Disabled access and heritage attractions

In a UK context, the importance of heritage tourism, the potential of the disabled market, and government policies concerning tourism, social inclusion, and the historic environment provide the setting within which access improvements at heritage attractions for disabled visitors are studied. At issue is how disabled access and conservation can be reconciled. The stakeholders range from the central actors, the disabled tourists and the heritage tourism service providers, through to the gatekeeper and lobby players in the conservation, disability, and tourism contexts. The critical power structures are identified. Changes to the historic environment are managed through the conservation planning system in which disability interests are not formally represented. Recent disability discrimination legislation has not altered this balance of power, and is a source of uncertainty over the access standards that should apply to heritage attractions. An evaluation of progress in implementing access improvements at heritage attractions reveals the limited extent of improvements undertaken to date. Consideration is given not only to physical access but also to alternative methods (intellectual access) of providing the heritage tourism service. In conclusion, the situation is examined from three perspectives. From the disabled tourists' perspective, choice of heritage attractions to visit remains restricted compared to that of nondisabled tourists. The lack of consultation with disabled stakeholders in the access improvements decision-making process is discussed, including the acceptability of alternative methods of service delivery to disabled tourists. The uncertainties facing heritage tourism service providers arising from the disability discrimination legislation are considered but, to ensure a more balanced recognition of disability interests, both conservation planning and disability discrimination legislation need to be amended, adjusting the roles of the legislative gatekeepers.

Heritage property, tourism and the UK Disability Discrimination Act

Heritage tourism depends on a physical resource based primarily on listed buildings and scheduled monuments. Visiting or staying in a historic building provides a rich tourism experience, but historic environments date from eras when access for disabled people was not a consideration. Current UK Government policy now promotes social inclusion via an array of equal opportunities, widening participation and anti-discrimination policies. Historic environments enjoy considerable legislative protection from adverse change, but now need to balance conservation with public access for all. This paper discusses the basis of research being undertaken by The College of Estate Management funded by the Mercers Company of London and the Harold Samuel Trust. It assesses how the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act has changed the legal obligations of owners/operators in managing access to listed buildings in tourism use. It also examines the key stakeholders and power structures in the management of historic buildings and distinguishes other important players in the management process.

Terrestrial implications for the maritime geoarchaeological resource: A view from the Lower Palaeolithic

Stone tools and faunal remains have been recovered from the English Channel and the North Sea through trawling, dredging for aggregates, channel clearance, and coring. These finds highlight the potential for a maritime Lower Palaeolithic archaeological resource. It is proposed here that any Lower Palaeolithic artefacts, faunal remains, and sediments deposited in the maritime zone during dry, low-stand phases were once (and may still be) contextually similar to their counterparts in the terrestrial Lower Palaeolithic records of north-western Europe. Given these similarities, can interpretive models and analytical frameworks developed for terrestrial archaeology be profitably applied to an assessment of the potential value of any maritime resource? The terrestrial geoarchaeological resource for the Lower Palaeolithic is dominated by artefacts and ecofacts that have been fluvially reworked. The spatio-temporal resolution of these data varies from entire river valleys and marine isotope stages to river channel gravel bar surfaces and decadal timescales, thus supporting a variety of questions and approaches. However, the structure of the terrestrial resource also highlights two fundamental limitations in current maritime knowledge that can restrict the application of terrestrial approaches to any potential maritime resource: (i) how have the repetitive transgressions and regressions of the Middle and Late Pleistocene modified the terrace landforms and sediments associated with the river systems of the English Channel and southern North Sea basins?; and (ii) do the surviving submerged terrace landforms and fluvial sedimentary deposits support robust geochronological models, as is the case with the classical terrestrial terrace sequences? This paper highlights potential approaches to these questions, and concludes that the fluvial palaeogeography, Pleistocene fossils, and potential Lower Palaeolithic artefacts of the maritime geoarchaeological resource can be profitably investigated in future as derived, low-resolution data sets, facilitating questions of colonisation, occupation, demography, and material culture.

The interaction of the Madden-Julian Oscillation with the Maritime Continent in a GCM

Previous studies using the Hadley Centre coupled model (HadCM3) have shown that the islands of the Maritime Continent act as an unrealistic block to the eastward propagation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). This blocking effect is investigated using a simplified, aqua-planet version of this GCM, with various idealized configurations of the Maritime Continent islands placed on the equator, and an MJO-like convective signal forced by a propagating sea-surface temperature anomaly dipole. Results suggest that it is the orography of the islands, rather than the presence of the islands themselves, which results in the blocking of the MJO. Although the peak elevation of the orography in the GCM is very much lower than in reality, it appears to act as effective block to the eastward propagation of the low-level Kelvin wave signal which accompanies the MJO. In particular, the representation of Sumatra in the GCM, as a north-south oriented ridge straddling the equator, seems to be particularly effective at blocking the Kelvin wave signal, which in a full GCM would result in the weakening or complete extinction of the MJO signal to the east of the Maritime Continent.