BELLEVUE, WASH. – Expedia announced details around site enhancements as part of an ongoing relationship with the National Federation of the Blind. It’s estimated more than 48.9 million people live with disabilities in the US, including more than 7 million with a visual disability. Expedia’s dedicated UX designers, as well as product and software engineers, are actively engaged in ensuring travelers with disabilities have excellent experiences when visiting sites like Expedia.com and Travelocity.com.

The Expedia Accessibility Technology Team consists of front-end developers and testers who use a variety of methods to design and test site improvements that make the Expedia.com and Travelocity.com websites as inclusive as possible. Screen readers (software applications that read out a webpage’s text content and convey visual cues) for example, are commonly used amongst the Blind community. To make it easier for these readers to relay information, Expedia engineers have attached text to pictures and structured the code in a way that allows users of assistive technology to efficiently navigate the product pages. The National Federation of the Blind has provided insights, feedback, and testing on the implementation of these accessibility components to help ensure a great user experience.

Expedia continuously assesses its products, utilizing industry standards that address not only blind users who use assistive tech but also those who need captioning for video or audio, who do not use a mouse, or who have other differences that make these features worthwhile. In fact, Expedia has found that these enhancements improve the user experience for all travelers, not just those with unique needs. While recent activity has been focused on the current site, Expedia is also working to educate and train all of its engineers to design and develop their products, mobile and desktop, from the ground up with accessibility in mind.

“Blind people must have equal access to websites like Expedia to live the lives we want, independently,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind. “Expedia is a distinguished partner in supporting our mission of ensuring that blind people have equal access to goods and services online and continues to champion accessibility overall through its product offerings. We are extremely pleased with the progress we have made in our relationship. We know that every user benefits from the enhancements we have worked on together.”

“At Expedia, our goal is to help people go places, and our efforts in improving website accessibility for the blind are helping a community of people that previously experienced difficulties in navigating online travel booking paths,” said Aman Bhutani, President, Brand Expedia Group. “Through our relationship with the National Federation of the Blind, we’ve expanded our duty to bring travel to everyone and are encouraged and excited by our progress in this space.”