Category: Let's talk
Hi all,
A while back, someone posted a message about disabledfriends website.
www.disabledfriends.com
I had such trouble with jaws 6 and some of the links on the site, but when my time and date problem forced me back to jaws 5.0, I didn't have any problems with that dialogue box telling me microsoft internet explorer experienced a problem and needed to close, and was able to complete my profile. The boards are practically dead now, and the only ones who even answered my posts under the time schedule for getting people talking in the global room was 2 admins. They have talk rooms by location, where they have countries, states, and towns. There are 3 rooms for each town. I tried a couple of the talk rooms, and the first time you go in there, the screen moves constantly, so you can't even get to the editfield, but there's a blind users button, and if you're fast enough, the screen will stop jumping around, and you can type your message, but since we have to refresh the screen manually, the sighted people on there won't even barely speak to me because I'm too slow for them. If there were already 2 or more people in a room, I can follow text slowly, but it's rather situation if you go in there to wait on someone, because you have to keep one hand on the keyboard, and keep moving your arrow keys up and down in order to catch someone the second they come in. No matter how fast I try to be, it's not fast enough for sighted users. For some reason, one of the admins didn't want me posting my, "concerns" on the boards, but wanted me to contact her directly. I didn't care much for that, so the long and the short of it was, I ended by telling her well just come out and tell me there aren't any blind users on the site, and I would leave. She didn't tell me if there were or not, but she did create a blind users room. I think they just don't want us blind people going around saying their site isn't 100 percent accessible, because of their tailored to suit the needs of all slogan. Anyway, if anyone is interested, my user name shows up as ww59.
wonderwoman
Well, I don't know the site, but if I were you I wouldn't care for the admins not wanting you to talk about the difficulties you have with this site either. Maybe you could make a post on the boards describing your problems and asking if there were other blind users and if they have solutions to the problems you're having... Probably they won't anyway, but you can still pretend that you would like to know, this way you will both see if there are other blind users and draw the atention of sighted users to the problems you are having. Maybe this will make some of them more understanding about your slow responses during chats... Good luck.
Thanks very much for your advice Elmira, I'll do that. I'm not sure I'll get any responses, there haven't even been any new posts on the boards in a couple of days. Most of the boards don't interest me, having to do either with campaigns, arts, and a wide variety of disabilities, except being blind and osteogenesis. There is a what's your story board on there, where people tell what they're looking for in the way of who they want to talk to and such. Fact of the is, if the woman isn't blind, she can't direct me, as she put it, because there is no way she can understand our problems. I will do as you suggest, and put it on the what's your story board, and this time, if she tells me to direct my concerns to her directly to her instead of the boards, and if I don't get any responses from other blind users, I am done with that site. Maybe I should paste her message on here, and my response, so people will better understand my feelings, and get a general idea of what I'm talking about.
wonderwoman
hi folks, below is the message I received from her. I will post my response to her momentarily, after I look through my outbox. I'm sure there is another copy of it in there. Here is her message.
Hi
Please contact me at debbie@disabledfriends.com if you ahve problems with the site instead of posting your concerns on the message board. I will be able
to advise you directly.
I am here to help.
you see my point?
wonderwoman
Hi again, I found it in the sent items. don't know why I was thinking it would be in the outbox, I just knew there had to be a copy of it somewhere. Here it is.
Well, if it's not permissible on a message board to try and set up a
schedule with possible other blind users, or to inquire if there any, oh
well. I simply stated that unless there are other blind users who have to
refresh manually, or unless we have at least one talk room especially for
the blind, it wasn't working out so far. In posting ones concerns, one might
be able to find other peoples response on the same problem, otherwise, just
tell me there are no other blind users on the site, and I'll leave the site,
thank you,
wonderwoman
Well, there you have it. It was good that she created the room, but if there aren't any blind users, it won't do me muchgood. There hardly seems to be anyone on the site, period. There are never more than 2 people on the whole site, and they are always in the global talk room. I was told they had 3000 members. Where on earth are they?
wonderwoman