Listen to this podcast covering final Field Day preparations and DNS issues with blindaccessjournal.com. As an update, it appears the registrar may already be acting on my trouble ticket, as my name server now seems to point to the right place. Interesting.
There appear to be serious DNS problems with blindaccessjournal.com on some name servers around the world at the moment. A ticket has been opened with the registrar. In the meantime, please access the journal at http://journal.shandrow.com. Realizing that those having difficulties may not see this post, I will also be publishing a short podcast to the RSS feed containing the same information. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Dear Milog support,
My name is Darrell Shandrow. I have been a ham for almost twenty years now. I happen to be blind. This year I will be participating in Field Day with the Scottsdale Amateur Radio Club. The club uses your Milog software for logging QSOs. After downloading and installing a demo of the software, I have found it almost totally inaccessible to either the JAWS or Window-Eyes screen readers. These are the two leading applications for a blind person to use in order to gain access to the applications running on a PC. There is minimal tab key navigation in dialogue boxes and menus, and the focus is not tracked as I utilize the arrow keys. I am hoping that an “accessibility” option exists in the program which might enable this application to work for blind hams. If so, could you please explain how I may enable Milog to be usable with my screen reader? If this is not currently available, please, by all means, start working with blind hams to make your software accessible.
At best, the inaccessibility of Milog is going to force me to log contacts in a manner that will be different from the other three operators in our 4F classification. At worst, an attempt could possibly be made to exclude me from participation due to this inaccessible technology. I’m leaving for Field Day tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM Pacific time. Please respond by e-mail before that time or feel free to call me by telephone anytime this evening or tonight at 480-966-0922. If you have to leave a voice mail, rest assured I’ll call you back right away. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
73
Darrell Shandrow
NU7I
The radio club with which I am involved for Field Day uses the Milog software for the purpose of logging contacts. After downloading and trying a demo, I have found it to be completely inaccessible with either JAWS 6.2 or Window-Eyes 5.0! Though it is possible to use tab and shift+tab to navigate in some data entry situations, there is absolutely no dialogue box or menu navigation and the focus is not tracked correctly. I have contacted our Field Day coordinator to see what can be done and will very shortly be writing an e-mail to the developers of Milog to see if there is some sort of “accessibility” setting I have missed. Obviously, I will not permit anyone to barr me from Field Day participation over this technology inaccessibility issue. It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out. You can bet I’ll be keeping everyone updated.
This afternoon I tested the ability to use the PAC Mate to listen to ACB Radio Interactive with great success. GS Player was used on the PAC Mate to listen to the MP3 modem stream. No choppiness or other quality problems were observed during a ten minute test. Karen and I will be going out to dinner and picking up a UPS package later this evening, while listening to Jeff Bishop’s The Desert Skies show on ACB Radio Interactive between 5:00 and 9:00 PM PDT.
Featuring PAC Mate desktop, enforced write protect, typing mode for Focus Braille displays, enhancements of Microsoft Office functionality and various bug fixes, Freedom Scientific has posted JAWS 6.2 for free download by current owners of JAWS 6.0 or 6.1 and holders of current software maintenance agreements. With the impending release of version 3.0 of the PAC Mate’s firmware, PAC Mate desktop enables the accessible PDA to be used to remotely control a computer running JAWS over a Microsoft ActiveSync connection. Enforced write protect may enable a blind user at work to protect his or her copy of JAWS from the potential consequences of inaccessibility caused by the accidental tampering by coworkers or IT staff who may lack sufficient knowledge to competently manage assistive technology. Typing mode enables users of Freedom Scientific’s new Focus Braille displays to enter text into edit fields in their computer applications using Braille entry keys on the display hardware. Enhancements to support for Microsoft Office and numerous bug fixes make this update a worthwhile download. If you own JAWS and are eligible to receive this update, we strongly recommend that you learn about and download it from Freedom Scientific’s web site.
After speaking with my contact at the EOC a short time ago, I have learned that Field Day is a go after all. Despite activation of the primary facilities, we will be able to operate in another room in the EOC bunker. I will schedule transportation so that I arrive sometime around 10:30 tomorrow morning and return home shortly after 11:00 Sunday morning. The EOC facility itself is an underground bunker built in 1953 to withstand a nuclear blast. Obviously, the amateur and other radio antennas are located on the roof of the facility. There is minimal cell phone and Internet access. A passive antenna is available for cell use, but signals from underground remain spotty. Expect occasional short live podcasts from outside the facility, with a much longer podcast posted a few hours after the end of the event on Sunday. This longer podcast will most certainly include audio coverage of Field Day operations as they happen. I’ll be contributing use of the following equipment: Icom IC-703 Plus HF radio, power supply, Code Warrior paddles for Morse Code keying, SGC SG-237 antenna coupler and my trusty Dell Enspiron 600M laptop equipped with JAWS for logging the contacts. We will actually be operating from standard commercial AC power. The Field Day requirements for operation from an EOC facility dictate only that an alternative power source be online and ready for immediate implementation in case of a power outage.
Sponsored by the American Radio Relay League, the national association of amateur radio operators in the United States of America, Field Day is an annual operating event (contest) in which we test our abilities to communicate in the midst of emergency conditions where conveniences such as commercial electricity, cellular telephones and the Internet are not available. While setting up our radio equipment in less than a day and powering it from electrical sources such as batteries, generators and solar panels, we contact as many other ham operators located in the United States and Canada as possible who are running under similar circumstances. Check out the ARRL Field Day 2005 Rules page for further details.
As a semi-active amateur radio operator, I try to do what I can to stay involved. That effort includes participating in Field Day. Last year, I operated with another ham friend from his house, using exclusively battery power to run two radios, an antenna coupler and two computers. We made 242 contacts. This year, I had planned to participate with the Scottsdale Amateur Radio Club operating from the Maricopa County Emergency Operations Center (EOC). EOC facilities (either fixed or mobile) are often used for the Field Day exercise, as it represents an excellent opportunity to test the on board amateur radio equipment and the skills of available volunteers and emergency radio communications personnel. Sadly, it is looking more and more likely that this will not be possible, due to the fact that the EOC has been activated frequently over the past week as the result of wild brush fires and potentially dangerous weather. Obviously, if the EOC is activated to handle real emergencies, we will not be able to use it to conduct the Field Day exercise.
I am currently working with other amateur radio clubs in the area to discover their Field Day plans and how I may be able to participate. Field Day begins at 11:00 AM PDT Saturday, approximately 23 and a half hours from now. Wish me good fortune in my quest to find a way to participate in the event this year. If everything works out, watch for short audio podcasts live and direct from the Field Day site and possibly a longer podcast a few hours after the end of the contest at 11:00 AM PDT on Sunday. If you are a licensed amateur radio operator who will be participating in Field Day this year, please share your thoughts on the event by posting a text comment or calling the comment line at 206-350-6925.
The most frustrating and upsetting aspect to all these incidents is the complete lack of accountability shown by the provider of the service to customers and taxpayers. The attitude seems to be that, since we are disabled, there’s nothing we can do about the issues. All thoughts welcome in text format or by way of a call to the comment line at 206-350-6925.
June 22, 2005
Dear Rose, Annette, Andrew and Gary,
This afternoon, June 22, I had an ADA pick up from work booked for 14:00. As we all know, the allowable time window for ADA trips is 30 minutes, in this case running from 14:00 to 14:30. I wasn’t picked up till 14:51! That’s 21 minutes outside the allowable time window for ADA, and, actually, 6 minutes outside the 45 minute time window allowed for demand trips.
Calling your office at 14:07, Linda indicated the ETA was 14:30. Warning that it was the end of the time window, she refused to check with dispatch, saying only that EVDAR has the right to pick me up at the end of the time window. Fine…
At approx 14:34, I called back and got Linda again. At this point, I’m
feeling a bit upset. Karen had called at around 13:45 to get a 14:20 ETA. After that, I called at 14:07, so, in my mind, there was fair warning of the impending violation. I let Linda know that I would only pay the $1 rate for a demand trip, since the ADA time window and probably the demand time window was being violated. I was told that I would need to take it up with the driver and with Rose, the customer advocate. After I indicated that this approach does no good and Karen Hughes (my fiance) and I are still awaiting
tickets for the past five reported incidents, Linda told me it would be “another ten minutes” and proceeded to hang up on me.
At around 14:43, I called back and spoke with Debbie, who, finally checked with dispatch. It would be yet “another ten minutes”! She indicated that Rose was in the office, then transferred me to her voice mail. Calling back at around 14:50, I got Yvonne. Driver 214 pulled up at that time so we ended the call.
Getting on the van, I hand the driver only a $1 fare. She stands there for a minute or so (I could tell since I have a very minimal amount of sight) so I let her know that I am willing to pay only the demand fare for this trip, given that it was an ADA that was 21 minutes outside the time window and even 6 minutes outside that allowed for a demand trip.
As we rode home, the trip was mostly quiet, except that I attempted to probe the driver for some answers as to why I was picked up so late. She said “there was traffic and I was busy”. Asking for a bit more detail, such as the approximate location of her last drop off, (there’s always traffic and we’re all “busy”) she rudely said she wasn’t allowed to provide any details. The name of this driver now comes to mind. Her name is Cherry. She has always been relatively unfriendly toward customers, and, while working in the office last year due to some sort of injury, she was incredibly discourteous and incompetent.
After that unsuccessful conversation, Cherry apparently decided to talk about me on the radio. She called Jim Jackson, but decided better of it and told him to never mind, that the question was regarding the previous call. Apparently, Cherry’s computer terminal wasn’t working, as she seemed to be working from a printed manifest and was clearly using your old public UHF radio system.
I arrived home at around 15:10. Feeling a little suspicious, I decided to turn on the radio, where I hear the following conversation take place between Cherry (driver 214) and Jim Jackson:
Driver:
Please make a note that the passenger paid only $1.
Jim:
That was a $2 fare, Cherry.
Driver:
If you only knew what he was doing. Weren’t you listening?
Jim:
No. There’s no way we could hear anything. Why didn’t you turn on your camera?
Driver:
I couldn’t easily get to it; The passenger was still on the van.
Jim:
Darrell Shandrow is sight impaired, so he wouldn’t have known the
difference.
Driver:
Yes. He would have. He knows what he is doing.
There was no further response from Jim or Cherry. I did listen for
approximately another ten minutes.
There are a number of serious problems here, starting with the root cause of the incident.
This afternoon I received a call from Rose, who transferred me to Andrew Higuera, the quality assurance manager. Andrew and I had a conversation lasting over half an hour about this incident. He promised me that the incident would be fully investigated and that he would contact me on Thursday or Friday at the very latest. I asked Andrew an interesting question, and got a worrisome answer. I asked him for the SLA (service level agreement) between customers and East Valley Dial-A-Ride. One part of a SLA covers the amount of time the company has to respond to a customer’s complaint and to completely close the incident. Andrew told me that East Valley Dial-A-Ride may take up to 24 hours to make an initial response and up to ten days to completely resolve and close the complaint! This SLA is the same as that for the Valley Metro fixed route bus system. Given the differences in the two services, I strongly feel that this SLA is not sufficiently strict, especially given the apparent attitude of RPTA’s outsourcing partner (MV Transit) when it comes to serving people with disabilities in a dignified professional manner.
As part of a thread of e-mail correspondence between Karen, myself and
Annette fritz, the following language was used by your former operations manager, Joe Stanley:
I apologize for getting you to work late today. We work at providing the best transportation service possible to our customers. We are fully aware of the effect we have on the quality of life for our passengers. The MV slogan “We Provide Freedom” illustrates this. Your assessment of this morning’s ride is correct. We did have our driver going back and forth rather than driving an efficient route. We recognize that “shared ride” can tend to increase trip duration and have already “tweaked” some of the system parameters to battle this. We will continue this process until we find the correct set that allows our scheduling system to do what we and our passengers need.
An early step in that process is to begin work on the Subscription (Standing Ride) Templates. These Templates provide the base for all rides. The change in the base location dictates a massive re-tooling of these Templates. We were reluctant to do this large project right at the changeover because we wanted to keep the transition as smooth as possible. Your situation shows we cannot wait any longer.
I spoke with you today and you agreed to the plan that I think will get you to work on time. We will monitor this grouping closely to be sure it is working for you. If not, we will immediately make adjustments to fix the problem. Our contract with Valley Metro RPTA is performance based so it is in our best interest to be on time as much as our passengers. We will send 96 tickets for these past two incidents. We are confident, however, that this type of incident will rarely, if ever, happen again. As I mentioned above, we have already made some changes to the scheduling parameters and will make more. We feel the changes will have a positive effect on people’s experience with the East Valley Dial-A-Ride. We already have done training classes on Customer Service and plan to have more. We are also looking to raise the skills of our dispatchers and reservationists. We have in place report cards for our reservationists and a phone monitoring system that measures both the number of calls in the queue and how long. The reservationists are aware of our goals and will be reminded often. We will continue to improve our service. We want everyone’s experience with East Valley Dial-A-Ride to be a good one. We need input from everyone to improve our service. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us.Respectfully,
Joe Stanley
Dial A Ride Operations Manager
Unfortunately, over the six months since MV Transit has been running East Valley Dial-A-Ride, our true experience has been that things are no different than the past contractors. An apparent poor attitude seems to exist, in general, toward the customers (people with disabilities and senior citizens) concerning our needs to be treated with the same dignity, respect and overall professionalism as those who do not require specialized paratransit service. We are both customers and taxpayers. We help fund the service both by paying our fares and through the sales taxes levied on most local purchases. We expect a level of treatment that is consistent with our status as full human beings and first class citizens, possessing all the rights and obligations that status entails. We do understand that things aren’t always going to be perfect. In those cases, all we ask is that you hold yourselves reasonably accountable to us and provide intelligent answers and explanations for any issues. An incident like this will result anytime we are not receiving this reasonable level of treatment.
Sincerely,
Darrell Shandrow – Shandrow Communications!
Technology consultant/instructor, network/systems administrator!
A+, CSSA, Network+!
Check out high quality telecommunications services at http://ld.net/?nu7i
Information should be accessible to us without need of translation by
another person.
Blind Access Journal: http://www.blindaccessjournal.com
Listen to part 2 of this podcast on the positive benefits of accessibility versus the negative consequences of inaccessibility as it relates to employment opportunities for the blind.