Airbus brought an expanded portfolio of products designed to aid accessibility to AIX, ranging from wheelchairs to tactile placards.
Many of the developments are being carried out with partners, or even with Airbus taking only a marketing role.
“We can only solve the challenges ahead as a global team, as an industry, as a cabin and cargo interior industry. Nobody can do that alone,” stressed Eric Ezell, head of cabin and cargo innovation. “That’s why we’re totally open to partnerships.
“We have active partnerships already in place for a variety of topics and the essence of that is that we’re seeking to collaborate, to collect views especially with the affected groups who are working a lot to set the scene and give concrete examples.”
Axel Becker, manager, trend research, emphasises Airbus’s customer centric approach, looking at the passengers and focusing not only on wheelchairs but on all types of disabilities – blind and low-vision, deaf and hard of hearing, cognitive, permanent wheelchair use, restricted mobility and so on.
“We’re looking at the pain points, the challenges with regard to cabin and operations – and then looking for solutions,” Becker says.
“We came up with what we call the Magic Triangle, which has three elements. First, the use of the personal wheelchair. Second, digital solutions for blind and low vision, but also deaf and hard of hearing and cognitive disabilities. And third, enhancement of a PRM lavatory for passengers with reduced mobility. The last one is driven by regulation in the US at the moment.”
A recent co-marketing initiative is with Vilnius-based J&C Aero. “This is the jump seat duo, which is a combination of a standard wall-mounted crew attendant seat which can be transformed into an onboard wheelchair to transfer people with restricted mobility from their seat, for example, to the lavatory.
“Not all airlines carry an onboard wheelchair all the time,” Becker notes. “If they do carry one, they need storage space, but not with this. It’s not going to be used during the most of the flight, only on takeoff and landing when the crew is going to sit there and lavatories are unavailable anyway. There’s no overlap in use case. It’s either one situation or the other.
“Again, our role is that we support the certification,” he adds. “For example, we’re doing testing in the coming weeks in our definition centre in order to understand whether it works with the movement of the wheelchair, and testing it with real persons. [If all is successful] then we are moving towards a certification process and want to make it part of our catalogue where airlines can choose it as part of their customisation.”
Airbus is also promoting the Air4All concept in a co-marketing initiative with Delta Flight Products. “We are not part of this project engineering-wise, but we are aiming to test with them, for example on the ground or in one of our test aircraft,” Becker says.
Airbus is also highlighting tactile placards for those who are blind or have low vision. These have been used in the cabin for many years, because they are more universal than text and easier to understand.
“For blind persons some airlines use braille, but braille is only used by 10%-20% of blind people,” Becker says. “Also, it’s language specific. So if you know English braille, you probably cannot read Italian or French braille.
”That’s why we came up with this idea of getting the top 10 tactile placards for the cabin – the wheelchair sign, the bell, the light, attendant call button, the flush button, things like that. We’ve created some tests for our airline customers so they can try this out and are looking for the top 10 placards which then can be used on all aircraft, from all OEMs, all over the world.
“Once more, we are learning from our cross-industry partners, so what is used in trains and buses should work in the air,” Becker says.
