The apps closing the accessibility gap in travel

A practical guide to the tools worth having before the summer holidays

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from the trip itself, but from what precedes it. The hours spent cross-referencing hotel websites that list “accessible room” without specifying what that means, calling venues to ask about steps that aren’t mentioned anywhere online, calculating whether the margin for error – a ramp that turns out to be too steep, a lift that’s out of service – is one you can afford. For many disabled or impaired travelers, the logistics of getting somewhere have historically demanded a level of pre-planning that goes well beyond what most people would consider reasonable.

That is starting to change: not because the world has suddenly become more accessible – it hasn’t, or at least not fast enough – but because a generation of tools has emerged that shifts some of the informational burden away from the individual and onto platforms built around shared, verified, community-generated knowledge. None of these tools is perfect, some rely on data that’s incomplete or unevenly distributed, but used together, they represent a meaningful shift in what it’s possible to know before you leave home, and what you can navigate once you arrive. With long weekends, bank holidays, and summer travel now approaching, here is a practical guide to the tools worth knowing about.

Before you go: building a picture of where you’re headed

• TUR4all operates on a simple but powerful premise: accessibility information is only useful when it’s specific, and specificity comes from people who have actually been somewhere. The platform aggregates verified details – ramp gradients, door widths, bathroom configurations, lift availability – for hotels, restaurants, transport hubs, and tourist sites across dozens of countries. Unlike the vague assurances that appear in most hotel descriptions, TUR4all entries are contributed and reviewed by travelers whose needs mean they noticed. The platform is free to use and available both as a website and an app; contributing your own reviews after a trip is genuinely useful to others in a way that most review platforms aren’t.
• Wheelmap takes a different approach, optimised for speed. Public spaces are tagged as fully accessible (green), partially accessible (orange), or not accessible (red) by a global community of contributors. The interface is deliberately minimal: you search a destination, filter by category – restaurants, hotels, public toilets, transport – and get a fast visual read of what to expect. The app works offline, which is worth more than it sounds when you’re navigating somewhere unfamiliar and connectivity is unreliable.
• AccessNow, founded by Canadian wheelchair user Maayan Ziv, works with tourism organisations, transit networks, and governments to collect granular accessibility data – ramps, elevators, accessible restrooms, sensory accommodations – and makes it searchable by location. The app is strongest in cities where institutional partnerships have produced richer datasets, but its community review layer adds texture even in less-covered areas.
• Wheel the World approaches the problem from the booking end. Rather than simply listing whether a hotel calls itself accessible, the platform maps over 200 data points – bed height, turning radius, shower configuration – to produce assessments that reflect actual usability rather than legal compliance. For anyone who has arrived at a supposedly accessible room and found it falls short of what that label implies, this level of granularity matters.

Getting around: navigation tools that account for more than distance

• Google Maps has quietly accumulated a significant set of accessibility features that remain underused because they require a few deliberate settings to activate. In the Navigation settings, enabling wheelchair-accessible routes produces directions that prioritise step-free paths, flag elevator availability at transit stations, and identify accessible entrances. The data quality varies by city- some transport networks are comprehensively mapped, others less so – but in major urban areas it is now a genuinely useful first resource.
• NaviLens addresses a specific and underserved need: orientation and wayfinding for blind and low-vision travelers. The system uses high-density colour-coded tags, increasingly common in European airports, train stations, and museums, that can be read from several metres away without precise aiming. Point the NaviLens app toward the tag and it returns spoken information about your location, nearby services, and directional cues. The technology is forgiving by design, which is what makes it practical in busy transit environments where conditions are rarely ideal.
• GoodMaps and Evelity tackle the particular challenge of large indoor spaces, such as airports, shopping centres, convention venues, where GPS is unreliable and the layout can change between visits. Both apps work from pre-downloaded venue maps and use phone sensors for positioning, providing turn-by-turn guidance that can be configured for specific mobility needs. Worth checking before your trip whether your departure airport or destination venues are supported, and downloading maps while on a reliable connection.

In the moment: when you need information now

Be My Eyes began as a platform connecting blind and low-vision users with sighted volunteers via live video. It has since expanded to include an AI-powered image recognition feature – called Be My AI – that provides immediate verbal descriptions of whatever the phone camera sees: menus, signage, currency, room layouts, unfamiliar interfaces. The AI layer is available at any hour without wait time; human volunteers remain available for more complex situations. The practical applications in travel are broad. Major train stations on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, including New York Penn Station and Washington D.C. Union Station, now use Be My Eyes to connect blind and low-vision travelers with on-demand agents who can help locate platforms, read departure boards, and find elevators. Rome’s Fiumicino Airport and Emirates Airlines have also integrated the platform, suggesting a broader institutional adoption that is worth watching.

What these tools don’t fix

Nearly every stage of trip planning now happens online  searching destinations, comparing prices, booking flights, choosing accommodation. If these digital touchpoints are inaccessible, travelers face barriers long before their trip begins. It is worth being direct about this: the 2024 Web Accessibility in Mind report found that 95.9% of home pages failed to meet basic accessibility guidelines. The apps listed here address some of the informational gaps that persist despite this, but they don’t substitute for the structural work that remains undone. What they do offer is more reliable intelligence – before and during a trip – so that the energy that used to go into uncertainty can go somewhere more useful. That is not a small thing.

Some of the platforms listed here – TUR4all, Wheelmap, AccessNow, Be My Eyes – improve as more people use and contribute to them. If a tool proves useful, adding your own data afterward is one of the more concrete ways to extend that usefulness to others.