The Idea Place Posts

Monday will mark the 31st anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (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 happens 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.

I urge anyone reading this to read the congressional findings that are listed in the legislation. Like a lot of civil rights legislation, they 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.

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

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

Leave a Comment

When you want to assist someone else with a computer problem on Windows, there are a range of connection options. Some, such as an actual phone call, are easy to establish but difficult to use for this sort of a situation. Others, like Quick Assist, offer the best of all worlds in most cases where establishing the connection is easy and the access you have on the remote computer works quite well. However, Quick Assist does not currently support redirection of audio as far as I know, so if you are using a screen reader, it can obviously be difficult to use.

In the screen reader case, especially if the individual giving the assistance is using a screen reader, there’s not a great way to easily know what’s happening on the remote computer. That said, combining a couple pieces of technology, something I’m sure is no surprise to pretty much anyone who uses a screen reader, can be one potential work around if you want to use this connection option.

The Scenario

You, the screen reading user, want to aid someone remotely. That person may or may not be a screen reading user. In the old school phone call method, even if you use newer voice-over-IP technology, such as Skype, Teams, Zoom, or the never-ending products that seem to appear, you obviously have no direct control over the remote computer. Asking the individual you are trying to assist to type commands and such and read the output only goes so far.

The Quick Assist Solution

Establishing a Quick Assist connection is straight forward. Both individuals launch the Quick Assist app, which comes as a part of pretty much all Windows 10 installations. The person helping requests a six-digit code that they share with the person receiving help. The person providing help also indicates how much control they want to request. For our example this would be full control. The person receiving help will enter the six-digit code provided and approve the full control request. The pin requests, pin entry, control request and control approval all appear as web content so work quite well with screen readers.

The Wrinkle

As mentioned before, Quick Assist does not support audio redirection. To work around that situation, again you can combine a bit of technology.

1. On either the computer providing help or the computer receiving help, create a meeting or other connection with your program of choice that allows for screen sharing. You will want to be sure to use a program that supports sharing of system audio as well. As I’m sure many blog readers know, I am a Microsoft employee, although this is my personal blog, so tend to use Microsoft Teams but Zoom and other programs will work equally well here.
2. Both individuals involved in the assistance should then join the meeting or other connection.
3. The person wanting help next starts a screen share from within the call or meeting. It is key to include the system audio. This will create the environment, where the person offering the assistance who is for our scenario a screen reading user, is going to hear the remote audio.
4. Now establish the Quick Assist connection, including the person to provide assistance requesting full control and the person wanting assistance granting such control.

The Additional Wrinkles

Any time you are establishing a remote connection between two computers, the issue of how and when keyboard commands, touch gestures or mouse clicks go to the remote or local computer requires attention. In my trials of Quick Assist thus far, when you first establish the full connection, keyboard commands for me stayed with the local computer. Using various screen reader commands and techniques, I had to find part of the Quick Assist window on my computer and activate that area. The area was labeled something like Remote Input. I was able to get to this area with the JAWS cursor, NVDA object navigation or Narrator previous and next commands in those programs. Activating the input area with the appropriate command in the screen readers allowed sending keyboard commands to the remote computer. At that point I could use all the standard commands on the remote computer, such as ctrl+win+enter to launch Narrator. Again, our scenario is that a screen reading user is providing help and the person receiving help is not and likely doesn’t even have anything beyond Narrator installed.

One other item of note once you are using the remote computer. So far in my use of Quick Assist, I could not find a way to get keyboard commands to go back to the local computer without having the person receiving assistance end the connection. I did try some of the standard commands I use when working with a standard remote desktop connection and they did not seem to work. This may be a knowledge gap on my part or a limitation of Quick Assist. As I learn more I’ll update with additional details.

Using The Remote Computer

The process of creating this connection sounds more complicated than it is once you do it a couple of times. In my experience, getting the remote computer audio from the screen sharing in Teams or another app, and using Quick Assist to control the remote computer worked well. There was a slight, very slight, lag from the time I used my keyboard commands until I heard the result but it was far better than trying to ask the other person to type a range of commands. I found the environment quite usable to help solve problems.

Alternatives and More

This is not the only solution to this problem of course. If both parties in the connection are using the same screen reader, solutions such as JAWS tandem or equivalents where they exist, are better alternatives. Also, you could opt to forgo the screen sharing part of this process for the audio and just listen to the audio from the remote computer over the voice connection you are using. Likely there are other options I’ve not thought of too but I offer this as one more possible option when you want to help others out of a computer jam remotely, especially when you are using a screen reader and the person needing help is not.

One Comment