[blindlaw] US Voter Registration form for Spanish speaks in English a violation of the Voting Rights Act

James Pepper b75205 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 22 14:24:43 UTC 2012


I am still trying to get the US National Voter Registration form to be
accessible to the blind, and the government cared so much about the blind
that they made the form for people who speak Spanish, speak in English when
you use the form.  I made this YouTube video to show the problem:
http://youtu.be/Chhx36oNoc8

The form in Spanish speaks in English and I have been having a lot of
problems with government officials because the screen reader speaks with a
Spanish accent but it is speaking English, not Spanish. They think it is
Spanish.  It speaks out the letters and numbers in Spanish and for some
strange reason it speaks State as Estado.  That is enough to fool people.
Government officials think that it you speak English with a Spanish accent
that you are speaking in Spanish.

I guess these people are fooled by accents but this type of racism is
interesting, people really think that if you speak English with a Spanish
accent you are speaking Spanish.

I guess I should use my Maurice Chevalier impression when I go to
Washington and see how many people think I am speaking French when I am
speaking English! Diplomacy would be a lot easier if everyone spoke English
with an accent!

The English language form has serious problems, the most notable is that
most of it is not accessible, they didn't even bother to fix it. It
requires the use of JAWS, the full version too, so you have to pay for the
software to register to vote and that is a Poll Tax.

The form requires the blind to draw a map of where they live which is a
Literacy Test, a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act.  You must
locate a cross that designates a street intersection, and then you must
label each street with the nearest cross streets to your home and then
place an X on the form in relation to those cross streets.  Then you put in
dots to designate buildings and you must label them in relation to
everything else.  I have an email from the Elections Officer of the State
of Arkansas where they insist that the blind draw the map. When I talked to
them over the phone they said that they never had any complaints about
their form not being accessible to the blind but of course if you cannot
open it, how can you complain?

Most states were downright angry and the State of Washington responded by
stating that they were not required to make voter registration forms
accessible to the blind, That is an official statement by their Voting
Officer in the Secretary of States Office and I have the email.

The form was designed specifically to be filled out with an older version
of JAWS and that is a poll tax on the blind; there can be no cost with this
form.

My current forms can be filled out with Narrator on a PC or Voiceover on a
Mac, no need for screen readers.  But it is better with NVDA and you can
use JAWS, Window Eyes and everything else to fill it out, all by yourselves
without assistance no matter your income bracket. I made several social
security forms with this new format a few years ago and had them tested at
the Jernigan Institute.

Four years ago I made the form accessible where the blind could fill it out
using free screen readers and this was before I found out about NVDA!  The
AFB tested it and sent a copy to the State of West Virginia.  The form was
presented to the Elections Assistance Commission (E A C) by Jim Dickson,
the Vice President of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

I have an email where the EAC responded to my presentation of my forms
where the person wrote that their web services company was responsible for
making the forms and website accessible to the blind dated August 28, 2008
but the Director in a letter to Congress a year later wrote that the agency
made the form and tested it with JAWS with volunteers and he said that Jim
Dickson was on his staff so it was made correctly.

I have all of the correspondence, it is clear that the Director's letter to
Congress is not true.  He claims that Jim Dickson was on is staff in the
letter, so if they made the form accessible why did he present my forms to
the EAC to make the form accessible, Jim Presented the forms and he told me
about it in early October so there is no excuse the Director of the EAC
lied to Congress.

If they tested it with JAWS then they made it inaccessible on purpose.

The agency was created by Congress to make voter registration and voting
accessible to the blind in 2002 under the Help America Vote Act, why did
they have their webmasters make the form on September 15, 2008, 20 days
after I had submitted my forms to them?  Why did they wait until the
election was almost over to do the job?   Why did they wait until this year
to come out with their form to Spanish speaking people speak in English
which is a direct violation of Executive Order 13166 on making documents in
each language as well as the Civil Rights Act  and accessibility laws.

Of course why does the EAC require people to state their race on the South
Carolina Voter Registration form where if they do not do so the form will
not be processed.  This requirement to state your race is a direct
violation of the Voting Rights Act.  The idea is to gather information on
race to enforce the law but that is always voluntary and not required
except on the South Carolina Voter Registration form. The requirement
codifies the racism that the law was made to prevent.

The EAC is a rogue agency.  Can you do something about this?  I have the
forms, they are accessible to the simplest of screen readers so the blind
and visually impaired are out not expense and everything is accessible.
They refuse to use them.

I can make the forms speak in all of the languages used by NVDA and I was
able to make forms speak in Hindi, four years ago before I found out about
NVDA.  All I need is a SAPI 5 or better screen reader and we can do this
for any language and all of the information is accessible to free screen
readers and it can be encrypted and remain accessible to free screen
readers.

The Elections Assistance Commission is responsible for the Accessible
voting Machines and they make the Voter Registration forms.  Isn't it
interesting that if the blind and visually impaired showed up on election
day in real numbers, that there would not be enough voting machines to
handle the demand.  It is so much simpler to deny people the right to Vote.

James Pepper



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