Reginé Gilbert:
Hello, everyone. I am Regine Gilbert. I am currently an industry assistant professor, at New York University, in the "Integrated Design and Media Program" which is part of the Tandon School of Engineering. I teach user experience design, as well as co-teach a course called "Looking Forward," where Gus Chalkias and I teach students about the assistive technologies that blind and low-vision folks use. And, I got into accessibility shortly after I studied user experience design. And, when I took the user experience design course, I remember there was one slide in a 12-week course about accessibility, and I just one day woke up and I said, "I wanna make the world a more accessible place." And then, what you do is you go to Google. [chuckles] And so, I Googled "Accessibility in New York City," and I found their meetup. And, the accessibility meetup totally changed my life, because I made friends who I'm still friends with today, and it got me on a path to incorporating accessibility into user experience design, not only in my work, but also in my teaching, because I started teaching pretty early on in my career.
Anthony Vasquez:
So, one of the things you've just kind of highlighted there was, again, how little accessibility is even talked about for those that are supposed to know about user experience, for those supposed to know about human-computer interaction also. It's accessibility is almost like, you know, a footnote. If that. Things are getting better. It's my experience too, but I guess, you know, didn't mean to jump into the philosophy so soon, but why do you think that is?
Reginé Gilbert:
Well, I think we have an issue in society with ableism, and that is kind of one of the root causes as to why things are not made accessible, or accessibility isn't thought about, because I've taught for seven years, and I can say honestly, when I taught seven years ago people did not know what accessibility was at all. They didn't. Now, though, you know, in 2022, I can say, "People do know what accessibility is." However, there is still this feeling that it's hard and people don't take the time to actually learn what they need to do, because they think if you do bit by bit, piece by piece, you can actually build something. I equate it to, you know, if somebody's gonna go build a brick building, for example. You don't get a bunch of bricks, and just throw them, and say, "Well, there's the building." Right? You lay each brick. You put the mortar. You put the brick. You put the mortar. You put the brick. And, I think about this for accessibility. We have to build it, right? We can't just say, "Well, here's all the things we need to do for accessibility." And then, throw the bricks on the ground. That doesn't work. Right? We have to stack them. So, I think that there's progress, for sure, and still a long way to go.
Anthony Vasquez:
And, one of the things that I've seen in your talks, like you talked about the role of empathy, and it's often talked about in user experience design and the design process. Given your experience now, in both user experience and usability, how do you think causes like "AIR" and other I guess you can call it, "Tech-for-good" initiatives can build or bring empathy, so that products are accessible?
Reginé Gilbert:
Well, I think, one thing for sure that experiences like "AIR" bring, is a level of awareness and understanding. I think empathy without compassion is just not gonna really bring forth change. I think having the understanding of this, it's important to make things accessible, so that people have access. We all know what it feels to be left out of something. If you're working on a product, and you're not making things accessible, then you're ultimately causing folks to have that feeling, that feeling of being left out. Nobody likes that feeling. No one. And so, I think, when you are actually working on something, and you're getting to understand it, that's where you start to build. I don't think that empathy is something that you just have. It's a skill that needs to be built. Like, you have to keep it going; you have to keep learning; you have to keep understanding; and you have to, I think, be able to share your knowledge as well.
Anthony Vasquez:
And, that's why we're looking forward to you to bring together these different fields. You know, one of the things also I've noticed, that I caught at one of your talks, you mentioned that accessibility seems to usually be seen as important if it helps the bottom-line, for lack of a better word; and less important if it won't influence profits, or subscriptions, or user count, or anything like that. So, non-profits in theory are supposed to be different. Is this one reason why maybe you're... Like, why are you so excited about working with nonprofits and independent artists, and getting their websites up to speed? They're not in it for big bucks, I suppose.
Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah. Well, I think when you're talking to corporations you have to talk bottom-line, but if you're talking to everyone else, you wanna talk about the access that people can have. And, you want as many people to know about your non-profit as possible; you want as many people to get involved as possible; and if you're not making things accessible, then you're actually shutting the doors on folks. And so, when you make something accessible, you're allowing a lot more folks to enter.
Anthony Vasquez:
And, you know, one thing also I've noticed, when you talked about the role of, like, of course digital equity, which is Knowbility's mission statement, of course. I guess, one thing we often don't talk about when we do our trainings or whatever, is justice, right? Like, how? Fundamentally again, we talked about access, we talked about the negative power here of exclusion, and how inaccessible technology is, just has so many down effects, down the chain of excluding people, which then they can't do what they need to do to maybe support their families, or have fun. What do you think justice here? How does justice play into all this? And, you can take it any direction you want. I mean, it's kinda just a fun entry at this point. I've kinda asked you the hard questions already. [laughing] Let's just talk about justice. [laughing]
Reginé Gilbert:
Well. You know, accessibility is a human right, right? And, that is a justice issue, right? So, thinking about the fact that when you think about inclusion, when you think about accessibility, it's not just, you know, folks with disabilities, it's people who are poor, right? People who may not have access to high-speed internet at home, so they'll have to go to a library to access the internet. Right? There's a lot of assumptions that are made about the technology, especially within the United States, about what people have access to. And, the truth is, like, more than half of the United States does not have access to high-speed internet. And so, we have to think about these things as we're creating whatever it is we're working on, we can't just think about ourselves, and that is oftentimes, I think, the issue with technology, is the people who are making the technology are thinking of themselves, and not thinking about who actually might be using their products, which can be a diverse group of folks.
Anthony Vasquez:
I suppose that's where bringing in people with disabilities, and just users who will benefit from accessibility into the design process, right? Have you had experience with that? Like, have you been able to embed, for lack of a better word, like bring people in, to either do usability testing, or start from really wire-framing? Like, from your experience in industry and in academia, how much of an uphill battle do we have to go?
Reginé Gilbert:
[laughing] Well, you know, I have the pleasure of teaching with Gus Chalkias, which has been so enlightening for our "Looking Forward" class, because Gus is blind, and co-teaching with him where he is the expert in assistive technologies that blind and low-vision folks use. And then, I come in with user experience expertise, and we come together. This has been so good for our students to see, that, you know, folks with disabilities are amazing, and they are capable of doing so many things. It's just, oftentimes they're not given those opportunities. And when given those opportunities, who knows? Because, I feel like the most innovative folks that I know of, are folks with disabilities, because they have to make things work. And so, when non-disabled folks interact with disabled folks in a way that is not involving ableism, a lot of progress can actually happen. And, I think the opportunity that people are gonna get with this, the project for "AIR" is to get to have that experience, to have that knowledge. I think I want to see more of us, like, working together.
Anthony Vasquez:
And so, "AIR" gears up in enrollment probably sometime in mid-August we'll start getting the teams together. What excites you most about the whole initiative? You know, you've worked with us before, giving our great keynote on "Mixed Reality," but now, you know, working on this project, what gets you excited about all this?
Reginé Gilbert:
What gets me excited is that people are going to get to work on something that is accessibility related, that it's gonna get to be out there in public, that people are gonna be aware, and that it is possible to make websites accessible when we work together.