Bureaucracy Digitalizes

 The Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing is slowly coming back to life!

Please note, RantWoman is happy to use the official brand name when touting everything that is wonderful about the place. Today though a rescheduled meeting had only two attenders and conversation turned to need annually for many participants to propitiate critical bureaucracy and after an email exchange with topical staff into reflection on the rocky road to the digital universe.. 

One totally blind participant did not interact with some key paperwork until after a designated deadline. Another participant, RantWoman, a screen reader user who is not totally blind has probably,  based on the information shared, the same paperwork with a different deadline that RantWoman may eke past if she can successfully with a wonderful new portal developed by RentCafe. 

Email from the topical staff person said "Try the new portal." RantWoman vaguely remembers previously interacting once with the new portal and was able after two tries to nail the password she had previously set. 

On the way RantWoman noticed that while the screen says Tenant Login, the screen reader says Resident Login. 

What difference does this make as long as the link works?

At this point in life RantWoman has tech support instincts so firmly hard-wired that she frequently attempts to tell people what to look for even when she herself cannot see the screen. Can anyone see the problem now?

Next step: report the problem but to whom?

To the topical office which RantWoman knows based on other conversations is understaffed and full of new people? Not RantWoman's first choice.

To the staff now busy helping lots of people clamber aboard the new digital internet express? Also not on RantWoman's critical path for getting her own paperwork done though possibly a relevant FYI for others needing to shepherd other residents along the needed pathways.

Nope, RantWoman's instinct is go straight to the creators of the website. There is even an awesome accessibility statement that sounds really wonderful until RantWoman cannot find a direct link to report problems.

RantWoman found a Contact Us link that appropriately provides information about the organization using the website but not a place to report technical problems with the website.

RantWoman's screen reader does read her something about RentCafe and RantWoman knows perfectly well how to use the Google. However, RantWoman has expended as much time and energy on this exercise as she even wants to think about today and will now direct staff mentioned above to read this post and consider questions on RantWoman's mind.

RantWoman has no opinion about whether there should just be an internal organization link that says "Report Technical problems with the website" or whether there should be a link where to the actual vendor.

RantWoman also nurtured the hope that she would be able just to fill out some online version of the paper forms she recently received by snail mail. That appears maybe still to be on the horizon because the Upload documents section of the portal wants people to be able to scan.

At this point, RantWoman is aware that she probably has a hungry cat and needs to hand off this post and handle other issues.