Couple nights ago, I had to spend a serious amount of hours into clicking buttons on my Android devices and an iPhone. It was frustrating enough that my visiting family relatives were so annoyed that I also started to care less about doing laundry but writing this rant on my phone.
This story starts because of a single laundromat company, CSC, requiring an app download which requires Apple Pay or Google Pay as their only payment method. As you can imagine, a tourist who is already comfortable with their own washing/dryer machine in their house will hate the fact that they have to share a laundry and now they are required to download an app and they need to have an Apple Pay or Google Pay ready.
Even though I lived in California for the last decade and embraced the modern consumerism culture fairly fast, this accepted behavior is getting to a point that I have to confirm with the cashier/server that they accept cash or credit card before I sit and enjoy a food. With the recent change to stop manufacturing penny, that is telling us something about digital inaccessibility that is waiting for us.
Many people from my generation are of course using their smartphones even in their restroom breaks which can lead lead to a disease. Of course, I won’t be talking about restroom breaks, but I want to point out that what we know about commerce is changing because of companies who are forcing small players to have no option.
I have been an advocate for accessibility. Not just limited to infrastructure in a given city, but also a website or a desktop software.
Previous application from CSC, which offered both Credit Card and Google Pay. I have used their services with little to no issue. It was sometime in November, my apartment’s management gave us a notice that they will remove CSC maintained machines because they are not taking their responsibilities such as fixing their own equipment. It was the time that they forced me to use their new application on Android, and I started to use coins instead. That apartment’s management changed to a different residential laundromat service provider.
I’ve been staying in an Airbnb for the last couple weeks, and they are using the same residential laundromat service provider, CSC. I thought I could use their previous application but their software is already broken, and I was suggested to download their new application. This new application is forcing users to use Google Pay on Android and Apple Pay on Apple devices. There are no other options such as credit card, on-premise card service dispenser, and these machines are not coin operated.
I guess all small players are forced to use Google’s or Apple’s payment method, and I was hopeful about the Epic Games case would help to clear these issues for good. I don’t think small players will ever want to dedicate their engineering and business hours into accessibility.
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