Skew-T diagrams removed because blind people can’t see them

[Tokirbymd]

Paul,

Personally knowing all of the researchers in this specific organization, they are frustrated as well. When the gov't was shutdown years ago because Congress couldn't pass a budget, this site was deemed to be not "operationally necessary" so the server was shut down without any notice. Seems silly, but I can understand why.

Do you know who we as a pilot group should contact to help move this along? AOPA would be an obvious choice but they move with the speed of molasses.

 

[Tokirbymd]

If the problem was that the agency just wasn't getting around to fixing the page, I'd have preferred to see them leave the page up, with fines imposed until the work was done. Give them an incentive to fix it without depriving pilots and others of the data. But that probably makes too much sense...

I have no idea how one could ever make a complex graphic like a skew-T accessible to the blind, but I recognize that I don't know what I don't know...perhaps solutions or partial solutions to such a problem exist.

As Scott mentioned above, they are likely using the 508 nonsense as cover for the real reason they are shutting down- that for profit companies are scraping the data and selling the results for operational use instead of research.

 

[PaulS]

As Scott mentioned above, they are likely using the 508 nonsense as cover for the real reason they are shutting down- that for profit companies are scraping the data and selling the results for operational use instead of research.

That’s even worse.

 

[PaulS]

The solution here is to have an exception to the 508 rule for these charts. I just looked up a couple chart readers for the blind. They are pretty rudimentary and barely usable imo, and that’s for a simple multi data graph.

I can’t think of a way to make these charts useful to someone who can’t see.

A more likely solution is assembling this data into some type of table where pertinent data can be accessed and given to the operator aurally so the data picture can be imagined by the user. Then the resultant values would need to given. But even that is not as useful as a Quick Look at the graph.

I suspect some of you who are defending noaa’s decision here have never used these graphs. You know not what you ask, much like the powers the be who shut this data down.

 

[scottd]

Do you know who we as a pilot group should contact to help move this along? AOPA would be an obvious choice but they move with the speed of molasses.

The problem is that if you look in all of the handbooks, ACs, etc. published by the FAA, you won't see it mentioned many times. In fact, it says in the new Aviation Weather Handbook, "Skew-T diagrams are primarily intended for, and used by, meteorologists as part of their analyses of the atmosphere and formulation of various forecasts." That tells the story that none of the alphabet groups are going to push for this since the FAA doesn't recognize its value to pilots.

While I have no say in this matter, I have made it known to the researchers and their supervisors...I worked with many of them...that this needs to be resolved as soon as possible. Only time will tell.

 

[scottd]

Given it’s been over 7 years since that rule was enacted and NOAA just had that page taken down, my guess is that this isn’t the first time the NOAA has been warned about its non-compliance.

This page has been scrutinized before. It was a couple years ago that my own site was launching the NOAA site so it opened in the same frame. However, at some point this stopped working. I was getting an error, X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN. Talking to this group, they told me that the Dept of Homeland Security had detected a vulnerability on this site and had to make changes. Fortunately, there was a workaround that I discovered later on, but it wasn't easy to implement.