[gui-talk] inaccessible software continued

[Doug Lee]

Allen, my hat's off for that clear, nicely speech-renderable, and
seemingly even-handed dissection of the issues raised in James' post!

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 02:05:45PM -0500, Hoffman, Allen wrote:
James:
I want to respond to many of your statements below because I feel some
are either a bit more forceful than you may have intended when read, or
if not, your view may in my opinion mislead some about why we have
inaccessible products, and how we might best approach expediting
resolving the problem.  None of these comments are intended as negative
criticism, but are intended to provide a dialogue to think about these
issues further.
 
 
 
James writes: 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.
 
Response:
Capacity to change rendering of a document by intermediate content
management can cause problems but does not directly relate to software
accessibility.  Bad processes make bad outputs true, but good ones can
produce clear outputs which are what authors originally intended also.
Authors don't always have a clue what they are saying either and no
amount of intermediate content management can easily resolve that
problem.
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
What principle?  Can you more clearly define the principle for us?  Only
principle I read from this was working together to ensure content
accuracy.
 
 
 
James writes:
Every government form uses fonts that are too small for OCR software to
decode, hence they all have to be replaced.
 
Response:
Bull hockey.  OCR'ing forms is a poor way to access them for someone who
is blind anyway.  Electronic, accessible forms are far more usable when
done right.  If we wanted to drive the government, we'd require all
printed forms have electronic equivalents.  This is not really far off
in my view anyway.
 
 
 
James writes: 
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?
 
Response:
Limited English Proficiency support is part of government regulation,
however no regulation requires all content be produced in all languages
at all times.  I doubt that will become reality any time soon without
automated solutions.
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Are you nuts?  Please name examples of business fraud aimed only at the
blind by use of misleading alternate content.    
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Can you be more clear on what you mean by rebuilding content?  Does this
relate to examine the various layers of a PDF file to determine why
something may be rendered via a screen reader in a particular way?  In
my view bling disabled does not mean things are required to be free,
only equal.
 
 
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
Nobody requires a blind person to use some expensive system to register,
and normally someone will assist you to complete the forms if asked.  No
cost.
 
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
So, what is the count of the blind in the U.S., and the count of African
Americans who voted?  In what election was that?  How does such a ratio
make something a civil right?  Civil rights are not determined by
quantity of the population, and often are individual in nature.
 
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
Applause by whom?  I don't suppose counting the blind is all bad, and
would help provide some base line numbers for use moving forward-but I
myself probably wouldn't get down and have a tantrum over it.
 
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
As someone who voted and registered, I found it pretty painless with
sighted assistance.  I would agree it would be nice to have electronic
accessible version also-but wouldn't have a tantrum over it either.  I
think constructive input to election commissions would probably do the
job.
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
You should volunteer to work with them on the usability of the form.  It
would help.
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
Get to know the system and make it work for you.  Bringing advocacy
groups together is a good idea.  Educating people, unfortunately, is a
major part of making culture change.
 
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
Bull hockey.  Section 508 law, regulation, and standards do not assume
automated testing tools for anything existing at any point, or that such
will be used.  
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Comparable access is a complicated thing to nail down in real terms, but
the concept is great.
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
It is not always easy to make tests fully accessible without real effort
on the authors and developers parts.  It must be expected that it is
done however, without exception.  There are situations where such things
as simulations can present real insurmountable challenges to make
accessible for the blind, but these are rare.  For example, a color
identification test would probably be pretty difficult to make fully
accessible for the blind in a meaningful way.
 
 
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Apple is one driver, universal design programs and courses are another.
A third is corporate preference to meet one standard over many
standards.
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
Don't attribute to conspiracy which can be accomplished by incompetence.
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
What?  Can you clarify this?
 
 
James writes:
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!
 
Response:
There is a lot of poor attention to accessibility, and outright lip
service out there, but even lip service is a start.  We should have made
more progress in the last ten years however, in my opinion.
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Why do authors have to be come programmers just to give access to the
blind?  Its something that we need industry to solve and we need to
develop real strategies to get them to do it.
 
 
 
James writes:
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.
 
Response:
Don't write a book on what's wrong with accessibility, that won't teach
people what they need to do.  Write a book on strategies to use to
become accessible.  Write on how to do it faster.  Write on how to get
people excited about doing accessibility as part of normal business.
 
 
 
Allen Hoffman
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-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so."
- Josh Billings, 1818-1885 (in "Solemn Thoughts")