Who knows where the time goes?

[kestrell]

Edited later: Someone got back to me very quickly and explained that one field had been left blank, which is what triggered the email. Things are looking a lot less grim.

A week or so ago, I filled out an online form for a conference panel, and it took me about five hours, because there was lots of longish answers to give, and my screen reader didn't always correctly identify the fields. I constantly saved my answers and then had Alexx visually check it before I claimed it was done.

This morning I found an email that says there is a lot of information I didn't fill out.

Honestly, it almost made me cry.

I have a list of things to do today, and filling out this form again means most of those things won't get done at all, and I had just been in a really good mood because I was looking forward to getting through this list.

I didn't say that in my email reply to the original email, but I did explain about how much time it took me before, and asked if someone could call me, because it took me hours to fill out the form in the first place, and I was worried my ansers would just didappear into the ether.

I realize this post sounds whiny, but this is the kind of thing that, when you are disabled and everything takes so much longer and requires so much more energy and concentration, can feel like another giant hurdle in your day.

Comments

[dewline]

Thanks be for that follow-up message, however it was delivered, then!

As for your original cri de coeur, it's alright. A lot of people are coping with similar pains to this and we're never going to get these process problems fixed if the complaints don't get out.

Whiny? No!

[jesse_the_k]

Not only does it take more time to attempt to complete a task designed to exclude your participation, then you have to spend time and energy complaining about it. Inevitably the person you complain to you is all worried in their business about “but I didn’t mean to harm you,” and whoever decided that “no disabled people will interact with this” did indeed harm you.

[kestrell]

Yes, the reason I post these incidents is to show people how much energy and willpower it takes to get through just the average events of a day, but I still feel as if I need to apologize for it.

Re: Whiny? No!

[kestrell]

No, this group has been really, really positive and welcoming, and inviting me to mention access issues.

But when it's a cold and rainy Monday (seriously, it was forty degrees when I woke up), *and you are out of decaf coffee, everything seems pretty grim.

[duskpeterson]

I remember, during the period when I thought I might lose my eyesight altogether, realizing that I would never again be able to daydream on the bus, because I'd have to be tracking how many stops I'd gone by.

People have no idea how exhausting it can be to do simple tasks when you're disabled, when you're living in a world designed for able-bodied people.

[bibliofile]

GAAAAHHHHHH! No, that's not how things should work, even if it's just one field left unfilled. (And how did Alexx miss that, too? Hmmm.)

Crap. Life is hard enough for pretty much anybody without having pointless, thoughtless further problems tossed in.

[kestrell]

Re: travelling while blind: and it's a bonus day when the train/bus PA system works and you can actually hear/understand when the stops are announced, if the automatic announcements are correct. And then you have to be alert to sighted people who don't look where they are going because they are busy paying attention to their iPods or smartphones.
This is one reason why I go to bed so early: I look forward to just lying in bed and the only things I have to pay attention to is my book.

[duskpeterson]

And it was far worse before automated announcements of stops (which was the situation I was in, back in 2001).