CHICAGO, Oct. 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- United Airlines
today launches a redesigned version of its mobile app, with new
enhancements intended to make travel easier for people with visual
disabilities. Throughout its award-winning app, the carrier has
increased color contrast, added more space between graphics and
reordered how information is displayed and announced to better
integrate with the screen reader technologies like VoiceOver and
TalkBack that are built into most handheld devices and read aloud
on-screen messages and notifications. By restructuring the way the
information is organized on the app, screen readers are better able
to convert text to audio in the proper, logical sequence, allowing
customers to better understand and navigate the app. According to
the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center, more
than 25 million Americans have self-reported travel-limiting
disability. The improved accessibility of the app is just one of
the ways United is continuing its commitment to accessibility and
inclusion of customers with disabilities.
"The parts of the travel experience that we all take for granted
like checking luggage, getting your flight status and accessing a
boarding pass can still be a challenge for someone with a visual
disability," said Linda Jojo,
Executive Vice President for Technology and Chief Digital Officer,
United. "These new accessibility enhancements are part of our
continuing commitment to level the playing field, unlock all the
customer benefits of our app and give people with disabilities more
independence while traveling."
Visually impaired customers will notice that these changes make
it easier to manage all aspects of day-of travel, including check
in, viewing reservation details and flight status, bag tracking and
more. Ray Campbell, a member of
United's digital team who's visually impaired and sits on the board
of the American Council of the Blind, played a key role in helping
redesign the app, and walks through how these changes make flying
easier for him in this video.
"Optimizing mobile apps for tools such as VoiceOver and TalkBack
has been a game changer, allowing people with visual disabilities
to fully utilize smartphone technology in their daily lives," said
Campbell. "It's just as important for someone with a visual
disability to easily access day-of-travel information and features
as for any other customer. By improving the accessibility of the
United app, we are truly living out United's mission of caring for
all customers."
Beyond the accessibility changes, the United digital team
enhanced the current offering while keeping the features that
helped the app win a Webby People's Voice award in 2019.
- For our MileagePlus® program members, the app now features a
refreshed account experience for members to easily check balances,
track Premier® progress, explore MileagePlus benefits, access past
activity and more, all in one place.
- The airline is also expanding a popular feature previously only
accessible to MileagePlus members. Now, all 37 million customers
who have the United app will see a contextualized home screen
starting 48 hours before their flight which provides dynamic
updates based on where a customer is in their travel journey. For
example, customers can see the boarding status of their flight on
their homescreen, access personal device entertainment onboard with
one click, find a link to a map with gate-to-gate directions for
connecting flights and click a quick access button to track any
checked bags upon arrival.
- United made slight tweaks to navigation based on customer
feedback to make the app more intuitive, including making the
bottom navigation persistent throughout the app. Another example is
the "More" menu, which was reorganized and now contains the "Inbox"
feature, which includes timely messages about boarding
announcements, gate changes and other travel updates.
- Customers will notice a new color palette that's consistent
with the refreshed branding the airline debuted in 2019. United's
digital team also made subtle design adjustments to make things
more consistent and easier to find, like always using a purple bar
to highlight the main call-to-action on a page and ensuring alerts
and flight status icons appear the same way in every page on the
app.
- All of these changes are underpinned by a new back-end
platform, which will ultimately make the app faster and more
responsive.
The redesigned app is available for download today for
iPhone®, iPad® and iPod
touch® devices (as an iPhone app) and for Android
devices.
Since the start of the pandemic, United has been a leader among
U.S. airlines in enacting new policies and innovations designed to
keep employees and passengers safer when traveling. It was the
first U.S. airline to mandate masks for flight attendants, quickly
following with all customers and employees. United was also among
the first U.S. carriers to announce it wouldn't permit customers
who refused to comply with the airline's mandatory mask policy to
fly with them while the face mask policy is in place. United was
also the first U.S. airline to roll out touchless check-in for
customers with bags, and the first to require passengers take an
online health assessment before traveling. The airline also
recently announced it will apply Zoono Microbe Shield, an EPA
registered antimicrobial coating that forms a long-lasting bond
with surfaces and inhibits the growth of microbes, to its entire
mainline and express fleet before the end of the year.
About United
United's shared purpose is "Connecting People. Uniting the
World." For more information, visit united.com, follow @United on
Twitter and Instagram or connect on Facebook. The common stock of
United's parent, United Airlines Holdings, Inc., is traded on the
Nasdaq under the symbol "UAL".
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SOURCE United Airlines