I have been so frustrated lately with how so many things are adding complexity in the name of security. I am a firm believer in security, but lately it’s been sending me on a rampage.
The Internet Of Things
Any of you that follow me on a regular basis know that I have a home full of the internet of things. Frankly, how can we not all have at least a few of these items in our homes? These connected devices all come with their own apps and/or belong to larger extended ecosystems. So many companies today tend to think that creating an app is the way to make their products and or services accessible, but I am here to tell you no! And STOP IT! An App Does Not Equal Accessibility.
I think it’s very important to start by saying having an app is not making your product accessible, no matter how good that app is. Too many products have jumped on that ship and I need to tell them no, that is not accessible. Having an accessible app might make your product usable by a person with a disability, but in no way does it make it accessible! And definitely not universally accessible. If someone needs an app to be able to use your product, you are putting a condition on the use of your product that may be impossible for the person to fulfill. What if the person does not have a smartphone? Many people are still not able to afford a smartphone and may not be able to upgrade the phone they have.
Some Of The Reasons Why
Let’s think about this. A new smart phone can cost upwards of 1000 US dollars and/or a commitment to pay upwards of 140 per month. So a family that is barely able to make ends meet is not able to afford that phone and the expensive plan to use it. Maybe the phone that the person has is a special phone that only lets them call 2 or 3 numbers in case of emergency and is not a smart phone at all. Why would any manufacturer want to exclude these cases from their customer pool?
OK, so the things above are extremes. But they do happen, and some people do not have a phone that can run the app needed to use the internet of things device you’re selling them. So, now what? How can a person use this device that the manufacturer says is the way for a person with a disability to access the device? They can’t. Most people can go online or into a store and buy an appliance that meets their budget and does the tasks that they need it to do. But what happens if that person has a disability? Far too often, the choices they have are at either extreme. They have to buy the low end crappy model with no bells and whistles or the top of the line model that needs an app to do everything in an accessible way. This is commonly referred to as the disability tax. People with disabilities have to give up everything to get a usable device or pay top dollar just to be able to wash their clothes in hot or cold water.
The other problem with this situation is if the disabled person needs an app for the device, there is no guarantee that the app is accessible. Even the apps that say they are the way to access the device have glaring accessibility problems. Even the best of the apps I use have unlabeled buttons and image recognition can’t tell what the button will do. Sadly, there is often no way to know if the app itself is accessible. No stores ever have the apps paired and/or even know how to pair the device. This is one of the reasons I want to spend more time on my Know Before You Buy project. If I can spend the time to test the app and show how to use it, others can buy the appliances and electronics they want or need with confidence that they work. Or more precisely, they work at the time I did the video. Many, many times I find that the app works partially but a few months later they push an update and break the accessibility. I feel that the app is being pointed at when the manufacturer does not know how to make the item accessible.
Are Apps Really There to Make It More Accessible?
Sometimes the apps are there to make the internet of things device a little more geeky and I bet no one uses the features. For example, some of the lower cost apps for robot vacuums offer the ability to use your phone as a remote control for the robot. Well, if you wanted to steer the robot around the room, why not just use a cheaper vacuum? Why spend money to steer the robot around your house? I let my robots do the work when I am not there. Why should I care about steering the robot? I can pretty much guess that the robots that offer the remote control feature are probably not accessible in any way.
Why the Internet Of Things Doesn’t Work For Anyone
I have also had a recurring frustration with my internet of things devices, and this is driving me nuts. It seems like every time my phone updates or the app itself updates, all my data is lost and I have to sign in again. Frankly, this trend is driving me mad. In today’s world we are encouraged to use different passwords for every account and I try to do that but I have so many things to keep track of. I just can’t remember all those passwords. Also, passwords are getting harder and harder to remember and of course this is essential for keeping the account safe. But I would love to know why my pressure cooker needs to be safe. Would someone want to break into my house and cook me dinner? If so, please do so; I would love that. Why should my many robot vacuums be behind all these passwords? Does someone want to come over and watch them clean? Again, please? It’s not like I am being protected from someone walking in to the house and taking the devices to their home because these endless passwords don’t stop that. If someone wants to steal my pressure cooker, the fact that I have a password on the account means nothing. They can set it up again with their own info and then they have the same problems I do. I have a few stories of how bad these problems make it for me.
A Few Examples
The other day I wanted to make a stew for dinner. My husband was sick in bed and I wanted to make something that he and I could eat. I pulled my Instant Pot out and grabbed my iPhone that is just for these internet of things items. Even though the damn app for my Instant Pot had sent me an advertising alert earlier that same day, to my frustration the app was logged out and needed me to sign in again. Well, I lost it. I had no idea what that password was and no idea even how I had logged in. Did I log in with Google, log in with the Apple app, did I create an email address just for the device which I often do? How in the world could I get into this account? I tried a few things and then had a minor temper tantrum because I really needed that damn app to work. The Instant Pot I have is completely unusable without the app for me. I can’t even find the start button on my own. So basically I was faced with a 200 dollar device that was as useful as a brick on my counter. Actually, a brick would have at least been something I could throw to vent my frustration.
After having a bit of time to yell at the world, I did more investigating and found the email address and went through the process of resetting my password. The first time I did this I had no idea what the password requirements were so it failed. I then found the requirements and created the new password. And damn if when I tried to use the new password to get in, it failed. So back to changing my password, getting an email and all that again. I reentered the same password and finally after the third time I was at last in. Overall I spent about 2 hours fighting with the app in one way or another. Frankly having to do all this just to cook dinner is way too much, but my old Instant Pot died so what can I do.
I am about to record a video on another device that is also 100 percent reliant on an app for blind people to use it. It has its own interface on the unit but the only button a blind person can use is the start button. The interface is really geeky and even has cameras so that someone not blind can watch the food cook. But if the app fails I can’t use the device. And yes the app also logged me out last week. So once again I had to do “what is my password and how do I log in.” This stuff is just starting to wear me out. I want to use the new toys. I want to record videos for my subscribers that tell them about accessible products, but how can I do this if most of the time I am blocked by Apple or Android logging me out and making me do the password dance?
Even More Reasons Why Passwords Might Make Something Inaccessible
I truly hate passwords but I am a fairly technical person. What about someone that may not be as tech savvy as me? What about someone with a brain injury that may not be able to remember these endless obscure passwords? Again, adding the app to the mix to get accessibility also makes the device less accessible.
Times Were Better Before We Had Apps
I can’t help but think that in this day and age with the high tech tools we all have, we are going backwards. I remember my mother teaching me how to use the stove and showing me that if I turned a dial counter clockwise I would have the heat on low and if I turned it clockwise it would be on high. And this was so universal that even though my mother was not able to read, she knew these things and could teach her blind daughter how to use the stove and many other devices in our home.
There are still many people today that are not able to read due to a disability or just a lack of access to school. Do these people not count? Why should they not use your device?
I have never found any device that really needed that app to work for an able bodied person. Why are manufacturers putting this restriction on all the groups I have mentioned here? I am sure for every example I have given there must be so many others out there. So let’s talk about how these problems could be solved.
What Is The Answer?
There are so many, many ways these problems can be fixed. First, just put real buttons on your device. Make the buttons tactile and hey, why not shape these buttons in a way that indicates what they do. Don’t create buttons that do different things depending on the mode or state of the device. Don’t create menus that scroll forever and back around once you get to the top. And if you are creating a knob that changes the state, keep the choice on that button clear and defined. Don’t have that knob control an on screen menu, but instead create the menu based on where that knob’s tactile arrow points. Like my childhood stove, you could even make one that has firm stops like high so that I could always be sure it’s on that setting. Nowadays, getting speech synthesis is so easy and cheap, so add a voice to your device. If you already have tones on the device, make the tones mean something. My LG has the ability to change the tone it does when I turn the machine on and off but it never uses any of the tones it can play except for on and off.
What About Braille?
Some devices actually ship with Braille on them and I think that is absolutely the best. However, not everyone can read Braille. Statistics show that approximately only 10 percent of blind people can read Braille. And some people may not be able to use it due to physical limitations; e.g. they have neuropathy in their hands. Or maybe they don’t have hands. But definitely put on Braille if you can.
.My very first appliance review was my washer and the manufacturer sent me some Braille templates that were excellent. However, over the years since I got these templates. no one else has ever been able to get them for their washer. For years now every time someone tries to get these templates they are sent in circles. Someone had this happen to them just a few weeks ago. He found a mention of the templates on the company web site but there was no information on how to order them. And in the end when he called support, the accessibility help desk had no idea. He kept pushing them and finally someone said that they found what he was looking for and would have it out to him in 2 weeks. It’s now been over a month since that call and nothing has arrived. When he called back after three weeks they clarified that what they were sending was not a template but a Braille manual, Even the manual has not shown up yet. I have actually seen the manual, it’s massive and also written in the new Universal English Braille code, but I don’t read UEB. It was released long after I was in school and I never learned how to read it. The person that is still waiting for his manual also does not like UEB. More importantly, the company never asked if he could read UEB. I find this so frustrating as everyone I tell about the template wants to buy the unit with a Braille template. They can’t even pay for that template because it only seems to exist on my unit. The person that tried to get a Braille template that he found on the web site has also repeatedly said to me that “buying this unit is a risk if one day the app breaks.” If the update does not have accessibility he will then not be able to use the unit at all because this newer machine has no buttons and, yes, no template. It turns out that the unit he bought is of course the top of the line model.
In closing I will never tell you that a device that requires a person with a disability to use an app is accessible. I will tell you it might or might not be usable depending on the accessibility of the app. But ultimately if the device can’t work without that app it’s not necessarily a good buy. Manufacturers need to think about stand alone accessibility, I say over and over again. The accessible device is everyone’s favorite.
