Gov. Ron DeSantis’s excuse for unemployment website’s woes is ‘lame’ | Letter to the editor

Gov. Ron DeSantis states that Floridians waiting on unemployment checks have only themselves to blame because they failed to enter fields such as Social Security number or wages. If you think about the process of ordering something online, you will quickly realize this explanation sounds lame.

What happens if you attempt to fill out an online form and you leave out something like your Credit Card Expiration Date? You cannot hit Submit until the required field is entered and validated. Any respectable web site designer knows how critical and easy it is to incorporate data validation into an online form. Relatively simple code can be used to confirm that the letter O is not entered instead of the number 0. My intro Web Page Design students know how to easily add the “required” attribute to make sure a user must enter valid data for a field like Last Name or Email Address. And it’s just as easy to make sure essential fields on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance site are entered. That’s why there are red asterisks (*) after a field name like Last Name or Social Security Number.

All humans make mistakes. However, it is the job of good programmers to validate data entry to reduce or eliminate those mistakes. And it is the job of our governor to help solve problems, not put the blame on the people who desperately need assistance through little or no fault of their own. Even if a person is hapless enough to improperly fill out a form, it should not mean that they must wait months to receive the benefits that they are otherwise entitled to.

By the way, when I clicked on the Reemployment Assistance Application Portal FAQ link at https://mobile.connect.myflorida.com/prweb/app/default/ I received Server Error 404 - File or directory not found.

Floyd Jay Winters

Bradenton