/>I do my best to always buy accessible appliances and electronics, but sometimes it’s not possible. I had a run-in with one of these inaccessible appliances this morning. Here is a short video demonstrating that inaccessibility.
When we bought a refrigerator for our kitchen, we went for the most economical one to operate and didn’t think accessibility would be a big deal. After all, how often do you need to change the temperature in a fridge? Normally, this is a set-it-and-forget-it problem. Well, I am here to tell you that with the fridge we have, the accessibility issues are more significant than you might think.
This fridge is a Liebherr, and it likes to create alarms for many things, mostly when the door is left open or ajar. The fridge plays a loud beep beep beep sound, and then again every 2 seconds it plays the beeps. Normally, this alarm will stop as soon as the user takes action, like closing the doors properly. But sometimes, you need to do more, and that is what my story today is about.
Our power went out overnight, and when it came back this morning, the fridge was playing its alert. I checked the doors, and everything was fine, but the alarm would not stop. The fridge is fairly close to my office desk, so I needed to make this go away. However, no one else was home, so I needed to find a way to turn off the alarm on my own. This has happened a few times when the alarm has gone off and no one else was here to stop it. Those other times, I called a friend to come over and stop the sound, but this time no one else was free. So, how to deal with this obnoxious sound?
I placed a FaceTime call to my husband, and we used the phone to try and stop the beeping. There are a few problems with this control panel. First of all, I can’t reach it at all because I am too short. Secondly, the buttons on the control panel are touch-sensitive. So, here we go.
I got a small ladder and climbed up to the top of the fridge and held the phone up so my husband could see the controls. Then, I put my other hand in view of the camera, and he told me to move left and right to place my finger over the button. We tried a few times and were not able to stop the beeping. As I climbed down from the ladder, my husband said he often has to just slam all the buttons to make the alarm stop, so he was not surprised that it did not work. So, I finished the call, climbed back up on the ladder, and just pressed everywhere on the panel until the beeping stopped.
This situation had a few problems. First, it turns out that even sighted people have problems with these buttons working. If my sighted husband had to press everything, what hope would I have as a blind person using this touch interface? Secondly, I needed to climb a ladder to get up to the buttons. I had to use two hands, one for the phone and one for the buttons. I was not very safe on the ladder. I have problems with my knees, and I was very scared that my leg would give way since I could not hold on in a critical fall.
Sadly, even if we wanted a new fridge, I do not think we could find one that is accessible anymore. The days of a tactile dial in the fridge are gone. They all have these touch screens, and there is no way to use them as a blind person. So, accessibility has gone the way of the ice age. And sadly, if my fridge has an alert telling me that the ice is melting, I will never know.