[nfbcs] Innovation, Usability, Accessibility, standards, and legal requirements.
Mike Freeman
k7uij at panix.com
Thu Mar 6 22:29:52 UTC 2014
Right you are, both Doug and Steve. Laws and regulations are very important
but they are insufficient, especially in technological environments which
are changing very rapidly. Part of the problem is that those who implement
or must abide by these laws and regulations want clarity and specificity --
if I conform to the six hundred forty-eight directives shown in Guideline X,
I will have ensured accessibility and will be in compliance with the law and
thus am immune from being sued. Yet this is precisely what cannot be
guaranteed in general although NFB is taking a stab at it in the educational
environment with the TEACH Act proposal. After all, by definition we cannot
foretell the future (neither Nostradamus nor Edgar Casey were lawyers and
neither is around anymore -- grin). The software the R&D Committee was
looking at years ago to analyze computer screens and the LCD display device
Steve was playing with may be a partial solution but neither tells the blind
person what he/she must do to act upon the information the screen or display
is conveying.
We should by all means continue to work on laws, regulations and devices to
help us. But I am not sanguine that we will come anywhere near close to a
solution to our accessibility problems anytime soon. And this is in an age
when access to technology is becoming a necessity in order to acquire and
keep an increasing number of jobs.
I truly think we are going to have to revisit use of human readers, much as
people under forty do not want to contemplate this.
Mike Freeman
-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Doug Lee
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 1:50 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Innovation, Usability, Accessibility, standards, and
legal requirements.
Laws reflect what some people think should be done at the moment they are
made. As the thoughts change, so the laws, eventually. It was the same in
the days of Esther. :-) They can help or hinder, and I see the point of
democracy to be minimizing the latter, with the side effect of also
minimizing the former.
As Steve effectively noted though, laws lag behind thought. Thought in turn
lags behind the environment that forms it; and in the technical arena,
changes in that environment only accelerate as time passes. I see all this
is another defense of Steve's view that laws are insufficient, and more so
as time goes on. We can't stop fighting for better laws, but we must realize
that's not all we have to do.
On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 02:24:48PM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
John,
You may have a point regarding being negative, but I think you are
interpreting as negative the feeling that some of us have that legislation
and enforcement is not sufficient by itself. I'm not opposed to trying to
pass laws, but I think that we have to try to do more than that, so my
comments should not be taken as opposing legislation.
Further, the NFB has tried to get some pretty broad technology laws past and
our best success have been when we have focused our efforts on a segment of
the population which is why we have been working particularly hard on
educational software. At the very least, having legislation in place gives
us a way to bring the blatent violaters of accessibility guidelines in line
and legislation can provide a vehicle to educate others about accessibility.
I am not as troubled as Mike by the fact that there is already legislation
in place that in the purest sense can't be inforced very well. I think,
however, there is still room for me to feel somewhat negative and feel, at
the very least, that legislation is not enough.
Am I better off than I was twenty years ago? It kind of sounds like a
presidential campaign slogan, doesn't it.
I am not so certain that I am if you look at technology very broadly. Let's
be clear, though. If the question was changed to ask whether I am better
off because of the efforts we have made, legislation and other efforts, I
would definitely say "yes." I think, though, that a lot of our successes
have been to simply keep up, very necessary successes to say the least, and
some successes such as iPhones and Apple TV's and the potential new Comcast
cable boxes go somewhat beyondkeeping up. On the computer, some of what I
have learned to do to edit sound is beyond what I would have dreamed of 20
years ago. The fact that we are starting to be able to interact with touch
screens is a success as well, but while we should give apple a good deal of
credit, I would be surprised if they didn't look at the work done by the
TRACE Center. There are other advancements, too, and it is right for us to
not allow ourselves to forget those. Twenty years ago we didn't know if we
were going to be able to use Windows, but in time we did, and the work done
to make the MAC accessible back then by Berkeley Systems needs also to be
remembered.
Having said all that, I cannot honestly say that I am as comfortable with
Microsoft Word today as I was with WordPerfect under DOS. I am not one who
feels the ribbon is all that bad, but things happen sometimes that cause
delays in speech and sometimes formatting mysteries that reduce my
confidence. At least I can use the same software as my co-workers so there
are advantages. I should also add that I think many aspects of using Word
are getting better, but this is almost twenty years after the Microsoft
Accessibility summit. I really don't feel that email is better than it was
ten years ago. It is adequte, but we're seeing more crashing of certain
programs and others are updated so often that it seems to be a continuous
battle to keep them current with screen readers. It is great that I can buy
from Amazon and Target now, and without forcing the issue we probably
couldn't use their sites today. However, I was buying CD's online ten and
fifteen years ago at least, so at least some of these notable successes were
necessary to keep me doing what I was already doing. I would say I could
set up and operate pretty much any stereo system and even VCR twenty years
ago, although I had to follow steps I wrote down to program them. There are
many functions on many stereos I cannot access now at all. . We could run
down an entire list of appliances that are not very useable any more. The
NFB tried to pass a bill to require access to home appliances, but it didn't
get anywhere. In time it might.
So what's my point? It certainly isn't that we should give up or that we
not pass legislation. I am also aware of the fact that some of what I've
outlined above may be addressed some by legislation that has already passed
and that there are efforts already underway to make this better. Still, I
think there is room to ask some questions about how sustainable our
successes can be and what will happen as more and more products incorporate
technology such as touch screens and other user input interfaces. I've also
seen some erosion of accessibility within companies in the private sector.
It is less that anyone is taking away accessibility intentionally, but
rather that tools have become more complicated and some of the laws and
regulations that apply to government, education, and public access do not
apply clearly if at all to internal private employment situations.
Please allow me to use an example to illustrate why I think we need more
than legislation. We are now seeing that thousands of hotel rooms use
digital thermostats that are not very usable by blind people who cannot read
the displays. We could probably pass a law that all thermostats in hotels
must be accessible, and they may even be covered to some degree. There are
talking thermostats that, in many cases, could probably function
adequately.At what point would it make sense to provide to each blind person
requesting it, an electronic reader that could read the thermostat displays
and probably other displays rather than replacing tens of thousands of
thermostats?
I tried the prototype of an LCD reader some seven years ago or so, so while
there is no current device to do that, it doesn't seem impossible. It seems
to me that we need to do more work to figure out when we can change how we
interact with a device or web page as opposed to requiring that thousands of
people make changes for us. Of course, I don't really see us doing away
with standards, but I'm afraid that as technology advances, standards as we
now know them will either become more and more complex or they won't be that
relevent. We need very much to understand better what might be done that
could make development of accessible software and web pages simpler.
Although it is simpler than today's problems, I remember how we used to
consider frames not to be accessible and we even forced web sites to remove
them. Then suddenly frames were all right, even useful, and all the work to
prevent their use was suddenly largely wasted. While we create standards,
we need to have a better sense of where we are going with our accessibility
tools.
I don't claim that what I have written here reflects the views of everyone
who might be skeptical of legislation, but I think to one degree or another
it does reflect our collective experience and some of our frustrations.
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
>On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 01:04:33PM -0600, John G. Heim wrote:
>It isn't that difficult to generate a good list of the bugs that need
>the most attention. The list doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
>Someone might correctly suggest that bug A is more important than bug B
>but if bug B gets fixed instead, it's still a good thing. And you can
>generate all the fake bug reports you like, it's not going to make any
>difference. We're not *that* stupid.
>One thing that strikes me about the conversations on this list ...
>There sure is a lot of negativism. Practically every idea is met with
>the response, "Oh, that will never work." You'd think us blind people
>were still using clay tablets. But innovations occur every day that
>move us forward. You might argue it's one step forward and two back.
>But if that was the case, I wouldn't be here. none of us would. It
>certainly is my impression that things have gotten considerably better
>over the past 20 years, not worse. And there is a lot of reason for
>hope that the future will be better still.
>I think it hurts our cause for so many people to focus so much on the
>failures especially when there are so many successes to look at.
>Focusing on the failures makes us afraid to try.
>On 03/05/14 12:21, Doug Lee wrote:
>>Whatever else may be said, I confess there's a certain amusing appeal
>>to the concept of a bounty-hunter mentality to open-source bug fixing.
>>I can see now, bug reports being submitted by someone nicknamed Boba
>>Fett... or would it morph to Boba Git, because of the popular version
>>control system? But surely I digress... :-)
>>
>>On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 12:04:02PM -0600, John G. Heim wrote:
>>At www.iavit.org, we have been contemplating putting a "bounty" on
>>certain bugs in orca and nvda. We don't have any money but the idea is
>>that you get $50 or $100 for contributing code that fixes a particular
>>bug.
>--
>Doug Lee dgl at dlee.org http://www.dlee.org
>SSB BART Group doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
>"While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was
>done." --Helen Keller
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SSB BART Group doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
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