Tourism experiences of visually impaired tourists: an embodied agency perspective

This study proposes an embodied agency framework to analyze visually impaired tourists’ experiences through embodied components, embodied practices, and embodied experiences. Body, cognition, and situation act as the basic elements. Based on analysis of 28 visually impaired tourists related podcast transcripts using grounded theory, the research identifies three dimensions of embodied practice: embodied barriers, embodied actualization, and embodied dissolution. This study further delineates six distinctive visually impaired tourists-specific experiential modes: serendipitous encounters, autonomous experience, reverse guidance, egocentric spatiality, transformative experience, and integrated experience. Findings challenge passive notions of disability by demonstrating visually impaired tourists’ agentive capacity to repurpose obstacles and redefine social roles. It offers insights for advancing accessible tourism, social inclusion, and tourism-for-all initiatives for destinations.