Accessibility in Computing: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

Accessibility in Computing: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

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Welcome, everyone. This panel is part of a  series from ACM DEI Council and we have a   series of panels that we have been running  for various awareness and heritage months,   and this is one of the parts of that series. And  basically, the title of that is to celebrate,   embrace accessibility, and the contributions from  researchers with disabilities. And so with that   panel today joining us are a group of researchers  and academics as well as those from industry who   will be able to share their experiences and  current work as well as their insights into   the future kind of viewpoint of accessibility as  technology and innovation moves forward. And so   I wanted to introduce the panelists for today,  and as I introduce them, well, I will do a quick   introduction of each of them and then they will  go through and introduce themselves for a few   minutes. But the general overview of this is  that we'll have some panelists introductions.  

We have a set of questions that we have, and then  afterwards we will have some time for questions   from the audience. And the panel will last about  an hour. So I will start with Dr. Shaun Kane. He   is joining us from Google. Then follow is Dr.  Raja Kushalnagar from Gallaudet University,   as well as Dr. Rua Mae Williams from Purdue  University. And I as your moderator, Dr. Stephanie  

Ludi from the University of North Texas. Thank  all of you for joining us as panelists today.   And so I wanted to start with you, Shaun,  if you could briefly introduce yourself. Sounds great, yeah. So hey, everybody. I'm  Shaun Kane. I'm currently a Research Scientist  

at Google Research and working in the general  area of responsible AI and disability. To say   a little bit about my background, so I've been  an accessibility researcher my entire career. I   actually grew up with a disability that affects  my motor abilities. And one side effect of that   I think that you might see coming up when I  talk about my work is I've pretty much always   needed to figure out different ways of performing  tasks and solving problems. I did not plan to go   and follow the accessibility career route. I  started to get very interested when I was an  

undergrad in accessibility from a creativity and  design perspective. So one project I remember   fondly is I was at an engineering expo and saw  a demo someone made of a wheelchair accessible   blacksmithing station. And I was just really  taken by the creative work to do that, you know,   to solve that kind of problem. So my grad  work was in human computer interaction with   a focus on accessibility. A lot of my  early work was related to touchscreen   accessibility for blind and low vision users. But  through my career I've worked across different  

disabilities and different technologies based on  where I've seen the greatest need or opportunity.   I've also had the privilege of working in a few  roles in academia and industry. Like I said,   I currently work at Google Research as a research  scientist and my team at Google focuses on taking   a socio-technical perspective on technology. Right  now much of that work is about generative AI. And   since I work largely in the area of accessibility,  much of my current work is focused on how to   understand and measure ableism in generative  AI models and to measure disability inclusion,   and also how to bring users with disabilities into  the process of designing systems that include AI. Great, thank you. Raja?

Hello, my name is Raja Kushalnagar, I'm a  professor at Gallaudet University, I actually   don't know how to pronounce my last name, it's  actually totally fine. The interpreters often   don't know how to pronounce my last name. I just  emphasize the most important thing, the one way   for accessible information and for communication.  You know, one way is via voice, one way is through   sign language or captions. Important is  to get that information across. So this   is just one example of how my personal experience  actually informs and shapes and designs my work.   So basically I got in through basic technology,  growing up, I was born deaf. My parents enrolled  

me in a small private school, but it was a low  instance occurrence for deaf students at that   school. I was the only deaf student there at the  entire school. Mainstreamed. Small set of friends,   small set of teachers. So that was the kind  of accommodations I got used to, I was able to   understand the context because there was a small  group of people around me. So I was doing good   on all of my work assignments and that was fine.  I then decided to go to a big state university,  

UC Berkeley. Because of the larger size school, I  started to get lost. I had As, and then I had Bs,   and then I had Cs, which turned to Ds. More  and more information was getting lost because   the accommodations were not working for me. So  as you know, information starts to get lost,   it starts to then ramp up your abilities or  disabilities. And so I got to a point where I  

just couldn't continue and I decided to actually  transfer to a smaller university, with much less   student body. I had similar friends, similar group  of teachers, similar to what I had in my high   school experience. And that actually worked for me  as well. So I graduated and I realized, you know,   accessibility, those certain accommodations  don't work for me so I need to figure out what   I'm going to do and how is that going to help me  access accessibility services in my workplace. So   I decided to, after working a couple of years in  software development, I was a software developer,   I decided to go back to school to start  doing some research and that's where   I started my first research on medical imagery.  But I realized that wasn't quite exactly what I   was looking for. I wanted more of a challenge.  And so I wanted a little bit more information  

and doing some more research on accessible  communication technology. So switching fields,   I've switched there and I've been in this field  now for the past 15 years. I think a lot about   design and people who are deaf, hard of hearing,  blind, low vision, and what does it mean to have   information and communication be accessible via  technology and have that translated or applied in   their most appropriate language. So I have been in  academia through a variety of different locations,  

started at one university, then  moved on to Gallaudet University,   which is a deaf and hard of hearing  college in Washington DC focusing all   on design and technology, focusing on like the  UI and now actually shifting gears towards AI,   and allowing us different ways to use technology  for information and communication sharing. Great, thank you. That's it for me.

Rua Mae? Hi, I am Rua Williams and I still get confused  when people say doctor, I'm like, who are they   talking about? And my research is in the area  of technology and research ethics for disabled   people and disabled ways of making technology. My  academic pathway was always very non-direct. So I   had multiple minors in undergrad. I also almost  failed out of college when I first got there,   I was on academic probation, and after undergrad  I went to work in the video game industry and I   made games for a number of years and then I  only got my master's degree because I needed   it in order to be an instructor at the University  of Florida. So in order to teach graduate students   how to make games, I had to have a graduate  degree. So I got one. And then after that I   had no intention of going to get my PhD, but it  happened anyway. And I didn't ever intend to go   into accessible technology or anything related  to disability either, I was going to do things   related to science communication and things like I  had an interest in fisheries and aquatic sciences,   basically like ecological sciences and the  way that we don't have a strong public grasp   of what's happening to our planet. Instead, what  happened was I began, for various reasons, reading  

the human computer interaction research as it  related to treatment for autism. And this was very   personal for me because there's a family history  of institutionalization for members of my family,   my children are diagnosed with autism and ADHD  and I also have a diagnosis of autism and ADHD.   And as I read this work, I really struggled with  the way that the discipline I was supposed to be   going into was talking about my family and I just  couldn't put it down. I couldn't stop looking at   the way that we, even in research where we think  that we're helping people, we're saying terrible   things about them. And so that started me looking  at basically the reform of research practices in   relation to accessible and assistive technology  and people don't like it, and I'm here now, okay. Alright, thank you. And I'll just say just  a couple quick words about myself. So my  

name is Stephanie as I mentioned before,  and I'm legally blind, visually impaired,   which means I have some vision and since birth I  was mainstreamed, as some of the panelists also   mentioned, having had very few accommodations  in going through K-12, I actually found in my   case when I went to university that I had more  accommodations available to me. It was kind of   ironic, but it still made computer science very  difficult actually starting computer engineering.   And I just found computer science was more  aligned with my interests. My dream, even   though I am not a part of that effort, was to have  a self-driving vehicle just because I'm not able   to drive. So it's wonderful seeing that come from  the work that people are doing today. My work,   my interest is in computer science education  broadly, however, I have done a lot of work   related to computer science education, pre-college  or afterwards, as well as those who are developers   in industry who are themselves blind and visually  impaired. So that's kind of where my work has gone   in terms of research. And with that I have  also held, like some of the other panelists,  

other academic positions. So in addition to being  a professor, I have also been associate chair,   interim chair, and I'm currently associate dean  for the college that I'm in. And so with our   various perspectives, we have a small set of  questions that I wanted to read. So I'll read   them one at a time and we will be calling on the  input from each panelist. And so I will refer to  

each panelist by name so that way they know the  question, that it's their time. Question one is,   what are examples of persistent challenges  in accessibility? With these challenges,   what do you view as the biggest opportunities for  positive change? And I wanted to start with Shaun. Right, yeah, so this is a great question.  I would say, as I was thinking about this,   one persistent challenge that I see is that  we are constantly creating new accessibility   problems, which is probably good for  the careers of the people on this panel,   but might not be worth it in terms of impact on  people. I think the fundamental ways that we tend   to develop technology, we being everybody  is one that creates accessibility problems.   So it means every advance in technology or every  new implementation of a technology, we can expect   that there'll be some accessibility problems  there. I think it's also normalized to some degree  

that the first version of a technology  won't be completely accessible and that   accessibility can be added later. So this  perpetuates the same accessibility problems,   but it's also true that people with disabilities  are often early adopters of technology. And so if   we don't get the accessibility piece right at  the beginning, then we might be missing out on   that opportunity. And so, technology's moving so  rapidly right now, if we're not doing this right,   then people with disabilities might be excluded  from the advances and won't be able to give   critical feedback until it's a lot harder to fix  problems. In terms of the biggest opportunities,   I would say awareness of accessibility has  grown over the past decade and before that   probably. When I've taught courses in the last  few years, you know, students often already have   an awareness of what accessibility is and they're  excited to try and solve accessibility problems.  

I think the field of accessibility research has  also grown a lot, both in size but also diversity   of approaches. And so like when I was new to the  field, it seemed like everyone was essentially a   technologist who saw their work as creating new  technologies or creating fixes. Now I think we   have researchers who take a more critical approach  or researchers who focus on the intersection of   tech and policy, and that creates a lot more  opportunities for improving accessibility. Great, thank you. Raja? Yeah, I agree with Shaun. I think that the  technology is obviously evolving and changing.  

It creates new barriers or potentially new  opportunities. And I think that it has improved   since, you know, the involvement of people with  disabilities in this field throughout the entire   process through design development and building  creation, which I think is critical. I think if we   look at like 100 years ago, for example, movies,  you know, they didn't have audio technology people   who would basically, that's why we had silent  films and then deaf people had full accessibility   equivalent to their hearing counterparts because  there was no sound. And so then they could just   watch the film. Then they added technology. And  so within a couple of years the entire movie  

industry became spoken films. And so a lot of deaf  people didn't have access to films, they lost that   opportunity, and technology, then they started  adding captions, but obviously they were not   implemented immediately. This is over a course of  50 years now of implementing captions. You know,   people are writing beautiful dreams of different  scripts and wanting to add captions into movies,   but they didn't happen until much later. And  so now, in our current age, we now have with  

different audio engineers and different people  in technology, we have different people who are   actively thinking about how to make technology  more accessible for the greater audience and   really thinking about it from day one and getting  people with disability involved from the get go.   But to be honest, there's still more room to  grow, there's still a lot more, we're just   really at the cusp. So we're still seeing barriers  and challenges. Hopefully we don't have to wait   another 50 years for technology to then catch  up and to address some of these barriers. Thank you. Rua? So I write a lot about the disconnect between what  we do as researchers and what disabled people want   and need. But another really major problem that  I've begun focusing on is the disconnect between  

what researchers are making and what policy allows  disabled people to access. And so it doesn't   matter whether or not we're making things that  are aligned with disabled people's desires, they   can't get it either way. So we continuously make  these projects and make our careers off of these   projects that it's not even that we're making  bleeding edge technology that won't hit consumer   markets for 20 years, it's that that stuff will  never make it through the medical industrial   complex in the way that it has controlled the  bodies that disabled people can have. And so   this is a major problem in assistive and adaptive  technology, but it's also a major opportunity for   researchers to begin not only using user-centered  and participatory and community-based methods,   but to integrate within those policy analysis and  advocacy schemes within their research agendas so   that the things that they are building and making  with community are actually going to change the   policy landscape in such a way that people can  actually access the technology that they want.   So those are the things that I am focusing on most  recently is basically the different ways to both   change and circumvent the kinds of policies that  are just posing as barriers to disabled autonomy. Great, thank you. And before we move on, I  just wanted to mention just a couple other  

items that kind of go along with things raised  by the panelists. And one is that one thing that   has been fairly persistent at times in terms of  how that manifests might be a little different   is the societal expectations of persons  with disabilities. There certainly have been   difficulties and challenges in terms of being able  to get like opportunities to be able to pursue   various types of educations. And I'm speaking from  a global standpoint, not just a a US-centric one.  

And other challenges certainly can go along with  that in terms of employment just because, not just   in the US but certainly globally, the unemployment  rate of persons with disabilities is very high and   it can change between different groups of persons  with disabilities, but just speaking generally,   which can lead to income disparity issues  which can then translate into issues with being   able to purchase or otherwise acquire different  technologies that are being developed or are being   introduced to the market. So sometimes there can  be challenges there that do persist, but again,   those kind of cross a bit outside of the  computer science and computing fields but   are just relevant just because they do impact  those that would use or be able to appreciate   what is being researched or introduced by the  market in terms of industry. And so those are   certainly challenges. Will they change? I think in  time probably ebbs and flows, there are probably   a lot of things related to policy as well as  other issues. But I just wanted to note that  

is one aspect of challenge that sometimes is not  aware by most people, especially when one doesn't   have a friend or are otherwise affected by the  community in terms of various challenges that   people have. And so I just wanted to mention that,  which would kind of go into our next question. So   what trends in accessibility research do you view  as having great potential to facilitate greater   access to information services and activity? So  with this question, I wanted to start with Raja. Okay, I would say let's start  with generative AI. I think that  

has been a game changer for really all  people, which does include people with   disabilities like image description,  using simplified English translations.   But still obviously there's a lot of other  portions of like context and bias that needs   to be addressed. Making sure that the  design fits people with disabilities,   and just raising the bar for everybody and  not just thinking about everything on a   level playing field but just raising the overall  accessibility of it. So that's my thought on that. Great, thank you. Rua? I love and appreciate Raja, but I strongly  disagree with the idea that generative AI   is facilitating information access. It is, in  my opinion, causing a significant amount of  

degradation of the reliability of information for  all people. And I think that disabled people are   the most vulnerable to the kinds of misinformation  that generate AI spits out. There's basically no,   it's not even just a matter of eventually tweaking  the database and tweaking the learning algorithms,   it is not capable of producing the truth the way  that the methods are used. On the other hand,   what has proliferated more beneficial  information has actually been social   media. And then this is not accessible technology  research per se. However, the way that we study,   the way that people form communities and online  spaces has led us to understand these kinds of   knowledge transfers better. But the way that  disabled people can share with each other,   basically life hacks has been transformative for  a number of people. And also for some people,  

particularly those who have conditions that  are more resistant to medical validation,   let's say, that they can find people who at least  experience the same things and they know quote,   unquote, "they're not crazy." Now that's not  to say that I don't believe that there are   going to be potentials of kinds of like  algorithmic decision making supports. I   just think that we're currently doing them very,  very poorly and it's very, very concerning 'cause   right now the algorithmic decision-making  supports that we have are directly leading   to the deaths of disabled people every day. So  I am very mean about AI and I apologize. Next. Well, we might delve a little bit more  into this one and I just wanted to make   sure Shaun also had his shot to input on this.

Alright, I'm so excited for there to be  some spice in the conversation. I mean,   I think it's great to be having these  conversations. Yeah, I mean, I wrote some,   took some notes around generative AI, obviously I  think it's an area that everybody is talking and   thinking about and to Raja's point, I would  say, when I talk to people about some of,   kind of where we are now, I think of problems  that if you went to an accessibility research   conference even like maybe three or four years  ago, people would say like, we're nowhere close   to where we are now in terms of things like image  description, even things like sign recognition,   that there's progress happening in those spaces.  That's not to say that it's a panacea or that it   is good enough, right? I mean, I think there's  a bigger picture question of how do we make sure   that we build systems the right way and don't  use this as a way to decide that we don't have to   care about people with disabilities or that they  can solve the problems on their own. You know, I   use the example of captioning and image. Well now  actually AI systems can generate image captions,   as Rua points out, there might, we should be very  careful in how we interpret that and what kind of   oversight we might do for that. But there's also  an AI caption image is probably gonna be quite  

different than what the original creator might  have captioned. And so the quality could be lower.   You know, I'm personally wary of the idea that,  that AI will mean that people don't have to think   about disability or that there's this narrative  of, well, when we have AI, we're not gonna have   to deal with this problem anymore. And so when I  talk to folks about generative AI and disability,   I try to frame this as a way to potentially do  that work better, about to give an example around   image captions, I mean, in alt text, I've talked  to so many people who are researchers who like,   oh, I wanna put alt text in my images for my  paper and I don't know how to do it and I'm   not confident about it. And I see that as a place  where maybe there's an opportunity to give some   nudge, right? Or even if it's helping people learn  how to do more themselves. I think as both of my   co-panelists have pointed out, I think we need  certain societal structures and expectations in   place to make sure that we're able to leverage  that. The last point I would make, I would say  

in as much as I have a position about this as a  researcher, I see value in leaving making some of   these trade-offs up to people with disabilities.  So I've had quite a few conversations with folks,   just personal conversations recently, other  disabled people saying like how often do you   get advice from a physician that's bad or that  you have to add a level of scrutiny to or a level   of interpretation to. And so to say, often we  are used to not trusting the output of systems   and obviously that's not true for everybody and  there's a lot of skills that need to go into that.  

But I hope, as these conversations move forward,  we have a place to say, how do we take intentional   risks and allow people to take intentional  risks if there's a potential benefit to that? Does anyone else want to follow up? I just remembered and I just wanted to point  out one of the major problems that I have in   even coming up with examples and supports for  people to basically learn how to argue with AI,   right? Learn how to, relies on kind of feeding  that beast. And when I think about the resources   that are required to run generative AI right  now, I kind of start to like panic and I can't   even bring myself to build those resources  for people because they require basically   me to dump gallons of water into the ground.  Like, and so one of the reasons why I wanted   to bring that up is that when climate crisis  accelerates, not only will it disable more people,   but the people that our political structures  will intentionally leave to die are the disabled   people. And so it's always been tricky for  me that so many people in assistive and   accessible technology have this interest in  a technology which is demonstrably terrible   for the environment when those consequences  will be felt the most by disabled people. Raja, did you wanna add anything? Yes, I think generative AI does have a potential  to disclose people with disabilities. I think   there's definite lack of representation  within the model itself. I think, you know,  

it can be harmful unless people are thinking about  it in a creative space. I think there is also,   it can potentially help independence  sometimes in some ways depending on,   obviously your disability, I think  it's one step forward, one step back,   with automatic captioning, that was a  game changer for some individuals, but   it doesn't necessarily understand me. It still  leaves me behind. And so obviously it's a mixed   bag of things and I suspect that that's going  to be true for all. And again, how to kind of   just raise and elevate for everybody and get  everybody a sense of equality using technology.

Well, thank you all. It just shows you  that any topic and certainly generative   AI is one really great example of this.  That there's a lot of different facets and   a lot of depth to this topic that it isn't  just one straight and simple answer. It's   something that will be ongoing in terms of  the conversation, in terms of implications,   not just for the people that use it as diverse  of a group as that is, but also in terms of   resources, and how it's generated, the technology  involved. And those conversations certainly are  

being held in other areas as well for particular  occupations, for example. So it just shows you   that that conversation is not as simple and it's  not going to be something that is a quick one,   it's something that needs to be ongoing and  to really include everyone. And so that's why   having diverse groups that are part of the  conversation is so critical at all levels.   So kind of talking about different aspects of  this conversation, whether it be generative AI   or other, I just going into question three, what  differences do you see in accessibility research   conducted in academia and industry? So that  could be things that are in common, things that   you see as different. And so I wanted to start  with Shaun, since you are currently at Google. All right. Yeah, this is a question that I  hear often as someone who has bounced back  

and forth a little bit. Just to start with a  comment, a thought, so when I was a professor,   one of my deep sources of frustration was that we  were doing research that I saw as important and   we would write a paper about it and often that  would be the end of it. And I always felt it was   really hard to do anything beyond that. And I've  spent a few years in industry now and find kind   of a similar end result, but often for different  reasons, right? I mean, I think it goes back to   these, the broader issues of societal structure  and to what degree does both like our society and   the technology infrastructure that we use support  people who do things differently or people who   have different perception on the world. And I  think there are a lot of factors there that just   make it really hard to make things better, right?  And obviously we could go to a whole discussion   of what that would even mean, but so I think  where there are shared challenges, right, and   I hope that we come back to having shared goals  about really wanting to make things better for   people and to empower people. In terms of industry  versus academia, I often say we should reject the   binary of academia versus industry because every  job, every project is different. I also strongly  

encourage people to seek partnerships going in  both directions. You know, if you're faculty,   I think it's great to seek opportunities in  industry to understand the challenges that folks   in industry experience. Likewise, I'm thinking a  lot about how to better connect with academics.   To answer, give a partial answer to the question,  one difference that I see, again, based on my own   experiences is when we say industry, we often mean  a very specific and narrow type of company and a   technology company. And often from a set of  companies and the acronym. And so those companies,   I would say, draw from a really different  talent pool than academia does. And so I think,  

again, I was saying earlier there's importance  of having diverse disciplinary perspectives.   And I don't always see that in tech companies. I  think companies often maybe try that, but aren't   successful in having that kind of diversity.  But I would say a lot of the problems are,  

often a lot of the challenges, at  least in my experience, are local,   are an aspect of local culture rather than this is  how academia works or this is how industry works. Okay, thank you. Rua? Thanks. I think that when it comes to thinking  about this question, it's really important not   to keep the false dichotomy between academia  and industry as natural and inevitable. They're  

actually deeply entangled and enmeshed and embed  with each other. For example, many of the funding   bodies are deliberately seeking academics to make  connections with industry partners or to at least   propose the possibility of the outcomes of that  research becoming transferable, like becoming   market products. And so, and then also you  have the problem of the increasingly capitalist   structure of the United States University itself.  So there's like not really a difference between   like Google as an entity and Stanford as an  entity. Like they have the same motivations and   priorities in a lot of ways. What you do get down  to is the difference in motivation between the   individual researchers, right? And now at a base  level, most researchers are just interested in the   puzzle, right? But a lot of times, the motivation  that they're being given from their superiors is   different. So an industry researcher might be  sort of compelled to be studying things for the  

purposes of improving the product, right? And by  improving the product that necessarily eventually   means making the product more profitable, right,  even if they desire to make the product better   for the people, what actually gets taken on board  from the research arm to the development arm tends   to be what makes it more profitable. This is why  Google fired the entire ethics department. So,   and I'm just picking on Google because we keep  talking about them, they're not special. And in   academia, you have people who maybe, like Shaun,  have these lofty ideas that the things that   they make can actually make a difference and then  they get obstructed by the structures of academia   and of our government at large in our society,  right? But there's not really a difference that,   like Shaun said, like the outcomes tended to be  the same, but the reasons were different. And so I   think that thinking about the two things as  different makes it harder for us as individual   researchers to collaborate with each other in  subversive ways to create a better world. So,   I don't know, I think maybe I just  said unionized research, but next.

Okay, Raja, how about you? Yeah, so yes, I agree that academia and industry  often collaborate and potentially the roles of   academia kind of get passed on to the next  generation of researchers and developers   and potentially the customers as well. And  I think that academia does impact society,   and I do see society becoming more inclusive than  they have over the past 40 years or so. I mean,   growing up without any access, without any  rights, without any commitment to accessibility,   and now society has become better. But now  the question is where is society getting their  

values? Where are they gonna be able to improve?  You know, like for autistic accessibility and   different varieties of disabilities, and maybe  it's from academia and maybe it's from industry,   maybe it's a little bit of both. But I think  I see a lot of values in practice within like   the students' thinking and how they're thinking  about the importance of incorporating community   and incorporating design and then sending that out  to the broader population through industry. We do   get people reaching out to Gallaudet University  often about how to improve their products, how   to improve and think about these issues from the  design phase. Sometimes the values will show up   more on an individual level, but at a systematic  level, they're continuing to push potentially   the same old narrative and needing to push what's  not true is that all people, sorry, that people,   everybody should be included and respected and  at the academic level through the industrial   level. I mean sometimes it's, you know, across  systems and sometimes they are in conflict with   each other. And so I think that that continues  to and needs to continue to change and evolve. Well, thank you. So definitely there have been  a lot of good points brought up as they have  

for all the questions. I just wanted to call out a  couple. So one is that certainly that industry and   academia are not just their own silos. There is  a lot of interaction. The question was presented   that way just because in the perception of  most, it usually is perceived that way. So  

I'm glad that that was discussed and there are  certainly a lot of opportunities for engagement   as well as was mentioned with populations that  can give input through participatory design or   other ways of evaluating products, whether it  be early on or later. And sometimes those are   done with universities and sometimes they're done  with organizations outside of the traditional like   academic or industrial kind of areas. It could be  advocacy groups and other groups as well. And it,   yeah, being respectful certainly is very key to  that. And it's not just a, hey, I need you to  

check this off. You know, it's really to really  get input that is valued, right? And then is   further integrated with the product or whatever  it is that's being developed. And obviously across   the world, this may look slightly different in  terms of how that's done, but there might be a   lot of commonalities that thinking about like the  EU as an example, where they have a lot of ways of   funding different types of research and having  organizations work together, whether it be in   small or in the large, as well as industry itself  that have global presence. And so just wanted to   call those things out. But like some of the other  areas that we've discussed, it's not necessarily,   doesn't necessarily look the same for everybody.  And one of the other items that kind of goes along   with that, that hasn't been explicitly called  out is that accessibility can appear a little   differently for different groups. And because of  that, you can't assume that if it looks a certain  

way, then it's accessible for everyone. And so  keeping that in mind in terms of whether it be   a spectrum or a range of abilities or limitations  or constraints as people have, those all need to   be taken into consideration. It's not just one  profile that is being designed for. So again,   that's kind of popped up for degenerative  AI as well as some of the other areas. Can I make a quick point? Sorry to break my turn. Sure.

I realized after one thing I really wanted to  call out is also just academia and industry and   also individual institutions often vary greatly in  terms of the degree to which they support people   with disabilities within them. And so I really, I  think panels like these are great and I'm happy to   be a part of it, but I think they also sometimes  communicate a survivorship bias, which is to say   like, look, it's actually going well everywhere,  we've got people in all these different   backgrounds in these positions. And you know,  I'll say personally for me, some of these moves   or considerations around industry versus academia  have been around where am I able to succeed and do   work. And so I think for folks who are watching,  I think that's a place where there's so much work   to be done and I don't know, I don't think there  is on earth an institution that couldn't do a bit   better about how to include scientists with  disabilities as part of their organizations.

That's a very good point. And actually, that leads  us into actually our next question because that   could easily flow into the message,  right? So our last question that we have,   and we should have some time to take  some audience questions as well,   is what is your takeaway message to those in  the audience regarding accessibility and any   related topics? And so what Shaun just spoke  about could easily be one of those topics. Rua? Man! Takeaway. So yeah, so my  recommendation for anyone who   is seeking to be a researcher in this space,  or is currently a researcher in this space,   is to think very deeply about something that  I learned from Ruha Benjamin in particular   in one of her books, the "Viral Justice"  book. And in that book she talks about how   the world is full of problems and the problems  are everywhere, and you can't do them all, right?   But that doesn't mean that the thing that you are  doing is useless just because something else seems   more urgent at the same time, everything that is  happening is connected. And so what Ruha says in   her book is to find your plot, which basically  means like, find the piece of land that you will   work, right? And so when you're thinking about  becoming a researcher in this space or any other   space, look for the place that you feel you  can do the most good and grow the most fruit,   I guess. That as long as you are doing your  best and feeling fulfilled, then that is the  

most good that you can be doing, right? And so if  you're doing something that feels like a struggle,   sometimes it's the environment, sometimes it's the  ground, right? And sometimes it's the task and you   have to figure out which one it is so that you can  make a choice. You know, for example, like Shaun,   to move from one venue or sphere to the other,  you have to find your plot. That's my message. Okay, thank you. And Raja? Let's see. My message would be, I think  that academia has, the special gift in  

academia is of mentorship. I think the  whole generational knowledge of people   that have learned from before us, I  think including people who have 40,   50 years of experience in this field. So when  we're thinking about going one step forward,   two steps back, trying to change that  and incorporating where we've been,   where we've come, and explaining kind of like what  are the benefits of people and including people in   helping us shape the next generation within  research, within practice, within mentoring,   which who are gonna go off to industry, gonna  go off to be members of society and making   sure that it's truly inclusive from the onset  from the designing of technology and computers.

Great, thank you. Shaun? Yeah, I will share some wisdom that I received.  So this is something that one of my PhD advisors,   Richard Ladner, said to me that changed how  I think about the work that I do. You know,   he was saying essentially, when we think about  people with disabilities, it can be really   helpful to look at disabled people from the  perspective of skills and knowledge and their   experience as problem solvers, and I think as  a society, we've been getting better, at least   in the US around inspiration porn and looking at  people with disabilities as victims or as sources   of inspiration. But one of the things that he  had said to me was, "Okay, well, when you're  

doing research with people with disabilities, you  should take the same approach that you would have   if you were, let's say, interviewing some domain  expert, like a physician or a lawyer, and give   them the same kind of respect and level of input  and pay as someone who's really highly trained   in their field." And I found that perspective  very helpful in both in my own work, but also   sometimes in communicating with others about how  to engage with projects around accessibility. That's a great point from all of you. And I'll  just follow up just really quickly. Certainly,   plus one for me on all of that was mentioned, and  basically my takeaway is that, and perhaps it's   just what was mentioned just described slightly  different is that, you know, persons with   disabilities are not others. You know, they're  just not other people that you don't interact   with or that you don't know. Disability cuts  across everything else. And it can vary, you know,  

it's not just the profile of what is considered  disability, even though many people may have a   stereotype. And so with that, you will have people  with disabilities at all levels of life in terms   of education, in terms of occupation, in terms of  income, everything really. And because of that,   they're not other, people with disabilities  are with all of us, right? Whoever, you know,   thinking of us as just everyone. And with that and  kind of going back to what was stated in terms of   being inclusive and considering the perspective  they have, because there will be different   perspectives on some things just as others may  have different perspectives for other reasons,   that it is important to include. And for  me, when I went into research, it was   I guess not quite selfish because certainly  the sixth grade me of wanting to work on   a self-driving car was just something that was  aspirational. But when I think of the challenges  

that I went through and wanting to make things  to have better tools, to have more opportunities,   to make sure people know that they're there and  that's part of that expectation and aspiration,   but not as a savior type of way, but want to be  supportive and to kind of let people know what's   possible when sometimes the expectations  aren't there. And so it is something that   is important for all of us because one  of the things that I sometimes still   run into is when people talk about persons with  disabilities, they use the word normal as in not,   which is definitely something that is a little  cringey for me because with the work that I do,   including the person that I am and those that  I know is everyone's normal, there's no idea of   what normal is, even though people tend to throw  around the word very indiscriminately. I mean,   in reality, we're all together and it's just,  while some accommodations or tools might be   useful to help particular groups of people, in  a lot of ways, those same tools help everyone   in different ways. And so that's something to  also keep in mind as well, is it's not just for  

a very small group of people, there are a lot  of things out there, Raja mentioned captions as   well as other as what would be considered at  times assistive technology can help a lot of   people if you think about how technology is used  and can be used in different ways as an example.   But we do have a few more minutes. And so with  that, I just want to see if anyone else has any   follow ups or anything else they wanted to mention  that we just didn't get a chance to talk about. This is Raja. For the panelists, talking about  member research and how to communicate with   people who have a similar identity to yourself,  I would say it is always a challenge to try to   communicate both, someone's identity and their  experience. For myself, identity as a deaf person,   so I understand from a deaf perspective, and  I have other things to help navigate me and   my journey, but I do like the approach  that you're asking the expertise of that   member of that community. So asking other deaf  individuals how can I, help me understand you,  

help me learn what I need to know, what other  different technologies should be aware of that   maybe is applicable to your specific disability.  And I think mutual respect goes a long way, and I   think that that typically works for me, myself  as a deaf person and in my career. And that's   the conversation with other deaf folks as well is  that we consider ourselves an expert in the field. Did anyone wanna follow up? I will. So, you know, the question that we had in  the QA was from Alexandra about member research  

and people who do identity relevant work.  Basically the problem of being the insider   outsider and navigating boundaries and tensions in  that research. One of the things that I see a lot,   particularly from young researchers who are very  often in environments where they don't have a   mentor that shares their lived experience, is that  they will begin very eagerly designing studies   to study their in-group basically because  we have this experience of knowing that we   have this knowledge that is routinely denied  and even controverted by the establishment,   right? And so there's this eagerness to go and  study that and write about it and basically show   the dominant research that you're wrong, right?  But what often happens with that when they don't   have that mentorship from sort of like another  insider or outsider, is that that research can   accidentally be very exploitative. We've  talked a lot about disabled people being   domain experts in a lot of ways, and you also  have disabled people who are chronically under or   unemployed. And oftentimes I will see recruitment  requests for people to participate in anonymized   research on a topic that those participants would  otherwise be making money for that consultation.  

And sometimes there is a compensation like 25,  $50, it's just not the same. At the same time,   that population has a hard time declining  that because they often disproportionately   live in poverty. And so there's this problem  where as graduate students and as academics,   we forget because we are also disabled how much  privilege we had to get there. And we forget that,   there's not, the only difference between us  and the participants that we are recruiting   is privilege, luck, access to class capital. And  that difference is a significant impact, but that,  

like expertise wise, your knowledge is not more  valuable than the participant's knowledge. And   so what I caution young researchers against is to  be accidentally building your career off of the   labor of your own people, but the people that you  have privilege over, right? And so to be thinking   about that and how can you more ethically navigate  that tension, I don't have the perfect advice for   it that I can give you in a sentence, but it's  something that we can figure out collectively. Okay, I think we're about out of time. We  had a great conversation and I thank the  

panelists again as well as those of you  in the audience. And I think we touched   on a lot of different points and it just,  again, I think demonstrates the breadth   as well as the depth of the conversation  surrounding accessibility. And I hope that   there are several takeaways from those that  tuned in today and that inspire you to kind   of continue your own conversation around this  subject. But again, thank you today. Thank you   for all of you for coming and I appreciate  and hope you have a good rest of your day.

2024-07-15 15:02

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