Accessible Landing Pages

Visit Lauderdale launched its new VisitLauderdale.com destination website that includes an accessibility microsite in recognition of the tourism bureau’s new focus on accessible travel as part of its well-established inclusion commitment.

“Accessible tourism is not only about human rights, but also an opportunity to embrace and educate all visitors,” said Richard Gray, Visit Lauderdale’s SVP of Inclusion & Accessibility. “We embrace all visitors with wide open, welcoming arms and we are dedicated to increasing awareness of accessibility features throughout the destination.”

Greater Fort Lauderdale hotels, restaurants and attractions create a welcoming space for every guest. Many provide accessible amenities including accessible rooms – some specially equipped for the hearing-impaired – as well as wheelchair ramps, accessible outdoor dining spaces including spacious outdoor patios, special sensory-inclusive websites, and sensory-sensitive live performances such as those at Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

Area resources listed on the site including include information on where to find wheelchair accessible beaches, and to the Fort Lauderdale-based Special Needs Group, which provides a wide range of equipment including rentals of wheelchairs, scooter, audio and visual aid necessities and other essentials. Equipment is delivered directly to cruise ship staterooms at Port Everglades, hotels, attractions, or the Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center.

To learn more about accessibility in the Fort Lauderdale area, see Visit Lauderdale’s new accessibility microsite.

Dawn Barclay, in an article for The Insider Travel Report, conducted her own research, visiting the tourist board websites of some of the country’s most populated cities as well as most popular tourism destinations. Her goal was to understand the extent to which these organizations are providing information to the populations who most need it — namely, disabled travelers.

She wrote, “Considering that the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990 and we are now 31 years into it, you would think that every tourist board and CVB site would have at least a page dedicated to Accessible or Wheelchair or Special Needs Travel, especially since this is a growing and lucrative market. But they don’t and here’s why.”

To learn why tourism boards are lagging in the push for accessible travel, read the full article from Insider Travel Report.

TravelAbility would like welcome four destinations that have added an accessible landing page to their website that provides links to information about experiences, hotels, restaurants, and attractions that will enable travelers with disabilities  (or their family members) to have more accurate expectations about the destinations they are considering. 

• Visit Visalia, CA: https://www.visitvisalia.com/accessible-travel
• Visit Amelia Island, FL: https://www.ameliaisland.com/accessibletravel
• Phoenix, AZ: https://travelability.net/destination/phoenix-az/
• West Virginia: https://travelability.net/destination/west-virginia/

Great news! We are now at 54 destinations and climbing on the Accessible Destinations page on the TravelAbility website. To see the complete list, click here.

If you have an accessible landing page on your website, you can add it to our directory for free.

TravelAbility Summit attendee Jana Hayhurst, Director of Marketing at Simpleview, which has been a sponsor of TravelAbility for the past two years, is in the business of building and maintaining websites for over 500 destinations around the world. She reported that they are currently working on an article for their Simpleview newsletter about “DMO Tips for creating an accessible landing page,” that will contain not only the types of information to include but also how to format and what to be most mindful of when approaching the design. The article will launch on November 2, 2021, which is also Purple Tuesday in the UK.  

In an effort to continue to grow the number of accessible landing pages, they will follow up the article with a webinar on the same topic. The webinar will likely be a panel discussion consisting of a Simpleview designer, developer, and a representative from Audio Eye.    

I wanted to share an observation about TravelAbility that I haven’t experienced before. Attendees left itching for action after learning about the difficulties that people with disabilities endured while they traveled. It seemed to unlock a baseline of empathy and intrinsic goodness in people that they may not have known they had. 

At TravelAbility 2021, attendees learned that a business case can be made for accessibility. Research presented at the conference forecasted the number of people traveling with disabilities will triple over the next 8 years. In that time, 40% of baby boomers are expected to age into disability after they turn 65. Add the fact that corrective actions as simple as adjusting the pressure of a heavy door, moving the trash container that blocks the elevator button for wheelchair users, or simply offering a complimentary water bowl so a blind traveler’s service dog can have water, are regarded as extraordinary forms of customer service because they are so astoundingly rare. No one thinks about these simple solutions, but the ease of adoption has already encouraged some to act.

Several attendees who expected to learn how they could be more compliant, which they perceived would be overwhelming and expensive, left with the understanding that what they really needed to do was provide information for the traveler and training for their staff about setting accurate expectations. 

While the ADA laws provide a base for physical infrastructure in the form of curb cuts, ramps, parking etc., there isn’t any information infrastructure — a fact that makes the experience for people with varying levels and types of disabilities a gamble when they arrive at destination, attraction, or hotel only to be surprised to discover that information they’ve verified by phone was imprecise and unworkable for them. By aggregating accessibility content on various suppliers, DMO websites can be the answer. 

Nate Aron, who is in charge of partnerships for Amelia Island in Florida, approached us about creating an accessible website landing page but didn’t know where to start or what it should contain. He was understandably concerned and asked me for guidance as to which disabilities to include, where to find the information and how to package it.  

20 minutes of research.

As I flew home from Tampa, I pulled out my laptop and sprung for the overpriced inflight wifi, then typed “Accessible Things to do on Amelia Island” into Google. Up popped a blog post, “An Accessible Weekend on Amelia Island” by a travel blogger that contained links to the accessible attractions, museums, coffee shops and restaurants she visited. I then Googled “wheelchair transportation on Amelia Island” and found three wheelchair taxi companies and an accessible charter boat. I forwarded all the links I had found to Nate twenty minutes after I started my search.

“Here’s the first iteration of your accessible landing page. You can begin with wheelchairs and iterate later by adding other disabilities,” I said.

Well, while Rome wasn’t built in a day, Amelia Island’s accessible page was as I received this link from Nate less than 24 hours later.