TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Technology

25+ Tech Companies Invited to Participate in TravelAbility “Launchpad”

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illustration of a red rocket launching and the words travel ability launchpad: boosting innovation in travel and accessibility

Tourism marketing organizations would feel more confident proposing or expanding accessibility initiatives if they had a greater knowledge of the latest product innovations and how they can be a valuable competitive differentiator. To address this opportunity, TravelAbilitySummit created LaunchPad, a pre-conference workshop planned for the afternoon of November 11, 2019, in San Francisco. 

LaunchPad will bring together socially conscious entrepreneurs, who have created products and services that  make travel easier for people with disabilities, and established travel end users—hotels, airports, attractions, and destinations. “The goal is to connect entrepreneurs with new distribution channels in the travel industry and to help jumpstart new accessibility initiatives,” says Jake Steinman, founder and CEO of both Launchpad and TravelAbility Summit.  The accessible travel market has been estimated to be in excess of $17 billion dollars* annually and growing at a rapid pace as baby boomers age into a disability.

Leading travel media representatives and angel investors who can provide exposure, advice, and capital to help these companies grow will also be attending. “We have received a commitment from Blue Umbrella,” said Steinman, “a disability technology accelerator that will take part in the workshop and keep office hours during the conference to meet one on one with founders. A list of invited attendees for Launchpad is available here.

The creation of LaunchPad is a result of the TravelAbility Summit team’s deep dive into three categories:

  • –a fast-growing accessible technology market
  • –the disability community’s changing needs
  • –feedback from travel marketers asking for next steps to help them to create meaningful accessibility initiatives.

To that end, TravelAbility released The Fab 50  in February—50 products and services that are available to make the travel experience easier for people with disabilities— and from that list, we’ve invited some of the most affordable and practical to present their products and services at LaunchPad in San Francisco.

“Because there hasn’t been a disability travel conference in the U.S. in over 13 years,” explained Steinman, “there hasn’t been a venue dedicated to new assistive technology, apps, products and services designed to help people with disabilities travel more independently. We are looking forward to watching the sparks fly as these communities come together. We’ll be tracking  the outcome to build the business case for accessibility in travel.”

*2015 Open Doors Study on the Accessible Travel Market

(The Fabulous 50 list will be distributed to over 2400 destinations, hotels, attractions and suppliers in travel and disability communities.  

Two Companies Disrupting the Wheelchair Rental Market for Good

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woman looks at art in museum while sitting in a mobility device by Whill/ScootaroundPeople that rely on mobility devices will no longer have to stress about having to travel with a wheelchair because they will be able to rent a personal EV (through an app) at the airport and/or final destination, thanks to the merger of two cutting-edge companies. WHILL – makers of the cutting-edge Model Ci and Model A Intelligent Personal Electric Vehicles (EVs), which won the CES Innovation Award at the Computer Electronics Show in 2018, and Scootaround a leading wheelchair and scooter rentals solutions company servicing 2500 locations in North America. Together, they will be the first to provide a worldwide Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) model. “This will improve the current travel landscape for mobility device users by increasing their freedom and independence,” says Justin Gagnon, vice president of sales and marketing for WHILL/Scootaround. Gagnon offered TravelAbility Insider some interesting insights about the market:

  • Currently, the company is piloting six trials worldwide, two of which, Dallas and Winnipeg, are in North America. In Winnipeg, Delta Airline agents offer disabled passengers who are awaiting connections the opportunity to test drive a WHILL Ci so they can maneuver around the airport independently.
  • WHILL wheelchairs appeal to cruise line companies as they are smaller, sleeker and designed to maneuver around small spaces, which means they may also be used in non-ADA staterooms.

Our take: Vertical integration comes to the airport wheelchair rental market as the demand for motorized wheelchair rentals rises significantly. This disruption will not only require less staff but will also give travelers who need mobility options more independence.

photo courtesy WHILL/Scootaround

Watch Oscar-Winning Actor Marlee Matlin Give the Microsoft Help Desk a Try

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Marlee matlin at her desk signing with the help desk

The Microsoft Disability Answer Desk offers free technical support for Windows and Office for people with disabilities or customers who have questions about accessibility. Their support team is trained in using many popular assistive technologies and can offer assistance in English, Spanish, French, and American Sign Language. Disability Answer Desk is where customers with disabilities get support with Microsoft Office, Xbox Accessibility, and Windows. This includes product issues, accessibility questions and use of Assistive technology. Watch Marlee Matlin call in to the help desk, here.

OUR TAKE: Microsoft’s commitment to creating accessible products and offering abundant customer support is pretty much unrivaled these days. Could there by a connection between this company’s product strategy and their skyrocketing value of late? We’d like to think so To watch their support and learning videos… 
                                                                                                                                                   CLICK HERE 

 

 

50 “Accessible Hacks”​ to Make Travel More Enjoyable for People with a Disability

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balloons made into the numbers 5 and zero floating in the sunlight next to some orange balloons with trees in the background

TravelAbility Summit is dedicated to improving travel experiences for people with disabilities that will be held in San Francisco November 11-13, recently released the names of 50 technologies, products, and services that will help the travel industry level-up their accessibility. The 50 final products make travel easier for all and were based on the feedback of people with disabilities, technical experts and disability industry leaders. Through the process of vetting 200 products, we learned an important lesson: There is no one product that works for everyone, which at first can make choosing products for your customers overwhelming. But there is a common need for trusted advice. That’s where we knew we could help.

The number one question we get from the travel industry is, how do I get started with an accessibility plan—and how can I do it on a budget? Our advice is to start anywhere—hack the system and try whatever you think will work best for your hotel, destination, attraction or museum.

The hacks are an eclectic mix of tools and devices that range from a portable wheelchair ramp to a free app with 2 million volunteers who can become the ‘eyes’ of a traveler who is visually impaired. There are also larger, business-oriented hacks, such as TravelTripper, a platform for making a hotel’s booking and browsing experiences more accessible. The travel market is already exploding with requests for more accessible ways to book rooms, see cities and set out on adventures without barriers. When you have to get started somewhere, you get creative. The 50 Hacks is a great place to do both of those things.

For those who may be skeptical, think about this: the hotel or attraction that has thought ahead to meet the needs of a person with a disability will find the most loyal customers the travel industry could have. And we’ve hacked the process for you.

A final word about our methodology: Four members of our team examined websites and/or conducted interviews with executives over a 7-month period; conducted interviews with several special needs travel agents, media, and members of the disability and travel communities, often in-person at conferences and expo trade events. Additionally, we crowdsourced input and recommendations from the most popular disability media and blog posts using a series of Google keyword alerts. The team also had in-depth discussions with flight attendants, airport wheelchair attendants, and travelers who have disabilities who used the products themselves.

For a full list of hacks to help you get started on your accessibility journey, click here.

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.