TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Technology

Delta’s Support of Roll-in Wheelchair Securement System Creates Burst of Hope for Disabled Travelers

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Our Takeaway: The new Wheelchair Securement System unveiled at an annual trade show in Germany gained spectacular credibility once Delta Airlines announced its support.

TravelAbility provided part of the funding that helped advisory board member John Morris’ travel to the Hamburg Aircraft Interiors Show so he would be the first to test drive the securement system in real time.

Here’s what he found:

Delta Flight Products, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines that was established to re-think aircraft interiors, announced it was backing the Air4All wheelchair securement system on commercial jets — the company plans to unveil its design prototype at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany next week. Chris Wood, my friend and colleague in accessible travel advocacy, is a partner in the Air4All seating product. Last year, he spoke to me about his design innovation — you can watch our conversation here and read my initial reporting on Air4All here. With the announcement that Air4All will debut in Hamburg, I decided that I needed to be there — critical reporting on this product, its advancements, features and opportunities for improvement should come from within the disability community. I look forward to seeing, touching, and testing the Air4All system myself, and sharing my insights with each of you. Read More.

India by Rickshaw:  Leading Provider of Accessible Travel to Build 5000 Accessible Electric Rickshaws

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photo of a blue electric accessible rickshaw

Our Takeaway: Maybe Musk should have invested in EZ MOV rather than Twitter! A wonderful example of how a public-private partnership enhances existing—and familiar—transportation with infrastructure that converts a primitive method of getting from one place to another, in a completely contemporary way.

In the first-ever massive initiative in India to provide wheelchairs in auto rickshaws for physically disabled or mobility-challenged people for ease in travel, Ezy Mov, India’s leading Accessible Transport operator, has partnered with New Delhi-based Goenka Electrical Motors Private Limited (GEM) to manufacture 5,000 accessible wheelchair friendly e-rickshaws over the next two years.

Driven by its mission to realize the future of Accessible Transportation in India for disabled, handicapped or mobility–challenged people, Ezy Mov has plans to bring accessible transport even in the auto rickshaw segment right to the doorsteps of passengers.

Goenka Electric is one of the leading electric rickshaw manufacturers in the country with a wide variety of high-quality E – Rickshaws and Electric Vehicles. Ezy Mov is India’s leading and fastest-growing accessible transport provider with its fleet of on-call wheelchair taxis already plying in India – Mumbai

Apple’s New Accessibility Innovations Will Blow You Away

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photo of a MacBook anf an i-phone with the Apple logo showing

Our Takeaway: More evidence that disability is having its moment.  The major tech companies are all pioneering accessible new features for an inclusive world.

Apple previewed a handful of new features designed to boost cognitive, vision, hearing, and mobility accessibility, around Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The features are slated to roll out later this year. This comes as Apple gears up for its Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off June 5. 

One feature, called Live Speech, is geared toward users who are nonspeaking or who have diverse speech patterns or disabilities. Live Speech lets someone type what they want to say and then have it spoken aloud. The feature can be used for in-person conversations as well as over the phone and on FaceTime. It works on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and uses any built-in device voices like Siri. You could say, “Nice to meet you, I’m . . . ” and introduce yourself, for example, and can also save favorite phrases such as, “Can I please get a black coffee?” Read More.

New Study Shows Accessible Websites Enhance SEO by 12%

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the letters SEO on a blue background

Many have asked the question: Does website accessibility positively impact SEO?  To date, there have been no conclusive answers. To see what impact, if any, accessibility has on SEO, the team at AccessibilityChecker.org, which developed an accessibility audit tool, conducted the study. They checked organic traffic to a series of websites before and after the sites were remediated for accessibility. The upshot:

“We found that, on average, the websites in the sample group had a 12% increase in organic search results most likely to be attributed to the change in the website layout following the accessibility remediation.”

Our Takeaway:  Back in 2010, Google announced that websites that were not mobile-friendly would receive reduced organic traffic, which created the concept of responsive design in which the website is coded for both desktop and mobile at the outset. We hope this study will do the same for website accessibility as businesses have a business case to justify the expense. Read More.

EnChroma and Visit Seattle Help Color Blind Museum Guests to Experience Many Shades

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Woman wearing Enchroma glasses stands on stairs in a museum looking at artwork on the wall

Since the first person in America to test Covid positive was from Seattle,  Ali Daniels, Chief Marketing Officer of Visit Seattle, was looking for an antidote to the barrage of negative publicity that would also allow  them to control the narrative.“We noted that Tennessee received many awards and recognition by helping color-blind travelers enjoy fall foliage after having EnChroma lenses inserted in their viewfinder telescopes,” Ms. Daniels told us. “Arts and culture are one of our differentiators. Having Enchroma glasses placed at over 20 locations during our 2022 Refract Glass Art Festival resulted in video testimonials of people emotional their first time experiencing a full range of colors.”

Often overlooked, color blindness affects one in 12 men (8%) and one in 200 women (.5%), 350 million people worldwide. While people with typical color vision see over one million shades of color, people who are color blind only see an estimated 10% of hues and shades.

Our Takeaway: The positive reaction from visitors and the community was so profound that they are now exploring other opportunities to apply EnChroma’s technology to enhance the visitor experience at key landmarks. Read More.

For more information about EnChroma, contact Kent Streeb at kent@enchroma.com.

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