This isn't accessibility failure. Mere accessibility failure would be an improvement.

[lilfluff]

Reading through this post by Mari Ness on LJ about her hotel experience at the Town and Country hotel in San Diego has left me appalled. Even if I was to give the hotel the benefit of the doubt and assume Mari is incorrect on half the details it would still be past acceptability. When Chase Bank says, "What, no way should you have to pay that hotel bill," you know things were Not Right.

The best reading I can see of this shows utter incompetence on the part of the hotel. That's the best reading of the situation I can see. Any other reading only goes downhill from there.

Comments

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

I am myself not limited-mobility but, when I was LARP'ing, I played a wheelchair-bound character in several hotels-based conventions and... a limited accessibility to convention facilities is not nearly as rare as it should be.

On one occasion, because I was staying ic and thus in wheelchair, one friend carried me down the stairs and another carried the 'chair, because there wasn't even an elevator.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Even a brief experience with disability, even taken on voluntarily, can be really eye-opening. (I've been temporarily mobility-limited because of surgery, and voluntarily "disabled" in some fashion for games.) It doesn't convey the experience of having to deal with such issues day in, day out -- but it does make you more likely to notice things that will be problems for other people. And, well, you can't fix what you don't see, so that makes seeing the first step.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

Yeah, with my sister being blind I can view these issues a bit personally.

I'd like to take a good whack with a clue-by-four to quite a few web designers and the companies that hire them -- and a few more whacks for the various groups that are supposed to be helping people. I'll skip the Dial-A-Ride story as that one can still make my blood boil.

But, since it appears Mari's bank is agreeing to reverse the charges that will hopefully get the hotels attention by kicking it in the wallet. One thing to be told, "Your employees were rude," or even, "You are in violation of code," but when the bottom line gets pinched companies tend to react. Hopefully they'll point that reaction at the staff and into improving the facilities rather than playing blame the victim.

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

yes.