I agree completely. I am attempting to determine the Agency responsible since even the Customer Service (actually in New York) does not even know what agency they work for at the moment. Evidently the Direct Loan program is so new that they are in a state of flux. Don Marang From: Dale Leavens Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 10:12 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: ADA Section 508 Compliance on StudentLoans.gov? Impressing a customer service representative is not how to make change. This is probably a near minimum wage clerk quite possibly in an off-shore call centre. There is probably an alternative paper way of completing the application, there are still many millions without computers or convenient Internet access, some people who are in the greatest need of government services don't have telephone. surely such people aren't denied government services on the basis of their ability to purchase high technology. What I don't understand is the apparent need to complicate these forms, human interfaces and the like for no other purpose but to demonstrate the developers genius. It seems that every computer defense programme needs to be clever implementing the user interface by reinventing standard and perfectly adequate Windows controls, after all they are just variations on comboboxes, list boxes, check boxes, radio buttons many of which don't work even with the Jaws cursor, many of which are just numbered graphic images which represent and function like one of those standard controls. Why is it done and what benefit is it to the programmers or the usual sighted user? There must be some. Anyway, your complaints, probably fully valid need to be made to the agency directors and their legal departments. ----- Original Message ----- From: Donald Marang To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 9:21 AM Subject: Re: ADA Section 508 Compliance on StudentLoans.gov? I was using JAWS 10 at the time. I did at one point switch to JAWS 11 and had the same results. I did not try other screen readers. I could have and should have tried both NVDA and System Access To Go. I guess I did not want to waste the nice Customer Service person's time on the phone. Looking back it would have been more informative and have had more impact if I had shown her multiple screen readers failing. Don Marang From: andy Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 8:21 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: ADA Section 508 Compliance on StudentLoans.gov? hello donald have you tryed switching to jaws 10 to see if that fixes the problem i ran in to the same issue on another page a while back and went back to jaws 10 and completed the form. this is just a thought.