by Rodney Neeley
The purpose of this article is to tell my own story. I have been asked to write this story because of the fact that it could be considered a major issue which confronts blind job hunters as well as those blind people who are employed in private industry. Additionally, some of the critical comments which I will make regarding Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) enabled screen readers are germane to all Windows-based products currently on the market. With that in mind, here's my story.
The names of the two companies mentioned in this article have been changed to protect their identities.
I had worked in inside sales for approximately three years when I decided to move back to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. I thought that my career opportunities would increase because Washington has become a center for high tech companies. After looking around for approximately two months, I landed a job with Dialog Communications. Dialog Communications sold teleconferencing services. Everything went well for the first year of my employment at Dialog. I even managed to win an award for selling the most reservationless teleconferencing services in the entire nation.
Then Dialog was taken over by a company called General Conferencing. For the next six months, everyone seemed really excited about the new company. I was pretty happy about the situation because our sales commissions were increased. We also had a broader product line to sell to consumers.
The most important addition to our product line was our web conferencing service. This service enables people in different locations to share presentations over the web. My colleagues and I were all excited about selling this new service. So we started producing our own PowerPoint presentations and practicing presenting them to each other.
I participated in this presentation sharing. I did my presentation just like everyone else. It did not contain too many graphics, but it was interesting to learn to use PowerPoint. My presentation worked fine when I was using it on my own computer, but when I tried to conduct a practice presentation with one of my colleagues using the Internet, I discovered that I could no longer read my presentation. Fortunately, I was able to do most of the presentation from memory, but I sensed that not being able to read the presentation using my screen reader was a bad omen. I tried to participate in presentations with my colleagues as a member of the audience, but I couldn't read their presentations either.
After investigating this phenomenon, I learned that our web presentation software was written in Java. I knew that my screen reader did not work well with many Java applications. So I decided to contact some more knowledgeable computer users. I asked them to try to use our web conferencing service. Curtis Chong, Technology Director for the National Center for the Blind, tried our web conferencing software. He discovered that I was correct. General's web conferencing services just wouldn't work well with my screen reader. Part of the reason for this was that there were no text labels included in our web applications. For example, instead of saying "Question" when someone had a question about the presentation, the software showed a man with his hand raised and a puzzled look on his face.
Upon further investigation, I contacted Sun Microsystems. One of their accessibility engineers told me that General's software was not written using Sun's recommended accessibility standards for Java applications. I spoke to our programmers about this issue. They told me they were working on this problem. That was six months ago; the problem still exists today, as I discovered when I visited the General conferencing web site.
Since web conferencing was our major new product and we were penalized for not doing at least 20 presentations per week, I decided to leave my inside sales position at General. Since then, I have recently found a job as a contract specialist with the Department of Interior. I decided to work for the federal government because of the Section 508 regulations. These regulations should encourage federal agencies to provide information platforms that are accessible to blind computer users. Besides that, I was tired of selling. Most of my colleagues in inside sales had changed companies once every two to three years. I wanted a position that was more secure, and, fortunately, I was able to obtain such a position.
I believe this issue has some further ramifications for all totally blind job seekers. How can we compete in today's high tech graphically oriented job market? I'm not a technology expert. I'm a salesman. Like most salespeople, I don't want to have to be an expert on technology. I just want my products to work well with speech so that I can conduct presentations to my customers.
I have also done some remote work which required me to dial into a database. The dial-up connection showed me a graphic of the database, which, of course, my screen reader couldn't read. I have spoken with other people who have experienced this situation. What can we do to help blind people have efficient access to dial-up databases? Just today, I was searching for jobs on the Internet. I came across a company called Check Again. I visited their web site, http://www.checkagain.com. I tried their on-line demo. The first two screens worked well with my screen reader. The third screen contained some graphic images which my screen reader could not interpret. How could I realistically expect to compete for this position if the web demo won't work with my screen-reading software?
This company is not obligated to comply with Section 508 because it works mostly with private companies. I guess that what I am trying to say is that technology is developing at a rapid pace. Our screen readers are just not able to keep up with all of these advancements. So what does this mean for the 74 percent of blind people who are not working?