The ultimate question is what are we going to do about it?
I would like to take this over to the talk@iavit.org list. I know there are
probably people on this list who are not on that list. But I don't think its
a lot to ask for people to subscribe to a second list given the scope of
this problem. The talk@iavit.org list has very little traffic.
Please subscribe to the talk list by sending a message to
talk-subscribe@iavit.org.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Shugart"
To: "Blind sysadmins list"
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessibility (was: VMWare View
administrator)
John:
I agree with your statements below. The problem is, at least in
large companies, the number of vendors they'll go to is small. In the
virtualization space, its pretty much VMWare and Microsoft. Anyone else is
just a low spec, mainly because VMWare has proven they have a reasonably
good virtualization platform, and many large companies invest a lot in the
Microsoft ecosystem already.
I'm sure this will spark some disagreement, but I think the
assistive technology industry is falling more and more behind the times.
They've never been known for being up with the latest and greatest, but I
honestly think things are changing so fast, and the screen reader and other
assistive technology vendors have no clue how to keep up. The whole push to
web applications being a good example.
I go through the frustrations you talk about every day. One of the
systems I spend the most time managing is Microsoft System Center
Configuration manager. The current version is very accessible, its just an
MMC app. So I can get to the places I need to do do my job. I admit it's a
lot slower to navigate with the keyboard than the mouse, but I think a lot
of apps are that way unless keyboard support was well designed. Microsoft
is about to release a new version of SCCM, SCCM 2012. I played with the
beta, and its almost completely inaccessible. It's a WPF application, and
while the controls expose themselves through UIA, there's no labeling, I
can't tell what half the buttons do, etc. I filed a bug about this on
Microsoft Connect, and was told by Microsoft that accessibility would be
there in the final version. Well, um, great. Its there in the final
version. So, if the implementation doesn't work, I'm sure they'll race to
get out a bug fix, right? Yeah sure. The majority of assistive tech
companies have no clue what Configuration Manager is, and don't have the
time to learn it, so what does one do? Well, in my case, I'm going to the
Microsoft Management Summet this March, and I have a hope that I might be
able to corner one of the developers to talk with them. We'll see how that
works. I have to head out to work now, or I'd tell you about a friend of
mine whose a system administrator whose writing his own interface for ESX
Ranger. It isn't pretty, its frustrating, and a little support from the
industry would be kind of nice.
Ryan
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org
[mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John
G. Heim
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 7:58 AM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Accessibility (was: VMWare View
administrator)
Certainly there are some things that are very difficult to make accessible
and others that aren't accessible because the company doesn't care about
accessibility. With some companies, nothing we can say will make them care.
But I know that a lot of things are inaccessible just because of ignorance
on the part of the programmer or engineer. The best example I know of is
that the console install for VMWare ESXX used to have a splash screen at the
beginning. You had to click the mouse on the logo or something to begin the
installation. After that, it was all text and you could do an install via a
serial console. But there was absolutely no technological reason for that
barricade to accessibility to be there in the first place.
I submitted a bug report on that but I don't know if it got removed because
I haven't done an ESX install for several years now. In fact, my co-worker
is now in charge of our ESX clusters because of stuff like this. It was just
easier for my boss to give the job of dealing with VMWare to my co-worker.
This is an example of a phenomena I refer to as "backwatering". Tasks
involving dealing with new technologies are given to sighted employees
because its just easier and more efficient for them. The blind technologist
may have many important tasks to deal with bug gradually, he or she is left
with only the older technologies. Gradually, they become less and less of a
key player in their company or department. And then someday, when layoffs
come around and the boss has to choose between them and the sighted
employee, its the blind person who is layed off. And in a way, that's only
fair. After all, they are less important than the sighted employee.
I'm in no danger of being layed off. But this backwatering phenomena has
happened to me in the past and its happened to many of my friends. Its a
constant struggle. The main frustration with it to me is that you can be a
better technologist than your sighted counterpart. You might be smarter,
more instinctive, and a harder worker and all that can be dwarfed by mere
accessibility. I'll bet that almost everybody on this list is an
exceptionally good technologist and.or systems admin. If you weren't
exceptional, you couldn't make it as a blind systems admin. You have to be
way above average just to survive. All the successful blind systems
administrators I know are probably in the 90th percentile. And Many of them
are struggling just to stay employed. I don't know if anything can be done
about it but I think we have to try.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Shugart"
To: "Blind sysadmins list"
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 1:06 PM
Subject: 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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