UK travel websites are failing to make their online services accessible to disabled people, new research has revealed.
A study by accessibility experts Fortune Cookie, commissioned by travel portal Travolution, found that a number of UK online travel portals are making it difficult for over 10 million disabled people in Britain to access.
The research showed that many of the UK’s top travel firms have not optimized their websites for disabled users, despite current laws that require those with a disability to receive the same level of service that other customers demand.
Fortune Cookie analysed all of the eight major British travel websites, including expedia.co.uk and travelsupermarket.co.uk, but found that none met basic accessibility criteria, making each difficult to access for a person with a disability .
Usability issues highlighted amongst the sites included poor colour contrast making text illegible to those with visual impairment, lack of alternative text descriptions for images, reliance on JavaScript for navigation and inability to navigate sites without a mouse.
Fortune Cookie’s Accessibility Expert Rune Leth Andersen suggested that online businesses test their website for accessibility by using an automated accessibility checking tool, but added that automated tools only "detect some accessibility problems and can produce false positives".
"Another approach is to commission a web accessibility expert to audit the site and provide recommendations. And you can undertake user testing involving disabled people," she said.
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