taken from the Braille Monitor, April 2015
Accessibility at Microsoft More Challenges than
Victories
by Curtis Chong
From the Editor: Curtis Chong is the president of the National
Federation of the Blind in Computer Science, and in this capacity he is on
the frontline when it comes to hearing about technical problems and being
expected to offer some fix, work around, or political way to address
problems that keep blind people from being as productive as they must in
order to compete. Because most of the desktop and laptop market is
dominated by Microsoft products, and because Microsoft has had more
experience in dealing with accessibility issues than any other company, it
is not surprising that the president of the computer science division hears
frequently about user frustrations, lost jobs, and opportunities never
pursued.
Although we are currently engaged with Microsoft in a dialogue
expected to result in some advances in accessibility, this article is
appropriate in expressing the frustration that members and nonmembers alike
have when they try to use products that are essential at home, at school,
and in the places they work. Here is what Curtis has to say:
There can be little doubt that Microsoft products are widely used
today in almost every aspect of life. The majority of employers in this
country require their employees to use programs from Microsoft (especially
programs that are part of Microsoft Office) to accomplish the tasks they
perform every day such as sending and receiving email, creating and editing
documents, administering databases, managing projects, and so on. At home
many people have personal computers that run the Microsoft Windows
operating system and possibly Microsoft Office. At my doctor's office I
cannot avoid the sound of the mouse clicking as my doctor reviews my
medical chart using a computer powered by Microsoft Windows. While
computers made by Apple arguably are gaining market share, Microsoft
programs continue to maintain a highly visible presence in our lives. For
those of us who are blind, access to Microsoft products is not just
something that we would like to have. Rather, full nonvisual access to
Microsoft products is essential if we are to have any hope of being able to
compete in today's technology-driven labor market, let alone maintain
parity with our sighted neighbors at home.
For more than two decades the Microsoft Corporation has had a team of
individuals responsible for promoting and assuring the accessibility of its
various products to people with disabilities, including the blind. You
might assume, therefore, that after more than twenty years of effort,
Microsoft would stand out as a leader in the world of accessible software
and that all (or at least most) of the programs it sells would be
accessible to and usable by the blind. If so, you would be wrong! After
twenty years of effort, Microsoft's accessibility team is still unable to
serve as a gatekeeper to prevent Microsoft from releasing blatantly
inaccessible products.
The frustrating reality is that the accessibility effort within the
Microsoft organization has not been given the power and influence it must
have if the goal of ubiquitous accessibility is ever to be achieved. In
other words a Microsoft product is accessible today-not because it is
required to be so; it is accessible because the accessibility team was able
to persuade a specific product group to do what is necessary to make its
product work for people with disabilities.
Today only a small percentage of Microsoft products are regarded by
the blind as comfortable and intuitive to use. Examples include Windows
Explorer (referred to as File Explorer in Windows 8), most of the Microsoft
Office Suite, Internet Explorer, and several (but not all) functions of the
Windows operating system. Even for these supposedly accessible programs,
accessibility and efficiency have deteriorated as newer versions of
software are released. Consequently, whenever we who are blind hear about a
new Microsoft product, we feel a certain amount of skepticism about the
ability of that product to work with our screen-access technology and are
pleasantly surprised if, in fact, the product turns out to work for us.
Below are seven examples of how Microsoft has fallen short of what
seem like very realistic accessibility goals. As you consider these
examples, bear in mind that this list represents a tiny fraction of the
scope of the problem and that well over 80 percent of Microsoft products
remain inaccessible to nonvisual users.
. A concrete example of a product that simply cannot be used by
the blind, but which is an integral security component used in
employment situations, is Microsoft's BitLocker software, which
provides full disk encryption. BitLocker requires the user to enter a
PIN (personal identification number) before the full Windows operating
system is started. While competing full-disk encryption programs have
offered the ability to generate an audible tone that can be used to
alert the blind user that information needs to be entered, BitLocker
offers no such indication. Despite years of repeated entreaties by
blind people for Microsoft to fix this problem, we have yet to see a
version of BitLocker that addresses this issue. A blind employee who
is required to use a computer with Microsoft BitLocker installed will
be unable to turn the computer on and get it running-not to mention
use it.
. Microsoft SharePoint, a program used by many institutions
(many of which employ the blind), is not fully accessible to the
blind. SharePoint has been found to be so frustrating for the
nonvisual user that a third-party vendor believes that it can sell an
add-on solution to large enterprises (e.g., state or federal agencies)
that costs as much as $12,000 for a single user license. If
Microsoft's accessibility effort were working, a product that is as
widely used as SharePoint would already be as convenient and effective
for the nonvisual user as it is for everyone else.
. There does not appear to be any user-experience research being
conducted by Microsoft into improving efficiency for keyboard-only
users, including the blind. This has already had a negative impact on
keyboard-only users of the spell checker in Word 2013, which no longer
provides accelerator keys to speed up the selection of options when
spelling errors are detected.
. Microsoft struggles to implement an API (application program
interface) which makes it easier for screen-access software to get
information about application states, messages, and controls.
Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and User Interface Automation
(UIA), two examples of existing accessibility APIs, have existed
within the Windows operating system for many years, but they have
apparently not done much to solve the accessibility problem. While I
applaud the fact that Microsoft has worked hard to ensure that Windows
Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 have worked with updated releases of
screen-access software on the day they were released to the public, it
must also be recognized that, in order for this to have happened, the
screen-access software vendors (very small companies in relation to
Microsoft) had to devote considerable resources to make this happen.
It would be better if these relatively small companies could spend
more time and effort coming up with innovations that improve the
efficiency and productivity of blind users of their software.
. For years Microsoft has left the blind with no access to
Windows phones. Given that iOS and Android phones have had some form
of nonvisual access for years, we find this frustrating, if not
shameful. It is even more disheartening when we remember that, when
Windows Phone was first released to the market in 2010, Microsoft made
a very clear business decision not to include or support a screen
reader for the Windows Phone platform.
. Unlike its main competitors on desktop and mobile platforms,
Microsoft has failed to provide built-in support for refreshable
Braille displays to be connected to and used on its various platforms.
This is particularly vexing for users who are both deaf and blind for
whom refreshable Braille displays are the only way to interact with
computer software. The Apple Macintosh and the Apple iPhone support a
variety of refreshable Braille displays without requiring the customer
to install device-specific drivers, and these products entered the
market well after Microsoft began working on accessibility.
. The maintenance, setup, and recovery of Microsoft Windows
continue to be inaccessible to the blind. Consequently, there is an
added cost in time and/or money to the blind user, who has to bring in
(and often pay for) sighted assistance to install, upgrade, or repair
a Windows system. This situation is unacceptable-especially given the
fact that Apple OS X and iOS operating systems incorporate
accessibility tools that enable the blind computer user to perform
maintenance, upgrade, and recovery tasks without sighted assistance.
Moreover, this problem curtails the ability of the blind to accept
Windows system support jobs in information technology.
Year after year, the National Federation of the Blind and the
Microsoft Accessibility Team engage in active and ongoing communication,
and year after year, we have communicated our frustrations and concerns to
this team. I and other leaders of the NFB in Computer Science have met at
many national conventions with Rob Sinclair, the head of Microsoft's
accessibility team. Although our meetings are very positive and our
relationship with Mr. Sinclair extremely collegial, the reality is that we
see far more accessibility challenges with Microsoft products than
victories. Perhaps this is because, at Microsoft (as with too many other
companies), accessibility continues to be a matter of education and
persuasion and not something that everyone within the company is required
to achieve. How different the situation would be if Microsoft had in place
a policy which required accessibility instead of merely encouraging it.
As Microsoft products move from the desktop to the cloud and as its
corporate customers move in this same direction, it is vital that nonvisual
users be able to move with them; our jobs and our independence demand it.
Now, the $64,000 question is, how can we get Microsoft to deliver
ubiquitous accessibility and usability to everyone-including the blind?
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