Europe’s Most Accessible Cities

When it comes to travelling, it’s vital that everything goes as smoothly as possible, and that you can get the most out of your journey.

Everybody is unique, and when it comes to travelling with a disability, there can be additional factors to consider.

From hidden disability awareness to mobility assistance, there are multiple ways travel can be improved for people with a disability.

Taking Europe’s capital cities and evaluating them from a traveller’s perspective, we’ve determined which are the most accessible for tourists.

Berlin - Europe’s Most Accessible City

Berlin has ranked at the top of the European capitals due to a balance of efforts being made to make it into a ‘Barrier-free City for All’ and to have it fully accessible by 2020.

Berlin received the Access City Award 2013, meaning the council and others had made notable advancements toward a fully accessible city for everyone. This included an increase in funding in order to make existing facilities better and an introduction of better solutions in situations where access was poor.

An introduction of “The Round Table” was made, where representatives of multiple industry sectors and experts from other Senate departments work alongside the Berlin Commissioner for People with Disabilities and the State Advisory Council for People with Disabilities. The Round Table has high-level decision-making powers and was formed with the goal of introducing the vision of a ‘Barrier-free City’.

Berlin also came out on top when viewing accessibility through a tourist’s perspective. It offers some of the best ratios for disabled access to both accommodation and attractions in online listings; with 25% of the attractions listed online having accessible options.

Europe’s most accessible cities ranked

Methodology

We looked at accommodation, airports, awards, attractions and available information from official sites.

Note: some cities were excluded due to a lack of accurate available data, such as Andorra la Vella, Nicosia, Vaduz, Monaco, San Marino and Podgorica.

Accommodation
Percentage of listings that had accessible rooms with wheelchair access according to TripAdvisor.

Attractions
Percentage of tourist attractions at Get Your Guide which is wheelchair accessible.

Airports
Does the city’s major airport’s website have detailed information for disability and wheelchair access, as well as special assistance and mobility assistance?

(There may have been sites with accessibility pages buried deep, but if we weren’t able to find them after a thorough search we deemed it wouldn’t be helpful to tourists.)

Access City
Whether the city been the recipient of a top three ranking in the Access City Awards, who recognise exemplary effort in making cities more accessible for all.

Tourism Website
We assessed, or tried to assess, whether the official city tourism website offered clear and detailed information of efforts to make the city more accessible for all, according to their official tourism website?

Berlin Facts
Berlin facts sourced from here.

Disclaimer
All figures & data correct as of February 2019. A full list of sources and data can be viewed here.

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