You gotta wonder about the timing of a press release from Wal-Mart announcing
Wal-Mart Installs New Equipment to Protect Financial Privacy of Wal-Mart Shoppers with Visual Impairments, coming as it does on the heels of the
leaked internal Wal-Mart memo of plans to get rid of "unhealthy" workers.
Right up at the top of the press release, Wal-Mart makes sure to add that "Blind Community leaders praise Wal-Mart's Actions."
In a move applauded by members of the blind community nationwide, Wal-Mart today announced that it has begun installing state-of-the art point of sale devices to protect the privacy and security of Wal-Mart shoppers with visual impairments. The new devices have tactile keys arranged like a standard telephone keypad and will allow Wal-Mart shoppers who have difficulty reading information on a touchscreen to privately and independently enter their PIN and other confidential information.
Today's announcement is the result of collaboration between Wal-Mart and major blind organizations including the American Council of the Blind and the California Council of the Blind.
The weird thing is that the press release doesn't appear to be anywhere on Wal-Mart's own web page of press releases -- at least not as of Nov. 14 when we wrote this blog entry. We found it on Yahoo via PR Newswire.
We'll never know, I guess, if Wal-Mart would have moved this announcement along so quickly had it not been in hot water over its leaked memo.
Of course, it really seems like the new equipment is truly a good thing. And it seems Wal-Mart has been steadily dealing with the issue of accommodating blind shoppers for awhile: a story in E-Week last May reports that the retail behemoth has been "quietly testing a university-created robot designed to help visually impaired consumers navigate store aisles and find their desired products." Wonder why the "quietly?" Seems like the same kind of thing as this press release not being on their own website.
It's not clear if the point-of-sale devices announced last week are part of the same project, or how they relate to the robots, if at all.
A little "help the handicapped" publicity can never hurt a giant corporation. Wonder if anyone's checked Wal-Mart's hiring statistics when it comes to blind workers?
Pretty much unrelated and snarky comment: Given my ongoing rant about the use of "blind" metaphorically to mean "bad," I couldn't help noting this recent Reuters story as I googled, headlined CHINA: Wal-Mart Turns Blind Eye To Factory Conditions.