Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessibility (was: VMWare View administrator)

I agree that on the surface a lot of companies do want to be accessible and do the right thing. However, many times this extends only surface deep. This isn't necessarily the company's fault either. Let's face it, there are a lot of frameworks that are very difficult to make accessible, I'm looking at you Flash and Java. Not that it isn't doable, but sometimes the investment required is just too much. Case in point, about six months ago my company was looking at a monitoring solution for VMWare ESX. We got hold of the product and discovered it was all flash based. Parts of it worked OK with my screen reader, not great but OK, and parts didn't even work at all. Of course, as the blind person testing the product, with no clue what its supposed to do, its sometimes more difficult than people realize to determine how accessible a product is, is the problem you're running into an access issue or a lack of understanding the product on your part? Anyway, we got the vendor involved, and they were at first very interested. We even had a conference between us, the vendor, and the screen reader vendor I use. Nothing came of it because in the end the amount of work needed on the vendor's part was just too much, and the screen reader vendor claimed Adobe was at fault too, and the screen reader vendor didn't seem willing to put the hammer down on Adobe to get this fixed. In the end we ended up not purchasing the product for many reasons, accessibility just being one of them. Another case in point. Symantec Backup Exec, one of the most commonly used backup products, has some major accessibility flaws. Symantec claims that their product is 508 compliant because it is fully keyboard accessible. Digging further into that, its fully keyboard accessible because Windows has a mousekeys feature where you can use the keyboard to control the mouse. Hmm, some keyboard accessibility. On the other hand Backup Exec uses some standard controls that screen reader vendors still don't feel obligated to implement despite, again, repeated prompting. The end point is this isn't a simple make the company see accessibility and they'll come. Software companies are huge complex beasts, and often have multiple arms. Neither of which know what the other arm is doing. In many cases, such as Symantec, they erect barriers specifically to keep the various arms from knowing what they're doing. Keep in mind, as many people have said blind people are a nitch market. I don't know how many blind system admins there are, but my guess is we're a nitch of a nitch. I believe at one time the section 508 guide lines didn't require the administrative parts of an application to be accessible, just the enduser facing parts. I'm pretty sure that's been changed now. Honestly, with all the accessibility issues, its easy to see why not so many blind people go into systems administration as a career. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Scott Granados Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 10:21 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessibility (was: VMWare View administrator) I would agree, the folks at VMWare seem interested in accessibility. I'd say most vendors seem to want to do the right thing they just might not know what that is. I recently ran in to a vendor of Wireless gear (Aerohive) who was very hip to accessibility requirements. I was in a Webex with them and the tech I was working with even recognized that I was running JFW and adapted his suggested steps to account for the use of a screen reader. Needless to say I ordered the rest of the wireless gear we needed from them. On Feb 11, 2011, at 7:15 AM, John G. Heim wrote:

I have talked to the cheif technical officer at VMWare, Steve Herrod. Mr. Herrod and VMWare seem very interested in accessibility. I hope and believe that accessibility problems are mostly the result of oversights and lack of knowledge on their part.

I hope that people who are interested in this problem would join with me in the International Association of Visually Impaired Technologists in addressing this issue. We plan to try to work with companies to get them to design accessibility into their products. We are currently trying to form a committee to work on this. If you are interested in being on this committee, please contact me. The committee hasn't been formed yet so I can't say what it will do. That would be up to the committee itself. But I would assume it would do something like develop a set of suggestions for actions a company can take to make it easier for them to design accessibility into their products. Some of these suggestions might be having blind beta testers and having someone in the company responsible for reviewing accessibility.

You can contact me at john@iavit.org. Thanks.

VMWare,

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ryan Shugart" To: "Blind sysadmins list" Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 8:54 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] VMWare View administrator

It couldn't hurt, but I wouldn't hold your breath for a response. My guess is Freedom has never heard of VMWare, and they have other higher priorities, for better or worse. I'd say your best bet is to continue pushing VMWare, if they went to Freedom it might be different. Or is the person to push here Adobe, its their controls afterall. Its actually very difficult to say who sometimes, and quite frankly the habbit of companies to farm the blame off to someone else is really, well, frustrating. Ryan

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 2:25 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] VMWare View administrator

I received a response from the VMWare support department this morning. They sent me a generic document from the Freedomscientific website for preparing Windows XP for Jaws 4.1. It was a slightly pointless instruction but I appreciate their effert.

I have replied again with a number of proposed solutions.

Firstly they could provide a way of disabling the flash control on a per session basis. Alternatively they could fix the flash control so that focus is not restricted to it.

Would you think there is any point reporting this to Freedom Scientific?

Regards

Darragh Ó Héiligh System administration Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie

From: Ryan Shugart To: Blind sysadmins list Date: 11/02/2011 00:20 Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] VMWare View administrator Sent by: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

Andrew: This isn't the main interface, VMWare View is the VDI product. The VIC itself is still accessible, well as accessible as ever, in 4.1. Ryan

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 3:01 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] VMWare View administrator

Hi,

Oh crap. Is that the main Vmware console in VCentre? We have a couple of ESX 3.5 hosts I was going to upgrade to ESXI 4.1 in the near future (I am very new to VmWare), what is the latest version that doesn't have the changed interface? On the other hand, HyperV is looking ever more attractive.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [ mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: 10 February 2011 15:16 To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] VMWare View administrator

Good afternoon,

I was horrified and very annoyed to find that after updating to the latest version of VMWare View, the administrative site is flash based and I am unable to read everything that I need to access.

What the hell are these companies playing at!

Is it seriously too much to ask that they create interfaces that are accessible? Or at the very least not inaccessible? I don't mind having to work at things but I'm getting very tired of companies unknowingly putting obsticles in the way. Especially when I have a job to do.

Have any of you come across this in the latest version of the ESX related tools?

Before I do any more upgrading of our environment do you know if there is anything else I need to look out for?

I'm becoming a very intollerent person when it comes to these updates. Why and howe they made what was a reasonably nice interface to navigate around a completely inaccessible flash based tragity I just cant understand.

Regards

Darragh Ó Héiligh System administration Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie

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