Just over a year ago, I blogged (Accessibility and Expedia) about Expedia and Hotels.com settling a California lawsuit from two women who had claimed they were discriminated upon by the web site’s poor highlighting of handicap-accessible hotel rooms. Expedia promised to incorporate various accessibility options, including search capabilities and expanded content.

Last month, Expedia announced that they added several features in 2009, including:

• The ability to search hotels by criteria such as equipment for the deaf, accessible bathrooms, Braille, and ease of navigating through the room
• Their staff following up by contacting hotels for disabled customers to make sure their specific accessibility needs will be met

Expedia provided the statistic that they’ve gotten 500 requests each week related to these accessibility features since unrolling them in August of 2009.

By comparison, Travelocity, Expedia’s top competitor in the online travel arena, has a “Wheelchair Accessible” option among their hotel search options:

Orbitz has a “Handicapped rooms/facilities” option of their own:

Those are better than nothing, but Expedia deserves some credit for an actual, extensive means of searching hotels by different disability-friendly needs.

I work in the travel industry and hope this is a sign of good things to come. It took a lawsuit to spur action, but Expedia is making accessibility inroads. Let’s hope this is only the beginning.

Tags: Expedia, orbitz, travel, travelocity

I normally focus on web site accessibility, but after one of my favorite video games of 2009 recently won an award for its consideration to disabled players, it got me thinking about the subject.

First off, kudos to Dragon Age: Origins from Bioware (easily my favorite game maker) for earning 2009 Accessible Game of Year, from the web site Ablegamers.com. The roleplaying epic scored a 9.8 out of 10.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that despite web accessibility and video games being two of my greatest interests, I hadn’t really given the concept of the two together much thought.

Without having done a lot of research on the subject (yet!), my initial hunch is that a lot of game developers probably don’t pay a lot attention to disabled gamers. I hope that’s an unfair assumption.

Some may say, “How can you make a computer or video game accessible for everybody? There are just some things you can’t do if you have a disability.” Some games more than others can’t be made universally usable.

But as I think about it, there are more than just subtitles that can make games easier to use for those with sight, hearing or physical limitations. And like web surfing, there’s no doubt a vast range of disabled people who love playing computer and video games. If something happened to my sight, hearing or dexterity, my love for games wouldn’t wane.

Some things that come to mind that are similar between web browsing and game playing:

In short, while you cannot make all games universally playable for all people regardless of limitations, there are plenty of ways to up the accessibility. And like web accessibility, many of these features are useful even if you don’t have a disability.

For example, I don’t have a hearing impairment, but I always play games with subtitles on. In part, I play games at night when my wife is asleep and I don’t want the noise bothering her. Also, I just plain enjoy having the text to read along with the audio.

All I know is that Dragon Age: Origins is a phenomenal game, and they found numerous ways to address some of the issues above as well as others.

I’m not about to change this blog to “the art of web and game accessibility”, but this is a topic that I’m going to further explore.

Tags: bioware, computer games, dragon age, game accessibility, Video Games

This isn’t exactly a brand new headline, but that happens when you’re away from blogging for awhile. Kudos to Newegg for getting deserved recognition in the web accessibility world. Late July, the retailer of software and computer hardware became the first online merchant to earn the National Federation of the Blind’s gold level Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification.

“The National Federation of the Blind is pleased that Newegg.com, one of the largest online retailers in the U.S., is setting an example for the industry by providing an unprecedented level of access to its Web site for blind shoppers. We are pleased to award Newegg.com our gold level Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification, which has never before been achieved by an online retailer. It is also notable that Newegg.com achieved this high level of certification in only six months.”
– Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind

When the cases of prominent web sites getting in legal trouble over poor accessibility have little trouble making headlines, it’s nice to see that some sites are getting it right.

Source:
National Federation of the Blind Awards Newegg.com with “Gold Level” Certification for Providing Equal Access to Visually Impaired Users on Newegg.com

Tags: National Federation for the Blind, newegg, NFB, Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification

I’m downright appalled at how much I’ve neglected this blog in the past month. The fact of the matter is that work demands, among other things, contributed to theaccessibility.com taking a hiatus.

Nevertheless, that still doesn’t make me feel good about disrupting what was becoming a good blogging rhythm. And we all know that frequency of quality posting is key to any successful blog.

This is a short blog post to get back into the swing of things.

Last week, Apple released iPhone OS 3.1. There are some nice features in the release, but one in particular adds a nice little accessibility win.

The upgrade makes it easier to activate the accessibility features on your iPhone. By clicking the Home button three times, you can toggle on VoiceOver, Toggle White on Black, and Ask.

While arguably a minor enhancement, anything that makes accessibility features easier to get to is admirable. As I’ve said before, Apple seems to genuinely take accessibility seriously, as they continue to evolve their products such as the iPhone, Snow Leopard and now the mobile OS. Are they perfect? Of course not. But at least there is continual progress.

Tags: apple, iphone, mobile

In “Accessibility News: Web Accessibility in the Spotlight in India”, we talked about how web accessibility is a growing global issue.

Malaysia offers another example of this. The Malaysian Association for the Blind has announced plans to improve the user experience of all the nation’s web sites, to ensure that they are more usable for visually impaired visitors.

They plan to conduct consultative services and advise both government and private web developers on what they can do to better adhere to Web Accessibility Initiative standards.

A team of three certified trainers in web accessibility will shoulder this effort.

Surely, there is a lot of ground to cover in this lofty goal, particularly for a small team. We’ll have to watch over time how this initiative fares, and if the visually impaired in Malaysia gradually find their web offerings more and more usable.

Source Article:
Helping the blind get connected on The Star Online

Tags: blindness, MAB, malaysia, Malaysian Association for the Blind, Web Accessibility Initiative, World Wide Web Consortium