The light's how they find you

ETA3: Away for oral surgery. Blarg. Will attempt to catch up with everyone who wants to talk to me when recovered, so please hold.

ETA2: To any support people from the below companies who want to follow up with me -- thanks. Please just comment here and I'll get to you as soon as I can. It doesn't do any good to mention me on twitter and ask me to dm you -- twitter doesn't work that way when we don't follow each other (that one's for you, Google. *pats*). I may not be able to forward correspondence as a whole since most of these are tied to real name accounts and I really cannot cross identities. But I will copy-and-paste and summarize happily.

ETA: To everyone popping in from Twitter/reblogging/wherever -- thanks for stopping by! Please know that this journal is 95% private these days. The rest is fanfic and the very occasional public life event or accessibility rant. I am unlikely to be of long-term interest to anyone not into pornographic stories about fictional characters, just so's we're all clear on that up front. If you really want to watch me regularly foam at the mouth about social justice in general and disability in particular, try my book reviews, that's probably what you're after. Thanks!

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I was recently treated to another round of “disabled people need to just ask for accommodations, then they’d be given them,” with the usual accompaniments of “you shouldn’t be so angry” and “you should be nicer."

So I figured, okay. I know this is bullshit from a lifetime of experience, but let’s gather some data.

What I did
I gave myself 7 days. Every time during that 7 days I ran into a particular kind of inaccessibility, I wrote to the owner/relevant authority and asked them to fix it. I aimed for short, factual, informative request letters.


(To an Italian restaurant)

Hi,

I recently attempted to use your website to read your menu before coming in. I was disappointed to discover your menu is a .jpg image embedded in the website, making it inaccessible to blind and low vision users. Screenreaders cannot read the contents of images out loud. I found this very inconvenient, and wish you would take steps to make your website accessible to all your potential customers. The contents of the menu should be placed on the website as text with regular html markup. You can also post a pdf file of your menu, but pdf’s have their own accessibility pitfalls, and this is a much less preferred option.

For more information on website accessibility in general and this issue in particular, try http://www.webaim.org

Thank you for your attention. I would be happy to answer any questions.

(My full name, complete with J.D. for that bit of lawyer pomposity).


The parameters
I had to limit it. I had to limit it a lot, if I wanted to keep doing things like eating, sleeping, and working.

So I only asked for accessibility fixes to websites and iPhone apps. And I further limited it by only asking for things that were broken. Not just irritating, figure-out-a-workaround inaccessible, but flat out I-cannot-use-this inaccessible.

Who I wrote to

• Teefury – no alt tags or shirt descriptions means I can’t/won’t buy anything


• Echofon (twitter app)


• My train arrivals tracker app – it refreshes every 10 seconds, which trips Voiceover but good and puts my focus back at the top of the screen. Easy solution is to have an option to turn off auto-refresh


• My broker – Bad Ajax can’t fill out forms ARRRRGH.


• My dental insurance


• My vet


• Travelocity


• The administrator of my employer’s intranet – ohgod, everything. But for these purposes, all links are graphical and none are tagged.


• Goodreads – Argh can’t use magic ajaxy comment boxes argh, also the app in its entirety


• The Fluevog site


• An upscale Italian place within walking distance of home


• Demeter Fragrance


• Gmail – anything that isn’t in basic html mode doesn’t work


• Facebook (okay, I cheated on that one, I wouldn’t ordinarily go to Facebook in a week, but I did just so I could write to them)


• Abovethelaw.com


• Google (for the search engine) – Google Instant crashes Jaws, and the current “solution” is to have a link to turn Instant off. Except it only works for a single pageview at a time, ARRRRGH).


• Youtube – No access to player controls at all


• Tumblr – we’ve talked about this


• Peapod.com


• The website of the Governor of Nevada – Why! WHY would you post your official documents as jpg’s! No one cares that much about your pretty signature!


• Nike.com


• Corporateperks.com – can’t complete any purchases, “buy” button not labeled.


• Google+ - Uh . . . everything


• A definitely not upscale Italian delivery place – screwy menus so I can’t actually get to any section but the appetizers


• Potbelleys – terrible pdf menus


• My health insurance – not like I need to, uh, use that or anything

The results
I grouped responses into categories:

1. Competent and positive: Something like, “we didn’t know, we’ll get on that.” I intended to also include things like, “I’m not qualified to handle this, let me pass you up the chain,” where the intention clearly is to get the problem solved, not make me go away. I also intended to count responses along the lines of, “we have to talk to our tech people about this, but we want to fix it and here’s a rough idea of how long it might take.” This ended up not being necessary.

Number of responses in this category: 0

2. The runaround: People who don’t know what I’m talking about and don’t care enough to find out, so you end up in an endless loop getting passed up and down the chain of command until someone finally just stops answering, or, for the bigger corporations, you get one of those, “your ticket has been closed, we hope you are satisfied,” emails.

Number of responses: 6 (23%)

3. Hostility: Some version of “we know it’s inaccessible, but we are not fixing it,” or “we didn’t know, and we’re not fixing it.” I include in this category any version of, “it would be too hard,” (universally incorrect) “not enough people need that,” or “our customers haven’t asked for that” (what am I, exactly?) There are legit technical reasons why certain access issues would be very difficult to fix, but I happen to know a fair amount about this, and most of what I’m talking about here are discrete, one-fix issues.

Number of responses: 7 (27%)

4. Silence: Complete nonresponsiveness, other than a form “we’ve received your letter” email in some cases, and often with the "we respond to every request within x days" language. (The length of time between my note and this post ranges from 11 to 18 days. I’ll update if any more trickle in).

Number of responses: 13 (50%)


Positive responses
Nope, not a single one.

The runaround

• Corporateperks.com


• My broker


• Facebook


• Peapod


• Nike


• My health insurance

Hostility

• Gmail


• Google+


• Google (search)


• Tumblr


• Youtube


• Travelocity


• Goodreads

Silence

• Teefury


• Demeter Fragrance


• Echofon


• Train app


• Dental insurance


• vet


• My employer’s intranet


• Fluevog


• Upscale Italian place


• Not upscale Italian place


• Abovethelaw


• Governor of Nevada


• Potbellys

Some observations
Oh my God that took a lot of time. Seriously, hours and hours. I knew it would, but I was surprised by just how much. I thought I’d be able to get some sort of form letter going, but my comments were always so specific, it just didn’t work. (I also anticipate a pretty big time/emotion suck involved in dealing with whatever trolling/anonymous hating/general badness comes down on me for posting this complete with final paragraph. But hey, maybe it won’t come out that way. More surprising things have happened.)

It was also psychologically exhausting, but, well. We knew that. I went back and forth with some of these guys ten or twelve times, explaining and explaining the same thing over and over again. And there was something I didn’t know to keep track of until halfway through, and by then I couldn’t stomach going back through all the correspondence to count. It’s the “la la la!” response where the person clearly hasn’t understood a word I’ve said and just really really wants me to go away. E.g. corporateperks.com, where I wrote to say “I can’t buy a gift certificate, the ‘purchase’ button is not labeled, here’s how it should work.” And what I got back was, “we’re sorry you’re having trouble printing a gift certificate. Here’s how to hit the print button.” …Yeah.

I also intended to separately keep track of the nonaccessibility solutions offered. Things like, “okay, you can’t use our website, so just email me your order and I’ll process it for you.” This is not great, for obvious reasons (disabled people, they just need to use that other door, you know, the one in the back) but it would actually get shit done, and I am busy. This also ended up being unnecessary because not a single such offer was made. People went out of their way to not take my money.

Other suggested reading
celli on writing to the CTA. This will make you laugh. And then weep.

Conclusions
…Do I actually need to say anything here?

No, wait, there is something I want to say. Doing this – interacting with a bunch of organizations from the tiny to the giant in attempts to get something inaccessible fixed – was outwardly not much like the community-wide spasm fandom had last year over accessibility. Totally different ways of processing a problem. But it felt exactly the same to me. Like I am a second-class citizen, like I am imposing by existing and by being a user, like I should please please please go away. And I think the results here demonstrate the exact same thing that fandom did last year.