[nfbcs] Future goals for the division

Wed Jul 20 18:29:40 UTC 2016

> I would like info and thoughts of how older people can get into cs/help desk jobs

I think the important thing here is to collect our wisdom on what tools used in these help desk jobs are and are not accessible. When I thought I was loosing my job a few years ago, I applied for work in all the fields where I had experience, including help desk.  I had to figure out largely on my own, when I got several second interviews whether the tools the company was using were going to even work for me. In some cases, stuff was surprisingly accessible, or work-arounds were readily available. In other cases, nobody knew anything about a particular tool.

In tech writing, you need to use desktop publishing software and document tracking systems. In programming it's integrated development environments, version control and bug-tracking databases. And in tech support, it's customer issue databases, remote-control software and VOIP software.

One important thing to remember is that when we were younger, technical support happened mostly over the phone with you telling the clueless customer to "type in the word type", for example. Nowadays, remote-access software is used extensively, and it often isn't at all accessible. But the good news is that nowadays help desk  jobs are outsourced to workers at barely above minimum wage, and those of us with experience can often get work overseeing the outsourced folks, a job which is largely quite doable without sight.

When I started at Caere I aquickly moved up to lead support specialist for OmniPage, and later got promoted to oversee the actual folks who did the support. I monitored calls and traveled to their call centers to train them. It was way more fun, and in later cases, way more accessible than doing the actual job of speaking with customers over the phone. 

Even if you want to be a programmer as a young person, starting out at the help desk is a great way to showcase your skills to the company. I got promoted to tech writer at several companies because I actually liked creating and maintaining the customer knowledgebase. Returning to the older person who just needs a job, selling yourself as the person who knows enough tech to oversee the outsourced sweat shop can be the way to go. 

And searching for tech support jobs is also quite accessible thanks toCraigslist. But remember for the job-seeker, regardless of age or disability, networking is key. You don't just tell your friends you are seeking work: you tell them to ask *THEIR* friends if they know of any jobs for which you qualify.

Lastly, I think many blind people gravitate to government jobs or large companies, like HP or IBM because they believe there will be more protection there, more consideration to accessibility. That's certainly why as a person with nearly five decades of work behind me, I work at a college where I am protected by 504, 508 and a host of other laws.

But, I got my greatest experiences working at small and midd level companies, places where there were as few as 20 or maybe 200 employees. I got to wear many hats: people knew my abilities. I wrote scripts, talked to beta-testers, wrote manuals, trained junior staff, trained customers, helped customers, played release engineer, did a stint in sales, cleaned up bad error messages, tested products, fixed bugs in others' code, designed a knowledgebase, went to meetings, formatted floppies, made coffee ... you name it. And the reality is , I got downsized a lot. For a while I thought I was stuck on that hamster wheel of first hired and first fired, but was always assured that I would be laid off with a group, and that my skills were not in question. The thing was, I got so much experience doing all that. I am sure though one reason that contributed to my jobs lasting only four years or so was that I couldn't always access all the tools, and in a small company they needed people to be flexible. Looking back though, having to search for work so often made me less afraid of it and just overall better at finding work. And now I have a resume I have to cut stuff out from.  

--Debee

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Schulz via nfbcs
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 10:55 AM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
Cc: Bryan Schulz
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Future goals for the division

Hi,

I would like info and thoughts of how older people can get into cs/help desk jobs and am so sick of the nfb only being interested in young students.
The situation of someone going down the technical college road and only ending up with an associates degree isn't fun and gaining certs hasn't helped at all.
Bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Kathryn Webster via nfbcs
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 12:20 PM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
Cc: Kathryn Webster; 'Jim Barbour'
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Future goals for the division

Debee and all,

	I would be exceedingly interested in contributing to this. I'd like to echo Jim's suggestion of a wiki as that would be easy to maintain, edit, and expand.
In terms of publicity, I'm eager to take the lead on marketing any new intiatives to help blind students through our master database and website.
Collaboration amongst divisions is a significant goal of mine, and I see the CS Division as an ideal place to continue that effort. Our student division leaders, particularly Bryan Duarte and myself, are both very in touch with CS and student issues, so there is some place for us to start.
If our CS Division leadership chooses to move forward with this idea, count me in on all accounts. I am more than happy to help with whatever is necessary in kickstarting this effort.

What a fabulous idea!

Best,
Kathryn

Kathryn Webster
President | National Association of Blind Students

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jim Barbour via nfbcs
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 1:07 PM
To: Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs
Cc: Jim Barbour
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Future goals for the division

I think Debee has a great idea.  I actually think it's a very good application for a wiki.

One person won't know everything about what is accessible and what isn't, even in the developer and IT focused worlds.

If we agree, I'd be happy to work with Curtis W on setting up a wiki and start populating it.  I'd like to hear from folks that we think this is worth collaborating on.

Jim

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 04:54:45PM +0000, Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs wrote:
> >I'm interested in hearing from folks on this list about things they'd
like to see the NFB in Computer Science do in the future
> I'm changing the subject line so people won't skip over it.
> 
> I think one of the most crucial things is to put together an online 
> paper,
that is updated regularly, that spells out what one needs to know to get started in any computer science related field. This would be different from what sighted people need to know; it would focus on which current tools are accessible, which aren't, and include the resources such as books or online training that were discussed over in the other thread.
> 
> I work at a college, and I know new blind students get stymied by the
simplest things because they lack experience and so do their sighted helpers. For example, I heard of a student who dropped a Linux class which was all command-line based, because the rest of the class was using telnet built in to Windows to log in to the class server. Not sure why they used anything this insecure, but I wasn't administering that system and heard about it third-hand. And JAWS was not accurately reading what appeared onscreen, nor was it tracking the cursor when the student tried to use Emacs. As a Linux-head I had to laugh a bit about the ignorance that lead the student and his professor to conclude the coursework was inaccessible, but it's not a laughing matter, when a beginner doesn't know where to turn. 
> 
> The document could have sections: What you need to know to Learn C++" 
> or
"What you need to know in your first Visual Basic Class" etc. 
> 
> I also think we need to nail down and possibly explain the reasons 
> behind
the inaccessibility of many current tools. For example, if the QT4 library is used in creating interfaces, screen readers only partially identify or even recognize the existence of controls. If in learning SQL the difference between inner joins and outer joins is explained through the use of diagrams only, then it's not going to make sense to any blind student. That caused me, an experience programmer to drop a course just last year. I would have loved to be able to find a paper that outlined where I could go to locate a book that explained these concepts in plain English.
> 
> Another thought about UML: wild idea here, but how about digital 
> tactile
diagrams of the symbols that could be embossed? I know different embossers have different codes for doing graphics, but someone who knows more about this than I could perhaps take the lead here. A student could simply emboss the shapes, or get their school to do it, and then using post-it note glue which comes in sticks, post their charts on a classroom wall, doing homework along with a sighted class.
> 
> One way in which I can contribute is writing, and I'd be happy to take 
> the
lead on that part.  
> 
> --Debee
> 
>  
> 
> _______________________________________________
> nfbcs mailing list
> nfbcs at nfbnet.org
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman
> _listinfo_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ
> 20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE
> 3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=4qZb8xTe6mgKb15Tn4DsFoi8eETrXdtw
> taEdaGGoRTg&e= To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your 
> account info for
nfbcs:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman
> _options_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org_jbar-2540barcore.com&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEG
> xjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAn
> SNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=dhjNP2XYWfxR
> Zgm9mvFBAfIt5-CemFfiN3mZmNvkqqc&e=
> 

_______________________________________________
nfbcs mailing list
nfbcs at nfbnet.org
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_listinfo_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=4qZb8xTe6mgKb15Tn4DsFoi8eETrXdtwtaEdaGGoRTg&e=
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nfbcs:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_options_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org_kathrynwebster.nfb-2540gmai&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=vDr7n0-dfvXcW8PYhs4pJAKm6unK3jltSMesXUUq39Y&e=
l.com

_______________________________________________
nfbcs mailing list
nfbcs at nfbnet.org
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_listinfo_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=4qZb8xTe6mgKb15Tn4DsFoi8eETrXdtwtaEdaGGoRTg&e=
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nfbcs:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_options_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org_b.schulz-2540sbcglobal.net&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=jpA0NkVfNCngTXcs9lDq3IVIqAWznu_2lpu5dK2xDBs&e= 

_______________________________________________
nfbcs mailing list
nfbcs at nfbnet.org
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_listinfo_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=4qZb8xTe6mgKb15Tn4DsFoi8eETrXdtwtaEdaGGoRTg&e= 
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nfbcs:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nfbnet.org_mailman_options_nfbcs-5Fnfbnet.org_armstrongdeborah-2540fhda.edu&d=CwICAg&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=SgDrEUtE3ADL27-j9pYq9XSGy7CoLWr5UdbrSJ_DzJY&s=xevlKEyBQpqXo9ua92ttZUUi8QAYbsilaJh7qUjvejw&e= 