TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

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Motivated by Mom: Q&A with accessibleGo Founder Miriam Eljas

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Miriam and her mom Emma (seating wearing bright pink. Their faces are close together posed.
Founder Miriam Eljas and her mom.

We caught up with one of the most forward-thinking women in the travel industry and asked her our top 10 questions:

1. What is the service accessibleGO provides?
accessibleGO offers bookings, reviews, resources, and community. We take the travel experience and break it up into three parts: Plan, Reserve, and Share. When you are planning, you can look up content like which museums allow visitors who are blind to touch exhibits or local resources such as service providers like accessible transportation or equipment rental. You can book with confidence by relying on our accessibility reviews, accessibility data, and personalized customer service to confirm your accessibility requests. After your trip, you can pay it forward by contributing reviews, answering questions in our forum or writing a blog about your experience. 

How does it work? 
Our booking experience is currently focused on U.S. hotels and enables our users to filter and compare accessibility features and accessibility reviews.  When booking, you can fill out whatever accessibility requirements you have.  With this information in hand, our customer service team then contacts the hotel or travel service provider to make sure your accessibility needs will be met. If you encounter any issues before or even during your stay, our team is available to contact the property’s manager on your behalf. We will soon be expanding our current booking capabilities for car rentals and flights to showcase accessibility as well.

2. What need does accessibleGO address? 
The problems that people with disabilities face when traveling usually revolve around information—either they are getting inaccurate accessibility information or they’re not able to find any accessibility information in advance. Until now there was no [online]  platform where the community could share information about accessible travel experiences for everyone’s benefit. Our platform is built upon a foundation of accessibility data.

3. What is your origin story and what phase of the start-up life cycle are you currently in?
I started accessibleGO because of my mother, Emma Eljas, who had MS. Growing up in Silicon Valley with a parent who was a wheelchair user, we constantly encountered situations where knowing about the accessibility in advance would have made all the difference. I remember when I was a teenager I wanted to go to the movies with my mother. We called in advance and a well-meaning staff person informed us the theater was accessible with a ramp. When we arrived, we discovered there were stairs everywhere. Their concept of a ramp? A cracked piece of thin plywood. After that, I promised myself that I would eventually start a company that would prevent these miscommunications. After working in venture capital and selling my media company in NYC, I cofounded accessibleGO with our CTO Jeffrey Schlanger and VP Strategic Planning Galia Kut.

People are using accessibleGO.com to research and book travel plans, identify local services as well as connect with others.

—MIRIAM ELJAS

After several consumer beta tests to assess the market and test the product, we are ready to scale up operations. Our priority will be to make our platform more feature-rich and to expand globally.

4. From where do you obtain your hotel supply?
We are part of the Priceline Partner Network, so we have access to all the inventory from their system, including booking.com, agoda.com and others. We are gathering accessibility data for hotels across the U.S., with close to 5,000 hotels to date and up to 40 data points per hotel. When you look up hotels in our system, we display accessibility data whenever available. That may be a roll-in shower, step-free entrance, Braille signage, bed height or visual notification devices. 

Hotels have the ability to log in and publish their accessibility information. Our team is doing outreach to onboard hotels to upload their data. We are on schedule to cover a majority of hotels in the USA within the next 2 years.

5. How many hotels are in your system in North America?  Worldwide?In North America, there are over 50,000 hotels, worldwide about 200,000.

6. What is your business model? Our revenue comes primarily from booking commissions.  

7. How many consumers do you have in your system? 
60,000, mostly from a 5-month consumer beta test.

8. What makes you unique from competitors such as Expedia, Handiscover, Booking.com etc.?
The site has filters for over 40 accessibility data points, reviews that are exclusively about accessibility and a travel forum to check with community members about any aspect of your travel planning and get inspired. This is not available on mainstream travel sites. When you book with accessibleGO, our team personally calls the hotel, confirms your requirements will be met and even gets the name of the hotel staffer verifying the accessibility and sends you a confirmation email. This is a fundamental part of our business model.

9. How do you plan to build demand and usage?
A big part of our model is happy customers and viral growth. Check out our ‘thank you’ wall here.  

Through partnerships with non-profit organizations that serve people with disabilities, we are expanding our consumer base and building a real community. Paid online advertising has also proved effective through market testing and we plan to continue these efforts as we grow.

10. Can you provide insights on the destinations that your users are searching for? 
At first, we assumed that the most popular destinations in the U.S. would be of the most interest to our community (Orlando, New York or Las Vegas). So we based our hotel accessibility data, travel content and trip resources around the top 30 cities. However, when we ran a consumer beta test on bookings, we were surprised to discover the exact opposite. The bookings were not for popular vacation spots. For example, while 15% of bookings were in Florida, they were not in Florida’s biggest hot spots.

We found that 85% of our bookings are outside the top 30 cities in the U.S. including cities like Independence, MO, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg TN and Fort Lauderdale, FL.  Many people were traveling for family visits, doctor appointments or small trips for personal reasons, not grand vacations in big cities.  We also noticed a pattern for medical visits, with bookings to Rochester, MN where the Mayo Clinic is located as well as near Houston’s Texas Medical Center.

Accessible Hotel Design Doesn’t Have to Be Boring and Unsexy

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A peek at the future of accessible hotel design. courtesy: Hotel Brooklyn

Hotels are challenging pre-existing attitudes towards accessibility in design in 2020 and will focus more on meaningful spaces for modern travelers, according to HotelDesign.net. An exclusive panel discussion at their upcoming U.K. Summit will give delegates an unprecedented insight into the design decisions involved in the creation of a 189-key standard-bearer, Hotel Brooklyn. READ MORE.

Our take: The Hotel Summit’s decision to lead with accessibility at their 2020 conference is spot on. Operational standards will always be the rules to play by, but the industry trend is toward more design and aesthetic freedom than ever before. We are watching the evolution of accessibility, which will become a significant chunk of the market in which 1 billion people are aging into the next stage of life—with the money and interest in traveling. 

Hotel Designs to put ‘accessibility’ under the spotlight at Hotel Summit 2020

The Baby Steps Plan to Accessibility

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Think small. Aim high.

In order to achieve your goal of getting beyond compliance to creating a more accessible and disability-friendly destination, we’ve outlined the baby steps you and your colleagues can take to get started. And surprise! Many are free or will have a minimal impact on your budget.

Step 1: Convince the Unconvinced: How to Make The Case for Accessibility

  1. Join the mainstream. Making the world accessible for people with disabilities is gradually becoming a mainstream trend.  To bolster this argument consider forwarding “10 Signs Accessibility Is Going Mainstream” and “20 Accessibility Travel Predictions for 2020” to your management, board members and your industry.
  2. Look to Baby Boomers who have 70% of the disposable income in the U.S.  (Average household net worth: $1.2 million) and will inherit $14 trillion globally in the years ahead that can be used for travel.
  3. Learn from your peers. Share presentations from TravelAbility Summit 2019. Each issue of the Insider newsletter offers a link to a different presentation from the 2019 event, which can be used to help educate your industry. See Baby Boomer Travel research from AARP  here. 
  4. Roll a mile in my chair. Watch this superb video and distribute it to hotel GM’s. It’s called the “Hotel Manager in Wheelchair” video and was created by Sylvia Longmire. 

Step 2: Research & Development

  1. Research accessibility assets beginning with museums and attractions. Work with the ADA coordinator in the City Manager’s office to find the latest accessibility information about beaches, parks and outdoor hiking trails. Example: Here’s NYC & Co’s Accessibility page.
  2. Research hotels that will be undergoing a renovation in the next three years. Make a list of local experts and disability organizations who might attend a meeting and share knowledge with hotels while they’re in the renovation planning stage.
  3. Convene a meeting comprised of local people who can speak to travel issues around autism, mobility, and vision at your destination. Research shows these are top concerns for Americans

Step 3: Take Action

  1. Check if your website is accessible. Enter your website’s URL into www.wave.com to assess its accessibility. If it’s not, check out www.accessibe.com, which uses AI to convert websites to compliance standards for as little as $495/year.
  2. Introduce an accessibility/inclusion “Pledge” (TAS can provide you with one) that can be signed by industry partners, presented to local elected officials and shared with your community to underline your commitment to making your destination accessible.
  3. Include a panel about accessibility and travel at your next industry event
  4. Meet with your City Manager’s ADA Coordinator to learn about outdoor and nature accessible assets for future possible collaboration.  
  5. Use the Fabulous 50 list on the TAS website to Introduce your industry partners to apps and products, everything from BeMyEyes to portable ramps, that ease the transition to greater accessibility.
  6.  Keep asking—and answering questions. Work with forward-thinking hoteliers to develop an Accessibility FAQ page with images of the bathroom, entryway, and sleeping rooms. 
  7. Offer awareness training: Create a “Welcome to Accessibility 101” Seminar for your local industry partners.
  8. Add your Accessibility page to your website. Organize the research into an easily updatable product page similar to what Valley Forge did after TravelAbility Summit.

Final Note: To find trustworthy resources. Browse by topic on the TravelAbilityInsider.com website. (Topics include Autism, Hotels, Expert Opinions and more.) Sign up for our newsletter here to keep up to date with resources, new ideas and find personal stories

The Latest in Mobility For Zoomers (you know, Boomers who will. not. stop.)

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The iLivingV8 is a blue scooter that has pedals and looks like a scooter
Looks like a kids scooter, rides like a Zoomer’s dream. photo: iliving

I’ve been going to CES for many years and based on my experience, here is the evolution of the accessibility section. About 10 years ago the health arena began to appear featuring exercise machines that became smarter with technology.  The next phase was focused on the concept of healing and how technology was being useful in measuring the process of pain elimination and healing.  The next development was IoT, the Internet of Things, where everything in daily life became connected through an ever-faster 4G and now 5G network.  A couple of years ago AI was introduced, basically, the age of machine learning and 2020 CES was the year that AI became mainstream. This means there are now customized solutions because machines are smarter and can be personalized to the needs of the user. —Laszlo Horvath CEO, Active Media.

Here, the three products you’ll see soon on the streets—and why:

  1. Zooming into the future…that’s how you feel when you test the new Segway S-Pod, a self-balancing wheelchair (also referred to by the company as a scooter or “an egg-shaped wheelchair”). Ok, so the design is a little wonky but it’s a hell of a ride, say people who tried it at 2020 CES.
  2. It’s a GPS. It’s a guide. It’s an alert system. It’s the… SEED Cane, a smart cane designed for blind people that gives the user and a guardian the location and any obstacles in their way as they walk. The cane, which was an honoree at the 2020 CES Innovation Awards, is independently powered, uses infrared signals and vibrations and syncs with smartphones.  
  3. We predict the iLiving V8 will soon achieve icon status among the senior set. The foldable mobility scooter was an honoree at 2020 CES in the accessibility category. The scooter’s sticker price is $4K and its target market is on-the-go seniors who can stash the compact design in the car. It’s lightweight and there are no tools needed so you won’t be needing to send mom and pops links to YouTube for instructions.

What Exactly is Audio Description—and Does It Really Make a Difference?

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girl with headphones on smiling
Audio description is narration that benefits blind and visually impaired audiences.

Audio description is a form of narration used to provide information about key visual elements in media work for the benefit of blind and visually impaired consumers.  While expensive, audio description is becoming more mainstream as it is now becoming common to find many Broadway theatre productions as well as Hollywood feature films offering it.  Museums are also beginning to use AD as they install and promote new artist exhibitions. To see the difference for yourself, here is the regular 45-second TravelAbility Summit video and (close your eyes) here it is with audio description.  

Our take: One museum complained that they installed audio description for three exhibits and no one used the service in the first three months.  Any newly accessible feature will require promotion to the audience that will benefit. In this case, they should consider promoting it through local blind advocacy groups as word will spread from there virally through the “blind vine.” The cost? We used Video Caption Corporation, which exhibited at one of the Abilities Expo events and fee was $225, which was their minimum.