Upskilling disabled people with digital skills applied to Accessible Tourism jobs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Upskilling disabled people with digital skills applied to Accessible Tourism jobs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

Europe is a key cultural tourism destination thanks to an incomparable cultural heritage. The EU recognises also the importance of culture as part of the European tourism experience and as an element that can enhance the profile of Europe as a global destination.

Accessible tourism is about making it easy for everyone to enjoy tourism experiences. Is not only a social responsibility, it can boost also the competitiveness of tourism in Europe and its market size has been estimated in 780 million trips. Tourism enterprises need to recruit people with the right skills in order to address the growing number of older and disabled visitors, but training courses in skills related to accessible tourism are relatively scarce in Europe.

The group of specialists that deliver accessible environments and services necessary to tourism businesses, such as web designers and information managers, who apply their ICT skills to make the information systems accessible to people with disabilities, is essential to the tourism industry. Nevertheless, their training needs and skills shortages in accessible tourism remain unattended.

The incipient Online Accessible Tourism industry is an infrequent case in which disability can be not an obstacle but a competitive asset for the labour market, as they have direct personal knowledge and experience about the barriers and needs that people with disabilities experience in tourism.

Disabled people are therefore in the best position to design and set up new Online and ICT based services and resources for accessible tourism in Europe. Nevertheless, the use of this new niche remains mostly underexplored and underexploited for disabled people. Two main factors are limiting their possibilities. Firstly, the identified lack of VET courses in accessible tourism for ICT based specialists. Secondly, a prevalent lack of Digital skills in the collective of people with disabilities.

The project TOURISTIC aims to find new and innovative answers to all these challenges by upskilling disabled people in Digital Skills applied to the design of innovative commercial services and products in Online Accessible Tourism, creating new skills pathways and labour opportunities for disabled people in Europe, supporting ICT-based teaching and assessment practices and promoting the transparency, validation and recognition of skills and competences acquired through OER.

8 European VET experts and providers, companies and intermediary bodies in the fields of Tourism and support of disabled people from 6 countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, Slovenia and Spain), will work together to carry out the following Outputs:
IO1 – European Framework of Reference on Digital Skills for Accessible Tourism
IO2 – TOURISTIC Virtual Campus. Includes the following Open Educational Resources: (i) an Online Instructional Guide on Digital Competencies for Virtual Learning; (ii) a set of structured Training Modules (iii) VET Open Online Courses (VOOC)
IO3 – TOURISTIC Mobile Assessment App
IO4 – Guidelines to foster transparency and recognition of Digital Skills for Accessible Tourism in Europe

Target users and beneficiaries are: (i) I-VET and C-VET teachers, trainers and managers (ii) Disabled people. TOURISTIC will involve directly 93 VET and in company teachers and trainers (32 partners’ staff / 36 experts involved / 25 target users in pilots), 125 Disabled people (in pilots) and 500 stakeholders. At local, regional, national and European level the project will reach a minimum audience of 1000 recipients through the project dissemination activities.

The project will use European frameworks of reference, such as EQF and ECVET, to promote new learning pathways and boost transparency, recognition and mobility in Europe. Key sectorial and VET associated partners and stakeholders from the fields of Tourism and Disabilities, involved in the project, will support the dissemination of products and mainstreaming of final results.

The project will have a direct positive impact in: (i) partners and organizations involved in the project activities; will improve their training methods and tools; the teaching skills and competencies (including digital skills) of their trainers and teachers; the quality and relevance of their VET courses (ii) the disable people participating in VET will improve their Digital Skills for Online Accessible Tourism, opening new opportunities for training, job and mobility (iii) the Tourism sector will count with new training instruments to improve the competitiveness of the sector and support its transition towards a more accessible tourism offer.

The envisage long term impact of the project will be a strengthening of the Digital skills and the VET systems in Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 344404 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITOUTO EKPAIDEFTIKOU KAI EPAGGELMATIKOU PROSANATOLISMOU & Country: EL

Project Partners

• ZAVOD ZA IZOBRAŽEVANJE IN INKLUZIJO ODTIZ
• Asociación La Bien Pagá Espacio Escénico
• INSTITUTO PARA EL FOMENTO DEL DESARROLLO Y LA FORMACION SL
• ENGELI OLAN BIREYLER VE AILELERI GELISIM MERKEZI DERNEGI
• INNOQUALITY SYSTEMS LIMITED
• ISTANBUL VALILIGI
• AEVA – ASSOCIACAO PARA A EDUCACAO E VALORIZACAO DA REGIAO DE AVEIRO