ASL Club at UCR & ACM: Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Deafhood

hello everyone uh my name is big dale that's my name sign is a bg and this is a new event for students at ucr i'm really excited about it asl club is an opportunity for students to learn pick up sign and all that's included with deaf culture students attend weekly learning lots of different topics relating to deafness the history education the language communication and then with that i want to introduce justin he's the vice president of acm hello to everyone on zoom hello to everyone on zoom and hello to everyone here today uh my name is justin maizon and i am the vice president of acm which stands for association for computer machinery and i'm here today with a couple of my officers and we run the largest technical organization with a focus on computer science our goal is to help our members build technical and professional skills that will help them in school and eventually in the computer industry we have general meetings every other week on thursdays 5-6 at borton hall if you'd like to check us out also more about me i am a computer engineer major and i specialize in computer building keyboard building and cryptocurrency i'm really excited about this event because i don't know much about sign language and the deaf community so i'm excited to learn and see how technology plays a part in that next slide [Music] and then if you um if your the presenters can introduce themselves that would be great who wants to go first do you want to go first do you want to flip a coin spencer says or go by last name my name is spencer montan this is my sign name here and my pronouns are he and him i'm wearing a dark blue shirt with buttons and i have glasses on as well i also have dark hair and i have a white background i'm the assistant director for the assistant for the center on assisted technology and that's at rit rochester institute of technology and that is the national tech technical institute for deafness as well hi my name is rob koch i don't have a sign name i just fingerspell my name rob rob i'm a white male i use he him as my pronouns i've got a beard it's becoming more white i still have some color in my hair a little bit a little bit of red but getting whiter i have on a gray long sleeve t-shirt and right now i'm working for slalom build it's a group under slalom consulting so it's a consulting firm and we help customers migrate specifically to the cloud based on their data platform and their infrastructure so we get all of that migrated over to the cloud thank you thank you for having me here what's your specialty i'll go ahead and start my field i do have a background in sorry i'm i do a lot with people with sales in hr and i work at rit i work with the master's program getting more involved with project management and with technology i work with startups i've worked with several different startups and deaf entrepreneurs who want to improve accessibility and so that tends to be kind of my where i'm currently working in my field of expertise rob says for me i graduated from gallaudet university in economics and finance i pictured myself going into the financial world insurance world but once i got a taste of the workflow and i did not feel like it was optimal it was not they were not very efficient there was a lot of you know wasted work and so i might ask my boss if i could take over um the the concepts going in and i went in i went into the computer store i bought a i bought a um book on programming i taught myself how to program and from then on i was hooked and i just kind of fell into the world of software development um data platforms has kind of become my expertise i do a lot of workflow art re arc you know re-architect um and trying to make platforms more efficient um in real time so that's my field of expertise now how did you start in that field where did you go to school i started out as an intern and from there i learned a lot about the development in how this works with people and that is where i started up the startup wavio and i am basically a business developer in that role i started working on finding the data getting consumers to work on it and with my team we're working on transferring about 20 different states worth of information for the deaf and hard of deaf and hard of hearing community and we are developing a program in order to solve these different sound issues so wavio works on finding the different sounds in the room and then it listens to the environment and it's listening 24 7 and then it provides a warning on the phone for the deaf and hard of hearing so such as if a baby's crying or the doorbell it'll give you a warning on the phone and that's a great resource for the deaf and hard of hearing and in my experience it's great and it's been growing and the technology is really opening up a lot of improvements and captionings signing wise i noticed that there's a lot of different solutions within this product i did a little bit of explaining already briefly about where i went to school i can go a little bit further into depth um really it start you know i started in the field of technology because i was lazy i was really over my work running to the back room getting files finding uh the employee id putting that information into the system i mean it was just so um it took so long to reconcile and find the name and then the employee id and all of that information the amount uh you know it would be like the retirement account that that was the what i was looking for and the investments that they had and for students you know sometimes when you put money in a retirement account they ask you to invest in different kinds of mutual funds and so there's all different targets with those and so people will re-align because the financial market changes and of course the world changes in general and so they might want to move their money around and so figuring out a lot of of that and and thinking about that there was just i saw this and i was like why are we doing this i would ask a co-worker why why do we do it this way and my goal was just to automate it automate everything related to that because you know and that's when i went and got the book and i was working with the mainframe people at my company and they were you know they weren't really an expert in any specific computer language and so i just started um at that time i was using visual basic language is what it was called and so i was learning that and working with mainframe and getting information from them there was a lot of data and how to break down the data and sometimes the data i would get would be unstructured so that means i would have to write a program or i'd have to identify what specifically the number meant what the dollar amount was or the employee id or um you know make sure it was in the correct order so we would have to retract that data and use use that and so because of that and because of the work that i did i was you know it just really impressed me with the power that i had in my hands i was like wow i can do this and that just completely change you know i knew that it could change the world and so i i was you know it just became my thing i saw um how to change the workflow edit the workflow and you know big architect the whole point of that is like you know having an eye on making things better and more efficient and so now moving into a new role at a consulting firm as a principal architect i work with different clients i learn about their uh what their workflow and you know maybe redesign re-rework their program much of the audience might not be aware so we're wondering if you could explain a little bit of how your identity has taken part in the process in the world of technology and business i'm wondering if i can get the visual fixed a little bit here okay thank you so much can you please repeat your question i'm wondering in your field of business i noticed people at rit and your different businesses might not have an awareness so we're wondering how deafness takes a place in this identity and in your business aspect and perspective of everything that's an excellent question i'll give you a quick background of myself first uh growing up i found out i was deaf i had lost my hearing and so learning through life uh the sign language and learning asl which is american sign language i used a program here in southern california and i met with a lot of different teachers and students and a lot of information was passed that way i picked up the language very quickly growing up through that way i was also mainstreamed that is my background meaning i went to a hearing school as a deaf student and in that area there was a district a school district in burbank the city in southern california and that's where i was mainstreamed i went to a hearing high school so i was able to speak and then i had an interpreter in the school as well and there has there is a center there called nad the national association of deafness and that has a lot of support providing interpreters captioning they provide different printed material and things like that and so that was a great support to me in the different classrooms and as a business major and oftentimes as a in a deaf event we would go to a lot of deaf events and there's a lot of student organizations that include deaf students and volunteers with a signing environment so that is how i was able to learn and pick up the language by socializing with people within the organization and giving me that great experience and so then when i went to rit the rochester institute on technology there are 2 000 deaf students at rit and it's only it's one of only nine colleges that offer that excuse me it's nt id not na nic nad excuse me and subject matter experts and so these different groups create a lot of information in order to solve these issues there's business owners business organizers who come and help pick up all of these different formatting and pieces of information so it helped a lot with my personal growth and prepared me a lot for working in the field as a deaf individual both at csun and at rit thank you rob question about deaf hood i saw that that there was one question regarding that and what that is um there was a movement where deaf people [Music] were empowering themselves to really take ownership and really own their journey instead of being told you know what our journey should have be especially in the disability community people are not really good at letting others decide for themselves you know in terms of like the preferred language if spoken or if sign so there's a lot of different approaches to communication and not a lot of preference given to the the people with the disability and so death food go ahead go ahead spencer if you want to add something yes i'd like to add there's this you know so so-called deafness i the deaf identity is really included in the in the identity it includes culture it includes all these things but we also so you know we write we can use other forms of communication in order to get our thoughts across and so oftentimes deaf people are oppressed in the different industries and we're encouraged to use hearing aids or cochlear implants and all this different technology and so really the goal is to build a bridge between the deaf community and the hearing world and we want them to work together in that sense yes so and in that realm uh the other point of deaf hood is because you know historically deaf people have been oppressed and so it's not people always kind of force us to do things that we can't do for example the majority of deaf people don't speak clearly they it's just the reality so a good example is i'm in public and i speak because i can and um people ask me and they see me voicing and they're like uh you know they they think that you know i'm accommodating them they're not accommodating me at that point they know that i can speak so they're and then i might not get get what they're saying and and so with that put with deaf hood and with those scenarios it's like signing then they automatically know that i'm deaf that they have you know i have different communication needs and they have to kind of figure out how to work with that and so there's many um you know complexities with deaf heard there's workshops there's books that you can read it's a very you know very research heavy and there's a lot of information that can be applied to many other disability groups and other you know minority groups that this the exact same concepts could be applied and there was another question there before i forget about and she's asking about people pursuing a um for those that want to pursue a passion in that field what's the ecosystem like what's the world of technology like so as a developer you know i'm always putting an eye on accessibility besides went in and out okay so i want i'm i'm constantly thinking of accessibility for example you know if i'm identifying a workflow and i need to improve it or change it i'm always thinking of the disability perspective or the deaf view for example if somebody is color blind and there it's green and red i'm thinking that's not a good option because somebody that's colorblind would not be able to see that and it would have an impact on that or if they're releasing video and audio if it's a video or audio centric product i'm thinking okay is it accessible to the deaf what needs to be added in order to make it that way and you know there should be some accessibility standards on websites as well like wcag um i forget what the acronym is but you can look it up wcag 2.1 now is it's there's a board and it's an independent board but they partner with the us government to make sure that websites have some standards like if there's an image on the website it must have alt text and so if you were to go over use your mouse to go over it the text would describe what the picture is um so a blind person would be able to hover their mouse and then they could uh know what the picture is of and it would give context to that webpage and i'm sure spencer i'm sure you've worked a lot on that but i use my position within different companies even though you know as a developer i might not be or as you know doing database data engineering i have no influence on the company's design or process for setting up their website i can still use my influence as an employee of the company to kind of give them a reminder oh you should add accessibility here and here are different ways that you can add accessibility so there's many different ways that you know in my industry right now i think that there's not a lot of deaf people but i can use my um presence within the industry to help those make decisions rob made a great point of encouraging more people to make sure that their websites and things like that are accessible so for example on the internet uh the television all of these different options making sure that everyone including the deaf including deaf plus you know deafblind making sure the screen has the possibility to read the image and things like that many people have no exposure to deaf deafblind they have not met people like that and so for the first time they're meeting somebody that's deaf and they don't necessarily know what you know they have no visualization they don't think of different things and so they need people to proactively do that but at the same time it's not my job so yeah it's a tough place to be in right this is an excellent point as well technology developing at the institute developing in the different industries we need to make sure that people the industries are partnering and then having employees who you know the graphic designers the web designers all of these different people making sure that the product services and are at being figured out how to make them accessible so there are plenty of people who don't know how to do that and that's why we need to make sure that they have the information in order to make sure that something is accessible so that communication with companies for example on the phone lots of people don't have any idea what vrs is video relay services and that's used by the deaf community there are lots of people who don't understand why do we need to use video but that's my job that's how i make sure that at the same time i have the option and so as a deaf person i have to make sure that that communication is available so that's a example of how people sometimes just aren't aware of the different solutions that need to be taken do you mind explaining do you mind expanding on some of the barriers that you face within the industry and what um changes and improvements you would like to see in the future do you want to explain the improvements within that space um so in terms of you know i think exposure is number one number one is definitely exposure legal you know there's laws there's ada the american with disabilities act of 1990 just more and more companies now are realizing and recognizing that ada is there and how to you know in the beginning a day was really a hot button for um building accessibility and then now you know people were really good about building like wheelchair ramps and things like that you know making sure that the signs were braille and that elevators had braille on them so they knew which floor to go to uh maybe there was carpeting in the building that you didn't want it to be too thick because uh you know wheelchairs couldn't go over it so making sure that it was thin and easy for people to be mobile on and now that's kind of shifting and going more in the direction of you know online technology accessibility websites with the pandemic everybody's home and so you know the internet is a big plays a really big role in our lives and you know the use of paper has gone down extensively so the i think the priorities have just changed as a as a nation and so it's more tech related in terms of accessibility is the big thing now that's a great point about the policies all of these different policies are regarding running the different situations but now we're looking at accessibility of technology and resources like that so for example the icloud and all of these different uh websites sometimes have been behind in this situation so the policy is sitting there and needs to catch up and so there are many organizations that oftentimes they have an accessibility team and so we encourage you to go out and contact those accessibility teams provide feedback and really let them know what's going on so that they know what we're looking for in the community in southern california at csun they have a technology program that has a team where you can join they have a deaf team there they have you can become a members there you can meet people you can talk about asking for feedback and contact them and and get all of that information from those different groups there's also an organization an advocacy group an advocacy group that provides the ability to complain to the federal government if uh if things aren't being met so that is uh maybe we can move on to the next topic hello welcome back okay so yeah i love the talk about accessibility and technology so i want to like ask my questions like more focused on like the technology world and just how you know how we could take consideration to that so my first question is going to be to spencer and i just want to know like how have you used technology specifically in your startup companies weavi and wavio and just like how have you used that to contribute to accessibility and like what are the impacts of that let me explain a little bit more about wavio first uh that has been a great change so back in 2015 i started building the concept of an alarm system and so it has a microphone on the device and it listens 24 7 to the environment and that also will print onto a platform and it provides all of the information in the system so it uses the voice and it gives you all the different words and so we have this sound running 24 7 but we needed to make sure that the all the information would be provided to such a like an iphone and things like that so when it got set up when it gets set up we have these different use cases use cases for the deaf and hard of hearing market and we wanted to make sure that it benefited the this different group and so it helps with the military and security it can help with all of these different lists of groups and so we want to make sure that the the small startup company we want it to be provided to bigger companies and pave the way so to speak of the use available here now this system we back in 2016 the microphone itself was expensive and so now we are developing the a different design that will help develop and allow the developers into the system so that they can see the sound library and they can see the different lists of all of the environment sounds available and then they can pick through them that matches their product and what they need specifically so the product at a hospital room doesn't necessarily need a sound of or it does need a sound of patients coughing or screaming in pain so the different sounds that are necessary in that environment can be chosen by the by the company that we would be using it for so depending on the system the size of the room we would need to have a different level of those noises so there's alarm systems and there's there's a lot of commotion in the room for example if you can hear a baby crying so all these different sounds going on we want to make sure it can get picked up and benefit different groups of people in different companies like that oh thank you i loved hearing about like the idea of like the microphone like how back then it was expensive and so i really liked hearing the like development of that and like where it went into your startup companies which is really cool so my next question is uh what current projects are you working on and um are you working on to take into consideration inclusive design and how does that impact other communities such as you know like deafblind or just like the deaf community meaning do i have any new startups in line right now working with the deaf and hard of hearing communities yeah anything anything along that line any new projects or any anything alongside the startups yeah that includes inclusive design so wavio is a project that has a a partner project so to speak called c sound and so that partners with the company area 23 and that's the company name and it's in new york city and so that is under the health a health care company ipg is the company's bigger umbrella term name and so they have a big community or excuse me company there and so we partner with them working on the c sound design and we started that as a student i started that as a student back during my degree and so we're really working on making sure that zvrs and purple which are video relay service companies we want them to start helping they encourage me to do the idea back when i was a student at rit and they donated money and i was mentored by a business coach by different teachers and the students the rit students that are software engineers and in algorithms and innovation and then there was also a student that was a hardware designer you can see on the slides you can see what it looked like in the beginning the small little black box and then how it evolved um the beta and so there were several different devices that were in different states and we um we put them in different parts of the country we got feedback you know there was you know if it was able to identify sound if like the warning was consistent they would contact us so that we um if it was recording the sound we would get the recording and we would listen for them and then we would find out like that parrot was making noise it was like a new sound until we collect the data on the new sound one unique thing about wavio and c sound that project is it's the computer processes the sound on the device it's not through the cloud because hackers would be able to go in and hack the cloud and so they would have access to the um audio and people's homes and so we designed it to make it so that it's it you it's not hackable and the csun project um that it we can go ahead and make we can go ahead and show a video of that sound if you would like my friend came over and pointed out that the fire alarm was beeping i was surprised i didn't know i was cooking in the kitchen and my friend's daughter fell down the stairs and got hurt she was crying out for help i had no idea what was happening [Music] the current products on the market are extremely limited we can buy a device for a smoke detector and another that tells me when my doorbell rings but nothing that can distinguish between a microwave baby crying dog barking or any other household sound the reason no one's been able to create a product like this is the shortage of data in order to teach a machine learning model how to distinguish sounds with any level of accuracy you would need literally millions of sound samples turns answer was in front of us the whole time youtube contains over a billion hours of videos that are filled with sounds we train the csound machine learning model with sound clips from youtube over 2 million videos were analyzed categorized and converted into 10 second sound clips each containing a discrete sound each type of sound in our data model like yelling is comprised of several thousand youtube audio samples these sounds range from common household noises to alerts that could mean life or death every sound clip we add makes our machine learning protocol even smarter allowing for even higher ac ratings while the technology is incredibly complex the user experience couldn't be more simple c sound is always listening for one of the 75 sounds it's programmed to hear once the sound occurs it interprets the noise and communicates it via wi-fi to the user's mobile device [Music] that was our company that was our product that was partnered with area 23 and we're hoping that it'll become an international product uh in kane k19 in the grants and so we're hoping that we will get the award the grand i missed the name of the award it's a big opportunity for us and a big success that we've been able to build this so this is a great idea or success as a deaf entrepreneur thank you very much uh yeah so that brings me to my next question which is this one's going to be to rom uh i like to know more about the aws certifications and just what exactly are those and what is the process for obtaining them and then what certifications do you recommend pursuing so aws amazon web services is what it stands for they are one of the bigger cloud providers if you don't know the cloud if you don't understand the cloud really it's a bunch of servers in um it's parked in in a building somewhere in a lot of different regions and so in those data centers aws will manage all of the servers all the hardware within the servers they manage that and then you the clients manage what data is put on it you manage the websites that are set up in the cloud and so there's all different things that are put on to the servers that aws takes care of there's big three big cloud providers aws is one that's the one that we're talking about i recommend you get the basic aws certification if you want to show you know your future your potential to future employees or current employees that you understand and are knowledgeable about how the cloud you know the big uses for the cloud in aws they have certific they have ccp which is certified cloud practitioner and so that is one of the certificates and that's the basic one and that one is really neat because you know the testing is is relatively easy if you study of course um and rather cheap once you pass that test then the next certification um you get 50 off the the testing for the next one so it's it's a nice and easy start um and then rather cheap and you can build your confidence to and you get again a basic introduction into the cloud azure is another um big cloud provider as well and there are products that they provide that you can pursue um to upskill or um of scale your yourself so and really show that you are an expert and your capabilities in understanding the concept of the cloud thank you very much um for my next question this one's to spencer uh so earlier you mentioned that wavio uses machine learning and i myself and i'm sure many other comp sci students are interested in machine learning but you know they feel like it's too hard or too difficult and they don't know where to start what would you tell a student that has the interest for machine learning but but doesn't know where to start we're just going to switch who's invoicing this so i i was just letting the other interpreter know that i was going to voice this because i'm familiar with machine learning machine learning is the process you know ai using ai and using big data to arrive at a conclusion and so that's essentially what machine learning is it's automatic without getting involved um without getting involved with the instructions and so it uses so wavio uses ai and machine learning and machine learning here at rit they have a program here under the college of engineering and ccis computer the computer department and so now we are offering a course in machine learning last summer we hired one machine learning student to work with us here at um on a project i don't know if you guys are familiar with smart voice uh it is like surrey alexa all of those different things and so um there's an algorithm that will look for like the perfect voice that fits but that doesn't include people with um atypical an atypical voice and or maybe not or atypical speech and so if you don't have you know you might have a physical disability you might have um you know they can't it can't pick up your voice completely and so that student came to help develop a system that would include people who don't have you know that don't fit into the algorithm of having that perfect voice and so it picks up you know a voice that might have a disability like surrey or alexa things like that that doesn't necessarily recognize the voice of those people so that is what that person is working on and there is a college here at our or that you know there's a program here at rit that uses ai and machine learning and other technologies and we partner with one university in georgia georgia technology institute that's based in georgia and they teach ai and machine learning as well rob i wonder if you have any other good programs for people that want to learn machine learning oh yeah definitely um so there's also def run program in uh at purdue university and it's very heavy in data engineering machine learning they partner with many different companies and i know one deaf person that works there that was setting up i it's called it really is to expand the number of deaf and hard of hearing numbers people in um data science and machine learning and so they're really big into um supporting that but just to machine learning and ai machine learning there's many cloud providers that have courses curriculum that you can pursue that are free you can use their free instances and so the cost is really minimal for individuals aws has um age maker and then azure microsoft or google cloud has they partner with a lot of um k-e-g-g-e um and there's a variety of courses there just ready for people that want to learn more about machine learning the languages the software programs all of those there's python is one r is another they use tools as well like um j-a-y no j-u j jupiter um the spelling is it's not spelt like you would spell the the planet jupiter it's spelled different j-y-u-p-t-e-r but it sounds just like jupiter and so there's all these different things you can aggregate and that can show exactly um what the charts are showing and you can see exactly how you process um that training and what the models look like and get the outcomes that you want and so i mean there are really a lot of resources out there you can you know google fu i don't know if um that is one and so there's all different uh google view and different things like that that will go in and get resources and there's youtube i mean youtube has tons and tons of content that you know they don't sign but they're captioned videos that you can read um and and learn about machine learning and so that's how i i was able to get my certification i was able to go in and find the white paper the pdf and read that and then you know maybe watch videos on youtube and now google chrome has it where you know somebody comes up and you can you know in the browser the captions aren't available google chrome can provide those with for you and so there's a variety of features within there so yes that just gives you some the onus is on you and then just to add to that with wavio our goal is to have more data because the more data we have the better accuracy we have so that's really important and with machine learning and ai i mean that's really part of our product solution is to help save lives for other deaf people because often when you hear you'll hear stories of deaf people who parked their car in a garage and they didn't realize it was a new car the engine's much more quiet than they used to be so the car is parked and they go into the house and the engine's still running they don't realize it you know so they go into the house and the the car still running they go to sleep and they could you know the poison from the um from the engine and so that's one of the use cases that's really important to us in using ai and machine learning and getting the data and really recognizing in the data library having all of those different sounds and seeing the number of examples is really important um with you know the more data the more samples the better um the better success rate thank you very much so i have one last question for each of you and this is going to be more about like career paths and like where uh how like a college student could get involved so what led uh you each to pursue entrepreneurship and startups and industry or established companies and then what were some of the biggest challenges you faced in your career paths and how did you overcome them and then just more generally like what are some advice you would tell your past self you know that you wish you knew beforehand i'll go ahead first said spencer i had a lot of experience in the startup world so i've had about 10 years since i've graduated from csun and getting into the startup world it's i was very fortunate to be able to have paid interpreters come to meetings um with other companies and things like that that was a great experience being able to have that resource um and i think that is what made it possible for everything to go as smoothly as it did so starting up my company i had a group of deaf friends that came together and we were you know relaxing discussing talking about ideas and thinking about wow what a great idea for accessibility and we should work together and and found a company which we called it was a new idea to really get through all of these different experiences and challenges that we had and so working at this big company some working at a big company sometimes we don't have all of the resources and we have to go out and network and talk to all these investors and the business people in order to begin a startup and so there is a lot of discrimination that can come with that um so it can be a little bit fearful to get that startup running um and a lot of people tend to be a little bit afraid when a startup is ran by a group of deaf people so working in this investment situation we wanted people with a background in asl to make sure that our communication was clear we wanted them to make sure they understood our goals and we wanted to have that plan in place for our startup we needed to make sure that we had the interpreters built in to our situation and things like that uh the resources for support in the startup is really important i have many different partner partnered companies now that have already fixed these you know solved these issues so far and they share resources and it's really able to get us to the finish line so to speak so my career in the corporate world it was a very structured environment very predictable and i thought you know what's it going to be like to to go to the other side and so i in the past during the dot-com boom i moved to san francisco the silicon valley i got involved with many many many different startups and it was quite fun but at that time accessibility wasn't necessarily there many startups were lacking in funds and they didn't you know there wasn't a high demand for them to get an interpreter and so we would communicate in different ways email chat at that time it was aim aol aim so we would write back and forth or i would speak and then they would i would try to lip read what they were saying and you know i might miss something and have them repeat it so we'd go back and forth that way we got by but it really you know i got much better in understanding startups getting back and then i went back into the car corporate world to make money get health insurance get accessibility you know easier to get in get accessibility and requested interpreters and so i've been in both startups and in the corporate world i've experienced both um corporates well i will say fortune 500 companies tend to have a really high profit margin so they can afford interpreters and you can be a little bit more assertive in asking for accommodations and you know i'm just imagining a person coming in getting hired and you know have they haven't yet proved themselves and so is the company my question you know providing all of these accommodations for them or do they have to prove themselves first then the company's willing to provide the accommodations and so you know the startup is like that for sure so for example for me when i went into a startup you know entry level i had to work my way up and really become much more like a manager or vice president level and then you know they would definitely have to provide those accommodations um but there's different perspectives and there's different scenarios where uh with or without accommodations and with or without improving your skills but basically you're essentially rolling the dice in terms of you know when you go into both the corporate world and startups i'd like to add that when looking at startups you do have the advantage that when they are smaller they can develop and and more quickly move into finding what you're looking for and what your needs are and so sometimes it's hard for a big company to change all of their communication styles for everyone and you're kind of you know on the boat by yourself figuring it out whereas just like rob explained having an experience in the startup and having these different environments and i agree with what rob said um i'm sort of stuck in my own room here so when you move into the other roles uh yeah i have all my data experience but with a startup you really have to have a lot of different hats so to speak you have to be able to move into all these different roles so i've done management and i've done the business development and i've done marketing and so you have to have kind of these multiple experience roles and that has helped with my with strengthening my skill set and it definitely has helped me continue to grow in those different areas yes sometimes startups you don't know what you'll be working on that day you come into the office and you have no idea and so it's you know there's a fire there you got to fix it or you got to build something new and meet the needs of the clients right then and there and so that is one of the big differences between the the two experiences yes exactly like the fire is always existing and we always are trying to put the fire out every single day uh so the first one to three years of a startup there's problems constantly popping up we are always trying to figure out how to you know hit the head on the molehound so to speak and uh that does build that experience of working with the different groups and different places and that's the key to that building decision makers key to making decisions and so communication development with the mou the modes of understanding like signing an nda a non-disclosure agreement and learning how to you know identify the scope of the work that's one of the examples that's you know out of my comfort zone but i realized that that's one of my expertises you know to continue to grow that area thank you i really enjoy working in both environments rob says i really you know it depends at the time of my life what's needed like if i need something at a certain time in my life so that kind of dictates my decisions yes exactly i've been working in the startup world maybe five years and it definitely goes up and down right now it seems pretty stable so that's a good thing thank you very much uh so yeah that wraps up my questions about technology i love speaking with you guys we have a brief closing slides and then afterwards we're gonna have an audience q a so if anyone in the chat would like to ask a question or anyone in person so yeah i'll pass it to [Music] to big dial about and she's going to talk about asl club rob says i just wanted to let you know i really appreciate you having us here so thank you so much it's been a lot of fun to chat with everybody if you're interested in coming to asl club there's the information that i just posted and then there's a what movie are you showing on june 2nd rob's asking coda or easter seals it's the new marvel's movie it starts with an e i believe it's eternals oh eternal thank you so if anybody has any questions feel free to ask we won't bite maybe we answered all of your questions if anybody has any questions feel free to use the hand raise oh cool good one good one okay my kids enjoyed it i see a question what's your opinion on web three are you talking about web accessibility web 3.0 rob says crypto blockchain that kind of thing i'm assuming is what you're asking about yes do you want to take it or do you know anything about crypto spencer i mean i know it's a new topic that everybody is talking about i think that there's more there's more concept of um decentralizing decentralization not relying on the middle man like everyone you know relies on each other you know relying on the banks and the government and different middlemen and so i know that there's different kinds of cryptocurrency that's currently there's btc there's da there's a whole slew of um now and so i think that's still something that is emerging um will the u.s government and other governments accept it i don't know that's you know that you know that's what i'm still learning rob says yeah it's really it's a learning process for everybody involved every you know i know el salvador they had set up their um financials on bitcoin and it didn't turn out well and so i think there's a lot of learning as we go the financial market right now and is you know kind of trending down in general and so crypto is doing the same it's trending down as well and so that kind of leads to the question of what that will look like for cryptocurrency and and they can't really figure that out um in terms of web 3 you know it's the control decentralizing that and um having the the records you know that i know that there is like healthcare records changing that and as you get older and your health declines um you know getting that information on blockchain and it has to be encrypted obviously but the problem is that if people are able to go in and break hack or either you know you know get into the blockchain then the security it's the security is only as good as the implementation and of course if somebody comes up with you know a cpu that is extremely fast they would be able to break in much faster than you thought and that's something that could happen so the dynamic is constantly changing and i think with that i mean it really goes it's a lot to manage the type of technology and the different types of um yeah it's it's a very everything's really up in the air with web3 right now i would say another perspective of this topic is looking at the different servers in a computer you know they they're all if they get set up well um is is that a good setup you have to kind of figure out if you can make it run and at the same time you know make sure that the that everything is running and secure at the same time it's a difficult part are there any other questions i want to pull them out of you you know looking at the different topics that we cover today is there any answer that you wanted to add i wanted i'm thinking about including design in the discussion it's not really something we've talked about yet but design is an important part of this discussion making sure that on the mobile phone on the computer you have to make sure all the different content is stable in the in an ability and able to be read in those different technologies and so making sure that those companies develop those solutions of accessibility at the beginning and not after as an afterthought making sure that the that we're not looking at accessibility later when it pops up all of a sudden um so looking at all of these solutions at the start and then keeping that stable accessibility as the project begins and on i think that that is something we've worked on for many years for example google has a form that you can talk uh that you can to improve the functionality when placing a phone call and so that concept is something that we've made sure to cut to partner with communication companies and things like that working on figuring out is all of these options accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing communities is there a typing option for the deaf and hard of hearing on the phone you know can you include caption call uh it are these solutions being thought of at the beginning for access and because it makes it easier for later rather than making sure that that product isn't suddenly very difficult to use and then you've got to fix it so we really encourage that start starting look at accessibility rob do you have another thought on that yeah and i think it's the same thing when it relates to security if you imagine developing a product and you're working on that product you need to add security to protect the pii information uh the personal identifiable information and so that's what pii stands for so you know security is something that you um is something that you don't want to think about later it should be something that's already baked in and already part of the the product the app and so you can't undo the hardship so you know and you know that's something that should be you know baked in first the security same concept with accessibility it's something that should be included um you know and have that design ready i'm always trying to propose to to different companies how to set up accessibility um an accessibility center of excellence acos and the reason for that is because there are centralized resources that are ready that you can plug in with accessibility in mind and the resources and the tools and guides of who to ask the acos people are there and so different corporations i'm always encouraging them to set that up because i believe that there's a lot of benefit to that i know microsoft has you know they are huge with accessibility including design and a lot of what they do they just release a new game a new gaming control that you can that can be used by people with different disabilities um it's tactile friendly you know maybe if there's you know you don't have all of your fingers or something like that you're still able to use it and so they have tools that are you know for gaming that can be used by people with a variety of disabilities and can still play that game same thing with the mouse you know if what's required in order to click and so if somebody can't click what do you do what are the alternate solutions and so they have many different grades um you've worked with microsoft on some things right me spencer says yeah we do we do have some projects here that we're working with microsoft on yes we do have one project in development at the moment that's working with the hands and recently with covid it was a big challenge for the deaf and hard of hearing to make sure that there was accessibility when it comes to meeting and deafblind interpreters you you use your hands when interpreting you it's tactile and so how do we solve this issue and so an interpreter would use a glove to sign and then the glove would match what the interpreter was signing so that the deaf and blind consumer was able to understand what was going on there's also a project that uses that uses speech and so for example with all of our masks on it's also makes it hard to communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing and so we have a group working on this for the last three months that has been able to work at the institute trying to use it and make sure that there's a captioning room listening to the different presentations figuring out if the project is is working with both the deaf and hard of hearing as well as hearing students on the project you know everyday tools we use for accessibility so i you know download either google translator or microsoft translator you can go in the app and you can set up you can set it up in presenter mode and so it's always on so when a hearing person comes up to you and they start talking it automatically starts capturing and it's perfect if the environment has a lot of noise it doesn't work you have to be in a quiet room for it to work really well but there's other everyday tools like wavio something like that yes captioning is very important when it comes to different situations and it's great to be able to use captioning in such as an in an environment for a theater with an audience sometimes it's really hard for uh deaf members of in an audience to be able to see the people on the stage and so being able to have a captioning programming sometimes the programming is you know off to the side and it's a little bit difficult to go back and forth looking at the captions and then on stage and so we want to make sure that the user experience is easy and and accessible for everyone jordan you're muted oh i have found that there are many many many people that are that don't have a disability that rely on accessible accommodations they use them for example um live captioning on microsoft teams or zoom has the live live translation you know people you know somebody who's a you know a foreigner and they have a very thick accent an american might not understand that person and so they will rely on the live captioning to help them um they're not deaf but they're still relying on it and you know we're always laughing because hearing people tend to love to text they're constantly texting they don't like making phone calls and so you know they're you know they're texting back and forth and so that works really well um you know sometimes that can you know um you know sometimes that can screw up to uh communication as well because you don't necessarily understand the context in which the text is being made but for example sometimes oh if you're using voice to text having the ability to just talk and then send a text we can't do that you know this might apply to one group of people but oftentimes it applies to an everybody and so there's many different situations where it doesn't just apply to people and you know that's why accessibility you know you're just providing the tools and then everyone has the opportunity to use it not just people with disabilities because you're designing it for everybody in mind and thinking okay everybody has the potential to use this yeah with accessibility you have the opportunity to build an extra layer for these different products profit margin excuse me and rob says yes that hits the nail right on the head um nancy i see that you have something what do you think about otter ai does it work otter dot ai rob do you have any thoughts on that i haven't used it so i don't i have used it um i've used otter for a conference meeting and so i've shown up to meetings and there's a interpreter in front of me so i can watch the interpreter signing for asl um and it's nice to have the note taker as well for the presenter for example i'll use the otter app on my phone and then it the interpreter is able to catch everything of the presenter's speech so everything is easily used and it's great for note taking and making notes as well so then that way i don't have to look down and write the notes while watching the interpreter and the presenter so it does the work for me just don't use otter ai for excess you don't use it for accessibility purposes you just use it because you're lazy same thing up and down right right exactly i have a question from someone else in the chat um they ask equipment culture is difficult to get into for deaf business entrepreneurs excuse me i'm sorry can you repeat the question it's a little bit echoey i just want to make sure i catch it can you say the question one more time i'm sorry one moment sorry are you ready for me to go ahead yes um corporate culture is difficult to get into for deaf business entrepreneurs is there a rising deaf corporate culture to help all deaf entrepreneurs better prepare and work with the larger corporate culture in the u.s often in movies and tv we see asian corporate and the u.s corporate cultures conflicting

and trying to seek resolutions so i think this is a good way to help ease deaf entrepreneurs into working with the larger culture does something like that exist that's a good question maybe this is related to the topic um so we do have a few deaf in businesses in the us that can help that do help provide access and making sure that the process as a business owner is smooth sailing we have communication for the deaf we have ownership we have deaf owned vrs systems we have one product or excuse me project called den deaf entrepreneur d-e-n deaf entrepreneurs network that's more of a conference that's ran by two deaf individuals and they bring deaf people into a big conference and that helps you know make different opportunities for deaf employ entrepreneurs uh rob says you know working in the corporate realm and accommodations are so much easier they're far easier to get than they were in the past people are much more understanding and are less resistant and there's a lot less pushback when asking for accommodations black lives matter the metoo movement all of these different movements have really changed and improved the perspective of marginalized people and so it's been it's benefited the deaf community as well in terms of getting accommodations and asking for those types of things i have you know where i work right now for slalom build they you know i was really concerned about having meetings all day and needing to meet with customers and clients how i would handle that you know the price of an interpreter can really be expensive and they have said to me don't even worry about it we um you know that's not something you need to worry about so that's you know that's been an amazing experience in you know when i worked in startups and then we were acquired by a bigger company um some you know i had to be careful to not over request for an interpreter especially for you know it was it was specifically for like if i was negotiating my salary or things like that i would really for more serious things um but working every day you know you know everyday life i didn't need an interpreter in the in my job but you know i was kind of over that and so i decided to propose you know uh getting an interpreter and why it would be a benefit to have an interpreter on call or you know on request and i have two interpreters with me that i've had with me for several years one i have is my primary interpreter the other one is my backup you know the you know you have a p

2022-05-31 09:10

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