Charm Challenged

Paraphrasing from RantWoman’s email awhile ago:

 “RantWoman, I am orienting an new developer. He is asking whether, with all kinds of new screen technology we still need to think about high-contrast video.:

 "Yes, because the basic biological and neurological reasons people need high-contrast video have NOT changed.”

 RantWoman’s laptop had just died.  RantWoman was staring at all the life and pocket book disruptions caused by waves of upgrades and the treadmill of beta testing.  So, evem though RantWoman has maintained a longstanding aspiration to have a certain large software company ask HER for advice, when the ask finally came, with no stated budget for consultation, the asker got  the twitter version without even a suggestion to do further research for oneself.

 Can you say “charm challenged?” Should RantWoman also be saying “incompetent capitalist” and start charging people for such advice?

PS. RantWoman knows at least one software developer who is colorblind. RantWoman forgot about him in the email exchange above. RantWoman had in mind other people she knows, but Colorblind Developer uses high contrast options a lot when he gets to crash test the aspects of software accessibility that matter for him!

 

Charm challenged, Chapter 2.-, from a more recent email, forwarded from someone else with no time to respond, no less:

 Dear…. 

Following is a test page for online accommodations information that our office is developing. Would you please tell me whether you experience any difficulty accessing the information? The layout involves drop-down screens and I’m curious to know whether that presents any difficulty for screen readers. Also, if there’s specific information that you think is missing or should be changed, I would be happy to hear that, too.

 The office will present this site in a small meeting this afternoon, and I’d love to get feedback in ahead of that… "

RantWoman wrote back: 

"The link did not work for me. Is it possible it only works for people inside your firewall firewall if it is not a public link?"
Frankly, RantWoman gets a little grumpy when asked to do last-minute QA for people's accessibility efforts. RantWoman strongly encourages people to build accessibility and QA about accessibility into requirements a little further upstream than a couple hours before a demo. Plus, as you correctly point out, chances are it will take only a very small n of testers to break the site; if you break your accessibility measures further upstream, the demo should go better!
   More to the point, RantWoman has heard representatives of the very large software company featured in the other two items as well as from other very large companies: if you design accessibility in from the get-go, a better product overall comes out."

 

Charm challenged, Part 3: Add Faith community and Stir.

Someone from RantWoman’s faith community got tasked to assist RantWoman. The first problem: define the task. Sometimes this particular set of tasks is short term. Person Tasked to Help asked RantWoman a couple questions and Rant Woman concluded that he knew little going in. (RantWoman has learned she should be cautious about concluding too soon about this person, but RantWoman also concluded that the task definitely was not going to be short-term.

Exact an of time omitted. Exact zigs and zags omitted.

Enter name of person tasked to help into search engine of choice: Person tasked to help retired from managing a certain software product long grumbledabout by blind people and still on the #nfb14 list of products companies are please request to make accessible NOW. RantWoman did not check out final disposition of proposed resolutions. Rant Woman understands perfectly well that merely passing a “Make it So” resolution is insufficient on engineering grounds , but nice as Person tasked to Help is, RantWoman so would NOT mind having fewer reasons her faith community keeps reminding her why she really really really really needs a faith community!