[nfbcs] Inaccessiable Training - again

[david hertweck]

As a blind engineer and now a manager working for a large company I found 
the best approach is:
1. Try and find a way to do your job, be creative, think out of the box, 
make it work.
2. Put in extra hours.  I know a lot of sighted engineers if they are not as 
effective as other people they put in the extra time so we should be willing 
to do this.
3. Remember everyone has tasks to complete and completing yours can not 
interfere with others.
4. Before asking for help have an exact plan for how can that person help 
you.  What does not work is to ask someone to make "X" accessible for you.
5. Never "complain" find answers. It is super to "complain" in this forum 
but not at work.
6. Always remember your manager most likely has more work and certainly more 
responsibilities than you do, so you should never add to them for 
accessibility problems.
7. Always remember you are there for the company not the company for you.

thanks




through out my work life
and now as a manager of course they are not overwellming

-----Original Message----- 
From: majolls at cox.net
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 10:50 AM
To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Inaccessiable Training - again

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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