A booking can go smoothly right up to checkout, then collapse at seat maps, unreadable fields, and unlabeled checkboxes. Here are the checkout barriers to check for on your own site. Michael Taylor is blind and books his travel using a screen reader. These posts document what he runs into, so companies can check for the same barriers on their own sites. This blog is the fourth in Michael's five-part series on airline website accessibility.
When you book a flight online, it isn't really done until the confirmation email lands. A smooth trip through the site can go sideways fast when accessibility issues arise at checkout. This post covers the barriers I hit most often once a flight is picked and checkout has started. As always, I'm focused on screen reader accessibility.
Seat Selection
Picking a specific seat has given me trouble for as long as I've booked flights online. The most common tools for it feel built from the start for sighted users only.
Some airlines show a diagram of the plane with seats and their row and letter labels, and you click the seat you want. These are entirely graphical, and my screen reader can't work with them. If it reads anything at all, it's usually random strings of characters that mean nothing on their own.
The other common approach is a table laid out to represent the rows of the plane. Those are just as hard to navigate in any logical way. The row and column labels announced as I move between cells often make no sense out of context.
On top of that, there's usually no spoken cue for which seats are open and which are already taken. That leaves the whole feature useless to me, because the only way forward is slow trial and error.
Text Field Readouts
The details I type at checkout matter a lot. They have to match my government ID exactly, or I could be turned away at the airport on the day of the flight. So this next problem is especially frustrating.
On some airline sites, my screen reader won't read back anything I've entered in the personal information fields. I can hear each letter and word as I type, but I can't hear the finished entry when I refocus the field or move through it. That makes it impossible to check my entries for typos before I submit.
Flights aren't easy to cancel once they're bought, and fixing a mistake afterward isn't always possible. I've walked away from entire purchases over this, because I don't want a small typo I couldn't catch to turn into a problem later.
Optional Trip Protection
Somewhere in checkout, most airlines offer trip protection you can add or decline, and the controls for it are often not accessible. The terms and conditions usually open as a PDF in a separate window. If that PDF is image-based, my screen reader can't read it, and the text navigation commands don't work.
To accept or decline, I generally have to check a box tied to a text disclaimer before I can continue. That checkbox is often mislabeled in the code, so my screen reader either misses it, reads it incorrectly, or announces it as static text I can't interact with.
Checkout is where a booking should finally come together, and instead, it's where some of the worst barriers live for me. On the airline sites I've used, one broken field or seat map at this stage has been enough to end the whole purchase.
Airline Checkout Accessibility: FAQ
Are airline seat maps accessible to screen reader users?
Most airline seat maps are not accessible to screen reader users. Michael finds that graphical seat diagrams read as meaningless characters and that table-based maps give row and column labels with no context or seat-availability cues. Making seat selection accessible usually means exposing seat status and location as clear, labeled text.
Why can't a screen reader read back typed information at checkout?
A screen reader can't read back an entry when the field doesn't expose its value to assistive technology. Michael can hear each character as he types but gets nothing when he refocuses the field, so he can't verify his entry before submitting. For a booking that must match a government ID, that's a serious barrier, and UsableNet's web accessibility audit guide walks through checking fields like these.
What accessibility problems come with trip insurance and PDF terms?
Trip protection controls fail when disclaimer checkboxes are unlabeled and terms open as image-based PDFs. An image-only PDF has no readable text for a screen reader, and an unlabeled checkbox can be missed entirely. An automated accessibility testing tool quickly flags unlabeled checkboxes.
Broken seat maps, fields that can't be verified, and unlabeled checkboxes are the kinds of barriers behind ADA web accessibility claims at checkout, and partial fixes don't remove the exposure.
UsableNet's Accessibility as a Service pairs an expert WCAG 2.2 AA audit with a prioritized remediation plan your team implements, backed by testing from people who use assistive technology and litigation support. If a screen reader can't finish your checkout, talk to a UsableNet accessibility expert.
Related in this series: Flight Search Fields That Fail Screen Reader Users, Flight Filters That Break for Screen Reader Users, and Comparing Flight Results while Blind.
