Making Travel Websites Accessible For Blind Travelers

Before the late 1990s, air travel was often booked through airlines and travel agents, either in person or over the phone. After the Internet was widely adopted in the mid-1990s, online travel booking websites like Expedia and Orbitz took on the lion's share of the work done by travel agents, leveling the playing field for deaf and hard-of-hearing travelers who otherwise needed help booking over the phone, or drove to the nearest travel agent office to make their arrangements. Yet, what has been an immeasurable benefit for deaf travelers has come at the expense of blind travelers, who find these online travel websites difficult to access, and continue to arrange their itineraries by phone or in person, or rely on sighted people to make the online arrangements for them.The explosion of online travel booking websites has made it significantly easier for most travelers to make their own travel arrangements -- it takes just a few minutes to purchase airfare and book a hotel, compared to the one hour it usually takes over the phone (mostly waiting time). Yet, in today's transformed travel landscape, where travel agents have less clout, and mom-and-pop travel agencies are closing up shop, it is increasingly more difficult for blind travelers to navigate the travel booking business. Which is unfortunate because the best airline deals are usually found online.This may be about to change. On Monday, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) announced an agreement with Travelocity, one of the leading online travel agencies, to make Travelocity's web site more accessible to people with blindness. As part of the agreement, by July 2011, Travelocity will make its home page and search pages accessible, and its entire web site will be fully accessible to the blind by the end of March 2012.With this announcement, Travelocity becomes the first major online travel agency to commit to ensuring its website is accessible to travelers with blindness. Other major online travel websites such as Expedia and Orbitz still contain significant accessibility barriers for travelers. And in today's Web 2.0 environment, when travelers increasingly go to meta-search engines like Kayak and Hipmunk to find the best travel deals, these meta-search engines are not easily accessible for the blind, either.As more business-to-consumer and business-to-business transactions are increasingly being conducted online on both desktop and mobile devices, web accessibility for people with disabilities has become mission-critical. It is not simply enough to be able to buy books and kitchen gadgets on Amazon.com, or to bid for antiques on eBay. Starbucks recently announced that its Starbucks Card mobile app now enables you to pay for your coffee with your smartphone. In an increasingly cashless economy, blind consumers should not only be able to book their airline tickets on the Web, but also carry out transactions on other Websites and mobile devices. Travelocity's announcement only scratches the surface of what is possible, not only for blind travelers, but for all consumers with disabilities.

Travelers With Disabilities Flying the Not-So-Friendly Skies

This holiday season, many people will travel by air to spend time with family, hit the ski slopes, or relax on a tropical beach. As they too often expect, traveling on commercial airplanes is not always the most pleasant experience. Cramped legroom, baggage fees, subpar food, long check-in lines, even sitting next to someone with a cold -- they are aggravating and uncomfortable. For travelers with disabilities, it is a unique challenge because of the logistics involved in traveling efficiently through the air in very tight quarters. As they should, air carriers are obligated -- and in the United States required by law -- to accommodate travelers with disabilities.However, as a recent spate of incidents showed, there continues to be a lack of awareness among some airlines about the capabilities of travelers with disabilities when "flying the friendly skies." In these cases, travelers with disabilities were not accommodated for reasons of airline safety -- a claim that indicates ignorance of a disabled traveler's capabilities which have little to do with safety.In the United Kingdom, British carrier EasyJet informed Craig Murray, a teenager with muscular dystrophy, that his wheelchair was too heavy to be stowed aboard one of its airplanes, and told him to break it apart so it could go under the per-passenger weight limit for safety reasons. Craig's wheelchair was not designed to be taken apart, and he had already flown with this wheelchair on two other airlines in the past without incident. He and his family wanted to book with EasyJet for their Cyprus vacation because the tickets were cheaper than on other airlines. Without tickets from EasyJet, Craig's father said, "I don't think we will be able to afford to go [to Cyprus] now."In September, Johnnie Tuitel boarded a US Airways flight from Florida to Kansas City when, as he sat down in his seat, he was told by an airline manager that he was "too disabled to fly without someone else with him" and he was escorted off the plane. Tuitel, who has cerebral palsy, travels for work -- he is a motivational speaker -- and already flew 500,000 miles over the years without incident. He ended up boarding a Delta flight but missed his speaking engagement in Kansas City.Sometimes it is as simple as looking over the person and determining he or she can't fly. Zuhair Mahmoud, a blind man from Arlington, Virginia, was checking in at the Dubai airport for a FlyDubai flight to Amman, Jordan. At the check-in counter, he was told, "Well, we can't take you. You're traveling alone." FlyDubai's policy, apparently, was not to allow a blind traveler to fly without a companion.In this day and age when more people with disabilities are living independently, more travelers -- whether disabled or non-disabled -- are traveling by air and presenting air carriers with logistical challenges. In the United States, the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provide solid and enforceable guidelines to ensure the travel experience for a person with a disability is functionally equivalent to that of a non-disabled traveler. An essential clause of the ACAA states that "no air carrier may discriminate against any otherwise qualified individual with a disability." The ACAA covers all U.S.-registered air carriers and all carriers traveling to and from the United States. Code share partners also fall under the ACAA's jurisdiction. Outside the United States, member airlines of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) observe codes of practice which are very similar to the laws enforced within the U.S. Yet among some airlines -- even larger and well-established airlines like US Airways -- there can be a lack of awareness of the minimum standards required to accommodate travelers with disabilities. These airlines often fall back on safety claims that have little to do with disability, particularly when these travelers have already demonstrated they can travel independently and safely. EasyJet, known among European travelers for its low fares within Europe, was insistent on enforcing weight limits on stowable baggage for safety reasons -- perhaps to avoid lawsuits or fines. By not making an exception for a single person with a disability who wanted to save money on his Cyprus vacation, the airline demonstrated a lack of business foresight in following IATA protocols, especially when other airlines were able to accommodate him. As a result, EasyJet received publicity it did not want, and it ruined a family's plans for some fun in the sun in Cyprus.By the same token, US Airways and FlyDubai used their own interpretation of safety protocols to explain their denials of service to Johnnie Tuitel and Zuhair Mahmoud, who are themselves frequent and independent fliers. This also resulted in negative publicity, as news of their treatment hit media wires around the world.Safety is paramount when flying on airplanes. Travelers with disabilities, on the other hand, have often traveled on airplanes on their own with little or no impact on safety. So, when an airline makes a determination that it cannot accommodate a traveler with a disability, it must have a very good reason for doing so on the basis of safety, or risk negative word-of-mouth, or worse yet, an unflattering story in the media.Most importantly, when airlines can move mountains to make travel as hassle-free as possible for these travelers, they often get paid back in the form of gratitude, loyalty, or better yet, repeat business from both disabled and non-disabled customers.  That is indeed flying the friendly skies.