Greetings. I am sending this message to several different email lists, so appologies if you have already seen it.
Good morning. I went to make my usual Yellow Cab reservation on their mobile site last night and discovered that they have released an iOS app for easier booking. The free app is called Hail a Cab Austin and is available in the iOS app store. I downloaded the app. It looks to be pretty easy to get around, though there are some parts of it that are more tricky. For instance, you need to go into one of your favorites in order to book a new trip. There is no “book trip” or “schedule new trip” button in the app. Going to the favorites was not immediately apparent to me when I tried to book a trip, which is why I bring it up. I have had trouble when entering the destination address on my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I tried between 5-8 times, and each time it recorded more and/or incorrect letters than I had entered. However, when I used the virtual keyboard on my iPhone touch screen, each letter was recorded correctly. Though there was a 1-2 second delay before it was read out by Voiceover. There also does not appear to be a way to choose from the favorites you have already entered into the app, such as if you wanted to choose the home favorite for the starting address and the work favorite for the ending address. In the settings tab, the forth one from the left across the bottom of the screen, you can “edit favorites” in order to add the frequent places you travel to. The process of adding a favorite was pretty straight forward. However, each time after I had entered all of the information for my favorites and hit the save button, the app crashed and put me on the home screen, where I had to launch the app again. This happened two separate times when I entered both my home and work addresses. This is a very new app and hopefully will continue to improve. I am telling you about it since I wanted to see if others have similar experiences as I have had. I figure it would not hurt if blind users contacted Yellow Cab or the app’s developer to help influence the app and ensure accessibility. Ideally, I hope that Yellow Cab is added to Taxi Magic for cab booking, since I have read a lot about Taxi Magic, the quickness of getting cabs, how you are informed each step of the way, and the app’s over all accessibility. In addition, Taxi Magic lets the user know of their cab via push notifications, where it looks like Hail a Cab uses email for its notifications. This may not be a big deal since many people that have a mobile device also have email on that device. I can see how it would be helpful though to have notifications pop up and not to have to open a separate app (email) to view my cab’s status. I have not followed through with a booking with Hail a Cab, but if anyone is able to book a cab with them and go through the process of tracking the cab and even paying via credit card with the app, then I would be interested in those experiences as well. After spending between 10 and 15 minutes trying to schedule a ride with the app, I finally gave up and went back to the mobile booking page where I was able to submit my reservation within 2 minutes. It should not be a struggle to make a reservation or request a cab on demand with this app, especially given that many people that rated the app gave it at least 4 stars. Kind regards, Wayne Merritt -- Follow me on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/wcmerritt My websites: www.wayneism.com www.whitecaneday.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
