March 03, 2008

More on the Travolution/Fortune Cookie Travel Website Accessibility Survey

HotelMarketing.com echoes the keynote address, "Inclusive Tourism: A New Strategic Alliance for the Disability Rights Movement" and the Conference Recommendations of the Second International Conference on Accessible Tourism (ICAT 2007) held at the UN in Bangkok November 2007. It does so by quoting from the Travolution analysis of the recent UK website accessibility study done by Fortune Cookie. Standardization in the field of Inclusive Tourism is the order of the day from the construction of hotel rooms, treatment of airline passengers, to the construction of web sites:

Technology moves fast. How can accessibility - and disabled people - keep pace? The answer may lie in standardisation.

Now Travolution and Fortune Cookie have the opportunity to do something paradigm shifting. Here's how:

  1. Replicate the original study of UK websites at the end of the year in preparation for 2009 (The 2009 version could be announced at the Society for Accessible Tourism & Hospitality (SATH) Congress in Orlando, Florida January 2009)

  2. Reverse the focus of the original study (Examine the accessibility of the top 5 destinations visited by travelers with disabilities from the UK)

  3. Coordinate internationally (Collaborate with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and disabled peoples' organizations (DPOs) in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as they evaluate the accessibility of their travel websites and those of the top 5 travel destinations of people with disabilities for each of these countries)

  4. Educate widely (Create simple resources educating the travel industry on the business advantages of accessible information. Include best practice recommendations as well as mandated legal minimums. Provide similar material for consumers to enable them to present their needs to businesses and tourism ministries in an informed and solution-oriented manner. Encourage translation and distribution of these resources.)

  5. Announce globally (Present the results of the international study of top travel websites for English-speaking travelers with disabilities at the April 2009 International Conference on Accessible Tourism (ICAT) Conference in Singapore and the European Network for Accessible Tourism (ENAT)

  6. Repeat annually (Become the monitor of travel industry compliance with standards of online accessibility. Disseminate best practices. Award excellence.)

Analysis of the study results is available at Travolution: http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2008/02/12/1270/Accessibility+-+gaining+access+to+an+online+world.html

Posted by rollingrains at March 3, 2008 03:19 AM