Dear AppleVis,
After applauding your Editorial Team and active community...Has anyone used a Virtual Mail service that is reliable & accessible?
For those that don't know what a 'Virtual Mail' service is, it's a mail forwarding/processing carrier that in the US has an agreement with USPS to process mail. They in addition to forwarding your mail and providing you a mailing address like USPS, UPS, Fedex and the like, they also provide MAIL SCANNING feature. Some offer mail scanning through their website while others have an iOS app as well, where both the outside of your envelope and internal mail documents are scanned, uploaded to their servers, and can be viewed on their secure website or iOS app on your iPhone or iPad.
I understand that KNFB Reader (and other OCR apps) can do a great job reading our mail. However, these Virtual Mail providers offer the convenience of receiving our mail on our behalf and scanning them for us, we just login to their site or app to view our mail. We can then ask them to discard, forward or store our mail in their facilities.
With this said, they are in high competition and they market their services very well, but which ones have you guys used and tested for reliability and accessibility? Again, their prices vary widely from FREE to $49.99 per month, but which ones are RELIABLE & ACCESSIBLE, that is the question!
For your convenience, below is a listing of the most popular Virtual Mail providers, I would love to read your reviews as fellow blind and low-vision users... :)
MailboxForwarding.com
TotalOfficeNC.com
USA2Me.com
USGlobalMail.com
myRVmail.com
FreedomMailbox.com
PostScanMail.com
PhysicalAddress.com
TravelingMailbox.com
EarthClassMail.com
VirtualPostMail.com
iPostal1.com
Comments
A Few suggestions.
Yes. I can recommend a few suggestions, but your options are not great.
1. US Global.
https://www.usglobalmail.com/
2. PhysicalAddress.com
https://physicaladdress.com/pricing/
Curious
Not OP but I'm interested to know why these options are not great. I've never considered these services before and they sound interesting, but having mail opened/scanned makes me a little nervous regarding confidential mail so I'm curious on your take on it. :)
Accessibility issues
The IOS apps are not very accessible. The only one that seemed to know what a screen reader even was, was US Global. Also, take a trip through their signup forms. If they have unlabeled fields, chances are, they won't work for you. I spent days writing to all companies of this kind and only one, US Mail, knew what a screen reader was, but, unfortunately, he told me it was not a priority, at all, which is ironic because their mobile app and website are the most accessible, but certainly not fully accessible. I'd say about 90% of things can be done with a screen reader.