Death by Powerpoint, part N+1

One of the problems with being RantWoman is that even when one goes to gatherings of people doing really, cool, interesting, progressive, insightful, socially useful, awesomely interesting things, one still sometimes comes home with grumbles. Almost anything to do with Powerpoint is at high risk for generating grumbles and sometimes causing RantWoman to decide she has to redefine what she thought she was at the event to do.

(For links to yesterday's really cool stuff, see the bottom of this post. To see several entertaining encounters with Powerpoint first, just keep reading.)

Once upon a time in an actual workplace, when RantWoman's vision was merely subpar and not as bad as it is today, RantWoman was confronted both with a presenter having the inevitable problems with her computer and, once the computer got connected properly with the projector, with purple text on a lime green background.

RantWoman has always worn pretty thick glasses and electronic purple lettering almost never holds up. Spherical distortion, red trails along one side of all the letters, rainbows and trails are really fun for physics class and sometimes more entertaining than a presentation. However, none of this plays well with lime green background, and RantWoman just blurted out that "Powerpoint is spawn of Satan." Okay, so some people are not used to talking about Satan in the workplace and even less used to talking about Powerpoint and Satan in the same sentence. Possibly RantWoman should have confined herself to comments about the purple on green issue?

A couple years ago, there was a project funded by Congress that went around holding something called Healthcare Summits in several different cities. The project conducted pretty tightly-run public meetings seeking input on several pre-defined questions. In Seattle the meeting was held in a very large meeting room at Seattle Center and OF COURSE there was Powerpoint; projecting Powerpoint on jumbo screens alas does not necessarily enhance its readability. RantWoman did not even think to request slides in advance, but it turned out that apparently RantWoman's voice was needed.

Some of the Powerpoint slides contained options people were supposed to vote on with little selection devices provided at all our seats, but the facilitator kept forgetting to read the options for people who could not see the slides. RantWoman knows there were several in the room because in addition to the ones who spoke up, RantWoman heard several different people, especially some elderly folk, near her whispering to their neighbors.

After a couple rounds of people politely waiting for the microphone runner and the speaker trying to run ahead before everyone could vote, RantWoman just started asking very loudly, whenever the facilitator forgot to read the options and their numbers, for the options and their nubmers to be read. This got a little repetitive and RantWoman gave up on any thought of nuanced contributions to the discussionm but at least we all got better assurance that we were voting as we intended!

RantWoman once went to a presentation about personal budgeting and planning for major purchases or self-employment. The presentation was well-done EXCEPT for two points. First, brown letters on a medium blue background is really not the best contrast. It's not that reading the text from anywhere further away than her own screen is a reasonable expectation for RantWoman anyway; it's just that RantWoman was still in a space of thinking abstractly that better contrast would hypothetically be nice.

The second problem, which alas the poor contrast did not obscure, was that the presentation had these spiffy brown blobs to illustrate the Tater family making budget decisions. Now, I don't know about you, but sound financial decisions just are not the first thing I think of when confronted with fuzzy brown blobs. Once RantWoman just stopped looking at the screen, things went much better though!

Compared with all the sins mentioned above yesterday's Digital Inclusion Summit might be a mere blip, except of course for the word "inclusion" and the typical nature of the problems.

Registration for this event was through some kind of automated system. RantWoman does not remember whether the original application process had any options for requesting reasonable accommodations. RantWoman got multiple confirmation emails but these also were deficient in any ways to contact someone about last minute changes such as cancellation or requests for reasonable accommodations

RantWoman's main accommodation request in this situation: if one thinks about it, one can request electronic copies of presentations either in advance or afterward. In advance can be dicey because, well, other presenters prepare about the way RantWoman does: that is between procrastination and last-minute flashes of brilliance, nothing is ever ready until the night before the event at the earliest and sometimes not until the day of the event.

Of course, once one shows up, one's laptop battery could quit. Or the conference planners might not have spent money on wi-fi service from the hotel. Or speakers might be cheerfully chattering on, some of them pointing at their Powerpoints, some of them doing fine without Powerpoints, and more than one rendered stunningly mute when asked just to read an email address for someone who cannot read it on the screen. RantWoman supposes she could ask a neighbor to do this, but RantWoman has been around enough people who are constantly doing various coping things to suspect she probably was not the only one in the room having trouble with the Powerpoints.

RantWoman guesses she should be glad she was at this event partly on behalf of a place that specializes in assistive technology and accessibility. This does not mean even that place always succeeds but it does mean RantWoman decided that speaking about access to information was part of her reason to be there.

Somewhere in all this vexation, RantWoman suspects there might be some Opportunity lurking on the Make Your Own Job front. RantWoman would not mind in the least if there were more obvious cash and less obvious aggravation, but at least it's opportunity. Meanwhile: the places that contributed to yesterday's summit:

https://www.one-economy.com/

www.communitiesconnect.org/

www.npowerseattle.org/

www.seattle.gov/tech/