[NFBMO] A personal dilemma

Wed Aug 22 16:51:36 UTC 2018

Hi Fred, Gary, and all. I know what you mean Gary. There are so many things all around me that are inaccessible. Which battle do I fight? For example, yesterday was in-service here at work. To begin with, the sign in for registering for in-service wasn't accessible. Then All day yesterday, it seemed I was hit with accessibility concerns. Firstly, the booklet with the schedule and in-service information was in print. Then, my boss and I gave a presentation on accessible documents to some instructors, and one of them brought to our attention that an email was sent out to them last week mandating their syllabus be created a certain way, which is not accessible. So, we definitely have to fight that battle. That afternoon, we had break-out sessions about innovation, and we were all supposed to sit in a circle and pass around a book, each one of us reading a page. Well, I had to pass the book on, because, you guessed it, it wasn't in braille. At the very end, there were three presentations given on innovative ideas for the college. The first one was about a map type app that would guide students to where they needed to be on each of our campuses. All I could think of was, "What can we do to make sure that from the ground up, accessibility is considered during development. And, we were supposed to vote on each presentation. We had to go to this website on our phones, put in a code, and then vote. The voting was some kind of sliding scale that was not accessible with any kind of screen reading options I had. Part of my job here is to transcribe material into braille for students, so if anything were to be brailed for me, it would have to be me who did that, taking away from the time I used to get work done for the students. That seems a bit silly to me. Also, we have talked until we are blue in the face about consulting with our department while things are being created on our website, or before purchasing online programs, so we can make sure of their accessibility first, but that rarely happens.

Fred, I hope others from your area respond to your inquiry, because this has to be a concern for more than just you. There is no excuse for those sites to not be accessible. I would definitely consider legal options, working with other blind people in your area to corroborate the issues you are having, and take the necessary steps to push the companies to comply with the laws.

All the best,

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBMO <nfbmo-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Gary Wunder via NFBMO
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2018 11:08 AM
To: 'NFB of Missouri Mailing List' <nfbmo at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Gary Wunder <GWunder at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [NFBMO] A personal dilemma

My bank offers BillPay, a service that is highly accessible and can either send my payment electronically or can make out a check to someone who cannot take an electronic payment. If the amount is stable, BillPay can make payments for me regularly. If the amount differs from month to month, I can go in and make the payment.

I think it is a hard call in choosing which accessibility fights to take on. I am more likely to take on something I use frequently than something I may never use again. Having said that, if I find something that is inaccessible and is of tremendous consequence to other blind people, this may well boost it on my priority list of trying to get things fixed.

Since we only have so much time and so much resource in our daily lives, even something as important as accessibility must be prioritized. I feel a bit of guilt about this, but I don't know how to get around first things first.

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBMO [mailto:nfbmo-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Fred Olver via NFBMO
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2018 10:16 AM
To: NFB of Missouri Mailing List
Cc: Fred Olver
Subject: [NFBMO] A personal dilemma

Yesterday I had reason to be in touch with the company which supplies me electricity and as well the company which supplies me with gas for my home. The reason I felt I needed to be in touch with Ameren Electric and spire energy was that I have found in trying to navigate their websites that it is somewhat difficult if not completely impossible to pay my bills on either of their websites. This has been true of Laclede Gas now spire energy and for me amren electric now for as long as I have been attempting to pay my bills online using their websites. Because of this I have two choices I can have someone else write a check for me or I can choose to allow them to remove money from my account on a day which they prescribe to do so. The removal of money from my checking account not on the same day every month is not something that I look forward to, and the fact is that there’s not always someone around to assist me in paying my bills. I feel I should tell you that I have cajoled and even begged both of these utilities to make their websites more accessible to those of us who are blind. I have done this over a period of years to no avail. So I ask you, those of you who are blind, how do you pay your electric bill? Do you allow the utilities to remove money from your checking account or do you rely on a person who can see in order to facilitate your bill being paid? On the other hand, do you just except the fact that the websites for some of the places you have bills to pay are not accessible and find another way to get it done? It seems to me that if I do the second of those choices that I am in a sense giving up when I should be doing everything that I can do cause them to make their websites accessible. On several OK Asians I have referred organizations to the NFB‘s technology center so that their websites might become more accessible. It seems like such a small thing. Making websites accessible to be a thing of the past it should have already been done what would you suggest Fred Olver

Sent from my iPhone
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