! This is not a feeling I will forget anytime soon!”
You wouldn’t know it from this fabulous anecdote, but Yasmine has been travelling with a disability for more than 25 years.
Yasmine sitting on her walker happy exploring ruins in Jordan.
“I have many very memorable experiences, some before my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and many more after. As my disability has progressed, I continue to have memorable and thrilling travel experiences,” she explains.
But that doesn’t mean it has been easy. As her disability has increased, so has the need for disability aids. She was “…first using a walker, then a scooter, and now a power wheelchair to get around.”
For Yasmine, it’s not the disability aids that get in the way, it’s the structures around her: “The barriers I overcome are related to the limitations in environment accessibility, not my desire to explore the world around me,” she says.
“For example, using a walker on my third trip to Jordan in 2011, I struggled to go long distances but was thrilled when on many occasions random strong men would have me sit on the walker and carry me along like a sedan chair. That allowed me to see much more than I would have on my own.”
But while people can be supportive, their attitudes can sometimes also be challenging.
“It never stops to amaze me how surprised people can be at the adventures I have, and that businesses don’t advertise their accessibility.
“More often than not, I’m pleasantly surprised that something is accessible and it would have been so much easier to plan it if I had been able to find the information on their website prior to my visit,” Yasmine says.
Yasmine relaxing in the sun at Milford Sound in New Zealand.
Yasmine founded accessible tourism consultancy GetAboutAble in 2015 out of a desire to make travel and leisure more accessible and inclusive for all in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. The social enterprise supports travel and leisure businesses to improve their access and inclusion.
Since then, the business has grown to employ 10 employees, all with a lived experience of disability. Last year GetAboutAble made waves in the accessibility sector when it successfully delivered the 2023 ‘Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Conference,’ that attracted over 300 delegates as well as financial sponsorship from QLD Government and City of Gold Coast.
She explains: “Having experienced travel throughout the world and knowing that accessibility in Europe and North America was about 20 years ahead of this part of the world, I wanted to bring our region up to speed.”
Pointing to the need for tourism to be more disability-friendly, Yasmine says “20 percent of the population has accessibility needs including vision, hearing, mobility, neurodiversity and hidden disabilities. That’s 1 in 5 people who actively seek accessible and inclusive venues and experiences.”
Frequently, the things people in the disability community are searching for on their holiday are fairly straight forward. Customer service is top of the list.
Yasmine explains: “When you’re travelling as a person with disability, features like accessibility ramps, hearing loops, changing places or sensory friendly hours are some of the first things you’ll look for. But the most impactful accessibility feature of any business is inclusive customer service.”
To transform her for-purpose business into a profitable consultancy, Yasmine connected with The Mill House Ventures, a Canberra-based organisation that works with passionate social enterprises.
“Prior to working with MillHouse, GetAboutAble was focused on a business-to-client model, which wasn’t profitable enough to enable us to make a significant impact. After pivoting to a business-to-business model, we are now supporting many tourism businesses across the country to become more accessible, from small operators through to large national companies,” Yasmine says.
The Mill House Ventures is delivering the ACT Social Enterprise Grant Program on behalf of the ACT Government. According to Yasmine GetAboutAble is “delighted to have received one of these grants” and will focus on updating their logo design and business taglines and upgrading their website to reflect their business-to-business focus.
Reflecting back on what she’s achieved since 2015, Yasmine believes “the greatest satisfaction I have is seeing the change in the travel and leisure industry, especially over the last couple of years, with more and more mainstream operators joining the accessible and inclusive tourism journey.
“At GetAboutAble, we’re very proud to be part of that momentum.”
