Amen, I just need IRL adblock now please.

It causes genuine harm, I’m visually impaired and I’ve wandered into construction zones because advertising billboards are mounted near and “road work ahead” signs and everything is all just bright and bold.

I don’t know what’s official, everything is competing for my attention but I have very little capacity to dedicate my full attention to a visual sign. The end result is incredibly fatiguing, seeing a bright sign and straining to ensure I read it because it’s colours look important, nope, it’s an ad, that was a waste of energy, oh look another one with the same blurry colours and type setting it’s probably the same ad… Nope that one actually needed my attention, and now I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be and I’m in danger.

I’m also hard of hearing, but fortunately audio adber in the public isn’t as bad, but anyone who’s hearing impaired knows how fatiguing it is to try and filter through noise. It’s the exact same for visual impairment.

All the more reason why they can’t be used as valid and binding contracts in a court of law!

Not quite, the parents created an Uber Ride and Uber Eats accounts several years ago, agreeing to the ToS at that time.

Several months ago, uber updated the tos and pushed it out to users as a pop up agreement.

The daughter was monitoring the phone to watch the driver and pizza on the map when the pop up blocked the app, the daughter, being a minority who wanted her to pizza just hit “accept” to go back to the app to watch get pizza.

Several months later, the parents hooked an uber ride, where the driver crashes and injured the parent’s.

Uber is claiming that because the daughter agreed to the ToS, the new ToS is valid.

The parents only ever had the opportunity to read the original ToS, which also has a similar arbitration clause, which is why the lawyer is saying the daughters pizza situation was mooting. But the two ToS are different because one is an updated version of the other.

Heck half the time my screen reading software glitches out on ToS pages, so I just have to assume I’m selling my soul but hopefully not much else and click accept because it’s not like I’m going to find someone to sit and read it out to me, that would take hours!

And yet for every other contract I have ever signed in my entire life, I have a legal right to ask for it in an accessible form before I sign it. As a visually impaired person, uber is present in my life.

I hated it, it was the most inaccessible app for such a purpose, and the drivers really did not understand I can’t see what they see. I like just calling the depot, talking to a human, and booking a cab… But you can’t do that now either because when you call you wait on hold for 20 minutes while the automated message tells you about the taxi app.

So now unfortunately, uber is easier to book than a taxi, I don’t know if the ToS in the taxi app has any harmful stuff about arbitration because again, I’ve never been able to get a screen reader to read out the ToS properly on any app!

I feel like such a boomer, but I am really feeling more and more isolated as every service Abdi connection I’ve built my life around is moving online into a digital visual space faster than the affordable assustive technology can keep up with.

I’m expected to read something on a screen when I physically can not, uber and similar apps, including the app my local state government brought in during covid that now holds much only transit ID to show transit staff I’m blind (to get l transport assistance at train stations) all do this.

Once you open the wallet section of the app, for fraud prevention they disabled third party screen readers from reading anything on the app.

I have to open my app, then ask the other person to look through my wallet for me to find the card because I can’t, it’s such a privacy violation.

That’s a windfall payment and one less mouth to feed in the long run. Morbid, Yes, it’s not the best long term solution but anything you can do to survive true poverty never is.

What’s to say losing your job doesn’t have 3 of you dying from exposure in your car a week after you’re evicted?

If you haven’t lived the trauma of life and death poverty, I’m glad, but I don’t think it’s something that can be fully explained.

Trauma changes the way your brain processes risk, people living in chronic poverty don’t have the same risk assessment framework as you.

I’m wondering how many missed the chance to stand up for themselves, saw it coming, saw it pass, and knew it.

Something similar happened to me in the 2019 Australian bushfires.

All official advice when I left that morning was that we were safe to continue operating. I worked at a food bank so I considered my job essential. That afternoon, The wind changed, the humidity dropped, the official advice was updated, and my managers immediately shut the centre down. The immediate evacuationoffered me to order came in, it was now or never.

People started leaving. I had 3 underage interns with me, who’s parents were on their way to come pick them up.

I kept looking outside thinking to myself “how the fuck am I going to getting home? And then what? My house is at risk too, it’s too late for a real evacuation, I’m probably safer here with some water and wool blankets”.

I had to an evacuation plan. I even had an evacuation plan assuming I was at work when the time to leave hit. Those plans hinged on me leaving as soon as the order can in, or preferably before.

What I never had was a plan to leave if I had someone stuck in my duty of care and couldn’t take them with me. My conscience was not prepared to leave teenagers alone in a warehouse on fire, and in that moment I acknowledged I might die from this choice.

When the final parent came up pick them up, I was lucky, they had an empty seat in their car so I explained my situation and got in.

They offered to drop me at home, but again, what would I do differently at home other than burn in my own house instead of a warehouse. So we just kept driving.

My manager was pissed when she heard I’d stayed back so late, she told me I should have started jogging as soon as everyone else got in their cars. Ah, hindsight. She asked if I was seriously willing to die for my job… Not my job, but the people I have a duty of care for, sure. my first job was a picu candystriper, we were taught how to fill our pockets with babies in case of a fire, you don’t leave the burning hospital alone. That’s hard to unwire to develop an every man for himself attitude.

Edit: I think my screen reader and text to speech software is inserting random words in the sentences, I’ve been trying to edit them out but as I edit more keep appearing but I’m not sure if it’s visible in the text or if it’s an audio glitch, sorry.

For some families, that’s the reality, not being paid means no housing, no food, no medications. For people who have dangerous debt, not having available money could be a threat to their life.

Obviously your life is priceless, but we’ve developed a system where you simply can’t live without money, and put people in circumstances where the money in their hand now is worthy more to their survival today than twice as much money in their hand tomorrow.

I’m just grateful that’s not my situation.

Okay, you do you.

Buy physical media from independent production companies. Pirate whatever Disney, Netflix and Amazon are cranking out.

I’m using sync at the moment, I don’t dislike it but there is room for improvement. I have very low accessibility needs. I have palsies in my hands so for me it’s about having nice big icons to tap, because I don’t have the dexterity to push tiny text links or really cramped hit boxes.

My phone GUI is enlarged and sync is just the first third party app I found that scaled well with my phone, most third party apps work for me, it’s just the reddit official app that really, really doesn’t. It’s unreadable with my GUI settings.

Exactly, I didn’t have a tantrum. I used a third party app because of the accessibility features it offered that the official app doesn’t. I can’t use reddit now, so I don’t use reddit.

I’m really not sure I would, I’ve borrowed my partners $200 headphones and it still kind of sounds the same.

I can tell a really shit pair from an affordable pair. Obviously if it’s crackling, or really tinny I hear that. But I think my hearing loss is the quality cap, not the headphones.

Same with vision, I genuinely can’t see a difference between 1080p and anything higher because even the back of my own hand is blurry, if real life is blurry why would a better TV suddenly be sharp?

If my boyfriend sitting 30cm away from me having a conversation sounds muffled and distant, better headphones won’t make my podcast sound clearer.

All the time, always and forever.

I will buy adaptors, and seek out wired headphones with a jack that fits my phone.

Friends and families have bought me wireless headphones, but I am a walking Bluetooth black zone (I’m constantly having to reset Bluetooth connections on my all my devices, no one else in my household has the same problem), and I’m notorious for loosing things.

I superglued my wireless ear buds to a chunky necklace so even if one fell out it wouldn’t get lost, it would just dangle around my neck. Lost the whole thing somewhere between the garage and the front door one night. Got my housemates out crawling in the grass looking for it with torches and playing the “lost ear bud” tone from the app, but we never found it. Not even when mowing the lawn did we ever hear it getting chewed up.

I’m not an audiophile, I have reverse slope hearing loss and I’m currently using a $10 pair of 3.5mm earphones with a $7 usbc adaptor and its exactly what I need because it’s cheap, replaceable, and I wouldn’t even notice better audio quality if it stuck it’s tongue in my ear.