A simple answer to a difficult problem?

GUEST WRITER.

A SIMPLE ANSWER TO A DIFFICULT PROBLEM?

A new enterprise enabling disabled people to travel more freely has been launched by a group of friends frustrated by lack of choice. The project is based on the established principle of house swapping but has been adapted to suit the needs of disabled people by offering a website to bring people with the same or similar accessibility requirements together.

http://www.matchinghouses.com came about as a simple solution to a difficult problem - the problem of how can you ever ensure full disability access? By bringing together three obvious facts the answer seemed clear -

There are disabled people everywhere in the world.
In this modern world one of the biggest problems disabled people experience is the problem of access.
Disabled people know what access means for them. Where service providers might say something is accessible, disabled people actually know whether something is accessible or not, often through experience.

Many disabled people I speak to tell me about their nightmare holiday access experiences. These might be

• Arriving at a hotel that you can't get into, or that you can't get around;

• Finding that there are no local places you can visit and actually get into;

• Language problems preventing you from doing what you want when you want to do it.

In 2004 I got together with another disabled person and two web designers to create matchinghouses.com. This is a very simple idea, but it helps get round all the problems listed above. It is based on the simple idea that a wheelchair user in one part of the world will be able to use the property of another wheelchair user in another part of the world, so why not exchange houses for a holiday? It's so simple!

The idea of house swaps has been going on for decades. There are now up to 250,000 people all over the world swapping houses for their holidays. But there is no site especially for disabled people, looking at access. Some of the other sites talk about "access", but what they seem to mean is access to local facilities, not disability access in the house.

You go onto the site and enter a lot of details about your house. Our incredible database then matches your house with other houses that have the same access needs. In this way a property with no stairs will be matched with other properties with no stairs. A property used by a manual wheelchair user will be matched with other properties used by manual wheelchair users, and so on.

There is also an online forum and an online meeting room where you can meet people and just generally talk about properties in Spain perhaps, if that's where you want to go.

You can then contact whoever you want to swap with, and talk about the local area - accessible bars, restaurants, local sights to see, etc. Next thing you know - you're going on holiday to somewhere new! The information is all provided by someone in a similar situation to yours, so you know you can rely on it. They can leave information for you in case of emergency - for a wheelchair repair service for example. And they can tell you where the people are most friendly, most welcoming, and where you will have the most fun!

The Matching Houses website also offers clear, step by step guidelines on how to organise a house swap so both parties are completely clear as to what to expect. There is also a section which helps dispel any of the concerns you may have about swapping houses with a stranger such as security and confidentiality.

We now have more than 450 members across the world, all looking to swap! We are constantly improving the site, adding new features and responding to members' suggestions. There is a whole online community in here, so why not come and have a look?

Theo Blackmore
contact@matchinghouses.com
http://www.matchinghouses.com