Category Archives: My Sorta Kinda Maybe (In)accessible Life

My Sorta Kinda Maybe (in)Accessible Life: A Lot to Unpack…

10 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by in My Sorta Kinda Maybe (In)accessible Life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

It’s been a while… I know. There’s been a lot to unpack, both literally and figuratively (more on that in another blog post). But I had some pretty interesting experiences in the month of April, culminating in racing my most recent half marathon. And, in an emotionally complicated twist… I received something for free because of an inaccessible system.

Work: Nothing New to Report

I spent the second half of April back in the office. It felt both exciting and surreal, and with the benefit of hindsight it still does. I did, however, have to outsource use of GWS #2 ($50); to be honest it’s getting really old. Apart from that, I’m getting annoyed with the changes they made to GWS #3 – finding anything on there is like a technological maze! (you need THIS information? click on this button and then that link and then maybe you can have it). But, as much as I can shout about intuitiveness being part of accessibility, I can honestly say I could do everything I needed to.

1 outsource: $50

Let’s go Shopping!

I was super excited to attend a local rock and gem show at the end of April. It wasn’t far from my house, and wouldn’t be hard to get to…

Except…

The address for the venue could easily lead one to thinking it was on the street. But there was a big sandwich-board sign directing traffic through a parking lot, behind another building, and facing the street half a block east. There was nothing on the event web site or web page indicating this, and there would be absolutely no way to get your friend who uses a wheelchair into the building…

At the show, I found some amazing stones. I bought a stone I planned to use for a project I’ve been unable to complete for the past several months, was able to touch carved stone statues (I almost brought home a carved jaguar that was AMAZING but would’ve been really heavy to carry home!), and bought a strand of beads that I still maintain will work perfectly with some of the new awesome presents that came in a care package my Mom sent me when we were stuck inside. People engaged me in respectful conversation, pointed out all kinds of neat tactile things, and seemed happy to be out at the show.

At one vendor table (the one with a carved German Shepherd-type dog), I had a lovely conversation with the couple staffing the table. There were stones that I liked, and some that did nothing for me. I had several stones in a bag, and went to pay… And the tap on the credit card reader wasn’t working (apparently it was a thing for most of the weekend). The man behind the counter handed me the machine…

And it was a fully touch screen machine.

Fully touch screens are not accessible for a blind person. Unless the credit or debit card reader interacts with a cell phone, there is no audio feedback telling you what’s on the screen, and no way to enter your pin number without providing it to someone else. I put my would-be purchases back down on the table, apologized, and was about to turn and walk away.

The couple wouldn’t hear of it.

“It’s our machine that’s the problem,” the man said. “The tap feature has been annoying all weekend, and it’s not like you should be telling anyone your pin.” he handed me the stones, and even when I offered to see if my debit card would work with the machine, he refused to take payment for them.

I’ve been on this planet for more than thirty years. I’d like to think that I can tell a “pity present” apart from a small gesture of generosity born of a unique combination of circumstance. I read this situation as the latter. I thanked the couple profusely, put the stones in my bag, and continued enjoying the show.

10 minutes of aimless wandering: $2.50 MINUS gifting of stones = a debit of $22.50

Traveling: I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…

I was telling my partner recently that I have traveled more in the past six months than I had in the past two years. I visited my family over Christmas, and then, in late April, I flew to Vancouver for my first in-person race since 2019 (Hypo kinda counts… but it’s not a racing race… there is a difference!).

I got a ride to the airport, and was able to find security with no problem. Unfortunately, there was another passenger with a small dog that took a lunge at Jenny while we were waiting in line. I was so startled, and couldn’t breathe. Security was kind, and let me know what had gone on (in short, the small dog came at my dog out of nowhere, and my dog was trying to evade it). They offered me a chair and a glass of water, and once I calmed down I was able to go through security.

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this… but I’ve been asked a lot recently if security can “take my phone” so they can scan my boarding pass. I’m not comfortable with this – I don’t know who they are, and I like knowing exactly where my phone is. unfortunately, one agent tried to argue this point with me – “I’ll take your phone” and “How about you give me directions to where to swipe” to “But it would be easier if…”

Because I travel with a service dog, my hands get swabbed every time I go through the airport. This time, something on my hands triggered the censors, so my bag to put through secondary security screening. The agent was describing everything she was taking out of my bag, and putting it back right where it was. I still don’t know what triggered the censors, but let me tell you I was very glad to get on that plane (though less so when I realized the little dog from the security line was five rows in front of me).

10 minute Security screening delay ($2.50) + 5 minutes arguing why handing over my cell phone to a random person in the security line is a bad idea ($2.08 – that’s it?) = $4.58

Health and Fitness: Back to the Start Line

I’ve written before about running my first half marathon, so I won’t rehash that here (seriously, go read that post!) But it honestly felt like Vancouver was another first half-marathon for me. I had no idea what to expect, since I was putting my body through a whole new stress since recovering from COVID/not COVID. But I was ecstatic!

But before you can get to the start line, you need to get your race package. Depending on the size of the race you register for, you could be picking up your package at a local shop, a community centre, or (in the case of Vancouver) a convention hall. The hall was big, crowded, and was designed to make you go ALL the way around every single exhibit to get the pieces of your kit: Race bib (100% required) at one table, gloves (which I didn’t realize until I got home hadn’t come in the bag with my bib and other odds and ends) at another, race T-shirt (optional, depending on how many races you’ve run) at a tent at the far end, and (because I just like to be difficult) my Run Happy singlet at another table. I’m glad I didn’t go alone, because that was… not easy!

I can only imagine how much effort and organization it takes to put together a race of this size – I felt overwhelmed figuring out how my parents would connect with each other and with me and my guide on race day morning. Since I don’t drive and don’t know Vancouver well, I wanted out of piggy-in-the-middle – I just held my phone while everyone coordinated their wheels. And I am eternally grateful that everything there went off without a hitch.

Once we got to the start line… that was another story. The race was started an hour late due to a suspicious package found on the race course. Because of the delay, my guide and I thought we could make one more trip to the porta potties before we took off running. No sooner had we reached the line than we heard that the race would start in three minutes. The Canadian national anthem was sung, and the elite runners took off, as we wrangled our way into the crowd. We weren’t in our starting corral anymore (where you start the race based on your optimistic finish time), but we just decided to enjoy the journey… what else could we do?

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t even particularly consistent. But we met runners on the route – the woman from the Netherlands who asked if she could take our picture and share it with the blind running group there (yes!) and the runner we traded places with five or six times on the route, to the dozen people who called me inspirational as they ran past me (for the record, that feels weird).

And I gutted it out. I think COVID/not COVID affected things. I think the late start affected things. I think – and know – I can do more. But I am proud of that race in a way I don’t know that I would be proud of my fastest Half.

But once you complete the race… you have to get your stuff. At the start line, you find a table based on your bib number, and your stuff gets put on a bus to the finish line. So while you’re exhausted and hot and wanting to drink a gallon of water and eat a massive bag of chips (just me?), you get to navigate a throng of runners and supporters and find the table with your stuff on it – again, not a thing you can do without sight. Thankfully, the bags are all see-through, so it’s very easy to describe the bag’s contents in the event that your bib number falls off the handles.

I’m coming back to the “you’re so inspirational” comments I received on the race course, because, while they have always sat funny with me, they’ve never sat that heavy and awkward as they did on May 1. It’s not like you can have a long philosophical conversation about how inspiration porn is icky and gross, but my lack of sight doesn’t make me inspirational. It really REALLY doesn’t. It does contribute in some unique ways to how successfully I can run – sometimes finding guides for training runs and races is a challenge, the location of training runs can make transportation an issue – but I had to fight a lot more than blindness to get to that start line. COVID-not COVID was terrible, and took every ounce of energy I had. I’d been dealing with burnout for a very long time (if I am being honest, I think I’d tried to outrun it when I was running flat out in 2019). But we all have our stories of why we run, and what gets us out there; and maybe I’m just frustrated that all people see is woman who can’t see goes running. For the record, that’s boring. And because I couldn’t say that a dozen times on the race… I’m saying it here.

How do you put a dollar value on this? Honestly… you can’t.

The Bottom Line

The end of April (and beginning of May) saw me stronger than I thought I was. but I did experience some hiccups along the way. I’m respectfully submitting an invoice in the amount of…. $32.08.

A comment was left on a previous post that maybe I am undercharging for work I have to “outsource” because I should be able to do it myself but cannot. I think I agree. If anything, this exercise has taught me that we can (and should) put a value on our emotional labour, and the time and loss of dignity we experience based on societal perceptions and inaccessible design. But we can’t really put a dollar value on it… can we?

Oh, and in a happy coincidence? The day this post was published, I got an email from my mortgage provider – the one whose inaccessible web site started this experiment. They have overhauled their web site, fixed the issues with screen reader access, and plan on rolling out a full update next week. As of this publishing, I was able to access all the features of my mortgage.

Sometimes, if you speak up, someone somewhere is listening.

My sorta Kinda Maybe (in)accessible Life: The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same

22 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by in blindness, My Sorta Kinda Maybe (In)accessible Life

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

It’s been two weeks since I last checked in here. So much has stayed the same, but things are starting to pick up, especially now that I have the energy to actually do anything more than the absolute bare necessities (thank you very much, covid/not covid!)

Getting out There

Once I was legally permitted to leave my house – in addition to actually having the mental and physical capacity to do so – I couldn’t wait to get out and do things. Exciting things… like going to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, or the bakery the last possible day they were open before closing for Passover. But heading out to pick up a couple things from our local Buy Nothing group proved to be less intuitive and more frustrating than anticipated.

My first “gift” from the Buy Nothing page was a microwave chip maker. It came in its box – practically brand new! – with two trays and a slicer. My Buy Nothing group is in a fairly small area – I can technically walk anywhere to pick things up. However, this area is very easy to get lost in. An avenue suddenly curved slightly and became a street. There was no simple way to tell where along the block the house was located, as the “block” was broken up by multiple avenues (1 Ave, 1A Ave, 1B Avenue). Thankfully, I was able to text the giver, who came out and met me on her sidewalk. I’ll do anything for chips – even get myself lost in a neighborhood that’s supposed to be on a grid pattern!

The second gift was a smart plug – ironically located only a handful of blocks from the chip maker. Knowing the avenue curves and turns into a street, I thought I was prepared for being able to locate the house easily. Not so much… GPS said I was at the house a full two blocks – at the far end of an avenue and a street and around a corner – before I made it there. I loaded Aira to provide visual information since GPS proved useless. After ten minutes of angling, trying to read house numbers ($2.50), a smart plug was in my hand. Unfortunately for me, I still haven’t been able to get my phone to recognize it, and it sits unused, waiting for a time when I have the patience and energy to find some obscure solution I haven’t tried half a dozen times yet.

10 minutes of house locating: $2.50

Work

My second week of working from home felt more like putting one foot in front of the other, and just doing the best I could with what I had. However, what I did learn was that Government Web Site (GWS) #1 – which is mostly accessible, still has that hiccup when certain conditions are met. I was over the moon when I got an email about those conditions that normally means someone else has to click stuff for me, and found I was able to use a touch screen to access information that is not accessible with a keyboard. However, this is definitely not a truly accessible solution – it feels like I have to stand on my head and click my heels three times; without a touch screen, every now and again someone else has to drop everything to help me out.

GWS #2 is still not accessible. Unfortunately, I have twice needed to use it (read: ask someone else to access it for me). I have even spent ten minutes trying to use GWS #2 with the touch screen on my computer (the one that made GWS #1 usable), and even my phone… No dice.

GWS #3 has always been a fully accessible system. It is not overly intuitive – which I honestly believe is part of accessibility – but I have the ability to input and access all the information I need. I used this web site twice over the past two weeks, and ran into zero issues at all.

When my colleague and I set up our accounts on GWS #4 earlier this week, I was told that it had a blue button, and did not look dissimilar to GWS #2 – even the login and setup process was similar. The dread I felt was so powerfully intense… as was the relief I felt when I was able to access all edit fields and buttons completely independently. I guess you can’t really put a price on anxiety, can you?

2 X “outsourcing” = $100; 10 minutes trouble shooting $2.50

Health and Fitness

I am running a half marathon in ten days. Covid/not Covid put a damper on my training, so I have no clue what the race will be like. But my main social outlet is running and runners. Depending on the day, the distance, and the ability and willingness of humans to guide, I can either run independently with Jenny (who is still willing to run!) or I run with a friend guiding me by using a tether. My main running tracker is an app whose android app finally – six years after I started using it – labeled the buttons on its tracking screen. I had previously labeled the buttons myself, but new app updates or resets always reset the labels, too! Being able to just tap a button has taken a load off I hadn’t realize I had been carrying.

Another app I am excited to try is the Revision Fitness app. It’s been developed by a visually impaired Paralympian, and at first glance all of the workouts are fully described – something that’s generally missing from most workout apps on the market. I had planned to use my free trial during the first week of April… and we all know how that went.

Home and Personal Care

Last week, one of my favorite bath and body shops (L’Occitane) had a huge sale on their entire store. I scooped up some old favourite products, and decided to try a few new ones. When my box arrived, I was happy to receive my pampering items, but a part of me was disappointed, too. L’Occitane’s foundation has proclaimed that they are committed to labeling as many of their products as possible in braille. For years, I have purchased products, knowing that I could read the label on the bottles of shower gel or cardboard sleeves around a perfume without even having to use my sense of smell at all. Even their travel bottles had their full product name (“Cherry shower gel”, “Lavender Foaming bath”) on the bottles. My new products just said “shower gel” without any other identifier. I think it might be a blip – I’ll probably treat myself around my birthday this summer – but having something that’s so accessible be changed in such a way felt like something had been taken from me. Imagine going through your pantry, and your boxes of crackers – instead of saying “Ritz” or “Wheat Thins” or “Triscuit” – every box in your pantry just says “crackers”. Could you open your box and smell the crackers? Sure! Could you shake the box to determine your choice by weight? Of course. But the simplest way to tell your items apart is to read the label on the packaging. As it stands, I placed an elastic band around one “shower gel” to tell it apart from the other “Shower gel.” Now I just have to remember which one has the elastic!

I finally got the hang of the Covid test thing. I got to the point where over a 4-day period, I only needed fifteen minutes of Aira (read: working eyeballs!) to read my Covid test results. Still all negative, thankfully!

I’ve also chosen to not do business with a local business because their web sites are not accessible. One web site had a contact form that wouldn’t let me select anything in a drop-down menu – keyboard, touch screen, it didn’t matter. I spent fifteen minutes trying both, in case I missed a mandatory field. But nope… if there was a drop-down menu, I had no access to it. I seriously debated contacting the business/web site provider, but it was in the middle of Covid/not Covid, and I just didn’t have the mental energy to explain that I was really just trying to get in touch with them, and by the way I was having challenges accessing their web site, so would they mind fixing it so I could give them my business? I decided against this approach for two reasons: (1) I have other options out there for that particular service; and (2) the company mentioned a heavy reliance on technology, so I wasn’t confident that accessibility wouldn’t be an issue during our entire business relationship.

15 minutes of test result reading ($3.75) + 15 minutes of inaccessible web site navigation ($3.75) = $7.50

The Bottom Line

If it looks like I am throwing a pity party, I’m not convinced I’m not. I thought this exercise – quantifying the “little things” in my day that make this blind life harder – would be interesting and informative. Instead, while I am grateful for the things that put me on an equal playing field, I’m seeing how very very far we have to go.

I am respectfully submitting an “invoice” in the amount of $112.50 + a box of elastics.

My Sorta Kinda Maybe (in)Accessible Life: The COVID/not COVID Edition

08 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by in My Sorta Kinda Maybe (In)accessible Life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

When I first conceptualized this experiment, the one thing I didn’t expect was life grinding to a screeching hault! I received word over the weekend that I had come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. And, what do you know! I had symptoms! So… I got to go approximately nowhere, and see approximately no one.

But after a week of fatigue and brain mud… I still had a few hiccups along the way.

A Quick Adjustment to Calculations

In my initial post, I provided a monetary value for certain inaccessible systems/experiences of ableism/etc. The one thing I failed to consider was: What would I do in a situation where I had no choice but to ask someone to do something for me that I cannot do for myself… at all? Especially if it’s a thing I should – in any other instance – be able to do for myself. So, I have implemented a flat rate for those instances of $50. This is because I not only have a history of trying to work through something I should be able to do, but I need to take someone else away from their life because of it. $50 – no matter the complexity or duration of an activity – could “compensate” for my loss of dignity, as well as taking into account someone else’s time.

Social Life

Seriously, what social life? I’ve been stuck at home for nearly a week! I did attend a restaurant last Friday to celebrate my partner’s and my third anniversary. The menus were accessible online, and the staff was great (read: not patronizing or weird). No unpaid emotional stuff here!

Around the House

For someone who has lived for two years during a global pandemic, I’m surprised I haven’t had to take a COVID test before now. A friend dropped off two tests for me on Sunday. I found the instructions for the test confusing and clunky, though I could read the information online or on my phone. However, I was not able to read the test results myself.

Over the past six days, I have taken six COVID tests. For the record, they have all come back negative. Over the past six days, I have spent 80 minutes using a service called Aira (an online service that connects blind people with employees whose eyes work better than ours and who provide visual information that we cannot see). The fact that Aira has a free promotion for COVID-related tasks and information is hardly the point. I can’t access my test results independently and privately (the same is true for pregnancy tests, for the record).

80 minutes at $15/hour: $20

Work

I love being able to work from home, especially feeling like this! This makes me blessed and privileged, and I don’t take that lightly.

Did you know that PDF documents – particularly ones that are scanned – are often not accessible to screen reader users like myself? This is because they are usually scanned as images by default. In order to read any PDF that gets sent to me, that involves a – paid – upgraded license of Adobe. Wait… Someone needs to pay so that I can read standard document formats? Yup! If I wanted that same functionality at home, I would have to pay $20 per month. I’m adding this to my ledger because it’s absurd.

I regularly use government web sites (GWS) in order to do my job. GWS #1 is mostly accessible, except when certain criteria are met. I ran into such a situation with GWS #1, where I could not physically click a link myself and had to get someone else to do it for me ($50). Once that was done, I was ready to run, but still I couldn’t do this thing myself and had to “subcontract” someone else.

GWS #2 presented a whole other problem. A few months ago I had an extremely long conversation (a total of 2 hours – $30) with the developers of GWS #2. It came to light that because I use a screen reader, GWS #2 doesn’t play nice (with any screen reader); the presence alone of a screen reader means that I have no ability to use GWS #2 at all. Even after a minimum of two new releases, GWS #2 is still inaccessible. I was placed in a position this week where someone else had to use GWS #2 for me ($50). I am blessed to work with understanding people… but what if I didn’t? Thankfully, most of the rest of my work-based activities are intuitive and accesible.

2 outsourced tasks from GWS ($100) + 2 hours of troubleshooting with no results ($23) = $130

The Bottom Line

I made it through this week, and I am none the worse for wear. On the (in)accessibility/emotional labour front, I respectfully submit an invoice in the amount of $150.

My Sorta Kinda Maybe (in)Accessible Life: Unpaid Emotional Labour

01 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by in My Sorta Kinda Maybe (In)accessible Life

≈ 4 Comments

For those who do not know me, welcome! I am visually impaired (or blind, if you prefer) and I navigate my corner of the world (northern Canada) with my guide dog, Jenny. My blindness is not a tragedy, but it can be a source of frustration sometimes. But I Live a full life, with a partner I love and a job I think I’m good at, and a house I’m still making my own even when I’m not chronicling that journey anymore, and friends who just get it. I am very blessed. But sometimes, I get very very tired. As society opens up, and more people are confronted with my visibility in public, I’m being re-confronted with limitations to access, invasions of personal boundaries, and overt discomfort around disability that I haven’t had to confront too frequently for the past two years. And I had little patience for it before the pandemic; I certainly don’t have much now. But recent experiences have made me think about all the extra steps I need to go through to live a productive and fulfilled life. Sure, technology like screen reading software, tactile or talking devices, visual interpreting services (both free and paid) are all available and make my current standard of living possible. However, there are barriers for me to fully participate in society on a truly equal playing field; those barriers can be structural or attitudinal, covert or overt, intentional or misinformed. But they do exist, and I make decisions every single day whether they are barriers I need to break down, or leave intact because I only have so much energy in a day. I recently wondered, what would happen if I got paid to do all that extra barrier breaking work?

What Started This Idea?

It all started with a visit to the website for my mortgage provider. I’ve been reading books on financial management lately, and I liked the simple idea of putting your “windfalls” (unexpected sources of extra funds, like a raise at work or a big tax rebate) into savings. But I have a mortgage to pay, and I wondered if I could split my “windfalls” into twos or threes – RRSP, RDSP, and mortgage. So I found myself visiting the web site for my mortgage provider to find out what pre-payment privileges I had. Imagine my surprise when all I could do was put my computer into “browse mode”, tab around to all the links, with the complete inability to read any non-linked text on the web site. In short, if the information wasn’t embedded in a link, there was no way for me to read it. At all. Since I don’t have any other screen readers on my computer, my options to try a different screen reader didn’t really exist. So I tried on my phone. Well, that was even more fruitless; not even the links were readable. All I knew was that I was on the right website, and nothing more.

I emailed my mortgage provider, explained the situation, and let them know that I would really like the particular information regarding my pre-payment privileges, but it would be a great idea if they could fix their web site so that all mortgage holders (even little miss screen reader user over here) could access all aspects of their mortgage.

The trouble-shooting – reloading the browser, reloading the screen reader, tabbing around, logging in on my phone, emailing the mortgage provider – took approximately 30 minutes in total. If I got paid to do the work I did, just to have equal access to information, based on minimum wage in Alberta, I would have been paid $7.50 (before tax). How often do I just jump in and do this work, without considering the monetary cost involved, not to mention the lost productivity?

What this will look Like

My plan is, for 30 days, to post a weekly “bill” on this blog, for all the emotional labour I engage in – from working around inaccessible software or systems ($15/hr), to re-addressing issues of exclusion or inaccessibility that I have previously addressed ($20/hr), to being a “teachable moment” to the general public ($25/hr). It will include things around my home, my work, and extracurricular activities. I will not post identifying information, and to that end some aspects of this blog may be composites of several events. But at the end of the month, I want to have a blog about life as a blind person in 2022.

What this Blog is NOT

I will not call out specific people, organizations or entities. This post is about the overarching concept of inaccessibility and attitudinal barriers to full inclusion for me, personally. Each person’s journey is unique, and how I work around my vision impairment – and others’ response to it – may not be how someone else does it. This is not a blog that intends on continuing the harmful idea “well, if I can do it this way, so can everyone.” The tools in my adaptive toolbox are varied, but I’m sure there’s a “wrench” or a “screwdriver” missing somewhere. This can not, and should not, negate the exercise on its face. It’s one of discovery, because – if nothing else – I’m curious. This blog will not include a “bill” for instances where I have made a conscious, informed, and prolonged choice to not do something (like sticking braille labels on an appliance I use regularly); prolonged lack of motivation is not what I’m going for here.

What do you Want to See?

I have a few things planned for the next thirty days. They will include ordinary things like shopping, eating out at restaurants, and spending time with friends. They will also include flying (something I’ve only rarely done since late 2019), and running an in-person race. I know I’ve blogged a lot here about various activities I’ve enjoyed , or frustrating experiences of discrimination, among other things; but I have 30 days, a few ideas of my own, and I’d love to hear yours.

Let’s explore this idea together.