Let Google Help You Fly
If airline sites make you want to do a little head banging, Google Flights can be a calmer starting point. This walkthrough shows how to search, review results, work the menus, and turn on price tracking with JAWS or NVDA, and yes, the pure clickers are welcome too.
Finding a flight these days can be difficult when you use access technology. Many times, when you do find a site that seems to offer great deals, you find that accessibility is either happenstance or nonexistent. Apps on mobile devices seem to do a bit better, but still, there are thousands of apps and sites that take time to learn.
The good news is that many flight apps and websites you have heard about and have likely fought with in the past can be used by one website.
Google Flights works great with Firefox, Chrome, JAWS, and NVDA, and pure clickers should have no difficulty using the site to find flights.
Getting to the site is as simple as typing google.com/flights into your browser address bar and pressing Enter. If you prefer, flights.google.com also works.
Getting Flight Info
As soon as you arrive at the Google Flights site, you’re placed into the Where To box. Here you can type in where you want to go. You can use the airport code, as in SFO for San Francisco, or you can just type in the name of the city. You don’t need to type in the entire city name. Once you type in a few letters, you can simply arrow down to the city that you want to go to. Clickers, just click as soon as you see the city name pop up.
Next, just tab or click on the departure date box. Here, all you need to do is type in a partial date such as 7/13 for July 13th. Next, tab or click on the return date box and type in a date for that box as well.
Next, tab to the Done button. Click it or press enter on it. You’ll instantly be placed within the flight info list.
Now, JUST press enter or click on the button for the flight you’re interested in. You’ll be shown a details page with the flight info on it. From this page, you can also share it, or get flight notifications for price changes. You can also begin to book the flight. Note that flight bookings are performed on the air carrier such as Delta and not on Google’s site.
From within the list of flights, you can also hit the Show Details button to get more info about the flight. It’ll also allow you to select this flight if you like the details. You can hit the Hide Details to make them vanish again.
Other Google Flight Search Options
As you’re looking through flights, you may want to change the number of passengers, or set how many stops your flight will have. Google Flights can do this also. To go through these settings with the minimum hassle, I recommend getting out of the normal browsing mode used in JAWS and NVDA.
JAWS users, press JAWS KEY+Z, NVDA users press NVDA+Space Bar. This will allow you to tab through the page and activate choices easier. Clickers just ignore that last part and keep clicking…
You’re going to tab through a series of menus which can all be activated by pressing Enter. If you decide you really don’t want to make any changes in a menu, press Escape.
Trip Menu
For the screen reader users, you’re going to tab until you get to the Round-Trip menu. Press Enter if you want to change it. Once in the menu, continue to tab and press the Space Bar on either Round Trip, One Way, or Multicity. Press Enter on your choice and keep tabbing.
Passenger Menu
Next is the Passenger menu. You’re going to do the same thing for this menu. Once in the choice’s, things will act just a bit differently than in the last menu. If you want more than one adult, you’ll tab to the Increase button and press Enter on it. Visually you’ll see that two adults are now selected. Screen reader users will also hear the same message instantly. Within the Passenger’s menu, you also have a set of Increase/Decrease buttons for the following: children aged 2-12 selected, infants in seat selected, and infants on lap selected.
You also have a Done and a Cancel button. Once you have made your selection, press Enter or click the Done button.
Flight Class
Flight class is set to economy by default, but you can change this to premium economy, business, or first class.
Swap Destination and Origin
You can swap the destination and origin if you like by pressing the Swap Origin and Destination button. Note that your screen reader may not indicate this is a button, but it’s located between the Where From and Where To boxes.
Bags
The Bags menu is similar to the Passenger’s menu. The first set of Increase/Decrease buttons is for carry-on bags. You also have buttons for checked bags.
Stops Menu
Here you can choose how many stops, sometimes called layovers, that you would like for your flight. You can select Any, Nonstop Only, One Stop or Fewer, or Two Stops or Fewer. Once you have made your choice here by either clicking or pressing Space Bar on your choice, click Close, or tab and press Enter on the Close button.
Airlines Menu
By default, all airlines are selected. There are a ton in here I have never heard of. By now you should have no difficulty selecting or deselecting any airlines you don’t want to be part of the search.
Price Menu
This is a slider that you can adjust with your ARROW keys. This menu allows you to select the price you wouldn’t like to exceed. For instance, you can set the price for under $500. This is set to Any by default.
Times Menu
This menu is a bit different than the rest. You have two tabs, one for Outbound and one for Inbound times. You can tab to each one of these and press SPACE to select it.
For each tab, you have sliders for departure and arrival times. You can simply use your ARROWS to adjust the times for each flight.
Connecting Airports
This menu has sliders to adjust the time for layover. You can set these for less than two hours as an example. You can also uncheck any connecting airport that you don’t want a layover in.
More Menu
Here you can adjust the duration of your flight. This slider is set to Any by default.
You can also show or hide tickets. By default all tickets will be shown. It may be cheaper to buy flights as separate tickets from one or more partners, but you must book the tickets individually.
Track Prices
You can hit a button that allows you to get email alerts when a price for a flight changes.
Graphs
I found that the graphs for dates and pricing offered weren’t useful for screen readers. Clickers go nuts.
Nearby Airports
This button allows you to get prices for airports close to your destination. Just tab and hear or view the results.
Sort By Menu
This allows you to sort the results via the following parameters: Best Flights, Price, Departure Time, Arrival Time, and Duration.
Frequently asked questions
Is Google Flights a booking site?
Not exactly. It’s a search and comparison tool. When you choose a booking option, you’re sent to the airline or travel partner to complete the purchase.
Can I get alerts when prices change?
Yes. Use Track Prices to get email alerts when the price changes.
Do I have to type full city names?
No. Type a few letters, then use Down Arrow to a suggestion and press Enter. Clickers can click the suggestion as soon as it appears.
Conclusion We Landed!
We finally made it. Hopefully this brief walkthrough will help you setup your next flight faster and with less head banging. Until next time…
Qapla!