Access-air-bility® Aviation & accessibility
Making the passenger experience harder to overlook.
A passenger-centred website and research system for understanding where accessible air travel breaks down.
Project statusWebsite and accessibility research in development
How it came about
Access-air-bility grew out of a question I wanted to explore through my work in aviation: how can the experience of disabled and neurodivergent passengers help airports and airlines make better decisions?
I wanted to bring passenger accounts, research and practical information into the same conversation. The work has grown from a public website into surveys, a dashboard and an accessibility evidence system. Those are different parts of one project, rather than separate answers to the problem.
The difficult part
Collecting information is only the beginning. A published airline policy, a passenger account and an independent finding tell us different things. Putting them in a single table does not make them equivalent. The source, date and limits of each claim need to travel with it.
There is a similar challenge in the interface. A project about accessibility needs to be usable itself: clear language, readable pages and routes through the content that do not depend on someone already understanding the organisation of the research. The website and the evidence process both have to earn trust.
What I learnt
I have learnt to be much more careful about the distance between a stated policy and a demonstrated passenger outcome. A good-looking benchmark can hide weak or uneven evidence if that distinction disappears.
That has made the questions I ask more specific. Where did the journey become difficult? What supports that account? Who could do something about it? I want the research to stay close to those practical questions, so that the passenger experience remains central as the project develops.