Hailing an Uber ride without a smartphone just got easier.
The ride-sharing company launched its new service TextBER yesterday (June 16), which allows users to request a ride by simply sending a text message, rather than solely relying on a phone with app and Internet capabilities.
The beta service was developed by winners of the 48-hour “Hackathon for a Cause” event, sponsored by Uber and Coding Dojo, a fast-growing coding bootcamp.
TextBER aims to open the door to ride-sharing for anyone without access to a smartphone, especially the elderly.
“Services like Uber have huge potential to benefit an aging population that needs to get around but, due to factors like slower motor reflexes and vision loss, are at a higher risk for getting into a fatal accident,” CodingDojo stated in its press release announcing the service.
The company cited data from Pew Research, which reported 36 percent of the entire adult population and 59 percent of the elderly population have a cellphone, but not a smartphone, rendering them unable to request a ride from a ride-hailing app like Uber.
“The main Uber platform is only targeting people who have smartphones,” Josh Huang, one of TextBER’s creators, told Forbes. “We realized a lot of the elderly and lower-income populations don’t have smartphones.”
In order to get started with TextBER, users must first sign up for an Uber account then link the account to the TextBER service. After the account is authenticated, the user can begin requesting rides from the UberX platform by sending a text message to TextBER with their pick-up and drop-off addresses. TextBER will send a fare and time estimate, which the rider can accept or decline, before the car is dispatched.
Although the service is currently limited to UberX, Forbes said the team has plans to “expand to other Uber services and implement a speech-to-text feature.”
“They also hope to allow users to input default home and commonly used addresses to avoid re-entering them each time,” they added.
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