Industry Experts Consider New Standards to Ease Challenges for Disabled Travelers
Photo Credit: Wheelchairs at a gate at Orlando International Airport. Flickr / Peter Dutton
Skift Take
Ever-changing equipment poses constant challenges for both travelers and an often undertrained staff at both airports and onboard planes.
Facilitating travel for passengers with limited mobility was a key topic for discussion at the Passenger Terminal Expo (PTE) in Barcelona last week.
Several industry and advocacy groups have banded together in support of key initiatives by passenger rights advocates like Open Doors Organization. We caught up with Laurel Van Horn, Director of Programs and Editor for the Open Doors Organization, and formerly the executive director of SATH (Society for Accessible Travel & Hospitality), after PTE to share with us a bit of the background behind these new regulations; and what additional improvements aviation as a whole needs to make in order to ensure that travel is equality available to all.
"When Eric Lipp founded the non-profit Open Doors Organization in 2000, he was newly disabled," Laurel tells us. "For the first time, he experienced the barriers that people with disabilities face, even in going out to dine at a restaurant."
But Lipp channeled his frustration at the inadeq
