[Home-on-the-range] FW: Susan Stanzel's SCJP exam 12/28/2013

[Stanzel, Susan - FSA, Kansas City, MO]

Hi Everyone,

As some of you know, Saturday I took an examination for Java certification. I did not pass. I thought I would share my letter with you. I would like to get certified, but I am also doing it to make things better for all blind folks coming along. Afterall, I have made improving the lives of blind folks one of the most important parts of my life.

Susie

From: Stanzel, Susan - FSA, Kansas City, MO
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2013 10:53 AM
To: Accommodations Pearson VUE (AccommodationsPearsonVUE at pearson.com)
Cc: curtischong at earthlink.net
Subject: Susan Stanzel's SCJP exam 12/28/2013

Good morning Jill,

I very much appreciated you making yourself available on Saturday. This testing experience was a learning experience for everyone involved. I'd like to go through some observations from my point of view.

The reader Cynthia was fabulous. She knew the difference between a brace and a bracket. She knew how to pronounce almost all of the words. I did not pass this examination and when I try again I would like to request that Cynthia be used.

Until Friday afternoon we had not discussed the use and configuration of the Focus Braille display. You had assumed it would be plug and play. I am afraid there is more involved than that. When you called Freedom Scientific it would have been nice if they had explained how to choose the proper driver for the display which is their own display. I think they should have talked about how to configure it for computer Braille. Also, they have something called tandem use of JAWS. This means they could have connected to the laptop and done the necessary work to install the Focus display so when I plugged my Focus in it would have worked immediately. As it worked out this took about an hour to get done. I didn't realize until I started the test that the default setting for the Focus Braille display is grade 2 Braille. Naturally, since this is a Java test I would want computer Braille. We did talk about this on Saturday when I was having problems. You said you would look through JAWS and find the way to change the Braille. I never heard from you. Shortly after talking to you I asked David to call Curtis Chong who is the President of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. I knew he could tell us quickly how to make the necessary change to the configuration of the Focus Braille display. When David called Curtis he didn't leave a message. Curtis answers calls he recognizes. If there had been a message he would have returned the call. I asked David to please call again. Curtis did not have another call from David.

The Word document I accessed had a problem. It appeared there were unprintable characters in the document. These type of characters are pronounced by JAWS as "back slash" and showed up in the Braille as a cell containing dots one, two, five, and six. This problem was very distracting. Thinking back on it I think it routinely happened when there was a "]" in the code. This character is an integral part of the Java programming language. I would like to know if you could send a question involving code to Curtis Chong so he could evaluate the actual codes in the document.

If all this was not enough we hit another snag. When Cynthia was reading the agreement the computer became unresponsive because it thought it hadn't been touched. David had to find out what to do to get the test set up again. This took another 20 minutes. Maybe I could be sent an electronic copy of the agreement ahead of time to save time on the test day.

I had arrived at the testing center at 7:20. I wanted to be early rather than late. By the time I started the examination it was 9:41. I had been through a great deal of stress even before beginning the examination. I was not on a level playing field. Due to all these problems I don't think I should have to pay any more money. Earlier this year, Curtis Chong talked with someone at Pearson Vue and offered to work with Pearson Vue to enhance the organization's knowledge of nonvisual access technologies like JAWS for Windows and Braille displays. Apparently, no one took him up on his offer of help, which is why we found ourselves where we were on Saturday. All of these problems could have been avoided if the National Federation of the Blind would have been involved in teaching how to accommodate a blind test taker.

Again Jill, I very much appreciate everything you did and know together we can give me a much better testing experience when I retake this examination.

Sincerely,

Susan Stanzel





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