TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

ADA

“What Happened When I Crashed the ADA Coordinator Summit”

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Founder Jake Steinman with blue glasses and blue striped shirt

I attended the Great Plains ADA Coordinator’s conference in Phoenix last month and it was a real eye-opener.  My purpose was to identify prospective trainers that could be part of a nationwide network of accessibility user experience trainers that we would refer and feature as a resource on our website.

The Crowd

The event attendees included ADA coordinators who are mandated by law to ensure their city’s public space and buildings are accessible; professional consultants who conduct ADA audits and provide training; professionally certified trainers who work with city departments (police, fire, etc.) about accessibility and a smattering of advocacy groups. 

Sometimes I Just Can’t Help Myself

I was excoriated during one session. As I listened to several advocates espouse the maxim that everything should be completely accessible to everyone, I commented that, in my limited experience, advocacy is very important to changing laws and I appreciated the passion they exhibited. But, I said, it frightens businesses to the point of paralysis as they realize they can’t possibly be accessible to everyone so it’s just easier to do nothing and roll the dice that they won’t get sued.  

The Blowback

This provoked a lively 20-minute discussion after several people derided me for being critical of advocacy groups. I responded that I was simply relaying an insight based on my personal experience. Finally, someone in the back of the room came to my defense saying she has had a similar experience with what she said was the condescension of ‘insular advocacy groups’. She too was hesitant to work with them.  

The Take-Home Lessons

I’m happy to report I found several excellent accessibility trainers and learned how important the right words are when responding to ADA complaints and applying for budgets. Convincing city managers to include accessibility improvements even when there’s no budget priority for it is tough. Here, you’ll find my Top 13 Takeaways.

–Jake Steinman, Founder, TravelAbility Summit

News from the Founder of TravelAbility Summit

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photo of Jake Steinman

“13 Things I Learned at the Winter 2020 ADA Coordinator Conference”

I had the opportunity to attend the Winter ADA Conference in Phoenix. This event featured speakers across a broad spectrum of topics including ADA Basics, The ADA & Customer Service, Accessible Events and Meeting Spaces and Accessible Design.

Attendees included state and local ADA Coordinators, city managers, disability consultants, architects, policy experts and representatives from the business community. Most are charged with creating change in large bureaucratic environments.


Here are my take-homes:

  1. Despite being controversial for singling out individuals with a disability, compassionate lanyards identifying those with invisible disabilities who need additional assistance are becoming more prevalent at airports and other venues. 
    2. Toastmaster’s Club opened a special division for the hard of hearing in Tempe, Arizona that uses hearing loops to allow deaf and hard of hearing people to sharpen their speaking skills.
    3. Braille literacy is declining. 90% of blind consumers do not read braille, but 90% of the blind people that are employed read braille.
    4. If someone complains about a compliance issue, instead of responding “we don’t have the $ to make that modification ” or “no one has ever asked for a ramp,” the best response to avoiding an issue is “ Let me look into this and get right back to you.” and actually doing that.
    5. What is a “reasonable” exception to becoming compliant? A. If it alters the fundamental nature of the business. B. The modification would pose a direct threat to health and safety C. It causes an undue financial or administrative burden. 
    6. When an ADA complaint is lodged, companies must develop a 3-10 year Transition plan that lists what changes they plan to implement each year, based on annual budgets.
    7. Federal regulations require that any company receiving government contracts must have 7% of their employees identify as disabled. Companies are having trouble reaching this benchmark and are now urging employees with hidden disabilities to identify themselves with confidentiality.
    8.  When beginning a compliance assessment begin from the outside and work inwards. i.e. First provide access from the outside-parking or access to public transportation; Second, entry ramp; Third, widening entrances; Fourth, Bathrooms
    9. Words matter, they call it “easy English.” The attendees were professional ADA coordinators with little influence on management or budget decisions. Discussions during the sessions included an exchange of phrases and approaches that worked to persuade superiors to initiate steps to accessibility. 
    10. There are many low or no-cost steps that increase accessibility. i.e., the pressure required to open a door can be reduced to make it easier for wheelchair users to enter a room.
    11. Obtaining approval to become compliant requires an understanding of budget cycles and timing. For example, the best time to suggest and implement accessibility changes for hotels is by understanding that renovations have cycles and accessible improvements have the best chance of becoming funded before the architectural plans are drawn up. 
    12. The DMO or city officials can mediate problems.  Tempe: One ADA coordinator received a complaint about an accessible hotel bathroom door that was not wide enough for a wheelchair. She met with the hotelier who stated that it was too expensive to widen doors for all of their accessible bathrooms so she suggested that he modify just one room until they could afford to do the rest. After the modification was made the hotel found the cost was less than expected and widened all the restroom doors.
    13. Website compliance is extremely complex. The acceptable standard WAC 2.1 for businesses is not really compliant enough as consideration must be given to not only blind and deaf people but those with the most extreme disabilities.

    I look forward to learning and sharing more in 2020.

Is This Approach to Creating an Accessible Website Too Affordable to Be True?

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2 young men with brown hair and Jake wearing a striped shirt standing in front of a board that says "impossible....illegible"
At accessiBe’s Tel Aviv office with Co-founders, (left) Gaz Vizel, CMO, Shir Ekerling, CEO, and TravelAbility’s Founder Jake Steinman.

Last July we decided to make TravelAbilitySummit.com accessible and the proposals we received– ranging from $2400-$18,000 per year with installation times estimated at 8-12 weeks–were discouraging, to say the least.  Then we found accessiBe.com, a Tel Aviv based software developer that used A.I. tools to automate websites into compliance. The cost: $495/year for websites under 1000 pages and $1495 for websites over 1000 pages. Thinking it was too good to be true, we decided to take them on their 7-day free trial. Once the line of code they sent us was loaded on our website the site began to become compliant within 10 minutes. Within 48 hours our entire website had been compliant to two different standards.  While vacationing in Israel I dropped by to quiz the founders as I felt they presented an affordable solution to many of the small DMO’s as well as boutique hotels, restaurants, campgrounds and tour providers who are vulnerable to predatory website compliance lawsuits but find the pricing so unreasonable they’re willing to roll the dice that they won’t get caught. 

Below you’ll find the interview, straight from Tel Aviv:

  1. What need does accessiBe serve?
    accessiBe solves the universal business problem of web accessibility.  Every business website in the United States must be accessible and the vast majority are not. This is largely due to complexity and cost, both of which factors accessiBe entirely ameliorates.  Our tool is completely automated and affordable for any business. Thousands of businesses are sued by individuals unable to equally access their sites every week, so there are two equally important needs we have made it our mission to solve:  business compliance needs and the physical needs of 26% of American adults living with a disability.

2. What is the accessibe origin story?
Our founders have a background in software development and also owned software development and digital marketing agencies. Our founders realized in 2016 the only solution that could achieve widespread adoption was an AI-powered and automated one, which they proceeded to create using members of the disabled community as testers to ensure it help the people it was intended to aid.       

3. How does your software work? 
Our tool uses Machine Learning, Contextual Understanding, OCR and IRIS technologies, among others, to achieve full WCAG 2.1 AA compliance. (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)  It is entirely session-based, so while it doesn’t permanently change a site’s source code, it can be individually tailored to each user’s session without affecting any other session. 

4. Which physical disabilities does the software support? 
The software enables people with all disabilities to use the internet, providing support for those with visual, motor, cognitive and other impairments.  Users can change the appearance and function of websites using the accessiBe interface both on the front end (changing fonts, colors, and contrasts) and the back end (adding alt texts for Screen Readers and enabling keyboard navigation).

5. How many clients are using the system? How many are travel related?
Currently,  accessiBe administers more than 500 travel-related websites.  accessiBe is used by more than 18,000 websites, from small businesses to large enterprises like Avon, PlayMobil, Volvo and Lonely Planet.

6.. Will Accessibe’s system avoid predatory digital crawlers trolling for non-compliant websites to threaten?
Our tool is capable of entirely remediating a site and bringing it into compliance with European and U.S.  standards within 48 hours. Therefore, if a predatory entity uses a  session-based crawler like WAVE or Lighthouse, which are the most common tools used to check sites before sending a demand letter, accessiBe would likely deter that threat. In cases where an unfamiliar application is used to scan for accessibility, there may be different results, for which we have solutions prepared.

7. What support do you offer in the event of litigation?
As of yet, not a single customer of ours has ever received a lawsuit under our watch. Many arrived at our doorstep with papers already served and when given time to fix the failures, as is legally required in many states, our solution either significantly reduced their settlement fees or enabled them to remove the threat entirely. 

We asked four people with different disabilities to test our website and grade it on an A-F scale for accessibility. The results: A, A, A-, B+.