Accessible Travel

Travel is daunting for everyone but having a chronic illness or disability can amplify this uncertainty and fear. I’m Georgina and I am a full-time wheelchair user with multiple chronic illnesses. I really do understand how limiting travel anxiety can be on top of my disabled body’s ever-changing physical restrictions.

Every person has different abilities and needs and these can fluctuate, changing each day. Activities such as visiting a new city, dining out, or using public transport can seem like an impossible minefield at times. At Disabled Travel With Georgina, we hope to reduce some of those fears by producing detailed blog posts that explain the accessibility within places such as travel attractions, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses. My husband, Richard, and I will explain and photograph our experiences so you can use our posts to assess whether you’ve found a new hidden gem to add to your own travel bucket list!

Access and inclusion are beneficial to both the customer and the business. Disabled customers gain fun new places to explore and experience and, in return, these businesses have increased revenue from widening their customer base. I love highlighting these accessible venues and increasing their publicity by featuring them on my blog.

Disability is so wide, diverse and dynamic that it can be difficult to fully understand the needs of a disabled visitor. I want to open up a dialogue about access with business owners from every sector, ensuring they can do their best with inclusion. Richard and I are here to help those venues make any small tweaks to their website and, where possible, to help create inclusive and accessible physical sites and spaces.

Inclusive Weddings

Since I recently married my partner of over a decade, this topic is close to my heart. I want to ensure couples have more information about accessibility within the wedding industry. When planning our own wedding, I was shocked to see the lack of disability inclusion or presence of any model outside of the accepted “beauty norms” within wedding modeling campaigns. This is why Richard and I found it essential to start modeling as a pair, bringing representation to the forefront of these content creation shoots.

Beyond representation in campaigns, I couldn’t believe sparse the information was surrounding wedding accessibility information; even simple tips such as the best wedding dress styles to choose when using a wheelchair or how to find step-free venues. The inclusive wedding aspect of my blog is aimed at weddings for disabled and chronically ill brides, grooms and future spouses to give more information on these pertinent topics. I will hopefully be covering most aspects of marriage from the planning process to what happens on the big day. Throughout this series, we are going to be featuring vendors and suppliers that are going the extra mile for their chronically ill clients, opening up a wider revenue stream for those pioneers who are instigating change in the market, inspiring others to include diversity in their clients!

It’s worth noting that I am approaching the wedding industry from a singular cultural point and cannot have immersive learning experiences about other cultures and ceremonial traditions due to disability restricting my worldwide travel. If you’d like to natter about inclusion or your cultural marital traditions, please do send an email to disabledtravelwithgeorgina@gmail.com, and I would love to do an interview with you. Beyond that, disability itself is so diverse that one person cannot possibly cover all of the nuances of each condition. I will try my best throughout this project to help all future spouses in their upcoming happy moments.