Age Verification has been a problem for me in the UK. My iPhone is linked to my Debit Card. I do not wish to have a Credit Card. I am a Blind person and do not hold a Driving Licence, much to the relief to all!!
I cannot find a way in the UK to have Age Verification accepted. Of course, I can bypass this. But this makes me be treated as under 18.
Any advice and help appreciated.
Thanks
Comments
ID
Curious do they not provide ID for those who are blind or disable who are not able to drive? Here in the US, we got State ID. Can you get your passport?
Re: ID
On our state IDs, we can also get a little, "visually impaired", label put on them, I think it goes under the portrait if I'm not mistaken. Sort of like a little banner at the bottom.
Just use a sighted family member’s id
Whenever I need to verify my age on online platforms, I will always use my parents' identification, whether that's their credit card, etc.
Proof of Age cards (PASS)
In the UK, Apple also accepts certain proof of age cards, according to this support note: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/126788
Quote: "You can confirm your age with a credit card, or by scanning a driver’s licence or one of the following PASS-accredited Proof of Age cards: CitizenCard, My ID Card, TOTUM ID card or Young Scot National Entitlement Card. If you already have an Apple Account, Apple will check if you have a credit card on file or other eligible methods available to confirm that you’re 18 or older."
UK Verification
We do not have any form of national ID or disabled photo ID. Since 75 percent of even working age VI people in the UK are not working, most of us actually cannot get credit cards, whether we want to or not. Therefore, unless we have had our accounts long enough, verifiation is impossible for us, yes, actually impossible, and it could probably be argued to be a breach of the equalities act because of the unemployment rate of VI people. Passports are specifically excluded, and apparently so is voter ID. Apple have, sadly, lost my trust and credibility over this, they are going to have to earn it back, and that is going to be hard. As things stand, Apple won't be able to have blind customers in the UK any more. Oh, and asking parents to let us use their ID? Well, that failes either if the parents themselves use it for anything Apple related, and/or if they don't like registering their credit cards online, which applies to many older people in the UK. This is honestly the most discriminatory thing Apple have ever done, since they removed screen reading from Mac OS, which was like 30 years ago. Granted, they probably do not realise our situation, and have been following government advice, but even so, it discriminates against us due to the cercumstances of VI people. For me, i believe I will be able to verify in a couple of years, because of when I got my Apple account, but that will be no help if I actually have to verify for some reason. For me, this means no upgrades, no security fixes, for the forseeable future, until I can verify what I would lose access to at least. Ramblio is an over 18 app, so I suspect that would have to go, and other messaging platforms might end up very restricted too. We are potentially extremely isolated by all this, and much less safe. The new UK laws have good intent, but they are implemented in some very harmful ways.
Omg!!
My phone just did an update overnight and I woke up to my phone. It did a kind of restart and I thought "oh my God" it hasn't deleted everything? Well, the phone said "hello" and asked me for age verification. It wasn't taking any of my debit cards. I don't own a credit card cause I don't need credit cards to live. I don't borrow like that, so I choose not to use a credit card, it's absolutely insane that my phone would not let me in! The face verification kept failing, and I had to get my old phone out, my iPhone 14 cause I thought I was gonna be locked out of my phone forever, I went into a panic. I've just paid 1800 quid for this phone and the thought of not being able to use it because the phone, let's be honest it's glitchy AF, it has serious bugs and it's got bad attitude. I got really worried, but, I haven't been able to do age verification on my phone, so disappointing, and it scared me for nothing. I thought I wasn't gonna be able to get into the phone and it scared me for nothing. I've got serious health issues like asthma. I need a phone. I don't have a house phone, imagine I didn't have a spare phone here, it would be awful. This is such a nice phone, but it has let it down. The camera is lovely. The graphics are amazing but the phone stalls, the phone freezes, and it's annoying as hell!!
Better to contact Electronic Frontier Foundation
Now that age verification is spreading all over the world with all its privacy implications, it's better to take action and get involved with Electronic Frontier Foundation, who's fighting against this invasive privacy violation for years.
https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification
On their page about this, blind people issues are not specified. We must all take action and pose them our problems, or we'll never be listened to, we can't remain silent and accept everything passively.