[nfbcs] Screen Reader Support Models - was NVDA product question

[Brian Buhrow]

	Hello Nicole.  What I'm about to say may feel personal.  I want  to
assure you  that I do not mean this against you personally and I'm
definitely not trying to start a fight with you, nor do I feel any ill will
toward you.  I also understand the fact that as an employee of one of the
companies we're discussing, you are in a very uncomfortable position. 
	With that said, I believe the message I'm replying to demonstrates
very well part of the problem we have, as consumers, withcompanies like
Apple, Microsoft or Google taking more responsibility for providing
accessibility to their products.  To explain what I mean, I'll quote your
message below and try to make my points under the relevant sections.

} I agree with you on your points about Microsoft. I do think that Freedom
} Scientific should have been at least somewhat prepared, especially since
} they supposedly work with Microsoft.
} Okay, then why am I disagreeing? I am not just playing devil's advocate.
} Things are probably the way that we think that they are most of the time,
} but you cannot know for sure unless you work for one of the big companies or
} for a screen reader manufacturer. I work for Google. I obviously cannot
} answer directly to the mentioned issues, but I can tell you that Google does
} care. 
	I don't doubt that people inside Google care very much about
accessibility. In fact, I'm sure there are people like yourself inside
Google who care about it very much.  That's wonderful!  However, as you
yourself state, you cannot address specific accessibility issues that
Google may or may not be working on in a place where non-google employees
can see them.  What that means is that we in the outside world have to take
your reassurances on faith.  It also means that until concrete evidence is
presented to say otherwise, we must presume that what ever is currently
available from Google's publically available services is the final word on
how they wish to address particular accessibility issues.  As a software
rangler and technical support provider, I fully understand that software
evolves and is being continuously improved.  However, as a consumer, all I
can do is take what's available and if it doesn't work, I'm out of luck
unless I can find some other way to make it work that's outside of Google's
control.

} Part of the problem is that people seem to, for whatever reason, not
} want to even try to communicate. Often, when people say that they are having
} accessibility problems, I recommend writing to the Google accessibility list
} and/or providing feedback, but they don't. That is, of course, not the
} entire problem, but it is part of it. Another part of the problem seems to
} be that people think that fixes can happen over night. Just because there is
} nothing obvious happening does not mean that the company is not doing
} anything.

	I've heard this complaint in various forms for a long time and I've
even offered it up as an excuse in my own company when folks have expressed
frustration about why a particular thing doesn't work.  What I'll say is
that it's not that simple.  Here's why.
	If I run into what I think is a particular problem with something
Google puts out, but I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, who do I
interact with who can help me figure it out?  Sure, I could write to the
accessibility group, but if I do, I probably won't describe the problem
correctly and my message will get filed in the pile of those messages from
users who justdidn't know how to use the particular feature that appeared
not to work.  Or, alternatively, I do describe the problem correctly, my
message gets passed up to an engineering group who begins working to try
and address the problem.  I may or may not receive an acknowledgement of my
message which says thanks for the report, rest assured we're working to
address the issue.  Either way, I still cannot do what it is that I was
trying to do and I have no time frame in which I can possibly expect to
have the issue resolved.  If too many issues pile up in this manner and
they affect my job performance adversely, I run the risk of being demoted
or laid off.
	
	Accessibility technology is complicated: to produce, maintain and
support.  What companies like Freedom Scientific and GW Micro provide that
is so critical is technical support.  that support serves two purposes:
First, it provides a face/voice that a user can interact with to figure out
if their problem is with the software in question or if it is something
they're doing that's just wrong.  Second, as technical support talk to
users who have issues with the products they support, they can filter bug
reports to the engineering staff which not only more accurately describe
what's wrong, but let the engineering staff know what users are doing with
their products.  Also, they can provide specific feedback to specific users
about where their specific issues are in the queue of things to be
addressed.  People want to know they're being heard and to know that
someone cares and can help them with their specific problem.  Let me
illustrate with an analogy.  If I want to go somewhere and I want to use a
private car service, I'm probably going to choose Uber over a traditional
cab because the Uber interface is much more personalized.  It tells me
when my car will be arriving, who my driver is and it even lets me call
them and explain that they need to drive over a series of unmarked roads
to reach my pickup point.  With a traditional cab service, I place a call,
ask for a car and pray!  I have no idea if or when a car will arrive, and I
can't communicate with the specific driver  to let them know about the
series of unmarked roads.
	Good technical support is very hard, very expensive and something which
doesn't scale particularly well.  Apple, Google and Microsoft are taking on
more and more responsibility for accessibility, but are providing
relatively little technical support for that technology in terms of
customer interaction.  

} Going back to the main point, I think that companies that are willing to
} undo or modify changes if their users do not like them are more likely to
} work with accessibility than companies who make change for the sake of
} change.

	I don't think companies make change for the sake of change.  What I
think is that companies and their users have conflicting agendas regarding
the  purpose of their products or services.  This is particularly true with the
customer model Google uses for its services.  Google's purpose for all of
its services, whether or not they openly state it or not, is to increase
advertising revinue.  As a rule, the users of their service do not pay
Google dollars.  Instead, they pay Google by reading and, hopefully, acting,
on some of the advertisements Google's customers pay Google to put before
its users.  Most blind and visually impaired users don't want to be
bothered with reading the advertisements and so don't represent a good
investment for Google's time in terms of increasing the bottum line for
Google.  The only place where that may not be true is where Google is
offering private label services to governmental entities who demand that
those services be accessible in order to be compliant with the law.  I.e.
Gmail for  universities and govermment institutions.
	This fact in no way diminishes the dedication and sincerity of those
people who are working to make google services accessible.  You and all you
work with inside Google are undoubtedly very dedicated to making things as
accessible as you possibly can.  the problem is that in order to further
its larger goals, Google has setup its accessibility structure in such a
way that it is not a critical component of their service offerings.  Thus,
when Google decides it needs to add a new feature to a particular service,
or make a change to accomodate a new market segment or ad campaign, it
moves forward without worrying overly much about whether  that change
affects its "accessibility quotient". So, when stuff breaks in the
accessibility arena, as it inevitably does, it's unclear when or if that
stuff will get fixed.  Worse, from the user's perspective, the user doesn't
know when the service might get fixed, if it will get fixed or even if
google knows about the problem.  To be fair, this is true for Apple and
Microsoft as well.

	To get back to the original thread of this conversation, the problem
that Tim Connell points out in the article we've been discussing is that if
we switch to environment where all accessibility technology is funded by
the philanthropic model, either through crowd sourcing as NVDA does it, or
via a direct donation from a specific company, as Google and Apple do it,
we as blind consumers lose our direct customer relationship for a specific
product we need.  To draw another analogy, when the plumbing breaks in my
house, I call the plumber to come over and make a specific repair to a
specific problem.  He comes over, explains what's wrong, how long it will
take to fix and how much it will cost to fix it.  That is similar to what
happens today if I run into a problem with Jaws.  I call Freedom Scientific
and they help me understand what's wrong in my case and, if possible, provide
me a fix and/or a time frame when my problem can be fixed.  (yes, I know
it's not that simple and there are times when things can't be fixed, but even
there, they can tell me for sure if a thing can't be fixed.)  If I used the
philanthropic model for my plumbing problem, I'd be encouraged to send over
a bunch of money to a group of enthusiastic plumbers who might or might not
be over at some point in the future to repair my broken plumbing.
	The difficulty with the philanthropic model is that because accessibility
is hard to do, and because, in general, the monetary reward is not
commensurate with the amount of effort required to make it work, there
needs to be a more direct relationship between those who use the access
technology and those who fund it than the philanthropic model appears to
provide.  Before we throw away the direct customer relationship we
understand, it's important for us to understand the pros and cons of the
new funding models we've been moving to so that we can figure out if
they'll work for us before the old ways become inaccessible to us.

-thanks
-Brian

} 
} Nicole
} 
}