TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

John Morris

Wheel the World Raises $2MM to Provide Unlimited Experiences

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Wheelchair user in front of Machu Picchu ruins.

Friends Alvaro Silberstein, who uses a wheelchair following a car accident as a teenager, and Camilo Navarro came up with the idea for the Wheel the World travel booking site following a 2016 trip to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Silberstein said with the help of Navarro and other friends, he became the first person to complete the Patagonia trek by wheelchair. Three years later, about 1,300 people have booked trips through the Berkeley, California-based company’s website, which offers over 400 listings to more than 50 destinations. 

Recently, they announced $2 million in a seed round led by Chile Global Ventures and Dadneo, with the support of Plug N Play Ventures and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Our Take: When Camilo presented at TravelAbility San Francisco in 2019, he had 5 employees and an OTA concept around adventure travel for wheelchair users.  Since then they’ve expanded to offering bespoke tours in most major urban areas using a proprietary hotel mapping system that includes over 200 points.

See their first commercial:

To read more about Wheel the World, check out this article in TechCrunch.

The Future of Inaccessibility? Wheelchair Space Kitchen — A Parody Exhibit Opens in Denver

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The Wheelchair Space Kitchen gives a preview of what it’s like to be disabled.

There are parts of the Wheelchair Space Kitchen—just one of many rooms in Meow Wolf’s 90,000 square-foot Convergence Station, which opens in Denver on September 17—that won’t be accessible. A cabinet will be too high, a countertop too low. You might feel like you’re Alice in Wonderland, shrinking too small to reach a table or growing too tall to fit through a door. Some messages are written in Braille, and unless you read Braille, you’re out of luck.

This exhibit will give visitors an opportunity to feel what it is like to face obstacles — hopefully kindling in them a sense of understanding and empathy for those who face barriers on a regular basis, whether as a result of a disability or for some other reason. To read more about the Wheelchair Space Kitchen, see the original article in Thrillist.

AARP Experts Provide Advice about How to Find the Best Hotels for Wheelchair Users

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Modern hotel room.

Barbara and Jim Twardowski recently penned an article for AARP which lays out steps for finding a hotel that will meet the guest’s accessibility needs.

Their top recommendation: Reach out to the hotel to inquire about accessibility well in advance of your stay. Because the number of ADA accessible rooms are limited, it’s important to plan and book early – but first, be sure to contact the hotel directly to verify that it will meet your needs. Asking about things like bed height, the availability of swimming pool lifts and the design of roll-in showers are all important pieces of information to consider before your trip.

To read more of their tips for securing accessible hotel accommodation, read the full article on the AARP website.

Travel Tips for Women with PTSD

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Women at the beach, looking up towards the moon at dusk.

Many of the “cool” places travelers associate with culture and arts—that cocktail bar, an island off the grid, a museum after dark—can feel impossible to visit for someone with PTSD. Where there’s unfamiliarity on top of perceived danger—such as nighttime or a lack of phone signal—it can make traveling abroad more intense and off-putting. So, what do you do if you struggle with PTSD and have an insatiable appetite for travel?

To learn about the ways the author has fed her wanderlust as a woman with PTSD, read the article from Fodors.

The Man Who Filed More Than 180 Disability Lawsuits

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Albert Dytch headshot.
Photo courtesy Albert Dytch/Oakland Therapy Counseling.

DanVy Vu was out on the floor of her restaurant one chilly evening in December 2019 when a staff member called her to the hostess station to assist an angry customer — a man in a wheelchair who, along with his wife, had been stuck outside. The couple said that they had tried the accessible entrance through a courtyard but found the gate locked, which had left the man shivering out in the cold while his wife circled back to a non-accessible entrance at the front of the restaurant for help opening the gate.

The customer, Albert Dytch, filed a lawsuit following the incident. Dytch is a 71-year-old man with muscular dystrophy who has filed more than 180 ADA lawsuits in California. With the support of a prolific lawyer named Tanya Moore, Dytch has sued restaurants, movie theaters, shops, educational institutions and even hotels.

Our take: These serial lawsuits have created fear among hoteliers in Florida, California and New York, where ambulance-chasing lawyers claim that, since the ADA laws have little or no enforcement capabilities, litigation is really the default method of enforcement.  Although some courts have proposed a 30-45 day cooling-off period that allows businesses to make corrections, the disability community opposes this as, they contend, the businesses have had 30 years to conform. Who’s right?

To read the full story, see the New York Times article.