Most of 2026 hasn’t been about building. It’s been about listening, refining and occasionally being wrong.
When I started this AI project with Accessibility in the City, I thought I knew exactly who I was solving for and what the problem was. Twelve months on, both have changed.
The numbers are bigger than most people expect. Tourism Research Australia’s 2024 report found that travellers with accessible needs, and the people travelling with them, took 70.5 million trips that year, 22% of all trips in Australia, worth $29.2 billion. This isn’t a niche market; it’s mainstream, and we’ve been treating it as an afterthought.
NSW should take particular notice. It’s the number one destination state for these travellers, capturing 31% of overnight stays, ahead of Queensland (24%) and Victoria (21%). They’re also 58% more likely to spend that time in regional areas than other visitors, compared with 44% generally. Regional NSW, including the Hunter, is exactly where this growth wants to go.
That opportunity matters to a few different groups:
– Governments, who fund infrastructure, policy and legislation
– The tourism and disability sectors, chasing growth and better outcomes
– Businesses, already investing heavily in compliance
And the people we’re serving. I started focused on people with disability, and I still am. But the research has made it clear “accessibility” needs to be bigger than that one group. It also means:
– Older Australians, a growing share of every trip taken here
– Parents with prams, facing the same kerbs, stairs and doorways
– People with allergies, who need to know what’s in the food
Nowhere is this clearer than the Hunter and Central Coast. The Hunter already generates 14 million visitors and $6.0 billion in spend a year, according to Destination NSW. Add Newcastle Airport’s projected growth of around a million passengers over the next decade, and the high-speed rail from Sydney once it’s built, and this region will be judged on whether visitors can get around it, not just its beer and beaches.
Try this: borrow a wheelchair for an afternoon and get around your own city. It’s eye-opening.
Here’s what’s surprised me most this year. The biggest fix people raise with me isn’t more accessible infrastructure, though we still need it. It’s communication.
Governments spend millions on reports, policies and laws which commit to promoting accessible tourism products but rarely say how. Businesses spend millions making venues compliant. And after all that spending, almost nobody tells anyone where the accessible venue, toilet, ramp or step-free entrance actually is.
It’s not that most of the information doesn’t exist; it’s also scattered. One platform covers accommodation for a specific disability. Another is built around a single condition. None join the dots across an actual trip: the flight, the stay, the tour, the event, the food. And even when you find something, how do you know it’s still true? A renovation or change of ownership can make a listing wrong overnight, with no way to tell.
Try this too: pull up your favourite cafe, pub, music venue or tour operator’s website and see what it tells a person with a disability, an older visitor or a parent with a pram. For most, the honest answer is nothing.
That’s the gap Accessibility in the City is built to close. This isn’t primarily an infrastructure problem; it’s a communication problem, and it’s exactly what the AI tools we’re building can help solve.
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