[nfbcs] Accessibility (was: BMC Remedy web-based client)

[Gary Wunder]

Hi Tracy.  At one point in my career with the University of Missouri
Hospitals and Clinics, my job was to track all of the projects in our
division and to warn management and project managers when we seemed to be
critically close to deadlines or when no progress was apparent on critical
projects.  Initially the software we use for doing this was Microsoft Excel,
a rather low-tech solution for what we were trying to do.  A developer in
our shop was given the job of writing a system that would really meet our
needs and easily report what we wanted to know.  She came to me about six
weeks into her development and said "I'm coding this project in (I don't now
remember the name of the language), and I think it has some serious problems
working with screen readers.  We'll just have to work our way around this
once I get it developed.  I went to my manager because this was ridiculous.
At this point she was writing the program for me.  I wasn't the only one who
should have input into what it would do and how it would work, but I was
going to be the primary user and the data it communicated I would disperse
through memos and phone calls.  Whenever somebody who works 50 feet from you
can think about designing a project in a program that is not screen reader
accessible, it can be quite frustrating.  I served on the hospitals
Americans with Disabilities committee and regularly made presentations to
the University development managers, complete with demonstrations of screen
access demonstrations to show what worked and what didn't. My manager, the
one who commissioned the project to create the program, supervised the woman
writing the program and me. Work on the project was stopped, but that only
meant that we continued to use Excel until the University contracted its
information department to the Cerner Corporation.

I think that providing accessibility in products developed and purchased
within an organization is similar to the process that happens when trainers
are brought in with the new idea to inform and inspire the staff.  Sometimes
management would treat us to a two or three day course in project management
or and how to use the newest generation of software we were going to buy,
but when you went back to your desk after the course, things were much the
same.  The presentations were stimulating and sometimes inspirational, but
they didn't change much about the day-to-day world.  In a project management
seminar I remember a major message being that we should limit our access to
incoming email to one or two times a day lest we fall victim to always being
distracted by the latest message received.  The project consultant we were
paying big bucks said that he would not check his e-mail more than once or
twice a day.  Everybody in the room kind of chuckled because we recognized
that too often we were driven by the last thing that came into the box.
After the class several of us tried limiting our look at e-mail to twice a
day, only to be brought up short by people directly supervising us who would
come by and say "I haven't heard anything back from you on that e-mail.  Is
there some problem in getting an answer?"  Of course, the e-mail had been
sent out 45 min. before, and the expectation within the shop, the message of
the consultant notwithstanding, was that you would answer your e-mail in the
same way that you would answer the telephone, especially when it came from
someone above you.

I really didn't mean to go down that road quite as far as I did, but I think
there is a real disconnect between what people see as the real work we are
expected to do and the goals we have for getting access so we can do it.  We
need to bring some kind of focus to this.

Gary
   

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Tracy Carcione
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 9:37 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Accessibility (was: BMC Remedy web-based client)

I think a lot of developers don't consider accessibility at all.  They
think everyone else is just the same as they are.  In their world, blind
people don't even exist.  If they think of us at all, which is very
unlikely, then they think of us as street beggars or elderly invalids,
certainly not as people working for a living.
The hospital I work for makes a big deal about diversity and inclusion,
and the developers who are in the same office as I am try to build in
accessibility.  But, if the hospital outsources a project, forget it.  The
whole mandated training system is not accessible to me.  It sings; it
dances; it even talks Spanish.  What it doesn't do is allow me to even
click "next".  I have pointed it out several times to Human Resources, and
my bosses, but nothing is done about it.  And I would bet, when they get
around to redoing the system some day, accessibility will be forgotten
again.

Big companies like Microsoft and Apple are making some efforts, but there
are way more for whom blind people don't even exist.

I remember that IBM commercial John mentions.  I thought it was good.
Tracy





_______________________________________________
nfbcs mailing list
nfbcs at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nfbcs:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/gwunder%40earthlink.net