[nfb-talk] Fwd: [nfbcs] Response to "The Hands That Feed"

[David Andrews]

>From: "Curtis Chong" <curtischong at earthlink.net>
>To: <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:19:57 -0600
>Subject: [nfbcs] Response to "The Hands That Feed"
>
>On Saturday, February 18, 2012, Chris Hofstader posted a blog entitled "The
>Hands That Feed."  This post can be found at
>http://www.hofstader.com/node/10.  For the convenience of the reader, I am
>including the text of Hofstader's blog post at the end of this article.
>
>I will not try to summarize what Hofstader was trying to say in his blog
>post.  It speaks for itself.  However, I feel that a number of inaccurate
>statements made in his blog post must be addressed in order to set the
>record straight.
>
>                 Hofstader says, "Last July, the National Federation of the
>Blind (NFB)at its summer convention passed a resolution 'condemning and
>deploring' Apple for the sin of not requiring that everything sold in its
>app store be fully accessible."
>
>In fact, the National Federation of the Blind, during its 2011 convention,
>passed one and only one resolution regarding Apple.  Resolution 2011-03
>resolved that the National Federation of the Blind "express its frustration
>and deep disappointment with Apple for allowing the release of applications
>that contain icons, buttons, and other controls that cannot be identified by
>the blind user of VoiceOver, thereby rendering them nonvisually
>inaccessible."  It further resolved that the NFB "urge Apple, in the
>strongest possible terms, to work with the National Federation of the Blind
>to create and enforce a set of requirements for accessibility that will, at
>a minimum, compel application developers to label buttons, menus, icons,
>selection lists, checkboxes, and other controls so that VoiceOver users can
>identify and operate them."  Resolutions passed at the 2011 NFB convention
>can be found at
>http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/word/Resolutions_2011.doc.
>
>Regarding Resolution 2011-03, many people have asked me why Apple, an
>acknowledged leader in accessibility, was singled out for criticism while
>other companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Adobe (who clearly lag behind
>Apple in terms of built-in accessibility to products and who justly deserve
>criticism) were not included in the resolution.  As one of the authors of
>Resolution 2011-03, I would say that it was not a matter of singling out
>Apple for special criticism.  We have been trying for years to get Microsoft
>and Adobe to mandate accessibility to their products, and so far, we have
>not been as successful as we would like.  It seemed reasonable to me to try
>to get Apple, a relative newcomer to the field, to come to the table and
>work with us to build some minimal accessibility into products allowed into
>the App Store.  While it could be argued that terms such as "disappointment"
>and "frustration" might seem a bit harsh, I felt that Apple needed to know
>how strongly we felt about the need to mandate basic accessibility to icons,
>buttons, and other controls.  Also, I reasoned that since Apple already
>imposed some pretty strong requirements on app developers that other
>companies did not, why not call upon Apple to add accessibility to the mix.
>
>Hofstader says, "Curtis Chong, head of NFB in Computer Science, the portion
>of NFB responsible for computing issues decided to threaten people at Apple
>with a resolution of condemnation if they didn't attend the convention. ...
>It seems that Curtis did this because his feelings were hurt or some other
>completely childish motivation for biting the hand that feeds us best."
>
>For the life of me, I cannot understand how my dealings with Apple could be
>regarded as "threatening."  Last year, as President of the NFB in Computer
>Science, I did ask Apple to speak at our annual meeting, and I clearly
>stated that there should be a minimum set of accessibility features which I
>thought should be required.  When I was informed that Apple would not be
>coming to the NFB convention, I wrote back saying:
>
>                 "I am more than a little surprised that Apple would not want
>to expand upon the positive interactions that occurred between it and the
>National Federation of the Blind at the Federation's convention last year.
>At that convention, Apple received a $10,000 Jacob Bolotin award and
>garnered good will from convention participants because of its participation
>at the convention.  In short, Apple had a presence at our convention, and
>this was duly noted and very much appreciated by me and other Federation
>leaders."
>
>I also said:
>
>                 "We acknowledge the many good things that have been
>accomplished by Apple that have benefitted the blind, but we believe that
>ongoing dialog between Apple and the organized blind must be active and
>continuous so that a meaningful exchange of viewpoints can occur."
>
>Again, while we may not always agree with the fine folks at Apple, it is
>hard to imagine how the language above can be regarded as "threatening."
>There certainly is no indication that resolutions condemning and deploring
>the company would be considered at the convention if they chose not to come.
>
>                 Regarding a meeting that took place at Microsoft in
>September of 2004, Hofstader says: "I can't recall what angered Curtis that
>time but he took all of the correspondence and lots of other data covered by
>the NDA (nondisclosure agreement which everyone at the meeting did sign) and
>dumped it out onto the Internet."
>
>Hofstader's memory of events that took place in 2004 are markedly different
>from mine.  I certainly never "dumped it out onto the Internet."  Yes, I did
>provide Dr. Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, with
>a written summary of the meeting, and yes, that summary was indeed published
>in the December, 2004 edition of the Braille Monitor.  In my letter to Dr.
>Maurer, I took great pains not to reveal anything that was specifically
>flagged as a nondisclosure item, and I definitely did not write the letter
>out of any sense of anger or irritation with Microsoft.  I concluded my
>letter to Dr. Maurer by saying, "Overall I think the meeting with Microsoft
>went as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Representatives
>of some of the product groups heard from real live blind consumers and may
>have received insights that they never had before. We, on the other hand,
>learned something about how accessibility is handled at Microsoft-that is,
>it is still not truly a corporate mandate but rather something which various
>groups must be persuaded to incorporate into their product development
>cycles."  The letter as published in the Braille Monitor can be found at
>http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm04/bm0412/bm041206.htm.
>
>I know that in this day and age, blog posting is extremely popular and often
>serves as a convenient channel for communication.  Convenient and popular as
>blogs are, I believe it is incumbent on anyone who posts in a blog to ensure
>that the information disseminated is accurate.  I regret that in this case,
>the accuracy quotient was not as high as it could have been.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Curtis Chong, President
>National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science
>
>
>Original Blog As Posted By Chris Hofstader
>
>The Hands That Feed.
>Sat, 02/18/2012 - 11:44 - cdh
>Why do organizations that claim to advocate for people with vision
>impairment choose to take action against companies that do a good job with
>accessibility while giving a free pass to many that do nothing for our
>community?
>
>Yesterday, I was talking to my friend and Serotek CEO, Mike Calvo. He
>enthusiastically told me about a device that the people at the Disney Magic
>Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Florida gave him to use for his visit there
>on Sunday. According to Mike, a guy who knows a whole lot about
>accessibility, it looked like a little box with headphones. The information
>provided directly into his ears provided a step by step narrative of the
>park and described what he would have seen if he hadn't been blind on the
>rides and during the shows.
>
>"I'm 44 years old," said Mike, "I've been going to Disney since I was three.
>This was the first time I got to really enjoy it all."
>
>Last year, the American Federation of the Blind (AFB) gave Disney one of its
>prestigious Access Awards for the excellent accessibility of their theme
>parks. Also, last year, three blind American individuals filed a class
>action lawsuit against Disney for violating the Americans With Disabilities
>Act (ADA) for having certain portions of their web site inaccessible to
>people with vision impairment.
>
>I tend to support using lawsuits as a tactic to force companies to stop
>discriminating against people with disabilities by presenting an
>inaccessible web site. Web accessibility isn't too hard to do if the site's
>developers just follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
>available at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web site and certainly a
>company like Disney can afford to do so. At the same time, I accept that our
>community must first warn a company before filing a lawsuit and,
>furthermore, we should offer our services as accessibility experts to these
>companies before we start tossing around litigation. I understand that
>American Counsel of the Blind (ACB) takes the "try niceness first" approach
>to solving web accessibility problems, a tactic for which they should be
>commended.
>
>Disney, with the excellent accessibility of their theme parks, should also
>make their web sites fully accessible to people with vision and other print
>impairments but, given that they have demonstrated that they are willing to
>provide profoundly greater access to their parks than any other such
>organization (Six Flags, Busch Gardens, Universal, etc.) lends me to believe
>that, if properly made aware of the web issues, they would likely take
>action to remediate their site in a reasonable amount of time. I'd add that
>a company like Disney would also likely hire blind contractors to help them
>test their accessibility as they try to roll it out.
>
>So, why file a lawsuit against Disney while letting organizations that are
>much worse off of the hook?
>
>One might assume that the three individuals who filed the suit acted
>impetuously and, as they don't represent any of the advocacy organizations,
>they really do not represent the class of people with vision impairment.
>Unfortunately, this practice of using aggressive legal tactics and publicity
>against companies who do a better job with accessibility seems built into
>the culture of some so-called advocates. Even worse, some companies who have
>web sites with loads of accessibility problems get applause from some groups
>claiming to represent the community of people with vision impairment.
>
>Last July, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)at its summer
>convention passed a resolution "condemning and deploring" Apple for the sin
>of not requiring that everything sold in its app store be fully accessible.
>While I agree that having such a requirement would be nice, Apple has done
>vastly more than its operating system rivals Google, Microsoft and all
>flavors of GNU/Linux to promote accessibility. Also, Google and Microsoft
>have their own app stores with no requirements for accessibility either.
>
>Before I launch into the politics that seem to have led to the NFB
>resolution, I will provide a few examples that demonstrate Apple's
>overwhelming lead in providing systems accessible to people with vision
>impairment. Since introducing VoiceOver, the utility people with print
>impairments use to hear the contents of the screen spoken or sent to a
>refreshable braille display, Apple has sold 100 million devices that are
>accessible to this community. Additionally, every product in an Apple retail
>store that has a user interface includes VoiceOver. A blind person can go to
>an Apple store and try out everything they sell except the iPod Classic
>which hasn't had a software revision in a really long time. I can use any
>Macintosh, iPhone, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod Touch and more sold in the
>past few years without installing any extra software. Meanwhile, I would
>need to spend nearly $1000 extra to use Windows on a "standard" computer if
>I want to use the most popular screen access utility for that platform.
>Android from Google includes a screen access tool called "TalkBack" which
>is, in my educated opinion, years behind the out-of-the-box experience
>provided by Apple and the costly add-ons required by Windows.
>
>When counting accessible devices, Apple's more than 100 million is more than
>all of the software and hardware sold by the access technology industry
>since its formation more than 30 years ago. People in nations ignored by the
>AT biz now enjoy unparalleled access if they can get a used iPhone 3GS which
>can be had for much less than JAWS, the leading Windows screen reader from
>Freedom Scientific.
>
>Why then did NFB choose to single out the leader in affordable
>out-of-the-box accessibility while celebrating Google's tremendously
>sub-standard access?
>
>At the NFB convention in 2010, they gave Apple one of their accessibility
>awards. In 2011, Apple decided that because of its upcoming Lion operating
>system release that they would not attend any of what we in the blindness
>biz call "the summer shows" - including the national NFB convention, the ACB
>convention, Sight Village in UK and various smaller conferences. Apple
>representatives explained to NFB that they needed to focus on the
>accessibility of their new OS release and of numerous smaller initiatives
>they were preparing for autumn 2011.
>
>Curtis Chong, head of NFB in Computer Science, the portion of NFB
>responsible for computing issues decided to threaten people at Apple with a
>resolution of condemnation if they didn't attend the convention. Then, at
>the convention, he pushed through a resolution deploring the company that
>has provided an excellent out-of-box experience that is years ahead of their
>competition. It seems that Curtis did this because his feelings were hurt or
>some other completely childish motivation for biting the hand that feeds us
>best.
>
>How do I know all of the back room wrangling that happened between the
>largest organization that claims to represent blind people and a notoriously
>secretive corporation? Because Curtis, in the most unprofessional move of
>this unfortunate incident, decided to release all of the correspondence
>between himself and our friends at Apple. This data dump included the names
>of individuals at Apple, their personal email addresses and mobile phone
>numbers and, yes, the people in Apple accessibility positions received some
>harassment from the NFB faithful but, likely to Curtis' chagrin, comments on
>blogs that republished the correspondence defended Apple as, yes, the
>community knows which hands to avoid biting.
>
>Though they do not represent me and the members of our community with whom I
>choose to associate, I'd like to apologize to these hard working individuals
>for the behavior of the NFB. Even at times of greatest conflict, froth with
>frustration, actions like those done by Curtis Chong are not those that a
>respectable advocacy organization should undertake. Rather, they are
>reminiscent of the childishness of kids who have discovered some small
>sliver of their own personal ability to influence the world and choose to
>use it for instant gratification in lieu of sustainable and systemic
>progress.
>
>If this was the first time Curtis and NFB had pulled such a stunt, I could
>forgive it. One might say that Chong's actions might have been an overly
>zealous reaction to his feeling disrespected by a company that received an
>award from his group only a year earlier. Sadly, this wasn't the first time
>he did this.
>
>A number of years back, Curtis attended an accessibility event on the
>Microsoft campus. Then, my friend Madeline Bryant McIntyre ran the MS Access
>Technology Group (ATG) and everyone in attendance, including me, signed a
>non-disclosure agreement. As we were under NDA, our friends in the MS ATG
>felt they could converse openly with us about their timelines, their plans
>for the future of their accessibility initiatives and secret under-the-hood
>aspects of the then unreleased Windows Vista. I can't recall what angered
>Curtis that time but he took all of the correspondence and lots of other
>data covered by the NDA and dumped it out onto the Internet. Microsoft could
>have taken legal action but can you imagine the headline in the Wall Street
>Journal, "Behemoth Microsoft Sues Blind Advocacy Group" so MS couldn't react
>to Chong's violation of their agreement. My friends at MS can no longer
>trust Curtis and I doubt any NFB representative will be invited back to a
>private session, thus limiting NFB's ability to advocate for our community.
>
>At the time Curtis attacked Microsoft, the Redmond software giant was the
>leader in accessibility, a fact to which I testified in the DOJ's antitrust
>case against MS.. Microsoft's ATG continues to employ some of the most
>talented people in the field and I'm expecting some terrific things from
>them in the upcoming Windows 8.
>
>Thus, while trashing Apple and going public with MS information, NFB also
>chose to file ADA based lawsuits against some companies for having web sites
>with lots of accessibility violations. The first such suit was against AOL
>and NFB chose to settle the case for a rumored $5 million award without AOL
>making any improvements in their then miserable accessibility.
>
>The next suit was filed against Amazon whose web site contains many
>accessibility violations. Amazon hired New Hampshire based, Paciello Group
>(TPG) to help it with its defense against NFB. Mike Paciello, head of TPG,
>finds his way onto all sorts of accessibility standards groups and acts
>publicly like an advocate for accessibility for people with all sorts of
>disabilities but also accepts clients with reprehensible records on
>accessibility and, given the history of some of these outcomes, his clients
>don't seem to ever actually take accessibility seriously. I contend that he
>should work for clients who have actual plans of becoming accessible rather
>than adding the name of his highly respected company to the bad guys of web
>accessibility.
>
>If you are thinking, "Everyone deserves a defense," I must remind you that
>these cases are civil lawsuits and, in the US, only defendants in criminal
>cases have a constitutional right to a defense. This community has seen
>Freedom Scientific, the largest and most wealthy company in the blindness
>business, file all sorts of harassing civil cases against smaller rivals who
>could not afford a defense so had to bow to the big guy's wishes. I know
>this because, while I worked for FS, I participated in this harassment and,
>since leaving the company, I have been on the losing end of their
>harassment.
>
>Amazon settled its lawsuit with NFB for an undisclosed sum of cash and, now,
>years later, the Amazon web site is still loaded with bad accessibility
>problems.
>
>The next NFB suit was against American retail giant, Target. Once again, TPG
>was retained by the defense and, once again, NFB dropped the suit after
>Target gave them an undisclosed amount of money and, not surprisingly,
>Target's web site continues to have major accessibility problems.
>
>After settling its lawsuits, NFB made public statements congratulating AOL,
>Amazon and Target for taking steps to become accessible. As a user, I saw
>only minimal and patronizing attempts at accessibility by the defendants in
>these cases and NFB certainly did not represent the community of people with
>vision impairments actual needs and desires.
>
>At last years NFB convention, ebay was the lead sponsor. Guess what? The
>ebay web site had, at that time, dozens of accessibility problems . NFB took
>ebay's sponsorship dollars while ignoring their poor accessibility. Those of
>us who would say that any group advocating for our community should require
>accessibility before rewarding a company by splashing its name all over
>their convention like they were a friend of our population.
>
>In the time since the 2011 NFB convention, ebay has hired an accessibility
>engineer and has, according to a friend of mine, been working with NFB to
>remediate its web accessibility problems. When I tried the ebay site this
>past week, I noticed that it is much more usable by a screen reader user
>than ever in the past. I am happy for ebay's efforts and hope this is a new
>role for NFB, actually getting things done rather than just shaking down
>those who violate web accessibility standards and guidelines.
>
>While slamming Apple at their annual convention, they celebrated Google with
>lots of presentation slots for their Android system. As I wrote above,
>Android accessibility is poor at best but NFB probably got a fat
>contribution from Google and, as any advocate knows, money talks,
>accessibility walks.
>
>Why does this community bite the hands that feed us while trying to coddle
>those who treat us as a nuisance at best? I really do not know. I will
>probably join ACB this year as, while they have their problems too, their
>approach to advocacy makes much more sense than NFB. I will continue my
>personal letter writing campaign to developers of web sites with poor
>accessibility and continue to offer them my services as a tester when they
>start making their improvements. I will continue to use mostly Apple
>products and will continue to encourage my accessibility hacker friends at
>Google and MS to try to catch up with Apple.
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