[nfbcs] Starting at anew company as a blind computing professioanl

[Christopher Chaltain]

I think this is a good idea. I find most of my colleagues are curious as 
to how I get things done and are willing to help to make things a bit 
easier for me.

On the starting day, I like to have a system and a screen reader. I find 
the rest can wait a bit, and I like to get the lay of the land before I 
know exactly what accommodations I need. I also like talking to someone, 
before I start, like the hiring manager or someone in IT, about my 
requirements. I don't want anyone just making assumptions on what I'll 
need or won't need.

I find it's best to come across as flexible. Like I said, most people 
want to help. I'll also tell people not to worry about things up front 
and to just treat me like any other employee. I'll let them know if 
there's something that can be done to make things more accessible for me.

Over time, I start letting people know what would make my job a bit 
easier. Getting a source document for example instead of a scanned image 
would help. I can use OCR to deal with a scanned image, but this isn't 
as good as getting the original Word document for example.

I also encourage people to cut and paste simple documents into the body 
of an email message. This way I don't have to go through multiple steps 
of detaching the document and then opening it up.

I also schedule the occasional meeting when I think I need to have 
someone walk me through the layout of a particularly complicated spread 
sheet or go over a presentation with me that has a lot of images in it. 
Colors in spread sheets, documents and email messages can also trip me 
up, so if I need to , I'll ask for some clarification.

Basically, I just let them know that for the most part, they can treat 
me like any other employee, and I'll let them know as things come up 
what they can do to help.

On 16/03/16 08:29, Suzanne Germano via nfbcs wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am doing a presentation about having legally blind and blind members join
> your team.
>
> What would be your ideal experience as a new employee? ie all
> accommodations setup in advance
>
> What are things you would want your team to know for example how to get
> documents, diagrams, scrum boards etc in a format you can access
>
> I am legally blind and i emailed my new team all about my condition and the
> tools I use and I found it really helpful
>
> I am brainstorming right now so anything you can think of just let me know
>
> Thank you
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-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail