App Store update gives support reps the ability to respond to user reviews

Why it matters to you

It is now easier for app developers and support reps to respond to and resolve issues in the App Store.

In the past, if you raised an issue in a review for an iOS or MacOS app, the developer had no way to respond to you directly within the App Store. The release of iOS 10.3 earlier in the year fixed this to some degree, allowing developers to personally respond to public reviews.

However, it was still an incomplete solution because larger businesses were unable to give its customer support representatives the same access. The very individuals whose responsibility it is to communicate with users did not have that channel open to them and, in many cases, the reviews and feedback suffered.

Thankfully, Apple is doing away with that limitation. This week, the company introduced a new Customer Support role. The position can be manually assigned to employees via iTunes Connect, though some iTunes Connect users will automatically receive Customer Support capabilities with the update. If you are already an App Manager or Marketer, the ability to respond to reviews will be immediately extended to you.

Unlike other big changes coming to the App Store, the addition of responses from non-developers is arriving early, rather than with the public release of iOS 11 scheduled for the fall. That update is slated to usher in a massive redesign for the digital marketplace, with a new “Today” tab serving as the home page, as well as a specialized tab for games.

Apple hopes to highlight new experiences every day with the App Stor and make it a regular destination for users who otherwise only visit when they need or hear about a specific app. The app listing pages have been reimagined as well, and the whole experience looks to refresh a core part of iOS that has remained largely untouched since it debuted nearly 10 years ago.

Many users have already taken a crack at the iOS 11 public beta and had the chance to play around with the new App Store. If you haven’t, check out our guide to learn the ins and outs of navigating it. Otherwise, if you are itching to install the beta but have not done so yet, we have a guide that makes the process simple.

Save big with this Samsung BOGO Galaxy S8 deal now through July 20

This is a Samsung sponsored post.

Right now Samsung is offering a BOGO deal that lets you score two Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ smartphones for the price of one when you trade in your old phone. The summer Samsung BOGO Galaxy S8 offer runs through July 20 and is available exclusively through Samsung.com and the Shop Samsung app.

To score the deal you’ll need to trade in an eligible device, which can be a Samsung Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, or iPhone 7S Plus. You must send in your trade-in device within 15 days of receiving your new phones. The trade in device also needs to meet some basic operational conditions. It needs to power on and hold a charge, have only basic wear and tear, have a functioning display with no cracks in the screen, and not be blacklisted. Prior to trading in your eligible device, you must perform a factory reset and remove all personal information from the device. The trade in device must have a reactivation lock, Google Factory Reset Protection and all other anti-theft locking software disabled.

When you order your Galaxy S8 through Samsung.com or the Shop Samsung app, there are a few additional advantages. Enjoy premium care for the first 30 days which includes an in-person setup, one-on-one learning sessions, hand-delivered replacements, and more. You may also find value in the Samsung financing option, which spreads the cost of the phone over 24 months with low monthly payments, no money down and 0 percent APR for those who qualify. Finally, get your device fast with the included free expedited shipping.

In April we reviewed the Galaxy S8 giving the phone a 4-star rating. We concluded that while indeed it is expensive, it’s also worth every penny. We loved that it has such a high-quality build, a fantastic screen, and a solid battery life. Other perks include that you can stream music to two different Bluetooth devices at the same time and the “Wide Selfie” mode that lets you snap a photo, then twist the camera to your left and right to capture your friends.

To score two of these impressive phones, visit Samsung by July 20 and make sure you have an eligible trade-in device.

Available from:

Samsung

Looking for more great deals on tech and electronics? Check out our deals page to score some extra savings on our favorite gadgets.

Meet the Russian startup that’s launching a giant ‘space billboard’ into orbit

There’s a saying among Russian advertisers: “the best idea is to rent the Moon.” Fortunately, the Moon isn’t for sale, but space itself is up for grabs, so companies and amateurs are now launching dozens of small satellites (smallsats) into orbit at a time.

You can’t see most of these satellites from Earth, but for the next month a smallsat developed by students at the Moscow Polytechnic University may be visible to the naked eye. In fact, if all goes well for the team behind the project, it will be the second brightest object in the night sky, second only to the Moon.

It’s an ambitious, largely crowdfunded endeavor led by a Russian advertising agency 12.digital that says its goals are to inspire interest in space, test science instruments, and perform a bit of advertising for its biggest investor. See the promotional video below for an overview of the project, even if you don’t speak Russian.

“Space is not so far away,” Alex Panov, one of the project leads, told Digital Trends. “It’s possible to make cool and interesting engineering projects, even as students and young engineers.”

Panov and his team have called the satellite Mayak, the Russian word for “beacon.” It was launched Friday morning aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket that carried 73 additional satellites, including 47 other smallsats and a large spacecraft that will be used to monitor forest fires. Mayak detached from the rocket in the afternoon and, by evening, is expected to unfurl a large pyramid made of metalized film that will work like a mirror, reflecting light and making the Mayak one of the brightest objects in the night sky.

“It’s possible to make cool and interesting engineering projects, even as students and young engineers.”

The brighter an object appears to us on Earth, the lower it’s apparent magnitude. It’s not clear exactly how bright the Mayak will appear – Panov was hesitant to say — but some reports have claimed it will reflect enough light to shine with an apparent magnitude of -10. To put that in perspective, the Sun’s apparent magnitude is -27, the Moon’s is about -13, and the International Space Station — currently the brightest manmade object in the sky — is nearly -6.

The prospect of such a bright manmade object orbiting Earth is reasonable cause for concern for sky-gazers. But the Mayak won’t be in orbit for long. Part of the mission is to test the pyramid as an aerodynamic braking device to quickly take decommissioned satellites out of orbit — a potential solution to the ever-growing problem of space debris. Once the pyramid opens, the satellite will be dragged back into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up. Panov estimates that if they didn’t open the pyramid it would stay in orbit for 25 years. With the pyramid unfurled, that time decreases to under 30 days.

“The pyramid is like a parachute for satellites,” Panov said. “It’s a small system and if a satellite finishes working, you can press the button on Earth and the parachute will open and cause the satellite to go down to the atmosphere much faster.”

Mayak received a free ride aboard the Soyuz rocket, thanks to support from Russia’s Roscosmos space program. Roughly 60 percent of the project was supported through crowdfunding, with the rest coming from a sponsorship with a banking startup appropriately named RocketBank. For its sponsorship, RocketBank will brand Mayak as the “Cash Back Star” for its 200,000 users. However, 12.digital insists it’s not just about the advertising.

“The pyramid is like a parachute for satellites”

“We’re an ad agency but we realized we’re interested in some technologies and we met some young engineers and decided to work on this project together,” says 12.digital partner, Nik Ershov.

“We don’t want to move advertisement to space,” he added. “We understand that in the future some companies will use space as an area that people can’t avoid. But we’re scared about that. We don’t want to think in that context.”

Nonetheless, it’s tough to deny the potential for space advertising and the Mayak stands as an example of how companies may capitalize on the open space above us.

The satellite will orbit Earth about sixteen times every day, Ershov estimated, and should be visible from regions around the globe. The team has also released an app to help users track the Mayak in real time.

Meet the Russian startup that’s launching a giant ‘space billboard’ into orbit

There’s a saying among Russian advertisers: “the best idea is to rent the Moon.” Fortunately, the Moon isn’t for sale, but space itself is up for grabs, so companies and amateurs are now launching dozens of small satellites (smallsats) into orbit at a time.

You can’t see most of these satellites from Earth, but for the next month a smallsat developed by students at the Moscow Polytechnic University may be visible to the naked eye. In fact, if all goes well for the team behind the project, it will be the second brightest object in the night sky, second only to the Moon.

It’s an ambitious, largely crowdfunded endeavor led by a Russian advertising agency 12.digital that says its goals are to inspire interest in space, test science instruments, and perform a bit of advertising for its biggest investor. See the promotional video below for an overview of the project, even if you don’t speak Russian.

“Space is not so far away,” Alex Panov, one of the project leads, told Digital Trends. “It’s possible to make cool and interesting engineering projects, even as students and young engineers.”

Panov and his team have called the satellite Mayak, the Russian word for “beacon.” It was launched Friday morning aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket that carried 73 additional satellites, including 47 other smallsats and a large spacecraft that will be used to monitor forest fires. Mayak detached from the rocket in the afternoon and, by evening, is expected to unfurl a large pyramid made of metalized film that will work like a mirror, reflecting light and making the Mayak one of the brightest objects in the night sky.

“It’s possible to make cool and interesting engineering projects, even as students and young engineers.”

The brighter an object appears to us on Earth, the lower it’s apparent magnitude. It’s not clear exactly how bright the Mayak will appear – Panov was hesitant to say — but some reports have claimed it will reflect enough light to shine with an apparent magnitude of -10. To put that in perspective, the Sun’s apparent magnitude is -27, the Moon’s is about -13, and the International Space Station — currently the brightest manmade object in the sky — is nearly -6.

The prospect of such a bright manmade object orbiting Earth is reasonable cause for concern for sky-gazers. But the Mayak won’t be in orbit for long. Part of the mission is to test the pyramid as an aerodynamic braking device to quickly take decommissioned satellites out of orbit — a potential solution to the ever-growing problem of space debris. Once the pyramid opens, the satellite will be dragged back into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will burn up. Panov estimates that if they didn’t open the pyramid it would stay in orbit for 25 years. With the pyramid unfurled, that time decreases to under 30 days.

“The pyramid is like a parachute for satellites,” Panov said. “It’s a small system and if a satellite finishes working, you can press the button on Earth and the parachute will open and cause the satellite to go down to the atmosphere much faster.”

Mayak received a free ride aboard the Soyuz rocket, thanks to support from Russia’s Roscosmos space program. Roughly 60 percent of the project was supported through crowdfunding, with the rest coming from a sponsorship with a banking startup appropriately named RocketBank. For its sponsorship, RocketBank will brand Mayak as the “Cash Back Star” for its 200,000 users. However, 12.digital insists it’s not just about the advertising.

“The pyramid is like a parachute for satellites”

“We’re an ad agency but we realized we’re interested in some technologies and we met some young engineers and decided to work on this project together,” says 12.digital partner, Nik Ershov.

“We don’t want to move advertisement to space,” he added. “We understand that in the future some companies will use space as an area that people can’t avoid. But we’re scared about that. We don’t want to think in that context.”

Nonetheless, it’s tough to deny the potential for space advertising and the Mayak stands as an example of how companies may capitalize on the open space above us.

The satellite will orbit Earth about sixteen times every day, Ershov estimated, and should be visible from regions around the globe. The team has also released an app to help users track the Mayak in real time.

How to disable or enable Chromecast network notifications on Android

Google Chromecast is a great casting platform, but the Google Home companion app has now finally gotten a much asked-for update to make it even better. One major complaint was with Chromecast network notifications, which allowed users to control playback of any Chromecast device on their network — even if they didn’t initiate the playback on that device. The end result is that you could end up with a number of playback notifications if you’re using a busy network.

Now, however, you can finally prevent those notifications from showing up on other devices — meaning others can’t mess with your music when they’re not even listening. The update comes in the form of a toggle switch that allows you to disable all network notifications for the Chromecast and Google Home.

But how do you do that? Well, here’s a step-by-step guide.

Open the Google Home app.
Tap the Devices button in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Scroll through the list of devices to find the device you would like to stop sending notifications.
Tap on the menu button on the card for the device.
Under Device info, switch off “Let others control your casted media.”

There are a few differences between this update and what was previously available. Before, you could only disable notifications on a device-by-device basis — now, you can disable all network notifications. So, you can begin playback on a Chromecast device and notifications will not pop up on other devices on the network.

The update has been pushed live, so if you don’t already see the toggle switch, check to see if there’s an update available for the Google Home app.

You can also control whether or not Chromecast notifications pop up on your own device, and there are a few ways to do that. Here’s the easiest way to stop Chromecast notifications on your device.

Open the Settings app.
Under the “Personal” section, tap Google, then hit the Cast media controls option.
Turn the slider to the “off” position.
To re-enable cast media controls, simply follow the same steps and turn the slider back to the on position.

How to buy Bitcoin: From wallet to exchange, here’s how to start

Interested in learning how to buy Bitcoin? The most popular cryptocurrency is now accepted around the world and has a growing number of applications — but you need to know where to go to purchase and store it. Let’s walk through how to set up a bitcoin account and make your first purchase!

Step 1: Find a good Bitcoin wallet

Specific digital wallets are used to store Bitcoin until you are ready to spend them or exchange them for another currency. Wallets range in terms of features, platforms they can be used on, and security, so it’s important to choose one that works for you.

When you find a wallet that checks off all your important features, download it to the appropriate platform. For beginners, we recommend starting off with a simple wallet that makes transfers easy. These wallets can be downloaded for free, but fees may apply to currency exchanges when moving money to other accounts.

Coinbase wallet comes with a friendly wallet that ties directly into its exchange services and is simple to use, making it one of the most popular American Bitcoin wallets. When you sign up, you get a certain amount of insurance for the Bitcoin you store, and you can go online from any device to check up on your amounts or make a change.

Mycelium is a popular mobile wallet known for being compatible with more advanced tech, like Trezor hardware wallets (for maximum security) and Tor.

Electrum is primarily to be used on desktop computers, and provides you with your own encryption key for security. If you plan on storing a large amount of Bitcoin online and want one of the safer options, it’s worth a look.

Step 2: Choose the right Bitcoin exchange

If you want to know how to buy Bitcoin without a broker, you need an exchange: There are a whole lot of exchanges out there, with varying performance. Some are untrustworthy and others are very limited, so it’s important to pick the right exchange to start with. When comparing exchanges, remember to look at the fees charged for buying Bitcoin and what payment methods are offered. Few exchanges will offer to turn Bitcoin directly into cash for you.

Coinbase is the most obvious suggestion for people buying their first Bitcoin. It’s very simple to use, has a great interface, and shows consistently high quality when it comes to taking care of customers — without pushing fees too high. It’s also available on both desktop and mobile devices. We highly suggest you start here if you’re not sure where to go.

CEX offers even more simplicity for those who are a bit more used to exchanges in general. It gives you immediate exchange rates and basic buy/sell options without any hoops to jump through. However, its payment options are a bit limited.

Bitcoin exchange search is Bitcoin.com’s own exchange search. Put in your country, and you can take a look at available exchanges, as well as check out the current “featured exchange.” It’s a good option to investigate more choices, but remember to check reviews and history before choosing any particular exchange.

Step 3: Select your payment method

Exchanges accept a variety of payment options based on what they are willing to use. This is sort of a sore point for many exchanges, since some payment methods have been used to scam sellers for a quick buck in the past. Bank account and credit card transfers are typically accepted by most exchanges, with some limitations. Wire transfers are a bit more hit or miss, and PayPal transfers may not be allowed. Coinbase, however, allows for all these payment methods, which is why it is once again an easy recommendation for beginners.

Note that Bitcoin ATMs allow you to exchange Bitcoin in compatible wallets for cash. These ATMs are available in a limited number of cities, but do provide an alternative to withdrawing money using an exchange. Again, most exchanges and online wallets will not deal directly with cash.

Step 4: Buy some Bitcoin and store them in your wallet

You will notice that exchanges provide you with information on how many Bitcoin you can buy for specific sums of money. Currently, Bitcoin values have been pushed to very high levels, so you’ll probably be buying a fraction of a Bitcoin—for example, paying $500 for 0.1935 of a bitcoin. That’s where the market is right now, and nothing to worry about as long as you keep an eye on the numbers.

Start small and make your first trade. This will typically store your Bitcoin into an automatically generated account on your exchange. You should then seek out the option to transfer these funds to the address of the Bitcoin wallet you have created. The exchange may charge for this transfer.

Important note: Bitcoin transfers can be a bit sporadic. Unlike other currency trades, when you buy bitcoin funds the transaction needs to be recorded in the blockchain and affirmed. This can take time, especially during busy trading hours. It’s not uncommon for a trade to take an hour or two to complete, so you may not want to immediately leap over to your account and start moving funds around.

Step 5: Start doing something with Bitcoin

If you don’t start spending Bitcoin or exchanging them with other currency, it can be easy to forget about them. So start using your wallet. Find a local shop around town that accepts digital bitcoin payments, or look into compatible online stores. Always read reviews and fine print before making any purchase or exchange with your Bitcoin!

How to buy Bitcoin: From wallet to exchange, here’s how to start

Interested in learning how to buy Bitcoin? The most popular cryptocurrency is now accepted around the world and has a growing number of applications — but you need to know where to go to purchase and store it. Let’s walk through how to set up a bitcoin account and make your first purchase!

Step 1: Find a good Bitcoin wallet

Specific digital wallets are used to store Bitcoin until you are ready to spend them or exchange them for another currency. Wallets range in terms of features, platforms they can be used on, and security, so it’s important to choose one that works for you.

When you find a wallet that checks off all your important features, download it to the appropriate platform. For beginners, we recommend starting off with a simple wallet that makes transfers easy. These wallets can be downloaded for free, but fees may apply to currency exchanges when moving money to other accounts.

Coinbase wallet comes with a friendly wallet that ties directly into its exchange services and is simple to use, making it one of the most popular American Bitcoin wallets. When you sign up, you get a certain amount of insurance for the Bitcoin you store, and you can go online from any device to check up on your amounts or make a change.

Mycelium is a popular mobile wallet known for being compatible with more advanced tech, like Trezor hardware wallets (for maximum security) and Tor.

Electrum is primarily to be used on desktop computers, and provides you with your own encryption key for security. If you plan on storing a large amount of Bitcoin online and want one of the safer options, it’s worth a look.

Step 2: Choose the right Bitcoin exchange

If you want to know how to buy Bitcoin without a broker, you need an exchange: There are a whole lot of exchanges out there, with varying performance. Some are untrustworthy and others are very limited, so it’s important to pick the right exchange to start with. When comparing exchanges, remember to look at the fees charged for buying Bitcoin and what payment methods are offered. Few exchanges will offer to turn Bitcoin directly into cash for you.

Coinbase is the most obvious suggestion for people buying their first Bitcoin. It’s very simple to use, has a great interface, and shows consistently high quality when it comes to taking care of customers — without pushing fees too high. It’s also available on both desktop and mobile devices. We highly suggest you start here if you’re not sure where to go.

CEX offers even more simplicity for those who are a bit more used to exchanges in general. It gives you immediate exchange rates and basic buy/sell options without any hoops to jump through. However, its payment options are a bit limited.

Bitcoin exchange search is Bitcoin.com’s own exchange search. Put in your country, and you can take a look at available exchanges, as well as check out the current “featured exchange.” It’s a good option to investigate more choices, but remember to check reviews and history before choosing any particular exchange.

Step 3: Select your payment method

Exchanges accept a variety of payment options based on what they are willing to use. This is sort of a sore point for many exchanges, since some payment methods have been used to scam sellers for a quick buck in the past. Bank account and credit card transfers are typically accepted by most exchanges, with some limitations. Wire transfers are a bit more hit or miss, and PayPal transfers may not be allowed. Coinbase, however, allows for all these payment methods, which is why it is once again an easy recommendation for beginners.

Note that Bitcoin ATMs allow you to exchange Bitcoin in compatible wallets for cash. These ATMs are available in a limited number of cities, but do provide an alternative to withdrawing money using an exchange. Again, most exchanges and online wallets will not deal directly with cash.

Step 4: Buy some Bitcoin and store them in your wallet

You will notice that exchanges provide you with information on how many Bitcoin you can buy for specific sums of money. Currently, Bitcoin values have been pushed to very high levels, so you’ll probably be buying a fraction of a Bitcoin—for example, paying $500 for 0.1935 of a bitcoin. That’s where the market is right now, and nothing to worry about as long as you keep an eye on the numbers.

Start small and make your first trade. This will typically store your Bitcoin into an automatically generated account on your exchange. You should then seek out the option to transfer these funds to the address of the Bitcoin wallet you have created. The exchange may charge for this transfer.

Important note: Bitcoin transfers can be a bit sporadic. Unlike other currency trades, when you buy bitcoin funds the transaction needs to be recorded in the blockchain and affirmed. This can take time, especially during busy trading hours. It’s not uncommon for a trade to take an hour or two to complete, so you may not want to immediately leap over to your account and start moving funds around.

Step 5: Start doing something with Bitcoin

If you don’t start spending Bitcoin or exchanging them with other currency, it can be easy to forget about them. So start using your wallet. Find a local shop around town that accepts digital bitcoin payments, or look into compatible online stores. Always read reviews and fine print before making any purchase or exchange with your Bitcoin!

Earth’s most durable creature gives us hope for finding extraterrestrial life

Why it matters to you

The study of Earth’s most durable creature sheds light on our chances of finding alien life on other planets.

When you consider the creature most likely to survive an apocalypse-level catastrophe on Earth, what do figure to be the top candidate? Cockroaches? Fleas? People from the YouTube comments section?

In fact, if you picked any of these you’d be wrong. Well, at least you may be, according to researchers from Harvard University and Oxford University. In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, Harvard and Oxford researchers concluded that the tardigrade, also known as the “water bear” or “moss piglet,” is likely to be the ultimate survivor when everything’s said and done for the rest of us Earth-dwellers. Less than 1 mm in size, tardigrades are nonetheless astonishingly hardy: capable of being starved for up to 30 years, dehydrated to ridiculous levels, shot into space, or any other assortment of horrible modes of, well, death.

The research suggests that tardigrades are likely to hang around for the next 10 billion years, until they’re wiped out by the death of the sun. Cheerful stuff!

“The main quality that makes things resilient from our perspective is the capacity to withstand heat,” Dr. David Sloan, a researcher in Oxford University’s Department of Physics, told Digital Trends. “To me [it] came as a huge shock [that tardigrades can live at] about 150C for a brief time.”

If you’re wondering why serious scientists would carry out this kind of work, however, have no fear: there’s a good reason for it — and it’s all to do with the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life.

“We have found thousands of exoplanets so far,” Rafael Alves Batista, another researcher on the project, told us. “Many of those are Earthlike and are located in the habitable zone. If the chemistry is right, these places may have the necessary conditions for life as we know it to sprout. Many astrophysical events are a potential threat to life: asteroid impacts, star-star collisions, supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts, among many other. Therefore, if some of the planets that seem inhospitable today once hosted life, could this life withstand these catastrophic events? That was our motivation.”

In other words, if the tardigrades evolved on Earth, there might be other forms of life on different planets that are as resilient as, or even more resilient than they are. Hey, maybe the space-water bears are the ones sending the crazy alien radio bursts (FRBs) that have baffled astronomers for the last decade!

Fox hopes you’ll binge-watch at theaters like you do on Netflix

Let’s say you run a movie studio and notice that people would rather stay home and plow through the latest Marvel series on Netflix than pay through the nose for a trip to the theater. What do you do? If you’re Fox, the answer seems simple: offer a taste of that marathon viewing experience at the theater. Hollywood Reporter understands that Fox wants to release three film adaptations of RL Stine’s Fear Street books within three months — a given movie would still be fresh in your mind when its sequel is hitting theaters. You’d be “bingeing movies” (as one tipster puts it) just about as quickly as the big screen format allows.

Fox has reportedly asked Fear Street director Leigh Janiak to write (and potentially rewrite) scripts that she could shoot back-to-back and release in a similar format. Think Lord of the Rings, but on a dramatically condensed time scale.

It’d undoubtedly be a pricey experiment for Fox, but it’s easy to see why the company would try: if it pays off, it could lead to people watching every movie in a franchise instead of losing interest in the years they usually wait between releases. It might also reduce the temptation to wait for home releases if you know you can see everything over the course of a single summer.

There are a few potential problems with this strategy, of course. To start, there’s simple logistics: it’s still easier, quicker and cheaper to tap “next episode” at home than it is to venture to the theater multiple times. It’s also a big bet that the movies themselves are good enough to sustain interest. As the Guardian observes, Universal is likely regretting its commitment to nine Dark Universe movies after watching the first title (2017’s The Mummy) bomb critically and commercially. If a Netflix or Hulu show fails, it’s not a horrendous expense. If the first movie in a short-release trilogy fails, however, that’s a gigantic budget thrown out the window with no time to tweak the sequels before they arrive. Ironically, the Fear Street strategy could wind up underscoring online video’s advantages in low production costs and immediate gratification.

Via: Guardian

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Uber sued again for failing to accommodate disabled passengers

Despite Uber’s programs to serve the needs of people who use wheelchairs, the ride sharing company faces a long line of lawsuits and complaints about its ability to serve people with disabilities. The Equal Rights Center claims that the company is in violation of Title 3 of the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as the DC Human Rights Act in Washington, DC. Mississippi riders have filed a similar suit, alleging that “persons with disabilities in Jackson have no ability to call a wheelchair accessible vehicle or a specially trained driver through the Uber app.”

Now there’s a suit against Uber in In New York City. Disability Rights Activists (DRA) just filed a class action by a “broad coalition of disability groups and disabled individuals in New York City,” saying that Uber is 99.9% inaccessible to people with mobility disabilities.

The suit was filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan on behalf of Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, the Taxis for All Campaign, Disabled in Action of Metropolitan New York and individuals who use wheelchairs. The suit claims that while Uber has “grown exponentially” in the city, the company has shown “total disregard for the rights of people with disabilities.” The DRA claims that Uber has a fleet of approximately 58,000 vehicles in the five boroughs of NYC, “fewer than 100 of them offer the lifts or ramps necessary” to accommodate those who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices.

The agency notes that other transportation options like taxis, subways and buses are mostly inaccessible, too. Even Access-A-Ride, the city’s paratransit service, is pretty awful, according to the press release. An accessible Uber would benefit people with mobility disabilities if the company were able and willing to provide it in usable quantities. The plaintiffs are not seeking damages, just equal access to Uber’s services.

“UberWAV makes up only .1% of the 58,000 vehicle fleet. It’s just window dressing designed to skirt anti-discrimination laws,” said DRA’s Michelle Caiola in a statement. “Uber must not be allowed to operate in New York City in a discriminatory manner. It must ensure its convenience and benefits are available to all people equally.”

Uber responded to our request for comment with the following statement: “Uber’s technology has expanded access to reliable transportation options for all riders, including those with disabilities and has enabled people with disabilities to earn income in new ways. While there is certainly more work to be done, we will continue advocating for a solution that offers affordable, reliable transportation to those who need a wheelchair accessible vehicle.” The spokesperson also pointed out that the company has been advocating for a 5-cent surcharge on all for-hire rides in the city, which would incentivize more drivers (not just ones that drive for Uber) to convert to wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

Source: DRA Legal