The interesting thing about David Leopasty's bell complaint is that David is seeking what I sought from bell, an accessible set top satellite box...starting in 2018. Bell's solution? we will just not charge you. When Fibe tv came along, bell did not, has not insured that audio description will work there either. Bell's solution? we will just not charge you, or we will give you equipment for free that itself is not accessible. For the engineering record, latency is not the problem with digital, the problem is frequencies used on the VOIp connections tested...and that is another part of the problem. I went to an entirely different company...who must use bell, because bell owns the floor. Due to my other conflict with bell, they simply said no. The copper infrastructure is here, has not been removed, nothing needs upgrading. Connecting the inside wire to the outside, which ought to be achievable via one of those so called digital options, was not even tried. And yes, I tested bell's VoIP modem, and fainted from the effort. All bell had to do was complete an order from a contracted company, instead they racked up fees, without doing a single thing Teksavy paid them to do. Analog is more sound rich than VOIP too, which is only as solid as the connection involved. We have an aging population that still needs even 911, something lost with bell's VOIP too, before you get to what can happen with aging ears. Could I visit a teksavy location to see how their equipment works? no, likely they do not even have their own anymore. what really bothers me is that all the infrastructure is in the hands of a company who gets to decide that if you are not disabled by their definition, you cannot connect with the world..no matter t how modern the technology. Karen On Thu, 7 Sep 2023, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 12:50 PM Dhaval Giani <dhaval.giani@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 9:36 AM Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 11:40 AM James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Bell faces human rights complaint over allegations of inaccessibility for blind customers https://globalnews.ca/news/9373449/bell-human-rights-complaint/
This is about what Bell is not providing, even though other companies do. However, this is current technology, not obsolete, which Karen seems to need.
I call shenanigans on that perspective.
Given the nature of our group it is natural that some here will see the issue as merely one of choice and pace of technology, but IMO it must be seen as a broader issue of problem-solving.
Evan, I did not read James' response in that vein. I read it as genuine curiosity.
Forgive me for insisting that technical curiosity take a back seat to the real-world medical needs of people. But I will insist. This is a real problem, not an experiment nor a business decision.
Keep in mind that this group is primarily engineers/problem solvers.
So far the engineering-based problem-solving I've witnessed in this thread has amounted to "you can't get there from here". Explaining how Bell's system works now does zero to solve Karen's technical issues, let alone the quality of the customer-service response to her actions to date.
And I think it is an important question to answer. What is it that changes
that it causes Karen issues?
Indeed, that is Bell's problem that it MUST solve. If the transition has broken backwards compatibility (to use our lingo), they must fix the breakage. Their current digital-to-analog solution may work for many users (such as my landline) but clearly isn't sufficient for Karen's needs.
The best possible solution is to find something that addresses Karen's requirement with a purely digital connection. Maybe it's a latency issue; remember how sensitive faxes were to even slightly unstable connections? I don't have any clue on the technical issues, but simply insist that the onus is on Bell to address them since they broke compatibility. I care less about "how" than that it gets done.
While we are not medical professionals, we are engineers and it is our job to solve the problem. In order to do that we do need to understand the problem. This doesn't mean that Karen needs to participate in that process. Maybe the medical professionals have an idea on what is getting affected physically, but they are not engineers and they cannot comment on how to answer the question on how to solve it.
The medical professionals are required to define the problem, ie the specifications required for their instruments to work properly. The comms engineers then need to solve that problem by whatever means necessary. We know that an analog solution using POTS works. Karen cannot simply be left behind by the move to digital.
If Karen's accessibility needs require analog service in 2023, then that
service is not obsolete merely because it's convenient for Bell to declare it so.
The service is obsolete because the technology is no longer being actively maintained
I don't want to digress over semantics and definitions of "obsolete", see below.
This doesn't absolve Bell of the responsibility to ensure accessibility
requirements are met. It just means the technology is obsolete.
If you agree that Bell has the responsibility to be backwards-compatible, then designations of "obsolete" are irrelevant.
I am reminded (once again) of the brilliance of Jon Stewart's 2021 rant on the Colbert show <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8>, talking mainly about the COVID lab leak "theory" but coming up with this general comment:
*"We owe a great deal of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways,
helped ease the suffering [...] which was more than likely caused by science."*
Bell broke it. They need to fix it. Full stop. No excuses.
- Evan