Touch Screens and Me
How a recent attempt to buy wine brought home what it means to be disabled in the digital world
There are many many aspects of life in Marrakech, The Red City, that I love. It’s ferociously hot, often over 40⁰C but a desert climate. Zero humidity and cool at night. No lying on a bed starkers at 2am dripping with sweat as though you have caught typhus, as in Kuala Lumpur. No swimming through a miasma of warm steam in New York, then walking into any building which, for some reason, has the window-rattler aircon set to just above Antarctic (no New Yorker has ever been able to give me any sort of satisfactory explanation for this irrational collective behaviour).
I love the hands-on way the Marrachi treat me. The way they will grab me and haul me across the road, lift me bodily up steps to the restaurant. Put the cutlery in my hand and point them to my mouth. In the UK they could be up before a tribunal for this behaviour. In truth, if it happened in London I’d probably mind. Here it’s human interaction at a heightened level.
The other thing I like is that it’s a Muslim City without the authoritarian, doctrinaire rules and regs. There is a Nicolas Wine shop across the street.
I’ve been in with Shelley loads of times. This time I went in with Dino, my driver.
The store guys collected up a dozen local White and a dozen local Rosé. Came to just under two hundred quid.
And here my tale begins. The visa card machine is deployed. It’s a glass screen not a keypad.
“Touch screen.” Said the store manager with evident pride.
“Do you have a keypad?” In my very bad diriga. “Non”.
‘OK then we do it like a phone payment. You take the number, the expiry date and security pin from the card.”
“Not possible, only hotel customers.”
“Ok, then we’re stuck.” I turn to the door.
The staff are vexed. They work on commission. “Why not your friend use the machine? You do this with your wife many times.”
I indicate Dino. “He’s not my wife”.
I leave. No wine. Not annoyed with anyone in particular, just with my mouth forming horizontal zeds like a frustrated cartoon character. “There’s no way around this Dino”.
I get lots and lots of mail from people about living with a disability. I also give a lot of talks. Whatever else I do, I point out to my audience that “Disability is not OTHER – it’s your future”.
You will not get to age 80 without at least 3 quite profound disabilities.. Mobility, acuity, vision, hearing, dexterity – multiple choice.
This touch screen thing is the thin end of the wedge. How on earth do people manage? You can’t pay in cash now, so you put a card against a screen and hope you’re not being ripped off. If you’re over 50 and not wearing the right spex, it’s unlikely you can see the amount ring up.
You could alternatively just use a phone payment app – you have got to be kidding. You need your 6-year-old grandchild just to set it up. Then you have to actually find it. People in the UK are not good waiting in line for older folk, let alone disabled folk who take a bit longer to do things. So you get flustered.
In the end you walk out without getting what you want. Like me in Nicolas.
If you are going to use plastic, you need to know how much is in your account. Online banking. Good luck with that! My accountant’s neighbours think he shouts at and hits his grandchildren. He doesn’t. He’s shouting at his online banking app. And he’s an accountant! Allah help the rest of us.
In the UK there are some really good laws requiring local authority, government and all commercial websites to be fully accessible. You could have fooled me.
Have I paid my council tax? What’s the parking system in Camden for my blue badge? When is my GP surgery open? What size do these socks come in? When is the bus to Streatham? How do I write to my MP to complain about the pavements? Or even about the inaccessible website of my local council. Ok, how do I access the contact us section?
Truly my son, you are not worthy of contacting us. There is an armed guard sleeping across the accessibility section, asleep, with a curved scimitar across his belly.
You all skim past first ten same page links on websites. You’ve probably noticed there’s always a link called “accessibility”.
Don’t bother to click on it. The very fact they’ve put the link there means the site ain’t accessible. Touché!
I wonder if the problem I had with Nicolas is because it’s a French company, not a Moroccan one. Thinking about things, I’m a lot more relaxed in Marrakech.
“With the afternoon heat too suffocating in the square, the light too bright for any but a Marrachi’s eyes, I slipped into the labyrinth of the medina. Cool vaulted stone, courtyards latticed with bamboo staves, casting zebra stripes across the merchants and their stalls. What an emporium – mountains of tumeric, paprika, salted almonds and dates, yellow leather slippers laid out in rows, ostrich eggs and incense, chameleons in wire cages, and beef tenderloins nestled on fragrant beds of mint.”
“Crisply geometric patterns of blue-and-white zellij, sun-bleached panels of carved cedar, rhythmic arcades of white plaster, sinuous lines of wrought-iron balconies: each reveals the hand of a master craftsperson and the beauty of refined materials.”
Susan Sully, New Moroccan Style: The Art of Sensual Living
Hit the nail on the head. People always think that disability is someone else's problem, when in fact, it is a freight train headed towards them in the future, for the vast majority. Love the writing Robin - keep it up. You're a great storyteller!