13 July 2020

CTM becomes the first and only UK TMC with WCAG 2.1 AA accreditation

• CTM UK’s proprietary online booking tool, Lightning, awarded WCAG 2.1 AA accreditation
• Lightning now incorporates a wide range of functionality for European users with a disability or impairment

Corporate Travel Management (CTM) has become the first and only travel management company in the UK to receive Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) accreditation. WCAG are a recognised set of recommendations for designers and developers to improve web accessibility for people with impairments to their vision, hearing, mobility, thinking and understanding.

CTM’s locally developed and proprietary online booking tool, Lightning, has been recognised as being fully conformant with WCAG 2.1 AA. WCAG 2.1 is based on four design principles – perceivable, operable, understandable and robust – which are supported by 12 guidelines, each broken down into a number of success criterias. After undergoing an independent technical audit, Lightning was awarded WCAG 2.1 AA desktop accreditation on 1 July 2020. This is valid for 12 months.

Lightning now incorporates a wide range of functionality for European users with a disability or impairment, including:

• The text-to-speech feature which reads text out loud for people with limited vision
• A screen magnifier which enlarges part or all of the web page
• Speech recognition functionality which allows users with limited mobility to control the computer with their voice
• Active Focus which makes it easier for keyboard users to track and view the item their mouse (or mouse-alternative) is currently focused on
• A carefully chosen interface colour palette which ensures text displays clearly against the background colour
• The elimination all blinking and flashing content

In the UK, there are 13.9 million people registered as having a disability*, including 19 per cent of the adult workforce*. 2 million people suffer from severe sight loss*, 3 million with colour blindness*, 2 million currently use a hearing aid* and 1.5 million have a learning difficulty*.

“At CTM, we work with a broad range of customers across multiple industries and markets, and we are proud to support all our customers in achieving greater technological accessibility and inclusion for their employees.

“Our technology philosophy is simple – we are committed to developing highly intuitive and easy-to-use tools for all stakeholders across the travel experience. We are extremely proud to be able to deliver this experience to all our customers. Our recent WCAG accreditation for Lightning is testament to this commitment and we continue to work with our clients to assist us with user acceptance testing.”

Sources: * Scope / Scope / RNIB / Colour Blind Awareness / Hearing Link / NHS