[Athen] Request for "facts" on PeopleSoft

Teresa Wells Haven tlwells at uark.edu
Wed Apr 18 05:48:27 PDT 2007


That's the exact direction I've been trying to take the conversation --
that whether or not the product conforms to 508, the usability is
atrocious. It's bad even for users without disabilities, and for those
who rely on AT, it's abominable. The lead administrator wants to keep
the conversation in the legal realm to protect his reputation, which is
really sad because we're not accusing him of wrongdoing, just asking for
understanding of the user perspective. And since literally almost every
person affiliated with this campus (student, staff, faculty, and
administrator) is required to use the system, you'd think he'd have an
interest in making it more user-friendly...

I'd appreciate anything you want to share, either on- or off-list.

Thanks,
Teresa

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Stewart
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 7:35 AM
To: 'Access Technologists in Higher Education Network'
Subject: Re: [Athen] Request for "facts" on PeopleSoft


I will talk to our development staff as well, we do a lot of custom
design work for MIS type software. I belive Norm Coombs had some
interactions with PeopleSoft but it may be dated. My guess is that the
package may well conform to the Section 508 spec but as we all hopefully
know at this point that is meaningless from a usability perspective.

Ron Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Pratik Patel
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 9:11 PM
To: 'Access Technologists in Higher Education Network'
Subject: Re: [Athen] Request for "facts" on PeopleSoft

I'm sorry to be such a cynic, but you are not likely to get "hard facts"
from most large AT vendors such as Freedom as there is a type of
codependence. There is no reason for Freedomscientific to refute
PeopleSoft's/Oracle's statements regarding screen reader accessibility.
Marketing trumps all considerations in this regard. Besides, Freedom
might actually have to do some work. What a concept! You may get some
unofficial info from the GW guys. I'm not even sure about AISquared any
more.

Pratik


-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Daryl Murphy
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 6:14 PM
To: Access Technologists in Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Request for "facts" on PeopleSoft

If you want hard facts, contact the vendors that make the AT
software/hardware and ask them about usability with peoplesoft programs.
This way, you have hard facts.

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Teresa Wells Haven
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:08 PM
To: 'Access Technologists in Higher Education Network'
Subject: [Athen] Request for "facts" on Peoplesoft
Importance: High

Colleagues, I am in a "discussion" with a member of my university
administration who does not want to believe me that PeopleSoft has a
history of difficulties with accessibility. He would like me to
substantiate my dislike for Peoplesoft, and not surprisingly, a Google
search tends to come up with PeopleSoft's own statements on the matter
("We've been working on this for years," "We conform to Section 508
regulations") rather than anything contradictory. Does anyone have
anything in the way of "hard evidence" of PeopleSoft's past that I could
share with him -- records of court cases, complaints against the
company, etc.? The more recent, the better, since he is going to take
the stance that they may have had problems in the past but that doesn't
mean they have a problem now, although it won't hurt to show him a long
history of company problems.

To give you a taste of this "discussion", we currently use a PeopleSoft
product on our campus as our Student Information System. Students who
use screen readers have so much difficulty that most of them get sighted
people to interface with the system for them; I've been complaining
about the system since we implemented it several years ago. The
administrator in question downloaded a demo copy of JAWS last week and
used it to "read" a page (he merely listened to the text while he
visually looked at the screen), at which point he concluded that the
program works "just fine" with JAWS and all the students are really just
having either JAWS technical problems or don't have the necessary JAWS
skills to interact with the program (something he didn't even try for
himself, since "he's not a JAWS expert"). This "discussion" is flaming
up to the Chancellor level very rapidly, so I'd appreciate quick
responses if you have them...

Thank you in advance,
Teresa

+++++++++++++++++++++
Teresa Wells Haven, Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Assistive Technology
Center for Educational Access
(Formerly Center for Students with Disabilities)
ARKU 104
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
479-575-3104 (voice)
479-575-7445 (fax)
479-575-3646 (tdd)
ada at uark.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++




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