iNaturalist and Inaccessibility: My Experience as a Homeless Man

General
1

Hello, I’m zee_z on iNaturalist, and I’ve been using the platform since I was 17, starting in May of 2022. I have always been impoverished, but as of October 27th of 2025 I moved out of my family’s home into the city, into a homeless shelter, and have been a resident there to this date.

So, for the past 7-8 months I’ve been living as a homeless man, and I’m set to still be homeless for the next 3-9 months. During that time, I’ve made over 15,000 observations and I’ve just recently passed on 60,000 total observations. I’ve been uploading observations on iNaturalist Classic through public WiFi connections (libraries, restaurants, shelters), occasionally through private WiFi connections I have available to me like Thompson Rivers University’s, and my own cellular data. As you can imagine, these aren’t particularly stable, fast, or reliable to use, and are not always available to me. This has hardly been a problem for me, until recently.

I have exclusively used IOS, and I had heard a lot of information floating around that IOS’ iNaturalist Classic app would stop receiving updates, and be discontinued and made unavailable with the full release of iNaturalist Next. I had only briefly tried the iNaturalist Next app after it was first announced to test it out and see how it compared to Classic, and I found it to be a downgrade in a lot of ways. With the rumoured removal of Classic and the inevitable replacement with Next becoming more common of a sentiment, I bit the bullet and asked the forum in the post here:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/will-inaturalist-classic-continue-to-receive-support-or-will-it-be-replaced-by-inaturalist-next-entirely/77915

Considering the sentence that was edited out afterwards, the first response I received was a pretty blunt one:

The second reply by Loarie made it seem less assured and more up in the air than what the previous implied.

So, with that, I started to worry about iNaturalist Classic being removed as an option in favour of iNaturalist Next, especially with my first experience tied to the app, I was worried it would not work for me with my current circumstances, as it hadn’t back when I was better off.

I redownloaded iNaturalist Next to test out, and I was right. I encountered a few bugs, the most significant of which being abysmally slow uploading times and upload failures because of the WiFi networks available to me. iNaturalist Next also revealed itself to have significantly less QoL features available for offline use, the list of cached names is incomparably small to what I have available to search for and select in Classic. So, if iNaturalist Next is the slow encroaching option, and it does not work for me I decided to raise my concerns in a bug report:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/a-collection-of-inaturalist-next-bugs-and-problems/77925

I’m not sure if I came off as too combative or what, but the first response I received scarcely addressed the actual bug and more so boiled down to me needing to upload less:

With staff going so far as looking into my account to find something to dissuade me from uploading, nitpicking and linking a single date where the resulting observations account for less than 1/60th of my entire account’s observations.

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Fortunately staff responded earnestly after I disclosed my financial situation and after I had some support on that front, but it’s unfortunate that disclosure even had to occur for the problem to be taken seriously.

Now, I would like to preface that this post is NOT meant to be a critique of staff, nor should this post inspire such replies. I appreciate everything they’ve done and a lot of that was rescinded or edited out of their replies, but it’s still important to mention how responses like this come across. It’s not reassuring to hear that you should just use the platform less if the new changes don’t work for you, nor is it securing having your concerns met with combative responses personally digging into your activity to dissuade you further. This is not a critique of staff, but more how their responses have led to me feeling the need to post this.

iNaturalist has become one of my biggest hobbies. I spend a sizable amount of my free time making observations, identifying, learning about what I’ve seen, and talking to people on site. It’s probably what I spend most of my time on, as nature exists everywhere and I’ve connected with so many people I wouldn’t because of it. That enjoyment and connection feels like it’s being threatened because of the slowly approaching release of iNaturalist Next and the loss of iNaturalist Classic.

With the way the iNaturalist Next app exists currently, I will not be able to continue use of the platform if it is the only option available. iNaturalist Next (as I briefly stated before) is not able to work with the WiFi connections I have available to me, it suffers from drastically slower uploading speeds, it’s significantly less reliable as uploads constantly fail, it has considerably less offline functions that I make use of every day, and because of how much bloat and fanciful features it has, I’m hesitant to use it on older devices. Uploading on mobile’s browser isn’t functional at all really, and finding an available computer to port my photos through and upload takes too much time and isn’t feasibly available whenever I would need it.

This leaves the Classic app, what I’ve been using the entire time, and what is assumedly inevitably being removed. I’m not sure what the driving desire behind its removal is, but it’s the only option that works for me.

This is where the problem extends beyond myself. As @astra_the_dragon put it in the bug report linked above:

I have met and grown close to quite a few other homeless people that are fond of photographing nature, some of them with more resources than me, and some with significantly less. I’ve been pretty hesitant to recommend iNaturalist to them because of these ever-growing worries of mine about iNaturalist Next. Some of them don’t have access to shelters, some of them use exclusively cellular data for their apps, some of them have devices a decade older than my own. Is it fair to recommend a platform to someone when it’s slowly moving away from being accessible to them? I’m already hesitant about my own use because of it, because I do not know if I’ll end up with less than I currently have, and whether it will be even harder to access the platform if it happens.

I have been hesitant to post this and waited to see how things continued to unfold, and I’ve decided to go ahead and post it now because of the recent Product Goals blog post:

https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/133388-our-product-goals-for-july-december-2026

My Observations and Activity load much quicker with less lagginess, and we saw an immediate, measurable decrease in negative feedback about app performance.

This line worries me the most, I am worried this is implying staff would expect users to redownload and recheck the app for bugs every time a new update is released for it. The vast majority of the users I know that do not use iNaturalist Next haven’t downloaded the app since their first negative experiences with it. Most of them leave behind a single bug report or exchange grievances in other communities without ever following up again. My worry is that negative feedback downtrending could be attributed to users not revisiting rather than the app’s issues being resolved. I am still experiencing all of the problems I did when I made those bug reports, I’m not sure what changes were made, whether they’re bottlenecked by network speed and poorer offline indexing or not noticeable on older devices, but I’m not seeing the huge improvements.

I hope at the very least this sparks some kind of dialogue about the topics I’ve raised, I cannot articulate myself the best unfortunately and this is likely my last attempt at raising my concerns, as it seems like Android’s iNaturalist Next release is steadily approaching. I don’t dislike the new app, I think the UI and all of the added features are amazing to see and I cannot wait to see how it continues to develop. But the low storage space, the lack of bloat and lag, and the fact that uploading works extremely well with poor WiFi connections, makes Classic the only one that works for me. Consider this a plea for iNaturalist Classic, from someone in one of the lowest class denominators of users, it’s my only option. I would like to see support continue for it, long past Next’s release and continued development.

3

Hi @zee_z My reply here can’t really speak to any of the bugs associated with the iNat apps on mobile as I predominantly work on a laptop. But I wanted to respond to your post in general, especially:

I think you’ve done a sterling job of representing your genuine and meaningful concerns, and in so doing also raising significant issues for others. I appreciate your honesty and very detailed outline of the situation which I have found very interesting and insightful. And it would be a great pity if your contributions were no longer able to be represented here.

I have my own personal concerns and gripes with overzealous progress and development and continual refinement of apps and platforms (this statement is not referring specifically to iNaturalist, just my experience in general) so I recognise the concern. And I do hope this discussion brings a workable resolution.

4

Thanks for raising this important issue! I’m far from your situation, being a happily retired professional, but I also have doubts about some decisions in the phone apps. I mostly use the web interface from a desktop computer because I have found the phone apps difficult to use offline, and burning up battery if I try to use them in the field, even in airplane mode. I am worried that iNat has been caught up in the bloatware race, and have a few questions for staff:

  1. In software design, do you consider older hardware with limited capabilities?
  2. Do you intentionally test things on older hardware or low bandwidth networks?
  3. What are your accessibility policies, both for physical and economic limitations?
  4. Similarly, do you consider the urban/rural divide in access to phone and internet networks?
5

This is another aspect of accessibility. An eloquent appeal to consider ALL iNatters. There will be silent others, whose issues extend around loadshedding / power outages, poor internet reception (if at all), old / broken cellphone / mobile / computer. Doing the best they can with what they have.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/discussion-accessibility-for-inaturalist/66483

The bulk of iNat obs are First World, Northern hemisphere, or those same people as tourists or travelling for work. If you look at iNat’s stats for the year, a huge spike for CNC and a liddle spikelet for GSB. Or compare Africa’s area and population to other continents.

PS somewhere on the forum, someone said, I can only access the internet once a week. That stays in my mind.

7

60K+ observations, 12K+ identifications, and 17K+ annotations using iNaturalist Classic on iOS? That is phenomenal! Thank you for patiently telling your story with such clarity and conviction. The only advice I have is: keep doing what you’re doing. The more observations, identifications, and annotations you have, the stronger your use case becomes.

8

Zee, I followed the original thread but of course did not know your circumstances.

Mine are that where I live, outages are frequent. Some are due to weather, some are due to aging infrastructure, and some are scheduled, short term outages to provide relief to the system. All are unannounced.

Because of the temperatures here, an outage is typically about practicality and health. I do not use air conditioning often but I always have ceiling fans blowing. I leave the windows open to screens every morning as long as possible until the air blowing across from outside becomes hotter than the air inside, then I shut them. When the power is out and the ceiling fans are off, this is extremely early but shutting all the windows would create an oven so I use sun shades and windows open on the non-sun side of the house to keep the air as cool as possible.

As needed we can take a cold shower to cool off, however in outages the water also goes out and service is often not restored for some time, so conservation of the water one has in one’s tinaco (the rooftop tank) comes into play because the water at the street (f present) no longer has adequate pressure to reach the rooftop, so the water in the tinaco is the all the water one has for showering. (We have learned to wash our hands at the garden tap.)

Food here is different. We cook with gas and I suspect my refrigerator is much smaller than most people’s, and I buy fresh produce at the fruteria daily. So outages, while we often lose something, do not affect us economically the way they might if we had more perishable food or a food based business, for example.

All this is to say things are a bit more complicated here and when outages happen, I focus on living in more complicated circumstances. The idea of uploading, while it is technically possible (edit to add: I assume, I am on iNat classic on an Android, I think), does not occur to me. I do not even observe usually during outages, because I am thinking of all the variables, and then extending those out to the elderly aunt, my son and his wife, etc.

But if I did decide to upload, say if I saw something extraordinary, I would need to use my own 4G and my own data. And maybe it is because everyone is on their phones here, but during outages, the little bars sit at 2. Just now, when I turned off wifi to check, they went to three bars.

This is all a very long thank you for being open about your own circumstances. It would be wonderful if we all lived where internet was constant and strong but we do not, so I think there will come a time when the developers will need to decide if the data they seek merits building an app that might limit users to those who subscribe to a billionaire’s satellite (and that pricing structure) or if a more bare bones version might be offered also that would allow users to use internet with fewer bars.

9

Thanks for raising awareness about these issues, @zee_z! I hope that your concerns will be taken seriously. As a former software developer, I should mention though that performance, low-bandwidth, and old hardware issues are challenging to address, mainly because if a developer can’t reproduce the problem they can’t effectively work on fixing it. The most impactful thing you can do as a user is to continue to create detailed and specific bug reports, including what version of the app you are using, what sort of internet connection you have (maybe even including a speed test like Ookla), how many observations you’re uploading, what model phone you are using, etc. There are tools that developers can use to simulate different conditions and hardware and hopefully reproduce the problems you describe. I’m not saying this to make excuses for the developers, but to maximize your chances of helping the developers improve the app. It sounds like you have already been making reports, and unfortunately have had some negative experiences with staff responses. Despite that, I hope you will continue to make bug reports and follow-up on them, as your reports are extremely valuable. The developers have been shifting focus towards performance over the last few versions (see updates at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/new-inaturalist-app-frozen-and-unusable-won-t-clear-with-restart-or-rebooting-iphone/69329/15 for example) and have made noticeable improvements, but there’s still a lot to improve, IMO. Unfortunately, maintaining iNat Classic indefinitely probably isn’t a realistic option, so I hope the developers can continue to make performance improvements and provide better support for people with poor internet connectivity and older hardware.

10

Framing this as an accessibility issue is eye-opening. Just as iNaturalist has been a hugely important resource and platform for neurodivergent users who add an enormous amount to its value, its accessibility for technology-limited users is also hugely important to keep in the “product goals.” Thanks for helping to make this need evident to your fellow iNaturalists.

11

Thanks @zee_z for your thorough framing of this problem. Sadly, this is a widespread problem in ALL tech. While I’m not impoverished, I still prefer to keep devices in service for as long as possible. Sometimes repurposing something to keep it out of a landfill. IME, phones are the absolute WORST offenders here. And software is the biggest reason why. I have an old ipod touch that’s currently a pile of parts (I’m hoping that someday I can find a replacement for a bad part). It’s so old that it’s essentially locked out of apple’s app store for everything. As it doesn’t have a camera, it has no hope of inatting with either app. But I think it’s a useful illustration of where old phones are going. The OS version will eventually get so old that you can’t get into your relevant app store and even if you did, there wouldn’t be any apps available that could function on it. You’ll probably be able to use some apps you downloaded back when you did have a “current” OS version, but others will have been locked out of the relevant servers and you might as well uninstall them.

And with memory prices what they are right now, I expect fewer people are going to be buying new desktops/laptops for awhile. And if developers keep pushing software and web development towards the bleeding edge of the best available hardware, fewer people will be able to use the software on their older hardware. For folks who don’t really have the option to buy newer hardware? They are being excluded. Actively excluded.

For an organization like inat, those kinds of optics are bad. Very bad.

12

I am completely with you on this.

I hate the iNat Next app. It is terrible and a serious downgrade in functionality and ease of use when compared to iNat Classic.

Similarly, while I never used it much, Seek being discontinued and attempted to be rolled into iNat Next is also a poor idea and even worse implementation.

Many of us feel this way and have made our opinions clear, but it doesn’t ever seem to get through to the administration.

This is a bit like the Microsoft debacle with Windows 11, where people hate it so much they refuse to move on from Windows 10, and Microsoft has had to extend support several times, the last time being another year of extended support a few days ago.

I really wish the current iNat directorate would pay closer attention to what their users want. This is most often a simple, few frills, ‘ergonomic’ app that runs smoothly and doesn’t use up tons of resources. Essentially everything iNat Next is not.

13

I see myself envisioning an “iNat Lite”. it would do NOTHING automatically, no running in the background, no auto-downloading of full size images, no using data-hungry live maps, no dynamic searches (you have to hit ‘enter’ to send the search once, and get a response once), CV turned OFF by default, asks before any update, allows you to queue observations indefinitely while offline, and does not have any sort of built-in camera or audio recording. no fancy graphics, no frills, no nonsense. it needs to function completely offline - connection only turns on for uploading, commenting, flagging and such. seriously, look at every function it has, and ask: does this need to be here? is it possible to remove it or strip it down? do we really need to connect to the internet – or worse, have a stable connection?

And an advantage to keeping it bare bones – and open source – is that support should be a breeze. there’s only a few moving parts in there, after all.

14

I agree. iNat Classic does what I need it to do – get my smartphone pics uploaded from my photo library. I don’t need all the extras that don’t always work anyway and drain my phone. But then I do most of my iNatting with a camera and a laptop and I realize not everyone has a device other than their phone.

15

I’m a software developer. This issues the OP faces with using iNat is covered by a design philosophy called “Progressive enhancement”.

Progressive enhancement is a design philosophy that provides a baseline of essential content and functionality to as many users as possible, while delivering the best possible experience only to users of the most modern browsers that can run all the required code.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Progressive_Enhancement

In simple terms: Progressive enhancement means building a website that works in the simplest way first, like a plain page anyone can read. Then you add fancy features on top for people whose devices can handle them, but everyone gets the important stuff no matter what.

https://whatisada.com/glossary/progressive-enhancement

Software written with progressive enhancement in mind will work for people with older devices, people limited internet, people with disabilities, etc.

I would argue progressive enhancement aligns with the iNaturalist’s goal of protecting biodiversity by having ordinary people document biodiversity. In order to protect biodiversity around the world, iNaturalist should be useable for a wide range of users, including those with older devices, spotty internet connection, and/or disabilities.

17

I wish the new app had a simple toggle for “Offline Mode” where all it did was record my observation and location data. It’s not checking for recommended species or nearby projects, or AI vision, or anyhing else. These are all great tools, but when I just want to do a bioblitz to take hundreds of observations, these other tools slow down my progress and burn through my battery, espeically if I’m not close to a cell tower (which is often). When I’m done with my bioblitz and near a reliable signal or wifi, I can turn off the “Offline Mode” toggle and upload everything at once, then start identifying as I can.

18

Or make it simple and just call it “observation mode” where it won’t even use the offline models on the phone, just taking observations.

19

Sad..

20

Hear hear on iNat being nearly unusable from my android phone via app or through Chrome browser! The “next” version I tried is better but still very buggy after far too long. The only logical explanation for it being that terrible for this long is that iNaturalist is purposely trying to dissuade people from uploading observations from their phones, although I can’t fathom why. Do you know why? I mean, I would have probably uploaded at least hundreds and most likely thousands more observations in the past year or two if it played better with my phone.

21

I would like to point out that digging into a user’s profile who is reporting a technical bug and picking single lines of observations to openly comment on them in this forum is quite serious ( https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/a-collection-of-inaturalist-next-bugs-and-problems/77925 ). If this would happen to me, I think I would be extremely angry and delete my profile. Logically, this is a

1. red herring debate tactic (A: I can’t upload as many observations as before on the other app B: You’re uploading a lot of observations, maybe try less). Uploading of many observations (at once) has nothing to do with the original bug report, as this has worked before and the failing represents a downgrade to the former version.

B. This is whataboutism, my old lecturer would even say this is a soft attempt at character assassination (as it targets the user’s online actions and the relevance of the user’s observations on this plattform). Has nothing to do with the original bug report and the intent is to question the original criticism by pointing out that the user is doing something for what iNat is apparently (this can be debated from my point of view) not made. You can also make hundreds of observations per day of different species in one area, even in the city. Just enter an urban wasteland on a sunny day in summer and take images of all plants and insects there.

Staff, please don’t talk to us like that. If you can’t respond to criticism without using such kind of arguments, I seriously recommend a debate class. @zee_z You reacted very maturely. I wish you the best.

22

They should make an iNaturalist lite. I hate the new app as is right now. I have older devices because I don’t get the latest model every time it comes out. I repair my phones when possible so if they are going to prioritize newer phones then that will effect the way I use iNaturalist. Right now I’m using an iPhone 8 and a cheap motorola.

23

I’m not sure you need the iNaturalist app for that. Can’t you just use the standard camera app that comes with your phone? That’s what I do on iPhone. Like you, I always switch to airplane mode to save battery.