Living with any chronic illness can be tricky, and Dizzy and I do realise that companies have a long way to go before they even get close to making everything accessible. Reading stories about discrimination on airlines, and refusing to service people with disabilities in ride-sharing apps, such as Uber and Lyft, highlights this.
But lots of companies are trying to make their products and services more accessible! And Dizzy has decided to make a little list of some of these options that are now available. 🙂
Voice Commands in Technology
Voice commands in technology isn’t new, but it is something that is becoming much more accessible and affordable! Dizzy owns her very own little Alexa, which she uses to set reminders on when she needs more ginger nut biscuits and to sing her songs about donkeys!
They can also do lots of things to help us, such as letting us know about reminders, helping with quick and simple recipes, listening to music and the radio, and even sending voice messages to other people for us! And iOS is working on speech-command technology that doesn’t require perfect speech, which means that anyone will be able to use the technology. 🙂
Virtual Post Offices
Checking the post is one of those things we all have to do, and it can be hard getting too and from the post box or post office to post letters. One new service is the virtual P.O. box! Whether you need virtual services for business or personal, having a virtual P.O. box could be super helpful. It means that you can check your post online in PDF format and respond to it! This can also be much quicker and easier for people. 🙂
Accessible Shopping!
Many shops now offer delivery, which I don’t know what I would do without! Shopping can be really hard (busyness, queues, trying to find the right items…), but doing it online removes all of those worries. It can make present buying to food shopping much easier. 🙂
Have you noticed anything that can help make life just a little less tricky? What are your favourite ones? 🙂 xxx
Happy, but scatty. my usual brain left the building………
Online shopping definitely helps me, although there is still some way to go in accessible website design. Some companies now include screenreaders with their products, so you can just turn them on if you need them. In the old days you had to buy separate software if you wanted to make a phone read aloud what was on the screen, but now I can just turn on the feature, at no extra cost.
That is really good! Hopefully all companies will be using them on their websites soon. xxx
I also love online shopping! I don´t like the rows in supermarkts as it makes me anxious too. It´s good that there are now more things available to make life a bit easier.
Online shopping in amazing. I would struggle so much without it. xxx
Funky purple laptop, Dizzy!
Voice commands in tech with smart speaker and the likes of voice dictation and screen text readers are so, so good. And they’ve got a variety of uses in different situations for lots of people, from those with visual impairment to fine motor skill difficulties. In an emergency they must be handy too.
Virtual P.O boxes – that’s a new one to me! Although rather different to ‘accessibility trends’, the PO Box thing made me think of digital prescriptions; I don’t need to trek to the GP to pick up a paper script for repeats and go to the pharmacy, it’ll get automatically sent and we can usually just order repeats quickly online. Plus there are now lots of pharmacies, incl Boots & Superdrug, that’ll deliver repeats to your home for free.
Great round-up, very helpful to introduce things that people might not have heard of or considered before. It’s exciting to think how technology changes and increased awareness around disabilities and illnesses are going in the future..!
Caz xx
Hehe, Dizzy does love purple! And I agree. I also find it fascinating that different things that people invent and discover. They are so useful. 🙂 xxx
Definitely prime now Whole Foods grocery delivery! What an absolute blessing!! I’ve also signed up for emails from the post office to show the face of what’s coming that day in the mail so I know if the mail needs fetching. Lastly is my little front door camera that goes to my phone. We have a lot of real estate agents and political people knocking, I live in bedroom upstairs so it’s super handy to know who’s there. Great post!! 😊
All of those are amazing ones! I didn’t even know that you could request that with the post office. That is so useful. 🙂 xxx
The online grocery shopping is really catching on here Heather. When they introduced it about a year ago at my store, it had a huge membership fee, but now they had eliminated the fee and you just pay for the delivery (or you can pick up from the store too). Excellent that they have created this service for people who find it difficult to get out and shop, especially in inclement weather as well.
I love online grocery shopping. It just makes life so much easier. 🙂 xxx
It is becoming a popular trend here for local grocers, and that was before the whole Coronavirus situation.
Here’s mine…
Re-delivery of parcels to local post offices
Autism-friendly theater performances
Working from home
…to name a few.
I love them! I didn’t even know about autism-friendly theatre performances. They sound wonderful. xxx
Thumb rollerball mouse, so much easier to use when your fingers dont click!
I hadn’t even thought of that, but it’s true! 🙂 xxx
The Coronavirus is exceptionally bad in France and particularly bad in the Alsace where we are.
We now need a form to leave the house!
Stock up, hunker down and stay home.
Love and good health to all.xx
I saw that on the news! We’re not quite there yet in the UK, but I think we’ll all be told to stay in soon aswell. :/ Dizzy and I are already just going out for essentials. x Stay safe and healthy. xxx