By DAVID KOEPPEL

It is one thing to mandate rights to the disabled and another for service providers to treat them with sensitivity and respect. But executives with disabilities say the travel industry finally seems to be getting it right.

The 12-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act gets a lot of credit for forcing a national re-evaluation of attitudes toward the disabled. And with spending by disabled travelers exceeding $3 billion a year, an industry that operates on razor-thin profit margins has become eager to please, even hiring consultants to train employees on how to behave.

Whatever the causes, the difference between now and then is striking. Just ask Sharon Myers, a medal-winning in the Paralympics.
Paralyzed by polio since she was 3, Ms. Myers, a 56-year-old Virginian, recalled being carried onto a plane in Cincinnati more than 20 years ago, only to be kept waiting as the pilot and ground crew argued for 45 minutes about who was responsible for taking her to her seat.

"I was sitting facing every person on that plane," Ms. Myers, now the director for disability affairs at the Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality, said at a conference that her nonprofit consulting group organized in Miami last month. "Here I was a world ambassador in sports, experiencing my most humiliating travel encounter. No one even apologized."

For Ms. Myers and other travelers with disabilities, however, such ordeals have become rarer as employees in hotels, restaurants, airports and car-rental agencies have learned more about their special needs, both physical and emotional. "In the last few years, I have been treated with the utmost respect whenever I fly," Ms. Myers said. "There's been an absolute turnaround.''

Sharon Myers, who was paralyzed by polio at the age of 3
and is a medal-winning athlete, writes about travel for the disabled.
She says attitudes toward the disabled have improved
significantly in the last few years.

When she first started traveling for sports competitions and conference appearances in the 1960's and 70's, it was often impossible for her to get her wheelchair through the bedroom doors of hotels. These days, she generally has no such problem, especially if she specifies in advance that she wants an accessible room with roll-in showers and hand-held showerheads.

Disabled travelers spend about $13.6 billion a year, according to a 2003 study by a Chicago-based group that researches services and products for disabled customers. The study showed that of America's 54 million disabled people, about 2.8 million travel solely for business and an additional 2.5 million combine business and leisure travel. It suggested that disabled people would travel more frequently and stay longer if the industry worked harder to accommodate their needs.

Cheryl Duke, the president of WC Duke Associates in Woodford, Va., has heard plenty of horror stories about the rude behavior of service providers, like the hotel waiter who embarrassed a blind business traveler by shouting, "Who's going to pay this blind guy's bill," and employees at another establishment who turned away blind customers with guide dogs because animals were not allowed on the premises.

WC Duke runs a training program called Opening Doors to educate service providers on the dos and don'ts of dealing with disabled travelers. Ms. Duke, along with her husband William and son Paul, conduct about 60 training programs a year for hotel, airline and restaurant personnel of clients like American Airlines, Embassy Suites and the Intercontinental Hotel Groups, the parent of the Holiday Inn chain. She says the company's videos have been used about 75,000 times in the last five years, and that its revenues have more than doubled in that time.

Murray Krasnoff, an Orlando tour operator and part-time trainer for the Opening Doors program, said that he had frequently seen employees ignore wheelchair customers by directing all their questions to an able-bodied companion.

"I tell them it's their legs that don't work, not their mouths," Mr. Krasnoff said at a workshop he led called the "Ten Commandments of Disability" at last month's Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality conference. "People are so afraid of doing the wrong thing. Not doing anything is the worst thing you can do."

Hence the Second Commandment: "It's never wrong to offer help to persons having disabilities." It is wrong, however, to call a disabled person, "crippled," "handicapped" or any other antiquated or offensive expression. It is also wrong to ask someone how he became disabled or to lean on a wheelchair.

Even though basic courtesy might seem like common sense, Constantine Zografopoulos, 41, a wheelchair user and frequent business traveler, said that only in the last two or three years have these basic rules been observed by many employees.

Mr. Zografopoulos runs the Kostas Z Foundation, a Chicago advocacy group for the disabled. He was injured in a 1995 car crash that led to the loss of both his legs, and says that in the first few years that followed, he frequently endured rude or tactless comments in his travels.

Today, by contrast, he says, employees at hotels and airports are much more likely to take the initiative in helping him with what he needs and make a greater effort to make him feel comfortable. He has also been pleasantly surprised by the efforts of some companies to move beyond what is legally required by disabilities law.

At the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel where the Society for Accessible Travel conference was held, for example, he was picked up at the airport by a van equipped with a wheelchair lift. When he arrived at the hotel, he was accompanied inside by the driver, and the concierge handled the check-in. (To be sure, given its guest list that day, the hotel had a strong motive to take special care.)

Even so, he has a couple of suggestions for the hotel industry. First, standardize equipment, so disabled travelers can know what to expect wherever they go and will not have to search elsewhere. Second, given that the small number of disabled-accessible rooms are often all occupied, widen the doors to the other rooms, install larger lighting switches and mirrors and install movable sinks in more hotels.

At the Miami convention, the John Q Hammons Hotels were honored for placing grab bars in the baths and showers of every room, surpassing legal requirements, and the Microtel Inn chain got high marks for advertising itself as "the preferred chain for disabled travelers."

Microtel trains all employees with the Opening Doors disability etiquette program, said Roy Flora, the senior vice president for franchise operations of US Franchise Systems, Microtel's parent company. Mr. Flora said that employees received training every time a new Microtel hotel was opened and received annual or biannual refresher courses at existing locations. The company is also considering adding automatic doors at all locations and fitness equipment for disabled travelers. Changes in Microtel's Web site will allow disabled travelers to find accessible rooms at specific locations.

Theresa Waller, executive housekeeper at the Microtel Inn in Ocala, Fla., demonstrates a vibrating alarm clock for hearing-impaired guests.

Not every hotel chain believes that marketing to disabled travelers will prove profitable. Tom Riegelman, vice president of the Hyatt Hotel Corporation said there was "low demand" for the hotel's accessible rooms and estimated that only about one guest in a thousand request them. Mr. Riegelman does favor a move to a universal design within the hotel industry that would make all newly constructed properties accessible to both disabled and able-bodied customers.

"The good news is that companies are beginning to recognize an important niche market," said Ms. Duke of WC Duke Associates. "They see the disability market as a hot new trend, even though it's been around for years."