Joe Devon, co-Founder of Diamond, moderates a panel discussion with Cat Noone, CEO of Stark, and Lori Samuels, Accessibility Director - NBC Universal, to measure what it means to adopt and implement successful accessibility initiatives, and discuss the business and ethical case for accessibility.
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Getting Started in Accessibility
Transcript for Getting Started in Accessibility
Hello, and welcome to our panel on how to get started in accessibility. My name is Joe Devon, and I'm co-founder of Diamond, an inclusive digital agency, and chair of the GAD foundation that takes Global Accessibility Awareness Day from a day to general awareness. Today we're going to share with all of you that are trying to begin your own accessibility journey a lot of great tips and tools from a couple of wonderful panelists who I am going to invite to introduce themselves right now. So Lori, would you like to begin?
Sure, thanks Joe. I'm Lori Samuels. I am the accessibility director at NBC Universal, so I work across all of the NBC businesses, including our parks in Universal Orlando and Hollywood, sports, and entertainment, and news. So it's a lot of fun. That's what I do.
Thanks Lori, Cat?
Yeah hey, thanks Joe. Hey, everyone. My name is Cat Noone. I am the CEO and co-founder of Stark, and we're software that streamlines accessibility compliance, saving teams time, money, and effort through end to end collaboration. And the big goal for us is to make accessibility efforts more human by providing not just the software, but a community of people doing it and the educational material to make that onboarding and entire process significantly easier.
Thanks, Cat. And by the way, I checked with my team, and we're already using Stark on-- I think it's the Figma side of things.
Yeah, nice.
Yeah, and I told them we're going to bring you in, so they're very excited, and I suggest anybody try it out because I'm hearing wonderful things.
Thank you.
Of course. So I just want to start by saying that let's make this conversational, so we don't have to wait for every question to come along. Both of you are so knowledgeable in this space that I think we're just going to have a fantastic conversation with or without the questions. But just to kick things off, what is it that you need to understand before you begin your accessibility journey? Open to both of you.
I love this question because I think that is actually something that we don't spend enough time talking about, and that is kind of a foundational shared understanding of what is this accessibility thing all about, and why are we doing it, and who benefits, and all of that stuff. So I think it's really important to kind of orient ourselves around accessibility. So first of all, I kind of like to say that if we approach accessibility as it is, as a civil right for people with disabilities, to say OK, first of all, this is not a fear tactic or something we have to worry about with legal action. It's not just something we should sort of do because it feels good to do it-- although it does-- people have a right to access information.
People have a right to full participation in society. That's the preamble of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's actually a beautiful first paragraph, and what that says is that we as a society have said that we don't want people with disabilities to be discriminated against. We want to make sure that people can have full participation. Well it's 2021, almost 2022 now. Well, think about how much of the world we participate in that's digital, right? We're doing our work. We're getting our education. We're doing our banking.
We're doing our shopping. We're even doing our doctors appointments all on digital platforms. So how can you fully participate in society if your digital experiences are not accessible to people with disabilities? And then the second part of that I would just say is understanding how do people with disabilities use digital content, experiences, how do they interact with digital content. What are the kinds of things we need to know about? What are the different considerations? The disability community is not a monolith. So I think it's orienting around understanding disability, understanding accessibility as a civil right, and understanding how people with different disabilities use technology and consume content.
Thanks, Lori. Cat, anything you want to add, and I'll give you another question to mull over as you reply to that as well. Why is accessibility a civil right?
Well, I think in general-- I'm going to end up combining those two, naturally, because one is a byproduct but-- rather, they're interrelated-- but I think in general in the tech industry, we build some of the world's most groundbreaking technology. But it's irrelevant if we've not enabled customers the ability to access it simply because they don't fit this ideal profile that we wrongly originally mapped out as our user. And I think that first starts by understanding, and accepting, and being able to see and acknowledge disability. For so long we've not seen individuals with disabilities, and that's because they've been notoriously identified as, quote unquote, "less than," right? And that is inherently marginalization.
And so for us I just piggyback on what Lori said, if there's one thing that I want folks to understand, it's that accessibility-- individuals with disabilities are not something to be added. They're not an add on, which notoriously in society, the way the world was designed, was exactly like that, that they're an add on. And so how do we just completely dismantle those systems and let folks know that, yeah, this is part of the entire product development process? This is the step before the product development process. This is the conception of the idea. This is the understanding of how individuals from every walk of life are impacted by this, right? Accessibility is a byproduct of inclusive design. So yeah, that's my two cents on it.
Yeah, and I think the other thing is that people with disabilities need to be employees of companies that are creating technology and creating digital--
[INTERPOSING VOICES].
That part. That part, yeah.
And at a minimum need to be involved in the creative process, but ideally, hire people with disabilities to be part of your creative engine and your creative process at your workplace because that's how we get a variety of perspectives. And the other thing I would advocate for, again, that's really related to this topic, is if your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are not already including disability inclusion, then get that work going too.
Do you already have-- if you're in a large organization and you have employee resource groups or networks that are kind of affinity groups, do you have one that's focused on disability, or neurodiversity, or mental health? Get that going too because these are all the things that support a culture that will invest in accessibility and sustain that investment all the way through. But if you don't have the cultural work kind of going, you're might have a project that you sort of, well, we did this accessibility thing back in 2018. Aren't we done now? Well no, actually, you're not, so.
Yeah, most definitely.
And on that, Lori, I think it's interesting because you have a lot of-- and this goes back to education, right? I think a lot of the executives, stakeholders, boards, so on and so forth at this point now prioritizing-- they're being made aware of what actually is going on. And I think you have in organizations, notoriously, this bell curve, and a lot of information that starts with individuals on this end of the bell don't make it up to the top and vise versa. And so I think there's a nice flow happening now that individuals in organizations, especially at an enterprise level, are becoming the decision makers and are being made aware of software that's allowing them to innovate in different ways.
One thing that I think is ironic but also is changing now is that tech companies-- or not even tech companies, but companies in general which have some form of a digital component to it, so almost every organization now, are heavily focused on innovating, right? And humanity is innovating faster than ever before, but with that, I think a lot of organizations notoriously didn't realize that not having individuals with disabilities on the team is a loss for innovation, right? Individuals with disabilities-- disabled people, right?
Disabled is not an ugly word. Disabled people are some of the world's greatest innovators, yet so many products have, up until this point, been created without them in mind. Part of the problem, like you said, Lori, is that teams aren't comprised of people with disabilities, so they aren't even aware of those different audiences, be it that permanent situation or temporary that we've discussed before. And I think because of that, customers are less inclined to use a product when they don't see that they are reflected in the team that's building it, especially with culture starting to become very open and transparent, right? Culture is the habits of the system. What habits are you injecting in as the team?
And humans have innate biases, and there's a lot of bias in this space. And there's a term we refer to as ableism which is, again, like Cat said, that assumption that people with disabilities or disabled people are less capable in some regard, or that disability is this tragic thing, and we shouldn't talk about it, or we should kind of use euphemisms to refer to it. And that's all kind of part of the systemic ableism. So I think maybe you're approaching accessibility in your company because you did receive a legal action or demand letter, and so you know that you need to get going on this.
But I think again, this cultural work is so important, this mindset work is important because if you start off with the wrong mindset of, OK, this is a problem that we just need to make go away, or we just kind of-- we don't want to get sued, it's not the right mindset. And it's going to take your whole effort sort of off track. So I think that's why we're talking about this, and I think it's important to recognize accessibility as the work of disability inclusion and equity, and recognize disability as part of the human experience that shows up everywhere in every other dimension, and it's 15%, at least, of the global population.
1.3 billion people on the planet live with permanent disability, and that's not even counting the people who temporarily experience disability or situationally experience disability, as in, I'm in a noisy room, and I'm trying to watch something on some video, and it doesn't have closed captions, so I don't really know what's going on. Closed captioning benefits everybody, but it happens to be essential for people who are deaf, so yeah.
Absolutely, and I'm happy to see that there is definitely some change going on. There's an organization called the AstroAcess which is advancing disability inclusion in space, and that's really a lot about the cultural situation because you start to see disability included, really, everywhere, and the organizations really need to catch up. And to that end, Cat, can you just explain why you started Stark? I just love that a lot of folks, I think, in the past were thinking that this really started with developers, but really, accessibility starts way before when it comes to product and design. What inspired you? How did you get into it?
Well for me, I'm a designer turned founder. And I was working on a project in the health tech space and realized that the target group that I was working on-- designing a solution for-- needed to have accessibility baked in there, needed to be a way to ensure that it was usable for a spectrum of individuals. And we weren't going to go out of the gate and just shaft an entire group of people. And it was very, very obvious that we would be doing that had we not ensured that the contrast was proper, and that the type scale was there, and that there were proper personalization available to individuals, right?
Because we don't use the same products, right? Nobody uses the same product. And so it's like, how do you create personalization within reason? How do you ensure these foundational aspects of the product were baked in? And so when I went out of the gate looking, it was just like, all of the solutions were catered to engineers, or were enterprise first, or were so fucking expensive. And it was just like, compliance is expensive enough. This shafts, completely, all startups looking to innovate quickly and all this. And so in the midst of being pissed, I was just like, it's also out of sight, out of mind, right? This isn't optimized for anybody's workflow.
And so I said, OK, what is-- I can't, I can't. I'm pissed at the time, you know? I'm talking to the people that I'm working with on this. And I said, how have we managed to land on the fucking moon in the '60s, but this is not optimized and automated? Like, how can we say we're innovating? And so we were just like, let's build a solution. Let's just build a janky solution so we can do our job accordingly, and we did, and it was very much so dogfooding.
Fun, great, wonderful, shared it with a couple of people-- the idea. Did a lot of research talking to individuals that are blind or low vision and are designers and engineers but nobody knows about because they're not going to tell that to any employer, right, because of obvious reasons. So it was an incredible research and learning experience. All of that to say we shared out snippets of what we were doing on the internet and it just snowballed, and it continued to snowball. And we ignored it because we had to actually work, and then about eight months in, we were like, maybe this isn't just an us problem, and realized quickly we were on to something there.
I love that story, and I don't curse on webinars and stuff like that, but I fucking love that story.
Sorry, I do. I do. I'm sorry.
That's why I said it.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Yeah, that's why I said the f-word as well, and I'm hoping those closed captions--
We're going to get censored now.
--are going to not enter it out, which is another topic. If you want to go into that-- if not, Lori, why don't you tell us about your entry into this.
We'll just do a sidebar on the subject of censoring for closed captions. Should deaf people hear swear words? I don't know. Sorry, so--
Yes.
There's the short answer.
I said what I said, and I intend for everyone to know it.
She's speaking to it. OK, so now we're having fun. So I mean, I love what Cat and her team are doing for several reasons. So one, as I think I want to amplify the point you made earlier, which is accessibility is a byproduct of inclusive design. So that means that if we want to create accessible experiences and content, we must be thinking about that when we are designing those experiences and that content. So that's great. OK, we try to get teams to think about it. But guess what would be really helpful? Some tools. So some tools would be really helpful, something to check are we doing it right, or can you give us some feedback, or how do we bake in this guidance for our developers.
So that's what I think one of the issues that the Stark team is helping us solve as an industry, so it's huge, what you're doing. And I think the other thing is that we do have to find ways to make accessibility inclusive design practices easier to incorporate and into the whole development process, and we need to support that work because otherwise, guess what? People have an excuse not to do it. It's too hard. We don't know enough. We can't afford an expensive accessibility consultant to help us, so we're just going to kind of keep-- we just don't know enough.
We can't really do this. So the point is there are reasonable cost tools that you can start to incorporate. There is learning that you can do that doesn't cost anything. It doesn't really cost to learn stuff, and there's a lot of resources available to start that learning. And I do think that what we've seen in this industry, sadly, is we've seen the, almost, the infiltration of unethical practices around people, certain companies, kind of coming to the table and saying, guess what? You know that accessibility thing? It's too hard, so you can just add it on at the end. You can just design your product the way you want to design it. Don't think about those disabled people.
Just slap in this accessibility overlay and it'll fix everything. That, folks, is not a true statement. It doesn't work. It doesn't fix everything. In fact in some cases, it just makes the whole thing worse. So the fact of the matter is we need to be thoughtful about inclusive design. We need to consider the different ways that people with different disabilities use and consume content and use technology, but we also have to make that process easier for teams. We need to have easy on ramps into doing that because otherwise this whole topic gets overwhelming and it doesn't get done.
And can you also describe what got you interested in accessibility?
Me? So I was a-- I grew up, first of all-- my sister has cerebral palsy, so I grew up before the ADA was passed into law. My sister attended a different school. My brothers and I went to Boston Public Schools. She did not. I don't think my parents even imagined that she could have, although she absolutely could have had that been kind of part of the accessible society, but we were not an accessible society. In fact back then, terminology was way worse than it is now. I won't even tell you the name of her school because it was that
Bad. I won't even-- I'm not even going to say it out loud. It was that bad. So I think I grew up with some awareness of the discrimination that people with disabilities face in society and the segregation that they faced. Then I went into technology. I was a computer science major. I got my bachelor's and master's in computer science long before the internet even existed. And I was working in the consumer software space and also the educational software space, and at a company called Broderbund Software which did The Print Shop, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and a bunch of other fun stuff that we sold into schools and elementary age kids were using.
And then-- that was in the early 1990s, and when the ADA had passed into law in 1990, and I started thinking about this problem of OK, there's all these different sorts of adaptive track balls and different style keyboards that kids with disabilities can use in the schools. How are we going to make sure that our software, our mainstream software, works with these new kinds of peripheral devices? And so that was the beginning of my entry into accessibility and starting to think about like, OK, we just have to make sure we're following some standards. That'll work.
Sure enough, that's the basic idea, as it turns out, even 30 years later. So yeah, there's standards. You could follow them, and that would go a long way toward making sure that your stuff works with different kinds of assistive technology. So that led to me, and then I got to join into it in 2011 and started their global accessibility program. And then I went on to Microsoft and worked in different product organizations, and I just love accessibility, so I get to do it. It's yay, lucky me.
It's a wonderful space to be in, absolutely. Just meet the most wonderful people like both of you.
Thank you.
Let's speak a bit-- pardon?
I said thank you.
Let's speak about innovation, and let's look at it from the other angle because people tend to think of-- people ask this question the other way. But what would the impact of society be if we removed the accessibility features that are all around us today?
Hm, great question. We wouldn't have cell phones.
Correct. You wouldn't have touch phone-- you wouldn't have touch screens.
You wouldn't have texting.
Correct.
Let's see, you wouldn't have had the keyboard.
You wouldn't have speech to text.
Right, yep. There would be no Alexa, or Google, or Siri. Yeah, those--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
There would be no translation.
Yup, you wouldn't have video conferencing and calls like this.
Correct.
What else? That's a good question.
Yeah, I was going to say--
I love that question.
Everything, right?
That's a good handful of a list, but I mean, we can continue to go on, but I think that already gives everyone the idea of what a foundational launchpad this has given. Your means of asynchronous, remote virtual communication in the world we live in exists because of accessibility initiatives.
And that's the beautiful thing about the innovation in the accessibility space is that if you lean-- I like to think disability gives us a way, purely from an innovation standpoint, to kind of think outside the box, right? We have this kind of narrow box of, well, people see the screen, and people can hear, and there are all these kind of unconscious bias assumptions about what people are able to do with the technology or with the content.
And but if you break that up and you say, well, what if they can't see the screen, or what if they can't hear what's being said, or what if they can't operate that mouse? Then you have to actually start thinking outside that narrow, biased box, and that's when interesting, innovative solutions come. So again, text messaging was designed for people who are deaf, but look how useful it is. Curb cuts were designed for people to get on and off of sidewalks from a wheelchair, but everybody uses them. 80% of the people who use closed captioning are not deaf or hard of hearing. So when we create something that is accessible, it ends up having lots and lots of other use cases.
Absolutely, and I think the next generation of tech which is going to be all around haptics, wearables, AR, VR, mixed reality, it's really going to be about personalization. And since 11% of the population will have a disability at some point in their life, and it's really on a spectrum, disability, right?
Higher than that.
Yeah, I was going to say, it has to be higher than that. And also, one thing we're not talking about is what do-- this is a big question at Stark-- so what do standards look like? How do we put together standards of compliance for technology that hasn't even been conceptualized yet?
Yes, and sorry, I got distracted for a second because I realized I misspoke when I said the 11% figure. I meant to say that 11% of your lifespan will be with a disability.
Ah, that makes more sense.
Yeah, so yes. But yes, everybody will have that at some point.
We were jumping on you on that. Like nope, Joe, you're not right.
Yeah, no, no, no. You're right. I was like, wait, I'm--
This is not good math, sorry.
All right, let's move on to another topic. What is the business case versus the ethical case for accessibility?
You want to take that, Kat?
So I think for starters, I don't like that we're pitting them against each other. I don't like the versus in there because it makes it seem like it's at odds when they're two sides of the same coin, right? Like when we put together-- when we design and build products, one thing which is part of what we call what discrimination sounds like, discrimination sounds like accessibility isn't something for MVP, right? And accessibility isn't this, accessibility isn't that. That's the sound of discrimination in an organization. But when we think about the MVP, one thing we've done is turn it into what does a minimum level product look like?
We create products-- and people use products, rather, and pick products in the same way that they do partners. It's the same region in the brain. And so what we know about love and trust holds true in product. Our job with this innovation, with all of these lovely phrases that we like to throw out there like creating the best user experience, and it's delightful, and it's this and it's that. Who is it delightful for? Is it delightful for this male, pale Yale group? Is that who is included in it? Nobody else is. Now when we do that, we cannot create-- by doing that, you're not creating a product that is opinionated. It stands tall in something. And as a byproduct of that, you can't create a product that has character, and soul, and that someone can fall in love with and that keeps coming back to.
And so I think in order to do that, in order to create a product that is usable end to end that has a great experience, it needs to be inclusive. And what nobody really wants to hear is, you need to do your job as a designer. Your job isn't to push pixels. Engineers, your job isn't to just code these things and make it functional. When we say your job is to make it functional, you need to make sure it works for everyone, right? And that's why it goes back to-- and this is kind of tangential-- but this isn't a single discipline issue in the entire organization. This is an entire product development pipeline issue, which is why it needs to start at the conception of an idea, stakeholders, board, heads of EP, director, whatever your fancy organization ladder looks like.
Now with that, good business is ethical. We like to say that we're-- us as designers, we're not six inches into a craniotomy in an OR room, right? But we are designing the interfaces and the robotics of the doctors that are using them. So you better step away from that damn computer if all you think you do is push pixels because that scares the shit out of me. And so for the business case, going back to that to close it out, I think in general it goes back to that bottom line. Our job as designers, I think we would like to say our job is to build , trust and to do this, and to do that. No, your job is to-- that's part of your job in servicing the business.
Your job as a designer is to create an experience everyone loves, to ensure everyone can use it, and it's inclusive, and to service the business. Your job is to make the business more money. It just so happens that when you do that the right way, when you actually do it and not in this bullshit way that you've been talking about all the time, you allow an organization to meet a bottom line. Increased market reach, increased brand awareness, all of these selling points are this return on investment. You're going to open up your product to more individuals that can use it. That is your job, right? Everyone talks about monthly active user, this, that, and the third. That's your job, to get more people using it. And we can have an entire talk on just this topic, and I don't want to hog the time from Lori. Sorry, Lori.
No, not at all. No, those are great points. I love everything you're saying. I think accessibility has been described as a journey. I would at least describe it as a learning curve, but the topic of this is how to get started in accessibility. And I just want to say, you have to start somewhere. You have to start where you are. I think it was Derek Featherstone had this great quote recently, a tweet that said something like, what is the best time to start accessibility on your project? Well, before it started, but the second best time is now, right? So I mean, OK, if you're just getting started, the time to start is now. What do you need to do? Learn from people with disabilities. Hire people with disabilities.
Learn more about accessibility and inclusive design as foundational work that needs to happen and get incorporated into your whole pipeline, as Cat said, and understand that you can start taking steps today, tomorrow, to improve accessibility. You won't solve all the problems overnight, OK? If you were designing without accessibility in mind, if you were building without accessibility in mind, you have inaccessible experiences. That's just a fact. OK, so you want to find out-- there's kind of a two pronged approach. We're always creating new software, new experiences, so there's an opportunity. If you're ever doing anything new, you can incorporate inclusive design practices and tools in the process, and try to build as you go and get a good result.
A lot of times we have to go back after the fact on a legacy existing product and have to make some fixes, you know? And part of that is understanding where the gaps are. And so get familiar with how to use a keyboard with your website. Turn on a screen reader. It's not that hard. Get some of the basics. Try some tools out. Get some of the learning. And get the-- and there's a lot of resources out there that are free and readily available, so start understanding where the gaps are in your existing products and start getting a plan to have your designers, your developers, your QA folks, your product owners learn more about this space, and put it in front of people with disabilities and find out if it works. They'll tell you.
Thanks, Lori. I feel like we just got started on this panel and we're already basically out of time. But hopefully they won't mind that we're going to run a little long because I'm going to ask you for your closing thoughts. Either one of you.
Oh, I think it's important not to approach accessibility just as a compliance activity. It's not the same as security and privacy, though there are some commonalities there in terms of it should be-- I mean, we wouldn't want to ship a product that isn't secure and doesn't respect people's privacy, so we really should approach it at least with the same level of requirement in that sense, but it's not like those two other disciplines. In most other respects, it's about people. It's about people with disabilities. It's about different use cases for how people consume and use technology, and we're not being inclusive, and we're not being diverse and equitable if we're not involving disability. And so we have cultural work to do in this space.
We have technical work to do in this space. We have design work to do, and we have process work to do. So it takes all of that. So yes, it takes a lot, but the rewards are huge. The benefits are huge both to your business and to just, honestly, the excitement that people get from working in this space and knowing that, hey, I'm building something that everybody can use. That is a great feeling. So when you get there, it's a really great feeling. It's a great place to be, so do it. Don't be afraid of it. There's lots of people to help.
Absolutely. Cat?
I can't really add much more to that. I mean based on what we've seen, it's exactly that. I think, initially, a lot of this can seem daunting just because there's quote unquote "a lot to it," and not to mention the literature, the texts out there in order to understand this isn't necessarily quote unquote "accessible" in that it's human readable. And so I get how you look at what's out there and you think, oh, my goodness. It's easier if I just leave this alone for now. But I think the way we eradicate and mitigate that fear, and uncertainty, and doubt is through a human readable education and a community of individuals that are there to support these initiatives even when questions seem a little bit daunting themselves.
Remember, we have organizations that are now going back and needing to retrofit a decade plus of legacy design and tech debt. And so for me it's the educational material being human readable, a community of individuals that are willing to knuckle down with you even when they don't work in the organization, and they are out there. The people in this space love seeing solutions come to light, and in addition to that, technology that fits and supersedes the 21st century, this 21st century approach to technology that says this is something that belongs in the future, and this is something that is worthy of elegant solutions in order to even do this work for those seeking solutions to this work, I think at that point put accessibility next to privacy and security as priorities in an organization even though it has its own lane, as it should. It's this internal PSA, if you will, the shit you need to get done in order to have a really well-rounded innovative, successful organization.
Great, thank you both so much. I really enjoyed this panel, and thank you to the organizers, and all the sponsors, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.
Thanks, bye.
Thank you.
Live Q&A
Transcript for Live Q&A
(Kevin McDaniel) Wow, thank you, thank you all. Thank you to Cat and to Joe and Lori for for a very spirited conversation about getting started in accessibility.
We are so grateful for the time that you all have taken and you know, you mentioned at the end- I know Joe and Lori will be joining in just a moment - you guys mentioned it and we talked about this conference. But I have to tell you that we are so grateful to have you and your participation, your expertize. We're getting some incredible feedback here. And by the way, everybody, they have just joined me, Lori and Lori Samuels and Joe Devon, and we're here for Q&A.
Thank you guys both so much for coming and doing this and then coming back to join us. Thank you very much. Welcome.
(Joe Devon) Thank you, Kevin.
(Lori Samuels) Thank you.
(Kevin) Yeah, it's a really a pleasure to talk to you both. I know I have not spoke to you both, but I feel like I know you so well because I have spent so much time working on content with you guys in the background. I'm like the guy, the shoemaker. You know, I, but I really appreciate you guys and the work you're doing. I have one speaking first about the interviews you guys have done in Accessibility Matters and the content you've offered and just your contributions to the community. I've been a huge fan.
So I wonder, I have I have a lot of questions here, and it's OK, Lori, I'd like to start with you. You know, in the interview that you did with for Accessibility Matters with our publisher John Michael Griffin, you said in the interview, you said that "we can't have people coming out to design and build the next generation of technology who've never heard about accessibility. That's unacceptable. We can't keep perpetuating this problem. We need to start working on a solution and solving it at the source." And so there was and that's a great quote.
Let's talk about the source and policy. In the last piece we had, we talked a lot about hiring the right talent and developing that policy, as you know, is the accessibility director for NBCUniversal. You've got this huge task in undertaking to ensure that all of these properties and products are accessible when you're when you're talking about solving it at the source. I know this is a big question, but could you have a very large audience here today who want to implement and get started with accessibility? What does that mean? Where do they start and what do they do?
They're fighting by themselves. They're in the corner. What do they do to get this process started?
(Lori) Well, that's that is a great and big question. Am I on?
(Kevin) Oh, yeah, yeah, you're on.
(Lori) Sorry.
It's is a great question. I think there's two parts to that. At least the first is that when I when I was making that comment originally, I was talking about the fact that our colleges, our universities, our coding boot camps don't include enough, if any, information on on how to build and create accessible products. So that's a huge issue. Organizations like Teach Access are trying to tackle that in partnership with universities and accreditation, which is and industry which is great.
So we're seeing some movement in that space, and that's sort of what I was originally referring to is that the need to educate the next generation of of people working on building and creating technology software content, all of it to expose them to the fact that again, people with disabilities, people in many different circumstances have different ways of interacting with technology and content. So we have to know that as is foundational knowledge and then we have to practice how to how to solve for that. So that was what I was originally referring to as far as kind of how do you get a really large organization to start caring about accessibility, to start acting on accessibility? I think the first thing is to and in the work that can happen, there's there's two parts that you need grassroots engagement. You need people to start feeling their own responsibility in their own job about accessibility, so they they need to feel it in their bones.
It's not something that. And I think the best way to do that is by engaging people with disabilities, show people what, what, what people are struggling with right now in your experience, demonstrate the problems and demonstrate them, not from a standpoint of, oh, you know, this tool flagged these errors, but this person can't use your product and that starts to build empathy. It starts to build concern and awareness of, Oh, OK, wait, a second, this is a problem. We thought our product was great, but actually there's people who are really struggling or just can't use it at all.
And I've known I'm an optimist by nature and tend to think that people will respond to that motivation really well. And I've seen it happen over and over again. So they do. It's not it. It's not a technique to make to shame anyone.
It's just a technique to to let people know that this product is not working for everyone. So what can we start to do about that? So I think that becomes a motivator at the grassroots level. And then you also have to have the courage to approach your leaders and talk about it.
There is you can't do this without leadership support. You can't do it without leadership buy in. You have to have leaders expecting their organizations, particularly product organizations, to deliver accessible experiences. And so you have to work on those leadership conversations.
And leaders are just people, too. You just have to sort of show them, too that this isn't working. This might represent business risk for us or legal risk. But most importantly, you're missing out on, you know, business opportunity.
And we're not kind of standing by whatever company principles you have. Every company has principles and accessibility lines up squarely with those principles. So, you know, tap into your company's principles, get the leadership conversations going, have the courage to do it.
It's hard. You might be scared of having those conversations, but they have to happen in order for this to work.
(Kevin) Wow, that's exactly why I asked you that question Lori. We talked a lot about the tactical pieces in some of our other presentations, but I had and I will make this about me.
I'm so sorry, but I just have to agree with you so much because I remember years ago you get to this point where you're like, OK, I'm going to be fired today, OK, maybe it's next, but it's tomorrow, and then you finally come to this.
It does take a little bit courage at first that you finally come to this, OK, you're just not doing your job if you don't feel like that, because these are uncomfortable conversations that have to be had, and that's it's important to get the buy in.
And so I'm so glad you made that point because it's a it's a point that you only get with experience. And I really I just respect it so much.
(Lori) I would say one more thing on that, which is to borrow a phrase from from the civil rights movement in racial justice.
We have to cause some good trouble in this space. We have to if we're not, if we're not making people somewhat uncomfortable on any given day, we're probably not actually doing our jobs in the accessibility space because it is there are there is an uncomfortableness that has to happen to realize that we're not we're not achieving real inclusive and accessible experiences. And by and large, we're not in most of you know, most of the technology industry.
On the flip side, you also have to celebrate every accessibility success. That's something I've been sort of saying lately. A lot, too, is when when something works and when you see the impact it has, celebrate it. You know, make sure that people know about it because that's what also, you know, you want people to fall in love with this work and and they're not going to do that. If you're just using the stick all the time. You got to, you know, you got to use the carrot, too, which is this feels great.
Look at what we just did. We made a difference in someone's life. Now they can access that content, now they can use our product. This is great. Know, and so it might not be perfect, but celebrate the progress.
(Kevin) You know, I love that point, Lori. And the questions that come in where you guys are so global, the questions are so appropriate. I, Joe, I you also did an interview with our publisher, John Michael Griffin. You talked about the amount of work that has to be done and you've certainly done it.
It's that you said that "there's a tremendous amount of work to be done. But I'd say that the practitioner that the practitioners, they feel like there's a moment right now that accessibility is having. It's a moment where there is hope that things are getting better."
And so my question to you is, you know, talking about things, getting better. You founded Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Your cofounder and founder of Diamond, one of the questions we had, I had my own question, but I'm going to wrap it into it was how do you advocate to employees that are not as excited about 508 compliance as you are? And how do you make them realize that it's not a choice, it's the law. It's that business case you asked Cat about. How do you how do you build that, that momentum?
(Joe) Well, I certainly I don't talk about 508.
I don't talk about compliance. I don't talk about the law. I don't really find that it's difficult to get people. Most people excited about it if you approach it the right way. And I think there's several right ways to approach it.
It's kind of funny how everybody gets excited about the Chinese market because it's so big, right? But you have 1.8 people with 1.8 billion people with disabilities in the world, which is a market larger than China, right? So right there you talk to the people that are building products for their users, and you're showing them that a lot of their users have disabilities. A lot of the disabilities are hidden.
There's lots of different types of disabilities. And I think that they they might struggle to see where their user is. If all they're trying to do is say, Oh, well, I don't know any blind people or I don't know any deaf people, and they're they're really trying to pigeonhole what what disability is. But when you educate your employees and just people in general to the fact that that disability is really a spectrum as ability is also a spectrum. Certain people have better eyesight. Other people have better hearing.
There's there is a wide variety of abilities in terms of cognitive, in terms of physical abilities. And when you get into accessibility, you wind up creating much, much better, more usable products. And if you care about the if you don't care about the craft of what you're doing well, then there's a question whether that should be an employee or not. Right? But if you care about the craft of what you're doing and you're not paying attention to people with disabilities, then you're not doing a good job with your craft. And I particularly look for specific examples that really highlight this.
So for example, if you're a designer, you are creating, for example, I use this over and over again. You're creating, for example, a Skype or some some chatting tool that has an online offline indicator. And if you're a designer and you don't know that red and green look gray to folks that are color blind, do you really know your craft well? Right? And you cannot use color to convey information alone. You can do the red and green. There's nothing wrong with doing the red and green, but you still need to say online offline indicator because if you're color blind, then you'll need to know that right?
So the point is that this is part of your craft. There's an awful lot of people that are affected by you not knowing accessibility. And that's why accessibility has to be part of the culture of digital product development.
And I've never got a negative reaction by going with that kind of example.
(Kevin) So it's a usability thing. If you don't talk about the standards you get talking about the requirements, standards that the guidelines and requirements you're talking about the experience.
(Joe) That's why I have the extra pressure.
(Kevin) Yeah. So I love that answer. Lori, I had some specific questions for both of you that come in, but I'd like to just keep it global for a second because, you know, I see accessibility at a strategic level at a tactical level, and there are certainly different parts, and you both are obviously on the strategic level globally. When you when you given that we just came out of the Olympics, Lori, the amount of planning and the content, the organization, the coordination that went into that.
Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what goes into planning, planning events, incorporating the people disabilities into the planning of those events? And one of the specific questions that tagged onto that was, you know, how are you incorporating people with disabilities?
As far as internships, employees? What kind of feedback are you getting and how does that process work when your talking about something that large because we do have some very large company representation today?
(Lori) Yeah, well, I'm actually glad you brought up the example of the Olympics, it's something we're proud of at NBC Sports and and what what we're particularly proud of is that we provided live audio description for many of the Olympic primetime broadcasts and all of the Paralympic broadcasts, which audio description for those who don't who might not be familiar is the narrative description of visual context.
So in other words, when you know someone was was going out for a gymnastics event in the Olympics, not only do you have the regular commentary from the our sports folks, but you also have an announcers. But we also provided an audio describer who in real time was telling was providing a little additional visual context.
And that became something that was really impactful. And again, back to celebrating every accessibility success. We had a focus group with the American Council of the Blind to talk about what was the impact of having a live audio description for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, and it was a fantastic conversation.
I shared some of the most enlightening kinds of quotes from that discussion with our leadership here, and what it illustrated was something that again, is a really core principle that I like people to understand, which is accessibility is essential for some useful for all.
So when people who are blind had live description for the Tokyo Olympic Games, they were able to participate and enjoy and understand the Games, the opening and closing ceremonies, along with their sighted friends and family, in a way that they wouldn't, they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do.
So that's the difference that having audio description in this case makes, you know, investing in accessibility. So, so that's the Olympic story I think know to to to the broader issues of how do you kind of get this disseminated across across large enterprises?
It takes time. It takes work. Looking at, you know, fortunately, we already had some partnerships in place when I joined NBC Universal. We're already working with the Americans, the AAPD, the American Association of Persons with Disabilities would use scholarships for people entering into media, the media field to come to come join us as interns.
So there's a lot of work already happening in this space. And I think part of that is just understanding what is your organization already doing? What external partnerships could support this work? So I think that's great. You know, we're not doing this alone.
We do this in partnership with others. And so again, kind of, I think, bringing in expertize and also finding ways to get to the point where you're hiring more people with disabilities to work at your company is a really important part of the long term strategy.
(Kevin) Having diverse, diverse opinions, diverse backgrounds and experiences, I mean, it's it's you're right and and Alycia, I do see you. If I can just get this one question in for Joe. OK, great Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It continues to be this thing we do in May.
It's really, really awesome. And so I wanted to thank you, one, Joe, for all of your work in that. Well, one of the questions we had and I think this we had a lot of I'm going to send this to you guys if it's OK afterwards.
But given the work you've done in creating that awareness of the questions was how do we get schools on board K through twelve? And I I I like that question because we did we did a lot of work with creating awareness at the at a younger level, like creating biking awareness for new drivers.
And there's such a lack of education and accessibility right now. Where do you see global awareness, global accessibility? Where is going and what role can it play in education?
(Joe) Yeah, it's it's really vital in education. It's been a long time since I was a kid and I don't have kids, so I'm a little bit removed from the K to twelve. What goes on, especially today? I'm not sure how much technology as a part of the K to twelve, but we did release a report about the K to twelve. I think it was 2019 or no, maybe maybe it was 2020.
As the pandemic came along, we partnered with Sharon Roche over at Nobility and I know that she's doing some good work over there, as well as teach access in order to help bring the the education about accessibility to the schools.
So I think it's an important an important thing to do. Any time you're talking about technology, you need to include accessibility in it. But if you don't mind, I'm going to divert a bit from your question to also mention that Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a day, but we have launched the foundation last GAAD, so we now have the GAAD Foundation. And as part of that, we're trying to expand it from being just about a day to being throughout the entire year. So there's a lot more work going on, and education is certainly an important part of it.
But I will defer to teach access because they are really focused on the educational side of it.
(Kevin) Yeah. And for everyone that's teachaccess.org.
(Joe) I believe so. Yeah.
(Kevin) Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, but thank you, guys.
Thank you both. I'll tell you what, it's really an honor to meet you both. Like I said, I actually am a really a fan. I get to watch these interviews that I wish that was me, and then I was fortunate to get to meet you both.
So thank you, Lori. Thank you Joe.
(Lori) Thank you Kevin.
(Joe) It's a pleasure.
(Kevin) You guys are the best. Thank you so much for doing this.
(Lori) Thank you.
(Kevin) Sorry, Alycia.
(Alycia Anderson - MC) That's okay. I was fangirling myself and we're a couple of minutes late for me jumping on because I was so into it.
(Lori) Very nice to meet you too.
(Alycia) Oh, thank you. This is amazing. Amazing conversation. So I know I'm speaking for the entire group that's attending. Thank you for everything. You two are just rock stars.