Airlines Exclude People with Disabilities from Obtaining Information and Entertainment Services

A recent international flight prompted me to explore the accessibility of information and technology on airlines. On international flights, it is common practice to have flight attendants who speak several languages to accommodate people who do not speak the local language. But who accommodates people with disabilities who need to have the same information?

After a number of airline accidents, it appears that people start paying attention to the closest exit. In an ordinary situation, you can just look ahead, count the rows to the next exit, look back, do the same in the other direction, and take a mental note of the nearest exit. It is a little more complicated for people with visual impairment. On most flights, a Braille card is available with a tactile drawing of the airplane you fly, where the exits and lavatories are marked. However, this little map does not indicate which row has the exit, so this only gives a general idea, blind people still need to get assistance from the flight attendant. I don't even want to know in case of a real emergency, how do they follow the lights marking the exits... I wonder, with today's technology, how difficult would it be to provide the nearest exits to people electronically when purchasing the tickets, when the exact type of airplane and seat assignment is available.

Throughout the flight, and even before take-off, many announcements are made on the speakers, but people with hearing impairments miss out on most of those. On many flights, the safety instructions are provided with sign language though.

During the flight, passengers used to be able to switch between music channels. These were relatively obvious to figure out, but with the newest flight entertainments systems the situation became much more difficult. In many cases, these systems are only available by using the touch screen, but even if these could be used by a small keyboard, the text is relatively small, and people with limited vision would have a hard time using it. People, who are blind, however, cannot take advantage of these systems at all. Recently an accessible flight entertainment system was developed, but it is currently not available on airlines.

The problem is not that people cannot obtain absolutely necessary information and cannot be entertained on airlines. We can all ask a flight attendant when we have a question, and if we don't like the flight entertainment system or can't use it, we can bring a book or a portable CD player. But why is it that it is available to some people by default, and others pay for the same service and are excluded from obtaining it?