[Blindtlk] Inaccessible conference website

[National Association of Guide Dog Users]

Arielle,
	I have a couple questions concerning this. What sort of conference
is this? Is the sponsor a public (governmental) or private entity? As the
Co-Chair of the Policy & Law Committee of the Human Services Division of the
National Federation of the Blind, I am gathering information concerning the
inaccessibility of services that tend to discriminate against blind
professionals in the human service fields. We have already made progress on
this issue with the practice tests and licensing examinations of the
American Board of Clinical Social Workers. You may have noticed a message
from Valerie Yingling  concerning Electronic Health Records (HER); This is
also an initiative of the division. We will be having a Policy & Law
Committee meeting tomorrow and would like more information concerning this,
if it is applicable. You can either reply to this list or write to me
personally at

Marion.Gwizdala at verizon.net  

Fraternally yours,
Marion Gwizdala



-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Arielle
Silverman
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 3:12 PM
To: Blind Academics Discussion List
Cc: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindtlk] Inaccessible conference website

Dear all,

I'm attending an academic conference next month and as I was about to submit
my online registration, discovered an inaccessible slider that had to be
slid to the right before the website would let me submit my payment info. I
complained to the registrar that as a blind person I couldn't access the
online conference registration, and was told to try a different Web browser.
When I explained that the problem wasn't with the browser's interface but
with the use of  a slider, which to my knowledge cannot interact with JAWS,
the registrar offered me to fill out a PDF registration form and said that
they cannot remove the slider because it offers enhanced security. She did
seem attentive to my concerns but I am not terribly confident that the
problem will be remedied on the website. I eventually decided to have my
husband help me with the slider because the PDF registration form could not
be filled out by computer and so I would have needed sighted help
regardless, and doing the slider required less sighted help.

I have a few questions for you guys. First, have any of you had success
handling these sliders with JAWS? I've never seen such an element before on
a Web page. Second, do you know if conference websites are legally required
to be accessible under Section 508? If so, I would like to push the matter
further. The website for this conference had multiple accessibility issues
although the slider one was the most blatant. I complained to them back in
2009 and they fixed some of the problems but not all of them. Third, is it
really true that a slider offers maximum security and if so, what accessible
remedy should I suggest to them that doesn't compromise security?

Thanks,
Arielle

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