Hello all,
I would like to thank Randi Shelton for transcribing the comments of
Kimberly Marshall of UBER. Her comments were difficult to hear for many of
us and we thank Randi for this effort.
Kimberley's contribution
My name is Kimberley Marshall, and I cover stakeholder strategy with Uber.
One of my primary focuses is accessibility. We have a functional
accessibility team that work from the Uber platform to improve the mobility
and freedom of our riders.
She asked if everyone can hear her, and Mike said proceded saying it's a
little muffled just because she's on a cell. I got most of what she said.
There may be a few words I didn't get of that first part, but that's most of
it.
LOL!!! Mike was talking about how he gets a cheap rate to go to the airport,
and he says Kimberley might want to "close her ears" because he's promoting
texting the driver ahead of time. After he finishes talking Kimberley says,
"I did indeed close my ears. I'll open them back up now" LOL!!!
Julian gave his suggestions for improving the app: adding a permanent place
where the customer can put text in that would stay there and also adding the
color of the car to the description. Mike asked Kimberley if she heard the
suggestions, and she says "Yes I did Mike. And that's absolutely right.
There are a lot of considerations with something like posting a photo of the
rider. One of the great things about Uber's technology that reduces a lot of
discrimination that exists for a number of riders who might be trying to
hail a taxi. We'll take into consideration if we were able to do something
like that. It would be within the space our technology provides to reducing
that discrimination." Mike clarifies that by saying that a maybe a woman
doesn't want the driver to know then the driver is only looking for a woman
or skin color or something.
The question was asked about training for the drivers on service dogs.
Kim's response: 'That's an excellent question. That's one we get a lot.
Actually all partners that come on board to drive with Uber as well as
receiving initial trainings, the initial parts are on accommocdating riders
with disabilities as well as accessibility compliance notifications which
includes Uber policy which is that all partners are expected to be compliant
with all state federal and local laws governing the transportation of riders
with disabilities. If that transportation partner violates that law
governing the accommodation of riders with disabilities including with
respect of to using service animals, it constitutes a breech of agreement.
They will be removed from the platform. It's actually much longer than that.
In addition to reviewing the policy, they do also receive a video that
details many different methods of accommodating riders with disabilities.
And they also receive it on an ongoing vasis. That video is provided by the
same agency which does accessibility training for all flight attendants.Mike
mentioned the Uber assist, which he tried in Hawaii. That is a program we
are piloting in a couple different cities around the nation. That was
basically developed with feedback from the American Association of People
with Disabilities. She goes on to say that if the drivers don't ever use
that training because they haven't had riders with disabilities, they've
forgotten all that training. So part of the goal of that (Uber Assist) was
to identify drivers that have additional training and receive incentives to
accept rides on the Uber platform so that they are more regularly taking
riders that have accessibility needs and that the training stays fresher
with them."
Someone asked the question if you can send an Uber to pick someone else up.
Kimberley's response: "you can send Uber to pick anyone else up anywhere in
the world. So today right now you can open your Uber app and have it pick
someone up in Japan. A lot of people use that feature especially for
caregivers caring for their parents etc. You can definitely do that. It's
pretty handy. You just type in the address of whoever it is that you want to
be picked up. Then you can either share the trip with them with that person
so that they see the driver the license plate number and the car type. You
can also text the driver and let them know someone else will be there."
Someone asked if there's a website to see where Uber is in which cities.
Kimberly responds: "it lists all the major metropolitan areas that have Uber
operation, but it doesn't list smaller cities. For example, it will list San
Fransisco, but it won't list san Matao.
The question is being asked about employment. How do you check that out.
Kimberly's response: "you can visit uber.com back slash careers. You can
search by city nearby or uber team. Wheatever it may be. It's a pretty
robust searching mechanism."
The question was asked about whether or not you can request a driver.
Kimberly's response: "your request goes out to the closest available driver.
You're unable to request a preference on anything like gender or a driver
you've had in the past.
Kimberly's closing comments "Thank you all for th joining this call, and I
thank you hugely for putting it together. It's been really awesome having
Mike here with us. We receive a tremendous amount of feedback from our
riders especially our riders that are blind and visually impaired on
different updates that we can do to the app that would make it easier to use
it. And that's something that we're going to continue to work on whether
it's the technology itself or our different policies to insure that our
transportation partners are listening to the laws and follow them.
Accessibility is a top priority for Uber. We always have a long way to go so
we're always open for additional feedback and we continue to work to insure
that the technology remains an awesome platform for everyone."
Robert Acosta, President
Helping Hands for the Blind
(818) 998-0044
www.helpinghands4theblind.org
