Eyeway Conversations with Joe Devon and Jennison Asuncion
12:46PM Jul 25, +0000
Speakers:
Shilpi Kapoor
George Abraham
Eyeway Helpdesk
Joe Devon
Jennison Asuncion
Keywords:
accessibility
disability
people
joe
big
pledge
accessible
screen reader
years
frameworks
developer
talking
widgets
george
create
web
digital products
wrote
foundation
inclusion
This podcast is brought to you by BarrierBreak Solutions Private Limited and Score Foundation.
Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to yet another edition of Eyeway Conversations. I have with me Shilpi Kapoor from BarrierBreak. Hi, Shilpi, eelcome. Hi, George. And our guests on this episode are the creators of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Yes, we have Joe Devon and Jennison Asuncion with us. Welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks, George for having us. So let's begin by, you know, how did you guys get into the IT space?
Wow. Unfortunately, this was a long time ago, which means that I'm old. But when I was 13, my parents gave me an Apple TV and I just started banging away at it. I created like a little almost like a Hebrew word processing app, sort of. But it was pretty crude. But that was the first program that I wrote. And then kind of went away from that. And I am very much an entrepreneur. So I left that was doing some work in, in Europe, using CompuServe, which was around before the web, of course, and had some similar components to it. And then was hired by a search engine company that was around before AltaVista, let alone Google. And after I left there, I became an early employee of a company called Predictive Systems. I wasn't I was probably like the 40th employee, and we grew it to a few 1000 and went public four years later. So that's my fun journey. And then then I wrote a blog post, which I'm sure we'll get into later and met Jennison, which brought me into the it accessibility space.
So this is Jennison. Similar to Joe, I'm going to betray my age a little bit or expose it. I became blind when I was about a year and a half old. And so my first exposure to computers, though, did not have screen readers or anything like that. I was using a Commodore 64 and creating basic programs and had family members at the screen screen reading software, if you will. I always found computers interesting to me. Unfortunately, math was never my strong suit. And so I wasn't there yet, despite me trying a couple of times, both at the college level and the university level, spending time in computer science, that wasn't going to be the route I would choose, or end up going in and becoming a computer science like a software engineer. But I just found my way into tech and work started working in the accessibility space, full time in 2006.
Joe, how did you get interested in accessibility? Because I don't think you have a vision impairment, right?
Well, you know, I'm above 50. I'm 53. So I don't see the way I used to do, that's for sure. But I don't have too serious visual impairment. And I didn't when GAAD started, but what happened was my dad was getting older. And so he had age related issues with vision as well as with hearing. And he struggled to do online banking. And I was at the time a web developer for americanidol.com. And yeah, as a developer, it just felt wrong that the bank was inaccessible. I just felt like, you know, to make my dad independent, It's something that the web should have solved. And the fact that it was inaccessible, really, really upset me. So yeah, so that's where it kind of got interested in accessibility. I'd heard of it before. One big introduction was Victor Tsaran, who was working at Yahoo at the time. He was a technical program manager, and he displayed a screen reader like how he uses the homepage of Yahoo through a screen reader and it just kind of blew me away. So it was as a developer fascinated by the assistive technology. And also as the son of someone that needed to access the web excessively and couldn't.
I have a interesting story even though that I'm completely blind myself and was a benefactor of early computer with a Braille display, and all that kind of stuff. I also was touched by the importance of technology. I just graduated from high school and went to a program that was run by the CNIB, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, called the Score program where they brought 24 blind and visually impaired youth from across Canada together, many of whom had never touched a screen reader before or screen magnification software. And I spent a lot of time during that program, just observing other people. And I witnessed firsthand the impact of having technology with assistive technology had on people, youth my age, and who might have never had this before. And it had such a profound impact on me that I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it. But I knew that there was a power in putting technology in the hands of people at the time were blind and visually impaired. And I later expanded that to people with different disabilities when they got to college, and got exposed to people with other disabilities and impairments more broadly. So I know that might sound I don't know, but it to me, like, I also had my own awakening, because I hear I was using the technology for me. And I knew it impacted me, but just to witness it having such a profound impact on people, number of whom had never had that access before, really planted the early seed. And again, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. But I knew I wanted to work in technology in this way, at some point.
So, Joe, you wrote a blog to start this whole to express yourself and your concern, and boom, magic happened. And it became a global movement. How did that happen?
Gosh I mean, you just write a blog post, and then you get the fire movement, isn't it? Like, so easy! I'd say a lot of it was luck. Much of the luck was just the fact that Jennison happened to read it. Had he not read it, this would have never gone anywhere. And I'd say I wrote the blueprint of how to create this awareness day successfully. It took me years, you know, I'm one of those people, it's like, you write code and you look at it six months later, you're like, Oh, this code is terrible. You wrote a letter a month ago, or even a day ago. And you're like, oh, what's wrong with me? Like I am very self critical of things. And it took me years to say, Okay, I'm gonna look at the blog post again. And I was like, Oh, this kind of holds up, which surprised me. So if you read that post, I think you'll see a lot of the elements that would have made it a success. But honestly, like, Jennison is a force of nature and connecting up with him is really was key to making this happen. Both of us had a community, my community was more around the developer side of the world. Jennison was more on the accessibility side of the world. But he wrote to lots of people and said, Hey, what are you waiting for, this new GAAD idea we have and tons of people just took him up on it.
Including Shilpi! We have to acknowledge the fact that Shilpi was one of the people that I reached out to that in that first year. And I was like, Hey, Shilpi this guy, Joe, Devon and I are, like, just met and we're doing something and, she'll be certainly you were with us from the beginning, because I didn't want this to go by without your listeners knowing that you had an early impact and an early contribution as well. But it was it was one of those interesting times too, because like Joe said, I was busy trying to figure out ways to make accessibility more appetizing and palatable to the mainstream tech community. I like I started to grow my own network of, as Joe said, of people working in accessibility. But Joe's blog post was, the timing was perfect. And as he alluded to, like I just happened to be home. And on that Saturday, that fateful Saturday, and I was trolling Twitter, and saw this. What I later learned was an automated tweet. It wasn't even a tweet Joe wrote himself It was just an automated tweet that sat out there. And it just happened. That I guess that's what they say sometimes the best things that happen are the ones you don't expect.
And Jennison, you know, what both of you did when y'all started off, I think is something that I love about the accessibility community. And sometimes I think it's getting lesser and lesser in the accessibility community, that togetherness, that oneness that you know, let's open the doors. Let's bring in people. And I think that's why you know, BarrierBreak supported it at the first point because it was not about Joe or Jennison, it was about can we get the word out there? And can we make it happen? And can we do this collectively and your outreach is phenomenal. It has to be said for both of you that the kind of reach that you've achieved with GAAD over the years, right has been amazing. It's something I haven't seen in us basically, it's for sure.
It still surprises I'll speak for myself. But Joe and I certainly talk about this every year, it boggles the mind to think that how much this has as taken off. And at this point, Joe, and I really stand to the side and we've provided the platform, the GAAD day itself, and people have just run with it. So Joe, what are you, you're still as surprised as I am right?
Oh, god, yes. 100%. Surprised. And by the way, let me echo what you said about Shilpi. Shilpi, you're a part of this, you're in my very first presentation. I've given so many over the years, you're you're in all of them. I always talk about that first year, you had like, you got an Indian governmental event, we reached India and not only India, but a governmental event. And that's thanks to you. So agree 100% the community did it. And I don't feel like the community has gotten less friendly. Or let's say less welcoming, I think it's just bigger. So you know, maybe when things get bigger, it it can impact the the experiences and then maybe one or two things might have happened that make you go Oh darn, but in reality, like the same great people are there that were always there.
So the question I'd like to have is, in all these movements, there are people who say, Yay, that's a great idea and run along. But there are also people who are skeptical and who, who kind of say, What are you talking about accessibility? It's a lot more money, it's how many people are going to use it. So what has your journey been?
Well first I want to address what you just said, the idea that it's not going to be used and all of that, there are over a billion people with a disability, the number of people with a disability is larger than the Chinese market that everyone is chasing. How about just serving your own customers with disability? That's a fantastic, huge market. And the reality is, our numbers are kind of skewed. Because disability is really a spectrum. My vision when right now I don't consider it to be a visual impairment really, I've clouds in my eyes. But I don't consider the visual impairment really, or a disability, I should say. But had I had this vision of five years old? Yeah, everybody probably would have said it is your hearing is not the same at all. It's all on a spectrum. And everybody has different abilities, some people might be a little better with eyesight, better with the hearing, etc. And if you develop accessibly, you just make your platform work better for people across the entire spectrum. So I think that those numbers, it's great work that's been done by the WHO and the World Bank to come up with those numbers. And they acknowledge that it was a spectrum, and that they needed to to come up with a cut off and say, Okay, this is the degree of I don't even remember the exact verbiage they use, but at this point, we're gonna call it a disability, and boom, there's your official statistic. But everybody benefits when you make your digital products accessible.
There's definitely enough examples out there of quote unquote, accessibility enhancements, improvements that we hear. That Joe, Shilpi, George and myself, we all know benefit everyone. Captions, the ability to scale fonts, font sizes, keyboard accessibility, those are all things that you know, have obvious benefits for people with with quote unquote disabilities, but there's productivity reasons why some of those things are easier. There's other reasons like that make all of those things help everyone. So the argument now around, oh, this is just helping this small group, that argument is being a lot harder to defend, when we all know the benefits are out there for everyone.
So I buy your point. But George and I live in a country, which is India, where accessibility is really George, can I say not in everybody's mind for sure? Yes. As it is in the West, maybe legislative, maybe other, you know, issues. You know, and I've always wondered, do we need to change the term accessibility to something which is more inclusive? And, you know, you all both created GAAD, has there ever been a thought that has come in that how do we widen that word? Because in India, when we talk about accessibility, very often people talk about reach of network, you know..
Yes, I know, even here, in the as you use the term, the West, the term inclusive design, has been used a lot more more widely, to include accessibility. It does, though, sometimes become confusing, because some people think of one or the other. But I certainly hear more use of the term inclusive design as a way to bridge and to make it more broad. I'm not sure if inclusive design is something that's yet become part of the nomenclature out in India yet, but that's certainly a term I hear a lot more often, to include accessibility as part of that umbrella.
Yeah, I just like to throw in another dimension to this conversation, which is that in a country like India, words like accessibility and inclusion has different interpretations. Inclusion, for example, I've been to a conference where they talked about inclusive education. And there was no inclusion of disability being spoken about, they were talking about gender inclusion, class inclusion, but no disability inclusion.
We have the same dilemma here, in that there's a big emphasis on something called what we call DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or just equity and inclusion and disability is seems to always be late to the table. You know, race, LGBTQ, is brought up, gender, and then disability, it's almost like we always have to, we always have to say, and disability is being brought in. So it's similar to what you were mentioning about inclusion. It's the same dilemma. Some of us have seen out here, where the conversations around diversity, just diversity in general, they always forget disability, like it's some sort of separate thing. Meanwhile, disability cuts across all of those dimensions.
You've now completed more than 10 years of this campaign, GAAD. So what are some of the exciting milestones that you've seen along the way?
I think for me, the move away from strictly talking about making bank websites and education, yeah, making kind of like the kind of the dot coms accessible. That was the primary focus maybe in the beginning, but now, we're seeing a lot more stuff around gaming, this is a huge thing. I was just having a conversation with someone about this earlier today. You know, it's so important. And I don't want anyone to misunderstand that. We need to make all of e commerce websites and all of those things accessible. But people with disabilities also want to have fun, and want to also feel socially included. So the fact that things like gaming are becoming is so important to make accessible to me, I think is amazing and interesting. Because gaming is one of those things where people with disabilities, you can almost if you want to play a game without even exposing that you have a disability or impairment, so long as the game itself is accessible. And that goes a long way. I'd say that's one of the big areas. I'll hold off on my other area.
Yeah, and then keep going with yours. But on GAAD, one year a few years ago, Microsoft released the Xbox adaptive controller. And then the next Superbowl, they did a big Superbowl commercial where they had four kids Who had various, they had, like, missing limbs or, or that kind of thing. And it was just an incredible commercial that really allows you to understand what the importance is because I think a lot of people haven't been exposed to a lot of folks with disabilities. And when you see children that just, they're not interested in anybody's pity. You know, it's not about inspiration porn, it's really just about having the ability to play a game. And so you see the parents and you see the kids, and you see what it meant to them, that Microsoft went out there, and they developed a controller that just allowed kids to play a game. And when you're a developer or designer, you're building digital products. It's like, okay, let's not exclude people with disabilities. So I'd say that was a big one. And it really goes along with what you were saying on gaming.
And I mean, this year, even there was a it was actually some folks in India, who led a panel conversation around dating in the digital age and accessibility around that. So you know, we're seeing a lot more stuff that has to do with social inclusion outside of the day to day work, and the necessities of the, quote, unquote, necessities of life, like banking, and access to government services, all of that stuff. Again, extraordinarily important. But there's more to life than just that. And, and the fact that GAAD is encompassing some of these other areas, I think, is great.
You know, in a way, I kind of hate to only focus on the big tech, because they get, they get plenty of mention already on the media. But I think it's important that the big tech companies have all embraced accessibility. And the reason I think it's important, and so have tons of small companies. But I just highlight this, because in a lot of ways, big tech leads the way. And if all of them are saying that accessibility is important, it trickles down and eventually reaches the the developer designer, you know, the digital product creators, it reaches that community, because a lot of them are trying to get jobs in big tech. And if they know that they can't escape accessibility, when it comes to learning their craft, it's going to change the game, because that's what we really need. Everybody that creates a digital product needs to be aware of it, learn it. And that's, the aim of GAAD, right. So I would say that's another big one that we keep seeing on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the big tech in embracing this day and accessibility in general.
The last thing I'll say about this in terms of trends, which is also exciting to me is the G in Global means that these conversations need to happen not only in English, and we are seeing a lot more events, and just a lot more content that's coming out in other languages, which which is as it should be. We you know, it particularly here in the West, if you will, or here in the States, you know, English, English, English, and we see a lot of that stuff. But I always get a kick out of learning that there's like a webinar or discussion that's happening in and not in another language, because accessibility and disability that transcends everyone. So that really lends itself to the G in the Global part of the discussion.
But you've also started something called the GAAD Foundation. We weren't busy enough already, right? So what exactly does this Foundation do? Why did you set it up? And what's the scope?
Sure. I'll take a first crack at this one. And to say that we've heard over the years, that GAAD you know, it's just a day and there needs to be more momentum and all of that, and this is something Joe and I had been talking about doing something that would broaden the scope of GAAD further out. So the idea of a Foundation is something that Joe and I had been talking about for a couple of years, a number of years, and the 10th anniversary just felt like the right time to do it. But the mission of of the GAAD Foundation itself is basically we want to disrupt the tech culture...you want me to I don't know if we have to be so official about it, but the reality is what we're trying to do is disrupt the tech culture in such a way that it includes accessibility within the development of technology and digital products. So it's all about disrupting what's there today, we acknowledge that there's a current tech culture that doesn't embrace, and that doesn't often see accessibility as important. And we're here to disrupt it in all kinds of different ways, to make it so that people have accessibility at top of mind. Joe, did you want to add more?
Yeah, it's 100% the case and I even put this in my signature for the last few years. And it's probably not that pithy but to developers, it makes a lot of sense. The Agile methodology has been something that changed software development. And I really just want to copy what they've done and changed the culture of software development to include accessibility. So you know, somehow this group of people came up with the idea of a methodology for software development, that's better than the last methodology that was popular, and everybody took it up. So why can't they take up accessibility and just become ubiquitous in software development? So that's really the goal here. And we have lots of ideas around how to make that happen.
Yeah, I'm wondering, Joe, if you wanted to talk briefly about the GAAD pledge, like in addition to GAAD, so GAAD is now part of the work of the Foundation. But there's something that Joe really the brainchild of Joe's last year, the GAAD pledge, which would be a good example of another program and the Foundation.
Yeah, so we look at open source projects that really have a large impact on websites downstream. So there's something called web aim, the folks that make the wave tool, they came up with a yearly report, where they look at the top million websites and see how accessible they are according to their automated tool. And in there, they look at which frameworks, open source frameworks, the website used, and they kind of provide an idea of, hey, these particular frameworks, if you use them, it correlates to, you know, less accessible website. And that kind of gave me that idea to Hey, why not take these open source projects, and try and see if they're willing to take the GAAD pledge to make their project, more access, or sorry, to make accessibility a core value of their project, commit to what level of vocab level they will support, provide accessibility coding guidelines, and to prioritize fixing accessibility bugs.
And Joe, just really quickly, for the non techies who might be listening, when you're talking about frameworks and project, these just to simplify it a little bit, there are these popular code libraries. And basically, they have widgets or controls that are used like checkboxes, as an example or things like that. And these open source projects create these things, these widgets, and what Joe is talking about is making sure that these widgets are accessible out of the box, so that if anyone decides to adopt a particular framework, they can at least be guaranteed as long as they don't like alter these widgets, that there will be at least an initial layer of accessibility. It will not guarantee the thing is completely accessible but that's a start. And it's so important, because a lot of companies and a lot of organizations use these large, these frameworks to create their sites, because they don't wanna have to, they don't wanna have to create their own widgets and stuff like that. I just wanted to, like, de-technify that.
Exactly, sorry, to the audience. And, you know, it was great, because right from the get go, Facebook, committed to take the GAAD pledge for the React Native project, which is very, how shall I say it is very influential in the industry, and mobile apps. Yeah, it allows you to make mobile apps cross platform. So if your iOS or Android, or web, it kind of helps you do it in all all in one codebase. So it is used by lots and lots of people. It's very influential. And there were some core issues with their accessibility. So Facebook committed to putting in resources to make it more accessible. And that was a really big win. And Jennison, I'll let you mention that.
This year, so Facebook and the React Native framework or project took the GAAD pledge last year and this year, the Ember JavaScript framework took the GAAD pledge as well. So we'll be working, Ember had already been working on accessibility previously. But they wanted to make a public statement and a public commitment, and to demonstrate that this is something that mattered. So they've since taken the GAAD pledge this year. And and we certainly have plans. There's other frameworks out there. And I know, Joe has has them all in mind. To get them kind of inspired to follow suit.
Oh, that sounds like the right way forward from an accessibility perspective. I think we've been waiting for something like this. So again, congratulations. Another brilliant idea from the two of you.
Well, I don't know what the time in the US is right now. But it could be pretty late in the evening. And we appreciate the fact that Joe and Jennison, the two of you, agreed to speak with us and spend this time with us talking about GAAD and the way GAAD has kind of grown over the years. I'd like to formally congratulate you on the completion of a decade and we are on your second decade now and more power to you guys. And thank you very much for being part of our Eyeway Conversations.
Thank you so much. And if people want to learn more about the Foundation, they can go to gaad.foundation.
Thank you for everything you all do.
Take care. Thank you.
This podcast was brought to you by BarrierBreak Solutions Private Limited and Score Foundation.