No fun! When notifications are not in electronic format

There used to be a time when the property management office would often forget to provide me with notifications in electronic format. But ever since I complained robustly with a mild threat that I would take them to court if this continued, everything has changed.

It is usually not my style to threaten anyone but when the lack of electronic notifications could easily lead to some interesting situations and potential danger, then here is where I draw the line.

Here is an example.
I could be sitting around in my condo in a state of undress and workers enter my condo to carry out some work.  Of course we have been notified beforehand but I never got the notice so this is what has happened and now everyone, especially me, is totally embarrassed.

Another example would be if a notice is circulated giving out new numbers for the superintendents and an emergency arises and I do not have their numbers because I never received the notice in a readable format.  I am in difficulty and who do I call?

I'm Donna J. Jodhan, your friendly accessibility advisor, wishing you a terrific day.

If you would like to learn more about me as an author then I invite you now to visit 
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Radio versus TV

This is one of the more frequent questions that I am asked:  As a blind person, which do I prefer?  Great question and I will say that there are benefits to both for me.

 

TV has brought and continues to bring me countless benefits; and despite having to deal with several infomercials that do not always announce information on the screen, I continue to use TV as a main source of information.  More and more movies and programs are now including audio descriptions as part of their content and this helps lots.  As a whole, commentators and sports announcers do a great job at describing events and things as they happen.

 

I still use the news stations on the radio to gain much of my information and there is no problem here.  Radio describes everything for after all, they have no choice and they do a terrific job as well.  I also use radio stations to gain much of my information and with the advent of Internet radio, this makes it even more exciting for me.

 

Having both TV and Radio around me helps to enrich my environment and I like hearing the sound of both as I work in my office and go about my daily chores.  For TV:  I enjoy the news channels, the sports events, the cooking shows, and of course my favorite Soap Opera!  I also enjoy movies.  As for radio:  It's the news and the easy rock and classical music stations.

 

I'm Donna J. Jodhan your friendly accessibility advocate wishing you a terrific day and inviting you to go out there and share my blogs with others.  If you would like to learn more about descriptive audio then please visit www.wgbh.org.

The Disability Divide

This is probably not a term that many of you would be used to seeing so I am going to tell you a bit about it.  So as to be as concise as I can be, the disability divide refers to the difference between what a mainstream person can access through the Internet versus what a blind person is able to and it all refers to information, websites, and technology. 

 

Believe it or not, there are huge and ever widening gaps between what mainstream persons can access and what blind persons can.  When it comes to information, I as a blind person am unable to read documents in PDF format and much too often both governments and companies are guilty of failing to make their documents available in formats that I and others like me can read.  If these documents are not made available to me in any one of the following formats known as alternate formats, then information becomes inaccessible.  Formats such as:  Braille, large print, and electronic.

 

When it comes to websites, a similar situation prevails.  Many experts readily admit that about 97% of websites are inaccessible to blind persons due to various barriers such as:  Graphics and icons that do not contain textual descriptions, forms and fields that are not designed to enable blind persons to use them, files in inaccessible formats such as PDF, pop-up screens and pull-down menus, plus much more. 

 

In the case of technology, blind persons have to depend on manufacturers to develop special software that would enable them to take advantage of such things as:  MP3 players, PDAs, cell phones, plus much too much more.  These gaps unfortunately continue to grow and the only way for me to put it into perspective is like this:  Technology takes two steps forward, but for blind persons it's actually only one. 

 

If you would like to learn more about these gaps then you can visit www.rnib.org or www.nfb.org.

I'm Donna J. Jodhan your friendly accessibility advocate wishing you a terrific day and urging you to go out there and help encourage companies to help blind persons close the disability divide.