Oracle's Accessibility Program

"Oracle is committed to creating accessible technologies and products that enhance the overall workplace environment and contribute to the productivity of our employees, our customers, and our customers' customers."
—Safra Catz, President and CFO, Oracle

"Oracle's business is information—how to manage it, use it, share it, protect it. Our commitment to create products that simplify, standardize and automate extends to all users, including users who are disabled."
—Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, Oracle

For many reasons—legal, business, and ethical—Oracle recognizes the need for our applications, and our customers' and partners' products built with our tools, to be usable by the disabled community. The Oracle Accessibility Program Office, reporting to the office of the Chief Corporate Architect, is responsible for defining the corporate standards for accessibility, and developing materials to train all employees so that they can successfully create products that meet those standards.

February 2008: Oracle Helps Bring Science To Life For Blind Youth
Oracle and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Jernigan Institute's National Center for Blind Youth in Science (NCBYS) today announced that they will work together to help open the door for young scientific explorers. As part of this collaboration, Oracle will help fund the NCBYS's first Youth in Science's 2008 Junior Science Academy (JSA) as a way to make science come to life for blind students across the United States. Read the entire article at: http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2008_feb/nfb-jr-science-camp-grant.html.

December 2007: Oracle Shanghai and Nanjing Volunteers Leave Lasting Legacy with School of the Blind
As part of Oracle Global Volunteer Days (GVD) 2007, nearly 110 volunteers from the Oracle Shanghai and Nanjing offices, along with their family and friends, participated in a two-part project for the School of the Blind Children in Shanghai. For the first part of the volunteer project, 56 Oracle employees recorded 10 audio books with a total recorded length of 3,350 minutes. Teachers at the school created the book list, which included well-known stories to both interest and educate the children. To make the books more vivid, some of the volunteers included their kids and parents in the recording to provide a diversity of voices. These recorded books will benefit numerous students now and for years to come. The second part of the project, 81 Oracle volunteers (including 29 of the volunteers who recorded the audio books), visited the school to play games and read stories to the students.

Each year, Oracle holds its annual Global Volunteer Days, a two week long initiative to encourage volunteerism, celebrate Oracle employees' year-round service in their respective communities, and maximize the impact of Oracle's commitment to social responsibility. For more information about GVD, visit: http://www.oracle.com/corporate/community/community/volunteer.html.

November 2007: Technology opens new worlds of opportunity to blind and visually impaired techies
Darryl Presley, a member of the Server Technologies group at Oracle, was recently interviewed by Diversity Careers Magazine for its article 'Technology opens new worlds of opportunity to blind and visually impaired techies'. Read the entire article at: http://www.diversitycareers.com/articles/pro/07-octnov/fod_assistive_technology.htm.

October 2007: New Support access for hearing impaired customers
Oracle Support is pleased to announce more streamlined phone support access for hearing impaired customers. Customers may now call an AT&T Customer Assistant by dialing 711 or 1-800-855-2880 who will then serve as a relay between the caller and Oracle Support at 1-800-223-1711. Complete instructions for using the AT&T Relay service can be found here: http://www.consumer.att.com/relay/tty/standard2.html. Once in contact with Oracle Support an engineer will handle technical issues according to normal service request handling processes.

October 2007: National Disability Employment Awareness month
Don Mauck, Oracle Accessibility Evangelist, was a co-emcee for the Colorado coalition for Persons with Disabilities conference, which took place as part of National Disability Employment Awareness month. Don was asked to do this by the local non-profit group "Families and Allies," which provides many services to adult persons with disabilities. Besides being the emcee, Don started the morning session by singing the National Anthem (in his spare time, Don is an actor with the group PHAMALy, which stands for Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League.) Don was also the emcee for the coalition's annual fund raising event.

July 2007: Presentation at the NFB National Conference
Don Raikes, Oracle Accessibility Specialist, attended the National Federation for the Blind annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia. He presented an overview of how Oracle has improved its accessibility over the last seven years to the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) in Computer Science session. Don's presentation included a demonstration of an Oracle ADF web application illustrating the use of javascript on the web and how it can be accessible. Don also addressed Oracle's approach to accessibility as "standards-based".