Post #657783

2026-03-12 09:21 UTC

Yesterday I organized a workshop with eleven interaction design students to explain how keyboard navigation and voice assistant technology works. After teaching them how to use voice over / narrator shortcuts, the task was to navigate through SNCF connect website without screen and try to book a Lyon Marseille ticket for next Saturday under 40€, with an assistance dog during the travel. Only one succeeded after an hour but didn&#39;t find where to put the dog🐕‍🦺⁉️. Three students from Singapour didn&#39;t find how to put the website in English on the main page after closing three pop-ups in French. They shared their experience at the end, wrote down how they felt, they were mostly frustrated, exhausted, pissed off at not being able to do a task they usually do under 10min

Replies (6)

@mariejulien@mastodon.social 2026-03-12 11:44

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social to be honest, this experience is on par with the one without visual impairment 🤣

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@ledeuns@bsd.network 2026-03-12 12:08

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social Eager to see the result of the same experiment with @12train@mastodon.social 🙂

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@EF@mastodon.bsd.cafe 2026-03-15 07:48

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social this is a problem with many sites especially for those with disabilities and where the users' language isn't the website's principle language (and sometimes when not written in English). These are effects from poor requirements, poor coding and often sites churned out rapidly to insufficent budget. The JS based code monkey sites frequently awful to navigate and data heavy. Your results are not surprising. You may want to explain to the student who wrote "pissed", they probably should add off afterwards. Pissed, in many English speaking countries, means drunk, pissed off is annoyed, grumpy...

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@vermeer@mstdn.social 2026-03-15 20:40

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social not surprised SNCF has a very bad reputation in the mastodon train bubble. How do operators compare who actually want to run trains (DB, SBB) for the masses (and not just for Paris)?

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@drwhitt@mastodon.social 2026-03-16 22:54

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social Sadly, this is the status quo with respect to optimizing for profit over usability. I agree with the essence of @mariejulien@mastodon.social’s comment above that, while it may impede those with assistive needs quite a bit more, it is a serious problem for all users.

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@mlerjen@tooting.ch 2026-03-19 06:51

@MoritzBrouhaha@typo.social @alex@social.alexschroeder.ch 😁 we travelled from Zürich to Avingnon three weeks ago. SBB was unable to book a ticket for our dog, neither did the SNCF in Mulhouse. Instead the later provided us with a hand-written and stamped letter to explain the situation to the train personell... Finally on all four trains we had to take the dog was completely ignored by the train staff ... guess there is a profound awareness of their own usability issues🤣

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