What responsibility do you have for knowing your rights? For effectively communicating your needs? Are you able to advocate for your own rights in a way that leaves the person you are confronting better educated and more likely to assist the next passenger with a disability? Do you make use of the airline's Complaints Resolution Officer (CRO)? Do you share what you have learned about traveling with others in the disabled community?
Know Your Travel Companion
Be your own best companion first. Know what you expect out of a travel companion.
A travel companion, especially a good friend, can sometimes be a mirror. Don't burden them with the thankless job of reflecting back someone who you don't want to see. There is never a shortage of legitimate reasons to squabble when traveling and in close quarters! What does he or she expect out of you? Can you honestly and clearly communicate your own limits? Do you know each other's habits with smoking, drinking, drugs? Each other's sleep patterns and pet peeves? Do you have an agreement about borrowing and lending items or money while traveling? Have you established rules for disagreeing? For fighting? Are you comfortable discussing your disability with your potential companion? Have you done so already? Have you started getting to know your travel companion long enough before the trip to allow each of you to evolve a realistic set of expectations for your travel together?
Maybe your fellow traveler is a service or companion animal companion or a pet.
Have you arranged for the necessary health exams and vaccinations? Do you know the companion animal policies relevant to transportation, lodging, or foreign travel? Have you prepared for the effect of a different climate or a different diet? Can you be certain that your companion will receive adequate exercise and have access to emergency medical care?
Know Your Destination
Destination research is the least overlooked of the Six Knows. Common holiday spots can be very effective in communicating their image and appeal. The danger lies in being lulled into assuming that the specific accessibility information that you need is as easily available.
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