The document provides an overview of a webinar on web accessibility in the hospitality industry presented by Eduardo Meza-Etienne, Senior Account Manager, and Debra Ruh, Chief Marketing Officer. The webinar covered topics like the hospitality industry, the persons with disabilities market, the business case for accessibility, managing accessibility, and concluded that if the needs of persons with disabilities were better met, 24 million more people with disabilities would travel one or two more times per year.

1. Web Accessibility in the
Hospitality Industry
October 25, 2012
Presented By:
Eduardo Meza-Etienne, Senior Account Manager
Debra Ruh, Chief Marketing Officer
The session is scheduled to begin at 2:00pm Eastern Time
We will be testing sound quality periodically
Audio and Visual are provided through the on-line webinar system
This session is closed captioned
Silicon Valleyand materials of this session are the property of SSB Bart Group and the presenters and cannot be used and/or distributed 637-8955
The content
(415) 975-8000 www.ssbbartgroup.com Washington DC (703)

2. Review of Webinar Features
 Closed captioning – click CC icon (located in the
panel labeled “Audio and Video” on your screen)
and adjust the captioning box as needed for font
size, contrast, etc.
 Customize your view – You can resize the
whiteboard where the Presentation slides are
shown to make it smaller or larger by choosing
from the drop down menu located above and to
the left of the whiteboard. The default is “fit
page”
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3. Review of Webinar Features
 Asking ?’s – Participants may submit questions
via the chat area (Ctrl M) or may use a microphone
to ask their question “live”. If you want to be
recognized to ask a question via microphone use
the hand raising option located above the list of
participants (Ctrl R)
 Emotions/Hand-raising: Please do not use these
features during this session unless instructed by
the presenter.
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4. Web Accessibility in the
Hospitality Industry
Eduardo Meza-Etienne, Senior Account Manager
Debra Ruh, Chief Marketing Officer
www.ssbbartgroup.com
Silicon Valley (415) 975-8000 www.ssbbartgroup.com Washington DC (703) 637-8955

5. Agenda
 The Hospitality Industry
 The PwD Market
 Business Case
 Managing Accessibility
 Conclusion
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6. Hospitality Industry
 Broad category of fields within the service industry
 An industry worth several billion dollars
 Dependent on availability of leisure time and disposable income
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7. The PwD Market
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8. The PwD Market
The Persons with
Disability (PwD)
community is a viable,
growing, emerging
market, with hundreds
of billions of dollars in
disposable income
available.
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9. The PwD Market
Market Size
 Over 1 billion people, or about 15% of the
world's population, live with some form of
disability – that’s 1 in 7 people.
 There are 60 million plus persons with
disabilities in the U.S., affecting
approximately 1 in 2 Americans “living with”
or “directly affected by” these individuals.
 AARP (Association for the Advancement of
Retired Persons) says 4 million Americans
turn 50 each year - at age 50, adults begin
experiencing age-related physical changes
that affect hearing, vision, cognition and
mobility.
 More people living longer will result in a
dramatic increase of people experiencing
some form of disability at some point in their
lifetime.
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10. The PwD Market
Global Travel
The European Tourism 2000 Initiative indicates that out
of the 50 million persons with disabilities in Europe,
70% have the means to travel.
The New York Times reported that spending by
travelers with disabilities exceeds $13.6 billion annually.
According to the 2005 study, “Adults with Disabilities:
Travel and Hospitality”:
• 69% of adults with disabilities (or more than 21 million
people) from the US have traveled at least once in the
past two years.
• Over the course of two years international travel
expenditures for travelers with disabilities exceeded $7
billion.
• Worldwide travelers with disabilities spent almost $1,600
on each trip.
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11. The PwD Market
Spending Power
 $220 billion in discretionary income controlled by
people with disabilities in the U.S., and $3 trillion
worldwide.
 Persons with Disabilities in the US have an
aggregate income of over $1 Trillion dollars, twice
the spending power of teens, and more than 17
times the spending power of tweens (8-12 year-olds),
the two demographics sought after the most by
business marketing efforts.
 US research by McKinsey & Company predicts that
by 2015, the baby boomer generation will command
almost 60 percent of net U.S. wealth and 40 percent
of spending.
 In many categories, like travel, boomers will
represent over 50 percent of the consumer market.
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12. The PwD Market
Difficulties in Travel
Some Current Challenges:
Physical access – mobility, vision, hearing
- Facilities create barriers to access or enjoyment
- Accessibility achieved through accommodations and/or
retrofitting existing facilities, often poorly done and in a
separate, less convenient location
Attitudinal barriers towards PwD
- PwD don`t want to travel, nor are they able to afford it
- PwD prefer to travel in groups, and stay close to home
- Never seen PwD travelling or at resorts, so why bother
- Fear of what to say to PwD – assumptions that they are
slow or not able to communicate
Lack of access to accessible ICT
- Reservations systems
- Web sites
- Kiosks
- Online Customer Service Centers
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13. The PwD Market
Difficulties in Travel (cont.)
Blind and Vision Impaired
Not enough space in common areas to manoeuver with a cane
When using a service animal, no place for the animal to relieve itself,
or the designated place is in an inconvenient location
Print on hotel and emergency information, restaurant menus,
directions and maps, remotes and other controls hard to read – font
too small, poor color contrast, and Braille rarely available
Deaf and Hard of Hearing
No open or closed captioning on televisions
Rooms do not have door bells
Telephones do not have visual warning when ringing, or regular
phones are used instead of a TTY or Video Phone
Mobility Impaired
Hallways too narrow and not enough space in common areas to
manoeuver with a wheelchair or scooter
Inaccessible bathrooms , with limited space to move, no handles for
transfer, no roll-in showers
Many facilities accessible only by stairs
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14. Hospitality Industry
Business Case
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15. Business Case
Risk of Litigation
 Litigation risk is the potential costs to an organization from complaints, litigation
costs, damages and injunctions
 Risk from both publicly available systems (ADA Title III) and employee facing
systems (ADA Title I)
• International law is often more aggressive than US law
 Organizations face risk roughly correlated to their transaction volume
 Cost to settle a class action lawsuit including damages and injunctive costs
typically tops $10M
 Contract representations, modifications to products and broad compliance
claims can transfer risk to an organization
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16. Business Case
Legal Obligations
• ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973
• Section 255 of the Telecommunications
Act
• U.S. Carrier Access Act
• HAVA – Help America Vote Act
• State Legislation (Section 508 “Type”)
• International Legislation (DDA, EU,
Section 508 “Type”)
• W3C WCAG 2.0 Standards
• UN Convention on Rights of Persons
with Disabilities
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17. Hospitality Industry
Managing Accessibility
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18. Managing Accessibility
Successful Accessibility Initiative Phases
Organizations generally rollout accessibility using a six
stage process:
1.Policy Development - Develop the core accessibility
policy, target standards and timeline.
• Accessibility Policy
• Accessibility Issue Resolution Policy
• Accessibility Quality Control Plan
• Accessibility Monitoring Plan
• Procurement and Contracting Policy
1.Standards Development – Define the technical standards
and supporting documentation for implementing the
standards.
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19. Managing Accessibility
Successful Accessibility Initiative Phases (cont.)
3. Implementation Plan Development – Develop the
implementation plan for rolling out the policy and
standards across the organization.
• System Survey and Analysis
• Accessibility Project Management Plan
3. Training Development – Develop the training plan,
eLearning modules and training courses used to train
the various different roles.
4. Pilot Implementation – Implement the accessibility
standards in key, high risk systems.
5. Full Deployment – Deploy the standards and policy
across the organization.
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20. Managing Accessibility
Testing Methodology - Requirements for Compliance Auditing
 Technical Requirements (§1194.21 | §1194.22)
• Requires a system to have a conformant technical implementation
• Testing requirements are split between those that can be tested
Automatically (24.8%), Manually (48.3%) and Globally (26.9%)
• Automatic testing is the cheapest and most common testing but
covers only a small fraction of legal requirements
 Functional Requirements (§1194.31)
• Requires a system to be usable to people with disabilities using
current assistive technologies
• Functional testing coverage for sensory and mobility impairments is
generally required
 Support Requirements (§1194.41)
• Requires a system to be accessible in deployment
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21. Managing Accessibility
Testing Methodology
•Groundwork •Testing •Reporting
Identify Analysis
Automated Global Manual
Modules Prioritization
Identify Authoring
Assistive Technology
Use Cases Delivery
 Provide a three phase formal testing methodology for
determining compliance.
 For any given project, use a mix of the testing phases
and formality that makes the most sense.
 Focus principally on the testing phase and add and
remove requirements as needed.
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22. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model
 General teams are responsible for small, targeted sub-
set of requirements
 Internal expert teams are responsible for the full set of
requirements
 Internal expert teams are supported by an external
expert
 Over time organization learns more about accessibility
organically versus in one disruptive and expensive push
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23. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model - Considerations
 General approach requires specific internal resources to
be earmarked for accessibility
 For internal experts to be active they need to only be
working on accessibility issues
 Approach requires a large amount of education and
knowledge transfer for internal experts – this takes time
 Organizations may find it more effective to outsource
some or all of the internal expert work
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24. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Automated Testing
 Early and often
 Automatic tests integrated into functional testing system
and build environment
 Addresses many of the low hanging fruit
 Gold standard of accessibility validation every check-in
 Good enough standard is validation of accessibility as
part of regression functional test script execution
 As manual testing identifies automatically testable cases
add to test definition for future automatic regression
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25. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Manual Testing Considerations
 Manual tests require extensive subject matter expertise
• Many manual tests require the use of assistive technologies,
Application Programming Interface (API) monitoring tools or
other complex techniques to validate a best practice
• Many manual tests require judgment calls on the part of the
tester to determine if a item meets the spirit and letter of a
requirement
• The expertise required to make these determinations is
significant
• Knowledge maintenance generally requires about a month of
research and review a year
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26. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Manual Testing Considerations (cont.)
 Manual tests are expensive
• WCAG A and AA conformance requires testing 177 best
practices out of the box of which 133 are manual tests
• Validating all 133 best practices across twenty modules (pages)
would require 2655 test executions. If we assume thirty
seconds per test that translates to twenty-two hours of manual
testing per test cycle
• Formal audits are expensive and time consuming
• Performing full formal audits each QA cycle is cost and time
prohibitive
• Perform full audits at specific gateways – use informal testing
the majority of the time
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27. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Internal Accessibility Testing
 Define test set based on accessibility policy
 Develop short list for testing set at 90% coverage point
 Quick list is validated every sprint or development cycle
on limited set of pages
• Page test set is traffic ordered pages and high risk transaction paths
• Test most common pages first
• Basic smoke test
 Shared client and external team would test full list every
three sprints or major release per product
 Full testing by internal expert team between projects
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28. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Functional and External
 Functional Testing
• Limit functional testing to end cycle acceptance testing
• Link limited functional testing to full review of products
• Provide functional testing via users with disabilities on-demand
at Time and Material Basis
 External Accessibility Testing Team
• Develop accessibility testing team for in-depth accessibility
testing
• Tests every three to four sprints or major release per project
• Accessibility testing team would rotate coverage per sprint
across projects
• Perform ad-hoc testing on new templates, wireframes and
widgets being developed
• Consult with development team on questions
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29. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Functional Testing Considerations
 Different versions of assistive technologies, drastically
different results
• Assistive technology support for web technologies changes
drastically from version to version
• Determining if the issue is an issue in JAWS or the AT or an
issue of operator error is significant
• Signal to noise for false positive and negatives is significant –
often exceeding the actual count of valid bugs
• Accurate testing results requires intimate knowledge of AT
support and control
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30. Managing Accessibility
Tiered Testing Model – Functional Testing Considerations (cont.)
 Accurate functional testing requires a user with
disabilities.
 To execute functional tests a user must have a high
degree of familiarity with assistive technology.
 For example, testing accurately with screen readers
requires that the user:
• Never see the page
• Never use the mouse
• Only control page elements through the screen reader and
relevant reading modes
 In practice, SSB has never seen users without disabilities
effectively test in a fashion that provides a meaningful
simulation of the experience of a user with a disability.
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31. Hospitality Industry
Conclusion
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32. Conclusion
If Needs Were Met?
“24 Million People With Disabilities Would Travel One or Two More
Times Per Year, If Their Needs Were Better Met.” -Fortune Magazine
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33. Conclusion
Questions???
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34. Next Steps
Next Steps Point of Contact
 Schedule some time to speak with Eduardo Meza-Etienne
an SSB expert in your industry SSB BART Group
 Sign-up for a online training Senior Account Manager
covering further topics on  Eduardo.meza@ssbbartgroup.com
Accessibility  (202) 600-8932 (o)
 Contact the industry expert to
 (240) 457-8046 (c)
setup a free trial of AMP
 Follow us on Twitter, Facebook
and LinkedIn
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