While three quarters of disabled people prefer to buy tickets online, only 20 per cent of venue websites cater for their access needs. Instead, people must rely on using premium rate phone lines, prove their disability and discuss their accessibility needs each time they buy tickets.
AiE’s State of Access Report 2014 draws on the experiences of 300 anonymous disabled and Deaf people. 95 per cent of them reported experiencing problems buying tickets, 88 per cent felt discriminated against, 83 per cent had been put off buying tickets, and 47 per cent had considered taking legal action. Major ticket sellers like Ticketmaster, SeeTickets and Seatwave do not have online booking systems for disabled people, and disabled tickets are never included in pre-sales.
The Telegraph reports that AiE’s CEO, Suzanne Ball, has said that the issues would be resolved if clear access information was made available before gigs, disabled people were given the same ticket-buying options as non-disabled people, and there was a universal proof of disability.
AiE points out that the loss of sales caused by inaccessibility is potentially huge. When the Reading and Leeds festivals increased their accessible ticket sales between 2012 and 2013, it generated an estimated extra income of £187,000.
Last year, it was reported that the world’s largest online ticketseller Ticketmaster would be phasing out CAPTCHAs (which ask users to type out words to prove they are human), and replacing them with questions. CAPTCHAs are notoriously frustrating for blind and vision impaired users, and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has started a petition calling for companies to abandon them.
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