TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

ADA//Law

Airlines, Hotels, Attractions Prove Disability Inclusion Isn’t Just the Right Thing to Do—It’s Great for Business

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an average of 28% higher revenue, 30% greater economic profit margins

According to a recent study of 140 U.S. companies by Accenture–alongside the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and Disability:IN those businesses that offered the most inclusive working environment for disabled employees achieved an average of 28% higher revenue, 30% greater economic profit margins, and twice the net income of their industry peers between 2015 and 2018. Here are 2019’s top travel-industry scorers on the Disability Equality Index (DEI), a national comprehensive benchmarking tool.*

The following companies scored 80% or above on the DEI:

  • Airlines/Cruise Lines: American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, United Airlines, Royal Carribean
  • Hotels: Choice Hotels
  • Attractions: The Walt Disney Company, Comcast NBCUniversal
    To learn  more about how they became models of inclusion in the travel sector, READ MORE

OUR TAKE: The business benefits of creating an inclusive workforce are now abundantly clear. But what are the benefits for travelers? The upside is huge, actually. An inclusive internal workforce is a natural pathway to creating accessible products and authentic marketing. The more first-hand knowledge you have of the disability community and the particular needs of a certain group, the better you will be able to serve that consumer. Kudos to all who scored in the top ranks on the Disability Equality Index, the most comprehensive benchmarking tool for disability inclusion.

*Please Note: A score of 100 does not mean to convey “perfection.” AAPD and Disability:IN recognize there is no one “right” way to practice inclusion, and that some practices may be more practical for some companies or industries than others. A score of 100 on the DEI simply means that a company adheres to many of the numerous leading disability inclusion practices featured in the DEI.

 

EXPERT Q&A: The Secret to Creating a 5-Star Accessible Hotel Website on a 2-Star Budget

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Nate Lane stands in front of a skyline in afternoon sun with sunglasses on and a plaid blue collared shirt. He is smiling.

Our expert sources tell us that compliance lawsuits are not only on the rise, but they are also becoming increasingly complex. Could most of us in the travel industry create completely accessible websites on our own? Probably not. That’s why we asked expert Nate Lane, senior director of digital platforms at Travel Tripper (left)to share advice on the future of ADA compliance, building websites for hotels and being proactive about all things accessibility.

We asked:

Q: How did the idea of being more proactive about ADA compliance come about?
A: More and more of our clients started to receive ADA demand letters and lawsuits related to both technical and content related compliance. We were already helping our hotel clients by building their websites to be compliant from the start— and doing our best to maintain compliance over time. But because the websites were being edited by multiple parties it was impossible to know when an area of the site had fallen out of compliance because of a modification. We decided we needed more—a proactive compliance solution with real-time violation alerts that would fit into a hotel’s allowable budget.  Nothing we saw on the market fit all our criteria, so we built our own platform. Traveltripper accomplishes all of our goals. We used it internally for 18 months before making it broadly available to any hotel. TravelTripper is completely standalone and can monitor any website. It is completely CMS (Content Management System) and programming language agnostic. Furthermore, it runs outside of your website, meaning it doesn’t require an install and there are no implications to site speed or performance.

Q: Aside from using your system, how would you advise hotels that receive demand letters or lawsuits to respond?
A: First, be proactive about compliance instead of reactive. When lawsuits come in, despite your best efforts to achieve compliance quickly, a “who done it” timeline is put together and if you’re out of compliance, you’re much more likely to have to settle with the plaintiff. By being proactive and having records of compliance you are able to prove compliance, or a path to compliance, during a certain time period. Our platform automates this entire process for you, but if you’re not a client of ours we still recommend that you keep all of your records related to compliance on hand and ready to reference.

Second, It is absolutely essential that you demand information related to how an error occurred, including the exact assistive device that was used, and you re-create that error. More and more frequently, plaintiffs and their attorneys are becoming more and more creative and far-reaching with the contents of these lawsuits. From there you must review WCAG 2.1 AA-Level statutes to determine if the accusation is relevant for hotels in the first place. Recently we’ve helped our clients respond to lawsuits where an open-source screen reader was used, which had a public-facing “known bugs” log, which aligned perfectly with the violations the plaintiff reported. It was the tool, not the website! By investigating this and providing the information, the lawsuit was dropped. In another recent case, for the first time, we saw a plaintiff sue a hotel citing AAA-Level violations, which are typically required by the government, medical, or insurance providers—not hotels. Again, the lawsuit was dropped based on the hotel’s proactive approach and research.

Q: What’s in the future? 
A: We are beginning to roll out a third-party licensing and reseller strategy for those companies that want to partner with us. We plan to scale our platform within the hotel industry and then pursue multi-vertical opportunities.

Q: Do you have a pricing model for hotels?
A: Our pricing is aligned with hotel budgets, which typically corresponds with room count and ADR. We charge a one-time setup fee of $1,200 and an ongoing monthly fee of $200-$600 depending on the number of rooms. This covers the initial content audit and re-writes, ongoing real-time monitoring, quarterly extensive audits including manual usage of assistive devices, and the ability to export your complete compliance history that is stored within our system, which saves you and your legal team hours of time if you need to respond to a lawsuit.

 

People With Disabilities Want to Make Over the Travel Industry

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beard welcoming a woman to a boutique hotel she is smiling.The travel industry need not be afraid of the seemingly high cost or complicated business of accessibility, according to a recent piece in Forbes. Progress with accessibility can be achieved one tiny step at a time by asking visitors with a disability what can be done to make their experience more enjoyable.  Sometimes it’s a simple, but obvious service request that costs nothing like having check-in staff come out from behind the counter to onboard someone in a wheelchair, or it might be an inexpensive product or app that can fill the gap between legal compliance and pleasurable experiences.. 

OUR TAKE: Just like everyone else, the disability community wants to be heard. Listening to their needs conveys respect and eventually can result in incremental changes. In aggregate, these small changes will, over time, position hotels and attractions as ready to welcome the estimated 30% of the population who will have a disability in their lifetime. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the right business move to make now. 

READ MORE

 

Will the Supreme Court Hear Accessible Website Case Over a $3 Coupon at Domino’s Pizza?   

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Domino's pizza box (closed) with a drink and sanitary wipe“Last fall, Jason McKee was bouncing around business ideas with two friends when they realized something: all three had a family member or friend with a disability, that made it difficult to access the internet,” according to a report in marketplace.org. The story goes on to say: “They soon discovered something else: people with disabilities, specifically those who are blind or visually impaired, were filing Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits against businesses over website accessibility issues. And many of them were winning. “

“We all got together and realized the size of this marketplace,” McKee said. “Basically, the entire internet has to be retrofit,” the story explains. “The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to take a web accessibility case brought by a man who is blind against the pizza chain Domino’s, for not making its website and mobile app accessible to him.”  

OUR TAKE: In most markets, you need both people focused on the little details and the people above, who can understand the bigger picture. This holds true for web accessibility. But in 2017, when the current administration abandoned its effort to evaluate whether new accessibility rules were “necessary and appropriate” it left both people with disabilities and the businesses being sued by them in a sort of no man’s land. The most positive outcome has been more companies cropping up to help businesses stay on top of their website and understand what needs to be done to help make the web accessible for all, no matter how slowly that process may go. Several of these experts will be speaking at TravelAbility Summit 2019 in November.

READ MORE

 

New IATA Resolution Addresses 30% Rise in Wheelchair Requests

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Requests for wheelchair assistance skyrocketed to 30% between 2016 and 2017, “putting a strain on the quality of the service provided, reports the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in a recent press release. (The average increase in requests between 2010-2018 was 17%, according to Open Doors Organization.)

At their Annual General Meeting, IATA overwhelming passed a resolution that promises the organization will have two new priorities: First, to work with airports to ensure that wheelchair assistance is available to those who need it. Second, to dramatically lower the number of mobility devices (scooters and wheelchairs, for example) that are damaged or lost in transport.READ MORE

OUR TAKE: If they’re smart, they’ll be speaking with Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who has made it her mission to see that airlines are accountable to the public for damage done to wheelchairs. Legislation sponsored by Duckworth now requires airlines to report wheelchair damage monthly. If the IATA resolution is any indication, Duckworth’s advocacy is already having a profound effect on the industry. TravelAbility Insider has been tracking the results in our Duckworth Damage Report.

All airlines ranked by the number of wheelchairs damaged in one month and YTD