Swiggy makes its platform accessible to Indians with visual impairment

SoftBank-backed food delivery firm Swiggy is making its platform accessible to Indians with visual impairment to ensure convenience to all. The move is in line with its mission to elevate the quality of life of urban consumers by enabling unparalleled convenience. People with visual impairments were not able to easily use the Swiggy app, since it wasn’t designed to be accessible.

“We realised that making Swiggy accessible to Indians with visual impairment was important to ensure convenience to all,” said Madhusudhan Rao, SVP Consumer Platform (Product and Tech), in a company blog post.

The easiest way to do this would be to enable screen readers which allows reading out focused text and content on the screen.

“However, this means our visually impaired users would not be able to enjoy the true experience of Swiggy’s intuitive UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design that we’re immensely proud of and strive to improve every day,” said Rao. “Hence, in early 2021, we started our journey to transform Swiggy’s approach to accessibility by solving for it at the product-end.”

Over the last year, Swiggy has transformed from being a food delivery platform to one where consumers access everything from grocery to warm meals to personal care items and other essentials, delivered safely and reliably. It was also around then, and through organisations like Change.org that Swiggy came to realise how many users with disabilities use Swiggy.

As per the World Health Organization, over one billion people currently experience disability. Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment.

Swiggy started in a customer backward way by rSwiggy started in a customer backward way by researching how users with limited vision use its website and app. This helped it gather insights on what’s working and what’s notesearching how users with limited vision use its website and app. This helped it gather insights on what’s working and what’s not. Diving deeper, it did workshops with DEOC (Diversity And Equal Opportunity Centre). It put together a dedicated team at Swiggy whose mission is to ensure accessibility for all. This team has been working with engineers, designers, and others across the company to help ensure that all the existing products are made with accessibility in mind.

From its research, Swiggy understood many nuances that affect the customer experience for people with physical disabilities.  For example, when ordering food on Swiggy, users typically rely on information like cuisine, rating, and delivery time to make informed choices on what to order and from where. Considering this information was earlier available only as text on the user’s device screen, accessing it would naturally be a challenge to users with visual or motor disabilities.

To address this, the firm innovated on two kinds of support. The first is “switch access” which enables users with motor issues to operate the app with just two buttons. The other is a “talkback” feature for Android users and a “voiceover” feature for iOS users, both of which will deliver the information displayed on the screen in the right context rather than merely reading out the text on the screen. Changes like this would make a tangible difference to their user experience.  

“To simplify accessibility, we have also made various modifications to other important elements – the home screen, the restaurant listing screen, menu selections, navigation, payment, order tracking, and quick-action features,” said Rao.

Today, on the International Day of persons with disability, Swiggy announced the first milestone in its accessibility journey. The firm is making the two of its biggest and most used offerings- food delivery, and its express grocery delivery service, Instamart, accessible. These two services are available to millions of Indians. “We’re confident that the accessibility features will enable us to deliver unparalleled convenience to more users every day,” said Rao. “Ordering food through Swiggy is accessible and we hope, a quick and effortless experience.”

Users of Android, iOS and MWeb will have access to these accessibility features. They can navigate using gestures in the menu and checkout which simplifies the ordering flow. In iOS along with voice over, the firm has implemented voice control using Siri which helps users with reduced mobility in food ordering flow. At present, the firm is 70 per cent through with its efforts in making Instamart accessible to all and are working hard to add other segments like promo banners and post-order screens.  In the first three months since it started making the changes, the daily orders from its accessible sessions have increased 12-fold. “We are very excited and humbled to see this positive reaction from our users,” said Rao.

Swiggy’s next milestone and commitment is that by the Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 19, 2022), all Swiggy’s current offerings– Swiggy Genie, meat and alcohol delivery (available in select cities) will be accessible to all.

Swiggy said its in-house designer, Prasanna Venkatesh who grew up with hearing impairment could understand the challenges faced by people with disabilities on a daily basis acted as the cog to its mission of designing accessible solutions.

“While designing an application, we strive to make it available to the maximum number of people and deliver the best user experience,” said Prasanna Venkatesh, Senior Product Design Architect. “In today’s mobile world, accessibility is an important part of any app. Especially for a brand like Swiggy that is democratizing convenience, delivering everything users need from sanitizers to pizzas. I’m personally glad that at Swiggy, we realized this and acted on it, not just with a stop-gap solution but something that will make the true Swiggy experience accessible to all,” said Venkatesh.

Accessibility evangelists including Aziz Minat have also been in touch with Swiggy over the last many months for their meaningful and actionable inputs.

Going forward, Swiggy will continue investing in automated testing tools to catch accessibility issues. Through annual reviews with the right agencies, it hopes to be on track to make Swiggy more accessible and inclusive for users with disabilities. For instance, DEOC (Diversity And Equal Opportunity Centre) has partnered with Swiggy in the accessibility and inclusion journey. “They are taking a systematic and a sustainable approach to making their services accessible which other service providers can learn from,” said Rama Krishnamachari, Director, DEOC.

Srinivasu Chakravarthula, Accessibility Evangelist, said the food ordering business is growing and in fact has become essential in the lives of people with disabilities.

“It’s good to see Swiggy has started their journey to make their products and services accessible to all users including people with disabilities,” said Chakravarthula. “It’s also great to see that Swiggy is proactively looking forward to continuing their journey for accessibility and serve more customers.”