Liepaja cares about everyone, disregarding age and level of ability: people with special needs and disabilities, senior citizens and young parents.
While creating an environment that is convenient for the residents we are also working on provision of high quality tourism services for travellers with various interests and needs, including people with special needs.
For people with impaired eyesight we have created the route “Hear, smell, feel Liepaja”, which is managed by a trained guide and includes significant culturally-historic objects of Liepaja. The environment access solutions created by entrepreneurs and scientists of Liepaja allow people to enjoy the beach and safely walk on the streets.
A complex for people with disabilities and young parents is located at the beach, near the Central life-guard station. The complex is equipped with showers and changing rooms, and it has a boardwalk to the sea. It eases access to the sea for people in wheelchairs and young parents with strollers.
During beach season people with special needs have an option to enjoy swimming by use of infrastructure of Liepaja city. Audio buoys that signal about the allowed swimming distance are installed in the waters to make swimming for people with impaired eyesight safer. People with disabilities have access to special wheelchairs for swimming. We have made swimming available for everyone in Liepaja both individually or with assistant’s help.
To make it easier for people with impaired eyesight to navigate several tactile maps were installed around the city. Also, the walkways have installed guide lines that help people with impaired vision to move about individually and freely.
The efforts Liepaja made to develop tourism opportunities accessible to everyone have been recognized by an international competition “European Destinations of Excellence” (EDEN), which named Liepaja as an excellent tourism destination for people with special needs.