guide
Sanity accessibility for travel and hospitality: setup, plugins, and audit checklist
Running an accessible Sanity site for travel and hospitality combines two layers of responsibility: Sanity's platform-level accessibility, and the travel & hospitality-specific compliance frameworks — ACAA (US airlines), ADA Title III (hotels), EAA (EU passenger transport) — that layer on top.
Why Sanity for travel and hospitality?
Sanity accessibility depends on Studio schema design (required alt text on image fields), Portable Text renderers in the consuming front-end, and editorial discipline — the platform itself is headless and accessibility is a function of how the consuming app maps Sanity content to semantic HTML.
Travel & Hospitality accessibility — the regulated reality
Travel and hospitality accessibility covers airline and hotel websites, booking platforms, loyalty portals, and travel apps — a regulatory must under the Air Carrier Access Act for US airlines, the EAA for EU passenger transport, the ADA for hotels and tour operators, and the DOT's 2024 final rule on airline website accessibility.
Sanity accessibility challenges that hit travel and hospitality hardest
• Schema design without required alt text
• Portable Text renderers losing semantics
Travel & Hospitality pain points your Sanity site will likely have
• Inaccessible booking calendars and seat-selection maps
• No way to specify accessibility needs in booking flow
• "Accessible room" filters that do not actually filter
• Inaccessible boarding-pass / e-ticket PDFs
• Inaccessible loyalty-portal account management
Setup steps
1. Require alt text in image schema: Validation rules at schema level.
2. Audit Portable Text renderer: Map block types to semantic HTML.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Cited answers. Sourced. Updated as standards and case law change.
Can a Sanity site be made ADA compliant for travel and hospitality?
Yes, provided the merchant or development team applies WCAG 2.2 AA at the source code and content level. No platform — including Sanity — guarantees compliance automatically.
What does the DOT require for airline websites?
Under the Air Carrier Access Act and DOT regulations (14 CFR Part 382), primary public-facing airline web pages and core functions must conform to WCAG 2.0 AA. The 2024 final rule strengthens these requirements and adds explicit penalties for non-compliance.
Are hotel "accessible room" filters required?
Effectively yes. ADA Title III requires hotels to provide accessibility information at the time of reservation, including details sufficient for a guest with a disability to determine room suitability. DOJ guidance and many settlements require filterable, structured accessibility data — not a buried PDF.
Is Sanity Studio accessible?
Sanity Studio targets WCAG 2.1 AA. Consuming-app accessibility is the larger consideration.
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