Leisure for All: Accessible Travel & Tourism
In my role as Chair of CHI*Atlanta, my eyes have opened to some inspiring win-win situations. One of the most inspiring is the effort to make travel and tourism in Georgia accessible. Led by G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Communications and Technologies) and GAAT (Georgia Alliance for Accessible Technologies), this initiative involves smart, dedicated people from the academic, corporate, nonprofit, and government worlds. (See full participant list.) The effort has great potential to benefit people with disabilities while furthering our knowledge and Georgia’s economic development.
At the recent update meeting, InterContinental Hotels Group, Jackson-Hartsfield International Airport, and Delta shared about their efforts to make everything from online bookings to flight boarding accessible. Representatives from Shepherd Center chimed in with their experiences. It was enough to make any user experience or content strategist beam.
Perhaps most inspiring was the glimpse that Bruce Walker with Georgia Tech’s GVU Center (Graphics Visualization Usability Center) gave of research to make museum and aquarium experiences enjoyable for people with disabilities. His research explores not getting people with disabilities in and out of the building but making the experience a pleasure. How? One way is with music. Walker shared a concept of tracking fish movement with delightful sounds for people with visual impairments.
Exploring the accessibility of leisure might sound frivolous. But leisure is important to our mental health. Walker described this line of research as helping people with disabilities meet the next level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
And, in a way, all user experience is headed in this direction. We always have to make the interactive experience accessible and usable. Once we’ve met those basic needs, we have the opportunity to reach a higher level, the chance to engender delight.
To keep up with this and related Georgia accessibility initiatives, follow the GAAT – G3ict alliance on Twitter.
Walker's research explores music and technology in aquarium displays. This picture is from the Georgia Aquarium.
CHI*Atlanta has started an Accessibility Meetup. Check it out at http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-Accessibility-Meetup-Group/. Next meeting will be in late July.
I just learned about your site from a @braintraffic tweet, and this particular post caught my eye.
You might be interested in the concept of conference accessibility guides that the AccessAbility SIG in STC (Society for Technical Communication) has made for all conferences for the past 8 years. The latest one was made for the STC conference in May – in Atlanta at the Hyatt. We maintain our collection of guides at http://www.stc-access.org/the-conference-accessibility-guide/.
The links to the stc.org conference site are down now, but I have captured them as PDFs and will post to the archives (soon). Perhaps that information can inspire your group?
If anyone is interested in discussing this with the AccessAbility SIG, drop us a line on our Contact page. We plan to develop a basic template for future authors of these guides (what information is needed, how to capture the details. etc.). It would be lovely to encourage others to do the same. It would also be lovely to collaborate with others on this project.
As a recent visitor to your area, I can tell you that I’d encourage the Jackson-Hartfield International Airport to look at how the Philadelphia International Airport presents accessibility information. We used that last year for our 2008 conference.
Karen,
Thanks very much for these wonderful suggestions. I think the collection of guides would be fantastic inspiration. Please share when available!
I also will encourage the GAAT folks to reach out and collaborate with the AccessAbility SIG. I also will pass on the Philadelphia model.
Thanks again!