[blindlaw] I hope this works

James Pepper b75205 at gmail.com
Sat Aug 11 02:42:43 UTC 2012


As you know I have been trying to get the Voter Registration form to be
accessible to free screen readers and I made some videos that I posted on
YouTube where I am attempting to use their sites using NVDA.  The state of
things is rather bad.  The US form requires all  people who speak Spanish
to respond in English.  I thought that was against the law
to discriminate against people based on their language? When you use a
screen reader it speaks in English, not Spanish on the form.  The form is
supposed to be bilingual and so they made the instructions in Spanish and
the form in English.

Four years ago I made the forms accessible to free screen readers and they
were presented to the EAC by the Vice President of the American Association
of People with Disabilities so there is no excuse, they should have figured
this out by now.

I have been calling the Justice Department a few times over the past 4
weeks always getting someone who gave me the wrong advice; fiirst it was to
tell me to contact Congress or the press and that they could not do
anything and then I found out that the least they should have done was tell
me to file a Section 508 complaint. Following their advice I contacted the
House Administration Committee and they told me that they didn't see any
problem.  They thought that if you speak English with a Spanish accent that
you are speaking Spanish.  I can see how these people can be so easily
fooled, I bet they think Pepe Le Pew is speaking French!

Today I got a real person on the phone at the Civil Rights Division and she
told me to write it all up and send it in to their address.

Last week I found out that the Navaho and Hopi Indians are being denied the
right to vote because they cannot draw the map on the form.  The form
requires everyone to draw a map by locating a drawing on the back of the
form which indicates a street intersection and then they draw in their home
and surrounding buildings. The Indians do not live near street
intersections and so they have been excluded from voter registration
because their maps are not done enough according to the elections officials.

Right now I am laying out the forms for the Section 203 districts that
require minority languages and I can make the forms in Spanish, Hindi, and
Chinese for NVDA but I was wondering if you all knew of a free screen
reader in Japanese.  I know Macs can do things with Voiceover but was
wondering about its languages  and how well do they work?

James Pepper



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