Screen readers have been on the market for over 25 years now. I remember using my first screen reader in the 80s. Access to software has always been problematic. My first computer was an Apple 2E with an echo PC synthesizer. This computer ran with proprietary software that allowed the blind person to use a special customized word processor that worked with the synthesizer. Today we would call it a self-voicing application. At the time word processing had begun to have some of the same easy-to-use features that we are all familiar with and expect today. However my system "braille edit" did not have a spellchecker. In fact for formatting I needed to know special symbols and codes to embedded my text.
Today much of the mainstream market is accessible or at least to a degree. Blind people using assistive technologies can expect that their assistive technology will work within the same applications that their peers are using. A blind person can use a word processor, spreadsheet or database applications most of the time with little or low difficulty. However you will note that I said little or no difficulty. The less common an application is the less likely a blind user will not be able to access it.
More and more often I hear people ask “so why is there inaccessible software when we've known for so long how screen readers work” and we know of ways to make things work”. The more I think about this particular question the more I realize that in many ways we are to blame. My own office relies and depends on a database for our internal use that we would never expect our students to use. The screen reader I'm using to write this the most popular screen reader to date has its own administrative tools for the networking version that the screen reader can't read. Yes a screen reader cannot read its own utilities. A blind administrator such as myself needs to work within the networking tools using workarounds and jury rigging. In fact with Microsoft Windows eight to be released in the next year or less it will still be the only operating system I am aware of that does not have an accessible installer. I've had to put off a major upgrade for a couple weeks now while I waited for assistance to do a Windows install.
With all the things I've mentioned above I bet you're wondering why do I use this screen reader or why do I use Windows. The answer is to compete in this market what choice do I have. However those choices put me in a situation where I myself have caused more inaccessible products to be released. If I only had the ability to say to my screen reader manufacturer “I won't buy any more of your products until your administrative tools are accessible“ and then also have all the thousands and thousands of other users say the same thing you could bet that this problem would be solved. But if I were to say it and nobody else would back me what good would it do. The database that our office uses internally is a very popular product. Several departments on campus have different flavors or iterations of the same product. The product is somewhat affordable and somewhat easier for non-technical people to use. Can I tell every single department on campus stop using this database and if I did tell them that would they listen? I can't say statements like that putting my needs over the needs of many non-technical staff that need to track students as much as I need to. And if I did speak up and make some people stop using the product how would this affect the non-technical people. I need to be much more important to affect the market as a person with a disability more than impact as the many thousands of non-technical administrative assistants perhaps we would have fewer inaccessible products then we already do. But the sheer numbers just don't work. I look again at my campus and from what I know that there are only six blind staff members on campus in a staff of 20 to 30,000. How can six people affect that many, Instead we are given readers and other tools that end up costing more for us to cope in the inaccessible environment.
I was speaking with one of my colleagues at another university that has a much stronger assistive technology policy. They are very open and strict about products they purchase being extraordinarily accessible. from the outside I watch this University and think of them as a leader in accessibility. However my colleague tells me that even their university makes decisions to often to by the inaccessible.
Recently our campus had a difficult decision about what to do when outsourcing some of our primary campus tools. We needed to find a more effective e-mail and calendaring system to modernize our capacity. Like many other campuses we were looking at the choices between Google and Microsoft. I praise our campus administration for making it through such a difficult process as well as they did. I appreciated the difficulty they had in making sure that everyone had a say in the process. I respect our administration even more because they specifically came to me as a known advocate for assistive technology to ask how I felt they should go. Ultimately I did not give them a yes or no in either direction. What I did was provide them the information that I know about how the two companies treat accessibility. I was very proud when I read through the very public decision matrix to see that accessibility was actually a line within the project. Even if they did not include my words in that matrix what the matrix showed was a picture of how the two companies deal differently with accessibility. Ultimately the campus went with Google not because it was the better product and if you look at the scoring Google actually did score lower but we went with Google because there is a visible trend of improvement overall. When it comes to accessibility Google declared openness and continued development to accessibility. However, Microsoft did not take any stance towards where accessibility would be in the future.
How can we as advocates for accessibility and technology help fix these problems in the future? In the open market the only way we can do this is through our buying power. My campus is a massive buying power and ultimately they said that what they want is improvement and change. The status quo although it may be accessible does have its little inaccessible gremlins that have never been addressed or changed. Apple has had an accessible installer since 2006 or earlier. Many UNIX versions or flavors have had accessible installers shortly thereafter. I seem to recall seeing a demonstration of how to install Solaris accessibly in 2007 or so. Two versions of Windows later and soon to be three were just not there yet.
How do we make sure that other institutions start to make the same kind of statement? People with disabilities need to speak up continually and eloquently. I'm a firm believer in winning people over to your side and not fighting to bring them over. I have worked for many years to demonstrate and educate this campus in what it means to be accessible. I had a small impact but more importantly the people I worked with have also had an impact. By teaching others about accessibility and access issues they themselves became advocates for the cause. I have never been aggressive or hostile to any program or person about accessibility instead I've always worked with them as a team member and always try to find a positive with every negative. Ultimately the people I work with become better advocates for accessibility than I could ever be independently. This work is how I feel I made a difference in some of our campuses decisions. I have recently been asked to join two national coalitions working on issues of adoption of technology. One of these coalitions is a group of universities working on a pilot for electronic text. This group is people from both IT and assistive technology organizations within the different universities. All of the people in this group want to find a way to make the products used in this pilot more accessible. I'm excited to be a part of such an organization but I know that we cannot be effective if the administrators at our campuses don't take note of what we say. I feel especially lucky to know that when I do come out with an evaluation of how accessible a product is or not. That my campus will listen and take what I say into account. They may not follow my suggestions but I do know that at least part of what I say is important. Those of us in the field need to speak up often and loudly. We need to be sure that we have enough content and noise going to the administrators that some of it will sink in.
But now I want to speak to those administrators. Ultimately you the CIOs and the educational technology administrators and you the faculty are responsible for the future. If you decide to purchase a product or use a tool or utility that may not be ultimately accessible for everyone you're sending a message to the manufacturers and vendors of products. Your message is loud and clear and has the force of the dollars or Euro or Yan or any other currency even open source behind it. When you buy a product that you don't know it's accessible you're telling the world its okay to be inaccessible. You need to educate yourself about what makes a product accessible and be sure that what you're buying or using is accessible. If you don't know find one of us in the industry of assistive technology to help you check the item for accessibility. Don't believe the vendor when they tell you it's accessible. You wouldn't buy a car that the salesman told you was fuel-efficient if it didn't have an actual fuel efficiency rating. Why would you buy a product that the vendor tells you is accessible. Also be aware when you use open source products. The open source market tends to be more accessible by design but also has those inaccessible pitfalls and barriers. The reason for this is that making things work accessibly takes a few more steps that sometimes get missed. Open source products also suffer from the problem of too many cooks in the kitchen. An open source project may have all the commitment in the world to accessibility but the team that worked on one module may be all it takes to break that particular product. The plus to open-source technology though is if you find something that's broken you're more than welcome to fix it. So contributing back to the community and making a more accessible product is actually the best decision an administrator could make.
To answer the question in the title who is responsible for all the inaccessible technology in this world? I have to look extraordinarily close to home. After all I bought Windows I bought my screen reader I made the choice to use the tools I use and work around those problems in the products I need to deal with. I'm not saying the people that have disabilities should stop working within accessible products I'm just saying that we have some responsibility in this process to. Ultimately the finger can be pointed precisely at consumers of products. If those consumers are individuals universities or government agencies we all share the blame. However I feel that the more money used to purchase a product that is inaccessible the more culpability when that product is inaccessible. I may not have a choice in what database my office uses but I do have a choice in the screen reader I use. I'm not completely blameless but I share the blame with much more important people than I'll ever be.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Can We Give Too Much
This month's topic is extraordinarily sensitive and delicate. I want to start by saying that I'm only expressing my opinion in this piece and not the opinion of anyone I am affiliated with.
I graduated from university in 1997. Then the ADA was only six years old and assistive technologies were nowhere near as good as they are today. Graduating from university seemed to be an extraordinarily elusive target at the time. Every semester I was only able to take three classes. Two or three times I enrolled in a fourth but was never able to complete all four. I was an extraordinarily independent student according to the disabled students programs at the various schools I attended. They said this because I rarely went to them to find readers or for exams. I look at the services offered to students today from various universities and realize if I had had those types of services while in university I could've finished much quicker and possibly even gone on to a second or third degree.
Students in postsecondary education in the United States have fantastic opportunities that nobody would've imagined 20 years ago. Almost every private and public school has staffing to support these disabled students throughout their entire education. Some schools have additional resources to support students even beyond legally mandated services. Students with disabilities have basic rights now protected by law. A student with a reading disability is guaranteed access to their texts in a format that works for them. Students with mobility impairments are guaranteed the right to classrooms and other facilities at a school that they need to use. Students with psychiatric disabilities can receive accommodations that will allow them to complete their education. I am proud to work at an institution that has always embraced it students with disabilities and help them to achieve what they wanted. The institution I work for receives additional funding from the Department of Education to provide non-mandated services for our students. Many of the services provided by this funding I would argue should be mandated. However, as they currently am not I appreciating our ability to provide the services.
Colleges the opportunity for young students to change from children to adults. Many incoming freshman are shocked and overwhelmed by the level of independence college brings. Few students adapt easily to the change. By graduation most college students have not only adjusted to the independence and freedom but have become extraordinarily effective independent adults. However, students with disabilities are at a higher risk of not achieving the same independence as their peers. Students with disabilities can become as dependent on a disability services program as they were to their parents and support network they had through grade school. Disabled students programs help their students negotiate their accommodations such as accessing course materials or facilities. Disabled student services are there to guarantee the students access. In my opinion sometimes these programs may cause students to miss out on some of life's valuable lessons.
My philosophy when working with my students is that students should be served as effectively as possible. But the students should be deeply involved in every step of the process. This is known as the interactive accommodation process. The interactive process fails when students are not given the ability to contribute as much as they can to the process. For example if a disabled student services office automatically distributes accommodation letters to faculty students can very easily avoid communicating their needs. By being able to effectively communicate with their faculty students can learn how to then effectively communicate in other life situations. A student that has never had to explain what accommodations they need may not even know. I'm not saying that students instructor should not be automatically informed with an accommodation letter but disabled students also have the responsibility to work with their instructor to see that their needs are met. If an accommodation letter says that a student needs a room alone I believe the student should be responsible for working with the instructor. At some point in time well in advance the student should at least sit down with the instructor and explain what a room alone can consist of in their situation. Can a room alone be in an office? Can the room alone have a window? Both of these factors are very important. If the room alone may be an office with a ringing phone that may be okay for some students but not for others. Some students may be highly distracted visually so a window may cause problems.
Students receiving their course materials in a specialized format should also be extraordinarily involved in the process. A disability service provider can only really determine, by using students documentation, what types of accommodation may be effective. However, the disability service provider needs to engage with the student to be sure how that accommodation is realized. A student with a learning disability that affects their reading may benefit from one of several assistive technologies. Only by closely working with the student to try the variety of products can the best fit be found. For example, does the student need to hear the text, or do pictures distract from the content, how should mathematical formulas be represented, does the student want the footnotes in-line or somewhere else. If an alternative media Center creates all their alternative media exactly the same they can't serve all the students who require alternative media. Even to students with the same disability may have extremely diverse needs. Students should never step out of this process. Students should also learn how to create their own alternative media. Students should be provided the opportunity to experiment with the tools used by alternative media to create the material. If the student is not provided this opportunity I feel they are cheated later in life. If someone has always scanned your books for you and you graduate there is no one left to scan your books for you. The most valuable skill I learned as a student was to create my own electronic texts from hard copies. I admit I prefer using a human reader for most of my work because I find it quicker and better for me. But knowing how to scan something quickly when no one else is around that can read I wouldn't give up for the world. Some schools allow students use of assistive technology that the school owns. Our campus helps students find what's best and then acquire their own. Any student I work with is offered assistance in acquiring their own personal assistive technology. Students then have the opportunity to use and learn as much about the technology that they can. They also are able to take what they used in college to their job and nonacademic life.
Sadly many students are not offered these opportunities. And others that are offer these opportunities do not take it vantage of them. The students who do not take advantage of these opportunities when they are presented are dependent on the system to receive their accommodation. By learning what is required to receive an accommodation students are better able to work live and play independently.
I graduated from university in 1997. Then the ADA was only six years old and assistive technologies were nowhere near as good as they are today. Graduating from university seemed to be an extraordinarily elusive target at the time. Every semester I was only able to take three classes. Two or three times I enrolled in a fourth but was never able to complete all four. I was an extraordinarily independent student according to the disabled students programs at the various schools I attended. They said this because I rarely went to them to find readers or for exams. I look at the services offered to students today from various universities and realize if I had had those types of services while in university I could've finished much quicker and possibly even gone on to a second or third degree.
Students in postsecondary education in the United States have fantastic opportunities that nobody would've imagined 20 years ago. Almost every private and public school has staffing to support these disabled students throughout their entire education. Some schools have additional resources to support students even beyond legally mandated services. Students with disabilities have basic rights now protected by law. A student with a reading disability is guaranteed access to their texts in a format that works for them. Students with mobility impairments are guaranteed the right to classrooms and other facilities at a school that they need to use. Students with psychiatric disabilities can receive accommodations that will allow them to complete their education. I am proud to work at an institution that has always embraced it students with disabilities and help them to achieve what they wanted. The institution I work for receives additional funding from the Department of Education to provide non-mandated services for our students. Many of the services provided by this funding I would argue should be mandated. However, as they currently am not I appreciating our ability to provide the services.
Colleges the opportunity for young students to change from children to adults. Many incoming freshman are shocked and overwhelmed by the level of independence college brings. Few students adapt easily to the change. By graduation most college students have not only adjusted to the independence and freedom but have become extraordinarily effective independent adults. However, students with disabilities are at a higher risk of not achieving the same independence as their peers. Students with disabilities can become as dependent on a disability services program as they were to their parents and support network they had through grade school. Disabled students programs help their students negotiate their accommodations such as accessing course materials or facilities. Disabled student services are there to guarantee the students access. In my opinion sometimes these programs may cause students to miss out on some of life's valuable lessons.
My philosophy when working with my students is that students should be served as effectively as possible. But the students should be deeply involved in every step of the process. This is known as the interactive accommodation process. The interactive process fails when students are not given the ability to contribute as much as they can to the process. For example if a disabled student services office automatically distributes accommodation letters to faculty students can very easily avoid communicating their needs. By being able to effectively communicate with their faculty students can learn how to then effectively communicate in other life situations. A student that has never had to explain what accommodations they need may not even know. I'm not saying that students instructor should not be automatically informed with an accommodation letter but disabled students also have the responsibility to work with their instructor to see that their needs are met. If an accommodation letter says that a student needs a room alone I believe the student should be responsible for working with the instructor. At some point in time well in advance the student should at least sit down with the instructor and explain what a room alone can consist of in their situation. Can a room alone be in an office? Can the room alone have a window? Both of these factors are very important. If the room alone may be an office with a ringing phone that may be okay for some students but not for others. Some students may be highly distracted visually so a window may cause problems.
Students receiving their course materials in a specialized format should also be extraordinarily involved in the process. A disability service provider can only really determine, by using students documentation, what types of accommodation may be effective. However, the disability service provider needs to engage with the student to be sure how that accommodation is realized. A student with a learning disability that affects their reading may benefit from one of several assistive technologies. Only by closely working with the student to try the variety of products can the best fit be found. For example, does the student need to hear the text, or do pictures distract from the content, how should mathematical formulas be represented, does the student want the footnotes in-line or somewhere else. If an alternative media Center creates all their alternative media exactly the same they can't serve all the students who require alternative media. Even to students with the same disability may have extremely diverse needs. Students should never step out of this process. Students should also learn how to create their own alternative media. Students should be provided the opportunity to experiment with the tools used by alternative media to create the material. If the student is not provided this opportunity I feel they are cheated later in life. If someone has always scanned your books for you and you graduate there is no one left to scan your books for you. The most valuable skill I learned as a student was to create my own electronic texts from hard copies. I admit I prefer using a human reader for most of my work because I find it quicker and better for me. But knowing how to scan something quickly when no one else is around that can read I wouldn't give up for the world. Some schools allow students use of assistive technology that the school owns. Our campus helps students find what's best and then acquire their own. Any student I work with is offered assistance in acquiring their own personal assistive technology. Students then have the opportunity to use and learn as much about the technology that they can. They also are able to take what they used in college to their job and nonacademic life.
Sadly many students are not offered these opportunities. And others that are offer these opportunities do not take it vantage of them. The students who do not take advantage of these opportunities when they are presented are dependent on the system to receive their accommodation. By learning what is required to receive an accommodation students are better able to work live and play independently.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Is it fun or is it frustration
As long as I remember I've always liked trying out new things. A new “toy” would keep me in thrilled for hours. Over the past two months I've had a lot of new toys to play with. I've been doing a little bit more work with inkling on the iPod they gave me and testing out chrome OS for Google. Technology is expanding at a much faster rate than ever before and I'm starting to feel it's leaving me behind. So being able to jump in the pool and start testing things again is lots of fun.
I've seen many of my friends use IOS extraordinarily well. Some of them just fly across that touchscreen. However, every time I sit down to trying using one of these devices I feel completely inept. Half the time I touch the screen nothing happens or the wrong thing happens. Just trying to pick an application from the home screen is a chore. I swear I must have something wrong with my fingers that I can't get these devices to work for me. Yesterday I sat down with someone admittedly that was cited and described a few of the gestures needed to work through the application and he was able to get it to work as well as all those other blind friends of mine. When I tried myself after he was able to do it I tossed the iPad down and discussed and went for dinner. My friend said well I can see what's on the screen which does help me a bit. However I don't think it's the case in this situation. Almost every blind person I know is using an iPhone and loving it. So why am I so different? Yesterday afternoon I tried another touchscreen device that was supposed to be accessible but also failed with it quite astoundingly. Maybe some people just aren't meant to use a touchscreen.
While playing with the chrome book and chrome OS I've had a somewhat more successful experience. After all it's not a touchscreen. I really enjoyed working with the system and trying to learn how to do it. I've only cheated once or twice and asked Googlers how to do one or two things. Otherwise I started to learn my way around the system. It's been a very interesting experiment for me. I've seen one or two improvements that have come in just in the short time that I've been using the system. When I first got the unit one or two of the buttons that were pretty key to the interface were not labeled. But I've seen these fixed very quickly. My overall impression of the system is that it's still very new and it still very beta but if they keep working at it this might be a very useful product. I really enjoy using docs in an interactive way. It's kind of cool to know that somebody can add something to my document from wherever they are in the world while the document is open for me. And then being able to chat about the document at the same time accessibly was pretty neat. I'm really interested to see how this goes in the future. I must say at this point in time I'm still not considering it as a web browser but more as a productivity tool. Yes I can browse the web with it but the time it takes is still too long. Perhaps as the product matures or I learn more about how to use it I will start browsing more.
I've also had to start testing a few devices for work. I've been asked to evaluate different devices for scanning. It's been a long time since I've actually had to play with multiple devices and compare them. I was rather chagrined to learn that some of these devices are still not being released anymore accessibly than in the past. One of the devices had a completely inaccessible installer splash screen. Thank God for the new OCR feature of jaws I was able to get the thing installed long enough to realize that the product itself wasn't worth using. At one point in time my boss sat down to work with one of the devices with me. And I explained to him that I really enjoy doing this kind of testing. However at times it does get frustrating. He said it was something that would drive him crazy. This is a very legitimate response. However, that's why I'm the tester, I actually focus on how to fix it and not what the problem is.
I've seen many of my friends use IOS extraordinarily well. Some of them just fly across that touchscreen. However, every time I sit down to trying using one of these devices I feel completely inept. Half the time I touch the screen nothing happens or the wrong thing happens. Just trying to pick an application from the home screen is a chore. I swear I must have something wrong with my fingers that I can't get these devices to work for me. Yesterday I sat down with someone admittedly that was cited and described a few of the gestures needed to work through the application and he was able to get it to work as well as all those other blind friends of mine. When I tried myself after he was able to do it I tossed the iPad down and discussed and went for dinner. My friend said well I can see what's on the screen which does help me a bit. However I don't think it's the case in this situation. Almost every blind person I know is using an iPhone and loving it. So why am I so different? Yesterday afternoon I tried another touchscreen device that was supposed to be accessible but also failed with it quite astoundingly. Maybe some people just aren't meant to use a touchscreen.
While playing with the chrome book and chrome OS I've had a somewhat more successful experience. After all it's not a touchscreen. I really enjoyed working with the system and trying to learn how to do it. I've only cheated once or twice and asked Googlers how to do one or two things. Otherwise I started to learn my way around the system. It's been a very interesting experiment for me. I've seen one or two improvements that have come in just in the short time that I've been using the system. When I first got the unit one or two of the buttons that were pretty key to the interface were not labeled. But I've seen these fixed very quickly. My overall impression of the system is that it's still very new and it still very beta but if they keep working at it this might be a very useful product. I really enjoy using docs in an interactive way. It's kind of cool to know that somebody can add something to my document from wherever they are in the world while the document is open for me. And then being able to chat about the document at the same time accessibly was pretty neat. I'm really interested to see how this goes in the future. I must say at this point in time I'm still not considering it as a web browser but more as a productivity tool. Yes I can browse the web with it but the time it takes is still too long. Perhaps as the product matures or I learn more about how to use it I will start browsing more.
I've also had to start testing a few devices for work. I've been asked to evaluate different devices for scanning. It's been a long time since I've actually had to play with multiple devices and compare them. I was rather chagrined to learn that some of these devices are still not being released anymore accessibly than in the past. One of the devices had a completely inaccessible installer splash screen. Thank God for the new OCR feature of jaws I was able to get the thing installed long enough to realize that the product itself wasn't worth using. At one point in time my boss sat down to work with one of the devices with me. And I explained to him that I really enjoy doing this kind of testing. However at times it does get frustrating. He said it was something that would drive him crazy. This is a very legitimate response. However, that's why I'm the tester, I actually focus on how to fix it and not what the problem is.
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