D2.2 Qualitative Insights report

This report synthesises insights from qualitative exploratory research. It is based on two different research approaches a) a social media content analysis and b) in-depth interviews with disabled people. Both focus on mobility needs, challenges, and attitudes toward mobility solutions and criteria for travel and disabled users’ approach to the transport service barriers they face daily. The current COVID-19 pandemic situation has required a rethinking of the original methodology. Instead of shadowing, a social media content analysis was performed to identify public transport use barriers in the cities under consideration. Furthermore, faceto-face interviews were replaced with phone/online interviews. During the qualitative research, the data was analyzed to create user profiles and inform the development of a questionnaire to gauge the broader disability community's attitudes and other vulnerableto-exclusion groups towards future transport systems. For this part, we will develop an accessible online questionnaire and engage transport users with disabilities as respondents in various European cities. We aim to reach a minimum of 500 disabled citizens with different access needs by the end of the project to allow for a cross-country comparison. The results of the qualitative study revealed that in all the pilot cities, disabled passengers are still restricted in many aspects when it comes to choosing public transportation. However, people living in the largest cities still have more options than disabled people living in more remote or rural areas. Based on our qualitative study results, the interviewees in all the cities noted some investment had been made in reducing the barriers for disabled persons who travel in Public Transport. Nevertheless, they also confessed that most investments were made in engineering solutions: ramps to enable people in wheelchairs to change level; audio information to support visually impaired people. When regarding the needs of people with mental health problems, it is clear that much less has been done.