A blind colleague recently joined a new federal agency. The agency is refusing to let him use the NVDA screen reader (free, open source), because it's created by an Australian non-profit which is not registered on SAM.gov (because they're not a vendor).
If you know of how a federal employee has gotten approval to use NVDA, would you let me know what magic words were required?
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Bren
in reply to Waldo Jaquith • • •Hey @NVAccess, do you happen to know how someone working at the US federal government might get permission to use #NVDA, or maybe have a user there who might be willing to share tips?
@waldoj is asking for a colleague. Reading between the lines, I don't think the colleague is doing accessibility work.
(I'm really hoping the secret includes paying for it.)
NV Access
in reply to Bren • • •Andromeda Yelton
in reply to NV Access • • •Bonkers
in reply to Andromeda Yelton • • •The most annoying thing is that you need to renew your data at SAM.gov every year. But the whole process takes a couple of hours initially, and then you just confirm that nothing changed on the following years. But in general, it's not a rocket science.
NV Access
in reply to Bonkers • • •Corporate & Government
NV AccessBonkers
in reply to NV Access • • •BTW, the SAM.gov registration includes obtaining an NCAGE code, which makes you recognized in the whole NATO. I hope you get a nice support contract in the end :)
NV Access
in reply to Waldo Jaquith • • •Waldo Jaquith
in reply to NV Access • • •Bill Hunt
in reply to Waldo Jaquith • • •Reasonable Accommodations is the magic words. The IT operations team has a legal mandate to meet RA requests from any employee. That should unstick things.
If it's a small agency, they may have never had a blind employee before, so someone will need to take the desktop software through the lifecycle, including security testing. That's expensive, and will take months. They can get a risk acceptance signed by the CIO in the meantime.
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Bill Hunt
in reply to Bill Hunt • • •Threatening a lawsuit in those two cases might shake the tree.
However, most bigger agencies almost certainly have something else if not NVDA. Maybe Jaws. If they have a different product already approved and the colleague just doesn't like that specific product, well they're kinda out of luck.
Cassandrich
in reply to Bill Hunt • • •Matt Campbell
in reply to Cassandrich • • •David Goldfield
Unknown parent • • •David Goldfield
Unknown parent • • •