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Eyeway Conversations with Sathish Kumar

Eyeway Conversations22min

Eyeway Helpdesk

00:08

This podcast is brought to you by Score Foundation.

George Abraham

00:33

Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Sathish Kumar, a senior digital accessibility engineer. Sathish, you've been a student of English language and literature and you transitioned into becoming a digital accessibility engineer. How did that happen?

Sathish Kumar

00:53

When I was seven years itself, I saw the first computer and that's where my love for computers started because for me, it was kind of a magic. That's what I sometimes still think. And during those days, I never saw any screen reader, I just saw this computer at my school. And then somewhere when I was finishing up my 10th standard, they bought a set of computers with screen reader and I got an opportunity to just do a show for Doordarshan wherein I was just typing and they were shooting that. And then obviously it stopped because elsewhere outside we did not have that opportunity. I went to study English language and literature and finished MPhil. But there was a time period between MPhil. and MA (PG) wherein I went to NIVH and did a course on a computer and obviously screen reader and all that. So I also bought a computer to do my MPhil. dissertation in 2006 itself. But somewhere in the time, I just thought my destiny is not going to be inside a college wherein I could become a professor and talk to students. I'm not saying the profession is not good, but it's just that I didn't want to restrict myself to that domain. So, from 2008 I started searching for a job. And then I landed at Tata Consultancy Services and I was working as a Business Skills Trainer there and somewhere around 2010 I thought okay, I should reshape my career because that was just about only business skills. So I started learning through one of my friend's digital accessibility and we also had opportunities to talk to and train the same students or trainees at Tata Consultancy Services. Then in 2013, I came out of TCS, and then I was working as a freelance consultant and then somewhere in 2014, I got a training through Mitra Jyoti in Bangalore and SAP in partnership wherein I was I exposed my skills to the trainers and things like that. And then from there, I got picked up by another company and my career picked off as a full time accessibility consultant.

George Abraham

03:32

You started your career as a Business Skills Trainer, what does that mean?

Sathish Kumar

03:37

Generally, business skills is in other way if you want to say, it's a soft skills training, that's what people want to call but we would call it as business skills because soft skills is for life, but this is specifically meant for doing what you require in a corporate company. And so, at Tata Consultancy Services, what happened was like we had people coming in from colleges as part of the campus recruitment and 1000s of new trainees would come and they will undergo a rigorous training both in technical as well as non technical aspects, that is technical and business skills aspects. So we were taking care of the business skills part, I was taking care of business skills part and I was training them on first spoken, written communication because obviously, corporate requires a more formal communication method. And so in that we covered email and all other technical writing and probably how to doing a conversation starters with clients and all that. And then we also train people on professional grooming like how to dress up for an occasion, how to have a power lunch, team building skills, conflict management. So these are a few topics that we covered on those as part of the training. So that's how it was. Obviously, there were power presentations. And so we would put up those presentations, we would go along with a lot of real time stories, we will also tell them the vision value, statement of the company, and then what is expected of them, how they will grow up in their career, and the career is not just about being developer or tester, but it is all about, you know, taking different turns in their career and all that. So that is what business skills was all about.

George Abraham

05:39

So you were training people who were sighted, how did they kind of respond to you?

Sathish Kumar

05:46

So I'll just give you a small anecdote wherein you know, what happened was in one of the sessions, some of the people who were from IITs were part of the training. So after the break, my session started, so a few people were I think, having some bubble gums and I just walked in, I took some two strolls, and I said, okay from the third row, either the first, second or third person, you're eating a bubble gum, I won't ask you to go out and spit it now. But from next class, please don't do that. So I said that because one is that, I mean, they will be obviously blowing bubbles and other people who are watching instead of concentrating on the training and even for themselves, it is not going to be a very good experience. I mean, when I'm chewing a bubble gum, what I mean is that it's boring. So they were actually kind of taken aback or surprised how you were exactly pointing out that particular person or the row. So it just needs that we need to be aware of our environment, just fine tune our senses, and be careful with them. And once you start impressing with these small, I would say gimmicks, or tricks, or whatever we want to call, they would actually understand that, you know, he may be a non sighted person but you can't actually mess around with those people because they know what to do and what not to do.

Eyeway Helpdesk

07:19

If you know of anyone with vision impairment, who needs guidance on living life with blindness, please share the Eyeway national toll free helpline number 1800-532-0469. The number is 1800-532-0469.

George Abraham

07:48

Sathish, you've been working now in a corporate world for nearly 14 years. You would have seen a lot of opportunities or possible opportunities for people who are blind in the corporate world, would you like to share your views in terms of what are these opportunities that you think exist in the corporate world for blind people?

Sathish Kumar

08:12

So one area I have seen people working is HR wherein people take learning and development, which is part of the Human Resources section department, and they train people on different things. It can be, you know, training people on diversity, training people on other corporate subjects and all that. And we can also do recruiting because I know people who are part of the recruitment teams. Onboarding, I wouldn't suggest as part of human resource because you need to do deal with a lot of documentation. And we need to see that, so it's better not to take up that one because it's a bit challenging. But recruitments, yes, we can arrange interviews, screen profiles, you know, call people and ask them if they are okay to attend interviews and all that. That is all quite easy because you have the platform where you're scheduling interviews or screening interviews are accessible, I think people can take that up. And then I would say a lot of people have done their MBAs in corporate HR plus, you know, some people have done, I know some people who have done financing also. And what I understand as financing is a lot of people think it's maths so I don't want to do but I don't think that's the right way to say because I've seen people who became late blind are taking up these subjects. So mathematics is all about brain. It's not about eyes, I would say and we are not any way in financing, not going to deal with algebra and all that stuff. So we can still do corporate financing. We can become part of that. And also I feel that even business analysts are very good to think about and then a few people have taken up developer role.

George Abraham

10:14

This is software development?

Sathish Kumar

10:15

Yeah, software development. And particularly now, the recent development which I heard, just last week is all about data science and a few people are working on that. And then there are a few people who are working as part of the QA that is Quality Audit, or quality control or whatever they want to call. They be they can become testers, functional testers, they can do manual testing as of now. And I would say that if they are really interested, they can also become a Salesforce admin. Salesforce is a kind of a packaged software that deals with everything like you can log a service request, it's a CRM, a Customer Relationship Management applications and all that even people can work in that area. The only thing is we need to have the right training before we take up that job.

George Abraham

11:12

Sathish, I just wanted to know, if you were to advise a blind person who wants to join corporate India, what is the kind of preparation he needs to do in terms of skills, in terms of knowledge, generally in terms of preparation?

Sathish Kumar

11:34

So one thing that I wanted to bring to the table is that first is the social skills. And when I mean social skills, what I say is that we are all good talking to another blind person, or maybe in a group or a community. We don't feel threatened or we don't feel insecure about it. But somewhere down the line when people say that no, I'm working with the sighted folks, people have this idea that oh, sighted folks are entirely different, how are we going to deal with them? So I think we should shed that kind of inhibition. And during college days itself, people have to go and make friends with sighted folks. Understand that world also because that world is not entirely different from our world I would say. It's just the way we learn and the way they learn, the way we interact, or the way they interact can be a bit different. But at the end of the day, all of us are you know, dealing with the same human emotions. And second is communication because lot of people... people from city are okay, I would say because they are able to communicate. And people who are late blind also have very good moderate education, they have the opportunity. But what I understand is sometimes when people are blind from childhood and if they're coming from you know, particularly rural background, they need to work on their communication. And about that they need to work on their soft skills, they need to update themselves with recent developments and set their goals.

Eyeway Helpdesk

13:19

Support our work with the blind and visually impaired, you can visit the donate page on our website, www.scorefoundation.org.in. Please note, www.scorefoundation.org.in.

George Abraham

13:46

You've also being a public speaker, you've done some public speaking and I was reading that you had been to Los Angeles to be part of CSUN. Tell us a little bit about that. But how did that happen and what did you speak about and how was it received by the people there?

Sathish Kumar

14:08

So when I started my accessibility journey I started at TCS but obviously, the full time thing picked off in Bangalore. Then I moved to Hyderabad with the top accessibility agency. And I met another person in that company who was actually really motivating me to go for writing papers and all that because he saw that I was speaking well, I was asking the right questions and was also able to write well. He motivated me to apply for this one for the first time and my first presentation was out of the experience that I had in a project. So it was not something that I did research or anything, it was just all about how we fixed a particular Wordpress site. Even I was also speaking to a global audience for the first time because that conference is an international conference, it has gained an international popularity among accessibility community. But since I had already stage exposure, I didn't feel anything. I was not edgy about that one. I went and I spoke, and I made sure that the audience interacted with me. It is not like I saying everything 100%, no. So presentations must be interactive. That's one of the things I learned during my soft skills training true. So I practiced and they started really liking the presentation. At the end of the presentation, people came, they took my card, a few people asked different questions. And I got a good feedback.

George Abraham

15:47

Sathish, I also believe that you are a blogger. So what do you write about? Where do you write it? If people want to read your blog, how can they access it?

Sathish Kumar

15:56

So I haven't written a personal blog. I mean, I don't have a site on my own. But I am an author and a co-editor of one of my friend's site called www.digitala11y.com. So this particular site, we are running to make sure that accessibility is made simple for everyone. So people who want to learn, people who want to grow their career, be it disabled, or non disabled, we wanted to make sure that, you know, whatever we learned, we put them in simple words, and they can learn from that. So that was how this started. And after he saw my written communication, he asked me to write blogs in that one and I started writing, particularly in technical topics and accessibility. But I do have certain write ups on my own. So far, I haven't published. One of my friends told me that she would give me an a slot to publish. So main thing was, they're all motivating me to start a personal blog because my topics are a bit wide. I do some film review, or sometimes I go with music reviews, or sometimes I go with the technology, not just accessibility, but you know, maybe talking about a software or all that and people always say that, you know why don't you write this down probably and publish it as a blog. So it is still in the pipeline. Maybe one day that would become a dream. I mean, dream come true.

George Abraham

17:36

So Sathish, you also were telling me that you're interested in music, you're interested in audio editing, and you're also interested in beatboxing I wonder what that is? Tell us a little bit about those interests of yours.

Sathish Kumar

17:50

So beatboxing is nothing but you know, playing rhythm with your vocal cords, and your mouth, that's all. So usually, you know, there are many people who do that. I never learned this art. I never even thought about this. During my college days, it was one of the hostel day function, wherein I first demonstrated this and people started liking that one. And that was how this beatboxing started. I never went to any competition or anything, because I just do it because I love music. That's all it was not meant for competing with people and all that. And the second thing is, yeah, so when I was a kid, I used to sing a lot and I used to go to competitions from my school itself. It was a really good exposure because we used to compete with sighted, non- sighted, everyone. And that was a very good opportunity, but somebody told my dad not to motivate me in music because you know, otherwise I would be taking a keyboard and you know walking like a you can say that, probably you know, gypsy and will be wandering and all that because those days visually impaired people, not many were educated or many were taking up employment. So then when I moved to my higher secondary side, they taught us keyboard, there was a very good orchestra and I was part of the band too. But then I never bought anything on my own. Then 11th & 12th went with just a Casio keyboard which somebody gifted me that during my college days got my first keyboard and we got- me and my roommate and there was one more guy, we formed a small band. So one guy used to... they're all sighted people. So one guy used to play mouth organ, the other guy was guitarist and I was the keyboardist. So we created a piece of our own and we played it in one of the Christmas celebration event in college. And the professor was a music director there and he appreciated that effort. And that's how it all started. But then when I started going to carry my work, I couldn't carry that forward because I was traveling to different places. So I couldn't carry such a big keyboard and all that. So it's kind of stopped. Now that I bought an Apple Mac computer, which has GarageBand, which is a music production software. It is not like a, it's a minimalistic music production software I would say. And from there I've started playing music on my own. And I've not done a full production of anything so far because I need a full fledged at least a MIDI controller or some device to do that. Once I settled down because it's now it's a work from home situation, and I'm still in my native and I can't continue being here because opportunities will not come if I am stagnated here so I have to move out. Once I settle down probably I would buy a professional device and then I will start working on that.

George Abraham

21:16

Sathish, it's been wonderful talking to you. It's a pleasure in fact, and you've done a lot in a limited amount of time and you have a good perspective of life. I wish you the very best and as you go forward, may you climb heights and be an example and inspiration for many more to follow you.

Eyeway Helpdesk

21:44

This podcast was brought to you by Score Foundation.

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