Access: the act of separating a company’s customer base
into disabled and non-
disabled by seeing who can use a product and who cannot.
Access Board: a temporary plank used to allow wheelchair
users to enter a
building.
Achievable: any activity that is both easy and impossible to
do.
Advocate: from the Latin ad, meaning "extra
expense", voca, meaning "loud
voice", and “t,” the dismissive sound produced when
analyzing corporate
behavior.
Comment: a funhouse mirror in which companies appear much
smaller and more
public-spirited than they are, and advocacy organizations
appear much larger
and more public-spirited than they are.
Compatibility: the ability of two pieces of technology to
work together when
connected, usually by sheer luck.
Complaint: an unfortunate misspelling of “compliant”
that somehow found its way
into access regulations.
Compliant: a term of wishful thinking, applied by consumers
to products and by
companies to consumers.
Consensus: an example of an activity that is not readily
achievable.
Corporate: from the Latin corpo, meaning "large,
inert body" and rate, meaning
highest possible price.
Customer Premises Equipment: any device in any person’s
home or office that
has any connection with telecommunications, such as starting
with the letter “t”.
Fast track: that portion of access regulations guaranteeing
persons with
disabilities access to high speed rail service.
FCC: the federal agency whose clear and unchanging mission
is to adopt (or not
adopt) guidelines and enforce (or not enforce) them with
much (or no) input from
industry (or consumers).
Hearing impaired: A person unable to attend an FCC meeting;
alternately, a
person required to attend an FCC meeting.
Information technology: black, beige, or
blueberry colored objects that require buttons
to be pressed by people with difficulty pressing buttons,
and then present pictures
and words to people with difficulty seeing them.
Batteries not included.
Market window: an architectural element which is too narrow
to permit passage
of a wheelchair; alternately, an upper story opening in a
building through which
engineers threaten to jump when informed about access
requirements.
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: a government document with
the same impact
on industry and advocates as a “Student Driver” sign has
on traffic.
Point of contact: the single location in a corporation that
receives communication
from consumers with disabilities, generally a tapered
cylinder in shape;
alternately, a widely published non-working telephone
number.
Procurement: the act of exchanging
boilerplate for paperwork, under cover of darkness.
Readily achievable: anything that, without much difficulty
or expense, is still both
easy and impossible to do.
Regulation: anything that is more difficult or expensive to
do than to argue
against; alternately, anything easier to argue for than to
learn about.
Reply: waiting until other people stop talking so that one
may repeat what one
just said, this time while pointing a finger.
Section 255: that section of the Telecommunications Act of
1996 which, if
numbered in hexadecimal, would be “FF”, the beginning
letter of many private
and informal opinions about access regulations.
Section 508: the section of the
Rehabilitation Act (although it's amusing to watch
telecom attorneys hunting for it in the Telecom Act...) that
guarantees that federal
agencies expend a certain amount of effort explaining why
they cannot purchase
only accessible information technology.
Stakeholder: a person preparing to assault a vampire.
Standards: starchy and indigestable
vegetable matter that is thrown at a problem,
missing it both too high and too low.
Telecommunications: the gargantuan and obscenely rich field
of endeavor
encompassing every human activity except washing the car;
alternately, a small
and shrinking enterprise restricted to a few profitless
telephone calls per year.
Telephony: from the Greek tele, meaning
"distant" and English phony, meaning
"to
dissimulate or fool."
Treble damages: a hearing loss in the higher frequency range
of one or more
consumers, the cost of which is assessed against
telecommunications
companies.
TTY: an accessibility testing device, not to be confused
with a TDD or text
telephone.
Undue burden: that which is too heavy to
carry yet light enough to lay on
another's shoulders. Often confused with "undone
bird doo".
Wireless: that portion of the telecommunications industry
that should not be
subject to access regulation because it is so poor that it
lacks even the basic raw
material of a telecommunications network, wire; alternately,
the first part of a
question asked by disability advocates: “Wireless people
able to use this product
than they should?”
Wireline: that portion of the telecommunications industry
that should not be
subject to access regulation because it is tied up in too
much of the basic raw
material of a telecommunications network, wire.
5 business days: a unit of time too short for any company
whose products
operate at the speed of light.