Cory Lee, who uses a power wheelchair, has traveled to more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Not that long ago, finding accessible hotels, activities, and transportation required a painstaking process that involved many hours of research and dozens of emails. Even then, Lee sometimes arrived at his destination to find he had overlooked small but crucial details. For example, if the lobby of his hotel had steps that weren’t mentioned online, he wouldn’t be able to reach his room, even if the hotel had advertised itself as accessible.
As the mother of a child with complex medical needs and disabilities, I can relate all too well to the anxiety Lee feels when traveling. The stress is especially acute abroad, where the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) don’t apply. Because of a glaring lack of accessible options and the difficulty in finding those that do exist, traveling with a disability still poses challenges. However, thanks to a range of technological advancements, more disabled people are exploring the world with less apprehension.
Navigation apps help identify accessible routes outdoors and indoors
For Karen Morales, the lead travel agent for accessibility initiatives at the Fora Travel network, navigation apps have made the world much easier to explore. “As a traveler in a chair, I can’t just go anywhere without thought,” she explains.
Google Maps has integrated accessibility features that allow users to identify step-free routes. It’s “by far one of the most important advances, mapping cities so those of us who can’t take stairs can route around them on transit. It removes a barrier so you can go without the fear that you won’t actually reach where you’re headed,” she says. “Step-free routing on Google Maps is vital in cities like Tokyo, where you have elevated platforms and complicated metros, or Venice, with canal bridges and hidden stairs. We also rely on it to find food, since so many restaurants and stores have steps to get into,” she explains.
In my experience traveling with my daughter, Google Maps is also very good at helping find accessible routes in larger indoor spaces like museums, airports, or malls. I also like to use Citymapper to find accessible, stair-free routes all over the world, including public transportation options. When exploring the great outdoors, I often use AllTrails to find accessible hiking trails.
Some resorts have their own apps that fill in gaps left by other navigation tech. For example, the Wailea Beach Resort, Marriott, in Maui, Hawai‘i, offers a wayfinding app called Navigator that’s designed to default to accessible pathways. “Guests don’t have to second-guess how to get from point A to point B. That level of independence is incredibly meaningful,” says Laurie Garzon, the resort’s director of sales and marketing.
Artificial intelligence helps streamline research
Even though Lee is an experienced traveler, he has found ways that AI can improve his research. “When I was planning my trip to Thailand, I used AI to help create a list of accessibility questions for hotels and tour operators . . . beyond my standard checklist,” he says. “For example, it suggested asking whether accessible bathrooms had enough turning space for a power wheelchair. It also helped me organize my research much more efficiently,” he says.
Lee particularly likes AbleVu, an accessibility-focused travel site with an AI assistant, AbleBot, which remembers a user’s accessibility needs. Another travel-focused AI tool—created by Wheel the World, an accessible-travel platform that helps users research, plan, book, and review trips—enables users to double-check hotels’ accessibility features. When a user searches for hotel recommendations, Wheel the World’s AI-assisted Accessibility Match goes into action, comparing the information that WTW has researched itself against the accessibility needs users have shared in their profile. The results show a percentage of how well each hotel matches what that traveler is looking for.
What sets Wheel the World’s Accessibility Match function apart is that humans have verified all of the information in its database. “Travelers can ask specific accessibility questions, compare properties, and build a full itinerary using that verified data in real time,” says Andrés Villagran, head of marketing at Wheel the World. Using Accessibility Match, Wheel the World’s algorithm “matches a traveler’s specific accessibility profile against the 200-plus verified data points of each property, so travelers see the places that actually fit their needs instead of a generic ‘accessible’ label,” Villagran explains.
Be My Eyes provides real-time audio descriptions through AI and human volunteers
Be My Eyes is a free app that uses AI to provide detailed image descriptions, helpful to those with vision impairments. Travelers can open their phone’s camera to capture what is around them and hear AI-assisted explanations. If they need more support, the app can connect them to its network of volunteers who assist in real time with specific tasks such as describing a view or helping someone find their rideshare.
“Traveling means constantly navigating unfamiliar spaces, but Be My Eyes bridges the gap between being stuck and staying moving,” says Peter Tucic, a blind Be My Eyes user. Tucic has used Be My Eyes to help him find thermostats in hotel rooms and the right train platform at chaotic train stations. “It turns what could be a frustrating roadblock into a seamless part of my day,” he says.
Live captioning is a game changer for deaf or hard-of-hearing travelers
For Travis Dougherty, who is deaf and uses American Sign Language (ASL), travel used to be filled with communication challenges. “As a deaf traveler, technology has made travel much more independent. In the past, I often relied on hearing people to relay announcements or explain changes. Today, smartphones, live captioning, messaging, and AI tools allow me to access information directly and communicate more easily wherever I travel,” he says. Live captioning is helpful at almost every stage of traveling, including communicating with gate agents, checking into a hotel, buying tickets, or taking a tour with a guide who does not know ASL.
With live captioning, Dougherty explains, “the microphone picks up spoken audio, software processes the speech, and the words appear as text on the screen in near real time.” Even better, Dougherty doesn’t need any special equipment to use live captioning. “This technology is increasingly built directly into smartphone operating systems. For example, on an iPhone, live captions can be turned on through the accessibility settings and used to caption conversations and other audio,” he says.
Smart glasses help people with a range of disabilities travel better
Smart glasses are also helping people with disabilities travel more easily. In addition to using live captioning on his phone, Dougherty uses smart glasses. “They display live captions of conversations and sounds happening around me directly in my field of view. That allows me to follow conversations while still looking at the person speaking instead of constantly looking down at my phone,” he explains. Dougherty uses Hearview glasses, which were specifically designed for people who are deaf and hard of hearing, but other smart glasses use similar technology.
Smart glasses are also useful for travelers who are blind or have low vision beyond using Be My Eyes. With Meta smart glasses, “users can ask Meta AI to identify landmarks, read signs, provide contextual information about their surroundings, and help bridge language barriers through real-time translation,” says a spokesperson for Meta Ray-Ban.
Smart hotel rooms can help make travel easier
Smart hotel rooms, like those at Studio M Hotels, use voice-activated technology to let guests control lighting, temperature, and other room features hands-free, making travel more accessible for many people with mobility, vision, and hearing disabilities.
Courtesy of Millennium Hotels and Resorts
Smart hotel rooms aren’t the norm yet, but some high-tech options exist. Depending on the specific technology utilized, these automated rooms can help travelers with mobility issues as well as blind and deaf travelers.
Select Millennium hotels around the world have voice-activated digital assistants that can be used to turn lights on or off, adjust the room’s temperature, request extra towels, or call the front desk. Deaf and hard-of-hearing guests can access many of the digital assistant’s features via a touchscreen, making it easier to request a mini-fridge refresh or order room service.
Smart rooms at the Encore Hotel in Boston have an Amazon Echo that can help guests with (and without) disabilities adjust lighting, open and close curtains, get recommendations, and request housekeeping hands-free.
Related: What Hotels Get Wrong (and Right) About Accessible Design, From Disabled Travelers
Technology doesn’t solve all of the problems people with disabilities face
Morales, the accessible travel program leader for Fora Travel, emphasizes that technology hasn’t solved all the problems people with disabilities face on a trip. For example, although Morales appreciates that some airlines, including Delta and American, now have smart tags that streamline the process of checking wheelchairs, that didn’t stop an airline from damaging her wheelchair en route to Tokyo. Nor was technology able to confirm that she would get the type of hotel room she needed. “A widely applauded five-star hotel assigned me a room with two steps and a rock at the door,” she says. In both cases, it took humans willing to step in to help, she says. “Technology is the entry door for many disabled travelers, but it’s the humanity and care that make things work,” Morales says.
Related: The Era of Airlines Neglecting Disability Rights Is Coming to an End
What’s next?
Thanks to rapid technological development, new accessibility features are being introduced all the time. This fall, Apple is launching a suite of upgraded accessibility options, including auto-generated video subtitles, a voice-over option that allows users to ask about what’s in the camera viewfinder and receive a detailed response, natural-language voice control, and an accessibility reader that can provide summaries and automatically translate text into a user’s primary language.
Every development makes the world a little more accessible.
