Fast Food Menus

Yet another gripe I have are the wall menus at fast food joints. From food court Burger King to local McAlister's Deli to the airport Starbuck's, all of these places have their menus on the wall, but no handy large print paper menu on hand. Asking the over-worked and under-trained cashier for help picking your meal either ends up in confusion or inappropriate questions and always holds up the line full of hungry folks. When I was a kid, I always picked and memorized one thing, "doublecheeseburgerlargefiriesandacoke". This worked well for McDonald's and BK's, but did not extend well to other spots. It definitely does not work today since I do not eat at either burger joint anymore. [See Fast Food Nation.] Why can't these places have a hard copy of the menu available?

I know that some do, usually a take-out menu. This is useful, but it would not cost these big franchisers a lot to design and distribute a large print version. Some might say that the menus are available (mostly) on the web, but who is going to print out and carry around a binder full of menus on the off-chance they hit a fast food spot that day?

Food for thought.

Off-Topic: Changing Things

I am a big believer in fixing problems that I find. I recently discovered some locations incorrectly mapped on Google. I submitted a correction to Google, but I also let the affected businesses know. Here is a copy of my exchange with one of them.

Their response:

wecare@m400.alexlee.com to me Good afternoon, Thank you for contacting the Lowes Foods Customer Care Center. Thank you for bring this to our attention. We have forwarded your comments to the appropriate company official. Thank you for giving Lowes Foods the opportunity to serve you better and for shopping at Lowes Foods. Leslie Robbins Lowes Foods Customer Care Center

My email:

to lfscustomercare Your location at the Chatham Crossing Shopping Center in Chapel hIll is incorrectly mapped on Google Maps. It shown across from Southern Village here, As you know, it should be listed here. I submitted this to their contact us page, buy I am only a user. As an effected business, your request is more likely to be heeded. The reason I am sending you this is that I am legally blind. I live in ... and google mapped some nearby stores (CVS, Lowes, etc.) and found them to be ... Imagine my surprise when I went for a walk and never found them. Please see if you can have this fixed to save some other poor soul this trouble. Thank you

I hope this works. Either way, I will keep trying.

High-contrast Cell Phones

I am looking at getting a new cell phone. I don't need a fully voice-controlled, phone, but I would like one where the text is large and easy to read. I am having a hard time finding one. Companies do not advertise high contrast text settings, even if they have them.

My wife and I are currently planning to leave our current cell phone provider and are strongly considering Verizon. The main issue is that I am legally blind with partial sight. I don't need the text-to-speech features of the LG VX 4500. I need a phone with a clearly legible text where the font color contrasts sharply with the background color (black on white, white 0r yellow on black, etc). I went to a Verizon store to check the phones, but it was not possible to check many phone (the stores inventory did not match the website, many of the phone on display could not be turned on and it was not easy to check the Display Settings of the phones that were on). Is there a way to find out which phones have high-contrast color themes? The only one I could find is the CDM 8945, but I don't need all the VCAST features and don't want to have to pay for them. A serious attempt to help would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I have posted a link to a review of the Jitterbug phone. The Jitterbug might be the best phone for folks with low, but functional, vision.

Winning the "Boor War"

Back in early 1997, I read a great article, The Boor War by John Tierney, in the New York Times Magazine. He used the theories of an economist, Robert Axelrod, to argue for more cranks:

Which is to say, we need more cranks. We need cab passengers to punish noise pollution by refusing to tip drivers who honk. Guests at dinner parties should refuse to sit next to anyone who owns a car alarm. Apartment dwellers who live above wailing cars should contemplate today's most hotly debated moral question among urban cranks: to egg or not to egg?

I have followed Tierney's advice and have been 'cranky' all my life and I would like to share my most recent adventure, which relates to the purpose of this blog. When writing the post about MoMA's new audio tours, I noticed that the company who had created these tours had posted a copy of this article on its website. The version posted is a scanned image of the article in PDF format. PDFs are not very easy to read generally and scanned articles are particularly bad. After grumbling to myself about this lack of 'accessibility', I became cranky. That is to say that I found a 'permanent' link to the article on the NY Times' site (Thanks to the New York Times Link Generator!) and forwarded the link to the Sales and Marketing Manager, Kate Patterson, on Acoustiguide's 'Contact Us' page. Within minutes, I received a polite response thanking me for the tip and promising to add a link to the more accessible version of the article. Being cranky does not always work, but the times it does certainly make up for the times it doesn't. I have more stories along these lines and will share them in future posts. PS. Thank you, Kate.