Category: Accessibility

A version of this post, with some of the same content, was published last year. A bit of reorganization and some new commentary has been added. I’ve opted to use some of the same content because I do have to ask what has changed in the last year?

If anything, I’d say 31 wasn’t a great year for The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or at the very least, the future is looking less optimistic. The last couple years and months have certainly shown that societal progress is not a certainty and in fact progress can backslide amazingly fast.

July marks the 32nd anniversary of the signing of the ADA. Each year as another year goes by and we celebrate the signing of the legislation, I am torn between feeling celebratory and sad.

I do feel celebratory about the fact that the work of many allowed us to reach this point. As someone who has worked on various accessibility efforts over the years in a small way, I know all too well the toil, endless negotiations and so much more that is required to make progress. So congratulations for sure to those involved in getting this landmark legislation passed and sustained. That is assuredly worth acknowledgement on a grand scale.

Great, celebrate the reality that we have a law that at least gives some hope if it is your choice. I understand perpetual exposure to commentary that it is all trouble can be tough to experience. While you are celebrating, just remember, it isn’t as if in passing the ADA, the amendments to the ADA or other accessibility legislation, Congress has said any of the eight findings they list have gone away.

I urge anyone reading this to read the congressional findings that are listed in the legislation. Like a lot of civil rights legislation, the congressional findings detail that as a class, in this case one to which I belong, people with disabilities are not treated very well and in fact that’s an understatement. Frankly we suffer a staggering amount of outright discrimination and I’m of the opinion that far too often the level of discrimination people with disabilities experience is drastically softened when speaking about the reality of life in the U.S. today. From what I know, the same holds true around the world.

I know from numerous firsthand experiences, calling something discriminatory makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But trust me, experiencing the actual discrimination does much more.

Lest you think discrimination isn’t the right word, here’s the dictionary definition:

“The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability.”

I’m not sure what else you would call much that people with disabilities experience.

To be clear, not all discrimination is intentional in my opinion. In addition, the discrimination is often not the actions of any specific individual but rather the inaction of an organization of some sort, where often well-meaning individuals can find it difficult to go against the inertia that is causing the problematic situations. I also think people get uncomfortable around the term because they think, “Of course I couldn’t discriminate.”

Just because something isn’t intentional does not mean it isn’t happening. Words do matter and how we label what people with disabilities experience daily has an impact on how it is perceived. I recognize on the continuum of circumstances in life, I’m amazingly fortunate. The fact that I can write these words on a computer as someone who’s blind speaks volumes by itself. I have a high degree of security—food, shelter, employment, freedom from war, health insurance and so much more.

If reading that there are multiple challenges is tough or that something seems discriminatory, just remind yourself that the following are still part of the society we’ve created here in the U.S. according to our own congress.

The Congress finds that

(1) physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society, yet many people with physical or mental disabilities have been precluded from doing so because of discrimination; others who have a record of a disability or are regarded as having a disability also have been subjected to discrimination;

(2) historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem;

(3) discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in such critical areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services;

(4) unlike individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to redress such discrimination;

(5) individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;

(6) census data, national polls, and other studies have documented that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally;

(7) the Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and

(8) the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity.

One of the handy but not so obvious features of a Microsoft 365 subscription in my opinion, is the ability to transcribe 300 minutes of audio a month using the online version of Word. I’ve been using this on and off for many months but have started making regular use of it for some personal projects of late. I also noticed a note when uploading audio recently, that the 300 minute restriction appears to be removed. A note in the transcription area said you can now upload unlimited audio. It did also say this may change in the future but this change makes the audio transcription functionality even more compelling to me.

Office has a help article on using this experience. Here are some notes on using this experience with a screen reader in particular that go a bit further than the help article.

Creating a Document

First off, you are going to want to create a new Word document using the online version of Word. I do this by navigating to http://word.office.com and choosing the option to create a new document. Since Word online works best with any screen reader virtual mode off, I typically turn off the JAWS VPC, Narrator Scan Mode or NVDA Browse mode before navigating to the site.

Assuming you are signed into your Microsoft 365 account, focus should land on the Create a New Blank Document link. Simply activate that link and a new document is created and focus is moved to the editing area.

Transcribing Audio

With focus in the document area, you are going to want to access the Dictation option on the Ribbon and specifically the Transcription option. There are different ways to navigate but what I do is:

1. Press CTRL+Shift+F6 once to access the ribbon. You should be on the Home option. If on a Mac replace CTRL with CMD.
2. Press Tab once to access the options on the Home ribbon.
3. To move to different groups of controls here you can use CTRL+Left and Right arrows. Again, replace CTRL with CMD if on a Mac. I have found it faster to use CTRL+Left arrow from here until I reach the group that announces as Voice with focus on a Dictate button.
4. Press alt+Down Arrow to access the choices here. Replace Alt with Option if on a Mac.
5. Arrow down to Transcribe and press Enter.
6. A new pane will open and focus should go to it. If for some reason it does not, again use CTRL+F6 and CTRL+Shift+F6 to locate the Transcribe Pane.
7. Tab to the Upload audio button and activate it.
8. You will get the standard File Open dialog for the operating system you are using. Locate the audio file you want to transcribe and upload the audio.
9. You will get messages about the audio uploading and being transcribed. I have found it fastest to toggle on the virtual mode for a screen reader and read this text. You should find the text a couple lines above a cancel button when reading in this fashion. Remember to turn back off any virtual mode when done reading. Transcription is quite fast in my experience. It is usually done in less than three minutes for both uploading and transcribing an hour’s worth of audio for me.
10. When the transcription is finished, you will have some new elements in this pane. They will include:
    
    1. A list of all the recognized speech you can arrow up and down to review/edit. Tab from an entry in this list for an edit button if you want to make an adjustment to the transcription.
    2. Note that if you choose Edit, a new dialog opens with the section of text in an edit box and the speaker identification in a second edit area. You can adjust the speaker name and there is an option to do it for the entire document as well.
    3. After you arrow to any transcript section, there is also a tab stop to that specific segment. Press enter on this to start audio playing at that point.
    4. Controls for adding sections or all the text to the document.
    5. Audio controls for playing the audio you transcribed.
11. Use the Add to Document button. You will have choices for Text, text, text with speaker identification, text with timestamps or text with both speakers and timestamps. Use up and down arrow to move through choices and Press enter on the item you want.
12. Focus will likely stay on the Add to Document button. Use CTRL+Shift+F6 to move back to the document area. You will be at the end of any inserted text.
    

At this point you can make any adjustments to the text you want. For minor edits, I will use either the edit transcription functionality in the Transcribe Pane or Word Online. For extensive edits, I tend to open the document in the full desktop version of Word. For example, a global search and replace can change all references of Speaker 1 to a specific name.

By default the document, is saved in the root of your OneDrive folder and can be edited online or with the desktop version of Word. Speech to text transcription still requires some editing but this is another helpful tool to use from my experience.

When I think of an island, tropical breezes, ocean surf and the warm sun-soaked sand between my toes is usually what comes to mind. Add in a blissful smile from memories of warm island beaches I’ve been fortunate to visit and for me the term island is generally a joyous one.

What then you ask do such happy ideas have to do with the term Accessibility Island? Yes, there is much that is joyous about both accessibility and islands but certainly not all.

I use the term accessibility island because of perhaps one of the downsides of island life. As marvelous as an island can be, you can be cut off from other parts of the world. Constraints, water in this case, can restrain you from all you want to reach.

So too with accessibility failings. You can be quickly cut off from achieving all you want, again through no fault of your own.

Several years ago I was talking with a good friend about the reality of working as an adult with a disability and how it differed from what we had expected before launching our careers. I don’t remember all the details of that conversation but now more than 30 years into my own career, the one thing I do recall being most surprised about hasn’t really changed. There are many, far too many in fact, times when you feel cut off or isolated through no choice of your own. I won’t lay claim to speaking for anyone other than myself here but suspect I’m not alone from various conversations I’ve had over the years.

At the start of my career, it was the meeting with paper handouts distributed to everyone. Oh and even me if I really wanted something I couldn’t read I could get the handouts also, to be read of course by that ubiquitous “someone can help you.” . Through all the technology changes, it is still far too common to end up in the functionally same situation. Sure you might get the PowerPoint deck, web site or app shared ahead of time but if the content itself isn’t consumable with a screen reader in my case it might as well be the same as those paper handouts.

This can be especially true in training or other learning activities. Accessibility Island is trying to learn the material in a class at the same time you are both educating the course creator about accessibility and figuring out how to use the technology in the course. Three for the price of one might be a great deal when shopping but is a disaster when trying to learn.

Anyone who has worked or lived around accessibility I’m sure can rattle off a long list of common failings. The point here isn’t to chronicle all that can and is wrong with the state of accessibility. Instead, it is to say that the truly unfortunate thing is that you are still left without a good alternative in far too many situations. Stay silent and you may not be able to contribute effectively because you are acting on limited information. Speak up and you are still far too often seen as complaining, not patient or counseled how you should have “handled that situation better” by someone after the fact. Please tell me how you should handle exclusion better other than feeling sad, frustrated, hurt and yes willing to educate still.

Meetings or training are not the point here. The examples are really illustrative of the entire workplace. What happens when a new software program, update or other technology is deployed? Has the organization ensured the experience is usable for everyone in the workplace?

Ask yourself how many workplaces are free from blocking accessibility issues? Now ask yourself what the new employee encountering these issues who is new to the organization, job or manager is supposed to do? Unless you have a policy in place ahead of time for how you are going to handle these sorts of situations, you are leaving the employee to potentially struggle and spend needless energy trying to figure out what they should do? You are also locking the employee out of opportunities and your organization out of all the employee has to contribute.

These are examples of finding yourself on what I’m calling accessibility island. You are alone, cut off and isolated.

Authenticity, the “lived experience” and such are the hot topics of the day in various diversity and accessibility circles. This is great but then do not shy away when people want to let you in on their true experiences. Don’t try and tell us all the things we could have done differently or how things will be fixed in a certain amount of time or to be patient. If you feel compelled to tell anyone anything, when you learn about people on Accessibility Island, tell those involved in sending people to such a destination what they can do differently.

Trust me, anyone who’s taken even one trip to Accessibility Island has likely tried dozens of creative problem solving techniques. Given the lack of alternatives I mentioned earlier I can also assure you that for anyone to actually show an outward sign that they’ve journeyed to Accessibility Island, things have to be quite problematic. The fact that is reality, is itself a problem too. It should be a safe space to acknowledge that you are experiencing such issues.

Educate about accessibility, ask if your organization has the right resources, not just policies, to ensure an accessible workplace. Do you have the right institutional policies and procedures in place from procurement onward to ensure what you are bringing into the workplace represents the values and qualities you want for your world? Are those policies backed with the resources and knowledge to ensure the policies are actually applied and working? Do employees have the necessary information and training to be successful and avoid sending their colleagues on unintentional trips to Accessibility Island?

I know for myself, I want to choose when I go to an island because I want to enjoy those tropical breezes, the sand and surf. I do not want to be isolated, trying to contribute and locked out. I’ve had more than enough visits to Accessibility Island.

In my work at Microsoft, I’ve created a few training resources recently. These have been shared in other arenas but I wanted to share them here as well. The list includes:

• Creating an Azure Virtual Machine with a Screen Reader
• A free course with Fable Pathways on Web Development
• A series of videos on Accessibility Insights, Edge developer tools and Microsoft’s Disability Answer Desk and enterprise Disability Answer Desk