Panel Discussion: What People with Disabilities Want L&D Professionals to Understand About Accessibility

Luis Malbas  
Okay, Welcome back, everybody, last session of the day at AIDC21. Thanks, everyone for participating. It's really been an incredible day. I mean, I'm looking at the total number of registrations right now. We've had 989 folks register for this particular event. And like Ryan was saying earlier today is so encouraging to see so many l&d professionals interested in this topic and wanting to just do things better become better designers just include accessibility and inclusion into into their work. So thanks again for joining us. Before we get going with this final panel session, I wanted to thank the interpreters. Amber and Rebecca had been absolutely amazing. You'll see there's the A for Amber, you can't see her on screen. And Rebecca is active right now. Thank you guys, it's really been a great experience. For me personally, to have you working this event. I've never had interpreters in a virtual event before. And I love it and future events, I'm always going to be trying to prioritize that. And so you'll see you'll see interpreters in future TL DC events as well. Also, with that said, kayleen holds the host of this panel, and also one of the team that helped put this together. She is the one who sponsored the interpreters. So big shout out to kayleen. Killeen, thank you for doing that, and, and also for helping us put this program together for bringing Sherry in. It's really, really been great working with you. And last of all, just thanks to all the speakers for sharing their their wealth of knowledge with us today. This is not going to be the last event accessibility event that TL DC is going to do. So hopefully in the future. we'll have you back and we can do more. And so with that said, everybody, I'm going to go ahead and hide myself. And enjoy this final panel. And we'll see you next time. All right,

Kayleen Holt  
well, welcome everyone. My name is Kayleen Holt, I am with Scissortail Creative Services. And I have a couple of hidden disabilities myself. And I wanted to pull together this panel of other people with disabilities so that we could hear about the accessibility challenges that they face in learning and development events, or in virtual meetings and all sorts of other events. We have with us, Sherry burn haber. I hope I'm saying your name right, Sherry, you are. Thank you. She is a certified accessibility specialist. If you were here this morning, you heard her wonderful session. If you didn't get a chance to catch it. Be sure and look it up on the recordings. She's also a prolific writer, blogger on disability and accessibility topics, including the book giving a damn about accessibility, which is a really great read with a fun title. We have Elizabeth Matan with us. Just Yeah, there you go. She is an instructional specialist for deaf and hard of hearing students with more than 10 years of experience working with and supporting individuals with disabilities and helping educators make learning accessible. We also have Anya Hart lab, Parson a Anya. She's a data sales training and process improvement specialist. She's worked in higher education, nonprofit consulting, insurance, financial services. And you can catch quite a few sessions with Anya, I think on the TL DC website. And then we have Amy Thumbelina, who you just heard from recently, she is an instructional designer, an online course for online course facilitator with a passion for inclusive quality online education and educational technology. So thank you all so much for being with us. Appreciate it. We are going going to start this panel with Sherry. Just having her share a little bit about her experiences. And then at the end, we'll open it up for q&a. Any questions you have for any of us, feel free to pop those into the q&a panel. Sherry, go ahead.

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Hey, great. Thanks. Kayleen. Cut me off if I start rambling on too long, I am of an age that I have numerous experiences to share. Ada is turning 31 and a couple of weeks and I lived about half my life with a disability before the ADA and about half of my life since the ADA. So some of the really atrocious things that I experienced before the ADA was passed. were things like Going to a high school that didn't have elevators, but did have second stories, I actually had to arrange for a member of the football team to carry me up the stairs one semester because the journalism class was upstairs and they wouldn't move it downstairs, couldn't get to the of the podium for graduation, you know, again, you know, somebody had to bring my diploma down to me, couldn't go to the Yosemite graduation trip, because you know, somebody wasn't wheelchair accessible at that time. So fast forward, you know, let's just say 40 ish years later, and you would think that things would have gotten better, but not so much. Five years ago, I couldn't attend my own daughter's middle school graduation, because they hadn't accounted for wheelchair users, when they set up the thing on grass. So, you know, we're in an era right now, where we're focusing on digital events. And you know, that's not going to disappear, we're never going to go back to 100%. In person, there's always going to be hybrid. And so you have to take both the physical accessibility stuff into account for people with mobility issues, or who are blind, and then you're going to have to take the digital accessibility stuff into account for people who are attending online. And I have written a couple of articles and done a couple of presentations on that I did a presentation with a group called out and equal last year, which VMware sponsors their conference. So there's just a laundry list of things that you have to think about to get it right. Um, but it's one of those situations where it is amenable to working from a checklist, you just have to have a good checklist. So I would just say that one thing I would watch out for is the auto captions are getting better, but they're still not awesome. And there are vendors who are now moving away from Kurt and Kurt is live transcriptionist, and they're moving over to something called respeaking, which still relies on auto captions. It's just somebody who's trained to work with the captions engine that doesn't have an accent that knows how to pronounce all the words correctly, saying the stuff into the system that then shows up in the caption screen. And it looks a little bit like Curt, which is communications accessible, real time transcription, I think is what cart stands for. But it's not cart, you get into all kinds of delay situations with network lag. And it's, it's just not a good way to go. So when you're booking captions, you know, it's fine to book auto captions, or use auto captions just as long as you understand what the limitations are. And, you know, if you're using zoom, they're, they just recently, like, within the last week, enabled captions for breakout rooms that was not available previously, which was super annoying, and I beat them up really hard. I don't think I was the only one I'm not gonna take credit for them doing it. But I was one of the people that screamed, and they did fix it. So, uh, yeah, just make sure you're, we're using air meet right here. This is one of the more accessible meeting platforms Hoppen is another good one on 24 is the one that disability in uses. So there's a handful, like maybe five or six conference platforms that support accessibility, I could use this with a screen reader. I'm using this with magnification and captions right now. And it's, it's good enough. But you know, you want to stay away from things like GoToMeeting, for example, which is an accessibility dumpster fire.

Eventually, people will either get on the accessibility bandwagon, or he'll be out of business. Because accessibility is too important and too necessary. You know, we've got 21% of college freshmen identify as having a disability. That is not a small number of people. In fact, it's the largest minority there is. So that's probably the sum total of what I have to convey from from my experiences. Make sure those stages are accessible. Don't Don't pull a Tony Awards and le Stoker where the person who wins can't get up to the stage that is not cool. Even if the person who wins doesn't need a ramp, not having a ramp sends a message and the message is we don't expect you up here. Okay, so doesn't matter if you need the ramps or not have them and have discussion. Okay. Thanks.

Kayleen Holt  
Absolutely. Thank you. So Much Sherry, I'm sure we'll have some questions for you in a little bit. All right, we're gonna go to Elizabeth now. Hello. Hello, tell us a little bit about your accessibility challenges.

Elizabeth Mayton  
Okay, so um, I am part of here are partially deaf, I'm deaf in my left ear, I have some hearing in my right ear. And this is from both most likely I was born before they tested new one. So we don't really know how it happened. But I've had it all my life. I went one year and eight and this year. And I think I'll just go ahead and get right into it the challenges I've faced with online learning, which I'm sure a lot of people will relate. The first thing is background noise. And when they show a video or doing some sort of presentation, oftentimes I like to play music, you know, which I can understand it makes it more interesting, I guess. But for me, it's just almost impossible to follow what that person is saying. So the music might be great, but I'm not getting the information, I can't access the important information I'm here to learn about. So that is one of the biggest issues, I've noticed a lot of people like to play music, or even just a little bit of background noise that makes it really challenging. And I know for some people that can be very distracting as well whether they have a hearing loss or not. So I guess the solution to that would be don't play music while the person is talking or if there's any sort of important auditory information. If possible, if you must play music or have some sort of background noise going on while you're talking then caption make it show that we have subtitles and closed captions. Captions should be an option for everything, by the way. So that will solve a lot of the issues that I come across. Now I can't speak for everyone who's deaf or hard of hearing some people need ASL interpreters, or they need captions and interpreters. Oh, I will say that for this event. One issue I have is that if I turn on the caption, I can only see myself I can't see anyone else. And therefore I can't see the interpreter. So that kind of takes it away as well. You know, while everyone else can see what else is, whatever, what's going on, I can't see it. Because I need captions. So, um, so I know it's tricky. And it's just something to think about. And I know there's ways around it. The technology is there for the caption. So anyway, moving on. Another thing is when people mumble, or when I can't see their face, like the room is too dark. That was an issue done online learning when during a pandemic, when we had to force ourselves to teach everyone online. And a lot of teachers we did not turn on the cameras, or it's too dark. And so my student couldn't read their lips. And that was a really big issue. Um, make sure that I can see your face. You know, that's where we get all the information, um, cartoon animated characters drive me nuts. If I have to watch another beyond video, without captions, I'm gonna scream, you know, I might as well just turn it off. It drives me insane. Like, I just, I see them. It looks like fun, you know, people are laughing and I'm like, why are they laughing that So please, please, please add caption. Um, that would be a big help. If you have to do an animation, do your captions. And one more thing, when I attend events, or even just classes in general, there will be group discussions. And everyone just start talking about one or maybe more than two people talking. I can't follow that. Please take, you know, take time, one at a time. I think a lot of people have issues with that. I went to a conference recently. And they did just that though on a stage. And then we're having a group discussion. It sounded really interested. Everyone was laughing that have fun, but I had no idea what they were talking about. They had an interpreter there. But my primary language is not ASL. So I couldn't really follow what was being said and the interpreter was having a hard time because they were just talking too fast and talking over each other. So I know that I know people get excited and you know, it's just

It's something to be aware of, you know, because just remember, like, people are there to learn, and to get information and just try to take the time to think about what can I do to make this easy for everyone to get? It doesn't have to be cool. You don't have to play cool music. I don't care if there's no fireworks. So, yeah, I think people get caught up in that. We're trying to make it look really cool and fun and excited, when really, it should just be just just give me the information, you know, don't waste my time. You know, especially if I paid my money. So, um, and I'll leave, I will say this before, I'll stop rambling. But I do wish people would speak out more people. If you need something, or if something's not working for you. Go if you want to take a class, and especially if it's closer, you got to pay for it. Make sure it's accessible. And if it's not speak up, let them know, I think more people need to speak up. And I've known so many people who didn't take a class because they didn't have what they needed. So they can participate. Now Magoo, why didn't you say anything? If you don't say anything, nothing's gonna happen. They're not mind reader's, you know, while learning here. And we're all different. We all need different things. So I think that's really important. I wish more people would speak up. And I'm really glad that we're having this discussion. And I think it's really cool. Anyway, thank you. Glad to be here.

Kayleen Holt  
Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Lots of great things shared there. And I noticed in the while you were talking Sherry also mentioned when we go back to in person events, wait for people to get to the microphone before answering questions. Now that's really important. captioners and ASL interpreters won't hear them. Other people who maybe aren't using ASL but can't hear as well. won't be able to hear them. One of my pet peeves is when the instructor doesn't repeat a question a student asks, in class when there's no microphone. I have no idea what you're answering if you don't do that. Yeah. Okay. And we had someone mentioned the masks, you know, since we've been in this pandemic, people wearing masks when they're not transparent. That's, that's a hard one. Okay, um, so there's probably a lot of of chat that I've missed so far. I'll read through those. But first, I'm going to go ahead and let Anya, talk to us. Tell us about your experiences Anya.

Anja Hartleb Parson  
Hi, I'm so I am optimistic. I I want to explain a little bit about autism first, so that you can get a better idea of what why the challenges are what they are. So Autism is a neurological condition. And I can only speak for myself with respect to autism, because every person with autism, as I'm sure every person in general is is different. And that is very true about people with autism. There's the thing once you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. So I also have to, I have a set of twins with autism. And I can tell you that all three of us are very different. The major areas of challenge are executive functions and sensory functions. There can be developmental issues as well. But and I'm going to limit myself to talking about adults. It with respect to executive functions, you can think about difficulties and language processing and communication. Auditory Processing, to some extent, obviously features and executive functioning also in sensory processing, memory, planning, organization or organization and prioritizing. There are a lot of artistic people. Also display very rigid and repetitive behaviors, they have difficulty forming and maintaining relationships. And as you can imagine, and learning and development relationships are key. And they also have, a lot of times trouble with change, particularly sudden changes can be very difficult. The sensory piece to use myself as an example, is is a huge part of how autism affects me when I'm trying to learn something. So, there is there are issues with sound sound is a big one. A lot of times, for instance, in videos or conferences, or you know, type, any type of online presentation, background noises can be extremely distracting. And that's because oftentimes, autistic people have trouble focusing their awareness, a neurotypical person might not have a problem, sort of separating out the background noise from the foreground nerds noise. For autistic people, that can be very difficult. And it's not only just very distracting, and effects focus, it also creates a lot of anxiety, because your sensory system easily gets overloaded. So visual things can be very difficult, sometimes, very bright lights, and bright colors, for instance, are difficult for me. The ever present fluorescent lighting that we all grew up with, that still exists in places is very taxing, I tend to get headaches pretty easily. And that's one source of bright sunlight. For instance, it's very difficult sometimes for me, I usually wear sunglasses, and sometimes I actually have to wear sunglasses indoors. I, for the auditory part, wear headphones a lot. Just to dim noise. And the other piece, and this is maybe a little less of an issue in online learning, but in person learning is physical proximity, closeness and touch.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in group situations, and people were just way uncomfortably too close to me. And that created a lot of anxiety for me and just caused issues with focus. group settings in general are very difficult for people with autism. And from a learning perspective that can be that can really negate all your efforts. So that's from that's something to really think about in both in person and online settings. I don't know how much we really talked about in person, but I find challenges more so an in person training or learning than necessarily an online learning. But I will say online learning has been a godsend for me in many ways. In person events, learning conferences and trainings are extremely stressful. You know, especially if you have to travel somewhere. Like I said, we autistic people don't deal well with change. And when things are not the way we are used to or when they're not what we need, it really breaks our focus and our ability to have a you know, calm ourselves down, can even lead to meltdowns and just you know, I my quote unquote meltdown tends to be in the form of a migraine. But an online learning one of the things that I found very helpful is to have multiple modes of presentation. So for instance, when I'm listening to a part, the podcast, for instance, is typically not as effective as if I'm watching a video and I can see the person talking. So it's not even so much about them holding something up, it's seeing them talk that can be very helpful. Also displaying captions and text or having even the text available in some kind of form. Reference sheets, bulleted, you know, memory aids, that kind of thing can be extremely helpful. A lot of times, I also find that online learning is overly designed. It's very busy. There's a lot happening on the screen, someone is trying to get very fancy and creative with their animations, etc, which is all lovely. But it's, again, very difficult for someone like me to focus. And yeah, so I think if we thought more about access accessibility first, when we designed something, we were probably come up with a better end product. And lastly, also, the ability to control the learning for me is very, very important. It makes me very angry, for instance, when I watch some articulate course, and I cannot adjust the speed of the narration, or the video. It's there, it's sort of the thinking a lot of times, and some of it is sort of this top down thinking, or perhaps compliance related thinking that you have to bide your time and learning, you have to sit here for an hour, you know, and that is a sign that you have learned, or I think you guys know what I mean. It's just it's very disrespectful, I think, to the learner in general, but also particularly to people who who have learning challenges. So let me just check my notes real quick. That's another thing that I always absolutely must have. Do want to say, very quickly, why is it so hard to design learning that it's accessible to people with neurological issues like autism, for instance, from my experience, I think that a big issue is that there isn't enough out there in terms of knowledge, resources.

And so there's also the issue that people with autism often oftentimes have communication challenges, they may not be able to find the right words to describe what it is that they need, or even to describe what what the problem is for them. So I think it would be very, very helpful if you can consult an expert for instance, it could be a therapist, it could be someone specializing in neurological disorders like autism, a counselor, and of course, the autistic person themselves. But don't make assumptions about what accessibility looks like, talk to the source, and go from there. Because, you know, the assumptions aren't if they're wrong, you know, you can often create the opposite effect, unfortunately, even if it's well meant.

Kayleen Holt  
So true. Yes, thank you, Anya, I, the chat has been exploding. Lots of interaction here. I will start by mentioning that while Elizabeth was talking, some folks mentioned that your SMI is not voice talent. A lot of the time the IDs are not the greatest for recording either. Because you may get folks who mumble or aren't very clear. Someone mentioned that when they film video, they've started filming straight on so that that enables lip reading rather than the fancy angles you know, ship save those four when people aren't talking. So that no one has to try to lip read that. And then Anya, you just shared so many, so many great things here. One thing that really resonated is being able to have control over your learning. We know that that's better for adult learners anyway, and why so many instructional designers take it away. I really don't know I what I can tell you is that sometimes it comes from legislation because compliance training, you may have a certain number that you have to hit, they have to have a one hour training on x. And then they someone decides that to meet that you have to make sure that their butts are in seats for one hour. Listening to that. So Something I saw on Twitter from a blind user was about how she processes speech so much more quickly than those of us who are not used to using screen readers. I think it was something like 600 words per minute. And so when she's forced to listen to audio narration, at the regular pace, it's beyond frustrating for her. So just some things to keep in mind. And I'll check out the chat again in a moment. But right now I'm going to turn it over to Amy. All right, thank

Amy Lomellini  
you. All of these are tough acts to follow. So my story's a little bit different. I actually. Well, I started my accessibility journey, I guess you could say by working for the Deaf. I was an interpreter for many years, I did a lot with the deaf community, before I was ever disabled. So I actually became disabled as an adult. And I have a lot of chronic illnesses. Sherry was, you know, going down her checklist earlier, I could do the same thing, right, I have a ton. They just seem to keep coming. I don't know, they like friends. Um, but they impact me in different ways. And I think so I have rheumatoid arthritis is one of them. And I think I've had it since childhood just was never diagnosed, causes a lot of pain. And for me, it actually impacts my lungs as well. So breathing issues are a thing for me. That's actually how I was diagnosed. One of my other diagnoses, I guess, is something that no one's ever heard of. Right. So I'm going to just throw a plug out there Google ci dp, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyp, poly radicular, neuropathy. And anyone who can say that gets an award. But most people have never heard of it. And the problem with having such a rare disease is, if I can't even explain the disease, how am I going to explain the impact that it has on me, so I find having conversations, I know there was something in the chat before, like when you first get a job and trying to have a conversation with HR about your needs, it's really difficult if you can't really even explain the disease itself. So I do use a wheelchair. Sometimes, depending if I'm having a good day or a bad day, sometimes I use my cane, I use braces on my legs. In a virtual setting, you can't always tell that I'm disabled. So sometimes it comes as a surprise. But I mean, I live my life in chronic pain, I have limited mobility, all of this also weighs on, like the cognitive processing in terms of learning. And when we're talking about events, I mean, who Sherry you hit the nail on the head, too, with the you know, wheelchair access, I was at an event A few years back where I was giving a presentation. So I went got in the elevator, went down to the floor, okay, found out that the elevator didn't go to that floor. Nobody at the hotel could tell me how to get to the room that I was scheduled to present in. And long story short, they ended up putting me in the freight elevator with the garbage. So I had to go through the back kitchen where they had all the food, everything else, but they considered that accessible. And if you ask the hotel, they're ADA compliant. So craziness, it would just it was not a good situation at all. I've also been in you know, different institutions where I got stuck on the third floor because there's no the elevator broke while I was in a meeting with someone on the third floor, and there was no other way to get down. I ended up they wanted public safety to carry me down. And I mean, I'm an adult, this was my place of employment at the time. You know, it just it didn't seem right to I didn't want a public safety person trying to hold me and then carry my wheel just know all kinds of No, luckily, I live close by and my husband came and he knows how to like handle my legs. So and I leaned on him and I felt comfortable with him. But had that not been an option. What am I supposed to just sit up there and hang out until you can fix the elevator Three days later? Like that's not okay. So all of these things to think about and I was mentioned to you events on grass are awful for me. Also, bathrooms in any sort of public place tend to not be wheelchair accessible. So if you have an event, and even social gatherings at an event, like when you go out to a restaurant or a bar, I have to hope and pray that maybe I can go to bathroom or maybe just don't drink any water that day. I mean, none of those things are okay. And I shouldn't have to be thinking about those things. While I'm trying to learn I'm trying to be at a conference and present or whatever the case may be. In terms of online learning, and, you know, design. I love online learning, I definitely support what everyone else has said it has been so helpful for me. I have good days and I have bad days. I also have a nurse that comes to my house every three weeks and I get an infusion where she puts an IV in my arm and I have to get an infusion for four hours, one day and then four hours the next day. It's usually a little more than that with setup and breakdown. So those days I don't always feel good. I don't always want to be on so if it's a synchronous session or a synchronous experience that's really hard on me. And then I try to hide it. I mean, I know I tell everybody else be out in the open, but it's not always comfortable, right. So I'll have an IV in my arm, and I'll have a pump and a bag on. And I'm like, you know, doing one of these and trying to hide it, I shouldn't. But it's just not always something you want to be out there.

When we had to have over the pandemic, when we had to have cameras on during meetings, or during like class meetings and things of that nature, I had to wear a mask because my nurse was in the room with me. But the mask wasn't transparent, cuz I didn't have one of those. And it was just a whole big cluster. mess. So lots of things to keep in mind. As Kara North was saying in the chat, those times, trainings and things were, what comes to mind for me is the driver's education thing, the reduction on your insurance where you have to watch that video, but you can't advance the slide because you have to wait that amount of time. I only have a certain window that I feel okay. I'm also a new mom, I have lots of other things going on in my life, just like everybody else. So it's not even always about the disability. So sitting there, just I've already finished reading your slide, I don't need to now be told that it's going to take me another minute or 10 minutes, then I should have to wait here. That doesn't help. So just like you know, I'm just said to give me the information. That's all I'm asking for. I think Elizabeth mentioned that point. Having that learning control allows me to work when it's convenient for me. And when I feel okay, and I can advance. Another thing I want to say, I think I think it might have been Andrea who was saying it testing things out Oh no, Elizabeth, right. Being the advocate, you don't have to have a disability, if you're in a training, or you're in a presentation and you notice there's no clap, no captions, tell somebody to turn those on, you don't have to be necessarily the one to use it, I think something that I find a lot for me is that I'm the one that has to complain. Right? It's constantly on me to bring it up that this isn't working for me. But it's something that somebody else can notice. So even when you go into a building, test out that automatic door opener, right, if it doesn't work, tell somebody so that by the time I get there, it works for me. And when you're a new employee, or when you're you know, just joining a team or whatever, it's awkward to constantly call up HR or call up maintenance and say, Hey, the doors out again, at one place, they actually gave me a remote control to the door because it broke so often. That's not okay. It needs to work for everybody, the person carrying the heavy backpack or the professor comes in with their suitcase briefcase thing, it needs to work for everybody the delivery man who brings, you know, whatever he's bringing. Um, so I think that it's really, you can all be advocates, you don't have to have a disability. And I think that's one of the things I want to get across. So if you're trying to, you know, design your training, design it with accessibility in mind, and you know, all those buying tips and all of the myths and everything that we've talked about today, use that to your advantage, use that in your dialogue. And, you know, maybe we don't have to all the time, but there you go, be an advocate, please. Also, I did want to say somebody in the chat mentioned, nothing without Nothing about us. Without us. That is a huge thing in the disability community. So when it comes to testing, when it comes to trying your product, getting that user feedback, make sure you're recruiting a diverse group of people who will actually be using the training or the product that you're producing and compensate people so often we think, Oh, I can just talk to that, you know, deaf person on Twitter or the blind person and they can just use my course and with the screen reader and it'll be okay. No, you have to compensate them. Like that's a job. And there's actually people and companies who do that for a living. It's not something you can just tap and use up somebody's time without giving them the proper compensation. Okay, that's my schpeel I

Kayleen Holt  
absolutely love that point. Amy, thanks so much. You all are just wonderful. Alright, so we're going to look at the q&a. There are quite a few questions in here. I'm going to start with some questions for Anya. I think I'll direct the first question to you, Anya and other folks can jump into if you want because this one wasn't really directed to a specific person. But do you personally find it better to discuss the best ways you learn as an individual with an instructor? Or do you find it exhausting have those types of conversations? I've had situations where hires are shy and asking for a different approach.

Anja Hartleb Parson  
Both I find it exhausting but I tend to get better results if I do. discuss it with the person who's directly in charge of you know, making the necessary necessary changes. Um, It is exhausting having to educate other people about what's going on with you. But at the same time, nobody can read your mind. So, you know, we have to be patient and, and graceful when we approach other people and ask for accommodation. And that's something that I learned learned very early on. It's better for my mental health not to get upset every time something is in the way, it would be easier for me.

Kayleen Holt  
Right. any of our other panelists have something to add?

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Yeah, I'll just add, you know, nobody should be a guinea pig. Right? Um, if you know what works for you. You should that's what you should be asking for. To avoid kind of the on the spot questions and answers, I actually have a one page sheet called the care and feeding of sherry. And I give it to every new person I work with literally, where I say, you know, talk to me on Slack, send me an email, don't call me I don't listen to voicemail. And, you know, just ideas, you know, I'm like, you know, you have to use a minimum of a 24 point font, or send me the deck in advance of the presentation. So I'm in a tech setting, not in an educational institution. But I think it's very similar. And I think if we encourage students to do that, we would get them to a better place like Anya said, because everybody's usually got a pretty good idea of what works best for

Kayleen Holt  
them. Right? Yeah, thank you. And, you know, a very simple question, when you communicate before a course is just, you know, what accessibility needs do you have? Or what can we do to make this training better for you, or something along those lines, can open that door for conversations.

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Just one other thing I'll add is remember that a course is not just about learning something, a course is an experience, you know, the registration has to be accessible, the exams have to be accessible, the surveys have to be accessible, the communications have to be accessible, but portal has to everything has to be accessible. So it's not just about the SCORM file. It's about the whole

Kayleen Holt  
thing. Exactly. All right. And sending out those materials ahead of time is a really great, best practice. Sending out an agenda before you have a meeting is really really nice, too. Okay, so we have a lot of questions and Luis I'm going to rely on you to just stop us when when you think we need to stop because there's a bunch Alright, so we have a question for Elizabeth Do you use PSE or S II know what those are.

Elizabeth Mayton  
So that's basically PSD is Pidgin Signed English and an sp is sign is deaf English. And I'm not many people I know use that. I mean, I think like for American Sign Language users, that's typically what they use American Sign Language is completely different from English. Um, it's really hard to explain you would have to take sign language but I don't use PSD. I don't use se I try to use American Sign Language. But because my main primary means of communicating is English. I will do it in an English word order, if that makes sense. So I guess that would be kind of PSD. I don't know if I answered your question. But I use I try to I try to do ASL. But I know. I'm not because I'm not a Native American Sign Language. Usually I didn't learn sign language until I was 23. I mainly grew up with English. But American Sign Language is completely different from English, different words, different grammar. So it's very interesting, though.

Sheri Lynn Haber  
I tell people frequently to think of English words and Mandarin grammar. So there's no articles. There's no verb tense, you you say, you don't say I'm going to the store tomorrow. You say tomorrow store I go. Or those that's the order that the signs typically will come in. There are regional variations. Cape Cod has its Martha's Vineyard has its own form of slang language. There is black American Sign Language or be ASL. So there's and then of course, that's only good in the US. So China, Mexico, Canada, you know, that asked Australia they all have different forms of sign language, just like they have different spoken languages.

Kayleen Holt  
All right, thank you. Alright, so um, this one I'm going to ask maybe if you could put links in the chat if you have an answer to this. Does anyone know how we can actually access some of those professionals who can test online learning for us, if you know of groups that specialize in testing, you know, just people with disabilities who will help with user testing, please plop a link into the chat and I'm just going to go to the next question. Alright, so this is for Anya, can you touch on what group work situations have worked? Well, for you any tips for online only courses?

Anja Hartleb Parson  
Yeah, so typically, the smaller the group, the better. And also, the presumption shouldn't be that an autistic person will participate in group work, the act of socializing can pretty much negate any learning that takes place for the autistic person. So just keep that in mind. The the types of things that have worked well, for me typically is tends to be more asynchronous group stuff. So you know, I might, for instance, at work, I have participated in some work groups, just for employees, and I really preferred having an asynchronous format to our tasks, rather than necessarily meeting right in person at a specific point in time. And that also goes back to what Amy was saying, which is, if you have sensory overload, for whatever reason, there that you're not going to be ready at that time to really absorb anything. So keep it small, keep it asynchronous. Keep it optional, if at all possible. And you know, ask the person, what other types of accommodations they might need in that group work. And also be very clear in your instructions, and give a good, solid structure to what should happen in the group. Again, this goes back to this planning, organizing, prioritizing issue, and executive functioning.

Kayleen Holt  
Right, thank you. And there was another question that is what is the difference between neurodiversity and autism? And from my understanding, autism is a type of neurodiversity. It is not the only type. Anya, would you like to add anything to that?

Anja Hartleb Parson  
neurodiversity is a term that we like to use as, as a perspective on people who have autism and say, ADHD, for instance. There's also the term neurodivergent neurodiverse, neurodiversity sounds more positive. And it's kind of based on the idea that we have neurological actual brain differences, but that there are benefits to that. And so instead of looking at adults, kids and adults with autism as people who are disabled in some way, or who can't, in some way, we look at what what are the benefits? And what what can they do and how, what are their strengths? So I would say it's sort of an advocacy related term. Okay,

Kayleen Holt  
thank you. I learned something. Um, and Sherry, can you repeat the other transcription method that you compared cart to?

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Oh, respeaking is what looks like cart but actually isn't cart. It's still using AI generated speech engines. And some, the cart companies are starting to consolidate right now. You know, big current companies are buying out little current companies, and then they're trying to save money by switching over to respeaking, which is lower quality. If you're paying current prices, you should be getting current quality. Okay, thank

Kayleen Holt  
you. And we had a question. Sophia says one thing we are currently struggling with, through or struggling through with imposter syndrome is testing tools for accessibility. And we are curious what your methods would be we use a screen reader wave test in websites and what CAG rubric sheet. So who wants to take that one?

Sheri Lynn Haber  
I will, because I'm actually working on some machine learning extensions to wave. So if you go to GitHub and look at VMware GitHub site, we've actually produced something that's in the open source called crest. And so wave just so those of you who aren't, you know, in the bowels of accessibility testing, inspects code, right? It looks at code, it says this code is good, this code is bad. This code you have to check. What it doesn't do is it doesn't look at interaction patterns, it doesn't look at data. And really, at the end of the day, that's what we're doing. We're not interacting with code, we're interacting with data. And so we've added some stuff on top of that, not a super big fan of checklists only because they tend to narrow the scope of what it is that people are looking at. We are looking at creating a style guide for accessibility at VMware. We have 140 products right now. And we've had we've acquired 18 new companies in the last three years that I've worked there. So a lot of different things going on a lot of different ways. Yeah, sure. Everybody's got a skip link, right? The you hit the tab button after the page loads, and it says, Hey, do you want to skip the content. But some places it moves stuff someplace, it's on the left some places, it's on the right, it's red, it's green, it's in the center, you know, so one way of doing skip links across the entire company, for all of our products, for example, is something that we're going to be working on for the next year. And it's something that I recommend, I recommend that most large companies, or organizations look at. Okay, thank you.

Amy Lomellini  
I just want to say I agree with what Sherry was saying the checklists. Everybody, that's a question I get all the time is, can you just give me a checklist so that I can just check everything off, and then my course is accessible, doesn't really work that way. They're good place to start. And I think Sherry, you mentioned earlier, they, you know, checklists, and even like a wave checker, they only can check so many things, it doesn't get to the human part of it, the interaction piece that you were just talking about, it really doesn't get to that level. That's where user testing comes in testing with people with disabilities, testing with diverse groups in general. And, but if you're thinking, if you're just starting out, the checklist can be a good place to just become more aware of these things. Just know that you know, you're not going to find everything with the checklist, it's not going to be the end all be all.

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Another thing that's really important to consider, just to add on to that is that disability is the most under, it's sorry, the most intersectional. Historically, excluded category are underrepresented minorities, if you're more familiar with that term. If you are disabled, you are more likely to be a person of color, you're more likely to be a woman, you're more likely to be in a lower socio economic class. So a really mature organization doesn't just look at the disability, they look at the intersectional package.

Anja Hartleb Parson  
Yeah, I want to thank Sherry for saying that this is really, really important. At the end of the day, people with disabilities are people. And they are they have unique talents and skills and experiences. Instead of looking at accessibility and inclusion as a chore, as an add on, or whatever else. Think of it as a competitive advantage. Think of it as tapping into that rich talent that you are otherwise not going to get. I'm going to give you a figure among autistic people. The unemployment rate is 80%. That is eight, zero. Can you imagine what talent you're leaving, on leaving on the street by not providing ways for us to participate in work? So I'll just let let you think about it remotely.

Sheri Lynn Haber  
Honestly, probably worse than that. Now, because since the pandemic, the overall unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 80% in the US, and before the pandemic, the neurodiverse unemployment rate was higher than the rate for other people with disabilities. It's really, really, the whole point of the ADA was to help people with disabilities get jobs. And if you look at the employment statistics, over the last 31 years, when the ADA was passed, it was about 5050 50% of people with disabilities had jobs 50% were unemployed. Now we're down to 2080 and not the good 2080.

Amy Lomellini  
If you design for the the marginalized if you think of humanity as a spectrum, and if you design for either end and all the people you cover everything, but if you design for this person that you think is this normal, whatever that means, but if you design for that person in the middle, you're missing all of those people on on the edges that have been historically marginalized Microsoft There's a really great inclusive design toolkit that if you're unfamiliar with, I'll just pop that in the chat there, I definitely recommend checking that out as a good place to start. I helps kind of set the tone for why, and gives you rationale for it. I think Sherry, you quoted some of it this morning and your wonderful talk. Thank you. All right,

Sheri Lynn Haber  
it is a good place to start.

Kayleen Holt  
Great. We have, we have had so many great resources shared today. And such wonderful information. I really appreciate all of you. I will be posting a recap on my blog Monday. And I'm also going to work up a list of the resources that have been shared. And I will share that with Luis if he wants to post it somewhere on cldc. site, but I'm typing the URL for my blog in case you want to check that out. It'll be live by about noon on Monday. Anyway, thank you so so much. This was wonderful. So Luis, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. And I wanted to ask everyone on the panel, is it okay, if I post this as a podcast episode and share it out? if that's possible, I can ideally inclusively with the transcript, yes, her on that. I will, I will do that. Absolutely. Amy, at your request, I will, I will absolutely do that I'd like to just this, you know, this today is pretty much been life changing for me. So many things that I was not aware of before I am now. And so I'm so thankful for all of you for having this talk. And just for the day in general, um, I've got a lot to think about. And this is going to be a good weekend for me to really sort of reframe a lot of the things that are going through my head, so. So thank you, you guys. And yeah, so I will post this and I'll put it out there. And with all the other podcast episodes that I do with the transcription, and and with that, everybody, thank you so much for spending the day with us. We had almost 1000 people registered for the event pretty close to it. I'm sure after it's all said and done, we'll hit that that that number without without a problem. So because the Van cldc has ever produced, and I'm just glad that you guys registered for the event. And and they're moving forward. So thanks, everyone. I'm going to go ahead and close everything out. All the reports will be available here in air meet for the rest of the weekend. And then I'm going to just shut down this instance and then take the recordings and put them somewhere else for everyone to access. I'll send you guys a follow up email. Not sure if it'll be Monday, maybe Tuesday. I just need a little time to format this stuff. Thanks, Luis. Thank you so much. Thanks, kaylene wonderful day Well, bye bye

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