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Google Accessibility Petition: New BlindWebAccess.com Domain Goes Live

January 18, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

A new domain, BlindWebAccess.com, has now gone live in support of the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition. Visiting this new domain will instantly redirect the user to the petition’s home page. Everyone is welcome to distribute this new domain far and wide, especially when promoting the petition outside the technology oriented media. Thanks go to Tina for the suggestion of this specific domain name.

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Press Release – Google Asked to Make Its Visual Word Verification Accessible

January 17, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Check out the press release published to the media regarding the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition. If you have not done so already, please sign the petition. After that, please follow the link to the press release and forward it to all associates, friends, relatives, bloggers, podcasters and members of the conventional media for wide distribution. Thank you all for your support.

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I Have A Dream

January 16, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

In the spirit of the speech entitled I Have A Dream as delivered in 1963 by Martin Luther King, Jr. I advocate for the equal access to technology and alternative transportation that we, the blind and visually impaired, must be granted in order to be fully included and able to participate in society on terms of equality with the sighted. Please join me in this critical struggle for justice by signing the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition today and by taking all other actions necessary and appropriate to support our right to equal accessibility.

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Help Us Ask Dr. Schmidt to Allow Access to Google’s Word Verification

January 14, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

As part of the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition, a personalized letter will be written and sent to Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO. Assistance and feedback on the content of this letter is being actively sought from the blind community. Constructive suggestions and even draft content is being accepted at editor@blindaccessjournal.com for potential incorporation into the results of this vital project. We have a couple of months to get this done, so please participate.

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Sign the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition Today

January 12, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

We at the Blind Access Journal call upon all blind and visually impaired people and those whom care about what happens to us to sign the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition asking Google to provide an accessible alternative to the visual verification scheme that currently locks us out of participation in all the company’s services. After allowing sufficient time to collect a significant number of signatures, the signed petition will be sent, via certified mail along with a personalized letter, to Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO. Visual verification without accessibility represents a growing, immediate clear and present danger to the continued ability of the blind and visually impaired to participate in all the Internet has to offer on terms of equality with our sighted peers. Let’s all sign this petition and do all we can to urge Google to make the situation right by following the company’s own mission statement and allowing participation by all.

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The Irony of Google’s Celebrating Louis Braille’s Birthday While Locking Out the Blind

January 4, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Google is celebrating the birthday of Louis Braille by providing this Louis Braille Search. Though we thank Google for this gesture, we ask the company’s bright programmers to promptly implement a solution to the inaccessible visual verification scheme it has been using for over one year. In July of 2005, Google promised accessibility within “one to two months” and has, thus far, failed to deliver, thus continuing to barr the blind and visually impaired from full participation in all Google services.

We ask everyone in the blind community and all other interested individuals to take five minutes or less to compose an e-mail to accounts-support@google.com asking Google to finally allow full admission by the blind by adding accessibility to its visual verification for all services. Google has told the world in the past they did not receive feedback concerning the need for greater accessibility. Today, they should be hearing from hundreds, if not thousands, of blind people and others asking that Google follow its own mission statement to do no evil and “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

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Happy New Year!

January 1, 2006 • Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

Shownotes

Karen and I wish you all a very accessible, happy and safe New Year! This is our brief 2005 year in review podcast. Enjoy.

  1. Karen and I become engaged on April 1. The proposal is the focus of Jeff Bishop’s The Desert Skies radio show on ACB Radio Interactive that Friday night. The show is also the first semi-official podcast of Blind Access Journal.
  2. Karen becomes part of the Distinguished Service Team on her job, showing once more the value of blind people in employment.
  3. Darrell is Employee of the Month in June of 2005, also exemplifying the recognized value of the blind.
  4. Darrell attends the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference where awareness of accessibility concerns is effectively raised.
  5. Darrell gains significant exposure of accessibility issues as he has the opportunity to chat with Leo Laporte and his gang of TWiTs on This Week in Tech live from the expo.
  6. Darrell works with the GoDaddy Office of the President, resulting in positive, promising developments in the correction of the company’s currently inaccessible visual verification scheme. We will continue following up this communication in the new year.

Please work with us in 2006 and beyond to help insure an accessible world of technology in which blind people are allowed to participate on terms of equality with the sighted. Happy New Year!

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