[blindlaw] Satellite and Cable TV Tuner Boxes

[James Pepper]

The state of accessibility is extremely new and very hard to get into if you
are an independent operator.  Not only do you have to invent the new
technology, you have to convince people who really do not want to deal with
the idea of change, to change.  You have to explain to IT personnel that the
practices they have been doing for many years are completely useless.  They
do not want to admit to failure.  So if you are expecting change overnight,
forget it.
The US government uses the oldest software they can get to make things
accessible.  It is a mess.  So even if the software exists that doesn't mean
they know how to use it.

Just because some people got lucky and designed a device to be accessible
doesn't mean that everyone knows how to do it and for accessibility to work
you need people who actually know how to do it an they are very rare!

James
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Ford, Tim (CDPH-OLS)
<Tim.Ford at cdph.ca.gov>wrote:

> I fully agree that such lawsuits need to be carefully chosen.  I mention
> the satellite and cable boxes because they are so wide-spread.  I also
> suspect that, similar to an ATM machine, there are probably very few
> differences inside the various boxes in terms of the basic technology.
> Hence, the solution to one company's box may be either directly or
> easily transferable to others.  Certainly with the advances of screen
> reading programs, it would not be that hard to come up with a speech
> output option for these boxes, which by their nature have much  fewer
> variability as compared with a typical computer system.
>
> Tim Ford
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org]
> On Behalf Of Rod Alcidonis
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 6:11 PM
> To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Satelitte TV Tuner Boxes
>
> If you guys are wishing that every access issues should be addressed
> through law suits, let me suggest to you that this is not possible. Our
> efforts have to be targeted, else you lose credibility quickly.
>
> Rod Alcidonis
> Juris Doctor Candidate, 2009.
> Roger Williams University School of Law
> 10 Metacom Ave., Box: 9003
> Bristol, RI 02809
> Cell: 718-704-4651
> Home: 401-824-8685
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ford, Tim (CDPH-OLS)" <Tim.Ford at cdph.ca.gov>
> To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 6:57 PM
> Subject: [blindlaw] Satelitte TV Tuner Boxes
>
>
> > If anyone is looking for another possible case, how about the complete
> > lack of accessibility of my Dish Network satellite video
> tuner/recorder?
> > I assume the same lack of access exists for all the satellite and
> cable
> > system video recorders used by all those companies.
> >
> > The unit is essentially a computer, with a hard drive and an operating
> > system.  There are a series of menus, left and right arrow options, a
> > button to select, etc.  It strikes me that it would not be a hard task
> > to put speech output into that operating system, especially since it
> is
> > a set amount of options and commands.  Just for fun, I asked DISH
> > Network about a set of instructions so that a blind person could
> operate
> > their video recorder.  Needless to say, they had nothing.
> >
> > Yes, I can change/select channels, but that is about it.  The rest of
> it
> > involves too many steps and series of choices, and the choices vary
> > depending upon the situation, so I doubt that much could be done even
> > with a long series of steps to take, with no way of confirming what
> you
> > have done.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Tim Ford
> >
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