Blind Access Journal

We thank John Gatch of WMKV for allowing me to discuss the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition on his February 21 Senior Computer Talk radio show.

A friend and supporter makes the following commentary concerning the needless loss of my job.

Hey Darrell,

God I’m sorry for the bad news I just heard in your Show #86! This has
really got to blow big time. Quite unbelievable that such a simple
change that someone is unwilling to make should cost you your bread and
butter. Nothing else matters when it can affect the food you put on the table. I wonder why the unwillingness to make that adjustment to the software? What does the client lose by using the “standard mode” instead of the other “enhanced” or whatever mode the default is. Can’t this mode be enabled just for your point of access and everyone else use the other mode? Just grasping at straws.

Check out this correspondence from one of the people involved in my job loss. I strongly feel this particular person could play a much more positive and significant role in making things right had she the will and desire to do so. Company names, product references and the names of people have all been changed to protect both the good and the bad guys in this situation.

Hello Darrell,

I do sympathize with this situation and really hate to lose you from the XYZ account. You have been a valuable member of the team.

We continue to investigate what it will take from a Siebel standpoint. It’s not as simple or inexpensive as it appears. We are still investigating options with our Siebel contacts and await their input. Further, we have a very small Siebel development team (two people). There work is 100% prioritized right now in bringing up functionality
for our new X and Y product lines as well as rolling out
the Siebel sales solution through Africa. It’s unfortunate, however we
have to look at our resources and our pressing business needs and
prioritize them accordingly.

I know John is working hard to possibly engage you on other projects. You can count on us for a positive referral.

Once again, as a blind person needing reasonable accomodations, I am at the very bottom of the list of priorities. It appears dedicated, loyal service is not good enough. We are all just “resources”, to be thrown away once it has been decided we are no longer useful. I am a person who also has “business needs” to continue putting food on the table. Does that count for anything, especially given my solid job performance over the years? Is it right to throw me away rather than spending an hour or two of programming time to make Siebel accessible? The answers to these questions are apparent in the letter I received. They should speak loudly and clearly to the character of the corporation involved in this problem, who will have to remain nameless for the time being. Does anyone out there have a copy of the book or the movie “The Cold Equations”? It seems quite appropriate right about now.

I am taking a break from my job search activities to watch an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. This episode is the one where an injured Borg is recovered from his crashed scout ship. An evil plan is initially devised to return him to the Borg Collective with an invasive computer virus that would eventually destroy the Borg completely. As the crew gets to know him as an individual, he is given the name Hugh and given the opportunity to seek asylum on the Enterprise. In the end, Hugh decides to return to the Collective in order to avoid the possible capture and assimilation of the entire Enterprise crew.

As this episode comes to an end, I am reminded of the circumstances surrounding my job loss. Most people hope that they will achieve success, that their “ship will come in” so to speak. Sadly, my ship has crashed. It got coldly and callously shot down by people who say they are sorry but the accessibility accomodations needed to allow me to keep my job are not reasonable and there are no other positions available at this time. It seems I am not deserving of a serious, detailed, well-considered discussion of the matter. I am a disposable “resource”, good to have around when it was convenient for everyone, but easily thrown away at the least sign of a burden or need to make a reasonable accomodation. There is no chivalry, honor or morality applied to my situation. There is no grant of asylum, no reprieve and possibly no compensation of any kind. I am the sole loser out of this deal, the only one facing negative consequences for artificially imposed circumstances completely out of my control. I may be reassimilated once more into the dark, doom filled, gloomy world of unemployment, from which it is orders of magnitude harder for me to recover as a blind person than it is for someone fortunate enough to be sighted. I am thus unceremoneously torn from the collective I once knew as my job and thrown to the wind to fend for myself. I must seek new opportunities, persist, with all my will and prove that, once and for all, resistance is not futile!

It is time for brave blindcasters to download and try beta 60 of the CastBlaster podcast creation and publication software. Feel free to access the direct download, then visit the CastBlaster home page for additional details. The direct download link is intended only to insure you get beta 60 rather than an older, less accessible, copy of the software. It will become invalid upon the release of an update. CastBlaster Mike has also enabled forum registration without inaccessible visual verification, but you had better get in fast as he says he will have to reinstate visual verification should spam rear its ugly head. We thank CastBlaster Mike for his willingness to work with us. Stay tuned for future great things on the CastBlaster front.

Shownotes

Here are the names of the files I have installed for my Dell provided OEM Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live Value:

• LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe
• LiveDrvPack_Patch.exe
• creative_patch_v010.zip

Though I now have “what you hear” functionality and the crackling has been greatly reduced, things aren’t yet perfect and the older drivers (without what you hear) sound better. Any help with this sound card driver issue would be hugely appreciated.

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James Mannion shares his thoughts on the state of accessibility.

First I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your job I just read
over at the blind access journal. I am really feeling that lately I
have been wondering if the state of accessibility is falling into a
worse state than it has been in in a very, very long time if ever in
the time that solutions have existed. The sad thing is that for a
few years there I truely thought we were not only staying in the
game, but things were making positive forward progress. These days I
truely think we are in a serious back slide. I, like you, really get
frustrated and wish people would do the right thing. It frustrates
me that they almost hopelessly don’t have the insentive to much
care. I have signed and sent many people to the google petition. My
feeling is that this will set an example one way or the other about
this issue and any others that people choose to connect with it in
any way. If it does not succeed it could possibly be not just a dud,
but a step in the wrong direction. There is absolutely no way I
would consider any lack of success your fault. You have done more
than your part in making this happen. I also realize that you want
to do everything you can and my comment is not to take anything away
from that.

The point I want to get to though is that our screen
reader manufacturers need to be doing more and taking more of a lead
in directing accessibility improvements. They seem to be hanging out
in their cornor working the small number of things they have for a
while and not paying attention to much else. One company I
absolutely congradulate is IBM. They seem to take on a lot in terms
of accessibility and have been the driving force in Mozilla building
in accessibility measures. It is a beautiful thing when screen
reader manufacturers can work directly with the internals of a
program and that gives us amazing results or at least the potential
for them. However, what concerns me is that they are getting away
from any general approach to accessibility. Perhappes they just
don’t have the capacity to keep up on both fronts. I don’t know. It
just feels to me like one either gets lucky enough to fit into the
small segment of what the screen reader manufacturers deal with much
or more likely not these days and access is slipping away.

Meanwhile the companies are doing what they are doing out there and have little
insentive and very little central technical guidance in which to have
much confidence. I often hope they are listening to the podcast, but
what urges them to seek such information? I would have been happy to
direct yahoo people to the podcast and to any other source of help,
but writing them on several occasions produced absolutely no response
concerning their beta of yahoo mail. By the way it is interesting
that their praise comments on that new yahoo mail beta are the
stupidest crap I have seen in a while and appear to be written by
their own people??? The real issue though is the common technologies
that they as well as the software packages are using that the screen
reader manufacturers need to pay more attention to because the
“locks” on so many of the doors have the same brand name so to
speak. That could be a cloud with a silver lining, or could just
spell trouble a thousand times over and continue to do that while
others pile on top of it and do more of the same. We seem to be in a
period of rapid growth in the technologies being used and our
industry players seem to be sleeping or only talking to their
favorite people making up a small segment of things.

Shownotes

The number of this show is appropriate as my job will soon be nothing more than a code 86 and a part of my tortured history of dealing with inaccessible technology. Economics are never a reason to justify exclusion of the blind or anyone else from participation in society! Not much else to say here in the shownotes. This is a rant cast. You have been warned.

• CastBlaster Makes Huge Accessibility Stride Forward!
• Podcaster News Network
• Sean Patrick McGraw

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This just in — As of Feb. 28, I will be laid off due to the implementation of inaccessible Siebel technology and the lack of an available position anywhere else in the company! Stay tuned for future details.

We thank Susan Kuchinskas of InternetNews.com for her publication of the article entitled Google’s Doors Still Shut to Blind. It is certainly worthy of exposure on sites like Digg and Slashdot. Several attempts have been made to obtain Slashdot coverage without success, and Digg submission is impossible due to another instance of visual verification without accessibility. All assistance to increase the media coverage of the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition will be greatly appreciated.