Faith community readers, please be patient with RantWoman sounding off about her week. There really will be relatable content below.
No RantWoman did not even try to visit #CSUNATC21. RantWoman got enough just following Twitter about use of an inaccessible "accessibility overlay." CSUNATC has been the leading accessibility issues conference for many years, drawing large companies, rehabilitation professionals, and accessibility researchers. This year, Cal State Northridge, the campus who has hosted the event for a number of years tried to do web accessibility by purchasing something called an accessibility overlay, software that no matter what cannot make a website accessible if the website does not start out with some accessibility prerequisites built in. They blew it. One well-known blind professional involved is now trying to spin the debacle as unintentional beta testing, that is releasing into the internet wild software that is most definitely still in progress. Definitely a loser PR move. On the other hand, if even accessibility pros sometimes have to deal with bad accessibility, let's talk average users at a definitely not technologically oriented event.
RantWoman also did not find time to pop over to the #axecon series of talks about accessibility organized by Deque systems. RantWoman's schedule just got too full in spite of good intentions and very positive Twitter buzz.
Instead, EVEN THOUGH parts of RantWoman's faith community are still very busy reminding RantWoman both why she needs faith and why she needs a faith community, RantWoman is opting to hang out virtually with international strands of her faith community, to have conversations with real humans in language not muddled by machine translation. Demographically the event skews heavily older, white, and educated though in some cases still tentative about technology from North America and much younger from other countries. Especially during #pandemic times, people are so happy to see each other that everyone is being very patient with all kinds of technological hiccups. Indeed, RantWoman is so happy just to have conference documents available as easily adjustable / accessible Google docs, links to videos, and such that RantWoman plans to have a great time in spite of hiccups about gather.
Zoom has been the technological star of the show so far: interpreter channels, international inclusiveness, a pathway through a package called Jitsi because that works better for aspects RantWoman will pointedly not comment on about one country's telecommunications system.
Journeys to Planet RantWoman, though, are rife with opportunities for unplanned accessibility testing. Today's experiment in unplanned accessibility testing: a link in the bottom of a conference email to something called gather town.
Gather is supposed to facilitate more spontaneous conversations among different groups of people. When everything goes as hoped, people sign in, create avatars for themselves and then wander around a space. Avatars can hang out it one place and see who stops by. Or they can walk around different spaces and listen in to group conversations of different sizes as they get near and decide whether or not to join. RantWoman definitely likes this design element better than having to drop into Zoom breakout rooms (or wander into real life breakout spaces when she can't identify people visually) in order to find out who is there.
Here RantWoman is wanting to fit in and have a good time like everyone else. RantWoman is also glad to leave a lot of the technological fussing to others.
Things even sound like there might be reason to hope because everyone says "navigate with arrow keys" and some even find it a pain not to be able to use the mouse.
After the fact, when RantWoman put Gather Town JAWS, the name of RantWoman's favorit screen reader into the search engine, RantWoman turned up a whole bunch of links related to a certain shark movie. Look, it's WAY too early in the release cycle to want to think about the phrase "jumped the shark."
But RantWoman is getting ahead of herself. RantWoman clicked on the link. RantWoman was able to enter the meeting password just fine. Likewise a name. Next came picking an avatar. Not feasible using any screen reader tricks RantWoman knows; reasonably well-behaved when RantWoman worked visually with her screen enlargement software, Zoomtext.
Next came another screen with more options for customizing one's avatar, selecting clothing and skin tones, and hair style. All the avatar options are a little pixelated at 4 x magnification and nothing was navigable with screen reader. RantWoman finally just exited JAWS and decided to see how things go with just Zoomtext. Bear in mind, conferences are tiring and RantWoman ALWAYS wants her screen reader to help cut down on visual fatigue.
RantWoman's verdict: RantWoman will have to do about the average amount of screen scrolling with Zoomtext to be able to see parts of the screen not visible at 4x magnification. RantWoman got stuck on something but will probably go back at least on her Windows machine.
RantWoman is a masochist and a nerd. Plus RantWoman had not scored any interpersonal connections and needed to fortify herself, tonight with a peanut butter and pickles sandwich
. So while toasting bread and having the cat get supper, RantWoman also decided to try on her Android phone with the Talkback screen reader.
RantWoman clicked through from an email to Gather. RantWoman braved the warning that mobile access is in beta, like pretty early rickety beta. Enter name. Fiddle a little bit with avatar but lots of "unlabelled button." By mashing finger around screen manage to change both the avatar's clothing color , skin tone, and hair style. Talkback is uneven about telling RantWoman what is occurring but RantWoman has enough vision to tell. RantWoman got to the screen where she could enter a room. On screen arrow keys occur, but they don't work at all, no description, no activity, just sit there. So we're done. No more beta testing on the phone.
No turning off the Talkback screen reader is not an option. RantWoman could probably learn the easy gestures to turn Talkback on and off and rely on vibrate on tuch to help about some screen elements she would have heard about through talkback, but no, just no.
Okay. We're done. RantWoman is glad she knows how to Zoom host and has signed up for volunteer Zoom hosting during a couple blocks of social time. That means RantWoman will actually show up for the social time and with any luck actually make some connections.
RantWoman may or may not come back to the Gather town website
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