press release

Blind Access Journal Launches Community Effort to Improve WSJT-X Accessibility for Aging and Disabled Amateur Radio Operators

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Blind Access Journal Launches Community Effort to Improve WSJT-X Accessibility for Aging and Disabled Amateur Radio Operators

Peoria, Arizona — December 20, 2025 — Darrell Hilliker, NU7I, a totally blind Amateur Radio operator and accessibility professional, is spearheading a community initiative to improve the accessibility of WSJT-X (and WSJT-X Improved) for blind, low-vision, and mobility-impaired hams. The work is being organized and documented through Blind Access Journal, the blog Hilliker publishes to advance practical accessibility and inclusion in technology.

Digital weak-signal protocols like FT8 have become a core part of modern Amateur Radio. Yet many hams—especially those who are aging or who acquire disabilities—are finding it harder to participate fully when widely used software lacks accessible user interface foundations.

“A month doesn’t go by where I don’t hear at least one conversation on the bands where an older ham is contemplating giving up or curtailing their activities due to a physical disability like arthritis or a visual impairment,” said Hilliker. “We can do better as a community—and we can do it together.”

Recognizing Existing Innovation and Building an Inclusive Future

This initiative is not a critique of existing community solutions, nor is it intended to replace them. Blind Access Journal recognizes and commends the developers of alternative tools such as QLog, whose efforts have helped many operators. Instead, Hilliker’s project aims to broaden inclusion by improving accessibility in the widely adopted WSJT-X ecosystem so that more hams can participate using the tools their clubs, friends, and on-air communities already rely on.

“The entire Amateur Radio community benefits from all efforts to adapt,” Hilliker added, “especially in situations where disabled hams are not fully included from the beginning.”

Goal: Full and Equitable Access to Digital Operating

The initiative’s objective is nothing less than full and equitable access to Amateur Radio digital communication protocols and the software that enables them. Key accessibility goals include:

  • Expected keyboard navigation throughout the application
  • Strong compatibility with screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access)
  • UI that can reflow and resize for operators using magnification
  • Support for dark mode, high contrast, and other visual accommodations that many aging hams depend on

Highest Priority Technical Need

The most critical improvement—especially for blind screen-reader users—centers on the Band Activity and Rx Frequency tables. Today, these areas are widely experienced as inaccessible because the data is effectively “painted” to the screen or presented as unstructured text, rather than implemented using the underlying Qt5 UI structures that expose information to accessibility interfaces.

The initiative seeks a redesign and implementation approach that ensures these tables are true, semantically structured UI components—so assistive technologies can reliably read, navigate, and interact with them.

Call for Volunteer Developers

Blind Access Journal is calling on a small group of experienced Amateur Radio software builders and tinkerers—especially those who:

  • Have deep experience with Qt5 user interfaces
  • Can build and compile WSJT-X or WSJT-X Improved from source with confidence
  • Are willing to collaborate with disabled hams in an open, test-driven, user-centered process

Familiarity with accessibility design and standards such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is welcome but not required. Disabled hams involved in the effort are prepared to lead the process, define needs, perform testing, write documentation, and support the work in every way outside of the core design and coding tasks.

Volunteers will gain the satisfaction of delivering long-sought, meaningful accessibility improvements to a widely used mainstream Amateur Radio application—work that can make a real difference for thousands of fellow hams.

Looking Toward 2026

Blind Access Journal thanks the Amateur Radio community for its time, creativity, and tradition of public service. The initiative’s organizers hope to make 2026 a year of digital accessibility and inclusion for all radio amateurs.

To volunteer or learn more:
Email editor@blindaccessjournal.com and follow updates via Blind Access Journal.

Media Contact

Darrell Hilliker, NU7I
Blind Access Journal
Email: editor@blindaccessjournal.com

Phoenix-Area Blind iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch Users Asked to Fill the Room at Upcoming iOS Developer Group Meeting

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The Phoenix iOS Developer Group (PI) will be holding its February meeting on the topic of accessibility. Justin Mann, a blind iPhone user, will be presenting on the use of Apple’s built-in VoiceOver screen reader with several innovative iOS apps that enable business productivity, social-media participation, identification of items in the surrounding environment and much more.

Anybody is welcome to attend. This is an excelent opportunity to show some app developers that accessibility matters and that blind people are using iOS devices in number. Let’s fill the room with as many Phoenix-area blind people and their talking iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches as we possibly can!

The meeting will be held at the University of Advancing Technology located at 2625 West Baseline Road, Tempe, Ariz., from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 2.

We look forward to seeing all of you there.  

Darrell Shandrow Joins ACB and NFB to File Discrimination Suit Against ASU Over Inaccessible Amazon Kindle DX Pilot Program

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

  • Chris Danielsen

  • Director of Public Relations

  • National Federation of the Blind

  • (410) 659-9314, extension 2330

  • (410) 262-1281 (Cell)

  • cdanielsen@nfb.org

National Federation of the Blind and American Council of the Blind File Discrimination Suit Against Arizona State University

University’s Amazon Kindle DX Pilot Program Discriminates Against the Blind

Tempe, Arizona (June 25, 2009): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) filed suit today against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon’s Kindle DX electronic reading device as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by blind students. Darrell Shandrow, a blind ASU student, is also a named plaintiff in the action. The Kindle DX features text-to-speech technology that can read textbooks aloud to blind students. The menus of the device are not accessible to the blind, however, making it impossible for a blind user to purchase books from Amazon’s Kindle store, select a book to read, activate the text-to-speech feature, and use the advanced reading functions available on the Kindle DX. In addition to ASU, five other institutions of higher education are deploying the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks and reading devices in the classroom. The NFB and ACB have also filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking for investigations of these five institutions, which are: Case Western Reserve University, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University, and Reed College. The lawsuit and complaints allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Given the highly-advanced technology involved, there is no good reason that Amazon’s Kindle DX device should be inaccessible to blind students. Amazon could have used the same text-to-speech technology that reads e-books on the device aloud to make its menus accessible to the blind, but it chose not to do so. Worse yet, six American higher education institutions that are subject to federal laws requiring that they not discriminate against students with disabilities plan to deploy this device, even though they know that it cannot be used by blind students. The National Federation of the Blind will not tolerate this unconscionable discrimination against and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education. We hope that this situation can be rectified in a manner that allows this exciting new reading technology to be made available to blind and sighted students alike.”

Darrell Shandrow, a blind student pursuing a degree in journalism at ASU, said: “Not having access to the advanced reading features of the Kindle DX—including the ability to download books and course materials, add my own bookmarks and notes, and look up supplemental information instantly on the Internet when I encounter it in my reading—will lock me out of this new technology and put me and other blind students at a competitive disadvantage relative to our sighted peers. While my peers will have instant access to their course materials in electronic form, I will still have to wait weeks or months for accessible texts to be prepared for me, and these texts will not provide the access and features available to other students. That is why I am standing up for myself and with other blind Americans to end this blatant discrimination.”

GW Micro Response to Freedom Scientific Lawsuit

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Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 15, 2008 — GW Micro, Inc., a Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company dedicated to providing high quality adaptive technology solutions for blind and visually impaired individuals, announced today that it has received notice of a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Freedom Scientific, Inc., the self-described “world leader in technology-based solutions for people with visual impairments.” The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Florida, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,993,707 for a “Document Placemarker.” GW Micro has reviewed the claim and believes it is overreaching and not consistent with what Freedom Scientific told the Patent Office when obtaining its patent. GW Micro intends to defend itself vigorously and expects to prevail in court. “As many of our users know, our screen reader — Window-Eyes — has had the capability of returning to a specific line within a webpage since version 3.1, which was released over nine years ago, well before Freedom Scientific’s alleged invention,” said Dan Weirich, GW Micro’s Corporate President. Weirich went on to note that, “The implication in a recent Freedom Scientific press release that GW Micro is ‘benefiting from [Freedom Scientific’s] investment at no charge’ is simply not accurate nor in line with GW Micro’s tradition of success and fair play.” Finally, Weirich concluded, “We will aggressively defend both our legal position and our place in the assistive technology community.”

Daniel R. Weirich

GW Micro, Inc.

725 Airport North Office Park

Fort Wayne, IN 46825

ph 260-489-3671

www.gwmicro.com

Press Release: Yahoo! Asked to Reasonably Accomodate the Blind by Adding Audio CAPTCHA

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Yahoo! Asked to Reasonably Accomodate the Blind by Adding Audio CAPTCHA

An online petition is being circulated worldwide asking Yahoo! to implement an audio alternative to their graphical CAPTCHA (visual verification) process so that the blind and visually impaired will be afforded the same level of access enjoyed by the sighted. All Internet users are asked to sign this petition and support the concept that the blind and visually impaired should be reasonably accomodated with respect to multifactor authentication and visual verification systems.

Tempe, AZ July 24, 2007 — We at Blind Access Journal ask all blind and sighted Internet users to sign the Yahoo! Accessibility Improvement Petition at BlindWebAccess.com asking Yahoo! to make available an audio alternative to their CAPTCHA as a reasonable accomodation affording blind and visually impaired people the same access to the company’s resources as that currently granted the sighted. Right now, Yahoo!’s graphical visual verification prevents full independent access by the blind or visually impaired computer user to many of the company’s services. Pictures can’t be interpreted or automatically conveyed using Braille or speech access devices. Until an accessible alternative is made available, people with vision loss can’t see the code to be entered into the box to be granted admission. Tell Yahoo! you want them to provide an alternative way for blind users to verify their human status. If you close your eyes, don’t get caught by the CAPTCHA! Please visit www.BlindWebAccess.com and sign the Yahoo! Accessibility Improvement Petition today!