Mike,

At first, I found myself completely agreeing with your initial post. 
There is a lot of value in learning to deal with overcoming the issues of 
blindness to make you better able to deal with issues in the real world, 
over having things handed to you while in school.

However, I think the case can be made for the situation that if a 
potential employer uses an application that is not accessible, and you as 
a potential employee say that you will have to make changes to their 
business model in order for you to work there, I doubt you will be first 
on the list for potential candidates.

I guess what I am saying is that if a school requires students to use 
Google, and a student can't, but can do it some other way, that is OK, but 
it requires that the school accept that you, as a blind student, have to 
have accommodations made for you since you cannot interact with them in 
the same way that the other students do.

So, on one hand we are talking about forcing software manufacturers to 
modify their software to make it accessible, and on the other hand we are 
talking about forcing the university to modify their requirements for how 
students interact with their standard systems.

Is one really better than the other?  If the university simply said "no, 
use Google, or go to another school." would you consider that a reasonable 
solution since you could go to another school?

Again, I do agree with you that it is often better to find a compromise 
than to just start suing, but I do feel that inaccessible software can be 
a major hindrance to employment since it doesn't just put a burden on the 
employee, but the employer to accommodate that employee by modifying their 
business practices.

  -- 
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
Carnegie Mellon University.
E-Mail:	[log in to unmask]
Tel:	(412) 268-9081


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