A study by researchers at Rutgers found that guests who disclose a disability are less likely to be approved for a room and more likely to be rejected.

Guests who didn’t disclose a disability received “pre-approval” from an Airbnb host 74.5 percent of the time. But that number dipped sharply for guests who disclosed a disability. A person who was blind had a 49.7 percent approval rate and a person with dwarfism had a 60.9 percent approval rate.

The approval rate dropped further for guests with cerebral palsy and spinal cord injuries. A person with cerebral palsy had a 43.4 percent approval rate, and a person with spinal cord injuries had a 24.8 percent approval rate.

The researchers said that some of the gap between pre-approvals could be explained by hosts stopping to ask questions about what accommodations a guest will need.

The researchers believe that doesn’t explain everything. If you look at outright rejections, there’s a clear difference: guests without disabilities were only rejected 16.8 percent of the time, while guests with the four disabilities the researchers studied were rejected anywhere from 20.1 percent of the time for guests with dwarfism, to 59.8 percent of the time for guests with spinal cord injuries.

The study was conducted over the course of six months, with more than 3,800 booking requests being made across the United States’ 48 contiguous states. All guests were given profile pictures with men around 30 years old.

Halfway through the study, Airbnb introduced new nondiscrimination policies that guests were required to agree to. But the researchers say responses “did not vary significantly” even once the new policy was in place.

Airbnb said that most bookings on its platform are made through the Instant Book feature, which doesn’t require host approval. It also said, “discrimination of any kind on the Airbnb platform, including on the basis of ability, is abhorrent, a violation of our anti-discrimination policy, and will result in permanent removal from our platform.”

Airbnb has begun releasing more detailed tools for hosts to let them better indicate the accessibility of their listings, which could help prospective guests browsing the site. Those tools have rolled out to half of all hosts so far and will expand to guests this summer.

Airbnb also says it’s already following some of the suggestions to resolve discrimination made by the Rutgers study, including educating hosts on Americans with Disabilities Act standards.

Source: New York Times