Accessible Travel Is a Service Design Problem

For Travel Providers, Hospitality Leaders, and Transportation Organizations

I’m a blind traveler and accessibility advocate who has spent more than a decade writing, speaking, and working publicly around accessible travel. I run BlindTravels, a long-running platform focused on helping blind and low-vision travelers navigate airlines, hotels, trains, and destinations, while also helping organizations understand how their services are actually experienced by disabled guests.

I don’t work for the travel industry, and I don’t speak from policy alone. I speak from years of real travel, real friction, and ongoing conversations with travel providers, hospitality teams, and transportation organizations that want to improve how accessibility works on the ground.

In this talk, I focus on how blind and low-vision travelers experience travel from booking to arrival to departure, and where accessibility efforts quietly break down despite good intentions. That includes airlines and airports, hotels and resorts, cruise ships, and rail systems, including extensive experience navigating passenger rail and station infrastructure, particularly with Amtrak.

This isn’t a compliance talk and it isn’t about calling people out. It’s a practical conversation about service design, staff training, communication, and trust. Over time, I’ve seen a clear pattern: when accessibility works, disabled travelers become loyal customers. When it doesn’t, they quietly take their business elsewhere and tell others to do the same.

Audiences leave with:

• A clearer understanding of how blind and low-vision travelers actually navigate complex environments
• Insight into where accessibility most often fails at the service and communication layer
• A better understanding of how staff confidence and clear process impact trust
• Practical improvements that strengthen guest loyalty, reputation, and repeat business

This talk is especially well suited for accessible travel and tourism conferences, hotels and resorts, travel providers, rail and transit organizations, destination marketing organizations, and corporate leadership teams focused on service quality and inclusion.

Accessibility Is Not a Special Feature

Rethinking Art, Design, and Inclusion

Accessibility is often treated as something you add at the end. I argue that it works best when it’s part of the creative process from the beginning.

In this talk, I draw from my work in tactile photography, gallery installations, and accessibility advocacy to show how inclusive design improves experiences for everyone, not just disabled audiences. We look at real examples from art spaces, education, and public design, and talk honestly about what works, what doesn’t, and why good intentions alone often fall short.

This is not a theoretical discussion. It’s about how accessibility intersects with creativity, audience engagement, and the responsibility institutions have to the communities they serve.

Audiences leave with:

• A clearer understanding of what accessibility actually means in creative spaces
• Practical, realistic ways to approach inclusive design
• Insight into how accessibility strengthens engagement rather than limiting expression
• A reframed view of accessibility as a creative advantage

This talk works especially well for galleries, museums, universities, cultural institutions, and creative organizations.

From Tempest to Kasumi

Real Stories from the Early Game Industry

Before modern engines, massive teams, and off-the-shelf pipelines, game development was smaller, messier, and far more hands-on. I worked in the video game industry during that era, when teams were small enough that you knew exactly who broke what, and fixes often involved equal parts creativity and compromise.

I worked on games for Atari, Accolade, and Mattel, contributing to titles people still talk about today, including Tempest 2000, Test Drive Off-Road, and yes, the perpetually discussed Kasumi Ninja.

This isn’t a nostalgia talk or a victory lap. It’s an honest look at what it was actually like to build games when documentation was thin, tools were limited, and decisions made early could ship forever. Some projects became hits. Some became cult classics. Some became cautionary tales. All of them taught lessons that still apply to creative and technical work today.

Audiences leave with:

• Insight into how technical constraints shaped design decisions
• A better understanding of why failure cases matter as much as success stories
• Lessons from early development that still apply to modern creative work
• A grounded look at production realities rather than mythology

This talk is especially well suited for retro gaming conferences, game development events, university game design programs, and industry discussions focused on production, history, and creative problem-solving.

I’m a member of Retro Game Gurus, you can find more about me and my full credits list there https://retrogamegurus.com/