Acessibilidade para pessoas com deficiência física e/ou sensorial à hotelaria : na perspectiva do consumo coletivo

Abstract

The Federal Law n° 5296/04, in its chapter III, deals with the general conditions of accessibility in the collective use of buildings of commercial nature, including the companies connected with the segments of tourism, recreation, and hotel business, among others, determining that those companies should promote the accessibility for people with disabilities in an autonomous, secure and comfortable, in accordance with the norms of the ABNT (NBR 9050/2004). This law also regulates the Law nº 10.048/2000 and the Law nº 10.098/2000. The first one determines the priority service to people with special needs and the second one establishes general rules and basic criteria towards the promotion of accessibility for people with disabilities or reduced mobility, also establishing deadlines for the organs of the direct public administration, indirect public administration, foundations, companies providing public services and financial institutions to accomplish what is determined by these laws, subjecting the lawbreakers to sanctions. Is up to governmental and private organs and entities to ensure to the persons with disabilities the full exercise of those rights. However, in a contradictory way, studies show that the accessibility to community facilities and tourist services, especially in the hotel industry, which is the main segment of this sector, it is still applied on a small scale in most of the hosting equipment. In what to the infrastructure is concerned, spaces such as apartments, auditoriums, convention rooms, fitness rooms, swimming pools and restaurants, among others, are still poor in terms of accessibilities that can give response to the demands of people with disabilities. In that direction, this project has as main aim to assess, from the point of view of the owner or the general manager of some hotels in the cities of Recife and Olinda – PE, as well as from the point of view of the consumers with physical and/or sensory disabilities and also from the viewpoint of the public managers of the city halls Recife and Olinda, the reasons why this equipment characterized as being of collective consumption does not invest in the provision of accessibility conditions in what to the meeting of the needs and demands of people with disabilities. In a more specific way, understand the reason why the segment of the hotel industry, despite the ruling legislation, has not been concerned with the recognition and implementation of the right to accessibility by the consumers with physical and sensory disabilities, being that most of these consumers have lots of free time and, above all, like to travel a lot. In this research it was adopted the qualitative approach, descriptive and explanatory, constituting the case study the most appropriate research strategy. The dialectical historical-critical analysis was constituted as essential to reach the comprehension of the problem and its reality. The sample has integrated 10 hotels. The subjects of the research were constituted by 10 managers of the mentioned hotels, 5 public managers bond to the city halls of Recife and Olinda and 20 people with physical and/or sensory disabilities. The instruments utilized for the data collection were composed by questionnaires, interviews, direct observation, photographs and recordings. The results show that the lack of knowledge both by people with disabilities and by the managers of the hotels about the laws and rules of accessibility it is making it difficult the implementation of the accessibilities in hotels, conjoined with the lack of supervision and the enforcement of the laws by the public actors. As the analysis approaches the small hotels, the technical means of accessibility are gradually more inadequate than in medium and large hotels, when considering what is established by the reference standard (NBR 9050) about the meeting of the demands of physical and sensory disabilities. It can be concluded that the logic underlying the relationship between State / Market is making the public managers and the hotel managers fail to understand people with disabilities as being potential consumers, with plenitude of rights, and that failure in see disabled people as potential consumers leads them to ignore the investments in accessibility in the hotel industry.