okay great we're gonna start today's breakout session hi and welcome to teaching accessibility to tomorrow's builders my name is robert frawley and on behalf of scitec global i am so excited to have you join us in today's 30 minute session hosted by teach access you'll hear from osama ali teach access study away 2019 alum zach bohenik product designer at fordx and also a study away alum 2019 kate sonka executive director at teach access and assistant director of academic technology at michigan state and larry goldberg co-founder of teach access and head of accessibility at verizon media before we begin today's session just a couple housekeeping items the session is being recorded and will be available post event um if we have time at the end we will use the raise your hand feature and call upon attendees to ask their questions for screen reader users the keyboard shortcuts to raise your hand and lower your hand are option y on mac and alt y on pc throughout today's breakout session you can use the q a box to put in your questions and if we aren't able to get to them we will answer them post event in an email to you and with that being said please take it away kate thanks robert uh welcome everybody excuse me my name again is kate sanka i'm the executive director of teach access um i am a woman uh white woman with medium length brown hair i'm sitting in my office home office i have some artwork behind me and the wall is gray it's a little bit dark but you know that's michigan in the winter and i'm joined by larry hi i'm larry goldberg uh i am a white male with a white beard sold pepper hair sitting in a sun-filled living room in a suburb just outside of boston hey i'm osama i'm a south asian i have glasses on my hair is a little bit longer than i would like i'm in my bedroom with a lot of our artificial light i'm zach i'm a white male i have round glasses on um i have i'm in my office right now i have some books behind me in a painting and natural light i'm in class in michigan thanks um so just to give you all a sense of what we're going to talk about today really quickly i'll ask larry to introduce what is teach access in a few minutes uh and then i'll talk through um one of our programs um the study away um and then very specifically i'll be asking zach and osama a few questions about their experience when they were students and participated in the study away and like robert mentioned um if we have a few minutes remaining at the end we'll be happy to take questions so feel free to ask those throughout i'll keep an eye on that and and we'll try to get to those um so with that said um larry can you um in a few minutes in a couple of minutes i should say um give us uh a sense of what is teach access where did it come from um what's the mission uh et cetera thanks kate yeah the um really interesting thing that's emerged over the past day and a half at scitec global uh is that one of the greatest barriers to accessibility of technology is the lack of education and awareness and a coalition of universities and corporations and advocates uh for people with disabilities came together about three years ago and realized too many of our new hires at big companies like mine verizon media and other ones that facebook and google and microsoft and so many other large companies realize that our new hires just didn't come into our institutions well versed in the issues around accessible design and development and thinking about this we we thought our best leverage for trying to repair that problem is to go to higher ed and see if we can get some partners in the world of universities to begin teaching accessible design development in some mainstream uh perhaps required courses across computer science web design development uh human computer interaction user experience research we needed to reach out to the next generation of designers developers and creators so that we can systemically and systematically really increase the nature of technology and how it's designed for accessibility right from the get-go so we began that process and over the past three years we have gathered together a tremendous coalition you can see all the people who are involved so far at xraaccess.org i'm sorry teach access.org you'll hear about xr also and teach access has been going great guns and intends to scale up significantly over the next year and even five years with some major planning going forward kate can talk to you a little bit more about that uh and most importantly talking to zach and osama who really are carrying that torch forward having experienced what teach access is trying to do and we're looking to take what osama and zach have experienced themselves and spread that widely so thanks kate thanks larry so um pardon me just building off of what larry said we have a variety of projects that we work on to um work towards this goal of introducing accessibility um to higher ed students for now um and looking into the future we're finding ways that we can begin to reach students k-12 and then of course internationally as well but out of that we have uh done things like faculty grants where we're providing small stipends to faculty in the united states to develop curricular materials where they can introduce these basic concepts of accessibility we have some partners working on uh hiring toolkits uh so that's for companies specifically to think about um how when posting a job are they including language around accessibility um to try and attract students um with that knowledge um and then one of uh the big the big project we're here to talk about today um is our study away um and so in concept this is similar to a study abroad if you're familiar with that um where students are immersed for some number of days in this case it's a week in an experiential learning opportunity where they're really getting hands-on experience in-person experience with a topic in this case the teach access study away travels to silicon valley out in the bay area of course and throughout the course of a week students are visiting different companies each day sometimes they're able to fit in two companies based on the day but the idea here is that students are seeing the campuses of these companies learning what does the accessibility landscape look like getting to meet the members of this accessibility the accessibility teams being able to ask questions about um any number of things hearing from teams about projects they're working on challenges they're facing you know that sort of thing we have successfully run this program twice the first one was in 2018. the second
one was in 2019 and you'll hear from zach and osama in a minute about their experience very unfortunately we had to cancel 2020 due to ongoing um pandemic uh on the ongoing pandemic um for 2021 um we're looking at how can we do this virtually so it'll look a little bit different but we're excited about that in terms of who travels out there uh in both years we usually have around 25 to 30 total students coming from somewhere between six to eight universities and colleges and those are spread around the country and then you know accompanying faculty i went out with some students from michigan state university who were part of our experience architecture program which is the ux um program that we have on this campus um and yeah so with that said to give you kind of a context the context around what the program is oh actually what i should add so we have these 30 students coming from like i said anywhere between six to eight universities throughout that week students were put into small groups with students from other universities and wherever we could we tried to engage in some cross-disciplinary work so for example students who are maybe ux majors if they were computer science majors or we've had students from several different types of backgrounds we tried to mix that up just to really create some interesting mixtures give people a chance to to learn from each other and and increase their network uh with with peers from other institutions um while they're also meeting um industry partners so um in those small groups um students were working on projects um so my first question to zach and osama will be if they can describe um what the projects were that they worked on throughout the course of the week when they were out there in 2019. so whoever wants to handle it first i i can go first um so our project was um our team members each had a family member or a close friend who had alzheimer's or another form of convention so we wanted to address that with our project we called it helping home and it was a non-intrusive monitoring system using iot devices and sensors it was all conceptual but it was to assist in the caregiving of patients and loved ones with alzheimer's and dementia and so with the project we continued work after as well which was a great experience working with google we got to present at google with the home team uh to talk a little bit about the project and the potential with it and stuff and and so that that in itself was was a great uh takeaway as well and experience so yeah um my group project was focused on educating designers and developers on the different types of color blindness and how to make their products accessible to people with color blindness and how to pick accessible color palettes um so it was similar to tools like the color contrast analyzer but we put our own educational spin on it i'm really trying to educate the designers and developers and how they could build for different types of color blindness thank you both and just to build off of that a bit do you recall in your groups i know it was you know a year or so ago um the other majors or the other thing things that people are studying the other students in your in your groups yeah i think it was it was diverse it was a mix between like we were the ux designers i guess you could say because we were experienced architecture and then we were paired with a lot of computer science focused individuals mechanical engineering um i think i think that was it on my team actually i was thinking it was more diverse than i'm sure there were um there i felt like there was more variety there but yeah yeah i think it was pretty similar for me i was the ux person and then there were a few majors that were um i think computer engineering or software engineering and um there might have been another researcher as well perfect thanks um so now kind of expanding it out into the program in general so we were out there for a week um we were driving around in a van uh together to all of these companies every day um we did add on a day where we visited san francisco so you could spend some time there where we also visited the san francisco lighthouse for the blind so um you got to interact with some people there kind of just thinking about the program in general the first question i'm interested in asking around that um is what was most surprising about just the program in general your experience um well for me i think what was most surprising was how collaborative everyone is across you know teach access seemed as like a catalyst to bring everybody together but in the broader sense you see in this discipline of accessibility everybody like their hearts and minds are all devoted to the same cause and seeing that where you think you think of google and you think of facebook and you're thinking about like the next product that they're announcing and stuff and then you get to see this side of accessibility focus and you see everybody knows everybody everybody's collaborating across this this goal so that was the most surprising thing for me and it was rewarding as well um yeah i'm with zach and saying i was trying to surprise how collaborate everything was it was also very nice to see how many different um types of majors and like uh roles that are available for people in accessibility so there's many types like there's designers researchers um developers they all have a um a very major part a role in developing and building an accessible environment so i think that was really neat to see that's great um what were you most excited about maybe even before going out and then once you are out there after you're out there did it change uh what you're most excited about i'm gonna let us someone go first um i guess in general before we went out um it was very exciting to know that we were able to visit companies like apple google verizon um you always hear about these trumpets but you don't really know what exactly the culture is and what goes on behind closed doors um so being able to get the inside look was very exciting uh once i got there i was even more excited about being able to network with the people that i worked for there um be able to um have some questions i had about accessibility um like that said they're very open to discussing accessibility it was very nice to see how um how highly common should they want to impart their knowledge on you and how much you want to make you feel like it's open environment um so that was very exciting it didn't seem like it was too overwhelming at all everyone was very open and yeah it was a world a great time yeah i agree 100 seeing like for me seeing apple seeing verizon seeing google it was uh you know walmart linkedin i mean that was that was incredible that was just uh you see this you know you think of them as like a fairy tale land you know silicon valley especially being in the midwest in michigan and then you get to see it in person and you think wow okay i could actually contribute to this you know what these companies and the types of things that they're working on so that was most exciting for me for sure perfect um what was your favorite thing if we haven't already gotten to that through some of the things you were saying what was what did you what was your favorite part about the experience yeah go ahead go ahead um well i guess one thing that really stood out to me that i think uh was like a good way to look at the whole program was um just that this program was like the first introduction to a lot of streams for us accessibility um so being able to show them the opportunities that were available is very important i think uh and then as i mentioned there's a whole different there's a lot of different roles that people can do with accessibility in those companies like researchers developers and designers um and a lot of times students may not know exactly what they want to do after graduation and just giving them this insight on um showing the roles available to them and how they should have an impact on different teams like apple verizon and facebook um was very nice um it kind of gave me an idea of where i could be like impactful at and it showed me how like different majors can collaborate together to work and make stuff more accessible um for me i think that my favorite thing was the the takeaways after i mean i don't think that i could be where i am today without having had this experience um not just in like my current position but in in my designs and the ability to problem solve and like design thinking thinking accessible um creating accessible solutions as well as making things more usable um it ties into the books i've decided to read um you know in the network i've created and so this just in general that's that's probably my favorite thing is like the aftermath of it you know the takeaways and how it's pushed me forward in this direction that is actually a question that occurred to me while we were um while you were both talking was um how did i mean zack you kind of got at that how it's impacted um your work because something that um that we look at in teach access that we're fond of saying um credit goes to matt may of adobe is that you know what we have is a few people that know a lot about accessibility what we're looking for is a lot of people who know a little bit um and that's not to say that we still absolutely won't need and don't need experts um or that we won't need continue to need experts in accessibility forever but it would be great for a lot of people to know at least a little bit so in thinking about that how did your experience with study away impact where you are now or what you're doing or how you're approaching the work that you're doing and so forth as much as you're able to to share based on where you're at i think on one side it's it's in every design that i'm working on now you know it's just something that once you get it once you have that aha moment and it clicks and you're like okay everything needs to be accessible like that's just what needs to happen um so then then you learn the next stage is is then learning how to um connect with your co-workers and reach an understanding of not just to say hey i know everything about accessibility step aside but it's hey here's why this is important um you know this is why this is why i'm doing this this is why i'm asking these sorts of questions um i think is is super important and and taking the lessons from the teacher excuse me teach access trip has armed me with the right uh tools to uh get to that understanding with with everyone on the team and the goal is to try to get everyone right like you're saying to have a little understanding so if i can help you know that's that's my that's a win for me um yeah i'm in this somewhere um mind where if i know about accessibility i can uh definitely impart the knowledge on to other people on my on my team about accessibility i'm fortunate that i work with a group people that know a lot more about successfully than i do so that's really nice but i think the whole program in general the idea of teaching students about accessibility and no matter where they end up having those students be able to be educators about accessibility their own different teams that they work in is very important and i think it's really nice to be able to have um educators of accessibility in different um products and different teams um so i think that's just where i got really lucky where i get to be a part of a team that already knows a lot about accessibility so um yeah that's great um and i do want to remind everybody our attendees um if you have questions for any of us um about teach access the organization or um specifically for zach or osama about the experience they had a study away please feel free to submit those and i see one coming in um let me just read that quickly but um larry do you have any questions or comments before um i get through these i just want to mention that looking at zach and osama and the experiences they had anyone who's got any pessimism about the world today about accessibility's future just look at what these two individuals uh are saying and have accomplished and then multiply that by a million or more because that's what our ambition is in teach access and we're going through a strategic planning process right now to scale up so we can replicate that kind of experience that zach and osama had for so many more students and that's really our major goal thanks um so the first one i think might be more of a statement um but it's a um it's from dan um and it says also small ngos make inclusive technologies we are waiting um to visit in europe and there's a link there for tactileimages.org it looks like that's a place you could learn more about remote teaching individual learning and image accessibility so that's what we got and then the next question maybe larry you could take this one to begin with comes from tabitha the question is are companies able to involve their interns in the program oh yeah for sure um we hire interns at verizon media and as do the other major companies and our group on accessibility have consistently hired interns particularly during the summer and gotten them involved in accessibility and in fact every new employee at verizon media goes through an accessibility training and some of the uh all the interns when they come in during the summer are exposed to accessibility and if it catches their imagination and excitement uh they can do a deeper dive while they're uh within our organization either on campus or virtually so yeah we definitely target the interns to fill their heads up uh because as as zach said once you're exposed to this subject matter it'll never leave your mindset yeah thanks for that and and we have seen um students who've been involved in the past um whether through the study away program directly um and or who are working um with teams who know about teach access come back and want to get involved so in particular i'm thinking of one student who is a grad student and now he's working at microsoft and he's become very involved with teach access so we do see that students want to as they graduate and become you know working professionals are interested and continuing to be connected um which is great um there's another question in here from john how do students get signed up with uh teachaway or the study away so at this point in time the way that we have structured it is that any university who is a member of teach access and certainly i encourage everybody if you're interested in what we're doing please visit the website teachaaccess.org and you can get more
information there about all the things that we're talking about um but for universities who are members of teach access it's the study away program is open for them to bring students or include students in this program so that's where it's a little bit smaller in terms of scale because we have i think right now somewhere around two dozen or about 25 or so universities that are active members in teach access so we're pulling from those universities and encouraging those universities to bring students and then it's really up to each individual university on how they want to handle that so in my case for michigan state university i did attach a credit bearing option for students so that they could actually get credit um that would show up on their transcript and so forth um not every university is structured that way or or wants to handle it that way um and so it's kind of left to left to their own devices in terms of how they want that to look um so that's how it's been with this new kind of approach for 2021 and going virtual we're really excited about the idea of scaling it up so as we mentioned before it's been limited in that we've had about 30 students plus the faculty and then all of the teach access members industry partners just from a logistical standpoint most of the companies can't accommodate a group larger than that in their spaces but with the virtual option we're really hoping that all of the member or member universities are able to encourage as many students as they probably can uh encouraged to participate for this coming spring because it will be virtual it will be on zoom um so obviously we can we can handle a bit more um that way than in person so i'd like to if i could kate just encourage any students who's uh watching right now you are a client of that university and you should be if you're interested in this program please reach out to your professors your department chairs and encourage your university to join because as much as we love the direct student connections um to have the university embed this in their curriculum as the ultimate goal so we can touch many many more students if your university is a member of teach access so go to the website there's information about how your university can join um and i'm also going to put this into the chat but i'll i'll say it out loud the if you're interested in getting more information if you look at the website and have questions um if you're a university if you're definitely if you're a company who's on here interested if you're a disability advocacy group or non-profit we're very we're very welcoming but if you have questions there's an email address you can contact um it's info teachaccess.org and you can send a general inquiry there and then we will we will get back to you if you're interested in joining or learning more um i think that handles all of the questions there are just a couple follow-up comments um from tabitha about um how to get involved so i think we've we've answered that um we have just a couple minutes left um i'm curious oh another question just came in okay so from donna um is there any possibility of canadian universities participating um this is a great question um at this point in time we have not brought in or haven't had any canadian universities and larry alluded to this earlier but teach access as an organization is starting is has already started the process of some really substantive strategic planning that will take us through end of march so it's really going to be in depth thinking about how we can really scale up and one of the elements of this planning is how to do how to incorporate international universities international partners and so forth so at this point in time we don't have canadian universities as part of it but our goal is that at least within the next year or so we will have a very clear pathway of what that looks like and there's another question is there to try and reproduce this in spanish-speaking countries i think yeah tied to tied to the involving um international partners um we have a few ideas on how it might look um so we're we're going to be exploring that but certainly if if there are additional questions we haven't gotten to um about what we're doing please feel free to to send an email to info teach access and with that are there any closing comments that anyone would like to share zach osama or larry about anything we've talked about i love hearing from zach osama so i'm gonna seed my time um i i just want to say like last year when i went to teach access it was one of the most amazing experiences i've had in college so if there are any students that are watching this i would highly encourage you to get involved and if there's any programs that teach us accessibility um try to learn more about it and try to join them yeah i would i would mirror that and i've been talking to a lot of uh freshmen in college and i've just been trying to direct them toward kate at michigan state just telling them hey learn about this this was a great experience so i try to recommend it to as many people as i can and it's really just the ground floor i mean from here you open yourself up to a whole network of amazing people working on some awesome projects where osama and i had the great invitation from larry to go down to new york and and with xr access um and that was an incredible experience and we continue to be invited and um and and have have the opportunity to join different different things so it's a it's an incredible experience sorry i had myself i'm trying to answer a few more of these questions um here um and if i probably won't be able to get all get to all of them since we're one minute over um but please feel free to send those to um info teach access dot org we would be happy to answer those questions for you um but with that said thank you everybody for joining us we really appreciate having you here today um it's great to be able to share the work that we're doing and and definitely um i'm always happy to hear from from zach and osama so um with that said though i'm going to turn it back over to robert so that he can take us out great thanks kate well thank you all for attending this session um this is really great and really exciting i wish when i was back in college i had this this has been really cool and um just to let you know this session will be um available uh post event on demand it'll be added to our youtube channel and we'll also have it on our agenda um so look for that the next couple days and we'll send an email to all of you notifying you when that is live and with that being said um head back to the main stage session um just go to sitetechglobal.com forward slash event and we'll see you next time thank you thanks everybody thanks nice job everybody um really nicely done uh and i'm gonna head off to another meeting so great to see y'all thanks all right good job everybody bye make sure you put this on your resumes i'm going to pause there we go it's stopped um yes you guys are awesome make sure you put this on your resumes and um we'll talk to you soon and you know zach let us know when ford's ready to join i'll let you know yeah okay let's start working i'll start working with the xa club with uh karen ford we'll see yeah bailey and you know um and kate whalen yes yeah i'm trying i haven't talked to bailey i should talk specifically to her too we should just have we should have a group chat just schedule that let's do it i love it i'll be good because they're all deformed so great awesome all right all right i'll see you guys later bye bye
2021-01-05