Coding Accessibility: Developing Our Inclusive Future | GitHub  ## Metadata - Author: [[GitHub]] - Full Title: Coding Accessibility: Developing Our Inclusive Future | GitHub - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#Accessibility, #InclusiveDesign, #TechnologyForAll] - Accessibility - InclusiveDesign - TechnologyForAll Author: Jim LeBrecht, Ed Summers, Annalu Waller, Paul Chiou Source: [GitHub Accessibility Event](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0bTYYBsbLM) Reference: YouTube Transcript date created: 2024-09-15 14:30 --- # Title: Coding Accessibility: Developing Our Inclusive Future ## Table of Contents: 1. [📝 Summary](#-summary) 2. [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) 3. [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) 4. [📖 References](#-references) 5. [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) 6. [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) 7. [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) 8. [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) 9. [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) 10. [❓ Questions](#-questions) 11. [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) 12. [💡 Implications](#-implications) 13. [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) 14. [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) 15. [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) 16. [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) 17. [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) 18. [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - [GitHub's Coding Accessibility Series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0bTYYBsbLM) ## 📝 Summary: This discussion highlights the significance of inclusive design and accessibility in the tech industry. Featuring leaders in accessibility advocacy, such as Jim LeBrecht and Ed Summers, it emphasizes that accessibility should be built into products from the start, not added later. The conversation also showcases how open-source software empowers developers with disabilities, making technology accessible to all. ## 📖 Main Content: Accessibility in technology is crucial not only for individuals with visible disabilities but for all users. The panelists discuss how inclusive design benefits everyone, addressing physical, cognitive, and sensory barriers. They stress that access is a human right and technology must evolve to support all individuals, with a particular focus on including people with disabilities in the design and development process. ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Access Is a Human Right**: Accessibility should be built into products from the start, not added as an afterthought. - **Open-Source Empowerment**: Open-source platforms, like GitHub, offer customizable solutions to accessibility issues. - **AI’s Role in Accessibility**: AI, like GitHub Copilot, is helping developers with disabilities be more productive by automating tedious tasks. - **Diversity in Technology**: Including people with disabilities in tech development improves overall design quality and usability. - **Advocacy**: The panelists urge companies to actively foster inclusion by hiring and supporting developers with disabilities. ## 📖 References: - [GitHub Accessibility Event](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0bTYYBsbLM) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. "Building accessibility into products from the start is far more efficient and cost-effective in the long run than trying to add it later." 2. "Developers with disabilities bring unique perspectives that lead to more creative, inclusive solutions in technology." ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚀 **Leveling the Tech Field with Accessibility** Tech leaders are emphasizing that accessibility should no longer be an afterthought—it must be part of the initial design process. In a recent GitHub panel, industry experts, including Ed Summers and Annalu Waller, highlighted the importance of including people with disabilities in tech development. They discussed how AI tools like GitHub Copilot are enabling developers with disabilities to work more efficiently and stressed that open-source software plays a crucial role in fostering accessibility innovation. Learn how inclusive design practices are shaping the future of tech for everyone. ## ✅ Action Items: - **Advocate for Accessibility**: Ensure accessibility is a key focus from the beginning of product design. - **Utilize Open Source**: Encourage developers to contribute to and utilize open-source platforms to address accessibility issues. - **Explore AI**: Use AI tools like GitHub Copilot to assist developers with disabilities in coding tasks. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Incorporating accessibility from the start will reduce long-term development costs and increase user satisfaction. - Developers with disabilities contribute unique, innovative solutions that improve software usability for all. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Research Design**: Survey development teams that integrate accessibility from the beginning to measure impact on development speed, cost, and user satisfaction. - **Data Source**: Collect feedback from users with disabilities on how accessible products improve their experience. ### ❓ Questions: - How can AI further enhance accessibility in coding and development processes? - What are the challenges of ensuring accessibility in emerging technologies like AR and VR? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore how AI and machine learning can further remove barriers for developers with disabilities. - Investigate the economic impact of inclusive design on software development. ### 💡 Implications: Implementing accessibility from the start of software development has the potential to transform tech into a more inclusive space. It ensures that people with disabilities are not only consumers but also creators in the digital world. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Present**: Limited visual aids. - **Improve**: Add infographics to visually demonstrate the benefits of accessible design. 2. **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Present**: The discussion format supports auditory learners. - **Improve**: Provide audio summaries or podcasts for broader accessibility. 3. **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: Strong verbal explanations. - **Improve**: Offer written transcripts and detailed descriptions. 4. **Physical Learners (Kinesthetic)**: - **Present**: Minimal interactive components. - **Improve**: Include hands-on activities or workshops to explore accessibility tools. 5. **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: - **Present**: Use of logical reasoning and examples. - **Improve**: Provide case studies showing the impact of accessible design on product success. 6. **Social Learners (Interpersonal)**: - **Present**: The panel format encourages social learning through dialogue. - **Improve**: Create group activities or forums to discuss accessibility solutions. 7. **Solitary Learners (Intrapersonal)**: - **Present**: Opportunities for individual reflection. - **Improve**: Add journaling prompts for self-assessment. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: Ensure video transcripts are available for screen readers. - **Keyboard Navigation**: Verify that all interactive elements are keyboard-accessible. - **Text Resizing**: Ensure content can be resized without layout issues. ### 🌍 DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: Present diverse examples of accessibility challenges and solutions. - **Inclusive Language**: The language is gender-neutral and avoids jargon. - **Neurodiversity Support**: Break long content into manageable segments for easier processing. - **Representation**: Diverse speakers highlight different experiences with accessibility. - **Psychological Safety**: The panel fosters an open, supportive space for discussing accessibility. ### ✅ Logical validity: - **Sound Deductive Reasoning**: The argument that accessible design benefits all users is logically supported by evidence. - **Potential Fallacy**: Avoid generalizing that AI will solve all accessibility issues—acknowledge its current limitations. ### 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords**: Strong use of relevant keywords like "accessibility," "inclusive design," and "open source." - **Meta Description**: Ensure the meta description includes key points about accessibility and technology. - **Title Tag**: Well-optimized title with "accessibility" and "inclusive design." ## 🎯 Conclusion: Accessibility isn't optional—it's essential for creating inclusive technology. By involving people with di - Document Tags: [[accessibility]] [[developer experience]] - Summary: The text discusses the importance of coding accessibility for people with disabilities, emphasizing the need for inclusive design in software development. It highlights the unique perspective and skills that developers with disabilities bring to improving access to technology. The goal is to raise awareness and promote the integration of accessibility principles in software engineering practices. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0bTYYBsbLM - Hello, everybody. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Thank you for your patience, and first off, I'd like to thank the academy. - Woo. (audience applauding) - So my name is Jim LeBrecht, and I may be best known as the co-director and co-producer of the documentary "Crip Camp", which is on YouTube and, well, on Netflix and also you can find it on YouTube. I'm also an EP, executive producer, on GitHub's coding accessibility video series, which is available on their YouTube channel, and we'll also be posting a recording of this session to that YouTube playlist in a couple of weeks. For those that are blind or low vision, I am a older white guy sitting in a wheelchair. I got a red shirt on and underneath is a tie dye that was made from a fellow Deadhead and given to me, and I've got like a goatee and kinda curly hair. I wanna say that accessibility is more than just ramps and braille. It's needed everywhere because it serves everyone. Technology must become more accessible. It's good for business, and it isn't a one-way street. It's not only about providing access for people with disabilities. It's allowing us to enrich you and our society. It's on all of us to give others the opportunity to reach their own potential, and that goes beyond my simply talking about disability. This is just a general kinda Golden Rule that I believe in deeply. I've kinda started trying to use a hashtag, which is #AccessIsNotOptional, and I'd like to say that in this day and age, this is really the truth. Accessibility should not be added on later or simply just strapped on. It should be built in from the beginning. It's because starting from the beginning, it's much more efficient, and in the long run, it's much cheaper to do it that way. I want you to resist the urge to get the product out and we'll figure it out, the access, later. So I come from a mixing background for documentaries and such. It's like, "We'll fix it in the mix." You know, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So one of the ways to really make sure that you're being accessible is to include people with disabilities in the building and design process from the beginning. Bring them on as developers, testers and designers. It's not about building something and then sending it to someone for feedback but inclusion from the get go. The future holds great promise for all of us. The potential for AI to make the world more accessible is already happening. Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, the veteran of TCP/IP protocol, mentioned yesterday how email was central for him to access, was essential for him for access on email because, sorry, guys, I'm just a little bit nervous. (laughing) It was essential to him because it assisted him with his hearing loss. Communication technology allows for people who can't leave their homes or regions or who are non-speaking or speak different languages, and to participate and have impact all over the globe, we want these people to participate, and open source can play an important role. Basically, we're all unique with unique needs, and open source allows for customization, and it also can help break down financial barriers. So let's remember, technology is a tool, not the solution. Select the right tool and the right person to use that tool and then pass this on to others. So I'd like to introduce our panelists today. Right next to me to my right is Ed Summers, and he's a blind software engineer and an accessibility specialist. He has a BS in computer science and professional experience as a software developer, excuse me, yeah, as a software developer, engineering manager and leader of accessibility programs within large technology companies. Ed's personal mission is to enable people with disabilities to realize their full potential in the classroom and the 21st century knowledge economy. He fulfills that mission as the head of accessibility at GitHub, where empowers people of all abilities to create and collaborate. He also serves on disability-related government and not-for-profit boards. Previously, Ed worked at SAS, where he and his team created the SAS Graphics Accelerator, which enables users who are blind or low vision to create, explore and share data visualizations. Next, so on Zooming in for us is Annalu Waller. Annalu is a rehabilitation engineer, professor of human communication technologies, and director of augmentative and alternative communication at Dundee University. She has worked in this alternative communication. Augmentative and alternative communication is also known as AAC. Annalu has worked in the field of AAC since 1985, designing communication systems for and with non-speaking individuals. She established the first AAC assessment and training center in South Africa in 1987 before coming to the University of Dundee in 1989. Her PhD developed narrative technology support for adults with acquired aphasia following stroke, and her primary research areas are human-computer interaction, natural language processing, personal narrative and assistive technology. Her research is informed by her lived experience of having cerebral palsy. In particular, Annalu focuses on empowering end users, including disabled adults and children, by involving them in the design and the use of technology. She says that communication is what makes us human and that by supporting people with little or no function of speech to communicate, we are providing them with the opportunity to learn, be educated, be independent, and fundamentally to achieve their full potential. Excuse me, Paul, oh my gosh, Chiou. Is that correct, Paul? - Yes. - Thank you, so sorry, is a PhD candidate in computer science at the USC, (laughing) I should've read this thing ahead of time, Viterbi School of Engineering, where his research focuses on automatically finding and fixing keyboard accessibility issues in both the Web and Android apps using dynamic program analysis, an effort that he says is among the first of its kind. He chose this topic for his research, he says, because he can relate. He has been paralyzed from the neck down since he was 15 years old and uses a computer with assistive technologies that serve as a mouse. Paul started with ready-made assistive technologies, such as a head tracking device to control mouse movements and a tube he sips or puffs for right or left mouse clicks. Over time, Paul wanted to do more than the technology would allow, such as independently do photography, videography, or play the multiplayer online video game Dota 2. So he worked with his father to design, fabricate, and refine custom assistive technologies that allow him to do so. Recently Paul became a Guinness World Record holder for the most kills in a single Dota 2 solo match with a head tracking mouse. - Woo. - Yeah. (audience applauding) As a developer himself, Paul argues that paying attention to accessibility is a matter of ensuring quality software and that accessibility bugs in software should be treated the same as any other bug. That's our panel. So I'd like to start off by asking Ed a question. So Ed, what is GitHub, and what are you doing to improve access to technology for people with disabilities? - Great. Thanks, Jim. It's great to be here with the panel at South by Southwest. GitHub is an online platform where people build software. There's more than 100 million people building software on GitHub from all kinds of sectors, so private sector, public sector, NGOs, academia, and of course the open-source community. So most of the products and technology that we use today were either built on GitHub or rely on dependencies that were built on GitHub. So what are we doing to improve access to technology? So as you know, there's about 1.3 billion people with disabilities, and at GitHub, we think that if we're going to improve access to technology, then the best way to do that is to empower those people with disabilities to help build it. So we're doing that by removing barriers from the platform, innovating to create opportunities for access to development, and of course advocating through examples like our coding accessibility video series. - Great. By the way, so on GitHub's, geez Louise, so on your YouTube channel, there's this whole series of coding accessibility that folks should check out. Annalu, why should developers bother about accessibility? - Hi, everyone. Hello from Scotland. Why should accessibility be important? Well, it's not to make you look good. We know that accessible software is better software for everyone. If we think of good usability, the more we concentrate on developing accessible software, the more people can use it, and this is not only people like Paul and myself. This is you guys who might break your arm playing football. You need to be able to access technology wherever you are and in whatever environment you are working. So people who are working in sunlight will have difficulty seeing their screen. So in fact, they are experiencing similar issues to someone with low vision. So basically, the better we make software, the more users can access the products we develop. - Wow. Thank you so much. I think the point that you make also is just that we sometimes say in the community that, you know, if you're not disabled, you know, we're a club you can join any day. (laughing) - Well, people forget that everybody is disabled in some way. The majority of people have hidden disabilities that no one might be aware of, whether those are psychological, emotional, or whether you've got a hearing impairment, dyslexia or anything. What is normal? There is no such thing as normal. We are all human, and having disabilities is part of being human. - Yeah, it was Neil Marcus, who is a disabled performance artist and such, said that disability is a unique way to live, (Annalu laughing) and I really love that. I'm gonna move on to my next question. Ed, what role does open source play in the field of accessibility and assistive technology? - Yeah, so yeah, so basically, you know, there's open source and there's closed source. So closed source is where, you know, you can't see, the general public can't see the source code that was used to build technology, but open source means that anyone can see it, and depending on the license, anyone can contribute, anyone can use it, anyone can build on the contributions of others in the open-source community. So when it comes to accessibility and empowering people with disabilities, open source is a place where we skill. It's where we learn the discipline of software development and creating technology, and we've lowered the barriers to doing that. So more than any other, people with disabilities who want to be developers, who want to contribute can show up and learn and contribute to the open-source community. In addition to that, those of us with disabilities, we're just constantly faced with access barriers, barriers to access, and the open-source community and GitHub is a great place to go find solutions for the unique access barriers that we all face in different situations, and oh, by the way, if you find something that works for you, you can contribute to that community, but if you can't find, on GitHub, if you can't find open-source packages to solve your particular access need, you can just create it yourself and then share it so other people can reuse it as well. - You know, you bring a thought to mind, excuse me, folks, (coughing) that access is not just also about code or technology, but how does one access a job and what are your requirements? How do you hold interviews? And I just say that one of the things I've really learned over the years, that we can't use endurance as a sign of value, and that often entry-level positions are made up of interns or apprentices who are needing to work 18-hour days and carry 14 lattes, and you're filtering out so many people, not just with disabilities but other folks who are maybe single parents, and also looking at your application process, we were finding out a few years ago that when interviews were being done via a video and the technology that was involved, that people, let's say, who were on the autism spectrum who were not making eye contact were immediately, like, didn't get the jobs only because of that. So I just want to open your minds about really thinking outside the box about this. All righty. Thank you. Paul, I got a question for you, brother. How did you personally benefit from accessible software? How has open-source coding helped your daily life? - Hi, Jim. Yeah, thank you for the question. I was a tech savvy person before my injury, and I would spend a lotta time on the computer. After my injury, my dad made me a specialized modified mouse that I could use with my chin. Being on the computer, I feel free, and it's almost like as if I don't have a disability at all. As someone who cannot move and do physical work, I need to use my intellectual ability and brain power to compensate for my physical limitations. Technology was a game changer for me. I use the mouse through head or chin movement, and I type using an onscreen keyboard. I was able to do my work digitally. I realize that in today's age, as technology rapidly advances, we are slowly transitioning to a digitalized world and there are more and more opportunities for me. I'm able to do everything digitally because of assistive technologies. I can't move. So whether it's working or during my leisure, I'm always on the computer. I sometimes play a computer game called Dota to relax and interact with my able-bodied friends, but playing Dota with only a mouse is very frustrating and I lose all the time, but I wanna win, and I can play for my online teammates. So to improve my gameplay, my dad and I designed a prototype and built custom game control that allows me to access the keyboard through my tongue, and I also use open-source software and ready-to-go code from GitHub to help me customize the control to suit my needs. I was burned out around three years ago with all the research duties. Accessible software benefited my life by allowing me to work and also by giving me recreation so I can maintain a healthy work-life balance. - Thank you. Thank you so much. I wanna just kind of point out to people who are looking at the automatic captioning that we tend to call it "craptions" (audience laughing) because there's no human being that's actually typing it in. That technology is called CART. Don't ask me what that stands for. It's too early in the day. (audience laughing) But in an ideal world, this technology will improve and improve, but it's not perfect yet. So somebody said, I think Paul, you said something and it misinterpreted what you said, and it wrote "Mike Pence", so, (audience laughing) welcome to our world, ladies and gentlemen. All right, so my next question I wanted to pose to Annalu and Ed. Can tech be designed to meet conflicting needs of diverse disabilities? Annalu, do you wanna begin? - Yes. I think it's all well and good to say that we adopt a focus on universal design, but you see that we try and design for one person or one type of disability, we may be excluding another. So what we have been looking at in Dundee is the idea of user-sensitive design, where we try and look at the broad spectrum of disabilities and create software which is adaptive so that people can pick and choose the accessibility or their interface layout that suits their needs. So we can't design a piece of software which meets everyone's needs, but we can make sure that we can offer a variety of accessibility options within any piece of software, and I'm sure that Ed has loads of examples in this area. - Ed, before you begin, I just want to point out, there's the concept known as universal design. Have people heard of this term before? Yeah, a few folks. So the way I like to talk about universal design, which is I've really known about it more in architecture, is that you design something in a way that it provides access to anybody but that it's really built in elegantly into the design of the space. Ideally, you don't really notice it. It just feels natural versus, and I think the mindset is design it in a way that because you want to do this, not because you have to do this, and it makes it, yeah, go ahead. - And, Jim, that takes it back to my point earlier, where if we think about the diversity of our end user base, we will produce more elegant, more beautiful, and ultimately more usable software. - Thank you. Ed? - Yeah, I think the beautiful thing about digital technology is that it is adaptable, and I want to contrast against that or digital technology against the built environment and throw an example at you, Jim, for your consideration. You know, years ago, there were curbs on streets, and they were like, you know, curbs that were five or six inches tall, right, that would prevent people on mobility devices from entering and exiting streets safely. So there's this thing that was created called curb cuts, right? And that's where there's a cutout so there's a ramp down, right, which is excellent, and part of what happens with that, if it's too shallow, then people like me who are blind will walk right into the street because we don't have that tactile feel of the down curb, you know? That's what my dog is trained. It's really easy, you know, for my dog to detect a down curb or for me to do that with a cane, right? So that became a problem for blind people, you know, but the problem is that the built environment is kinda like you have to do it universally 'cause it's so expensive and it's fixed and it's physical. It's hard to make it adaptable for each individual person. Now, there's a compromise there, which was the tactile strips that you feel. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but check it out. You know, when you look at one of the curb cuts nowadays, we're putting these tactile strips on it to kind of, you know, make it more universal, but the beautiful thing about digital technology and software is that, as Annalu pointed out, we can customize the behavior to the individual needs of the user so that we each get what we want but we can still use the same application. - That's a great example and, you know, what the, you know, the beauty of curb cuts was, that it wasn't just simply helping folks with disabilities. It was anybody with a baby stroller or- - Cart. - Yeah, or even in the garment district in New York City because they used to bring things in these carts. It made their lives a lot easier is what I heard. I'm gonna go to Paul next, and Paul, why did you decide to study accessibility? - I decided to study accessibility because I wanted to help make software more accessible. Most quadriplegics I know just stay in a nursing home, and all they could do was watch TV. I always consider being able to go to college and pursue an education is a blessing for people in my condition. I'm fortunate to have supportive family with an engineering mindset. Over the years, I have developed a sense of responsibility, and whenever I face obstacles or something that I cannot do or something that I want to do, I always looked for solutions. Something that has always been on my mind is to create technology or assistive kind of technology so I can help those like myself. After graduating from college, I decided to continue studying computer science, and now my research is about how to make softwares more accessible. When software is poorly designed or is not properly implemented, as Annalu mentioned earlier, that consider, you know, different users, it can contain blockers that hinder users' ability to perceive, operate or understand content. I realize that software is the bridge between hardware and the user, and it's just as important as physical devices that I want to create. If we have software that is not accessible, we might as well not have the entire device. By studying accessibility, I can bear my responsibility as a software developer and help those supporting me. - Wow. Thank you. I think that some of us who are able to kind of achieve some pretty wonderful goals, we're also kind of feel like we want to make it easier for the next person that comes along, that sometimes when you're a trailblazer, you know, really the heavy burden of all of that, so I'm with you on that one, Paul. This one's for Ed and then maybe Paul. How are disabled developers uniquely qualified to contribute to research and development teams? Ed, do you wanna start? - Yeah, I'll take a crack at that. So, you know, one thing that first comes to mind is that people with disabilities have all kinds of contributions to offer that are simply not related to our disabilities. We could just be really, really good at stuff, you know? And everybody needs an opportunity to contribute because, you know, when this tide rises, you know, all boats get lifted when we make contributions. Just think about Einstein, right? You had hidden disabilities, and yeah, we're a lot better off for that. So I think though too, the other key point that comes to mind, Jim, is that all of us with disabilities have to be problem solvers, and every person I know with a disability who's successful is creative, over the top creative, because we have to constantly solve the problems. I mean, just last night at dinner, we were talking about the kinds of problems that we were solving to get here today. It's, you know, and we develop these systems and these strategies and low tech, high tech, and, you know, in this economy, in this digital age, I think, you know, one of the things that employers really need and they're willing to pay for is creativity, and we've got it. - Yeah, I mean, if anybody's kind of seen the documentary "Crip Camp" that I was talking about, one of the things that my friend Corbett says is that, you know, "We're living in a world that wasn't built for us. We're living in a world that we wonder whether people even wanted us." So indeed it's like you develop this sixth sense at times of problem solving. I tend to know nowadays, like, where I have a sixth sense about where the elevator might be in the lobby, you know, those kinds of things. Paul, so how are disabled developers uniquely qualified to contribute to research and development teams? - Developer with disabilities indeed offer unique perspective on accessibility. For many people with disabilities, software is the only outlet for them to the outside world, information and services. Coping with these accessibility blockers is something that many of us live every day, and even the slightest small accessibility issues can have a huge impact on these users, and actually I think it takes a lot to be accessible in software development. It's very easily overlooked and taken for granted. For example, like a software developer may not know how people cannot see use the software and let alone just test for bugs, accessibility bugs, and I think having developer with disability in our community is just as important as having people from different culture, their background. It offers a diverse point of view from everyone, and it benefits everyone. - Wow, man. I really like that. I really like the analogy of folks from other cultures. You're absolutely right. Ed, how is AI changing the discipline of software development and what is the impact on disabled developers? - Yeah. Yeah. Hoo, it seems like AI is changing everything today, isn't it, and this latest round of AI innovation with generative AI, in many respects, the first product to really kind of test the waters on that is a product called GitHub Copilot that was published, let's see, I think in about 2021 when we first shipped that, and it's built on top of OpenAI, and what it does is a couple things. One, it can suggest code suggestions. That can be quite elaborate and impressive. So for example, you know, when we type in your editor, sometimes there's a type-ahead, like it'll type the next word or the next few words. Well, think about that but, you know, suggestions for the next few paragraphs or even the next few pages but doing that in code. So that's one thing. Then the other thing is it, if you think about ChatGPT, for example, where you can just ask open-ended questions and have kind of a conversation with the AI, we created a version of that specifically for developers that's baked into the place where they work. It's called an IDE, an integrated development environment, where developers, and this is even, this is really great for developers that are learning their craft, they're upskilling, or they're breaking into this new area of technology. You can ask GitHub Copilot how to do something or to provide examples or to look at some existing code and explain how that works or to translate code from one language to another. There's all kinds of things you can do with it. So now, how does it impact developers with disabilities? So first off, we've made GitHub Copilot remove barriers so that it's accessible for developers with disabilities, and what always amazes me, particularly with people with disabilities, is that we get some new technology in our hands and we create uses for it that benefit us in ways that the people who create it could never anticipate. One of the videos that we produce, as you know, Jim, is about a developer from Ukraine named Anton Mirhorodchenko, and Anton has cerebral palsy. He's nonverbal. He types with one finger, and so when it comes to writing code, typing is a barrier for him. It's difficult for him to use a keyboard, and he found that using generative AI and GitHub Copilot, he could basically type a few characters in a cryptic way and the AI would suggest, accurately suggest what he was trying to express, and he's saving a lotta time and it could really, you know, it really unlocked his ability to work at a faster rate and contribute more. - Yeah, one of the videos we have in that playlist of coding accessibility, it looks at Anton, and I have to say that I wound up following on Patreon, and he's one of the funniest people I have freaking ever encountered in my whole life, and seriously, folks, it's just, that's what I love about our community. It's like so often people kinda think, oh, it's all tragedy and how could this have happened to you? And it's like, am I right or am I right? We have probably indeed some of the most wicked senses of humor and this is how we survive, right? All of us. All right, enough about me. Yes? Do you want to go to Q&A here? Let me see. Let me ask one other question and ask for a really brief response from everybody, and then we'll open it up for questions. What can people in the audience do to help improve access to technology for people with disabilities? And any of you three can pipe in here. Annalu, you wanna start or? - I think it is on us as software developers to understand the myriad of policies and guidelines on accessibility that are already out there, and if we are training new software engineers, accessibility should be part of the mainstream training and not an added add-on to that because we all have a responsibility to make software accessible. - Paul, do you have anything to add to that? - Yes, speaking of training, yes, I completely agree. Sometimes it's about awareness. Accessibility has become mainstream in recent years, but there's, for example, in my area, there's still no accessibility in software engineering curriculum. Recently we have incorporated, me and my advisors try to incorporate such a topic into the course and do a survey that we did with the students. We found that 30% were not aware of accessibility at all, and 60% heard about accessibility but has no experience. So we actually incorporated an accessibility component into the student course project, and I taught two lectures on this topic and also designed an in-class activity where we brought eye covers and asked students to order pizza with a screen reader while being blindfolded just to understand how things work, and through this experience, we received positive feedback from students. Many students were actually very interested in the topic, and studies show that over 70% of internet sites have accessibility blockers. We believe that by promoting awareness and showing students how there are people who use apps differently than them, we can cultivate the next generation of software engineers to be more considerate and build software that is more inclusive. So it's all about awareness, and the audience, you know, after listening to this talk today, you know, doesn't matter how much background you have in accessibility, you know that from our perspective how accessibility is important, and yeah, just I think in the future will be better. (laughing) - Hopefully, yeah. - [Paul] Yes. - Ed, do you have anything to add? - Yeah, you know, I think it's a series of two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes we do three steps forward, one step back, you know, but as technology tends to evolve, it's important that people with disabilities like us are part of that process, but I think that, you know, somebody, now I can't remember who said this, maybe you can remember, in this day and age, every company is a technology company. Yeah, 'cause technology is just infused, and I would expand that and say that every organization is a technology organization, and I would encourage the audience to think about access to the technologies in, you know, the places where you work, live and play, and that could be your church, your synagogue, your place of worship, you know, the extracurricular activities you're doing, your local bar, whatever it is, and, you know, just think about how you can advocate for people with disabilities to get access to the digital content we're doing here today. As you plan events at venues and get-togethers. Think about the accessible venues. If you happen to be a part of procurement processes or can influence the planning and procurement of technology, get accessibility on the agenda. It's really easy to go out and find standards for accessibility. It's easy to get overwhelmed. There's a great community of accessibility professionals globally that are just always willing to jump in and help provide guidance, and by all means, include people with disabilities in everything you do. - Yeah, a lived experience is an encyclopedia of information, I think. So we'd love to open it up to questions from the room. There's two ways to participate. There is a mic stand right here in front of me. Also, we will have a microphone, the wireless microphone that we can pass around. So just raise your hand for that. I wanna point out that that's another access point, and it's actually two aspects to this. You know, I was in a room the other day and said, "Well, it's a small room. I can just speak loudly." For people who are hard of hearing, that's really not going to work, and you don't want them to have to go, "Please." You don't want them to have to self-identify that way. So I really encourage everybody to insist that in situations like this, that people use the microphone and we wait and we insist upon that. Okay, so does anybody have a question? Either come up to the mic over here or raise a hand. - [Alex] I have a SouthBy hat for the first person to ask a question, by the way. - Alex says he has a SouthBy hat for the first person that raises, there you go, right back there. (Jim laughing) - [Cory] Hi, I'm Cory. I'm a white woman wearing a black sweater and blue jeans. Question for you around some of the additional new technology that's coming out around virtual reality and augmented reality and wondering how GitHub is looking at resources around those technologies as they evolve. - Yeah, we're not doing a lot of work rapidly in those spaces, but I think that, you know, as far as GitHub itself. Now, on the other hand, the open-source community I know is thriving in that space with solutions. I'm personally not familiar with XR. You know, I don't work in that space. By any chance, Annalu or Paul, are you familiar with any work going on in the open-source community? - [Jim] I think Annalu, yeah. - We've done quite a few research projects using VR and AR, and again, the opportunities that those technologies have, especially for people with cognitive impairments or needing to explore places they can't get to is incredibly important. The other example I know is quite a few tourism companies are using AR to actually support people to explore physical spaces before they go to visit those cities. So I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg so far, but again, when you are developing software for this technology, you've got to think of the diversity of your end user group. - Paul, do you wanna add anything? - In my research, I haven't covered any virtual reality or augmented reality, so I'm not really sure about this topic. Sorry. - Yeah, okay. Thanks. Next question. Hi. - [Sharron] Hi. First I just wanted to say thanks. My name is Sharron Rush. I'm executive director of a local nonprofit here called Knowbility, and I've been coming to South by Southwest since 2002, and every year, it seems like there's more attention and more engagement around the issue of accessibility. So I agree with you about the three steps forward, and at South by Southwest, I just wanted to give a shout out to the team that there is more engagement that way, but I wanted to talk- - I want to ask you if you could do your image description. - [Sharron] Oh, sure. I'm sorry. - Thank you, no. - [Sharron] I guess the easiest thing to describe me would to say that I'm white and I'm an old Austin hippie. How's that? (Sharron laughing) - Perfect. Trust me. - I got it. - Trust, yeah. - [Sharron] So Knowbility has been advocating for 25 years. We do a training conference every year, and it just seems that as accessibility has grown, and the need for training is what I was gonna ask about, how do we as a community, I mean, maybe we're just terrible at marketing, but it seems that every year, we get the same people from state agencies and academia, and I just wonder how do you instill that idea that there is training available? You know, there's training at, and we're not the only ones. There are other conferences and training, and yet I really agree with what, is it, Anna Lee? - Annalu. - [Sharron] Annalu said about there are people who still come out of schools and never hear about accessibility, don't even know how to spell accessibility when they have computer degrees. So how do we instill that into training and awareness in companies that just as it's important for people to understand about computer security and those things, that accessibility becomes foundational. I'd just love to hear what you think about how we can make that leap. - Can I take the first crack? - Yeah, go for it. - All right, good to see you, Sharron. So glad you're here. I'd love to just grab you for a minute afterwards. (Sharron laughing) It's been a while. Just say hello. Yeah, it's a great question, and, you know, when we think about, we have this term in the accessibility field, we think about shifting left, right? Well, what that means is, as you've mentioned, you know, fix it in the mix. That's way to the right on the timeline. I guess that would be right for y'all, that side, but yeah, by shifting left, you know, you go further back into the development, the design processes, into the planning processes and I think you're right, you know? When it comes to solving the accessibility problem at scale and making it stick, the ultimate shift left is the shift left all the way into the training that new professionals are getting when they're in school. So there's one organization in particular, in addition to the work that Paul's doing at USC, there's an organization called Teach Access which is doing amazing work in this space. I think my mic is cutting out, yeah, for some reason. I dunno if the battery's going dead, but yeah, so check out and encourage people to check out an organization called Teach Access. Another one is the Industry Association of Accessibility Professionals. There are some certifications that anyone can get through this organization, and I saw just the other day, I believe about 6,000 people have been certified with accessibility core competencies with their kind of base-level core competencies. It's called CPACC, as you know, I'm sure, Sharron, and then one last plug on this, one of the folks from our team at GitHub, Carie Fisher, she's a program manager on our team at GitHub. Just last week, she facilitated a panel with folks from Teach Access, IAAP and W3C that really focused on this topic, you know, to give people the lay of the land for getting information about accessibility so that they can build, you know, build programs and tear down barriers, and that was at Microsoft Ability Summit last week, and I'm sure that'll be online. I think it's online on the band already, so maybe check out that panel discussion from this year's Ability Summit. - [Sharron] All those things are great, and I just wanna add another plug for AccessU. It happens here in Austin in May, and we have four days of dedicated training. So come to AccessU and get some training too. - I believe we're running pretty short on time, so I'd like to have the next question, and please forgive me, Annalu and Paul. - [Alan] I'll make it quick. My name's Alan Hale. I'm a white man with auburn hair and a cozy sweater, and I wanted to ask what advice you might have for allies who wanna help pave the way for access. I'm someone with a non-apparent disability, disabilities, and my wife's a wheelchair user, and I'm in spaces all the time in the mobility industry where it's autonomous vehicles, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and as I'm promoting accessibility, I get the question, why does this even matter to you? (laughing) Which both lights my fire but also is deflating, but how do you navigate being an ally when disability maybe isn't apparent to different environments? - Great question. Does anyone, Paul or Annalu, do you wanna answer? - Maybe I can link this with what I wanted to say. The only solution from my point of view is to include accessibility in all undergraduate programs in all schools so that it becomes part of the regular training of everybody. We need to stop thinking about disability as being other and make accessibility part of the normal teaching instruction and program, because if we can grab students or young people, they will become our biggest allies, and unless we get directors, company directors, chief executives to understand the importance of accessibility, they won't support these opportunities going forward either. So you need to tackle the people at the top but also within any training we're providing, whether it is for teachers, medics, nurses, architects, software engineers, and we have seen this work at Dundee because we are including this into the regular compulsory curricula across the board. - Thank you. Paul, do you have anything to add? - [Paul] No. - Okay. - But I do, I wanted to say some. One other thing is that as I was learning everything about accessibility, including what motivated me to do the work we're doing at USC, another thing is I wanna give a shout out to Sharron at Knowbility 'cause I actually participated in their AIR program, Accessibility Internet Rally, 2021, and that really helped us doing accessibility shifting left 'cause we really started starting with the design process. Everything was accounted for in accessibility, and there were mentors, you know, to help us. We helped non-profit organization. It was a very good experience if anybody is interested in learning how to get hands-on experience. Oh, by the way, we won second place. (audience applauding) (Jim laughing) - The ReadME? Yeah, so folks, Ed, unless you have something burning, let me just, so on the GitHub website, the ReadME Project, I really encourage you to go there. There's a incredible article about- - [Attendee] The whole front page. - The whole front page, yeah. It's dedicated to accessibility for the next few days, and I just wanna close with a very brief thought. The one other aspect of accessibility, especially at companies, is letting your employees know that you want them just the way they are and that you're there to support them. The stigma of disability means that people try to hide it, live in the closet with it if they can, but the best thing you can do is say, "We are a company that believes in diversity, and you are so freaking welcomed, and simply tell us what you need to do the best job possible," and I've seen this at other companies and it's remarkable and it's way too unique. It needs to be much more of a, really part of our ethos. Thank you for coming today. (audience applauding) - Thank you., Coding Accessibility: Developing Our Inclusive Future | GitHub, GitHub, 01hv9bcz681ggmhtwasmhmn4wq.