"More and more businesses are requiring..."

 RantWoman thought she was going to being her day blogging about wayfinding and information of interest to different categories of pedestrians. That may still happen, but a "more and more businesses are requiring actual signatures in electronic transactions .." thread in RantWoman's inbox prompted the following screed, with the caveat that More Research is Probably Needed: 

In the digital world, actual signatures tend to take two forms. A user may be shown a box on the screen and asked to draw a signature with a mouse. Can anyone guess the problems with this for blind people? RantWoman would love to say "Stop it! Just stop it." At LEAST tell us why you are not willing to work with signing options.

On mobile devices and many point of sale devices, users are typically shown a box and asked to draw their signature with their finger or sometimes with a stylus. Point of sale devices sometimes have enough tactile cues that RantWoman can make that work, but not always. Now the rest of the screed.

It sounds like there are several possible issues here and that people may need to complain in multiple directions.

1. Neither Talkback on Android nor Voiceover in iOS currently works with the electronic signature spaces I have seen. Bless Democracy Live for uncovering this "feature" while trying to make their online voting app work in WA state where an actual signature, not an electronic signature is required. The suggested solution: turn off the screen reader, sign the document and turn the screen reader back on. (?!?) Apparently it might be possible to ask operating systems to change this but I have no opinion about technical issues involved to do that.

2. I don't know what the thinking is about why businesses are requiring actual signatures instead of using one of the many electronic signature options available. Frankly I don't care. If they want actual signatures it's there responsibility either to figure out how to do it accessibly or to figure out accessible alternatives.

3. I would complain both to the service  provider or site you are trying to do business with , in this case Verizon  and to the FCC. You are paying the same price for service as everyone else but you are not getting the same value in terms of ability to transact business. The carrier is getting paid to solve the problem and they need to hear from lots of consumers. People should have not to file court cases or complain to the FCC to go about our daily lives, but the FCC absolutely needs to hear about issues as they think about rules and future telecommunications services.

4. Tech support veteran in me speaking about what people need when you complain: I would include all of the following in any complaint. Name of service provider. What model of device you are using and if you have it operating system and screen reader version, what site you are trying to work with, and any other weird behaviors. Also include info about whether you were able to complete the desired transaction and if so what you did.

There. Enough rant. I would be interested to hear more about other people's experiences with this kind of signature requirement. What companies or services require this?

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