[NFBCS] CompTIA Certification

[John Miller]

Hello Dan,
I would love to hear from others on this question.
Personally, I would encourage you to be a software developer before being an IT support person.
As part of my work I develop software.
The longer the duration of the task I am assigned, the better I perform.
I was just assigned a software developer task with a due date in two weeks.
I know I will be successful in this task.
The sighted IT workers who are remoting into my machine are completing a task in roughly 15 minutes typically.
I have seen the task take as long as an hour but that is when they are trouble-shooting.
So on the negative side, IT desk support jobs for Windows users often ask you to complete a task in a quite small chunk of time.

I do not believe that there exists many IT solutions for a blind person to remote in to another computer and provide solutions.
While there may be such solutions, I would like to hear which of these solutions are being used by the fortune 500 companies, universities, and so-on.
The work-arounds that I use as a blind engineer take a little bit of time to configure.
I see the sighted IT workers using the tools provided them with all the default settings.

I observe the sighted IT workers that I interact with entering information on each IT case using a homegrown web application, likely in Microsoft Edge.
There is a lot of copy-and-paste going on in complicated dialog boxes or web forms.
I am slower than my sighted peers in filling out these webpage dialog boxes.
But I am just as fast or faster than my sighted peers when working at the command line to commit a piece of software into a software repo.
So at the command line I would say the playing field is level between sighted and blind computer users.
For the webpage interface I believe the sighted computer user has an advantage.
This may be the typical reason of the sighted being able to take in at a glance all the information displayed on the entire screen at once.
It may be because the webpage was not designed with accessibility for the blind in mind.
As the blind community, I think we have to reimagine how to quickly fill out and how to quickly reference information in web forms.

I see many blind individuals working as system administrators and providing support at work in Linux rather than Windows.
I observe a number of blind individuals working as access technology trainers helping other blind users.
I know of a number of blind software developers who enjoy their jobs.
In summary, I would love it if you personally were the IT tech person providing me desktop support at my company. This would confirm that the software applications used by my company are sufficiently accessible. On the other hand, I believe that there are other roles at work that may be easier to show case your talents at.
However, many of these roles benefit from a strong foundational knowledge of IT technology.
So strengthening your IT technology knowledge can absolutely open up doors at work.
Very best,
John




From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of dan TeVelde via NFBCS
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2023 9:00 AM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List' <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: dan.tevelde at comcast.net
Subject: [NFBCS] CompTIA Certification

My current contract position is not working out as expected. I haven't had any contract work this year. National Industries for the Blind has a short-term information assurance training program leading to CompTIA certification. I don't know any blind people who have this certification and use it in their jobs. Is the CompTIA exam administered by Pearson accessible? Is support desk work realistic?

Thanks,
Dan
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