- Hey, welcome to the "State of Accessibility Podcast". Today, we're coming live from CSUN. We're at the Vispero booth right now. I am Mark Miller, I work with TPGi. I'm the director of sales. And of course, I'm here with my good friend as always, David Sloan. - Hi, everyone, I'm David Sloan, chief accessibility officer at Vispero and practice manager of user experience at TPGi. And fingers crossed, this is gonna work and we're not gonna have any technical issues. So, advanced apologies if we suddenly disappear. - I think we're doing great. So, we've been at CSUN, I've been here since Sunday. This is Thursday. And I have seen so much, it's always amazing to be here and be amongst other people in the accessibility industry with that are like-minded, that are thinking about accessibility, thinking about advancing accessibility. I've been meeting with people, I've been in the booth, I've been doing presentations. I don't know, have you had a chance to see any presentations? - I have seen, I think, three presentations. So, before I go into the best one I've seen so far- - Mm-hmm . - I'm just gonna walk back and just have a kind of one-minute high-level discussion, or description of CSUN. CSUN is an annual conference, takes place in Anaheim in California in March every year. And it's probably the biggest annual conference on digital accessibility and assistive technology. It's organized by the California State University at Northridge, hence the name. So, technically, the name of the conference is the name of a university. But in accessibility, we've all come to know CSUN as meaning this annual get-together. And it's a wonderful place for people to connect, to learn more about what's happening, new developments in digital accessibility, assistive technologies. There's a huge exhibition room where we are just now. - That's right. - Full of people, showcasing different software, hardware products for accessibility and lots of talks going on in multiple different rooms. I think there's like seven or eight parallel tracks. So, there's no shortage of figuring out what to do. - Not at all. - Lots of people to talk to, whether you're new to accessibility, or you've been coming here for years and are meeting up with old friends and people that you've or maybe I've never met in person, but following on LinkedIn or social media. - That's right. - It's an amazing experience and it's also pretty tiring. So, then answering, a question, like "What's been the best session so far?" That's not an easy question, right? - You're a little sleep-deprived, like- - Yeah. - I don't even know if I remember all my sessions. No, and I think the most important thing you said there, and what I really love about CSUN is the people. - Yeah. - And is reconnecting with people that are working in a similar industry, the same things are important to them that are important to you. And we all sort of sit in our bubbles- - Right. - During the year and work on these things. So, getting together and being able to be face to face and share all that is just is amazing. I've done two presentations, so, I will talk about them in a minute. But one of the things I do wanna get to, is of what you've seen of other presentations, what has had the most impact on you? - Well, the one I'm going to mention, is one I went to yesterday, late in the afternoon by a speaker, Kelly Melcher from State of Minnesota. And she talked about building your accessibility network. And one of the things that I feel like the community is somewhat struggling with, is burnout and being, feeling, like you're the only person doing accessibility. And with developments, here in the US and elsewhere, the sense that accessibility is maybe not such a priority as it used to be when we all know that it's still super important to be- - Right. - Focusing on digital accessibility. So, this talk was really some really practical advice on building your network in your organization and beyond, ways to connect to people, ways to help them get on board with accessibility in very specific ways and feel successful. So, it was just a very, very straightforward, very well-presented set of recommendations. And one of the really cool things that I'm gonna take away and pass on, is when you are an accessibility advocate and you feel like you're making no progress, or you feel like you just need to take a break, when you've built a network, it's like you have this massive big relay-race team. So, you pass on the baton to someone else, you get a rest and they can continue the enthusiasm, rather than if you're the only person, you've got no network, you're the only, when you can't keep on going, there's no one else to take over. So, this relay where somebody's on, you take a rest and then recuperate- - It's- - Recharged. - Yeah and it's the energy that happens with a whole group of people. And I mean, it's really related to what we're just saying about CSUN, right? Like one of the reasons this is great for us, is because of the energy connecting with our friends and colleagues provides and it's that network. - Yeah. - And it's the energy that's provided, that sounds like a really, really good presentation and I think really appropriate for what we're all doing now. I wanna actually, before we go on to any of that, we have a live audience that is gathered around our booth here, the Vispero booth. And I'm gonna ask Rachel to come around. Can you find my voice, Rachel? - Okay, here, I have my hand out if you wanna take my hand right here. There you go, come on over. And I'm gonna get you in view of the camera here. And I'm gonna put the mic right in front of your mouth and I would like you to tell me who you are, where you're from and why you're at CSUN, what it means to you, go ahead. - Okay, so, this is Rachel Hage, I'm actually from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is my first CSUN conference, I love it. These Vispero and TPGi teams, I was able to go to some of the seminars, wonderful content. I got to meet Sharky, that was awesome. I got some cool swag, this little floppiness pin that I love. And yeah, just happy to be like the guys were saying, just networking. The energy here is amazing. The content, all the seminars, just the unity. And I'm a , so, I'm a JAWS user and a trainer and I love all the Vispero products. And yeah, just being around everyone here has been wonderful. I recently became a CPACC, so, networking with a lot of those guys have- - Oh, congratulations! - Been wonderful. Thank you, thank you. - Congratulations. - Thank you. - That's fantastic. Is this your first CSUN or are you like a- - This is my first CSUN, yes. - Oh, and is it everything that you like just dreamed it would be? - I think more, more, honestly. It's just, I love it, I can't get enough of it. I was so exhausted by the end of the day yesterday, but I was like "One more seminar." Because I just couldn't stop, so, it's been great. Yeah. - Well, thank you. Any highlight before we let you go? Any highlight that just really has stood out to you, since you've been here? It could be anything, a presentation, connection with people, anything. - Yeah, definitely the networking. That's my favorite part so far. Just meeting amazing people out there. But yesterday morning was the Google accessibility updates. I loved all that content that they put out there. That was wonderful, so happy about that. I teach a lot of students using ChromeOS and Android. And it's just, it's awesome stuff they're doing. So, yes! - Fantastic! Well, thank you, thank you so much for coming over and talking to us. Have a great rest of your CSUN. It's only gonna get better from here. All right, thank you. - Thank you, Rachel. - Thank you. - And I think that was the fact that Google are here, talking about their accessibility efforts shows you that this is a conference on the radar of big tech. - Oh, absolutely. - We have presence from worldwide global brands, who are talking about their accessibility efforts. It stretches across small companies focused on accessibility or specific assistive technology products. But we're in California, so, we're kind of, it's- - Yeah. So, and I've had a chance to sit down with some of the Google folks and it's really impressive how focused they are in accessibility, just how focused they are on accessibility of products like Chrome. - Mm-hmm . - Right? Their cloud products and even the accessibility of, or thinking about, really starting to think about what does accessibility mean in something like the Meta glasses and VR and all these kind of things. Because it's not just Google, right? It's the Amazons, it's the Facebooks, it's all these large tech organizations that are really trying to figure out one, how do they improve accessibility today, but what is all this future, right? What is accessibility in VR? What is accessibility in artificial intelligence? What is in large language models, what does this all look like? So, it's amazing to be in such an innovative space, to your point, with small companies and with some of the largest companies that we all know the names of, thinking about and innovating and figuring out how to improve accessibility. - Right and that kind of discussion of we see blog posts talking about device, emerging devices. We might see YouTube videos, people demonstrating using them. Here, there's a chance to see and interact with those devices in person. And when I saw our colleague Matt Ater- - Mm-Hmm . - Using these Meta glasses- - Unbelievable. - Take pictures and send them to the person he was talking to, just through voice. - Here's the most interesting thing to me about the Meta glasses is that we often think about assistive technologies and then the curb-cut effect when assistive technology starts to benefit people beyond its original intended audience, right? So, like Alexa was originally an assistive technology and now, we all enjoy Alexa. The Ray-Ban glasses are almost a reverse of that. They were sent out into the general public. And people with disabilities, people who are blind have really found an amazing use for them. - Yeah, I think, that kind of making this assistive technology, just real and visible to people in person. We all get to walk up to a booth and try something on, or just see somebody using the AT to navigate around the conference room center. - It's incredible, yeah. - Communicate with people, you're seeing AT in practice, you're seeing people use it to independently make the best of the conference experience as well as the people who are demonstrating new stuff. So, it's just, the collection, it would be ridiculous if it was any other way, right? But a conference about accessibility and assistive technology, should include a significant proportion of people with disabilities who are using that tech, or potentially could be using that tech and demonstrating to others how to use that tech. So, it's great to see it in practice being used. If you are non-disabled and you haven't seen somebody using assistive technology, this is a wonderful chance to either, firstly, observe people using tech and better, to talk to them and- - Right. - And ask questions about what works, what doesn't work so well. - And just watching innovation like the Ray-Ban glasses and like, it, I don't know, I wish everybody could experience this, but being on the exhibitor floor and just seeing things we didn't see last year, right, coming up this year is incredible. Let's pull somebody else in real quick, because we have people sort of milling about all around us. And I want to, you and I are, I think, wonderful to listen to. But there's probably other people that people wanna listen to. So, I'm gonna see if I can get Charlie Pike. Can I get you over here real quick to be on the podcast? So, this is Charlie Pike, he works for us. I'm gonna have you introduce yourself real quick, Charlie. But what I'm interested in is really the highlight, like what you've, what's the one surprise or highlight, or really important thing that you've seen, since you've been here at CSUN? - So, I'm Charlie Pike, I'm the director of platform success at, I have to stand in here- - Yeah, there you go. - At TPGi. So, I'm working with our customers and our platform to make sure they're getting the full benefit from the platform, I think. So, you put me on the spot here, what's a big surprise or- - It could be anything. It could be like a conversation with somebody else at the conference that you've had that was great, it could be a presentation, it really could be anything. - Yeah, I mean, I've been coming to this conference actually since, well, a long time, since about 2005, 2006. So, I've always seen it as a gauge of where accessibility is. And we get a very good sense here of what's the thing, what's moving the needle here. I think what I'm seeing this year is a lot of much more maturity around accessibility. That's really surprised me. A lot of the sessions and so on, we're talking about deeper-level things. We're not talking about the basics here, which is something I've always waited for, right? Whenever we get onto the serious topics, process change is accepted now. There's no, we're not talking about just getting all texts on our images. We are really trying to understand how do we get our designers, developers understanding this, getting this and getting down to the really, the nub of the challenges, right? And in a few cases specifically, how do we train, how do we get awareness going, like that was going in your session? There's a lot of interesting stuff going on, but I think the level of depth has really impressed me. - Yeah, I think, that's important. I guess that's reflected in the software evolution as well. When people have realized that accessibility is more than testing and finding all the problems, all the barriers that you didn't know you had. And then, trying to fix them as best you can. The tools are evolving to support process improvement. And we all talk a lot about shift left and having accessibility earlier in the design- - [Charlie Pike] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Process, so, have you seen a change in the kind of functionality of this software that people have been talking about here to support accessibility programs? - Yeah, there's a less emphasis on just finding defects. Because that's all about, I mean, from my experience, a lot of that becomes compliance whack-a-mole. And your issues are arriving as fast as you are fixing them, or faster as the case may be. And I think people have begun to get tired of that process and they wanna see it "Well, how can we fix it for good? And why is this the case?" And we have a lot of people for years, who've been painting by numbers with accessibility. We are giving them prescriptions, "Fix this, fix that." But they don't yet understand what they're doing in any deep way. I think, now, the tools much more emphasis on getting them over the line, but also tools in their hands that are related to their jobs. - Hmm. - I think we've tended in our industry to impose tools on teams. From an accessibility perspective, I think the tools are shifting a little bit more to what developers need to do and what designers need to do. And therefore, how can we fit accessibility into that process? So- - Right. - I think that's part of it. - I think that's a great observation that goes back to the talk that I heard yesterday where it's moving from building tools and processes for accessibility professionals, accessibility specialists. And there will always be a need for that, but much more go to where people are and what people are doing and try, where necessary, help them adjust how they do things. But give them tools to augment what they're already using, rather than saying, "You've gotta stop all that and do it our way." Because here's a special accessibility tool. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, understand the one thing that they can change in their process that would link things together. - Yeah. - For sure, well, thank you Charlie. We really appreciate that. It's always good to get a technical perspective from you on CSUN. So, thank you so much. I've got somebody else here that I wanna talk to real quick before we move on. This is Kory Karlander. Hey, I'm gonna hold the mic right for you, Kory, but come on right in here so we can see you on camera. And really what I want to hear from you, Kory, is what CSUN means to you. - Okay, let me think about that one. So, CSUN just, high-level, there's no conference like it for me, being a person with a disability, a screen reader, it's a place where you're around other like-minded individuals, professionals who are wanting to maintain independence and professionals, who are finding every which way to push technology forward to help those continue independence and continue to thrive. I was very excited this year to have done my first presentation with Elizabeth Whitaker from Freedom Scientific. And as JAWS users, we gave some tips on how to make a document more screen-reader-friendly. Now, I'm not an accessibility engineer, but just from a user perspective, what it means to make a document work for us. And that was very cool. - The most important perspective by the way, right? The user perspective. It seems to me, Kory, like it's really interesting talking to you, because you have this technical interest in the conference and seeing accessibility move forward technically, but it also sounds like being able to come together with people who understand maybe what you go through on a daily basis, is really important as well. - Absolutely. That's the part, it just, it touches me. And there's nowhere else like it. So, to have so many individuals in one vicinity, right, that they just get it and it's special. And there's just so much that comes out of this conference that is shared during this conference. It's just a wealth of knowledge. - Well, very good, Kory. And we really appreciate that perspective, 'cause we can stand here and talk to people all day about what's technical. But to understand the work that we do, the work that our listeners, if you're listening to this podcast, presumably, you probably do the work of, or care about the work of accessibility and it really helps us remember why we're in this industry and why we do this stuff. So, thank you very much. - Yeah. - everything you do. - Thank you, Kory. - You're welcome. - And that thing that Kory said about not being an accessibility engineer, but here are some things you can do to make your documents more accessible. If we needed accessibility engineers to make accessible documents, we failed. - Right, right, right. - So, that kind of breaking down to essential steps that can make a big difference, sharing that knowledge is just so important. - It's important. Well, Kory mentioned her sessions. And I know she was excited, because she's been to CSUN a few years now and this was the first time that she presented. I was not able to attend her session. I'm sure she killed it. But I've done two sessions, two since we've been here. In fact, I'm in a milestone in CSUN that we all look for when we do sessions. And that is being done with your last session. - Yeah. - Because so much pressure comes off of you. I guess, people are are nodding like, "Yes, yes, yes." - Yeah, yeah. - And so, right before this podcast, I crossed that milestone. And I've been very happy to have done my sessions, but also happy that the pressure of doing sessions is off. I did two sessions. One of them was with Seyfarth Shaw and it was a legal update. I was really a bystander in the session. I talked a little bit about how you can, what you need to do from an accessibility standpoint to start to comply with some of the regulations. But if you want, our sessions are posted, our slides are posted. But it was just an incredible look at where we are today from a legal perspective and from a regulatory perspective. And that went over really, really well. Everybody is always interested in how that's evolving. The other session I did with Juanita from Navy Federal Credit Union as we really talked about maturing an accessibility program, the pillars to an accessibility program and the relationship that an organization should have with an accessibility vendor and how that relationship changes over time as you become more and more, as the company becomes more and more mature with their ability to deliver accessible digital projects. We've got a, I'm getting a shout-out from a fan. - I am gonna interrupt, so that people don't think you're just making it up. - Okay, all right. - We have Mitchell Evan here, one of our principal engineers at TPGi, who's just told us Juanita and Mark were amazing. - I'm gonna- - I'm a fan. - And that was off of his phone, 'cause he is unable to talk to us right now. I can't get the blur to go away, but he typed it into his phone to make sure that we heard it and so- - And it depends on witnesses that Mark's presentation was very good. - I'll grab you an eight by 10 and autograph it after this. Thank you very much. No, but it's a pleasure and it's really that's you talk about connecting with people. Juanita and I are two different people from two different, she works for a company, I work for an accessibility organization. And to have us come together, I learned so much just working on the presentation with her and we work together all the time. So, just being in that forced scenario where we had to put together something that we were gonna present here at CSUN, there were things that she said, things that she learned and I'm like, "Oh, that's amazing." In my years, I haven't thought about that. So, it really is a privilege to be able to do things like that. And if you're listening to this and you're like, "Hey, I wish I'd showed up to CSUN," CSUN posts all these presentations. Yes, it would've been great if you were here. That's always the best experience. But you can go through and see what people were talking about, see what the presentations were about and see what that content and experience, the benefit of that content just like everybody else. - Yeah and the conference back channel, there's a lot of stuff going on in LinkedIn, people sharing talks. - Absolutely. - Sharing their reaction to other people's talks. When we have this conversation going on, I'm sure there are others going on as well where people are reflecting what they've heard and the kind of overall, what was the, we're not finished yet, there's still a fair bit to go. But the sort of emerging takeaways, amongst many other things, this conference is a pulse check- - Yeah. - On, well, the state of accessibility to coin a phrase. - That's a great podcast name. Yeah, I think we should do that on LinkedIn Live. - But I think this year, as Charlie said, there's this sense of there's a level of maturing in terms of understanding the problem that needs to be fixed. There are problems that we know how to fix them and it's just a case of education and encouragement to get them done. And then, there are new problems that are emerging with new tech. There are opportunities. We haven't even mentioned AI yet, but there have been plenty- - Lots of talks on AI. - Lots of talks on AI and I haven't been to any of them yet, which is I need to fix before the end of the day. But it's obviously, it's something that's here and we can harness it for good. And there's lots of vendors here showing solutions. There are people talking about the opportunities and the threats. We're still very aware of the threats that we've talked about before about AI, entrenching, ableist biases and- - Right. - Just people thinking, "Well, I've got an AI power too, I don't need to have any humans involved in our accessibility efforts," which we're not nowhere near there yet. - And David is referring when he says, "We talked about it," it was actually the last state of accessibility podcast. We tackled that with Ryan Jones. - Right. - So, if you're like "What is he talking about, I'd like to hear that conversation," you can actually find that podcast. So, this is, we're almost halfway through Thursday, which means that there's really one more day of the conference. A lot of people may filter out today, a lot of people are filtering out tomorrow. But the reality is, is there's a lot left. We have an entire reception that we're doing as an organization. There's people I'm still texting back and forth with that I need to connect with and there's lots of sessions. My question to you is "What are you looking forward to? What is the final thing that you really hope that you get to do, get to see?" And I know we're near Disney, but you can't use Disney as something you hope to do and see. So, other than that, it has to be the conference, David, what are you really looking forward to? - Oh my goodness! I'm looking forward to going to a few sessions before I'll be back here working with the booth team later in the afternoon. But getting to a few sessions and honestly, I haven't really planned which ones they're gonna be, but I'll be just picking from the schedule and just deciding, probably going somewhere a little bit surprising, a little bit, something that's different. I'll try and push myself and go to something that I maybe don't think I care much about, or don't understand, it's- - Out of your comfort zone. - Exactly, out of my comfort zone. So, I think, that's my goal. And then, telling everyone about it in the reception later. - So, the last thing I wanna mention, 'cause we have to wrap up here in a minute. This is a really cool CSUN for us in our organization, because we have the JAWS screen reader and this is the 30th anniversary of JAWS. The JAWS screen reader has been around for 30 years and we're all wearing these pens. I don't know if we can see them on camera, but they are a two-and-a-quarter floppy disc, the one when you finally had something hard and a window that covered up that magnetic strip. Because that is in 1995, that is how JAWS was delivered. And we've got an amazing timeline from 1995 to present. And it's been an amazing evolution. That timeline talks a lot about the evolution of JAWS from a technical perspective and a release perspective. But it's amazing to think about alongside, right, sharks are always swimming forward and as JAWS is swimming, right, technology's improving and increasing and access for people with disabilities is increasing. More people with disabilities are working, more people with disabilities are able to have equivalent experiences when they go out in public, more people with disabilities are able to access content online than ever before. We need to keep swimming, that's not done yet. - Yep. - But it's really amazing. And the coolest thing at CSUN, because it's the 30th anniversary of JAWS, I don't wanna scare anybody, but the shark is around. If you're on the floor, if you're in a presentation, JAWS might show up. So far, he hasn't chased anybody, he hasn't bit anybody. He mostly is careful that you don't touch him, 'cause I think he's blown up and he doesn't wanna deflate. But it's been really fun. In our presentation room, we have an entire shark's mouth archway that people walk through to get to the presentation. So, I think it's been really fun just thinking about how far accessibility has come, thinking about it in context to the JAWS screen reader, which is such a pivotal aspect of accessibility. I mean, it's almost synonymous with the word at this point when we think about it, particularly in the blind and low vision community. And the fact that we're just having so much fun with it and we're gonna have more fun with it tonight at the reception has been, that's been kind of probably the biggest difference- - Yeah. - For me is just this goofy atmosphere around celebrating 30 years of people who are blind, being able to access their computers, access content there on their computers, access the web, all these things that JAWS gives us. And the innovations around screen reader technology right now, Picture Smart, it can look at a picture and describe that picture at any level of verbosity and answer, a user can ask questions against that picture and get the detail and information out of it that they want. It's amazing where we are- - Yeah. - With this type of technology today. - Yeah, 30 years of innovation, necessary innovation. - Yeah. - This technology innovates. I just wanna finish. But before we wrap up, we've been talking a lot about the social energy from being at a conference and mix and meeting old friends- - Mm-hmm . - Meeting new people, meeting people from all sort of different parts of the accessibility community, not everyone can be here at an in-person conference, whether it's because of financial reasons, or because of just being unable to travel, health reasons or whatever. I just wanna take a moment to just share appreciation- - Absolutely. - Able to be here in and recognize. We have a privilege of being able to attend- - It's a really good point. - Conference. - It's really good point. - There are lots of people out there, who aren't able to travel, sharing information, building that community virtually as well, while, for those of us who are able to meet in person benefit from that, that's great, but- - While there are so many people here, this is a subset of- - Absolutely. - The large community doing that good work. And while we wish everybody could be here, for all sorts of reasons, people aren't here. So, I think that's a great shout-out. - Yeah. - That's a great shout-out. - Yeah and ultimately, everyone, keep on doing the great work of digital accessibility. It doesn't get any less important to focus on making digital products and services accessible. So, keep on doing it. - Right, well, thank you so much Dave for being here at CSUN with me. - Yep. - And for doing this podcast. I hope everybody enjoyed it. I am Mark Miller, thanking David Sloan and reminding you all that if it's not accessible, it's not usable. Thank you.