Well, I sort of agree with both sides. There is a huge problem with
asking for help. Every time you do that in a work environment, you are
telling management that you aren't capable of doing your job by
yourself. On the other hand, to say it's undignified to ask for help is
to blame the victim.
When my department decided to get into virtual machines, we bought a
VMware ESX 3.5 license. At the time, you could install ESX via a serial
console. But even during the serial console install, the regular console
came up with a splash screen that required you to do a mouse click on a
button to continue. First of all, I must have spent an hour trying to
figure out why the install was hung. Secondly, even after I figured out
what the problem was, I had to get help with the installation. My boss
just said it was simpler to let the sighted guy do the installs. Next
thing I knew, I was no longer our VMware tech. The other guy was given
responsibility for our VMware cluster even though, frankly, I was a much
better technologist than he was. That juicy assignment should have been
mine.
I'll admit I found the experience somewhat humiliating. That shouldn't
be though. That's not right.
On 08/20/2015 04:29 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
Then I guess we'll have to strongly disagree. I agree a blind person
should not need sighted help to accomplish a task that a sighted person
could do without asking for help, but if I ask someone to take a peek at
my screen to see why the install process has stopped talking to me then
I in no way lose my dignity. I'd only lose my dignity if I gave up and
never tried anything because I wasn't willing to take advantage of the
options available to me to get the job done.
In high school, college and graduate school, I hired someone to read
some texts to me that I couldn't get any other way. I did not lose my
dignity in doing this. I would have lost more if I had stayed home and
never gotten a graduate degree.
I've taken advantage of sighted help to get Windows installed, changed
my BIOS configuration, installed ChromeVox and so on. In general, I've
known way more about my system then the person helping me, and they've
just explained to me what was on the system and then helped perform what
I needed to do. Again, there was no loss of dignity here, and I still
accomplished the task myself. With a few minutes of sighted help, I can
now use my computer, install Linux on it, work with Google Docs and so
on. In no way should I not take advantage of my computer entirely
because I need a few minutes of sighted help from time to time.
I've installed Ubuntu without sighted help numerous times. When I run
into trouble, and the install seems to stop for me, if it's available,
I'll get sighted help to tell me what's going on. In these cases, I work
with the Vinux or Ubuntu accessibility team to help resolve the problem
because I shouldn't need sighted assistance. I'm not going to refuse
sighted assistance if it's going to help resolve an issue and make
Ubuntu more accessible for myself and others in the future.
Sighted assistance is another tool available to me, and by taking
advantage of it, I'm ore independent and not less.
On 08/20/2015 04:08 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree here. If you're asking for
help because you're confused and don't understand something, that's one
thing. If you're asking for help because there is an image on the screen
which you can't see, that's understandable, although I would wonder why
you don't file a bug or write to the developer about it. Where I have
an issue is that I should be able to do the same things with my computer
and operating system as the sighted. Obviously, I can't see the screen
so I need speech, but I should not need to ask someone to literally look
over my shoulder to install an operating system on my computer. That,
to me, is a dignity issue. How many sighted people do you know who
would ask someone to do the same? Not many. They would either give up
or complain. I believe that it is my right, whether I'm deaf, blind,
sighted or whatever, to install an operating system on a machine by
myself without help.
Taking another example, how many sighted people do you know who would,
if the situation is reversed, ask you to read their bank statements,
utility bills and other paper mail? Most of them I know would be hugely
insulted at the prospect of asking someone else to help them do what
they should have a right to do on their own. Obviously, if speech isn't
working for some reason beyond your control, such as a hardware issue,
it's understandable to ask someone to read an error message on the
screen, but it should then be your responsibility to sort out the
hardware issue and do as much of the installation on your own as
possible and you should have the ability to do that. Yes, technically
you're correct in that if you tell a sighted person what to do, you're
doing it yourself, but I take it a step further and say you should be
able to do it yourself without help.
I don't have an issue with asking for help, but I do have an issue with
asking for help when the sighted person in the equivalent situation
would not need help. As an example, my dad is sighted and just
installed Ubuntu on his machine. He not once asked me for help with the
install and he didn't expect me to do it for him or direct him in what
to do. He asks for help learning Linux and getting video issues sorted
out, but he not only was able to do the install entirely on his own, but
I wasn't even there when he did. That is the right I should have and I
shouldn't be forced to get another person involved to accomplish my goal.
On 8/19/2015 4:51 AM, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
I prefer not to seek sighted assistance either, but getting sighted
assistance doesn't mean you lose your dignity, and it doesn't mean you
didn't do something yourself.
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