Introduction

This is the first national Accessible Travel Framework for Scotland.

Disabled people have absolute rights to live a life of equal opportunities. The ability to travel is an important enabler to access those opportunities.

The purpose of the Framework is to:

support disabled people's rights by removing barriers and improving access to travel; and
ensure disabled people are fully involved in work to improve all aspects of travel.

We refer throughout mainly to travel rather than transport because the issues disabled people told us about include more than just getting on or off a bus or a train or a ferry, etc. The issues include accessible travel information, getting to transport, facilities around transport, people's attitudes and going between different modes of transport.

This Framework provides a national vision and outcomes for accessible travel, new ways of working to include disabled people and a high-level action plan to tackle the issues already gathered.

The Framework has been co-produced by the National Transport Accessibility Steering Group.

The Steering Group includes organisations of and for disabled people, transport service providers, local government and Transport Scotland. The logos of the organisations involved are on the inside front cover of this Framework.

The Group has worked together to gather the knowledge, advice and lived experiences of disabled people and people working in transport to develop this Framework.

We believe that some of the required changes can be made relatively quickly and easily. For instance, more information and advice is needed about things that already exist to help make access easier and we showcase examples of good practice in this and other areas in the document. Other changes are longer term and include shifting attitudes and changing cultures. For these reasons, the Framework is intended to span 10 years, with a separate action plan which will be monitored, reviewed and revised every two to three years.

All of this work will be overseen by the Steering Group, making sure that co-production with disabled people and people working in transport continues and that we all "Go Further" to make travel more accessible for disabled people in Scotland.