Customer Support for Fitbit users with disabilities

[Podunk]

Disabilities support team to supplement the customer care representative. People who are knowledgeable about mobility and visual deficits. Trained to help maximize the benefits of the Fitbit devices as part of rehab or every day use. We all know people with rehab or other disabilities who might benefit from a Disability Support team knowledgeable

[Odyssey13]

@Podunk  please vote for your own suggestion. I voted. Great idea.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Podunk, and thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about adding a Disability Support Team on Fitbit. We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If this suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

Watch this space for status updates. In the meantime, try visiting Health & Wellness to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[Robin234]

Hi,

A couple of thoughts:

* If it’s not a team of people who are specifically looking at the accessibility and unique needs of people with disabilities, then do you have people assigned throughout the company that take their needs into consideration?
* One reason I came on this site today is because having the minimum starting time for a walk is 10 minutes. There are days that I’m extremely grateful if I can walk for 10 min. I’m putting in a lot of effort to walk those 10 minutes, which is not being counted as exercise on my Fitbit. Therefore, my Fitbit is not meeting my needs. 
*** I understand that most requests need a certain number of votes before they are forwarded to the Fitbit management team. However, in this case, when we are talking about people with disabilities trying to access your product, that will help them be more mobile, I do NOT understand the need to have X number of votes.
~ There are a lot of conversations and efforts going into making recreational activities more accessible for people with disabilities. I do NOT understand why Fitbit would intentionally want to ignore possibilities to make their product more accessible/user friendly for people with disabilities just because their aren’t enough votes in a system that does not prioritize topics such as this. Especially, from my limited perspective, when some of the adaptations may be a minimal cost and Fitbit would be able to advertise that they are making changes to being more inclusive. 
** Due to how critical this topic is, it is my sincere hope that this topic is forwarded to the Fitbit management team immediately and does Not wait for anymore votes.

** If a topic this important and where Fitbit management is going to knowingly ignore accessibility issues with some of their disabled users is NOT immediately forwarded, I would be interested in hearing their rationale for it NOT being immediately forwarded. 

Thanks for moderating this thread and for listening!!
Robin

[Odyssey13]

Hi @Robin234  you might want to look at this post - click to read - and the video provided to understand how suggestions are handled.

[Podunk]

Here are a couple of tips that you might try in order to get better results from the Fitbit and identifying exercise. One is to mimic riding a bike if the Fitbit is on the left wrist place four fingers in the left hand pocket and one thumb in the belt loop while you walk, it is not the safest, but it mimics riding a bicycle. Another method which I have found recently works well because the charge for strap attachment broke is to place the Fitbit tracker in your sock and walk with the Fitbit tracker in your sock. If it is horizontal, it will record as walking if it is vertical it will record as elliptical.  I find that I am getting much better results in the past two days since my charge for attachment broke. If this works out, Amazon has an ankle holder for the Fitbit device. I have been advocating for the blind and disabled for more than a year and a half first working strictly with customer care, then advocating within the community.  I will keep doing this no matter how hard they try to frustrate me because I feel that without voicing the concerns of the blind and reading disabled and having worked in an acute rehabilitation facility advocating for them also, I would be neglecting a moral duty that I have taken on to better the lives of people with  physical and visual disabilities. Keep walking and keep advocating for people win, physical and visual deficits. I am a blind user, using an iPhone with Apple‘s voiceover as a screen reader. I have dictated this on my iPhone and appreciate all the positive comments I have received, and will receive on this suggestion. There is another suggestion within the community to have Fitbit software developers use screen, reading software prior to releasing updates in order to make sure that the applications are friendly to those with reading deficits, and those who are blind. It appears they have not taken my suggestion seriously but if you want to look for it and vote for it, it would be appreciated . Thank you, Mark, alias Podunk. 

[Robin234]

* Hi😊 Odessey13, Thank you for the suggestion to look at that information. Even though I already knew the process, the information was helpful.
*. I just did a search on the term disabilities and read some of the suggestions and comments. One person mentioned how emotionally difficult it is to see the word “steps” all of the time because they are in a wheelchair. That thread was current as of this month. This person said that, for years, they have been advocating for the ability to count rotations of the wheels on their chair.
* It so happens that one of the next posts I saw was a request for just that, counting the rotations of wheels on a wheel chair. That post was from 2015. 2015!
* So this is a request that has been made for almost 10 years, that I saw in my brief time looking, so it might actually be longer. 
* Almost 10 years!!!
* But because not enough people vote for it, it has probably never been submitted to the Fitbit teams. 
* I believe that is just wrong. 
* I believe Fitbit should be working to be more inclusive, not putting up additional barriers/roadblocks to further increase their exclusion. 
*** Odessy13, thank you for caring enough to comment on this post😊😊😊