Innovative Solutions to Facilitate Accessibility for Airport Travelers with Disabilities (2020)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

194 • Accessibility design: Design that focuses on satisfying minimum technical criteria set by governmental authorities to allow most people with disabilities to use most of the designed environment. In the U.S., this means design that seeks to comply with ADA accessibility standards, as well as related state and local building codes. • Automated people mover: An automated, small-scale, guideway transit system typically found at airports or theme parks. Also referred to as “people mover,” “air train,” or “sky train” in this report. • Ad hoc request: A request for assistance made by the traveler at the time of need, often upon arrival at the airport. • Advisory circular: Nonregulatory guidance and information published by the Federal Aviation Administration for the community. • Amenity: A desirable or useful feature or facility within an environment that contributes to physical or material comfort. • Apron: Also referred to as the tarmac, the apron is the area of an airport where aircraft are parked, unloaded or loaded, refueled, and boarded. • Assistive device: Any device designed or adapted to help people with disabilities perform actions, tasks, and activities. • Cochlear implant: An electronic device that is surgically implanted into a person’s cochlea, enabling people with severe hearing loss to hear some sounds. • Demand-responsive system: Any system of transporting individuals by public or private entities that is not a fixed-route system. • Fixed-route system: A system of transporting individuals by public or private entities in which a vehicle operates along a prescribed route according to a fixed schedule. • Focus group: A form of qualitative marketing research where a small group of people is interviewed at the same time about their attitudes toward a product, a service, a concept, an advertisement, an idea, or packaging. • Geofence: An electronic boundary defined by GPS coordinates used to surround an airport for the purpose of, for example, tracking vehicles such as TNCs in order to collect fees. • Haptic: Relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception. • Hemiplegia: Paralysis of one side of the body. Glossary

Glossary 195 • International symbol of access (ISA): A blue square overlaid with a white stylized image of a person in a wheelchair used to designate accessible facilities. • Paraplegia: Paralysis of the legs and lower body, typically caused by spinal injury or disease. • Paratransit: A comparable transportation service required by the ADA for individuals with disabilities who are unable to use fixed-route transit systems. • Protruding object: An object that presents a hazard to people with vision loss due to its placement in a circulation path. A protruding object is one that projects more than 4 inches (100 mm) from the wall and 27 to 80 inches (685 mm to 2,030 mm) above the finished floor in halls, corridors, passageways, walks, and aisles. • Psychiatric disability: A mental illness or emotional condition that significantly inter- feres with a person’s ability to complete major life activities, such as learning, working, and communicating. • Reasonable modification: A change, exception, or adaptation to a policy, program, service, facility, or workplace that allows a qualified person with a disability to participate fully in a pro- gram, take advantage of a service, live in housing, or perform a job. Reasonable modifications also include any structural changes that may be necessary. • Rollator: A four-wheeled walker. • Repatriation: The process of returning an asset or item to its owner. • Retrofit: The act of adding a component or accessory to an object that did not have it when it was manufactured. • Section 504: A section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that protects the rights of individuals with disabilities who are involved in programs or activities that receive federal funding. • Service provider: A company contracted by either an airline or airport to provide assistance services to people with disabilities and older adults on airport property. “Service provider” also may refer to an employee of such a company. • Transportation network company: A business that connects its affiliated drivers—using their personal vehicles—with passengers desiring door-to-door transportation who have requested this service using the company’s proprietary smartphone application. • Quadriplegia: Paralysis of all four limbs. Also known as “tetraplegia.” • Universal design: An approach to the development of products and environments that can be used effectively by all people—to the greatest extent possible—without the need for adaptation or specialized design.