[nabs-l] Technology, Print and Readers

[Anita Adkins]

Hello,

To me, it seems that my responsibility as far as getting printed 
inaccessible electronic information into a format that is accessible to me 
is both my own responsibility and that of the producer of the visual 
information.  For example, I hire my own reader to translate my textbooks. 
At the same time, I take advantage of textbooks that are available through 
RFB&D.  I believe that the publisher of a textbook should make it available 
in an accessible electronic format.  I do not believe that waiting for them 
to do this on my part is acceptable, however.  I must strive for 
accessibility of textbooks and I must strive to have the ones that are not 
currently accessible translated.  If not, I would be far behind my peers in 
school.  If I can do so, I would rather provide any necessary adaptations, 
such as providing my own braille display or screenreader, when applying for 
and performing a job.  An employer will be more likely to hire someone who 
is capable and able to solve challenges.  Again, this does not mean that I 
think it is acceptable for employers to be negligent in making material 
accessible.  Once I have obtained the position, I can use my own tools.  If 
necessary, I can ask for any that I may need to be provided by the employer 
or discover an alternative way to obtain the equipment.  I think that 
accessibility should be a strong goal for the society to work toward and 
that information should be available in an accessible and usable format. 
Part of being equal is being equal.  This means that I can have access to 
information in my preferred format just as a sighted person can have access 
in his preferred format.  It means that if a sighted person is expected to 
fill out ten reports that I should be expected to fill out ten reports.  A 
question for thought might be: Is being equal equivalent to adapting to and 
complying with the majority; or, is being equal treating everyone the same 
by providing technology, resources, etc. in a format that they can access, 
use, and/or prefer?  I am now finished rambling on this matter.  Anita
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Orozco" <jsorozco at gmail.com>
To: "'National Association of Blind Students mailing list'" 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 5:47 PM
Subject: [nabs-l] Technology, Print and Readers


>I thought this was an interesting article on this month's Monitor.  Any
> thoughts?--Joe
>
> ***
>
>>From the Editor's Email Basket
> Technology, Access, and Personal Responsibility
>
> by Mike Freeman, Gary Wunder, and Dan Burke
>
>>From the Editor: Today's complex political, legal, and technological
> environment often creates complicated and ambiguous issues for blind 
> people
> working
> to achieve equality, security, and opportunity for themselves and others.
> The NFB's philosophy of blindness is sound and pragmatic, but deciding to
> adhere
> to one's principles today and even determining what actions those 
> principles
> demand can be a challenge. The following email exchange took place 
> recently
> on the affiliate presidents listserv. The first message is from Mike
> Freeman, president of the NFB of Washington. The second is from Gary 
> Wunder,
> president
> of the NFB of Missouri. The final one is from Dan Burke, president of the
> NFB of Montana. All three men are also members of the NFB board of 
> directors
> and thoughtful shapers of NFB opinion and philosophy. Their concerns and
> cautions are worth serious thought. This is what they wrote:
>
> Fellow Affiliate Presidents:
>
> Mike Freeman
> We all know the basic tenets of NFB philosophy; we wouldn't be affiliate
> presidents were this not so. In most instances guidance from NFB 
> philosophy
> is
> clear and straightforward. However, the most fascinating applications of 
> NFB
> philosophy occur in situations that bring out its subtle nuances and force
> us to ponder what it means in the real world.
>
> In my opinion one of these areas of subtlety concerns our desire for
> accessible documents and other materials. When should we ask for them, 
> when
> should
> we demand them, and when should we take responsibility for gaining access 
> to
> them by our own efforts (including use of readers)? I am concerned that, 
> as
> it becomes easier to get accessible materials, we are losing our edge in
> critical thinking and in adhering to NFB philosophy. I am becoming
> increasingly
> worried that more and more blind people-both NFB members and 
> nonmembers-are
> failing to distinguish between that which is desirable and that which 
> ought
> to be mandatory, between what should be ours by right and what is our own
> responsibility to procure for ourselves. The Americans with Disabilities 
> Act
> and other laws have something to say about this under certain 
> circumstances,
> but there is often room for disagreement, especially in employment
> situations,
> where I am afraid many blind people entering the workforce are confused
> about what is an employer's responsibility and what is the prospective
> employee's
> responsibility-where they begin and end, when failure to provide 
> accessible
> materials is discrimination, and when it is just the way the world works. 
> I
> am becoming increasingly concerned that we are not sufficiently educating
> our members in the arcana of NFB philosophy-a failing that is partly ours
> and
> partly that of the membership, who all too often want everything in
> ten-second sound bites.
>
> This concern was crystallized for me by two incidents that I observed 
> during
> the past twenty-four hours. The first came from a question of one of our
> members
> (a staunch Federationist), and the second came from a post on our BlindLaw
> list.
>
> Incident one: A young lady called me up yesterday afternoon asking whether
> census forms were accessible and what blind folks who lived alone did to
> fill
> them out. I told her that I hadn't even considered the question; that I
> always just used an amanuensis and never worried about it. Apparently she
> called
> up the census office, and they have a form in Braille; she wondered how a
> blind person would handle this. I said that I supposed the Braille form 
> was
> like
> the old Talking Book Topics Braille book request lists that had print 
> under
> the Braille and one would just put a penciled line by the answer one 
> wanted.
>
> My point is merely that in the old days we would never have even 
> considered
> the question; we all just used an amanuensis to fill out the form, and 
> that
> was that. To what extent is it the responsibility of the Census Bureau to
> provide accessible forms, and to what extent should we just accept that 
> the
> world
> predominantly uses print and that, if we are to compete on terms of 
> equality
> and, perhaps more important, demand the right to compete on terms of
> equality,
> we should just learn to handle the print ourselves? I know what Dr. 
> Jernigan
> would say (or I think I do); in the no-longer-distributed publication "Why
> the NFB?," he took one letter-writer to task for complaining that he (Dr.
> Jernigan) had sent him some print correspondence.
>
> Incident two: A legitimate and interesting discussion has arisen on the
> BlindLaw mailing list concerning the rights of attorneys during the
> discovery process
> to receive materials in accessible form: what is the extent (if any) of
> these rights, and (a) whose responsibility it is to make documents
> accessible and
> (b) how should one get the job done, specifically with scanned PDF
> documents? The post that disturbed (nay, incensed) me was from a lawyer (I
> don't know
> whether or not he is in the NFB, and this is probably immaterial anyway) 
> who
> said that one of his clients had gotten an adverse court ruling because 
> the
> blind attorney hadn't been able to get a scanned PDF into a useable form 
> in
> time to prevent it.
>
> I'm sorry, but this enrages me! Were I that attorney's client, I'd fire 
> him
> and sue the pants off him for incompetence; if the attorney wishes to be
> accepted
> as being able to compete on terms of equality, he should actually compete,
> and in my opinion it is no one's responsibility but his to see that he has
> at
> hand all the material he needs to do the best job he can for his client.
>
> It will be interesting to see how others respond though I doubt many will
> put it in as stark terms as I do here. But my point is not to debate this
> particular
> issue: I am making like a foghorn in the night: ladies and gentlemen, we
> have a job to do. We not only need back-to-basics NFB philosophy seminars 
> at
> the
> national level, but we need them in spades at the state-affiliate and
> local-chapter levels. The question then becomes how to get the membership 
> to
> sit
> still long enough to absorb and consider the esoterica of NFB philosophy
> where the rubber really meets the road and get them to increase their
> critical
> thinking skills in this area, for I fear me greatly that we will face this
> issue more and more as the world increasingly adopts technologies and
> methodologies
> that involve use of sight under circumstances that heretofore they did 
> not.
>
> Mike Freeman
>
> Hello Mike,
>
> Gary Wunder
> I really like your post and admire you for taking the time to put it out 
> on
> a list like this. I have to tell you that I'm amazed that many people, 
> some
> of them state presidents, don't even pay for readers on a regular basis. I
> can't imagine how people pay their bills, fill out forms, and do all of 
> the
> other things that being a state president requires without setting up some
> human help along the way. To me it is just a built-in cost of being blind,
> one
> I have taken to be a given for a long, long time now. I cannot imagine
> trying to make it the responsibility of opposing counsel to provide my 
> blind
> lawyer
> a document in an accessible format, and I would be mighty upset with any 
> of
> our blind lawyers who told me my case had been lost because they did not
> read
> the material available.
>
> As for the census, our form was completed in less than five minutes by one
> of the readers we have come to our house. Currently we have two of them. 
> One
> is a volunteer. The other uses the money she makes by working for us to 
> buy
> groceries. Both of the people who work for us get something out of it, 
> and,
> in addition to the reading we get, we get the joy that comes from the
> challenge of figuring out how to make our volunteer feel as good about
> knowing us
> as we feel about knowing her and the satisfaction of knowing that we have
> provided a job to someone who needs to eat.
>
> I think our people are indeed in need of some good Federation philosophy
> about technology and personal responsibility, but, when we hold such
> seminars,
> we will have to be mindful of several realities that can make determining
> what responsibility rests with us and what rests with others a bit more
> difficult
> in the twenty-first century than it was in 1940 or 1975. If discrimination
> is truly something which must be both detrimental and unreasonable, then
> there
> was little discrimination when sighted people would pass around plain 
> pieces
> of white paper-plain to us because we could not determine the black or the
> red ink on them. I think there is no discrimination when sighted people 
> sit
> around and talk about the expression on the face of the Mona Lisa or the
> genius
> of the painter who put it there, or how different pictures can convey a
> different message when viewed at a different angle. There is no
> discrimination
> if my daughter can do magic with the Paint Program provided in versions of
> Microsoft Windows, and I can do nothing with the same program. I want to
> drive,
> but currently there is no discrimination when my daughter of sixteen can 
> get
> a license, and I cannot. At this point in our history these things are
> inherently
> visual.
>
> Now take the situation in which we have a device where everything can be
> recorded in a digital format, where every number and letter can be coded
> into a
> unique sequence that can be interpreted by a speech synthesizer, a Braille
> printer, or a text magnifier, and now consider that almost anybody who
> writes
> any kind of document uses this device. Then, to make it more glitzy, to
> allow for pictures more easily, or perhaps even to increase its security,
> they
> take what is inherently nonvisual and make it visual. Our own state
> government now writes most of its documents in Microsoft Word and then
> converts them
> to PDF for distribution. Is this sound public policy when the same state
> government and the federal government that provides most of the money for
> rehabilitation
> have entered into a contract with blind people saying, "If you will get 
> the
> training and take going to work seriously, we will help you along the 
> way?"
> Is it reasonable, when government and private industry actively support 
> the
> creation, distribution, and purchase of project management tools that use
> numbers
> to calculate the criticality of a project and then turn those numbers into
> colors and graphs without providing a nonvisual solution so that we can 
> get
> at those very numbers?
>
> As some of you may know, tomorrow I go to a two-day session for an
> orientation with the Cerner Corporation. Their goal for me is to teach me
> about their
> company and to show me the tools and techniques that will immediately make
> me a productive Cerner associate. I'm excited about the trip. I love
> learning
> about new technology and thrill at being on the cutting edge of a new
> electronic medical record.
>
> If I have any fear or reservations about that session, is it that I may 
> not
> be capable of being a computer programmer? Absolutely not! Do I fear that 
> I
> may behave in a socially inappropriate manner? No, I have no question 
> about
> that. My fear is that, when they begin to show me the simplest of
> timekeeping
> functions, the way they track projects, and maybe even the way they sign
> into their system, we will find something in that mess that is 
> inaccessible.
> Maybe
> it will be a button which was not coded as a button and therefore is not
> seen by a screen reader. Maybe it will look like a combo box but be 
> nothing
> more
> than a series of links that in turn cause others to be displayed silently 
> on
> the screen.
>
> At one of my recent jobs, the way one logged a problem was not only to 
> have
> a user ID and password, but to carry around an electronic card which
> actually
> received a code that was changed every fifteen seconds. Only if you got
> these three elements could you file a problem for the vendor to fix.
>
> For me in this circumstance the question isn't whether I have a
> responsibility to deal with the printed word on a page, but whether I have
> the ability to
> decode a screen which, if created with nonvisual access in mind, I would
> have full access to, but, more times than not in the advanced world of
> technology,
> my needs as a blind person don't even place in the race to get something 
> out
> the door.
>
> My point in writing all of this is to say that there is something of a
> shared responsibility for all of this information we are forced to cope 
> with
> every
> day. If I am the one most personally affected, then I believe I am the one
> most personally responsible, yet, if that translates to the need to have
> somebody
> with me during three-fourths of my work week, I reject that as reasonable,
> whether I pay for that assistance or whether somehow my employer is 
> willing
> to pay for it. It just makes no sense, especially since it is completely
> avoidable.
>
> I think all of this points to the absolute imperative that we pass H.R.
> 4533, the Technology Bill of Rights for the Blind Act. As I understand
> current law,
> there is nothing for blind people to do when their employment is 
> threatened
> by technology which will not allow for nonvisual interaction except to sue
> their employer. This is not the way to show that you and they have a 
> shared
> goal. This is not how a good employer-employee relationship is built. It 
> is
> not the way you show your employer that you want to be a part of the team.
> At some point we must get to the place where these important decisions are
> handled
> at the procurement level and where a violation of the law is not revealed
> only after a blind employee finds himself at a significant disadvantage.
>
> So I'm all for a seminar, a back-to-basics,
> take-some-personal-responsibility gathering, but it will have to be one 
> that
> grapples with the technology of
> today and not just a session where we say, "Well, of course you will, from
> time to time, need to hire the services of a sighted person to get along 
> in
> the world, so get on with it."
>
> Gary Wunder
>
> Mike, et al.:
>
> Dan Burke
> Thanks for the post. I gave it plenty of thought this afternoon while
> thinning out the lilac hedge. Our previous efforts to ensure that 
> electronic
> voting
> machines provided for in HAVA [Help America Vote Act] would be nonvisually
> accessible are an excellent example of Gary's points, as are our current
> efforts
> with the Technology Bill of Rights. Technology has changed the world in 
> many
> respects because it can easily be made accessible.
>
> Part of my duties at the University of Montana includes supervising
> alternate media production, that is, primarily ensuring access to 
> textbooks.
> I am also
> called on quite frequently to identify inaccessible documents. If, for
> example, I receive an inaccessible PDF, I engage in a conversation with 
> its
> originators
> about dissemination of or deployment of such formats and give directions 
> to
> resources for creating accessible documents. However, I don't then sit 
> back
> and wait for the accessible document to come if I must read and digest the
> material in short order. I convert it or, since I have the luxury of
> high-speed
> scanners and student labor, have it converted.
>
> Philosophically, this question could be boiled down to whether blind 
> people
> behave as actors or victims. I am keenly aware that, in fulfilling our ADA
> Title
> II obligation to provide accessible texts and documents in higher 
> education,
> we may not always be preparing students to be actors in their professional
> lives. It is apparently quite possible to get all the way through law 
> school
> without knowing how to convert paper or PDFs to accessible and usable
> documents.
> It may be posited that the lawyer in your story was a victim, or perhaps a
> less pejorative term might be recipient of accessibility. To be an actor 
> in
> this case would require a strategy, the skills and resources or tools to 
> get
> what one needed in a usable format in the most expedient manner--likely
> large
> amounts of material at times under severe deadlines.
>
> One tool in any such strategy, of course, is the old-fashioned,
> nontechnological use of a trained and reliable human reader. I use my
> knfbReader Mobile
> quite a bit now to go through personal mail, but, if I have been 
> neglectful
> in keeping up with it (or just too busy), I revert to a reader as the most
> efficient way to get through a pile of mail in a hurry. The power company 
> is
> not sympathetic to claims that I am not proficient in managing my personal
> business responsibilities.
>
> It's an excellent topic for a seminar discussion.
>
> Dan Burke
>
> "Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves,
> some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> nabs-l:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/aadkins7%40verizon.net