"Accessible Western Lake Constance" Action Week

Nadine Hölzl: For about two and a half years, we’ve been working intensively on the issue of accessibility. During this time, we’ve established an advisory board comprising tourism stakeholders, social organizations, and disability advocates; offered awareness-raising training; collected data; and initiated numerous other measures.

It was important to us to first establish a solid technical and structural foundation before bringing the issue more broadly to the public’s attention. Once we realized that these foundations were in place, we wanted to take the next step.

The Action Week was a deliberate milestone for us: a clear deadline by which businesses were expected to further develop their accessible offerings. At the same time, it allowed us to create a framework for highlighting existing offerings, testing new ideas, and raising public awareness of the issue as a whole.

Nadine Hölzl: Over the course of six days, there were a total of 35 events organized by 23 different participants—in a wide variety of formats. These included, among other things, city tours for blind and visually impaired people, guided walks on Mainau Flower Island for people with limited mobility, tactile tours in museums, nature tours, and a comedy show by Kai Bosch on the topic of inclusion.

The event week is deliberately aimed at everyone—with and without disabilities. After all, accessibility isn’t a niche topic for a small target group. When paths are easy to navigate, routes are planned to be shorter, or content can be experienced through multiple senses, everyone ultimately benefits. Comfort, orientation, and accessibility are quality features that everyone appreciates.

Our goal is to view accessibility not as an optional extra, but as an integral part of quality. Or to put it another way: Good offerings are designed so that as many people as possible can participate in them as a matter of course.

Nadine Hölzl: One of the biggest challenges at the beginning was getting local businesses on board. Accessibility is still often equated with high renovation costs and a great deal of effort. That’s why we first needed to raise awareness to show that accessibility is, above all, an opportunity—for greater guest satisfaction, higher quality, and new target audiences.

Some businesses already had excellent accessibility offerings that we were able to easily incorporate. At the same time, however, the campaign week was also meant to provide an opportunity to try out new formats. This outreach, in particular, was time-consuming at first. But once the first participants had committed and the idea became tangible, the project gained momentum, and the number of events grew steadily.

Another challenge was reaching the target audiences. It quickly became clear that we were only reaching a fraction of the people through our traditional tourism communication channels. That’s why we deliberately chose new approaches, specifically reaching out to social organizations, associations, and networks, and broadened our communication efforts.

Nadine Hölzl: Yes, we’re already planning to hold the action week again in 2027. It’s already clear that we’d like to extend the duration of the event—probably to three to four weeks. This year’s experience has shown that one week is too short for the large number of planned events and activities. A longer timeframe will allow guests to participate in multiple events without the dates overlapping too much or everything taking place in a short period of time.

In addition, we would like to place even greater emphasis on the concept of inclusion in this series of events. Our goal is for the event program to appeal not only to people with disabilities but also, explicitly, to people without disabilities. Because only when people with and without disabilities participate in the activities together and engage with one another can inclusion be put into practice and awareness of this important issue be strengthened throughout society.