Today, December 3rd, 2024, is the International Day of persons with Disabilities. Unlike many of the so-called declared days, this one is not to try and/or eat something, but a day for people to think about how people with disabilities interact with their world. I am an accessibility evangelist, so today, I will look back on all the work I have done to help make people with disabilities’ lives just a little bit better. So many of the people I know working in accessibility would agree that our goal in doing our jobs is to put ourselves out of a job. We do our work because we find the little wins go so very far. Read on for just a few of my wins, both at work and in my personal life.
My Time At The Disabled Students Program
I am very proud of the work I have done at Berkeley over the past 19 and a half years. Some of my favorite moments were spent working with students and watching them learn and become vibrant, contributing members of society. One of my very first students I served—in fact, he was the first student I evaluated—has gone and done so much with his life because of the tools I put in his hands and the excellent education Berkeley provided him.
This student had many different learning disabilities, but with the tools I helped him get and learn how to use, he was able to graduate from Berkeley and then continue on to med school and become a practicing doctor. He has reached out over the years to let me know how he is doing, and these are some of my favorite emails I get. But the one that stands out to me is one he wrote to me while he was doing his residency. He wrote to thank me again for showing him how to use Dragon Naturally. He said that having access to Dragon not only helped him write patient notes but also become a leader at work. His work was just starting to use Dragon for all doctors, and since he was the only doctor that had ever used Dragon, everyone was coming to him for help to learn the tool. This made the hard job of connecting to his peers so much easier.
Today, he is a successful doctor with his own practice and still uses many of the tools I first introduced him to.
The next student I remember was a woman that was struggling while getting her master’s degree. She had been able to finish a bachelor’s program with support from many people, but her network had disappeared when she started her graduate program. She indicated that she would get her family to read with her and/or read out loud to her, and that is how she made it. Now that she was a grad student, her family was not living near her anymore, and she had no way to get them to help her through. Also, she knew that she had so much more to read that asking them was not going to be enough. I showed her one of the reading assistant software tools we had, and she was willing to try it. As we had some of the books she needed already converted, I let her try reading with them to see if the tool would help. We met early in the morning, and I set her up in one of our lab’s private rooms and told her to check in with me if she had any problems. I went on with my day and saw a few other students, thinking she had moved on to something else.
What surprised me was when I did my final walk-through of the lab to close down for the night. I found her where I had left her eight hours earlier. When I opened the door to her room, she turned to me and burst into tears. When I asked if she was okay, she explained that she was crying for joy. She had read more material in those eight hours than she had ever read independently in her whole life. She was so happy that she now was able to read and learn from what she read that it changed her life. This student went on and not only finished her master’s but became a teacher herself.
In my time running the lab, many students walked in my door. So many of them came wanting something to help them just get through school; however, some of them were truly so far ahead of the game and just needed a place to work and focus, or, in many cases, to take their exams. Two of these stand out in my memory. One was a young man that had many different disabilities, like not being able to write and so many problems with social interactions. When I first met him, he could not talk directly to me at all. And just two years into his degree, he was a very different student. Not only could he speak with people and demonstrate his intellect better than when we first met, but he was advocating for his fellow disabled students and talking up a storm. One of my fondest memories of him was when he was taking an exam in the lab, and his proctor needed to leave. He walked with the proctor to the professor’s office and asked for more time to finish his essay. I spoke to the professor the next morning to make sure everything went okay, and the professor could not stop listing off how wonderful that student was and how much he loved reading that student’s work.
The professor said he could not put the student’s work down. It was so good.
My other students like this, who also still bring smiles to my face, are blind students that have gone on to great things themselves. Both of these two blind students got excellent jobs working as fully contributing members of software engineering teams at companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. One of them also became a manager of a large team. I loved working with my students and always remember so many of them with a warm heart. But after my first eight years on campus, I moved to a position in IT. I had always felt that my work with students was critical, but I also knew that so many of the things I needed to help them with would not have been so inaccessible if someone had worked on making it accessible before the students had needed accommodations to use it. So, that became my job.
A Few of My favorite projects
I have worked with so many websites and applications for the past 12 years that most of them do not stand out. Here are only two of my favorite projects I worked on. Many years ago, our library was looking for a self-service scanning option. I had looked at the original scanners that we had installed throughout all of our libraries, and they all turned out to be not usable by blind students. So, when we were wanting to replace them, we started at the early onset of the project to find an accessible scan station. When we started the project, it turned out that none of the ones on the market met the requirement. So, we asked the top three contenders if they could make the changes needed and went with the one that had the best ideas on how to make this work. After working with them for a few months, that vendor had done exactly what was needed to make the first accessible scan station. The part of this that was so cool was they not only made these for us but also backported the software to systems that were already in place around the country. So, Berkeley helped a lot more libraries become more accessible with a little work and time on my part.
Another project I worked on was making sure our dorms had accessible laundry equipment. I worked closely with the vendor to make sure that not only the washers and dryers we had were accessible but that the app the students needed to use to pay was accessible. I should have known that this would be a harbinger for the future.
My Time On YouTube
In my personal life, I also lived and breathed accessibility. Many of you that know me have heard about my Know Before You Buy project. This project also started out with a washer. I wanted to help other blind people learn about any household appliances or electronics before they buy them, so I started this project, and 4 years later, it is still going strong. The very first video I recorded went viral and still, to this day, receives 100 or more views a month.
When I hear from blind people around the world that they bought the washer I helped make usable, I feel that my effort and time were well spent. I have heard that many people bought the washer on my recommendation and that others bought the espresso machine that I reviewed. I would love to review more products, but sadly, I can only review the things I buy for my own use, as I do not get paid to do this work. I have had two manufacturers give me a unit to review, and I think my audience loves this content. So, as long as I have a need to buy something for myself, I will do my best to review it for everyone else.
I will always look back on my work over the years and hold these memories close to my heart. So, the next time I find a product or application that is not accessible, I will know that this state is not the only way it can be. Maybe, in the future, more and more manufacturers or software developers will learn from my work and other people’s work in this area that making a product work for people with disabilities is not only a good thing to do but a smart way to sell more products.
On this International People with Disabilities Day, please think about what products you find inaccessible and reach out to everyone to make a change. One day, we will not have to fight for accessibility but be able to show off our differences as a way to celebrate this annual international day.