[nfbcs] Inaccessiable Training - again

[majolls at cox.net]

Gary and all

I think you hit the nail on the head.  To what end do you "complain"?  If you don't, you don't get anywhere.  And if you do (too much) you are perceived as a burden ... and managers would rather not deal with you and get someone else that doesn't have the requirement that you do.  I work for a large corporation.  I found that while managers can be sympathetic, others just don't care.  it really depends on your luck of the draw regarding what manager you do get.

I can remember voicing concern about sitting in a large room for a presentation where they had big monitors up on the wall.  A presenter would be running his demo, and the display was up on the "big screen".  Unfortunately, I couldn't read the big screen.  I was just too far away and I'm just too blind.  When I voiced concern, what I mostly got was "just do your best" ... which was absolutely no help.  I finally came up with the idea ... "just run a data feed to a separate monitor that can be placed on a table that I can sit close to".  That idea really worked, but it took me ... not them ... to come up with the idea.  The managers ... who are supposed to help you ... didn't have a clue what I needed, or what might work.  And, if I complained too much, they just said ... "do your best" and sort of turned a deaf ear.

And as far as going to bat for you ... trying to get the application changed so it's accessible ... I think most managers have priorities on what they have to get done.  When you require someone to sit with you (meaning time and money) or when you ask your manager to help you ... they'll do it as long as it isn't excessive ... meaning as long as it doesn't take a lot of time and money.  If it does, you're kind of on your own.  And as far as them modifying software to be accessible ... that's only an option if your company doesn't have a lot of other "business requirements" they have to get done first.  Where I'm at, that's always the case.

I guess we all just need to be experts on Accessibility programming so we can do it ourselves.  Wish I had better things to say, but I've only had 35 years of experience in dealing with this.  And it doesn't sound like the federal government is any better than private industry.  People (managers) are people no matter where you go I suppose.