Marketing to the Visually Impaired

The internet has made life a lot easier for hearing impaired travelers by effectively eliminating the need to talk to travel purveyors. 

For the visually impaired, however, it has been all downhill when it comes to accessibility. That a couple of lawsuits against airlines by visually affected customers have gone in favor of the carriers seems only to have added to their woes.

Early last month, in a closely watched case against JetBlue Airways, a California court ruled that airline websites and airport kiosks were not covered by the state's anti-discrimination law. That followed a disappointingly similar outcome to a case, also in California, in April against United Airlines. (Lawsuits by the visually impaired against websites date back to the internet's infancy when the National Federation of the Blind sued AOL in 1999). While prevailing in court may have been the carriers' proximate objective they would be ill-advised in not addressing the real needs of a very real revenue accretive market.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are 284 million people who are visually impaired worldwide of whom 39 million are blind with the remaining  245 having low vision. Recognizing the need and the market, some organizations and companies have adapted their products and services to cater to the niche market. Among them are talking set-top boxes for HDTV by the Australian company Bush Australia that use text to speech technology.

Read more at: 4Hoteliers