[blindLaw] SOS --Need for Testing Beta 2020 and Microsoft 2016

[Laura Wolk]

All,

The nightmarish scenario of Jaws reading all material,both old and
new, in a track changed document seems to have arisen with a vengeance
as of the late September release.  I have tried restarting jaws,
restarting the computer, refreshing the screen, and switching to no
markup.  Nothing works.

My ability to work quickly and reliably has just been ground to a
screeching halt.  Why not simply migrate back to an earlier update,
you might ask?  Well, my friends, it's because **that** update was
causing heavily track changed documents to crash as soon as the
document was opened.  And how did Vispero come to know that fact?
Because they tested it and identified hhe problem and committed
themselves to fixing it as soon as possible?  No, of course not.
Because my coworkers and I spent hours, literally hours, isolating the
problem, creating a test document with nonsensitive information that
replicated it, and sending it to them.  I am truly at my whits end.  I
am a fully-employed person with a disability working at one of the
most stressful and time consuming jobs in our profession.  And yet,
here I am, using my work time to literally sit on the phone and
**explain**, yes, **EXPLAIN, step-by-step, to Vispero employees how to
**TURN ON Track CHANGES**, because they are so unfamiliar with this
concept that they don't even know how to do it.  I do not have the
time to take on a second full-time job just so I can do my first one.
None of us do.  This is utterly unacceptable.  We need our leadership
to step in now.  Stop bringing Microsoft to national conventions to
wax eloquent about how much they care about accessibility if in fact
they don't.  If in fact they are committed to not assisting at all
with products that people still pay them to suppor, products that the
entire federal government uses, products that just ask the blind to
deal with it or risk losing their jobs.  Stop touting Jaws as if it's
the best thing since sliced bread if, one week into the Supreme Court
term, I now effectively cannot do my job, no, not have a harder time
doing my job, but cannot do my job, because no one is testing this
stuff before updates are released.  I am just incensed.

I also need someone to test whether this problem is occurring on Beta
2020 with Word 2016.  I cannot get beta 2020 installed on my computer
here.  But I need to verify whether it's fixed in that release.  I
swear, if they try making me wait until December to fix this, I'm
going to need some major reinforcements.

Now please excuse me while I quickly go angry cry in the bathroom, put
on my nice happy brave face again, and resign myself to spending
thrice as much time on my work as I needed to spend yesterday.  Your
prayers are appreciated.