The Idea Place Posts

It is nice to see that Safeway has updated their iOS app for online shopping with an improved VoiceOver experience. I’m not a regular user of this app but as luck would have it, I happened to use it over the weekend before the update. So it was nice to read the description of what’s new for the 2.6 update saying, “Enhanced usability and performance for users of VoiceOver and other built-in iOS accessibility features.”

Browsing the virtual shopping isles and other product areas seems much improved. Each product is now a heading, meaning you can use VoiceOver’s navigation by heading feature to jump from product to product. I do wish the headings were put on the entries in the list where the price for the product was given as that would have made browsing even faster. As it stands now, you must move to the product heading and then back two objects to read the same product name that includes a price when using VoiceOver object by object navigation.

For example, when on a product listing page, you can set VoiceOver to heading navigation and step from product to product with swipes up or down. When on a product of interest, issue a swipe left gesture twice and you’ll be on the same product but will hear the price and other details. One swipe right and you are on a button for more information about the product. A second swipe right and you are back on the heading for that product. Subsequent swipes right put you on buttons for decreasing the number of a given product you want to buy, a text box for the same quantity info and another button for increasing the amount. One last swipe right and you are on an Add button for putting the product in your virtual shopping cart.

The process for selecting a delivery time also seems much improved when using VoiceOver. My recollection from my weekend use was that you had to use a complicated grid where it wasn’t very easy to identify available delivery times. Again I’m not a regular user of the app but had used it a few times before the weekend. With the update, selecting a delivery time has been separated into three different controls for choosing the day, time and number of hours in the delivery window. It seems much easier to navigate.

In experimenting with the app a bit, I also noticed more progress messages being read automatically by VoiceOver. This included hearing that item lists were downloading when I selected a given isle and such.

In general this seems like some good attention to making this app work better with VoiceOver was given. I’m sure I’ll use it more frequently now because of the ease of use improvements and because of major pricing changes coming to Amazon Fresh in the Seattle area.

The Customer Services and Support (CSS) team I work for at Microsoft is growing with several exciting opportunities now available. The team has eight new positions available across the three areas where the team has a charter and focus. This includes three spaces: Disability & Accessibility, Online Safety, and Privacy.  The team is focused on driving innovation that will enable all customers with Microsoft services and devices. The Disability Answer Desk is one such innovation, providing a rich support experience for all our customers.  It came from small beginnings with a pilot 18 months ago, and is now handling over 1000 issues a month.  It’s been received well (check out this from the AFB), and we’re excited to look at how we can expand and drive to reach more customers globally.  Subject Matter expertise in Disability and Accessibility is a huge asset to roles in this team: the more we can understand our customers, the more empathy we have to designing the right experience!  The team is also hiring an Accessibility expert to help manage broad spanning programs across a division of 50K folks.”

If you are interested in any of the roles, please follow the directions on the external link and feel free to share this information to any individuals or locations that may be interested.

I’ve written a time or two about the accessibility challenges with MLB and that league’s internet offerings. To the credit of the various advocates who have worked with MLB to improve things, MLB has resolved the vast majority of issues around the accessibility of what they offer on the web and in various apps. In many ways MLB could be a model of how to handle accessibility for live sports and screen readers.

Unfortunately like much of accessibility, it seems we have to go over the same ground time and time again. This time it is with the NFL and many of their offerings. As just one example, the NFL now has an iOS app that could serve as a model of what developers can do wrong for app accessibility. Nameless controls, poor support for VoiceOver and more. Even the NLF’s main mobile app page is a dizzying array of accessibility challenges. Thus far emails and phone calls to various contacts I can locate for the NFL have gone unanswered. It is really unfortunate that it takes this much effort to make progress but I guess it is time to crank things up a bit and try to get some attention from the NFL around accessibility.

Any study of the journalism business will show that even today by and large the media does not understand disability or accessibility. Typically we get stories on one of the two ends of the spectrum of possibilities. Either stories talk about everything being horrific or they tout things that are basics that people with disabilities accomplish as being something magically fantastic. And that’s assuming you get coverage at all.

The lack of coverage is I suppose a bit frustrating to me on a personal level at various times. Last year I found it interesting to see how the work Apple did around accessibility in their Maps app getting absolutely no coverage in the mainstream tech press. And now the same tech press is trumpeting improved versions of several Yahoo mobile apps as a sign of rebirth at the company with no reference to the reversal in accessibility for many of these same apps. As an example, the updated fantasy football app has become all but unusable on the iOS platform with Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader.

I hold no illusions here. I know how the news business works and recognize that accessibility isn’t something viewed as important enough to cover, let alone understand, by most of the press. It is though I suppose a bitter pill to swallow at times to recognize where one does and does not stand within the mainstream universe.

Recently I wrote about an update to the Amazon Fresh app that was supposed to make the app more accessible but actually did the reverse. A little more than a week ago, Amazon released a second update that had the actual accessibility fixes I suspect were supposed to be present with the first update. The app now works better than ever with VoiceOver. Amazon Fresh currently only delivers groceries in the Seattle area but if you are in the delivery area, the service is worth a try.

The improvements involved giving correct names to multiple controls in the app. It makes shopping significantly faster.

Amazon Fresh offers grocery delivery in the Seattle area. One of the methods you can use to place orders is with an iOS app. The app was updated today listing accessibility improvements as one of the items addressed in the update.

Something must have gone wrong because the app actually introduces some critical accessibility problems that make it tough to use the app at all. Most notably, in an area where you shop by isle names, the isle names went from perfectly readable with VoiceOver to generic names of “isle title”.

Similarly, when you pick an isle, all the products listed now get the name of “item title, item price”. Ironically the price per ounce and such actually reads correctly as a number.

I have reported these issues to Amazon. If I hear back I’ll update things on the blog.