I'm also interested in this topic and I've heard hardly anything
regarding the accessibility of Verizon's set-top box. There's another
question that I have which some people may not care about at all,
whereas others will find it to be a higher priority and that is the
accessibility of their Web sites as well as their mobile apps.
As an example, does Verizon allow you to watch and manage your TV
service through a Web site or via an app running on an iOS device? Can I
watch live TV? Can I access my DVR to watch recorded content? Can I pay
my bill through one of its apps? Are these apps and Web sites accessible
with screen readers?
At this point, some of you might understandably snicker and you might be
thinking that all I'm trying to do is to promote Comcast and steer
people away from any of its competitors. While I honestly wouldn't blame
anybody for questioning my motives in asking these questions, I can only
tell you that, while I do think that what Comcast is doing is quite good
and while I can speak to their commitment to accessibility I'm all for
consumer choice and I support a consumer's right to choose a competitor
over Comcast and, in those cases, I don't take it personally. I am,
however, personally curious about the accessibility of TV providers and
I would honestly be thrilled if I found out that Verizon was moving
ahead on all of these fronts. As I also indicated, some customers might
find some of these issues to be not important. I'm fine with the fact
that some people might only want to watch TV on a TV and would have no
interest in doing so on an iPhone or on an Android tablet and, as I
said, it's all about consumer choice.
I will say that Verizon's billpay feature does work very nicely on the
Web, at least with NVDA. We still have an old-fashioned landline from
Verizon and, when I use their Web site to pay my bill, I did find the
process to be fairly straightforward and accessible.
Sarah, thanks also for the tip about Verizon's email. I discontinued
their Internet service last May and, much to my amazement, my older
Verizon email account continues to work, although I rarely use it for
anything important.
All the best.
On 3/25/2017 12:50 AM, sarah lewis wrote:
Hi to all,
I was hoping I could get some input from people. At my house we need to upgrade
our outdated slow internet service. We currently have Verizon. Since I have
been hearing that cable TV has become more accessible lately, I would like to
also get TV when we do our internet upgrade. We will be using an iPad in
addition to the TV when we use our cable service.
I have the impression that Comcast is the most established as a provider of
accessible TV to visually impaired people. My only concern is that I have heard
that Comcast will not do screen sharing to help with computer issues the way
Verizon will. This is something that we have benefited from at times in the
past.
I'm considering using Verizon for everything depending on how successful
Verizon has been in making cable TV accessible. Does anyone have first-hand
experience with Verizon TV? Is it as accessible as Comcast? If not, we will go
with Comcast and give up the screen sharing. There are other ways to get that
help.
Thank you so much to anyone who may have information or advice.
Sarah Lewis
PS – I wanted to mention that we recently learned that Verizon is discontinuing
being an email provider. Those who want to continue using their Verizon email
address can arrange to do so through an agreement Verizon has with AOL. We were
surprised to learn that our deadline of when our Verizon email is being
discontinued is April 12. Different customers have different deadlines. This
change seems to be poorly publicized so wanted to let people know in case this
will affect anyone else on the list. I have been using Verizon as my primary
account for years but will probably switch to all Gmail.
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