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 _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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 _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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

to design accessibility into their products. We are currently trying to

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi John, I find the best way to hit these guys is usually via their Sales Directors. In an extreme case a while back, the late, great, blind Ray Charles composed a piece of music in front of an audience, having first sent the band out of the room. He used an accessible music composing program, and when finished printed out copies for the band. The band were brought back in, and he said, "Play it as it's written - mistakes and all!". So the band did, and it was absolutely perfect. I used that when promoting that music product over here against a competitive product, and won every single time - simply because while the two products did much the same job, that one was accessible. I'm now talking to a company who produce mathematical publishing software which works in Word, and is ideal for schools. With help from them, and a few tweaks on their part, we not only have it producing braille math, it's producing Large Print at the touch of a few keys. They are now seeing orders for multiple copies coming through from schools over here so that it can be used with all students, and not just for the V.I. students. You want another example? Ask Andrew Hodgson. He recommended Zyxcel wireless routers because he could access them remotely if ever I needed help. I've bought four now, and probably effectively sold at least a couple of dozen more for that very reason. Now if I could just get those Richard Craniums who produce Adobe AIR to get their fingers out of wherever they keep them warm these days, I'd be able to produce accessible Help files for the Apple Mac. George. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim Sent: 14 February 2011 14:58 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: them form their push per the putting 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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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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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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I am writing with good news for a change. It would appear that the Secure web reporter product now owned by Mcafee is now accessible. This works in conjunction with the secure web gateway. I haven't upgraded the infrastructure to the latest version of the secure web gateway because I have heard that it's Java based and as I am the only administrator of this system I cant afford to have decreased accessibility. The secure web reporter has been Java based for as long as I've been using it but the interface has been almost completely inaccessible even with the Java access bridge. buttons were unlabeled, the tab order was baddly broken and in some parts of the interface for example, while creating advanced reports the interface would break completely when the java access bridge was used. This version continues to have a few issues with the tab order. When for example configuring the log source options I can cycle between the tabs in that section however I am having major problems trying to get to the buttons in the dialogues. Unfortunately the jaws cursor doesn't work in this interface either so I'm not sure how I'm going to get around that. I am considering opening a support case with Mcafee to see if they'd at least implement a work around to put shortcut keys in there. Do any of you have any suggestions for getting around this? Although there's more than can be done for this interface to make it more accessible, it's really fantastic to see this level of improvement. It makes me less anxious about upgrading to secure web version 7. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh 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

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 _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins