Come fly with me – extensive online airport websites research. INTERNATIONAL
Enjoy your holiday – up we go
A holiday abroad starts at the airport
For people using a wheelchair or people who travel with their assistance dog, a visit to the airport can be an experience that causes stress, instead of the usual vacation fun at the beginning of a journey to your favorite or a new destination.
If you depend on services like accessible toilets, transfer between flights, assistance dog service, sign language or braille / tactile products to find your way around the airport, you do want to know all this before departure.
Research on 700+ airport websites
In the summer of 2017, we did extensive online research for 3 months and checked 700 websites of the largest airports in the world.
It took several months and on average at least half an hour per website to find the accessibility information. We discovered over 30 different descriptions of ‘accessibility info’.
Homepage access
This important page should be found directly at the homepage of an airport website. Only a few airports worldwide actually had the accessibility information page in the Front Page Menu.
In many cases the page was found in the FAQ section, or some 3 or 4 pages to click through to find it.
Less than 1 in 3
Some 250+ websites made it to our website.
Of all 700+ (later extended to some 900 globally, research has continued during the years 2018 – 2020) airport websites at the time of our research, only some 250 met our minimum criteria to be shared.
That is less than 1 in 3
airport websites with accessibility information page
Our criteria
The minimum criteria to be listed were:
- Information available in English
- Detailed information about the different services and description of locations (accessible parking, accessible toilets)
- And if available, contact or location information of the Airport Services Desk to facilitate travelers with a disability with assistive devices, wheelchair service or other relevant needed services.
Apps, software
More and more services have become available to improve airport accessibility. There are apps to help travelers, and there is specific software airports can use to make it all run smoothly.
Big airports receive thousands of travelers on a daily basis. It is a must, we say, to have accessibility information in order and up to date.
Not only that, online information available for travelers with a disability is very important to help prepare travels, and tackle any problems ahead.
Airport and airlines information
You can find here all airport websites that we found through our extensive research.
Also, you can find airlines accessibility information in Asia, United States, Europe and Australia.
Please reach out to us if you find accessibility information at airports that you could not find here.
Come fly with me – photo of Alaska Airlines showing Disney’s Genie
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This post was updated November 15, 2023
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