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Mike Smith provided some good coverage of Google’s current accessibility issues with Gmail and visual verification on his latest Podcast. Check out the Mike Tech Show April 30 Podcast for the accessibility coverage and visit the Mike Tech Show web site for tons of additional excellent technology related content.

Check out these four simple rules of accountability and stay tuned for additional in-depth analysis provided in audio and text form:

• Show up.
• Pay attention.
• Do what you say you are going to do.
• Hold yourself responsible for errors without making excuses or reassigning blame.

Learn what happened to me this morning when I attempted to get cash out of our neighborhood ATM!

Let me just make it crystal clear right now that I fully expect our families and those whom consider themselves our real, true friends to take every possible opportunity to help us advocate for accessibility! This includes taking all actions requested here on the journal as well as others not directly stated as needed to attain positive results. There are absolutely no exceptions; equal participation through accessibility is just too important!

Karen and I have just started a wedding blog where you can see how our plans are coming along and provide some useful input. Since Google now deliberately prevents blind Blogger users from creating new blogs, I have implemented this one using the WordPress blogging application, so you might notice some minor differences. Enjoy and, as always, feel free to participate by posting comments!

I wrote the following letter to OfficeMax customer service conveying my feelings about a positive experience at one of the company’s local retail stores this afternoon and asking that the company make its web site accessible. Please comment about your own experiences with Office Max and send additional e-mail to the company asking for better web site accessibility.

Dear OfficeMax Customer Service,

I am a blind information technology professional, accessibility advocate and publisher of the Blind Access Journal found at http://www.blindaccessjournal.com. Like many other professionals, I must purchase office supplies from time to time, and Office Max is the company I choose to conduct such business.

Since I needed to purchase a new chair and some other supplies for my home office, I decided to visit my local Office Max store in Tempe Arizona at the corner of Broadway and Rural Road. Josh, one of your employees, was extremely helpful in assisting me to select the chair, a paper shredder, a printer cartridge and a cross over ethernet cable for the Accessibility Command Center’s advanced computer networking needs. He also went beyond the call of duty by arranging for assembly and same day delivery of my new office chair! This was extremely helpful for an independent blind person who does not live with sighted people who can easily meet these challenges on a moment’s notice. In many cases, product assembly is almost impossible for a totally blind person who is unable to read printed instructions or intuitively see how various parts go together without such information at hand. Transportation issues are also quite challenging for the blind, and there were serious questions of scheduling your company’s standard delivery processes around the time demands of my regular day job and all my advocacy and volunteer activities in the blind community. Instead of forcing me to deal with these frequent difficulties, Josh assembled the chair and had Brian, another employee, deliver it this afternoon. All of this help was offered; I didn’t even have to ask! It is a great chair and I’m quite happy to own it! This willingness of your employees to go above and beyond the call of duty is a clear indication of your company’s commitment to serve all its customers, including those of us with disabilities! Thanks to Josh and Brian! Please do pass along the positive feedback to their supervisors at the local store.

At the conclusion of this excellent experience with your local store, I decided I wanted to go online to www.OfficeMax.com to complete a positive customer survey. I was dismayed to find that this wasn’t going to be possible due to the current inaccessibility of your web site. After more than half an hour of browsing your company’s web site, I have still been unable to locate the survey. The accessibility problem stems from the fact that there are a large number of graphical links that are missing appropriately descriptive alt text tags. Fixing this accessibility challenge would not be very difficult or expensive, and it would serve to further enhance your company’s goodwill within the community of people with disabilities.

I hope I will receive a personal response from someone on your staff soon. Please provide a direct link to your company’s customer feedback survey so that I may officially express my gratitude for the exceptional ability and willingness of Brian and Josh to go above and beyond the call of duty to assist me in the convenient, hassle-free business with your company. Please also work with your company’s web site developers to correct the accessibility issues caused by the lack of alt tags for graphical links. I thank you for your consideration and look forward to a response in the near future.

Sincerely,

Darrell Shandrow

We are urging all blind Internet users to write Blogger support requesting the immediate removal of the visual verification requirement for creating new blogs until a reasonably accessible alternative can be implemented that meets the needs of all human beings without excluding those whom happen to be blind. The purpose of visual verification is to test for the presence of a live human being. Lets remind Google of our status as real, living and breathing human beings by insisting on equal access! .

We have recently learned that Google now requires visual verification during the process of creating a new blog on blogger.com. Despite our ongoing attempts to communicate with Google about the need for accessibility, no accessible alternative has been provided for this new instance of visual verification. Whereas a blind user was once able to create new blogs at blogger.com, Google has now locked us out! Google staff continuously tell us that they are working on the problem while simultaneously Google continues to implement more instances of inaccessible visual verification. Sadly, we are only able to derive one conclusion. Google doesn’t care! I think it is now safe for us to conclude that Google is engaging in deliberate, ongoing and unmitigated discrimination against blind Internet users through the use of visual verification tests (also known as captcha) as a means to deny our equal participation.

It has become quite clear that our constant correspondence with Google staff through the company’s customer facing e-mail addresses has been totally ineffective in stopping Google’s discriminatory behavior against the blind. It is time we find a way to take our insistance on equal accessibility to some kind of next level so as to strongly encourage Google to correct its contemptable corporate behavior toward the blind and others with disabilities! I’m open to ideas!