Blind Access Journal

Listen to The Desert Skies tonight on ACB Radio Interactive where Jeff Bishop will be spinning a triple-play of Natalie Brown’s excellent, podsafe music. The show is on between 6:00 and 8:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, that’s 02:00 to 04:00 UTC. Don’t miss it!

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At a critical moment, Rosa Parks made the decision to stand up for what was right by not simply giving up her seat on a bus to a white person. This event helped to spark a seachange in American society that has served to enable African-Americans to fully participate in all that the USA has to offer all its citizens. As I boarded the Red Line to work this morning, I learned that the name of the route has temporarily been changed to the Rosa Parks Line in her honor as a tribute to her life and all she did for the Civil Rights Movement. The Mayor of Tempe was riding the bus earlier in the morning, and some flowers were placed in the front seat, just behind the driver.

The tributes to Rosa Parks remind me that we, too, must not simply be forced to get up and step aside while the rest of society passes us by on an ever increasing pace. We must struggle against discrimination and segregation and for the acceptance and accessibility we must have in order to participate in society. Will we, the blind, ultimately stand up for what is right, or will we get up and step aside? The decision is up to each of us. Let’s make the right one and follow the hard, winding road toward a better, more inclusive future for the blind!

As we struggle for our right to survive in an increasingly inaccessible digital world, the following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to mind:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

This quote is an excellent reminder that we all must speak up when it comes to advocating for the accessibility we need in order to participate in the world around us on terms of equality with our sighted peers. Equal accessibility will not happen automatically, and industry won’t pay attention if only a small portion of the entire blind community’s population advocates. We must all hold our weight to evangelize accessibility, to get the word out to the world that we are capable human beings deserving of equal consideration and reasonable accomodation in all areas of life.

I have just composed and sent the following request for accessibility to the Podsafe Music Network to C.C. Chapman at Podshow. I hope this will result in some constructive movement forward and will report any response to this correspondence I may receive.

November 1, 2005

Dear C.C.,

I am a podcaster who has been registered on the Podsafe Music Network for a couple of months now. Like other podcasters, I am excited about the opportunity to participate in a new independent form of media by playing and promoting music on the Blind Access Journal podcast. Yes. That’s right. I am a blind computer user who relies on a screen reading program that provides on screen text in Braille and spoken form.

Unfortunately, to this point, I have not been able to add music to my playlist for download and use on my podcast. There are currently a number of barriers that could be resolved with relatively minimal extra effort. Just a little concerted action to insure the accessibility of Podshow’s products and services would go a long way toward allowing the market of potentially hundreds of thousands of blind and visually impaired people worldwide to fully avail themselves of all the opportunities you are providing in podcasting.

The first accessibility barrier is the visual verification that follows the e-mail confirmation process. The currently accepted accessibility accomodation is to provide an audio playback of the characters to be entered in order to solve the CAPTCHA. Please browse to http://cvs.livejournal.org/browse.cgi/livejournal/htdocs/img/captcha/ to learn about Live Journal’s implementation of accessible visual verification. If companies like Live Journal, Microsoft and Spam Arrest can provide accessibility to their visual verification schemes, we expect you can, too.

Other barriers come into play once signed up as a podcaster on PMN in the form of inaccessible web site design. Though searching for artists seems to work, there are serious problems with listening, adding to one’s playlist, downloading and possibly other aspects of the system. While I am able to listen to songs, the buttons for doing so are unlabeled and do not play the expected track when selected using the JAWS screen reader. Similarly, and even more serious, selecting the link to add to the playlist does nothing at all. Since it is impossible for us to add music to our playlists as blind users, there really isn’t anything further we can do on PMN.

Please visit http://www.macromedia.com/resources/accessibility/ for information on the potential accessibility of Flash and possibly other Macromedia products you may be using at Podshow. Please also visit http://www.acb.org/accessible-formats.html for some excellent information on how to make web pages and other electronic documents accessible. At the moment, most blind and visually impaired podcasters are not allowed to participate on the Podsafe Music Network due to significant artificially imposed accessibility barriers. We in the blind community would like to work constructively with Podshow, in a spirit of cooperation and meeting each other halfway, to start resolving these issues in the very near future. Audio based media such as music and podcasting represent our most natural domain as blind people. It just would not be right at all if we were left out of even this aspect of life due to accessibility barriers that can be easily relieved with some creative energy, thought and action. I thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Darrell Shandrow

Blind Access Journal

Karen and I visited the Bishop family in Tucson again this Halloween weekend. A great time was had by all! Stay tuned for a possible episode of the podcast with some of the highlights from the trip.

As we live in an apartment complex, we will most likely not have any trick-or-treators. We haven’t had any in the past six years, so there is no reason to believe that pattern will change this time. Nevertheless, we will be watching a scarey movie or listening to a scarey podcast or two before going to bed a bit early tonight, as the 5:00 alarm rings just a tad too soon for us! Have a happy, accessible Halloween!

This is all we in the blind community ask of the technology industry: do your very best to consider our needs of equal participation through accessibility in the development and implementation of your hardware and software products and services. Read Grisoft Announces AVG Anti-virus 7.1: with Improved support for screen reader programs to understand how some companies are deciding to do the right thing.

Shownotes

If you’re blind, you’ll want to stay far, far away from the Video iPod. It offers absolutely nothing but complete inaccessibility! Listen as I discuss my firsthand experience with the device at the office yesterday. I also chat about Larry and Rob’s recent podcast on the (in)accessibility of digital audio recorders and wrap up with an inspirational podsafe tune by Natalie Brown reminding us that we need to believe in ourselves and have faith in all that we do.

Blind Cool Tech

Career profiles of real blind people, reviews of assistive and mainstream technology, sound seeing tours and much more provided by Larry Skutchan and an informal team of blind correspondents from around the world!

Natalie Brown

This sweet, soulful vocalist/songwriter with a dynamic, multi-octave vocal range has been charming global audiences with songs that entertain, empower and provoke since late 2000.

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Let’s get some healthy discussion going about the pros and cons of relating the consequences of inaccessibility for the blind to those that caused harm to African-Americans through blatant practices of racial segregation in the 1960’s and earlier here in the United States. Should we evoke references to segregation in our advocacy for the accessibility we must have in order to avoid being locked out of society? Please review my ideas for the design of a Blind Access Journal logo and send me an e-mail telling me exactly what you think.

In the background, there is a picture of an authentic “No Blacks Allowed”
sign from the 1950’s. The word “Blacks” has been changed to “Blind”. There
is a slash drawn through this sign to indicate our struggle against that
state of affairs…
In the forground, a blind person is depicted with a cane and some accessible
electronic technology. At the bottom is written:
Blind Access Journal

We Have a Dream of a More Inclusive, Accessible Future – Please join us!

http://www.blindaccessjournal.com

Listen as I chat about the upcoming Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference, Phoenix Arizona weather, Natalie Brown’s music, the Podsafe Music Network and a few other subjects while I get a haircut and have lunch at McDonald’s.

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Think Google’s inaccessible word verification is bad? Check out some of these new online banking security measures! They hold the promise of insuring our inability to participate in the world of online banking, which has provided us so much more access to our financial lives over the past ten years. There is a real, clear and present danger that we could suffer such startling consequences as loss of access to our hard earned money! Read INTERNET BANKING / New security measures coming online to safeguard accounts from the San Francisco Chronicle and tell us what you think we as a community should be doing to insure this potential new “No Blind People Allowed” sign does not destroy our ability to earn, deposit, save, invest and spend money on terms of equality with our sighted peers.