The Accessibility of Travel Sites
By Rosemary Musachio, Ruh Global Communications, Chief Accessibility Officer
ILUNION T.A., in conjunction with Ruh Global Communications, is assisting the travel & leisure industry with helping collect valuable insight to providing its customers with the best service and quality experience when traveling either locally or abroad. You can take the 10-minute survey at http://accessibilityintravel.consultaopinion.com/Encuesta.aspx?idEncuesta=145.
The survey has questions about the accessibility of travel websites, along with airplanes and hotels. Coincidentally, I’m planning a trip to Holland this fall so I’m hopping from travel site to travel site looking for inexpensive airfare. Since I’m an accessibility analyst who uses a headpointer, planning for a trip is easier when travel websites are accessible.
Travelocity, Orbits CheapTickets, and Expedia seem to be the most accessible websites, A dead giveaway is the “Accessible” link at the bottom of the sites. They also share the same template since they’re own by the same parent company. Each of the four has a skip-over link that becomes visible when you tab to it on the top of each page. Each also has visible keyboard focus. You may not know it, but this can save you from making an expensive mistake when booking for a trip. Since you can see where you tab to, you won’t accidentally hit Enter on the most expensive airfare. Another accessible feature is that you can enter the arrival and departure dates in the fields when popup calendars open when tabbing through them. Additionally, most form fields on these four travel sites are labeled, which makes booking a lot easier for screen reader users.
However, the popup calendars are temperamental when you try to close them. Sometimes they close when the user tabs out of the form field; sometimes they don’t. Pressing the ESC key doesn’t always work either. When it does work, keyboard focus returns to the page. Alert windows, such as those that say specific fares are no longer available, don’t obtain keyboard focus and can’t close. Radio buttons also are frickled. Even if users tab o the first radio button of the group, they often can’t use the arrow keys to navigate through them. Furthermore, although most form fields are labeled, they become possessed--like something out of “The Exorcist” ---when tabbing through them quickly; the focus blinks uncontrollably.
Priceline, which is just as popular as the other three sites, surprisingly is not very accessible. The top of each page does not have a skip link. Labels for form fields are incomplete, lacking the for attribute. Links and buttons also lack visible focus. Other lesser known sites have similar accessibility issues or worse. Try to enter dates or select them from the popup calendars on Kayak, Justfly, or CheapFlights. Even if they have the cheapest fares and hotels, frustration would make you look somewhere else.
Perhaps if enough people answer the Ilunion T.A. survey mentioned at the beginning and the results received wide publicity, travel companies will realize how important persons with disabilities are to their industry. According to the New York Times, 69% of Americans with disabilities travel and spend $13.6 billion annually. Definitely not a population sector to overlook!
Learn more about our work at www.RuhGlobal.com or follow us on Social Media @rosemusachio, @debraruh and @ruhglobal on most channels.
#AXSChat: Join Debra Ruh, Neil Milliken, and Antonio Santos for a weekly Twitter Chat on Disability Inclusion, ICT Accessibility, Built Environment, CRPD, Empowerment and Employment. Just search the hashtag #AXSChat at 3pmEST and join the conversation. You can learn more about AXSChat at www.AXSChat.com.