Bill Holton
In the February issue of AccessWorld I served up a review of a recent eBook from the folks at Mystic Access called Dinner Delivered: Accessible and Easy Ways to Receive Meals Direct to Your Door, by Kim Loftis and Chris Grabowski. In that timely tome they offer a thorough look at several meal delivery services, along with two of the most popular grocery delivery services: Instacart and Shipt. They found both extremely accessible, and provided step-by-step instructions on how to sign up, order, and pay for grocery deliveries using either or both of these services. An app they did not cover in that article is Walmart Grocery, through which you can order both curb pickup and home delivery.
Walmart’s New Look
I have shopped occasionally at Walmart.com, usually preferring to use the web interface, as I found their iOS app a bit “busy” and confusing. But now they've updated the Walmart app, combining the regular “department store” and their grocery store into a united smartphone or tablet interface. If you’re like me, you already had a Walmart account, which means all of your settings, addresses, and payment information will be imported directly into this updated app. If you have not shopped with a Walmart app before, you will be asked to create an account. As part of the account setup, you will be prompted to provide credit or debit card information. You can skip this for now, and only add the information when and if you decide to arrange for grocery pickup or delivery.
For this review I limited the scope to evaluating the grocery delivery service, using both the iOS app with VoiceOver and the web interface running the latest versions of Windows 10 and JAWS.
Both the web interface and app used location services to point me toward my local store. For the department-store side, shipping is usually free with a $35+ order. On the grocery side, a minimum purchase of at least $30 is required to qualify for delivery. Grocery delivery is not free. One-time delivery charges, which seem to fall into the $10-$12 range, depend on what time of day you arrange for delivery. You can also sign up for unlimited delivery for either $12.95 per month or $98 per year. As of this writing the company was offering a 15-day free trial. To cancel the trial, simply go to the Account page and use the “End Delivery Trial.” button.
Filling Your Cart
Shoppers are welcomed with a list of featured and sale items. There is also a Search edit box at the top of nearly every app screen or webpage you can use to search for items of interest. You can also shop by department, such as “Eggs and Dairy,” “Pantry,” and “Frozen.” Needless to say the selection can be daunting. When I searched for “cream cheese,” for example, the app responded with 530 items. The item I wanted was near the top of the list, I could have also filtered and sorted the results by relevance, price, best sellers, special offers, and other criteria.
One glitch I did discover in the search area is that if you use the Search feature to locate an item, to cancel the search and return to the previous screen you have to swipe near the top of the page until you reach an area that doesn’t voice, and then double-tap this invisible control. The iOS app, at least, does not make use of the VoiceOver two-finger scrub gesture for activating the back function.
Another frustration with both the app and Web interface is the lack of quick navigation. Items usually appear in pairs, with an “Add to Cart” and “Favorite” button following. This leads to a lot of swiping on a phone and tabbing on the Web. This wouldn’t be so bad if the items did not appear in pairs, leaving the screen reader user wondering which button is for which product. Consequently, I found it much less confusing to simply activate the item name, and then determine what I was going to do with it.
Item descriptions include calorie counts, unit and total item prices, serving sizes, number of servings, and ingredients and nutrition information. I can’t help but wonder how difficult it would be to also include links to cooking instructions, where applicable.
The Add to Cart button is always located at the extreme bottom of the product details screen, which results in a lot of scrolling. Press the Add to Cart button to add your initial purchase, then, if desired, use the plus and minus signs to increase or decrease the item count. When you have reached your desired quantity, simply back out of the screen. The final item count is automatically saved to your cart. Again, using the iOS app you will need to scroll back to the top of the page--the scrub gesture does not work for activating the Back function.
You can add frequently purchased items to your favorites and then shop from that list, and you can limit your searches to items in that list. It's possible to scan items in your pantry, but you will need to locate the UPC codes, and the app does not offer audible feedback to help determine if you are getting close (such as when using Microsoft’s Seeing AI). You can also enable ”Voice Shopping,” which empowers you to add items to your list with a Siri command. Reserving a delivery date and time via Siri is apparently also in the works.
Arranging for Delivery
Curbside pickup is available, but for this review I focused on delivery. The app offers a calendar of available dates and times for delivery. Since I was conducting this evaluation during the COVID-19 rush for delivery, I had to wait several days for an open slot. I figured that was OK—it would give me time to adjust my order, which is possible to do up until about 12 hours before the delivery window.
After a bit of initial frustration, I discovered that adding items to an existing order was simple. Add the item or items to the cart, then return to the cart by double tapping the running items count and price total found at the lower right corner of the main screen. There, you are given the choice between starting a new order or adding the items to your pending order.
At first I was unable to add or remove items from my list. Support is offered both via email and returned call through the app’s Help menu. They graciously offered to make the changes for me, but had little awareness of accessibility. Happily, it finally occurred to me to try the obvious first step. I cleared the Walmart app from my phone’s running processes and restarted. The app worked fine. I was still unable, however, to figure out how to change the quantity of an item using the Web interface. Each cart item includes a check box you toggle off or on depending on if you will accept substitutes for that particular item. The checkboxes were accessible, but on the Web, I found that the combo box that allows you to increase quantities, or reduce them to zero, would not activate with either Enter or Spacebar, or by using the mouse cursor. It was enough to drive a poor writer to drink. Unfortunately, I was also unable to toggle the check box proclaiming I am over 21 years of age and eligible to purchase alcohol. Luckily, they sent my sangria anyway—though I did have to show ID and let the driver record the number.
Checking out, there were no fees beyond the one-time delivery fee, or the monthly/yearly membership. The ability to tip was not available, so when my driver arrived I wound up using cash. Only after the order was delivered did I receive a form to add a tip. (Note: Store employees do the shopping and loading of items into the driver's car. The driver is only responsible for delivering your items and bringing them to your door. As happens in other areas of the service industry, tips are pooled and shared with the drivers, who are contract employees.)
The Final Receipt
Despite the few accessibility issues mentioned above, all in all I found grocery shopping at Walmart a satisfying experience. The driver arrived on time and in the location I specified. I do not know, however, how I would have fared in this matter if I lived in a fifth-floor walkup, or even in an apartment building with an elevator. Unlike Instacart, which notes in their app that prices are often higher than in store, the Walmart prices were no higher than if I’d shopped in person.
Assuming the 15-day free trial of unlimited grocery delivery is still available when you read this, you really have nothing to lose giving Walmart’s grocery a try. If you do, be sure to let us know how it goes.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
Related articles:
- Shop Independently with Shipt: an Accessible App that Brings the “Store to your Door” by Deborah Kendrick
- The 2019 AccessWorld Accessible Holiday Shopping Guide: Kohl's and Petco by Janet Ingber
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