United Airlines has been in the news recently about their accessibility features. One feature, which was introduced in 2019, is not often talked about, the screen reader on the Inflight Entertainment System. On a recent flight, I thought I would document its features. But first, let’s talk about the history of inflight entertainment for blind people.
Back in the 1990’s when I started flying transcontinental routs, I was dreading the long hours of sitting and doing nothing. It makes it even worse that I can’t sleep on a plane, my record was 48 hours of traveling without any sleep. Back in those years, it took some creativity to bring entertainment for such long flights. Braille books are so big and heavy that an entire carryon bag wouldn’t be enough to hold the amount of books I could read during two long flights. The other option was to bring a portable player with batteries (which didn’t last too long those days) and CDs or tapes. I could listen to some music or audio books.
There was of course, the inflight entertainment, which was usually a handful of music and movie channels, and while they weren’t too accessible, one could figure it out by pressing the back and forth buttons. It was later, probably in the early 2000’s, when the entertainment systems became too complex to figure out. I always felt bad asking the flight attendants to set me up with some music, I figured they had more important things to do. Though a few times, I managed to find some audio books which entertained me for a few ours.
However, those were the years when laptops started to be portable with a few hours of battery life, and MP3 players started to emerge, This allowed me to save a selection of music or audio books for the entire trip. Flying was no longer an endless sitting marathon.
After 2010, mobile phones became available for screen reader users, with an extra powerbank I could bring my entire library and music collection with me. At that point, entertainment was nothing short of what I had at home in my living room. This is when I actually started enjoying long flights, I could catch up with reading without having to answer phone calls for an entire day.
Thus, there was a point where I wasn’t even interested in what is offered by the inflight entertainment, because I never had to be limited to their selection, even though sometimes it is quite generous.
But I was curious, how would I spend my time if I had to rely on it, so I tried it out on a flight from Seattle to Washington DC.
Though I could request earbuds, I could just use my own. I plugged it in, and remembering what I read about the system before, I just tapped the screen three times with two fingers, and the screen reader started. From its behavior, I recognized that it was based on the Android TalkBack system, but it has a somewhat limited functionality, and most features are identical between the Android and iPhone screen reader, so if one is familiar with any of them, they will easily find their way around the screen without much of a learning curve, though tutorial is available on the system.
The first screen had some advertisement, and my seat number. After pressing continue, a language selection popped up, but at least on my system, only English was available. When I pressed continue again, I got to the main screen.
First I explored the accessibility menu, where there were two major categories:
Under vision, you can turn the text to speech on and off, read a tutorial, change the volume, speed and pitch of the voice. When text to speech is not running, you can also change the text size.
Under hearing, you can enable closed captions and subtitles.
The entertainment screen has some interesting options, the seat number, flight number, next stop and weather. You can also get further flight information where you can read the speed, altitude, distance covered, and distance to the destination. There was also an option for connecting flights, but for the remainder of the flight I got a message that it will be available later. It could have been a useful feature, as my connecting flight was going to start boarding in less than 30 minutes after landing.
The entertainment options contained a nice list of podcasts and movies, when I was reading through the movies it read if a title had audio description.
The onboard dining menu listed all the options I could choose from and instructed me to ask a flight attendant for ordering.
Overall, it was a great and easy to use experience. On one of my flights, the screen reader got stuck in a cycle I was not able to navigate out of, the two finger trippletap didn’t toggle the screen reader on and off, so I got stock, the system would have to be reset.
One thing I found somewhat difficult is that navigating the screen is not too comfortable. While a sighted person would generally read the screen and tap what is of interest to them, a screen reader user would swipe left and right to read each line, and it wasn’t too comfortable to discover the entertainment options with a continuously stretched out arm, but it was definitely doable.
Overall it was a great experience. In the future I will use it to get information about my flight. However, I have to admit, and it is strictly my personal take on this, such a feature could have been much more useful more than a decade ago. It is a great option, but it does not replace the convenience of traveling with a fully loaded mobile phone.
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