Five-Star Disability

I bet most of you enjoy some sort of shopping, either for groceries, clothing, tools, computers, shoes et cetera.  I do too, I like finding cool things at low prices!  There are many accessibility issues herein.

My vision is fairly poor, I can see where I am, but reading small print is beyond me.

Okay, I know that a picture tells a thousand words, but getting pictures from my BlackBerry to WordPress should be worth a good challenge.  I’ll add them when I figure it out.

In the meantime: there are two kinds of price tags, both are a challenge for me: Item price tag and Shelf price tag.

Item price tags are exactly that: each item has its own price tag.  Be it shirts, shoes, sausages, cans of soda, beans, jackets, computers and so forth.  The price is on the item, right.  Modern item tags will also have a bar code that has the price encoded for scanning.  My frustration is when the bar code takes up 85% of the business card size price tag, with the price limited to the lower corner, mostly the right.  And it is oven super small, like size 5 CPI.  It is very frustrating!  I usually whip out my BlackBerry to read the prices.

Every company does this differently, to each their own.

Shelf prices are also different across the shopping world.  A shelf price is an easier way to mark a large quantity of same merchandise at the same price.  Many grocery and big box stores do this.  Again, here lies a problem.  For eye  level shelves, the price is easily found.  But for top or bottom shelves?  I have to get down on my knees or find something to stand on to see them!

Now,, if I can’t see the price, I usually move on, I’m not wasting my time trying to find or read price tags that are too small or too low.  I will spend my money else where! What do you do if you want to buy that can of Bacon Spam or that amazing shirt, but can’t see the price?  What do you do?

Thank you…

Please share!