Yahoo! Accessibility

Traveling for people with disabilities is getting easier as cities adopt accessibility requirements. It’s now possible to find restaurants with ground level restrooms. Captionfish helps you find cinemas with audio descriptions and captions. Public transportation is becoming more wheelchair friendly as cities replace outdated buses and trains with new, more accessible models. There’s even a new television show for disabled travelers on Oprah’s television network.

This is great news for people exploring the world, but how do you actually find an accessible restaurant when you are on the street? They don’t normally have big neon signs to advertise their presence. Fortunately, there is a new generation of mobile phone applications and web sites that allow people to find the best restaurants, stores, cinemas, and public transportation.

Accessible Travel Applications

Open Doors, a group in Chicago, has been a pioneer in this category with their Easy Access Chicago web site that lets you track accessible public transportation, investigate hotel accommodations, and research other aspects before visiting the city. While Open Doors provides detailed, highly reliable information, it’s not a scalable process as it involves a small team of investigators that inspect each location. Continue reading A Night of Accessibility in Paris