Susan Hewitt: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the March edition of our Be a Digital Ally series. I'm Susan Hewitt, and I'm a member of Knowbility's accessibility services team. Sorry. Look at the wrong screen here. And so I'm your host for this evening. So during tonight's presentation, as always - and we want to make sure that we create exclusive and accessible spaces, that we're kind and polite and respectful to one another, which I'm positive we will be, and that we ensure accessibility.
A few things about Knowbility. So we are a nonprofit. We were founded in 1999, and this we turned 25 last year that makes anyone feel old. We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Yeah, let's see. And we're based in Austin, Texas. And the screen says locally, but I know for a fact, one of our presenters is not local. He's from South Dakota. I think. That's I think, Marc, you are probably the 1st person I've met from South Dakota. So we're based here in Austin. But we have. Oh, we're on the wrong slide. Nope, that'll be right.
Marc Thorson: There are only 2 or 3 of us
Susan Hewitt: Okay, only 2 or 3 in the whole state. Okay.
Marc Thorson: Fantastic.
Susan Hewitt: So no, he's not based here in Austin. But we are. We operate globally, and the mission of Knowbility is to help create digital world, inclusive digital world people with accessibilities. I'm sorry with people with disabilities. And that includes tonight's presentation is part of our mission, all right. Next slide.
So we pursue that mission through a few different services. 1st and foremost, we have accessibility, testing and auditing. We work with a range of different organizations, public and private, lots of educational institutions K-12, government and other nonprofits.
We also do with some of those clients strategic consulting leadership, help them build, you know their own self-sufficient program. Access Works that's database. And that, we use to help folks who want to do usability testing. Ashley, who's not here tonight, our great Access works lead, is able to help set up usability testing with actual users with disabilities. Which is a great program. And I know I've worked in a variety of places over the years. And always when people want, I say, access work capability. So we're very proud of that.
We're very proud of our training as well. We do a lot of virtual in person training. Our current director of training is Denis Boudreau. You guys might know him - one of those global folks all the way in Canada. And we also do accessibility help desk work, which is kind of just what it sounds, you know, providing support. And whether it's like on your tickets or zoom or phone calls when people have one off questions or different customers. So we have a lot going on. There's our services.
Next, another big part of our work being a mission driven org is our community programs. AIR. And I'm sure a lot of you on this call participated in some of these. Air is our annual... Sorry - that's my train of thought. The Accessible Internet Rally is what it stands for. So it's an annual web design contest. Back in the day, it used to happen like a Hackathon. It all happened in one day, but now it's you know, we get folks more than one day, because I think post-Covid. I don't know, Marc, if that's when that started happening. Actually, it was before Covid. But I bring up Covid because we do have folks who participate all around the globe now, and that's where we have teams match up teams of web developers match up with nonprofits to help build them an accessible website. It's a great contest. We just wrapped it up at the end of the year. If you have never volunteered with that, I encourage you to either join up as a team, you get free training, or, you know, volunteer as a mentor or a judge, we definitely welcome you.
AccessU is coming up in May. That's a fantastic conference that we host. Come down to Austin, or, if you're in Austin, you know, sign up to come. It's also you can also attend virtually, and it's great to come. Not only are you going to get a lot of wonderful skills, I mean some of the same presenters that you might see other conferences like Csun. You don't have to go all the way there. They're right here in Austin, AccessU. And that's a great way to kind of build your network. Build your skills. And Dave, one of our presenters tonight. He is the chair of AccessU board this year. So you know, you got someone in the know right here.
K-12 digital accessibility. I actually don't know that community program. Man. Mark, if you want to jump in, I've only been with Knowbility I have to say for a few months now, and this one is not one I've interacted with. I've taught at AccessU and then AIR a lot. But so it looks like it's a resources for parents, teachers and administrators who want to learn how to develop accessible digital program through K-12. I will also add that normally Teenya Franklin, who is our head of community programs, would present that slide so trying to fill in some big shoes there.
And then, this is one of our programs - Be a Digital Ally. We're getting back into doing this monthly. So if this is your 1st time we welcome you, and we encourage you to come in the following months. At the end we'll let you know what's coming up next month. The goal of BADA, what we call it for short, is to cover basic skills and principles behind accessible design and development.
We cover a lot of topics with organizational documentation, web development design. And that means the audience is content. Creators of any skill, you know. You don't have to be like some expert, or even if you are an expert, you know, come to a session. You're going to learn something that you haven't learned before. So it's great for people who are in your accessibility as well.
All right. So quick. Note the Q&A. We prefer, if you hold your questions for the end. But you can also raise your hand. The chat is open. We'll be looking at the chat, but that's probably, you know, ideally. Raise your hand or wait till the end to ask the question. But Mark and I will try to keep an eye on that. And then I think that's all that we have. Here we go. Thank you, Mark.
So tonight from Nelnet we have Dave Dauber and Marc Thorson and guys, I will let you introduce yourselves. We're really happy. You're here. We're happy, everyone to attend. And all right, guys, take it away....
Dave D: Alright! Thanks so much, Susan. I am going to steal the screen. Give me one moment, please. All right, there we go, hoping people can see my screen.
Knowbility: We see your screen.
Dave D: You can see my screen awesome.
Well, thank you guys so much for coming. The help you give someone today may just help the you of tomorrow. So, as Susan mentioned, my name is Dave D. Remember my name, because it rhymes with accessibility. And I've joined with Marc Thorson, here, we're both from Nelnet. We're gonna do a little storytelling with you all tonight. So sit back, relax. We're not gonna get into, you know anything to digital or or too high tech mark. And I just want to tell you a little bit about us and our story and kind of how we evolved and went from being programmers, engineers to accessibility people.
We'd like this to be as interactive as possible. I know that it's kind of hard in a Zoom Meeting like this. And then Susan said, You know we can save our questions for the end, and definitely, if we want to take time at the end to do questions. But Marc and I are gonna ask you all some questions, too, as we go. So, hopefully, you can participate either put stuff in chat or raise your hand to come off mute whatever. We just want to keep this open relaxed, and have a chat with, y'all, I can say y'all, cause I'm here in Austin, Texas. Alright.
So a question I want to propose to everybody is.... (Thanks for the happy birthday mentioned. Appreciate that.) A question I want to propose to everybody is, what assistive technology or at do you use personally? Now, that's not one we're not going to answer that right now. That's a question that I'd like you to think about as we go through our talk tonight. So what at do you use personally. Marc and Dave? Who, I mean? Who are we? Well, Marc, take it away....
Marc Thorson: All right. Well, thank you, Dave, and and thank you all for joining us today. I appreciate the opportunity. just for for awareness. I'm on the screen as a photo. I'm a middle aged white dude, with with eyeglasses, and I have a kind of a painting of Darth Vader in a fishing boat in my background. So so you maybe get a little bit of my personality there with the background. All right, next slide.
So so who am I? Well, kind of the nuts and bolts of me. I'm accessibility team lead at Nelnet. I guess you could say I'm I'm the founder of our accessibility program. So I was the one man band when it all got started many years ago, and very proud of how we have evolved and and added superstars like Dave to our our mix. So so it's it's been a a quite a journey.
I'm the son of 2 former teachers, an uncle of a mostly talented niece and nephew, which I don't. These people are the ones that I spend most of my time with. So I'm a computer technic like a lot of you, I'm sure. Sci-fi, you've probably figured out fantasy nerd with my Star wars thing, and I'm a sports fan. It's March madness, hey? This is my time of year. So, and spring training, baseball, everything.
And by the way, I was born with spinal, muscular atrophy. So I you know I've never been able to stand or walk, or or really take care of myself totally, independently. Honestly, I need help in a lot of different ways, and I need accessibility, certainly, in a lot of different ways. Alright. Next slide.
So I like this quote. I thought it fit our talk. It's by Joseph Campbell. He's an author. He actually is one of the influencers that George Lucas had for Star Wars when he created the script for that. So his quote is, "Opportunity to find deeper powers within ourselves. Come when life seems that most challenging." And I think that's very true in my life. When things have gotten challenging, I think somehow, some way I found some, some deeper powers and and good things have come of that, and I hope you can all all recognize that. All right.
So I'm going to dive a little more deeply into the story. But in order to do that. You know I am kind of a dork, and every good story has to have a hero and a villain. So here's our hero. Our hero, for my segment is the Flash. And the one depicted on the screen is Sheldon Super, dressed up as a Flash. So that's my favorite.
And now the Flash is so fast that you can travel through time, and that's always going to help. Today we look at my life at different points in time, and how accessibility needs have changed. Next slide.
And of course, the villain! You might have guessed it was my disease. Life with SMA. SMA is a genetic disorder. I'm not going to get into great detail. It affects motor neurons, it leads to severe muscle weakness and atrophy, which is the name. There's several different types of SMA. I was born with it, which is the worst variety.
When I was born there were no treatments. Thankfully, now in the 2020s, we finally have some treatments and drugs available, so infants and babies who are born with it certainly have much better outcomes. Which is wonderful news for our community, and I hope they continue to improve on that. All right.
So playing time. So we're passing through time. And 1st we're flashing back to to 2001. That's a long time ago for me. I'd just gotten out of college, and I started my 1st full-time job at a place called Education Assistance Corporation. It's a student Loan company in South Dakota. And of course, like, you know, everybody that's new to their job they want to do.
Well, they want to get started. Good. But of course I had a disability. And this is really a pivotal point where stuff was starting to get harder for me. I've gotten through school pretty well, but it's getting harder to move. I was having trouble controlling my wheelchair. Even coding was was getting tiring and and typing longer messages like I did in school was starting to get hard, and it was kind of scary. When you're going, I finally got a job. And now it's gonna be hard to do. And what do I do?
So my motivations? I gotta look for a solution. I gotta...I gotta reach out there and find it. And thankfully, thanks to our accessibility community, I did so. So my motivations were minimizing extra effort to save energy, you know. And like I said before, being able to communicate with others and do my job. And also I'm studying right now in 2001 to realize my passion for this, and when you face it head on every day, this is, and then I combined it with my coding and computer and enlightenment. This is...this was a new area that was exciting to me. So I want to be able to get better at that. So how did I do that? Next slide.
Our hero, our heroic solution, at least in 2001. Well, I could still kind of use a keyboard and mouse limited. I use a wireless one but mainly what I added was speech recognition. And I I hadn't tried it much before in my life, and thank goodness for it because it it was a godsend at the time. Now, I could write my email by voice and documentation and coding, and it was not tiring for me anymore. And and thankfully, you know what's because of that. I could do my job well, and I had more time to learn. And really I think this kicked off, you know, my growth into accessibility. You know, I got to attend the things like Knowbility AccessU and and the rest is history.
All right, let's let's move ahead. A fast forward about a decade. Oh, go back back to 2010, Dave. There we go! We're really fast. Flash was
Dave D: Move ahead. I thought I thought you were like, Okay, wanna flash on...
Marc Thorson: No, no, no, we're we're we're back in 2010, all right. We we circle back and forth all right. So in 2010, I, you know; I... I've become a lot more experienced. I'm experienced in our company. I just bought out buy a larger one, which is a good thing. You know, we didn't lose our job, but we removed. We merged with the company and they are a large tech shop and I found opportunities there, you know, to specialize even more. This was an awesome opportunity to to build an accessibility program, but at the same time my disability had gotten a lot worse, you know, independently. I couldn't even control my wheelchair anymore. So people were pushing me around, you know. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it's a downer and difficult.
I can't use a keyboard anymore. My hands are are are pretty much immobile in 2010, and they look forward to me or the mouse. So, you know things that are interfaces, you know, and things that I'm thinking about with accessibility are becoming a lot more problematic. And then - and I point out one there - there's a lot of others that folks can think about, and we can talk about later. But links and controls that aren't programmatically accessible. Well, you know, doesn't like that. So that was kind of one that I saw, you know. Wow!
We need to improve things both here at my my job and and advocate elsewhere in my motivations and goals very similar as always so. So they're saving energy, excelling at my job. And like I mentioned earlier, I want to even know with all these challenges I've got. This is an opportunity, you know. I can demonstrate to people that we need that corporate accessibility program. We need that formal. We need to go. And that's what I set out to the group. Next slide.
All right. So in 2010, it's a hundred percent speech recognition all the time. You know, I'm I'm relying on it both for dictation and command and control, like moving the mouse or mouse emulation. Things like that - clicking on things by voice. All that good stuff. And I needed it. If it didn't work, I was stuck. And I also, you know now, thanks to the accessibility help and thoughtful teammates and coworkers and large, you know, I'm still able to succeed in 2010. And I had really more time to focus and and guess what? We kicked off a regional accessibility shortly thereafter. So it wasn't just me that was, we had one. Then we had 2 and 2 and 4, and that was pretty cool and really had a formal program going.
All right, step ahead more to 2022. I am the accessibility architect at Nelnet. Again we get bought out again. I got bought out by Nelnet a few years earlier and and transferred over there, so a larger entity again. But they really loved our accessibility program, and they wanted to do more. So this was an opportunity again for me.
But again life gets in the way, sometimes. I was really struggling with breathing at this point - in 2022 - to the point where I needed an emergency tracheaotomy. And it was pretty dire. For a little while there was actually a few weeks where I couldn't talk at all. I relied on communicating with others through blinking my eyes, and that was all I could do. But thankfully, you know, I was able to recoup from that. And...but still, you know, there are lingering things we can prolong duration. This is hard. You probably noticed that already for me that my voice is a little bit...interface controls are hard to target or a problem.
Lauren racials. Same thing. Saving energy. And I really and my career. alright and helping transform the company into a video in the industry. All right on that slide.
Alright. And last, but not least, our hero more limited reliance on speech. I use it still. But now I have other technology. There's less energy for me to use. I know I can't even take notes and noise and meetings. And now I got more time to do bigger and better things alright, and that's the end of my slides, and I will pass it on to Dave to show a video.
Dave D: Alright, thanks, Marc. Man, that was quite a time through the past. Thanks. So the next one I'm gonna do. Next thing I'm going to show is actually a video that Marc recorded for us. And I say us, my co-trainer, Robin, at Nelnet. We've been on the road with this presentation talking about people. And why, you know the WCAG - or web content accessibility guidelines - why they matter so much. And it's really the people perspective, and that people actually need to use their assistive technologies as Marc was just talking about how his life, just transformed from one stage to the next, and he adapted with these different assistive technologies that helped him to to his job, to watch his sports on TV, to play his games that he would. He wants to play. So let's take a little glimpse at Marc. He kind of described this to you in a little bit more detail. This is really a a high level video of the things Marc has accomplished.
Video: My name is Marc Thorson, and I grew up kind of like other kids. I love video games and things like that. And that kind of ruined my passion for computing and technology. But I rely on id and speech recognition to do everything on computer. I am an accessibility team lead at Nelnet.
The journey at Nelnet. I actually began at a company called Great Lakes. I was just a front end developer, and I pointed out to my boss that, you know, we need an accessibility program. And this is something I'm passionate about. And soon after that we were acquired by Nelnet. Nelnet saw the value of our team, and eventually we've even become a diversified business now, because accessibility is a service for someone that can't get around.
The computer itself is a godsend. It's my world to communicate literally everyone that does not in my home. Something that really impacts me with eye gaze. A circle overlays a website and follows Marc's eye gaze. A menu appears and he chooses the click option, bringing him to a new page. Sites that, or apps that are buttons or things are too small. That takes me more time to to do things like that. They're really tiny. Small buttons or links can be really hard to touch. Click on and see.
WCAG has success criteria to make sure they are big enough like 2 dot 5 dot 5 target size enhanced and 2.5.8 target sized minimum. You know, things that have higher contrast that are easy to read, that I know are are interactive, you know. Maybe they've got a border. That's obvious. That just helps. It makes things faster and and easier and more understandable. That makes sense, Marc.
And WCAG has 3 success criteria that support good color, contrast for both text and for things that well aren't text like important graphics or buttons: 1.4.3 contrast minimum; 1.4.6 contrast enhanced; and 1.4.1 non-text contrast. For me, you know, with a disability we often are very prideful. We don't like to try something. Usually I was using a keyboard and mouse, and I stuck with it forever, and probably longer than I should have. Then I found seat technician, and wow, Amen. It answered my prayers. And then eventually, you know it got harder to navigate, and I was mouthing things, and not being able to see just that as well as I used to have no mouse capability at all now. So I found eyes and another answer to my prayers.
Dave D: What a good perspective abilities can change over our lives, and the digital world should match them. WCAG supports this through the guidelines of compatible 4.1. I wish I had tried this earlier. I would have been a lot more productive. So you know, you kind of wait until it's a breaking point. That's not always a good prospect. Find it when you need it, and benefit early.
Alright, thanks, Marc. Just a little video there, my little avatar talking to help bring to the point of how important that the web content accessibility. Guidelines are that we learn them and that we use them and follow those as we develop our products as we do our designs. All of that because it's it's the people that we do it for, right? People like Marc. And needing those buttons and all that good color contrast, and having large target size, and then having it be robust enough to work on any of the products that he uses now or in the future. So just we just pay tribute to to WCAG at this time.
Dave D: So, again on to me. Who's Dave? Dave D. I'm right here in Austin, Texas. I'm currently an accessibility trainer and coach at Nelnet. I'm married. I'm a father of 2 teens. Oh, man, that could be a whole nother story in itself. 3 dogs, a cat, multiple fish. Got a 1 fish behind me in a tank, and then we've got a little boy pond outside. We've got a few goldfish swimming around in there. Like Marc, I'm a computer tech geek. I love all that stuff. I think I've got an Alexa in every room - because they helped me out so much. Just all of that stuff. I just get fascinated with and got to keep up with the trends.
I'm also an actor. I do acting. I did acting in high school, and I've done acting in several small parts here in Austin, in different TV shows and films. I'm a producer and a host of a show called the Gene and Dave Show. And I was born with cerebral palsy, and I've used a wheelchair all of my life. But, as I tell folks, I haven't let it stop me.
So when I was a kid, my superhero growing up, and I don't know if it's really a superhero. It's not like a comic book superhero. But my hero was definitely the 6 million dollar man.
It's an old TV show. I don't know if anybody out there even remembers it. That's watching it. I had a birthday message in there. Yeah, I'm 53 today, so tells you, tells you my age, and growing up, I love the 6 million dollar man. In fact, I would always ask my doctors, can you put bionics in me so that I can walk. Of course that would embarrass my mom. She was like, Oh, my gosh! It's a TV show.
But still I would always ask the doctors because my super villain is my life with CP. It's a neurological disorder. It's caused from damage to the brain, either at birth or shortly after birth. Normally, it's not really progressive itself, but as I get older I find that it's sometimes harder to move because the muscle stiffness these symptoms that are here make it more difficult for me. And it's a lifelong condition. I've had plenty of surgeries. Try to do physical therapy and then assistive technology is really my bionics.
They've served me some, some great, making me able to do things with AT which is my bionics. I can't stand or walk. So, I'm going to be reading these bullet lists kind of across the screen instead of all the way down, and then all the way on the other side. But since I can't stand or walk, I started using a manual wheelchair when I was in grade school. In grade school, when I was going to go from kindergarten to 1st grade I was gonna have to go outside - in these portables is what they were called. Really they were trailers, and they had several steps going up to them. I wasn't able to get to it. So they moved the 1st grade class into the school and then put the kindergartners in the portables as I aged, and that solved the problem - at least for that year.
I had an attendant that needed to help me in the restroom who was female and couldn't go into the boys room. So they actually added on to the school to not have the portables anymore in the future. And when they added on to the school they built a private bathroom that I could use later. MS, which is middle school in this case. When I was having to transfer to classes, I got an electric wheelchair for the 1st time, so that I could go from one class to another. When I transferred in high school all of the plays and the music. All of those activities were in the basement of the school. I couldn't get there. So we had to ask to get an elevator installed into the school.
And also participating in theater and in football. Yeah, I was part of the football team. I was what you would call the water boy, but I got to be in the football team and travel around with them to from game to game. However, they could only rent a small bus with the lift. They didn't have any big buses, and they didn't want to have to pay for that. So my parents actually drove me to the games. Sometimes, if it was like a small theater group that was going, we could rent the small bus. That was able to take me so lots of different solutions as I was growing up from 1976 to 1990 my grade school and high school years.
1990 came the ADA - Americans with Disabilities Act. I really wasn't sure what that was, at first, when I was graduating. But little did I know it would really change my life. And make sure that I was able to participate and have jobs.
I went to Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, computer information systems. And one of the things that I did while I was there was, I ran...I was the Sysop system operator for bulletin board system. This is back before the Internet. I don't know. Does anybody else on the call? Remember bulletin board systems? I'm trying to watch the chat, too. And it's...I've got on so many different screens. Yeah, okay, I've got some yeses. Alright. People remember those before the Internet.
After graduating college, I moved to Kansas City, where I was at DST Systems Fort Worth. I was at Sprint, and I was at Novo One. I would, did cobol programming. And then I learned this language called Small Talk, which was one of the 1st object oriented languages, and I was a programmer.
I moved to Texas, Fort Worth, Texas, in around the 90s in 1999, and then I met Terry. She lived in Austin, Texas. I was in Fort Worth. We met online. We dated for about a year, and finally she said, You know what I love Austin, Texas, and I love you, but I ain't moving. I'm not moving to Fort Worth. So I went into my boss, and I said I'd really like to move to Austin, and I'd like to keep my job and telecommute, which was pretty unthought of in the early 2000s. But they let me do it, and it worked out really good.
So after I had moved to Austin, I got into theater again - one of my, you know, my high school love of doing theater. Terry introduced me to a group called Actual Lives, where I met a really good friend named Gene. And we started on this adventure.
[action music, no voice]
Dave D: Okay, so that was an action video, and I.... The accessibility on that is not very good. As far as there are no captions, because there is just music playing kind of like James Bond. Music? And there are no audio descriptions either. So when we had made that video and we didn't have audio descriptions, Gene said, we'll just tell everybody that I look like Tom Cruise, and that you looked like Antonio Banderas, and that we're hanging out with a bunch of pretty women and famous people jumping off bridges and scuba diving, and leave it at that. Oh, man, Gene. OK, that's what we'll tell people. So. Anyway, that's the audio description for that video.
As we started our TV show, he's like, we have got to have a website. I'm like, well, you know, I've never really built a website. And he said, well, we we've got to get somebody to help us build a website, and it has to be accessible. And I had been programming. I'd never done any websites or web design before, but I was taken back when he said, it has to be accessible. And I said, What what do you mean? And he said, well, our videos have to be captioned. We have to caption everything. When we put it on the public access channel. We have to make sure we have captions. And we had to help them actually figure out how to do that. We have a website, we have to make sure that you know the color contrast is good, and that people can use their keyboard on the screen.
And I, at that point, I was amazed. I'd never heard of doing accessibility on a website. All my life I had had all these barriers of no elevator in my high school and having my parents having to drive me to different things. You know, using my electric wheelchair, needing ramps, door openers. That was accessibility in my life. I had no idea that a website had to be accessible.
And so he said, let's enter into this competition where we can get help building a website. They make sure that it's accessible, and we compete with other nonprofits who will build websites, and we'll have the best one out there.
And sure enough, that year we won 1st place at the AIR Awards which Susan had described a little bit earlier...is the Austin Internet Rally at the time - Accessible Internet Rally, and it was just so much fun. I fell in love with it. It did what it was supposed to do right, with this competition. You just get really sucked into it. And it was just wild, a great time of coding our website. And I enjoyed it so much that it became my jam of accessibility. Just doing that AIR. Austin, with Knowbility was wonderful.
That year, I quit my job. I started working at a company called Bridge 360, where I was an accessibility QA contractor. Working on some stuff for Pearson. Actually, we were working on some HTML, 5 video players that had to be accessible. So it wasn't just video. But there was interactive parts in it. It was really exciting.
After that contract ended, though unfortunately, I lost my job there, and I went to Blackbaud, where I did some quality assurance. And then from there I went to Texas Health and Human Services - shout out to Cornelius, that's on the call - and worked there making videos kind of like the one that you saw before, and leading classroom trainings, and also doing some auditing there.
And from there I went to Deque where I worked as a coach, mostly coaching folks on what accessibility is, and also working a little bit with the training department - shout out to Susan, worked with her there! She was my manager at the time, so again shout out to her. It's really great to see, even though I've worked at all these other places. People come together with accessibility. And, you know, here we are at this event, and now I'm currently working with with Marc as he described, at Nelnet. I'm doing more training, and coaching, and also doing some auditing and some document remediation. So just still having a great time doing accessibility.
In 2021, while I was working at Deque, I had a stroke. That left me in a hospital bed for a couple months. And while I was in the hospital trying to work my computer, I thought, well, I know that my Mac has voice control on it, and so does my iphone. So while I'm laying here, I just as well learn it and play with it. And that's what I did. And just really enjoyed using voice control. And now it helps me so much. I still use it daily.
I began testing my voice control with AccessWorks, which Susan mentioned in the beginning, is another Knowbility company that does has a database. So that if your business needs help testing something with different users that actually use the assistive technology they can help you out as well as another company named Fable. I also help them with their testing very, very similar companies that need help testing will go to them. And people with assistive technologies can get paid to help test.
So I proven it presented voice control at AccessU last year. And here's a picture of of me explaining how ARIA works with voice control. So just my whole life has been accessibility through assistive technology. Those have been my bionics. And Marc expressed some of the same situations of using his keyboard first and then going in and starting to voice control, and then that became difficult. So he started to use eye gaze and working with him. It amazes me the way that he can use eye gaze throughout talking talks on teams and conferences, and he can share his screen and go through stuff quicker than I can sometimes with the mouse.
So pretty incredible that we have all of these assistive technologies. What is assistive technology for those that don't know? Here is the definition from the Assistive Technology Act of 2004. Assistive technology is any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified or customized, that is, used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities for individuals with disabilities.
I kind of think they should leave off the with disabilities, part because, just any individual can be aided to do things with some of the simplest products. The significance of accessibility is that it proves it provides access for everyone and has benefits beyond.
In the upper left hand corner there's a...there's 4 pictures on the screen. In the upper left hand corner is Gene from the Gene and Dave show, and he's using a mouth stick to actually type on the keyboard. Just a stick that's in his mouth, and it's pressed up against one of the letters one of the keys on the keyboard, and that's how he would type. Throughout the day he would use that stick. And that is assistive technology. It's just a stick that he would hold in his mouth. But without that he wouldn't be able to type or or press on the keys.
The next individual to the right is holding a cane. He's blind, holding a cane, talking into his cell phone. All kinds of assistive technology right there.
Another friend that I worked with at health and human services is using magnification on his screen, that that's a little bit hard to see, but he's got his screen blown up and the letters really, really big, and they're bright colors on a black screen. And then some individuals are watching watching TV on their phone or watching something on their phone. They're really smiling and laughing. So wonderful things that assistive technology has done.
Accessibility is not just about compliance. It really, it benefits everyone including the you in the future. You never know what's going to happen to to you in the future? I sure was not expecting to have a stroke and have it limit what I could do with the keyboard. And if people hadn't been programming for voice control there would be a lot of lot more websites that I would be lost on. There's still more work to do. But they definitely have helped me with being able to use voice control. Technology should be designed for all users. And that's very important, too, because we all need to use it. Just another slide on how accessibility helps us.
Marc and I were talking about this, this talk and going through it, thinking about what kind of assistive technology helps people. And we started talking about curb cuts, just curbs that are cut down is used by everybody. Right? Bicycles, strollers, wheelchairs, closed captioning on TV. You know, it was built for people that are deaf or hard of hearing, but I know a lot of people that turn it on now, just so that they can understand it. They can still hear. But it really helps you focus on what's being said.
Immersive readers built into Microsoft Edge. I don't...I don't need to read all of the things on this list. There are a lot from from elevators door openers and even eyeglasses, and I noticed that Jan had mentioned that at the very beginning that that was the at that she used. Sure enough, man, eyeglasses help us;it benefits benefits everybody.
So a couple of questions that we could ask, or how does accessibility impact your work. And have you considered how your own needs may change? So anybody that wants to add a short glimpse of of their story into this this discussion today. Feel free to come off mute, or you could post something in the chat, too. Love to see all this information.
AI, okay. Bell, check glasses. Boy, there's a whole list of stuff on here: absolutely, automated captioning transcripts, automated meeting summaries, captions for Foreign films, and some English language films, audio books. Generative AI. Chat GTP; yeah, I use that all the time to Microsoft copilot, Dolly. If not for spelling spell checking. I might be working at a minimum wage job. Yeah, exactly right. I hear you. Lots of technology that that helps us go throughout the time.
Alright. So what assistive technology do you use? That's the big question for the day. And just remember that accessibility is a life line, not a checkbox. So if you're at a company that's being that's doing accessibility. Remember that you're doing it for the people and for helping people. Not just to check off a box on a on a legal document. It's really helping the people that you serve that need it - your customers, your students parents of students, whoever you may come in contact. Chances are they could use that accessibility. And what you build today could support your future self. Again, we just never know what's going to happen and keep learning and advocating for inclusive design and implementation. Take what you've heard here and take it out to the people.
Speaking of learning and advocating, join us for the John Slatin AccessU 2025. It's going to be great a great year. We've had a lot of entries. We're still going through them hopefully within the next day or 2 announcements will be made on those. It's just been so much to go through, just such a great turnout. We want to make sure that we have a very enjoyable conference and a lot to learn. There is a QR code in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. If you want to scan that with your phone to get to the website, you sure can. It's going to be on May 12th through the 15th here in Austin, Texas.
And then finally, I'm just gonna give a little slide here for Nelnet. We want to continue this talk, and we want to help you put people first. We do auditing, training, coaching, and it's Nelnet, Inc. - Nelnet inc.com forward slash accessibility.
Alright. So that is our talk for the day. Did anybody else have anything else to add? I'd really like to thank Knowbility for having us. And thank you all for coming.
Susan Hewitt: Yeah, we've got a couple of wrap up slides. Huge thanks to Marc and Dave. That was a great presentation. I loved hearing your stories and all the great video interludes. I need to come through some of that creativity, Dave, and thanks for the segue into introducing next month's session of Be A Digital Ally. We're going to do an AccessU sneak preview. As they just pointed out. It's May 12th to 15th you know. Use the QR code he gave you to buy your tickets or check out the when the schedule is released.
Hopefully this week you give that a look at our session will be April 17th same time. And Teenya Franklin, who's the head of our community programs, will give you an overview of access to you, and we'll havea presenter or 2 who will be at the conference kind of give you a little sample, a taste of what they're going to be delving into. So we'd love to see you there. Oh, also, that is the same side. So yeah, Dave, already said, this next session is a preview of access, you. And here's the information.
If you want to join, stay connected with us, you can sign up for (well, you're going through this fast, Mark). Sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on the socials. Email, us. Last slide; Mark's ready for dinner. Yes, here's another QR code for you. This is for the survey - we'd love to get your feedback on this presentation or other presentations we've done. And also we're always happy for donations because we are a nonprofit, and we hope that - yeah - hope you enjoyed tonight. And we look forward to seeing everyone again soon.
Thanks a lot. Thanks, Dave, thanks, Marc.
Have a good night.