OK, so where DO I get information from for my accessible holiday?

One of the greatest problems facing anyone going on holiday who has any kind of disability, hidden or visible, is where to get reliable and accurate information that will ultimately lead to a smooth trouble free holiday or travel of some kind or another.
Lets look at the cruise market to get a good idea of the problems facing the disabled by taking a snapshot of queries placed on cruisecritic.com  message board Disabled Cruise Travel. Issues relate to travelling with medical sized suitcases; Cruising with a service dog; facilities for slow walkers; types of wheelchairs that are best; shore excursions - contact details, the list is endless but there is one common theme, many of the questions, if not 100%, are asking the same questions that others of the 3479 entries to-date have asked. Now thats pretty strange and the website offers a range of options to help and advise cruisers with headings such as..
Disabled Cruising Resources

Best Cruises for Seniors
Best Ships for Cruisers With Disabilities
Cruising With a Disability What do disabled travelers really need to know before booking a cruise
All really helpful stuff so whats the problem?
Where do we get the answers and why is a forum such as cruisecritic, and its not the only travel forum with this issue, so full of basic questions which have been answered many times over?
Lets see if the travel agent can help here, well from a number of surveys carried out over the past few years in Europe it seems that travel agents on the whole are asking pretty much the same questions and have less information to offer than maybe other resources can. There are a good handful of specialist agencies who only work in the Accessible Travel market area but how do we find out who and where they are and how to contact them. Good question as its one that the other Travel Agents often ask as well.
First port of call the internet but here another problem raises its head as the use of the most popular search words, travel; accessible and disabled produce over 19 million hits, where oh where to begin and who to trust?
Finally we reach the crux of the problem facing disabled people wishing to travel, lots of information available but in a fragmented form thats not readily 'accessible' easily, thats not always reliable (sure its an accessible hotel because the brochure says so, but not in reality when you arrive expecting to use the roll-in shower that actually is non existent), and is offered by a company you've never heard off.
So references and recommendations are what most people look for and here the forums are winners, indeed for some locations I visit these forums to see if any new names pop up that might prove to be possible suppliers to me.
What is really needed to help clean the up the mess and create some form of cohesion is for the travel media to wake up and be more responsible in highlighting accessible tourism. Eco tourism, responsible tourism, great buzz words that get yards of coverage in the printed media travel sections and on travel related TV shows but accessible travel??? ummm, yup, basically zip.

As a resource base for worldwide information please do contact me to see if in my extensive database I have a connection that can help you out or I may even be able to service your requirements directly.
This post is by Alan Broadbent, from Disabled Accessible Travel who can be reached at dat@disabledaccessibletravel.com Their website can be visited at http://www.disabledaccessibletravel.com/ and for regular information on accessible travel issues and links visit the facebook page http://www.facebook.com/disabledaccessibletravel