[nfbcs] Innovation, Usability, Accessibility, standards, and legal requirements.
Doug Lee
dgl at dlee.org
Thu Mar 6 21:49:40 UTC 2014
Laws reflect what some people think should be done at the moment
they are made. As the thoughts change, so the laws, eventually. It
was the same in the days of Esther. :-) They can help or hinder,
and I see the point of democracy to be minimizing the latter, with
the side effect of also minimizing the former.
As Steve effectively noted though, laws lag behind thought. Thought in
turn lags behind the environment that forms it; and in the technical
arena, changes in that environment only accelerate as time passes. I
see all this is another defense of Steve's view that laws are
insufficient, and more so as time goes on. We can't stop fighting for
better laws, but we must realize that's not all we have to do.
On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 02:24:48PM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
John,
You may have a point regarding being negative, but I think you are interpreting as negative the feeling that some
of us have that legislation and enforcement is not sufficient by itself. I'm not opposed to trying to pass laws,
but I think that we have to try to do more than that, so my comments should not be taken as opposing legislation.
Further, the NFB has tried to get some pretty broad technology laws past and our best success have been when we
have focused our efforts on a segment of the population which is why we have been working particularly hard on
educational software. At the very least, having legislation in place gives us a way to bring the blatent
violaters of accessibility guidelines in line and legislation can provide a vehicle to educate others about
accessibility. I am not as troubled as Mike by the fact that there is already legislation in place that in the
purest sense can't be inforced very well. I think, however, there is still room for me to feel somewhat negative
and feel, at the very least, that legislation is not enough.
Am I better off than I was twenty years ago? It kind of sounds like a presidential campaign slogan, doesn't it.
I am not so certain that I am if you look at technology very broadly. Let's be clear, though. If the question
was changed to ask whether I am better off because of the efforts we have made, legislation and other efforts, I
would definitely say "yes." I think, though, that a lot of our successes have been to simply keep up, very
necessary successes to say the least, and some successes such as iPhones and Apple TV's and the potential new
Comcast cable boxes go somewhat beyondkeeping up. On the computer, some of what I have learned to do to edit
sound is beyond what I would have dreamed of 20 years ago. The fact that we are starting to be able to interact
with touch screens is a success as well, but while we should give apple a good deal of credit, I would be
surprised if they didn't look at the work done by the TRACE Center. There are other advancements, too, and it is
right for us to not allow ourselves
to forget those. Twenty years ago we didn't know if we were going to be able to use Windows, but in time we did,
and the work done to make the MAC accessible back then by Berkeley Systems needs also to be remembered.
Having said all that, I cannot honestly say that I am as comfortable with Microsoft Word today as I was with
WordPerfect under DOS. I am not one who feels the ribbon is all that bad, but things happen sometimes that cause
delays in speech and sometimes formatting mysteries that reduce my confidence. At least I can use the same
software as my co-workers so there are advantages. I should also add that I think many aspects of using Word are
getting better, but this is almost twenty years after the Microsoft Accessibility summit. I really don't feel
that email is
better than it was ten years ago. It is adequte, but we're seeing more crashing of certain programs and others
are updated so often that it seems to be a continuous battle to keep them current with screen readers. It is
great
that I can buy from Amazon and Target now, and without forcing the issue we probably couldn't use their sites
today. However, I was
buying CD's online ten and fifteen years ago at least, so at least some of these notable successes were
necessary to keep me doing what I was already doing. I would say I could set up and operate pretty much any
stereo system and even VCR twenty years ago, although I had to follow steps I wrote down to program them. There
are many functions on many stereos I cannot access now at all. . We could run down an entire list of appliances
that
are not very useable any more. The NFB tried to pass a bill to require access to home appliances, but it didn't
get anywhere. In time it might.
So what's my point? It certainly isn't that we should give up or that we not pass legislation. I am also aware
of the fact that some of what I've outlined above may be addressed some by legislation that has already passed and
that there are efforts already underway to make this better. Still, I think there is room to ask some questions
about how sustainable our successes can be and what will happen as more and more products incorporate technology
such as touch screens and other user input interfaces. I've also seen some erosion of accessibility within
companies in the private sector. It is less that anyone is taking away accessibility intentionally, but rather
that tools have become more complicated and some of the laws and regulations that apply to government, education,
and public access do not apply clearly if at all to internal private employment situations.
Please allow me to use an example to illustrate why I think we need more than legislation. We are now seeing that
thousands of hotel rooms use digital thermostats that are not very usable by blind people who cannot read the
displays. We could probably pass a law that all thermostats in hotels must be accessible, and they may even be
covered to some degree. There are talking thermostats that, in many cases, could probably function adequately.At
what point would it make sense to provide to each blind person requesting it, an electronic reader that could
read the thermostat displays and probably other displays rather than replacing tens of thousands of thermostats?
I tried the prototype of an LCD reader some seven years ago or so, so while there is no current device to do that,
it doesn't seem impossible. It seems to me that we need to do more work to figure out when we can change how we
interact with a device or web page as opposed to requiring that thousands of people make changes for us. Of
course, I don't really see us doing away with standards, but I'm afraid that as technology advances, standards as
we now know them will either become more and more complex or they won't be that relevent. We need very much to
understand better what might be done that could make development of accessible software and web pages simpler.
Although it is simpler than today's problems, I remember how we used to consider frames not to be accessible and
we even forced web sites to remove them. Then suddenly frames were all right, even useful, and all the work to
prevent their use was suddenly largely wasted. While we create standards, we need to have a better sense of where
we are going with our accessibility tools.
I don't claim that what I have written here reflects the views of everyone who might be skeptical of legislation,
but I think to one degree or another it does reflect our collective experience and some of our frustrations.
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
>On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 01:04:33PM -0600, John G. Heim wrote:
>It isn't that difficult to generate a good list of the bugs that need
>the most attention. The list doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
>Someone might correctly suggest that bug A is more important than bug
>B but if bug B gets fixed instead, it's still a good thing. And you
>can generate all the fake bug reports you like, it's not going to make
>any difference. We're not *that* stupid.
>One thing that strikes me about the conversations on this list ...
>There sure is a lot of negativism. Practically every idea is met with
>the response, "Oh, that will never work." You'd think us blind people
>were still using clay tablets. But innovations occur every day that
>move us forward. You might argue it's one step forward and two back.
>But if that was the case, I wouldn't be here. none of us would. It
>certainly is my impression that things have gotten considerably better
>over the past 20 years, not worse. And there is a lot of reason for
>hope that the future will be better still.
>I think it hurts our cause for so many people to focus so much on the
>failures especially when there are so many successes to look at.
>Focusing on the failures makes us afraid to try.
>On 03/05/14 12:21, Doug Lee wrote:
>>Whatever else may be said, I confess there's a certain amusing appeal
>>to the concept of a bounty-hunter mentality to open-source bug fixing.
>>I can see now, bug reports being submitted by someone nicknamed Boba
>>Fett... or would it morph to Boba Git, because of the popular version
>>control system? But surely I digress... :-)
>>
>>On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 12:04:02PM -0600, John G. Heim wrote:
>>At www.iavit.org, we have been contemplating putting a "bounty" on
>>certain bugs in orca and nvda. We don't have any money but the idea is
>>that you get $50 or $100 for contributing code that fixes a particular
>>bug.
>--
>Doug Lee dgl at dlee.org http://www.dlee.org
>SSB BART Group doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
>"While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was
>done." --Helen Keller
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Doug Lee dgl at dlee.org http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
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