In a difficult time, when the coronavirus pandemic forced us to limit our contacts, the idea was born to promote tourism in rural areas where travelling and recreation away from large crowds is possible. This idea gave rise to the CE - Spaces4All project, which aims to open up rural tourism to persons with disabilities by putting together suitable packages of measures and breaking down existing physical and mental barriers. Due to the time and cost - intensive nature of removing physical barriers, the focus is on raising awareness. What needs to be done to improve the accessibility of tourism for persons with disabilities? Where are the responsibilities and which measures are suitable? The paper describes how these questions were dealt with and explains the measures using two examples from the project pilot regions. The project CE - Spaces4All focuses on persons with mobility impairments, blind people and persons with visual impairments, deaf people and persons with hearing impairment. Barriers were initially recorded in three pilot regions in a total of seven European countries and summarised in a joint database. The exemplary field surveys were carried out by the project teams directly in the pilot regions. Barriers were identified through this so - called mapping, for example in the road network or other municipal infrastructure, in the respective tourist attractions or in accommodation and catering establishments. This resulted in the Web Accessibility Viewer, which is an online geoportal that indicates tourist and tourism - related facilities in both public space and private areas and their degree of accessibility in three pilot areas in Central Europe: the cross - border area of Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary. In the next step, the areas in which barriers can be removed as part of the project were identified together with the responsible tourism stakeholders in the respective pilot region. Sometimes these are minor structural measures, but often they are just comparatively simple things such as a lack of information. Although people with disabilities use many technological aids to help them cope better with everyday life, obtaining information before travelling is particularly important for people with disabilities because they need to know in advance whether the destinations they are planning to visit are actually usable for them. The awareness of what is important and that it matters is currently often underrepresented among those responsible for tourism and for policy planners. It is also a task of CE - Spaces4All to anchor this awareness more firmly and establish it as a matter of course in the long term. The paper presents the path to raising awareness using two examples from the sub - pilot regions of Austria and Slovenia, outlining the key points of the planned measures.

Land use and settlement dynamics of two rural areas defined by the contact karst spring is the subject of this paper. The research area consists of the spring catchment of Ljubija in the northeast part of Slovenia and Gradole, the most water-rich spring in Istria (northwest Croatia), have been surveyed in terms of environmental conditions, and social and historic land use aspects. We used Statistical data and Geographic Information System (GIS) methods. Via a multidisciplinary approach we discovered that: 1) environmentally, both areas are actively managed due to drinking water resources—Gradole has 9.8% and Ljubija 8.9% of protected area; 2) data regarding social features showed that human pressure has not negatively influenced the natural settings and water supply vulnerability—the area of the Ljubija spring catchment has lower population density compared to the area of the Gradole spring catchment (1.4 inhabitants/km2 compared to 38.7 inhabitants/km2), but the Ljubija area has more pronounced growth in the number of households—I2020/1948 = 115 compared to I2020/1948 = 88.1 at the Gradole spring catchment; and 3) the limited regeneration abilities of the karst water bodies have been preserved by the prevailing share of forest—land use data showed 84.8% for Ljubija and 34.4% for Gradole.

This paper draws on primary research conducted within the international project New Governance for New Spaces—NONA, implemented under the Interreg Danube Region Programme with EU co-funding. The principles of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative are fully aligned with the research framework and outcomes. The study aimed to test the applicability of the NEB model in urban regeneration at four selected pilot sites in four mid-sized cities in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia) with a strong focus on participatory governance and co-creation involving stakeholders, local authorities, and citizens. It also examined appropriate financing and management models to support sustainable improvement and future development of these spaces. A central outcome of the research was the development of a comprehensive methodological framework outlining key steps and potential implementation scenarios, designed as a roadmap for medium-sized European cities. The methodology combined field research, surveys, the establishment of a Local Action Group (LAG), and the implementation of “soft interventions,” including creative competitions, site-based festivals, workshops, expert walks, and panel discussions and forums. These activities informed a set of beneficial practice recommendations, defined through clear requirements and expected outcomes.

According to the Austrian Federal Disability Act, a disability is defined as the effect of a non-temporary physical, mental or psychological impairment that makes it difficult to participate in social or working life. According to a survey conducted by Statistics Austria in 2015 as part of the micro-census, 18.4% of the population were affected by disabilities. Permanent disabilities are strongly age-dependent, so this figure is constantly rising as society ages, making it more important to make tourism, leisure, and recreational activities accessible to this section of society. The EU-Interreg funded project CE-Spaces4All aims at the improvement of accessibility of tourism for persons with disabilities, concentrating on three groups with different requirements: wheelchair users and mobility impaired persons, visually impaired and blind persons, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Public authorities, tourism development stakeholders and persons with disabilities from seven countries are working together in three European pilot regions (Poland, Austria/Czech Republic, Slovenia/Croatia/Hungary) in a capacity building process to improve conditions for accessible tourism development and independent tourism travel. A key element of the project is the Web Accessibility Viewer (WAV) which serves as a tool for policy planners for mapping and visualising barriers. The project partners organised field mapping events to capture barriers on-site in the pilot regions and record them on a map. The WAV is a Geographic Information System (GIS) based online service with a desktop and a mobile application based on QGIS open source software to collect data according to a joint catalogue of barriers developed together with the European Disability Forum, an umbrella organisation of persons with disabilities that defends the interests of over 100 million persons with disabilities in Europe. The WAV includes tourism-related barriers (for example parking, paths, public transport, tourism facilities, points of interest) from all pilot regions categorised by the three groups of persons with disabilities mentioned above supplemented by an easy-to-understand accessibility assessment with a semaphore system (red: not accessible, orange: partly accessible, green: accessible). Photos of the mapped spots are taken by the respective mapping teams and directly linked with the datasets. The WAV is available in English as well as all the national languages of each project partner country. Work with the WAV subsequently resulted in a catalogue of barriers that serves as a starting point for further measures, for example for action plans for long-term territorial cooperation on improving accessibility of the pilot regions. Awareness raising events with local and regional stakeholders complement the agenda of sensitising institutions, companies and public administration related with tourism. This will lead towards a better governance for policy and territorial planning of accessible tourism as well as improvement of public services for persons with disabilities.