What WORKS: Thank you for ASKING x 3

Prologue: NOT called to go away, not this time 

There is a narrative about "we have spent HUNDREDS (Really?) of hours on RantWoman and nothing has worked. RantWoman begs to differ. A WHOLE lot of time HAS been spent doing things wrong! A WHOLE lot of time has been spent by people RantWoman appreciates but is clear she needs help from others instead. A WHOLE lot of time has been spent by people who have no gift for what is needed but have enriched the community and nourished people who DO have the needed gifts. But more than enough HAS worked so that RantWoman so far still, much to some people's chagrin, has not run away screaming. THANK YOU FOR ASKING is one theme, but first more on points that have NOT worked.

RantWoman would tartly point out:

--There are now MONTHS of minutes ABOUT RantWoman. None of the months of minutes mention any specific measures that RantWoman would consider reasonable accommodations. If Friends do not know what RantWoman considers reasonable accommodations, then WHATEVER Friends have tried, they have NOT tried everything. Hint: RantWoman has two blogs and is quite frank about things that work, problems in common in many parts of life. For RantWoman, the terms reasonable accommodations and public accommodations reflect single standards of truth,tools, technologies, practices that make a difference in every part of life. There is more to be said but God is suggesting RantWoman stick to her What HAS worked Light here.

--A certain Care and Accountability Committee spent over a year trying to tell RantWoman, a person with a disability that the problems were not about disability. The problems are not ONLY disability but they certainly are about disability.

--A certain Care and Accountability Committee spent over a year demanding RantWoman conform to things she cannot conform to related to clerk / facilitation issues that affect every meeting RantWoman goes to but not being willing to visit other meetings and observe. RantWoman considers this a colossal error for one thing because the other meetings involve practices reflective of the ADA. Even though Quakers have been at this business meeting thing for hundreds of years, we supposedly believe in continuing revelation, and writers of guidelines could maybe possibly see what there is to learn from others.
  That could be a glorious opportunity to live with a single standard of Truth. RantWoman says this FIRMLY holding in the Light one Friend who works for a public agency and who RantWoman would ABSOLUTELY advise to consult her ADA coordinator if she EVER has to organize or lead a public meeting. RantWoman further notes that it is National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, #NDEAM and every working age Friend in our community can embrace the opportunity to LEARN because at some point God is likely to send them need for the experience either for themselves or for someone with potential to be a valued member of a team.!

--RantWoman is unclear that EXTRAVAGANT appreciation for VERY modest improvements in respect for RantWoman's schedule will help but does feel called to note improvement. Recently RantWoman had a conversation with a former Clerk about need to talk to current Clerk. RantWoman pointed out that her phone accepts incoming calls. RantWoman also called current clerk about something else and appreciates that current clerk made a point of scheduling a call after one event and well in advance of the Saturday last minute that has been the norm for SEVERAL other Friends who have been connected with the story.

Thank you so much for asking: Faith and Practice. More importantly Thank you for asking about an audio option!

A recent Adult Religious Education session featured a discussion of the Vocal ministry section of the NPYM Faith and Practice. The discussion was rich. RantWoman was grateful actually to hear some Friends have not given messages and then regretted for years not offering the ministry; RantWoman also took note of one Friend who RantWoman usually does not think of as having a hard time offereing vocal ministry but who spoke of a recent ministry the Friend found very difficult to give.

RantWoman also did not speak of her inner turbulence that sometimes gets handled with music and themes where for instance in childhood worship was cool simply because there are logistical reasons bad things were not happening.

But RantWoman digresses. The thank you for asking is about how RantWoman reads and is the online version accessible. THANK YOU for asking and for mentioning audio options. RantWoman thinks there probably is some interest in an audio option so figuring out logistics to do that goes back on her mental list.

The current version is a large PDF which is not easy to open on one's phone. It has a table of contents but none of the document structure links and headings that would make it MUCH easier for RantWoman and her screen reader to jump around. Now RantWoman has to find the page number field and input a page number or just scroll down manually. But the scrolling down manually puts the reading cursor at the bottom of the page and RantWoman has to scroll back up. In other words, the document is partially accessible and with some difficulty. There are probably some keyboard navigation tricks RantWoman needst o look up, but there is still much to whine about.

In the realm of regretting messages not given, RantWoman MIGHT have been more insistent sooner about trying to build in more accessibility, but RantWoman did not push. However, there is a project.... and SOON RantWoman will check back and see abotu next steps forward. But THANK YOU FOR ASKING and BEING INTERESTED
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And to readers for whom the above vocabulary is about as familiar as quantum physics, please BELIEVE RantWoman that it matters and that there are Friends in our community in a position to help.

When God and Power Point Meet Thank you for asking: Kenya. Powerpoint

Thank you so much Friend for asking whether the Powerpoint with the presentation about they Kenya public health trainign ministry was tolerable! To be honest, RantWoman did not spend a lot of time even trying to look at the fuzzy blobs on the screen, but you told the story clearly enough that RantWoman did not care about the Powerpoint. RantWoman might be interested in an up-close of the faces of some of the people you worked with, but that did not need to happen for Adult Religious Ed.

Thank you for bearing with the interruption: note from a public meeting

RantWoman has a Death By Powerpoint tag on her other blog. Ordinarily RantWoman would save presentation tips for traffic engineers for that blog, but RantWoman was at a meeting about pedestrian accessibility. The meeting featured blind people, deaf people with interpreters and people presenting Powerpoint who were not the person nominally running the meeting. At one point a presenter showed a slide with some kind of "heat map" showing indicators of sidewalk conditions in different parts of the city. RantWoman did not want the presenter to move on without at least a little description of waht the heat map showed. Luckily other blind people in the room had already been speaking up about accessibility issues so the presenter was not flummoxed at all when RantWoman just blurted out something about "Please describe the heat map!". He offered really interesting comments and then moved on.

It's not that there are no rules around RantWoman. RantWoman is just done apologizing for needing adjustments.

In Light and Faithfulness.

RantWoman