Airports work remarkably well when everything happens more or less as scheduled. You arrive, get through security, find the gate, wait for boarding, and eventually get onto the plane. There may be plenty of aggravation along the way, but at least everyone knows what is supposed to happen next.

A major disruption changes that quickly.

On August 6, an equipment outage at the FAA’s Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center disrupted flights across a large portion of the Midwest. Chicago O’Hare recorded more than 1,100 delays, while Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit each saw hundreds more. The equipment problem was eventually resolved, but for several hours passengers throughout the region were dealing with delays and rapidly changing flight information.

For blind and low vision travelers, that raises a more interesting question than simply how many flights were late. What happens when the information inside an airport begins changing faster than you can reliably get access to it?

Sighted travelers receive a surprising amount of airport information without consciously looking for it. Someone glances at the departure board and notices the time changed. A passenger sees a gate monitor switch from ON TIME to DELAYED. People at the gate suddenly start standing up or drifting toward another podium. A line forms at customer service. Someone notices that the aircraft expected at the window still has not arrived.

Much of that information is simply hanging in the environment waiting to be seen. Blind travelers do not have that same passive access to it.

Airports speak visually

I think most people underestimate how much of an airport’s communication happens on screens.

Departure boards, gate monitors, boarding information, delay notices, terminal maps, and signs are updated constantly. When everything is operating normally, missing some of that information may not matter very much. If I have been taken to the correct gate and the flight boards at roughly the expected time, I may never notice that the system depended heavily on visual information. Disruption exposes the weakness.

A departure scheduled for 2:15 moves to 3:00. The gate changes from B32 to C17. A few minutes later another delay appears. The incoming aircraft changes. Connections become questionable. The airline begins moving people to other flights.

At that point, getting through the airport is only part of the challenge. You also need accurate information soon enough to decide what to do with it.

Federal disability rules recognize this. Passengers who identify themselves as needing visual or hearing assistance are supposed to receive prompt access to the same trip information being provided to other travelers. That includes information given at gates, ticket counters, customer-service areas, and aboard aircraft.

The practical question is whether that actually happens when the airport is under pressure.

A gate change displayed on a monitor but never announced does a blind passenger very little good. The same is true when a departure time changes on the screen several minutes before the airline app catches up. During normal operations, that delay in information might be an inconvenience. During a major disruption, a few minutes can be the difference between getting onto a replacement flight and joining a very long line of people trying to do the same thing.

Our phones have helped, but they have not replaced the airport

Airline apps have improved this situation considerably. I can receive a push notification, check a boarding pass with a screen reader, track a flight, or receive a text when something changes. For blind travelers, that can provide a level of independence that simply did not exist years ago. I would not want to go backward.

The problem comes when the phone becomes one of several competing versions of reality. During irregular operations, the gate display may update first, followed by the airline app, then a text message, the airport website, and finally an announcement. Sometimes the employee standing at the podium has information that has not appeared anywhere else yet. That leaves everyone trying to figure out which source is current, but a sighted passenger has the added advantage of watching what is happening around the gate.

There are environmental clues an app cannot easily reproduce. If most of the passengers suddenly stand up, something probably happened. If everyone from your flight walks toward another gate, that is useful information even if the notification has not arrived. If a long customer-service line suddenly appears, there is probably a reason. I can hear much of that activity. What I cannot always determine is what caused it.

That is where airport communication still falls short. Technology has made the official information more accessible, but it has not necessarily made the entire airport environment accessible.

Assistance should help with navigation, not become the information system

Airport assistance is useful, and there are times when I rely on it. But a blind passenger should not need an employee standing beside them throughout a delay just to know what is happening with the flight. If the gate changes and I need help getting to the new location, assistance can solve that navigation problem. I should not need assistance simply to discover that the gate changed.

Those are two different issues.

The industry sometimes treats them as though they are the same because assigning a person to help a disabled traveler can compensate for a lot of inaccessible design. It works until that employee leaves, becomes responsible for several passengers, or gets pulled somewhere else during a disruption. Information should be accessible on its own. Human assistance should fill in the places where a traveler actually needs help.

Sometimes you have to speak up

There is also responsibility on our side of the counter. When an airport starts falling apart and nobody seems to know what is happening, waiting quietly for accessible information that never arrives is not always going to work. Blind travelers need to be comfortable advocating for themselves when the situation requires it. I am not talking about becoming aggressive with an exhausted gate agent who is trying to deal with 150 unhappy passengers. Most of the employees standing behind those counters did not cause the outage, the weather, the mechanical problem, or whatever else has gone wrong. I am talking about being clear.

If I cannot read the gate display, I can tell the agent, “I’m blind and I can’t access the information on the monitor. Please make sure I know if the gate, departure time, or boarding information changes.” If everyone around me seems to have received an update that I missed, I can say, “I’m not getting the visual information everyone else is seeing. Can you tell me what changed?” Neither statement is confrontational. It tells the employee what the issue is and what I need from them.

That becomes particularly important when the original flight disappears and you are waiting for information about a replacement. A new flight can mean a new terminal, another gate, a connection you did not originally plan for, or a boarding time that is already approaching. Sitting somewhere waiting for the information to eventually find you is not a particularly good strategy. Self-advocacy is a travel skill. Knowing what to ask can be every bit as useful as knowing how to navigate the airport.

Airlines can make this much easier

Most of the improvements needed here are not especially complicated. When a gate or departure time changes, the digital information available to screen readers should update at the same time as the airport displays. Important gate changes should still be announced rather than relying exclusively on monitors. An announcement telling passengers to “check the screens for updated information” obviously needs another way for travelers who cannot use those screens to get the same update.

Airline apps also need to put critical disruption information where people can actually find it. There is little value in making an app technically compatible with a screen reader if the new gate assignment is buried three screens deep while everyone else can glance at a monitor. Airport indoor-navigation technology may eventually improve this further. If accessible navigation systems can respond dynamically when a gate changes, a blind traveler could receive the update and navigate to the new location without waiting for someone to become available. We are not completely there yet, but none of these ideas requires reinventing the airport. They require treating information as part of accessibility.

Disruptions are where accessibility gets tested

The Minneapolis outage was unusual. The circumstances that produce airport chaos are not. Weather delays happen every day. Aircraft break. Crews time out. Air traffic restrictions appear. Computer systems fail. Incoming planes arrive late and turn one delayed flight into several more. Every one of those events puts more pressure on an airport’s information systems. That is when you find out whether accessibility was built into the system or was simply working because nothing unusual had happened yet. 

Airports have spent years moving more and more information onto screens. There are good reasons for doing that, and those systems work very well for most passengers. The drawback becomes obvious when seeing those screens is the easiest way to understand what is happening. Blind and low vision travelers do not need a separate stream of flight information. We need access to the same information everyone else receives, while it is still useful. And when that information does not reach us, we need to be willing to tell someone that we are being left out of the conversation. 

When the airport goes sideways, knowing that the gate moved can matter just as much as knowing how to get there.

Conclusion

Have you experienced troubles with flight cancellations or delays? how did you handle it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to drop me a line an lets talk about it. 

See you at the gate

-Ted and Fauna