Passenger transport

What the EAA covers here

Passenger transport covers air, bus, coach, rail, and waterborne travel for consumers, across four surfaces named together: websites, mobile apps, electronic ticketing, and — where a transport operator provides them — interactive self-service terminals such as check-in and ticket-vending machines. Real-time travel information, timetables, and disruption updates fall inside the same scope, whichever surface delivers them.

Terminals used specifically for a transport service are reviewed under this sector rather than under the general self-service-terminals category, because the transport context brings its own constraints — journey timing, platform and gate information, accessibility assistance requests — that a generic terminal review wouldn’t capture.

Websites, apps, and terminals together

A single journey typically crosses several of these surfaces in sequence: search and booking on a website or app, an e-ticket delivered to a phone, and a check-in or boarding step that may happen at a kiosk rather than online at all. A review that only looks at the booking website and stops there misses the terminal step a passenger with a disability may depend on more heavily than most travellers do.

Real-time information

Delays, platform and gate changes, and disruption notices are time-sensitive in a way that raises the stakes of getting them wrong: a change announced only as a scrolling visual banner, or only as a station tannoy announcement, reaches only part of the travelling public. The same information needs a route to both a screen reader or visual display and an audible announcement, not just one of the two.

What auditors look at first

On the booking side, a review checks whether the purchase flow gives enough time to complete payment without an assistive-technology user being timed out, and whether seat, fare, and add-on selections expose their current state programmatically rather than only through colour or shading. On the terminal side, it checks whether every touchscreen action has a physical or audio-guided alternative, and whether real-time information — delays, gate changes — reaches both a visual display and an audible channel rather than defaulting to whichever one is cheaper to build. A last check usually covers assistance requests: whether a passenger can actually notify staff of an accessibility need through the same booking flow, rather than a separate phone-only process bolted on beside it.