Celebrate (?) Seattle's Infamous Redlining Guide.

Okay, Okay, RantWoman will NOT give in to all the ways one could misread the event title.

Instead, RantWoman VERY much esteems the work the following invitation represents, both diligent research and, as RantWoman can attest, creation of electronic content with lots of great accessibility features.

RantWoman is going to let the rest of the event speak for itself.

Please enjoy the electronic walking tour even if you don't make it to the celebration described below.

Thanks to a grant from 4Culture and support from friends, the new self-guided digital walking tour, Seattle's Infamous Redline Guide is ready for release. It can be downloaded for free from the App Store, Google Play, or on the web.

Please help us celebrate! The celebration takes place Saturday, March 22, 2-4 pm at HOME | Made Space Seattle 

The tour begins with the founding of the Central District by William Grose, through the rise of a vibrant community despite the city's efforts to exclude Black people from land and wealth, and ends at Africatown Plaza and Wa Na Wari with an invitation to join efforts to fight displacement and build Black prosperity. Now more than ever, we need to remember the past as we work for a positive future.

Please come celebrate with us, and spread the word. You can let us know who's coming by clicking the link in the attached invitation

Hope to see you there. I should mention that the venue is wheelchair accessible.

GAAD Outline UPDATED

#GAAD #GAAD2024 

Update after run-through 

Assembled in preparation for a presentation aimed at City of Seattle staff for #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay 

Intro and some presentation technology points.

First, thank you to Holly Delcambre and Autumn Harris for the invitation to present and to the tech team for helping with the presentation process.  I also commend the City of Seattle for undertaking this Voluntary Product Accessibility Template initiative.

The initial part of this presentation is going to be a video recorded on Zoom with Zoom auto captioning. Then there will be live Q & A at the end. I am not going to interact with the chat but will ask the tech team both to collect questions and to please advise me if for instance I need to slow down for interpreters.

If for some reason screenshare doesn't work well for you, you can more or less follow along at rantwoman.blogspot.com/GAAD-Outline-UPDATED

This blog post is partly intended to parallel the PowerPoint, including a transcript of planned content. The slides contain links to individual posts at my personal blog,  RantWoman.Blogspot.com The presentation will also include links to other resources.

The presentation strives to model some presentation best practices. I am not going to read every link for the demos presented but they can be found using the hashtags #GAAD and #GAAD2024 on my blog. 

For more extensive commentary about PowerPoint, though probably not about presenting with a screen reader check out the Death by PowerPoint tag.

Finally, in addition to hashtags and my personal idiosyncratic tags, this post uses Headings to allow screen reader users to find pieces of the post without having to reread the whole post.

More technological comments:

I use both screen reader and screen enlargement. I am not a fount of wisdom about issues like back end screen reader accessibility for blogger. I simply use the tools I have learned in the platforms I am most comfortable in.

I also am not a whiz about PowerPoint, content design, video creation and editing, or every nuance of screen readers. The PowerPoint presentation includes links to some demos of user experience with a screen reader. Demos will be screen share recordings with sound in Zoom, but I have not succeeded in displaying automatic captions in the recordings. I hope the presentation will be memorable anyway.

The prerecorded segment of my presentation

There are MANY content Creation tools out there. People consume social media content in all kinds of ways. I am going to focus on just a few dimensions of accessibility with some brief demos of user experience when #A11y is neglected. I hope viewers will come away with at least one tip they can use all the time with the tools they already use or a vision of features they need in any tools they are considering.

More detail

All purpose standards reference: Web Contant Accessibility Guidelines, currently WCAG 2.0 with many helpful links at WebAIM.org

#A11y tips for people who are blind

--Use Alt Text to describe images

--Capitalize every word in hashtags

--Put event details in plain text even if you are also uploading a great graphic with the event details in graphic format. Also helpful: provide a link if you want to provide more information than is allowed in one post (Personally, I do not currently have a paid presence on X / Twitter. I consider it good discipline to fit my post in the current 280 character limit.)

--There is sound and there is sound: Consider a short video that has some kind of catchy music but nothing audible to aid a blind person in understandaing what the video is about. See Demo

--There is a whole separate section in hell for text in graphics. More about this separately.

--DO NOT roll text over video content, especially over the faces of people talking. Screen reader users will not find such text at all. People who are low vision may have trouble focusing fast enough to read the text. Many people, not just people who identify as Deaf or hearing impaired rely a great deal on lip reading as well as facial expression. Just avoid text over other content.

#A11y Tips for people who are low vision or color blind.

--CONTRAST matters for people who are low vision or color blind. Also many people do not own printers but may print in places like public libraries that have only black and white printing.

--Contrast checking for color content is complex. Some content creation tools have contrast checkers built in. In other cases, an internet search might start with the info available through The WebAIM Contrast checker Pick an approach you like and stick with it.

--Quick and Dirty: Use operating system tools to Test how your content looks in Black and White.

--My Quick and Dirty for this presentation will use screenshots and Zoom clips in color schemes available through Zoomtext, the screen enlargement tool I use.

--Contrast again: Text over images is not picked up by screen readers and may not be identifiable to people who are low vision. 

#A11y tips for people who are deaf or hearing impaired.

--For short social media posts, consider posting a transcript separately.

An Example with both Video and a Transcript

Other Miscellaneous tips:

Beware of images with flash: some flash rates can cause seizures

Built accessibility in from the outset. make it a habit. That way, even if you are as adept as RantWoman at pushing deadlines, you won't lose the accessibility game.

Know the limits of your tools:

--How much alt text is allowed.

--Do you have options in your tool to check contrast or do you need to look for a tool that checks contrast?

--Do you trust automated text captioning or alt text generation or do you need to plan for that as part of the work plan.

--If you are creating content in one platform and then exporting it to a PDF or to another platform will functionality such as links and headings be preserved?

--If the platform you want to post to does not make it easy to create accessible, post a link to accessible content from another platform.

Other Examples

The Ask a Human algorithm, Instagram, and a search engine

Accidental Journey: Facebook and Alt Text

Quick and Dirty Contrast Checks

Alt Text What makes good alt text

Accessible Prescription Labels

Guide Dog Video that leaves something to be desired

The Dreaded Text in Graphics

What if there is text in a graphic in content I want to share

Other places I look for examples

(use search engines to find)

Anything produced by Disability Rights WA

The Non-driver project

Other disability rights and disability services organizations.

Points to Remember

Use Alt Text on all images. For best results, do not rely on what happens automatically.

Avoid writing text in graphics and over images

Always Check contrast

If a platform does not allow you to make content accessible, post a link to something that is accessible.

Provide captions whenever there is audio.

To avoid causing seizures, be cautious about flash.

One last comment about logos and the importance of contrast.

YES, event sponsor logos matter.

Blind people are VERY divided about how much we want to know about other people’s appearance. As a general rule, I recommend not worrying about it unless specifically requested. But I have a T-shirt that is a bit of a joke. Two years ago I attended the American Council of the Blind national convention in Omaha NE. The convention T shirt is dark red with dark blue design, really terrible contrast. The front image is the Bob Kerrey pedestrian bridge. The back is a bunch of sponsor logos and I have to think the sponsors might prefer their logos be a little more visible. 

Final thoughts

Even if you only do one accessibility step and remember to do it all the time, your social media content will be accessible to more people.

Software and platforms constantly evolve but many customers appreciate stability and are not automatically eager to learn everything new that comes along..

Closing comments

Thank you all for joining this presentation. I hope I have left you with some easy approaches and resources.

But what if there is text in an image I want to share?

 #GAAD #GAAD2024

Advanced alt text or short message text.

It's one thing to create one's own content with text or Alt Text easily findable  by screen readers, search engines, and translation engines.

But it's SOCIAL media. That means there are all kinds of community creators who might like to have their content distributed. Here are about 3 examples of JAWS reading PowerPoint slides where there are images with varying amounts of text.

This is Zoom screen share so users cannot just hover the mouse over the image to see the Alt text.

I did not troubleshoot about captions so unfortunately there are no captions on the recordings.

The other bad news: what makes alt text functional in PowerPoint may or may not be preserved if one is creating in one platform and sharing on another.

With that, some suggestions in these recordings.

Map of Puget Sound area native tribes

In this case, I would probably just leave the content as is unless one wanted to add something about the map of the Puget Sound and the listing moving from north to south.

Find a Ride promotional copy

Promo for Town Hall event with Anna Zibarts, Barb Chamberlain, and Tanisha Sepulveda

Sponsors love to be identified. The Town Hall webpage for this event has all the sponsors listed correctly but the more important question if just sharing this image would be to make sure that Text mentions the speakers, date, time, and location of the event.

As an aside, the video also illustrates the importance of good audio video editing and teamwork in presentation. Most of the world can probably live without the details of a presenter trying to navigate. On the other hand, it would be preferable to know how to do autocaptioning appropriately when  a video is going to be screen shared.

GAADoutline

 Assembled in preparation for a presentation aimed at City of Seattle staff for #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay #GAAD #GAAD2024.

Intro and some presentation technology points.

First, thank you to Holly Delcambre and Autumn Harris for the invitation to present and to the tech team for helping with the presentation process. 

The initial part of this presentation is going to be a video recorded on Zoom with Zoom auto captioning. Then there will be live Q & A at the end. I am not going to interact with the chat but will ask the tech team both to collect questions and to please advise me if for instance I need to slow down for interpreters.

If for some reason screenshare doesn't work well for you, you can more or less follow along at rantwoman.blogspot.com/GAADoutline

This blog post is partly intended to parallel the Powerpoint, including a transcript of planned content. The slides contain links to individual posts at my personal blog,   RantWoman.Blogspot.com The presentation will also include links to other resources.

The presentation strives to model some presentation best practices. I am not going to read every link for the demos presented but they can be found using the hashtags #GAAD and #GAAD2024 on my blog. 

For more extensive commentary about Powerpoint, though probably not about presenting with a screen reader check out the Death by Powerpoint tag.

Finally, in addition to hashtags and my personal idiosyncratic tags, this post uses Headings to allow screen reader users to find pieces of the post without having to reread the whole post.

More technological comments:

I use both screen reader and screen enlargement. I am not a fount of wisdom about issues like back end screen reader accessibility for blogger. I simply use the tools I have learned in the platforms I am most comfortable in.

I also am not a whiz about Powerpoint, content design, video creation and editing, or every nuance of screen readers. The Powerpoint presentation includes links to some demos of user experience with a screen reader. Demos will be screen share recordings with sound in Zoom and captioning will be Zoom auto-captioning. I hope the presentation will be memorable anyway.

The recording links will be added to this post after the presentation.

There are MANY content Creation tools out there. People consume social media content in all kinds of ways. I am going to focus on just a few dimensions of accessibility with some brief demos of user experience when #A11y is neglected. I hope viewers will come away with at least one tip they can use all the time with the tools they already use or a vision of features they need in any tools they are considering.

More detail

All purpose standards reference: Web Contant Accessibility Guidelines, currently WCAG 2.0 with many helpful links at WebAIM.org

#A11y tips for people who are blind

--Use Alt Text to describe images

--Capitalize every word in hashtags

--Put event details in plain text even if you are also uploading a great graphic with the event details in graphic format. Also helpful: provide a link if you want to provide more information than is allowed in one post (Personally, I do not currently have a paid presence on X / Twitter. I consider it good discipline to fit my post in the current 280 character limit.)

--There is sound and there is sound: Consider a short video that has some kind of catchy music but nothing audible to aid a blind person in understandaing what the video is about. See Demo

--There is a whole separate section in hell for text in graphics. More about this separately.

--DO NOT roll text over video content, especially over the faces of people talking. Screen reader users will not find such text at all. People who are low vision may have trouble focusing fast enough to read the text. Many people, not just people who identify as Deaf or hearing impaired rely a great deal on lip reading as well as facial expression. Just avoid text over other content.

#A11y Tips for people who are low vision or color blind.

--CONTRAST matters for people who are low vision or color blind. Also many people do not own printers but may print in places like public libraries that have only black and white printing.

--Contrast checking for color content is complex. Some content creation tools have contrast checkers built in. In other cases, an internet search might start with the info available through The WebAIM Contrast checker Pick an approach you like and stick with it.

--Quick and Dirty: Use operating system tools to Test how your content looks in Black and White.

--My Quick and Dirty for this presentation will use screenshots and Zoom clips in color schemes availabe through Zoomtext, the screen enlargement tool I use.

--Contrast again: Text over images is not picked up by screen readers and may not be identifiable to people who are low vision. 

#A11y tips for people who are deaf or hearing impaired.

--For short social media posts, consider posting a transcript separately.

An Example with both Video and a Transcript

Other Miscellaneous tips:

Beware of images with flash: some flash rates can cause seizures

Built accessibility in from the outset. make it a habit. That way, even if you are as adept as RantWoman at pushing deadlines, you won't lose the accessibility game.

Know the limits of your tools:

--How much alt text is allowed.

--Do you have options in your tool to check contrast or do you need to look for a tool that checks contrast?

--Do you trust automated text captioning or alt text generation or do you need to plan for that as part of the work plan.

--If you are creating content in one platform and then exporting it to a PDF or to another platform will functionality such as links and headings be preserved?

--If the platform you want to post to does not make it easy to create accessible, post a link to accessible content from another platform.

Other Examples

Quick and Dirty Contrast Checks

Alt Text What makes good alt text

Accessible Prescription Labels

Guide Dog Video that leaves something to be desired

The Dreaded Text in Graphics

Other places I look for examples

(use search engines to find)

Anything produced by Disability Rights WA

The Non-driver project

Other disability rights and disability services organizations.

Points to Remember

Use Alt Text on all images. For best results, do not rely on what happens automatically.

Avoid writing text over images

Always Check contrast

If a platform does not allow you to make content accessible, post a link to something that is accessible.

Provide captions whenever there is audio.

To avoid causing seizures, be cautious about flash.

One last comment about logos and the importance of contrast.

YES, event sponsor logos matter.

Blind people are VERY divided about how much we want to know about other people’s appearance. As a general rule, I recommend not worrying about it unless specifically requested. But I have a T-shirt that is a bit of a joke. Two years ago I attended the American Council of the Blind national convention in Omaha NE. The convention T shirt is dark red with dark blue design, really terrible contrast. The front image is the Bob Kerrey pedestrian bridge. The back is a bunch of sponsor logos and I have to think the sponsors might prefer their logos be a little more visible. 

Final thoughts

Even if you only do one accessibility step and remember to do it all the time, your social media content will be accessible to more people.

Software and platforms constantly evolve but many customers appreciate stability and are not automatically eager to learn everything new that comes along..

Closing comments

Thank you all for joining this presentation. I hope I have left you with some easy approaches and resources.

Quick and Dirty Contrast Checks

 #GAAD #GAAD2024

Here are two Pixel phone screen shots of slides seen through the Zoomtext White on Black Color Scheme. They are intended to illustrate the importance of checking contrast in order not to loose content.

The images have an assortment of Blind Person in a hurry technical shortcomings. Please enjoy anyway.

Hint. There is text in all 3 gifs.
Can you read all the text in the bottom picture?

A bunch of reasons I like teamwork for social media and presentations

It would be good to deal with the text in the image 

but that is readable in the original Powerpoint

The Quick and Dirty part with the phone screenshots: Zoom screenshare does not share what Zoomtext does to screen presentation.

Sound Transit Job Posting Senior Program Manager: accessibility services

 The actual job posting

Senior Program Manager Accessibility Services

Full disclosures

--RantWoman has received this posting from more than one direction.

--More than one person has suggested that RantWoman should apply for this position. RantWoman is humbled to be held in such regard, especially because RantWoman imagines only one aspect of the job will be dealing with passionate advocates such as RantWoman.

--RantWoman is considering whether to apply. That would require leveraging a lot of volunteer experience. The job description is probably also a stretch beyond the project management experience RantWoman has; RantWoman is considering whether to apply anyway.

--More importantly RantWoman is also considering what she might say to help make the right match, what to say about a big system, the wacky decisions of WA voters, and sundry other observations gleaned from years of public participation. 

Further Comments

--Ding! Ding! Ding! No "Driver's License required!" Already off to a good start. Okay, RantWoman might be tempted to add "Must have lived experience as a transit user" or "will be required for the first six months of employment to get around entirely on transit or without driving." RantWoman realizes this might seem a littl extreme, but this is a job with a multi-county transit agency after all. 

--Does this job require a background check? RantWoman assumes so and would not mind being told early in the process. Pro-tip lots of employers check applicants' credit. RantWoman recognizes that this is a good idea when a job role involves responsibility for public resources.

--Requires use of Sharepoint and Teams: RantWoman does not imagine that occasional encounters with Sharepoint testing counts. RantWoman has successfully used and even helped another person work with Teams but RantWoman would have to start out from "I can learn." Luckily RantWoman is informed a little by one person's short-term job experience. That person would not want this job but at least temporarily had an astute employer who realized that people who use screen readers do not necessarily poke around in all corners of office systems as easily as sighted employees do.

--Transportation management involves LOTS of Powerpoint. Be prepared.

--This job will require A LOT of teamwork. Can you say growing edge for RantWoman? RantWoman awhile ago was on a panel with another visually impaired transportation advocate who like RantWoman went to public school. The conversation was about how hard group projects were, an insight RantWoman has no idea how to share with younger blind people earlier in their education.

--There is the small matter of RantWoman's quirky opinionated social media presence.

--RantWoman does not just blurt things out in social media. For instance, RantWoman had occasion to comment about one local transit agency somewhere in WA: RantWoman finds herself wondering why the local transit agency cannot get the nearest bus stop any closer than half a mile away from two low-income housing communities. Many transit agencies like to talk about attracting the "choice" rider, people who have a choice about whether to drive or take transit. That's all fine, but what about making sure to serve people who really need the service and are more likely than others in the community, for really good reasons, to be non-drivers. There. Now RantWoman gets to figure out how to sell that point of view to potential co-workers and collaborators.

Or RantWoman gets to aim to inspire someone willing to brave the absurd housing market in order to take advantage of all the great things about living in the Pacific Northwest.

Best Death By Powerpoint story in awhile.

RantWoman is currently Zooming at the American Council of the Blind Presidential update and legislative seminar. RantWoman is impatient about waiting for session videos to show up on YouTube or through acbmedia.org . RantWoman here wants to leave enough breadcrumbs that readers will be able to look up a fireside chat among blind CEO's of 4 different organizations. Find the video. Appreciate all the experiences and insight.

RantWoman's favorite story: ACB President Dan Spoone spoke of a time when he and a team of other Siemens employees were doing some kind of presentation in Germany. Dan had memorized key points of the Powerpoint presentation in order to add comments as his colleague presented. As the program moved along, Dan would point to a lighted rectangle and make his comments. Finally one of the people who worked for him yelled at him to STOP. It turned out every time Dan spoke, he was pointing at the window instead of the Powerpoint on the opposite wall!

One problem with Zoom webinars is that no one can hear the chuckles.

RantWoman was telling this story to a friend. Friend asked "How DO blind people watch ...?"

RantWoman decided to pass on the opportunity to gripe about someone being metaphor challenged. Instead RantWoman's friend got the standard issue tour of RantWoman's visual experiences: fog, blur, double vision, grow your own lava lamp floaters all complicated by bifocals so that RantWoman can see between 0 and about 5 of  any given object. RantWoman has yet to meet any Powerpoint that can compete with that although RantWoman's issues with glare MIGHT save her from unintentionally pointing at any windows.

Seattle Cultural Accessibility Forum

Seattle Cultural Accessibility Forum 

The wonderful resource above landed in RantWoman's inbox along with a question: do blind people like hearing during introductions information about what someone is wearing?

Opinion on one email list was sharply divided. Some posters think this is totally unnecessary. Some, including RantWoman think this is really cool and RantWoman quite enjoys hearing how people's choice of clothing illustrates their personalities.

Okay so RantWoman used to sew. RantWoman also has quite a lot of vision, enough to appreciate guidance about visual cues that might help her recognize someone.

But in the realm of introductions, besides preferred pronouns, definitely a norm in many circles in Seattle, RantWoman also appreciates knowing whether the person introducing themselves identifies as having a disability.

That said, clothing plus pronouns plus disability makes for a LOT of introduction. RantWoman is unsure which of these she would most like or hear or be most willing to skip. 

Resting Reproach Face

RantWoman intended to post the content below only to her sleep blog. RantWoman needs to sleep more which is partly how the content got posted here. Readers who WANT info about the ups and downs of sleepting, snacking, getting dressed, household chores and the occasional cat pic are welcome to head over to the blog  via the link for yesterday and then to enjoy today's content.

Festive orgy of Zoom and Powerpoint 

Yesterday's plus Powerpoint event was fine. Sometime RantWoman will meditate about what actually turns out to be useful for RantWoman around Powerpoint. But not tonight. Tonight, tags for this post and then...

Today's entry:

Welp. If one goes to bed promptly at 1 am, one has time for a good 5 hours of sleep before the first wakeup. This would be pee and feed the cat and try not to get sucked into Twitter or texting with sister and just GO BACK TO BED. That did not happen today. For all of the usual reasons. 

The Queen of Spades,
Resting Reproach Face

Trash collection and removal did happen. That is a great good thing.

If one does not snack in the evening, one wakes up hungry. Luckily there is porridge with raisins though time to get some more fresh fruit.

Tomorrow. If it is not raining or I decide on a wrap that is the right level of water protection and warmth.

Today I got a call from the building staff. They are doing this regularly. It was nice to hear staffperson's voice. Also take note of delivery tolobby of a couple boxes of packages of adult diapers and one of what must be the Ag department's food boxes. I dunno which T campaign contributor is making money off they boxes. but no question people would be better off if they had SNAP benefits to use to buy food they want.

But I digress. 

Awesome candidates' forum. 

Meditations on...

Inclusive Design and Teaching Accessibility

RantWoman is for the moment just collecting interesting resources. RantWoman also realizes she may need some additional tags. Further, RantWoman realizes the resources here assume readers already know a lot about topics or can figure it out from context. Yeah. And RantWoman promises other items today and just wants to save resources for future reference.

Derek Featherstone on Inclusive Design

Resources after the Teaching Accessibility event.
RantWoman's biggest takeaway from this event: one of the presenters spoke about her students. Even the ones who had only very modest exposure to accessibility issues were able to have influence in the organizations where they worked about accessiblity issues.

Thanks for attending today's webinar.  It was great to see so many folks online and so many familiar faces.  We will be placing the recording on our website.  The slides are available online.  Please take a minute to complete the evaluation.

If you aren't already part of an AccessComputing community of practice and would like to engage more with us about disability, accessibility, and computing, email me at blaser@uw.edu.

In the meantime, below are some of the resources talked about today:

• AccessComputing
• Teach Access 
• Accessible Learning Lab at RIT
• The book for Amy’s course 
• Disability & Innovation: The Universal Benefits of Accessible Design, by Haben Girma
• Anat’s video about the Accessibility Capstore course -
• Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility from W3C

Flattening Inaccessibility, except well

First the good news:

Remember the #FlatteningInaccessibility survey of blind and visually impaired people from a few weeks ago. Results are starting to come out and will accumulate at FlatteningInaccessibility Survey results


On the other hand, inaccessible graphics at their best. By Inaccessible RantWoman means:

--Type is so tiny sighted people complain.

--The tiny type and column format make it difficult for screen reading software to OCR the columns and then put everything back together.

Fear Not: Chances are this information can be found somewhere else besides this graphic

Tactile Umbrella Images, Powerpoint, Making Coffee

Recent Postcard from Planet RantWoman, with no apologies whatsoever for....

Umbrella Statements

It is September, It is time for it to be raining. It is Seattle so who really cares about umbrellas--EXCEPT here as Tactile Art projects

Tactile Art, you say?

Ya know if 3 people who, with RantWoman's permission, once came to the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing  on a different matter had so much as thought to ask about ANYTHING that goes on there, MAYBE RantWoman would be more disposed to take various other views more seriously.

Or maybe readers get, without even being asked about preferences, to think about tactile projections of 3-dimensional objects onto a plane, software that converts images to line drawings and the art of finding images that will convert easily to line drawings with the right level of detail so that a raised image can be reasonably interpreted by people's fingertips.

The (surprisingly cheap) software to make tactile art on the Friendly Neighborhood Center's Braille embosser came as part of a grant for a project that never quite turned out as intended, but RantWoman keeps having a LOT of fun using only a small part of the software capabilities to make tactile art.

Readers who are REALLY nice or who still don't even ask,  get to hear about taking our collection of tactile drawings to various public events and giving a great cat picture away to a mom whose daughter finds regular coloring books hard because she has motor control issues.

If it's in Twitter it Has to be True.

And speaking of things some in RantWoman's life ARE NOT AWARE OF, for one thing because even though RantWoman overachieves about testiness and interpersonal Brillo Pad, RantWoman also does do things that get recognized but that do not need explicitly to be tangled with RantWoman as growly presence.

City of Seattle ITD (@SeattleITDept) tweeted at 11:25 AM on Fri, Sep 20, 2019:
Multilingual computer classes boost #DigitalLearning in South Seattle’s Rainier Vista community. The resident-led initiative engages @Seattle_Housing tenants with support from the Technology Matching Fund.@emeraldjournal featured the program: Emerald City Journal https://t.co/zn187vAzLR
(https://twitter.com/SeattleITDept/status/1175113780272848896?s=03) 

RantWoman also notes fantastically successful end of computer classes in 3 languages project celebration,

Give us this day our daily powerpoint

RantWoman celebrates Powerpoint!

RantWoman especially celebrates all the multitudinous ways to render Powerpoint unreadable.

RantWoman celebrates good use of white space and terrible font size.

ONE more comment after the Microsoft Ability Summit.

RantWoman is unclear that the world needs one more gosh-danged comment about the recent Microsoft #abilitysummit. The world is getting another post anyway.

RantWoman has chatted with a couple people she saw there and there are in fact ideas simmering but elaborating them would be too much like work for the Sunday after someone RantWoman knows took her first #fremontsolsticeparade naked bicyclist ride.

RantWoman's head is also full of other "makes head explode" topics such as tariffs, nuclear posturing in NE Asia, kidnapping the children of people applying for asylum, attempts to cut SNAP benefits in the new farm bill....

All of this is why RantWoman is going to rattle on about people with disabilities in the workplace.

Some of the time, in the experience of many around RantWoman,  there is only one person who uses accessibility tools in an office. This places a burden on the person with disabilities and their tech support staff to network and connect to all the different pieces of mental lint sometimes needed to make accessibility tools play well with a specific environment. RantWoman kind of hopes that the wave of thought about accessibility over the last 10 years has helped ease the burden on both sides. RantWoman hopes this, but is not taking bets.

Alternately, some of the time, workplaces around RantWoman are likely to be peopled both by someone who uses Toby the new eye blink control mechanism and someone who relies on screen readers. That is Toby will be of no use to people in the second category, but they will need to collaborate. So it would excite RantWoman to see demo which show people with different disabilities using different accessibility pathways as they collaborate.

And one more thing just for the put EVERYONE to work crowd: sometimes people need the tool to figure out what they can do for work. RantWoman has a neighbor who MIGHT be able to use Toby. RantWoman's neighbor is interested in watching movies on the internet. RantWoman's neighbor can speak about 10 words in an hour; at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing, she uses her words to tell the people helping her find her videos what kind of video she would like to watch. MAYBE she can get to enough Toby skills to find her own videos or still further to find videos and use a word search program to type reviews, emails.... MAYBE,. But that is a LONG way from her being in any world where RantWoman can see work outcomes! Better quality of life? Probably, but not work outcomes. Just sayin...

Automated Translation: IN Powerpoint

RantWoman is still digesting demos at the Microsoft #ability Summit.

In particular, RantWoman is interested in the translator demoed for Powerpoint and Skype. RantWoman wants to think wow gee whiz. Really.

RantWoman wants to think this, but questions also leap to mind.

The demo mentioned that school principals are trying this capability to communicate with parents who speak several languages. RantWoman would be VERY interested to learn: is this being done in contexts where there is careful evaluation of whether actual  functional communication occurs?

RantWoman further notes that many users might find to useful to have
--an automated transcription window as well as the automated translation one. RantWoman also wonders about parallel audio tracks generated in this program. Following a spoken passage and a written version at the same time is used sometimes by people trying to learn a new language.

RantWoman also notes the design feature of being able to read a caption in a specific window, but with some audiences it is not reasonable to assume the people needing the interpretation even read in their own languages. RantWoman also guesses that the Star Trek level of automated voice translation is a ways off.

Another language specialist question: is there a way to load the translator with a corpus of terms in the source and target languages. RantWoman thinks quality of output matters and being able to professionally translate a glossary would vastly improve RantWoman's comfort level about this whole application of machine translation.

And for extra grins, if this tool is going to get demo'ed in an audience full of blind people. OF COURSE people should expect questions such as will it work with Braille displays? Will screen readers be able to find the caption window? RantWoman gives the  demo team credit for an enthusiastic "We love impossible questions" at least.

Oh, and one more tirade in case RantWoman is going to get completely enthusiastic about replacing humans with machine translation:

bilingualism is good for brains

bilingualism is good for brains

bilingualism is good for brains

bilingualism is good for brains

Oh, and one definitely wants to measure that the machine option really is better than humans.

Chromie at the Cloud Summit?

Cut to the chase for two survey questions from the Google Cloud Summit:

Yes RantWoman is considering using Google cloud products. One consideration in technology choice will be do the tools work with the various accessibility tools needed around the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing. Let's see: speech to text, text to speech, throw in Google Translate. What about capacity to index a series of voice clips, possibly with ability to distinguish one language from another? And do not forget tactile and other maps

We must not forget another highly desirable quality: ease of learning / designing for users with varying levels of technical prowess.

Would RantWoman recommend Google products to her peers?  RantWoman really does not know yet; she kind of has Business Analyst brain and is thinking about what all comes with use of the products and what questions buyers into comparison shopping need to ask of vendors. RantWoman would find it interesting to know what questions vendors wish potential customers would ask.

RantWoman is aware that if she wants to project technical competence, perhaps tighter and more formal presentation would be in order. On the other hand chronically underresourced nonprofits seem to be a realm where RantWoman finds her way easily. Hold that thought along with the organizational culture, IT needs and resource constraints of said sector.

Now the point of the two survey questions: Chromie the ambiguously gendered Chromebook, and a new buddy, Pixel the oddly-behaved Smartphone have a bit of a scheduling dilemma: RantWoman  signed up to attend the Google cloud summit. Then when a friendly voice called to confirm that RantWoman plans to attend, RantWoman sort of absently said yes even though in fact the summit lasts all day and RantWoman can attend both ends but has a schedule conflict in the middle, oddly enough related to IT and other needs of a couple different nonprofits. Luckily for mapping and wayfinding enthusiasts, RantWoman's other meeting is walking distance from the Cloud Summit so going away and coming back is an option.

Anyway RantWoman signed up but forgot to make her customary reasonable accommodations request: do you have handouts or slide presentations? if so, RantWoman always appreciates a path to get them electronically. RantWoman forgot to ask in advance and will, no harm, no foul ask upon registration. RantWoman knows it sometimes takes time to handle such requests but often the request yields something that can make a big difference. Anyway, show us what RantWoman and Chromie can do! Plus RantWoman bets she will not be the only person in the room who cannot read slide presentations or who would like them up close on a personal device.

Honestly, the usefulness of handouts varies. Handouts in advance can be a great help just in mapping out what might come along during the presentation. Sometimes RantWoman is better off just listening to the room and interacting with handouts another time, and not only because for instance her Chromevox is a little uneven.

But there is more to handouts than putting paper in someone's hand. On Saturday RantWoman was at an event where she had asked to have handouts emailed in advance. RantWoman got one handout but it turned out there were others. The presenter was apologetic about forgetting to email the other handouts. However, the presenter had a clear link to find the same handouts online. By the time she came over to apologize, RantWoman had already found the documents on Pixel and Talkback was chattering away, in an earphone for once. Plus the link means that RantWoman will be able easily to share electronically, always a big plus.

The last thing on RantWoman's mind: the networking reception. RantWoman is getting better at teamwork and RantWoman thinks she should just not attempt such encounters alone. But an app that helps one find people who have just presented would be really fun. Is the whole cloud overkill though?

And, what should RantWoman focus on in her own networking effort. Stay tuned?

September 13th, 2017 McCaw Hall, Seattle

Know before you go. Get the most out of your Summit ’17 Seattle experience.

Hi (RantWoman) We’re excited to welcome you to Summit ‘17 Seattle. Before you attend the event, please take a two question survey to tell us what you think about Google Cloud. We’ve gathered some helpful highlights and resources to help you enjoy Summit ’17 Seattle. A few things to know before you go: Registration opens at 8:00 AM but please come early as the keynote begins promptly at 9:00 AM. Please bring your ID in order to pick up your badge. Your badge is your ticket in, so be sure you wear it to all day. Lunch will be served in the Pavilion from 12:45 PM to 1:45 PM. We will be hosting a networking reception from 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM at the Cloud Showcase and Partner Zone. Don’t forget to stop by The 5th Nine where you can meet and mingle with real Google Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and talk about DevOps and what it really means to operate at cloud scale. We have a jam-packed event in store for you including keynotes and sessions covering topics on advances in big data, apps dev, and machine learning, and more. We look forward to seeing you there!

Simple Everyday Accessibility: Reasonable #$@#$ Accommodations.

RantWoman is about to go on summer vacation for a few days. The destination is Tacoma; the occasion is an annual gathering of RantWoman's faith community, but the themes the world is owed a rant about are universal enough to post here.

One of RantWoman's themes of the week is everyday reasonable accommodations requests, the sort of requests that can make RantWoman's day MUCH more manageable with what RantWoman considers only modest effort on someone else's part.

This rant brought to you by the terms "reasonable accommodations" and "alternate formats," with extra credit / special honorable mention for the term "hearing aids.:"

RantWoman confesses, she is motivated in these lessons in vocabulary and technology, not only by her own needs, but also by the presence of people near and dear. Some people near and dear to RantWoman greet every request either by dismissing RantWoman's experience or by asking "why do you need..?" Others think complying with such requests is optional, that if they personally cannot accomplish something it does not need to be done, OR that it is reasonable for complacent retirees to deprive working age adults likely to hear such requests many times in their working lives of the opportunity to learn about such simple accommodations measures, even in a volunteer context.

Can anyone see why RantWoman is just a delight to be around sometimes?

Today's moments of Blindness Tourism on Planet RantWoman, with some actual practical hints thrown in.

RantWoman has figured out how to do headings. She has even used headings on a document she fully intends to post here but has not gotten posted. Now RantWoman gets to have a conversation with an otherwise wonderful editor about why headings within chapters of long documents (and even short ones) are so much nicer than having to flip back and forth to the Table of Contents if RantWoman wants to skip around while reading.

RantWoman has learned to request electronic copies of documents and handouts in advance. For a RantWoman summer event, RantWoman is HUMBLY grateful to have made such a request in a way that resulted not only in her having electronic access but also in lots of other people who might rather use devices than kill trees for printing also have access. Oh, and RantWoman made the request far enough in advance of the event that the requested items can be sent or found on a website and RantWoman SHOULD even be able to read, review, enjoy them.

Okay, and if those near and dear to RantWoman forget about the in advance part, one measure of RantWoman's appreciation for an occasion will be requesting things in email after the fact. That of course depends on RantWoman having a path to request the email, but hey, RantWoman cannot have everything.

Further tokens of today's journey
Thank you so much for asking how RantWoman sees.  times 2

1. RantWoman, you get around so well I forget you really cannot see. Tell me how you see.

You can probably see both of those things at the same time, yes? RantWoman can see one or the other but not both at the same time, and with fog and blur around the edges.

2. How the heck should RantWoman know what the general public can see in the world of projection and college auditoriums? Sometimes RantWoman can read Powerpoit projected. Sometimes RantWoman cannot. Not seeing can lead to snarky comments. RantWoman does pretty well about snarky comments anyway. Imagine a prize for "the highest jargon density per slide."

For this event, getting a copy of whatever you are going to project ahead of time by email would be way cool.

The more informative version.

Thank you so much for asking about what font to use for things that will be projected in some kind of college auditorium.

To be honest RantWoman did not know off the top of her head. But the search string

powerpoint font size for projection

yielded a variety of options.

Pretty much agreement: no font smaller than 24 pt. You can do this in Word too.

Here are a few links to get started.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-font-size-and-color-scheme-for-powerpoint-presentations

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/ten-secrets-for-using-powerpoint-effectively/

http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00125_How_big_should_text_be-_What-s_the_ideal_font_size-.htm

Now, let the fun begin.

The Living Computer Museum

RantWoman, a number of STAR Center  denizens, some Americorps participants and a couple other people went on an excursion recently to the Living Computer Museum, The Living Computer Museum The trip was a smash success—in spite of what may sound like griping below.

 Many people with white canes and walkers and wheelchairs all were lucky enough to pile into ONE custom Metro Bus. RantWoman mentions this because RantWoman is pretty sure that LOTS of places need transportation that can handle the number and diversity of mobility needs reflected in our travel group. Hold that thought though because it’s not a problem the excursion can solve and  it’s time to tour the museum.

 Our group was large enough to split into two groups. RantWoman, Self-Taught Blind Tech Wizard and an Eager Americorps Participant were part of the group who got turned loose in the museum and promised guided tour later. Our trio made a great team. Eager Americorps participant helped a lot about reading different bits of text. Self-Taught Blind Tech Whiz was both enthralled to learn about old technology and a fountain of memories of video games such as Zork that had skipped RantWoman’s notice. 

Comments in no particular order:

A good museum spans lots of different points in time. The Living Computer Museum definitely does that. RantWoman, though, is still getting used to the fact that things in her life from Last Century now have places in museums. In RantWoman’s case, this includes paper tape, punch cards, “the cold room,” usually in previous experience referred to as the machine room. The Living Computer Museum’s version of the cold room has the customary elevated floor with cables in the gap between the subflooring, serious air conditioning to keep the computers cool, an industrial size card reader, a large printer full of tractor feed green bar paper, a lot of noise, large disk and magnetic storage options.

 RantWoman admits to ignoring the don’t touch admonishments. RantWoman and Self-Taught Neighbor, a couple decades younger than RantWoman did not flip any switches, but RantWoman did help Self-Taught Neighbor run hands along the long loading tray for the large punch card reader. Neighbor had come across a punch card earlier in our meanderings and was very curious about how they worked. So RantWoman had to show him. And there was also a large disk pack from a mainframe computer several generations ago to explore. RantWoman figured we could not do any damage with either, but there is the matter of don’t touch.

 

RantWoman was interested to notice several different data storage media including the two most exotic media RantWoman has ever written code on, paper tape and punch cards as well as the giant disks used by the Xerox Alto, various floppy disk sizes, cassette, and magnetic tape. RantWoman thinks it would be an interesting exercise of scale to include information with some of the different exhibits about how much data different forms of data storage on display hold. With some way of scaling between the storage media of different eras and things like modern home appliances, laptops, smart phones.

 

RantWoman also happened to catch a radio interview with museum co-founder Steve Ballmer basically about getting and using information from all the data. RantWoman thinks that, like the storage scaling would be an interesting theme to weave into some different exhibits. RantWoman would even promise to consider carefully whether the theme would need a Death By Powerpoint tag.

 

Accessibility Features

Can someone find and access accessibility features on random devices. The Living Computer Museum has all sorts of computers from yesteryear which may or may not have accessibility features, but for the devices that have accessibility options, it is really nice to find them. Self-taught Blind Tech Whiz spent a fair amount of time trying to use Narrator on a variety of the computers on display. Self-Taught Tech Whiz is WAY faster than RantWoman but consistently, he found he needed a password and therefore staff assistance if he wanted to activate Narrator. This problem occurs a lot: one often needs to have a password or find a human to enable accessibility features on public computers that, RantWoman thinks should be accessible to all.

 

The Autonomous Car demo

RantWoman’s trio decided to start on the first floor, with the autonomous car demo: Consensus of everyone who tried it: look, it's awesome that the thing was created with 3-d printing technology, BUT the demo car really needs doors.

 

Remember all those mobility devices mentioned above with the bus? Having to clamber up onto a stool and then get into the car was not going to happen with the demo car. RantWoman considers this a little unfortunate given all the hype about use of autonomous vehicles in public transportation, but on this excursion there was plenty else for people to interact with.

 

Next, being warned to press a red button in the event of motion sickness for a sighted or somewhat sighted person actually is not something RantWoman would want to deal with in an autonomous car. RantWoman would like the car to operate well enough in sync with human physiology that motion sickness should be a rare occurrence.

 

RantWoman watched the visual experience without clambering into the test car. RantWoman can see the reason for the motion sickness warning. Fortunately Blind Neighbor did not have to worry about finding the red button in case of motion sickness. Why? The demo offered no sense of movement EXCEPT for the visual demo.

 

Blind people know a car is turning because of centripetal force and sometimes because of changes in air flow or wind. Many people can tell things about their ride based on sensations of travelling on asphalt or some other surface, A realistic driving demo needs to include experiences like this. RantWoman also thinks that blind people would not be the only users who might be interested in audio description of what is going on:

 

“travelling on Main Street”

 

“swerving slightly to avoid object in the road. Object may be either a carboard box or a kangaroo…”

 

“nearing destination”

 

Tourists as well as blind people might also appreciate narrative about locations the car is driving by.

 

The autonomous car demo included a printed circuit board where the trunk would usually be. RantWoman found this kind of by accident and is unclear whether the printed plate included text but RantWoman imagines needs for maybe a few breadcrumbs to identify places on the plate associated with different functionality.

 

RantWoman found herself poking around at the explanation behind the car demo of the levels of autonomy and wanting to press something for an audio description, but not really wanting to linger after Eager Americorps Participant read part of the text.

 

 

BARBIE.

WHY, why why, when people want to interest girls in technology do they think making it PINK will do the trick. RantWoman knows many girls and women strongly interested in technology who do not care one way or another about pink. RantWoman would like to know from women who do care about pink, whether making technology pink makes them more interested, but RantWoman would also like to hear from all the female tech execs tweeting one night about how much they liked Legos as kids or from Carly Fiorina or the women from Hidden Figures or  …. RantWoman herself feels the benefit of STEM in everyday life, in RantWoman’s case as relates to cooking, sewing, and other household tasks. Just ask rantWoman about washing dishes for example.

 

Then there is the matter of making Barbie (and Ken) over in directions of women in technology RantWoman knows. 

 

--Picture a shorter than average barefoot Barbie who is way too happy to let  a taller and nerdier than average Ken carry her around to her college engineering classes.

 

--Or picture one happy couple RantWoman knows: Ms Computer Scientist favors a half-shaved head, sometimes dyed in the colors of the institution where she teaches, and can dance male or female positions in contra dancing with equal ease. Mr. Computer Scientist favors skirts and contra dancing. When RantWoman one time suggested a trip to Utilikilts, Mrs. Computer Scientist said Mr. Computer Scientist thinks kilts are for men who cannot handle real skirts.

 

RantWoman here offers great appreciation for our tour guide. RantWoman apologizes for not remembering her name but definitely liked her half shaved head look. 

Soap

RantWoman's moment of ungraciousness: the museum women's room. RantWoman would like to hear from other blind people and people with other disabilities about hands-free faucets. RantWoman sometimes finds them a trial: if one has to turn the water on with some kind of faucet, one then has the audio cue that water is running. If there is no audio, RantWoman sometimes finds it frustrating to wave hands around until the water comes on. Worse, while waving her hands RantWoman ran into a soap dispenser full of strongly scented soap. RantWoman pretty much does not care WHAT the soap scent is; RantWoman avoids scents like the plague. The scented soap was something floral definitely closer to bearable than many options RantWoman has encountered. But RantWoman still had to wash her hands about 3 extra times when she got home to overcome her inadvertent encounter with soap. RantWoman DOES have standards of sanitation; it’s just that they are not usually found in soap dispensers in public.

 

If overly smelly soap is the worst problem of the day, though, it is a great day and rantWoman defijnitely recommends readers theck the museum out.

 

Headings brought to you by very modest experimentation. RantWoman recently asked the editor of a 4-6 page monthly newsletter she likes to read to please consider using headings. Sometimes in the past headings have occurred. Sometimes in the past has made a difference whether the newsletter is done on a Mac or a PC. In any case, using headings is a VERY modest but VERY helpful accessibility measure even for comparatively small documents. And the presentation or non-presentation here is an artifact of a mistake but RantWoman has to move on and not try to fix for now.

 
Please leave a comment if the mistake is causing you problems and RantWoman can try harder to troubleshoot.