Innovatia

2022, Brown won the inaugural Accelerator for Enterprising Women prize. Brown says one of the first questions sighted people ask is why someone who can’t see would want to travel. “Everyone thinks that the expe- rience of being at the top of a mountain is the view, but really it’s the feeling. You’ve got fresh air, you feel this sense of achievement that you made it to the top, “ she says. Vacayit head of content, Lisa McEwan, who has low vision, described travel as multi-sensory. “A lot of experience you gain is from people you meet, the music, the food.” McEwan has travelled extensively from New

Zealand to Finland, but she said the process of researching and booking a trip is hard, and text alone can be misleading because it lacks the detail needed to make an informed decision. She said the aim of Vacayit is to make the experience more immersive. The content compilation process involves liais- ing with tourism operators, using a questionnaire prompting them to provide information about the multi-sensory aspects of their place or expe- rience; for example, “Is there the smell of scones baking, or the smell of fresh linen sheets?” Paronella Park in North Queensland was one of the first destinations included on the app. Mc- Ewan drew on her own experience of the place to write the content, even choosing to take the stairs rather than accept the offer of a car ride down to the park waterfall. “It gave me a greater sense of the grandeur and magic of the park… It felt like I was not only step- ping down stairs but also stepping back in time. I also appreciated hearing the gradual increase in volume of the cascading waterfall on the lower level,” she said. For now, Vacayit only covers destinations with- in Australia, but hopes to expand to overseas destinations in the future.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP F inding the best deals on flights, choosing accommodation, and working out your itinerary for your next trip requires attention to detail and a lot of research, and much of the information you rely on is visual. Websites and brochures are full of colourful images – but what about those of us who can’t see them? How do they get a sense of what a place is like? This is a problem for which Hailey Brown and her team at Vacayit have developed a solution. The Vacayit app provides audio descriptions of places – describing not only what a place looks like, but also the sounds, smells and general am- bience – to help people who are vision-impaired plan their holidays. Brown developed the initial concept for Vacayit while she was studying Tourism and Psychology at the University of Queensland, when she was nominated to present an idea at the World Tour- ism Forum in Lucerne, Switzerland. She came up with the idea while she was having dinner with her friend Henry, who is blind. He told her he would like more information about destinations,

because so much is image-based, and there is very little audio content available. Needless to say, the idea was a success – so much so that in

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INNOVATIA

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INNOVATIA

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