Yellow Pages & Accessibility

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Dear Sir

I never expected the arrival of this year's telephone book to be such a 
devastating experience.

I have smuggly watched friends and contemporaries resort to visual aids 
and increasing levels of magnification while I have managed to maintain 
the vision of my youth. You can imagine the shock and consternation I 
experienced on opening the telephone book and attempted to read the 
contents.

I had barely recovered from this first blow to my youth when I received 
a second after expressing my concern to someone younger than myself.

 "What's a telephone book?" they replied.

One seemingly innocuous incident has seen me rapidly shunted into the 
world of the aged and technologically dated.

Yellow Pages Group Ltd, I will never forgive you!

Yours sincerely
Dave Kennedy
(membership of Grey Power pending)


I discovered my letter to the Southland Times did not get there due to an email failure. I 


commented on the stress that the arrival of the new telephone book caused me on 


Facebook in a similar light hearted way, but it is actually a huge issue. For the many 


elderly and others who suffer vision impairments, having excessively small print is 

discriminatory and it is not acceptable for Yellow Pages to put financial imperatives
ahead of providing a proper service.
 

Comments

Della said…
Hey, I have the same problem! I can't use it at all..
May 18, 2012 at 6:28 PM
Dave Kennedy said…
I feel there is also a certain loss of dignity if one has to use a magnifying glass to read the book and there is always the problem of having one at hand in an emergency.

I enjoyed reading your blog, Victorina, and do feel free to give me advice regarding my use of the Queen's English, I struggle at times. :-)
May 18, 2012 at 9:34 PM
Suz said…
What's even more depressing Dave, is spending a minimum of a grand a year for glasses, and STILL not being able to decipher the numbers the size of dust particles...and I'm 45!
May 27, 2012 at 7:07 PM
Dave Kennedy said…
Suz, I notice that someone has rated this post "absolute twaddle", which they are more than welcome to do, but this is an issue about blatant discrimination and accessibility. I'm not sure if they objected to my attempt at humour or that they feel that this is a non issue. I would guess that if a survey was was done there would be a significant percentage of telephone book users who struggle and then the point becomes what is the driving purpose for publishing, to make as much money as possible, or to provide a service. Obviously if you can cope with your general reading needs, but struggle with the telephone book, providing a service is not important.
May 27, 2012 at 8:44 PM
Shivika said…
Today people are facing a lot of issues while using these print directories. They do not provide exact result and the font size is also very small.

For more details visit our website ...
http://chalofaridabad.in/
December 5, 2014 at 10:59 PM
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