Know Why Visually-Impaired People Are Signing Petitions Addressed To Food Delivery Apps

Ahmedabad: For 29-year-old visually-impaired banker Aziz Minat, the challenges to order food went beyond the pandemic.

Minat, who stays alone in Ahmedabad, often relied upon food delivery apps during the pandemic. However, he found it next to impossible to manoeuvre through their interface, reported The Indian Express.

“Usually, visually-challenged people use screen readers to access phones and laptops. It is a software that reads out the stuff for us which is on the screen. The problem with Swiggy is that it is not compatible with the screen reader. If you are clicking on one restaurant, another pops up and it gets tough. Another issue was that the names of the restaurant and dishes were not readout,” TIE quoted Minat as saying.

In February, Minat had started a Change.org petition requesting Zomato to improve the app to make it more accessible for people with visual impairment. After getting a positive response from the company in a month, he started a similar petition asking Swiggy to do the same in June.

After nearly two months, Swiggy replied that they had looked into the issue and it was “under consideration”. While Minat felt the response could have been more prompt, he is optimistic on the first step being taken.

According to a study published by The Lancet Global Health journal, as many as 8.8 million people in India were found to be blind in 2015 and another 47.7 million people had moderate and severe vision impairment.

However, there are hundreds like Minat who are facing difficulties in accessing mobile applications. Swiggy, BigBasket, Grofers, Paytm and even Flipkart are among the many apps some differently-abled people have deleted due to their low accessibility.