Page 156 - Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization

Hello/Good-Bye 137

screen. By thus separating human and automated input, a captcha can
help achieve the very admirable goal of preventing automated hacker
attacks. The problem: Captchas are also unreadable by a visually im-
paired person who uses a screen text reader. This undoes decades of
progress in accessibility; if you don’t have a legitimate need to use capt-
chas on your site, don’t. If you do, find a captcha program with an
intelligible audio alternative.

? Graphics without readable alt tags. An alt (alternate) tag, as we’ve
mentioned, describes or substitutes for the image when using a text
reader. Think of it as a caption. Make sure your web team checks the
comprehensiveness and accuracy of your alt tags just as carefully as you
proofread your site for, say, dead links.

? No way to get service except by phone. If a customer who is hearing
impaired wants to contact you to return an item, is email offered as an
alternative? If telephone-only is your policy (because you’re trying to
re-sell them or for some other reason), then you’d better have a well-
functioning TTD/TTY machine to support special-needs customers.
But we recommend including email support for them as well.

Of course, barriers to entry can occur at many places other than
entry and exit points. For someone using a wheelchair, a single narrow
hallway with no reasonable and clearly marked alternate route can
botch the whole deal. Here are some other bottlenecks we’ve seen that
shout ‘‘I don’t care much about you!’’

? The celebrated spa that always has a fresh floral arrangement
perched on (and thus blocking the use of ) the toilet stall’s grab
bar

? The lavishly renovated espresso cafe—with a juice cooler jutting
out to make the turn into the restroom impossible in a wheel-
chair

? The railing for a bustling National Park Service gift shop’s ramp
that is entirely obscured by overflow merchandise