Renee F.’s Post

NDIA I'm talking to you! We've got a masterpiece of bureaucratic demolition here—a textbook dissection of how not to make public data public! This whole setup feels like someone just threw accessibility under a bus labeled "innovation." "Universal Accessibility" - Except for Anyone Without the Latest Tech. Strict Open XML? Really? It's like saying, "You can access this... if you’ve got a brand-new laptop and a fast connection.” How wonderfully inclusive—assuming your audience is only government officials who already have Excel 2021. Think of it as a bouncer, standing between most of the public and their own data. Compatibility across devices shouldn’t be a luxury. Mobile Usability in Theory, but Not in Reality. Who knew a public document could double as a digital deadweight? Trying to open this on a phone is like trying to squeeze a mountain through a keyhole. Forget the rural areas or lower-bandwidth zones—they’re just the ones you’re supposed to serve, after all. External Dependencies - Because Why Should a File Be Self-Contained? A government file needing "backup files" to work is like selling a car without a key. Brilliant. Especially for the average citizen just trying to get their hands on public data without also needing a PhD in digital archaeology. Screen Readers Are Left Out of the Equation - Or Were They Ever In? Oh, they added visuals but no alt text? So, visually impaired users just get to imagine what’s there. Because imagination is totally what people are looking for in hard data, right? Spreadsheet or Maze? Because if there’s one thing everyone loves, it’s going on a scavenger hunt through unnamed cells, tables, & layers of nested folders. Makes you wonder, is this a document or an initiation test for a secret society? Cognitive Overload as a Built-in Feature. Designed with all the accessibility of a Jackson Pollock painting, it’s like they forgot that the general public includes people who might need a clean, simple layout to process the data. How hard is it to make it straightforward? Government documents are supposed to be public. Accessible, simple, universal—oh, but that would be too logical. A clear but fixable problem: government-issued Excel files that seem to be competing in a contest for most inaccessible document format. These documents are incompatible with anything but the latest tech, layered in dependencies, and structured as if simplicity itself were a threat to democracy. Complex dependencies might make sense to a small team of data wizards, but for everyone else, they’re an accessibility wall. Assistive tech shouldn’t need a team of translators just to work. Structure Thats More Obstacle Course Than Document. With unlabeled tabs & scattered cells, even users with top-of-the-line software are left guessing. Simplicity is not a handicap. Conduct accessibility checks to confirm that best practice & that assistive technologies can navigate your documents. Marie J. Mark Sweeney Annette A.