[gui-talk] inaccessible software

[James Pepper]

 There needs to be a meeting of the minds in all content. Party A creates a
document.  Party B, the Blind, receive that document, they have to figure
out what Party A meant by processing that file using many different
programs, each resulting in a different document and in most cases the
content is lost or not transmittable.  Party B gets a different document
than was intended by Party A.  But Party A does not know that Party B has a
different document because it looks exactly the same as what they sent out
Visually there is no difference.  So there is no meeting of the minds.

I think this principle should be used to challenge every government form,
every document made by the US government, because everyone here knows that
when you process a document or if someone else processes a document made by
any agency, the content you receive is not what was intended.

Every government form uses fonts that are too small for OCR software to
decode, hence they all have to be replaced.

 And why is it only in English, isn't the government supposed to supply
content accessible to every language under all of the civil rights acts?

Also it is possible to make a document intentionally be different in content
for the blind than for the sighted as a matter of fraud.  So there is a
great liability that insurance companies should consider when they establish
business insurance, particularly for the big corporations.

Why do you have to rebuild the document to figure out what was intended, you
did not write it, someone else did!  The NFB, the AFB and the ACB need to
demand a new level of accessibility, where All of the the content is
accessible using free software and that a person can fill out a form, send
it to the author just like anyone else without assistance.  As a matter of
Civil Rights the blind should have access to all content and that they
should not have to pay any fee for that level of accessibility.

Access fees are poll taxes and in the case of Voter Registration, violations
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have far more serious and immediate impact
on a state than accessibilty laws.  A state that refuses to be accessible to
the blind in voting looses its federal funding under ADA, gets redistricted
and for 25 years it is required to gather demographic information on the
class that received the discrimination.  They loose their congressional
representation under the 14th Amendment Section 2, which was used after the
Civil War if they refuse to comply, and that death sentence was what
enforced the Civil Rights Movement!

Since the blind and visually impaired in this country are twice the number
of African Americans who voted in the 2010 election it seems that we should
be concentrating on this as a matter of Civil Rights.  The NIH is currently
tracking 33.5 million Americans over the age of 40 who have eye diseases
that lead to blindness with 17 million of that figure being
cataracts. Diabetes is taking its toll in the baby boomers! So the number of
visually impaired is a lot higher than you realize!

We must demand that the US census count the blind, the disabled and the
visually impaired and demand this as a matter of Civil Rights!  I testified
on this before a Department of Labor subcommittee that met in Dallas Texas
and Operation PUSH was there and I demanded that Obama order the Census to
count the blind and disabled and that met with a round of applause!

The voter registration form requires the blind to purchase JAWS 10 or later
to fill most of it out, that is a poll tax and not all of it is accessible,
so it requires the blind to either get someone to read it to them and that
is a poll tax and a literacy test. Their form actually depends on people
helping the blind fill it out, even though for everyone else they can just
fill it out and mail it in.  By the way when that form was made, JAWS 10 did
not exist!  Also their form has a map on the back of it that you must draw
where you live on the form.  Many states insist on this and so people who
are blind cannot draw the map, so it is a literacy test designed to fail.
Arkansas insisted that the blind were able to draw the map because they have
never had any complaints!

Also the National Form is designed so badly that the blind have 5
opportunities to change their status in a drop down list of being a citizen
or not, so you need to figure out how many people filled out that form with
JAWS and accidentally changed their citizenship status because that status
determines whether they can vote or not.  So I am saying that people could
have filled out the parts of the form that are accessible and still were
denied the right to vote!

So you need to coordinate with Civil Rights Organizations.  For instance
during the 2008 election I was in contact with the Voting Rights Division of
the ACLU, but they did not understand the problems of the blind and they
wanted help from the NFB and could not find it. Of course I did not know of
this list back then.  But you have a communication problem between advocacy
groups.  Because we had a state elections officer put in writing that the
state was not required to make voter registration forms accessible to the
blind!  That is their policy!

Section 508 law is a mess because it assumes that somewhere and at some
point in time, there existed a program that was capable of determining if a
person could diagnose each individual regulation of Section 508. Most of the
suggested programs do not exist anymore. And some of the regulations are so
obsolete that they are causing problems such as the use of specialized
keyboard shortcuts that take over standard keyboard shortcuts used by the
blind.  We need to get rid of that regulation!  And the tools to determine
section 508 compliance do not have to be accessible to the blind.  It does
not matter that the blind must use multiple techniques to find content, that
all of the content is not accessible in one sitting, all that the law does
gives people an excuse to claim accessibility when none exists!

The blind need to access content in about as much time as a sighted viewer,
with a consideration for content that is obviously needs more explanation.
But there should not be a problem with most US government forms.

Standardized tests are easy to make accessible to the blind so that they can
access all of the content using a free screen reader in about as much time
as anyone else. Sure if there is some video that must be used, then yes it
will take more time as you have to read the description.   I do not
understand why people are resistant to making tests accessible.  It is easy!


The reason people are learning Universal Design is that Apple requires W3C
compliance to work with the IPhone.  Most designers do not own screen
readers and accessibility settings mess up Adobe software as well as other
design programs.

Also we have a problem where web design software fools the programs used to
test for Section 508 complaince so the accessibility is NOT being put into
websites.  Web design software places placeholder text which say things like
"Button 1" into alternative text fields and of course the designer is
supposed to change this text to indicate the intention of the button.  But
if they do not do anything, the site will still pass the standardized tests
for web compliance because the alt text has text in it, albeit useless text,
but it is in there and so web designers can claim they made their content
Section 508 complaint when it is not accessible at all!

Also web designers know where everything is located on their pages so when
they demonstrate the 'accessibility' to their boss they can show them how
easy it is to access the content.  But try that on the public and they are
lost.

One company claimed that their program was accessible using a standard
testing technique, which was discontinued 9 months before and they still
have a link to this obsolete test on their website. Isn't it nice that they
care so much about accessibility!

Why do the blind have to become computer programmers to access content?
Face it everyone on this list is more adept at handling computers than your
average person.

I could write a book on what is wrong with accessibility but I think the
main problem is that there is a huge business in fixing things after they
are made and some of these people are in charge of the standards for
accessibility. So you have the fox guarding the hen house.

James Pepper