This article originally appeared in the November 2012 issue of Dream of Italy. It was updated in 2017.
Unlike the United States, Italy does not have a national law like the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires buildings, sidewalks and public transportation to meet certain accessibility standards. Instead municipalities, each with their unique assortment of ruins and centuries-old buildings and cobblestone streets, determine accessibility criteria.
There are Italian activist organizations that lobby for more accessible walkways and facilities. But without any enforceable national mandate, and with the engineering and preservation challenges that come with retrofitting antiquities and even just decades-old structures, the resulting landscape is a patchwork of accessibility scenarios.
This makes Italy a challenging destination for the mobility impaired, especially those in wheelchairs and scooters but also people who use canes and crutches. That said, travel to Italy for those with mobility limitations, and for those with other disabilities as well, is doable for many, provided a traveler is willing to do abundant advance due diligence and research their itinerary to make sure every aspect of their travel plans meets their needs and expectations.
“It’s not easy, but it can be done,” says Cornelia Danielson, author of the book, The Accessible Guide to Florence. Paul Bennett, president and founder of Context Travel, which gives walking tours in Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples, points to improved accessibility at places like the Colosseum, which has added ramps for wheelchairs and an elevator and notes: “In the past 10 years, we’ve seen changes for the better, gradual changes for the better.”
So, where to begin researching accessible travel in Italy? An essential resource for anyone with mobility issues planning a trip to Rome, Naples, Bologna or Vicenza is Howard Chabner and Michele DeSha’s free online guides to accessible travel in these cities. (Find them at www.globalaccessnews.com)
Chabner, a Harvard Law School graduate who has been wheelchair bound due to muscular dystrophy since his early 30s, has personally researched and, most importantly, visited the attractions he mentions. (His wife, who is able-bodied and travels with her husband, contributes writing and research, too.) His city reports provided detailed reviews of museums, churches, ruins and useful pointers about everything from bathrooms to elevators and public transportation, too.
Selecting a Hotel
In an interview with Dream of Italy, Chabner explained that he does his own travel planning from start to finish without benefit of a travel agent. To find a hotel, he’ll start by searching TripAdvisor’s top-rated hotels in a given city and then narrowing them down based on price, location (i.e., neighborhood) and taste, which includes no large chain hotels. Then after clicking around their website, he emails prospective properties a description of his situation.
He includes a list of questions about things like door widths, access from the street to the room itself, the bathroom, etc. For a sample email with questions, see Chabner’s “Rolling in Rome 2012” guide. He emphasizes to get a clear sense of the lobby or whatever route you’d take in your wheelchair from the street to the room. He recently stayed in a hotel in Naples that, despite his vetting, wasn’t accessible through the lobby, he had to enter and exit through a side door. Equally important, he asks the hotel to send photographs of the bathroom.
Chabner says he can often get a sense of how enthusiastic a hotel is about working with disabled guests by the tone of their emails. “Quite often you can judge how nice a hotel’s going to be by the attitude that goes in giving this information, by their enthusiasm or lack of it.” First-time travelers should note that many accessible rooms are short on views because, as Chabner tells it, they’re located close to the one elevator that can accommodate their wheelchair.
Danielson, the author of Accessible Florence, cautions that “accessible” is a very broad term and, like Chabner, encourages prospective hotels guests to ask questions and get photographs. Danielson, whose interest in accessible travel stemmed from having a son with physical and intellectual challenges, notes that this includes 5-star hotels, a number of which have recently opened in Florence, including a Four Seasons. Danielson hasn’t researched these newer hotels herself. “When I was researching my book, I would call hotels and they would say they were accessible. But then some people didn’t know what a roll-in shower was. Their idea about accessibility was very different.”
Getting Around
Another consideration for mobility challenged travelers is sidewalk ramps. Dave Bexfield, founder and president of Active MSers, an organization devoted to encouraging people with multiple sclerosis to remain active, traveled to Italy in 2009. He presently uses forearm crutches, but at the start of his Italy trip, he was using trekking poles until one day in Lake Como, his legs gave out, reducing his mobility. For the remainder of the trip, he used a wheelchair when possible. Speaking generally about Italy, he said, “Curb cuts are a challenge. They can be blocked by cars. Or sometimes there’s a curb side on one side but not the other side of the street. You have to scout ahead when you’re in Italy.”
Chabner notes that there aren’t as many curb ramps as there could be in Rome, though he was impressed with the number of them in Naples. “We notice a lot more curb ramps on the streets in Naples and more people in wheelchairs, locals and tourists, than our last trip in 2009.” He adds that Naples’ curb ramps are on the steep side, and that someone in a manual wheelchair might need help getting up them.
As for buses, subways and vans, they differ from city to city. Chabner chronicles his experiences in Rome earlier this year, which included rides on accessible vans with ATAC Paratransit Service, Rome’s public transportation agency. The buses in Rome were not reliable in that not all are accessible and it was impossible to know when an accessible one might come along. Chabnor used Rome’s Metropolitana, but had trouble finding information about accessibility.
Trenitalia has a service for people with mobility issues, Sala Blu, but it’s important for travelers to understand that 1.) not every train is accessible and 2.) not every train station is as accessible as the next. (See our article about Sala Blu in the February 2012 issue of Dream of Italy.) So, it’s important to make your train reservation in advance, and equally important to get to the train station early, to make sure you find the employees who are going to get you on the train, often using a portable lift but again it depends on the train station.
Chabnor said that not all the lifts are the same size. Bexfield, who traveled all around Italy by train and car, called the trains “okay,” noting that they were not always accessible, you’d get to tracks and have to go up and down stairs. “You need an accessible station to get on an accessible train.”
As for flying from the U.S., airlines will let you check your wheelchair at the gate. You can take your wheelchair through security.
New Initiatives in Accessibility
Last but not least, we thought it would be instructive to include the perspective of a tour company that’s developing accessibility criteria for its walking tours. For years, people have showed up to Context Travel’s walking tours in wheelchairs or with crutches. Sometimes they’d give Context notice, other times not.
This got Bennett, the founder and president, to think it was time to assess just how accessible Context’s tours were. Context put together a panel, which includes Chabner and Danielson, and has embarked on having folks in wheelchairs assess their tours.
If a mobility challenged traveler is interested in a particular tour that has been analyzed by the panel, Context sends them a mobility questionnaire to evaluate their particular challenges in hopes of booking them on a regularly scheduled tour with other travelers. If that particular tour that hasn’t been analyzed yet, Context can work with them on a putting together a private tour.
— Barbara Benham
Barbara Benham wrote about fractional ownership in Italy for the September 2012 issue of Dream of Italy. Based in Washington, D.C., she tweets as @TravelSweeps and blogs at Travel-Sweeps.tumblr.com.
Resources
Flying Wheels plans independent trips and runs tours for the mobility challenged. Read our short article about Flying Wheels.
Howard Chabner and Michele DeSha’s Italy accessibility guides
www.globalaccessnews.com
Here are the links to Rome and earlier reports on Naples, Vicenza , Florence, Bologna, Parma and Ravenna.
Accessible Guide to Florence
by Cornelia Danielson (Xlibris, 2004)
The book is out of print. Used copies are available online, for prices ranging from $33 to more than $80, indicating high demand. Danielson says that much of the information is still relevant as a starting point, but that readers should verify information.
Carpe Diem and Traveling With MS
Dave Bexfield of ActiveMSers wrote an article about a trip to Italy and a list of general tips about traveling with MS.
www.activemsers.org
The post Italy for the Mobility Challenged: Tips for Disabled Travel in Italy appeared first on Dream of Italy.