A11yNYC Meetup - Oct 1 2019 -  Designing With Accessibility in Mind with Regine Gilbert



>> Hello, everybody; welcome to Accessibility New York City. I'm Stacy Smith
and one of the core organizers of tonight's Meetup, and really excited to see
a full house. And I'll go ahead and say hi to those of you watching on the
stream. We're happy to have you here, too.

So, yeah. Before we get started, I'd like to first give a special mention to
our very generous sponsors, Equal Entry, Adobe, Level Access and thotbot.
This is a really cool space to meet up in. But, of course, we don't do these
alone. This is a very much a team effort. And in addition to my Meetup
coorganizers, I'd like to say a special thank you to Joly Mcfie, and he's
making the lovely technology happening to make the livestream and the
subsequent recording possible. And also to our friends at White Coat
Captioning, and Diane Scott who will be doing the live captions. Thank you to
Diane.

I hope you'll stick around at the end of the presentation. We'll have an
additional short presentation that I think will be of interest to most of you
in the room. That will take a couple of minutes. And also, it's a meetup, so
stick around and mingle, introduce yourselves to each other. If you have any
questions, I'm sure she'll enjoy getting to meet you and having a chat.

And without further ado, I'll go ahead and hand it over to tonight's
presenter.

[ Applause ]

>> Hello, everyone, thank you for coming out. I'm Regine Gilbert. And I'm
going to be speaking about designing with accessibility in mind. I've done
this talk a few times, but I've never actually done what I'm about to show
you today. You all give me good feedback, I'm sure. I'll tell you a little
bit about myself, how I got into accessibility.

I've been in UX design five years, almost six. But I have been in technology
for over ten years. I decided to make a career change from product manager
into UX design, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Working in
IT, working inhouse and working with software, I didn't deal with the outsid
digital world until I got into UX.

When I got into UX, I learned about accessibility from just reading. And
then, I learned about this Meetup where I got connected with Thomas and
Shawn. And I've learned so much from this Meetup. It's been a gift in my
life. I've gotten friends out of this.

And I'll tell you about one of the first times that I attended this meetup.
When I attended the meetup, I met a person who is blind and telling her, oh,
I do UX, design. And she said, what is that? I said, well, making things more
usable for people. And then, she asked me a question and she asked me, do
people like you think about people like me? When you're making stuff?

And I sat there. And I thought for a minute. And up until that point, I
really hadn't heard people talk about making things for people with
disabilities. I told her honestly, no, but I will tell you this. I will make
sure I think about it. I'll make sure that anybody I work with thinks about
it. I'll make sure anybody I teach thinks about it.

And so, that has been my commitment ever since. Beside that, I grew up with a
mother who had cognitive issues as well as a cousin who is deaf. So being
part of a family with people with disabilities has kind of, it's part of my
journey and part of my story.

So let me get into it. I found this quote on Twitter from Blind New World
that said, no one who truly cares about design should ignore #accessibility.
Designing with empathy isn't just the right thing to do as a designer, it's
the future of design, full stop.

So I want to talk to you all about the seven principles of universal design.
So how many of you have here know about Universal Design? By a show of hands.
A few of you. Not a lot.

In universal design, there's equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and
intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical
effort, size and space for approach and user.

So universal design is not specifically for the web, it came from Ronald Mace
and a team of architects, product designers and engineers in the '90s. But we
can take the seven principles and apply them to the web.

So equitable use. How many of you check color contrast on a daily basis up in
here? Who? Who? Who? Just a few. Okay. So, please, if you work with color at
all, use a color contrast checker. It's not that hard, honestly. And it can
change things. Have you ever gone outside and tried to use your phone and
you're trying to see what's on the screen but it's bright out and you can't
because it's probably low contrast and you can't see? Just do it.

Just make it high contrast. So flexibility in use. Resizing text. Users
should be able to read text and make it larger or smaller. Have you ever had
to zoom in on something because you can't see it? Anyone here have to do that
ever? Yes? Yes? So make it possible, right? Don't just make some image that's
really small and then you zoom in and it becomes super pixelated.

>> Simple and easy to use. WTF, what does that stand for? I'm not cursing
here. What's the focus? Can I see where I need to go? Are you pointing me in
the right direction? WTF. What's the focus? Don't let your users get lost.
Give them a way. Show them a way to go. Keep it simple. Honestly, keep things
simple.

Number four is perceptible information. So information architecture. Are you
organizing your information in a way that's understandable for people? Right?
Organize it so it makes sense. People know what information architecture is
in here? Henry, what is it?

I'm just kidding. It's okay. Henry's my former student. I won't do that to
you. So make sure we all kind of know what architecture is. Architecture's a
structure of something. So does something make sense? Are you putting things
in the right place? Are you putting things so that the hierarchy of things
makes sense?

Tolerance for error. Please let me undo something. If I did it, let me take
it back. Yeah? So let users correct their errors because you don't want to
get them stuck somewhere.

Can we talk about forms? Make forms that don't require more information
needed to the goal. I just want to be able to put my name and my email and go
do that thing I want to do. I don't want to have to put in everything else.
When you're creating something for someone, what do they need to do. What do
they need to do? And what is the minimum amount of effort that you can have
to that? Think of all of your users. Users may not have use of both hands, or
they may just use the keyboard or some sort of alternative, right?

So keeping that in mind, whatever you're making, make sure you're thinking
about whoever could be using it. I meant to start with this question. I'm
going to throw it in now. How many people in this room have ever been left
out of anything? How did it make you feel? Sad? How did it feel when you were
left out? Isolated, frustrated? I want you to remember this feeling when you
don't make things accessible. This is exactly what it is. It's not about
standards, it's not about compliance. It is the feeling of being left out of
something.

And we all know what that feels like. You may not know what it feels like to
be disabled. You do know what it feels to be left out. And it doesn't feel
good. When we're making things, we should keep that in mind.

So Web Aim. Anybody here familiar with Web Aim? What is it? Lauren? I'm going
to call on people I know. So it's a browser extension. It's a resource.

Yes, they're a great resource for accessibility, WebAIM.org. And in February
this year, they did a survey of a million websites, a million homepages.
Anybody here familiar with this? Yeah. You saw it? What did you think?

Oh, your site was on it. Okay. So, yeah, that's something. So there was an
average of 59.6 errors per home page. Users with disability would expect to
counter software detectable errors on one in every 13 elements with which
they engage.

So I want you to think about a website that you go to. And imagine getting an
error on the 13th thing that you see on a page. How would that make you feel?
Anyone? Annoyed. Maybe you won't be feeling the best about yourself. Right?
You may not trust the brand that made the website.

So 97.8% of home pages had software detectable WCAG 2.0 noncompliance. For
those of you who don't know what WCAG stands for, different ways of saying
it. But it standards for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. How many
people in this room are familiar with the web content accessibility
guidelines? Quite a few of you. I'm talking to my peeps here. So, I expect
that.

So for people who don't know, these are standards. They're used
internationally, and they're pretty awesome, but they also can be complex to
understand for people who are not familiar with them. So some of the most
common errors was low contrast. 85%, 85%. How many of you in this room create
something? Are you creators? Are you developers? Are you designers? This is
y'all. This is y'all.

This 85% color contrast is me. It's all of us. Right? 68% missing alternative
text. 58% empty links. 52.8%, missing input labels. 33.1%, missing document
language. 25%, empty buttons. What does this tell you? What are we doing?
What are we not doing? As designers, developers, creators, copy, whatever it
is you're working on, what are we not doing? Any thoughts on this?

1 million websites. And this is just the home page. This doesn't even get
into the other pages of the sites. And these are the errors. And the first
one is so easy. Color contrast is not hard. Today, I got an email that had
pink background with white text.

Did you get that email? You haven't opened your email? So it's, we got it
from the same organization, I think. So it had pink background, light pink
background with white text. Now, because I am mindful of accessibility and
because I'm constantly looking and constantly using color contrast checkers
and just thinking about it a lot, the first thing I thought, I couldn't even
read it. I said, the contrast is off.

I can't. I can't even read it. I was just done. Please, color contrast is one
of the more simple things that you can fix. We can do better. What can
designers do? I talked to designers because I'm a designer and I still have a
lot to learn, admittedly.

How many do I have here? Quite a few. How many of you check color contrast?
Really? Okay. I believe you. Information plus experience equals knowledge.
It's one thing for you to come here. It's one thing for you to read. It's one
thing for you to learn. You have to do the right thing.

You have to make sure that the work you're doing is not giving people that
feeling that you all know so well. When you can do something as simple as
check the color, that's a huge difference for someone to have access.
Information plus experience equals knowledge. It's not about just getting the
information. It's not just about being able to regurgitate the web content
accessibility guidelines or whatever the color contrast may be. It's about
you actually doing the work and making sure that the work has results so that
it's usable and people can see it.

Because then, they'll feel good about using the stuff that you built. Let's
talk about empathy, shall we? What do you know about empathy. What is
empathy? When you're able to feel what someone else is feeling. What's
compassion?

No.

>> That's when you can't necessarily relate, but you can use a combination of
your imagination and your experiences to at least comprehend what you're
feeling even if you can't feel it yourself because of your own background.

>> So using a combination of your feelings, experience, and seeing how that
might feel. Say that one more time. 5yearold? Compassionate? Okay. I don't
understand.

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> Okay.

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> Okay.

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> Yeah, I was just asking for a definition.

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> So compassion could be a form of love. Yeah. Okay. So I have this up here,
and it may be hard for some people to see in the back. So I'm going to
describe the image that is here. This is a snowy day at a school. And there
are some kids who are standing outside and there is also a person who is in a
wheelchair.

The person who is with the shovel in hand is removing the snow. Now, the
person says, the person in the wheelchair says, could you please shovel the
ramp? The person with the shovel says, all these other kids are waiting to
use the stairs.

When I get through shoveling them off, then I will clear the ramp for you.
The person in the wheelchair then says, but if you shovel the ramp, we can
all get in. What does this tell you about empathy versus compassion? Yes?

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> So compassion is when you start thinking.

>> When you stop thinking about people as different. Empathy is a dualistic
people. Compassion, no separation of me and you. I do for you what I do
(inaudible).

>> I'm going to repeat that because not everybody can hear you on the live.
Yeah, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I like it to be interactive.

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> People speak up.

>> So compassion is when you stop necessarily thinking about people as
separate and start thinking about them as you. As a whole. Us as a whole. We
as a whole, right? So I love this comic because I think it's such a good
representation, I've actually shown it in the workplace when I've been
talking about accessibility.

And when I show this, then people actually kind of get it. Because it does a
lot of times if you work in accessibility, you know it is an ongoing thing
for people to get it. For people to understand it. Which is why I like for
everyone to think about why, you know, or how you feel when you've been left
out of something. Because that you can relate to. And that's something
everybody can relate to.

If you start small and build on what you have, you can continue to multiply
that into something greater. While picking up all of the valuable lessons
along the way. You learn all of the secrets to the game on your way up. Now,
for those of you who are learning about accessibility, it is a lifelong thing
because there are so many different types of disabilities. As you move on in
your careers, as you move on in your life, things are going to change in your
life. We are all temporarily ablebodied, right? Things change. Vision
changes. We're all looking at screens almost all the time. We have ear buds
in, right?

And naturally, as you age, your eyes get a little worse, your ears get a
little worse, your audio. You're not hearing things as you once did. Things
change. And so, you've got to keep that in mind. How many of you know who Don
Norman is? Who is Don Norman?

Norman Doors? What is that about? Designer of everyday things. Great book.
Yes?

>> Designer who was thinking of talking a lot about when you interact with an
object or website or anything, there are certain aspects of that object that
tell you the ways you can interact with it.

>> Yeah.

>> And things need to be designed so they clearly communicate how you can
interact with them. And so, they're intuitive. So the Norman Door looks the
same on both sides. You can't tell what to do. And just by making things look
different by using visual or intellectual cues, you can make things
accessible and easy just by saying, like, this is what this is, this is what
it does, and empowering the user or the person to be confident when
interacting with it.

>> That's great. Empowering the person to to be confident when interacting
with it. So Don Norman, he wrote an article back in May that really inspired
me. And the article was written by him. Don Norman, for those who don't know,
he is the one that coined term UX. User experience. He's considered the
godfather of UX. And you know, has come up with so many different ideas and
phrases that we all use.

So Don Norman is now 83 years old. And he said, I wrote the book on design.
And we do a disservice to the elderly. Basically, he didn't think about
designing for his older self. Right? And so, out of this, I came up with an
idea to create a workshop where folks would design for their older selves.

So I'm just going to ask the room, um, what age do you think is old? Now,
some of you have done the workshop, I think a few of you have. So you know,
don't answer if you have.

But for a lot of you haven't. So just shout it out. How old do you think is
old? When you start lying about your age, what else? How old? 35? All right.
We're going to keep it moving.

[ Laughter ]

80. 65. When you start getting the AARP Magazine. What else? How old is old?
When you stop lying about your age. Yes? Hey.

>> Hello. What about when you can no longer (speaker off mic).

>> When you can no longer use the things around you. When you start planning
your funeral.

>> Yeah.

>> Oh, my gosh.

>> I think it's when your age starts affecting what you quote unquote
normally do, right? So I feel old even at 35 sometimes because I can't do the
things. And so, at different times it makes you feel old.

>> I was diagnosed with arthritis at age 28. You know?

>> (Speaker off mic).

>> So when you start seeing these commercials and thinking, is that for me?
So, you know, we all have these things, right? And this idea and this concept
of what's old. So in this article that Don Norman wrote, sorry, yes? When you
feel nostalgic or you think the music is terrible because it was so good when
you were growing up. In this article that Don Norman wrote, they referenced
another article that said you should really start spending for your future
self. This was based off a popup exhibition at the design museum in London.
And they surveyed a thousand people. And they asked people, how old is old?
And the respondents said, 73. For a moment, I want you to think about
yourself.

You as a 73yearold person. And what does your life look like? What happens
as you get older? What are you already feeling in your body at this current
age? Take a moment, think about what year it will be when you are 73. Let's
all do this together. 73.

What does your life look like? Your life, not somebody you're imagining, you.
And what do you want it to look like? And why? Why don't we start making
things for ourself now for that person in the future? Who do you think about
the most?

If I asked my students, I asked it several times, we often think about
ourselves the most. And therefore, it becomes really hard when we try to
think about accessibility and think about someone who is not us. Especially
if we're not disabled.

But when you start thinking about you and you as you get older and the things
that you want to still be able to do, potentially, despite everything else
going on with you. This is important to think about. We are the ones that
create our future. There are so many designers in this room. Why are we doing
things for ourselves as we progress and age in life?

So I like this quote from Don Norman, don't think that thoughtful design is
just for the elderly and sick. In the field of design, this is called
inclusive design for a reason. It helps everyone.

What does your future look like? What do you want to build? What do you want
to see? I have a hard time now opening almost everything. They make it
impossible to open packages. Why are we doing that? Who created this? And who
did they create it for?

>> This goes 

>> Can you give him the mic, I don't think anybody can hear. Just one second.
Hold that thought.

>> What you're saying touches on a serious point goes beyond age and what
we're talking about right now, but to design the systems in general. And one
of the keys, I think, maybe something called forward compatible design, which
is an article I started writing sometime ago that I stopped writing because
it's like a systems engineering question. If you look at serious things like
what happened in Fukushima and Japan about ten years ago by the nuclear
reactor, one of the reasons the disaster was so bad, they had outdated
systems in terms of the actual confidence, something built over 50 years ago.
And they had no, it was designed in the way in which was hard to replace the
competence in the reactor.

To take out and replace. Updates in terms of esthetics and for as the times
change. For example, you say, oh, someone comes up with a nicer way to do
that in two years. And you can comparably switch around without spoiling the
entire system. We need to look at forward compatible design, design that is
easily integrated into the future as we go along. Thanks.

>> Thank you. That's a very good point. Anyone who has children here and you
want that stroller that's going to last beyond them being an infant, that's
going to work when they're a toddler, right? You don't want to buy multiple
strollers. You're wanting to have something grow with them. Right? Why aren't
we making these things?

I'm done, actually. This was it. These are some resources that I put up. I
think it's great to look at the Microsoft Inclusive Design toolkit. It's a
great reference. Permanent, temporary and situational. Check your color, I
hope you do, but this is a plugin you can use. Also, please, color contrast,
easiest thing you could do for accessibility. As a designer, there's color
contrast checker. And those of you very interested in accessibility just as a
whole, I highly recommend you sign up for the A11y weekly email. So you'll
get an email every Monday with the latest and greatest that's going on in the
world of accessibility. I think following the #A11y is also very good. Does
everyone know what A11y stands for in here? Yes? Okay.

See. Not everybody in here knows. And that's okay. Because one thing, I'll
say this one thing, it's actually okay to say that you don't know something.
Everyone. What is this that people say on Twitter? I don't know who needs to
hear this.

[ Laughter ]

But it's okay if you don't know. And it's okay. A11y is the numernym. Between
the A11y there are 11 characters. So A11y. I didn't know what the heck it
meant for a long time, to be honest. And then I discovered what it was. So
now you know.

I will open this up for any questions anyone has about anything I can answer.
Also, I will say early next year, I have a book coming out on inclusive
design, designing with accessibility in mind. Published by A Press, which I
spent a good year working on. And it is a little bit of this and a little bit
of that. And I, I am proud of the work that I did. I want to give a shoutout
to Sarah Allen. I made sure to have my technical reviewer on the book be a
person with disability. So shoutout to Sarah. Probably will not be watching
this. But I will give a shoutout.

I have that coming out. I also have a skills share called Inclusive UX, if
anybody's interested in that. It's a quick 30 minutes on user experience if,
and accessibility, if you're interested. And I want to thank you all for
coming here tonight because you could be anywhere. You chose to be here. I'd
like to open it up for questions if I have time.

>> Absolutely. If you have a question, just flag me down.

>> Hi, okay. I used to work as an applied behavioral analysis. And I was
wondering, is there any good technology for kids with autism? Or, like, with
occupational therapy and central auditory processing disorder? Have you heard
anything about that?

>> No. I don't know the answer to that. Because that's not my specialty area.

>> Yeah.

>> But, can you connect with me and I will find out?

>> I would love that.

>> I would love to find a person to find that answer for you.

>> Thank you.

>> Hello. I guess one, I guess the biggest concern I definitely have around
accessibility stuff is, I guess, getting it to actually happen.

>> Right.

>> I work for, like, six months or whatever, they care about accessibility, I
think they want to still get your money. I learned a lot more about
accessibility there and they're actually trying to implement a lot of that
stuff. And there going a lot of places, it's like, let's get this product
out, right? Or let's get this thing done. And you know, oh, we don't have
time to worry about adding the ARIA tags. You know, about doing, making sure
this is all done and things like that. So how do you recommend or suggest
that designers kind of not only advocate for that but actually do things to
make it actually happen?

>> Okay. I brought back up the quote. If you start small, start small. Say
what can we do? What can we add to this build instead of looking at what we
can't add to this build. Because there's always a little something that you
can add to each and every build. And just like all the buildings out here in
New York City that are brick by brick, that's how you do it. Brick by brick.

Start small. Start with the smallest thing that you can do and see, like, I'm
a big fan of planting seeds. There's no way to change people's minds
overnight. But there is a way to just start to say it. Start to do it. And
start to execute it. I mean, that's general, that's the truth. That's the
only way I've known how to do it. I certainly can't change people's minds.
And it starts at the top. And when the people at the top don't give a crap,
it's really, really difficult to try to do anything.

So try to do what you can with what you have and what you can.

>> (Speaker off mic). If we show them the dollars involved because there are
lots of disabled people out there and the people who related to disabled
people. If you show them it's actually from the monetary perspective, it's to
advantage to care about these people, and they will actually  just mentione
the buyin from the top is important. If you don't have buyin from the top,
you're wasting your time. But tell them, listen, there's a whole demographic
we're leaving out. Oh, we forgot about that. Yeah.

>> Or you start doing it. I worked at a place where they had had some issues.
And I said, I'm going to put together accessibility guidelines. And I did.
And I did screenshots and I looked up, I'm not a developer, but I found all
the information I could for the developers. I found all of the information I
could for copyrighting. And I put this document together, sent it to my boss.
She said, this is great, I'm going to send it to everybody.

I didn't ask, I just did it because something needed to be done. And
sometimes, that's what you have to do. Any other questions? Oh. I think
they're going to go back there and then we'll. Hey, Mariella.

>> Hi. One of the questions I've been wanting to ask you for some time is, is
there ever such a thing as universal accessibility? And by that I mean, I'm
putting together this event on Saturdays.

>> You're going to talk about your event?

>> So one of the things I've noticed is that a lot of tools are created for
people with disabilities instead of with people with disabilities. And so,
this is going to be an event where people with disabilities talk about
challenges that they have and a team of engineers, designers, rehab
professionals work with that individual with the disabilities kind of like a
hackathon but we don't want to call it that because we don't want to scare
people. We're calling it a buildathon. And one of the presenters is going to
be there.

But anyway, this Saturday if you're interested, come talk to me. But anyway.
My original question is, is there such a thing as universal design? Because
one of the things I'm learning while I was putting this event together is
that you could account for as many disabilities to make an event accessible
and inclusive.

But there's still things you're going to miss. For example, we tried to make
the event accessible. We forgot color contrast, we include captioning, but
then we forget ASL speakers or, like, it's just so many things. So is there
ever a way that you can actually make an event or anything truly accessible
where you include everyone?

>> You can try. And honestly, that's getting there. Right? And when you
incorporate people with those types of disabilities in the creation process,
you will get the results you need. When you have people who are not disabled,
right? Organizing an event, they're not going to think about certain things.
So if you know that you want to have a variety of people coming to your
event, have them be part of the creation. Whatever it is you're creating.
Nothing about us without us. That's it. And that's the best way you'll get to
as universal as you can get, in my opinion.

Oh, there's a question up here.

>> Hi. So I work at a place where a digital company but our primary consumers
are the elderly. And one of the things that we run into is in addition to
meeting sort of basic web accessibility contrast or baseline things, the
medium itself is in some ways challenging just digital tools for people so
you sort of have to layer on this level of either, like, it's something we
struggle with. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about how to go
about making things more accessible when there's not sort of the intuitive
sense of, like, what the agenda is or how to approach or why you would engage
with a particular product when it's not something that's been familiar to you
in your experience.

>> Right. So you I'm sure don't have any elderly people on your team.

>> There are people who are older within our organization, but they're
primarily retirees. We do user testing, but 

>> Yeah, I would say if you could do some codesign, that would be so helpful
because what you have when you're designing for an audience that's not you,
right, you've been using digital products for quite some time, I'm sure. And
since, you know, what is it then? 11 years since the iPhone came out? We're
super savvy. If you think about someone who is born today.

If they see a screen, they're going to touch it. Whereas, if you have someone
who grew up in times where you still memorized everybody's phone number, you
didn't just push a button. You still, like, maybe you did the rotary. Right?
To call people, how many people remember that? Right?

Maybe you did the rotary. So you have people who were not thinking the way
your team is potentially thinking. And if there's any way whatsoever to do
codesign and bring them in a little earlier, even if you get one or two
people, it would certainly help. Because when you do usability testing, it's
after the fact. You've already created it. And you haven't had the people
actually participate in designing whatever it is you're making.

And ask them what they want when they're there. You know, what are they
looking for? What's going to work for them? They may or may not be savvy. I
mean, so my parents are deceased. I have a New York mom. And my New York mom
today was very excited because she updated her iPad to iOS13. So she's
sending me text messages because she has a Samsung. Her regular cell phone is
a Samsung phone. She doesn't like it. But she loves her iPad. And she's
sending me a text message, you can probably tell I upgraded to the iOS13. And
I don't know how she thinks I can tell that from the text message, but you
know, this is her using technology's kind of newish for her. And so I think
keeping that in mind when you're building this is super helpful. I hope that
answers your question. I'm not sure.

Okay. Uh  hi online folks.

>> You'll never guest who it is. It's Thomas.

>> Oh, Thomas. Hello.

>> Thomas asks, I know you do work in VR and AR accessibility, can you
comment on some interesting design techniques in this space?

>> Okay. So yes. I actually created a course for the AR lab. And so, a lot of
times we don't, when we think about AR and VR, we don't think about it for
people with disabilities, but there's a lot of use around those areas,
especially when it comes to, for example, I worked, got to work with an AR
company that was working on way finding for people with dementia, right?

So using iPads to direct them back to their room. As they walked the halls
because they didn't remember exactly where to go.

So there is opportunity in these areas. Is anybody here interested in AR or
VR? Yes?

>> Lost captions.

>> Oh. I did. Okay. Sorry. Sorry, live people. Okay. What I would say, this
area is so new when I created this course for the AR Lab, it was a bit of a
challenge to find things in relation to accessibility and AR, VR because it
is so new. I will say that there needs to be work around this because as a
person who is going to get older, I want to be able to use these products,
again. We are the creators. So it is my hope to have some influence on the
future creators that you think about accessibility that you think about that
feeling of being left out and how you don't like that feeling when you are
making these things.

What I would say is I like to throw out this statistic. In the year 2035, in
this country, we will have more people over the age of 65 than we do young
people. Now, all of this technology that we're making today, I want to still
be able to use it when I get older. I hope you would want to still use it
when you get older. So what are we not doing now so that we can use it later.

So these are just some of the things. Thomas, I hope I answered your
question. I'm not sure. Okay. No comment. Thank you. Oh, it's not out yet.
They're still putting it together and editing it. It'll be through our lab.
AR Lab, which is the first ever public/private funded mixed reality lab in
the country.

>> You occupy a very important place in terms of, like, the interface between
ordinary people and the guys who build these systems. And I was just thinking
AR/VR about medical applications and  because not everything is about
accepting your disabilities as they are. Sometimes, there's hope where you
can use, for example, New York science where all of the advances taking place
in medicine where the technologies can help to heal the person. But now,
these communities, like the engineers and the newer scientists and all of the
people, it's a very new field. There's so much going on, traditional fields
emerging and cultivating ways in which we speak in all kinds of ways.

But they need people like you who are interfacing with them, the average
person and advocating stuff like that to have people try out new stuff where
you use AR/VR. And in that space, recover some of the facilities artificial
way, that they don't have in the real world. And they can retrain the nervous
system so we recover.

They did this interesting experiment where they asked people to wear glasses
which showed the world upsidedown. And after a while, the brain, the nervous
systems trained their brains to make them see the world upside, right way up
in spite of the fact that the glasses were showing it upsidedown. Some of the
technologies can help the people to recover in ways we don't think about.

And we need people like you who are interfacing with the common people and
getting students to test these things to be a necessary part and also go to
the government or the scientists who are heading the way. And say, listen, we
can do these things and look for problems that can, there's not everything
you can do that with. But you see where I'm going with this.

>> Yeah. I mean, I feel as UX designer, we are problem solvers, as creators,
we are problem solvers. And if we're not solving problems, what the heck are
we doing here? What is the point? Make things better. Make people feel good.

You all know what it feels like to be left out. Don't do that to other
people. It's as simple as fixing the color, fix the color. If it's one thing
you can do to make things better, make things better. Uh  there's, like, I
don't know people are raising their hands.

>> Okay.

>> I think we might be at time.

>> Take two more questions and we can continue the questions after the
stream. But there's another brief presentation we want you to see. We'll take
two more questions.

>> Okay. There was somebody in the back.

>> (Speaker off mic) input labels, something I wasn't sure about terms.

>> Sure, as a designer don't worry about the input labels as much. That's
more on the other side. But for alternative text, alternative text is what
you'll put for an image. So you want to describe what the image is. So let's
say somebody is using a screen reader, the screen reader will, then, read
what that image is about for somebody who is in an area where there's low
bandwidth and image is not able to download, you can see what that image is.

>> How are you doing? I'm an OS engineer, it's better to get somebody who is
impaired or elderly with the product, but that's not really an everyday
solution. What can we download and learn from was already executing and
ideally?

>> I would say AX is pretty good. I will defer to you for more applications.

>> This is how you're supposed to do it.

>> You can put voiceover on.

>> We've done that.

>> Sorry. We've done that. And it was pretty terrible. So we knew that we
just, we needed to be pointed in a better direction rather than shooting in
the dark.

>> (Speaker off mic). So I would probably check the default apps to begin
with and see how they're a sort of thing. iOS13 has a new voice control and
puts labels on everything and you can talk interactively. And I find it
interesting. I find it very interesting to do a quick check because you can
visually see all of the text labels. If you're missing a label (speaker off
mic).

>> Also, continuous integration. So if your process includes continuous
integration, that can be automated. But it doesn't, it will skip the part
where you would require a human being. So a picture of a cat with alt text, a
dog, it doesn't make any sense. But it's technically sound.

>> Last question here.

>> First of all, great job today. This is wonderful. And I mean, I just
wanted to explain why I said aging is when you can no longer use the things
around you is that I find, okay, so I have an 84yearold dad and a
68yearold mom. And they, my dad boxes three days a week. He works seven
days. My mom is constantly climbing mountains, hiking this, that. They are
living their best life. The only time that they feel old and that they seem
old is when they're saying to me, how did Auntie Jean know you went swimming
yesterday with Lexi? Oh, Facebook? How am I supposed to? So my mom's actually
an art director.

And she used to be able to design a logo in five minutes on her old Apple
products. And I guess, there's certain, you know, tech that is almost more
complicated in her mind than it needs to be. And so, now she'll spend two
hours trying to figure out, where's the color wheel, right? Or something
basic like that.

And so, I do think one of the things we can do collectively is try to
simplify the things that we are creating so that we're not being exclusive. I
think we always thought exclusive as being this elitist ideal. But you can't
be inclusive and exclusive at the same time. Does that make sense?

>> Yes.

>> So thank you for mentioning that wonderful and horrifying statistic about
2035. Because I think we do tend to focus on the future as in the young
future. And we forget about the future for everyone else and the people who
gave us generational histories and rich things that are the basis for
everything that we're doing today. And I think it's a real disservice not
only to the elderly community but the disability community, and it's all
connected.

So I just want to thank you for, you made me think a lot about what's next.
And I'd love to find out, how can we make it simpler? And if you have an
answer to that, that'd be great.

>> Yeah. I think and this will be my last thought. We think about ourselves a
lot. We don't tend to think about the "we" part of this. What connects us
all? What connects us all is feeling loved. What connects us all is feeling
accepted. What connects us all is being together and being able to do things.

And I don't know why we don't do that. And so, it is up to us to create that
future. So thank you for your time.

[ Applause ]

Also, I would like to get a selfie with you all in the background. Why not.
Say hello. Thank you. Thank you, all.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you so much. Right now, I'd like to invite Ying up to give a quick
presentation of a wonderful project she's working on.

>> Thank you for coming.

>> Okay. Hi, everyone, my name is Ying, I'm here with my teammate Sarav, and
we're from the Your Everyday A11y project. I have a confession to make. I did
not do contrast check. I changed it last second for you. So we learn
something new every day. So what we're here to talk about really quickly, we
have an event coming up in November and we wanted to tell the community about
it and also just get the word out.

Okay. So, un, what are we? What do we do? At Your Everyday A11y, workshop
series geared toward empowering those with disabilities to live more
independently and autonomously. And we seek to leverage mobile technology
across multiple topics, such as navigation, mobile banking, scheduling apps,
voice interfaces and also social media ethics.

So before I get into the actual event, just a bit about us. So you see me
here with Sarav. But the idea from the project came from Sam Berman. Sam
always talks about the story. He has cerebral palsy, and he said the first
time he got a smartphone at 20 was when he realized, I have enough
information in my hand to travel New York City by myself. That's the first
time he could go places without his girlfriend, his parents, a caretaker and
gave him a great sense of confidence.

And so, you know, for us city kids, we start taking the subway very early on.
And for Sam, it wasn't until he was 20 to do that by himself, which is great
story. Talks about using Google Maps technology. That's kind of the
inspiration of where our project came from.

And because of that, our first workshop is going to be on November 2nd from
10:00 to 12:00. And this one is going to focus strictly on navigation, really
inspired first by Sam's story. How can we give other people like Sam, you
know, who struggle with using technology that same sort of sense of
confidence to just go out into the world and do what they need to do? So, I
know everyone in this room is very technologically savvy. You may have one
phone, even two. So this is more for people you may know that could benefit
from a workshop like this.

So really, what we're trying to teach is how can you use mobile technology to
optimize the accessibility and the convenience of the transportation route
that you want to use? You know, safety is a big concern. Sam talks about,
sometimes, I get to a place and don't realize there's way more stairs than I
thought there'd be. And I can't find the elevator where I want to go. So
being able to figure out those things in advance really helps, you know,
people like Sam.

And also, we just want to arm people with disabilities with the tools and
know hoe to find the routes that are safe, convenient and cost effective for
them. Think about going into New York City today. You're going to be thinking
about, okay, how do I get there on time? How many transfers? Do I want to
take a bus, subway or taxi today? You're optimizing for yourself. We want to
be able to give that sort of knowledge to someone else. How can they optimize
best for them?

And so, really, the ideal participant is someone who wants to learn more how
to use navigational tools and apps to optimize their transportation. Someone
who is looking to use technology to travel more independently and safely
around New York City. And one requirement, if you do want to come to our
workshop, is you have to have a smartphone. So if you know of anyone who
could benefit from this workshop, please have them RSVP at our website. Maybe
you can help them RSVP, as well.

And yeah. Really, we just want to get the word out. If you know anyone who
can benefit, please direct them to the website. And if you're interested in
our project, come talk to us after. That's it.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you so much. It's going to be an amazing workshop. Hopefully, you'll
get some participants out of here and hopefully, you'll share it with your
networks, as well. Okay. So with that, we'll end the stream here. But I just
want to thank everybody else for coming out tonight. This is a great event.
If you'd like to relive it, again, or share it with a friend, of course, we
archive all of our meetups, visit our YouTube page. If you're not a member of
our meetup, I encourage you to join so you can stay in touch with our future
events and also this sort of announcements job opportunities, internships,
all of that stuff we like to send out. You can follow us on our Twitter where
we post a lot of the information, as well.

And if you have any announcements or want to make a special presentation or
have anything you want to share with the community here, please reach out to
us. We love giving everybody a chance to share with community. So please let
us know. I'd like to thank our sponsors one more time. Equal Entry, Adobe,
Level Access and thotbot and with that, I'll see you at the next one. Have a
good night.

[ Applause ]