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Advocacy Group For the Blind Slams Google Apps
angry tapir writes "The National Federation of the Blind claims that Google Apps lacks required features for blind people and wants the US government to investigate whether schools that adopt the e-mail and collaboration suite run afoul of civil rights laws. The NFB is asking the US Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division to probe whether New York University and Northwestern University are discriminating against blind employees and students through their use of Google Apps' Education edition."
This is also problem with so many open source projects. They all forget about disabilities and blind people. I've tried to get them to support them, but no one is interested adding such features. That's what proprietary software has done a lot better - they actually do account for disabled and blind people too. It's a major obstacle with open source software, but for example Microsoft and other big companies have generally supported such features.
Blind people designed Slashdot's look you insensitive clod.
At least gmail have an HTML mode. But I think the problem is that we need better screenreaders more suitable to modern Internet.
From the title I was initially thinking of Android apps since that's more in the news, but that made me think how it's going to be almost impossible for the blind or partially sighted to move to current touch screen technology.
Anyone know of any research in that field?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
I have a fairly simple solution. Allow the disabled users to use other software. The law requires businesses to make "reasonable accommodations", not change the entire way of doing business. Other apps will integrate nicely with Google Apps.
iOS has many features for blind people - apparently it's one of the best machines out there to use.
The touchscreen interface seems particular unsuited for blind users.
How about an arbitrary braille surface: addressable pins under a thin silicone (or similar) membrane? The user interface would of course have to handle finger movements differently since the user would read by fingers.
Actually that would make a pretty badass smartphone/pda for the ubernerd. You could read text messages with your hand in your coat on your screen. Typing would suck less now with tactile feedback. That's the only thing I miss after moving from a mechanical keypad to a touchscreen.
What I think would be interesting is if a blind person were to put forth the effort to create applications friendly to blind people.
I'm trans, you know, the minority of people who are so small and misunderstood that we're not even allowed to have sob stories the way most minorities have, much less sob stories that high school kids are indoctrinated with (not saying it's a good thing, just stating a fact). Somehow trans people find ways of navigating a cis gendered world, often at great expense to themselves. I'd give up my sight any day to be cis gendered (better be careful what I wish for lol), so I guess I really have no sympathy for blind people despite their enormous hardships.
When you're in my minority, the world looks at you and says, "Figure it out on your own damned time at your own damned expense." When you're blind, the world looks at you and says, "Damn, that sucks. (And it does, having interacted with blind people on the bus, again, not saying it's a cake-walk just stating facts.) Here, have a government check every month. Here, have free care. Here, ride the bus for free. Here, have a free education. And if you don't get a job, don't worry, we'll keep sending you a check so you can eat."
To be fair, blindness is a much more obvious handicap than being trans. In a perfect world, being trans wouldn't be a handicap at all, but I don't see that perfect world happening any time soon.
I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a difference between being handicapped and handi-capable, no matter how cheesy that sounds. We each have our own deficiencies to overcome, so I have a difficult time understand why I should bend over backwards for someone else's deficiency. If health insurance covered any of my expenses related to being trans, I might have a different attitude, but this is a harsh world populated by harsh people. I don't see why the blind or any other group should escape that harshness.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
are you kidding me? FOSS can't even come up with decent UIs for the sighted...
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Actually, according to the Americans with Disabilites Act, they are "violating your 'rights' should they fail to make accommodations for your demographic," if it's a place of public accomodation, educational facilities included.
I find it pretty ridiculous that minority groups act like they have a right to any convenient piece of technology that comes down the pipes being tailored to their particular needs.
Well, it's your right to think that way, but I'm sure you'd feel differently if you were blind, and your computer's screen-reader program was unable to parse important emails from your professor.
Its not their fault. Google is still in beta!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
if it's a place of public accomodation
Huh?
Well, it's your right to think that way, but I'm sure you'd feel differently if you were blind, and your computer's screen-reader program was unable to parse important emails from your professor.
Yes. The people affected do tend to have biased opinions (far more so than usual) on the matter more than not. What's your point?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Blind people lack required features for Google Apps.
Here at the college I work at, yes it is outsourced.
Students access it via a single sign on link from within our home grown SIS, and are redirected to gmail.
Students only have their password to the SIS - the pw for the actual gmail account (on a subdomain of my.educationalinstitution.edu) is not known, so even if the students knew they could use POP or IMAP to access it, they don't have a working password to access it with.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If the government (in the form of publicly funded schools) requires you to use specific software then you can't just go and "spend your money elsewhere". You have to use that software, even though it is physically impossible for you to do so, and despite the fact that there are alternatives you could use if allowed. That is what the accusations of violating civil rights are about.
I suppose the NFB's going rate is lower than your average anti-trust congressman's office.
Great savings for Microsoft. ;-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Bonk!
Americans With Disabilities Act and ADA Amendments Act of 2008 says you are wrong.
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. Disability is defined by the ADA as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity."
I work in educational support for the rural disabled in Alaska.
when you have a disability, deal with it
This is a sig. Deal with it
Is that your motto or something?
if it's a place of public accomodation
Huh?
I'm sorry, I guess I made a typo. I meant "accommodation".
What's your point?
I was providing an example for AC so that he may empathize with people dissimilar from him.
Blind people designed Slashdot's look you insensitive clod.
OMG! Ponies!
Google provides an IMAP gateway for all of its mail, including Google Apps.
These people can use any email client under the sun to access their mail, including the vaunted Outlook.
This whole thing seems like a money grab to me.
Yes, it's really outsourcing mail, cloud computing, calendaring, etc to Google.
Everything is on their servers, just like how gmail is.
The admins at the agency that has a Google account can manage everything, add users, manage users, etc, but it's all on Google's cloud
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/cloud.html
They have it for students, K-12s (my old workplace went to Google Apps in 2006), higher ed, ed agencies and government.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/
http://www.google.com/educators/p_apps.html
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/k12.html
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/university.html
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/government/index.html
iOS has many features for blind people - apparently it's one of the best machines out there to use.
Yup. From the first "enable" to the last "write", although "show run" gets a bit boring through a text-to-speech device.
I'm sorry, I guess I made a typo. I meant "accommodation".
Well, I meant to ask what that has to do with Google Apps.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Unless you're only into games and Photoshop, for most people computers are primarily a textual medium. The visual bits around it are just there to make the text more accessible, but you can can generally use computers without the eye candy. Most normal software can be easily navigated using only the keyboard, and there's software that reads the captions of windows and the text in controls.
But the web has been a great step backwards for blind people, and for no good reason other than that most of the people behind the web technologies weren't blind. But there is no particular reason why websites should be so terrible to navigate by keyboard - it's still mostly text with a few input fields here and there. But in practice a lot of websites are terrible and Google Apps is one of the worst offenders.
Because I don't want to end on a negative note, I would like to point out that computers haven't made life worse for the blind, quite the contrary. Cheap text-based communication has ruled out a lot of social disconnect. And it is much easier to get an e-book or internet article and have your computer read it to you or present it using a Braille device, then it is to hope that the local library has a heavy clumsy Braille book that happens to interest you.
Maybe one day you will befriend someone who is blind and maybe that will give you new perspective.
Here at the college I work at, yes it is outsourced.
Students access it via a single sign on link from within our home grown SIS, and are redirected to gmail.
Students only have their password to the SIS - the pw for the actual gmail account (on a subdomain of my.educationalinstitution.edu) is not known, so even if the students knew they could use POP or IMAP to access it, they don't have a working password to access it with.
That is the fault of the college of course. There is nothing preventing the school from enabling POP access, and providing some password for login (either the SIS password, or some random password that can be seen in the SIS, and perhaps changes when the SIS password changes).
If the college does not want to put in the effort to do that then it can and should be sued for violating the ADA and/or equivalent state/local laws. Simple as that.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
> I don't see why the blind or any other group should escape that harshness.
They don't escape it.
That society and current law have some compassion for some groups could mean we're on our way to having compassion for more groups. The LG part of the LGBT world seems to be slowly gaining some acceptance, perhaps the T part will also increasingly benefit from societal attitude shifts.
And blind programmers do put forth effort to create applications, for sighted and not.
I have a visually impaired child. We are blessed to be part of a community that helps us significantly with our special needs. But that assistance isn't something that we are entitled to receive. It is a kindness and generosity. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) doesn't speak for all blind people, and I think that their attempt to leverage the US government and civil rights laws to go after open project software is both ignorant and counterproductive. There are much better ways to handle this issue.
The NFB could try asking nicely. They could try asking someone else to code the functionality, and share it with everyone. They could pay for it to be coded.
But they are in no way entitled to force any third-party to spend additional time and effort coding in added functionality for something they coded.
My son actually coded up a timekeeping application for the iPhone. He is 17, has a blind sibling, and didn't think about making it "ADA compliant". That doesn't make him evil. It doesn't mean that Apple has a right to force him to make his application ADA compliant. This isn't just a Google Apps issue. It is an issue for all open software projects.
The better way to handle this issue is to speak politely with the major open source projects and companies regarding embedding ADA features into the software development kits. Suing Google over Google Apps, that's just ignorant and stupid.
So no one can!
I really don't understand this mentality. Because a small minority of the population can't use someone, we should restrict it from everyone. I'm not saying that people shouldn't make the effort, but sometimes it's just not required, or its too much extra effort. If I had to make a free app blind-friendly, that could be a lot of extra work, so it might end up not being created.
Screw it, we shouldn't even be allowed sight! Everyone should wear blindfolds, else its just unfair!
I want to ask the following seemingly silly question, and you seem to be well informed about this;
Why is it LGBT? Is it coincidence that they are ordered from most to least societally acceptable? Why not alphabetical?
Also why L and G? Seems to me they are the same thing. The attraction to the same sex as opposed to the attraction to the opposite.
As old people die off I believe all of the above will gain more acceptance.
It was funny watching them take a few swings at it first..
I'm currently working on a couple of government projects that must adhere to the latest accessibility standards, and they include this little doozy: no javascript.
Think about that. No javascript.
HTML was never designed for applications. We have javascript to get around this. No matter how sophisticated the "toolkit" or "framework", it's all still a stupid, ugly hack. But it works.
HTML alone though? Someone needs to pull these people aside and tell them that they've gone batshit insane.
I have worked with the NFB on projects before, and prior to that when I was contracting at IBM, I was the section 508 guy for my group. I have a decent bit of insight into accessible software development, and push for it's inclusion at my current workplace.
However, realize that the NFB is an advocacy group. They do not care about business needs, or the cost of adding support for screen readers to your application. They could care less that you need to spend 40% of the project costs retooling, or increase the work effort by 20%, in order to support approximately .3% of the population. They simply want it to work for them - as it should be, and the rest is your problem.
So, what's is that problem?
Well, businesses have roadblocks in realizing that providing accessibility standards for your software is a losing proposition - the NBT actively attempts to cloud this viewpoint or strike it down as morally objectionable. However, it is unlikely that the level of effort that goes into producing an accessible application or website will ever show any reasonable return. Additionally, as with all software, the later in the game is is added, the more expensive it is - so retooling an app is worse than the cost of folding it in from the beginning. So we're looking at a big expense with no return - low ROI.
Beyond all this, non-sighted or otherwise impaired individuals are already coping with non-accessible interfaces on a daily basis. They have specialty software that helps them cope with this, and in other cases, there are learned workarounds. Just like a Microsoft product user, they are conditioned to accept the failures, and while aggravating, they can usually accomplish their goals regardless.
So, what are my points?
1) Never agree to retool an existing app (though you can accept submissions)
2) While in the planning stages decide what level of accessibility support you're going to aim for. It's increasingly expensive, especially the QA side where there's a severe demand for accessibility testers. Make a rational cost-based analysis. Some things you get for free just by adhering to strict HTML standards (like providing alt text for your images AND LINKS, or properly labeling your tables with a summary attribute, and column descriptions) for webapps.
3) Don't ever sweat the compliance if it's hard to do at any one point - it's simply not financially worth it. Go for as much as you can. All the rich "web 2.0" features which make the difference between a sale or a miss don't translate well in the accessibility world. It won't help your product if it's accessible if no one is going to use it. Remember - unless the laws change, compliance is usually a 'good to have feature' - not a 'must have'. Prioritize it well.
4) Harsh though it may seem, you can rely on your disabled users to provide their own solutions. Your software is unlikely to be a required resource - worse comes to worse, they can always use something else willing to lose money by supporting specialty groups.
so genuine discrimination is the kind that you yourself personally notice, or what? isn't being required to use a form of service which depends on a faculty one does not have, but is not intrinsic to the service itself, a form of discrimination?
it seems sort of like a continuum to me, and since you're not making a pure libertarian argument that private parties should be free to discriminate, i'm just wondering where you draw the line.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The universities in question switched their systems over to google apps, which does not provide suitable access for the blind, therefore, the universities are being sued over it under the Americans with Disabilites Act.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
They tried to slam them... but missed!
I guess that for "trans" you meant transexual. My excuses if it means something else.
I'm trans, you know, the minority of people who are so small and misunderstood that we're not even allowed to have sob stories the way most minorities have, much less sob stories that high school kids are indoctrinated with (not saying it's a good thing, just stating a fact). Somehow trans people find ways of navigating a cis gendered world, often at great expense to themselves. I'd give up my sight any day to be cis gendered (better be careful what I wish for lol), so I guess I really have no sympathy for blind people despite their enormous hardships.
When you're in my minority, the world looks at you and says, "Figure it out on your own damned time at your own damned expense." When you're blind, the world looks at you and says, "Damn, that sucks. (And it does, having interacted with blind people on the bus, again, not saying it's a cake-walk just stating facts.) Here, have a government check every month. Here, have free care. Here, ride the bus for free. Here, have a free education. And if you don't get a job, don't worry, we'll keep sending you a check so you can eat."
Bullshit. You may be a trans, but that does not mean:
So, there is discrimination about transexuals... cry me a river. Look a little beyond and you'll see people discriminated (and worse) by their sexual orientation, race, gender, politicals beliefs, religion, place of birth. And yes, against the handicapped. I am not saying it is just, I am not saying it shouldn't be easier for you. I am saying that I feel that "as I am being discriminated against I do not like it when other people get some relief" is a very miserable thought to have, let alone to write in a post.
And please note that these helps that you think are so big things are just a way of leveraging their disabilities a little. It is neither a consolation prize, nor a way to compensate for the discrimination against them. It is a way to leverage their disabilities so they can get into a more equal "playing field". Other than the discrimination issues... is there anything that I can do that you can't?
Why can't
if it's a place of public accomodation
Huh?
Well, it's your right to think that way, but I'm sure you'd feel differently if you were blind, and your computer's screen-reader program was unable to parse important emails from your professor.
Yes. The people affected do tend to have biased opinions (far more so than usual) on the matter more than not. What's your point?
I don't follow your reasoning... blind people is biased and non-blind people not?
Unless you can point me to an objective statement that you and me know to be truth (i.e. "God says blind people are so by His design and you must not help them to overcome their disabilities"), then there is no "fixed point" to claim that some opinion (the one you are against) is biased while your opinion is not biased.
To me, your post translates into: "I am not blind so I do not share the opinion most blind people have, so my bias is different to theirs".
Why can't
Let's say you came to work one day and all the stairs and elevators had been replaced with climbing ropes. You'd still be a perfectly competent WHATEVER_YOU_DO_FOR_A_LIVING, but you'd never be able to reach your third-floor office, and all because you can't climb thirty-foot ropes--boo hoo, you whiner!
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
harharhar
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Read the laws yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADA_Amendments_Act_of_2008
It doesn't say "shouldn't expect limitations", it does say "can't be discriminated against", saying "I know this sounds very un-PC but damn, when you have a disability, deal with it, there are going to be some things closed off to you. You'll just have to do what you can." That's discrimination. Replace "you have a disability, deal with it with "you are black, deal with it" and you'll understand.
Looking at those Video, it seems that the problem is more to do with the functionality of the screen reader, which seems unsuited to interactive web apps. I suppose the only real way to avoid this is to have the functionality interface with desktop software that the user is used to. But Google actually does this remarkably well. Gmail can be accessed via IMAP and POP3, Docs can be shared easily via links and downloaded as in standard formats, you can use Google groups with plain old email and Google calendar can also be synchronized with desktop applications. Hotmail didn't even support POP3 until about two years ago.
I guess I'd have preferred a comparison and an explanation of how it should have been done. I would also be more convinced if they mentioned why outsourcing email is a problem when the mail server can be accessed entirely the same way as a university mail server.
I don't follow your reasoning
What I tried to convey was that the arguments of "if you were in this situation, you'd have a different opinion" are rather pointless. It is more likely that you will not be able to take an objective standpoint if you are in the situation yourself (not that anyone who is in the situation is wrong, but that's not the point). The fact that someone would change their opinion if they were put into the situation is essentially irrelevant and does not mean that what they were incorrect.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If it is open source, then let them add this functionality themselves.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Who is "they"?
Roll up your sleeves and pitch in or STFU.
>implying I can't climb a 30' rope
You know, back in the day being blind or stupid was a problem that would take care of itself naturally. I miss those days.
You can't legislate away reality, no matter how hard you try. The ADA is not only stupid, but it's unconstitutional. There is nowhere in the constitution that says that the Federal government has the authority to require businesses or other private enterprises to accommodate anyone. No, the commerce clause does not work that way. Don't even try to suggest it does. The fact that the government currently uses it in an unconstitutional manner to shoehorn their noses into everything is irrelevant.
Perhaps you might try a different phone that comes with better readability in mind instead of complaining about the one you have.
I don't understand. Are you saying people who are black shouldn't have to deal with whatever occurs in their life as a result? Before you answer - realise there are also black-only scholarships and black-only sports events, etc.
If you're saying there should be no consequence to being black, you're also saying that there should be no black-only scholarships. Unless you're saying "oh, no - only the 'bad' things are discrimination.. there's no such thing as reverse discrimination" which would just show you to be a bullshit leftie hippy with his head in the clouds.
Saying "people who can't see, shouldn't be impeded in life in any way and to even think they are is DISCRIMINATION" its lunacy. Sorry your parents didn't tell you, you're an idiot. They are ALREADY IMPEDED by the very fact they can't see. Now, I can't tell whats going through those mis-firing neurons of yours, but perhaps you think what you're trying to say is that "being blind isn't a limitation, considering it such is discrimination."
It's a limitation in the very definition of the word. A deaf person is limited in that they can't hear. A blind person is limited in that they can't see. You're limited in that you can't have an original thought. Thus - neither saying a blind person is going to have to deal with anything that arises in their life as a consequense of being blind, nor saying a black person is going to have to deal with any consequence that arises in their life as a result of being black, is discrimination. It's simple fact.
Pretending that all people are treated equally is self-delusion. Sure - they should be, but they're not. They never will be. There's plenty of shit I "deal with" in my predominantly black neighbourhood because I'm white. But I don't whinge about it on forums and say "but the law says no discrimination!". That's not the real world. That's a made up imaginary space in polititians campaign slogans.
If "disability" is defined as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity." then "you have a disability, deal with it" is accurate by admission. The individual has an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. If they didn't - all things being equal and nobody ever being prevented from doing anything in your perfect imaginary bubble world - then they wouldn't fall under that classification, would they?
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Yeah, I know. I'm an insensitive bastard. But even you might have trouble after that grizzly bear bites off your left hand. Point is that there are constraints needed for a job--I suppose firemen might need to climb a thirty-foot rope to rescue panda cubs from flaming orphanages--and some are more-or-less arbitrary, and this may fall into the latter category.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
If a bear bites off my left hand I've got bigger problems than whether or not I can climb a rope to work in an office, and I wouldn't expect an employer to go out of its way to change things just for me.
And Google isn't doing anything to rectify the situation despite the following bug reports: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4547 http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3382 and http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5876 Android lacking adjustable font sizes is inexcusable. Android's font size is tiny on small screens. When I installed it on a friend's Neo Freerunner the first thing my mum noticed was that the fonts were tiny. I can choose a different distribution on my Neo Freerunner, but someone who buys an Android phone without root privileges cannot.
When did the United States Supreme Court rule ADA unconstitutional?
It hasn't, thus the ADA remains constitutional.
Has anyone participating in this discussion actually done web design for accessibility? I've been looking at it for our course management system. It's not trivial, but it's also not difficult. In increases development time / cost, but probably not more than 10%. It's perfectly possible to design reasonable visual interfaces that work fine with common screen readers. A sighted user won't even be aware that it's been done. It's a combination of avoiding some standard pitfalls that a screen reader can't reasonably work around, and putting appropriate labels and tags on everything. A lot of tools are accessible. jQuery has been doing an increasingly good job. The CK editor has as well.
The issue isn't just blind people. Older people (like me, to be honest) sometimes need to increase font size, and would really like it if the web page design doesn't fall apart.
There's no way you're going to get away with saying "sorry, they should know they're handicapped." The law won't allow it, and in my opinion shouldn't. I might feel differently if there weren't reasonable approaches to dealing with it. The big problem is getting web developers to think about it, and to try their software with a screen reader now and then.
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/1140155/Massachusetts-CIO-defends-move-to-OpenDocument http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/massachusetts-open-source-fight-becomes-partisan/506 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/top-national-advocate-for-the-disabled-sets-terms-for-endorsement-of-opendocument-format/2163 (among many others)
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
The Constitution isn't some magical document that takes a council of sages to decode. Whether or not the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional or not is irrelevant. The bottom line is that there is absolutely nothing in the constitution that gives the Feds the power to create or enforce the ADA, and thus it is unconstitutional.
It wouldn't be Google violating your rights in that case - it would be the organization providing "a place of public accommodation" etc using Google's software.
Coincidentally, that is why Microsoft and others have good accessibility support - not because they're required, but because they want to sell to public sector and various private businesses where ADA compliance is necessary. No compliance, no sale.
Remember, some of these blind folk may have been working, studying, and paying tuition there for years, and now everything's been changed, for maybe not much reason. "Clean out your desk, Perkins--a man who can't throw a javelin better than that has no business in shoe distribution--God knows how you almost got vested in the pension plan."
Besides, schools should be concentrating on sharp minds, not sharp eyes.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Damn. "Who's," not "whose." Believe it or not, there no apparent cognitive deficits.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Who in the United States decides if a law is Constitutional?
The Courts and the final say is the United States Supreme Court, so show me where the Federal Courts have ruled ADA unconstitutional.
They decided that Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act was unconstitutional insofar as it allowed states to be sued by private citizens for money damages - I don't agree with that, but the rest of the Act wasn't ruled unconstitutional.
You don't get to just say "it's unconstitutional!" and have that stick.
I do get to say it's unconstitutional because I've read the Constitution and it acts as a simple yes or no question.
"Is this explicitly authorized in the Constitution?"
If the answer is anything other than "Yes, it is explicitly authorized in the written text of the constitution." then the issue is unconstitutional.
The current government is almost entirely unconstitutional and has been for a long time. The Supreme Court included. Their rulings don't particularly matter when they're contrary to the document they're supposed to be upholding.
Damn. "Who's," not "whose." Believe it or not, there no apparent cognitive deficits.
Seems to me that perhaps they should start focusing a bit more on sharp eyes.
It's a university, for God's sake! They're supposed to be four-eyed eggheads
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Sincere apologies!
Please ignore previous comment..
I missed the "not" in your statement.
Back to the discussion at hand (or eye):
This is something I've had a hand in for quite some time; and unfortunately the conclusion that I've come to professionally is that it just is not possible to 'enforce' a specific type of behaviour on the current level of technology available used to access the 'net.
It's sad, but true.
Even with good standards there exists means for the standards to be broken. You can't police every site. You can't keelhaul every company and coder that doesn't comply with standards or means to provide for a small percentage of their users.
At best you can promote and support standards which make a service available to all and work towards the majority and the minority enjoying the same services.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I don't see why the blind or any other group should escape that harshness.
they don't. I've worked for blind people, I've worked for deaf people. I'm disabled as well and we all get no end of crap from tabs (temporarily able-bodied).
I lost roughly 30% of my hand function because I was busting my ass working normal IT programmer hours in a hostile work environment. I was fired from my job, I was denied workers compensation because "it wasn't workplace injury", I've been denied employment because "you can't have any technical knowledge because your hands don't work". I really understand now the discrimination that some women are told they're no longer qualified for the job just because they became pregnant.
I've even been discriminated against by geeks. I need to use proprietary package for speech recognition in order to be able to write and do some command-and-control. there were a few of us that wants to bridge NaturallySpeaking to Emacs but the Breaking with alarming frequency. After explaining the problem to Stallman and a few other fsf types, I was told that the official position of the free software foundation is that the needs of free software come before the needs of disabled people. If that meant that the free software equivalent wasn't going to arrive for a decade, disabled people would have to sit on their hands and wait till arrived or, do without free software that worked with speech recognition. Rather shortsighted, and rather harsh.
As I sometimes say, geeks don't give a crap about accessibility until they become injured and then they can't do anything about it because their hands don't work. They spend a couple of years reinventing and failing with the same solutions that failed for decades in the past and then either they give up and change careers or they fall off the economic ladder.
If we had greater accessibility for all types of disabilities, allow rsi injured, blind and tab programmers to compete on a level playing field by raising us up, not tearing others down, it would be okay for us to succeed or fail because it would be on our merits, not on our disabilities. We still have to deal with the bigotry of hiring managers but that's true for all of us.
The sad thing is, from the work I've been doing with speech user interfaces, I'm coming to believe that it's possible to build a common API to accommodate both text-to-speech and speech recognition user interfaces. With a bit more work, the interface can be expanded to also include a graphical user interface and once you have partition the application into everything else and the user interface, then accessibility becomes cheap, dirt cheap.
Or maybe those of us who are in the groups on the giving end of this "compassion" will hit "compassion" fatigue and none of the receiving groups will get any more.
Probably not, but an able-bodied heterosexual white male can dream, can't he? (if it does happen, it'll be the same day I lose my sight, hearing, and ability to walk. Hmm.. is there a "compassion" group for those lacking optimism?)
"Compassion" is in scare quotes here because it's really time and money being demanded, not compassion
Google Docs has partially implemented WAI-ARIA roles. Google Reader has full support for it. I'm not blind, but as a curious web developer I have tested them with JAWS. I don't see where the problem seems to be. Modern screen readers work really well with modern browsers and web apps developed with the ARIA specification.
Trans ??
Are you trying to say you are a transvestite?
Seriously, not trying to make a funny here (yet any way)
But if you are seriously saying being a transvestite is a physical handicap.......
Well, it's your right to think that way, but I'm sure you'd feel differently if you were blind, and your computer's screen-reader program was unable to parse important emails from your professor.
No I think I would use a different Email application.
It's also very helpful in making web pages more robust and reliable in different browsers, and reducing the complexity of the web page. This reduces testing costs and improves its stability. It also forces certain types of design, keeping interfaces simple, consistent, and filled with content rather than unstable and unreliable eye candy.
Simple guidelines for webpages for documentation include:
1) No Flash or other proprietary formats.
2) 7-bit ASCII text only. (This can be relaxed for international documentation, but it's helpful.)
2) No Javascript. (It clutters the document, makes it alter content in unpredictable ways, and is historically unstable. It has its uses, for filling out complex forms, but those come at a very real price in stability of the documentation itself.)
3) No font awareness. (bold and italic should be enough: the time is better spent on the content, not selecting fonts)
4) Minimize graphics. Never use an image when a few lines of text will do.
The resulting tools are not beautiful, but they will work after the project is over and everyone is on a new operating system.
This concept of entitlement just pisses me off. Google should not be REQUIRED to make a product that the blind can use, nobody should! This is equivalent to walking into a regular restaurant (full of common/average consumers) and demanding vegan/gluten-free/insert-super-picky-niche-here menu items. You should NOT have the right to call the cops in and force them to make the food you desire.
What the blind (or anybody who has a need for a product) should do is create a voice for themselves as a demanding consumer for a product that doesn't exist and let the industry trip over itself and fight each other to make the dominant/superior product! Make your time/money/effort/usage the product that companies WANT you to give them rather than cramming it down their throat and complaining when they don't swallow well enough for your satisfaction because you're an Apple/Google/Microsoft/XYZ brand fanboy and they 'don't fulfill your needs'.
Stop demanding that others enable you to do something and figure a way to make it happen yourself. Show off your own Rube Goldberg solution of self empowerment with pride and pretty soon someone will come along with a tool that you inspired them to create to simplify your efforts and improve your life.
It's open source, meaning you -yes you- can add code to it to help the blind. The blind can even help themselves if they know how to code, and I bet some already do.
This is what I hate about people who view themselves as victims. Blind people are not stupid people, just get off your lazy asses and create the code yourself, or get someone to help you do it.
Complaining about it doesn't help, and you're just making yourselves look stupid and naive.
That is the true power of open source, you don't have to beg someone else to do the work for you, you don't even have to ask, you just get the thing done yourself if that's what you want, and guess what, that's the normal procedure whether you're disabled or not. If you're interested in adding features to an open source project, add them yourself, whether you're disabled or not has nothing to do with it.
Most business software doesn't need to be a "real application." It works really well as a web application.
Oh I'm sorry, did that just make it harder to have "equality" for the disabled?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
First off, not just google apps, but even more so Apple apps....Apple has more of a market, go after them, not google...oh wait...must be Apple that sent this group against google in the first place because they are scared of their competitor....how else would you explain the group goes after the smaller of the 2 major players where a blind man using a phone would get.....oh wait....a blind man using a phone usually uses it because he has a voice, and both google and iphone have voice recognition software built in, case ends there...nothing to see here...move along now.
Computers & Internet aren't primarily visual.
Now most video games -- (most of) those are visual.
Most websites, however, are information. Take /. for example. It's 90% text that can be viewed, or listened to as it is automatically read. It can even be easily transferred to braille although the equipment is expensive.
Sure -- flash games, animations, or videos are a bit harder -- but that goes with the the territory. But text-based sites like /., reddit, wikipedia, most forums, etc are all quite easy to make accessible for persons with vision impairments (in whatever degree). Generally all you need is a non-ajax version (although there are standards evolving to make ajax work).
Truly, computers and the internet offer an excellent avenue for persons with disabilities to not only be included, but also allow them to make valuable contributions that they might not be able to in a more labor-based society. From a purely economic standpoint, it's much better to help persons with disabilities be contributing members of society rather than shunting them into the role of simple community-supported subsistence.
Actually, it's much better economically to have persons with disabilities support themselves through employment than it is to have them supported by taxpayers. It's perfectly legal and ethical to not employ someone whose limitations prevent them from doing the work required. However, it makes no sense to ignore a qualified applicant because of limitations that do not significantly prevent them from doing the work.
Yes, considering the ordering for that case would be BLGT (Bi people are less different, thus more accepted.)
I don't think that's true.
First, people in general just don't "get" bisexuality. At least with more social awareness of homosexuality there has come more understanding, and if not acceptance, at least more tolerance. Bisexuals however, often face prejudice from the homosexuality communities (who should know better) as well as straight people.
Again, the gender of the individual matters greatly -- straight males are far more likely to be accepting of a bisexual woman than a bisexual man.
..this is exactly what everyone does on iOS/Android. Certainly, accessibility isn't their reason for doing so, but if the current wave of mobile apps have proven anything, it's that rich clients aren't going anywhere.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I am sure they might be requiring such a thing, but neither 508 nor WCAG 2.0 forbid JavaScript.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
So, would you equate the blind expecting access to an email client as unreasonable as blind access to driving or flying? The requirements for web accessible are straightforward. Google should up their game.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Ok, but wouldn't that be the university's burden, not Google's. Google are not forcing anyone to use their software.
Also, you can set up imap on gmail, and use a different email program.
How do blind people use the net normally, screen readers? would't they use a browser that is screen reader friendly anyway?
+1 Insanely Insightful
They didn't say you cant bring a ladder to work though.
There are alternatives to using the rope, just like there are alternatives to how you access gmail etc....
are you kidding me? FOSS can't even come up with decent UIs for the sighted...
Classic
Either way, it is the universities issue, not Google's.
Black != Disabled
Why aren't they complaining that GM and Ford don't make blind friendly cars?
i agree completely.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Hello, We just released a CMS for schools. We tried to make it usable by blind and/or visually impared persons, on the visitors side as well as in the content mnanagement. It can be used with a braille reader and/or speech synthesizer and also by persons with a normal visus. First preliminary tests seem promising. And, last but not least, it is OSS/GPL. main site :http://websiteatschoo..eu
manual (features etc.): http://manual.websiteatschoo.eu/
Kind regards,
Website@School Development Team
Dirk Schouten
Pine's not going to read the calendar to tell you class rescheduling, nor will it allow to collaboratei n a GoogleDoc. They're blind, not stupid.
If they are using a "Program for Internet News & Email" (yes I looked it up) to try and do that, then they are stupid. It is all about having the right tools for the right job.
How would the blind collaborate normally, when other students may be using Word or Libre Office? I honestly can visualise it (no pun intended).
I haven't seen anyone put forward what software/platform/suite they should have used.
I know what you mean.
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