Impacts of inaccessible website and app updates

In yesterday’s post giving information to new readers about the background to this blog, I recalled how the blog platform that I’d previously used in 2007 had been updated with ‘improvements’ for sighted users but had become much more confusing and unfathomable (if not completely technically inaccessible) for me to use with screen-reading software. I consequently lost control over my own blog and let it go.

 

This led me to remember numerous times that perfectly accessible and hitherto well designed websites and (more recently) smartphone apps have undergone updates that while apparently making improvements for sighted users, have either made them less usable or completely inaccessible for blind people.

 

There have been so many times when a website or phone app have become integral to my home or working life and suddenly, overnight the update has meant that an aspect of my life has temporarily ceased while I find work-arounds, new ways of doing things or adaptations. Sometimes there haven’t been other ways and I’ve missed (and continue to miss) the sheer ease of use of an earlier version.

 

These changes might be anything from a crucial button vanishing, the loss of the ability to change the quantity of items in a purchase, form fields getting stuck and uneditable, sections of text or headings no longer read out, through to the web/app platform no longer speaking at all.

 

There are clear international web and app accessibility standards that some web/app designers integrate as a matter of course, where others see them as additional requiring them to be specified.  I have always tried to engage with companies and/or designers over such changes  and have found that where apps have lost accessibility, the app/site owners had no idea what ‘accessibility’ meant or that they had been previously accessible – in these cases, it would have been that the previous designer knew what they were doing and built access in without needing to be told to do so.

 

Rather than listing all the websites or apps  that have ‘died’ on me, I want to illustrate here about the impacts on my life that reductions or removal of accessibility has meant to me. They include A favourite train times app that I lost connection with through an update. This meant that, until I found, learned and set up  another with all my favourite routes and stations, my ability to get train information became very limited overnight. There have been shops that I’ve used entirely because of their good accessibility, suddenly becoming unusable with an update. A full eBay app update in 2015 reduced its usability for nearly a year. I’d chosen my band’s web host purely because of its accessibility and maintained our website for two years. Without warning, it was ‘improved and I could no longer use it.

 

On a positive note, the ‘Railboard’ train times app which I’d started using following the reduced accessibility of my previous favourite.  The app was excellent, but had a few very specific bugs. I wrote to the designer explaining in detail the problems. He wrote straight back thanking me for the feedback and within two weeks, had issued a new update with all the bugs fixed.

 

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