Andrew:
Very good points. The explanations I've gotten from the AT vendors I've talked to is that there simply aren't enough blind people using these complex systems to warrant them putting the development resources into making them work. I honestly don't fully buy that, I think many, certainly not all but many, AT vendors don't have the inhouse expertise to understand these systems themselves. The IT environment in many AT vendor shops is simple. That goes for both screen reader/magnifier vendors as well as the companies who provide value added services. I'm trying to get some scripts written to make my use of Window-Eyes with some systems a little easier. The company I went with, a fairly big one in the US, hadn't heard of half the stuff we used, even the more common stuff such as, oh, VMWare ESX and Backup Exec. In all fairness they have made a good effort to do the best they could, but still the lack of expertise in these systems did sometimes hamper the process.
I get that most of these companies are small and don't have the resources larger firms do. But, I maintain that if you can get around using some of these products, it takes some of the urgency out of making them accessible.
Ryan
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:19 AM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Anyone else noticing Cisco becoming less and less accessible?
Hi,
I use a couple of newer Cisco products which don't use Java, including the CSA agents, the Cisco secure ACS (which has a strange Java page to log into the system but after that is plain HTML), and some of the Call manager work I need to do is also in plain HTML. I think the newer versions of Call manager are also in plain HTML.
As I have said before, it is a trend of a lot of network provider gear to use the newer web standards, to make their apps seem as though you are using a real application. For example, a product we use for network logging is done completely in a Java application, and thus is completely inaccessible to me.
I, like you, feel that the screen reader manufacturers should be pushing a lot harder for access to this, I can't honestly see a reason why this has gone relatively unnoticed for so long. Software houses like FS and the like seem quite happy to add new features to Jaws like dictionary lookups etc, yet we still don't have access to some of the fundamental technologies.
Thanks.
Andrew.
Andrew Hodgson
Senior Systems Administrator/Projects Engineer
Direct Line Tel: 01432 852332
Email: andrew.hodgson@allpay.net
Please do not print this email unless absolutely necessary.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Shugart
Sent: 24 September 2009 07:18
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Anyone else noticing Cisco becoming less andlessaccessible?
I'm not sure 508 will help us here. In my experience with dealing with government agencies, most of them don't understand section 508 themselves, and the few that do, on the organizational level, look at it as something to be worked around, not complied with. There are a lot of good people who do take 508 seriously, but my experience is they're just lost in the wind.
On the specific topic of Cisco, my company just deployed Cisco's Anyconnect VPN, and that's perfectly accessible. Its all web based, the pages are very basic HTML, there is a Java or ActiveX plugin to handle the actual VPN and network traffic, but it has no UI and everything's HTML based. So some Cisco products work, and as far as VPNs go Any Connect seems to be the wave of the future, as I don't think the standard VPN client will work on X64 based systems.
As to the problem of the web site and such using Java, this brings up a good question. Should we tell Cisco to not use Java or any of these newer standards because they're inaccessible, or should we make the newer standards accessible? Java accessibility in particular is a joke. For a platform that's been in wide spread use for at least ten years, if not fifteen, it should be much more widely used. Both leading screen readers have very bad Java support. I honestly don't know if this is the fault of the screen reader vendors, Sun or the Java programmers, but unless Cisco's Java isn't using the accessibility standards, its not Cisco's fault their site and downloads are inaccessible, its either the screen reader vendors or Sun's. Again I don't know whose fault that is, I'm just saying the answer to this isn't to push Cisco to stop using these newer technologies, its to push the adaptive technology industry really hard, and possibly in some uncomfortrable directions for th
em.
Ryan
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Scott Granados
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 5:47 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list; dave.mehler@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Anyone else noticing Cisco becoming less andlessaccessible?
I don't work for the feds so it won't help me much but I know people who
do.:) I'd love to see the government threaten to stop buying Cisco for 1
day, that would put this whole thing to rest once and for all. I'm hopeful
though, the sited folks don't like the state of things either so hopefully
they will redesign a lot of this stuff for the whole market, that's much
more likely.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher McMillan"