[GUI-Talk] need help with facebook and messenger and not getting it from our tech div.

Sat Jan 11 10:45:38 UTC 2025

Dear Mike and other list members reading this,

Thank you for an excellent, thought-provoking question.
Your message reflects the changing nature of the technology we use. In earlier times, most of our access technology was provided by specialized companies. It was relatively easy to get to the key person and advocate for a change we felt was important. That was one advantage of a smaller customer base. The downside was that the small customer base meant that resources were limited, so change could take a while, and the cost of the products tended to be high.
Now, mainstream companies have become access technology companies. That model has ushered in a new series of opportunities and challenges for us.
You're absolutely correct that when companies offer features-such as contracted Braille support-they should work as intended. It's frustrating when that doesn't happen, especially when these tools have the potential to make a significant difference in people's lives.
Large tech companies receive thousands of inquiries and requests daily. That makes it difficult for individuals to get past the first level of technical support and reach the engineers or product managers responsible for making meaningful changes. The people, or algorithms, processing the inquiries may not have the skills to know when an issue is a high priority, or even when the issue is thought-through so well that someone in product management ought to be made aware of it.
In terms of how you as an individual can have influence, while there are no guarantees, there are some things that can improve your chances. As a former software engineer, you will be aware of the importance of clear bug report or feature suggestion data. Where bug reports are concerned, it is important to outline the behavior you're experiencing, steps to make that behavior happen on demand wherever possible, and then provide a description of the behavior you want or expect.
Compiling data like this can be very difficult for someone who may not have the language or skills to do so. They simply want the technology to behave itself and don't consider themselves technology experts. The Federation has produced a self-advocacy toolkit, with sample letters and other resources, to help anyone advocate for improvements to the technology they you. Learn more about the self-advocacy toolkit here.<https://nfb.org/programs-services/center-excellence-nonvisual-accessibility/self-advocacy-toolkit-and-tracking-form>
arguably, participating in a beta test process where one is available may help, because there are quality assurance folks dedicated to the beta process. But even then, the sheer volume of bug reports and the decisions a company makes about which ones to fix before release means that important problems persist.
Sometimes, high impact bugs remain unaddressed for release after release. I discussed this in my 2023 speech to National Convention, and in 2024, we passed a resolution endorsing the concept of a Defect Equity Framework, where bugs are prioritized based on drawing an equivalency between how they affect blind people and what an equivalent bug would be for a sighted person. To use your example of contracted Braille input to illustrate how this would work, if a sighted person was using their chosen input method to produce text and it was producing gibberish, you can be sure that fixing this bug would be a very high priority.
I've spoken with many people who feel disheartened because they have done all the things I have suggested above. They have taken the time to produce detailed, clear, reproduceable bug reports, but nothing seems to change and they now feel they are wasting their time even trying.
Sometimes, I get asked by people what value the National Federation of the Blind adds in the 2020s, when anyone can advocate, anyone can start a petition. Your message illustrates the power of collective action. With staff dedicated to pursuing these issues and building relationships, we have the ability to get past the first level tech support and raise matters with people who can actually make change happen. Does this mean we get everything we want immediately? Sadly not. But there are issues we have been responsible for getting addressed before they had a high impact on a large number of people.
We can also act as a conduit and find common threads. The more quality information we have about what people are experiencing, the better the Federation can serve blind people. There is no doubt that the number of people impacted by a bug is one determinant of the priority it is assigned. One way we collect data is through our bug report form.  If you are experiencing issues with a product, we want to know about it. We regularly meet with most of the major tech companies who are receptive to learning from us what blind people are saying and how they can do better. So, in addition to reporting issues directly to the company, please do let us know about them, so we can help. Learn more about our tracking form.<https://nfb.org/programs-services/center-excellence-nonvisual-accessibility/self-advocacy-toolkit-and-tracking-form>
It is important for me to set realistic expectations. In some cases, issues just don't gain traction. We don't always get everything we want right away, but the NFB is not going anywhere, we are persistent and tenacious. Where all other options fail, we may need to take more public action, including a convention resolution or some sort of legal action. History shows us that the range and quality of tools we use are vastly superior thanks to the NFB's efforts.
I hope that's of some help, and although advocacy can feel like banging your head against a brick wall sometimes, please keep at it because sometimes the wall moves, even just a little, often when you least expect it.

Jonathan Mosen

Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence

200 East Wells Street, Baltimore, MD 21230

410-659-9314, extension 2233 | jmosen at nfb.org

The National Federation of the Blind is a community of members and friends who believe in the hopes and dreams of the nation's blind. Every day we work together to help blind people live the lives they want.

-----Original Message-----
From: GUI-Talk <gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Mike Jolls via GUI-Talk
Sent: Friday, 10 January 2025 6:16 pm
To: Discussion of the Graphical User Interface, GUI Talk Mailing List <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Mike Jolls <mrspock56 at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [GUI-Talk] need help with facebook and messenger and not getting it from our tech div.

This is aimed at Jonathan Mosen, but of course (to others) feel tree to jump in here.

I'm coming to this discussion rather late, but I guess better late than never.

Jonathan, since you are the executive director of Accessibility Excellence, perhaps I've found someone that can answer a question.

What expectation should we have, when contacting companies like Apple or Facebook, about getting changes made to these systems?  Let me give you an example.

A few years ago when I got my first iPad (and I already had a Focus 40 Braille display), I found out that the iPad had Braille access built in.  I got really excited because I figured a person could use a Braille display with the iPad to do some notetaking using the Notes app.  The cost of the iPad and display was about $1,000 to $2,000 cheaper, so there could be a real advantage if you could connect the Braille display to the iPad.  So I began exploring the iPad and iOs.  What I found was that the user interface didn't work exactly how I thought it should.  You have to understand that I'm a retired software engineer with almost 40 years of experience.  I've worked with several UI's in my career and I think I have a decent idea of how they should work.  Some of the issues I found dealt with how you navigate through a document you're working on.

Anyway, I found 4 things I felt should be changed, so I wrote Apple asking for changes to the Notes app and/or iOS with respect to using it with a Braille disply.  To my knowledge, none of my requests were implemented.  I even consulted with other blind people on FB asking them if they thought my complaints were valid.  They all agreed.

One big complaint was that Apple's Braille translation in Grade 2 Braille just doesn't seem to work correctly.  I mentioned this to the people in the accessibility group on Facebook and they told me to not use grade 2.  Rather, use grade 1.  OK, I can type each letter, but my question is .... If Apple is going to offer Grade 2 as one of their options, it should work.  That was the expectation required of me when I was employed.  If you're going to offer a feature, it better work!!

That was one of the items I mentioned in my change request.  But as I say, to my knowledge none of the 4 things I suggested have been implemented.

So that leads me back to my original question.  What can we as individual users expect from Apple when we send in a request?  Should we expect them to blow us off?  Or do we have to come to someone like yourself who has the power to "move the mountain" and get things done?

Thank you so much for listening.  Being a retired tech person, my interest is maybe using my knowledge to help improve the technology for blind users.

If you (or anybody else for that matter) would like to discuss this further, I'm open to listening.

Mike Jolls

________________________________

From: GUI-Talk <gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org>> on behalf of Mosen, Jonathan via GUI-Talk <gui-talk at nfbnet.org<mailto:gui-talk at nfbnet.org>>

Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2024 11:34 AM

To: Discussion of the Graphical User Interface, GUI Talk Mailing List <gui-talk at nfbnet.org<mailto:gui-talk at nfbnet.org>>

Cc: Mosen, Jonathan <jmosen at nfb.org<mailto:jmosen at nfb.org>>

Subject: Re: [GUI-Talk] need help with facebook and messenger and not getting it from our tech div.

Hello Ken. Happy thanksgiving to you. It sounds like you have a frustrating set of experiences there and I hope those who use Facebook regularly can offer you some guidance. I did want to respond to your question regarding what we in the Federation can do regarding Facebook.

One of my responsibilities as the Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence at the National Federation of the Blind is to further strengthen our relationships with these tech companies that are having such a major impact on our lives.

The issue of Facebook accessibility has been high on our radar of late because of accessibility concerns on several platforms.

The good news is that Meta has been engaging and I would describe our dialog around improving accessibility as constructive. But at this stage we feel that there is much to do.

You mentioned the issue with the iOS app. We have communicated this matter to Facebook. The difficulty with this one is that some people are experiencing it, while others are not. I completely understand that it shouldn't be necessary, but one workaround for now is to type your Facebook post in another app, like Apple's Notes app that is built into your iPhone, copy it to the clipboard and paste it into Facebook. When you do this, it will still seem like the field is blank, but it is in fact not. Clearly this is a very high-impact defect, and we've communicated in detail to Facebook's development team.

So in short, we are actively advocating on Facebook accessibility, the discussions have been constructive, we are in touch with exactly the right people, but we don't have any specific outcomes to show for it yet.

Clearly, we hope that will change soon.

Best of luck with getting the password issue resolved.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----

From: GUI-Talk <gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org>> On Behalf Of ken lawrence via GUI-Talk

Sent: Thursday, 28 November 2024 1:57 am

To: gui-talk at nfbnet.org<mailto:gui-talk at nfbnet.org>

Cc: ken lawrence <kenlawrence124 at gmail.com<mailto:kenlawrence124 at gmail.com>>

Subject: [GUI-Talk] need help with facebook and messenger and not getting it from our tech div.

Hi list. Ken here from the NJ affiliate.  am completely baffled a few days ago, I finally changed my facebook password.  but when I logged in facebook says  your account is suspended nobody can see it and you can't use it not sure but it seems to think I downloaded something in violation of some polacy I did nothing of the kind and my facebook works fine on the phone.  it made me prove I wasn't a robot and now it wants a totally blind person to uploade  a verification selfy.  meanwhile on messenger things are weird when I go to the app it says the link might be b roken.  downloaded a version of the app and same thing happens.  all I did was reset a password.  on the phone there is really something muffed up I can't post to a group or a friend when I try posting the words "what's on your mind are in the edit field and no matter what I try to do it can't seem to write correctly on a group like the knight-manager group the phrase "create post is in the field again.  I'm sure Use AI is turned off but I can only go live with a video post or comment on another posters post and only on the phone why isn't facebook working on the computer and what is wrong with the messemger both on messenger dot com and on the desktop app.  am I going to lose facebook soon for something I cna't fix or appeal and that I didn't do?  there's no human contact on FB desperate.  if federation ken 61 goes away I'm urging a boycotting of FB and will as best as I can direct all my FB friend all 541 or them to mastodon.  also what can we as federationists do to get accessibility to facebook which we are obviously losing just like twitter and since to mark zuckerberg we are nothing more than product what can we do to put a human face on to facebook.

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