When traveling, many hotels, transportation systems, restaurants, and experiences such as amusement or theme parks require users to download an app to perform critical functions relevant to that experience. I was compelled to use one of these apps over a recent hotel stay. The app was used for tasks like checking in and requesting housekeeping services.
Unfortunately, I had significant trouble using the app to its fullest due to poor accessibility. I will discuss some of my experiences below. The accessibility points I will speak about here can also apply to other similar travel apps. My focus will exclusively be mobile touch-based screen readers.
One of the features of this particular hotel app was the ability to reference property schedules that display information such as the front desk and pool hours, airport shuttle times, and housekeeping and towel exchange dates. Accessing this information was a point of major difficulty. To not beat around the bush, all of this information was completely inaccessible.
The schedules were uploaded to the app as raw image files unreadable by my screen reader. The only word I heard around this information page was “Image.”
The hotel in question took pictures of paper documents and uploaded these raw files to serve as a property information section for the app. This is a terrible idea regarding accessibility because these raw images are essentially invisible to screen readers. To correct this, the hotel should read the schedules on the app and mobile website in a plain text-based format.
Many hotel apps are being used to enable contactless check-in at the property. While this is a new feature, I am sure it will gain popularity as adoption rates increase. When using this functionality on this particular hotel app, I ran into one major issue that had the potential to stop me in my tracks completely.
Once I entered all of my check-in details, such as name and billing information, the app was programmed to display my room number once my reservation details were confirmed. Though the app told me that my check-in request was successful, I could not find my room number anywhere on the screen.
I explored using manual and direct touch navigation for a while but could not find it. The sighted person I was traveling with helped me by looking at my phone and quickly found the room number in the display's center. However, my screen reader could not detect this number.
Even a precise, direct touch on the spot where the number was visually displayed did not make any difference. My screen reader played the sound, indicating nothing was in the focus cursor. The room number was displayed in large green letters, which I attribute to this lack of accessibility.
Heavily stylized fonts are often not recognized by screen readers because the software usually interprets them as images and either completely ignores them, as in this case, or speaks vague, meaningless terms like “Graphic” or “Diagram.”
When checking out using the app, the guest is prompted to leave a tip for the hotel’s housekeeping staff. Unfortunately, the interface for doing so was inaccessible. The only display was a list of words for different service descriptions and dollar amounts. An example is “Excellent Service, $25.”
There were no buttons, links, or other options to make a selection. Manual swipes and direct touch navigation yielded the same negative results. After asking a sighted person for assistance, I was informed that there was an “Add Tip Amount” button along the right edge of the screen across from each dollar amount.
My screen reader could not find these buttons, most likely because they had no corresponding text label in the code to indicate to the screen reader what the button should do when activated. Button-related accessibility flaws are common and make for incredibly frustrating experiences for blind technology users like myself.
Apps like these that serve a specialized purpose for a specific place are becoming increasingly common. Unfortunately, this particular app gave me significant accessibility trouble. By raising awareness of these issues, I hope that apps like these can grow in accessibility and usability. After all, apps are the way of the future and must catch up in accessibility to guarantee maximum digital inclusion.
Explore more about the experience of people with disabilities and how you can improve your digital content in our free guide, "Digital Commerce Without Barriers."
Editor's Note: Our frequent contributor, Michael Taylor, wrote this post. This post reflects his opinions and experiences. Read more about Michael and some other posts on his experience online here.