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I woke up this morning with a raging headache.
Not good.
I haven’t even gotten to work yet, and as of yesterday afternoon, still no solution.
I talked to Cary last night, and he says he’s taking calls, but he’s asking the callers to hold three or four minutes at a time while he wrestles with the interface and Jaws.
Completely unacceptable.
We can’t afford to keep doing that.
I don’t understand why they had to kill the link in the first place.
If they have to upgrade, fine.
But if they’re not going to involve us in testing the thing to make sure it’s accessible, then don’t kill the link.
It’s that simple.
I know I have a lot of sighted readers, but this is one of those times when sighted people really prove how inconsiderate they can be.
To the ones who have been helpful, I sincerely thank you.
But to the rest, please stop making my life difficult.

Taken from customerservant.com

I just talked to one of the techno-shepherds, and he told me that the client wants me to use the lates version of the screen reader so that my “testing environment” is the same as theirs.
I’ve already explained several times that the Java support hasn’t changed from V5 (the version I’m using) to V7.
All they did as far as internet applications is concerned was add support for Firefox.
They added some other Jaws-specific features, but no change in Java support.
And what the hell is this about a “testing environment?”
Yet another line of crap.
I was just given a link that goes to “the page cannot be displayed.”
We’ll probably have this thing figured out by the end of the month, just in time for them to break it again.

Taken from customerservant.com

I’ve been informed by the acting operations manager for all projects that the client’s man isn’t in the building.
The HTML Specialist is supposed to be contacting.
We’ll have some information at a quarter after never this afternoon.

Taken from customerservant.com

I got in this morning to find that the link I use to access the database interface has been killed, and to top it off, the new interface doesn’t work with Jaws.
This is exactly what I thought was going to happen.
And as if things need to be any worse, the person who has all the information about who to contact in order to get the link operative again has been fired.
She wasn’t forward-thinking enough to pass on the information.
Probably wanted to keep it to herself so she could feel important.
There’s the client’s man, who’s perfectly happy to accept the declaration of accessibility handed down from the developers, and then there’s the HTML Specialist, (yes, that’s her actual title), who’s in his pocket, so the results will be pretty much the same from that end.
This is what happens when idiots get put in to positions of power.
We’ve gone through this before, I’ve made it a point to make suggestions and recommendations to the developers to make the damn thing accessible, and no one seems to listen.
Now we get to spend however long arguing this point all over again.
Well, at least this time, I have ‘net access.
I’m not too thrilled about sitting around here serfing the ‘net though.
That’s not why I’m supposed to be here.
I didn’t get up, find out that the conditioner I bought isn’t really conditioner, (not Andrew’s fault, probably some idiot put shampoo in the same place as the conditioner, and he just grabbed because he knows where the conditioner is supposed to be, and assumed that it would be there), then to spend most of the remaining time trying to get a comb and brush through my hair without doing any damage, just to come to work and find out that everything’s been totally screwed up because of someone else’s stupidity.
Why does stupidity have to ruin everything?
I’d love to find a way to make stupidity illegal.
To be fair, I realize that making changes to tons of code is very expensive, and that there are only two employees who require the changes.
But I don’t think it would require a complete overhaul of the system to make it accessible.
Java can be made accessible, it just takes a little consideration to do it.
Given my past dealings, the impression I get is that accessibility really isn’t a concern for more than financial reasons, and they’ll just continue to feed me lines because they think I’ll believe them, and because I really have no choice but to at least act like I do.
What else am I supposed to do?
It’s not like I can just expose some major scam and get the changes made.
If I go making too many waves, it could cost me my job, and I’m sure there’s something they could hide behind to make sure it doesn’t look like a discrimination case.
I’m definitely a proponent of capitalism, but there’s making a profit, and then there’s greed.
Based on what I’ve seen, I firmly believe that both the client and the company I work for are acting as a result of the latter, and not the former.
I wish I was wrong on this one.
The Business Of America Is Business,

TMH’s Bacon Bits, Liberal Common Sense, the Conservative Cat, and MacStansbury.org link to this.

Convergys, accessibility, Express Scripts, computer, MYSQL, database

Taken from customerservant.com

I got to work this morning, and found that they had turned the heat off last night.
I’m not kidding around.
They actually turned the heat off, and it’s still in the 20’s.
The people who worked the overnight shift litterally had to wear gloves to type.
John says he put in four service requests to have the heat turned on, and one to turn the air on when it gets to eight thousand degrees in here.
I can’t believe it’s really that hard to keep the temperature somewhere near normal.
Idiocy at work.
They released the new upgrade to the database interface today.
I’ve been instructed to use the old link, (which is running very slow today), until the client’s minion comes out, declares that the new version is accessible, and tells me to try out the client’s latest attempt at bestowing a gift on creation.
I get to be the guinney pig again, and that’s a direct quote from John.
I hate being in this positiion.
Why do I always have to be the guinney pig in these situations?
I know I’m the only one who uses a screen reader around here, but it feels like I’m the company’s experiment or something.
“Let’s set up some obstacles, and see if the blind person can make it work!”
Or is it just extreme ignorance.
Who knows.
I didn’t get the support position, or the supervisor position, so I’ll be on the phones a while longer.
There’s got to be a way out of here.
In the meantime, I’ll settle for a little heat.

Taken from customerservant.com

I just got done taking a call from a woman who had to be half-baked.
She was completely confused, babbling on about wanting this particular manufacturer’s brand of Hydrocodone, and how she had to have all these special numbers on the back of her prescriptions in order to send them in, and how she was going to find the person who gave her misinformation.
FYI: Members can’t choose the manufacturer of a drug.
It’s not like going to the grocery store and picking up your favorite brand or something.
And why does someone need to take three different strengths of a narcodic like that, along with Alprazolam (the generic for Zanax)?
Really scary.

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Taken from customerservant.com

As stated here, the caller told me the prescription had been called in on the twenty-fifth, which would put it at a perfectly normal processing rate.
When she got on the phone with my supervisor, (actually the Asc member taking supervisor calls), she said that it had been called in on the twenty-third.
How about you get your story right!
I’ll be the first one to admit when I’ve made a mistake, but there’s nothing I hate more than a caller who just wants to get me in trouble because they don’t like what I have to tell them.
She should have given me all the information in the first place.
I could have helped a little more then.
Now, I told her we wouldn’t wave the expedition fee, and then she gets to a supervisor, provides the rest of the details, and gets the fee waved, making me look like a total ass.

Taken from customerservant.com