[nabs-l] Technology, Print and Readers

[Darrell Shandrow]

  Hello Courtney,

In many cases, "printed materials" have been created using a computer.

I would have used your approaches, perhaps amending them by saying that 
I have a talking computer that is able to read most printed material 
that has been created on a computer using programs like Microsoft Word.

On 6/30/2010 3:39 PM, Courtney Stover wrote:
> Jo,
>
> This is a really interesting discussion topic.
>
> To illustrate my thoughts, let me provide a personal example.  I was
> considering applying for a position as a youth coordinator at an inner
> city shelter.  One of the requirements was that one needed to be able
> to read printed matterial.  Now, I had two options in this situation
> as I see it.  I could have iether gone in, provided my credentials and
> said something like: "I believe myself to be extremely qualified for
> this position.  However, I am unable to read printed matterial and
> therefore need a reader.  If you are willing to make this
> accomadation, my work can proceed smoothely and I can be an assett to
> this organization."
>
> Or.. I could've gone in under the same circumstances and displayed my
> KNFB reader, complete with headset.  "This will allow me to read most
> printed matterial.  There may be exceptions where I need a reader, but
> they will be very rare exceptions."  I could then have gone on to
> detail these types of exceptions e.g. the reader not responding well
> to certain colors of ink when they were set against certain
> backgrounds)
>
> Iether of these options would have been viable, imho.  However, I feel
> that the second would have served me far better.  It would have
> significantly decreased the accomodations the employer had to make,
> making them far more likely to hire me, and it would have shown them
> that I had good problem solving skills.
>
> I do believe that if we wish to compete on an equal playing field, we
> often need to take personal responsibility for making matterials
> accessible.  In my oppinion, the blind attorney cited in the article
> was skating extremely close to negligence.
> Courtney
>
> On 6/30/10, Joe Orozco<jsorozco at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> 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
>>
>>
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