[NFBCS] generating discussion: what accessibility barriers would you like to see documented?

[Littlefield, Tyler]

Amanda:

Thanks a lot for these ideas, this is awesome.

I'm storing everything in notes so that I can work out the basics of the 
wiki. I feel it makes sense to have something visible and that people 
can see.


I want to say here that everyone, no matter how compitent you might be 
always has a struggle in an area; some are better at masking it than 
others. There are all kinds of reasons someone might find something to 
be more accessible than you: perhaps they're not doing the same thing 
you are, perhaps they have more (or less) vision, which does tend to 
matter in some cases, perhaps they had help figuring it out that you did 
not, perhaps they had other techniques that you simply don't know.


Part of why I'm so excited about this wiki is that it lets people 
document these tools, techniques and ideas, and gives us a collaberative 
platform to work from. By us, I mean all blind people solving technical 
problems. We're here because the people that came before us built things 
to help us grow and do more, and there are still people building tools, 
scripts, programs and etc to help, but sharing your knowledge is also 
critical. I felt a lot of what you said about not being able to 
recommend someone take on a degree in computer science, and that makes 
me incredibly sad to talk about or think about, because programming is 
something I love and want to do better at. But I can say this because 
I'm lucky enough to have landed in a job that encourages exploration and 
growth; skill played some part in me getting to where I am, but honestly 
it was a lot of knocking on doors and not giving up and eventually 
getting lucky that took me from somewhere I struggled to get up and do 
every day to where I am. Taking this back to spoon theory, I want to see 
a collaboration that gives people the ideas and techniques they may not 
have had before, so that they are left with more spoons at the end of 
the day to do what it is they love, or just to go for a walk and feel 
like they have the ability to do so.


Thanks,

Ty

On 9/5/2022 12:45 PM, Amanda Lacy via NFBCS wrote:
> I love this idea. Sighted developers have no clue what the NFB is, but they understand Github, and can also contribute to it.
>
> Despite having a bachelors in CS and now being in grad school, I still struggle to read and do mathematics. If I'm lucky, I get math in LaTeX. LaTeX is technically readable, but I have a very hard time understanding the math in it when I read it. It is far too verbose, with too many irrelevant symbols. I wish I could convert it to MathML and read it in Nemeth.
>
> I spent a lot of time in school wondering if the tools I was trying to use were inaccessible, or if I was just stupid/not trying hard enough. Then I would hear about some other blind person having success with the same tools, so I would try harder and beat myself up for the minimal results I got. I had to take an Ms Office class where the lessons were taught using screenshots, and nobody knew what the keyboard shortcuts were. Now I find Ms Word with its ribbon and all its unpredictable behavior to be so intimidating that I basically don't use it. I use MacOS much of the time anyway. We need to cover applications for the Mac as well as Windows and Linux. My point is that there were and still are big gaps in my technical knowledge, even at this level, and I cannot be the only one of us to experience this. A blind-friendly list from which to fill these holes would make a huge difference.
>
> Topics can include the following:
> * A broken applications list, for all the apps we know are unusable, so I can just look it up and say "nope, not installing that one."
> * Applications for reading math.
> * NVDA extensions, JAWS scripts, and VoiceOver scripts.
> * Tools for reading PDFs, especially academic papers. Why don't any of the programs I know about have a setting to skip over citations? I can't imagine anyone else likes hearing sentences interrupted by lots of numbers.
> * Accessible editors for all platforms and how to use them.
> * How to use LinkedIn.
> * How to use HackerRank, and other online code assessment tools.
>
>> On Sep 4, 2022, at 10:48 AM, Littlefield, Tyler via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> If you've not read any of the current thread about creating a wiki or a platform to share content, I'll give you a TL/DR; a few of us have committed (as we're able) to creating a platform to document accessibility issues. I am pulling together a site and a resource over the next week or so to get this going. My question to you (and anyone you want to circulate this to) is as follows:
>>
>>
>> What accessibility barriers have you encountered as a student or as a professional that had solutions that could be documented?
>>
>> Further to this point, what would you yourself be willing to document?
>>
>>
>> If you don't have time or resources to assist with the second point, please still respond. It would be very easy to take your tips and ideas and still generate documentation around the issue. The goal here is to generate discussion and ideas around what could be placed here, and how helpful it could be.
>>
>>
>> I'll lead the race, just to get us all started:
>>
>> * Editor accessibility with JAWS and NVDA
>>
>> * Using AWS through AWSCli as well as other services (linode, etc). This is more important for AWS because that website would make anyone sad.
>>
>> * Usable frontend design tools (document Bootstrap here).
>>
>> * Accessible SSH clients and workflows for using them.
>>
>> * Maybe a section like applevis where services (Jenkins, Github, etc) can just be noted as being accessible with notes either way? Sometimes I just want to know if something is accessible or will be, without installing it or using it first.
>>
>>
>> Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this!
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ty Littlefield
>>
>>
>>
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