[gui-talk] Response to "The Hands That Feed"

[Baracco, Andrew W]

Well, I have known Chris for many years, and I do respect the
contributions that he has made to the AT field, and his expertise in AT
matters, but he does tend to go over the top sometimes,and I'm glad that
you are calling him out.  I just want to say that as a user of Apple
products since December 2009, I have found Apple to be remarkably
receptive to input from its blind customers, and not just Apple, but
many of the developers who write IOS apps.  Each incarnation of the Mac
OS as well as IOS has included accessibility improvements.  In the
summer of 2009, I recall an Apple rep saying that there would never be
external keyboard input for the iPhone, only to see it happen in the
next version of the IOS.  I have also experienced upgrades in the
accessibility of apps when a new version has been released, and fixes
when accessibility when an upgrade to an app breaks it because blind
customers gave input.  I did feel that the NFB resolution was a kind of
slap in the face to a corporation that really does seem to care about
us, and also wondered why it wasn't directed at Microsoft.
Also, by the way, IOS version 5 allows the user to label unlabeled
buttons, like you can with your PC screen readers.

Andy


_____________________________________________
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
On Behalf Of Curtis Chong
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 5:20 PM
To: gui-talk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [gui-talk] Response to "The Hands That Feed"


On Saturday, February 18, 2012, Chris Hofstader posted a blog entitled
"The Hands That Feed."  This post can be found at
http://www.hofstader.com/node/10.  For the convenience of the reader, I
am including the text of Hofstader's blog post at the end of this
article.

I will not try to summarize what Hofstader was trying to say in his blog
post.  It speaks for itself.  However, I feel that a number of
inaccurate statements made in his blog post must be addressed in order
to set the record straight.

		Hofstader says, "Last July, the National Federation of
the Blind (NFB)at its summer convention passed a resolution 'condemning
and deploring' Apple for the sin of not requiring that everything sold
in its app store be fully accessible."

In fact, the National Federation of the Blind, during its 2011
convention, passed one and only one resolution regarding Apple.
Resolution 2011-03 resolved that the National Federation of the Blind
"express its frustration and deep disappointment with Apple for allowing
the release of applications that contain icons, buttons, and other
controls that cannot be identified by the blind user of VoiceOver,
thereby rendering them nonvisually inaccessible."  It further resolved
that the NFB "urge Apple, in the strongest possible terms, to work with
the National Federation of the Blind to create and enforce a set of
requirements for accessibility that will, at a minimum, compel
application developers to label buttons, menus, icons, selection lists,
checkboxes, and other controls so that VoiceOver users can identify and
operate them."  Resolutions passed at the 2011 NFB convention can be
found at
http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/word/Resolutions_2011.doc.

Regarding Resolution 2011-03, many people have asked me why Apple, an
acknowledged leader in accessibility, was singled out for criticism
while other companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Adobe (who clearly
lag behind Apple in terms of built-in accessibility to products and who
justly deserve criticism) were not included in the resolution.  As one
of the authors of Resolution 2011-03, I would say that it was not a
matter of singling out Apple for special criticism.  We have been trying
for years to get Microsoft and Adobe to mandate accessibility to their
products, and so far, we have not been as successful as we would like.
It seemed reasonable to me to try to get Apple, a relative newcomer to
the field, to come to the table and work with us to build some minimal
accessibility into products allowed into the App Store.  While it could
be argued that terms such as "disappointment" and "frustration" might
seem a bit harsh, I felt that Apple needed to know how strongly we felt
about the need to mandate basic accessibility to icons, buttons, and
other controls.  Also, I reasoned that since Apple already imposed some
pretty strong requirements on app developers that other companies did
not, why not call upon Apple to add accessibility to the mix.

Hofstader says, "Curtis Chong, head of NFB in Computer Science, the
portion of NFB responsible for computing issues decided to threaten
people at Apple with a resolution of condemnation if they didn't attend
the convention. ... It seems that Curtis did this because his feelings
were hurt or some other completely childish motivation for biting the
hand that feeds us best."

For the life of me, I cannot understand how my dealings with Apple could
be regarded as "threatening."  Last year, as President of the NFB in
Computer Science, I did ask Apple to speak at our annual meeting, and I
clearly stated that there should be a minimum set of accessibility
features which I thought should be required.  When I was informed that
Apple would not be coming to the NFB convention, I wrote back saying:

		"I am more than a little surprised that Apple would not
want to expand upon the positive interactions that occurred between it
and the National Federation of the Blind at the Federation's convention
last year.  At that convention, Apple received a $10,000 Jacob Bolotin
award and garnered good will from convention participants because of its
participation at the convention.  In short, Apple had a presence at our
convention, and this was duly noted and very much appreciated by me and
other Federation leaders."

I also said:

		"We acknowledge the many good things that have been
accomplished by Apple that have benefitted the blind, but we believe
that ongoing dialog between Apple and the organized blind must be active
and continuous so that a meaningful exchange of viewpoints can occur."

Again, while we may not always agree with the fine folks at Apple, it is
hard to imagine how the language above can be regarded as "threatening."
There certainly is no indication that resolutions condemning and
deploring the company would be considered at the convention if they
chose not to come.

		Regarding a meeting that took place at Microsoft in
September of 2004, Hofstader says: "I can't recall what angered Curtis
that time but he took all of the correspondence and lots of other data
covered by the NDA (nondisclosure agreement which everyone at the
meeting did sign) and dumped it out onto the Internet."

Hofstader's memory of events that took place in 2004 are markedly
different from mine.  I certainly never "dumped it out onto the
Internet."  Yes, I did provide Dr. Maurer, President of the National
Federation of the Blind, with a written summary of the meeting, and yes,
that summary was indeed published in the December, 2004 edition of the
Braille Monitor.  In my letter to Dr. Maurer, I took great pains not to
reveal anything that was specifically flagged as a nondisclosure item,
and I definitely did not write the letter out of any sense of anger or
irritation with Microsoft.  I concluded my letter to Dr. Maurer by
saying, "Overall I think the meeting with Microsoft went as well as
could be expected under the circumstances. Representatives of some of
the product groups heard from real live blind consumers and may have
received insights that they never had before. We, on the other hand,
learned something about how accessibility is handled at Microsoft-that
is, it is still not truly a corporate mandate but rather something which
various groups must be persuaded to incorporate into their product
development cycles."  The letter as published in the Braille Monitor can
be found at
http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm04/bm0412/bm041206.htm.

I know that in this day and age, blog posting is extremely popular and
often serves as a convenient channel for communication.  Convenient and
popular as blogs are, I believe it is incumbent on anyone who posts in a
blog to ensure that the information disseminated is accurate.  I regret
that in this case, the accuracy quotient was not as high as it could
have been.

Sincerely,

Curtis Chong, President
National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science


Original Blog As Posted By Chris Hofstader

The Hands That Feed.
Sat, 02/18/2012 - 11:44 - cdh 
Why do organizations that claim to advocate for people with vision
impairment choose to take action against companies that do a good job
with accessibility while giving a free pass to many that do nothing for
our community?

Yesterday, I was talking to my friend and Serotek CEO, Mike Calvo. He
enthusiastically told me about a device that the people at the Disney
Magic Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Florida gave him to use for his
visit there on Sunday. According to Mike, a guy who knows a whole lot
about accessibility, it looked like a little box with headphones. The
information provided directly into his ears provided a step by step
narrative of the park and described what he would have seen if he hadn't
been blind on the rides and during the shows.

"I'm 44 years old," said Mike, "I've been going to Disney since I was
three. This was the first time I got to really enjoy it all."

Last year, the American Federation of the Blind (AFB) gave Disney one of
its prestigious Access Awards for the excellent accessibility of their
theme parks. Also, last year, three blind American individuals filed a
class action lawsuit against Disney for violating the Americans With
Disabilities Act (ADA) for having certain portions of their web site
inaccessible to people with vision impairment.

I tend to support using lawsuits as a tactic to force companies to stop
discriminating against people with disabilities by presenting an
inaccessible web site. Web accessibility isn't too hard to do if the
site's developers just follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) available at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web site and
certainly a company like Disney can afford to do so. At the same time, I
accept that our community must first warn a company before filing a
lawsuit and, furthermore, we should offer our services as accessibility
experts to these companies before we start tossing around litigation. I
understand that American Counsel of the Blind (ACB) takes the "try
niceness first" approach to solving web accessibility problems, a tactic
for which they should be commended.

Disney, with the excellent accessibility of their theme parks, should
also make their web sites fully accessible to people with vision and
other print impairments but, given that they have demonstrated that they
are willing to provide profoundly greater access to their parks than any
other such organization (Six Flags, Busch Gardens, Universal, etc.)
lends me to believe that, if properly made aware of the web issues, they
would likely take action to remediate their site in a reasonable amount
of time. I'd add that a company like Disney would also likely hire blind
contractors to help them test their accessibility as they try to roll it
out.

So, why file a lawsuit against Disney while letting organizations that
are much worse off of the hook?

One might assume that the three individuals who filed the suit acted
impetuously and, as they don't represent any of the advocacy
organizations, they really do not represent the class of people with
vision impairment. Unfortunately, this practice of using aggressive
legal tactics and publicity against companies who do a better job with
accessibility seems built into the culture of some so-called advocates.
Even worse, some companies who have web sites with loads of
accessibility problems get applause from some groups claiming to
represent the community of people with vision impairment.

Last July, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)at its summer
convention passed a resolution "condemning and deploring" Apple for the
sin of not requiring that everything sold in its app store be fully
accessible. While I agree that having such a requirement would be nice,
Apple has done vastly more than its operating system rivals Google,
Microsoft and all flavors of GNU/Linux to promote accessibility. Also,
Google and Microsoft have their own app stores with no requirements for
accessibility either. 

Before I launch into the politics that seem to have led to the NFB
resolution, I will provide a few examples that demonstrate Apple's
overwhelming lead in providing systems accessible to people with vision
impairment. Since introducing VoiceOver, the utility people with print
impairments use to hear the contents of the screen spoken or sent to a
refreshable braille display, Apple has sold 100 million devices that are
accessible to this community. Additionally, every product in an Apple
retail store that has a user interface includes VoiceOver. A blind
person can go to an Apple store and try out everything they sell except
the iPod Classic which hasn't had a software revision in a really long
time. I can use any Macintosh, iPhone, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod
Touch and more sold in the past few years without installing any extra
software. Meanwhile, I would need to spend nearly $1000 extra to use
Windows on a "standard" computer if I want to use the most popular
screen access utility for that platform. Android from Google includes a
screen access tool called "TalkBack" which is, in my educated opinion,
years behind the out-of-the-box experience provided by Apple and the
costly add-ons required by Windows.

When counting accessible devices, Apple's more than 100 million is more
than all of the software and hardware sold by the access technology
industry since its formation more than 30 years ago. People in nations
ignored by the AT biz now enjoy unparalleled access if they can get a
used iPhone 3GS which can be had for much less than JAWS, the leading
Windows screen reader from Freedom Scientific.

Why then did NFB choose to single out the leader in affordable
out-of-the-box accessibility while celebrating Google's tremendously
sub-standard access?

At the NFB convention in 2010, they gave Apple one of their
accessibility awards. In 2011, Apple decided that because of its
upcoming Lion operating system release that they would not attend any of
what we in the blindness biz call "the summer shows" - including the
national NFB convention, the ACB convention, Sight Village in UK and
various smaller conferences. Apple representatives explained to NFB that
they needed to focus on the accessibility of their new OS release and of
numerous smaller initiatives they were preparing for autumn 2011. 

Curtis Chong, head of NFB in Computer Science, the portion of NFB
responsible for computing issues decided to threaten people at Apple
with a resolution of condemnation if they didn't attend the convention.
Then, at the convention, he pushed through a resolution deploring the
company that has provided an excellent out-of-box experience that is
years ahead of their competition. It seems that Curtis did this because
his feelings were hurt or some other completely childish motivation for
biting the hand that feeds us best.

How do I know all of the back room wrangling that happened between the
largest organization that claims to represent blind people and a
notoriously secretive corporation? Because Curtis, in the most
unprofessional move of this unfortunate incident, decided to release all
of the correspondence between himself and our friends at Apple. This
data dump included the names of individuals at Apple, their personal
email addresses and mobile phone numbers and, yes, the people in Apple
accessibility positions received some harassment from the NFB faithful
but, likely to Curtis' chagrin, comments on blogs that republished the
correspondence defended Apple as, yes, the community knows which hands
to avoid biting.

Though they do not represent me and the members of our community with
whom I choose to associate, I'd like to apologize to these hard working
individuals for the behavior of the NFB. Even at times of greatest
conflict, froth with frustration, actions like those done by Curtis
Chong are not those that a respectable advocacy organization should
undertake. Rather, they are reminiscent of the childishness of kids who
have discovered some small sliver of their own personal ability to
influence the world and choose to use it for instant gratification in
lieu of sustainable and systemic progress.

If this was the first time Curtis and NFB had pulled such a stunt, I
could forgive it. One might say that Chong's actions might have been an
overly zealous reaction to his feeling disrespected by a company that
received an award from his group only a year earlier. Sadly, this wasn't
the first time he did this.

A number of years back, Curtis attended an accessibility event on the
Microsoft campus. Then, my friend Madeline Bryant McIntyre ran the MS
Access Technology Group (ATG) and everyone in attendance, including me,
signed a non-disclosure agreement. As we were under NDA, our friends in
the MS ATG felt they could converse openly with us about their
timelines, their plans for the future of their accessibility initiatives
and secret under-the-hood aspects of the then unreleased Windows Vista.
I can't recall what angered Curtis that time but he took all of the
correspondence and lots of other data covered by the NDA and dumped it
out onto the Internet. Microsoft could have taken legal action but can
you imagine the headline in the Wall Street Journal, "Behemoth Microsoft
Sues Blind Advocacy Group" so MS couldn't react to Chong's violation of
their agreement. My friends at MS can no longer trust Curtis and I doubt
any NFB representative will be invited back to a private session, thus
limiting NFB's ability to advocate for our community.

At the time Curtis attacked Microsoft, the Redmond software giant was
the leader in accessibility, a fact to which I testified in the DOJ's
antitrust case against MS.. Microsoft's ATG continues to employ some of
the most talented people in the field and I'm expecting some terrific
things from them in the upcoming Windows 8. 

Thus, while trashing Apple and going public with MS information, NFB
also chose to file ADA based lawsuits against some companies for having
web sites with lots of accessibility violations. The first such suit was
against AOL and NFB chose to settle the case for a rumored $5 million
award without AOL making any improvements in their then miserable
accessibility.

The next suit was filed against Amazon whose web site contains many
accessibility violations. Amazon hired New Hampshire based, Paciello
Group (TPG) to help it with its defense against NFB. Mike Paciello, head
of TPG, finds his way onto all sorts of accessibility standards groups
and acts publicly like an advocate for accessibility for people with all
sorts of disabilities but also accepts clients with reprehensible
records on accessibility and, given the history of some of these
outcomes, his clients don't seem to ever actually take accessibility
seriously. I contend that he should work for clients who have actual
plans of becoming accessible rather than adding the name of his highly
respected company to the bad guys of web accessibility.

If you are thinking, "Everyone deserves a defense," I must remind you
that these cases are civil lawsuits and, in the US, only defendants in
criminal cases have a constitutional right to a defense. This community
has seen Freedom Scientific, the largest and most wealthy company in the
blindness business, file all sorts of harassing civil cases against
smaller rivals who could not afford a defense so had to bow to the big
guy's wishes. I know this because, while I worked for FS, I participated
in this harassment and, since leaving the company, I have been on the
losing end of their harassment. 

Amazon settled its lawsuit with NFB for an undisclosed sum of cash and,
now, years later, the Amazon web site is still loaded with bad
accessibility problems.

The next NFB suit was against American retail giant, Target. Once again,
TPG was retained by the defense and, once again, NFB dropped the suit
after Target gave them an undisclosed amount of money and, not
surprisingly, Target's web site continues to have major accessibility
problems.

After settling its lawsuits, NFB made public statements congratulating
AOL, Amazon and Target for taking steps to become accessible. As a user,
I saw only minimal and patronizing attempts at accessibility by the
defendants in these cases and NFB certainly did not represent the
community of people with vision impairments actual needs and desires.

At last years NFB convention, ebay was the lead sponsor. Guess what? The
ebay web site had, at that time, dozens of accessibility problems . NFB
took ebay's sponsorship dollars while ignoring their poor accessibility.
Those of us who would say that any group advocating for our community
should require accessibility before rewarding a company by splashing its
name all over their convention like they were a friend of our
population.

In the time since the 2011 NFB convention, ebay has hired an
accessibility engineer and has, according to a friend of mine, been
working with NFB to remediate its web accessibility problems. When I
tried the ebay site this past week, I noticed that it is much more
usable by a screen reader user than ever in the past. I am happy for
ebay's efforts and hope this is a new role for NFB, actually getting
things done rather than just shaking down those who violate web
accessibility standards and guidelines.

While slamming Apple at their annual convention, they celebrated Google
with lots of presentation slots for their Android system. As I wrote
above, Android accessibility is poor at best but NFB probably got a fat
contribution from Google and, as any advocate knows, money talks,
accessibility walks.

Why does this community bite the hands that feed us while trying to
coddle those who treat us as a nuisance at best? I really do not know. I
will probably join ACB this year as, while they have their problems too,
their approach to advocacy makes much more sense than NFB. I will
continue my personal letter writing campaign to developers of web sites
with poor accessibility and continue to offer them my services as a
tester when they start making their improvements. I will continue to use
mostly Apple products and will continue to encourage my accessibility
hacker friends at Google and MS to try to catch up with Apple.