With the fuss recently over IKEA and the Empire cinema, another incident slipped by the blog. Time to remedy that.
Apple Store Eldon Square, Newcastle
I recently popped into the Apple Store in Eldon Square in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Its a large shop with hard surfaces and lots of noise, and all that reflecting sound was causing a considerable problem hearing the staff with my hearing aid.
So naturally, I asked if they had a loop system at the desk or till so I could hear them properly.
They looked confused.
I explained what an induction loop was (they didn’t know, but were keen as mustard to find out if they had one).
They ran off. They came back. Nope.
Now bear in mind the iphones aren’t hearing-aid compatible, and their stores are a huge auditory problem for people with hearing aids.
How how much longer are Apple going to ignore the needs of Deaf and hearing-impaired people, and flout their legal obligations to address barriers to using their services and products?
They’re a HUGE retail company. Are they using that weight to evade their responsibilities in favour of pure profit?
– David Colley
Same for me in the Birmingham store, loud packed and noisy and asked where they could stand so I could ‘hear’ them better told “nowhere”. Couldn’t address of my questions about how the iphone (3gs) was compatible with my digital hearing aids etc.
Really hard work to go in and ask for help. As for the Genius bar < forget it. Their focus on visual impairments and use of voice activation means they are way behind in terms of Deaf access (you can buy an adapter to connect a minicom to the iphone - did you know that? Still trying to find a way of connecting my digital hearing aids to my iphone via bluetooth and an induction loop neck loop.
Whats the point of having a huge textphone plugged into the IPhone to do TTY calls? How cumbersome! Why on earth didn’t they do the software so that the Iphone can do direct TTY calls with its own onscreen keyboard? Its like their whole philosophy on ‘ease of use’ and ‘elegance’ simply doesn’t apply to us!
Believe it or not Nokia brought out the Communicator that had built in software to make minicom calls (back in 1996) because mobile technology evolved and text, email and web took over that fell behind (my view). Yup agree company’s making digital products that are accessible seem to forget we have tastes and are fashionable too.