accessibility

Accommodation with a Side of Guilt, Please

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This evening, I went out to dinner with some friends. I ordered a dish I’ve eaten many times (a salad) only to find that they’ve begun presenting it in a new way: the dressing was in a small cup on the edge of the platter, rather than atop the food as it usually is. I froze, slightly embarrassed. I’ve always had trouble dressing my salad if it’s in a cup. Squeeze bottles? No problem. These give me a certain degree of control. Cups, however, are a different story. (Disclaimer: some blind people have no issue with these whatsoever.) I was just about to ask someone at my table to help when our extremely-attentive server materialized at my elbow:
“Do you want me to take this back and dress it for you?”
“Um…no, it’s okay…it’s just a bit awkward—“
“I totally understand. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back.”
Away went my plate. The server appeared several minutes later, saying “Here’s your salad. We have a special rule here where each time food is sent back for any reason, we have to actually make a new dish. So, we just made you a new salad and dressed it for you.”
I was stunned. I had just inadvertently wasted an entire plate of food so that someone could put dressing on top of my salad for me? Forget being slightly embarrassed: I was mortified and, I confess, a little ashamed. While the server reassured me that it was all okay, I silently asked the powers that be to disappear me immediately. They did not oblige.

I’m used to being “accommodated”. Indeed, I often expect it: when I enroll in university classes, each of my instructors is given an accommodation letter, which describes the accommodations I’ll need to participate fully in the classroom. (If I sound like a handbook, that’s because I wrote one—no, really!) I also expect workplaces to make (reasonable) accommodations to the work environment. This is something I’ve been encouraged to view as normal and acceptable. As is typical for me, I have felt heaps of unnecessary guilt over accommodations, even when they are deemed “reasonable”. Once, in ninth grade, my science teacher got together with a few others on staff and made me a periodic table, so I wouldn’t have to use the rather inadequate one in my textbook. My junior high Industrial Arts teacher went out of his way to make sure I could try out all the same equipment everyone else could. He even positioned the end of a nail gun while I fired, showing a remarkable lack of concern for his fingers. (If you’re reading this, I want to thank you. I’ll never forget that one.)

When people go above and beyond the call of duty for me, I feel grateful (healthy) and horribly guilty (unhealthy). Instead of simply thanking people and getting on with things, I waste time and emotional resources worrying about how undeserving or inconvenient or high-maintenance I’m being. While the person who is helping me is busy doing me a favour, I’m busy coming up with all the reasons I shouldn’t be accepting it. Even when I do accept it, as I did with that salad, the shame and humiliation will plague me for days. Yes, you read that correctly: days. This particular incident was so awkward that I’m amazed I didn’t start crying right there at the table; goodness knows I wanted to.

As far as the server was concerned, she was helping a gal out, no more no less. I have no idea what the kitchen staff thought, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they were about a dozen different kinds of exasperated. As far as I was concerned, I’d manage to waste food, fill my server’s time with running back and forth (in a very busy restaurant, I might add) and make a fool of myself all in about five minutes. I’m cringing as I write this, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it needs to be discussed. There are probably a lot of people out there who have felt how I’m feeling right now.

I’m trying to be okay with being accommodated. I’m trying to be at peace with accepting help, and depending on others, and even letting people do me favours now and then. Could I have dressed the damn thing myself? Of course. Would it have been less messy and awkward to have someone else do it? Absolutely. Did I force anyone to do it for me? No. Am I still going to feel awful about it for days to come? Yup.

But should I feel guilty? Most people seem to think I shouldn’t. Accommodations are there for a reason, and in many cases they are universal enough to be made into policy and/or law. But just because it’s not in a handbook or policy statement doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t be done. While imposing unreasonable accommodations on people at work, school, and elsewhere isn’t going to further the cause, it shouldn’t mean that any random act of kindness ought to be rejected.

Should we make a habit of letting people do things for us, especially when we’re capable of doing them ourselves? If you know me at all, then you know I’d never suggest such a thing. However, this does mean that we should be comfortable with accepting what people want to give us now and then. If it’s not a sin to let someone carry your heavy bag, or hold open a door, or grab you a drink (all things sighted people let others do for them on a regular basis) then why not let someone offer kindness if they really, really want to?

I’m learning, guys. I’m learning. But for now…I think I’ll go and have that cry.

FAQ: Improving the Accessibility of Social Media Posts

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Last week, I published a short article listing the most common inaccessible posts sighted users tend to make. While it was not meant to instruct, I did intend to shed light and raise a little awareness. I refrained from advising sighted people to alter their posting habits in any way; I did not want to give the impression that I believe they are somehow responsible for making any and all material accessible.

Once the post had been published, though, several sighted people expressed gratitude, and were eager to make minor adjustments to their social media practices for the benefit of their blind friends and followers. Immensely pleased by all the enthusiasm, I agreed to write a brief Q & A, covering the most basic aspects of social media accessibility. And here it is.

Note: I’m using Facebook as a starting point, though many of the same general rules apply on other social media platforms.

Q: What should I do when uploading a photo?
A: If you upload a picture of your own, there will be no caption or description by default. A screen reader user will hear a string of meaningless numbers and letters (this is how photos are rendered) and that’s about it. They will know you posted it, but unless the accompanying comments provide context, it is impossible for a blind person to interact with your post. Most blind users will be perfectly happy with even the briefest description. For example, if you post a picture of your cat, you need only mention its name. Your blind friends don’t need to know all the details; if they are truly curious, they can contact you for more information.

Q: What should I do when sharing a photo?
A: When sharing a photo from someone else’s page, you may get lucky: there might already be a description or caption attached. Blind users can often interact with shared photos, because either the comments or the description provide enough context. If, however, the photo stands alone, you may have to add a short description, which is very easy to do, especially on Facebook where space is not at such a premium.

Q: What should I do when sharing screenshots and text embedded in images?
A: Many sighted people don’t realize that text embedded within images is completely inaccessible to screen reader users. The reader interprets the image as a graphic, and cannot recognize the actual text inside it. In this case, you may actually have to write out the contents in plain text so your blind friends can understand it. If it is a particularly long post, (or, as in some cases, the post is a lengthy article constructed entirely of images) it may be wiser to wait for a blind person to request information. Don’t spend ages writing everything out before you know whether your efforts are necessary.

Q: What should I do when posting from Instagram, Pinterest, or other largely-visual platforms?
A: Again, you must consider what you’re posting before making a decision. If you’re posting from Instagram, and it’s just a picture of what you had for breakfast, write a quick, plain text description like, “Look at my scrumptious chocolate muffin!” Blind users will understand the gist; they don’t necessarily require lavish descriptions of the muffin’s various attributes. Keep in mind, though, that most blind people understand that Instagram and similar platforms are primarily intended for sighted people. As such, it is not a sin to post visual items from those sites without taking the time to describe every single photo. There will be certain things we just can’t access properly, and most of us are totally fine with it. It’s not life or death, after all.

Q: Can you give me some general advice that will cover everything?
A: Yes. The best general rule is this: perform a cost-benefit analysis. If what you are sharing is important, taking steps to make it accessible is greatly appreciated. If you run a business or promotional page, you are obligated to make your content as accessible as possible. I recently admonished the CNIB for posting on Facebook without including a description of the photo they’d uploaded!
If you’re just posting on your private page, though, don’t worry too much. Blind people may skip past four out of five visual posts without being particularly bothered about what they’re missing. If you’re worried, extend an invitation to them, encouraging them to contact you when they want more information. That way, you never waste your time adapting things no one will benefit from.

Your time is valuable. Thank you for the minor adjustments you make for us. They don’t go unnoticed.

10 Bits Of Facebook I’ll Never Quite Get

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These days, it’s rare to see actual statuses being posted to Facebook and Twitter. When I scroll through my newsfeed, the majority of content looks like this: “so-and-so shared a photo”, followed by a string of incomprehensible numbers and letters (which is how a screen reader interprets an image). Much of Facebook is totally visual now, so my level of interaction is lower than I’d like. Here are just some of the aspects of the network that I’ll never be able to grasp.

1. Pinterest—pictures galore, and I can’t appreciate a single one.
2. Photo sharing—people do this to excess on Facebook, and of course I can rarely figure out what’s going on.
3. Selfies—it doesn’t seem like I’m missing out, mind you.
4. Articles that use images—many, many times, an interesting article is unreadable for me because the text is embedded within images. Sadface.
5. Instagram—that whole platform, besides the occasional video, is a no-blindy zone (which makes sense, of course, but it still sucks).
6. Cute, fluffy creatures—every now and then I get to listen to a den of kittens purring away, but generally I miss out on the kittens and puppies that dominate my news feed.
7. Graphic design and visual art—I have friends who are tattoo artists and graphic designers, and they use Facebook as a promotion tool. I can’t applaud them for their work. More sadfaces.
8. Dialogue-free videos—and there are so many of these! I get to hear pretty music, but most of the time I haven’t a clue what any of it’s about.
9. Viral nonsense—people do love to share videos and articles on sites like Upworthy, but often the article is just a bunch of images. Other times, the video player is either inaccessible, or missing altogether.
10. Virtually anything on Tumblr—again, people love to link to Tumblr content on Facebook, but more often than not, I just can’t access it. I don’t know if I’m just unlucky, but I have never, ever had success with Tumblr.

So, if you notice that I never “like” your posts, or comment on your content, please understand that it’s probably because I don’t get most of it. Never fear: if I’ve added you on Facebook, I like you, I promise.

Braille Is Not Dead (So Stop Trying To Kill It)

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Note: As of January 2020, this post has been updated to correct some assumptions I no longer hold, describe new experiences I’ve had, and clarify a few points that have come up in the years since its original publication. I hope it is better and more useful for it.

I’ve heard the case against braille books, and it’s a compelling one. Braille books are bulky, because the braille alphabet is oversized compared to print letters. They aren’t terribly common, as the market for them is so small. They are expensive to produce, so most of us don’t own our own books. We usually end up borrowing them from special libraries and resource centres.
Braille is undeniably inconvenient. Throughout secondary school, my backpack weighed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25 pounds, because it was crammed with volumes and volumes of braille. If I also had to carry my laptop case, braille notetaker, and/or my Perkins Brailler, I’d be carrying something like 40 pounds of equipment and books back and forth every day. That was a third of my body weight, and I am quite sure some of the neck and back issues I suffer from began with all those books.
Then, there’s the multiple volume problem: most braille textbooks and longer leisure reading books are too long to come in one volume. My first braille dictionary, a short one meant for children, was 25 volumes in length. My high school chemistry book, which included enormous tactile diagrams, was 53 volumes long. Each volume only contained the equivalent of 20 or so print pages, so I would sometimes run back and forth during class to fetch the next volume of braille (my books had their own storage room, true story). When I had chemistry or math homework, I’d have to carry several volumes of braille, instead of just two books like every other student. It was a logistical nightmare, especially when I’d miscalculate and bring the wrong volumes home with me. If you ask my parents, they’ll tell you about all the times I came home distraught, because I’d realized, too late, that I didn’t have the correct volumes with me. Oh, the tears I shed over braille books.
So, yes, I understand the case against braille, and I acknowledge that it’s not for everyone. Some blind people never master it, and others simply don’t like using it. Auditory learners, in particular, seem to do better with audio books and text-to-speech than braille, and that’s valid, too.
That being said, I’m not shy about my belief that braille needs to stick around, and cannot be replaced by audio technology.
People keep insisting that braille is dead. Irrelevant. Frivolous, even, given our digital landscape. With screen readers and other text-to-speech products, what do we need braille for? Blind bookworms, students, and professionals can just sit back, relax, and let their computers read to them. Who needs to have the actual text in front of them? Isn’t being read aloud to enough?
For me, and for many, many blind people, it’s nowhere near enough. It’s not enough, because we still deserve to read in the ways that best suit us. It’s not enough, because it’s still nice to be able to pick up a book (or, in some cases, to cuddle up with electronic braille). Most importantly of all, it’s not enough, because blind people, especially those who are deaf-blind, still need access to more than one literacy tool. They still need to learn to read just like everyone else.
Imagine how a sighted parent would react if, upon sending their child to school, the teachers decided that reading is optional, frivolous, irrelevant. Imagine the outrage if instead, teachers just read aloud to that child, not letting them see or understand how the alphabet works because it’s too much bother to teach them.
Now, imagine that the teachers then insisted on teaching that child to write, without letting them read. Sure, a child can be taught to type and never have to know how to write by hand, but learning to write when they cannot read would be a wee bit complicated, no? And wouldn’t learning to spell be far, far trickier? Would the average sighted child ever be subjected to this bizarre methodology, just for the sake of convenience or frugality or the idea that they don’t “need” to learn? Not likely.
Nearly everything I know about language I learned from reading. If you want to be a good writer, you have to watch other writers at work, and this necessitates a lot of reading. Yes, I can still learn by having my computer read a book aloud to me, and I’m not one to disparage audio books as “fake” reading. But I find that I don’t retain information quite as well just by listening. Not every blind person is an auditory learner, least of all me, so reading on my own is still a crucial skill, and I literally couldn’t do my editing work without braille. Spotting subtle punctuation errors and common misspellings that automated software won’t catch would be cumbersome if I relied on my ears, and would slow me down considerably.
Speaking of spelling, I’ve noticed that while bad spelling is by no means exclusive to blind people, we have to work harder than most sighted people, simply because without braille, we don’t interact with text the same way. If you hardly ever “see” the words on a page, you have to put in a lot more legwork to ensure you’re not missing things. It’s easier to be a good speller when you have the opportunity to memorize the words, and you can’t do that as easily without reading independently. While I am a decent speller, any word I picked up in a braille book is much easier for me to remember than a word I picked up by listening. These days, I do the majority of my “reading” by listening to audio books or text-to-speech software, so I have more difficulty spelling newer terms. Here are just a few of the pitfalls a lack of braille access has caused for many blind people I know:
• The Beatles becomes The Beetles
• Def Leppard becomes Deaf Leopard (logical, but still wrong!)
• Too, to, and two become hopelessly mixed up, even more than usual
• Names are commonly incorrect (Sarah vs. Sara) and names based on deliberate misspellings and wordplay are especially difficult
Unless we are diligent about checking the spelling of anything new, mistakes like these will keep cropping up in the blind community, and minor as it seems, it can be genuinely embarrassing for a lot of us.
Mindful of this, I find excuses to read braille as often as possible, both because I enjoy it and to keep my spelling skills up to par. Sighted people will almost always have the luxury of knowing how a thing is spelled the moment they read it. The only way for me to replicate that is to read a lot of braille and do a lot of googling.
“But Wait!” you say, “isn’t spelling sort of secondary to all the other aspects of literacy? With the ever-present Spellcheck, isn’t the ability to spell less valuable?” Maybe, though as a professional writer and editor I do know that Spellcheck won’t save you every time. Even if we discard spelling, though, grammar and general syntax still rely on the ability to read, and not everyone can pick that up just by listening. Braille gives you the opportunity to read aloud to yourself, which will help improve grammar and flow in your own writing. (Screen readers aren’t so natural-sounding as to read with a human’s sense of flow, and as I learned while preparing speaking notes for other people, screen readers don’t help you catch unintentional tongue-twisters!) If you’re not an auditory learner, learning a new language, or improving your mother tongue, is much easier if you can read directly to yourself.
So, no, braille is not for everyone, and braille proficiency is not, as I once believed, a non-negotiable ingredient for blind people’s literacy and professional success. But love it or hate it, braille is the only way in which blind people can learn to read in the same way sighted people do, and for people wired the way I am, it’s the optimal method for absorbing and retaining new information. Braille is inconvenient, and expensive, and problematic, yes. But it’s not redundant. It’s not pointless. It’s definitely not dead.
Please, stop trying to kill it.

Confessions of a Blind Binge-reader: It’s Not Just About the Books

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Anyone who knows me even a little is aware that I’m a devoted bookworm. I think nothing of finishing a book in one day—sometimes one sitting, depending on how engrossing it is—and those who follow me on social media are privy to my prolific reviewing habits on Goodreads. I spend much of my time in class, studying, socializing, and reading material not generally considered fun (though I’ve been known to take pleasure in reading my sociology textbook now and then), but I have always found time for leisure reading. I have sometimes been too busy to sleep; too tired to study; too desolate to go out. I don’t think I’ve ever been too anything to read. Reading is by turns a learning experience, an exploration of human nature, and an escape when things get too difficult. In short, I read for all the reasons anyone else reads.

I’ve been teased about the sheer volume of books I get through; I’ve had a friend ask, without a trace of irony, how many books I read “today” (it wasn’t even noon at the time). I know many other people who read at least as much as I do, but I admit that it’s not just about the books. Until I was given unfettered access to the internet at age fifteen, books were a luxury. Braille was hard to come by; most of the books I read in school were lent to me by an Albertan organization dedicated mostly to producing textbooks. However, they did boast an impressive collection of leisure reading, particularly classics. I devoured so many books as a student that by the time I was fourteen, I’d exhausted more or less every book they offered. I then signed up for the CNIB library, which sustained me until I gained better access to Ebooks. Even then, titles took months to arrive after they’d been ordered, and while the library did send me random books suited to my age group, they were often falling apart at the seams, badly squashed, or covered in suspicious substances resembling, at least in one case, strawberry jam.

Even when I did have books to read, they were always limited. I had to choose from a select few, and I had to return them as quickly as possible so that I could receive more. I remember slogging laboriously through books I absolutely hated (If you ask my former EA, she’ll remember how much I complained while reading “Huckleberry Finn”) because I didn’t have much choice. When your selection of literature is scant, you can’t get too picky about what you read.

Forget about buying my own books: braille books were so rare and so costly that when I won my first ever book in a draw, I kept it long after I’d wrung any enjoyment from it. I still have it to this day, and I’m not sure I could just hand it off to someone else. You never forget your first braille book.

It was the same with audio books: while I was growing up, audio books were not nearly as prevalent as they are now. They were expensive, and thus were quite rare. I remember literally shrieking with delight each Christmas when my parents would present me with the newest Harry Potter book, or the next volume of Paolini’s Inheritance Series. Now and then, people would find audio books at garage sales or in bargain bins and I’d be treated to some of the most random selections you can think of. When I was nine, someone gave me “The Green Mile”, obviously not thinking this through. My mom happened to listen in while I was reading one night and just about lost her mind when I asked, with total innocence, what a “faggot” was. As a kid, I was introduced to the autobiography of Mia Farrow (complete with the famous sex scandal involving Woody Allen), Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flat”, and Grisham’s “The Client” … these were just a few of the completely inappropriate, yet no less enjoyable, reads I was exposed to via audio. I had an interesting time back then, I can tell you.

When my reading world expanded and I suddenly had almost every book in existence at my fingertips, I hardly knew what to do with myself. I began binge reading—grabbing every mildly interesting book I could find and ravenously searching for more. One of my most persistent fears, all throughout my life, was running out of reading material. Gone are the days when I had to read the Old Testament because it was summer vacation and I didn’t have any books to read. Gone are the days when I’d have to struggle through Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim” even though I despised every page. Now, I can read what I want to, without fear of consuming too much material too quickly. Now, I don’t have to ration my books, because there will always be another one waiting for me.

This is the kind of freedom most sighted readers have enjoyed all their lives. The public library stocked nearly every book they’d ever want to read, and they always had access to newspapers and magazines. There was no need to read 400 pages of something they hated just because books were too scarce. The great thing is that blind kids of the future will not have to go through what I and many other blind people did. They will have access to digitized braille (as well as actual books, of course) and plain text ebooks. They will be able to read the “back cover” and decide which books interest them. They will not have to wonder where their next book is coming from. Nearly every bit of reading material—whether on paper or on the web—will be accessible to them.

And, just like sighted people, they won’t have any idea how lucky they are.

You see, it’s not just about the books. It’s not about reading so much that people will take notice and praise (or ridicule) me. It’s about freedom of choice, and equal access, and autonomy. It’s about spending my time the way I want to, without worrying about having to ration my enjoyment.

So, fellow blind binge readers, enjoy your freedom. Enjoy the fact that in this, at least, equal access is yours. And if you think you might read just a little too often sometimes? If you worry that you hoard books? If you think you’re silly for still fearing that you’ll run out sometime, even when you know better? Give yourself a break. Old habits die hard. It’s worth remembering where they came from.

What Is This, Anyway?

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I’ve sometimes pondered how much of my waking life I’ve spent simply identifying stuff. Being blind necessitates devising elaborate strategies to keep track of things like canned goods, important paperwork, and even clothing, depending on the complexity of your wardrobe. There are a lot of tools out there to help us, from free apps like CamFind to very costly Pen Friends—devices that allow you to “tag” certain items and have the pen tell you what it is later. The latter is efficient, but not everyone has a couple hundred bucks to shell out for it.

As I’ve said, there are some free (or inexpensive) apps designed to help us out, but they’re often difficult to use properly. I, perhaps more than many blind people, am hopeless at taking good pictures of things; the other day I was going through my tea collection, trying to find a certain bag, and I had to take them all out and sniff them to find what I was looking for. I eventually lost patience (I have a lot of tea), and pulled out my cell phone to use image recognition. One little problem: the pictures were either too blurry, or taken too close up, or taken too far away, or entirely inaccurate because I’d photographed my lap, or the floor, or anything else but the bags I was trying to identify. Generally, you just point and shoot, but I swear there are days when the apps just don’t want to cooperate. In fact, when photographing a particularly stubborn bag, my app cheerfully informed me that the tea was called “tips about relationships”. Gee, thanks.

Lighting and placement are other concerns that I struggle with. I don’t always consider how dark it is, or how many shadows might shield the product in question. I also sometimes accidentally place the product among others, which makes it harder for the app to know what I’m trying to photograph. I get better at it the longer I play with it, but I’m still a long way from perfect.

There are some relatively unusual tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years. I can, for example, identify a can of green beans by shaking the can and listening to the squeak the beans make. No other canned vegetable that I know of makes that particular sound. When I tell sighted people about this, they don’t believe me until they try for themselves. I’m also good at finding minute differences between, say, a matching set of shampoo and conditioner, though I have had some interesting experiences when the bottles are identical.

Despite all the technology, organizational systems, and detail-oriented planning, I’ve definitely gotten myself into some very strange situations. I once found what looked like a candy dish on my living room coffee table. Thinking that my mother had thoughtfully put out candy, I picked up one of the curiously smooth treats and popped it into my mouth. All I tasted was dust: I’d tried to eat a decorative rock. I’ve put conditioner (and body wash) in my hair instead of shampoo; I’ve nearly put frozen berries in a dish instead of peas (luckily the smell tipped me off); I’ve poured instant oatmeal into my travel mug instead of hot chocolate mix. All this, and much more.

Gregg is fond of telling the “bath bead story”. When he was a little boy, he found a strange-looking dish in the bathroom which appeared to be filled with candy. Having disassembled (and failed to reassemble, naturally) a gumball machine the day before, he assumed that his mother had transferred the gumballs to this dish. Undeterred by the fact that people don’t usually store candy in the bathroom, he grabbed a candy and took a big bite. He immediately found his mouth filled with scented foam. he’d eaten one of his mother’s bath beads. He’s also had a hair mishap; he got a shampoo bottle and mayonnaise bottle mixed up, and nearly washed his hair with the latter. I’ve since informed him that mayonnaise is actually good for the hair now and then, but I’m not sure he believes me.

If there are any blind people out there who have good stories of this nature, please share them in the comments; we’d all love to indulge in a little schadenfreud…uh, I mean, we’d all love to share our compassion and sympathy. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Leaving On a Jet Plane…

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Flying is scary for anyone. Even if the thought of relying on complete strangers to ferry you through the sky doesn’t make you a little nervous (I can say it’s never bothered me), airports are intimidating enough for even the most seasoned travelers. Some airports are massive enough to have train systems and moving sidewalks. If you plan to fly internationally, you have to deal with customs and security and all the rest of it. Sighted people can see where they’re going and read detailed maps, but many of them still hate and fear the experience. Given the anxiety this process elicits in sighted people, flying on my own for the first time put a great many butterflies in my stomach…and I can assure you that they were not flying in formation.

I’m rather prone to ranting on this blog, but today I get to rave a little instead. I’ve flown independently several times now (my long-distance relationship forced me to get over my anxieties real quick) and each time has been a breeze. You see, if you have a disability that can make it difficult for you to navigate the airport, you can ask for assistance when you book your flight. Each time I flew, I was greeted by a security agent at the check-in desk, and led through security, then to my gate, then onto the plane before regular passengers boarded. I didn’t have to worry about finding the right gate, or getting onto the plane in time, or even finding my seat and stowing my luggage. Once I boarded the plane, the flight attendants showed me where the emergency exits and bathrooms were located. WestJet, in particular, is always quick to provide you with a brailled copy of the safety information so that you can be given the same information as everyone else. They even showed me where the call button was in case I needed anything during the flight. Because I am absurdly averse to inconveniencing people, I never used it, but at least I knew it was there.

When we landed, a flight attendant escorted me off the plane and handed me to an airport employee who helped me find my luggage and either book a shuttle home or wait for people at the arrivals gate. It was the easiest and most worry-free experience I could possibly have imagined. Travel is stressful enough without having to agonize over finding your way around an unfamiliar place where time is of the essence.

As with anything else, there are a few snags. Guide dog handlers often run into situations where there isn’t much room on the plane for the dog. Some airlines are unwilling to allow the dog onto the plane, even though they are required to do so by law. Still others will insist that blind passengers pay for an extra seat if they want to bring a guide dog along. Even if you’re a cane traveler, you can run into a few issues. More than once, I’ve been offered a wheelchair to carry me through the airport, despite the fact that my legs work just fine, thank you very much. Sometimes they do this because they’re not sure what would be best, but other times they offer this because they can’t be bothered trying to guide me. I have been lucky: I have declined the wheelchair each time and that has been honoured; some are told that they must use the wheelchair if they want assistance. Opinions will vary on this one, but I consider it just a wee bit degrading to be told I am not permitted to walk when I am perfectly capable of doing so.

One of the most disconcerting issues is when you get stuck with a customer service agent who wants very little to do with you. Last week, during a layover in Seattle, my fiancé and I (also blind) were guided by a woman who seemed intent upon getting us to our gate and getting rid of us as quickly as she could. Perhaps she was short on time, or just having a bad day, but her attitude was barely courteous. This stood in sharp contrast to the friendly and solicitous manner of most of the airport employees I have dealt with in the past. I am usually blown away by their sincere concern for my comfort. It’s a kindness rarely found and truly appreciated.

All things considered, air travel is a piece of cake compared to, say, bus travel. When describing the assistance I receive to sighted people, I have seen them express jealousy that they, too, can’t request to be guided step by step through the airport. Getting lost and confused is practically part of the air travel culture—if it can be said to have a culture at all—and avoiding this altogether is a privilege to be treasured.

Every Day is an Audio Challenge

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Every Day is an Audio Challenge

I’m ninety percent through the long and complicated process of filling out one of those lengthy internet sign-up forms. They’ve wanted everything from my phone number to my Social Insurance Number, and it’s getting a little excessive. There’s only one more field though, so I’m almost there… and then my screen reader cheerfully states  “Type the two words below! We need to check that you’re human!”. At this point, my very human impulses urge me to start keyboard mashing until something explodes. I calm down a little, though, since there’s an equally cheerful “Visually impaired? Get an audio challenge!” button below the text field.  Normally, when I hit this button, garbled but mostly comprehensible speech guides me so that I can successfully prove my humanity and move on with my life. Unfortunately, there are exceptions to everything, and this is one: I type the spoken numbers as carefully as I can, trying to ignore the weird, swirling background noise that sounds creepy enough to be a horror movie’s soundtrack. Then, with pounding heart, I hit “submit”. The page refreshes, and asks me to try again. So I do. And again. And again. And again. And because I am most definitely human, I give in to my exhaustion and give the whole thing up. So, no account for me, and there goes all the info I took so much time to input. Audio challenge, indeed!

When you’re a screen reader user, every day is an audio challenge. Websites change with the weather, and new updates often present more and more issues. Screen readers themselves are only updated now and then, so the only thing we’re left with is our ingenuity. Most often, larger websites will make a concerted effort to accommodate visually impaired  users, but even they slip up, and they slip up a lot.

The reason I choose to use the word “challenge”, though, is because I don’t mean to sit here and rant about how horrible it is that we can’t use the web as easily and efficiently as sighted people. As I’ve said before, disability automatically bars us from total and perfect equality, so to expect such out of the internet–a network that changes constantly–is only going to result in disappointment. However, there are some websites–large and small–that manage to provide a near-perfect experience, and they are what keep me from resorting to the keyboard mashing mentioned above.

I won’t waste space going into detail about which web features are useful and which are not; you’ll find many resources online that will give you far more information than I ever could. What I will do, though, is explain why accessibility is so important, and what inaccessibility can do to even the most casual of internet users.

I’ve seen the way sighted people react when they’re having difficulty with a website. They become very angry very quickly the moment something doesn’t operate exactly the way they expected it to. Sometimes such anger is justified, and sometimes it isn’t, but the point is that the frustration sighted people occasionally experience is something screen reader users deal with on a near-daily basis. We’re not talking about blind gamers who have difficulty performing complex maneuvers, or blind web developers struggling with code. We’re talking about the average, everyday user, who only wants to check her email and scroll idly through Facebook.

Take a very simple example: a friend of mine was recently struggling to get Facebook to sort her news feed by most recent post rather than by “top posts”. This should be a very easy task. All you have to do is check the little “sort” box so that the sort method is changed. It should be the work of five or so seconds. Unfortunately, she was having no such luck. On the  regular version of Facebook (the one that loads when you log in with your computer), the sort box isn’t even present. On the mobile version, it is present, but you can only access it with an iPhone, as far as I know. So, my friend would have had to switch to her iPhone specifically to log in via Safari, find the “sort” button, and tick the appropriate box. (Just to add insult to injury, Facebook automatically changes the sort style back after a few days, so this process must be repeated indefinitely. Facebook doesn’t like it when we think for ourselves.)

Sometimes, the consequences can be very serious. You might be thinking that being unable to sort your Facebook newsfeed to your liking isn’t much to get upset about, and for most people it isn’t. But what if inaccessibility begins to interfere with your performance at work or school? What if you can’t get a certain job purely because their databases don’t accommodate your screen reader? What if you can’t format a paper properly because of constraints beyond your control?

Here is the biggest accessibility stumbling block I’ve ever encountered: my university, like so many others, uses a platform called Blackboard to manage just about every aspect of university life. Assignments are posted there and must be submitted there. Notes are placed there for review and download. Readings are announced (yes, announced!) there and must be accessed before the next class. Some instructors even post links and other information there, so that if you can’t fully access Blackboard, you will find yourself very behind in a tearing hurry. Can you guess where this might be going? … Yes, exactly: Blackboard was not fully accessible with my screen reader when I started at university two and a half years ago. I could access some readings, but not others. I could click on some links, but not others. I could read some instructor announcements, but not others. As for downloading the files they uploaded? Forget it. I had other screen reader users try it, and none of them had any more success than I had. Until i managed to get instructors to understand that they’d have to eliminate Blackboard altogether when interacting with me individually, I was constantly struggling to find the material I needed, access it, and then post material of my own back to the site. I even know some professors who are so enamoured with Blackboard that they refuse to use any other medium (even email) regardless of the student’s issues with it.

So, sometimes we deal with a little more than a stubborn Facebook news feed. Sometimes we can’t even get hired because we won’t be able to use a company’s software properly. Sometimes we struggle with important tasks like online banking, student loan and scholarship applications, schoolwork, basic shopping, etc. Everything is online now, and alternatives to internet-based services are becoming more and more scarce. To say that it’s “just the internet” isn’t really a comfort anymore. Gone are the days when the biggest problem we had to face was an inability to access a message board about our favourite annagram games.

Experienced screen reader users (and anyone else who struggles with other accessibility issues) become very adept at working around most accessibility road blocks. Within seconds, I can post a question to my Twitter feed and receive answers (assuming my Twitter feed is accessible, of course!). We help each other out. We post detailed articles about how to circumvent some of the nastiest issues common to many of us. Getting by on the web, just as we do in real life, is something we’ve long realized will be the norm for the foreseeable future. However, whenever web developers help us out by making their websites easier to navigate, it offers us some much-needed breathing space. It’s lovely to visit a site and have it just…work. So, if you ever manage or develop a website of any sort, please consider being as inclusive as possible. Learn about all disabilities that hinder internet use–not just blindness–and do your bes to accommodate them wherever you are able. There are a significant number of us out there, and we could really use your help. Most often, the necessary changes are small and won’t interfere with the rest of your website.

Still need convincing? Have a look at a screen reader mailing list sometime, or cruise on over to a forum about accessibility issues. You’ll see staggering amounts of people in genuine need of assistance because they can’t make things work the conventional way. If you had to deal with that level of frustration every day, you might feel more inclined to help out.

Finally, I want to conclude by thanking all the web developers out there, sighted or blind, who continually work to make the web as accessible as possible. You guys are amazing and I am thankful for you every time things work as they should. You save me more time than you know (not to mention my limited sanity).

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

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As my Canadian readers may know by now, the CNIB is circulating a petition asking the government of Alberta to take responsibility for its visually impaired citizens in a way it has never yet done. For the last century, the CNIB has shouldered all rehabilitation service for the province’s blind population including orientation and mobility, independent living skills, low-vision assessments, deaf-blind services, etc. On a national scale, the CNIB has also provided library services for all blind Canadians, relieving public libraries of the responsibility of providing accessible materials.

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the CNIB, particularly my American friends, it is a non-profit charity organization, relying on government and public funding to stay afloat. Stay afloat it has, though not without frequent setbacks, downsizing, and restructuring. More than once, the CNIB has hinted that they may have to shut down their library because they could no longer afford to maintain it. For dedicated bookworms like me—particularly for braille-loving bookworms—this is an unwelcome prospect.

 

As of April 2016, Alberta’s CNIB branch will no longer be providing rehabilitation service to Albertans; instead, the organization wishes to encourage and assist the government in taking up the job themselves. I can see the logic: in our current medical system, if you have been paralyzed from the waist down, you are given rehabilitation therapy. You’re not just sent home, pointed towards a charity, and left to your own devices. If you are blind, though, you can be sent home immediately after you have been pronounced healthy, and there isn’t even a legal obligation to point you towards the CNIB. Imagine the shock and devastation of being newly-blinded, only to be dismissed from the health care system with no instruction on how to get around, cook, clean, or even figure out how to organize your own belongings. It’s doable, of course, but many newly-blinded adults (as well as small children who have been blind from birth and are just figuring out the world around them) need the service that CNIB provides. My question is, will we be worse off once the responsibility changes hands? If we go by the current state of the Alberta health care system…there’s a good chance the answer is yes.

 

In theory, it’s a wonderful concept: if the government adopts a similar system to the one in the US (where rehab services are funded and administered by the state, not by charity) there is much less chance that the money will simply run dry one day, leaving everyone stranded. The CNIB can turn its attention and energy to other matters while the government pays for the necessary care of its own citizens—citizens it has gotten away with mostly ignoring for the last 100 years. Instead of relying on relentless fund development campaigns to make sure I receive the services I need, I now only have to present my Alberta Health Care card to be shown a new route, or be assisted with a new work situation.

 

Here’s where the fairytale dissolves, though: the health care system is far from perfect. Even emergency medical care is flawed beyond what I could possibly describe in this post (or any mere blog post, really). You can wait hours and hours at the ER just to receive basic and essential care when you are desperately ill. You can wait months (or even a year or more) to undergo tests and surgeries if your condition is not considered immediately life-threatening. Sure, you can fasttrack and go private, but that sort of defeats the purpose of our wonderful socialist care system, right? Isn’t that the whole point?

 

Things are already pretty bad under the stewardship of the CNIB, at least for many Albertans. I grew up in Northern Alberta, and CNIB specialists were only able to travel to me on a sporadic basis for an hour or two each lesson. Eight hours of driving for them, and only two or three hours of training for me. When I was a child, they were very helpful and supportive of my parents, but once I got older and needed Orientation and Mobility training, they simply didn’t have the resources (human or otherwise) to serve even my most basic needs. I was fourteen before I was taught precisely how to use a cane properly, and about sixteen before I knew how to cross a freaking intersection with any degree of safety! My transition to the city at seventeen was rocky, to say the least.

 

Even when I moved to Edmonton, though, things weren’t a bundle of roses. Currently, there are only two O and M specialists serving the Edmonton area, and one of them does not work with adults at all. Oh yeah, and they are not exclusively tied to the Edmonton area; one of them goes out to Northern Alberta to assist rural clients. So, you have one full-time specialist serving the entire adult blind population of Edmonton. That might sound reasonable enough, but I can tell you that getting O and M service is an absolute nightmare. Unless it’s an urgent school-related situation (they won’t even help you with work, I tried), you could wait months to receive training unless you are ridiculously persistent. There is a triage method of sorts—the most important cases are theoretically dealt with first—but that kind of thing can easily be manipulated. If your situation is less grave than someone else’s, but you are very persistent or persuasive, you might receive service more quickly.

 

Arguably, the impersonal nature of the Alberta Health Care system might help mitigate some of these problems…but I really do think we may be going from bad to worse. For one thing, we already know the triage system is flawed; how much more flawed will it be for rehab services, which are not considered necessary for one’s actual health? Sure, it’s inextricably linked with quality of life, but who has the time or money to worry too much about quality of life, right? Quality of life is for rich people, or at least people with full health benefits. My suspicion—and it’s my personal suspicion, no one else’s—is that we will still be waiting months to receive vital service; we will still be competing with others for priority treatment; we will still struggle to get what we need and may resort to figuring it out ourselves. For many of us, it’s simply easier to get some sighted friend to walk us through a route until we figure it out. It’s slow, and not quite as safe, but many of us are capable of it.

 

So, I will probably be okay. I will probably not feel the lack when the system switches over (if it switches over—do remember that the government has made absolutely no promises). But what about the seniors who suffer from macular degeneration and need help learning how to perform basic tasks all over again at 85? What about the mother of a newly-blinded teenager who has no idea where to turn? What about the parents of that two-year-old they have just realized is blind? Who will support them?

 

This isn’t just about me; this is about everyone who has ever relied on the CNIB for anything at all. They have been such a strong and capable presence for so long that the government has, I think, gotten complacent. I fear for those who will need support in the coming years but will probably not get it. I fear for those who currently hold jobs at the CNIB who may be sent packing—special training and all—when the government decides, as it may, that any person at all can safely do O and M or Independent Living Skills instruction. I fear for the parents, teachers, and employers who may require support and guidance in making accommodations, and will have no one to ask. Maybe I’m wrong: maybe the government will swoop in, save the day, and give us even better service than the CNIB ever could. Maybe. But I’m scared. Really scared. I really do think we’re jumping out of the frying pan…and right into the fire.

Writing For The Eye (When Yours Don’t Work)

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As a university student, I am continually required to think about (or, more accurately, worry about) proper formatting. Beyond the simple process of following letter templates and adjusting fonts, I have to fiddle with things like tricky citations and nastily precise documentation requirements. My every piece of writing is micromanaged, right down to its one-inch margins, italicized journal titles, and perfectly-indented footnotes. This is a reality every student faces, especially if they do any academic writing. The various documentation styles required for scholarly writing are notorious for their complexity and constant (unnecessary) revisions. Time and time again, new editions of the style books are released, containing the latest “improvements” to the documentation style. Usually, they change one or two things and the rest remains exactly the same. While this does cut down on the learning and relearning a student has to do, it does make buying the new editions a wee bit frustrating, considering that they’re not exactly inexpensive. I have had some instructors who graciously gave me a pass when it came to specific aspects of document formatting I simply couldn’t do. For example, I was not always able to paginate properly, because my screen reader and Microsoft Word had a love hate relationship. I also have trouble spotting things like italics where they shouldn’t be, or improper indenting. Citations and bibliography writing literally take me hours, and I’m never sure I got it right. This can be a big deal when you consider that a few of my instructors knocked off several marks for every formatting error we made. Writing the essay is the easy part: I have to worry about my margins!

 

At least this is just for essay writing, yeah? I won’t have to worry about any of this in the workplace? … Come on now! I’d never be that lucky. Even in business writing, formatting and document design are essential. It seems that in every class I attend, I’m reminded once again that visual elements are as important, if not more so, as the words I write. My websites have to be visually appealing and skimmable. My documents must be consistently and precisely formatted, lest I distract the reader (and boy are they easy to distract). My power point presentations have to include multimedia, pretty pictures, and lots of lovely charts to make everybody care about them. Without these, I’m just going to be boring, unpersuasive, and ineffectual. And, as with fashion, there’s no handbook to guide me; it’s all about knowing what will please the eyes—the eyes I don’t use and don’t really understand.

 

This creates even bigger problems when you consider the types of positions opening up in my field. These days, employers don’t just want a writer or editor. They want a writer who can edit, take pictures, design web content, and make pretty posters to hang on the walls. They essentially want to combine three different roles into one efficient package, and of course I’ll never be able to do that for them. I can’t take pictures—at least, not well—and I can’t do much with images beyond simply placing them where I’m told to. I have wondered seriously about my career prospects if this disturbing trend continues. It’s a sobering thought, indeed.

 

I’ve never tried to deny that we live in a highly visual world. I know and respect this, which means I respect the fact that visual elements will always have the utmost importance in almost any field, communications included. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to adjust to. You see, screen readers (the software I use to navigate on my laptop) can only do so much. I have very little trouble checking that my font is the right colour, size, and style, because the software can describe this to me. I know how to make headings and tables. I can fiddle with paragraph style, and make lists, and even create power point presentations, though it’s a struggle. If you tell me exactly what to do, I can probably figure it out. Herein lies the problem, though: in the “real world”, people probably won’t be telling me what to do. They’ll be expecting me to design my own documents, using all those wonderful skills I picked up in university. Don’t get me wrong, I have as much intuition and creativity as the next person, but how am I supposed to understand on an intrinsic level what is visually appealing and what isn’t? I have never read print, so I have no idea what is “distracting”. I don’t have an innate understanding of why certain things look clean and appealing and why other things look cluttered and inelegant. Give me a braille document and I can critique it all day long. I also have my own opinions about web interfaces and document formatting, but they are only relevant to people using screen readers. I can create excellent content, but to hear some of my instructors talk, I could be writing Shakespearian quotes for all it matters. The visual elements have to be present, and they have to be superb.

 

I’ve definitely had my share of formatting mishaps, most of which I can laugh about because they’re years behind me. In high school, I once sent my teacher an essay that had somehow been written in several different colours. He thanked me for the “rainbow”. I tried to claim I meant to do that, but I don’t think he believed me. On the plus side, the colourful fonts probably helped to offset my research on charming gentlemen like Hitler and Stalin. If you’re going to read about vicious dictators, at least read about them in rainbow colours, right?

 

Another memorable assignment I’d done had been meticulously formatted, right down to the beautiful footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography. It was my first attempt at Chicago style, in my first year of university, and oh my, was I ever proud of it. When I got it back, it had been given an A. One little problem, though: the professor asked whether I’d meant to centre the entire essay, by any chance? Apparently, it was just a tad hard to read that way. Some people really are hard to please, eh?

 

Luckily for blind writers everywhere, times are changing. More and more applications are becoming accessible with screen readers, and the readers themselves have features that help us edit our own work. Still, automated editing features will never replace the human eye and the fundamental intuition that comes with it. I’ll just have to hope that my content is enough to rise above the glaring lack of pretty pictures. I do hope you will all continue to read my ramblings, even in the absence of eye-catching graphics. My heart might just break otherwise…