Did you know that traveling can benefit people with disabilities? It can do this by expanding their boundaries, giving them a new perspective of the world, and even changing their view of their self. How can traveling do all this?
Travel has positive effects upon disability.
Here are just a few ways people with disabilities are helped by travel:
Traveling is Relaxing – For those of you who are inclined to be on-the-go, traveling can be surprisingly relaxing. It can also help to get your mind off of worries and problems. In this way, traveling can offer the health benefit of reduced stress.
Traveling Offers a New Perspective – This may be especially important for people with disabilities. Why? Because society ingrains limitation-based perspectives of these individuals. Traveling, especially to another culture, can refresh your mindsets and help you to be more open to new ones.
Traveling Provides Increased Self-Confidence – Why is this? Because when you do something you don’t normally do, you start to realize what you are capable of. People frequently do adventurous, out-of-the-ordinary things while traveling or being on vacation.
For example, if someone who was severely paralyzed managed to sail a long distance, he or she would definitely experience increased self confidence! Think this is impossible? It’s not — a woman who is quadriplegic recently accomplished this feat. Disability Living will feature her story later this week.
Why don’t more people with disabilities travel?
There are probably multiple answers to this question. One of them is, there is simply a lack of disability-accessible airports, travel websites, “well-adapted hotel rooms,” and the like. Despite this lack of accessibility, people with disabilities all over the world are choosing to expand their boundaries by traveling.
This week Disability Living will discuss traveling with a disability.
We will feature posts about a paraplegic woman who has sailed around the UK, quick tips for flying with a disability, summer camps for kids with disabilities, and reasons why people with disabilities don’t enjoy flying more. Disability Living will also highlight beach wheelchairs and increased mobility, a disability-accessible Canadian travel agency, and scuba diving for people with handicaps or disabilities.
Do you have disabilities or handicaps? Do you want to travel and experience new things? If so, you can!
People with disabilities are sometimes marginalized and underestimated by society. They are also frequently told what they cannot do. We are here to tell Canada’s disability community what it can do! And thanks to assistive technology, most people with disabilities can travel.
Have you always wanted to travel but felt like you were unable to? If so, stay tuned to Disability Living this week as we discuss traveling with a disability.
Sources:
http://www.disabled-world.com/travel/health-benefits.php
http://www.disabled-world.com/travel/
Image made available by Vox Efx on Flickr through Creative Commons License.
*Please note: All research for this article is compiled from direct and third party sources. Mention of programs, organizations and companies does not imply support of The National Benefit Authority. Pictures are for creative purposes only; they are not intended to sell or promote products for the NBA and belong to the accredited individual, organization or company.
Let’s Talk About It
Do you want to travel but feel you are unable to due to your disability? In what ways is your disability holding you back from traveling?
In your opinion, how can travel benefit someone with a disability?
I truly believe travel would benefit anyone with a disability such as myself.It would open up the world to me and give me a sense of well being,but financially that is impossible. I would love to travel to the West Indies and expierience their culture,see how they live and I strongly believe that the hot weather would help my aches and pains I have daily from 13 surgeries and a Catastrophic car accident I recently had ion Jan 25/2010.
I had a head on Collision with a truck and was ejected out the windshield,breaking my neck in 5 places,vertabrea 2-3-4 and fracturing 5-6. I have just been assessed by Omega medical and deemed Catastrophically impaired for life. My neck is fusing together ,I just had both hips replaced as they were crushed,and my rt knee operated on.I had 7 broken ribs,which punctured my rt lung and sustained a gash in my head which took 28 staples to close.I was Airlifted to St Mikes Hospital,truly the best there is avail,and was in a Coma for 11 days. I was not expected to live.
Previously I lost my only child ,my 19 yr old son in a car accident which devastated my wife who divorced me when I was released from the hospital in a wheel chair,Forcing me to sell my Blue Mountain Chalet and she took everything.
I found myself living in an empty Basement of an older mans home in Maple Ontario where I found him dead 2 months later on the kitchen floor.
Hopeless was the lightest word I could say I felt and suicide was lurking in the Back of my mind,which I overcame with counselling. Travel would brighten my life in a huge way,and just maybe some day I will have the opportunity to do so. Now,starting all over without a home of my own,I live with hope,I help others in anyway I can,i donate to the Leprosy Fund,Feed the Children and do all I can to help anyone I meet who needs it.that is where I get my heart warmed,my sense of self worth and the hope that I will get more mobile in the future after many more months of Psych/Physio therapy .
My outlook is life goes on and when i see a person in an electric wheelchair,my limping does not seem to hurt as bad and my feelings of hopelessness seems to ebb a bit. There is always tomorrow and the Lord said,Live for Today as Tomorrow will take care of itself. Bill Wilson…………………
I am a disabled woman and I market/sell TRAVEL to both able and disAbled persons.
I’d love to help disAbled to travel when they want to.
Please contact me and I’ll do my very best as I always do with each client.
hello madame, my name is Laura, I was researching a lot of information online about people with Disabilities as I am also a person with disability myself. I honestly never experience traveling that could be arrange by myself, I only travelled before with my family as a child, Now I am 28 years old and feel I truly want to travel over some place.
However I have never experience of “planning” my travel in advanced as I am sure there quite a lot of risks to go through, my family believed I could never go to France due to inaccessible environment. So in a nutshell I am just looking into information of other’s experience and hope to find courage and possibilities that I could learn from.
My desire to go travel is to Southern California as first destination. I know you are sell the the Travel service.. however if may I heard what your experiences from traveling as well?
it would be appreciated to heard from your view!
Laura Hamel
My wife and I are both in our early seventies. I had an above knee amputation of the right leg in 2003, due to an aneurism in my knee. We started right away traveling to our regular camping and fishing trips with a tent attached to our van. Four years ago we bought a travel trailer wich allowed me to use my wheel chair in it, and traveled to the East Coast during the summers, and one winter, 5 months in Florida. Last year, since we couldn’t do the maintenance around the house, we sold it and moved to an apartment with no stairs, and bought a Motorhome. During the summer, we traveled to the East Coast again. On January 3, 2012, coming back home from a test at the Regional Hospital we were involved in an accident witch left 3 of the 4 occupants of the other vehicle dead. They had lost control, and came sideways in our lane. My wife needed an urgent operation in her right ankle, had 6 broken ribs, cracked sternum and multiple bruises, while I had my only foot broken, a bad head concussion, bruised ribs, cracked sternum and internal injuries. We spent the complete month of January in hospital, and I had to go back for a week in February. We both lived in our wheel chairs till the middle of April. My wife is starting to walk with a walker, but I will be staying in my wheelchair, except for very short distances on crutches. We believe the only thing that is keeping our spirits up is the planning of our next trip, which we hope to leave by the end of June, next month. We found that traveling with a disability, (a person in a wheelchair), you have to rely on your own resources. In our travels in the East Coast, we found only one Campground that had a washroom and shower for a person in a wheelchair, and that was in Bonaventure QC. We would like to hear from others if a list exist of facilities for wheelchair confined people. Walter Rancourt