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Holiday sales plummet for Blind Recording Artists: Access for Blind Net Surfers Blocked by CDBaby

When Mary Sten-Clanton (Dorchester, Mass.) went online in September, she planned to visit CDBaby and purchase "Unconditional" by Lisa Ostrow. Mary had often used the site to sample and buy new releases from the indie recording artists who pay CDBaby to sell their music. This time, she could no longer listen to samples of the songs. Mary, who is blind, uses a "screen reader." CDBaby was always accessible before. She decided to buy the CD anyway, but she couldn't.

Mary's e-mail to CDBaby went unanswered. She recently returned to the site, but the problems had not been fixed.

"I always find it particularly frustrating, and even hurtful," Mary says, "when a company whose Web site has always been perfectly accessible suddenly takes that access away."

CDBaby is the oldest and largest online outlet for indie recording artists. When musician Derek Sivers started the company in 1998, accessibility was part of his level-the-playing-field philosophy. He sold CDBaby, however, and the new owners redesigned the site in July without regard for blind customers and musicians.

Lisa Ostrow, a blind Harvard grad, is concerned about her blind fans as well as other blind CDBaby artists. She worries that this issue will cause blind fans to go elsewhere such as Amazon or CDUniverse.  She believes that blind artists, now unable to easily update their CDBaby pages, will also lose valuable revenue because they won't be able to directly impact their own sales presence.

" It's not only the importance of our blind fans that should cause CDBaby to sit up and take notice," says Lisa, " the blind artists  are also affected. It is the inaccessibility of sites like CDBaby that tie our hands and make it more difficult for us to get our jobs done.  As for our blind fans, of which there are many, the level of frustration that they encounter when visiting inaccessible sites, is a guarantee that they won't be back."

Other blind customers have contacted CDBaby. A country and folk music fan from Buffalo, New York, who prefers to be known only as Cay, wrote to them in July.

"I first got a response that they had lost all their email and to re-submit," she says, "So I wrote again. They didn't respond to me. I really enjoyed the site. Many years back I recall there was a problem on the site where I couldn't access it and they were caring.  Now they don't care about blind customers."

Music critic Ken Lawrence (New Jersey) recently received an e-mail from Girls on Film, an electronic/dance group, about their new release on CDBaby. Unable to preview the music, Lawrence, who is blind, wrote to the company.

CDBaby's response states, "I'm sorry our update removed the functional use for our blind customers.  Our programmers are all in house and are looking forward to making it more friendly to the blind. Unfortunately, there are a few other programming issues they need to finish first."

A few other programming issues? When Sten-Clanton phoned the company in October, she learned that even sighted customers were affected.

"Apparently, people are trying to pay for their CDs and getting thrown back to a previous page," she says. 

Mary wonders what "improvements" they were trying to make. Others like Ken are baffled that CDBaby's "in house" programmers haven't fixed this yet.

Lawrence is a member of the National Federation of the blind (NFB). NFB provides advocacy, rehabilitation services and conducts research through its Jernigan Institute in Baltimore. Ken, who hopes to go into radio one day, fosters friendships between sighted indie recording artists and the blind. His friend, a sighted CD Baby artist, singer-songwriter Jenifer Jackson, wrote on his behalf.

CDBaby's response raises more questions than it answers.

"We are aware that our website upgrade was actually a huge downgrade for the blind," the letter says, "Our site used to be VERY user friendly, and I think that it was overlooked by our programmers. It IS a priority though, and we are working on making a dial up site that will be readable. This isn't going to happen anytime in the next 2-3 months, … We were really proud of how accessible our site was before …"

One wonders how "really proud" they could have been. Apparently, not proud enough to remember it when their in-house programmers redesigned the site. Furthermore, a "dial-up site?" According to Sten-Clanton, whose husband is a computer programmer, it will likely be a separate text only site, accessible for mobile phones and screen readers. This concerns Mary. She once tried Amazon's text only site and found that many of the features were missing.

"In that case, I just went back to the regular Amazon," says Mary, "Since Amazon is accessible to begin with."

And, they've committed themselves to not fixing the problem for at least two or three months? Over six months from the new launch? This lag means no holiday purchases by blind consumers and no holiday revenue from those sales for struggling blind musicians.

Hit hard are artists with Christmas albums with an appeal to blind fans. Veronica Elsea of Laurel Creek Music Designs (Santa Cruz, Ca.) has her Christmas CD, "We Woof You a Merry Christmas," by The Guide Dog Glee Club, on CDBaby.

"I just can't understand," says Veronica, "what they think the actual gain is. I can't understand why having a mouse hover over something is an improvement over a standard link. My sighted friends don't get it either. Thank goodness I can at least tell blind customers to come to my web site to buy CDs, but I was really counting on CD Baby as the most accessible place to purchase the mp3 download version."

The holiday pinch also affects the NFB's Performing Arts Division (PAD), a volunteer-run non-profit. Revenue from "Sound in Sight," a multi-genre compilation of eighteen original tracks and covers donated by blind recording artists, helps fund PAD's projects. PAD's President, Dennis Holston, a blind Manhattan-based talent recruiter, wrote to CDBaby expressing his concern and offering to help them restore the accessibility which blind fans and recording artists have long enjoyed.

In their response, CD Baby ignored Holston's offer of help and encouraged him to have people use the company's toll-free number: 1 800 BUY-MY-CD. This only helps if the customer knows what they want, however.

CDBaby's response to Holston attributes the problem to flash technology," but they seem unaware of some important facts.

"Flash is a product of Adobe," says Wes Majerus, an access technology specialist with the NFB's Jernigan Institute, "It can be made accessible, if Adobe's accessibility guidelines are followed."

The Accessibility Issue in Context

Many blind people feel that CDBaby is treating them "like second-class citizens." To understand why this is such a big deal to blind consumers, we need to look at how the internet is used in modern society, internet access and the realities facing blind Americans.

People rely on the internet for everything from shopping and social networking to research and career advancement. According to Majerus, there are laws mandating that government web sites be accessible, but most sites are not under such obligations. Internet access is a major issue for blind computer users, because it places unfair and unnecessary limits on their ability to lead full, productive and independent lives.

The NFB's Access Technology Center has resources for sites trying to become accessible. Their Accessibility Web Certification program acknowledges sites which have made significant improvements. There is also a form to report inaccessible sites. Visit:
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Technology_Center.asp?SnID=326767672

According to Majerus, the majority of problems encountered by blind net surfers involve improperly labeled forms and images which don't have associated "alternate attributes" tags, which enable text-to-speech software to recognize them.

The CDBaby problem comes during a year in which blind people have lost many services and programs. Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic closed seven studios which produced student textbooks, and the American Foundation for the Blind closed the New York Talking Book Studios, the nation's oldest producer of recorded books for the Talking Book program of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS),.  Also, the 100-year-old Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind, which produced Braille and recorded compilations of selections from current periodicals, has been downsized into a social network for blind people with links to articles about blindness. To the horror of many, this measure was taken by the Ziegler's board in order to funnel large sums into vision research. NFB President Dr. Marc Maurer estimates that only 5% of all reading materials are available in formats which blind and low vision citizens can access.

In addition, the year began with the publication of a disturbing report about illiteracy among America's blind citizens and the devastating effect it is having on employment and income. Efforts to engage the public on the issue have had limited success.

On March 26, 2009, the NFB published "The Braille Literacy Crisis in America: Facing the Truth, Reversing the Trend, Empowering the Blind:"
http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/word/The_Braille_Literacy_Crisis_In_America.doc" 

The research finds a statistically significant link between Braille literacy and a blind person's likelihood of finding employment, obtaining post graduate degrees and earning over $50,000 a year. Even though blind people are successfully employed as lawyers, engineers, mechanics, chemists and in many other fields, the unemployment rate for blind Americans of working age is over seventy percent. Of those who work, however, over eighty percent read Braille. Nonetheless, Braille literacy is being neglected in the nation's schools.

Congress acknowledged the severity of the crisis by authorizing the Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar as part of its commemorative coin program which supports two non-profits each year. Proceeds from the sale of the Braille coins go to the Braille Readers are Leaders campaign:
http://www.braille.org
 
Despite a PR campaign which included NASA launching the coin into space onboard the Atlantis, the Braille coins, unlike other commemoratives, have not sold out. Time is short. The coin is only available through the end of 2009. Currently, the program stands to receive far less than the $4 million maximum set by Congress.

Update from CDBaby

In a mid November phone interview, CDBaby representative Joel Andrew calls the accessibility issues a "total oversight" by the company. He explained that the new launch has had many problems not the least of which was that major glitches caused CDBaby to be in violation of its contract with its artists.

"For a while," he says, "They couldn't even tell if we owed them money."

Addressing these issues has been the company's main priority. According to Andrew, fixing the site has been like "trying to move a whale."

Mr. Andrew confirmed that the company is, indeed, considering a text-only site. He was not aware of the concerns blind customers like Sten-Clanton have about that. He also had no idea that there was a way to make flash accessible. He said that he would pass on the information, adding that he and the other people at CD Baby are activists.

"CDBaby has always been and continues to be a strong advocate for independent musicians. We are totally in support of the activism that is going on with regard to accessibility," he said, "the way people are organizing to bring their concerns to the forefront."

Some changes impacting sighted customers and artist have been addressed. Nonetheless, blind people cannot expect that their issues will be resolved soon and certainly not in time for the holidays.

Other blind CDBaby recording artists include Neal Ewers, Kevin Reeves, Sarah Alawami and the author of this article.

About the Author

Donna W. Hill is an author, singer/songwriter, speaker and avid knitter. A volunteer publicist for the Performing Arts Division, National Federation of the Blind, she works for improved opportunities for blind Americans.

http://www.padnfb.org

A breast cancer survivor, she promotes self-exam. Hear clips from The Last Straw at:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/donnahill

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