Wisk Aero, a leading Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) company, and ReD Associates, a humanities and social science-based strategy consultancy, have released a whitepaper that explores the AAM industry’s potential for providing safe, fast, and affordable mobility solutions for people with disabilities.

Despite mobility’s rapid evolution, many forms of transit still face challenges in providing consistent, efficient, affordable, and accessible services, and people with disabilities continue to encounter barriers to mobility. The rise of Advanced Air Mobility and the development of air taxis for passenger use presents an opportunity to address these barriers and improve the quality of mobility experiences.

The whitepaper, eVTOL Air Taxis: New Opportunities for Equitable Transport, synthesizes the most significant challenges for AAM around creating a valuable and equitable travel experience for everyone, and provides a call to action to mobility providers to place accessibility at the center of the industry.

The paper also summarizes the research conducted by Wisk and ReD, as well as the key findings. The findings underscore the need for AAM to redefine accessibility and emphasize five distinct levels of accessibility:

• Access: Ensuring physical and informational access for people with disabilities in mobility spaces and services
• Physical Safety: Addressing concerns related to physical injury, exposure to illness, and discomfort during travel
• Emotional Safety: Mitigating the stress and vulnerability experienced during travel, including invasive security checks and interactions with fellow passengers
• Equal Expenditure & Efficiency: Streamlining processes and reducing waiting times, energy expenditure, and the need for extensive support
• Joy & Inclusion: Promoting the emotional and social aspects of travel, avoiding feelings of isolation and marginalization

“Technology has greatly improved the lives of individuals with disabilities,” said Uri Tzarnotzky, Head of Product Design at Wisk. “However, there is still a disparity between advancements in technology and the transportation and mobility experiences for many, including those with disabilities. At Wisk, our goal is to deliver safe, everyday flight through our autonomous air taxi. Pursuing only the essential minimums of accessibility isn’t enough. By thinking about accessibility from the start, we can realize the full potential of this new form of technology and ensure that it serves everyone. Developing ways to reduce the friction inherent to multi-modal journeys for passengers with disabilities is a priority at Wisk.”

“For years, we’ve seen in our work on mobility how challenging moving around cities can be, particularly for the large number of people with disabilities,” said Ian Dull, Partner at ReD. “By deeply understanding the needs of people with disabilities and addressing them from the ground up in its aircraft, Wisk is ensuring that next generation urban mobility offers truly accessible experiences, not Band-aid solutions, and pushing other players in the AAM ecosystem to raise the bar.”

Wisk partnered with ReD Associates to investigate how AAM can provide an inclusive mobility experience and develop a whitepaper for the industry. Wisk and ReD undertook a mixed methods study of people with disabilities’ unmet mobility needs and challenges around intra-urban and exurban travel (travel to destinations within and around cities) in line with future AAM use cases.