[NFBCS] The Fine Line Between Reasonable Versus Unreasonable Accommodations

Sun Sep 4 22:17:58 UTC 2022

Hello all,

My apologies for chiming in on this thread so late.
Curtis, I appreciate you starting this discussion.
I am in journalism, and I don't have the expertise in computer programming
or access technology that others have on this list.
I have gotten great advice when I had questions from Curtis and others.
Having said that, I also agree that it is our responsibility to approach
our employers when we have accessibility needs.
I am probably the only blind person working for the McClatchy newspaper
chain, and I used to get frustrated when no one from the company came
forward with ideas of how I could access various web based tools that are
not usable with screen readers.
I learned that it is best to tell my employer that I can point them in the
direction of people who have the expertise that I don't have.
I also think it's important to explain how having new equipment such as a
Braille display will help make you more productive on the job.
William, I'm sorry about your experiences which have been frustrating for
you.
Our screen readers are not perfect, but for many of us they provide a way
for us to be more independent and productive.
I know that I'm not as fast as my sighted colleagues in some areas, but I
still get the job done. The main thing we must do is turn in work that
meets the same standards as are expected from our sighted colleagues.
In my case that means turning in stories without misspelled words and
incorrect grammar. It means checking and doublechecking for accuracy.
I also think having an updated place for accessibility resources is a great
idea.
Best to all, and enjoy he Labor Day holiday!

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Curtis Chong via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 3:10 PM
Subject: [NFBCS] The Fine Line Between Reasonable Versus Unreasonable
Accommodations
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Curtis Chong <chong.curtis at gmail.com>

Greetings everyone:

I would like to second what Brian Buhrow said in his recent email.

"If one is going to hold a job as a blind person, whether it be in
technology or something else, it is necessary to become an expert on how to
make things accessible for yourself."

While some of you might assert that we cannot all be experts in making
things accessible to ourselves, the reality is that as individual blind
people working in an organization where we might be the only blind person
employed, we must take responsibility for hunting down the solutions we need
so that we can do our jobs in a way that encourages our employers to want to
keep us. It is a rare thing indeed for technology training classes (not to
mention other corporate training venues) to be nonvisually-accessible to us
by default. In fact, I maintain that if we insist that these classes need to
be 100% accessible nonvisually in order for us to keep our jobs, our value
to the employer will be reduced to the point where we are no longer useful
to have around. When email first became a reality in the large corporation
for which I was working (this would have been back in the early 1990's), I
took the same courses on how to use the email system that my sighted
colleagues took. Then, when I needed to figure out how a mouse click could
be activated from the keyboard, I spent extra time with the trainer to try
to figure out if, indeed, there were keyboard equivalents to the mouse that
would work for me. During my time in mainstream information technology, I
was oftentimes required to travel to distant cities to attend week-long
trainings where the material was presented for people who could see and
where readers were nowhere to be found. Sometimes, I attended these classes
with sighted colleagues who were willing and able to provide some
assistance. At other times, I attended these classes by myself and figured
out what I needed to know later when I got back to my office.

All of this is to make the point that there is a limit to how much we as
blind employees can expect to receive in the way of "reasonable"
accommodations. When the level of accommodation provided to us reaches a
certain point (a point, by the way, which differs from one organization to
another), the positive support we have garnered tends to wane as the effort
required to provide that support increases.

I hope I am making some kind of logical sense here. If not, I appreciate
hearing from folks to help to clarify my thinking on this issue.

Best wishes,

Curtis Chong

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Brian Buhrow via NFBCS
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2022 1:32 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Brian Buhrow <buhrow at nfbcal.org>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Feedback Request

          hello peter.  As a long time IT person who has worked on networks,
large computer

installations, and a variety of technical projects, I am going to echo wha
others have said

here about on-line resources.  It is usually the case that when one is
learning a new API or

programming technique, or any new skill for that matter, what one needs to
know about is the

skill itself, not about the blindness adaptations necessary to become an
expert at that skill.

Because everyone's blindness skills are different, it makes the most sense
for the individual

learning the new thing to figure out the way that works best for them.

So, for example, Bookshare.  Yes, the books in Bookshare may not discuss
ways to peform the

skills those books teach as they might be performed by a blind person, but
the fact that the

books are accessible on Bookshare makes them extremely useful to blind folks
just by virtue of

the fact that they're there.

Now, having read those books, one can then ask specific questions about how
a specific API or

development environment might be used in an accessible manner.

          If one is going to hold a job as a blind person, whether it be in
technology or something

else, it is necessary to become an expert on how to make things accessible
for yourself.  As

part of that, building a network, as exists on this list, becomes one of the
tools you use to

gain the knowledge you need to do the things you want.

Blindness specific training is wonderful, but it is mostly a general
training in the sense that it

teaches you how to teach yourself to use tools or create techniques which
make things

accessible to you.  Those tools and techniques might not work for anyone
else in the world, but

if they work for you, then you're good.  For example, for me, half the
battle of learning to do

something is just knowing another blind person has done that thing.  If I
know they have, then

I can turn the question of "can I do something?" to "How do I do something?"
Once I've have

how, then I can go about setting up the task of figuring it out.

          Part of the reason we've not set up an NFB CS web site is that it
would be out of date

before we finished building it.  If we said, for example, that something was
inaccessible,

someone would prove us wrong.  Or, if we said, if you follow these
instructions for making

something work, the thing would change and our instructions would be
rendered inoperative.

In other words, what we offer you here, and in our training centers, are a
lot of fishing

poles.  We leave it to you, the fisherman to go out and catch your fish.

-Brian

_______________________________________________

NFBCS mailing list

NFBCS at nfbnet.org

http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org

To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBCS:

http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/chong.curtis%40gmail.com

_______________________________________________
NFBCS mailing list
NFBCS at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBCS:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/batescampbell%40gmail.com

-- 
Elizabeth Campbell