When Dr Ahmad Shamsuri Muhamad started secondary school, he learned how to take a taxi on his own.
Growing up in the 90s as a visually-impaired individual, Ahmad Shamsuri said he learned how to recognise a taxi by hearing.
"Taxis at the time were running on diesel and cars with diesel engines have a distinctive sound. So that's how I listen to the engine sound to hail a taxi," he said during an interview in Kuala Lumpur today (April 17).
When more taxis moved to LNG gas or petrol later, Ahmad Shamsuri said it became more challenging to distinguish between a car and a taxi: "Both sound the same!"
He had to rely on help from family members or those around him to navigate his way around town.
Now, Ahmad Shamsuri, 44, can simply talk to and listen to his ehailing app to get around.
Today at the Society of the Blind in Malaysia (SBM) office where Ahmad Shamsuri is the deputy president, members had the opportunity to learn how to hail their own rides through voice accessibility features on the Maxim E-hailing app.
When he taps on the screen, he hears his phone's screen reader announcing out loud the steps or features on the app such as pick-up location and then destination.
He can also hear the Maxim app give him a list of drop-off locations to choose from and talk back to the app to decide where to go. Then he has to double-tap to confirm the booking.
"We learn to be familiar with the layout of all the features on the app and go through it step-by-step. Buttons have to be properly labelled with no graphics covering the text so the speech reader can read it clearly," he said.
One SBM member pointed out that the voice feature needs to improve the way it announced pricing.
"I can't tell if the fare is RM490 or RM4.90 because it is not announcing the decimal point," said Nurfarahin, who was trying to book a ride to the city centre.
Maxim company director Mohd Hazwan Musley said he would take note of SBM members' feedback today and aim to improve the app.
He also announced other features for all OKU users such as OKU-friendly rates, where the fare will be least 5% cheaper during peak hours at certain areas.
Mohd Hazwan added that when these rates are activated, OKU users will also be given a longer grace period to get to the car – up to ten minutes instead of the standard three minutes for other users.
However, the OKU-friendly rates feature has to be manually verified by the driver when they arrive to pick up the passenger.
The company's head of division for KL, Syed Abdul Syarif said features were developed in-house and AI is being used to improve speech accuracy level. He claimed it can recognise users speaking in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin.
"Today's seminar is focused on allowing us to test our approach and gather direct feedback from participants," he said.
Despite some limitations, Ahmad Shamsuri relishes having his own independence to get around with technology like ehailing apps.
"I can go to work on my own and even call for rides at 2am when I'm out late," he said.
He hopes to see more consideration for the blind and others in the disabled community being applied in all stages of app development.
"When some companies update their apps, it ended up being not as accessible as the previous version," said Ahmad Shamsuri.
