[nfbcs] Inaccessiable Training - again

[John G. Heim]

Well, I'll admit it looks pretty bleak. But if you are looking for some 
ray of hope to cling to, some progress has been made based on 
accessibility by putting pressure on vendors who sell to universities. 
Most universities take accessibility pretty seriously. And technically, 
since the 508 regulations apply to them, they are supposed to be buying 
accessible products. Oracle, for example, made their web interface more 
accessible after several universities got together and complained. I was 
a peripheral part of that effort and they listened.  I was an Oracle 
user and the people who bought Oracle products for the University of 
Wisconsin asked me to explain the accessibility issues to them. Oracle 
assured them they'd address these issues and sure enough, many of the 
problems did get fixed. The NFB had similar success with the Kindle. Of 
course, that wasn't initiated through the schools, it was imposed upon 
them. Even so, the fact that the 508 regulations apply to universities 
gives us some leverage. These examples also illustrate how easily the 
accessibility problems are fixed once the vendor decides to give it some 
effort.

There is currently a discussion going on on another list I['m on. 
Several IT professionals have posted long lists of the products they 
used to administer that have become inaccessible in the past few years. 
It seems as if we're losing ground. And that may be true.

I would like to see the NFB pay more attention to accessibility of IT 
products. The vast majority of blind people are not high tech workers. 
Most blind people care way more about the accessibility of Microsoft 
Outlook than they do about Cisco routers. However, most blind people 
aren't going to lose their livelihood  if they have to struggle for a 
time with some feature of Outlook.  As long as they can send & receive 
email, they're okay. But if Cisco comes out with a new interface that is 
inaccessible, a lot of people like us could end up on SSDI.

On 2/14/2013 10:50 AM, majolls at cox.net wrote:
> 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.
>
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