Accessibility Certified – Home
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Industry · Travel, hospitality, leisure

A booking every guest can finish, mouse or no mouse

Pick the dates, compare rooms, add the guests, pay: every step has to work with a keyboard, zoom and a screen reader. We test your booking flow the way guests with disabilities experience it.

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Why travel businesses can be covered

Travel and hospitality are not a category of their own in the European Accessibility Act. What it does cover are e-commerce services: services provided at a distance through websites and apps, at the individual request of a consumer, with a view to concluding a consumer contract (Article 3(30)). Recital 43 adds that these obligations apply to the online sale of any product or service. On that wording, your own booking flow for rooms, package holidays, holiday rentals or admission tickets is covered.

Information-only websites without booking are not, and neither are offers aimed only at businesses. Many small properties are exempt as micro-enterprises: fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million. Flights, trains, coaches and ferries follow their own rules, see passenger transport.

And regardless of the law: a guest who cannot get past your calendar books through a portal, or not at all.

Two questions, one answer

Does the EAA apply to you?

Your industry is already selected. Answer two questions and the EAA check shows an assessment, the reasons and next steps. You can change every answer there.

Who are your customers?
How big is your company?

A first orientation, not legal advice. Nothing is stored.

Where bookings usually break

The places we look at closely in every booking flow.

Arrival and departure

Two-month range pickers that only work with a mouse. Unavailable days shown in grey with no hint why they cannot be booked.

Guests, rooms, children’s ages

Plus and minus steppers without a name and without announcing the new value. Age fields for children that appear without a screen reader noticing.

Comparing rooms and rates

Rates with cancellation terms, board and price laid out like a table without being one. Amenities shown only as icons with tooltips that vanish.

Photos, maps and location

Room photos without alt text, galleries without keyboard support, location maps with no address or directions in text.

Pressure messages

“Only 2 rooms left” or countdown banners that pop up, move the focus or cover content.

Booking engine and payment

Embedded third-party booking engines and payment frames. Many journeys break here, even when the rest of the website is well built.

The criteria that decide whether guests can book

  • 2.1.1Keyboard

    Calendar, steppers, gallery and rate selection must work without a mouse, right up to the confirmation.

  • 1.3.1Info and Relationships

    Rates, inclusions and prices belong in a real table or list, so a screen reader can relate them.

  • 1.4.13Content on Hover or Focus

    Tooltips for amenities or cancellation terms must stay put, be dismissible and not cover anything.

  • 3.3.2Labels or Instructions

    Fields like “child’s age” or “arrival time” need visible labels and a hint about the format.

  • 2.4.3Focus Order

    Pop-ups must not scramble the order. When one closes, focus has to return to where it was.

  • 2.2.1Timing Adjustable

    When a held offer is about to expire, guests need a warning and a way to extend it.

How we test your booking flow

  1. Agree the scope

    Home page, rooms or offers, availability, booking up to payment, confirmation, cancellation and contact.

  2. Scan

    The scanner checks every public page automatically. It never picks dates or submits a booking.

  3. Book by hand

    A reviewer books with keyboard and screen reader in your test environment, or up to just before the binding step. We never make real bookings.

  4. A report you can forward

    Findings in embedded booking engines are described so you can pass them straight to the supplier.

What applies if you are covered

For e-commerce services, Annex I of the Directive adds requirements: accessible information about the accessibility of what you sell where the responsible operator provides it, and identification, security and payment functions that are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. You also have to publish how your service meets the requirements; our statement generator helps with the draft.

Third-party content is excluded only if you neither fund, develop nor control it. Whether that applies to a booking engine you license and embed needs to be assessed case by case. Member states’ details, authorities and penalties are in our law overview.

Frequently asked questions

We are a small hotel. Does this apply to us?

With fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million, you are exempt as a micro-enterprise. Check with the two questions above or the full EAA check.

We only sell through booking portals. What then?

Then the guest books on the portal’s website. Your own site without booking is an information site. Making it accessible still pays off: every guest looks for directions, amenities and contact details.

Our booking engine comes from a supplier. Can you test it?

Yes, as far as it appears on your website. We test the path your guests take and map every finding to a criterion. We cannot change the supplier’s code, but you get a clear basis for that conversation.

Do you test with real bookings?

No. We never book anything. The reviewer tests in a test environment or up to just before the binding step. If you provide a test payment method, we test the payment step with it.

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