[nfb-talk] Blind academics and Thomson Reuters

[Chwalow, Judith]

From: William Page [mailto:page at scipol.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 7:19 AM
To: Maurer, Patricia
Subject: Blind academics and Thomson Reuters

As always, academics need to be published in academic journals.
Increasingly, journals are insisting articles are submitted online. 
The market leader is ScholarOne Manuscript, a division of Thomson 
Reuters and based in the US. Its websites have many buttons which are 
graphics with no hidden text beneath them; I believe no screen reader 
can read them. This limits the ability of blind academics to submit 
articles to at least this major player. This is unhelpful to their 
career development!

I know this because I am a blind publisher who signed up to use their 
service for our journals - and I cannot use it!

Thomson Reuters agree they should be doing something about this, but 
cannot see it being done for some time. Is there an association of 
blind academics who might add pressure to get this changed sooner 
rather than later? Below are my emails to Thomson Reuters about this; 
they are clearly not trying to be difficult, but say this would be an 
immense job for technical reasons.

You are welcome to forward this email to anyone you think appropriate.
Thanks for any help you can give.

Bill Page

--------------------------------------------
William Page
Beech Tree Publishing
- Science and Public Policy
- Research Evaluation
- Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 10 Watford Close, 
Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, UK Telephone +44 1483 824871  Fax +44 1483 
567497 Email page at scipol.co.uk Website www.scipol.co.uk (including 
links to journal abstracts and full texts on the Ingenta Connect site)

-----Original Message-----
From: tiffany.coker at thomsonreuters.com
[mailto:tiffany.coker at thomsonreuters.com]
Sent: 18 June 2010 18:58
To: page at scipol.co.uk
Cc: ryan.looney at thomsonreuters.com
Subject: RE: MC and screen readers


Dear Bill,

Thank you for your note explaining the hardship you're experience using
ScholarOne Manuscripts with Hal.  While I have heard that certain users
with screen readers had various minor troubles using the system, I
haven't become aware that the system was impossible to use until you
mentioned it below.  From my understanding of screen readers, they rely
heavily (if not solely) on "alt text" describing images and buttons to
aid in navigation.

I also appreciate your willingness to help prioritize changes in the
sites you work with.  However, in the case of ScholarOne Manuscripts,
the system is built in such a way that all sites rely on the same code
base to work; each site, rather than being a unique deployment of unique
code, is simply a branch of the main code for all sites.  Any changes we
make to one site will and must affect all.  Adding "alt text" to each
image throughout the site is a large undertaking, and is further
complicated by the fact that the sites can be customized to display
different images depending on workflow, configuration, and language
settings.

While I don't believe that we can expect any improvement in 2010, as our
resources are completely deployed on other projects, I will speak with
my supervisors here and at Thomson Reuters to evaluate this for the
future.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have further questions.

Best wishes,
Tiffany

.................................................................
Tiffany Coker
Director, Product Management
ScholarOne
Healthcare & Science

Thomson Reuters

Phone: 434.964.4027
Fax: 434.817.2039

tiffany.coker at thomsonreuters.com
thomsonreuters.com


-----Original Message-----
From: William Page [mailto:page at scipol.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 8:26 AM
To: Coker, Tiffany (Hlthcr&Science)
Cc: Looney, Ryan (Hlthcr&Science)
Subject: RE: MC and screen readers

Hello Tiffany
Around December, Ryan Looney kindly contacted you on my behalf. We had
signed up for two of the journals I publish to be on Manuscript Central.
It took me time to realize that I could not really use MC because I am
blind and use a screen reader (called Hal). Although David Thomas knew I
was blind when he did the demonstration, it did not become apparent
until much later that this would be a problem.

I appreciate your situation, of making all MC sites compliant will be an
immense undertaking. However, I am currently signed up to a service
which I cannot use! So I wonder if we can reach a compromise: might it
be possible to make just our two sites compliant? By which I mean, that
a competent screen reader can read?

If it helps: I am actively involved as an editor as well as the
publisher of one, Science and Public Policy, so this would be my
priority. If the other, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, had to
wait, I could survive because I am not actively involved in editing that
one, only in publishing it.

If there is anything I can do to help with this, please tell me.

With thanks for any help  you can give me,

Best wishes

Bill Page

--------------------------------------------
William Page
Beech Tree Publishing
- Science and Public Policy
- Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal
10 Watford Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, UK
Telephone +44 1483 824871  Fax +44 1483 567497
Email page at scipol.co.uk
Website www.scipol.co.uk (including links to journal abstracts and full
texts on the Ingenta Connect site)