I’ve written here on a few occasions about my frustrations with MLB accessibility. In particular the lack of response to phone and e-mail to the dedicated accessibility resources listed on MLB’s web pages.
About 10 days ago I received an e-mail indicating MLB was trying to get in communication with me. I connected by phone with someone about a week ago.
While the phone conversation was pleasant, I really don’t feel there is any meaningful update on the item that’s been the topic of my repeated communication here. Specifically, I have asked on multiple occasions about accessibility plans for the At Bat functionality that provides things like pitch speed, box scores and such.
Two things the MLB representative did tell me that I’m sharing here with permission were that research into how to make the At Bat functionality was in progress and that MLB had recently hired someone to work on improving accessibility. The representative further explained that they were trying to have things like pitch speed announced automatically with some audio functionality. Interesting I guess but I don’t understand why they don’t start by making what exists accessible before trying to get overly creative and doing some kind of automatic audio.
I am appreciative of the communication from MLB but remain disappointed at the lack of progress on making site features more accessible. I understand work has been done on some of the media players so I suppose that’s good. But I believe MLB could be doing more and doing it more rapidly.
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