I don't want to drag this way off topic, but it is true that some customer service improvements that everyone would like, and that are used by other suppliers such as luggage vendors mentioned above, would also remove some barriers that I experience.

In response to the specific tangents about whether I have kicked it upstairs and how it is handled elsewhere, the comment/compliment/complaint form has a specific classification for accessibility issues, and those are routed to a designated department, and I should say the response time is better than other types of comments. The response from the designated department is from a high-ish level of responsibility for accommodations.

When a situation has been poorly handled and I report it, I usually try to make constructive recommendations about how to efficiently avoid the bad experience. I am not looking for "compensation". I am actually giving advice that falls within my professional sphere of expertise, not just cranky customer feedback. When they deny or disparage my counterfactual recommendation, they usually tell me to take it to the CTA or the US counterpart. Never a suggestion to escalate to a higher level internally. I have had mixed results at the external forums, at most a reprimand, no changes required.

It would not occur to me to take it "up the food chain" - I am a nobody. In their CTA complaint responses, they have thrown a lot of defence attorney time at me making that clear.

I have not tried to book anything on other airlines. (As a nobody, if I want any creature comforts of status, I need everything on 014. My flying patterns do not give me other options to consolidate my traffic to a status level.)

In the air, US airlines know what they are doing because ADA. Other airlines do little (and big) things like ordering from your seat (Virgin) or indeed pre-ordered food (SQ BtC) and captions right there in the IFE TV service (United) and a sign language safety message (SQ - though can't recall if I recognized what sign language it was). AC's policy (as told to me by a student who was AC ML FA) is to approach the deaf passenger and orally ask them "can you lipread?" The thinking is that it would embarrass someone to insinuate that they were deaf by bringing them a printed note. The one sentence everyone can lipread is "can you lipread?" I usually say no, and I don't think they got the joke even once. From there, it is hit and miss, from never being acknowledged by SD or FA at all (neither for status nor assistance reasons) through to the personal tutorial on seat-belt fastening (when I already had the seat belt on). The median response is to be gracious and happy to accommodate and cheerfully commit to bringing me notes of anything notable and then not doing anything.

The designated department at HQ has certain things that they can really make happen. Those services may not be what is wanted or needed, but boy, it happens. I can't recall how I did it, but on one occasion, my PNR ended up being flagged by the designated department for services at the airport on a connection in EU. Although this service gets expedited security, it also results in being frogmarched past all the shopping in the terminal that I wanted to do, and being dumped in front of the gate with time to kill. On several occasions, I have been met with wheelchairs, sometimes with privacy-breaching iPads with my name on them being waved on front of one and all. I am not answering to a porter with a wheelchair anyway, but particularly not in a way that violates my anonymity with respect to the other travellers.

Advocating for access is a "tax" on people with disabilities. It siphons off a fraction of every day at work and ever day of free time, just getting things to work. There was a time when I spent 30 hours a week doing squeaky wheel stuff. Now, I will let the official entities like Canadian Association of the Deaf do the lobbying. The sad reality is that most deaf people do not do much travelling, and have priorities more along the lines of access to competent education, patient-professional interaction in medical settings that rises above the veterinary level, access to employment, and the like.

Back to our regularly scheduled discussion of luggage!