[Ohio-talk] Follow-Up To My Email About Red Roof Accessibility Issues From Last November; All Input Welcome

Tue Apr 3 20:39:14 UTC 2018

West I can help with this please contact me.

Richard Payne,  President
National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
937-396-5573or 937/829/3368
Rchpay7 at gmail.com
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
blindness is not what holds you back

-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Wes Derby via
Ohio-Talk
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2018 3:31 PM
To: NFB of Ohio Announcement and Discussion List <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Wes Derby <ufofanatic at gmail.com>
Subject: [Ohio-talk] Follow-Up To My Email About Red Roof Accessibility
Issues From Last November; All Input Welcome

Hello, Fellow Federationists. This may be mainly for President Payne, but
I'm interested in any thoughts from the rest of the organization.

A quick update on the Red Roof Inn Human Resources system I emailed about in
late November.

First, President Payne...I apologize for not getting with you. After I sent
that, we had sort of a whirlwind of activity in my home. I was hospitalized
for seizures, my daughter came for her first visit, I got married, and...All
that fun stuff. Let me know if we should still hook up by phone or private
email on the original issue. The best ways to reach me are this email, or by
text/iMessage/call at 614-828-7602.

A quick recap: We have a time-off/scheduling system known as WFO or WFM,
depending on which department you're in. Our previous system, EmPower,
worked pretty well with JAWS. This system was put in place in mid-May of
2016, shortly after I started with the company. When an employee wants to
use PTO, or request VTO, or schedule trades, or anything like that, they log
in, fill out the form, and get it submitted. If a JAWS-using employee wants
to do any of this, we have to email staffing and/or our escalation teams and
hope someone enters the request. It puts blind employees at a disadvantage
especially since most things are first come/first serve when it comes to
time off or other requests. So, if you submit your request, but the
supervisor or staffing department doesn't get to it for a few hours, and a
sighted person submits his/her request online themselves, you're likely to
NOT get yours approved, though you may have sent your email before the
sighted person logged in and independently submitted his/her request.

The company is aware of the inaccessibility, but can't/won't do anything to
fix it. Our Good Will/Easter Seals job coach claims there's a WAY JAWS users
can do it, but thought it would be too complicated, so has never given us
the instructions for doing so.
When I originally posted this, a couple people suggested NVDA.
However, the system is on a tight enough lockdown that installing NVDA isn't
possible without admin rights. In addition, since you have to be logged into
the company VPN to use the system, it can't be independently tested from an
outside computer running newer browsers and newer versions of JAWS.

To me, it's an accessibility barrier. Many of my fellow JAWS users, and one
past employee who used JAWS, feel the same way I do. Some are content with
the status quo, but most of us are not. The main problem is, most are afraid
to speak up. I'm not afraid, only because between my wife's income, starting
my own business, and what I get on SSDI, if they want to use me as an
example, I can afford the risk...Most of the others can't. So, I'm sort of
the lone wolf sccreaming out for changes to be made. LOL

Now, in addition to the WFO issues, many of us JAWS users are experiencing
extreme slowness with the various applications we use in our departments.
The JAWS users are the only ones still using IE9.
They've tried updating us, but then, the scripts written for us fail to
function, so we're stuck until the company decides to go to JAWS
2018 and update our systems. Our concern is that perhaps many of the
web-based applications we use are phasing out support for Internet Explorer
9, which is understandable since it's ancient.

I learned yesterday that our JAWS sccripter, Mark Tudela, is supposedly
coming in soon to do some scripting work. My supervisor is hopeful that he
will be scripting JAWS 2018 so we can move up, but he isn't sure. His hope
is to get all the blind employees onto the same operating system everyone
else is on, and using Chrome instead of IE, which is possible in newer
versions of JAWS. The company will supposedly be looking into paying for the
upgrades, though still having us use our personal licenses. Of course, I
already paid for my own upgrade, but that's probably not relevant.

I'm glad to see they're getting Mark in there as the last I'd heard from one
of the corporate IT guys, the reason JAWS users weren't being upgraded is
because the company was supposedly trying to find someone less expensive to
do the scripting, but having no luck. Glad they apparently came to their
senses on that score.

I just wanted to update everyone on the situation. Not sure if the upgrades,
when and if they come, will help us with WFO, but, here's hoping.

What further advocacy steps should myself, or others who aren't afraid to
speak up, take? How, if at all, can we get the Federation involved in this
as Red Roof does employ quite a few blind people in our state?

--
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