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Surehands assistive lifts in more hotels each year!

February 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

As the needs of travelers with disabilities are more and more recognized by the travel industry, amenities grow and evolve as well. We’re excited to watch an increasing number of hotels add assistive lift devices to their rooms for travelers who have limited mobility and need help getting in and out of bed as well as the pool.

SureHands is one company who’s got their eye on this rolling ball! Their lift devices are top knotch, and include intricate track systems, supportive slings, cups or frames, frictionless slides, and prone-style trollies that are geared for all needs from independent and assistive living to institutional use. Only recently did these top-end systems start making their way into the hotel industry, and already SureHands is gaining momentum with this great idea.

SureHands has taken on Las Vegas by storm, and has had a welcoming response from the Bellagio, Treasure Island, Mirage, Both Wynn Properties and the new luxurious ARIA at the City Center. Next time you’re in Vegas, make sure to check them out!

Filed Under: adaptive travel, assistive aids

Surehands assistive lifts in more hotels each year!

February 1, 2010 By

As the needs of travelers with disabilities are more and more recognized by the travel industry, amenities grow and evolve as well. We’re excited to watch an increasing number of hotels add assistive lift devices to their rooms for travelers who have limited mobility and need help getting in and out of bed as well as the pool.

SureHands is one company who’s got their eye on this rolling ball! Their lift devices are top knotch, and include intricate track systems, supportive slings, cups or frames, frictionless slides, and prone-style trollies that are geared for all needs from independent and assistive living to institutional use. Only recently did these top-end systems start making their way into the hotel industry, and already SureHands is gaining momentum with this great idea.

SureHands has taken on Las Vegas by storm, and has had a welcoming response from the Bellagio, Treasure Island, Mirage, Both Wynn Properties and the new luxurious ARIA at the City Center. Next time you’re in Vegas, make sure to check them out!

Filed Under: adaptive travel, assistive aids

Training Airlines on Handling Wheelchairs

January 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I spent the first three days of this week in Houston, Texas training Continental Airlines’ ground crew how to handle assistive devices, such as wheelchairs and scooters, and came away with a new appreciation for what that team does.

This training was organized by Eric Lipp of the Open Doors Organization (www.opendoorsnfp.org), with the help of Michael Bliwas and The Mobility Shop (https://themobilityshop.com/), and we all agreed that this was a successful first stop on what we hope will be a large, comprehensive tour to train airline ground crews around the globe.

The purpose of these trainings is not only to teach crews how to properly lift and stow assistive devices, but how to take care of them, disassemble them, and return them to customers in one piece. Airlines currently spend way too much of their budget replacing and repairing broken assistive equipment and with today’s economy, we hope we are teaching employees how to save their company money and avoid fines “from the ground up!”

As always we were very impressed with Continental’s employees; they came with a sincere eagerness to learn, tamper with, and fully explore the subject. We look forward to working with other airlines and are excited for Continental to once again lead the way in the topic of handling customers with disabilities.

Unfortunately due to technical difficulties with our video camera we don’t have an example of this training, but we hope to get some useful tools up soon!

Go Anywhere, Do Anything! -Craig

Filed Under: air travel, airlines, assistive aids, wheelchair

Training Airlines on Handling Wheelchairs

January 22, 2010 By

I spent the first three days of this week in Houston, Texas training Continental Airlines’ ground crew how to handle assistive devices, such as wheelchairs and scooters, and came away with a new appreciation for what that team does.

This training was organized by Eric Lipp of the Open Doors Organization (www.opendoorsnfp.org), with the help of Michael Bliwas and The Mobility Shop (https://themobilityshop.com/), and we all agreed that this was a successful first stop on what we hope will be a large, comprehensive tour to train airline ground crews around the globe.

The purpose of these trainings is not only to teach crews how to properly lift and stow assistive devices, but how to take care of them, disassemble them, and return them to customers in one piece. Airlines currently spend way too much of their budget replacing and repairing broken assistive equipment and with today’s economy, we hope we are teaching employees how to save their company money and avoid fines “from the ground up!”

As always we were very impressed with Continental’s employees; they came with a sincere eagerness to learn, tamper with, and fully explore the subject. We look forward to working with other airlines and are excited for Continental to once again lead the way in the topic of handling customers with disabilities.

Unfortunately due to technical difficulties with our video camera we don’t have an example of this training, but we hope to get some useful tools up soon!

Go Anywhere, Do Anything! -Craig

Filed Under: air travel, airlines, assistive aids, wheelchair

@CaptionFish expands for the Blind

November 13, 2009 By

A revolutionary new website makes finding movies with captioning easy! As part of a massive effort to support entertainment accessibility for all people with disabilities, Captionfish launched in Beta format in May of this year with the goal of providing captioned film results for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Some highlights of the first beta release included:

  • Effortless Searching: Using its Instant CC Film Finder, Captionfish offers the easiest way for visitors to find captioned movie results within 30 miles of their location.
  • Comprehensive results: Captionfish’s Instant CC Film Finder results can be customized for up to 7 days in the future or up to 60 miles away from a specified location.
  • Open Captions and Rear Window® identification: Captionfish provides easy to identify icons that distinguish between an Open Captioned or Rear Window® Captioned showing.
  • Mobile edition: Captionfish provides a mobile website optimized for mobile phones so deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors can find captioned movie results while they are on the go.
  • Closed Captioned Trailers: Captionfish links to a growing list of closed captioned movie trailers so the deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors can enjoy previews of current and upcoming movie releases.
  • RSS Feed for custom results: Captionfish enables an RSS feed so each visitor can check for the latest captioned film results using their preferred RSS reader wherever they like.

In August they improved upon their platform with these additions:

  • Theater Directory: Captionfish shares all its theater information with you. This allows you to discover theaters around you that are currently providing or have provided captioned showtimes. This also gives you an opportunity to let us know about theaters that we don’t know about.
  • Movie Directory: We’ve opened up access to all of the movies and captioned trailers in our system. You’re no longer limited to the titles that are playing in your area. We also give you early access to captioned trailers for upcoming movies, sometimes even those a few months out, like The Twilight Saga New Moon.
  • Map/Directions: Found in the Theater Directory pages, Captionfish provides maps and directions to help all visitors plan their trip to the movies!
  • Simplified Searching: The ability to change locations is now the most prominent feature. All visitors can search ANYWHERE in the USA to their heart’s content!

And even more in October:

  • Blog: Follow Captionfish updates on our new blog.
  • Captioned Trailer Updates: Follow @cctrailers on Twitter or subscribe to our Movie Directory RSS feed to stay on top of all of the new captioned trailers that we’re putting up.
  • Caption Type Filtering: Filter the showtime listings to movies that are being shown using your preferred caption type (Open Captioned, Rear Window® Captioned, or Show All, if you don’t care).
  • Share Captionfish With Others: Let your family and friends know about Captionfish! Hand out flyers or place a badge on your blog and/or website!

This month they expanded yet again to include helpful information and now supports DVS (Descriptive Narration) in movie results! So now additionally people who are blind or have low vision can now filter their movie results to show just DVS movies by clicking the DVS only filter option. They hope this will help make finding movies easier, and empower them to make more informed consumer decisions to support theaters that proactively provide accessible solutions for the blind/low vision community.

  • E-mail notifications: Get e-mail notifications when Captionfish finds captioned showtimes in your area for the movie(s) that you want to see! Look for this feature in the sidebar next to every trailer that you view.
  • Revamped Movies Directory: We redesigned the movies directory page (now called trailer directory) to better organize and display all of our captioned trailers. New releases, upcoming movies, current showings, and previous showings are all listed separately in an easy to find format.
  • Captioned Movie Indicator: There are times when Captionfish has shown captioned trailers for movies that are released without captions, leading the visitors to think that movie will be released with captions. To prevent confusion, we now tell you which movies are, or will be captioned in the theaters. Each of the individual trailer pages has a note on the right sidebar under the movie poster that lets you know if captions will be, are, or were available for the movie in theaters.

    • Filed Under: assistive aids, blind, deaf, hearing, movies, visual