[nfbcs] Inaccessible training, again

Fri Feb 15 15:16:34 UTC 2013

Hello, John.  I did not know about this organization.  I think one of the
questions that it will have to face after it surmounts the organizational
problems you are talking about is what real power and leverage it will have
to exert.  What we found with Amazon was that they were perfectly willing to
sit down and talk with us, impressed us with their engineers, were impressed
by our technical expertise, but never really implemented the things we
talked about.  It seemed to us that they either ignored what we had to say
or through their accessibility engineers under the bus when it came time to
make a market decision about goal or no go when accessibility was broken.
We have seen Microsoft make this decision plenty of times in their release
all mobile phone operating systems.  They keep talking, we keep talking,
they keep promising, but the releases go out the door.

Warmly,

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 11:01 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Gary Wunder
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Inaccessible training, again

I hope you guys all know there's a non-profit devoted to helping high tech
workers with accessibility. It is the International Association of Visually
Impaired Technologists. See www.iavit.org. We've had trouble getting
anything accomplished because it seems people like to complain but seldom
want to actually do anything.

The one thing that I'd really like to see get off the ground is the
committee to contact manufacturers of products high tech professionals use
to raise their awareness of accessibility and possibly help them make their
products accessible. I'm talking about things like routers, virtualization
software, and on-line courses. The NFB does a good job of working with
companies like Microsoft on making sure things like email and spreadsheets
are accessible. But nobody talks to Cisco or VMWare. 
That's what IAVIT is for.

Well, that is what it is supposed to be for. So far it's just a dream. 
Some would call it a fantasy.

On 2/14/2013 9:41 AM, Gary Wunder wrote:
> Hello, Steve.  In a large company what you face is frustrating; in a 
> smaller company it may well be overwhelming inasmuch as the small 
> company believes that it has no leverage to exert over providers.  I 
> think this has to be a major topic at our computer science meeting 
> this year.  I know the struggle; it wasn't so long ago that I was 
> arguing with the training department about whether it would make the 
> effort to use accessible software or would pay someone to sit with me, 
> do the reading, and press the buttons.  I did not feel comfortable 
> with the latter solution, but it was the most immediate one at hand, 
> and I think it does comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.  
> Of course the problem is that you can only do so much of this without 
> being regarded as a burden by the people with whom you work and the people
who supervise you.
>
> Warmly,
>
> Gary
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Steve 
> Jacobson
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 11:09 AM
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Inaccessible training, again
>
> Tracy,
>
> Do you know what the software that is being used is called?  I am 
> dealing with a similar problem here and getting nowhere.  I have had a 
> couple of cases where the reason for the course was for me to just 
> press a button to acknowledge I had read some documents that I had 
> read, and the button was not at all accessible.  When I complained, 
> reasonable accommodation was seen to be having a co-worker press the 
> button for me.  That worked in the short run, but what about the long 
> run?  I have had no luck getting the name of a contact outside of my 
> employer which is what I really need to see what can be done.  
> However, in my case, a good deal of the problem is with FLASH.  In one 
> course, the problem was that all buttons that were used in the entire 
> course remained visible to Window-Eyes, JFW and NVDA.  The TAB key 
> even jumped to them.  However most would do nothing when pressed 
> because they were not part of the current window.  There could easily 
> have been 100 unlabeled buttons of which maybe five were active, and 
> the others did not show visually.  I have another set of courses where 
> I figured out that the button that goes to the next frame which has a
label of "next" is identified as "Close" by screen readers.  This isn't a
problem once I figured it out.
> Some of my courses display PDF documents within the course but 
> apparently provide their own inaccessible PDF viewer.  Sometimes I can 
> get these documents separately once I find the person who wrote the 
> course, but it all takes time away from my job.  In short, I'm with 
> you completely but don't really know where to turn.  Adobe will tell 
> us that FLASH can be made accessible and they have all kinds of
information as to how to do it.
> Developers will tell you that Adobe puts all of the burden on them.  
> Okay, so I'm venting, too.
> <smile>  In my case, most courses have been accessible for me where I 
> work until the past couple of years, so I'm seeing the accessibility 
> slipping away.  The problem is that nobody realized that what they had 
> done was accessible because one doesn't complain about something when 
> it works.  In the old days, when there were instructors for classes, I 
> could often get by with taking careful notes and perhaps reading just 
> a little from the material.  I might just study a couple of diagrams with
the Optacon.
> However, we not only don't have instructors any longer, we are 
> required to take many more courses, some for legal documentation 
> purposes.  Some courses are such that I would have to get security 
> clearance for a reader, and the workload is so unpredictable, it isn't 
> a great solution, especially when this wouldn't have to be a problem.  
> Running into this kind of thing as well as the problems you and I have 
> mentioned with respect to computer update screens, and even what I see 
> as flakiness with screen readers in certain applications just gives 
> one an uneasy feeling about our progress.  There has to be a way to 
> put some pressure on some of these developers, and if we can get our 
> TEACH act passed, it might help in that some of these developers 
> probably develop some on-line courses for higher education.  However, in a
large company, this kind of thing is very frustrating.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Jacobson
>
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:36:54 -0500, Tracy Carcione wrote:
>
>> I was recently assigned some online training at work.  It's always 
>> been inaccessible, but I thought I should give it a try and see if 
>> somehow they had changed things.  Nope, still inaccessible.
>> It's so frustrating, because it's almost accessible, except that 
>> there are lots of unlabeled buttons, and, when they ask a question 
>> designed to test my knowledge before moving on, it's displayed as a 
>> picture, with no
> text.
>> At which point I'm stuck, and have to stop.
>> I've complained to Human Resources, to Training, and to some VP in 
>> charge of web-based training.  I just left feedback on the site, 
>> trying to explain the problem.  I really don't know what else to do.  
>> If they really want me to take this course, they'll have to assign 
>> someone to sit with me and do it, and the boss doesn't want to do 
>> that.  So I get no
> training.
>> I'm not sure what I'd actually learn from the training, but I guess 
>> I'll never know.
>> And to add insult to injury, right on top of the training website it 
>> says "empowering people".  Well, not blind people.
>> I'm just venting my frustration, though if anyone has some idea, I'm 
>> open to suggestions.
>> Tracy
>
>
>
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