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The Intersection of Travel and Disability

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UPDATE: What Are the 8 New Sessions Added to TravelAbility Summit?

October 22, 2019 by Denise Brodey

CLICK HERE for the complete summit agenda
TravelAbility Summit accessible travel for everyone

New Panelist
What You Need to Know When Marketing to the Disability Community
It’s not one community and there’s a spectrum for everything, which makes conventional digital tactics challenging. The key is identifying the travel decision-maker with the right message at the right time, which is how Designsensory’s influencer campaign for the Tennessee Aquarium generated traffic. Presenters: Ian Ruder, Editor, New Mobility Magazine; Josh Loebner, Director of Strategy, Designsensory 

New Research
The Destinations Disabled Travelers (and Their Families) Search For
The founder of an accessible online travel agency that connects to Booking.com’s hotel supply, shares data, information and the tactics they used to reach people with disabilities. Their research reveals the type of destinations families traveling with a person with disabilities want to visit.  Presenter: Miriam Eljas Goldman, Founder, AccessibleGO

New Panels

  1. How to Overcome Your Fear of Not Being Accessibility Perfect?
    In private, hotels and attractions have expressed concerns about catering to people with disabilities. Since every disability has a spectrum, they fear that imperfect accessibility may lead to unmet expectations, criticism or even litigation. Three disabled travel specialists provide their opinions: Panelists:Srin Madipalli, AIRBNB; Mike May, Access Explorer; Isabelle Ducharme, Co-president and Chairwoman, Keroul
  2. How to Create Your Own “Disability 101” Workshop One of our goals for TravelAbility Summit is to provide attendees with actual content and the right contacts so they can create disability workshops that educate industry partners as well as management about the trends that will affect their business. Last year, Visit Oakland created a “Queer 101” and “Disability 101” workshop that attracted nearly 40 of their industry members. Presenter: Mark Everton, CEO, Jaymee Rayford, Training and Lisa Baird, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,  Visit Oakland, 

New Sessions
Unique Ways Travel Oregon Approaches Accessibility After the welcome center outside of Ashland, OR burned down Travel Oregon, perhaps the most forward-thinking state tourism office when it comes to marketing, rebuilt it as state-of-the art-center utilizing universal design that is useful for people with multiple disabilities.  We’ll take a video tour of the facility as well as learn how the small grants they awarded several of their industry partners resulted in big changes in access.  Presenter: Carol Astly, Director of Meeting Services, Travel Oregon

Is Customer Service Training the Key to Reducing Accessibility Complaints?
Comments from accessible travel group forums reveal that it’s a willingness to solve accessibility problems that can only come from customer experience training —and that garner effusive praise and referrals. Hear from the first Florida destination to incorporate an accessibility module in their customer service training program. Presenters: Judy Durant and Josh Lambert, Beaches of Ft. Myers and Sanibel Island CVB
What are the P.R. Benefits of Becoming Accessible?
Two former senior marketing strategists discuss the numerous tangible and intangible benefits that can result from accessibility readiness.  Anne Madison, Former Chief Strategy Officer for Brand USA; Kathy Tull, former Chief Marketing Officer, Las Vegas CVB (i)

New (Breakfast) Presentation 
Moab, Utah Debuts Their Latest Marketing Initiative: Nature for All.  The marketing piece showcases the many accessible nature options that the destination and the state of Utah have to offer. Presenter: Elaine Gizler, Executive Director, Moab Area Travel Council.

CLICK HERE for the complete summit agenda

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Filed Under: Speakers 2019, Uncategorized

New Avatar Robot Helps People with Disabilities Travel Vicariously

October 22, 2019 by Denise Brodey

Man travels with backpack in airport next to a tall human-height blue and white slim robot that looks like a stick.
Photo Courtesy ANA/Nippon

Fly across the world—or home for Thanksgiving—without ever getting on a plane? Yes, it’s possible, writes Andrea Romano in Travel & Leisure. Whether it’s a fear of flying or difficulty due to a disability…there used to be so many roadblocks to travel. Now? there’s a robot for that. Japanese airline All Nippon Airways (ANA HD) has plans for a “telepresence robot,” called “Newme” that allows you to travel around the world without boarding a plane. READ MORE

OUR TAKE: For once, the news isn’t about how robots are coming to take our jobs. They’ll be working for and with us, helping the 40 million people who have mobility issues, according to the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control.  The future of travel is coming to an airport near you. 

And the future of accessible travel? That’s coming to you in the form of TravelAbility Summit, November 12-13 in San Francisco. Find out more.

CLICK HERE for the complete summit agenda

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

TravelAbility Summit Hasn’t Even Started Yet—and Already Our Speakers Our Making Big News

October 22, 2019 by Denise Brodey

l to r headshots of Josh Loebner, Ann Madison John Morris and Will Butler, all experts appearing at the TravelAbility Summit (tTravelAbilitySummit.com)

Accessibility (on and off-line) means creating experiences all travelers can enjoy. These four speakers will be at TravelAbility Summit (live from San Francisco in a matter of days!) have recently published pieces of interest: 

Advertising and Disability by Josh Loebner, contributor to Adweek 
READ MORE

Blind people can show each other something by Will Butler on LinkedIn READ MORE

The Top 10 Signs Accessibility is Going Mainstream by John Morris on WheelchairTravel.org READ MORE

What Can the Supreme Court Teach the Travel Industry? by Anne Madison, Travel Vertical Blog  READ MORE  

Learn more about TravelAbility Summit November 12-13 in San Francisco, HERE.

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Filed Under: Disability Advocates, Hearing, Mobility, Speakers 2019, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged With: accessibility, TravelAbility Summit

Launchpad Update: The Scoop on Our Mentoring Event on November 11

October 10, 2019 by Denise Brodey

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

LaunchPad: At-a-Glance Look at Innovations and How they can be used.

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.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Our Top 5 Most Popular Stories Of 2019 Highlight the Hottest Products and the Secrets of Hotel Accessibility

October 10, 2019 by Denise Brodey

woman smiling in a tee with suitcases behind her and on her lap waiting at a train station in a wheelchair
Although it didn’t make it into the top five, this TravelAbility Update: What We’ve Learned So Far (Sept. 26) came close. To discover what we discovered, READ MORE. 

OUR TAKE: Every one of these posts helps to make the business case for accessibility—no surprise there. But you will also be interested to see the variety of products, tech, expert ideas and corporate plans out there. There’s a nugget of usable information in all five of these:

1.    Two Companies Disrupting the Wheelchair Rental Market for Good (Sept.5) READ MORE

2.    Top 10 Signs That Accessibility Is Going Mainstream (Sept 26) READ MORE 

3. Airlines, Hotels, Attractions Prove Disability Inclusion Isn’t Just the Right Thing to Do—It’s Great for Business (Aug. 8) READ MORE

4.    50 “Accessible Hacks”​ to Make Travel More Enjoyable for People with a Disability (Aug. 8) READ MORE

5.    EXPERT Q&A: The Secret to Creating a 5-Star Accessible Hotel Website on a 2-Star Budget (Aug.8) READ MORE

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