accessibility_fail | FUCK YOU, GOOGLE!

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FUCK YOU, GOOGLE!

So I am wishful of obtaining a second Gmail account, since my mail email is used for communicating with family, and for a myriad of reasons, I am forced to be permanently invisible on chat, and that makes me sad. Also, I'd like an email address that doesn't use my legal name in the handle for my internet stuff. So, I go to the sign-up page and try my usual options (mathsnerd, mathsie), only to find that they're both taken. Okay, no problem. I start trying logical workarounds to see which ones are available.

Oh, wait, what's that, Google? After trying more than three names, I have to go through CAPTCHA to prove I'm a real person? Okay, that's kind of soon, but whatever. Gee, you sure scrunch those letters together and make them all wavy so that I have a real hard time figuring out what the hell you want me to enter...

Huh, okay, I've tried eight times, Google, and I can't seem to read it well enough that you're satisfied that I'm a real person. And while you offer a "read-aloud" accessibility option for the CAPTCHA down below for submitting the form (which, incidentally, doesn't work in Chrome, yeah, you know, YOUR BROWSER!), for the CAPTCHA to keep trying different handles you conveniently don't offer any alternate options.

So, in conclusion, FUCK YOU, GOOGLE, AND FUCK YOUR UTTER LACK OF ACCESSIBILITY ON THIS PAGE. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Right now you're not living up to your usual standards. And I'm seriously wondering why I bother with Gmail accounts.

No love and a fuck-load of frustration,

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Hem hem. *has plunged deeper into the Google vortex*

There is an accessibility-specific feedback form

*coughs*

Oh God, trying to wade through this....

AND the Section 508 documentation for GMail. I can do this all day.

I believe

trouble is going to try and work up a post for FWD on this so we can get a signal boost going on.

This evening for me, afternoon for you strange West Coasters, and I think way in the middle of the night for Mathsnerd. :)

I'll check in tomorrow. You silly people 6 hours behind us. ;)

Time zones are hard!!!! They hurt my wee head!

Can I quote your post?

Go for it. :D

W00t. Forward momentum for the win. Google is going to be sorry that they angered a German feline with connections in the Dreamwidth disability community. ;)

Okay, filled out (finally!), but it won't let me submit. As in, I click the Submit button, but nothing happens. WTF?

...wow. *bitter laughter*

Okay, figured it out. One has to FIRST, be signed it to one's Google account; SECOND, join the Google accessibility group (one of the links at the top of the page - do it in a new tab so you don't have to retype everything, for God's sake!); and only THEN, can you submit!

This also means, that if I weren't complaining about this lack of accessibility for my second Gmail account, but rather my first, I'd have a bit of a problem, since I wouldn't be able to join the group. *is flabbergasted at Google's privilege and jackassery*

...lemme get this straight: You cannot complain about your inability to acquire a Google account due to inaccessibility until *after* you have already acquired a Google account, successfully logged into it, *and* managed to join a Google group?

You'd think they were trying to make this impossible. On purpose.

(And I'm not even going into what to do if the captchas are illegible and you happen to be deaf...)

Google, equal opportunity inaccessibility for all!

We're taking them down. Or at least, making them fix this shit. It's downright embarrassing to see them bragging all over their Accessibility Pages about how they're all for accessibility and 'just let us know what else we can do to bring the world to all the disabled people out there' and then have this kind of shit. Sure, we'll let you know, just as soon as we figure out how to send a fucking carrier pigeon to California!

'just let us know what else we can do to bring the world to all the disabled people out there'

Are you freaking kidding me!?!?!?!?!? it says this somewhere??

We don't need you to bring us anything, you sanctimonious, condescending, privileged bastards. We just need you to stop throwing up barriers.

God, I hate this sort of self-aggrandizing bullsh*t. They get to believe themselves to be such heroic philanthropists because they remove a few barriers that they-themselves put in place. It's like shooting someone and then claiming to be a hero because you stopped the bleeding.

Please.

Edited 2010-09-17 17:50 (UTC)

I am sorry to say it does actually say something like that on their Accessibility Page. I have to go now, my café is throwing me out, but tomorrow I'll look for the exact quote if you haven't found it by then on your own. ;)

Yeah, their priviled posturing really got me upset. Hence, the need to take this from raging in DW to actively making Google aware of their FAIL and getting them to, at minimum, fix the CAPTCHAs. Hell, we might even get our voices heard a bit and get some education across. "It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it", right?

Okay, lovies, I've got to go, but I'll be on again tomorrow, 13 UTC or so. Ta!

Okay, so Google's official stance on accessibility that rankles me, personally:

"We want to make information available to everyone, and that includes people with disabilities..." link (First sentence, second paragraph down)

From the title of "Making the web more accessible, one step at a time", "users with special needs face a lot of challenges when trying to access websites they are interested in", link (First paragraph)

"It’s hard to imagine a world in which the right to participate in activities commonly enjoyed by the bulk of the population are denied or inadequately accommodated, but that was the case before ADA." Umm, excuse me Google, we're still fighting for our rights, and the ADA only applies to the USA, not the world, thankyouverymuch. Now take your Americancentricness and GTFO.
"...we’re serious about honoring our mission to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. You can keep up with our progress at google.com/accessibility."
"There still is work to be done to meet the goals of ADA, and we are committed to doing our part." All of this is here

I could discuss this for ever. I won't here (there's a lot of this in my blog already), but I could.

Having said that, here I go anyway, LOL: I think a large part of the problem is the ADA itself. Or, if not the law, then the way we talk about it, the way we view it.

The ADA is set of instructions on how not to get sued. Which makes it about them, and not about us. The ADA is about access, which is an attempt to mitigate flaws in space design, it is not about people. And yet, we call the ADA a civil rights law.

The problem with calling a law dealing with issues of access a civil rights law is that it then encapsulates our idea of what civil right are for Disabled people. It makes access equal to rights. Civil rights are about our place in society, and not so much about our use of spaces (although that is a part of it, it's just not the whole thing). While we are rightly and justly fighting for access, we HAVE to remember that implicit within the word "access" itself is the idea that those who need access to something (a society, for example) are already starting from a place outside of it. My contention is that I am ALREADY a member of this community, this society, and the fact that they haven't recognized so far is the problem. I should never need to even consider needing to plan access to something I am already a part of.

I think the ADA is wonderful, but it's not an answer. The ADA attempts to make it possible to reach a minimum standard so that we may then put the issue of access behind us finally and move on to the REAL work of changing the underlying paradigms that caused the need to legislate common decency and sense in the first place.

Okay, so I'm German and the ADA doesn't apply to me. I did live in the States for ten years though, so I'm familiar with it and its extensive shortcomings.

However, my brain is seriously fogged (pain plus the standard fog of one of my chronic illnesses) and so I'm going to have to ask for a bit of a link from you - what exactly is the connection here between your soap box and the rest of the stuff?

I paraphrased above Google's attitude to accessibility as "let us know how we can bring the world to the disabled", you asked if that was really what they said, and I gave some quotes with links to clarify their official position towards accessibility. Unfortunately, I'm not immediately following the gap from there to the ADA rant/discussion. Care to connect the dots for me? :D

ROFLMAO... I was just re-reading this and thinking the same damn thing.....

I get excited sometimes and in the interest of trying to stay brief (a challenge for me. Grin.), I often make leaps that work in my head, but not so well for others if they are not explicitly stated. Sorry....

The other part of it is that calling the ADA (and similar laws in other countries) a civil rights law, rather than a law to correct flaws, is that it leads to the ability to design a system like Captcha, and then accommodate it to meet the letter of a law. The approach of design, then accommodate, guarantees that we never go beyond a level of minimum standard because the minimum standard becomes the goal.

On another note, I am sorry also for assuming a common experience with ADA. The internet is a big place... I forgot that we are not all Americans for a second there. I apologize for my assumption, and consider it a lesson learned. Avoiding assumptions is really hard and I am not always good at it.

Edited 2010-09-18 14:46 (UTC)

No worries, I figured it was a case of 'brain working faster than fingers and/or speech-to-text software' and thus asked for clarification. Happens to me in my posts all the damn time and I have to go back and edit. *g*

It always confused the hell out of me that the US viewed the ADA as a civil rights thing. Germany approaches disability rights differently again - it gets filed under legal/medical accommodations and thus must be expanded as far as possible. I have far fewer problems here, since I returned (my disability is relatively new) and people automatically include me in life as a person first, with my disability second, even as they're helping me. Children regularly ask questions, school-age ones on their own, little ones get sent by their parents ('Mummy, what's wrong with the lady?' 'If you want to know, go ask her politely. I can't tell by looking at her. Just remember to be polite.'). In the US, parents were always shushing and dragging their kids away as if disabled persons were invisible or shameful or something. It's nice to be automatically treated as 'normal' by society again, with allowances for my limitations, rather than ignored/seen as a leper.

But, digression aside, you're right, and I think Google's general American-centric focus as evidenced by some of those quotes above and the limitations of the ADA are part of the problem. Which is why we're talking about a focussed, targeted campaign to wake Google up and make them the centre-point of a flood of communications letting them know how they are failing in their self-styled quest for web-wide accessibility. Oooh, they're going to regret asking for feedback.... *evil feline smile*

As for failing to check your assumptions at the door, don't feel bad about it, just work on it in the future. :D I am, unfortunately, used to, even here on DW, people assuming that "everyone's an American" and I am quite used to gently reminding people that yes, Virginia, there IS a world outside your borders. ;)

PS Checked out your blog. What a pity, two and a half years ago, I left your area. And your kitty is adorable beyond words!

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