Your Voice: The Ups and Downs of Eid Shopping as a Disabled Consumer
In this column, consumer panel member Masuma Ali said, Institute for Disabled Persons (RiDC) wrote about their Eid shopping experience as a blind person.
What is Eid?
Eid takes place at the end of Ramadan on the 21st or 22nd.nd This year it is scheduled for April depending on how the moon looks. This is a day of celebration for all Muslims, consisting of Eid prayers and a feast of delicious food. Muslims spend Eid time with family and friends and exchange gifts.
Gifts and challenges as a shopper with a disability
Whether it’s Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or a birthday, deciding what to gift can be difficult, and Eid is no exception. For me, it adds visual impairment to the mix and causes stress chaos. In my opinion, giving gifts is fun and not a source of stress. No, but it doesn’t happen often enough.
Personally, part of the gift-giving experience is being able to shop in stores instead of doing everything online. That’s where the challenge begins. First, you’ll need to have a local high street filled with six decent stores.
Part of the gift-giving experience is being able to shop at the store.
There are no local shopping options, so you have to travel to a large shopping center far away. We are lucky to have a shopping center within a 5 mile radius. But getting to those places using public transport can be difficult, and given that self-driving cars aren’t ready, my options feel limited. uses either his Uber or public transportation.
Concierge or retail staff assistance
When you arrive, it can be a little overwhelming to find yourself in a shopping center with more shops than you could possibly visit in a day. I don’t know what kind of support I can get, so I often make plans about which stores I want to go to. While this is a practical and sensible approach, it can rob you of the spontaneous enjoyment of shopping and coming across an unexpected gift.
The shopping center concierge staff will guide you to the store and help you find staff for that store.
Some shopping centers have a good concierge service, which I have used many times and overall a good experience. For those who are not sure, in principle, the concierge staff of the shopping center will guide you to the store and look for the staff of the store. When finished, you or the store will call the concierge to pick you up and drive you to the next store. One of the drawbacks of such services is that they often need to be booked in advance.
I think you get the idea – being disabled and shopping takes a lot of planning! I don’t always book in advance. Because life doesn’t work that way. Assistance from store staff varies and that affects the shopping experience. But others can’t wait to escape.
Why not shop online?
I know what you’re thinking. It would certainly be much easier to shop online. Due to my visual impairment, I need to use assistive technology on my laptop and mobile phone, and how well the website is designed determines whether I can use it. Website accessibility often varies. Some store websites are mostly manageable, while others are completely inaccessible.
To take the stress out of shopping this year, we’re giving away tickets to outings and shows…we think it’s going to be a memorable gift.
I also use services such as concierge and store staff support, but I prefer to go shopping with someone. It will be a stress-free experience. I also shop online, but often have someone else look before I buy because the descriptions aren’t good enough to judge information like color, style, and size. I recently purchased a Ramadan calendar for my niece, but when I received it, it was not what I expected, so I returned it. This meant that my niece was away from me out of fear that I would find too many alternatives and it wasn’t what I wanted. , giving tickets to outings, shows, and more.
To all who celebrate Eid Mubarak. May today be a wonderful day filled with love, happiness, peace and beautiful memories.
Masuma is a member of the Consumer Panel at RiDC (Research Institute for Disabled Consumers). The panel conducts research projects ranging from online surveys to mystery shopping to user testing of products to see how accessible the products are and feed back to the people who make and run them.To learn more and become a member yourself, please visit https://www.ridc.org.uk/our-panel/joining-panel
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http://enablemagazine.co.uk/your-voice-the-ups-and-downs-of-eid-shopping-as-a-disabled-consumer/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=your-voice-the-ups-and-downs-of-eid-shopping-as-a-disabled-consumer Your Voice: The Ups and Downs of Eid Shopping as a Disabled Consumer
