I'll come in on this ... my preference for management (once I become
proficient at it enough where commands will just pop out of my head at
random) is PowerShell. I'm very weak in it by most standards, but I'm using
the accessibility struggle as my excuse to get better at it quicker. (I love
the command line so much that I drive my GUI-thinking friend crazy most of
the time.) I currently have AD deployed both at my place of employment, as
well as at my house, and I love it ... using AD, WSUS, WDS (though the only
way WDS works for us is with unattended setup files, and even then I'm not
sure how they work, since writing those always takes a sighted tester
first), and I also have an IIS server at my house, with SQL and Sharepoint
running elsewhere. So, you can see I'm all over the place, setting up more
stuff than is truly necessary because I want to be versed in as many
products from Microsoft as I can. Not only to scout out accessibility
issues. Certain areas that need serious work though, are the Sharepoint
administration panel, the Server Manager dashboard (many elements don't read
checked or unchecked, for instance when installing them, and also, when
there are edit fields to type information in, those simply read in screen
reader's views as "edit" instead of the actual field name (installing WSUS
via the GUI is a good example, for instance, if you want to change the
database from the default WID configuration )), and many others. Honestly,
not sure why the open source screen reader NVDA's not been included into the
Windows setup experience. And, another thing to keep in mind ... installing
windows on Hyper-V would be much easier if a virtual sound device could be
configured ... instead, in order to get audio, we have to use enhanced
session mode, which doesn't help during the installation process. Also the
option for speech during recoveries such as emergency console on NanoServer,
DSRM, WinPE (for capturing images when unattended setup has not been
written), andso on. After all, you guys were the creators of UEFI, weren't
you? Use your own process to your advantage to make the BIOS talk ... so to
speak. Just my two cents ... will probably have more coming in the not too
distant future.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins
[mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of
Gianugo Rabellino
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 10:16 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions
Thanks Andrew for the warm welcome, and thanks for your context on devops.
Indeed I believe that devops can be a great opportunity: I have to confess
my undying love for command line interfaces and scripts rather than GUIs, so
no surprise here.
Something I'd be keen to know, in fact, is whether there is something we
could or should do on the command line front to make it more accessible and
usable. Note that this is no excuse to delay or underperform in providing
accessible web and GUI interfaces: I consider that an absolute minimum bar
that needs to be applied across the board with no exceptions, and I trust we
will get there.
At the same time though, and all things being equal, I wonder if you and
others in this community have a preference given the choice of a GUI
interface or a console/command line environment to perform typical system
administration tasks. In both cases, it would be very helpful for me to
understand what are the gaps and where we can work to make the system
administration experience more productive from an accessibility point of
view.
Thanks again for taking the time to write this, and likewise I'm looking
forward to future engagements with this list.
Gianugo
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins
[mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew
Hodgson
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 3:20 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions
Hi Gianugo,
Welcome to this group. I am really pleased to see someone from Microsoft
join the group, and hope you won't be bombarded with lots of people asking
you for access tips or to vent issues with Microsoft products.
I am the group owner, and I came into the sysadmin world with a Linux intro
at home, followed by a swift Windows conversion when I joined a company. I
have mainly found the Microsoft products really usable with speech, and in
fact chose Windows because my sighted friends using Linux were mainly using
GUIs, which were in most cases non-standard and the access to those was very
sketchy. I am a fan of the remote administration tools, so rather than
remoting onto a server and getting the job done, I prefer accessing the
server remotely via a remote access protocol (RSAT tools are a very good
example of this working well). PowerShell remoting is another way this
works well.
Recently I have joined a DevOps team and whilst we are using the Windows
stack, the senior guys of the team mainly have a Linux background, and so it
is quite a challenge to fit in some of the technologies in a Windows stack.
It is getting a lot easier now, and I find the concept of defining stacks
using code really helpful as someone with limited vision, because I just
write the code, and can see the end product, which includes infrastructure
diagrams etc. Not fully there yet, but we're getting closer.
I manage Office365 tenants for a few organisations (mainly charities that
have donations from Microsoft), and I have found the recent console slightly
behind in access to its older brother. This may just be because I am new to
the new console, and in fact that is one thing which needs to be made clear:
Sometimes there isn't an access issue, but because everything has moved
round from where it was, it can take a long time for screen reader users to
catch up. I tend to use PowerShell to do most of the work these days,
illuminating the need for a console altogether, but it may be something to
look at.
Looking forward to future discussions with you on the list, Best, Andrew.
-----Original Message-----
From: Blind-sysadmins
[mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of
Gianugo Rabellino
Sent: 23 March 2016 18:28
To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Introductions
I had just subscribed to this list and I thought I'd quickly introduce
myself. My name is Gianugo Rabellino, and I am the newly minted director of
accessibility for Microsoft's Cloud+Enterprise division. My responsibility
roughly spans all the server side product lineup from Microsoft (Windows
Server, Azure, System Center, SQL Server, Power BI...) as well as our
developer tools (Visual Studio, VS Code, .NET and more).
As I'm ramping up and learning a lot about a11y, I found this list and I
thought it would be useful for me to subscribe and at the same time offer to
this group to be a Microsoft point of contact on top of our official
channels. While I'm directly responsible for the Cloud+Enterprise lineup,
I'm also part of a larger accessibility team across Microsoft, so I'd be
more than happy to connect to relevant colleagues if you have questions or
issues about other Microsoft products.
My background in the past 25 years has been in open source, and as such I'm
very passionate about having discussions in the open and interacting
transparently with the communities I'm working with. To that extent, I am
currently attending CSUN and I would love the opportunity to meet with
anyone on this group who happens to be in San Diego these days. Please don't
hesitate to contact me and we will certainly find a time. And if you're not
at CSUN, feel free to reach out all the same, on this list or privately: I
would really appreciate an opportunity to learn more and work together.
Looking forward to our future conversations,
--
Gianugo Rabellino
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