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Blind Call-Center Worker Researches IT Upgrade, Gets Downgraded For Her Trouble

Written by Frank Hayes
April 21st, 2011

A blind call-center worker on April 12 sued a Maryland county government over a job downgrade and pay cut after the county merged its non-emergency call centers but didn’t preserve screen-reading technology. Yasmin Reyazuddin, a multilingual information specialist, said she researched the necessary configuration changes after the county bought Oracle’s Seibel CRM system, but when she raised questions about the switchover she was demoted, moved to a non-call center job and told her pay would be reduced. She wasn’t even allowed to try the system to see if she could use it anyway.

Wait—there’s a call-center employee who’s already using assistive technology, is capable of researching whether the new system can be made accessible (according to Oracle’s documentation, it can) and is willing to look for a workaround for any problems. And that’s the employee IT can’t figure out how to accommodate in the project plan? That isn’t an employee you bury. You loan her to IT to figure out the cheapest way to get a screen reader working and then end up collecting good publicity instead of a federal lawsuit.

Posted in CRM, E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Software, Supply Chain
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