Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think

It's Thanksgiving season and RantWoman thinks the spiritual discipline of being grateful is especially appropriate this time of year. Unfortunately, this IS RantWoman.

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
A deaf person to open the meeting! Instant credibility.
A deaf person who specifically does NOT promise to fix everything: even more credibility!

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
Look, I know you work really hard on this, but I HATE YOUR PRODUCT for all of the following reasons....

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
Ya know, if the hardware depreciation period were 5 years instead of 3 years, there would be time for reasonable application development, time for training, and not so many gooped up features going way underused. In other words there would be time for the humans to be part of the picture not just slaves to the machines' treadmill.

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
Awhile ago RantWoman was talking to someone tasked to advise your company about how to be friendly to startups. RantWoman's advice: build the accessibility in. Do not turn off the accessibility features. Make it easy to USE and interact with the accessibility features. RantWoman is not a very competent capitalist though. RantWoman neglected to provide this advice for free and also did not think about a way to get paid for it. File this with "what RantWoman thinks about."

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
Okay, really, sometimes I HATE THE CLOUD. Sometimes i want to go off grid and write and just write based on what I have and not have to down in global infoglut while I comb the nuggets out of all the verbiage I can already generate.

Thank you so much for asking me about screen readers and screen enlargement.
You know that thing that all the sighted developers are too squeamish to name, I agree with all the blind people who think "Nose print remover" is absolutely hilarious and deadly on point!

Thank you so much for asking about my autodetect fantasies.
Look, maybe this is weird fantasy life, but RantWoman frequently reads amterial that contains text in more than one  language. RantWoman LOVES it when her screen reader automatically switches back and forth and between languages. Too often, this is a fantasy!
Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
RantWoman at one point asked for walking directions from someone who from the sounds of things clearly drives. Score one for the usefulness of wayfinding!

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you waht I really think.
Putting a bunch of blind people and people with hearing impairments and hopefully some other disabilities in a big noisy room with lots of conversations going on in the same area is a good recipe for brain melting. It's a great opportunity for all of us to commiserate about our different issues and MAYBE to share tips about work arounds.

For instance RantWoman made a point of trying to look at one person who says she lipreads. RantWoman knows she herself used to lipread; now she assuredly does not and therefore she has lots of trouble sorting out conversation threads in a big room. RantWoman peculiarly finds it easier to filter things in languages she does not speak; other people merely find that additional languages are another way to be driven crazy.

Thank you so much for inviting me to tell you what I think.
The term "inclusive computing" sounds like a really interesting concept. RantWoman's first screen of search results turned up a couple links RantWoman skimmed:
http://milesberry.net/2014/11/making-computing-more-inclusive/
http://inclusiveweb.org/

We here at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing offer for consideration the following inclusive computing realities:

--Customers and staff who between them reflect a whole spectrum of sensory , physical, cognitive, cultural idiosyncrasies sufficient to qualify us for the term "diversity on steroids."

--one clump of about 3 customers who between them muster enough literacy to read their desired webpages.

--one customer who needs cheerleading so that the chatter in her head does not get in the way and she can, after visits over a couple days, interact with a certain online bookseller.

--RantMom whose search algorithm for info about bus boarding during a recent closure of the downtown Seattle bus tunnel was "call Little Sister and have her look it up." RantWoman is grateful RantMom did not ask her: RantWoman at the time was talking on the device she might haveused to look up the info if the device got to the desired info fast enough to suit RantWoman and in a format RantWoman could deal with.

But definitely, thank you very much for inviting me over because I am crazy enough sometimes to enjoy being driven crazy and especially getting to talk about it!