Blind Access Journal

If our own blind brothers and sisters don’t insure our ability to access the results of all their accomplishments, then how on Earth can we expect the sighted to make anything accessible? The last couple of days have shown me once more that the vast majority of blind people simply are not switched on to the absolute importance of the need to insist on technology accessibility. We must ask first then insist if we must until the proper changes are made to allow our full participation. Sadly, from time to time, we must also call a blind brother or sister on the carpet when they do things without giving appropriate consideration for accessibility. Apparently, this basic, common sense stance is “militant”. We apparently must ask for accessibility, then just sit back if it doesn’t happen. It is apparently acceptable for our own people to take lead on projects and bring them to fruition without accomodating our own needs for equal access. No way, Jose! Militant or not, we must insist on the right thing at all times! The cold hard consequences of ignoring inaccessibility are just too numerous and terrible to mention at the present time. How can we switch the sighted on to the need for equal accessibility if most of our own people are totally clueless? How will we ever get mass accessibility by allowing others to pat us on the head and set us aside for bigger and better things? Though we happen to lack functioning eyes, we are people, too. It is high time we insist on our first class citizenship and our basic human rights when it comes to technology related products and services!

Shownotes

We are having a great time visiting with the Bishop family in Tucson this weekend!

Find Unique Gift Ideas and Creative Gifts – FindGift.com

Excellent, accessible site for Christmas shopping and other occasions.

Podsafe for Peace

Slau failed to fully consider accessibility needs during the creation and publication of this project. We call him on the carpet for his oversight and his feelings are hurt by my “militant” approach.

What have you done for the cause of accessibility this year?

There will be a prize for the best accessibility accomplishments made during 2005. Get to work and submit your testimonials by January 31, 2006!

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Shownotes

Wow! What a show! Check out the new Edirol R-1!

DSC #292

Check me out on the Daily Source Code as I ask Adam to keep the DSC audio tag at the beginning of the show.

Podsafe for Peace

We’re disappointed in Slau for his lack of consideration for our accessibility needs with respect to downloading the song, especially since he is blind!

Jeff Bishop

Sorry to hear you had to take down the accessible copy of If Everyday Were Christmas. I guess it really is true that no good deed goes unpunished. What a shame…

Blind Cool Tech

Check out Rob’s October 11 review of the Edirol R1, including a significant amount of incredibly useful tutorial material.

Jill Parr

Listen to a neat rock version of Do You Hear What I Hear at the end of the show.

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Bowing to pressure from Jerry Halatyn to make constant changes to the way in which If Every Day Were Christmas is delivered to blind podcasters, Jeff Bishop has simply removed the means by which we were able to obtain this song without the need to use the currently inaccessible Podsafe Music Network. Once again, it appears that the needs of everyone else trump the need for accessibility at all costs, again placing our needs at the very bottom of the list! For all that, I don’t even like this song anymore. The accessibility issues and undue complications in resolving the issues have simply taken all the fun out of this project. Thank you, Slau! In addition to all the accessibility issues and subsequent wrangling, one must be very careful as this project is, in no official way, endorsed by UNICEF. There is no way to absolutely, positively guarantee that any money generated from the purchase of this song will go to that charitable organization. Podsafe for Peace will not be played here on the Blind Access Journal podcast and we will be making no financial contribution to this endeavor.

The premier audio book website audible.com has released a new design to its website.

The new design labels all the images that one would need for navigation purposes, the book pages have headings so you can quickly jump to the publisher summary for example without reading through all the book information first, and the site rolled out new listener membership plans that let you roll your book credits to the next month.

The last feature is obviously taken from the cell phone industry and the roll over minutes option that they all pretty much offer now.

A very cool new feature is the list of lists which include lists like the best Listens of 2005, books to film, holiday stories, and staff/customer top ten lists.

The site also has an express purchase feature that is the same as amazon.com’s one click ordering.

the one drawback with regards to accessibility is on the membership join page. The membership plans are described using labeled graphics, but the plans are each on their own line with the click here portion of the graphic clickable all though your screen reader might not indicate that.

the plans on the audible site are basic ($9.95/month), Gold ($14.95/month), and Platinum ($22.95/month).

You get 1 credit per month on the gold plan and 2 per month on the platinum plan. the basic plan I’m not sure about though you do get some form of free audio plus 30% off any audiobook.

I had canceled my audible.com membership a few months ago, but now that you can roll your credits to the next month I may resubscribe.

Bottom Line

Despite the one accessibility issue, which I don’t technically consider an issue since the graphic says click here, I recommend audible.com for anyone who enjoys reading and likes access to the latest and greatest in literature.

Shownotes

Note to self and warning to everyone: don’t accept software from strangers! Recovering from both a computer and a biological virus…

Natalie Brown

Thanks for the excellent ID! It now begins the show. Anyone else want to supply one?

Fix for crackling speech from Sound Blaster Live cards.

Check out this Freedom Scientific Technical Support Notice if you have the crackling Eloquence speech problem as this solution can be difficult to find when you need it…

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A new trojan horse executable with the name google_accessibility.exe is making the rounds. Purporting to enable the blind and visually impaired to work around Google’s inaccessible visual verification scheme, it actually corrupts the data on the attacked system’s hard drives, rendering such systems inaccessible and effectively useless. In addition, all data on any mapped drives connected to the attacked system over a network share is completely erased. Recovery requires a full reformat and clean reinstallation of the operating system and all applications.

Google_accessibility.exe is extremely tempting to those whom have found themselves increasingly locked out of Google’s services due to inaccessible visual verification, but this trojan horse is not our salvation and must be avoided at all costs. A confirmed case of this attack resulted in the following catestrophic consequences:

• JAWS went silent after the program was run.
• A restart resulted in an unbootable operating system.
• The data on the attached hard drive was so corrupted as to be impractical to recover.
• A complete reformat and clean installation of Windows was required in order to restore the system to correct functionality.
• A backup drive connected by way of a network share was wiped clean.
• Approximately 100 GB of accessibility advocacy related materials, contact information, correspondence, documentation, e-mail, financial records, music, podcasts and other similarly critical data were completely lost.
• Tens or perhaps hundreds of hours may be required to restore the Accessibility Command Center to full operation!

My computer was killed last night. I just learned from one of my sighted coworkers that we’re going to need to perform a complete operating system reinstall! Thankfully, I backed up most of my important data on another system, so the loss is not catestrophic. What happened and why? Stay tuned. An Ancestor ate my computer’s data and operating system. Crunch, munch, snap, crackle, pop…

Dear Leo,

Thank you for allowing me to chat a bit about accessibility on TWiT #30 from the podcasting expo. I hope there may be future opportunities to work with you to get some serious play on accessibility issues as there are potentially disastrous consequences of inaccessible technology for those of us with disabilities, whom represent a market that must not be ignored.

I have recently registered with Digg.com. Visual verification without
accessibility kept me out, but someone at Digg assisted me in completing the registration in a couple of days. Unfortunately, the matter is not closed. Despite being logged into an account that already required visual verification, I am still not allowed to submit new stories to digg.com due to another visual verification test, also without appropriate considerations for accessibility. A couple of letters to the available contact e-mail addresses at digg.com have not yielded a response on this second, much worse accessibility issue in over a week. I would really appreciate it if you would please work with your friend Kevin Rose over at Digg to devise a way to allow the blind and visually impaired to fully participate in this service.

Again, thanks for the exposure of accessibility issues on TWiT and I hope to hear from you.

All the best,

Darrell Shandrow

Shownotes

Listen to this tutorial covering the download, installation and use of Juice Receiver with the JAWS screen reader. It should also serve as an introductory demonstration of the use of screen reading technology by the blind.

Get Juice Receiver from Jeff Bishop

Check out Jeff’s site for the quickest and easiest way to download Juice Receiver.

Juice, the cross-platform podcast receiver.

Learn more about Juice Receiver at the project’s SourceForge home page.

Blind Casting E-mail Discussion List

This list is for the open discussion of podcasting for blind and visually impaired users. Discussions can focus around listening and producing podcasts and all that generating podcasts is all about. We talk about the equipment required for doing ppodcasting and much much more.

JAWS

The most expensive, widely used screen reader for the blind. JAWS (Job Access With Speech) was used as the screen access solution in the tutorial.

Window-Eyes

Solid, lower cost alternative screen reader to JAWS.

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