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More than 61 million Americans have some type of disability. That's one out of every four adults. Disability affects us all. From the homes we live in to the buildings we work in, the streets we walk on, and the transport we travel on, modern towns and cities are built to be accessible for those with disabilities. But what about outside of the physical environment? How are disabilities accommodated in the digital world where we spend so much time?
In 2010, a law was introduced requiring the owners and operators of hotels to ensure that their websites and booking engines were ADA compliant. This relates to the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design. This act protects the right of Americans with numerous disabilities, including but not limited to blindness or impaired vision, deafness or hearing loss, intellectual disabilities, missing or partially missing limbs, mobility impairments, autism, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and so on. It is one of the most important civil rights laws in the United States.
Most hotel owners know how to build a physical environment in their hotel with the appropriate design requirements to make the property accessible to everyone. Since 1990, hotels and lodging facilities have been required to build spaces that comply with physical environment ADA regulations. We are all very familiar with examples of these, such as bathtubs with grab bars, wider spaces for wheelchairs, and toilet seats that are a certain height from the floor. Research has found that people with disabilities spend $58.7bn on travel annually, so the legislation that ensures that your hotel amenities are accessible to all is not just fair and practical, it is also good business.
Expanding From The Physical To The Online Space
Accessibility to a hotel should begin in the earliest stages of the guest journey, not just when the guest arrives at the property. As hotels become increasingly reliant on the online booking experience to fill their rooms, many are now putting a major emphasis on the online booking system with the best ADA practices to attract customers at the 'look and book' stage of their journey.
The growth of online-only offers, or membership rates for those signed up to an online loyalty program demonstrate the importance of this. Online booking engines are open 24/7, whereas many hotels only staff reservation phone lines during office hours.
If a hotel's booking engine is not accessible to all, then it is excluding people with disabilities, which is not only unfair but also illegal. Failing to follow the regulations means that hoteliers could miss out on new or existing customers with disabilities who may be unable, or have difficulty, in making a room reservation online. Hotel operators who are not legally compliant also open themselves and their properties to penalties and potential lawsuits.
How To Build A Hotel Booking Engine Under ADA Compliance
Although it takes extra diligence, building a hotel booking engine that is ADA compliant is not rocket science – it mostly comes down to good practice and routine in a development environment. The software development company in charge of designing and building the booking system must invest in training for their staff to ensure they thoroughly understand the coding practices required to build a front-end and back-end that meets regulations.
A hotelier must consider which software company has good practices that will ensure the product they are buying is ADA compliant in the first instance, and whether it has a culture of constant improvement that will ensure their product will remain compliant over time.
Technology moves so fast in today's world that a product created today can quickly be out of date by tomorrow. Ensuring that a booking engine supplier has the means to continue developing their product while maintaining ADA Compliance is of huge importance.
Things To Consider When Choosing A Booking Engine Provider
There are five important factors to consider when selecting the supplier of your booking engine system:
Consider whether the booking engine company is already ADA certified and when they received their certification.
How up to date is their product offering? Many companies invest heavily in building a product that is ADA certified, but because of that cost, they are then afraid to change or adapt their product for fear of becoming non-compliant or needing to go back for re-certification.
Does the supplier offer product customization, and if so, how would they then handle ADA certification around each customization aspect of your booking engine?
Are the company's internal User Experience/User Interface Design and Front-End Developers trained to provide an ADA compliant system? Are their developers trained in coding practices around ADA, and are the UX/UI designers taught how to design it in the best way, accessible to everyone online? By ensuring there is an internal culture and knowledge around the ADA regulations, you will future-proof all new improvements and developments.
Does the company have a practice of continual re-certification of their ADA regulation? If so, the company must be agile and still open to advancing its product while remaining confident that it can maintain all ADA rules across its online booking experience.
Simplicity Leads To Good ADA Practices
When building online booking engines, there is always a risk of developing an application that can have many different features or, as we say, bells and whistles. The more bells and whistles your booking engine has, the more complex it becomes technically to ensure that the online booking experience is accessible to those with disabilities.
If the booking engine is built in a very simple and intuitive manner, then it is very easy to ensure that it is, and will remain, accessible to all. Therefore, when selecting your booking engine, be careful not to seek a booking system with the most functionality for the end-user, but rather a booking engine that is simple, yet seamless, and intuitive for your customers.
It is important to recognize the nuance between ADA compliance and WCAG 2.1 AA (Web Content Accessibility Standards). There is no definite way to build an online booking engine experience that works in exactly the same way or is compliant in the same format. What is most important is to find a company that understands both ADA Compliance and WCAG 2.1 AA standards, as well as how to interpret and implement them in their particular ways.
Building a website that is ADA compliant and selecting a booking engine provider that is also ADA certified and is committed to maintaining their certification, will provide a hotel operator with peace of mind that all persons with disabilities are able to book a room at any time of the day, or night, and also get the same great deals that all online users get.
By maintaining the same standard of care for guests with disabilities online, as when those same guests are on-site, hotels will also minimize the risk of unwanted lawsuits.
How To Tell If The Booking Engine Is ADA Compliant
How do you know if the booking engine conforms to ADA practices? Among the various elements that are taken into account when creating a booking engine that follows the ADA guidelines, some examples are described below.
In general, ADA-friendly booking systems provide color contrasts to facilitate the view for people with impaired vision. When designing the booking engine, we need to clearly differentiate the color of text and the background color.
The same detailed approach needs to be given to the alternate text, or simply alt text, which is the text behind an image file or a button. Blind people usually rely on a screen reader to browse across your booking engine and the application reads the text aloud, converting your text into an auditory experience. Therefore, you should name your images to give them a descriptive meaning. For room images, for instance, instead of just calling them 'room-image-1' the alt text should be the description of that room, for example 'Deluxe double room with free Wi-Fi, queen-sized bed and bath with shower overlooking the golf course'.
The same descriptive approach – one that is information rich yet concise – should be incorporated across all texts to clearly describe your property's amenities, the differences between the rooms, prices, cancellation policies, etc. The font sizes should be big enough for everyone to read.
Final Thoughts
Hotel accessibility matters as much online during the booking journey as it does when those with disabilities come to stay. Hotel operators who recognize this and ensure that their digital presence is ADA compliant will benefit from reduced risk of lawsuit, an enhanced brand reputation, and will be well positioned to capture a slice of the growing accessible travel market.
Following WCAG and ADA best practices will not only help avoid unnecessary lawsuits and negative publicity, it will also ultimately deliver the seamless online booking experience that your customers expect.
A booking engine that conforms with ADA regulations delivers an overall better user experience for everyone, disability or not. By applying ADA principles across your booking journey, you will make it easy for all online users to choose their room, upgrade their stay, add their personal details, pay and complete their reservation. This in turn helps build a more positive brand reputation and a better online presence for your hotel.
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