[nfbcs] Training and access

[Chris Nestrud]

I've had a few different experiences.

There was a very hands-on two-week training provided by someone from
one provider. Surprisingly, we were able to get JAWS installed in the virtual
machine with very little effort. I was able to participate with few
issues, and since the class was very lab-based, it was good that I was
able to play along. The development portion used Eclipse and was pretty
accessible. There were some accessibility issues with the application,
but those didn't show up until most of the way through the class.

During another class with a different provider: they used some modified
RDP thing to connect to remote desktops in the cloud, request made
when registering for course to install JAWS on remote desktop was
ignored, attempt to install JAWS during first part of class failed,
finally able to get things working using a copy of the instructor's VM,
then found that the product was inaccessible, spent the next couple days
listening to lectures for a product I knew I wouldn't be able to use.
One of the more frustrating experiences of my career thus far.

Third course with a different provider: live course with very little
time to complete labs, lab material was inaccessible, alternate
on-demand course content was also inaccessible. I ended up setting up my
own mini-lab and used product documentation to learn the material.

Thankfully my employers have been understanding of the less than perfect
realities of software accessibility.

I'd push for having JAWS installed, particularly if you can't build your
own environment later for training, especially if there will be a lot of
labs.

In the end, as with so much else, no way to know until you're actually
there trying to get things done.

Let us know how it goes, and good luck!

Chris

On Tue, Feb 05, 2019 at 01:33:49PM -0500, Tracy Carcione via nfbcs wrote:
> I'm wondering if I'm making too big a deal of using Jaws during my
> upcoming training.  Last time I did training on a new system, when I
> actually got Jaws to work with the training system, after hours of effort
> from several people, I couldn't really use it in class.  The effort of
> figuring out how to get Jaws to do the things the instructor was saying,
> while still paying attention to the content of the class, was too much, so
> I stopped and only used Jaws during the down time.  Then, I was able to
> figure out some things and make them work, and figure out that other
> things were not going to work at all.  That was somewhat useful, because
> it told me which parts of the class I'd be able to use.  But I still
> understood the content of the class, without Jaws.
> I'd be interested to hear other people's perspectives on having access
> during training, when the object of the training is not about
> accessibility. Or am I wrong about that?
> Tracy
> 
> 
> 
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