Our ambition is to be the airline of choice for customers with access requirements and we’re working hard to ensure our flying experience is accessible to everyone. We know that we can’t do this alone and we’re continuing to collaborate with our hub airport partner at London Heathrow, worldwide airport network, aircraft manufacturer business partners, and key stakeholders to identify and remove obstacles to accessible air-travel.
BA Accessibility Advisory Panel
In 2025, we hosted three separate BA Accessibility Advisory Panels, a group of customers with lived experience of disabilities. The panel brings to life the mantra “Nothing about us, without us”, which champions the belief that we need to involve those with a disability or access needs when creating products and services.
The panel was extended in 2025 to include broader pan-disability representation, so regular insights continue to help us shape our accessibility strategy.
In 2025 we made some great strides, but we know we have much more work to do.
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Advancing Inclusive Design & Accessibility
We’re committed to inclusive design and continuous improvement initiatives to remove physical and attitudinal barriers, as well as evolving our customer policies, processes and procedures to better support people with disabilities.
Over 2025, we embedded our partnership with Open Doors Organization. This not for profit disability advocacy uses their state-of-the-art technology to automate service dog applications for air travel, easing the process for those travelling with a recognised assistance dog.
MIMA
We believe that disability inclusion is everyone’s job at British Airways. So we partnered with MIMA, an Inclusive Design and Accessibility agency to help us continue our journey to embed an accessibility mindset across our business.
To build on our existing proposition, MIMA worked in partnership with our Global Learning Academy to provide training sessions for our corporate head office and our operational support functions on inclusive design and accessibility.
With a combination of face-to-face and online sessions, and the launch of an information hub with recorded content, we’re proud to continue empowering our colleagues to support our customers with access requirements.
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Better Access to Information
Via our digital platforms and the provision of a specialist customer care team, we’re working to improve access to information and services to enable customers to make more informed decisions before and during their travel, via our digital platforms and the provision of a specialist customer care team.
In 2025, our digital platforms were redesigned with accessibility specifically in mind, with a full rollout in 2026. Our dedicated Accessibility customer care team in the UK has grown and extended opening hours from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week.
In times of disruption, we continue to prioritise customers who have requested airline accommodations due to access requirements. Our cabin crew are able to engage with our customer care team in-flight to proactively organise access needs identified onboard, to facilitate a more inclusive experience upon arrival, or prompt service recovery if needed.
Hearlo
In 2025, we introduced Hearlo, a mobile app designed to overcome communication barriers for people with speech or hearing disabilities. This free app is available on the Apple and Google Play stores in more than ten languages, including Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. Customers can communicate by either typing or selecting a Hearlo Card – an intuitive set of pictograms designed for every touch point, from check-in to in-flight service.
The app offers comprehensive accessibility: you can customise font size, style, including dyslexia-friendly options, text case, playback speed, vibration feedback and utilise real-time audio transcription and text-to-speech translation. Crucially, once installed and customised, the app does not require internet access, supporting individual needs throughout the journey.
Meet and Assist Service
In 2025, to help those with accessibility needs travelling from India to Heathrow feel confident and empowered, we introduced a bespoke Meet and Assist Service to remove any wayfinding and language barriers for our customers.
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Improving Colleague Learning and Engagement
We’re striving to enhance the experience of customers with both visible and non-visible accessibility needs, through our empathy and understanding. To better support our colleagues, we’ve developed targeted colleague communication campaigns and learning and engagement activities to improve the awareness and understanding of the barriers that some of our customers may experience.
Our ‘Beyond Accessibility’ resource hub is available to all colleagues and includes a range of videos that capture the experiences of people living with disabilities when travelling. These both raise awareness of disability and equip them with the tools and skills to remove attitudinal barriers.
We also host multiple colleague roadshows and awareness events throughout our operation and corporate functions in collaboration with key partners including Alzheimer’s Society, as we continue to spotlight non-visible disabilities such as dementia.
We’re also proud to have introduced a network of cabin crew Accessibility Champions to raise awareness of disabilities. A number of these champions have attended dedicated engagement sessions with specialist knowledge and relevant information to support their colleagues onboard. We continue to invite their involvement with internal initiatives such as the Flight Ready Programme – Autism, a programme to enable people with ASD to familiarise themselves with the airport and cabin environment prior to their journey.
Supporting Customers with Non-visible Disabilities
Our partnership with Alzheimer’s Society seeks to create a more dementia-inclusive airline. With a greater understanding of dementia, our colleagues can provide better support to individuals and families, ensuring that they can travel more confidently to the places they love most. Through our dedicated voluntary Dementia Friends training programme, colleagues can learn more about what it’s like to live with dementia and turn that understanding into action.
We continued our active participation in the sunflower scheme, initiated by Hidden Disabilities, to support our customers with disabilities and health conditions that may not be immediately apparent.
The British Airways Visual Guide helps passengers prepare for their flight to help make them feel as comfortable as possible during their journey. The guide was produced in partnership with Learning Rose and is endorsed by the National Autistic Society.
We have worked collaboratively with London Heathrow Airport, one of our hub airports, and our assistance partner to launch the Flight Ready Programme – Autism. We know that air travel can sometimes feel out of reach for those with neurodiversity such as autism and by enabling customers with ASD to familiarise themselves with the airport and cabin environment, we seek to help remove barriers to processes and the built environment of what can be a sensory-overwhelming experience. We aim to conduct these familiarisation visits regularly throughout the year.
We continue supporting those with deafness who are British Sign Language (BSL) users via the relay service SignLive to engage with our accessibility customer care team. Our safety demonstration video is also available in American Sign Language (ASL) and BSL on our website or via the inflight entertainment system. Alternatively, cabin crew can facilitate access via a QR code from their mobile devices.
UK Department for Transport
We continue to actively work with the UK Department for Transport to help make air travel more accessible. This includes participating in the Accessible Aviation Implementation Group, an industry-led initiative with a consortium of airports, airlines, assistance providers and members of the disabled community, whose objective is to embed the recommendations published in July 2024 by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.
Valuable 500
We’re a member of the Valuable 500, a network of 500 companies and partners that work together to end disability exclusion. As part of our membership, we’ve committed to build on our work and further integrate accessibility into all our projects and practices, systems, learning and products.
By listening more effectively to our customers, we’ll meet their individual needs and prioritise the issues that are important to them. We’ll also work more collaboratively with our partners at airports to ensure our customers have a more consistent experience when they travel. And we’ll make continuous improvements through digital innovation whilst committing to discussing accessibility at leadership team level.