Darrell Shandrow Hilliker

We have just discovered that AOL has recently made its signup process for the AIM service accessible by allowing the blind to use an audio based CAPTCHA (visual verification) system to hear the characters to be entered into the edit box in order to create an account. Congratulations AOL! Thanks for doing the right thing in this area. How are you doing on your visual verification accessibility, Google?

Huge welcome to everyone visiting Blind Access Journal after listening to me chat for a few minutes about accessibility on This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte live from the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. It was an incredible honor to be in the TWiT hotseat and the entire expo was fantastic!

Huge thanks go to Allison of the NosillaCast for this picture and a few others you will see in the near future.

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Approximately three days after being locked out of the ability to post new articles to his blog, Steve Bauer, the blind Blogger user featured in the original story, received a response indicating that his blog was manually reviewed and will no longer be classified as spam. He confirms he is now able to post. While solving the word verification scheme takes a sighted person a minute or two, it takes three days for Google to allow a blind person to accomplish the same thing! This is not accessibility and we in the blind community cannot accept this ongoing treatment by Google and other companies doing business on the Internet. The current state of the art in accessibility for visual verification is to provide audio playback of the characters to be entered. Let’s all, blind and sighted alike, absolutely insist on this accomodation.

Listen as I chat with a visually impaired business man, meet an attorney, hang out with one of the Podcast Outlaws and chat with Joe from Yahoo about the need for a real solution to their inaccessible visual verification, all while traveling from Phoenix to Ontario, California to attend the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. Enjoy. Feedback is welcome as always.

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Thanks go to Kelly Pierce for the introduction of this article below. It was very nice to meet with Jason Lee at the expo.

I was surfing and found this article describing Darrell’s efforts at the portable media conference in California. I thought everyone would be interested in it.

Kelly

All Headline News, Canada

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Journalist Advocates Better Online Access For Blind

By Jasen K Lee, Staff Reporter

Ontario, CA (AHN) – The editor of Weblog, Blind Access Journal is calling for online broadcasters and e-zines to make their content
accessible to the visually impaired. Speaking at the Portable Media Expo, Darrell Shandrow, who himself is blind, says too many online journals and podcasts are unavailable to the visually disabled because their content is inaccessible.

Shandrow says the technology exists for podcasters and online sites to make content available, but many are slow to recognize the audience they’re alienating.

He suggests all content providers take the time to employ the technology that will allow the blind to “read” written articles or blogs through audio links. Also, Shandrow says some podcasts are inaccessible because their content is not formatted for the visually impaired to hear it.

Shandrow explains the changes necessary to increase online
availability are not difficult and require little extra effort. However, too often, the disabled are not included in the thought processes of the content creators, thereby leaving them “on the outside.” He says a little consideration would go a long way toward bringing the blind into the inner realm of the burgeoning “blogasphere” and all it has to offer.

Check out the direct link to this story and feel free to provide feedback telling me your thoughts. It seems overly gloomy to me, and, of course, that was not at all my intent. I can only apologize for the part I may have possibly played in this slightly inaccurate impression of our capabilities and the technology we already possess to gain access to the world around us. I can only hope you all appreciate the extreme challenge involved in trying to explain the need for accessibility to those who have never heard of the concept of including those who rely on assistive technology into the development of their products and services. I feel I have done my best at the expo, but please feel free to provide any feedback concerning how to make the results of this evangelism even better.

Steve Bauer, host of the Smooth Jazz U.S.A. show on ACB Radio Interactive tells us about his experience as a blind person dealing with word verification while setting up a blog at Blogger, only to have it classified as spam and thus locked out of posting new articles to his own blog! We now have our first confirmed case of Google’s censorship of blind bloggers!

Friday evening (11/11/05) I started to try and set up my first blog on
blogspot.com. Everything went pretty well until the visual verification came up. Fortunately, my wife was able to assist me in getting past that obsticle. I proceeded on to set things up. My wife helped select the colors and fonts and things seemed to be moving smoothly. Well, that’s what they appeared to do.

Somehow, I got my first post to appear. Feeling somewhat confident, I
tried post number 2. Boom, bang, bash!!! To be assured that my post was from a human, another visual verification popped up. This time, my wife was not available.

Later, when she came in, I tried again, the visual verification came
up. She typed it in for me and the second post went up. As you can tell, this is not something that will work. My wife is not always around, nor does she have interest in holding my hand and doing this everytime I want to post an article.

Another very strange thing is in the Profile setup, there is a place
where you can put the url to your photo. I did this, selected save,
but when I would go back to Profile Configuration, the url to my photo was gone.

Blogspot seems to be quite easy to navigate and set up, but not for a blind person. The visual verification is resulting in me looking for another service to host my blog.

Here is a creative twist on iPodder’s new name. This poem is a collaboration by Karen, Tina and Darrell.

Get your Juice Receiver today,

You can squeeze it in many ways.

Access is easy & fast,

Your juice receiver will last.

You can download information at anytime,

It is much sweeter than a lime!

It meets various needs at many speeds,

Can listen to music, news, podcasts & look at your RSS feeds.

It is versitile,

& will make you smile!

Downloading is easy & does not take long,

The sooner you install,

You can play your favorite podcasts featuring Podsafe songs,

And have a ball.

MP3’s are the latest craze,

The Juice receiver is not a fad or phase.

It won’t lose its zing over night,

It’s an accessibility delight!

So, Take this time now,

If you do not know how.

Go to Jeff Bishop.net,

and you will be all set.

He has a direct link to the Site,

With the instructions & updates that are condensed just right.

Unlike most things, this is free,

But it’s a great little program, you will soon agree!

So, what are you waiting for,

You do not have to go to the store.

You do not have to leave your house,

And the blind don’t need a mouse.

This juicer is one of a kind,

Not hard to find.

No need to fridgerate,

So come on, hurry,

and check out DSC with Adam Curry.

Do not wait!

The Juice Receiver is not a drink,

With your podcasts it will Sync,

Giving you hours of audio that will inspire and make you think.

Get your creative juices to flow,

while listening to the newest podcast show!

So get the podcasting fever,

Download the Juice Receiver!

Check out this brief summary of the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference where many new friends were made in the podcasting community. Thanks go especially to Allison, Steve and all the others who have made a lot of potential new opportunities to evangelize accessibility possible!

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Shownotes

Apologies for the brief shownotes. Much more was actually covered, so listen!

Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code #275 on the Licensed Music Crackdown

From the not at all surprised department: the big boys at RIAA and similar licensing organizations are trying to crash the party and suck out all the fun… We won’t let ’em; Podsafe music to the rescue!

Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference

This conference is being held in Ontario, California on Friday, November 11 and Saturday, November 12. I’ll be there!

Natalie Brown

Listen to her song entitled Confused at the end of this episode of the podcast.

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Blind Access Journal was completely unavailable for approximately thirty hours from Sunday afternoon through Monday evening due to a total outage of UltraHost, the web hosting provider on which we rely. I received the following note from Jeff, the owner of UltraHost, on Monday in response to my status request on resolution of the ongoing outage.

From: Jeff – The Ultra Guy

To: Darrell Shandrow

Subject: Re: Status of outage?

Hello Darrell, you wrote:

We’re just writing to ask for an update on the UltraHost outage that began yesterday afternoon. Thanks.

The server hosting your site was compromised. I had to reload the operating system, reconfigure the server and restore all user accounts from backups.
It has taken me all day, but all user accounts have now been restored.
I apologize for the downtime and any inconvenience it has caused. Fortunately, this is an unusual situation.

Jeff

UltraHost.US Customer Care

This morning, following last night’s resolution of the outage, I sent him this note:

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the response and the ultimate resolution to the issues. I am, quite honestly, concerned with both the length of the outage and the lack of proactive
communication concerning the cause of the problems and status of resolution. Frankly, the timing of this long outage couldn’t have been worse as I am
preparing for the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference next weekend. I was beginning to wonder if I would need to switch to another host very
quickly or face the potential of going to a conference to promote accessibility while having blindaccessjournal.com and shandrow.com, the two domains that
make up the blog and podcast, hard down during the event and for awhile afterwards. At the same time, I am impressed at the completeness of restoration.
I expected to have to do a lot more work in order to bring everything back to a state of relative normalcy, but, in fact, almost none was required.
Could you please give us some details as to what steps have been taken to help insure the security breach is not repeated?

Thanks.

It has become apparent to me that it is virtually impossible for a one man shop to meet my web hosting needs with the reliability I must have in order to effectively spread the message of accessibility evangelism around the world. Sadly, I must say, I am open to all recommendations for good web hosting companies that provide a similar level of functionality as UltraHost along with lots of bandwidth and file storage space for the blog and podcast. Thank you all for any feedback you are able to give.