[NFBCS] Unrealistic expectations of team leaders and supervisors on the job

[Tracy Carcione]

Hi Michael.
What Steve said was very good. But you want specifics?
I've had my job for 32 years, with a variety of bosses.  All have been
willing to help me address accessibility problems, but none of them really
knew what was or wasn't accessible.
I have a project leader who still thinks that some spreadsheets will be hard
for me to read, even though I keep telling him that they are not and keep
reading them.  On the other hand, sometimes a user sends an email with an
embedded image, and I have to ask my leader to tell me about it.
As Steve said, when there is an accessibility problem, I have to figure out
what's going wrong and what a good solution could be, then present it to my
manager in a way he can understand.  He's a smart guy, but doesn't know
anything about screen readers, nor should he have to learn about them.  
Sometimes the solution takes a lot of asking questions of other people on
this list, or Jaws tech support, + a lot of experimenting by me.  I had to
do that recently to get 3270 terminal emulation to work well on my laptop.
However, the same steps didn't work quite so well on my co-worker's laptop.
Go figure.
Sometimes, I can find a solution, but it's not real efficient.  For a while,
our change control system required a lot of mouse clicks and careful
arrowing around, which I could do with Jaws, but it took me 4 or 5 times as
long to do as it took my sighted colleagues.  It wasn't a big part of my
job, so I asked my project leader to do it for me, and eventually the system
changed again to something I can use easily, so now I do it myself.  But, if
it it had been a big part of my job, I would have been in trouble.  And I
had to pay attention to when the system was being updated, so I could try
again to see if it worked better for me.
Like Steve said, I have to be in charge of my own accessibility.  I have to
tell my manager what works and what doesn't, and at least be ready to
explain why, and do it clearly and patiently.  I can't be shy about speaking
up and asking for help, but I can't constantly ask for help, either.
HTH.
Tracy

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Michael Walker
via NFBCS
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 8:19 PM
To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Cc: Michael Walker
Subject: [NFBCS] Unrealistic expectations of team leaders and supervisors on
the job

Good evening,

How do you cope with determining whether expectations of a team leader or
supervisor are realistic? Suppose expectations are not realistic, or there
are misconceptions about what you can do on the job in this field. How do
you approach that? Tell me some stories where you have faced that, and what
you did about it. I am completely blind. I am currently experiencing some
conflict with my team leader on this subject. She sometimes has beliefs
about what I am not able to do, or may have unrealistic expectations about
what I can do, regarding possibly frontend development.

Thank you,
Mike
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