Before you Say you Comply with the ADA, You Might Want to Know What a Disability is.

Excuse me while I vent a little. Boy am I ever pissed off. I think this will rival my rabbid rage-fest about Bell. Oh no, that one will win hands down just for length and complete lack of clarity, oh and number of hahahaha’s. Ok, so this post gets one of those now. Let’s go.

I get really good news today, so why does it turn into a piss-fest you say? Well I’ll explain. I got a follow-up call on a job I applied for. I just about jumped through the roof. She’s like ok well I just want you to complete these tests and then we’ll see how you do. I’m like ok, are these tests all text and do they have any time-limits? She said I think they’re all text and there are no time limits. So I run off like a good little potential client services assistant to do my test. I se that she has sent me a full battery of tests, 8 of them. I just about shit myself, but I set off to do them. I open the website and they say that there is no overall time-limit, except that there is a time-limit of a half-hour per question so as not to be discriminatory, and comply with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). I just about jump through the roof with happiness. A web-designer that understands people with disabilities might have trouble with a website. That means they probably get the blindness thing. I completed a basic math test, and as far as I can tell, I aced it. I moved on to the next test. About four questions in, I get to a question on interpreting tables. The question reads: “Please compare the following list with the order form below.” There! is! no! order! form! below! If there is, it is in a bloody, fucking, blasted, son of a bitch, motherfucking, cocksucking, everloving, piece of shit picture! I! don’t! do! pictures!

raaaaaar!

Oh that felt good. I’m gonna have to do that again.

Raaaaaaar!

Process that for a while. In order to be compliant with the ADA, I would think you’d have to do some fucking research. And it would not take you very long to come to the conclusion that pictures don’t work, folks. Hey webmasters. Here’s some help. How about starting here That would be a fine start. Then keep going. Ya know? Live up to the commitment of actual compliance with ADA? I don’t give a rat’s ass on most websites if the pictures aren’t labelled super well. As long as I can fight my way through, it’s cool. But if you’re a testing website, whose results may decide someone’s fate when it comes to employment, do it right, folks!

And that would be the place where I usually would stop. But there’s more. In trying to do this test, they mentioned a tech support line and said you could phone it 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday. So I do. I am greeted by a heavily-accented voice that can barely say the name of the company followed by, “howcanihelpyou?” You know the way mumbly accents sound? Like it’s all one word? I tell him that I’m blind, and half of the question is in picture form, so can he please log in and read me the contents of the picture so that I can complete the question if I give him my session ID? He responds with, “Uh…so what is the problem?” Keep in mind that, although I have a half-hour per question, the clock *is* ticking. I explain it again, very…slowly. He tries to deny that it has a picture. I tell him, dude, if my screen-reader isn’t reading it, it’s probably a picture. JAWS doesn’t make a routine out of reading only half the screen. He puts me on hold, and then comes back and says, “Yes. It’s a picture. I can read this question to you, but there will be other ones later on.” I shoot back, “Well then I know where to phone when I run into another question with a picture, don’t I now?” He says, “Well no. Get someone with sight to read it to you.” And that’s when every bloody part of me raises up in absolute rage. Newsflash, asscrap, if you want to be ADA-compliant, that doesn’t mean the blinks have to call over sighties. It means that I can complete the test, and if I can’t, you fuckers deal with the consequences. Oh my oh my oh my oh my I was mad. I told him that this was obviously not compliant with the ADA, as the site stated. He told me I had to tell this to the person who gave me the test. I told him I would have no problem doing that, but I expected that he would tell his superiors as well. He’s like, well maybe I could. Maybe? It’s their damn site! Really, me telling the person who told me to go do this test will do exactly nothing. If he tells the people in charge of the site, something might actually happen. It would be like someone recommending that I try out this new MP3-player, the MP3-player being broken when I bought it, and then when I told the company that it was broken, they would tell me I should really address my concerns to Bill Jones over there who told me to go give their product a try. Wouldn’t that be ridiculous? I couldn’t believe he made me feel like it was primarily my responsibility to deal with this, and that he had no obligation to pass the message along, even when he realized that yes, there were pictures, and no, they wouldn’t work for me.

I hung up the phone, and had to tell this person offering me a job that I couldn’t complete the test because of, gulp, issues between the screen-reader, gulp, the thing that makes my computer, gulp, talk, because I’m, gulp, blind, and pray that didn’t send my resume and cover letter straight to file 13. Of course when I spoke to them, there were no gulps, but I hate telling people who have any sort of control over whether or not I get a chance at something about the whole blindness thing any sooner than I have to, because people hear the word blind and shut down. So thank you very much, Prove it, for perhaps jeopardizing a job opportunity. Thank you ever so much. And now would be a wonderful time to head back to the drawing board on your accessibility plan, fucknuts! Raaaaar!

Pet Look-Alike? How About Pet-Think-Alike!

Steve sent me this story a few days ago, but I’ve either been too busy, too tired or not here at all so it didn’t get posted until now, which is a tragedy! Ok, let’s start roasting!

Owners sue LA agency for not turning pets into stars

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Stage mothers for a Rottweiler and other dogs have sued a company called Hollywood Paws for failing to turn their pooches into stars.

More than a dozen pet owners contend the company collected tens of thousands of dollars but never delivered on promises to get film and television auditions for their pets.

I was sympathetic to them, until I read…

“I lost a lot of money,” said Rachel Armstrong, owner of Goliath the Rottweiler.

Armstrong said she believed her dog had the “cool” factor that would get him into music videos and paid nearly US$2,000 to Hollywood Paws LLC for training.

All she got was a rejection from “The Tyra Banks Show.”

First of all, cool factor? He’s a dog! I love dogs, but this is over the top! And if she even got a letter from any show, they did what they could. Maybe he’s meant to be, um, a dog?

Lawyer Cynthia Mulvihill filed the suit in Superior Court earlier this month.

How much do you want to bet that *when* this case flops, these same people sue this lawyer for not getting them a win as promised?

“Who wouldn’t want to be told, ‘Hey your member of the family is beautiful and should be in the movies’?” she asked.

And what did that even have to do with whether or not this thing even belongs in a court?

Hollywood Paws offers training in such media skills as getting a pooch or cat to crawl, freeze or scratch on command.

On its Web site, the company warns: “Completing these courses won’t guarantee that your house pet will become a screen pet.”

What’s that sound? Your case evapourating?

The business also has a talent agency and bills itself as “a way to effectively link animal actors and studio trainers with professionals in the entertainment industry looking for new talent.”

Hollywood Paws owner Larry Lionetti contends he never promised acting jobs, although he said several animals had won spots in commercials.

“Everybody knows down in your town that there are actors and actresses waiting on tables until a part comes along,” he said. “Who in L.A. doesn’t know this?”

This concludes another episode of wow, we’re stupid! What’s going to become of us?

Is Evolution Eliminating our Spines?

Wow. If this crap continues, there is no hope for us. My comments are in bold.

Ban ‘evil’ Harry Potter, board told

Oct. 4, 2006. 09:02 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA – A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series is an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

and they’re bothering to have this hearing because? Are we to extend this logic and say that Alice in Wonderland indoctrinated children in the taking of acid? Come the fuck on! It’s fiction!

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban “Macbeth” and “Cinderella.”

Stands up and cheers. But who knos? She was probably fired because she possessed far too high a level of critical thinking skills to be trusted and considered safe.

“There’s a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter,” she said, adding that the books don’t support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.

Duh!

In June, the county’s library board eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. One board member said the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayer dollars to entertain readers who might be illegal immigrants.

Oh yeah, this is Georgia. Oh excuse me. That was very bigoted and evil. And probably unfair. It seems attitudes like these are running fucking rampent.

Days later, the board reversed its decision amid accusations that the move was anti-Hispanic.

Again, duh!

This is the point where I wonder if we humans even have a spine anymore. Do we just give in to one whiny bitch who cries loud enough? Does a person only have to use magic buzz words to get their way, not a logical brain and some common sense? It seems to be the way to go, because somewhere else in Georgia, another loud and whiny bitch shrieked that bananas were offensive, and now they are. What the fuck? Somebody save the spine before it goes extinct!

Uh, the Helmet was the problem?

Just read this and let it settle in.

Nude motorcyclist ticketed for wearing wrong helmet

GUELPH (Oct 4, 2006)

A motorcyclist wearing nothing but a football helmet was ticketed Monday evening after Guelph Police received several calls about the nude rider.

Sergeant Cate Welsh said police got a number of calls about the bareback rider making his way through the downtown area about 11:20 p.m. An officer stopped the man on Elizabeth Street and found the unusual ride to be a prank.

“He was being filmed by a local car enthusiast club,” Welsh said.

The rider got a ticket for not wearing an approved motorcycle helmet.

So what can we take from this? It’s ok to go nude, just wear the right helmet?

They got Sick! Real Quick!

Ok, this just pisses me off because I thought people knew better.

Taken from the story in Google News

A five-year-old boy needed a liver transplant after he and his family were severely poisoned by wild mushrooms they picked in Waterloo and ate for dinner last week.

Ok, how did a whole family miss the infamous don’t put it in your mouth ad? Those certainly weren’t muffins or beets, and they sure got sick, real quick.

Failing that, did this family miss the six zillion warnings I’ve heard to not eat wild mushrooms? The ones that say that they could kill you? How’d they manage it? It never said in the article anywhere that these mushrooms looked exactly the same as some mushrooms that this family knew were eddible. It just sounded like the family decided to go for a stroll and get close to nature and pick some mushrooms they saw along the way that looked yummy. Now, because of their stupididy, their little boy will probably never be the same. He’s damn lucky to be alive, that’s for sure. But it makes me mad that something so stupidly preventable wasn’t prevented.

Mommy, it’s Over!

Well, I can’t believe it. Friday will come around again, and there will be one less thing to do, and that is check Jonathan Coulton’s website for the Thing a Week! Sniff sniff! He has decided that, after writing 52 things a week, he deserves a break, and rightly so. He says he will continue to write music, just not on such a strict schedule, and who can blame him? Christ I couldn’t put out anything of any quality once a week for a year if my life depended on it. So I hope he enjoys his break, and I’m sure I will enjoy whatever he puts out next.

The Pedestrians on the Street go Squish Squish Squish?

If some day I’m no longer posting on here and I mysteriously disappear, you can probably guess that I was hit by an insane driver. What is with the drivers up in this part of town? It’s like they don’t bother to look at traffic lights and just barge on through. I know we live on a street that merges with a highway, but here’s a tip. When you’re at a traffic light, it’s not the highway anymore! People do cross there. I have almost been hit by a city bus and several cars, and most times, someone has come by right about then and said yes, it was my time to cross. One day, an older lady who always wants to look out for me walked up to one of these cars, managed to knock on his window without getting ploughed down, and basically told him he should learn to drive better because he almost hit a blind lady. I wished she hadn’t made a scene and was glad she told the driver off and nothing happened to her, all at the same time.

I don’t know how more people don’t die at this intersection. Several times a day, I hear long stretches of squealing tires, but miraculously, I’ve never heard the smash that should follow. Honestly, I see more and more reasons why everyone who drives a car should be tested every few years to see if it’s safe for humanity to let them drive, and some people’s driving privileges should be revoked immediately!

The Horror! You Read My Blog!

Does anyone else find this statement absurd? Not many people must, because I hear people saying things like that all the time. Things like, “I can’t believe so and so found my blog!” and “I didn’t want so and so to know about that, but he found out on my blog.” There are even settings in blogger to make your blog private or certain parts of your profile invisible to certain people.

Do people not know the difference between public and private? If you’re posting on the internet in a place where access is not restricted, i.e. people don’t have to log in to read, it’s public. If you don’t want people to know certain things, don’t write about them in a public place! If you really want to write about sensitive things, at least find a way to make it hard for people to figure out who you’re talking about! Some people make it so plainly obvious who they’re talking about, and then are shocked and appalled when it gets back to that person. That’s especially funny when their blog’s readership consists mostly of people who have been given the blog’s address. Hmm, maybe that’s not the place to vent your rage about your personal friends if you don’t want them to find out, chief.

It would be like signing a piece of grafiti and then being shocked that someone read it and knew it was you who wrote it. Do people not know that there are little books you can buy, called diaries, specifically designed for keeping private things private? They even have locks and stuff so you can keep most prying eyes out. I sometimes wonder if these people are truly surprised that people found their blogs, or if they just enjoy the drama that comes from saying too much.

What’s with All the Junk Mail?

Holy crap! I have never lived in a place that gets so much junkmail! Every day, I check the mail, and every day, there is mail. But half the time, it’s nothing we want. Pizza ads, eye-glass coupons, information on dial-around phone codes, funeral home brochures, dating service booklets, various phone and cable company pitches, cards from the government telling me what Stephen Harper has done for me, some of this every day, ug the list goes on and on!

When I lived in my last place, I thought the junkmail pile was high. But it’s nothing compared to this. Holy crap!

And then there’s the salesmen that somehow get into our secure building with a “no soliciting sign” out front. I think I have a pretty good idea how they get in. Numbnutses hold the door for them! Ok guys, if you don’t know the guy behind you lives there, don’t just let him in. I know you’re trying to be nice, but we have a buzzer for a reason, let him use it, unless it’s obvious that he lives there of course, like he’s fumbling for his keys and his arms are full or something.

The funny part is, at the rate this is going, I will have gotten more salespeople knocking on my door here, in a building with a lock on the door than I did in the old building where we used to live, where security was a dream, we had a problem with homeless people trying to sleep in the laundry room, and I accidentally kicked a guy down the stairs who had chosen that place for his bed. And I’ve only lived here for 3 months!

The funniest solicitation I got, I got over the buzzer. A couple of women said they were offering to come around and help people get to know their bibles. What the hell? At least they were nice enough to buzz, though. Sadly for them, the door didn’t open.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this building. I just find it bizarre that we get so much advertising! A synical part of me wonders if the building managers are getting some kind of incentive to let them in. Probably not, it’s just a weird thought.

Fume Fume Rage Rage Spit Spit Rar~!

Excuse the incoherent splattering of rage. But this pissed me off.

I swear, crap never ends with these people. Remember the Take Back the Night March and our food-bringing vigilantes? Well, they’ve sunk to a brand new low. Today, I get an email from them. It says that they’re actually in debt, so could we please give them some money to pay for the food they provided?

I beg your pardon? These people certainly have balls if they have no guts. There was no fucking money made at this march. Everything that was provided at the march, from the use of the PA system, to the bottled water, to the other little desserts, to the noise-makers, was donated by businesses and private citizens. Nobody else expected to be paid. What’s more, these people have donated food before, they know there’s no money to be had. And, they know that the people putting it on aren’t exactly dripping with cash, either. It’s a goddamn charity event!

But more importantly, why did they make the food if they knew it would put them into further debt? There is no way that they could claim they had no idea it would put them into debt. There was no sudden tragedy that just happened. Obviously the stack of bills was piling up and there were red pen-marks in the budget before they went and made the food. I wouldn’t have even minded so much if, when we had asked them if they wanted to make food, they had said “Sure we can make the food, but we can only do it if you give us a hand financially because we’re strapped.” At least then it would have been up front and honest. Hell, if they couldn’t have done it, they could have said no. But to write us an email now and cry out that they’re in so much debt and need to recover costs somewhere is kind of low. It’s like buying your friends Christmas presents and then saying, “Actually I can’t afford them. Can you pay me for them?”

But what supremely pisses me off is I can’t even feel like they did one good thing for the march. They came out, but they tried to stir shit by chanting anti-police chants. They brought food, but now they expect to be paid for it. It really shows the selfishness of the bunch. I say we don’t give them a single penny, and then ask other, more generous and scrupulous organizations to help with food next year. Dealing with these people is just too much trouble.