Opening Doors Around the World for People with Disabilities
Srin Madipalli is the former CEO and Co-founder at Accomable, an accessible travel startup which connects travelers with disabilities to accessible vacation rentals. Accomable was acquired by Airbnb in November 2017. Srin is now Accessibility Product and Program Manager at Airbnb in San Francisco.
In December I joined a line-up of brilliant and diverse speakers at the Tech Inclusion Summit in London to talk about my journey to build Accomable — an experimental web-app which helped people with any type of mobility issue find accessible vacation rentals.
It started just over two years ago, when a short film of our endeavour to launch the accessible travel startup with my childhood friend, Martyn Sibley, was short-listed at the UN Enable Film Festival. The film chronicled how I taught myself to code, travelled across Europe to find properly adapted accommodation, and we enabled our first customer to find an accessible place to stay. It was amazing to see our experience shared with so many people, and to help put a spotlight on our goal of accessible travel for all.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that day two years ago was the launching point for Accomable. Afterwards, we saw amazing success in growing Accomable into a fully operational platform, connecting thousands of people with disabilities with places to comfortably stay all over the world.
Our success was a testament to the transformative power of technology to bring people together from every corner of the globe. It’s also a reminder that more must be done by tech companies not only to ensure that travel is accessible to everyone, everywhere — but to help make the world a more inclusive place.
That’s why I am so energised by Accomable becoming a part of Airbnb. Airbnb’s mission has always been to enable anyone to belong anywhere, and by working together, we can make the world more accessible for more people. Over the past few months, Airbnb has taken important steps to ensure this is a priority throughout the platform. Prior to teaming up with Accomable, Airbnb implemented design and engineering guidelines to improve the website and app for people of all abilities, worked to help hosts more accurately describe accessibility features at their listings, and collaborated with renowned accessibility consultant SSB BART Group who are conducting a series of audits to help improve Airbnb’s digital products.
When I spoke at Tech Inclusion Summit in London at the end of the year I celebrated the progress we’ve made. Now, as we roll into 2018, I’d like to highlight the challenges ahead, and share our vision for the future with the world.
There are an estimated 1 billion people around the world with disabilities, and for far too long, the hospitality industry has failed to innovate in this space, causing travel for those with disabilities to be a headache at best, and impossible at worst. Technology companies have the power, and I believe the responsibility, to open the world to everyone.
Our first task in addressing the issues faced by people with disabilities when traveling is to build upon and improve the way we can search for and find accessible accommodation that meets everyone’s needs. I am leading a team and sharing my expertise in this area, and will be working closely with our community of hosts around the globe to improve these over the coming months.
Another area is accuracy; accurate information is vital if you are a traveler with a disability. I have Spinal Muscular Atrophy and have very specific needs when it comes to traveling, which I communicate clearly. Yet it can still be incredibly difficult to find accessible places to stay you can trust. For example, property owners have told me their apartment is step-free, but forget about the small step up to the front door — which my wheelchair can’t ignore. My team will focus on developing new policies and features to ensure accessibility information is as accurate as possible.
And we won’t stop there. I want to make sure that accessibility is at the heart of every element of our company and our community, whether it’s accessible experiences or any other new specially adapted product.
Moreover, we’ll use our global resources to cater to people with disabilities beyond mobility, working closely with every community to ensure our platform is welcoming to as many people as possible.
Lastly, we’re committed to making sure that Airbnb is a great place to work if you have a disability, and will be launching new initiatives to increase the number of applicants with disabilities.
It is a bold, ambitious agenda, and a necessary one. Even 25 years after the UN International Day for Persons with Disabilities was declared, we remain in the early stages of a tectonic shift in how people with disabilities are treated. We cannot allow another generation to pass without fundamental change.
That’s why technology companies must take this issue head on to drive innovation in this space forward. It is critical to build off of this momentum with entrepreneurial spirit, and to embrace progress. It will take our entire community — whether or not you have a disability — to make these changes and build this vision of a future society for all.
I invite everyone to follow our progress, offer feedback and join us in our mission to make the world a more accessible, inclusive place.
About Change Catalyst:
Change Catalyst empowers diverse, inclusive and sustainable tech innovation — through events, consulting, research and training.
Our Tech Inclusion programs explore and develop innovative solutions to tech diversity and inclusion.
Our Startup Ecosystem programs help underrepresented entrepreneurs and investors to start, scale and fund worldchanging businesses.
Change Catalyst is a Certified B Corp, winning the “Best for the World” award for community impact in 2014 and “Best in the World” overall in 2015.
The Change Catalyst Team
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