Exclusion by Design - Michele A. Williams  🔗 **Source:** [Exclusion by Design - Michele A. Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTlzxDLkg8I) [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to another accessibility talks or alley talks. We're glad you could join us for our monthly virtual meetup on accessibility, inclusion, and usability. It's a space where we learn from guest speakers and connect as a community. My name is Andrew Olsen. I'm an engineer at Principal Financial. And for a visual description, I am a white man with long red Vikingsque hair and wearing a dark ribed glasses and a blue shirt. Really excited to be here today. Before we get started though, I want to have a quick reminder that Ali Talks is dedicated to maintaining a safe and welcoming environment. We ask everyone [00:00:42] joining us today, speakers and attendees alike, to follow our code of conduct. It's going to be in the chat and also during our conversation. So, code of conduct applies to all those spaces. You can find a full version on our website and our goal is just to ensure that we have a respectful space for open dialogue and for learning. Next, I want to take a moment to thank all the partners who make Ali Talks possible. A special thank you to our bronze supporter, Principal Financial Group. That's actually my employer. So very proud to have them sponsor our alley talks. We also want to recognize our alleycat club monthly club members which I am also a monthly club member. [00:01:28] Every contribution helps keep this community growing and our content free and our talks accessible to everyone. So thanks everybody for being a part of the Alycat Club member. We're always looking for sponsorships. So, if you'd like to support Alley Talks as a sponsor, please visit our website to learn more. Your contributions go directly towards compensating speakers and approving improving our events. You can also double your impact through corporate matching programs like Benevity. That's what I actually use for my sponsorship. There's a way that your employer can double those amounts. So, just search for us under Ali Talks by Midwest OpenSource Alliance. Lastly, [00:02:13] do you have questions for our speaker? Here's how you ask. If you're watching the live premiere on YouTube, you can ask your question in the live chat. If you're not watching live, that's okay. You can leave a comment on the YouTube video or you can continue the conversation on LinkedIn or other social media channels that Ali Talks is in. And with that today we have Michelle Williams UX and accessibility consultant at making accessibility work. She is presenting on exclusion by design. How disability gets erased from concept to product and how to fix it. So I have a fun fact here about you Michelle. Uh the fun fact [00:02:56] about you is that you are an only child. Tell me. >> Hi. Um, well, hi everyone and please don't prejudge me based on my fun fact, but yes, I grew up as an only child, but not a spoiled one. I like to make that distinction. >> That's great. I married an only child, so it is a unique perspective uh for somebody that did have siblings. >> Yeah. And and vice versa. It's always interesting to be around others who have these weird sibling relationships that I cannot relate to, and sometimes I'm kind of grateful for that. Well, what's great is I can relate to you not relating. So, this is great. What a great way to start. >> Perfect. >> All right, Michelle. Well, the floor is [00:03:39] yours. I'm really excited to hear what you have to say today and I'm going to stop sharing and it's all yours. >> Thank you, Ali Talks team, for having me today. And yes, my topic for today is going to be a little bit less on the technical side and more on mindfulness and thoughtfulness about what all of us do. And so I've titled this exclusion by design because I want to talk about what we talk about. Here's what I mean. But first, before I start, I do like to often note my disability language. I tend to use identity first, which means using phrases like disabled people rather than people first as in people with disabilities. There's no right or wrong, but I just align with those who [00:04:22] feel that disability is not a bad word or a word to be avoided, but rather a descriptor, particularly given the focus of our talks in this space. So, just uh an idea there before we get into the topic. And so, first I want to talk about what I notice or what we notice. And notably through this portion, I'll talk about how I began to see the world differently. And it's going to start in kind of an odd place, but nonetheless, it starts with renderings of houses and communities. So, how did I end up here? Well, growing up, u one of my mom's major jobs was at a civil engineering firm, and at one point I interned there as well. And so, they would draw these concepts of the buildings that they were [00:05:05] going to create. But then over time, those renderings also expanded to people in those spaces. And also growing up where I did in the east coast in an area that was going through some revitalization, I started to look at these again with a different lens, a different appreciation, but also a different curiosity, particularly when people were added to the space. What people and often times I was looking for the diversity of ages, of cultures, of genders. Who were these builders? Who were these concept creators envisioning for these future spaces in neighborhoods that I would be living in and moving around in? Essentially, for instance, they imagine someone like me. But also, [00:05:49] it just brought to bear that there was an imagining of who moved around these spaces. And if I think about what those dynamics were that I was looking for like race or gender or age, those are some of the common uh factors that we talk about when we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives or when we talk about this idea of inclusive spaces. Those are often the characteristics that are called out and therefore if there is a mindful representation, you will find that. However, as I moved along in my career and in my stages, I started working in the field of accessibility and I noticed that working in accessibility therefore [00:06:32] changed what I noticed. So, for instance, if I went back to say this rendering that I found, I believe this is in the Netherlands of a nice waterfront community with some town homes that face this calm water space and there are people standing and walking around and particularly someone riding on the pike. Again, in some aspects, this would look the same, but now I started to notice, for instance, the cobblestone or the brick stone road that the person is riding on. And I would start to wonder if someone with uh different mobility disabilities or mobility aids that they used would appreciate those cobblestone walkways and driveways and sidewalks. Just something I started to put into my [00:07:16] brain few uh years back. bullet trains or the idea of high-speed trains were all the rage and you would see concepts around that and I couldn't quite find exactly the ve very early images but I do remember thinking some of those images almost looked like a spaceship or something and it looked like it was going to be very difficult for anyone in a wheelchair to get into them and then also once they became developed and you start to see renderings of the inside it's very traditional narrow aisles and seeds, which again does not always lend itself to mobility aids and those who um whose body types just simply are not ready to be outfitted for a chair like [00:08:00] this. So again, starting to notice things differently or let's say it's back to school time and you're starting to see commercials like for a company like Old Navy and a lot of times there'll be a lot of youth in the commercials showing off the latest fashions and book bags that are going to be available that season. And I have a snapshot here of a lot of children who again are diverse in say culture or race or gender identities, but we don't see a lot of representation around disability in that as well. At least not often. And then lastly, even in stock photos. So again, as you're growing in your career, you're starting to make your own presentations, you need to grab some [00:08:44] representative photos. And again, we're finding that there oftent times, let's say if you need uh to focus on businesses, then you will see a diverse representation again of gender, of age, of culture and race, but not necessarily abilities. So, as I've been continuing to work in this field and then see the world through how that field has changed my perspective, these are some of the everyday moments that started to come up. It really came to bear one day when I was in the office. So, I traditionally worked in my last full-time job in the Boston office and I had occasion to go [00:09:26] to uh our Denver office. got a cup of coffee and came back and was sitting around maybe three of my co-workers when I did. One asked, "How's the coffee?" Because apparently the uh new coffee machine was all the talk of the office and people were debating whether or not it actually improved versus the previous coffee machine. But what my response was, the coffee is okay, but the machine's not accessible. So the machine looked like one that I have uh depicted here on the slide which is one that's high on the counter. It's a touch screen. So the controls for that are even higher up on the counter. And its interface obviously being touchscreen is therefore not going to be accessible to [00:10:10] people who maybe have vision impairments. And also mobility wise and the height of it is going to be difficult for some folks depending on how tall they are. And then the position on the counter is not going to allow for anyone in a wheelchair to be able to roll up to it. So these are the calculations I was making in my head. Just some of the things that stood out to me about why this machine even though it made self serve and single cup there were some benefits to it. I knew that depending on one's again physical disability, it may be difficult to independently get a cup of coffee. And when I said the machine's not accessible, one of the other colleagues that that overheard me just kind of turned around and um just stated that you know that's so typical of you that [00:10:55] you would notice that you know no one else was going to point that out. We were just worried about the taste of the coffee itself. So what was happening basically I was noticing what disabled people already knew. So disabled people already knew that exclusion basically existed everywhere. I was just catching up. So essentially over the course of working in this field, I had more and more opportunity to really authentically engage with disabled folks. And basically I was just learning to view the world through the perspective that they lived in every day. and started to piece together this absence of this sort of representation. [00:11:37] So basically what was happening was in the course of learning accessibility, learning digital accessibility, I realized I wasn't really learning accessibility from learning standards like WCAG, I was learning accessibility from engaging with disabled people. whether they were my colleagues, whether they were research participants, whether they were friends, I was starting to get that perspective. Well, what does this all mean for those of us who primarily work in the tech field, which I presume would be most of the audience for these talks? Well, what it means is that there might be representation or or perspective missing in some of the key aspects of what we do to build our tech products. For instance, in our personas, in our [00:12:21] journey maps, in AI generated content or concepts, in product visions, in user stories, these are the foundations that lead to what we build. But that is going if if there are aspects and perspectives missing, that is going to impact what we build and how we go about building it. Here's an example. that same position that where I said I traveled to the different offices. I had another encounter in my home office in Boston and I've dubbed this students versus professors. So essentially we were in the kitchen of that space. So apparently these kitchen spaces are important but [00:13:04] in that perspective I was talking to some folks I didn't directly work with. They were, I think, more on the product side. And what they were doing was kind of lamenting, pitying, pointing out that some of their co-workers who implemented the studentf facing software were being asked to incorporate accessibility. So essentially, as probably is familiar to most of you, accessibility was not yet part of the norm of how our products were developed. I along with uh some others were part of the team with the accessibility expertise to try to curb that and to inform and educate and advocate for [00:13:49] accessibility to be built into the products. And therefore one of the ways that we prioritized that work was to prioritize our student facing software as opposed to we had a sort of educatorfacing software. So you can understand there's a ratio there between how many instructors there are versus how many students and how much turnover you have of students. So that was one of the ways that we have prioritized the work. So as this work was being done colleagues kind of across the across the aisle I guess or across the department who didn't necessarily work on that student facing software were kind of going whoa you know you have to do all these new things you have to learn all these new things. You have all these new [00:14:32] checks. that's how they were viewing it. But in the process of doing that and again hearing the sort of almost relief that they didn't have to do that work because they worked on the instructor side. I interjected and I pointed out that professors can be disabled too. This then led to them basically falling silent. It wasn't that they disagreed. It's just that it simply had not occurred to them that professors or instructors can also have disabilities in the vein that uh and I continue to explain students who have disabilities [clears throat] for instance graduate and they may want to get a job somewhere and that job may look like becoming an [00:15:16] instructor or people also acquire disabilities throughout their throughout their lives. So either way, you all should also be thinking about this and are going to be asked to do the same task. This is not a separation. So that leads back to this idea of a phrase that you may have often heard. Representation matters. Representation leads to what we imagine, who we imagine, the scenarios we envision that then lead to the design and lead to the products that we put out into the world. So we can't design for who we haven't imagined. So this is why it is important to understand that not everyone notices the world in the same way if you've not [00:16:00] been exposed to those considerations. So as I again was reflecting on how I'm moving through the world and I'm noticing things that apparently other people don't notice, it then led to a question. Why does disability inclusion keep happening? Why is this the state? So for instance, when we approach say a product development team that needs to that should be considering accessibility, you get these sort of common what I dub explanations more like excuses that we didn't know or we didn't think about it or we don't need to. And we can sort of give people a little bit of grace in some of those explanations [00:16:45] and we can try to accept that these things are facts in themselves that people just really don't recognize. They really don't know. But sometimes there's a harder truth and that is that sometimes disability is intentionally left out because society teaches us that disability doesn't belong. So this is what's known as abbleism. And to briefly describe abbleism, it's a discrimination or a prejudice against individuals with disabilities as a short definition more extensively, more accurately, it's a disregard or a lessened view of disabled people. And I tend to bring this up in a lot of talks [00:17:27] that I give because I do think it's important for us to understand that this mindset is impacting many of the people that we engage with. And I also bring it up because it is often viewed as the way, the correct way, the right way to think about disability. It's not as negatively presented as we would see in this definition. Sometimes it's presented as polite or the right way. So for instance, I have some examples that I often call out in presentations because I think they align with some everyday behaviors that we may not have ever thought of as being harmful. So for instance, um making ordinary into [00:18:11] extraordinary like saying he's blind but goes to work every day. So this came up for instance when I was doing an awareness sort of presentation a kind of booth at an event and um I was showing off different assisted technologies and just explaining about disability in general to some folks who were visiting my table. It's almost like a vendor fair. one of the sort of groups that came over were uh you know exploring the table and relating the content back to themselves which is fine and that's great but one of the persons said they had a neighbor who was blind and then said but he goes to work every day my response was adults go to work so this idea of lowered expectations because [00:18:56] someone has a disability is the wrong viewpoint why we think that is because there's so much discrimination there's so much inaccessibility in the world that it seems difficult to have a disability and therefore be able to do ordinary tasks. But instead, our viewpoints should switch to there shouldn't be so much so many obstacles to doing ordinary tasks simply because someone has a disability. Another one that I point out is applauding technology presented as innovation and is skewing it as an accommodation as in text to speech for reading. So, for instance, we'll see commercials for Amazon's Audible. Listening to your books is efficient. It's effective. It allows you to [00:19:41] maximize your time, such as time during a commute. It's a great way to get some reading done in a busy, you know, lifestyle. But then a student who has advanced in their grade level, who now realizes they may have a reading difficulty like dyslexia or something like that that benefits from listening to a book rather than trying to site readad is going to be told that they are not reading, they are not trying hard enough, they are not doing the assignment if they want their textbooks or their uh other literature read aloud instead of site reading. So again, we're positioning the same technology with very different viewpoints depending on who who is using it and the uh reasons [00:20:25] that are given for it. A last example is sharing what is known as inspiration porn. And I use that term because it was coined by a disabled advocate uh during a a TED talk, Stella Young. And this is the sort of videos like someone using an exoskeleton to walk across the stage. So someone who was otherwise paralyzed, maybe having the ability to walk during certain moments or other sort of videos that are dubbed inspirational, but really what they do is take away the idea of normalizing different ways of doing something. So using a mobility aid like a cane, a walker or a wheelchair [00:21:08] should be just as valid as walking or again some of the other videos that we have. In some ways they do not allow for folks to just show up in the world the way that they uh might need to. And so this TED talk that I mentioned was called I'm not your inspiration. Thank you very much. Some folks are not okay. They're not trying to be someone's inspiration. Particularly when we know that disability is not an aspiration. No one is trying to become disabled. So therefore, how can someone therefore be an inspiration? Basically, if exclusion is the norm, access will always feel exceptional. [00:21:52] So let's let that sink in for a minute. If we find that we don't see a lot of disability representation, if we find that the prevailing thoughts about disability is that it is lesser than it should not be talked about directly, it is an unfortunate circumstance of a person, then we will build around that as well. So when you come to a space and you want to advocate for someone to be able to do ordinary tasks in an ordinary way that will always feel like the exception when it has been taught that that is not the norm. So this is an important thing to I think to really [00:22:36] keep in mind as we move forward with the work that we do. So with that when we have this circumstance then we have missed opportunities. So for instance in our research, how many of your foundational research studies, not just usability, but those studies that influence the direction of a project, how many of those have included disabled participants before the product direction was decided? In our product strategy, when your product strategy was written, who had the opportunity to influence it? When we're talking about say personas or archetypes, who again are we envisioning in the product? When was the last time one of those personas acquired a disability? Or if we're using AI, a lot of controversy around that, [00:23:20] but nonetheless, we know that companies are doing it. Then if AI generates concepts based on what already exists, for instance, based on training models, then what happens when exclusion is already the norm? Basically, if disability is seen as a problem, it will rarely be included in the solution. So hopefully at this point, maybe you've experienced some of this, maybe this is resonating with you, maybe you had not yet noticed it, but now you do. Hopefully within that space, you ultimately see this as not the right way to go, not the right way to think about disability, not the right way to have it showing up in our world. Basically, you're seeing that disability [00:24:03] is not the problem, it's our viewpoint. So therefore, what we want to do next is interrupt. In order to interrupt though, we need to take some action because inclusion rarely happens by accident. So really many accessibility improvements don't necessarily require permission. They require initiative. So how I position that is we should become accompllices. And I use this word uh intentionally because an accomplice in this instance would be someone who actively helps disrupt an unjust status quo. So I think about uh in the US there is a late civil rights leader named John Lewis who came up with the phrasing good [00:24:46] trouble. So if you know anything about the civil rights movement in the US at one point it was the status quo and even the law to discriminate against black citizens. So in order to disrupt that, you had to essentially almost break the law or push against that law. So in that sense, you weren't just an ally, you were an accomplice. You were trying to disrupt something that was the current ways of working, the current ways of operating, the current ways of thinking. And I think in this vein of becoming an accomplice, your actions can be either subtle or they can be rogue. And I'll let me explain that a little bit more. So, here's some practical accomplice [00:25:29] behaviors that I, as a sneaky person, uh I know this is recorded and can be traced back to me, but I'm going to encourage you all to start some good trouble if you feel like we should do that. So, for instance, researchers like myself, I consider myself both a user experience researcher and an accessibility specialist. So for my fellow researchers, there's some subtle things we can do and then there's some absolute row things we can do. So for instance, we could include disability questions in a screener that doesn't add that much time. It simply collects the information about the participants. We can even report on that information in our reports and let that information [00:26:14] have its way with the group. You know, have its impact once it is presented and collected and included in the findings. But we've not done anything major by simply asking a clarifying question about our participants. Because the reality is if you've been doing research any amount of time with any amount of people, you've likely had someone with a disability in your research study whether you knew it or not because of how prevailing disability is and and how much it is present in our population. So that's a small thing you can do that still might have a good impact on your team. You can also do what I tended to do, although I was technically oftentimes employed as an accessibility researcher, so it wasn't that rogue of [00:26:57] me, but I would run accessibility focused studies, whether prompted to or not, and present the findings widely. So, you can go ahead and decide to gather the data on how we're doing from the user's perspective and present those findings. That then of course will have a even bigger impact on the visibility of those considerations within your organization. As designers, you can do very subtle things. For instance, you control your design file. So you can annotate it. Whether that's in the web world, you might want to do heading levels. If you think developers will understand what that designation means, you can be [00:27:39] having conversations around that. Let's say you are designing something more in the hardware space, you can still be accounting for uh some of the maybe lowerhanging fruit considerations in the space that you're in. Whether it's appliances or vehicles, whatever space, there's usually something whether that's considering the colors that you're using, whatever it is that you've learned that benefits. oftentimes as a designer you have some power to include that either out loud or just subtly in your design and it will make a difference or you can kind of go rogue and literally design for accessibility for disability. So for instance again [00:28:23] kind of thinking in a web space you can make sure that your drag and drop has uh keyboard functionality that you've documented or again you can make sure that you talk about touchcreens having an audio interface accompanying them for those who can't see the screen. These sort of considerations that again hopefully you started to notice and want to include can start to be under your purview and done. Let's say you're a developer. There's even probably even more subtlety you can do because unlike designs, most folks aren't necessarily pulling up your code and reading it cuz most folks don't know how to do that. So then you might be able to do something like ensure icon [00:29:07] buttons have accessible names in web code. Again, there may be other equivalents of that in other spaces, but you can do things that you know will not only just be good code practice, but also accessible code practice. Or you can go rogue and test your designs with a say a screen reader or other assisted technology and fix those issues prior to handoff and just say that's what I'm going to do as part of my process. I'm not saying do this in ways that will obviously get you in trouble or have an impact on job security, but I do think that there's opportunity for us to, as I'll call it, just do the thing, right? So, we can add captions before [00:29:51] we're asked. We can add accessibility acceptance criteria if we're, you know, project pro program managers and project managers. We can include accessibility findings in our say research reports or our other say huristic reports. We can use inclusive imagery in the concept renderings like those that I showed earlier. Basically we don't need permission to disrupt exclusion. And I also think that there's again a almost necessity to do that when again we think that it won't happen otherwise. It won't be considered the norm. and therefore it won't happen without someone taking those first, second, even [00:30:35] third steps to do that. One example of a again a s somewhat lowhanging fruit opportunity that we have is disability stock photos. So I talked about stock photos earlier and it may seem inconsequential but it's not because again we talked about how representation matters and the idea of representing disability in a positive light matters tremendously. So there are some repositories of photos either directly created by disability advocates or they are just really good representations within some stock photo libraries that I want to highlight and call out. So on the slide here I have three in [00:31:18] particular. One is very new. It's called allin frame that is coming out of the Levant consulting group. a wide array of scenarios and scenes with a variety of disability representations within it. So, for instance, on the slide here, I've chosen a photo with a woman at a laptop at at a table with a a guide dog laying on the floor next to her and then there appears to be say maybe a professor or a colleague standing next to her who is has dwarfism. So that person is standing basically at the same height of the person sitting at the table. But overall this is just a conversation of two posts collaborating [00:32:01] over a laptop. So the neutrality and the lack of fanfare around a very natural say professor student you know colleague to colleague conversation is what we're going for and it's what folks need to uh see represented when that has not always again been the case. So that was all in frame. Another group that has uh done some stock photos is called disabled and here h e r e disabled and here. Uh, so the one photo I chose from their collection is of a man doing sign language outside and smiling. So again, a lot of different scenarios of folks and disabled in here is even more [00:32:44] intentional about also queer representation as well and uh diversity of cultures and races. So a very good uh spread of different scenarios from professional to casual in that uh free set of stock photos and all of the these two as well come with alternative text that you can use. So I think sometimes also the idea of describing a photo when we ask for folks to do that can kind of cause people to pause. So they've taken care of that as well and giving you some ideas for how to describe the photos in alt text and longer description situations. And then I've noticed pixels. I don't I'm not uh in the photo world so some folks may know much more [00:33:28] about pixels than I do but I just stumbled upon their repository and uh when I was for instance making my website and decided to look for disability representation within the set of photos and surprisingly there are some very good again neutrally presented disability representations in there including the one that I've highlighted here of a young woman but Down syndrome doing yoga in a yoga studio along with other folks in the studio. So again, various casual and workplace scenarios, everyday life scenarios where disability is just a part of the scene but not the scene itself, if that makes sense. And [00:34:11] therefore, again, if you have a project where photos need to be a part of that, why not also include that kind of diversity in that in that photo array? Basically, every [snorts] time we quietly demonstrate that inclusion is possible, we weaken the arguments against it. So again, every interruption that we do gives someone permission to imagine disability differently, and that's the work of an accomplice. Now at the same time what I think accompllices should not do is for instance constantly ask is this accessible without context and related to that use disability as a gotcha. We're not trying to trip up our colleagues. We're trying to advocate. [00:34:56] We're not trying to make accessibility feel like the enemy uh or something that folks have a negative connotation or association with. So therefore, we also don't want to speak over disabled people or assume one disabled person's experience represents everyone. So again, the idea is not to take this over to present it in a way that is harmful to the community, but rather as I think accompllices should, it's to create space and then also to share influence. So the idea is that we are changing those perspectives, those thoughts, those representations of disability [00:35:39] amongst those that we have influence over so that it is easier for disability inclusion to be that norm. An example of this that I like to call out is a colleague of mine, Dr. Cynthia Bennett. So I I haven't mentioned this explicitly, but I wrote a book, Accessible UX Research. I will um highlight that towards the end. As I was writing the book, I being a non-disabled person wanted to make sure that I had some disability representation in the book. And in particular, given that the book's focus was UX research, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just focused on research participants, but researchers, professionals, and colleagues. And that brought to mind uh again a good colleague and friend, [00:36:24] Cynthia Bennett, who is a blind UX researcher. She's now currently at Google. And I was able to get some quotes and some perspectives from Cindia including the following that when we talk about accessibility being represented in our products, she says accessessibility is narrow. Whatever they have learned about it, accessibility is there but often implemented in a way that people who don't use the accessibility feature would understand. Here's the takeaway from something like that quote. The idea is that accessibility is not for is not speaking for people. It's helping people be heard. So at some point this work needs to come [00:37:07] from originate from members of the disability community. But at the same time it doesn't and it shouldn't take disabled people being in every space being in every room for the work and the advocacy to be done. So hopefully that makes sense that there should be a shared responsibility and therefore a opening of opportunity as a result because of the work that everyone is doing to change how we are viewing accessibility and the fact that it is often times excluded from key conversations and key decision points. Ultimately what we're trying to do is normalize which is our fourth pillar. So we had notice interrupt [00:37:52] actually I don't remember the fourth. So our fourth pillar is normalized how this change actually happened and I actually have a personal accomplice story to talk about what this looks like in terms of normalizing. So what I'll put on the slide for succinctness is a quote I added captions before I knew you would ask. And that came from a social media manager. To expound on this story a little bit more, uh I had a client now I'm as working as a consultant. I had a client and however it happened, I had occasion to engage with their social media manager. I don't even remember at this point how that came about except [00:38:34] maybe we were posting about uh some of the work that was happening within the company. for instance that there was a big announcement of some resources that that company had put out. So in the course of that of course I'm advocating for the social media content to be accessible. It needs if it has images, it needs to have alternative text, if it has video that has audio, then it needs to have captions. And it seems like we had had that conversation just a few times because the scenario that this occurred in was we were now in person. This was uh still during uh the COVID times, but there was a conference that the company was putting on. So, a small handful of the people that were presenting at the conference got [00:39:17] together in person in California to then stream this conference. We were in sort of a green room area and the social media manager whom I had just met in person again mentioned they were getting ready to post something and then immediately said, and I added captions because I knew you were going to ask. Don't even don't even say it. I added the captions and I just had to chuckle. I don't know if I would have said, you know, did you add captions? I probably would. Can't lie. But it was uh it was heartwarming because they didn't say it in frustration or anger. They said it in acknowledgement that I know that I need to add captions now to my content. You have gotten that message across to me and I feel like from now on, no matter where that person I don't even know if [00:40:01] they're still at that company, but they're not going to forget that, right? And that is a win. That is a win for the community. That is a win for the normalization of something that can feel like an accommodation for folks. And there yet we know that captions benefit so many people. So I really love that little story and that little moment that I had. But also I think that's what normalization looks like. It looks like people asking are captions included? Uh did we recruit disabled users? Is the meeting accessible? Do we have all text? All of that without prompting. It just becomes how we engage with the process of putting together whatever it is that [00:40:44] we're putting together. Because we also know that accessibility again is not just the products, it's the world. So thinking about again how I've been viewing the world, uh everything from the coffee machine to transportation to representations on TV. This isn't, excuse me, this isn't just um our websites or our digital products. It's everything. But that leads to the push back that you often get of someone who it seems like you're really having a tough time to convince to do this. You're getting that push back that it takes time and we don't have the time to do this. We don't need to do this. And there are going to be occasions when you don't actually sort of win the argument, let's say. But the [00:41:29] way that I position that is sometimes you won't convince the person you're talking to, but everyone else is listening. And I have a very much have a a story around that as well. I worked again at a company. I was in charge of doing this work. I had some folks that did have that push back and we would have back and forth because I am who I am and I'm going to advocate how I advocate. There were often some back and forth in meetings around the prioritization of the considerations that needed to be included. I often did not convince that person. They would end around me. They would do what they, you know, felt they wanted to do. But not long after a lot of layoffs happened and a lot of the dust settled after that, I [00:42:12] got a note from someone who was still at the company who had survived the layoffs and was one of the ones that was still continuing the work. and they took time to reach out to me to say, I appreciated how you advocated and I'm going to do the same thing. I am going to pick that up. You're no longer here and I wasn't one I had left before the layoffs, but nonetheless, they let me know. They had heard what I said. They had taken it in and they were now going to do that. So, keep in mind that there may be people who uh challenge this, but the thing is culture changes quietly and this is how we get to it. One person like those of us that are on this uh watching this presentation might ask the question, [00:42:54] might bring it up, but then another person repeats that thing that we kind of always say. They are like the social media manager who kind of takes that on because they've heard it enough to know how to repeat it. Maybe then the next time a third person expects it. So someone expects the content that was posted for the company to have captions for instance or whatever else that looks like and then eventually it's just standard practice. Basically that norm shifts and again it doesn't always shift loudly. It can shift in those moments of expectations changing standard practice changing. So, I would kind of encourage you if you are that person that starts [00:43:40] it, that feels like they're always the one bringing it up, advocating, trying to learn and bring it back to the team, stay the course because it it will eventually work if again we have the right motivations and we have uh appropriate approaches for how we're doing that. being mindful of the fact that it may be a learned behavior to think of disability in such a way and therefore we might have to undo a learned behavior but nonetheless keep at it. So to recap the action steps that I was calling out throughout the presentation. The first is to notice to take in those different perspectives. Talk to disabled folks. get to know folks on a more personal [00:44:24] level or a more intentional level as I'll uh talk about on the next slide, but take in those different perspectives. Then question, acknowledge abbleism and call it out or at least be able to recognize it better. Then interrupt, become that change agent that you see when you see behavior that is not conducive to inclusive spaces and and the idea of independence and autonomy. and then normalize quietly expect inclusion in the actions that you do or maybe even loudly expect it. And I mentioned intentional because this starts with intentional learning. So for instance, you don't need to know every disability, but you do need to keep [00:45:07] learning. That idea of this cycle of noticing and then interrupting and then eventually uh normalizing the behavior. All of that is a cycle I'm continuing to learn as I continue to do this work. But it takes also intention to pay attention to listen and then to even change your own thoughts and behaviors according to what you learn. To me research is the biggest pillar of that but it can be anything really. The goal isn't perfection in anything that we do. The goal is making sure disability doesn't disappear from conversations that shape our future. So again that might be research but that might be coming again to presentations [00:45:50] like this to conferences reading books getting those perspectives from social media people who are identify as disabled on social media whatever vein of uh whatever sort of craft that you contribute let's say to a digital product or to the world in general. you can be doing this work and you could be doing it in an intentional way that then allows you to notice differently and start that cycle. So that again disability among all the other characteristics that of course we could consider but today we're talking about disability we want to make sure that that's not disappearing from what's shaping important conversations. Basically inclusion ex well sorry basically exclusion is learned inclusion [00:46:35] can therefore be learned too. So we can unlearn exclusion and we can learn inclusion with that intentionality. As I said earlier, it doesn't mean that disabled people need to be in every room for disability to be considered. So with that, I'm going to say thank you. Uh I have a slide here that has a lot of stuff on it, so I'll break it all down. Uh I am Michelle A. Williams. So Michelle is spelled with one L and I am can be found on LinkedIn. So Michelle A Williams PhD is the moniker I use on LinkedIn. My company is making accessibility work. And so the uh company website is mawconultinglc.com. And I mentioned I also have a book [00:47:19] accessible UX research delves into some of these topics. Not only is it meant to help researchers to do the work of facilitating research, but it asks every reader to take a self-reflection of why we need to do this work and how we approach it. And so if that may be of interest to you or some of your colleagues, there is a QR code on the screen that will allow that to uh come up on your device or I believe hopefully the Ali talks team can also help with putting that link in the chat or also again you can visit my website for that. So, with that, I'm going to end and allow the team to ask questions. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Michelle. That was outstanding. I really appreciate your [00:48:02] expertise and time. What was kind of fun about this is as you started speaking, your voice became more and more familiar and uh I looked back and I realized you were here four years ago in September of 2021. And what was fun for me >> in September, >> it was four years ago in September. So, uh, in your topic for folks that want to know was how sighted and blind web navigation differs and, uh, what was fun is I put that together by hearing your voice. It wasn't through visuals through the the name sounded familiar, but as we all move through, um, I know personally moving through the uh, the accessibility community, names pop up, and it's just always a delight to be part of Ali Talks and to be able to meet and have these [00:48:46] conversations. But it took your voice uh to put that back together and I really loved that talk and I really loved your talk here today. If you'll indulge me, a few things that popped into my mind was another thing that popped up that I loved in in one of your points was the inclusion. We had another great talk about representation creates reality with Key Wells and Dan Edge and that was in August of 2022. So, I want to encourage folks to go back and watch that. But your points resonated there, but one of the things that really hit home for me was uh having a a family member in a TV show that's disabled and there is no backstory. You don't have to [00:49:29] know why. It's just they're the mom. They're there supporting the main character that's moving the plot forward. And that's inclusion right there is that that is just part of life. And that really resonated with me. So whenever I do see inclusion in TV shows, I get excited about that because you don't have to know the hows, the wise. These are just people and the plot is moving forward as it would in anybody else's lives. So >> absolutely. >> I just wanted to bring that up that really >> hit home for me. Yeah. >> Another thing that popped up for me as well was uh >> as you're talking, I always felt that Ally had to be an extra part of the effort in my work. And really what it [00:50:12] came down to was the questions that I asked as I built. So >> it wasn't a thing that I had to do. It was just asking the simple question, can everybody see this? Can everybody experience this? And so everything that you said just really resonated with me and that's something that I found and have been excited on my journey through. So it's a long way of me saying thank you so much. And uh we have some additional questions based on all of this. And one of them was uh or a question that we have here is uh what are some examples of your disability questions in your research? Do you have a few? So it depends on how you're inserting it. So for instance, if you [00:50:56] just want to ask it in a screener, then you would just ask in a screener if someone identifies as having a disability, you can have check boxes if you want of different uh disability categories like vision or mobility. And then you I tend to also have an open-ended question for folks to describe that. And similarly, you can ask if folks use assist of technology. And in previous talks I've also talked about you can ask about say assist of technology or using a device in a certain way without asking about disability as well. Like these two don't have to go together. So if you have a team who is worried about collecting disability information about a participant, you can at least still be gathering computer adjustments. you [00:51:40] know, you can kind of just kind of position it that way and say, well, if nothing else, someone is increasing their font on their mobile device by 25. That does not have to be associated with a disability diagnosis in order to then impact the design. So, that's one way to include a disability consideration is to just uh be aware of the participants you're recruiting. Then it becomes a matter of whether or not you're doing a study that is focused on disability or inclusive of disability. So I talk about this for instance in the book there's two veins of research. So I might be running an very intentional accessibility focused research. So whether that is um maybe laying the groundwork for some accessibility work. [00:52:22] So we want to know how we're doing. So we bring in folks with a lot of different disabilities just to get some foundational understanding of where you all add similar to how you might do an audit but from a user's perspective or we might be very intentional about a particular feature like it's been in very much in the news in a good way about Slack's intentionality around designing for screen reader users. So that then would be a very you know focused research initiative. So it depends on whether or not we're doing that or whether or not we're and this would be the dream including disabled folks just in the research that we're doing and then therefore you're just gathering those perspectives along the way. So everyone is being asked if a certain task say is usable or for a certain feature is beneficial but then [00:53:06] you also gather that feedback from the perspective of uh folks with various disabilities or even a focused disability in the context of that. So then it just becomes part of the research protocol. I love that and I love that way of because asking that question, are we including disabled people in our research? >> The answer is explicitly well no by fitting in some of these questions you are. So or or you can. And so that's that's amazing. >> Yeah, >> really appreciate that. So in that same vein, how do we recruit and fairly compensate disabled participants for user research and usability testing? So recruitment is a big deal. So it [00:53:50] depends. I have some thoughts on this. Sometimes you can use a recruitment firm. Sometimes again you can use the same recruitment channels that you're ordinarily using but uh I put that in the screener. Uh or you can be intentional about reaching out to disability focused spaces and trying to do that by building relationships with those. So whether that's a disability organization, say a maybe an after school organization or you know a volunteer organization that has a focus on disability, there's a lot of that compensation is a great question because I've started to change some of my perspective on this in initially I would have just said well all research should be compensated and therefore there's a compensation structure that usually is fair. The only fair for all [00:54:34] participants, the only difference with disability, there might be additional compensation if say there's transportation involved. So for instance, if you are asking people to come in person, keep in mind that that might be have an additional cost. If you have a disability or if your protocol may take longer because someone has a disability, you would just extend that compensation. But also it depends on what the person is doing because I've now been challenged by the author of one of the books behind me uh against technoabbleism at Dr. Ashley Shu has uh presented a different perspective in terms of attribution and compensation more as a consultant than as a research participant. So for instance if someone is being brought in to really give feedback on an idea to do ideation to do [00:55:19] deep dive design that's a consultant. And I've had participants who want to put participation in a research study, for instance, on their resume and get credit for giving their ideas and the results of their lived experience as um a contribution to our product. So I do think we need to be a little bit more mindful of whether or not that contribution is extending to someone who should get those proper attributions and a little bit more compensation based on what they are presenting and whether or not there's an avenue for those folks to even be hired onto the team in some sort of cont some sort of role that that matches the contributions they're getting. >> That's fascinating. So that feels like [00:56:02] it's a different pool, right, to draw from instead of everybody. But that's a wonderful opportunity for the product folks as well to have that consulting there. So that is a really really great perspective. another question here and uh reading as our team in the background is listening is coming up with some questions and I just also just want to pause uh if y'all have questions while we're doing this during the live put that into the chat and we will address that during the live or if you're on LinkedIn or our other social spaces if you ask that question we will get to it and get those to Michelle if she's not there in that space already and get an answer to that but uh actually we're [00:56:45] going to make this Last question because we can always continue the conversation but you know how do we ensure our research captures the intersection of disability along with race, age and possibly you know socioeconomic factors. Is there something there? >> One of the things I say often is that no one research study answers every question or addresses every person. So what I tend to say is to do something that you would think would happen in research spaces but unfortunately often doesn't which is we should be building a knowledge base. Every study should be building on prior knowledge and adding new knowledge. So in that space then we don't need to say every study needs to have every person. Instead, every study [00:57:30] is adding to that diversity of the perspective we couldn't quite get to in the first one or the second one and adding to the knowledge and representation overall because again there's always going to be a constraint. Research is only going to be able to have but so many participants but so many perspectives and nonetheless if even if you got all of that other diversity no one person answers for everyone else. So you're going to constantly need additional people to give you those additional perspectives over time. And that's why this never ends. It's constant learning and intentional learning. So you can be intentional therefore about who gets recruited for the next study and the next one and the next one and every now and again taking a reflection and [00:58:12] looking back and seeing okay who have we historically recruited and then who therefore do we need to include. So for instance, I've noticed that a lot of studies focus on blind screen reader users, maybe low vision users, but there is a wealth of information to learn from deaf users. Uh we do not understand enough about the communication differences about ways of contacting a company. You know, there's so much around uh content understandability that can come from someone particularly who is native signing. So there's an opportunity to prioritize. Yes. and to do things in stages, but also again look at the landscape of what you've done and what you've learned and every now and again say you know we're missing some [00:58:56] perspectives. I've just attended a talk that talked about neurode divergence. I just attended an event that again helped me to notice this different perspective. Let's now bring that into the fold and add that to what we already have been learning and understanding and addressing in what we've been doing. >> That's great. And that encourages folks that do include those people in those spaces and learn something to share with the rest of us in the community because we don't know what we don't know. >> Yes. >> So that's that's outstanding. Well, our time is up. Really appreciate this conversation and thanks so much, Michelle. It's so great having you back. I can't wait to have you back again and hear what more you have to say. So really appreciate that. >> Thank you so much. See you in four more [00:59:38] years now. >> No, four more years. Maybe soon. something great great to say. We're always here for it. So, really appreciate you. >> Awesome. Well, thank you team and thank you everyone who watched. >> Thank you, Michelle. As we were talking about, we're going to continue this conversation in all the other spaces. We have a LinkedIn event and any questions you have whether in the live chat, we will follow up. You can find us though on LinkedIn on linkedin.com/comp11 tks. Doesn't have to be four years in between. You know, we're always looking for speakers. So, we're always looking for new voices, but also looking if you have something else to say. So, we're [01:00:22] we're open to it. And we also love to include marginalized folks in tech and just get all those voices heard and um are always looking for that. So please if you have something to say and then are interested we please visit our speaker page to learn more then reach out on LinkedIn or email us at teamallettalks.com to start the conversation. And finally these are the spaces that we're in. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's where you are most likely watching right now. So you you can subscribe so you never miss a talk and follow us on LinkedIn, Blue Sky and Mastadon to stay in the loop. You can find us in all these spaces and all the links and [01:01:07] there's also more on our website. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you being here and we'll see you next, Exclusion by Design - Michele A. Williams, Michele A. Williams, 01m48z1cdfckjgykkcya8g6jh0.