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Travel sector websites fail disabled travelers

February 27, 2008 | Online Travel

Technology moves fast. How can accessibility - and disabled people - keep pace? The answer may lie in standardisation. New research commissioned by Travolution magazine has found that major UK travel firms are failing to make their online services accessible to disabled people.

New research commissioned by Travolution magazine has found that major UK travel firms are failing to make their online services accessible to disabled people.

The research was carried out by digital design agency Fortune Cookie which tested a number of UK travel websites for accessibility to the UK’s 10 million disabled people.

Fortune Cookie’s Accessibility Expert Rune Leth Andersen said: “There are a number of ways of testing the accessibility of a website. Run it through an automated accessibility checking tool (w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete). But beware, automated tools detect only some accessibility problems and can produce false positives. Another approach is to commission a web accessibility expert to audit the site and provide recommendations. And you can undertake user testing involving disabled people.”

Fortune Cookie analysed eight popular travel websites but found that none met basic accessibility criteria and all would be difficult for a person with a disability such as blindness to use.

Examples of sites that failed accessibility tests included Malmaison: “a number of the images have no ‘alternative text’ description’; Travel Supermarket: “relies solely on JavaScript for navigation”; Expedia: “poor colour contrast that would make the text illegible to some people”; and Trip Advisor: “inconsistent and confusing navigation”.

Fortune Cookie’s Director of Accessibility Julie Howell, said: “The sites we tested are all popular travel sites that disabled people would reasonably expect to be able to use. Our findings highlight typical problems across the industry.”

Get the full story at Travolution

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