Body
Anyone with a physical disability who has traveled by commercial airplane knows that it’s an uncomfortable and sometimes perilous experience. Just getting in and out of tight-fitting seats can be a daunting challenge and tiny airplane lavatories are virtually inaccessible. Wheelchairs are frequently damaged or lost in transit, leaving travelers desperate and stranded at their destinations. Does it have to be so tough?
Shu Cole, PhD, a professor of health and wellness design at the Indiana University at Bloomington who studies the travel and hospitality industry, doesn’t think so, and she hopes to be able to contribute to potential solutions. Cole is working with Jacqueline Kish, PhD, OT, a post-doctoral fellow, and Allen Heinemann, PhD, Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR), on a five-year, $2.5 million study looking at ways to make travel more accessible for people with physical disabilities and mobility limitations. “We want to understand people’s travel experience and how it affects their community participation or societal participation in general,” she says. “I don’t have that lived experience of having a disability. Allen’s group provides that understanding.”
Cole’s path to health sciences research has been a journey of its own. She was born and raised in the city of Tianjin, China, a short high-speed train ride away from the country’s capital, Beijing. She majored in English language and literature and accepted a job at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. But Cole had always been fascinated by the travel and tourism industry and wanted to head to the U.S. to get a master’s degree in business. She didn’t have that kind of money, so she accepted a fully funded scholarship to study Western philosophy at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
Leaving China in the early 1990s after the Tiananmen Square student protests and massacre with a one-way ticket, Cole had heard that Texas was different from the rest of the U.S., more like the Wild West. When she got there, though, Cole found the people to be extremely friendly and welcoming. She ended up staying in Texas for almost eight years getting her master’s and then moving on to a PhD in her true area of interest, recreation, parks and tourism sciences.
Cole did her dissertation research in customer expectations at the wildlife refuge near the university, which was popular with bird watchers. By then, she realized that she wanted to do research into tourism and hospitality rather than take a job in the industry. “I wanted to make a contribution to these businesses to improve their services,” she says. Cole also was ready to see more of the U.S., especially the coasts. She had met and married her husband while in graduate school, and the two of them landed jobs in schools in the California State University system. A year later in 2000, with teaching experience under their belts, both got jobs at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Hers was in the Department of Parks, Recreation, Sport and Tourism and it was at Mizzou where she became interested in the experiences of travelers with disabilities. Six years later, Cole received tenure.
Cole was happy with her new focus, but her husband wanted to get closer to the East Coast, where he had grown up. The couple’s next move took them to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where Cole further refined her research interests to include travel and tourism for people with disabilities and older adults with mobility issues. Cole, now 58, understands that while airlines want to provide good service to all their passengers, they also are focused on increasing revenue and profit, which often means fitting more seats in limited spaces. That conflicts with moves that would make air travel more comfortable and accessible for people with disabilities.
She also realizes that “by the end of the five years of this project, we’re not going to be able to solve all the problems.” Yet Cole hopes that by raising the issue with airline managers and executives, the accessibility of everything from seats to giant airline terminals will become a higher priority. “Hopefully, they will understand better how to prioritize inclusive travel and invest more in it,” she says. “There are no easy solutions, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way. I want to be able to fly when I’m 80. That’s one of my motivations.”