We seem to have some challenges of late comprehending one another on
this list. It happens, especially in written communication. But if you
all will forgive the intrusion, I feel the need to explain a fundamental
concept of communication theory so we can get back to the business at
hand--which is helping one another with our JAWS issues. So please
forgive me for what I hope will be helpful to all in terms of promoting
constructive communication. Although much of the following answers
Brian's prior message, I hope we can all learn something from the
following--I know I did just in writing it.
My "sighted response" comment was more of a slightly sarcastic way of
saying, "But you're missing the point. We can't get there from here, or
at least, we don't know how to get there from here."
Point #1: I want to say that your descriptions of things are generally
useful, at least for someone like me who appreciates understanding what
my sighted friends are seeing. As I have explained, what JAWS says and
how it says it doesn't always replicate the layout that you see, and
since I do what you do in reverse--that is, teaching sighted people
while being blind myself--I find the visuals useful. Having said that,
they're not always relatable--not because you're not good at it, but
because of something called frame of reference, which I will describe below.
Point #2: I think some context may be helpful. While I don't presume to
speak for anyone on this list because people are all different, I think
it's probably fair to say that most of us have experienced well-meaning
people who want to help, but keep forgetting on some level--conscious or
subconscious--that our reality is not theirs. Case in point, I spent an
hour showing someone my issues with the ribbons, and no matter what I
did, she kept trying to solve the problem with the mouse. As you know,
that's not an option for me, but she couldn't break the habit. In the
end, I got my point across, but it was an intensely frustrating hour in
which my blood pressure probably went up twenty points.
So as I read your response to Adrian's questions, and you kept going
back to the icon at the bottom of the screen and the popup menu, my
reaction was, "But he can't, or doesn't know how to, get there from
here." It's like I told my friend with the ribbons, "It's great that you
can see it and you can get there, but how does that help me?"
Your subsequent answer was helpful, as Adrian pointed out, because I
never think to try Shift F6. In my limited experience with the afore
mentioned problem, when I opened a PDF, I was trapped and could go
nowhere. But I never tried F6 or any variant thereof.
My degree is actually in communications, not computers or taxes or
anything I do now. But the first core concept we're taught, both in
communication theory and in interpersonal communications, is the concept
of frame of reference. Basically your frame of reference is the sum of
all experiences you've had. So while I have no direct experience with
having sight, I do have knowledge of things that people have told me or
described to me over the years. Each person's frame of reference is
going to be different. Some of us have sight. Some of us used to have
it. Some of us never had it. Some of us have had things described to us
in a way that we have a pretty good idea of what it looks like, while
others have no such concept.
So when I say, "That's a sighted response," it's really not a slap in
the face. It's actually supposed to be a joking way to say, "There's a
piece of that puzzle that I'm missing because you're talking in visual
blahblahblah that's not in my frame of reference, although every sighted
person in America would probably have gotten it; hence, a sighted
response'. Try again." Your second effort was much more successful as
Adrian pointed out.
Likewise, sometimes we forget that you're not working directly with JAWS
all the time, and there are things you can't relate to because they're
not in your frame of reference. As an example, for me on all of my
computers, Firefox will lose focus and JAWS will say, "Netscape Dispatch
WND." I don't know why or what it means. It just happens. You've
probably never seen that, because as far as I know, that phrase is never
on the screen. I just live with it, hit the tab key to regain focus, and
go on with my life. But if I asked how I could get rid of this "Netscape
Dispatch WND" message, you'd probably think my computer was on drugs,
because "Netscape Dispatch WND" is probably not in your frame of
reference and certainly not on your screen.
So to Brian, I apologize if you took my remark as a slam; it was never
intended as such. There may have been a touch of frustration in there
because it does get tiresome when people recommend things you can't do,
no matter how well-meaning the intent. And to the rest of us, we've got
to realize that every person on this list has a different frame of
reference. So something that's a part of your daily existence may never
have been experienced by the other person across the keyboard, and
that's not just because we're blind or sighted. It's because our
collection of experiences is unique to us.
I really don't intend to start a thread with this. It just seems that
these kinds of miscommunications seem to be happening with greater
frequency, so I thought a little communication theory might help. Please
note that any responses to this message or any other probably won't be
read until late tomorrow night, as I'm working a full day in a tax
center tomorrow.
So back to JAWS, and remember that my frame of reference is not and
never could be entirely yours.
Brad
b...@formyfriends.org (for anyone who wants to contact me off list)
On 1/29/2016 9:30 PM, Brian Vogel wrote:
On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 05:59 pm, Brad Martin <b...@formyfriends.org>
wrote:
Sorry, Brian, but that's a sighted response. We don't often have
good luck with "pop-up menus" and "file icons." If we're lucky we
might hear JAWS read them, but it's less common that we can get
there from here and actually do something with them. If you know
of some sort of keyboard command that can get us to where those
notifications go, awesome. And I'll confess right now that I
haven't read the rest of the day's mail yet. I just got home.
Brad,
My initial response when I read this was indignation and I
was all prepared to go into high dudgeon about "how unfair" your
opening line was. After spending about 20 minutes folding laundry and
thinking about it my reaction is now an amused, "Duh, that's because I
*am* sighted!!" What I can, and I think do, bring to this
conversation are some things that only vision makes "instantly
obvious" that may be utterly opaque for a variety of reasons to
someone using screen readers. The way that downloads are being
presented by various web browsers keeps changing, seemingly
constantly. What I always presume, and I'll be the first to admit
that the presumption is sometimes wrong, is that it's possible that,
for reasons you allude to, a screen reader user may not "be able to
use" a given feature because they literally don't know it's there. I
also couple that with a presumption that once they know it's there
they're more likely to know how to get to it and use it than I am,
particularly without research. Sometimes one or the other of these
presumptions is simply not so, and I have no problem being called out
on that. That being said, I don't exactly consider presuming much
greater expertise on screen readers, and how to use them, among screen
reader users while I'm tossing out "things I can see and that may be
helpful and that may not be known about," to be "a sighted response"
in the purest sense. I'm trying to collaborate.
As you know from some of our private correspondence, I seldom
accept that something "can't be done" and tend to take the attitude
that I/we don't know how to accomplish a given thing but there's got
to be a way to do it, and then I dig in to figure out how, often with
assistance from "the network" that I have.
No one, prior to yourself, in this specific thread has
indicated that anything I've mentioned is "something I can't get to,"
or I would have paused and tried to figure out how to remove that
obstacle, if possible. You can be assured when someone says, "I can't
do that," which is different than, "But that's not happening," I won't
be saying, "Well, tough, you should know how to do that." A "but
that's not happening" leads me to, "I'd have to be there to see what
is or is not happening," when I cannot replicate the issue in any of
the environments I have to try to replicate it in. In that sense I am
definitely completely dependent on sight, or as close to completely
dependent as can be (I can envision some stuff, but there are limits).
Now it's time to play with NVDA and Chrome and downloading
something to see exactly how I can (if I can) gain access to the
downloads bar at the bottom of the screen or to the same context menu
via the downloads menu.
Brian
--
Brad Martin
b...@formyfriends.org <mailto:b...@formyfriends.org>
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