Setting up Booking Engine To Display Rooms for ADA Compliance

Created by Alex Savchuk, Modified on Fri, Mar 15 at 6:54 PM by Alex Savchuk

When it comes to online compliance to ADA regulations currently the extent of detail required to be compliant in respect to online reservation systems but for the most part need to make reasonable effort to complete the following:

Ensure that their corporate website adheres to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines
Describe the accessible features of a guest room in enough detail so that people can determine if the room will meet their individual accessibility needs
Hold accessible rooms for reservation by guests with disabilities until all standard rooms of that class or type are sold
Remove an accessible room from inventory as soon as it has been reserved; overbooking of ADA rooms is prohibited
Guarantee that the customer receives the specific accessible guest room or guest room type he/she reserved. This covers bed type, number of beds, bathroom fixtures, etc.

innRoad has taken significant actions to adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) including:

Adjust contrast ratios of text
Add image alternative text descriptors
Ensure all buttons, form fields and links are identifiable by screen readers with proper labels
Programmatically manage the focus (to ensure screen readers know when something has changed on the screen)
Add link to skip navigation header
Update the focus order, highlight the focused element of the page and ensure user can navigate the page with keyboard

To test, we used the Google Lighthouse Accessibility audit plus manually testing, to verify the above changes. You will find that if you run the Google Lighthouse Accessibility audit, the booking engine will score close to 100.

Our developers actively monitor the WCAG guidelines and make appropriate updates to the Booking Engine. If you would like to test that for yourself the steps are provided below:

Google Lighthouse Accessibility audit steps:
1. Open booking engine page in Chrome
2. Press F12 or Right click page and click inspect
3. Click on the audit tab, select “Accessibility” and then click the “Run audits” button
4. The tool will analyze the page and display the score

Booking Engine Customization

Colors: It is recommended to ensure that the colors chosen for your booking engine have an acceptable contrast ratio.
1. The following tool can be used to test contrast ratio of the desired colors: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/3.2/color-contrast
Custom header: If your booking engine has a custom header, please ensure that it adheres to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines

InnCenter Setup

From there if you have any ADA rooms available at your property it is recommended to have them be separated into their own room class allowing any of your guest that would require that room to directly book it for themselves or keep it hidden and offline so it does not get booked up before all your other rooms.

If you wish to change your room class configuration, please contact innRoad support. We can help split out your ADA rooms into their own room class.

Once the room(s) are separated into their own room class, we recommend you to create a separate room class description that lists out the included ADA accessible amenities.

Edit your room classes and their descriptions

Update the room class name

You can add "ADA" to the room class name. For example, "Double Room with Balcony - ADA Accessible"

Create a new room class description called “Accessibility Information”

- Go to Description > Add more
- This will open the Room Class Description section
- Fill in your other information
- Once filled, select Done on the bottom of right corner of the pop up

Fill out the Amenities list

Scroll down to the Channel Specific Information section > select the TripAdvisor channel tab (this is also used to update some information that displays on the booking engine).

- Once on this tab the first thing you will notice is the Accessibly features- unfortunately, at this time, those amenities only sync to TripAdvisor
- Scroll down to the section Other Information - in this location we currently have 14 amenities that are related to ADA requirements listed below:
  - Adjoining rooms
  - Connecting rooms
  - Grab bars in bathroom
  - Refrigerator
  - Sitting area
  - Telephone for hearing impaired
  - Telephones with message light
  - Oversized bathtub
  - Soundproofed room
  - Mini-refrigerator
  - Operator-assisted calls
  - Bathtub seat
  - Telephone TDD/Textphone
  - Accessible room