Back in 2019, I posted a couple of articles concerning different online services; such as:
- a comparison of ridesharing-services
- MOIA accessibility improvements and my visit at MOIA HQ or
- the website of FlixBus in practise test
The following rant is not only about travel-related providers, but also about other different kinds of apps and online services I deal with in my everyday-life.
Actually I was planning to update certain posts accordingly or write some additional update-posts, but as certain online services changed their appearance in a similar way, I decided to just put everything in a single rant for now, so here it goes…
App designs
Imagine you made yourself learn a particular app interface. You made yourself familiar with important sections, elements and their position and made all that part of your daily routine.
Now, all of a sudden, an update with major design changes comes by turning the app interface upside-down. Thus, your previously and perhaps hardly learned navigation skills to get around in the app can be thrown over board and you can start over.
Of course, this is just the worst-case-scenario, but even minor changes to the design can already have a negative impact on the service’s accessibility.
Accessibility is not only important for visually impaired people, but also for people with other kinds of disabilities and learning-difficulties.
Of course – at least from the blind perspective – you can take advantage of your screen reader’s OCR- and screen-recognition feature, but even that is not always applicable. Plus, it is just a helping-method and the main goal should be to navigate those services with your “standard” navigation tools.
Fun-Fact: Just around the time when I started writing up this post, a couple of app updates were released and, as if they all had the same idea, some developers announced the release of a so-called “app make-over”, and Sonos is one example of the worst-case scenario I mentioned earlier.
Well, thank you for the extra input, but that really wouldn’t have been necessary. ☹
Feature changes
Nothing against feature changes in first place, but certain changes do not always turn out to be good changes or work out the way they are intended to.
Certain ride services for example (such as Free-Now, Uber, etc.) seem to no longer offer phone calls between the driver and you outside their app. Therefore, a stable internet connection is required.
This way, your actual phone number won’t be spread amongst the drivers and vice versa.
However, at least on the Free-Now side, I often could not establish a working call with certain drivers for whatever reason. The call seems to go through, but neither the driver nor myself can hear anything, making it more difficult finding each other, as some drivers just assume that you can find them by yourself, no matter where they decide to park.
In worst case, they just assume that you haven’t turned up and cancel the ride.
Before you ask, it was definitely not a bad internet connection (at least on my side). Everytime it happened so far, I was in a well-covered area with full 4G reception.
Another problem I am often facing with ridesharing providers is how the app points out pick-up and drop-off points. Most of the ridesharing services I dealt with are aiming to show you the exact address, but sometimes this feature was gone for a while, leaving you either with a map to determine visually where to find your ride, or you may also find keywords like “train station east-side, inter-city hotel”, which at least gives you an idea where to position yourself. But, what if it just says “central station” and that’s it? There are a lot of possible areas around the train station, so where should you best position yourself?
Of course, one thing which also plays a role here are bugs in the app causing the app not to work as it should, so – once reported – we can only hope for the bugs to be squashed eventually.
Contact & Support
Let’s assume you have an issue with an order, and you wish to make an enquiry for the support to address your issue.
First of all, HOW DARE YOU! You are not supposed to be dissatisfied with our service, or at least don’t share your dissatisfaction with us. Okay, I’m just kidding. 😊
However, it seems like some providers try to hide their contact options or at least make it more difficult to find them, whereas – In the past – it used to be fairly easy to look up their contact channels and get in touch either on the phone, Email or via contact form.
Nowadays (but only in worst case), you are lucky if you can find a contact form.
Sometimes, you can also get trapped in the “customer service” window, where different inquiry scenarios are listed. Once you have chosen the issue you are facing (The food hasn’t been delivered yet, for instance), the only thing they show you is a short message, saying something like “We apologize for the inconvenience, and we ask for some more patience for our driver to deliver your food”, and that after waiting more than twice as long as the estimated delivery time.
And in worst case, that’s it! In order to find a phone number or a contact form, you need to dig a little deeper and elsewhere in order to find what you are looking for.
Regarding Free-Now, I recently tried to contact them, but they closed their hotline for telephone support. An Email address still exists, but I am not able to find it on their website, nor with good old Google.
Instead, they would direct you to their “help center” and, in case the FAQ doesn’t help solving your problem, you can fill in their contact form.
Another barrier, as far as telephone enquiries are concerned, can be a language barrier between you and the agent. I once called up a German airline’s hotline for special needs to arrange my assistance, but the agent had difficulties understanding my request, and I could barely get what she said, as German and English wasn’t really her strong point. She in the end hung up on me and booked a service animal on my ticket instead of assistance around the start- and destination airport. I got it fixed later on by calling once again, but an additional language barrier for disabled people to overcome is surely a challenge for itself.
Nevertheless (but these are my own experiences so far), once I managed to get in touch with most of the online supports I dealt with, they usually tried to help me and could finally get clear of the issue or gave me a refund if needed.
There are exceptions though, and my recent post about Deutsche Bahn’s online services speaks for itself.
Bottom line
Nothing against optimization in form of new features, feature improvements and bug-fixing. But is it really necessary to turn the app interface upside-down from time to time and risk making the app more inaccessible (not only for blind and visually impaired users)?
On the other hand, if it makes the app more intuitive and everything you need can be found easily, that’s more than fair. However (at least from my point of view), this scenario seemed to be an exception during the course of the last few months.
One thing we could do is keep reporting bugs and accessibility issues, hoping that they will sort it out sooner or later, even if you have the feeling as if nobody is listening to you or reading through your enquiries properly. But the more people or the more often you keep insisting, the higher the chance might be to finally get rid of certain issues.
What are your experiences so far? What kind of issues have you encountered, and could you find a work-around? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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