[nabs-l] google docs

Chris Nusbaum dotkid.nusbaum at gmail.com
Thu Mar 29 01:35:00 UTC 2012


Great ideas, Katie! By the way, where do I download Firefox?

Chris Nusbaum

Sent from my BrailleNote

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Katie Wang <bunnykatie6 at gmail.com
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list 
<nabs-l at nfbnet.org
 sent: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:51:09 -0400
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] google docs

Hi Ashley,

Google Docs is a popular file-sharing tool tied to your Google
account.  Once you create a file on Google Docs (Word documents, 
Excel
spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations), you can share it with 
a
group of people by their email addresses, who can then edit or 
comment
on your work.  You are right that it is  currently inaccessible 
in
Internet Explorer, although I have heard that it now works with 
JAWS
in Firefox.  I'm also aware that Google is working on improving 
the
accessibility of their various products, although I'm not sure 
how
much progress they have made so far.

For the purpose of your class, it might be worthwhile for you to 
check
if Google Docs indeed works in Firefox, especially considering 
that
the browser is free and fairly easy to install.  If that route 
does not
work, you may need to talk to your instructor/classmates to work 
out
an alternative solution.  What do you mostly use Google Docs for 
in
your class? If the work mostly involves peer editing in a small 
group
(which sounds like what you are describing), perhaps you could 
talk to
your fellow editing group members to see if you could all email 
around
your assignments and add comments directly in Microsoft Word.  A
similar, but perfectly accessible, alternative to Google Docs is
Dropbox, a desktop client that also allows you to share files 
with
others, so that might be something worth considering as well.  
Hope
this helps!

Katie

On 3/26/12, Ashley Bramlett <bookwormahb at earthlink.net> wrote:
 Hi all,

 Well, I have a hybrid class for english; that means half online 
work and
 half in class meetings.
 What exactly is google docs and how does it work?
 Do you attach documents to it or something?

 I realize it is inaccessible to us.  How do you get around that? 
Do you write
 assignments in word and/or email?
 I ask because I encountered google docs in our online class when 
we were
 supposed to comment on introductions for articles.
 Obviously, I couldn’t read the comments.  Jaws only read names 
of classmates,
 not text.
 So I’ll have to have  a sighted reader and hand in my comments 
on paper.

 And most importantly, has either consumer advocacy group done 
anything about
 this lack of accessibility? I fail to see how blind students 
take online
 classes with so much inaccesssibility.
 PDFS, flash based content, multi media presentations and um now 
google docs
 are just a few accessibility challenges in the online class 
experience.

 Ashley
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