Emeline Lakrout.
Photographer: Isabelle Zhao/Bloomberg
‘PowerPoint Broke Me’: The Challenges for Blind Professionals
Some software programs commonly found in the workplace still have accessibility obstacles. Advocates for the blind are calling out tech companies by name and pushing for change.
When Emeline Lakrout quit her job at Unilever Plc in March after five years with the company, it wasn’t for a better offer or a career pivot. She left, she said, because too much of the software she needed in her marketing role was inaccessible to her as a blind user and invisible to her screen reader.
If coworkers asked her to use Trello, a project management tool made by Atlassian Corp., she would politely request alternatives. Software from Anaplan Inc., a company owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, forced her to squint centimeters from a giant monitor, straining her remaining vision. And working on slide decks was especially vexing when her screen reader viewed slide content as images instead of text, often out of order, making presentations hard to create and decipher.