Issues like this one occur routinely for many of us. It was correctly pointed out that the problem, itself, may not be Verizon's. However, apparently, they did a very poor job of trying to help their customer. If front-line representatives are not familiar with a subject matter, they should try to get help. Frankly, if no one at Verizon is familiar with screen readers, they need to be educated. ----- Original Message ----- From: donald E. Bowen, Jr. To: GW Micro Support List Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 12:11 PM Subject: Verizon Snubs Needs of Blind and Visually Impaired Customers
Hi, After a very frustrating morning with Verizon.com , I am writing to you all as a form of therapy. I managed to register an online account with them this morning and when trying to complete an online payment came across an inaccessible Submit button I could navigate all around it but could not get focus on it. I finally had a sighted individual look for me. The button was there. I asked the sighted person to put the mouse pointer on it but not to click. He did. Window Eyes announced graphic I took over with the numpad mouse controls but could not navigate away from and then back to. Well, I was able to move away from, just not back to. Oddly, not even the jump to graphic navigation command would take me back to the Submit button. I gave up, asked my son to go ahead and click on it for me. He did. The payment confirmation screen loaded. I then called the Verizon e-services center. John O'Niel, the telephone support agent who answered, said he did not know what a control was, He did not know anything about links, buttons, drop down boxes or list boxes or what a screen reader was, nor did he have any idea what to do. When I asked him how he got a job as a telephone support agent for Verizon e-services, He then hung up on me. I called Verizon and asked for the legal department. The clerk who answered there said, with disdain, when I briefed her on the reason for my call, "please hold" and transferred me to Customer Service. If Target, and other commercial web sites can be successfully sued for Publishing an inaccessible web site, surely a utility company is under some sort of obligation to provide an accessible web site. Thanks for letting me vent. And by the by, anybody have a clue how I can submit my payment to Verizon? Besides a paper check or paying a service fee for pay by phone? Sincerely, Donald E. Bowen, Jr. Music for Sight SKYPE ID: musicforsight If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. All GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through and sorted using the search form at the bottom of the page. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [email protected] and include leave gw-info in the body of the message. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4636 (20091125) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. All GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through and sorted using the search form at the bottom of the page. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [email protected] and include leave gw-info in the body of the message.
