The Intersection of Travel and Disability
OUR TAKE: When we rolled out TravelAbilityInsider, the companion to our upcoming Summit in November, we did a deep dive into what we didn’t know and found outstanding experts to help. Many have joined our diverse advisory board and made commitments to be at the TravelAbility Summit. Their subject expertise ranges from making a website accessible to creating an itinerary for all abilities. Find exclusive interviews here and get ready for more learning and fun on November 12-13 in San Francisco.
by Tom Berrigan, Managing Editor, InBound Report
Jake Steinman, editor-in-chief of INBOUND, as well as the founder of a portfolio of the popular tour and travel industry events and conferences acquired earlier this year by Connect Travel, has been concentrating on a new project—the first TravelAbility Summit, a highly focused conference dealing with the issue of accessible travel. He launched the effort a year ago, and the first Summit will be staged Nov. 12-13 in San Francisco. Steinman recently participated in a panel discussion on the subject of accessible travel at the U.S. Travel Association’s recent annual ESTO conference in Austin, which brings together DMO leaders from all kinds of destination organizations. INBOUND talked with Steinman about his ESTO experience and how the TravelAbility Summit is shaping up. Here are excerpts of our recent conversation.
Roy Allela, a 25-year old engineer and inventor from Kenya, has found the ultimate solution to bridging the communication barrier between deaf and hearing people. He has invented the Sign-IO gloves that can translate signed hand movements to audible speech so deaf people can “talk” even to those who don’t understand sign language, according to a post in the blackbusiness.com blog.
OUR TAKE: Behind almost every great innovation is someone who is touched by disability—a father, an aunt, or in this case an engineering uncle. Allela was inspired to create the gloves because he and his family struggled to communicate with his 6-year-old niece who was born deaf. The unassuming young inventor who works for Intel estimates the glove expected to generate revenue of around $30 billion by end of 2024,” according to Global NewsWire. For us, it’s a good reminder to set the bar higher and higher every day.
Delta Airlines released a promotional video on social media showing how it “makes the world smaller” for everyone, including children with disabilities. The disability community, however, swiftly called out how Delta and other airlines often make travel harder for people with disabilities, especially wheelchair users, an issue Delta said it is working to resolve. The response from the disability community was 180-degrees from what the company expected. They jumped in the comments section on the video and told their stories—of seeing their wheelchair treated like a sack of potatoes, traveling with a repair kit and being asked to crawl up a flight of stairs to the plane and other difficulties with airline staff. Read the full story here on Yahoo, here.
OUR TAKE: No good deed goes unpunished, even by the disability community. It’s certainly understandable why disabled travelers who’ve experienced first hand a ruined vacation due to wheelchair damage would jump at the chance to vent at Delta, but it doesn’t seem to be productive in the long run. Delta’s ad shows that they are trying to find accessible solutions that involve both design and awareness training among their hundreds of airport sub-contractors to improve conditions. Having to endure this torrent of excoriation may have an unintended effect: Brand risk. If the airlines do nothing, they risk nothing. It is with mixed emotion that we write this. It’s unclear whether marketing folks at Delta ran the ad by a focus group of disabled airplane travelers. If they had, they might have been able to hear their stories and work a note about their long-term approach to change into the messaging. To learn about some of the positive internal changes Delta has made in hiring and supporting people with disabilities, click here. “When we had our CEO transition, we really birthed an increased focus on diversity and inclusion,” said Keyra Johnson, Delta’s chief officer of diversity and inclusion (on their site). “We don’t think diversity just happens. We actually believe that you have to work for it and go after it.”
You can tell there’s something different about Chris Lona’s website designs from the moment you open the site. They are simple, well-organized and engaging. One huge point of difference in his design is that he creates websites that can talk to you—but just saying that would be underselling his work. TravelAbility Insider got the chance to talk with him about the web design he has done for companies including Brand USA and the University of Massachusetts, creating cross-platform designs that everyone can use, including people with visual, hearing, mobility and cognitive challenges. “When Brand USA launched its Great Outdoors initiatives in 2016, the organization wanted to ensure it would be able to extend its invitation to the world to visit the USA with an inclusive and welcoming message. To accomplish that Brand USA worked with CL Design to design an accessible Outdoor USA subsection on its consumer website. This included “talking” (audio) instructions that would literally speak to people who have disabilities that might affect their ability to navigate information online,” said Anne Madison, former chief strategy & communications officer for Brand USA.
Many businesses have initiated re-designs because of changes made last December According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, the agency that governs ADA laws announced it was withdrawing its rulemaking process as the Trump administration was calling for a rollback of federal regulations. The consequences of the deregulation: a maelstrom of lawsuits on behalf of people with disabilities, many of whom are frustrated by businesses’ lack of compliance with ADA law. But how are businesses responding? Who is responsible for the 30% growth of the lawsuits in a single year? And how exactly does a business ensure its website is ADA compliant? Answering those questions can be time-consuming and costly. Here’s what Chris Lona had to say:
DB: How did you get interested in accessible web design?
CL: When I was a student, I started having double vision and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Treatment was successful but left me with an autoimmune condition and long-term vision problems. I was in the last year of a five-year architectural degree program and while my colleagues were gearing up to intern, I was undergoing spinal taps and radiation treatment. Instead of returning to architecture, I became interested in web design. I think of web design and accessibility as very similar to architecture—I find structural solutions and create beautiful products using universal design which is another way of saying design created with truly everyone in mind. Plus, having recently been through the whole tumor issue, I think, gave me a new perspective on accessibility. CL Design, my business based in Bellevue, Washington, focuses on inclusive web accessibility and strategic branding design.
DB: What does inclusivity mean to you? Is it different than accessibility? Maybe you are hoping to achieve both.
CL: Inclusivity incorporates accessibility. And yes achieving both is one of many objectives. I call my designs the “curb cuts of the web” because one of the main objectives is to create a sort of invisible accessibility where people just use it because it works. Curb cuts were designed for people who use wheelchairs but are enjoyed by people on bikes, pushing strollers, using a hand truck, using crutches and so on. So, extrapolating that model to the web, I prefer to design and include better, accessible web experiences for everyone from the ground up instead of fixing the problem of compliance with web accessibility regulations and guidelines such as the ADA, Section 508, and WCAG as an afterthought to development. The websites I create accommodate people with visual, hearing, mobility and cognitive challenges. But of course, anyone can benefit from the choice of human audio narration, captions/text, one keypress (or touch) navigation and more effective communication that comes with the combination of audio, text, and images.
DB: Many businesses revising their websites to be ADA compliant are doing so begrudgingly, honestly, because it can be a costly time consuming and disruptive process. Travel destinations and suppliers have sites with hundreds of pages others are small businesses such as boutique hotels. How do you simplify the process?
CL: My work is based around a simple philosophy—treat people like people and offer them the best experience possible. Ultimately, web design is about customer service. A website may be the first time that consumers (one in 5 of whom have a disability of some kind) come in contact with your business. It’s my belief that becoming as accessible as possible can align with ROI. That said, even making small changes can be much more than compliance. No one says an organization has to make their entire site accessible at one time; in fact, we often suggest pilot projects for a specific area that may be of a higher priority. Usually, I suggest the features of a destination itself. It is an investment in future travelers who do much of their buying and travel research online.
DB: How do you incorporate accessible designs into clients’ websites?
CL: Happy to explain it. Incorporating inclusive web accessibility (IWA) into clients’ websites is designed to be virtually effortless. A simple graphic or icon is provided to the client. It may say something like “Experience Our Talking Website”. Their IT department or consultant can then show them how to place it into their existing site and link it to the web address we provide at sitellites.com—our special domain for inclusive web accessibility presentations. When a visitor clicks (or touches) the graphic/icon on the existing site, they are directed to our presentation.
If a client wishes to deploy our accessible site under their domain, we can provide all of the files required for them to do so. Simple updates like a change of address are often done as a courtesy. Since most DMOs and CVBs are not specialists in accessible web design, we are happy to make more extensive updates within their budget which frees them up to do what they do best. Training in how to make updates themselves is also possible. The results of adding IWA to an existing site removes barriers for the organization and for their customers. For organizations, the extra time and web infrastructure tacked on as an afterthought to their existing site for less-than-optimal accessibility is removed. And since no assistive technology is required for their customers to use IWA presentations, the barriers of acquiring, learning and using it is removed. It is an accessible experience for all.
DB: Without getting too technical, can you explain what Lona Design includes and how programmers use it?
CL: Sure, here’s how I explain it to potential clients: Inclusive web accessibility isn’t intended to replace your existing design tools, but to augment it. Current design tools are extremely powerful when it comes to creating and iterating on new ideas. However, after new ideas have been designed, they need to be stress-tested on different screen sizes and with real data. They then need to be translated into
DB: Where can people see examples of web accessibility. This may help businesses just beginning on this journey.
CL: To learn more about inclusive web accessibility visit cldesign.co/
To see examples of my work, visit CL Design (cldesign.co).
See a recent project designed for the Blue Badge Access Awards at sitellites.com/bbaa. (The augmented site is bluebadgeaccessawards.com.)
A project related to our work with Brand USA is at www.accesstheusa.online. It features inclusive web accessibility presentations for all 50 states.
Chris Lona will be speaking at TravelAbility Summit and is available earlier if an attendee would like to reach out with suggestions, comments or questions. For more coverage of liability and ADA compliance, see our archived posts, which describes how the public has come to depend on websites to do everything from book a hotel room to update their flight plans and the effect of the rollback of federal regulations.
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