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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

Most of the example challenges feel pretty odd.

> Go a couple of weeks without using the phone. Which services are closed off to you?

I think I've called a service provider of any kind once in the last five years. It didn't actually get me anything that text comms would not have.

> Tell people you need an accessible venue for your meetings. How do they respond?

The last time I spoke at a venue was like 8 years ago. The author doing it multiple times in a random week seems like quite an outlier.

> Switch on subtitles and mute your favourite shows. Do they even have subtitles? What do you miss?

I always have subtitles on in any TV show, streaming show, YouTube, etc. I can't even think of the last time it wasn't an option. (The subtitles for the news have a 15 second delay due to it being a real-time broadcast, which is a bit distracting but acceptable.)

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I've had to use the phone quite a bit in the last year. Airlines and travel companies are especially bad about only supporting happy-path functionality online and then providing an excruciatingly bad phone experience if something gets off-track.

The pharmacy that I use has a very busy and probably very expensive web site, but it has bugs, and any time you get off the happy path, you have to call. For example, when I get a prescription delivered for my brother-in-law (who has disabilities and lives with us) the pharmacy only gives the name on the credit card to the delivery driver (this is a known bug, for over a year) so the driver shows up and asks for the wrong name. Usually the pharmacist figures this out and gives them the right prescription, but if they don't, the prescription goes into a black hole. It can't be picked up at the pharmacy, it can't be scheduled for delivery again, nothing can happen until I call and get it fixed.

Helping my mother set up online access to her pension, the only way they will grant her access is if they call her at a certain number and she answers the phone.

I can't think of any other examples off the top of my head, but I despise talking on the phone and will go to great lengths to avoid it, and yet I have to do it maddeningly often.

> Airlines and travel companies

I actually found Twitter DM, of all things to be the most effective way to get customer service from United Airlines. I don't know if this is still the case given Twitter's recent decline.

Anecdotal, but I have also found Twitter DM to be a highly successful communication channel when you need support. I’m assuming that a) it’s the fear of being publicly shamed and b) it’s a channel that’s not made completely unusable through some kind of helpdesk software.

Complaining about corporations in public posts is all I've ever used Twitter for. It sometimes results in better support channels than the default.

Hi, I wrote the article 4 years ago. So, slightly within your 5 years timeframe.

There are still plenty of services in the UK which are only available by voice.

I may be "an outlier" but it was my lived reality. At the time I was travelling to and speaking at multiple events per week. Why should I be able to do that when others are prevented?

In the last 4 years the situation with subtitles has improved slightly. But there are still plenty of shows on Netflix and Apple+ with no subtitles or - perhaps worse - shitty subtitles.

I'm really pleased that you haven't experienced any of these barriers. Can I please encourage you to find something that you think might be a challenge and spend a few weeks building up your empathy?

> I think I've called a service provider of any kind once in the last five years. It didn't actually get me anything that text comms would not have.

It sounds like what you are implying is that because you haven't experienced it in a 5 year period, someone who lives their entire life like this must not experience this as well? Even though you are presented with data saying otherwise?

No, I'm implying nothing like that.

The challenge the author set was to go without a phone for a "couple of weeks", not "for your entire life". For that to be a useful challenge and build empathy as is the goal, the people taking the challenge need to be put into a position where they must make a phone call at least once in those two weeks. Otherwise it does nothing at all.

The author appears to be upgrading their internet connection, moving, and arranging financing for a house in their totally normal week. For them, it is a useful challenge. But for my phone use patterns it is utterly useless. I'd need to run the experiment for a decade.

But thanks a lot for telling me that my lived experience is invalid and disproven by "data".

For some reason Crave in Canada on AppleTV seems to have no subtitles whatsoever. I can't understand why.

This might be related to Apple, normally Apple is very good for accessibility, but even the BBC has challenges with subtitles on AppleTV, same with the Dutch NPO TV:

“Why are there no subtitles on BBC iPlayer via Apple TV?

There are technical challenges associated with delivering subtitles to Apple TV which will require a significantly different solution to that which we use on all other platforms. We are working towards it but don't currently have timelines associated with this support.”

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/questions/accessibility/a...

Makes sense, but it's clear that we still don't live in a world of fully ubiquitous subtitle accessibility, which can cause trouble both for the hard of hearing and for those with English as a second language.

Likewise, subtitles usually are not available at theatres, public screenings, and other venues.

So just because you could argue about all of these, they are all invalid?

I did not use the word "invalid", or anything like that. You've made that up.

The author seems to think that this list is compelling, and that people will find it incredibly hard to do these challenges. But at least half the list is describing stuff that I know with certainty would be no trouble because it is either stuff I already do all the time, or has boundary conditions that have a <<1% chance of triggering. That's a lot more than "could argue".

So the list seems pretty bad, and I would suggest would not actually have the effect the author suggests of building empathy.

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