For more information, bios, resources, and transcripts visit adalive.org/episodes/episode-135/

Our guest for this episode is Eric Lipp, founder and executive director of Open Doors Organization. The mission of the non-profit Open Doors Organization is to make goods and services accessible to people with disabilities in travel, tourism and transportation. Their goal is to teach businesses how to succeed in the disability market, while simultaneously empowering the disability community.

Americans love to travel. Americans spend billions of dollars on leisure travel each year according to the U.S. Travel Association. This travel supports millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic impact when we include food services, lodging, transportation, recreation, amusement, and retail sales. Looking at the disability travel market, Open Doors Organization reported 25.6 million people with disabilities traveled for pleasure or business while spending over 50 billion dollars.

In this program we will talk about two laws that affect people with disabilities when they travel. Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in places of public accommodation including, hotels, restaurants, airports, bus stations and more. The second law is the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA), which makes it illegal for airlines to discriminate against passengers because of their disability. However, people with disabilities sometimes file lawsuits or complaints because they believe their rights were violated or they had a poor travel experience.