Ben (or Ben), I know I am in a small minority, but when I read upthread of people calling and waiting on the phone, all I can think of is "I wish". I am ultra-grateful for the cheerful and resourceful AC and AC Altitude Twitter team, and if this presence on FT keeps up, that will be a delight. But for booking complicated reservations, fixing errors, and such, I read on FT about things people do to "simply" contact AC, and I cannot. Like 1% of the population, I am deaf.
AC offers deaf passengers access by TTY, or "TDD", an older name for the same obsolete device. Deaf people have not used TTYs in over 10 years. Many of us have thrown them out. When last I attempted to call AC on TTY, the number was always either busied out or set to auto-answer. I was never able to reach the airline. But that issue has become irrelevant since I tossed mine long ago. Even TDI, the international non-profit organization established to promote the use of TTYs no longer speaks of them. Like other deaf people, I use SMS and email. (In the US, deaf people also use video relay, but we do not have it in Canada yet.)
My bank, my health insurance, and my family doctor, among others, offer secure messaging to enable clients to login and identify, then send and receive inquiries that are answered asynchronously, but within similar response standards as telephones on hold. A low-tech alternative is to allocate an email or SMS contact to the Aeroplan members self-identified on their profile as deaf, in the same way you assign Elite member contact numbers. This number wouldn't need to be answered as quickly as SE100K, but no slower than voice phone callback time.
Now, when I had expressed a concern to AC about a troublesome set of reservations that arose from this unresolved barrier to my equal access, the response from the disability services point person said how that would be nice, but they're prioritizing buying new airplanes, and so they have no plans to make it possible for deaf customers to communicate securely other than the plain vanilla online booking. Their only suggestion for complex bookings was... go in person to a travel agent. Not only does that involve taking an hour away from work, but it prevents me from using Manage My Bookings among other things. Funny enough, each time I end up doing that, I end up booking other airlines.
That is outrageous in all kinds of ways, and I continue to hope that it will be fixed before I have time on my schedule to get on a CTA or Human Rights complaint. I want to thank you for your candid and interactive responses on the forum, and wanted to share this particular concern while the portal into this alternate dimension remains open, since I have fewer communication options than forum-mates upthread. Can you give me any hope?