Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Blind moment that almost and may have ruined lives thanks to poor accessibility (self.Blind)
submitted by cebeezly82
Okay, quick background info. I am blind, am fostering a teen, and just picked up a second job so have been super busy. Teen has been snowed in at my house for over two weeks practically. I know she is bored as all out hell, and possibly on the border of relapsing and making bad decisions. Gave her a Macbook and my series x to keep her busy while I generate some more money, and just reposition my life to better support her.
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I've been battling DCS, hundreds of forms and documents, and tons of other stuff. Plus I have two other kids keeping me busy. DCS kept giving me the run around and saying that I need to wait for them to register the kiddo for school. Used to work for the school district and explained that this isn't the case given it's just the preliminary online portion of registration that just gets you the meeting with the principle of the alternative school. Also doesn't help when DCS and other members of the support team keep saying they're coming, and reschedule at the last minute. Can't keep doing that to a blind person with very strict transit restrictions that require lots of planning.
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Fast forward to a short gap in between my first job and a huge meeting for my second job today. Education Liaison said to just go online and get things going just as I suspected. Shared login credentials with DCS and had started filling everything out. I use a screen reader for the blind to navigate websites, and things sort of went smooth, at least until step 4. This was the dentist and doctor info section. Come to find out MS Edge sucks in terms of accessibility and auto fill. Thank goodness I didn't submit it yet because DCS and the Social Worker made me aware that for fields like "Last Name" profane words such as "Pee Pee Face" and "Butt Cakes" were filling the spaces. Think there was even a "Fuck Face" somewhere in there. Excessively stupid how Edge never even notified me and replaced doctor's names with this stuff when tabbing. Back when my 10 year old son's xbox was broken I let him play Fortnite on my gaming PC with some other games. I am pretty sure he used edge and typed out these terms at some point.
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I also think I missed out on my dream job because Edge filled in the same words and didn't notify me audibly when completing thee online application some weeks ago. I personally dislike edge, and only reason I am using it for is because google updated their email interface which made it completely inaccessible to screen reader users. If I use the edge browser I can access the basic html version of google mail for some reason, while I can't with chrome or firefox. I have been complaining about this for over half a year now with a number of other blind users with no luck. It's definitely been one of those days, and I wish they would just quit updating crap so I can live my life without running into some accessibility issue because we need to make things prettier for the sited. Was one of the main reasons I had to drop out of computer science at University back in the day and go for something else.
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I've been battling DCS, hundreds of forms and documents, and tons of other stuff. Plus I have two other kids keeping me busy. DCS kept giving me the run around and saying that I need to wait for them to register the kiddo for school. Used to work for the school district and explained that this isn't the case given it's just the preliminary online portion of registration that just gets you the meeting with the principle of the alternative school. Also doesn't help when DCS and other members of the support team keep saying they're coming, and reschedule at the last minute. Can't keep doing that to a blind person with very strict transit restrictions that require lots of planning.
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Fast forward to a short gap in between my first job and a huge meeting for my second job today. Education Liaison said to just go online and get things going just as I suspected. Shared login credentials with DCS and had started filling everything out. I use a screen reader for the blind to navigate websites, and things sort of went smooth, at least until step 4. This was the dentist and doctor info section. Come to find out MS Edge sucks in terms of accessibility and auto fill. Thank goodness I didn't submit it yet because DCS and the Social Worker made me aware that for fields like "Last Name" profane words such as "Pee Pee Face" and "Butt Cakes" were filling the spaces. Think there was even a "Fuck Face" somewhere in there. Excessively stupid how Edge never even notified me and replaced doctor's names with this stuff when tabbing. Back when my 10 year old son's xbox was broken I let him play Fortnite on my gaming PC with some other games. I am pretty sure he used edge and typed out these terms at some point.
​
I also think I missed out on my dream job because Edge filled in the same words and didn't notify me audibly when completing thee online application some weeks ago. I personally dislike edge, and only reason I am using it for is because google updated their email interface which made it completely inaccessible to screen reader users. If I use the edge browser I can access the basic html version of google mail for some reason, while I can't with chrome or firefox. I have been complaining about this for over half a year now with a number of other blind users with no luck. It's definitely been one of those days, and I wish they would just quit updating crap so I can live my life without running into some accessibility issue because we need to make things prettier for the sited. Was one of the main reasons I had to drop out of computer science at University back in the day and go for something else.
mdizak 3 points 1y ago
Sorry to hear about the troubles.
As for Gmail in Firefox / Chrome, works fine. Google did recently update it a while ago though, and seem to have removed the ability to set basic HTML to default. However, upon logging in just press Shift + B once or twice, and it'll focus on the "Display Basic HTML" button, at least works for me. Sucks you have to do it everytime you check e-mail, but it is what it is.
cebeezly82 [OP] 2 points 1y ago
He thinks for the suggestion. That's what I do but I absolutely cannot get the button to show up on Firefox no matter what system I use. Edge has some strange glitches especially when multitasking and having additional tabs. Chrome isn't displaying the button either on none of my systems. Shows up on Safari on Mac OS. It's kind of a bizarre move. And I've done testing for both Microsoft products and Google products for accessibility purposes. They all keep making this move towards adding excessive amounts of complex and additional navigation systems for simple single tasks. They're usually young kids with ux design focus changes that hyper focus on the new changes and the way accessibility will work, while never going back and looking at past navigation techniques. And how they work.
i_am_extra_syrup 2 points 1y ago
Oh, gosh... I cringed so hard for you when reading this. Sorry that happened to you. To be transparent, I'm sighted... but this has even happened to me because I use fake names on forms all the time (not always appropriate terms either). LOL
Anyway, just throwing out there that if you ever need any assistance feel free to shoot me a message. I can also direct you on how to clear those saved for fields in your browser.
It frustrates me so much when I read feedback like yours stating that common websites are hard to use with screen readers. Especially, products like Gmail.
Best to you!
Anyway, just throwing out there that if you ever need any assistance feel free to shoot me a message. I can also direct you on how to clear those saved for fields in your browser.
It frustrates me so much when I read feedback like yours stating that common websites are hard to use with screen readers. Especially, products like Gmail.
Best to you!
cebeezly82 [OP] 2 points 1y ago
LOL thank you so much that's super kind. It is definitely been one of the most cringe moments of my entire life. Finally had a chance to explain to DCS what was going on and she has kids and just busted out laughing on the phone in front of all her colleagues. Social worker at the school sounds like an old fuddy-duddy with no sense of humor though. Also appears that I must have used Firefox for my second dream job because I just called and scheduled an interview about 20 minutes ago. I just don't understand why autofill would keep putting something like that in place of something that I keep typing out. I thought you actually had to click or choose the option. I also don't understand why the screen reader wouldn't read it when I go to the field to review. It would just re-input the same nasty word every time I tabbed out of it. Does not do that on any other browser..
i_am_extra_syrup 1 points 1y ago
Good to hear that DCS was laughing at least. Oh well for the fuddy-duddy. Haha!
Something I've noticed is that autofill doesn't necessarily fill the field as if a human filled it... or at least sometimes it's not recognized as such. For example, I do auto complete but it will still say the form is incomplete because it didn't actually get typed into. It's probably something dumb like that. Also, when you tab, if the information you just put in matches along with the rest of the bogus field values that are saved then it will sometimes auto fill the rest of the fields simply by association.
Something I've noticed is that autofill doesn't necessarily fill the field as if a human filled it... or at least sometimes it's not recognized as such. For example, I do auto complete but it will still say the form is incomplete because it didn't actually get typed into. It's probably something dumb like that. Also, when you tab, if the information you just put in matches along with the rest of the bogus field values that are saved then it will sometimes auto fill the rest of the fields simply by association.
bradley22 1 points 1y ago
How did your son do that? I wasn't aware you could change the dictionary like that? I thought that was only an NVDA/jaws thing?
cebeezly82 [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I have no idea to be honest. And what's bizarre is he hasn't used my computer in over 2 years since the quarantine during the pandemic. Using Windows 11 and I think maybe it randomly just carried over entries from way back when. It wasn't doing that up until I upgraded to Windows 11
bradley22 1 points 1y ago
Strange. So you checked yourself? As in you’ve gone to notepad and typed in certain words?
Did you ask him where he made the changes? Because you’re gonna wanna remove those.
Did you ask him where he made the changes? Because you’re gonna wanna remove those.
cebeezly82 [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I think edge just found the autofill profile file somewhere and basically keeps them in a profile. I just completely reset edge so I'm checking to see if it's still happens which it appears it isn't so far. Unless of course it's deep in the cloud and comes back when I least expect it. It was a couple years ago and he's really young so no way to know where it's at
bradley22 1 points 1y ago
That’s interesting.
retrolental_morose 1 points 1y ago
unpopular opinion? Sounds as much bad judgment on your part as your blindness. As a parent, I'd never let my children have access to technology with my credentials. As someone who wanted a job, I'd never submit an application without proofreading it first. neither of these are blindness-related things.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Have to agree with you here especially the children thing.
cebeezly82 [OP] -1 points 1y ago
Sometimes when things are going on letting kids access your device isn't usually bad. Also, in terms of the application there was no way to actually review it. I would imagine you have some knowledge of how technology works if you've been around the web. There was no way to actually access a non text box version of the application or registration on these particular sites. I absolutely always proof read. Lol, I have written multi-million dollar grants for past jobs and projects, and know what I'm doing. I shit you not, Jaws or NVDA was not picking up the auto fill. It was like Edge was literally deceiving me on purpose. I would type a name or straight up NA, and Tab to the next. Then I would start from the top as I usually do with tabbing and down arrows to jump from field to field just to check as I have for, well since screen readers actually existed in the 80's. Edge never gave any indicator that it was auto filling fields with odd things. LMAO, I would at least expect a company worth nearly a trillion dollars to be able to not screw up something like that. Unpopular opinion, you kind of sound like a bland parent and person all around that has little emotion or open mind.
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