Playbook, electronics retailer
The site is ours. The features on the device are not ours to promise
These arrive as one kind of message and they are two completely different jobs. One person cannot get through the site. The other is about to spend real money and needs to know whether a device will work for them, which is a question about a manufacturer's software rather than about a shop's catalogue. Answering them together produces a reply that fails both, and the second failure is the serious one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The site half is unusually bad in this trade because the deciding detail lives in comparison grids and specification tables published as images, and because filtering a large catalogue by keyboard alone is where most of the failures actually are.
- The product half is somebody asking, before buying, whether a device reads a screen aloud, works with a hearing aid, takes a switch, or can be driven one handed, and none of that is a fact about the shop's stock.
- Those feature sets change with software updates, so an accessibility specification indexed a year ago is wrong in exactly the way an old menu path is wrong, except that the consequence is a person buying something they cannot use.
- Getting this wrong is not a return with carriage on it. It is somebody who trusted a shop about their own independence, which is why the refusal on the second half has to be a real referral to the maker and an offer to demonstrate, not a polite shrug.
How it arrives
- does it read the screen out loud
- can i use it one handed
- will it work with my hearing aids
- the spec table is a picture can you read it to me
- can somebody demo it in store for me
- is there a model with bigger buttons
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Every specification and comparison table transcribed out of its image | Typed as real tables on real pages. In this catalogue those grids hold the ports, the dimensions, the weights and the feature lists, and while they remain pictures they are invisible to a screen reader and to anything else that reads text. |
|---|---|
| What you can honestly say about a product's accessibility, and when you read it | The features listed on the box or in the maker's published material, recorded with the date you took them. Kept as quotations attributed to the maker rather than as claims of your own, because that is the difference between a fact and a promise. |
| The demonstration route, in store or otherwise | Whether somebody can come in and try a device, whether an appointment is needed, how long it takes and who to ask for. For this question a hands on trial is the only answer that is actually reliable, and it is the one thing a shop has that a website does not. |
| Where a complaint about the site itself goes | A named route with somebody behind it who can commit to a change, separate from general support. These do not survive being answered in the same queue as a delivery query, and in a number of markets they are a legal matter as well. |
The reply
There are two things here and I can help properly with one of them. On the site, the comparison table on that page is published as an image so I cannot read it, but the same figures are typed out on our specification page and I can quote any line of them to you [1]. On whether the device itself will work for you, I am not going to answer that from a product page. Accessibility features are the manufacturer's software rather than our stock information, they change with updates, and being wrong about it costs you a lot more than it costs us. The two reliable routes are the maker's own accessibility pages, which they keep current, and trying one here: we can set aside time with somebody to demonstrate it, and that is worth doing before you buy rather than after [2]. If you tell me which store is nearest, I can pass on a request for that.
The split is announced in the first sentence so neither half is quietly dropped. The image problem is admitted and immediately answered, which turns an acknowledgement into help. The refusal on the product half is given with the real reason and the real stake, because a vague refusal here reads as being brushed off by a shop that does not want the bother. The demonstration is offered as the honest best answer rather than as a consolation.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks whether a device will work with an assistive technology or a specific impairment, wants a demonstration arranged, or is reporting that the site itself blocked them.
I am not going to guess at whether a device will work for you, and a demonstration needs arranging by a person. Leave your name, an email, the model you are considering and what you need it to do, and somebody will arrange time with you or point you at the maker's current information.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm that a device supports a particular assistive technology, since that is the maker's software, it changes with updates, and a wrong answer costs somebody their independence rather than a restocking fee.
- Never say the site meets an accessibility standard unless the indexed material says exactly that, because the person asking is checking and the claim is checkable.
- Never read out a figure that exists only inside an image, which is a number the assistant does not have and would be inventing.
- Never suggest that somebody get a friend or a relative to help them use the site or the device, which is the reflex answer here and reads as being told to go away.
Questions
- Can it answer whether a product works with a screen reader?
- No, and it should refuse even where a specification sheet appears to say so. Those features live in software that updates, the sheet is a snapshot, and the person asking is making a purchase decision about their own independence on the strength of it.
- What is the highest value work on the site half?
- Transcribing the comparison and specification grids out of images into real tables. It is typing rather than engineering, it removes the most common blocker for anybody using a screen reader, and it happens to unlock the questions the assistant currently has to refuse.
- Is offering a demonstration not just deflection?
- It is the opposite. It is the one answer a shop with a counter can give that a catalogue cannot, it is reliable in a way a specification sheet is not, and it converts a question that has to be refused into a reason to come in.
Keep reading
- Everything for a electronics retailerCompatibility, warranty and returns on opened items answer well from your own terms. Firmware level setup advice does not.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- They have stopped complaining about the deviceThree companies, each saying it belongs to one of the others. By now the complaint is about the passing rather than about the fault.
- Locked out of the shop is inconvenient. Locked out of the device is notThe shop account holds the purchase record. The maker account holds the machine, and losing that can lock hardware nobody here can unlock.
- The shop is open and the counter that matters is notThe repair counter closes before the doors do, and the maker's own line often runs longer than both. Say all three or the trip is wasted.
Try it on your own material
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