Podcasts about World Wide Web Consortium

"Privacy Preserving Attribution", first deployed in Firefox, is designed to make it easy for a browser vendor to collect large amounts data from users. Now the World Wide Web Consortium wants it to be everywhere. More from The Lunduke Journal: https://lunduke.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lunduke.substack.com/subscribe

Today, Laura and Kevin talk with Mike Paciello, a trailblazer in the field of digital accessibility and usability. As the Chief Accessibility Officer at AudioEye, Mike shares his journey, from his early motivation to focus on accessibility to authoring the first book on web accessibility, Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities. We discuss Mike's role in the creation of the Web Accessibility Initiative, challenges companies face in prioritizing accessibility, and how AI is shaping the future of inclusive technology. Mike also sheds light on gaps in the accessibility market, and ethical considerations for emerging technologies. Finally, he dispels misconceptions about accessibility and offers his vision for a more inclusive digital world. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, accessibility advocate, or curious about the intersection of technology and inclusivity, this episode is a must-listen.Mike Paciello is the Chief Accessibility Officer at AudioEye, Inc., a digital accessibility company. Prior to joining AudioEye, Mike founded WebABLE, which delivers news about the disability and accessibility technology market. Mike authored the first book on web accessibility and usability, “Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities” and, in 1997, Mr. Paciello received recognition from President Bill Clinton for his work in the creation of World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative. He has served as an advisor to the US Access Board and other federal agencies since 1992. Mike has served as an international leader, technologist, and authority in emerging technology, accessibility, usability, and electronic publishing. Mike is the former Founder of The Paciello Group, a world-renowned software accessibility consultancy acquired in 2017 by Vispero.

In this episode, we chat with Luis Villa, co-founder of Tidelift, about everything from supporting open source maintainers to coding with AI. Luis, a former programmer turned attorney, shares stories from his early days of discovering Linux, to his contributions to various projects and organizations including Mozilla and Wikipedia. We discussed the critical importance of open source software, the challenges faced by maintainers, including burnout, and how Tidelift works toward compensating maintainers. We also explore broader themes about the sustainability of open source projects, the impact of AI on code generation and legal concerns, and the need for a more structured and community-driven approach to long-term project maintenance.   00:00 Introduction 03:20 Challenges in Open Source Sustainability 07:43 Tidelift's Role in Supporting Maintainers 14:18 The Future of Open Source and AI 32:44 Optimism and Human Element in Open Source 35:38 Conclusion and Final Thoughts   Guest: Luis Villa is co-founder and general counsel at Tidelift. Previously he was a top open source lawyer advising clients, from Fortune 50 companies to leading startups, on product development, open source licensing, and other matters.  Luis is also an experienced open source community leader with organizations like the Wikimedia Foundation, where he served as deputy general counsel and then led the Foundation's community engagement team. Before the Wikimedia Foundation, he was with Greenberg Traurig, where he counseled clients such as Google on open source licenses and technology transactions, and Mozilla, where he led the revision of the Mozilla Public License.  He has served on the boards at the Open Source Initiative and the GNOME Foundation, and been an invited expert on the Patents and Standards Interest Group of the World Wide Web Consortium and the Legal Working Group of OpenStreetMap.  Recent speaking engagements include RedMonk's Monki Gras developer event, FOSDEM, and as a faculty member at the Practicing Law Institute's Open Source Software programs. Luis holds a JD from Columbia Law School and studied political science and computer science at Duke University.  

In this episode of the WP Builds Podcast, Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley discuss the significant and evolving role of AI on the web, focusing on the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) new report titled "AI and the Web, Understanding and Managing the Impact of Machine Learning Models on the Web". The episode delves into AI's dual challenges: data quality and environmental impact. We explore ethical and societal implications, such as privacy, transparency, and the potential for AI to undermine human creativity and entry-level jobs. We also address the importance of standards, regulatory frameworks, and Tim Berners-Lee's optimistic vision of AI, emphasising the need for collaborative and ethical AI development. Go listen...

In Episode 9 of Season 4 of the BSuite podcast, host Anne Richardson interviews Tim Frick, founder and president of Mightybytes. MightyBytes is a B Corp certified digital marketing agency that serves social enterprises, sustainable brands, and large nonprofits.  Tim is an active leader and educator throughout the B Corp community and the digital marketing space. In the episode, he shares how he established Mightybytes' Impact Business Models, the challenges that come with using digital marketing tactics in ethical ways, and how business leaders can achieve success while adopting a sustainable mindset.   LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED: Mightybytes: https://www.mightybytes.com/ B Lab: https://usca.bcorporation.net/ Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox Sustainability & The Web: Tim's TedX Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW75oJszcws Solitaire Townsend's LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7149030234300809217/ EcoGrader: https://ecograder.com/  Siteground: https://www.siteground.com/  Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Green Digital Products and Services by Tim Frick: https://bookshop.org/p/books/designing-for-sustainability-a-guide-to-building-greener-digital-products-and-services-tim-frick/8133175?ean=9781491935774 Gaia Education: https://www.gaiaeducation.org/ World Wide Web Consortium's Web Sustainability Guidelines https://sustainablewebdesign.org/ Alliance for the Great Lakes: https://greatlakes.org/

In this sponsored episode of the Edge of NFT, we explore Root Protocol, a groundbreaking project at the forefront of the Web3 Renaissance. Founder and CEO Dylan Dewdney shares his insights on Root's mission to empower individuals through self-sovereignty and drive the evolution of digital identities. With strong support from key industry players such as Animoca Brands and influential venture capitalists, Root Protocol aims to revolutionize the internet landscape! Support us through our Sponsors! ☕

In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host, Chris Willis, is joined by Partners Kim Phan and Lori Sommerfield, to discuss recent developments related to website accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In this episode, they explore the Department of Justice's proposed rule under Title II of the ADA, which seeks to improve state and local government website and mobile app access for individuals with disabilities, and the potential significance to the private sector. They also discuss the international World Wide Web Consortium's latest version of its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), 2.2, and the first working draft of WCAG 3.0. Tune in to learn more about these important updates and how they may impact your organization.

This classic episode of the ITPro Podcast was first published on 6 January 2023.Passwords can be tricky at the best of times. Proper password hygiene is one of the most important factors in endpoint security, as it keeps sensitive data secure and prevents threat actors from getting into important systems. Despite the risks, the use of weak or recycled passwords continues to be a problem even amongst IT professionals and remembering too many unique passwords is a strain. While systems such as multi-factor authentication have been used as an extra layer of security, groups like the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium have been working to make passwords a thing of the past, in favour of more secure methods.This week, we spoke to Richard Meeus, EMEA director of security & technology strategy for Akamai Technologies, to explore the solutions driving secure sign ons, and how the sector can adapt to this change.Read more:Revealed: The top 200 most common passwords of 2022If not passwords then what?What are biometrics?What is two-factor authentication?What is multi-factor authentication (MFA) fatigue and how do you defend against attacks?How to implement passwordless authenticationBest password managersBest free password managersThe sooner the FIDO Alliance can shut down passwords, the betterWill FIDO passwordless authentication save cyber security?The top 12 password-cracking techniques used by hackers

Michael Cooper works for the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative, and he was attending the XR Access Symposium to learn more about the existing XR accessibility efforts but also to moderate a break-out session about captions in XR. One of Cooper's big takeaways is that there is no magical, one-size-fits-all solution to captioning in XR because people have different needs, different preferences, and different contexts that means that there is a need for frameworks to help make captions easily customizable. There are a lot of potential customizable options for spatial captions that include distance from the speaker, text size, text color, weight, layout, the size of the box, whether or not they have transparent boxes, preventing occlusion of objects by the captions, whether it moves with the speaker or not, and how to handle off-screen speakers. Gallaudet University's Christian Vogler warned XR Access participants about the dangers of doing a one-to-one translation for how captions are handled in 2D into how they're handled in 3D since there different modalities like haptics that could help reduce information overload. One of the demos that was being shown at the XR Access Symposium implemented a wide range of these different spatial caption options, and so there is a need to develop an framework for the different game engines and the open web with WebXR as well as an opportunity at the platform level like with the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest ecosystem to implement a captioning framework. Cooper told me in this interview, "I do think that we need design guidance. There are a lot of good ways to do captions in XR. There are some bad ways to do it, and so we need people to know about that. Going down the road, I think that we are going to need to develop semantic formats for the captions and for the objects that they represent. So there's a lot of excitement about that. But again, there's a big sense of caution that the space is so early that we don't want to overstandardize. And as a person who works for a standards organization, that's a big takeaway that I have to take." It's again worth bringing up what Khronos Group President Neil Trevett told to me about the process of standardization, “The number one golden rule of standardization is don't do R&D by standardization committee… Until we have multiple folks doing the awesome necessary work of Darwinian experimentation, until we have multiple examples of a needed technology and everyone is agreeing that it's needed and how we would do it, but we're just doing it in annoyingly different ways. That's the point at which standardization can help.” It's still very early days for this type of Darwinian experimentation with Owlchemy Labs' innovations of captioning starting with Vacation Simulator in October 2019 as well as the captioning experiments and accessibility features by ILM Immersive (formerly ILMxLAB) within Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge. The live captioning within social VR platform of AltSpaceVR was also pretty groundbreaking (RIP AltSpaceVR), and VRChat has had a number of Speech-to-Text implementations including ones that can be integrated into an avatar including VRCstt (and their RabidCrab's TTS Patreon), VRCWizard's TTS-Voice-Wizard, and VRC STT System. There were also a number of unofficial, community-made accessibility mods before VRChat's Easy Anti-Cheat change eliminated all quality-of-life mods such as VRC-CC and VRC Live Captions Mod. There have also been a number of different strategies within 360 videos over the years that would burn in captions at either 1, 2, or 3 different locations. The more locations the captions, then more ability one has to to look around without missing any action within the environment and still be able to read the captions. At Laval Virtual 2023, I saw some integrations of OpenAI's Whisper to do live transcription and captioning as they were feeding text into ChatGPT 3.5.

This week's episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, guest Denise Páne and Karen Yankovich discuss navigating ADA compliance for business success. Denise Páne is the CEO and Founder of Access Design Studio, the leading expert in ADA compliant accessible websites. A lifelong advocate of people with disabilities (starting with her own Special Olympian brother), Denise boasts over 20 years of business design expertise, with a special focus on making websites compelling and inviting for people of all abilities. Denise is an Accredited Accessibility Expert and a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and the World Wide Web Consortium. #GoodGirlsGetRich We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.   About the Episode: In this episode, I have an insightful chat with Denise Páne, an industry expert on digital accessibility and ADA compliance. Our conversation is packed full of enlightening information about digital accessibility and its role in business today. We kick off the conversation by diving into the world of digital accessibility and its profound impact on businesses. We examine the untapped audience that is waiting to be engaged with through ADA compliant websites. The potential for business growth here is something you won't want to miss. Plus, we touch on the significant legal repercussions of ignoring the guidelines set by the ADA - the Americans with Disabilities Act. Next, we shift our focus to brand authenticity. I truly believe that in today's world, having a brand that aligns with your values is essential. It attracts like-minded consumers, resonating with their beliefs and fostering stronger connections. And guess what? LinkedIn has rolled out a fantastic new feature to help showcase your company values. We discuss how this tool can attract the best talent to your business. Wrapping up our discussion, we delve into practical ways your business can achieve ADA compliance. We touch on tools, resources, and services that are available to help you navigate this process and become more accessible. Importantly, we also highlight some of the deceptive practices you should be aware of. As we look to the future, we predict ADA compliance becoming as ubiquitous as SEO in the digital realm. As we wrap up this episode, remember that digital accessibility isn't just about enhancing user experience. It's about creating an inclusive digital space that embraces all users, which can lead to incredible business opportunities.   Episode Spotlights: Where to find everything for this week's episode: https://karenyankovich.com/236   Magical Quotes from the Episode: "Everybody is welcome. In our, in our company that starts with probably their first impression of you, which is your website." "There's ROI on digital accessibility, it's a win-win for everybody." "The DOJ already has put out a statement saying every website needs to be addressing accessibility. In the next three to five years, you're going to hear it as commonly as you hear SEO."   Resources Mentioned In This Episode: Where you can find Denise Páne: Access Design Studio LinkedIn Facebook Instagram YouTube Sign up for the She's LinkedUp Masterclass Join my free Facebook Group if you have any questions about today's episode   Help Us Spread The Word! It would be awesome if you shared the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast with your fellow entrepreneurs on Twitter. Click here to tweet some love! If this episode has taught you just one thing, I would love if you could head on over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW! And if you're moved to, kindly leave us a rating and review. Maybe you'll get a shout out on the show!   Ways to Subscribe to Good Girls Get Rich: Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe via PlayerFM You can also subscribe via Stitcher Good Girls Get Rich is also on Spotify Take a listen on Podcast Addict

Kim Clark, our guest on this episode, focuses her work on the communicator and content creator's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). We talk about what Kim means by being a “communicator”. She discusses the concepts of being an internal communicator and/or an external communicator. Much of Kim's commentaries talk about what corporations can and should do to be more inclusive. As our discussions proceed, we talk a great deal about the ideas around “inclusion” especially where disabilities are concerned. While, as always, I asked Kim to provide me with questions and conversation topics she wanted to discuss we get to delve a lot into how the world treats, or not, persons with disabilities and other marginalized groups. Kim is the coauthor of the #1 Amazon bestselling book, The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid sh*t, or as we say during the podcast, “The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid stuff”. You get the idea. I believe this was one of the most fun and, at the same time, informative and pertinent podcast episodes I have experienced. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know your thoughts. About the Guest: Kim Clark (she/her) focuses her work on the communicator and content creator's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is the co-author of The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid sh*t, an Amazon #1 bestseller and is a leading voice on DEI communications and social justice messaging for brands. Her career spans documentary filmmaking, agency partnerships with the Discovery Channel, teaching at San Jose State University, and leading global internal communication teams at KLA, PayPal, GoDaddy, and GitHub. She is known for her ability to facilitate sensitive yet urgent conversations to make meaningful progress in creating inclusive workplaces. She speaks at conferences, designs custom workshops, writes inclusive communications guides, and consults with companies on all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion communications. How to connect with Kim: LinkedIn YouTube My Website Instagram Book website Buy the book About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. Yeah, I get to say that every time we do an episode, it is kind of fun. We've now been doing these podcasts in September of last year, they're very enjoyable. And today we get to talk with Kim Clark, who is a conscious communicator, a knowledgeable person dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion. She is a co author of a book called The conscious communicator and she'll tell us more about that. And all sorts of other stuff, dealing with diversity and so on. We're gonna have fun with this, because although most of the time when you deal with diversity, especially you don't deal with disabilities, we're going to have to talk about that a little bit and see what kind of fun we can have. But we'll be nice about it. Right. Anyway, Kim, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Kim Clark  02:06 It's really a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Michael. And I'm an aspiring conscious communicator. I just want to clarify having a arrived. I'm not enlightened, but I'm a farther along than a lot of other people. Is this   Michael Hingson  02:19 sort of like, is this sort of like when you're a lawyer, you're in a law practice. You're always practicing. And   Kim Clark  02:24 you're always? I'm a DI communications practitioner. Yes.   Michael Hingson  02:29 So So you have a dei practice or something like that?   Kim Clark  02:33 Yes. Communication, specifically as my lane. Yes.   Michael Hingson  02:37 Well, that's fair. That's fair. We can we can live with that. Well, I really appreciate you coming on board. And looking forward to having a great chat. Let's start like I usually like to do and again, it's something I've been doing almost from the beginning. And it just seems to me that kind of fun way to lighten the load and start the process. Tell us a little bit about you growing up and sort of where you came from, and how you got into this and all that stuff. For a general question, I   Kim Clark  03:05 love it. I love it. Michael, thank you very much for helping set the context of how I got to be where I am today. I grew up in a conservative Christian kind of environment from a religious standpoint in Oregon, Washington, and then coming down to California. And I've been in California ever since I was 12 years old. But I'm still an Oregonian at heart. In Oregon, you're either a beaver or duck doesn't even matter if you went to those schools. And we are ducks in our family. So just to clarify that for any Oregonians that are listening. And I had a very interesting coming out in my late 20s. And from that experience, I I produced a documentary called God and gays bridging the gap. And that was basically putting a face and voice to people who were becoming political pawns at the time and still are. And to talk about the benefits and consequences of coming out. When you say coming out You mean as as LGBTQ plus okay, great, just making sure. And then bringing in, you know, pastors and people who are, you know, a part of Christian or Jewish traditions and bringing in that perspective. And so I spent a lot of time showing that movie around all over the place for a few years. And that really catapulted me into how do I tie in social justice issues. Equity. In my work, work, no matter where I am, shortly after the documentary, which was my happiest time and my poorest time. So I got into corporate communications, specifically internal or employee communications. And that's where you spend your time working with leaders sending out emails doing intranet work. So you're talking to the employees about what's going on in the company, you're setting up the company meetings, working with employee resource groups on setting up, you know, speakers and those kinds of things. And at that same time, I started to bring in a mentor who became my teacher and coach, and I've worked with her for almost 20 years now. And she has been a diversity trainer for 40 years. And so while I'm learning and coaching with this mentor over these years, she's constantly talking about diversity, equity and inclusion in the, the corporate space. And so I start pulling when I'm learning into my communication strategies, I'm like, Okay, well, what is the role of a communicator and content creator in this diversity, equity and inclusion space. And so I started implementing that, and building the infrastructure of relationships externally, with grassroots community organizations, as well as employee resource groups, etc. And it was tested, when the pulse tragedy happened in 2016, in Charlottesville, where employees came to me and said, We can't focus, we need support, can we do something for employees. And so I, in within a few hours, got together a virtual vigil. And I brought in my mentor, she's on speed dial, everybody should have somebody on speed dial for these kinds of things. I'm on lots of clients is speed dial, but my mentor was my speed dial. And I brought her in, and we held a virtual vigil over resume in 2016. And I saw, without knowing anything like this, whatever occur at the time, I saw the importance and the urgency that communicators needed to be in a strong position to handle these kinds of social crisis situations, but also being proactive around diversity, equity and inclusion communications from a cultural moment, like Pride Month, proactively and consistent, strategic, meaningful, transformative versus performative. And I just started going out and talking about it. I did a lot of talks, conferences, you know, speaking opportunities, I did a lot of teaching while I was in house, and then in 2019, I went out on my own, and I'm, that's what I do full time now is I help answer, what is the role of the communicator and content creator when it comes to diversity and equity and inclusion efforts. And so much, Michael, you've seen this of de ai efforts, including accessibility, especially accessibility is based in language and communications, channels, how accessible our channels are, that's all the role of the communicator. And so I'm honored to be a part of this work. And since the summer of 2020, when so many companies were put were posting social media, statements of solidarity with the Black and African American community, I got really pissed off, because I knew coming from the position and the experience that I had had for over a decade in corporate communications, I knew what was happening. It was a Keeping Up with the Joneses, it was, you know, not wanting to be left out, but they did not understand the work that is behind those statements. And so I knew they were performative, for the most part, even with commitments of donations, etc, etc, I knew they didn't truly understand and that we're not equipped and resourced, whether it's people or funding to live up to what those statements meant. And so I saw those statements as using communicators, my people, my community, as being performative. They were that we were being used, and we were participating in this performative system. And I'm, I just, it just fired me up to say, I want to write a book about this, which led to the co authoring of a book called The conscious communicator, the fine art, I'm not saying stupid stuff stuff.   Michael Hingson  09:44 Yeah, I thought you were gonna do it. Yeah.   Kim Clark  09:47 And my co author is Janet Stovall, who's a TED speaker. And so she's worked with CEOs of UPS. She's an executive speech writer. So she knows that external part of communications, I know the internal part. of communication. So we partnered up to write this book, specifically for content creators and communicators, for them to understand their role and name, shall I say their responsibility in this work to become to EI, social change agents in their organizations?   Michael Hingson  10:15 Let me ask this, you said something that prompts the thought. We talked about diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, that really misses the mark as What does accessibility mean, we still don't deal with disabilities, as a society as a race. That is the human race in general. We don't recognize yet that disability does not mean a lack of ability. And the fact of the matter is that when we say D, EI and EI, it doesn't mean a lot. Because what does accessibility mean? Do we talk about, for example, websites, a website can conform, for example, even from from a disability standpoint and an accessibility standpoint, it can conform to the guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it doesn't make the website usable, even though it conforms, there are things that that one can show where that doesn't always happen. Accessibility really misses the mark, because we really got to get to the point. And this is something that someone said, a few years ago, a gentleman named Suman, conda, Dante who developed a product for blind people called IRA, that he looks forward to the day when accessibility is eliminated from and is not used in the in the English language or in human language anymore, when we don't deal with that. And the reality is, it's not accessibility, it truly should be inclusion, and, and disabilities, for that matter. And until we change, and we should change how we view disability because disability, as I said, doesn't mean a lack of ability. It's a characteristic pure and simple. And also it is the second largest minority if we consider women, a minority, although numbers wise, all y'all are on a larger group than men. But we'll just go in with a standard typical definition. Persons who happen to have a disability are the second largest minority, and the minority that is absolutely totally 100% discussed the least, we didn't discuss at all National Disability Awareness Day here in this country. Earlier this month, we didn't discuss an October National Disability Employment Awareness Month, you don't see it discussed on television, as a minority, although we have a lot of sub characteristics 100 we don't discuss it, we don't deal with disabilities at all. And I am not picking on you. I'm making an observation that somehow we have to change the conversation to make that truly happen, and that we truly get included. And that's what I'm curious to see how we can really change that dynamic and get people to recognize that we're being excluded no matter what anyone says.   Kim Clark  13:17 You are not Yeah, the world isn't designed for people with disabilities, including communication channels. Right. And that's something that I talk about in my trainings quite often is the whole idea of the curb cut effect, if you want to talk about and set context for the curb cut effect, and then I'm happy to pile on as far as like what the role of the communicator is. Sure, go ahead. So the curb cut effect is the idea of especially if you're in the US, the curbs sidewalks out in public, were cut down very purposely, and then add you know, painted yellow in the middle and then dots. I don't know what the actual name of the dots are. But there's there's dots,   Michael Hingson  14:01 truncated domes, but anyway, go ahead. Okay.   Kim Clark  14:04 Thank you. Thank you. And so they were specifically built for blind, low vision, wheelchair users, etc. People with disability then, but here's the thing, the effect of Curb cuts while they are designed specifically for people, you know, with disabilities, the effect is we all benefits. Sure people who are not wheelchair users, people who are sighted. We all benefit people with you know, luggage, people who use canes who have had strokes. People who have baby carriages, people who are cyclists, you know, who will have bikes in all of its forms. People who use carts, you know, who are pulling a wagon, you know, out to the park, or whatever it is. So everybody is benefiting. Nobody has to step off a curb, you know? And, uh huh.   Michael Hingson  15:11 Take a person in a wheelchair who rolls down a ramp and goes over those truncated domes. My wife who I was married to until she passed away last month, almost 40 years. hated those as a number of people I know in wheelchairs did hate them because they get bounced all over the place. It's like riding over cobblestones. Yeah, and, and the other problem is, although some blind people really pushed for them, how much do they benefit blind people, if you're truly walking at a fast pace? Your cane, if you're using a cane may hit the dots, or the strips aren't that why do you might even go all the way over the dot the the plate of dots. And without hitting it, the reality is we still are missing the point, it's more important that blind people detect the ramp. And the dots don't necessarily do a lot to help that for a lot of us. And some people said, Well, what about a subway station to keep you from going off the edge. That's what a cane is for. That's what a dog is for. And the dots may or may not add value. And then the plates of dots at a subway platform are not very wide anyway. So I only bring that up to say they they were installed and they benefit wine people and so on. Yeah, sorta kinda. And then you can talk about the curb cut effect and the way where you have some curbs and there are some places like in Sacramento, and other places where it isn't just a curb cut, the the sidewalk gradually goes down to the street so that it's really a flat exit from the sidewalk onto the street. So you can't even tell there's a curb cut. Some people can make the case that the dots may help there. And I'm still not convinced of that having been around Sacramento, there are other mobility tools that we need. But I hear what you're saying. And look, I can make that case in other ways. The phones today smartphones have the ability to verbalize what's on the screen and so on. Although the companies don't really require, especially Apple, whether it's Apple police who supervised whatever goes into the App Store. The app developers are not required to do anything to make their apps accessible or usable by persons with a disability necessarily, but voiceover for example, on the iPhone is there. It's on every iPhone that exists in the world ever since the iPhone 3g. But why is it that we don't see more mainstreaming of using that voice? Why is it that in Tesla's rather than using a touchscreen? People are given more audio inputs? Why is it that people in a vehicle aren't encouraged to use the voice technology and Apple Push the voice technology more so that rather than looking to see who calls you, you turn on a voice that allows you to hear without ever discussing with the phone? Who is it but the reality is we're still not being included in the conversations because people say oh, that was for blind people or for for people who can't read the screen. It shouldn't be that way. You know, the electric lights and other example that covers up your disability of being light dependent, but make no mistake, you have a disability. Because if the lights go out, you have a power failure or whatever. The first thing you do is go look for a flashlight. And we've made light technology, light emitting technology incredibly available to people who can see but it doesn't change the fact that you still have to use it to cover up a disability. And still, we do that rather than changing the conversation.   Kim Clark  19:09 I love it. I love it. Your apps, of course you're right. And I and I love learning from you continually. And the whole idea of that curb cut effect is is to your point is there is a difference between intent versus impact to your point. But the intent is like okay, if we can design the world more specifically for folks that have been left out of design. We're actually going to get everybody else but just like the disability movements mantra from the late 60s, nothing about us without us, which is my one of my favorite mottos, which can also be applied to other communities situations. We have to work as communicators, with people not about or For people, it has to be in collaboration and co creative space. It's like, so me, as an internal communicator, I can own the channels. But I have to work with folks who are looking for those channels to be more inclusive of their experience. Because the whole point, Michael of communications and communicators, our whole goal should be connection. It should be connection. So if I'm putting out an email or a meeting, or an event or a social post, and I'm cutting out, like, what's the percentage, I mean, billions of people around the world I'm cutting out without getting trained and working in collaboration with people who have the answers. They know what needs to be done, we have to listen. And we have to do what they say.   Michael Hingson  20:54 We Yeah, the according to the CDC, for example, 25% of all persons have a disability of some sort. Now, the challenge is that a lot of the needs and issues that blind people face are different than the issues and needs of a person in a wheelchair, or a person who is dyslexic or a person who is deaf or hard of hearing. But yet, we all still have the same basic situation, the same basic characteristic in that we're not included. And it's difficult sometimes for different subgroups to get beyond individual needs to recognize that, but it is still where we have to go. We are we are dealing with so many different things. Just this year, the Department of Justice finally said that title two of the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act applies to the internet. Why did it take 31 years from the time the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted? For them to say that, in reality, the internet is a place of business as a place of reasonable accommodation. And websites need to be made accessible. Now, my belief is that as people, even today, especially today, start to look at that the reason for making your website inclusive shouldn't be because you're going to get sued, although it's there. And we can't ignore that. But we should do it because it's the right thing to do. We we include as a result, up to 25% more people than we would otherwise have. But we don't tend to look at the fact that the cost of doing business should be inclusive of persons with disabilities.   Kim Clark  22:50 And it's it's not it's not acceptable, you know, and we need to really, you know, make sure that we understand that in all kinds of fields of communications, that is completely unacceptable. Our internal websites or external websites, you know, or, or social platforms, it's completely unacceptable. I have a son and a daughter, and my son is autistic, and low verbal skills, and epilepsy. My daughter is dyslexic. And it wasn't really figured out that she was dyslexic until about second grade. And I know some people don't even know you know that they're dyslexic to college, for example, or college age. And I'm seeing especially my daughter, because she is she has more communication abilities than my son, I can hear from her. I've just like her view of the world is like this, this world, this school system, you know, these books, etc, are not built for somebody like me, I have to figure out a way to create my experience, given what the world has left me out of in designing. And so between the two of them and watching them trying to navigate the world is part of my motivation of trying to create more inclusive work spaces and places to set them up for success because my son from an autistic experience, he's just he sees the world differently. And he is experiencing the world different than what I can understand. And there is no to your point, lack of ability with either of them. They are still perfect, whole and complete. So what do I need to do as a dominant culture as a white person, as a woman, as educated, college educated, like lots of privileges, and I have this platform and this gift to teach, what can I do? What is my role? So I've turned this into my purpose. This is absolutely my purpose. have just like what is the inclusivity look like that we need to turn our, you know, turn our design paradigms, we have to flip the script, we have to flip the script and understand that we need to be designing from a completely different way than what has been done before, in order to achieve what we say that we want. And that turns communications channels as well as messaging from performative to transformative to where we can see the evidence of it. That's something my teacher mentor talks about all the time. It's like, okay, you talk about you want inclusion, you that you're an inclusive culture. Well, what's the evidence of that? So that's where I'm coming from to is like, evidence action? What is, you know, show me, show me, you know, and that's especially rare in the kind of communications world because we're all like, let me tell you about it. Let's talk about it. And I'm like, yeah, uh huh. Uh huh. And there's the say do gap. So you say that you have di e IA. So diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility. So lots of, you know, companies are adopting that kind of acronym right to be inclusive of accessibility. But are you funding that across your organization? Not just an employee resource group, as an advisory board, or whatever it may be? But are you funding them? And are you for hiring folks in your sales department, in your marketing department, in your IT department, in your communications department, hiring them? It's, you know, you have to have evidence behind what you say, to close that gap between what you say, and what you do. And then what you do, we get to say, so it's this nice, you know, relationship, but we've gotten too comfortable with this wide gap. And that's an acceptable,   Michael Hingson  27:00 well, and I go back to D EIA, my concern about a is it doesn't really address the issue of disabilities necessarily at all. And it doesn't need to be there, it should come under inclusion. Diversity should include disabilities, but it doesn't everyone has thrown disabilities out of the concept of diversity. You don't hear Hollywood talking about blind directors, we did see a film when the Best Picture award and some some good representation representation for deaf and hard of hearing this year at the Oscars, and that is great. But whether it really changes the dynamic, in the long run, is another story. And again, if we're going to talk about inclusion, you either are or you're not. This this is my my opinion and my definition of it. But you can't say well, yeah, we include some people, yeah, we're still working on others, and you're not inclusive yet. It's a quantum leap. As far as I am concerned, I probably am in a minority for saying that. But you know what, everyone else has screwed up diversity, so I can have my opinion. If we're truly an inclusive society, then there's no need to do anything else about disabilities. It's automatic. But we haven't grown to do that. And another example that I would give you is, and I've talked to deaf people about this, why is it that persons who are deaf or hard of hearing prefer deaf and or hard of hearing and not deaf or hearing impaired, there's a great reason for it? The great reason is, because when you start to use hearing impaired, you're still comparing yourself to a person who has what you might call perfect hearing. And the concept of impaired means you're less, we haven't changed that dynamic for blind people. I actually had a discussion with someone in a speech I gave in October, because I discussed the concept of blind and visually impaired and I said there are two problems with the word visually or the concept of visually impaired one. Visually, I'm not different simply because I'm blind. Now there might be something about my particular eyes or anyone's particular eyes, but blindness doesn't cause visual differences. And then you've got impaired, I'm not impaired, and we need to get the language changed. So blind and low vision is the equivalent I think, to blind to deaf and hard of hearing. And I respect deaf and hard of hearing. And when I had a discussion with someone and I use the word hearing impaired, they explained it and I said I absolutely appreciate it and you're absolutely right. But I think it's just as true for blind and low vision to be adopted. But again, diversity, equity inclusion and accessibility doesn't deal with the issue. Not at all, what does accessibility mean? For whom. And so, really, it's all about or ought to be all about inclusion, to truly make it, something that works. And we need to get society to recognize what inclusion really ought to mean. And then you know, and then deal with it accordingly. But you had mentioned that you are more of an internal communicator and your co author of the book, and I want to get to the book is more involved in external communications. Tell me more about that, if you would?   Kim Clark  30:48 Well, your your point is, so I really want people to hear what your point is around this. And a lot of it does come back to language, it comes back to narrative. What are communicators and content creators, creating around the term accessibility? How are they defining in their organizations, the term inclusion? And how are we doing follow up communications around the evidence of inclusion, that's all communications. That's why it's so critical for communicators and content creators. To truly understand this work. It's not something you just write and throw over the fence. Because we're creating the perception, the stereotypes, what is being emphasized, and what is being de emphasized. So we're emphasis emphasizing certain parts of inclusion, but we're de emphasizing to your point, you know, people with disabilities in inclusion, and we also have to own the paradigm shift around inclusion is is less about how do we accommodate others and more about how it is the dominant power within our corporate spaces, recognize itself and make room? You know,   Michael Hingson  32:05 and you're absolutely right. And again, that's why I mentioned the problems and concerns I have with the term accessibility, it's meaningless. It doesn't at all necessarily mean, disabilities, we're not putting any true emphasis on that. Someone created that. And they've come up with other terms like differently abled, which is balderdash. Because I'm not differently abled, I may use different techniques, or special needs, yeah, I may use different techniques, but so does a left handed person from a right handed person, so does a very short person as opposed to a very tall person. The reality is that none of that deals with the issue. And in to your point, I know that's what communicators really need to do, which is to create that language. And then the real issue is you can communicate it all day long. But how do we get people to accept it.   Kim Clark  33:03 And that's the beauty of communications, because we have a responsibility and a superpower an opportunity to drive accountability with our visibility, visibility drives accountability. So we can shine the light, right, we can focus on those areas where the work really needs to be done, and then demonstrate and share out the evidence of that work. So something that I do for clients is inclusive communications guides. And so this kind of shared language within an organization, every organization needs to have an inclusive communications guide. It sits between your employee handbook and your brand guidelines. And it makes it real it's it's it ladders into your diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. When it comes to language. So you're delivering it's, it's part of your evidence of your dei work. And in in my version of this d of these inclusive communications guides, I have a specific section on people with disabilities, I know you're going to be reviewing my section to ensure that it is accurate, but this whole idea of the language that we use when we are a part of the community, when we're not part of the community. How do we handle those cultural moments and those opportunities? Were those external like internal International Day of disabilities that we were talking about in October? Like how do we do storytelling that is authentic and transformative and meaningful? So that's part of the work, which it was part of that motivation of why I did the book is because we needed to clearly define the role of communications as communicators within nonprofits, corporate, any kind of institutions, whether communications is in your title officially or not. People managers are communicators. They're communicating their, to their teams. And they're the least equipped to handle social justice issues, for example. And so that's the that was how I approached Janet Stovall and said, Would you write this book with me because we need to help communicators come up with a framework to be able to have a strategic conversation on how to be proactive and transformative instead of performative. When it comes to inclusion, when it comes to equity and diversity, what do we actually mean by that? And especially handling social justice crisis situations?   Michael Hingson  35:42 So what are some of the words or phrases that people communicators and others should stop using when it comes to dealing or addressing or referring to persons with disabilities? And what would more inclusive language be like?   Kim Clark  35:59 Well, there's a lot of there are, there are some terms out there that are not like we were talking about special needs. You know, that was a that was a term that the community did not come up for itself. And we find this in a lot of historically marginalized communities is terms, phrases that have been created by people who are not part of the community that has been labeled on communities. And so the inclusive communications guide is created by the communities themselves in the language that they use to identify themselves. And I always go to people who are part of the community to gut check and vet the guides to ensure that it is representative of their experience. And it's, it's driven by terms and explanations that they say for themselves that, that they have the mic, it's not something, you know, for the Black and African American community in the US, it's not me for a white person to be saying, you know, this is what we call you in the census from the government state status, you know, and it's like, well, are the Latino, you know, Latino community, that is, so the diaspora just like people with disabilities, it's like the diaspora is, so why the range of experience is so wide so and yet we try to find these labels just to say, you know, as if they're all one people, or, you know, like, you know, people, you know, from Asia, and it's like, Do you know how many countries and languages and customs and traditions you're trying to like, lob into like one category, it really, it really erases people. And I think that happens with, you know, people with disabilities community as well, it really erases the variety of, of experiences and talent and expertise and knowledge that the community comes for us. So now, the first kind of step that I've learned from, from the community is to ensure that we're using language that doesn't demean or reinforce that stereotype and that narrative that disability is a lack, you know, a lesser than in comparison to someone who can see, for example, but actually reframing and helping people understand everything that you said it supports everything that you that you said is that it's just another experience of the world. And so but to put the value on sighted people and say, oh, and we've talked about this, Michael about, like, you know, accommodations and Manat people, managers being fearful of bringing somebody in and having to, you know, have accommodations and think that it's gonna be harder to work with somebody with somebody who's already created their, their way of getting through the world, and they know how to do it. And it's like, just let me do it. You know, what, let me do it the way I know that I'm set up for success and support me in that.   Michael Hingson  39:00 Is there a difference between dei communications and inclusive communications?   Kim Clark  39:07 Well, you know, diversity is its own thing. Equity is its own thing. And inclusion is its own thing, but you can't do one without the other. And there's others like justice, you know, people like to, you know, add, some people like to throw in the J, which, you know, if you use that acronym in a smart way, you come up with Jedi, right? Yeah, there you go. That's kind of cool. Yeah, so some people will put inclusion and diversity, you know, just so it's basically this declaration or proclamation of where their focus is. And you need all of it, you know. And they're all outcomes as well. So, in order for us to have a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace, it has to be a part of the process. It doesn't magically happen by continuing to do what we have been doing, and then we get it a dei of outcome, we get differences in hit our measurements that does that doesn't exist. If you want the AI, as a result, it has to be a part of our process. So diversity in all the ways that it shows up inclusive of people with disabilities and a variety of disabilities, right. And there's, but you have to have that, like I was talking about earlier, you have to have people with disabilities in your marketing team and your sales team, you have to, they have to be hired, and they have to be, you know, retained, and grown. Right, listen to given autonomy and a voice. You know, and, and that's the role of psychological safety and team environment. So you can get those innovative solutions. But there needs to be equitable standards and systems access, removing the obstacles, providing whatever kind of, you know, I don't know, if you use the word accommodations, maybe it's just like, this is the kind of setup that I need. So it's, you know, like, you know, I might have a bad back. So I should have some sort of way that I am set up for success with my workstation. So what like why, let's, let's set that standard, to your point, like this should just be a given on any individual level.   Michael Hingson  41:23 So the the, we'll go ahead. And then,   Kim Clark  41:27 you know, so equitable access, so you're removing any kind of barriers, you're setting people up for success. You're compensating people, you know, equitable levels, promotions, sponsorship, opportunities, etc. So you're not holding people back. So equity, and then that inclusion is this ongoing verb, it's an ongoing action, it's minute by minute, moment by moment, paying attention, looking around to say, who's not here, who should be here? How are we designing this program? Are we leaving anybody out? Why do I Why do I not have representatives from that community as part of this conversation, so I can make informed decisions? Why am I not learning more directly from that community, so I can be an advocate for them in rooms and spaces where they may not be. So it's an ongoing thing that happens. So when you embedded in your systems and within your teams, and you're in, you've got it in your processes, whether it's from an organization as well as your team environment is how you operate within your team, that impacts the content, the calendar, the impact of your work, the words that you use, the visuals that you choose. And therefore you're going to start having evidence of that work showing up which is going to lead to those outcomes.   Michael Hingson  42:51 It's, it's interesting to, to think about all this, and I recognize the value of communications. And what you do is extremely important. But we are not seeing tremendous yet paradigm shifts in attitudes. So for example, I mentioned that in reality for persons with disabilities, when companies think about us, which they often don't, but when they do, or, as the discussions occur, it should be part of the cost of doing business to make an inclusive environment for all. So company, companies, for example, provide windows for you, for sighted people to look out. They also provide windows to be open to cool or allow heat in or whatever. companies provide fancy coffee machines to give their employees something that that they like and the company's value, providing that stuff, to a large degree, companies provide lights, for all of you to be able to see to walk around to look at your monitors and so on. In fact, companies provide computers and monitors, and will spend a great deal of money doing that. But if a blind person comes in, for example, and says, I need screen reader software to be able to access the computer you provide immediately, resistance goes up. Why is going to be? Yeah, because we're not yet valued sufficiently. And people can say that's not true. But the reality is it is otherwise they would recognize that the cost of doing business ought to include us. Those coffee machines, for example, are often touchscreen, which makes them harder to use. Now there is a way for me to be able to use a touchscreen device by accessing someone who can read the screen and there are services that do that. Then you get resistance again about even using those. We still have not come anywhere. Close to recognizing that persons with disabilities have the same or ought to have the same equal rights. Or I think as Jacobus tenBroek, the original founder of the National Federation of the Blind, a constitutional law scholar would put it, we have the same right to live in the world as everyone else. But I don't think that this society has gotten to that point yet. And we can communicate, and what you do helps. But again, it comes down to how do we truly make a major shift in attitudes?   Kim Clark  45:35 I would say it's the role of the communicator and the content creator, how are we telling their stories? How are we deferring and handing the mic over? What kind of videos are we producing? What you know, we have to be proactive in this and helping people understand what the opportunities are. So it's communication, it's telling stories, it's getting giving visibility, and, you know, driving that accountability, you know, starting with our own channels, but you know, we, especially for those of us who are internal communicators, we have access to HR, these are our stakeholders and business partners, we have access to it, we have access to customer care, we have access to facilities, you know, I've had many situations where, you know, I'll, I'll be working with a client, and they're like, We are renovating our offices, and I said, Are you working with various, you know, people with disabilities and your design of your office spaces, there's racism and how seating charts are decided, you know, you know, in facilities, layouts, that's something that has to be addressed. People who are wheelchair users cannot reach the mugs in the cabinet in the cupboard. That's not okay. You know, putting power strips under desks, where women with skirts, you know, have to climb underneath the desks in order to plug in their charger, you know, so, we have to understand and there is a wonderful research report that I refer to in the book, the conscious communicator book from Korn Ferry, talking about the, you know, kind of design of what they use it first, the crash test dummy, as the reference, the reference for all, you know, crash tests that do not take into account women's bodies, or pregnant people, you know, etc. And it in it spawns out from there, not just in crash tests. But I highly recommend people to read that research report, and just talk about this reference man leaves most of us out. And so in the design of our facilities of our seating, the design of our communications channels, how we are communicating when the words that we're using the visuals that we're using, we that is the power of communications and setting up narratives and setting standards of the shared language and how we are going to address you know what we've been so oblivious, to dealing with, up until this point, the opportunity, the potential of flipping through communications is exponential.   Michael Hingson  48:28 I was watching the news this morning. And yes, I use the word watch. I have no problem doing that. Because as we know from the dictionary, the word to to see is in part described us to perceive. It doesn't necessarily mean with the eyes. Anyway, I was watching TV this morning. And listening to a report about the Orion spacecraft that was launched, traveled around the moon came back successfully, really super. And a discussion of the fact that maybe by 2025, we'll have the first woman and or the first person of color to walk on the moon. Why not a person with a disability? Why not a blind person? Why not a person in a wheelchair? Why not a person who happens to be deaf? Why not all three, I haven't seen Jeff Bezos in any of his launches. I may have missed something. But in the rockets in the people who took into space, I haven't seen that there were any persons with disabilities and Branson sort of the same way. The fact of the matter is that there is so much yet to be done. And we have and should not take the approach of violence and I know that that has happened with with race to a large degree look at things like the George Floyd thing which should never have happened, but at the same time, somewhere along the line We have to have a major attitudinal shift. And that people need to recognize that we are as valuable. And as you pointed out with the whole curb cut effect. And as I mentioned with VoiceOver, for example, on the iPhone, it can be such a tremendous tool to aid in so many ways so that people could focus more on watching the road rather and listening, rather than what we do today. But we haven't got there yet. Which is, which is truly unfortunate.   Kim Clark  50:35 And I and I, I fault paradigms, over generations, where, you know, people with disabilities have always been among population, but that value of economic viability has taken precedence and priority over human experience, and leveraging leveraging all the beautiful differences, you know, and taking advantage of the talent and the expertise of how, however people have come to be. And that's a paradigm shift. It's a story and a stereotype and a narrative that has continued and been unquestioned, which is part of its intent is to not question it. And that's the paradigm we have to question I used to teach a, I still teach at San Jose State University, but a class that I used to teach was going back to my point earlier of what's being emphasized and what is being de emphasized. So when, when we are looking at our dei communication strategy, when we are looking at narrative, we have to be looking at who's been left out historically. And question that and say, No, that's unacceptable. That's not That's not how we roll. That's not where we're going to be like moving forward. And truly bringing in that, you know, because one of the things that I that I constantly have to work communicators through is the tokenizing. of folks. So you're mentioning Jeff Bezos hasn't had a wheelchair user in his rockets. I should have? Well, but I could foresee that there could be a tokenization of someone with disabilities, sure photo opportunity for a PR opportunity, right? We fall into that trap as communicators, like, oh, well, we need to have in this photo, we need somebody you know, who's different, you know, different skin color, you know, gay, you know, a woman, you know, those kinds of things, somebody with disabilities have physical disability, we need to have physical disability versus neurodiversity. Because we can't see that in the images and make our point, that we're a diverse group, right? So what we end up airings, we end up on the tokenizing side of the spectrum. And we need to provide more understanding and context around the people who are involved in whatever it may be riding in a rocket. Why the and the value that they bring to that experience? So what you know what, what kind of feedback, what are we going to learn from a wheelchair user who's going up in a rocket? What are we going to learn from that person, not just from that identity, but all that they can bring to the table of who they are.   Michael Hingson  53:24 Until we truly recognize that there is that kind of opportunity, and that people who are different than us are not less than us, it will be very difficult for us to move forward, whoever we are. And so I agree with you that the the immediate reaction wouldn't be tokenism. And that's what we have to avoid. But I think we can get there. But it is just a process. And it is something that we really need to do more to make happen. And I and I do hope we'll get there. But we do have a long way to go. And as I said, What makes it doubly frustrated is disabilities are the second largest minority in our country. And yet it is the most ignored minority by far. And so it is a mitten issue. Um, you mentioned your diet, your documentary early on, is that available where people can see it?   Kim Clark  54:27 It is online that you can rent it for like $1.99 because this was 2006. And, you know, don't judge me for my hair and my clothing choices at that. But yes, it's online. It's called God and gays bridging the gap.   Michael Hingson  54:44 Cool. And I think that I hope people will watch it. I think that will be kind of fun. Well, you wrote a book and we've talked about it. We've referred to it a bunch and we've also talked Talk about the fact that you wrote it with someone. But it was a number one Amazon bestseller, which is really cool   Kim Clark  55:05 in all three formats. So I'm very grateful for people who had been following us all year in 2022. We launched it in September, but our following just built more and more throughout the year. And they really showed up on the day that we launched it. And we are so so grateful. And it continues to show up around the world, people writing me and my co author Janet Stovall with you know, they're, you know, this is what I'm doing with it, I heard from a graduate student, who has said, I've come up with an assignment for the class, I'm teaching based on your book, which is wonderful, because as a San Jose State University lecturer over the last 20 years, I am building a course based on the book four year universities, colleges and junior colleges to have a course that's actually I'm going to be teaching, teaching a version of it, but I'm also going to make it available for educators. So it's available for corporate communicators currently. Now, anyone who does any kind of content creation, also people managers, it is very helpful. Can an individual take what the model the depth Model D PTH? That's our framework. That's kind of the secret sauce of the book. Can they apply it to themselves? Absolutely, absolutely. But we are making it available as well to universities, because we want communicators who are coming up, you know, and, you know, not everyone is going to go to universities and colleges, I recognize that. So it's available for others, I will have online courses available, I will have a book club and a conscious communicator community that I'm launching. So there's all kinds of different ways to access the content and practice it with other folks. Because that's, that's, you remember that I am, I'm about action, I am about evidence. So this, you know, everything that I'm going to be rolling out, aligned with the book, but also within the course, etc. is all about accessing the content, practicing it together and being in a community that is being very intentional about this work.   Michael Hingson  57:17 So what kinds of things do you teach? To help people understand not to say stupid? What's the word? Oh, yeah, stuff. That's it. That is not really what you wrote for the original title, but it serves the   Kim Clark  57:29 purpose. No, yeah. And that, that shows like The conscious communicator, part of the tighter title that was me. And then Janet had the second half, you know, you know, I'm not saying stupid stuff.   Michael Hingson  57:45 People are wondering what we're laughing about. The actual first two letters are sh and we'll leave the rest alone. Yeah,   Kim Clark  57:50 there you go. It has an asterix in there just for to be family friendly. But yeah, so it's it's been so the kinds of things that I'm most asked to speak about. I do workshops as well, but I do a lot of speaking engagements and consulting. Specifically around the most popular topic is from unconscious bias to conscious communication. So it's that the role of unconscious bias in Korea it that impact of bias in our communications, which can end up showing up like performative communications, it ends up looking like microaggressions. And so understanding ally ship and advocacy as an as a communicator and content creator, what's our role there? There's also a concept called majority coding, C O D ing coding. And that is about making sure that the dominant narrative is sussed out from our communication. So we are not reinforcing status quo unintentionally. Where do we disrupt that status quo in our narrative, you know, to the points that we've made over and over again, you know, during our talk today, being disruptive in that and so cultural appropriation, you know, when we're supporting events, and we have pictures of employees with culturally appropriate attire during Cinco de mio or Native American Heritage Month, you know, like really making sure that we're educating our employees that we are, you know, not reinforcing any kind of negative stereotypes around particular communities. So that's where we start my call. That's just that all that that I just said is where we start. So this is a practical application kind of lab experience whenever I do a speaking as well as workshops, and then there's the whole work around the book itself of the depth Model D PTH. What does it stand for? So, so depth The whole point is, you'll see this on the cover of the book is helping communicators bring depth to their organizations. So it's an acronym though it is D is for deliberate. E is for educated. T is for tailored. Sorry, I've got the P. P is for purposeful. T is for tailored, and H is for habitual. So it's a framework to be strategic and proactive. So you're no longer knee jerk reactions. When a social justice, you know, issue happens. You have the infrastructure, you have the relationships, you have your content, you have the people in place, you have the funding, you have everything that you need to be proactive. And we tackle things like, let's literally talk about PACs, political action committees, and what those what the companies that we work for are giving money to legislation, people will say, let's leave politics out of the workplace. Well, I'm sorry, but yeah, yeah, that we need to talk about that we need to have that kind of exposure to understand that companies are entirely making so many business decisions based on political situations, legislative support, tax, you know, benefits. That's why, you know, moving people to Texas, and I'm like, Oh, my God, Roe v. Wade, you know, you know, that kind of thing. So, we have to talk about those kinds of things and help communicators understand where the system has been designed to be performative. That's what we're hired for, rewarded and recognized for and how to disrupt it. And what do we need need to do to go backwards into the systems and processes to ensure that we are actually transformative, and that's what we're rewarded and recognized for, to help because there's, there's no doubt in my mind and, and 1000s of other people's minds that D AI is the transformation of the business going on right now. And if you do not do this as the business, you will be irrelevant within the next five years, just like digital transformation, if you didn't get on board, you're not here anymore. The same thing is happening with Dei. And we need to understand this is that strategic business transformation of the business, and communicators play an exceptionally important role in this work.   Michael Hingson  1:02:36 I was talking to some people yesterday about podcasts and their people, roughly my age. And so I'm 72. I admit it right. And they said, We've never listened to podcasts. Tell us about podcasts. And, you know, we're kind of old. We don't deal with that technology. And my, my immediate reaction was, that's a great excuse. But why do you put up the barrier to make it more difficult than it needs to be? And by the time we were done, they were going to go off and listen to unstoppable mindset, which I'm preparing. Everybody should? Everybody should? Yes, that's right. But the reality is that we all need to practice keeping up. And it challenges our minds, when we work at keeping up with whatever it is, whether it's podcasts and doing something like this, or just dealing with iPhones, I know any number of blind people who I see on lists who say, I need someone to tell me how to use this, or use this iPhone or use this technology. No, but what they don't do is go research it, they don't go look for it themselves, and do more to stretch and grow by learning to do it. And I understand there come times when it's necessary to have some help because a lot of times when I go research how to do something. When I go search to search for it on say Google, I see links to tons of videos and I ignore the videos mostly because they don't describe very well what they're doing in the video and they don't give me information. It's an easy way but it doesn't really help everything. So I go past the the videos to get to the other information stuff. And most of the time I can find enough information to tell me what I need to know. But we we really work as a society. It being often too lazy and not learning to research and not learning to keep myself constantly growing. When my wife passed away, the first thing or one of the things I started to say is you know I have to move on and it took me a few days to realize why I was uncomfortable saying that. And the reason I'm uncomfortable saying it is because I'm not moving on. She's with me. She'll continue to be with me, but I will move forward It should, we should all move forward, we should always work to move forward.   Kim Clark  1:05:04 Wow. Thank you for sharing that. And absolutely, there's, you know, there, there's chatter amongst the DI practitioner world that talks about, all right, well, if you learn to how to use a phone, because you feel like you have to, and there's so many other experiences that we that we can refer to, in addition to the phone, you know, being racist, or sexist, or, you know, etc, ableist, you know, it's just a matter of just doing it, just do it, you can you can learn a phone, you can learn to be anti racist, it's, it's a matter of being allowed, allowing yourself to learn, and make room and space, you know, for that learning, and seeing people with disabilities for their, you know, humanity, and what we have in common, and how needed unnecessary. Everyone is in society in this work, and to move forward in that work to your point, it's, it's necessary, and it's just basically required as a citizen of the global Earth. Really, you know, it's just like, this is just who we are. And this is what we're about. And this is, this is part of, you know, leading a very meaningful life is, is is doing that learning, no matter how uncomfortable it can be. It's the benefits are way outweigh the risks.   Michael Hingson  1:06:33 You mentioned politics and all that. And one of the things I've read on a number of occasions, or articles or commentaries about conversation, and that in our world where we have become such a fractured country, when it comes to political views, especially in the previous administration, according to the people who write some of the things that I've read, we've lost the art of conversation. Do you think that's true that we've really lost the art of conversation? How do we get that back? How do we learn to step back and say, Hey, talking about differences in different views isn't a bad thing, as long as we keep it in perspective, that everyone has the right to an opinion. But we do need to have a moral standard that we go by as well?   Kim Clark  1:07:24 Well, if we think about the workplace, and it comes from, you know, the environment that we grew up in, and then we bring that environment, to the workplace, and what what we do not have, or any kind of decent role models around having conversations outside of our comfort zone, because whatever environment that we we were raised in, whatever what was rewarded in the environment that we were raised in, and, you know, what we're bringing into the workplace culture is afraid to say the wrong thing. We don't have, it's not only that we don't have any role models on how to foster a learning environment. It's, you know, it's, it's, we have terrible examples, not just that we don't have any we have, and then the ones that we have are terrible examples. You know, like, we only see that the options are calling out, you know, for example, when there's a lot of options that we actually have on our tool, but to have to look at valuing a relationship with a colleague, in a way that we can have productive, maybe even healing conversations, but we don't, we're so rewarded within a capitalist corporate environment of getting it right the first time, you know, part of the bias of professionalism, which is an excellent article by Stanford innovation review, talking about the bias, they did the curb cut effect as well. But you know, talking about the bias, professionalism, it shows up in perfection, for example, perfectionism. And so there's the status quo, that is in the subtext of our corporate cultures that actually prohibits the the learning capacity, the curiosity, the willingness, the permission to explore these conversations amongst colleagues in a healthy productive way. So first order of business, go do your own research. Don't lean on somebody, like I shouldn't be only tapping into you on things that I could Google, right. But do I want to hear about your specific experience? And how communications and channels can be, you know, connect more with you? Yes, I do want that input. But are there things that I could go and learn on my own? Absolutely. Now, but I have to check myself and make sure that I'm in a place of listening and learning And then I shut the crap up, you know, and that it's not that I am in that place of humility, and, and valuing your specific experience. But, you know, I'm not rewarded for that in a corporate environment, I'm rewarded for having all the answers for getting it right the first time for being extroverted for you know, pushing things and making things go fast, and least resistance, you know, allowing bias to inform my decision making. And you know, what, we'll fix it later, or, okay, well, it doesn't work for, you know, blind folks. But you know, we'll do that in the next round. And then we never get to it because our budget got cut, you know, so it's like, these are the things that we need to challenge and and understand that we don't have role models, and we have terrible role models. And so looking at what that bias of professionalism is actually keeping us oblivious, and keeping us from growing beyond what has been allowed before to the point of really honoring, and learning and keeping our egos in check. That's really key in order for us to foster that learning environment, especially in the workplace. So we can begin to do the real work.   Michael Hingson  1:11:27 Well, the the, the comment about, well, we'll get to it in the next round immediately, puts a value on one thing over another, rather than truly being inclusive. And, you know, as far as this whole concept of, we have our role models, whatever they are, we have our own experiences, and so on, I feel so blessed with doing this podcast, because I get to hear a lot of different viewpoints, and brought that on myself. But every person I get

Passwords can be tricky at the best of times. Proper password hygiene is one of the most important factors in endpoint security, as it keeps sensitive data secure and prevents threat actors from getting into important systems. Despite the risks, the use of weak or recycled passwords continues to be a problem even amongst IT professionals and remembering too many unique passwords is a strain. While systems such as multi-factor authentication have been used as an extra layer of security, groups like the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium have been working to make passwords a thing of the past, in favour of more secure methods.This week, we spoke to Richard Meeus, EMEA director of security & technology strategy for Akamai Technologies, to explore the solutions driving secure sign ons, and how the sector can adapt to this change.

Les références : Chronique inspirée très librement de Les univers parallèles à Facebook, Twitter, Instragram… ou pourquoi et comment rejoindre la fediverse L'environnement, un concept à la noix (de Musk-ade) Les crédits carbone peuvent rendre une entreprise bénéficiaire La liberté d'expression, un concept à la noix (de Musk-ade) Eugen Rochko, un gars bien Le protocole ActivityPub sur la page Wikipédia Le W3C, une structure importante pour le commun InternetVous pouvez commenter les émissions, nous faire des retours pour nous améliorer, ou encore des suggestions. Et même mettre une note sur 5 étoiles si vous le souhaitez. Il est important pour nous d'avoir vos retours car, contrairement par exemple à une conférence, nous n'avons pas un public en face de nous qui peut réagir. Pour cela, rendez-vous sur la page dédiée.Pour connaître les nouvelles concernant l'émission (annonce des podcasts, des émissions à venir, ainsi que des bonus et des annonces en avant-première) inscrivez-vous à la lettre d'actus.

Bonjour à tous et bienvenue dans le ZDTech, le podcast quotidien de la rédaction de ZDNet. Je m'appelle Guillaume Serries et aujourd'hui, je vous explique pourquoi nous allons passer des mots de passe aux clés de passe. Et surtout, pourquoi c'est mieux. Adieu les mots de passe ? L'éditeur de gestionnaire de mot de passe 1Password vient d'annoncer qu'il supportera en 2023 les clés de passe ou clés d'accès. Et une démo est d'ors et déjà disponible. Mais qu'est ce que sont les clés de passe ? Les passkeys, c'est le terme en anglais, utilisent la norme WebAuthn, créée par l'Alliance FIDO et le World Wide Web Consortium - le W3C - et servent à remplacer les mots de passe par des paires de clés cryptographiques. Cette paire est composée d'une clé publique qui peut être partagée et une clé privée qui ne l'est pas, et qui permettent aux utilisateurs de se connecter à des comptes. WebAuthn est pris en charge par Google Chrome, Apple Safari et Microsoft Edge. Les clés WebAuthn fonctionnent également avec des systèmes biométriques comme Face ID d'Apple et Windows Hello de Microsoft. 1Password rejoindra donc Apple, Google et Microsoft qui ont déjà mis des passkeys à la disposition des développeurs et des utilisateurs pour leurs navigateurs et systèmes d'exploitation respectifs. Le mois dernier, PayPal a ajouté la prise en charge des passkeys sur iPhone, iPad et Mac pour se connecter à PayPal.com. Mais quelle est la différence entre les passkeys et les mots de passe ? Et bien les passkeys sont plus résistants que les mots de passe au phishing et aux attaques par force brute sur les mots de passe. Ils permettent également de se passer d'un code d'authentification à deux facteurs, qui sécurise mieux les mots de passe. 1Password affirme que les principaux avantages des passkeys sont qu'elles sont fortes par défaut, et surtout qu'il n'est pas nécessaire de les mémoriser puisqu'elles sont stockées sur l'appareil. Surtout, la clé privée n'est pas partagée avec le site Web auquel on se connecte. Et enfin, la clé publique ne peut pas être utilisée pour deviner la clé privée.

Újra kihirdeti a kormány a veszélyhelyzetet 24.hu     2022-10-29 06:21:02     Belföld Alkotmány Alaptörvény És meg is hosszabbítja 180 nappal. A rendeletre a novembertől életbe lépő alaptörvény-módosítás miatt van szükséges. Készítsük fel szervezetünket a hidegre: 6 alapvető vitamin és ásványi anyag őszre Magyar Mezőgazdaság     2022-10-29 05:48:00     Gazdaság Mezőgazdaság Hivatalosan is ősz van, ami azt jelenti, hogy nagyobb a valószínűsége annak, hogy hiányt szenvedünk ebből a hat alapvető tápanyagból. F1: Leclerc összetörte a Ferrarit az edzésen Vezess     2022-10-29 00:44:41     Forma1 Ferrari Mexikó Mexikóváros A ferraris monacói falazása volt a Forma-1-es Mexikóvárosi Nagydíj második szabadedzésének „fénypontja” még úgy is, hogy egy helyett másfél órás volt a gyakorlás. Halottak napja: a gyászfeldolgozásban mindenkinek megvan az egyéni útja Hungarianpress     2022-10-29 04:00:00     Életmód Halottak napja Mindenszentek Halottak napján, Mindenszentek ünnepén egy kicsit megáll az élet. Mindnyájan cipeljük a lelkünkben eltávozott szeretteink hiányát, az elmúlás fájdalmát, a gyász teljesen sosem begyógyuló sebeit. Mindenki másként éli meg ezeket az életeseményeket: a teljes tagadástól a csöndes beletörődésen át a lelki bezárkózásig terjedhet az emberi reakció. Van az Sokkal kényelmesebbé válik a PayPal-bejelentkezés Fintech     2022-10-29 06:07:00     Modern Gazdaság Cégvilág Apple Google Microsoft A PayPal lehetőséget kínál az Apple-felhasználóknak, hogy a készülékeiken is használt azonosítással jelentkezzenek be a fiókjukba, egy úgynevezett jelszókulcs segítségével. A jelszókulcs egy viszonylag új ipari szabvány, amelyet a FIDO Alliance és a World Wide Web Consortium hozott létre - az Apple, a Google és a Microsoft partnerségével -, és amel Nem csillapodik Irán – folytatódtak a tüntetések 168.hu     2022-10-29 06:35:00     Külföld Tüntetés Irán Civil szervezetek Folytatódtak a tüntetések Iránban pénteken a Mahsza Amini halála miatt kitört demonstrációk résztvevőinek meggyilkolása miatt – civil szervezetek és az AFP francia hírügynökség által ellenőrzött videófelvételek szerint. Elektromos gyomirtó, retekszedő robot, John Deere-újdonság Agroinform     2022-10-29 06:36:00     Mezőgazdaság Robot Egy nagyon ütős új traktormodell, hihetetlen retekszedő robot, már a gyakorlatban is működik az elektromos gyomirtó. Óraátállítás 2022: kezdődik a téli időszámítás Portfolio     2022-10-29 06:30:00     Külföld Európai Parlament Óraátállítás Téli időszámítás Magyarországon ismét óraátállításra kerül sor most vasárnap: hajnali 3:00 órakor 2:00 órára kell visszaállítani az órákat. A téli időszámítás hivatalos kezdete a gyakorlatban azt is jelenti, hogy egy órával többet alhatunk, mivel visszafelé állítjuk az órát. Azt, hogy meddig marad velünk az óraátállítás, egyelőre nem tudjuk. Az Európai Parlament a Mit hoz a tél a harctereken? – térképen az ukrajnai háború Növekedés     2022-10-29 06:45:00     Gazdaság Ukrajna háború Térkép Váltakozó sikerekkel zajlik az ukrajnai háború, az utóbbi időben azonban egyértelműen az ukrán hadsereg vette át a kezdeményező szerepet. Oroszország már a Donyec-medencében is komoly kudarcokat szenvedett el. Számos nehezen belátható tényező azonban komoly változást hozhat a harctereken. Térképen az ukrajnai háború. Valami furcsa dolog történik odafent a műholdakkal hvg.hu     2022-10-29 06:03:00     Infotech Műhold A szén-dioxid-kibocsátás miatt megnyúlik a műholdak keringési pályája, de ez a szemétként keringő, használaton kívüli eszközöket is érinti – még tovább növelve egy esetleges ütközés kockázatát. Krumpli- és tojásárstop jöhet az orbáni bejelentés után, de újabb áruhiány lesz a vége Népszava     2022-10-29 06:15:00     Gazdaság A kiugróan magas élelmiszerdrágulást részben éppen az Orbán-kormány ársapkái okozzák, mégis újabbakat vezetnének be, aminek újabb áruhiány lehet a vége. Csodagóllal mentett pontot az Espanyol Mallorcán Sportal     2022-10-28 22:53:00     Foci Spanyolország Mallorca Espanyol A Mallorca hazai pályán 1–1-es döntetlent játszott az Espanyollal a spanyol La Ligában. Vegyi támadást szimulálva készül Katar a foci-vb biztonságos lebonyolítására Liner     2022-10-28 23:11:41     Foci Stadion Katar A katari hatóságok egy stadion elleni vegyi támadást szimuláltak amely elméletben a 2022-es világbajnokság idején következett be. Az ország nagy részén októberben már nem látjuk a napot Kiderül     2022-10-29 05:05:45     Időjárás A következő napokban is anticiklon határozza meg időjárásunkat. Ennek következtében marad a borongós, párás idő, napsütésre csak kevés helyen van esély.

Újra kihirdeti a kormány a veszélyhelyzetet 24.hu     2022-10-29 06:21:02     Belföld Alkotmány Alaptörvény És meg is hosszabbítja 180 nappal. A rendeletre a novembertől életbe lépő alaptörvény-módosítás miatt van szükséges. Készítsük fel szervezetünket a hidegre: 6 alapvető vitamin és ásványi anyag őszre Magyar Mezőgazdaság     2022-10-29 05:48:00     Gazdaság Mezőgazdaság Hivatalosan is ősz van, ami azt jelenti, hogy nagyobb a valószínűsége annak, hogy hiányt szenvedünk ebből a hat alapvető tápanyagból. F1: Leclerc összetörte a Ferrarit az edzésen Vezess     2022-10-29 00:44:41     Forma1 Ferrari Mexikó Mexikóváros A ferraris monacói falazása volt a Forma-1-es Mexikóvárosi Nagydíj második szabadedzésének „fénypontja” még úgy is, hogy egy helyett másfél órás volt a gyakorlás. Halottak napja: a gyászfeldolgozásban mindenkinek megvan az egyéni útja Hungarianpress     2022-10-29 04:00:00     Életmód Halottak napja Mindenszentek Halottak napján, Mindenszentek ünnepén egy kicsit megáll az élet. Mindnyájan cipeljük a lelkünkben eltávozott szeretteink hiányát, az elmúlás fájdalmát, a gyász teljesen sosem begyógyuló sebeit. Mindenki másként éli meg ezeket az életeseményeket: a teljes tagadástól a csöndes beletörődésen át a lelki bezárkózásig terjedhet az emberi reakció. Van az Sokkal kényelmesebbé válik a PayPal-bejelentkezés Fintech     2022-10-29 06:07:00     Modern Gazdaság Cégvilág Apple Google Microsoft A PayPal lehetőséget kínál az Apple-felhasználóknak, hogy a készülékeiken is használt azonosítással jelentkezzenek be a fiókjukba, egy úgynevezett jelszókulcs segítségével. A jelszókulcs egy viszonylag új ipari szabvány, amelyet a FIDO Alliance és a World Wide Web Consortium hozott létre - az Apple, a Google és a Microsoft partnerségével -, és amel Nem csillapodik Irán – folytatódtak a tüntetések 168.hu     2022-10-29 06:35:00     Külföld Tüntetés Irán Civil szervezetek Folytatódtak a tüntetések Iránban pénteken a Mahsza Amini halála miatt kitört demonstrációk résztvevőinek meggyilkolása miatt – civil szervezetek és az AFP francia hírügynökség által ellenőrzött videófelvételek szerint. Elektromos gyomirtó, retekszedő robot, John Deere-újdonság Agroinform     2022-10-29 06:36:00     Mezőgazdaság Robot Egy nagyon ütős új traktormodell, hihetetlen retekszedő robot, már a gyakorlatban is működik az elektromos gyomirtó. Óraátállítás 2022: kezdődik a téli időszámítás Portfolio     2022-10-29 06:30:00     Külföld Európai Parlament Óraátállítás Téli időszámítás Magyarországon ismét óraátállításra kerül sor most vasárnap: hajnali 3:00 órakor 2:00 órára kell visszaállítani az órákat. A téli időszámítás hivatalos kezdete a gyakorlatban azt is jelenti, hogy egy órával többet alhatunk, mivel visszafelé állítjuk az órát. Azt, hogy meddig marad velünk az óraátállítás, egyelőre nem tudjuk. Az Európai Parlament a Mit hoz a tél a harctereken? – térképen az ukrajnai háború Növekedés     2022-10-29 06:45:00     Gazdaság Ukrajna háború Térkép Váltakozó sikerekkel zajlik az ukrajnai háború, az utóbbi időben azonban egyértelműen az ukrán hadsereg vette át a kezdeményező szerepet. Oroszország már a Donyec-medencében is komoly kudarcokat szenvedett el. Számos nehezen belátható tényező azonban komoly változást hozhat a harctereken. Térképen az ukrajnai háború. Valami furcsa dolog történik odafent a műholdakkal hvg.hu     2022-10-29 06:03:00     Infotech Műhold A szén-dioxid-kibocsátás miatt megnyúlik a műholdak keringési pályája, de ez a szemétként keringő, használaton kívüli eszközöket is érinti – még tovább növelve egy esetleges ütközés kockázatát. Krumpli- és tojásárstop jöhet az orbáni bejelentés után, de újabb áruhiány lesz a vége Népszava     2022-10-29 06:15:00     Gazdaság A kiugróan magas élelmiszerdrágulást részben éppen az Orbán-kormány ársapkái okozzák, mégis újabbakat vezetnének be, aminek újabb áruhiány lehet a vége. Csodagóllal mentett pontot az Espanyol Mallorcán Sportal     2022-10-28 22:53:00     Foci Spanyolország Mallorca Espanyol A Mallorca hazai pályán 1–1-es döntetlent játszott az Espanyollal a spanyol La Ligában. Vegyi támadást szimulálva készül Katar a foci-vb biztonságos lebonyolítására Liner     2022-10-28 23:11:41     Foci Stadion Katar A katari hatóságok egy stadion elleni vegyi támadást szimuláltak amely elméletben a 2022-es világbajnokság idején következett be. Az ország nagy részén októberben már nem látjuk a napot Kiderül     2022-10-29 05:05:45     Időjárás A következő napokban is anticiklon határozza meg időjárásunkat. Ennek következtében marad a borongós, párás idő, napsütésre csak kevés helyen van esély.

Épisode 808 : Interoperabilité, c'est le mot du jour. Fini de faire cavalier seul pour Markito dans la course au Metaverse, le Boss de Meta signe des partenariats stratégiques pour faire avancer son projet et normaliser le futur du metaverse.A quoi ressemblera le fameux Metaverse ? Est-ce que ce sera un espace virtuel ouvert, joyeux et collaboratif comme le pays des bisounours ? Ou verra-t-on naitre des espaces propriétaires payants s'affrontant dans une concurrence féroce digne de Game of Thrones ? Pour résumer qui aura les clés de la boutique ? La promesse : le Metaverse n'appartiendra à personne.C'est Zuckerberg qui a pris le lead médiatique sur le projet metaverse.Il a pris des positions, tenter un morve risqué, jusqu'à rebaptiser le Groupe Facebook en Groupe Meta.Mais face au risque hégémonique, Zuck se défend. « Le Metaverse ce n'est pas Meta. Ca n'appartiendra pas à Meta. »Il faut de la coopération pour créer de la cohérence. Et aucune entreprise n'est censée posséder ou gérer le métaverse.Pour que le métaverse soit une expérience véritablement immersive et révolutionnaire, une gamme de fournisseurs devront exploiter leurs propres espaces et travailler ensemble. En gros, le Metaverse doit se construire un peu comme Internet tel que nous le connaissons actuellement.Le metaverse, une question techniqueMais les vrais enjeux du metaverse sont avant tout techniques.On l'avait évoqué en parlait du déploiement de l'occulus Quest 2 ou des lunettes du projet Lazare.Mais il y a un peu plus que ça, il y a aussi le MSV, LE Metaverse Standards Forum.Pour le Web, par exemple, on a le W3C, le World Wide Web Consortium, qui convient des normes de l'InternetAvec au coeur du Web, la même notion d'interopérabilité.HTML, CSS, PHP, Balises, autant de blocs de construction fondamentaux mis à disposition pour que chacun puisse créer ses propres expériences connectées. Pour le Metaverse il y a le MSV ConsortiumEt bien Pour le Metaverse, il y a le Metaverse Standards Forum, un lieu de coopération entre les organismes de normalisation et les entreprises pour favoriser le développement de normes d'interopérabilité pour un métaverse ouvert et inclusif,Quand on parle de normes, on parle de schémas, de plans de connexion, de transmission d'avatars, de codage…* »Le constat de ses membres est simple : Le potentiel du métaverse sera mieux réalisé s'il est construit sur une base de normes ouvertes. »*Et bien que personne ne sache encore exactement ce qui sera nécessaire, ces éléments de base fondamentaux définiront l'espace métaverse, ce qui garantira que des entreprises comme Meta ne finissent pas par dominer entièrement la prochaine étape.—L' absence d'interopérabilité est un problème clé dans l'industrie naissante du métaverse. Ceci étant aujourd'hui c'est tout l'inverse qui semble s'écrire. Roblox a son propre truc à base de gros pixels carrés. Ce qui se passe sur Fortnite ne peut se passer que sur Fortnite et Horizon la plateforme en VR de Meta n'offre aucune passerelle avec rien.—Les géants se mettent d'accord dans une sorte d'alliance cordialeLa semaine dernière, le groupe Meta a adhéré au nouveau Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF). Il s'agit d'un groupe de travail qui réuni des organisations et des entreprises de premier plan pour travailler ensemble sur l'interopérabilité. En gros, les géants du web de demain se réunissent pour créer ensemble les normes nécessaires pour un métaverse ouvert.L'idée étant que les utilisateurs puissent emporter leurs avatars et objets virtuels avec eux entre les différents espaces et expériences en ligne.https://metaverse-standards.org/—Il s'agit pour les géants d'écrire le HTML de demainL'interopérabilité est déjà un élément clé du Web, avec des blocs de construction fondamentaux, comme le HTML ou encore le CSS.Personne ne possède ces langages mais il existe des règles d'utilisation qui permettent à tous de participer.Le Metaverse Standards Forum est d'ailleurs encadré par le le World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) un organisme qui régit aujourd'hui les règles d'interopérabilité du web.L'idée sera que de pouvoir passer d'Horizon Worlds à Fortnite, de manière transparente et fluide. Un vrai défi qui pourrait effectivement changer le game ! —Le Metaverse Standards Forum rassemble aujourd'hui les leaders de l'industrie du Web3.Quelques noms : Microsoft, Adobe, Nvidia, Meta, Sony InteractiveCeci étant collaboration ne veut pas dire sans rapport de forceEt Meta bien décidé à ne rien laisser passerAttention, aucune confusion n'est possible : Meta aimerait contrôler autant que possible la poussée du métaverse. Et c'est déjà bien avancé…. grâce notamment aux ventes de ses casques en réalité virtuelle et au développement de son espace Horizon Worlds VR.À en juger par la stratégie de croissance de Facebook au cours des 10 dernières années il y a peu de chance que Zuckerberg se contente de faire de son entreprise un composant parmi d'autre d'un métaverse multiplateforme.Tout comme l'entreprise a acheté et absorbé les autres acteurs de médias sociaux, Zuckerberg a évidemment les dents longues.——Epic Games et Microsoft font figure de concurrents sérieuxSi il y a bien une entreprise qui est prête à tirer profit du métaverse, c'est Epic Games. Epic Games c'est le fabricant de Fortnite.Epic Games vend également Unreal Engine, le logiciel de conception en trois dimensions qui est utilisé par toute l'industrie du jeu et dans les superproductions comme la série "The Mandalorian". Epic Games s'est d'ailleurs récemment rapproché de Microsoft avec la mise à disposition de Fortnite sur Microsoft cloud.Avec la Xbox, Microsoft fait figure de leader sur le sujet du cloud Gaming. Le Gaming on le sait c'est une porte d'entrée énorme pour le Metaverse.L'objectif assumé de Microsoft est de toucher plus 3 milliards de personnes via sont service de cloud Gaming.Les projets actuellement projetés par le Metaverse Standard ForumAssets 3D interactifs et rendu photoréalisteInterface humaine et paradigmes d'interaction, y compris AR, VR et XRContenu créé par l'utilisateurAvatars, gestion de l'identité et confidentialitéOpérations financièresIOT et jumeaux numériquesSystèmes géospatiauxUn autre exemple de projet à venir : Interopérabilité des actifs 3DTester et éprouver le flux de travail des actifs 3D de la création au rendu d'exécution dans plusieurs moteurs :Confirmez que les comportements et les attributs des actifs satisfont les cas d'utilisation.Testez le pipeline de publication et de transmission.Exercez des comportements et des attributs interopérables dans plusieurs applications d'exécution.Source : Metaverse standards. . .Le Super Daily est le podcast quotidien sur les réseaux sociaux. Il est fabriqué avec une pluie d'amour par les équipes de Supernatifs.Nous sommes une agence social media basée à Lyon : https://supernatifs.com/. Ensemble, nous aidons les entreprises à créer des relations durables et rentables avec leurs audiences. Ensemble, nous inventons, produisons et diffusons des contenus qui engagent vos collaborateurs, vos prospects et vos consommateurs.

In this episode, we have the delightful guess known as Denise pane, an Accredited Accessibility Expert and a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and the World Wide Web Consortium. Denise does not have a disability herself but has a brother who is developmentally delayed and has epilepsy. He and her mother are the most important people in her life, she was inspired on how her mother took care of her brother, and how their bond grew.  He saw how the family spent a lot of their own lives making her brother's life a fantastic life. She was hired by that dedication, and it made her want to contribute in a bigger way to others like her brother. You can really tell from the View that they have a real bond between them, brother and sister, they're very protective and supportive of each other. Denise has always wanted to help those with disabilities, but working at camps, and working with the Special Olympics for many years.  After seeing how the pandemic affected people with their mental health and how there wasn't much inclusion for those with disabilities during this time online.  She just wanted to make a difference, so she got with her team, and made them WEB more accessible. Her website https://accessdesignstudio.com   Her LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/company/access-design-studio/about/  

In this episode, we have the delightful guess known as Denise pane, an Accredited Accessibility Expert and a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and the World Wide Web Consortium. Denise does not have a disability herself but has a brother who is developmentally delayed and has epilepsy. He and her mother are the most important people in her life, she was inspired on how her mother took care of her brother, and how their bond grew.  He saw how the family spent a lot of their own lives making her brother's life a fantastic life. She was hired by that dedication, and it made her want to contribute in a bigger way to others like her brother. You can really tell from the View that they have a real bond between them, brother and sister, they're very protective and supportive of each other. Denise has always wanted to help those with disabilities, but working at camps, and working with the Special Olympics for many years.  After seeing how the pandemic affected people with their mental health and how there wasn't much inclusion for those with disabilities during this time online.  She just wanted to make a difference, so she got with her team, and made them WEB more accessible. Her website https://accessdesignstudio.com   Her LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/company/access-design-studio/about/  

The FBI searched emails, texts and other electronic communications of 3.4 million U.S. residents without a warrant, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have announced they will support a new passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, and details about how some websites are keylogging your data as you type […] The post FBI Warrantless Searches, Passwordless Sign-Ins, Keylogging Web Forms appeared first on The Shared Security Show.

SDxCentral 2-Minute Weekly Wrap for May 13, 2022 Plus, Vodafone released its cloud-native Unified Performance Management platform, and Dish is closer to hitting its 5G spectrum license deadline. Google, Microsoft, Apple Move One-Step Toward Passwordless Vodafone Grabs Google Cloud For AI-Powered 5G Data Hub Dish 5G Launch Races Against Time, Complexity SDxCentral 2-Minute Weekly Wrap Podcast Full Transcript Today is May 13, 2022, and this is the SDxCentral 2-Minute Weekly Wrap where we cover the week's top stories on next-generation IT infrastructure. On World Password Day, Apple, Google, and Microsoft teamed up to expand support for a passwordless sign-in standard built by the FIDO (Fi-Doh) Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. The parties and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called this move a “milestone” on the passwordless journey. FIDO argues that password-only authentication is one of the biggest security issues on the web, leading to customer frustration, account takeovers, data breaches, or even stolen identities.  The passwordless standard-based capabilities allow users to sign in through the same actions as unlocking their devices via biometric verification or a device pin. FIDO claims this approach is more secure than traditional passwords or legacy multi-factor technologies using one-time, SMS (s-m-s) passcodes. Vodafone this week released its cloud-native Unified Performance Management platform that the operator claims will provide a more reliable mobile experience to Vodafone's European customers. The platform taps Google Cloud's smart analytics portfolio, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools, along with Cardinality.io's (Car-di-nal-i-ti-dot-i-o) cloud-native DataOps and analytics platform to update Vodafone's pan-European networks more quickly and efficiently via hybrid cloud architecture. The unified performance management platform, which is being launched in 11 European countries, will allow operating companies to gather billions of network performance data points, effectively replacing more than 100 distinct network performance applications used today. This will provide a single source of clean data located in the cloud that companies can analyze and optimize for using artificial intelligence. Dish Network remains steadfast that it will hit looming 5G spectrum license coverage requirements despite admitted past technical snags in launching its cloud-native network. The mobile virtual network operator controls a host of wireless spectrum licenses. Some of those licenses are tagged with very specific coverage requirements. The most pressing is that Dish must cover 20% of the population encompassed within those licensed areas by June. Dish CEO Erik Carlson previously stated that the company had more than 25 major metro markets ready to be deployed before the deadline, including around 100 smaller cities across the country. The company did take its first steps toward that goal this week by launching commercial operations on its own network in Las Vegas. However, it admits there is still work to be done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apple, Google and Microsoft are all taking a major step to get rid of passwords. The tech giants announced they're expanding support for a password-free sign-in standard from the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. Meaning you'll soon be asked for verification by your fingerprint, face scan or a PIN by most platforms and devices instead.Could an autonomous F1 race be in sight? In line with the 2022 Miami Grand Prix this weekend, we spoke to PoliMOVE about their autonomous racecar which broke a world record for speed. A study finds spending a long time in space changes the shape of your brain and canon tells us about the future of photography.A massive amount of water has been found below Antarctica's ice sheet for the first time, Elon Musk is to run Twitter following his company takeover and the vaquita - the world's most endangered sea mammal - isn't 'doomed'. Plus, ‘TikTok addiction' could be real, we'll tell you about the symptoms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft plan to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium; IBM shareholders have urged the company to report on concealment clauses that prevent employees from discussing workplace wrongdoing. And Wipro and HFCL team up to make 5G routers. Apple, Google and Microsoft yesterday announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, according to a post on the alliance's website. Based on its standards — which tie authentication to a physical device, such as a user's smartphone — users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing, and sign-in will be more secure compared with passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS, according to the post. IBM shareholders at the IT giant's annual meeting last month endorsed a proposal to have the company produce a public report on the potential risks arising from its use of concealment clauses that constrain disclosure of workplace misconduct, The Register reports, citing a statement yesterday from Clean Yield Asset Management, a US-based investment firm focused on corporate social responsibility. In a statement on its website, Clean Yield Asset Management said that 64.7 percent of IBM shareholders supported a proposal submitted by the investment firm calling on the company to report on its use of concealment clauses at IBM's 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The support for this proposal comes at a time when leading companies such as Google and Salesforce are scaling back the use of these problematic clauses and lawmakers at the state and federal levels are taking steps to end their use. Specifically, Clean Yield's proposal calls on the Board to report on the potential risks to IBM associated with its use of concealment clauses in the context of harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful acts. Concealment clauses are any employment or post-employment agreement, such as arbitration, nondisclosure or non-disparagement agreements that IBM asks employees to sign which would limit their ability to discuss unlawful acts in the workplace, including harassment and discrimination. Wipro, India's fourth-biggest IT services provider, and HFCL, a leading telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider, have entered into a partnership to engineer a variety of 5G transport products that include Cell Site Router, Distributed Unit Aggregation Router, and Centralised Unit Aggregation Router, the companies said in a press release. With expertise in product engineering, transport network technologies and 5G, Wipro will co-develop equipment with HFCL. Wipro will use Tarang Labs, its product compliance and certification labs in Bangalore, for hardware integration, validation and pre-certification. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Scalable Vector Graphics ist die vom World Wide Web Consortium empfohlene Spezifikation zur Beschreibung zweidimensionaler Vektorgrafiken. SVG, das auf XML basiert, wurde erstmals im September 2001 veröffentlicht. Praktisch alle relevanten Webbrowser können einen Großteil des Sprachumfangs darstellen.

Through social media, the news, and elsewhere we encounter stories of people we say are inspirational to us because they have some sort of disability. We can't imagine how they do the things they do. No matter how many such stories we find, we still are amazed. On Unstoppable Mindset, my goal, in part, is not just to show you such stories, but to give you a chance to meet the people behind the stories, yes those amazing people. Meet Josh Basile, a C4-5 quadriplegic. He wasn't born a quadriplegic, but he grew into the role after an accident. Josh will tell you his story and how he decided to go into the law. He will tell you how his decisions after his accident shapes his life today. I hope you will not be amazed after this episode. Instead, I hope you will gain greater respect and greater value for people who are different from you. Listen and see how such persons live, love, and enjoy life just as you do. I hope that you will see that we are not as different from you as you think. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About our Guest: Meet Josh Basile a C4-5 quadriplegic, power wheelchair user, disability rights advocate, and lawyer. In 2004, at the age of 18, Josh was paralyzed below the shoulders in a beach accident. Soon after he formed a 501(c)3 to empower newly injured families through SPINALpedia.com and its 21,000 paralysis-related videos. As a medical malpractice lawyer and disabilities rights advocate, Josh serves persons with disabilities both in the courtroom and through policy initiatives. As a community leader and change-maker, Josh works tirelessly to improve the quality of life the persons with disabilities and to continuously break down existing barriers to access and inclusion. To improve web accessibility and usability, Josh joined accessiBe and that accessFind initiative as the Community Relations Manager. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:21 And welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And it's always fun if we get to have something unexpected happened on the show, and sometimes unexpected guests and we'll see how it goes today. We have, I think a very interesting person for you to meet today. He's someone that I met through accessibly. But he has a fascinating story to tell. And let's get right to it. So I'd like you to be Josh Bassel. Josh, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Josh Basile 01:56 Michael, it's great to be here today. Michael Hingson 01:58 Thanks for for coming. So you do why don't you start by telling us a little bit about you. Josh Basile 02:06 Alright, so my name is Josh Basile. I live outside of Washington, DC and Maryland. My life changed forever. When I was a teenager, I was 18 years old. I went on a family vacation to the beach and a wave picked me up and threw me over my boogie board and slammed me headfirst against the ocean floor. That day, I shattered my neck and became a C for fat quadriplegic. Michael Hingson 02:37 So, needless to say, you had a life changing event. What What was your reaction? How did you how did you feel? You must have experienced some fear? And lots of uncertainty? How did you how did you work through all of that. Josh Basile 02:55 So I guess we could start with the initial fear. So like, when I had my injury, I just remember hearing a loud crack. And it like reverberated throughout my entire body. And all of a sudden I couldn't move at all. And I was facedown in the water, I was unable to like scream for help, I was unable to turn my body and just kind of was just floating in the ocean. And all I could do was try to remain as calm as possible and hope that my friends would see me floating in would come out and grab me in and saved my life. And luckily they did that day. And then when it comes to fear of, of kind of transitioning into a new world of functionality and a new world of kind of dependency on in so many ways. I that was definitely a huge change. I went from a college athlete to someone that couldn't even brush his teeth anymore. And it was it was a big it was a rude awakening, but so much of it kind of for me to overcome it was about perspective and having a different mindset of, you know, there's so much with with my injury that I can't do, but I choose to not focus on that I focus on what I can do. And it's it's there's lots of little things that allow me to really always proactively continue to move forward. Michael Hingson 04:31 So we talk about the things that you can't do, I guess, you know, as a as a person who happens to be blind, you know, I hear all the time about how you can't do this or you can't do that. How do you how do you react to that? Being in a chair and being a quadriplegic? And I guess what I'm getting at I'll tell you kind of my thoughts is, are are that is it really so much you can't do or you have to do in a different way. way. Josh Basile 05:02 So for me, it's like before my injury, I did things, 1 million ways. after my injury, I get to do it 1 million new ways. And it's different. But different, could still be fun different could still be meaningful. It's just you know, the way I brush my teeth now is not with my hands. I do it through through the hands of a caregiver. I, you know, doing a different sport. Before an injury, I skied on my two feet. Now I ski in a sled with somebody behind me Holding, holding it. And you know, I've flying down the mountain. So there's a million different ways that I get to do new things. And it's just a matter of having the right creativity. And at the end of the day, it's really having a willingness to try to put yourself out there, and to experience all that life has to offer. Michael Hingson 05:54 The founder of the National Federation of the Blind Jacobus timber once wrote an article and Tim Burke was a constitutional law scholar, he wrote an article called a preference for equality. And he talked about equality, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. And what what he said is that a lot of people say, well, it's only equal, if I give you a pencil and paper and you write, you know, that's, that's equal, we're giving you the same things we give everyone else. And what he said was that equality doesn't mean that the equality means that you have the same opportunity, but you may use different techniques, different tools, but that you at least are allowed to, or you are given the opportunity to use those tools to be able to accomplish the same task. Josh Basile 06:39 Or yeah, with equality without it's, we all have our own unique experiences on how we do things, how we experience life. So you know, having an equal opportunity to experience and to participate, and to have different options to do it the way that you would like to do it, or the way that you can do it. But being being a part of this world, you know, so much of the internet is about, you know, people talk about accessibility. But you know, for me, it's almost more important for it to be about usability and usable. And it's like, there's different things of that nature that you can kind of talk about kind of equal access and equal this, but it's, for me, it's like, is it going to be functional, to my life to my unique world, and there's so many different types of disabilities, so many different types of functionalities. And it's, it's important that it works for the person that is trying to be a part of it. Michael Hingson 07:35 Which is really the whole point that equality isn't about doing something exactly the same way with the same stuff. Equality is being able to accomplish the same task. I thought it was interesting years ago, was it Jack Nicklaus, who had a hip replacement or someone and needed to use a golf cart. And so there were some issues about him going on a golf courses with a golf cart when everyone else had to walk. And they had to work through that. Josh Basile 08:04 It was, it was definitely it was a golfer in the, in the like the, around the 2000s, that that ended up having to do that. And it went to the Supreme Court, and they found that he was able to use the golf cart, and that it was a reasonable accommodation. Michael Hingson 08:20 Well, for blind people who wanted to take the LSAT and and go into law, there were a lot of challenges because the the testing programs required that you took the test in a certain way. And eventually at least they provided some equipment, but it wasn't necessarily the equipment that blind people use. And so it really put people taking the test at a disadvantage. And again, it went to the Supreme Court, ironically, lawyers of all people who ought to really be upholding the rights of all people. But it had to go to the Supreme Court before a final ruling came down that said, Well, of course, people can use the screen readers and the technologies that they are used to to take the test. Josh Basile 09:06 Now and that's, you know, that's always kind of kind of boggled my mind. How even within the LSAT, how there's so many different discriminatory factors that have that have existed over the years. When I graduated college, I decided to go to law school and I took the LSAT myself. And during that time, everybody that had a disability that had an accommodation there so anybody with accommodation, they created a flag on the test. And basically it's it told every single place that you applied every school that you applied, that this person has a disability. And only after while I was in law school, there was a class action lawsuit that I believe originated in California, that ended up like saying that you can't do that you can't that is completely against Ada, you can add, you can add, be able to disclose that a person has a disability during the application process. And there there was, you know, a class action settlement across the United States. But it's, it's, it's kind of crazy how that stuff is, is there and continues to happen? Michael Hingson 10:21 Well before your accident when you were 18. And of course, you're you're not that old now you're at least 25. Right? So before your I know, before, you're 36. So before you were, you were put in a chair, you you had your accident, what were your career goals. Josh Basile 10:41 before my injury, I was a business major and art minor in college. And for me, I've always loved the stock market. So I wanted to become an investment banker. And that was the route that I was trying to pursue, or I'd like a dream internship that summer, my injury and I would have loved to continue to work for my boss that summer as a as a career afterwards. But I'm definitely my injury, I flip things upside down, it changed life forever. And I quickly learned that my voice and my mind were my best assets. Physically, I was limited in what I can do. But mentally, and through my, through my advocacy skills, I could do great things. And that's when I decided to go back to community college, and I went to undergrad, and then graduated magna cum laude through law school, and it was a it was definitely a long adventure with the patient I decided to go through. But in the end, it was totally worthwhile and is open so many doors to an opportunities within the employment world. And I've very much enjoyed working for since 2013. Michael Hingson 12:04 So why did you decide to switch and go from investment banking into law. Josh Basile 12:11 So basically, just to become as strong of an advocate as I could possibly be, you know, with undergrad, I was a communication major. And so my voice getting really strong and my ability to influence others and change the world around me. And then I just knew law school would give me a unique mindset and approach to really taking it to the next level. And, you know, law school is incredible to it teaches you kind of how to think like a lawyer. And then you have to get in the world and you actually have to kind of have a specialty to take on. And that's when I took on medical malpractice and catastrophic injuries and help families all across the country, the lawsuits and helping them navigate kind of also how to get the community supports they need for independent living when it comes to caregiving or pursuing vocation through the vocational system. There's there's so many different elements to what happens after our college Strophic injury to kind of reenter society and actually have a better quality of life. Michael Hingson 13:16 But you worked through it, you chose to not give up, you chose to move forward and do something with your life, which is of course the whole point, isn't it? Josh Basile 13:27 Absolutely, it's, um, life is too short not to, to live, love and laugh, and put yourself out there to be the best you and you know, before my injury, you know, our let's say, after manage Dre like, Yes, I have a different body, but I'm still, I'm still me. I just have, you know, a sexy power wheelchair to get me around. And I've got different technology and different caregiving supports that allow me to do things that I would have done before. But it's, it's definitely one of those things that like you just, I try to I try to let families know that within this life, like I've mentored 1000s of families through my nonprofit determined to heal. And one of the big things is, after an injury, you need to learn how to advocate for yourself, you need to learn how to become your own best advocate, because nobody's going to fight harder for you than you're going to fight for yourself in your life. So learning kind of what it is to give you the best opportunities to give you the best supports, and to be able to be that captain of the ship as you're going along this life journey. It gives you a great power in what direction you're gonna go. And it gives you the ability to you know, accept help and that accepting help is not it's not a weakness. A lot of people think of an accommodation school as a weakness. It creates an evil Been playing field just to allow you to show what you have. And being able to get support through friends, family caregivers to help you along your journey is just, it gives you extra boost along your way along your voyage is basically having crewmates instead of sailing ship of one year sailing a ship of the 10. That's a much easier voyage. Michael Hingson 15:25 The issue of accepting help is one though, where you need to be the one to decide what help and and when you need help. Which, which is always of course an issue people, a lot of our well most of the time want to help and sometimes help when you don't need help, which which can be a challenge and of itself. Josh Basile 15:47 Yeah, no, it's it's hard. A lot of a lot of persons with disabilities are very stubborn. You know, I see it a lot within the paralysis community. The difference between a quadriplegic and a paraplegic. So a quadriplegic is somebody that has immobility in all four extremities. a paraplegic, has a mobility in two extremities. And so often paraplegics, in many ways, they, they want to do everything on their on their own and show their independence, which gives them their power. With a quadriplegic, you'll see somebody is way more open to receiving help, and is accepting of it, and is willing to, like, try and train somebody to help them do different tasks, but it is, it's the different mindsets of are you it doesn't really, for me, it's accepting help, doesn't matter. Or if you're paraplegic quadriplegic person without a disability, it's just a matter of opening your your arms to being able to allow others to be a part of your life and contribute. So many people just want to help because they want to, they want to give it's it's a good feeling to give. And it's, it's, it's it's kind of a different dynamic, depending on the personality of who you're talking to. Michael Hingson 17:06 Sure. And about. And then the reality is that, that we all should be more interested in receiving help when we need it. And we should also be willing to give help, and offer help. And I tell people all the time, look, don't assume I need help, and don't operate under the assumption that I want help crossing the street. There's never anything wrong with asking if I want some help, but accept the answer. If I say no, because there are also a lot of times that I don't want help. For example, when I used to travel around the world trade center, and looked like I was lost, I probably was and the reason I was lost was because I worked to getting lost. So I could figure out more about how to travel around the center and and learn things and there would be times I would ask questions. But it was important to learn the complex, because I wasn't going to use the same visual cues that you would use. Josh Basile 18:13 I love that about persons with disabilities that we we are faced with so many barriers on a daily basis. But that allows us to be kind of really fine to problem solvers. Like we're really able to like figure out, you know how to overcome challenges, how to get to where we need to go, how to complete puzzles, how to complete? Well, you, you name it, and it it's like the practice that we do every single day gives us a special kind of ability beyond many other people. And it's I think this is one of our greatest contributions that we can give to the workforce in general is that, you know, you you give us a problem within a company, we're going to be able to approach it probably a lot differently than than other employees that you have, just because we we do it every day we put our 10,000 hours in to become experts, expert problem solvers. Michael Hingson 19:14 I know that you have seen this and seen some of the statistics, both before and in your time at accessiBe and we'll talk about that. But one of the things that we both get to talk about on a regular basis is the fact that when companies decide to make themselves inclusive, whether it be in their advertising, whether it be in their hiring practices and so on, but when they decide to make themselves inclusive to persons with disabilities, the reality is we also tend to be more loyal because we know one it's harder to find a job when we're facing a 65 plus percent unemployment rate among employable people with With Disabilities, and to that, it's harder to, to deal with various aspects of a company, if they don't make it more inclusive. So when we find companies and organizations that are inclusive, we tend to be more loyal to them. Josh Basile 20:16 Absolutely, it's data statistics, you name it, studies have been done, and conducted that have proven that the disability community is, is either the most, most brand loyal community, in the world in the United States. And it's because, you know, we're not always taking care of correctly, but when we are, it's, we don't forget it. And we advocate and, and share with friends family, we'd let others in the community know that this company, this organization, gets it, they're doing it, right, they're welcoming, and those good experiences. We don't forget it. And we look forward to those moments when somebody gets it. It's, it's kind of, I think, it's amazing that we're having so many more of these kinds of conversations around inclusion and disability, and that companies are starting to get that this, this needs to be a part of their business, it needs to be a part of their their business culture. And the more that we do that, I think we're gonna see some major changes coming up in the years to come. But obviously, we're still a long way away. But it's, I've heard more about this in the last, you know, two years than I did in the last, you know, 17 years of my injury. Michael Hingson 21:42 Well, it's true, and we need to be more part of the conversation, how do we get more people to include us in the conversation? It's all about education, but how do we get people to accept us and include us as, as a class in the conversation, the conversation of life, if you will. Josh Basile 22:06 For me, it's always about having a seat at the table. Too often, persons with disabilities are an afterthought, because they never had a seat at the table from the beginning. And they they were just then recognized later on when enough noise was made that there that somebody was like, Alright, now let's, let's deal with the disability that are of our business or society of this law, have, you name it, it's just no, we don't have enough representation, and all aspects of society, in my opinion, whether it's within, within the legislature, within the business world within education, transportation, we need to have way more persons with disabilities being employed, being employed in positions of leadership, being able to have people get it from the top down, that that Disability Matters. And that disabilities is something that it's it's a way of approaching a system in place of availing inclusion and providing accessibility providing options for all abilities. And it's it for me, it's like it's a win win. If when when organizations get it, when legislators get it, and they incorporated there, they're actually just making it stronger. Everything they put forward ends up becoming stronger, because it it ends up working for more and more people and giving more options. It's it's, you know, people look at curb cuts. And you know, that's that's one of those things that it's made for persons with disabilities. But guess what, everybody that uses it is benefiting from it. And they don't want to live without it. So being able to put together more kind of inclusive pieces of the puzzle to society. For me, it's just a win win, but we need to have more people at the table to be able to make sure it gets done. Yeah. Michael Hingson 24:16 So you went off to law school. Where did you go? Josh Basile 24:21 David Clark School of Law at the DC Public Interest Law School. Michael Hingson 24:26 Cool. So you, you went you graduated, then what did you do? Josh Basile 24:32 So I immediately went to work. So I was in law school, I, I interned for a federal judge. I then worked at a law firm, and then worked at the US Attorney's office worked on the Health Committee under under Senator Harkin, and then I ended up getting an internship at my current employer. And after finishing law school, I just I continued working with him. And it's been there since 2013. And I've loved every moment of it. Michael Hingson 25:09 It's fun, especially when you can blaze a trail. Josh Basile 25:14 It's it's, you know, the thing with lawyers is all lawyers are for the most part nerds. And they're just very smart. They love, they love, either studying reading or are, you know, are willing to go the extra mile like, anybody that ends up doing law school and taking the bar exam. That's a lot of work. It's a lot of time, a lot of energy spent away from friends, family, it's a commitment. Um, so most of the turn attorneys are nerds. But as a medical malpractice attorney, and catastrophic injury attorney with a significant disability, I love it. Because I get to be an empathetic nerd, I get a B, you know, there for families in ways that most attorneys can't I get what they're going through, I understand what they need in place to have a better quality of life, I can communicate with them. And it's most cases that we take can take anywhere from two to four years to either settle or to go through the legal process of getting a judgment through the courts. And even then, sometimes there's delays because it gets appealed. It's a it's a long process. But as an attorney, with a catastrophic injury myself, it's, I really enjoy it. Because I get to connect with with my families more than anything, Michael Hingson 26:32 you must be in a position to help make a more powerful case. Because if you said you have a catastrophic injury yourself, you've been through it. Josh Basile 26:40 Yeah, no, absolutely. There's, it resonates. I think with the jury, I think it resonates with the judge, and also resonates with the defense, that's on the other side, when you're doing depositions, or you're doing negotiations, and they're like, this person doesn't need this. And then you're like, you know what they actually do, but I, I can have some lived experiences beyond the experts that we bring to the table that are saying what we are arguing, but, you know, so much of when it comes to bringing cases, it comes down to the Battle of experts, and both sides end up getting somebody that argues one angle, and then it's up to the jury to decide what what is fact and what is fiction. Michael Hingson 27:26 So you're working for a private firm today? Josh Basile 27:29 Yes, it's a plaintiffs firm. So we only represent families that have been that have been injured, Michael Hingson 27:35 that have been injured, right? Well, so in addition to doing that kind of work, you've you've obviously gotten some involvement in doing things like web accessibility, and so on, how did all that come about? Josh Basile 27:52 So I'm passionate about breaking down barriers for persons with disabilities, whether it's in the employment, world transportation, independent living, and when I learned that less than 2% of the internet meets Accessibility Guidelines. I wanted to do something about it. And I knew that I could proactively kind of know, I always try to first figure out what is the problem? And what are the best options going forward to come up with a solution, or at least, to be able to have a better approach at at addressing the problem, both in the short term and long term, and so much with the internet is about scalability. You know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of websites that remain inaccessible. And when I learned about acccessiBe, I did my research, I had different friends in the disability community, do give me their sense of it, and to test different product products that were out there. And what I learned was accessiBe was the real deal. And that this could be a great way of changing the world of the internet, and COVID COVID was happening at the time, which, for me, the internet became that much more important to be able to be to allow persons with disabilities to have access to the products, information and services that as we well know, the internet provides and, you know, having access to that improves quality of life and opportunity and I wanted to do something about it. Michael Hingson 29:32 How did you discover accessiBe? Josh Basile 29:35 So A childhood friend of mine ended up moving over to Israel and joined accessiBe's team in their HR department, and she ended up connecting me with with the founder, the founders of SSP, and I spoke with them. And next thing I know we're collaborating they wanted they wanted more persons with disabilities to have a seat at the table with an organization, so that they can learn and they can improve, and they can become a better business not only running the company, but also for serving the community that they are on a mission to change lives. And, you know, I, you know, hearing that and seeing that, and being a part of that, since February, I've just, I've been wowed by by them as a company, and SSB is just doing all the right things. And it's, um, I know, there's, it's been a long way since February. And but it's always been a forward moving progression. And, and as an advocate, I love I love moving forward, Michael Hingson 30:45 what are some of the specific problems that you face in accessing the internet. Josh Basile 30:50 So it's basically navigating a page is one thing, you know, being able to go from start to finish and checking out fully. Now I've been on a website where I'm using my Dragon Naturally Speaking, and I can't jump to a different forum, to be able to fill out my contact information, my address, or do a drop down to be able to see what's there. I guess, you know, if I'm only able to access specific parts of a website, I'm missing out on all the other parts that everybody else is afforded. without a disability, I use my mouse controller. To control my mouse, I also use an onscreen keyboard to navigate a webpage, I use voice dictation to type. And I also use a screen reader for reading. So I have multiple different technologies that I'm using at once. And if a website has accessiBe built in access, accessibility built into it, or usability built into it, I'm able to navigate it so much better and gain from it the way that it was meant to be gained, that people put information on the website for a purpose. And you know, it's just a matter of are you going to be able to access it or only be able to see or experience half of what the websites truly trying to show. Michael Hingson 32:15 I know for me, using a screen reader exclusively to hear what's on a web page. When we deal with images where there are no descriptions, or we deal with an element that requires you to use a mouse or it expects you to use a mouse. So as you scroll through items, the screen refreshes, which means you really can't get to see what all the options are without the screen refreshing and it takes you forever to go through it over just two examples of some of the access that we we face that I face and other people who are blind face and you face some of those things, things as well. And the reality is, and I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it, we live in such a marvelous technological world, where it is so easy to make all of this stuff fully inclusive. And it's in some ways becoming less inclusive, because we make it more visual, or we want to make it more automatic to diffuse that little mouse to scroll around the screen. And we forget that that doesn't make the website inclusive for everyone. Josh Basile 33:24 It doesn't. And you know, we make internet work for everyone has not been easy over the past 25 years really of the internet, being you know, more mainstream, but it's, you know, keep working towards it. And the thing I love about accessiBe is that there's many different profiles for many different disabilities and abilities, and then being able to use those profiles, but then also to be able to have customized options below that to even further make it accessible or usable or making it work on how you personally want to navigate a website. And so many people with disabilities, you know, have multiple disabilities. So like being able to, like have usability options for for that is you know, through accessories AI powered solution. It's like there's nothing else out there that exists that I've been able to use that I have a physical disability. I've ADA HD and I have a reading disability. So incorporating all three of those things sometimes makes websites a little difficult to navigate. But then when you have the AI powered solution, I'm then able to customize with the mobility profile and be able to customize with other options with ADHD as well. I guess it's incredible what you can do when you give people choice and power and how they want to navigate. Tell. Michael Hingson 34:58 Tell me about the ADHD profile. Josh Basile 35:01 So the ADHD profile, basically, you know, allows you to have a better, I'd say, it blocks out kind of the top and bottom of the of, of your eye is so that it's kind of blurred out a little bit, but it's darkened. But then as a focus area where you can go up and down the screen, so that your eyes focus on one particular area, without having distractions from all over the page. So many websites, they try to grab you here and there, and everywhere. And you're with ADHD, the littlest thing can like, can pull your attention away and distract it. Yeah, I always like to, you know, there's a great Disney Pixar movie called up, and there's a dog and every time the dog sees a squirrel, because squirrel, and like I that's too often on a website, if I see something, my mind goes away, and then it's hard to get my mind back to where it needs to go to get the most out of the website or what my task at hand. Michael Hingson 36:05 So does it prevent pop ups, for example? Josh Basile 36:09 Well, I'm not I'm not sure. I don't think it prevents Papa fits in. Right? I gotta, Michael Hingson 36:17 it may be the way that the visual stuff. Yeah, Josh Basile 36:21 yeah, it creates kind of that, that perfect kind of line of sight of where to focus on and direct. I know that epilepsy profile for the pop ups in progress that is blinking or as motion. Michael Hingson 36:37 But but the point is that, that there are a number of different profiles, and it's, it doesn't necessarily deal with all disabilities within the artificial intelligence system. For example, there's not a lot for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. But the other aspects of accessiBe do address that dealing with the ability to have video captioning, and so on. So there are other things that accessiBe now does and we both have talked about the fact that it's a growth issue that accessiBe has grown to recognize and put in place the procedures to deal with that. I Josh Basile 37:19 love that they have, accessiBe now as remediation services for PDFs, they have remediation for, for video captioning, it's like, all of these different pieces of the puzzle is what it takes to make a website accessible. And they're also doing manual remediation. And going in and making necessary changes either from the beginning or later after like it's, there's there's so many different ways of making a website accessible. Obviously, the best way is to always do it right from the beginning. Yeah, and you know, I even say even having a website that was perfectly done from the beginning, but then adding the AI, the AI powered solution thing gives you that much more power and choice, and how a person with a disability or multiple disabilities can experience a website. And it's, it feels very welcoming when it's when it's done like that. Michael Hingson 38:13 So what do you do for accessiBe Since you're busy with a, with a job in a law firm, and so on, but you do work with SSP? What do you do? Josh Basile 38:22 I'm the community relations manager. So I bring in persons with disabilities, disability focused organizations, to be able to work with us on our different projects and initiatives. One of my favorites is called Access Find where we are, right now if you go to Google, and you type in a website, you have no idea if that website that comes out of the 10 websites do the search are going to be accessible, more likely than not, it's based just on statistics of 2% of Internet being accessible, it's not going to be and that's a frustrating experience of not having confidence in knowing whether or not you're going to be able to navigate that website fully. So what access find is going to do, it's only going to house accessible websites through its database. So you go you go there and you're going to be able to know that all of the search results are accessible. And we're building it out. We have over 40 family member organizations that we're working with, to make sure that we do right with and all of these organizations have a seat at the table as we're building out the beta website. So it's gonna be very exciting. But come 20 22x is fine is going to go Live for the world. And it's just I just can't wait for it to to be a resource and a service for persons with disabilities. Michael Hingson 39:49 How do you think that the world will react to access find? Josh Basile 39:53 I think I think it's gonna be one of those things that everything around web accessibility, we We need to provide education for I think X is fine in its own right, is an incredible educational tool acknowledges the fact that so much of it is inaccessible. And that, you know, the Googles of the world had an opportunity to do something to make it easier. And they never took, they never took the opportunity or they they made a business decision that, you know, it is not worth addressing this. And the fact that exists, we took the time spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars to make this this in existence, I think it's just says a lot about accessiBe as a company, that they care that they want to do something for actively about making the internet more accessible. And they wanted to create a product, by the name of with the community for the community. And that I think that's just, I think I think it's just going to be a powerful message to share with the disability community and nonprofits that access find is, is going to be a great tool for them. Michael Hingson 41:06 It will be the first time that it will truly be possible for people to expect when they're searching for something, they're searching for a website, or a company or an organization, it'll be the first time where people with disabilities can truly expect that they will be searching among companies that are inclusive or are accessible. What happens if we find one that isn't an access Find, what happens with that? Josh Basile 41:37 So are you saying a website is put on the X spine and it's not accessible, Michael Hingson 41:42 or becomes inaccessible. Josh Basile 41:45 So that's just an opportunity right there for for the community, to be able to voice and to be able to share with that website, you know, that, you know, something happened over time, that yes, maybe your website was accessible at a moment. But then over time, it became inaccessible to the point where it needs to be addressed, you know, that the the thing with with web accessibility is not something that it's like you do it once and it's forever, like web accessibility is, is is a moving a growing evolving project, where you, you, you have to, you have to have things in place to address it consistently. Because websites are consistently changing, you know, with accessories, AI powered solution, every 24 hours, it does a scan of a website, to be able to, to fix different holes and, and things that are that might be broken or that change or that are new to it and to address those things. So it's when when a website does come up on accessory that was once accessible, but then becomes inaccessible, it's an opportunity for the community to speak up. And then we can reach out to that company or that website, and let them know that they need to address it, and give them an opportunity to address it, which is we're on this journey together. We want to make the internet more accessible. That's kind of how it has to be done. Michael Hingson 43:17 How will websites be able to become a part of access find. Josh Basile 43:22 So that's still we're still figuring out all the details on that. But they're going to have to pass a particular audit test, or multiple audit tests. And those audit tests, be able to basically use the WCAG guidelines to find out if you meet accessibility guidelines. And then once that once that is so it's accessiBe or access find is 1% not going to just be accessiBe the websites, it's going to be all any and all websites that meet accessibility guidelines will be welcomed. And we're excited to have as many websites as possible. You know, if we can have all 2% of websites on the internet that meet accessibility guidelines, a part of access find that for me, that'd be a dream come true. And obviously, we want to get that 2% a lot higher in the years to come. Michael Hingson 44:20 I think he just made a very important point that needs to be emphasized, again, that this is not just to be a platform for websites that use accessiBe. There are a variety of audit systems that one can use to see how accessible their website is accessiBe has one called ACE and if you go to ace.accessibe.com you can test your website you can plug your website into that and you can you can put the web address in and you can get an audit report and have it even emailed to you it's free. There are other places Do it as well, they all do basically the same thing. They look for the accessibility features that come under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, what the World Wide Web Consortium suggests are the things that need to be an inaccessible website. But some do a better job of explaining what they discover than others, I've seen a couple that aren't very easy to read, whereas ace tends to be pretty easy to read, but they are looking for the same thing. It isn't biased in that sense. But at the same time, the websites are dynamic. And that was kind of what I was asking about that if, if a website goes up into access find, because it is found to be accessible. But then later, someone goes and tries to use that website, because they found it through access find. And it isn't accessible anymore. I gather, you're saying there's going to be a way that that they can notify someone of the lack of access, and it can be addressed. Josh Basile 46:09 There. There's absolutely there's a report feature. And we're still we're still testing out all those things within the the beta surveys we're doing with our founding members. But yes, they're they're 100% is a component of reporting when a website goes from accessible to inaccessible, or a lot of times with a count when it comes to accessibility. A person reports an accessibility issue, but it ends up becoming an issue on their end with their technology, or things of that nature, which is always interesting to be able to provide learning opportunities, both through the website or to the user of the website. Michael Hingson 46:48 You Yeah, I have I've found instances where people say that accessiBe or other systems that make websites accessible aren't working, when in reality, it isn't the the accessibility aspect of it. It's the way they're using it this user error or user problems or user something. And and it is important to recognize that there terror are ways for the system to break down at both ends. If someone wants to explore getting their website into access find, how do they do that? Josh Basile 47:25 So on access find, even if you go there, right now, there's a way to list your website, there's an absent Michael Hingson 47:33 what's the web address for access find, Josh Basile 47:35 accessfind.com Michael Hingson 47:37 Okay, Josh Basile 47:38 and then you go there. And there's, you can kind of learn more about what access finds about, there's a promotional video. But then there's also a way to join as a founding member, but also add to list your website. So we're actually getting those every every single day, Sara charge for that. Zero charge, it's completely free. Access find, is not going to be like Google or Yahoo, there'll be zero advertisements, it's just all about making an easier search and more confidence search for users with disabilities to access accessible and usable websites. Michael Hingson 48:18 It's going to be pretty exciting. And I'm really anxious to see it go live and to see people start to use it. And, and it'll be a lot of fun. And it's been it's been a long time coming. And so it will be great to have a way to do web searches and have pretty good confidence that you're looking at websites that are accessible. You and I know full? Well. I'm sure a lot of our listeners don't how much of a challenge it is to go deal with websites, especially when you find in accessibility. I had a survey that was sent to me by our health provider two weeks ago and and I've seen this happen many times. So the survey they wanted to know my perceptions of things regarding Kaiser at least I assume that's what the survey wanted. And I the reason I say it's, I assume is because it started out by saying Did you feel positive about Kaiser, I think it was or negative. And I clicked positive. And then it took me to a web page. So that was in the email. So it took me to a webpage. And the first thing on the webpage was I had to accept the terms and conditions or click on some something and that something wasn't a link. It was in no way labeled. There was no way to click on it with my keyboard or any of the features that I had. And I couldn't go any further with the survey. And I see that all the time. It's frustrating. Yeah, and and it is so unnecessary because it would be so easy to address. And I mentioned it because I did send an email back to the survey people. And I've heard nothing. That's why I keep asking about how we get more into the conversation, because the reality is that to make websites usable for all of us is not that complicated to do today. Josh Basile 50:26 It isn't, but it's one of those things, we, we have to do educational awareness campaigns, not only for persons with disabilities, but for small businesses to let them know that this is an option. It's an it's a, it's a it's an option that can allow them to, to get and better serve all all of their visitors. And it's that excites me. I know, I know, where we we've got a lot to do around education around awareness. And I mean, this conversation today is one of those things that, you know, it's got to start somewhere. Michael Hingson 51:06 It does in and it has to continue, and I think it will, it's a matter of continuing the conversation and becoming visible. And and we will continue to do that. Look, do you have any? I'm sorry. Josh Basile 51:21 I very much look forward to doing it with you, Michael? Michael Hingson 51:25 Well, I as well, I think we're we are making a difference. And we're going to continue to do that. Do you have a way of people want to reach out to you and ask you questions about access find or anything like that, that they can do that? Josh Basile 51:38 Yeah, the you can email me at Josh. Dot basil. That's B as in boy, A S as in Sam, I l e@gmail.com. That's my email address. Feel free to message me. Michael Hingson 51:57 Great. Well, I want to thank you again for being here. And I want you to come back as as often as you want. When you have things you want to talk about, let me know. Because that's the only way we're going to have the conversation continue. And we're going to make it happen. accessiBe has this goal still of making the internet fully accessible by 2025. That's a pretty ambitious goal, but we have a few years yet to go. So if we do it by the end of 2025, we got four years in a month. So let's see what we can do. But we have to start somewhere, as you said, Josh Basile 52:37 Mike, what's always a pleasure. Everything that you do and the hard work you do and it's just it's It's fun being on this journey with you. Michael Hingson 52:48 And it's got to be fun. Otherwise, why do it? You know, life's an adventure. And so it is it's a lot of fun, Josh Basile 52:55 fun and meaningful is what it's all about. Michael Hingson 52:57 Indeed. Absolutely. Well, Josh, thank you for being with us on unstoppable mindset. And, again, for anyone listening, we hope that you'll go to the website MichaelHingson.com/podcast M I C H A E L H I N G S O N .com/podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast. You can do it through any podcast hosts that you normally go to. And wherever you found this podcast, we hope that you will at least give us a five star rating. And reach out to us and let us know if there's anything that you're interested in. In hearing or knowing more about or any comments that you have about our podcast today. You can reach out to me, Michael H I M I C H A E L H I at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com. I will respond to emails. So we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear your thoughts. If you know anyone who should be a guest on our show, please let us know. Let them know have them reach out. And we hope that you'll join us in future episodes of unstoppable mindset Michael Hingson 54:16 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Daniel Weitzner is Founding Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, Principal Research Scientist at CSAIL, and teaches Internet public policy in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Weitzner's research pioneered the development of Accountable Systems to enable computational treatment of legal rules.  Weitzner was United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House, where he led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, copyright, and digital trade policies promoting the free flow of information. He was responsible for the Obama Administration's Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles. Weitzner has been a leader in Internet public policy from its inception, making fundamental contributions to the successful fight for strong online free expression protection in the United States Supreme Court, and for laws that control government surveillance of email and web browsing data. Weitzner has a law degree from Buffalo Law School, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Swarthmore College. His writings have appeared in Science magazine, the Yale Law Review, Communications of the ACM, the Washington Post, Wired Magazine and Social Research.  Weitzner is a founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, led the World Wide Web Consortium's public policy activities, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

More often than not when we think of web accessibility we think of the challenges blind people face with inaccessible websites. In fact, the lack of web accessibility encompasses all disabilities.   Our episode this week is the second part of a webinar series I conducted for accessiBe.  This week we will present The Accessibility Gap part two. You will meet Josh Basile, a C4-5 quadriplegic, who will discuss the challenges he has with the internet. Josh will show you from his vantage point why businesses and companies should make internet accessibility an important part of their presence on the web. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About our Guest: Meet Josh Basile a C4-5 quadriplegic, power wheelchair user, disability rights advocate and lawyer. In 2004, at the age of 18, Josh was paralyzed below the shoulders in a beach accident. Soon after he formed a 501(c)3 to empower newly injured families through SPINALpedia.com and its 21,000 paralysis-related videos. As a medical malpractice lawyer and disabilities rights advocate, Josh serves persons with disabilities both in the courtroom and through policy initiatives. As a community leader and change-maker, Josh works tirelessly to improve the quality of life the persons with disabilities and to continuously break down existing barriers to access and inclusion. To improve web accessibility and usability, Josh joined accessiBe and that accessFind initiative as the Community Relations Manager. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:20 A pleasant Good afternoon to everyone wherever you may be. I'm Michael Hingson. I and I am here hosting the webinar series we call the Accessibility Gap in CO hosting and with me today is Josh Basile. If I could talk straight, I'd be in good shape. Josh, welcome. Josh Basile 01:38 Thank you, Michael. It's great to be here. today. Michael Hingson 01:42 We're excited about this series of webinars because it talks about something that most everyone isn't addressing. And that is this concept of the accessibility gap. Last month, we did one, our first in the series with Curtis Chung, who is a well known assistive technology expert, a longtime consumer advocate. And we talked about the nature of the gap. And basically what we discussed last month was that there is a very significant gap between on the Internet, what exists, and the number of people with disabilities who can access what exists. And that gap grows wider every day, as more and more websites are created that are inaccessible to those of us who happen to have a disability. The world, the industry, and most all of us are not doing anything to bridge that gap. And we thought that today, one of the main ideas that we can talk about and one of the main objectives we have is to make you aware that it crosses disability lines, it isn't just blind people, although we tend to be pretty visible at dealing with the accessibility gap because of the fact that we don't get a lot of access to content for a variety of reasons. But no one thinks about the fact that it goes further than that, and that it isn't just blind people. So Josh happens to be a quadriplegic uses a wheelchair. And I've mentioned last month my wife has a paraplegic who uses the chair, but she doesn't have a lot of the issues that say Josh does, and Josh will talk about that. For my part, I have been blind my entire life. I have been using the internet, since it's been around I have found some websites that work pretty well have found a lot of websites that are not very accessible and don't work pretty well. And more recently, even finding that some of the websites that I can access, when people actually do the work of remediation of those websites. That is they work to make them accessible. A lot of content becomes visible and usable for me that I've never been able to access in use before. And I'm sure that Josh also has lots of stories about that. So Josh, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit. I think some of the people here know my story more than yours. So why don't you go ahead and tell us about you. Josh Basile 04:14 Thanks, Michael. So, hi. Hello, everyone. I'm Josh basil. So just let you know about my journey. I grew up in Maryland, and was an avid tennis player and loved all sports. And after my freshman year of college, this is back in 2004. I was on a family vacation at the beach and a wave picked me up, threw me over my boogie board and slammed me on my head that day I shattered my neck. I was facedown in the water unable to turn over. And luckily my friends saw me floating and they pulled me onto the sand and that was the start of being a sea for fact quadriplegic. I'm paralyzed below the shoulders. So I use a mouth control to operate my computer, I do have enough movement in my hand, that I'm able to operate my joystick, I can't even lift my hand off my joystick. But that's my level of injury. But I never let my spinal cord injury or my unique abilities stop me from moving forward and continuing to wheel after my dreams, I ended up going to community college after my injury, then went to undergrad, and then went to law school and graduated magna cum laude without ever flipping a page with my fingers. Technology's pretty amazing. And I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today is how technology is advancing in beautiful ways to bridge the accessibility gap. I have a nonprofit called determined to heal. And we help simplify the transition for newly injured families through information, videos, through adventures. We just try to live with an adventurous spirit, adventurous wheels and, you know, keep moving forward. There's no point to really reinvent the wheel. others in the community can show you what's been done before you and give you ideas on how to customize your journey forward. Mike, thank you for letting me have an opportunity to speak. Michael Hingson 06:11 Well, Josh, let me start by asking you a question. Because I'd like to really hear it from your perspective. What, what do you feel is the accessibility gap? How would you break it down? If you're dealing with it in terms of all of us? Josh Basile 06:26 I think the simplest way to think of the accessibility gap is we have accessible websites, and we have inaccessible websites that exist. And the gap is what's that divide? What how is it growing? Is it is the gap coming closer together? Are you getting to put more inaccessible websites, or they're getting to be more accessible websites at any given moment. And unfortunately, the gap is growing in the opposite direction, every single day, every single second, there's more inaccessible websites being launched than accessible ones. And it's just it's not the direction we should be moving in. It's unfortunate, but so much of it is because so much of the content management systems that exist out there, make it so darn easy to build websites no longer with manual coders that know how to build it right from the beginning. And right now it's just anybody can go and plug in and pull over and build a website with a click of a button and not actually put in the accessible elements needed for people to explore, understand what's in front of them, and be able to really, truly experience a webpage as any person without disabilities experiencing it. Michael Hingson 07:43 Let me add to that the gap is not only in the actual fact that websites are inaccessible in the number and the in to some degree, the percentage of websites that are inaccessible is growing. But we have another gap, which is really what leads to the title of today's webinar, which is different disabilities, same goal. The fact is that while people are making their websites and as Josh said is becoming easier and easier to do, what we're not seeing is any major effort on any level, to make business owners who make websites more aware of the need for accessibility. And we're not seeing those who really should be involved in addressing the issue. We're not seeing them increase awareness. Programmers aren't learning about access. The schools aren't training coders and programmers about access the content management systems that Web site creation systems, especially the ones that make it easy, like a WordPress or site builder and any number of other systems that are out there. They're not mandating access, and they're not incorporating access right from the outset. And the reason is because of the real gap that exists, the awareness gap. There's not much of anything being done to address this whole concept of awareness. And that is what we really need to do. I don't think, and I'm sure Josh, you would agree. And I want to hear you and what you say about it, but I don't think that anybody really Mullah is malicious and they're ignoring making websites accessible. They just don't know Don't you think? Josh Basile 09:44 Yes and no, I think there's many different sides of the coin of why people don't make their websites accessible. One is definitely an awareness issue. before my injury, I really didn't know anybody with a significant disability. And you know, my injury gave me a new perspective, a new way of experiencing the world, for me a new way of seeing the world, in so many different things that I never knew, or was concerned about. But a lot of the times, it's, you know, as you're building a website, so much of the business world look at it, like, it's, it cost me, you know, $100 $200 to build a website, and to make it accessible, it might cost me 10 times that amount, or even more, and then they make decisions on money, which, you know, in respects, it's, if it could be done right from the beginning, you wouldn't have that issue. Or if you rely on other types of solutions, that you can get it done in a much more financially feasible manner. But I think so much of it, like you said, is basically not knowing, not being aware. But I think there's definitely a lot of different factors that contribute to why the internet is not accessible. Michael Hingson 10:57 But I think that the majority of people if they understood, things like 20%, of all people are one out of every five persons in the world has a disability. And most of them can't utilize the web, the way the other four out of five can. If people who are creating websites understood that one out of five people aren't able to take advantage of their websites and thus do business with them. They would be even if it's just a financial motivation, want to make websites accessible, but it still goes back to that level of awareness that they don't know that and they don't know about accessibility, most people don't. And unless they have direct interaction, they probably won't. Until the time comes, that disabilities truly become a topic that we're as a society willing to discuss and bring to the forefront. In the past several years, we've certainly heard a lot about diversity with issues regarding women like women in Hollywood, we saw a lot of that dealing with the Oscars last Sunday, or different races and so on, and how all of that is changing. And that landscape is changing. But the landscape for persons with disabilities still is not because the mainstream of society has yet to decide to make its mindset inclusive, that to bring all of us in for whatever reason, it still is that way. And I think that's something that that we need to deal with. And hopefully things like this webinar will help raise some awareness and find that more people will become aware, because I do think that mostly people, if they understand want to do the right thing. The other part about it, Josh, is, as you said, it needs to be inexpensive, and it needs to be easy to make happen. And the reality is that there are a lot of people who have found some pretty easy solutions that have made their websites accessible, they feel that it has no one has objected to the websites, since they've put technology into play that makes their website accessible. So they're happy. And they're able to go on and do their business. And of course, that works until something doesn't like the the website server goes offline or something like that, then they don't have a website, or it can be that somebody says, you know, I tried to do something on your website, and I couldn't make it work. Can you help me with that, or they people will speak up and say, we have an issue. And then when that happens, the good website owners will address the issue. And hopefully that they have resources to make that happen. Josh Basile 13:52 When it's about the fact that businesses just are not are not tapping into the disability community. If you have one out of five different potential customers that could potentially benefit and purchase or access the information on your website. Why wouldn't you want to reach that audience that we're talking about billions of dollars of untapped customers that because a website's not accessible, that they can't fully reach that audience. And even studies have been done over the years that the disability community is the most brand loyal community in the population in the entire world. Once we are treated properly and cared for and acknowledged, we go back and back as repeat customers, to these businesses. And it's not only just us, it's our family members. It's our friends, because we speak about it. We talk about Yeah, we went to that place and treated as well. And we go back and again, we invite people there we let them know. We love being mentors to other community members. Michael Hingson 14:59 So tell them So tell me, why is there such strong brand loyalty when that happens, Josh Basile 15:05 because if you look, you know, there's 350 million websites in the United States, or that's tapped in with with within the United States. But yet, less than 2% of those websites are accessible. So just thinking about just businesses in general, when you only have a select few of businesses that truly speak and serve our community, you remember those, and you go back to those, because that's where you're going to get the best experience, you're going to get an experience with less struggles, less frustration, it's just going to be easier. And that's what customers want. And that's what persons with disabilities want. That's what anybody wants. Michael Hingson 15:51 One of the one of the strongest messages that any good salesperson learns is when you establish a rapport with your prospects and with your customers, when you get them to feel like you're speaking to them, not pressuring them, not just trying to, as a lot of people would say, buy used car salesman, sell them, but you're speaking to them, you are concerned about them, they're going to pay attention to you. There's so many examples of that if you deal with people in real estate, the good real estate agents will tell you that, although we may have sold someone a house, the fact is that if we keep in touch with those people, if we know what's going on in their lives, even though they're not going to buy from us for a while because they're not moving. They'll refer other people to us. And when they do need to move, they will remember us and they will come back to us. And and the reality is that works when you have that genuine concern. And the the 2% of websites that are accessible, are transmitting a message, we care, we are working to make ourselves available and accessible to you, whoever you are. And the result is we're going to be brand loyal. And we are brand loyal to those people that really touch us and talk to us. And that is I think one of the most important things that we as people discussing this today and people who create websites, and more important the people who are going to be involved. And the companies that are going to be involved in fixing websites, the most important thing they can know is it really is about the consumer, much more than the business. Because you may get a business as a customer. But ultimately, it's about getting the consumer, the users of those websites to both the accessibility that has been created. And then obviously, the products that you want. My favorite example that I came up with just on the spur of the moment, once a couple of weeks ago is that you can have websites that people work on and do things with and supposedly make accessible. But if consumers have a problem with it, it's like cat food. If you are a company that manufactures cat food, and you sell it to your customers, that's really great. But it only works until the cat tastes it. And if the cat doesn't like the taste of it, and if that tends to be a general consensus, you've got a problem somewhere until you please the cats, nothing's going to work. You know what I'm saying? Josh Basile 18:47 Absolutely. So I think so much of having an accessible website, just talks to like, like you said about caring, about respecting about just inviting someone to have a seat at the table, or to really open the door enough to let somebody in, that might be peeking in, because it's not fully accessible. And, you know, in order to truly experience a website, you need to experience all four corners of it, you need to experience all the pages, if you can see the product, you can read about the product, but you can't check out and purchase the product. You know, that's just half of the picture. That's half the half of the puzzle. And you know, that's the trouble of some websites. You know, you just can't navigate the full thing without you know, calling in a family member or friend to help you get across and to tell you the truth. Not everybody has those people next to them to help them at any given moment. So it's making the website accessible is just so important. And right now as the accessibility gap is going in the opposite direction. It's something that we need to do. And like right now we're talking about the issues which is the first stage of have an understanding that there is a major problem. And then it allows us to figure out solutions on what we can do to bridge that gap, and how we can work together as a united front to bridge that gap. And I'd love to talk a little bit about how we've done this well in the past, and how we haven't done it well in the past, within the disability community. Michael Hingson 20:23 Sure, but before we do, can you maybe give us a couple of stories of your own experiences, or what you've what you've experienced or seen about people who've had real accessibility gap problems in your community, and then I'll tell a couple also, well, Josh Basile 20:40 so too often, the way that I've seen this, experienced it, and just witnessed it from the history lessons of diving deeper into the wall into kind of the past, is that the disability community, as always, or for the most part, in an afterthought, products are rushed to market industries are created. And the disability community is not thought of until years later, when we basically, let's say, with with build, building a building, like before the ADEA was existed, buildings were built, and you know, if they were built accessible is one thing. If not, you know, later on, they would create a ramp to let somebody in. And probably the best industry right now that you look at it in recent years, is the ride sharing industry, the Ubers, and the lifts of the world, they basically came onto the market, crushed the taxi industry, which had regulations on accessibility, and then basically came into this new ride sharing world and had zero accessible vehicles out there for persons with disabilities. And it made it so hard to, to get picked up if you run a power if you're in a manual wheelchair, and really almost impossible if you're in a power wheelchair. And now, as years go on, enough persons in the disability community have spoken loud enough, and enough things have been getting into the media. And now these companies are starting to say, you know, we want to help this customer base now that we're being forced to. And, you know, we don't want to force businesses to do the right thing. But at the same time, it's the way it's been done over the years. And it's unfortunate. And as the accessibility gap becomes wider and wider, it's just, we need to keep the conversation going to let businesses know that they need to do this. Michael Hingson 22:37 Yeah, that's a good point. And continuing with the rideshare example. I was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit a few years ago against Uber. Because Uber wasn't dealing at all with the issue of blind people with guide dogs traveling in Uber vehicles. Drivers would show up, discover it with a blind person with a guide dog and drive off. And we didn't even know that they were driving off or if we did no, because they said I'm not taking you because you have a dog and I'm not putting any dogs in my car. And they would drive off Uber's response was even at the beginning of the litigation. Well, we don't have any responsibility in that because all we're doing is matching drivers and passengers. So we're not involved in that, well, yes, they are their contract employees, the Uber drivers, we're not letting blind people in with guide dogs and the Americans with Disabilities Act specifically addressed that kind of a concept. So what took a lawsuit, and even now with the lawsuit that was finally settled, there are countless cases of drivers with Uber and and some with Lyft as well, that continue to not accept blind people, even though especially with Lyft, there's been a fair amount of training. I just read a situation last week where a woman after the lawsuit had over eight to 18 or 20 different examples of where Uber drivers would refuse to take her would send the information to Uber didn't get very many positive results, filed a case it went to arbitration and she got over a million dollars because Uber wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. So there's still a lot of resistance in the industry saying you're not going to force us to do something that we don't want to do. And the reality is that shouldn't have to be that way because there's no magic about a blind person and a guy dog that is well behaved going on any or in any Uber vehicle. You know, and that is just as true with the internet and my my example that comes to mind is when target refuse to deal with the internet and making their web site accessible for blind people back in the early 2000s. And it took a lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind, and an $8 million settlement to get target to finally address the issue. It wouldn't have cost anywhere near that for target just to go off and make the website accessible, but they weren't going to be forced. And that's unfortunate, because they were missing up to one out of five persons in the United States or in the world, their worldwide, being able to use the website. And I don't know whether Target has addressed the issue for all disabilities. And I think that's a very relevant point for us to deal with. Your website isn't accessible unless it's really dealing with all disabilities. It isn't just being blind, it isn't just dealing with what a person in a chair a quadriplegic has to deal with, take a person with epilepsy, and they go to your website and start to see a lot of different blinking elements on the site that can invoke seizures, it's just as pertinent even persons who are deaf or hard of hearing, oftentimes without having good captioning. And without videos being captioned, can be a problem for blind people, those same videos, without audio descriptions of the videos, that can be a problem. There's a lot to accessibility. And it is something that we all do need to address. Josh Basile 26:32 Well, it's the unique functionality that you're saying, of almost, you know, for each person with a disability, we're experiencing a website differently based on our unique abilities. I find it amazing that, you know, we have AI solutions now, that can create profiles, based on your functionality where you go to a website, where if you have epilepsy, you can click a button, and it can turn off, you know, gifts and other types of blinking lights. Or if you have a cognitive disability, it can make that information that's on the page easier to absorb. Or if you have a quadriplegic, you can use keyboard navigation, to be able to get through all the dropdowns and get through all the different parts of the page. And for the blind community. It has so many different integrations with jaws, and screen readers and other things of the sort. The biggest thing that, you know, we have the ability now through technology to have a united front on how we can come together to make websites accessible. Too often, if you look in the history, and just I see it, I live outside Washington, DC. And when I go to Capitol Hill to advocate, it's always every unique disability group advocating for themselves and having a fight with legislators, please help us. But what too often doesn't happen is that we have a united front of all disability groups coming together for you know, a mission to make a particular thing accessible. And I think that's what we need to change with the internet like we are going in the wrong direction when it comes to the widening gap. And the only way to bridge it is if we all come together, persons with disabilities, unique populations of persons with disabilities, persons without disabilities, people that are manual coders, people that are in the artificial intelligence world, the more and more people we come together in the business community, we all unite under a common mission to make the internet more accessible. And we can do beautiful things together if we do that. But the trouble is, how do we get messages like we have in today's webinar out to the world to start a movement to get people involved to get people to have a call to action. And I hope we're starting that right now. And I know other people chimed in about this in the past, but we just got to keep having this conversation. Michael Hingson 28:55 And you know, it is true that people with different disabilities do have in some senses different needs. And there's relevance in advocating for specific needs. But there are also areas of commonality. And it would be very difficult to imagine that the reality of making the internet accessible for you, is really different than making it accessible. For me. It's all about access. It's something that we all should work on together. And we need to get more business owners and more of the companies that are involved in making the internet accessible to work together. There's not just one way to make the Internet accessible there. There are some who say that there are some who say the only way to do it is you got to code it. You got to do it right. By hand. There are those who say the only way you're truly going to make it happen is if you start with accessibility right from the outset. Well that's definitely true. That is, if everything were such that you could not create or publish an internet website and content without ensuring its accessibility because the technology demanded it, then a lot of things would go away and there would be access. But the reality is, that's not working for us. So the ideal is a wonderful thing. But it is an ideal, and it isn't something that anyone is going to make happen in the near future. So you do have a lot of different other kinds of alternatives and aspects that need to be addressed. So that the fact is that whether it's being done through artificial intelligence, or whether it's being done through manual coding, the goal is the same, the results will be the same. And the deed, certainly that is the need to make websites accessible, is the same. And the reaction, the reality is that should all be a unified front, you know, we'll see, maybe things like the World Wide Web Consortium will recognize that and that is, of course, where a lot of the standards come from. And I guess it's relevant that we talk about standards just a little tiny bit. That is to say, there are standards, there are guidelines, well, not so much standards today as guidelines that say this is what you need to do to have a website be accessible. And those generally rely on putting in codes, and in doing the website accessibility remediation through a coding process. But that doesn't work. Because it's a one by one kind of a solution. That is you got to do it to each website. Well, now we're finding that some companies, and I will mention accessiBe is the one that I know, of course, I'm a little bit I won't say bias, but oriented toward accessiBe because I've seen it. But the fact is, artificial intelligence is a solution that will help make websites accessible, it's doing it. And that makes perfect sense. Because artificial intelligence is all around us in the world, whether we happen to have an echo from Amazon of Google Home, whether we have technologies that that use other ways of interacting with the internet, we have Netflix and other websites that use artificial intelligence to talk about our shopping habits. For heaven's sakes, Apple just updated their iPhone iOS software, because Apple felt that there were too many websites or companies that were invading the privacy of users and looking at what they do, and using that to customize advertising. That's AI, right. So it is all around us. But we all could work together. And we all could resolve and solve pretty quickly this accessibility gap, don't you think? Josh Basile 32:50 working together is basically everything you said is we have to have many different pieces of the puzzle. In order to do this, we can't just have one piece of the puzzle and expect the whole picture to come out. But with that being said, I'm a big believer, you know, my my world as a quadriplegic, it was 20 3040 years ago, the difference in my life is has always been technology, technology changes everything, for someone that is paralyzed below the shoulders. And when it comes to the internet, I think we're getting to a point where, because of artificial intelligence solutions, we now have scalable ways of really attacking the accessibility gap in ways that never existed before. And it's only gonna get better as we invest more time, resources and energy, like you said, into artificial intelligence, machine learning, all these other components that where we can break down those accessibility barriers, with either just embedding a specific piece of code that ends up going over the website, behind the scenes with computer software, like the manual coding, yes, if you can do it right from the beginning with manual coding, that is an awesome option. But the second that you update that website, you have to go back and make sure that it's accessible again, because if you don't have that accessibility element and for updated information, you know, you're closing the door slowly and slowly on that website when it comes to accessibility. Michael Hingson 34:21 And that's part of the the challenge that a lot of businesses have is that the only way to do that if you're coding is you've got to keep someone on retainer. And if we use the last year as an example, the pandemic has made that all the more difficult because the money just isn't there to do that. But even in a non pandemic time for smaller businesses that that want to create accessibility if you have to keep someone retained. That's going to significantly eat into your profits. Should you do it. You got to find a way to keep the website accessible but remember part of the justification Is that you're going to have a lot more potential traffic going to your site. And if you start to tell people, hey, my websites accessible, come and see me. People who come and discover that will, because of that Nielsen study that we talked about earlier, will be brand loyal, I can tell you from personal experience, that's always going to be the case. And I've been in sales and marketing, since, well, literally since 1976. But even before then, I've been in sales my entire life, because as a blind person, I've had to sell just to convince people to let me take my diet guide dog somewhere, long before the ADEA, I've had to sell in so many ways, all of us have Josh, you've had to sell to convince people and as a lawyer, you're always selling. And I don't mean that in a negative way you are arguing a case is a sales presentation in a broad sense. Josh Basile 35:53 For me, it's always advocacy, ever since my injury. So when I was first injured, I was on a ventilator for five weeks, and wasn't able to speak a word, I was only able to blink with my eyes to communicate with my family. And ever since that day that I got my voice back. I promised myself I would never be silenced again. So I've exercised my vocal muscles, my my vocal, my advocacy with my mind to make sure that every word counts. And so much of what we're doing right now is figuring out how can we advocate for a more accessible internet. And we, because we live it, because we speak disability, we understand what we need to do to make this possible. And we need to do it together, we need to have actual solutions that are scalable, and we need to attack the 315 million websites that exist right now to make them accessible is not going to be an easy feat. But the if we don't do something about it, it's just going to get wider and wider. And that scares me. Michael Hingson 36:56 And it's 350 million, by the way and growing. And that's of course, the issue. I am on some email lists, I've got a cut down on the number of unsolicited emails I get. But I'm seeing a number that talk about how Amazon is changing the way it operates. And so join this webinar to learn how you can set up a sales system with Amazon and sell products on Amazon, even if you don't have your own or how you can set up a system to do this or that or whatever. All of those are websites. And all of those websites come without any specific process of making them accessible. So Shopify is a major marketing system that's out there, and you can get a website set up on Shopify, but the basic Shopify system doesn't, in of itself, create real accessibility, a website might be usable, because the words are there, although we may or may not be able to see the pictures. One of the interesting things about Shopify, having looked at it from the the viewpoint of accessibility is that there is someone who has put something up that says that if you have a Shopify website, here's how you can put accessibility on it. Whether it's accessiBe, or something else, the bottom line is, we mostly aren't paying attention to it still. And that's the gap and it's going to continue to grow. Josh Basile 38:27 Well, I think that this year alone with the pandemic, just shows how much we we rely on the internet to access the world. We've all been stuck in our homes for so long. Can you imagine, you go to persons with disabilities, let's say you know, everybody that's that doesn't have a disability. And you gave them the problems that we faced with internet accessibility. There would be outrage, people would not people would be so mad that they couldn't access the world. And the fact is that, you know, we've had to live this year with a lot of this and accessibility and it's getting wider. It's I think the pandemic is one of those moments in time that it's going to push persons with disabilities to realize that if we don't do something now, we're gonna I want to say too late, because I think as technology advances, more and more breakthroughs can happen. But we this is the time to do something about it. Michael Hingson 39:24 Research In Motion was the company that invented the Blackberry, and I know how familiar you are with the Blackberry. But there was one night when their servers dropped. And people went 12 hours without being able to use their blackberries. And I heard and read reports about how people panicked they couldn't get anything done. And it was a night by the way here in the US. Some people committed suicide over it. A lot of people were very stressed because their access to the world as they viewed it was gone. and it can happen in so many ways. For us, the access is gone a lot most of the time. And what we're saying is, let us be part of the solution. Let us be invited to the party, and let us have access. We want to help you make it happen. We're not trying to abuse anyone. But no one should resist the concept of trying to bridge the gap. Josh Basile 40:31 Absolutely. And so right now, we were about 45 minutes, and I was just looking at, and I would love for our participants, the people at our party, our webinar party to ask any questions, so we can keep these conversations going. So please go to the chat. And let us know your questions. And we can Moderator 40:50 So guys, we already have a few questions. We can definitely attend. Michael Hingson 40:54 Let me just before you start, we started about three minutes late. So we'll go until well, I'm on the West Coast, and Josh is on the east coast. So we'll go to 103 or 403. Or we're Gil is it's later than that. Go ahead, Gil. Moderator 41:10 Yeah, it will start and thank you. Michael Hingson 41:11 Thank you for being here. Gillen, for staying awake for us. For sure. For Moderator 41:15 sure. As Michael, it's my pleasure. So we'll start and say that because there were a few people were asking if we're gonna publish this or oracare archive these recording. So we'll definitely be using social assets. Yeah. So the first question we got from the audience, is there a cookbook that define the necessary accessible elements for a variety of cryptic, categorial disabilities? Michael Hingson 41:42 There is, and Josh can add to it. But again, the World Wide Web Consortium has created guidelines and things that it says needs to be involved in an accessible website. I want to, though say that those standards don't guarantee accessibility. That is to say accessibility goes beyond whatever guidelines that are created to talk about how to code a website, how artificial intelligence can make a website accessible. The fact is a website is accessible if ultimately, it is fully functional and usable. And so one of the examples I would give is, I have a website and I think I gave this example last time, but it's worth repeating. My website was updated earlier, well, late last year now, actually, in August or September. And when it was updated, it was done by a person who I discovered didn't really have a lot of expertise in accessibility. But he updated it and there were images on the website. There were other things on the website. And one of the specifics on the website was pictures of me and my guide, dog, Roselle, who you can for those of you who can see it, Roselle is behind me over my right shoulder. Roselle and I were in the World Trade Center on September 11. And we escaped I was the Mid Atlantic region's sales manager at the time for a company and artificial intelligence when we brought accessiBe onboard. Artificial Intelligence interpreted that image as man in black suit hugging yellow Labrador retriever, which is correct. That's exactly right. But that's not really saying what that image is showing that I would want people to know, what I want people to know is Michael Hanson, hugging Roselle. And, you know, the process will continue to improve. But the standards would have said, if the all tags were put in the image was described, even though it's not what I would want it to be. So there are standards and Josh, if you want to talk about that, but I'm just saying it does go beyond the standard as well. Josh Basile 44:00 So I think you answered that very well, Michael. Moderator 44:04 Great. So Michael, we talked about you took you talked about the person who will create your website and this, this is a great, so we're for the next question. Who do you think should be responsible of the accessibility of the website? Is it the website owner or the person or the agencies that creating the website? And how can you? How can you know if your website is accessible or not? Josh Basile 44:29 In my opinion, I firmly believe we all need to be accountable. If you're a website owner, if you run an organization, if you run a business, you need to understand all of your consumers and you need to serve all of your consumers. So just because so at any given moment, you're always thinking about all these different demographics that you're serving. And if you end up forgetting one of those demographics, you're losing out and and I think the response to ability has to be on those that can be held accountable with the decision makers. And you know, as a decision maker, you need to take the extra time to dive deeper into making sure that your business is reaching the max number of people. And so that's my opinion to that go. Michael Hingson 45:20 Yeah, I think, ultimately speaking, if you're going to do and ultimately speaking, it would be the website owner, that is they're responsible for their website. And they should be obligated to make sure that their website is accessible. So I think in one sense, they're responsible. But I am also with Josh, we're all part of the solution. So when we discover websites, we should contact the owner. And I'm going to comment on that statement in just a second. But we should contact the owner and say, you know, your website is not accessible. The reality is a lot of us who have disabilities who are in the disabled community of persons with disabilities, we know enough to suggest places to go or what you need to do, we can introduce website owners, and I think that they should be responsible for, for making the website accessible, but we can help with that. Josh Basile 46:23 A good point there, Michael, it's, you know, it's not just the accountability of the website owner, but us as a community to have that conversation to let them know when it's not, because it's just not I was on a friend's website the other day, and I saw a few broken videos, you know, until he or she knew that those videos were broken, it was gonna go undiscovered control, that owner stumbled upon it themselves. So I think having that discussion about accessibility, you know, brings accessibility to light, and people start making it a point to do it. Michael Hingson 46:56 I absolutely agree. And I think that the companies that are involved in website access, need to and making websites accessible, need to be part of the solution, in a general way, and certainly, different companies are going to promote their products. But I think they should also provide people with just general conceptual articles, general conversations, discussions about accessibility. And, yes, we all promote our own products. But you know, there are a lot of colleges and universities in the United States, for example, and in most countries, and we compete for students, in our colleges and universities. But what we don't see is by and large colleges and universities saying, Well, anybody that goes to this kind of school is really going to a scumbag organization. Maybe they do it, and I haven't seen it. But the reality is that colleges and universities promote their programs, but they generally tend to do it in a positive way. And they don't deny the fact that if somebody goes to another school unless it truly demonstrates that it's not a good school for all sorts of reasons that we don't need to go into here. But unless they demonstrate that, then the fact is, we all need a college education. And the first thing colleges and universities will tell you is you need a college education, which is of course what they're promoting. And they'll say even if you don't go to to Harvard, but you go to the University of Southern California, that's good school. And so sorry, we didn't get you. We think that we're better but you went there, you're still getting a college education. And that's important. Moderator 48:43 Moving forward to the thank you so much for that. Moving forward to the next question. Can you provide some examples of website in the 2%? weren't doing this? Well? Michael Hingson 48:56 Gil, or Josh, do you want to or? Josh Basile 48:59 I think, yeah, I'd like to see how Okay, Michael Hingson 49:02 okay. I'm going to just send people to the access of the website because there are a list of sites that they use, or that they have remediated, and you can go there and see them. I'll name a few Oreo calm, which is the company that makes Oreos Energizer the battery company. I learned last week that the Los Angeles Lakers store Lakers store.com is accessible. You can go to any of the consumer organizations like the National Federation of the Blind. They have they have not used accessiBe but they have made their website accessible to a good degree, although there's more work that can be done to do that. There are a number of sites that are out there. By the way, if you want to know and I think you've asked this skill if you want to know if a website's accessible. You can go to accessiBe.com www.accessibe.com, where you will also see something mentioned called A C E. ACE is a free website audit tool, and there are a number of them out there. But ACE is a free website audit tool that you can use in will ask you to type in a web site name. And then it will audit that site and tell you based on the World Wide Web Consortium guidelines, the web Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and so on, it will tell you how accessible that site is. And so that's another place to go to look at whether a website is accessible or not. But ultimately speaking, what you can do is to go visit a website and see how usable it is. And how usable it is needs to include. If you're blind, for example, the things that you don't see, and they and even though you don't know about them, that's where programs like Ace can help. And you can learn about them. There are so many examples of people who thought their websites were accessible and didn't do anything. But as I said, they don't do menus, they don't do image descriptions. And they don't do other things that give us the information that we need to have. Josh Basile 51:18 With that in mind. It's a question from James that the vast majority of 350 million websites are small businesses or smaller, what tools can those small businesses and nonprofits use and survive the costs? So I know, first of all, you know what I'm going to say. The small business purposes, yeah, accessiBe provides the services at a much much lower rate than manual coding. thing I love about the nonprofit of that is that accessiBe, as we said that they are going to provide the accessory services 100% free for nonprofits. So for like my nonprofit, I was able to get it up and running for free, and which I'm now loving so much. So all in all profits, it's just sharing that with your communities that this exists for them is an incredible, I'm making it accessible. Michael Hingson 52:10 I'm on the board of a nonprofit that added accessiBe independent of me to their website about a month ago, accessiBe has also said that if anyone knows, or is involved with a COVID-19 site, especially vaccination websites, and so on, that accessiBe will provide its product free of charge to any COVID-19 site. And Kaiser Health News, or Kaiser Health Net, did a survey a couple of months ago, they surveyed 94 websites that were related to COVID 10 of them had some amount of accessibility and the other 84 did not. That's not what should be going on. Especially when among other things, government agencies are supposed to know about the stuff. Josh Basile 53:01 That's it's really scary that during COVID That you're not allowing or making sure that your website is accessible before you make it go live. That just is such a disservice to to persons that are the most vulnerable to COVID. And that, you know, it's in my eyes it is it's life or death. And if you don't have the ability to get that vaccine, or delay that vaccine, that it's so terrifying. Michael Hingson 53:29 Yes. Moderator 53:31 How do you think COVID is affected accessibility, especially with the rise of CFS? S and E long COVID, resulting in more disabled people? Michael Hingson 53:45 Well, I think that answer is part of it. If as more people become persons with disabilities in one way or the other because of COVID, they may, depending on what has happened to them need to have website access that they don't have today. We have seen some companies respond really well. Zoom, for example. I don't know when it first started. But when zoom became very popular, it became visible that Zoom actually has an access team and whenever something is reported to the team that is not accessible with Zoom, they jump right on it. And I've seen fixes to accessibility issues within a matter of years, even just a few days. That one came up last week. Were regarding a keyboard command to to start a meeting. And it's been fixed. It was an access issue. There was a button there was a key command to to utilize that became broken. It's now been fixed. So they've been great at responding. I don't know of any other companies that have put that level of commitment into the process. But it is something that, that all companies should do, especially large companies, for small companies. If you rely on accessiBe, for example, reporting to accessiBe helps, because accessiBe will address it or let you know that it's not an accessibility issue or what they can and can't do and so on. And I think it's all about response. So the companies that are going to succeed are the ones that are truly responding, ultimately to the consumers. And I think we have maybe just about, well, three minutes. So do we have another question? Moderator 55:43 Yeah, just one more for symbolic way to sum up this webinar. So you mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, that there are 250 million websites out there and only 2% of them are accessible. So how optimistic are you that is that there is a true chance to close the gap. Michael Hingson 56:07 There absolutely is a true chance to close the gap, by the way that 350 million is in the US alone, I think the estimate is something like 1.5 billion worldwide, and it continues to grow. And I want Josh to answer as well. But absolutely, there are ways and there is a chance to bridge the gap x SMB says that they want to work toward getting the internet completely accessible by 2025. Great goal. And I believe that the commitment of the company is genuinely to make that happen. I know that there are many other people not related to accessiBe who also want to make the Internet accessible. And the fact that there are people who want to do it, in and of itself means there's a chance. So we just need to find ways to work together and collectively make our voice a much stronger voice. Josh Basile 57:02 Just investing energy and time into scalable solutions. And the reason why I emphasize scalable is because the gap is so darn large. If you go in and expect to bridge that gap just manually, we don't have enough skilled people that know how to do this. And the ones that can do it are incredible at what they do. But there's just not enough of them. There's not a big enough army. But from a scalable solution with technology. Having the software be near your army just makes it that much easier to bridge that gap. So I'm really investing my heart energy and time and an ability to advocate for continuing to strengthen the AI solutions that we have. And they will get better and better. As time goes on, which excites me so much. Michael Hingson 57:55 Josh, I want to thank you very much for being part of our discussion today on the accessibility gap, bridging the gap and different disabilities. Same goal because I think we've demonstrated as vividly as we can, it is the same goal, and that we all can work together. To find a solution. We just need to have the commitment and the drive to do it. We will be holding more of these webinars and we will make sure everyone is aware of it. If you have more questions or want to communicate, you're welcome to email me I'm easy to reach it's Michaelhi@accessiBe.com M I C H A E L H I at accessibe.com You can also go to my website and reach me through that Michael Hingson.com or you can go to web to accessiBe and send emails through the contact process there and they'll reach we do want to hear from you. So I want to thank you all for being here and helping us Bridge the Accessibility Gap. Michael Hingson 59:07 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Rafi Glantz is the Partner Success Manager for accessiBe. As Mike Hingson discusses near the beginning of this episode one of the advantages of being a podcast host while working for a company is that it is easy to find talent and interesting guests close at hand. Rafi is one of those gems listeners now get to meet. He was born in the United States, but moved to Israel when he was 18. Listen to his interesting story and learn how he became an Israeli Citizen, joined the military and then worked for companies in his newly adopted company. Rafi will take us on a journey of discovery including what brought him to accessiBe and all his adventures since joining the company. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast we're inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Unexpected. It's always kind of fun. Today, I want to introduce you to Refael Glantz, we call him Rafi. We call him other things, but Rafi is what will you like that? We will call you Rafi today, and Rafi is the partner Success Manager at excessive B, you know, and he is the second person from accessibility that that we have talked with on this podcast. And why? Well, yes, it has some to do with accessibility. But even more important than that, what I find interesting is that when I have the opportunity to work for an with a company that has a lot of very talented people, it's great to be able to interview everyone and talk about their talents, without having to go far afield to as a result be able to interview lots of people with lots of interesting stories. So we don't have to go search for guests too far. Because we could just look inside in our case excessively. And it isn't always about accessibility. But by the same token, sometimes it is and sometimes excessively comes up in the conversations as I'm sure it will today. But Rafi, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Rafi Glantz  02:40 Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:43 So Rafi, you I have to say that you don't really sound like you were born in Israel.   Rafi Glantz  02:50 I was. No, I'm from Detroit originally.   Michael Hingson  02:54 Yeah, there you are see? So, um, so you are from Detroit? And when did you when did you move to Israel and what what brought you to Israel.   Rafi Glantz  03:05 That's a kind of a funny story. So it's funny, it's good that you bring that up. When I was 18, or 17, really, I was finishing high school. And we're living in Philly at the time with my family. I went to university up in Bel Air in California at American Jewish University, which no longer has undergrads, which might tell you a little bit about why I ended up dropping out. And when I turned 18, I realized, okay, I can join the military now, which is really what I wanted to do. And I ended up moving to Israel getting my citizenship here. And I did about almost three years in the military here. And then when I got out, I realized that it made more sense for me to find a job in the high tech world here, then go back to the states and pursue a degree that to be totally honest, I didn't have too much interest in anymore. What kind of a degree did you want to get? Well, I went for pre med, and what they called bioethics. And I was actually a combat medic in the Army. And so I had some interaction with that stuff. But the interaction that I had, I guess helped me realize that that was not the path that was gonna, at least I thought at the time, make me really happy.   Michael Hingson  04:21 So you, you switched, how, how difficult was it to become a citizen in Israel? I asked that because, you know, there are lots of discussions about immigration and citizenship and so on here and it'd be interesting to hear a little bit about what it's like when you when you did it over there.   Rafi Glantz  04:39 For sure. So luckily for me, it's very easy for me to prove that I'm Jewish, because my dad is a cantor and now a rabbi. So he's got a very strong body of proof to show that I am in fact Jewish and Israel has a law called the right of return. So if you are Jewish and can show it that You're essentially guaranteed citizenship here. And they have a very much streamlined process. So I had my new identity documents and everything the same day I landed. Wow. Yes is much smoother than Much, much smoother than our southern border currently.   Michael Hingson  05:15 Yes. Makes it a real challenge. Well, so I'm real nosy. How old are you now?   Rafi Glantz  05:23 Oh, I'm actually just turned 28. About two weeks ago,   Michael Hingson  05:26 congrats. excited me as an interesting company. The founders were under 30, when they formed accessibly, they were part of the 30, under 30, for Forbes in 2019. And I learned that sure Heckerling, the founder, the CEO of excessive he will be turning, I think he said 32 in January. And it's interesting, it's lots of young people, which is great. And not too many of us who have been around the industry for a long period of time. But but there are advantages and disadvantages, I suppose as long as the tribal knowledge can be passed on from people who've been there, but it's really cool to be with a company, where there's a lot of vision, and a lot of enthusiasm for, for what we're doing.   Rafi Glantz  06:16 Absolutely, it's really exciting for me as well, because to come from, you know, a world where in the United States, especially where we're really taught to defer to experience and age, and that, you know, somebody who is older and more experienced in an industry definitely knows better than you. And, you know, you shouldn't necessarily go against that grain. That's very much not the culture here. And so while of course, a lot of our startups don't succeed and don't achieve the level of success that we certainly have. It's really, really inspiring to see guys who are not that much older than me. build such a behemoth, you know, and don't you wish you'd had the idea first, oh, my God so much. But unfortunately, and I'll tell you the truth, a lot of people in sales calls and stuff like that, they'll say something like, wow, this is really impressive. How did you build it? And I said, Well, to be honest, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. But I will take all the credit you're willing to give me sir, absolutely.   Michael Hingson  07:15 Makes makes perfect sense. You know, the, the issue is that it is still a team. And I think even in the US, though I'm not seeing as much as you might think of deferring to people with a lot of experience, we we tend to, I think as a as a country look down, especially the younger people look down at a lot of older people, there's a lot of age discrimination that goes on here. And it gets pretty, pretty vigorous sometimes, which is unfortunate.   Rafi Glantz  07:48 I actually, I never want I haven't lived in the States for about 10 years. So I'm a little out of date there. But I also grew up a lot of the time in a synagogue surrounded by I guess a little bit of a different approaches, right. And I went to a religious school for a lot of my early childhood. And so that was like really drilled into me that you don't argue with the rabbi's on certain things.   Michael Hingson  08:11 So while you lived in Philadelphia, did you go look at the stairs and see if you saw rocky running up and down the stairs or hearing meal? Yo, Adrian Are any of those things?   Rafi Glantz  08:20 Just I will admit that I have yo yo words real way, many times inside the museum of art as well, which let me tell you the security guards are not fans. They've heard it before and they don't want to hear it again.   Michael Hingson  08:33 Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine they've heard it way too many times. And not too many people probably run up and down the stairs either.   Rafi Glantz  08:44 Not anymore. Maybe they used to but right now, not not too many. I've done it a couple of times. But there there are more stairs than you would think.   Michael Hingson  08:55 Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then there are those silly people who run up and down the stairs of the Empire State Building. I'm just as confused about those people as well. So it's okay.   Rafi Glantz  09:10 Yeah, listen, I'm confused about people who run marathons. If somebody tells me they ran a marathon, I said, who chased you? Like yeah, exactly what I don't understand what what was the reason? But, you know, teach there. If that's what gets here, you know, gets you up in the morning then great.   Michael Hingson  09:26 Yeah. Well, it's the same thing as football. You don't want to play this game where everybody just beats up on you. That's fine.   Rafi Glantz  09:33 Exactly. You know, there's a great SNL sketch. I love the vintage SNL sketches. And yes, the more recent ones like they're kind of hit or miss for me, but they had a very good one with Alex Rodriguez. And Charles Barkley and then they had Kenan Thompson playing a football player. And you know the baseball play rod and and Barkley are talking about wow, you know, I played for 10 years. I played for 20 and my knees or shot or this is hurting. And the football player says, I played for 10 games, and my brain doesn't work. Which we don't want to make light of CTE but it is a very serious issue that not enough people address. So I'm at least glad it's being discussed now.   Michael Hingson  10:17 Yeah. Well, and and we do need to look at more of those things. But still people like to bang their heads together. So it's, it's okay. It's a news event for me. And that's okay.   Rafi Glantz  10:31 I think it's better than rugby. At least they wear helmets. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  10:34 at least. I was in New Zealand in 2003. We were there for about two weeks. And it was during a lot of the rugby playoffs. There are two things that went on in in New Zealand at the time. One was rugby playoffs, and they certainly are very, very loud and opinionated about rugby in teams. But even more so New Zealand had just lost the America's Cup. And they were yelling, why is it that the government doesn't take over paying for our ship our yacht so that we can win? Because Oh, it was just vigorous and horrible.   Rafi Glantz  11:16 I'm glad they've got their priorities in order. Yeah, we   Michael Hingson  11:18 certainly do believe that sports are parameters and Okay, anyway. So, so tell me, you, you moved to Israel in 2018, and enjoyed the military and worked in as a medic. And so you must have lots of interesting stories. Did you ever get to see much in the way of combat? Or were you close to it or any kind of experiences around that that you want to tell?   Rafi Glantz  11:43 I saw enough. So I actually joined the military in 2011. Or actually, sorry, 2012, because it was November 18 was November 22, something like that. 2012. And then I was in there for almost three years. And for most of my service, it was honestly very boring. Most people who do military stuff will tell you it's mostly hurry up and wait. Yeah, I have a lot of very funny stories that are not appropriate. But I can tell you that in 2014, we ended up having what some people call a war, some people call an operation in Gaza. And I had the misfortune to be involved in some capacity. And I learned that that is not a career path for me that I would much rather work in high tech. And I think one funny tidbit that I will share that I think will tell a lot of people listening just one thing about our culture is that Israel is a very, very small country. So we have what's called staging areas for the military, basically, where, you know, you park all the vehicles and leave all the soldiers in a relatively protected area, so that they can be sent to a new area as needed. Now, the public knew aware a lot of these staging areas work because it's not secret. And a lot of the soldiers you know, they're 1819 20 they're gonna call their parents and say like, Hey, here I am, everything's okay. Don't worry about me. I could not tell you how many random citizens of this country showed up to staging areas all over the place, with food, blankets, coffee cigarettes, for people who smoke everything you can imagine, over the course of a two week war, I gained about 10 pounds. I think this is maybe the only military operation in history, where the majority of the soldiers actually gained weight.   Michael Hingson  13:39 But it is nice to see that the military folks are are supported. And I understand that's what's going on. You mentioned it and I'm not sure that a lot of people really understand how large is Israel.   Rafi Glantz  13:51 It's pretty small. It's about the size of New Jersey a little bit smaller. And when you take into account the West Bank and and Gaza, it's even smaller, you know, the distance between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem even though we see it on the news all the time we hear about it, the distance between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is like 30 miles. It is not a big place. And it's a little bit funny because you'll have experienced this Mike living in California, driving 45 minutes is not a big deal, right? Driving an hour to Costco is relatively normal. Like I'd rather if there's a Costco 40 minutes away, but I'll go in Israel, if you're driving more than 20 minutes, people will look at you like what, how can you do that in the same day? How can you come back? It's so far, because it's just a completely different standard.   Michael Hingson  14:41 It's interesting, I have met people when I lived in New Jersey, we met some people who lived in Springfield, which is no more than 10 or 15 miles outside New York City. And yet, these people who were 40 and 50 years old, never had been to New York City. It really, it is amazing to see some people how confined they, they keep their world, they have never been to New York City, much less going to upstate New York or anything like that they have just been around Elizabeth and Springfield and so on, and had never been to to New York City. It's amazing. If you know, for us, as you point out here in California, we don't think anything about that, we oftentimes will drive three and 400 miles to go from one part of California to another and think, right, not too much of it. Karen and I do a little bit more thinking about it. Today, she's got a little bit of rheumatoid arthritis, so she won't drive as far at one time. But we have, and it's normal to see that. But you know, at the same time, there's a lot of value of being around home, but not going 10 or 15 miles to the to the largest city in the country. One of the one not the largest in the world, but one of the largest in the world. And seeing all that it has to offer is really a strange thought, a strange feeling.   Rafi Glantz  16:09 I couldn't agree more. And you know, what I we have a lot of what we call taboo to my life, which basically means Culture Day on Sunday. So when you're in the army, they'll take you for like a special trip on Sundays to see a historical site or to see the western wall or something like that. There's a lot of kids who live in a country the size of New Jersey who've never seen the wall or the Dome of the Rock or all of those, you know, very holy sites that Jerusalem so famous for in prison.   Michael Hingson  16:38 Yeah. And go figure and and I think it's a great loss not to visit, or at least learn about a lot of those places. I think that the people who don't do that miss so much about the rich culture of wherever they live.   Rafi Glantz  16:54 Definitely. I, like looking back, I would have liked to spend more time, you know, investigating City Hall in Philadelphia, and not just for all the relatively corrupt things that happened. Just kidding. But that'd be fun. It would necessary certainly be nice.   Michael Hingson  17:13 Yeah, it's an interesting and interesting place. And, you know, we got to deal with politics as we deal with it. So I'm still with Mark Twain. I wonder if God had been a man because he was disappointed in the monkeys. But you know, we got to do.   Rafi Glantz  17:31 That's not the most unlikely theory, I've heard to say.   Michael Hingson  17:37 So you, you went to the military, and you came out and did school and so on? And what did you do before you joined accessibility?   Rafi Glantz  17:47 Well, before I joined accessiBe, I realized that in the Israeli tech scene, you know, a person who speaks English, like I do, and has a relatively acceptable phone manner, can find employment in the high tech space. So I started working in the financial technology industry, mostly just, you know, working in the crypto field, and I went in whatever I do, my philosophy is that, you know, you should dive into it as deep as you can, and learn everything that you can about it. Because you never know, like, what's going to come in handy and how much information you'll need. And particularly in the crypto world, it's, it was such a new field at the time I'm talking, you know, 2016 2017, it was such a new field, that there really were no experts. So if you were willing to put in the time and Google things and study, you know, you were as much of an expert as anybody could find. And the problem of course, being that it's expanded so much that nobody could possibly keep up to date on everything that's going on. But that was that was sort of my first foray into the real high tech world.   Michael Hingson  18:57 So what did you do?   Rafi Glantz  18:59 Um, mostly I just did marketing and content. So I tried to connect with the communities that were behind these organizations. And I learned a little bit about how to manage marketing, but mostly it was managing people whether they were working with us on projects or whether they were doing marketing or influencer marketing or anything like that. I mostly learned how to keep my own stuff organized, and keep people on deadlines, which as you can, as you probably already know, is not the easiest thing. It's like   Michael Hingson  19:32 herding cats. Absolutely. Yes.   Rafi Glantz  19:36 So we both have cats, so   Michael Hingson  19:40 I think they weren't themselves out for the morning anyway, at least I hope so. Ours was yelling at us. Certainly Ervin has quite a down I refilled her food bowl so she's a little happier.   Rafi Glantz  19:50 Not There you go. Although I see mine just loves human food every I'm a big I love cooking that's like my Yeah, my stress relief or and every Every time I make anything with chicken, meat, fish, anything, the cat assumes it's for him. He doesn't understand that I'm not cooking for him and I've already given him. So it's, it's, it's a problem. But I always find it adorable to feed a cat pieces of cow meat, because he would never be able to get that in the wild. I can give it to,   Michael Hingson  20:21 well, ours likes her food. Although she will eat chicken. We haven't seen her eat a lot of fish. And we haven't been able to convince her to do that. So that's okay. But she she really likes her own food. But what she really loves is when she's eating, she wants to be petted. So our food dish, her food dishes up on our sink, it's a double sink with a long counter between the two sinks in the bathroom. We have to keep it up there because there are certain dogs who will probably invade the food bowl if we don't. Because he believes everything is for him. It's a laugh, he's a Labrador, but we we put the food up on the counter. But she wants to be petted while she's eating. In fact, she really likes to get rubbed all over and she'll lay down and per while she's eating, getting petted.   Rafi Glantz  21:19 That's one way to do it.   Michael Hingson  21:21 And during the during the night, at least well, I'll only let her do it one time. I told her when she started this, that she gets at one time a night. And that's it. She'll walk me until I get up in the middle of the night and feeder. So frustrating. Yeah. But, you know, animals are fun. And you know what you can't argue with all that they bring us in that we get to bring them. The fact of the matter is that all animals have personalities. And I'm sure that there are people listening to this who say I never let my cat do that. Well, you know. On the other hand, our experience unless there's some catastrophic illness is that our animals tend to live a long time. I had one guy, Doug Holland, who lived over 15 years, typically, guide dogs worked for me for 10 years or so. I've had two that didn't, but both were illness relate well, one was illness related. And one was she just really got fearful of guiding actually was my sixth dog. Marilyn, she only worked about 18 months. And then just this afraid of guiding but there were other issues with her. But even Roselle worked from 2000, I'm sorry, from 1999 to 2007. And she had for the last three years, she guided a condition known as immune mediated thrombocytopenia, which is where the platelets in the blood will be attacked by your immune system. It's something that humans get in dogs get and and eventually got to the point where she couldn't work more, but she lived for four more years. And that was okay. But we love our animals. And when we should they add so much value to us, I wish more people would take the time to really develop relationships with animals.   Rafi Glantz  23:15 Yeah, I think they, like you say they add a lot to your life. And you know, you can get your emotional validation from all kinds of different places. But in my mind, like there's nothing better than a dog because no matter what, as long as you're not abusive, and a lot of times even then that dog is going to love you and support you and be there for you until the day it dies. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  23:37 they may not trust you as well. And that's something that I talk a lot about when I when I travel and speak and talk about what guide dogs do and even the experiences of the World Trade Center. I tell people that dogs do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. The difference. However, between dogs and humans, his dogs will generally be open to trust. I had I saw one that wasn't because she had been abused. And it took us months before we got her to trust us. But then when she did, she opened up and became a great friend for us for three years. It was in the latter part of her life. And she still lived to be 15.   Rafi Glantz  24:17 Wow. So my family has had poodles for the longest like full standard poodles and little purse dog. Yeah. And I, you know, on average, I think they're living with nine years, maybe 10. Not not quite that long. So you must you must really take care of these guys.   Michael Hingson  24:35 Yeah, every dog is a little different. We haven't had poodles, but we've had cats that lived a long time and stitch our current cat is now 12. So she'll, she'll be around quite a while yet, especially if we keep making her jump up to get her food. She's got to get around her size. We're not going to lift her up. She's tried to start to pull that one on us few times. We don't do it.   Rafi Glantz  24:59 Well, right because those cats, they'll take advantage of you. They're clever.   Michael Hingson  25:03 You think   Rafi Glantz  25:04 I met mine, he has this thing he loves knocking over glass items, doesn't care what it is if it's full of water, if it's full of juice, whatever, he will knock it right over. And the worst part is, you'll see him doing it. And I'll, I'll go, you know, I'll yell at him. However you yell at him to try and get him to stop doing something. And he will look over at me and knock it over. As he looks at me. Yeah, with no shame. No. No shame at all. Just as though it's like, oh, this is what I'm doing. This is mine. As if I as if he paid for it from IKEA. Right. You know, he doesn't understand now there's glass on the floors. He doesn't understand why I'm picking him up and trying to put him in another room. Yeah, cut his paws open.   Michael Hingson  25:53 Yeah. We haven't gotten to the point of stuffing him in a box and saying you're going to stay here for a couple of weeks, you're grounded. Work. Well, how did you come to accessiBe? How did you discover this company?   Rafi Glantz  26:09 It's actually a very funny story. So I started working at a company called Celsius network, which is in the crypto space. And people that are great, like I don't, I don't have anything negative to say about them, it just didn't really work out. And I was looking for a new role. I had some friends who worked in marketing, and they had a great marketing company called market across an inbound junction. So I spoke to them had an interview, they turned out not to be interested. And a week later, I haven't interviewed accessiBe, and I ended up getting hired. And I thought, you know, these are two totally unrelated things. Turns out market across was an early investor in excessively. So it's sort of close the loop there. And it's, I've been here for almost two and a half years now. And it has been a very, very crazy ride. You know, when I when I joined excessively, I think we had a little bit under 4000 Total customers period. And we were we just started selling in the US a few months before. And we were working out of this small office, north of Tel Aviv, it took me like an hour on a bus to get there every day there and back. And two and a half years later, we have grown just an unbelievable amount. And it's sometimes really quite surreal to see it.   Michael Hingson  27:33 It's it's an amazing company. I just learned about it literally about 12 and a half months ago, and have gotten very much involved in it and find the same sort of thing. It's an interesting ride. It's a great ride. It's it's a great company, and there are a lot of things that it's doing. So So what exactly did you start doing? And are you still doing the same thing you did? And what do you do now? Exactly?   Rafi Glantz  28:02 Ah, that's a good question. So I started out doing just regular sales, I had access to be I was one of our I guess you'd call it an account executive. And within a couple of months, it became clear that we needed somebody in the company to handle enterprise accounts. And despite not really having any specific experience doing that. The powers that be which are shared deck, LM gal pulled me into an office and said, Hey, do strategic partnerships. And I said, What's that, and they said, we'll figure it out. So there was a little bit more planning than that. But they kind of threw me into the deep end there. We built a lot of really cool partnerships with organizations like Synchro and real page and other groups whose names I won't get into right now. And from there, we realize that now we really need you know, as we grow, we need somebody who really has experience and processes and is more professional to handle that. So we brought in Darryl, who now does that and I moved over to the partner success team, which I did part time a little bit in the partner success in strategic but now I really work with our agency partners because excessively has partnerships with almost 5000 agencies in the United States and Canada. And I work with those partners to help them with essentially whatever they need accessibility wise, you know, some of them, they have a lot of technical questions that need addressing, they might not be sure how to go about making a website accessible really, and with others, there are more questions relating to how do I get my clients to want to spend money on accessibility? Because unfortunately, there are most business owners out there today. If you tell them, hey, you can make your website accessible for this and this and this, their immediate answer is, well, what happens if I don't, because I don't want to spend that money. And I don't really agree with that approach. But that is, unfortunately, their approach. So a big part of my job is arming these agency partners with the right tools and the right talk tracks and points to make and statistics that will help them explain to these business owners why accessibility makes sense, not just for their business, but also morally and legally.   Michael Hingson  30:34 So, for fun, what what's good is, what do you say? What do you say to someone? Or what would you say to someone who says, I just don't want to spend the money to make my website accessible? And I asked that, and I'll tell you why. Ask it, I'd love your thoughts on this as well, is you were well aware that over the past several months, there have been some people, and it's a relatively small number, comparatively speaking, but still, they're very vocal, who say none of this stuff works. It's not good. The companies just plain don't have good practices and so on. And the only way to do web access is to do it right from the outset, or to do it with manual coding. And I'm sure there are all sorts of other arguments that you hear, but what do you say to the person who says don't want to spend the money?   Rafi Glantz  31:24 Well, yeah, let's let's take that into points. Because I think the the don't want to spend the money is one point, and then the detractors are another, I'll address both. But let's tell because I want to spend the money. Right, so don't want to spend the money. I usually say one of two things. One is the really positive side, which is hey, 26% of American adults, according to the CDC, live with a disability, even if I cut that down to 5%, who really have trouble using websites, I know very few business owners, that wouldn't invest $50 a month to increase their market share by 5%. And to be perfectly blunt with you, sir, if you can't afford $50, for 5% more customers, your business is a bigger problem than accessibility. And I know that that sounds a little bit aggressive, but it is the case. And then I'll also mention something that you'd actually brought up in a previous, previous webinar that we did. The Nielsen data that shows that people with disabilities are the most brand loyal community, and particularly online, most businesses now are doing their best to build a supportive and positive community of customers and of users. So this is a great way to do that. And I'll also try to humanize it a little bit and say, hey, put yourself in somebody's shoes for a second, who needs to use a screen reader or Braille reader or click stick? And let's say you're looking for new shoes, right? If you go on Google, you're gonna go through 1215 websites before you even find one you can use, then by the time you do if you need shoes again, do you really think you're gonna go searching for a shoe store? No, you're gonna go back to the one that was accessible. But more than that, you're going to share it with your community. Because there are so few business owners in whatever your space is, that cater to people with disabilities, people will flock to you. And I think that that's just a general advantage of capitalism, that if you choose to stand out by being accessible, and being one of the first movers in this space, which I know, it seems like there's already a lot of activity and accessibility, but less than 2% of websites are accessible. So if you make yourself accessible, even next week, you're still one of the first movers, it sets you apart, it puts you in a new class. And it's also a great, it's a great piece of PR to put out both internally for your company culture, and externally for the world to see that you are a brand that cares about all people and takes all their money.   Michael Hingson  33:51 There you are. Well, how does how does access to be fit into that? What is it that accessibly? Does that company should take that kind of an interest in?   Rafi Glantz  34:03 That's a good question. So I'll first say that our position to my best understanding of it is that accessibility and I know this is a very San Francisco thing, say so get ready, Mike. Accessibility is more of a journey than a destination. You know, there is no such thing as 1,000% Perfect accessible website at all times, for a lot of reasons. But the real big thing is that websites change all the time. And sometimes there are things that an automated widget can't fully remediate on its own. So what we've done at accessiBe is we've created a full web accessibility hub. And we're in the process of releasing certain things now. But the big flagship product that everybody probably knows about is our automated tool, the widget, the overlay, whatever you want to call it, and that's a really big important step towards web accessibility. using that tool. You can make pretty much any website reasonably accessible. In 48 hours or less for less than $500 now depends on the size of the website, it depends on certain other factors. But that's generally the case. That being said, depending on your website structure, your needs your compliance obligations, you may want certain other things, whether that's testing by a person who actually has disabilities and can confirm that everything's working properly, or whether it's us working with you to develop best practices for your internal development, so that you can make sure that when you build new products, or you update your website, you're doing so in the most accessible way possible. To access campus, you know, we're actually creating a learning center for developers to become web accessibility developers, because I know that a lot of our marketing and conversations are about an automated solution. But we do want to empower developers to make these changes permanently. The issue is that when we looked and I say, we're not really looking for this, but when we looked, we could not find a really great comprehensive learning center for a developer to go from a JavaScript developer to an accessibility developer. And so we just made it, we're creating that we're creating access flow or creating access find, we're building this whole network so that whatever your needs are relating to accessibility, we'll be able to meet. And we're going to do our best to do that in an affordable way and an accessible way. Because we, as much as we'd love it, if everybody made accessibility, a core tenet of their business and of their approach to the web to the web, we also have to recognize that many website owners, in fact, the majority, they spend less than $1,000 a year on their entire website infrastructure. So there has to be a relatively easy and affordable way for them to achieve some modicum of compliance as well. I think   Michael Hingson  36:53 one of the important things to make sure people understand is that if you use something like excessive BS, overlay technology, it's it's AI Artificial Intelligence powered overlay, you're not suddenly saying My website is perfectly and totally accessible. But it makes a significant difference. And because of things like what you said, access flow, without going into a lot of detail about it, it will give you tools to help you determine what else needs to be done to make the website accessible in a more complete way. And that's extremely important to be able to do. You know, you have talked about I think that the right thing the the moral and ethical reasons for making your website accessible, and it's something that we should do, we don't tend to think in an inclusive way, whether it's here in the US, or in most places, although in Israel, the laws are now pretty stringent about website access, but they're not really stringent throughout the world, in that they don't absolutely mandate and require totally, that websites, for example, and apps and other things need to be accessible. And people do find ways or try to find ways to get around it in various places. Now, I don't know much about the history in Israel and what people do today. But I know we're here, even though a number of courts have said that the Americans with Disabilities Act does apply to the internet, because the ADEA does not specify brick and mortar facilities as the only places that businesses have to provide inclusion to address. But some people say well, but the ADEA was invented before the internet. And so it doesn't apply. And a couple of courts have gone along with that. So Congress needs to address it. The president needs to address it, and they haven't done that yet.   Rafi Glantz  38:58 I agree that I think one of the issues that we're dealing with that we saw and continue to see during these Facebook, or I guess now I should say meta, these Facebook hearings is that our elected officials don't seem to understand how the internet works by any stretch, and neither do judges for for the most part. I know, I know only a very few number of judges personally, but none of them are JavaScript developers, you know, none of them know how to code. It's not something that you're trained on in law school. So I think that in general, there needs to be a change in the approach to this so that there's some sort of mechanism for people to get trusted information. So they'll be able to make a reasonable decision because I do think that a lot of the decisions that have been made are being made from a place that's not as informed as it could be.   Michael Hingson  39:49 Well, I think that's true. And if you look at things like excessive BS ace audit tool, or you can go to the World Wide Web Consortium website, and Find their audit tool. There are places where you can go to say to a website, here is my website address. Tell me how accessible My website is. I think people would be really surprised. For the most part, if they found out just how inaccessible and how unintrusive most websites really are. Yeah, you know, most people   Rafi Glantz  40:23 don't think I talked to business owners and agency owners like, probably 910 12 times a day at this point. And most of them, very few of them have any hate in their heart towards people with disabilities, the real issue is that they just don't think about it. Because number one, they're busy running their business, they're, you know, chicken with their head cut off on most days anyways. But unless you have somebody in your family who has disabilities or in your community that you're close to that you work with on a regular basis or something, for most people, it's just not top of the mind. Now, not saying that should be the case by any stretch. But it's, it's a challenge for us that we need to make this more visible, for lack of a better word.   Michael Hingson  41:05 Absolutely. And, you know, the reality is that there are some who say, I'm just not going to spend any money, I can't afford to do it. But again, it's a mindset shift, if they looked at it, as you said, that is, think of all the business that you can get by making your website accessible. I think anyone who has any insight into the business concepts of the world would agree that it makes perfect sense to make your website accessible. And then when you bring things into it, like access fine, and maybe you want to explain a little bit about what that is, but access fine, also, can help make a difference for people.   Rafi Glantz  41:45 Yeah, access fine, is I talk about it on my calls a lot, because it's a huge opportunity for a business owner. So access find is the world's first search engine that is only going to display accessible results. So only accessible websites, and everybody who uses accessibility is pretty much going to be on there. So what I like to say is that if you're everybody does SEO now, right? Everybody wants to optimize their search results and get found on the internet. Well, if you're doing SEO on Google, you're competing with every other shoe store, every other hockey rink, whatever it is in the world, and certainly everyone in your area, if you're on access, find you're competing with like five other people, because nobody's accessible yet. So as frustrating as that is, it's a huge opportunity for the early movers to establish themselves.   Michael Hingson  42:33 And I want to make it clear as that access find is not just accessibly. That is it is the intent is for it to be website remediation process agnostic, as long as you are working to make your website accessible, it doesn't matter what tool you use, so long as you do it. Because the reality is, when it comes down to it, there are two things that go into making a website accessible. One is the code that somehow gets inserted somewhere that does things like label images, or label buttons and define links and so on, tells you that you have a shopping cart. And so that's that's one. But the other is specifically looking at what you do to make that website usable. And a lot of it has to do with labeling. But it also has to do sometimes with layout and other things like that. And so the issue is it doesn't matter what tool you use. But however you do it, the fact is that the evidence of you doing it is visible to audit tools that look for it. And it's visible to people who who know how to look for it. And that's what you really want to get to.   Rafi Glantz  43:56 Yeah, I mean, I, we don't care how you become accessible. If people can use your website. That's awesome. And we want to put that on access fine. And like access find is not solely an accessible thing. It's a nonprofit. And we're in partnership with the Christopher Reeve Foundation and with the Viscardi Center, and a whole bunch of other really awesome organizations that believe in the same goal that we do that whether you choose to work with us or anybody else. The goal here is accessibility. And that's actually, you know, we did this ad that I got a lot of Facebook messages from my mom's friends about this ad that we ran a national ad campaign in the US which you know all about Mike the Unstopables. And the reason the the purpose of this was not so much to sell excessively, but to sell the idea of accessibility, because like Like we said before, so few people are really aware of this at all. And of those people very, very few have it at the top of their mind.   Michael Hingson  44:55 Diversity is a term has really gone away from dealing with disabilities and I will make that argument all day. We talk about diversity when we're dealing with sexual orientation, race, and gender and so on. But disabilities don't get included in that, which is why I prefer to use the term inclusive, because either you are or you aren't. And if you're leaving anyone out, then you're not inclusive. And it's as simple as that. The fact is, as you pointed out, 20 to 26% of all people in this country and mostly throughout the world, have some sort of disability, how often were we discussed or talked about, or issues that we face brought up during last year's presidential campaign in this country? And how often are those kinds of things considered today, and it's just reality is not much.   Rafi Glantz  45:47 Yeah, and it's a real shame, because there's a massive missed opportunity, I think, you'll probably know the number better than me. But there's close to $500 billion a year in disposable income in the community. And most people are just choosing not to tap into it for some reason. It, it doesn't make sense, particularly now, in a time when we have inflation, we have supply chain problems, we have all of this stuff, and people are scrambling to find customers, you would think that they would want to access the market that's right in front of them.   Michael Hingson  46:18 One of the things that it isn't directly related to web access, but one of the issues that we face as blind people is that the cost for assistive technology, the technology that at least hopefully and does somewhat level, the playing field for us, is expensive screen readers, the software that makes computers talk and describe or verbalize what comes across the screen tools to produce Braille and so on cost money. The National Federation of the Blind has worked with Congress to get introduced into Congress the accessibility assistive technology affordability Act, which calls for a tax credit for people who purchase assistive technology to help us offset some of those costs, yet, and it was actually put into the buyback better program of Congress and Joe Biden. But it's now been dropped as they've been weeding out some of the the programs that people are debating over whether they want to include or not, that is extremely unfortunate that they would that that would even happen, because it's pretty universal thing that for us to be able to do the same things that you do, there are going to be some costs, because we have made our universe some site oriented, that we leave people out. And we've we've done that in various other ways. But even I think I could make a strong case, to a degree more with blindness than than anything else. We think that eyesight is the only game in town. And we don't tend to think about the fact that some of this technology costs, we're not saying pay for it, but give us some tax credits to help us offset some of the costs. And so there's a push right now to get that put back into the bill. But you know, we don't tend to think about people with disabilities in general. One of my favorite examples, is we watch the view everyday, Karen watches it. Now, last month was national employment, or National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I didn't hear actually, except for one time, any disability mentioned on the view in the whole month of October, and that time wasn't even relating to employment or disability awareness, other than saying how inspirational it was that a couple of people with Down syndrome were doing something. It's not inspiration, we need its recognition and understanding and a raising of expectations about society. Absolutely.   Rafi Glantz  48:54 And there's just not enough representation. For all the reasons that you point out there just isn't. I think, what was Senator Tammy Duckworth? I think she's one of the first if not the first woman with disabilities in the Senate. And I mean, she, I could not think of a more heroic story. I mean, she was a combat helicopter pilot, if I'm if I'm remembering this correctly, who was wounded in combat, and ended up becoming a United States Senator. I mean, I could not think of something that would be more appropriate to teach kids, but you rarely hear about that today. The news stories that we hear about are so much, so much less interesting and so much more depressing.   Michael Hingson  49:37 What's interesting is that she isn't the first to have a disability and be in the Senate or the House, and specifically one of our previous podcast guests, a lady named Peggy Chung, who is also known as the blind history lady, talked about the fact that before 1940, there had been three blind people in the house and to whom served in the Senate. But since then, not one single blind person has been in either house, which is kind of interesting. But really, we've gone backwards, we have gone backwards. And she makes that point during the podcast. So if people haven't heard that it's a fascinating one to go listen to. She's got some great stories. She even talks about the fact that the typewriter was originally invented for a blind person. It's a great story, you should go find it. It's, it's, it's in, in the the podcast, and   Rafi Glantz  50:29 I heard that clip on your LinkedIn, you saw that? Yeah.   Michael Hingson  50:33 Good for you. I appreciate you looking. But it's a fascinating story. And the reality is that so many people could make contributions to society, but we tend not to recognize or lose out on getting what they can offer, because we operate in the assumption that there's only one way to do things.   Rafi Glantz  50:55 Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you said initially, is something that I quote you on, I do attribute it, don't worry. But in my in my call, because I'll bring up you know, Michael Hanson, and everything. And I'll say, well, now he's our chief vision officer. But as he says, You don't need sight to be a visionary. And you know, it gets a chuckle. But it's also true, you really don't. And one of the very few experiences that I've had, that sort of, certainly not put me in your shoes, but let me feel a little bit of what it might be like, was, there's this restaurant in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and I forget what it's called, but they put everything in complete darkness. So for about two and a half hours, you're eating, drinking being served everything, mostly by people who have disabilities, both deafness and blindness, as if you're part of that community. And initially, it was very disconcerting. And I did make sure not to wear a white shirt, of course. But it was, for lack of a better word, very eye opening.   Michael Hingson  52:00 The only problem with that, and a lot of us express this concern is if you go away from that having had challenges and you think that's how it is for for people who are blind, you're missing the point. Because the fact is just like for people who can see you learn techniques to do the things that you learn, the fact is that I'd be glad to go to that same restaurant with you and laugh at you while you're having a problem. Because I don't have that problem. Because I've learned techniques. And so there was an organization several years ago that created a website, and was called how I see it, or that's how eye see it the is Eye. And they asked their members to put up on the website, videos of themselves being blindfolded, trying to accomplish tasks. And the whole intent of it was to say see how difficult it is to do this if you're blind. And the reality is, they were so wrong by doing that. And what actually occurred was that blind people discovered it and started putting up our own videos on the same website, saying See how easy it is if you learn and actually overwhelmed the site, and eventually was taken down. And eventually there were some discussions. But it was an organization that has to do with eyesight, and blindness and so on. And they missed the whole point. The reality is that, that it's not the blindness or the eyesight. It's how you learn to deal with it. Most sighted people don't learn to be very observant, by comparison to say, a Navy Seal or someone in the military or people who learn to use their eyes or their ears extremely well. And people who truly learn to understand their senses recognize that, that in fact, there's more than one way to do things. And it isn't always about one particular sense. Absolutely.   Rafi Glantz  53:56 I think a great example of that is actually one of the guys who helped create accessories, initial solution a dt. So he's a friend of sheers. I'm imagining you might have even had the chance to meet him.   Michael Hingson  54:08 I haven't met I know about it, but I haven't met him yet.   Rafi Glantz  54:11 Okay, so get excited. But he is a really nice guy. He came in and showed us a presentation. But what really impressed me was that this guy, not only does this screen reader talk about two and a half times my normal speaking speed, and my speed is not slow. He's also listening to music and also coding while he's having everything read to him and everything. That is very impressive, regardless of any kind of ability or disability. Like I don't think that I would be able to do that. Without like you say without a lot of practice. And there are absolutely strategies and stuff that you would learn to to help you do it. But for someone like me, it's still impressive.   Michael Hingson  54:54 So I have a couple of other things. One is I want to get back To the whole issue of access, and so on, we talked all about the moral aspect of it. But the reality is there is a legal aspect of it, and what do you what do you say to people? Or let me let me combine both of them together, there have been criticisms that that people say is bad marketing to say that you shouldn't make your website accessible just because somebody might sue you. And creating that level of fear. When in reality, it does happen, and it can happen. But what do you say to people about that? And how do you deal with the people who plain say, that's wrong to even say?   Rafi Glantz  55:38 So it's an important point to bring up? And I think that number one, it's in arguable that this is a real problem. Now, could you argue it in court? Sure, you can argue whatever you want in court. But as you know, the American legal system is not 100% perfect all the time for everyone to say the least. So there is a lot of case law to show that you do need to be accessible. The real problem that we face today is the demand letter problem. And it's a lot more of a murky issue than the full on lawsuits. Because the people who send lawsuits, in my experience, much of the time, these are actually well intentioned people who actually have tested this site, they want to use the website and they can't. The demand letters, on the other hand, are coming from a relatively small number of law firms that have identified this as a great way for them to make money making settlements. And unfortunately, in our, in my opinion, particular, that tends to paint the community of people with disabilities in a very negative light. Because in my experience that I believe also in yours, your first instinct when something is not perfect, or as expected is not to sue the pants off of somebody, you're going to engage in a dialogue with them and try to get them to understand why this is something important. So when people tell me, Hey, I don't really believe I'm going to get sued. Sometimes I'll be a little bit rude and just say, Okay, wait. But what I usually will respond with is a story that actually happened to me. So about two years ago, I was in Las Vegas, right before Corona started speaking about web accessibility, and somebody interrupted me about halfway through the presentation, right when I was talking about the legalities, and he claims to own 60 locations of a payday loan company. Now, I won't defend payday loan companies, I don't understand how 3,000% interest is legal in the United States of America, that's a different conversation. But he claims to own 60 locations, and he got a demand letter from some attorney asking for $10,000 Because his website wasn't accessible. Now, this guy's never heard of accessibility before, which is puts him in the same boat as the vast majority of business owners in the United States. So he calls us lawyer and asked the Hey, what's up with what's going on? And the lawyer explains, well, listen, it's you, we shouldn't really fight this. Because if I take this to court and fight it for you, you're going to pay me $100,000. In legal fees, it's going to take like a year and a half. And we'll probably still lose, because you're not accessible. Like you haven't done any work to your website, you don't have any grounds. So he said, Okay, he wrote a check. And he started looking into how to make the rest of his websites accessible. The problem is, and this speaks a lot to the nature of many of these complaints. The day his check cleared, he got 59 more letters and had to settle for $600,000. And as much as I disagree with the business that he's in, I appreciate him having the courage to come forward and speak about it. Because this happens a lot more frequently than we realize, because most business owners who have something like this happen to them, they're not going to speak up about it, they're going to be as quiet as possible, because they don't want to get sued again, and they don't want to cast their business and themselves in a negative light.   Michael Hingson  58:49 The other part about that, though, is that his lawyer wasn't up on it enough to understand that maybe there are ways to address the issue either. Very true. I know, excessively, has interacted with a number of companies, I'm sure you've got stories about this companies that say, Hey, I'm being threatened with a lawsuit. Can you help us and that what accessiblity has done as helped in two ways. One, it's offered its its products, and when that's put on the site, that greatly mitigates a lot of the accessibility issues by just using the overlay not totally, but that it helps. And the other thing that excessive B will do is then show with its its own documentation that it creates case by case. Exactly how the, the website has become accessible. And that in fact, the the lawsuit is not justifiable. Yeah,   Rafi Glantz  59:50 I mean, I don't know the exact number anymore, but I don't even close to it. But it's it's literally in the 1000s of people who have come to us with papers already served and all Almost all those cases, we've managed to make the whole thing go away. We've never had a client successfully sued due to using our tool. And I will also say that having access to be on your website has despite what whatever detractors might want to say, which, you know, they're welcome to say whatever they want. But having accessiBe on your website has become a lot like having the ADT flag on your lawn. You know, people see that flag and realize you have a good security system. And they're a lot more likely to move on to the next victim than test it out. And we've seen that play out quite a bit in recent months.   Michael Hingson  1:00:34 What do you say to the people in there have been consumers who say that we're just not doing things the right way?   Rafi Glantz  1:00:42 I say what I said before, which is it's a journey, it's not a destination, you know, there is no one stop perfect, immediate solution for accessibility? Because it really depends on the website, it depends on how often you're updating it. What industry are you in, you know, medical, and housing have different requirements in many cases than other e commerce stores. But a real the best approach to accessibility, I think, is a comprehensive one that comes at it from multiple angles. So yeah, you want to have best practices. When you're building a website, you want to have all of the alt text and Aria labels and features on there. You also want to have an overlay widget because as you know, Mike, not everybody who's colorblind is colorblind the same way, right. So if you pick like a couple of colors to use on your website, no matter what colors you choose, they're not accessible to everybody. So I think that there's a layered approach to accessibility that can include both best practices, manual remediation after the fact and automated remediation as well, to give you the most complete picture.   Michael Hingson  1:01:48 And that's really as good as it gets that it is a journey, you know, always will be a journey. There are people who rightly say the only true real way to create an inclusive or accessible website or anything accessible is to do it right from the outset. And that's, that's, that's absolutely valid. But that means that WordPress has to build such stringent tools into its system, that any website that's created or any, any system that's created through WordPress has to be accessible before it could be released. Microsoft has to fully include accessibility in everything that it does, right from the outset, not making it an afterthought. Apple needs to do the same thing. But Apple also needs to because it has all these apps that come out of the App Store, Apple needs to mandate a basic level of accessibility that apps beat. And I have not seen that Apple requires that today. So you can create and people create all the time apps that aren't accessible. Nice, I put it that way. Because Apple, in fact, has built a level of accessibility into its products. It's it is made screen readers. And in Apple's case, it's called VoiceOver, it has made a screen reader, a part of the technology that it produces on all Macs is on on iPhones, it's on iPads. They've made their websites pretty usable. But they don't mandate the same thing about the people who come to the App Store and require that abs that websites are excuse me, apps are fully accessible, or at least accessible to the point where they can be and I understand that there are times that websites or apps are going to display videos, or let's not use videos, but images or maps that we don't know how to verbalize yet automatically, but people do need to address those issues. And we're not doing that yet.   Rafi Glantz  1:03:59 Right. And I think there's a really important point that you brought up there that there is some responsibility that lies with these big giant tech companies like WordPress, like Wix, you know, whatever name name a giant company, because, well, it's all well and good to talk about America and say, hey, you know, we need to build accessible websites. But in the developing world around the world, there are there's even less attention being paid to accessibility a lot of the time and even less budget. And that being the case, the only realistic way that many of these websites can be accessible is by these giant providers mandating and providing tools for that to be possible. Because again, I mentioned that, you know, most companies in the United States pay less than $1,000 a year for their whole website. Worldwide. That number is divided significantly. You know, there's a lot of people who pay even less and we're very proud to be able to offer our automated solution which is an important component like we said Have a layered approach to accessibility at less than 500 bucks a year. But I think you'll agree it's hard to convince someone to spend 500 on accessibility if they spent 200. On the website, you know?   Michael Hingson  1:05:11 Sure. Well, and but the reality is, again, the issue isn't mandated that somebody do it. The role modeling really has to be done by those who develop the basic technology. And so those who create WordPress design tools, WordPress that creates its design tools, or Microsoft should have the absolute best screen reader built into its technology right from the outset, and it and it doesn't. Google is the same way any of them, it isn't mandating that somebody else do it. It really needs to start with them. They really need to build in absolut

Meet Gal Bareket, Chief Solutions Officer of accessiBe. Gal, an Israeli-born technology leader tells his story of growing up in Israel including serving in the Israeli military. He talks about his experiences forming and growing his companies before joining accessiBe. Gal will discuss his views about internet access and his experiences helping to shape the vision and products of the assistive technology industry's largest internet remediation company, accessiBe. His stories will fascinate and enthrall you and inspire you to do better in whatever task you undertake. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast we're inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:22 Hi, I'm Michael Hanson, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And today unexpected in a lot of ways, partly because, up until about a week and a half ago, I didn't expect that I would have our guest on today. But here he is. I would like you all to meet gala bracket gal is in Israel and gal works for accessibility. I've told you all a little bit about accessibility in the past, accessibility is a company that has created a variety of products and systems to make websites more usable, so that we can achieve our ultimate goal of making the internet fully accessible by 2025. And one of the people who's going to help with that is gal who is our guest today. God Welcome to unstoppable mindset. Gal Bareket 02:19 Hi Michael, thank you for having me. This is such a pleasure having the country having to have the continued conversations the ongoing conversation with you. Michael Hingson 02:27 Well, and and we don't get to talk nearly enough. So here's a chance to do some of that. So you are in Israel. So right now it's probably something like about 636 or 637 in the evening. Gal Bareket 02:40 Also, daylight saving brought us one hour back. Right now we actually 5:30pm It's great still have today. Yes. Yes. Michael Hingson 02:48 So the daylight saving just in for you. Gal Bareket 02:50 Just just editor just started with. We just added we are it's getting dark earlier. Michael Hingson 02:56 Yeah. And we do that next Sunday. So we'll we'll catch back up to you. I don't know why we can't have a standard in the world, but it's the way it is. Well, so So tell me a little bit about you. So you're from Israel. Gal Bareket 03:15 So I'm from Israel, I had the privilege of joining system B in early May this year, mid May late this year. Previous to excessive A i A little bit perhaps about my background in the military, which provides a little bit of both spice and interest to the role. I served in the Israeli elite intelligence unit called at 200 were just a few great things that the military experience that is so far removed sometimes we have so far removed for someone who didn't get to go through it but essentially through college however, you have the you are being put in stressful situations and I had the privilege in the age of 19 to already have 200 to 400 people under my supervision and in addition you get to work in the army on on trying to focus on on solution rather than the problem after and that's something that helps to cultivate and help cultivate the myself throughout the years. Which then led is a little bit a little bit further about my personal background. I graduate from Tel Aviv University with a law major had had to work in a hand the work in Israeli parliament our sides Knesset MK MP MK members, parliament members in the Israeli Knesset and helping them legislate laws it's so it's something that in Israel also it's important to share that from the edge D getting a degree standpoint. You know how in America you do we go to preschool at pre law and then a law school in Israel when you finish with the military service and you go to university You automatically immediately choose a profession, if you will. And hence the law major that did allowed me to immediately pursue the degree itself, and bend practice law. How ever prior prior to practicing law is that in my last year of school, I was working on two companies at the time. And one of those two of those companies actually launched but I had to make a decision because I couldn't operate both at the same time, I chose the company that accessibly equity hired, it was a company in those fatality in the industry, we were working on trying to help bridge the communication gap, how funny between guests and hoteliers, or between guests and staff and between people, essentially to because communication is almost key to everything. And I'm sure we're going to talk about it a little bit over over our chat and it but in addition, the bridging the communication gap during my time the Israeli parliament, you could see that if the minister doesn't necessarily or the the Knesset member the necessarily came or a parliament member with a judicial background, the ability to legislate, the law becomes cumbersome, and hence you need a mediator to digest what you but what what the request was was was created and then able to push it forward. Now, this is a little bit so just to summarize a little bit about me some army time, great experience some to leave university, a growth towards working within touching the bills themselves understanding the cumbersome and hence why I get one of the many reasons why I'm attracted to accessibly because there's so little tweaks that can be done in order to make so many people live so much better. Michael Hingson 06:54 I'm curious, you, you raise something that just sort of prompts a question. serving in the military, that's something that everyone in Israel does. Right? When they're right, when they're growing up. What that is something that is really foreign to us over here in the United States, and that not everyone is required to do that. What do you think the real value of serving three years in the military gave you? Or why do you what do you think about having had to do that? Gal Bareket 07:26 I think that when a when a teen a get to the age of 1817 and starts a process, a process in which there is an entity called the army that started working on, on identifying various aspects about your personality, IQ and capabilities, is when it's today thinking about in hindsight, it's crazy. Back then, it seemed, it seemed it seemed normal, it seems like I'm being categorized in order to go to a place and trying to optimize me as resources or try to optimize the skill set that I bring to the table and see how it can help the the entire entity to grow and within those 17 between 17 to 18 as you go through the process, getting getting into the military getting into the military service, which is you know, like applying to college like sending out those envelopes. When you get there is but it but in an opposite direction you are being then targeted by the army in various units you can serve in whether it's combat or non combat alike, within the Army, then you get you have you get to have a when in contradictory to college, there is much more discipline, much more discipline in terms not necessarily the discipline that you would feel or think about when I say the word discipline but more order. organization skills you have for Israel is a country that knowns for it's a formality, the Army is a place where formalities finally being get structured. There is different entities that are in charge of different things in the army and then you get to understand how to when you get out of the army how to better succeed within the commercial world because you already understand some of the help within the intelligence unit in particular how to communicate when you are being trained how to how to be in charge of large portion of people at the same time and mitigate and mitigate and mitigate issues you are you're becoming a mini CEO of me as small medium enterprise company. It when you're between the ages of 18 to 22. And when you get released are like whoa, but what just happened? Did I just do that I learned all those things, and I can't share it with anyone in the world. Michael Hingson 10:05 But But you learned a lot of responsibility. You learned how to do those, which I'm assuming that you feel were very much a life building experience for you and one that you value 100% There's something you wouldn't change for the world. Gal Bareket 10:24 That is true. That is true. I can't it's like, it's like, you know, they say, I don't I don't regret things I did. I regret things I didn't do. Things that I did. This was part of the many actions that were supposed to bring me to the person that I am today. So I try to not regret my or my actions that I already took. Michael Hingson 10:46 What do you regret that you didn't do? Gal Bareket 10:49 Oh, i very i bet i I just dug myself my own hole. Michael Hingson 10:57 Just just popped out. It was it's a it's a great line. And I think you're absolutely right, we, you know, I once went to a meeting. And the people, the it was actually a church. And the pastor said, you know, the problem with how we view mistakes is that when you make a mistake, if you legitimately make a mistake, you've made the mistake. Now the question is, what are you going to learn from it, but you can't argue or spend your whole life worrying about the mistake you made? It's how you progress from it. And it's the same sort of thing. We learn, we make choices, and we do things. And once we've done them, they are they're part of us. But the real question is, what do we what do we learn? Or issue think back? After doing something? What is it that I didn't do that I could have done? And that's something that we're going to talk about? In the book, I mentioned that we're beginning to write a new book. And that's one of the issues that we're going to talk about is that, that the reality is it's it's not the choices so much we make, it's what do we learn from them, so that we can make better choices? Gal Bareket 12:08 Right, right. Look at the intersection of in hindsight and evaluate whether what how we how we actually impracticality took the whatever action that we were supposed to take and understand whether it was right or wrong, or how could we have got become became better every intersection probably yield an opportunity to self observation. Michael Hingson 12:32 It should. And one of the things that I experienced is a lot of people don't take that time later, to analyze what they do and what they did. And as I put it, I'm my own worst critic. I like to record speeches that I give, and I am these podcasts I listened to because I learned from them. And I recognize that I am, and should be harder on myself than anyone else could possibly be. If I learned to do self analysis, and I think that's an important part of life that all of us can, can learn to develop. Because when we analyze ourselves, if we look each day back at what we did, and what we didn't do, that we could have done or should have done, that, is what helps us move forward and enhances or can we help us move forward and enhance our lives? Gal Bareket 13:27 Right when we're we were consciously making decisions when we were unconscious of the decisions that were taking place, and we just let ourselves be part of I agree mycologists My only advice to you is just be constructive is yourself. If you're your worst critic, give yourself just make sure that you are not taking yourself to too much down before so you'll be able to actually get up. Michael Hingson 13:49 Yeah, I think that's the that's the point is that when you're your own worst critic, it's the point that you will see things maybe sooner than other people will or they don't want to tell you, but if you see it, the question is how you then deal with it. And you're absolutely right. This being your own worst critic isn't to tear yourself down, but it's to give you the opportunity to say how do I handle that different next time? Right. Thanks. And then remember next time, that's the other part of the of the challenge and the problem. It sounds like with with your experiences and so on having been in the military and gone through that life experience for several years. You've been put in a situation where you get to analyze a lot Gal Bareket 14:40 that's true. I almost everywhere every place I go every every interaction that I that I encounter I make sure to I need to make sure to be alert and keen and understanding for the for the for for something bad to happen. Proactive listening is is something that that the army is also not that the army was promoting initially when I was there but leaving the Army in being in keep endorsing proactive listening. And that's I think, where the most progress that can be done on an individual basis because then when actual conversations and and decision making are actually being taken under as conscious as they shouldn't, then you can actually move forward, learn processes, and look at things from a retrospective standpoint, create proper hindsight, and progress. Michael Hingson 15:37 And that's all we can ask ourselves to do. That's true, that makes perfect sense. Were you ever in combat in the military? Or were you removed from that somewhat. Gal Bareket 15:50 So thankfully, in the elite Intelligence Unit, what I did, I was I needed to facilitate the teams that went, I was an officer of operations. And part of my role was to make sure that the people that are going to various locations that don't necessarily as places that they want to be in or places that the entity the people that are there wants them to be there. I needed to create to make sure that everyone will literally to make sure that there will be safety for everyone. And constant communication, the hospitality and housing would work great. And never people would come we will come back, come back come back safely on both ends. Yeah, that's that's that's mainly was my own version of his offer, operational person I didn't I wasn't the first to come. But was that but I needed to be in charge of those who went there? Michael Hingson 16:46 Yeah. Well, that's a pretty awesome responsibility and an interesting skill to learn, which I'm assuming was very helpful you to you, once you got out of the military, because you learn how to deal with people and you learn to understand what people think and how they think someone. Gal Bareket 17:05 However, in the in their in life after the army, things are a little bit more relaxed. Yes. The quick decisions are important, but they are not necessarily some of them are life changing, or some of them are. But they are they can be taking, they can be taken with some thought behind them. And it's, it's not necessary. Yeah. Michael Hingson 17:35 I hear what you're saying. It's, it's different. Do you think a lot of people forget a lot of the lessons that they learn in the military? Given the way you describe it? Yeah. Gal Bareket 17:45 I think that I think that's life is is dissected into chapters, and each chapter that you go through for, you know, youth, growing up youth, then in Israel, it's the military time that is in the background, but you yourself are growing from 82 to 2223, depends how many years you decided to participate in the army. And there's all those intersection are those the parts are, are our parts where you grow from, grow, have evaluate whether this is the person, you know, am I and I don't like to speak about myself in the third day, but I'm his girl from the military is the same guy that is the same person that he is today? Or is there just a bunch of skill set and learnings and morals that I can take with me as as part of who I am, and then learn how to utilize them with with the person who grew immensely since that time? In the past. So yeah, this life life, life is interesting. This way, it throws you into chapters that you don't necessarily know when it starts when it's when it starts when it ends, because sometimes inertia just comes in. And so being conscious is continuing our previous anecdotes is really important. I know Michael Hingson 19:17 for me, having gone through the university and gotten a master's degree in physics, one of the things that I tell people is I don't use the physics directly today. But the disciplines the mindset, the thought process that I learned being very heavily involved in science and in the philosophy of science and having had the opportunity to study how people in science think and someone has helped immensely. So physics is something that I think was extremely valuable to me, although I don't use it because my life took some other turns. The skills and the disciplines I learned from it, are extremely valuable, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. Gal Bareket 20:01 Would you have? If you could have gone back? Would you have taken the route of pursuing physics? Or are you like, just the more on the morals from it? Michael Hingson 20:11 No, I would still, I would still have pursued physics, I learned a lot that I don't think I could have learned without being involved with it. And, again, when I was taking physics, I didn't know that my life would change in some of the ways that it did. Excuse me, but, but it did change. And so it's, it's all about growth. And it's all about learning how to accept that growth, and accept the choices that you make, I believe that I can trace a lot of my life back to choices that I made and how one choice led to another choice. And I think that's important for us to be able to do. And I don't say that in a negative way. But rather, the one choice led to another choice that led to another choice. And along the way, I learned from each one, which also caused me to help make the choices that I made. Gal Bareket 21:11 I understand and agree in 1,000%. Michael Hingson 21:15 So you, you went through the military, and then you came out. And I'm fascinated by the fact that then when you went through University and graduated with a law degree, and then started working in the legislature, I came at the legislature from a different standpoint, in that although I was in the sciences and someone, I also joined the National Federation of the Blind, a consumer organization, the largest civil rights organization for blind people. And we're very much about dealing with getting appropriate legislation to deal with the civil rights of blind people. And so I was very heavily involved for many years, in various ways, working with Congress and state legislatures. And so to understand the the law process, and some of the political negotiations, it's a fascinating world, unfortunately, I think that it's changed a lot, at least in this country in the last 40 years or so it's become much more divisive and much more political than it really should be. And you almost get to the point where you wonder if people are really looking out for the country anymore. Gal Bareket 22:30 Yeah, I think it's a sickness of every country. I think it's, it's, it's a sickness of, of either the parliamentarian system, or the presidential system, the ones that you that America has the presidential system with the two houses, and which automatically creates a lot of stagnation. The fact that there are two entities is that are part of the process of making a decision in Israel, the situation is the same in a parliamentarian system, but different because there are many parties that are supposed to form a coalition. And it happens to be that the minority then controls there has an ad portion and proportional power over the coalition and and then not the Your vote is not necessarily provide us the request of what it is that you are voting for. Michael Hingson 23:27 It's it's interesting, I think you raise a good point. But it also goes back to mindset, if everyone is really looking at it from a mindset of, yeah, we have different beliefs, we have different points of view about what needs to be done. But we want to do what is right for the benefit of our country. That's a lot different than I want to do what's right as far as I'm concerned, so I can win and gain more power. And that's where I think we've all diverged and deviated that there's too much I've got to be the winner. I've got to be the one to get the power. And the other side shouldn't have any power because they're just totally wrong. As opposed to recognizing that there's value on both sides. Gal Bareket 24:19 Yeah, yeah. That the political sphere is a sphere that provides a lot of desperation and inconvenience and others and things are so simple to just make them as you are saying they should be but you know, life flips. I find myself and I think I shared with you in our previous conversations, focusing on the things that I can change focus things on the thing, whether it within myself or within my nearby surroundings. I found myself getting as being less involved in an In politics with time speaking of the different entity and or even removing myself from almost complete completely, in order to focus on my, like my current life and accessibly, the the efforts that I'm doing to help the company is doing and letting me be part of it of making the this cliche as it sounds, making the world a better place focusing on those, yeah, focusing, which is, you know, the stuff that are in front of me, or even a year ahead or two years ahead, are within my capacity and bandwidth to influence. Michael Hingson 25:42 Yeah, you can worry all day about everything that goes on in the world. Or you can, excuse me, or you can learn to focus on the things that you have control over and not worry about the rest. And all too often, we focus on way too much stuff. And we have no effect or control over any of it. If we would learn more to focus we would drive ourselves less crazy. That's so you So you went but you you came out of college and you said you use had been involved in starting two companies, what were the two companies Gal Bareket 26:21 so one company was in the fashion industry. And what we were doing we used Ay ay ay an image, or AI image recognition and machine learning. We used we were helping it was several years ago now it's now it's a little bit more trending all over. But people that got into fashion blog websites, were looking at different items and not necessarily knew where to shop them or even look at their friends on social media and or various pictures and couldn't know what items are they're wearing the like to see where it was purchased from what we build an engine that is able to determine through image recognition, where is the picture is taken from or where is that what is what item is being is the person wearing, and where and the list of potential stores that is able to then facilitate that it was heavy tech. And that went on that that's that's here. Michael Hingson 27:26 Now did you didn't write code No, Gal Bareket 27:30 I you know, I was helping. So, it was the beginning of the road I was up to form formed a team creating terrible infrastructure and processes and then I learned that it would be less it was less prominent in Israel to start with. So, we we were we applied to an acceleration program in Boston, whoever the same time we in May in in the different company and they ended up pursuing for the next five and a half years until excessively in the in that company, that the time that I had to make a decision with this company was was moving to Boston the other company got accepted to an accelerator program in Berlin. So both received a global recognition and now it was a time to choose the the one have had a very tough choice great team on both ends, it's just that fashion is never was my expertise. So hence it was in a very easy check move towards hospitality service industry, AI bridging the communication gap things that are a little bit more in my day felt more in my day to day and hence I invested the my commercial life to a degree into that. Michael Hingson 28:55 So what was the hospitality company about Gal Bareket 29:00 so when West one guest comes to hotel today, they would they go to their rooms and ever you know be let's say before COVID Before digitalization went on a rapid scale up probably before COVID When the hotels when guests were finished their booking there was no way for the hotelier to properly start the communication with the guests and allowing the guests to get a seamless experience as the book get they can request the stuff they want pre arrival. They can continue the converse they have they noted in when they get to their room, they don't necessarily choose the landline they can use their own mobile device through their own medium of choice whether it be WhatsApp WeChat, line Facebook, etc. And then as they leave the the the hotel they can decide whether they want or not to continue or not continue the conversation. So we used we replaced the old landlines. During the room to the convenience of not without the need to download any app on your mobile device, you are able to then communicate with the front desk and request whatever it is that you need or maintenance or housekeeping and everything from the palm of your hands without the need to download anything. Michael Hingson 30:20 So you did that for a period of time? Is that company still working today? Is it still doing the things and setting up the procedures that you you started Gal Bareket 30:34 and know the company, the company had a great time and, and was working in various places globally until COVID hit when COVID COVID created the big impact for the hospitality industry. And however we were able to find our way through it and we're able to find the right integrator the concrete the right go to market strategies and create the right partnerships. One of these partnerships and ongoing conversations led to the conversations with the with decades share and gal that though that conversations then emerged into into into more than just the conversation in which the guys told us why wouldn't you guys want joining us, help us help us utilize AI bridging that we also need to bridge the communication gap to different degree. And we need we need a team that that scaled in the past in various aspects and is and is able to help us scale further from the from what the team was in amazingly able to accomplish with accessibility. Michael Hingson 31:49 So though dealing with Internet access is a lot different than dealing with the hospitality industry. What what piqued your interest about what Sher gal and deco were doing with accessibility. Gal Bareket 32:05 So many things, I'll start with the fact that the vision draws your attention, because it's almost possible to do and when something is impossible to do, it's worthwhile to, to get the hang of it and to try to try and do it by ourselves. The meeting with the with both with the sheer girl and vism the motivation and inspiration that came out of the meeting was a new that this is a company we would like to be part of and then perhaps Lastly, but most importantly, my wife's a mother was a social worker in New York City in which she works directly one on one with people with disabilities. She during you know we had throughout our time together we there were endless Commodore, there were ongoing conversations and the great I got to hear secondhand not firsthand challenges, barriers of people and to have the opportunity to have the opportunity back event to have a conversation about how to have the humble part in entering an entity that is working to do good was a no brainer. It that we are providing our ability to provide service, of course, but being but but moving away from one industry to the web accessibility industry, allowing us to also see how hotels are not Mrs. are not necessarily within compliance are Elia allowing us to see the web accessibility is the is a bigger picture, as the word focusing on digitizing itself. And as accessibility is taking a big stage within the big role on the stage of trying to have working on remediate on making the web accessible on the web. The World Wide Web is such a big word. We're making the world wide web accessible. So yeah, so you ask what what brings you to the company being part of an organism that that's what organism organization that's what it strive for, to take this www are making it accessible, and learning that as I get to accessibly how big the problem is, and that's something that I wasn't aware of. I was aware that it's there. I was aware that some people are facing it. I wasn't aware that it's growing. And I wasn't aware that it's it's how much it affects the day to day life. And as I started to training at accessibly and I was giving the opportunity of speaking with a people with a visually impaired all those technicalities of Have bed bow challenges that people are facing? I knew that this is its this is where I am supposed to be, this is what I need to serve. And this is this is how this is a company, I want to utilize my skill set, you know, to help grow? Michael Hingson 35:18 Well, and the fact is that, as you stated, what we call the accessibility gap is growing, because of the number of websites that are being created every minute, every day, and how small the number of those websites actually intentionally do what's necessary to bring access in. And I think one of the important concepts to remember about accessibility is you can have all the standards in the world, you can have all of the the requirements that define what access means. But access ultimately is about how usable is the website, right? And that's where it really comes. It's all about, can people use the website? And do the standards make the website as usable as it should be? Or is there more to it, and there is more to it. The standards are a great guideline, which is why we have today what we call the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. But the fact is that it's all about usability. And I think that's been a very strong growth area for accessibility, because access to be when I joined in January was very much involved in talking about access from the standpoint of adhering to the guidelines, I think that there was an intent to want to make website usable, but focus more on the guidelines and the World Wide Web Consortium standards and so on. And is moved to understand that there's a lot more to it than that to make the website world very usable. Gal Bareket 37:12 I think accessibly is because it was always providing services, they just understood it. Now it's the time to provide the services from scale, at scale. And also, from an educational standpoint, access to be understood, as people were looking out for looking at, at it as a company as a thought leader in the industry as a company who were able to work on and assist many websites. As as we all know, it also received a bunch of heat from either the community or for members or whether whether it's legit or not legit, everything is legitimate desire legitimatize in my book, so it's all fine. The accessible understood that it needs to take needs to do several things it needs to provide a provide education or what we call free education or learning. And you mentioned the word access one of the tools that is coming out as part of the company's culture called Access campus, which its goal is to route and incept within the beginning of developers and marketeers mindset how the digital assets of a website should be accessible. There are there is a there you mentioned usability before Miko usability testing is a term that is taken from the user experience world from the tech industry from the development sphere. We now are trying to claim an access to B and the claim to fame that usability as part of the user experience of checking a website needs to kind of the QA of your website needs to be be done with people with what product or service we like to call user testing. People with disabilities that are using system as you mentioned in the beginning of the call like Jaws, or that are allowing them to view website and actually see if though if the digital assets are actually working or actually providing them with access successively decided that it's that it's more it's going to work in a more holistic fashion is going to work on an educational spectrum. And that's part of the founders vision to make to help people learn more about the field. Well, people understand not just from a compliance standpoint, but how to create products and tools and services that are from the get go are accessible. In addition for everyone who needs to get up to par access will be provided for access to be now so the professional solutions department The Department where which I am part of the goal is to allow remediation of the rest of the digital assets that are part of your website and or part of your organization. If you are an enterprise who is who has files that are problematic for the for your workers that are supposed to read a remediated file, an accessible file, then perhaps you need that service. And I would ask you, Michael, when, when you tackle a PDF, when you tackle a file, what are due? Are there any challenges that are in front of you check in immediate file for having having you having a person unstoppable challenge, taking a child taking, taking on a file? Michael Hingson 40:50 Well, sure, which is, of course, the whole point of now what we're talking about with access flow. But But yes, clearly, it depends on the PDF is like with everything, there's always the answer, it depends. There are many PDF documents that are not readable by a blind person with a screen reader. There's more to it than what Adobe does with its own internal optical character recognition to recognize the the information in the file. And sometimes that can be made to talk and give me the information that I want. And sometimes it can't. Likewise, with any website, sometimes, it verbalizes well, and many times, it doesn't verbalize extremely well, which means that I might be able to use the website, but it will take a lot of work to be able to use the website, or the website was constructed in a way that really makes it very usable for me without a lot of effort. Someone put it very well, when they once said that what blind people learn how to do is to muddle through and, and break their way through all of the barriers that exist on websites. So we can we can make them work. But a lot of times, it's very difficult to make them work or we have to spend so much time doing it that you wonder after a while if it's worth it. And that's of course, what excessive B is, is all about an excessive B, I think, excuse me excessively as someone recently said in a meeting I attended that excessive be in other companies like it, but I'm specifically focused on excessive be excessively has to customers. And it's something that excessively I think has learned over the past many months, that there are the customers who actually buy the service, that is the website owners and the website. Developers. And so it's the business community. But the other customer that accessibe B has, which is just as much and probably even more important for the company to consider is the end user. Because the end user is the the person or people who actually have to use the product that excessive B provides or products that excessive B provides. Right in excessively has has grown a great deal. And recognized that that second customer is extremely important in a way it does pay the bills, because the customers who use that site that uses accessibility and find it helpful are going to talk about it. And the community is pretty close knit. So the reality is it's important to to really focus on the the end user world as well and accessible has really started to do that which I think is incredibly good. Gal Bareket 44:14 Oh, I agree. I agree help during bridging the gap with your end users, which they are the actual service recipient of the work that you're trying to accomplish. And getting their feedback is priceless, is priceless. And can can be a great tool for for progress for change. And you can see I think you can see it with the growth of this solution with the current growth with the with the current organic growth. And my emphasis on organic on this dissolution department because you get to understand why people come to accessory. I'll give you an example. There's a there is a product that is VPAT is about Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, that template is something that companies are now understand that they need to obtain in order because the companies that are exploring whether they would like to do business with them wants to know if they are on they are taking steps to become accessible. So, that the market which is it is fascinating because the market is doing the right formations to allow a to allow having the discourse of accessibility all around. And the service when when it when people come for excessively, right now, with an organic growth growth, to get the VPAT service, it allows us to understand that they that organizations right now are are taking an active role in trying to make sure that they are fixing and adapting and removing and removing all of the barriers for people with disabilities. So, they were allowed to enjoy surfing the web properly and kindly and comfortably, which is most important. So some so I repaired manual audit, media or mediation, follow mediation, these are these are these are names of just aspects of the worldwide web or the digital assets that exist to be understood that it that it would do whatever it takes a 360 effort to make sure that its community will have a way not just not just to get into the website, but also use it conveniently and being able to actually you know, scroll between everything read the materials and have have have an equilibrium or have Bring, bring everyone to the same level. So we can all enjoy similar content. Michael Hingson 47:01 What is your role at accessibility? What is your job? Gal Bareket 47:05 So my role as chief solutions officer, I run the Department of taking chief solutions officer and we have solutions and services under our umbrella. Some of the reason why we added this solution into the component is because accessories working on providing every service to their businesses in a seamless, seamless and convenient fashion. Like it did with the AI overlay interface. The the convenience allows businesses to first to rapidly adapt technology and and being willing to make a change for the better good. So one of the one of the elements of those solution in the solution part is where we automate getting a person from a website directly to our dashboard, allowing to facilitate the entire work and offload in a seamless and automated way backed by accessories AI power engine and provide a service back to the client now the service aspect comes into play where with our accessibility experts is this team is a team of trained individuals developers that are doing the manual labor and have in touch and making sure to go to dot the tee to cross the t's and dot the eye around every single part of the website that nothing will get the NO FLOW will remain untouched. So in comparison perhaps to previously where our emphasis was on the on the AI engine itself and on the on the widget while getting slowly requests for the other remediation services. Now we are continuing putting our effort the company continue putting its effort as you know, Miko on on the AI interface but simultaneously, it opened a full bridge to allow every service every accessibility service that is related to the World Wide Web to arrive in our into our door in our footsteps and allowing us to be able to remediate and fix and resolve the issue whether it's just to bring up to compliance but in most part in my department, it's to make sure that the user will get a friendly experience when they get into the website. Michael Hingson 49:43 And so I get the impression from what you're saying that could involve the AI powered overlay. But it also could, could come about from other services that excessive B is or will be providing Gal Bareket 49:58 100% and person that it should go over it. Now when I say person, there's two people that are that we offer as a company, we offer our own, actually the expert team that we trained in house Cree with our own syllabus and our and our own materials, and made them and brought them up to par with looking at isup and other organization to bring them perhaps even further down their proficiency route. So there's that sweet expert who goes through the work themselves that in our part, and are integral part of the service. In addition, there is an addition there's also the technological effort that is being happening around this scene, continuing making a robust system, that its AI capabilities will be able to do the majority of the job in order to flag the difficulties to the person A, that is testing it. Now, that is the first person the second thing that the second option of people that can test your website is a product or a service that we called user testing. User testing is essentially bringing in people with disabilities with their assistive technology devices, which Michael perhaps you want to share what is what is even assistive technology for some because I am saying the word because I love the words, because I learned it, you are living it firsthand? Michael Hingson 51:33 Well, I think it's exactly what what it implies it's technologies that assist in making it possible for us to accomplish tasks. So in the case of the web, for blind people, it could be a screen reader or it could be access to a Braille display. But it is it is technology that allows us to interact with a computer to get the information that others obtain by looking at a screen. So the assistive technology. So the assistive technology is my, my lovely. Alexa decides to talk to me. So the assistive technology assists in helping to accomplish and perform tasks that we otherwise wouldn't be able to perform, because they're visual. And that is like reading a monitor. So even the Amazon Alexa can in some ways be assistive technology. But the the whole idea is that the technology helps us interact with our environment to accomplish the same tasks that you perform. Gal Bareket 52:52 So that's exactly it. So our end users, that's exactly what they're doing, they're using their tools, where we'd very to be a screen reader, whether it will be just scrolling through the keyboard by itself and see that the website is navigable and allowing the company at the end to see whether the website is actually user friendly, where it's where with all this is a technology to leads you to share with the world not just from the compliance standpoint, not just from a legal standpoint peep I am opening my store for people with disabilities and everybody are willing and we are inclusive and you know, we're stopping no one in the door and everybody are welcome to enter. Michael Hingson 53:36 So from a business standpoint, who and what companies are really the best opportunities for accessibility to help make the website more the website world more accessible. Gal Bareket 53:51 So here we are talking about all types of companies, from small to big, from small medium mom and pop store, to a big giants such as even Adobe or or enterprises, whether public or private companies, governmental organizations, educational organizations can also be benefit tremendously from working with us the excessively what it did with those manual services, automated solution AI backed components and having additional offerings to bring to the industry. It able to open up a full array of opportunities that are that can come from various angles, and they're coming today we're seeing we're seeing group from groups of hotels that are reaching out to us and then a public company in In public company in the US, to a flood of public companies in Israel, we seeing various entities that are interested in understanding how can they now be better, and provide better service, whether it's on the worldwide web or even internal, within their own organizations to to, to, to get better in their hiring processes, to perform better in their internal training for employee adaptation, as many aspects as you will, as you will aware, to those services, and think that these are all being taken in under my department within that umbrella. Michael Hingson 55:45 So there are companies that specialize in making websites more usable, accessible, or whatever, they have manual programmers that, that do that. And they bet a lot of expertise in it. Why accessibility over those or other companies like it Gal Bareket 56:05 says A B is a company that is ready for scale. And is and that's something that is most important, how many website Michael, are currently on? resolved? Michael Hingson 56:22 Well, I think the statistics that I think that we have found is over 98%. Gal Bareket 56:28 So even more and say, 90%, of how many 100,000 100 million? Michael Hingson 56:36 I would say we're talking in the billions at this point. Gal Bareket 56:41 So it's very simple. How many? Michael Hingson 56:47 A? Well, since we know since we know, for example, from our own studies that there are over 380 websites created every minute in the United States. And out of those, we're saying that roughly 2% are accessible. That's basically eight websites out of 390 every minute, Gal Bareket 57:09 right? So I'm looking at the numbers, as I'm talking with you right now, I do want to make a mistake in the US does 103 33 million websites are in the millions, right. And there is other countries with other numbers. But the fact that we are, we are not even meeting the surface, it's it's where we need to aim next. And there's so much work to be done. So accessible, his ability to scale is not just a word for itself, it allows it it allows the company to serve many entities at the same time. Scaling, it's not this is not just tech scaling is operation, it means that if we need tomorrow to hire X amount of people, we have the processes in place, the infrastructure in place and the capacity to do so it means that the company as a whole is working, to grow and having a with the bandwidth to gain all everything in it. In addition, and it's something that our visionary CEO, and is able to create, he constantly create ways to simplify from a technological standpoint, the entire process of have of fixing a website or building a website. And that allows us as a company to have, whether it's internal proprietary tools to provide the job quicker. So I turn around or turnovers are much quicker than other than other companies. Because we are we are building internal tools to help us get to where we want to be. And, and you know what, this is a problem, a big problem, the more companies that are entering the domain, that are trying to make the world a better place, we all win. So instead of comparing between the companies, we are in a joint effort to make sure that the more and more companies would enroll together, that this 100 and that the 2% would be 98%. And then we can fight over the 2% together. Michael Hingson 59:29 Yes, and and the reality is that none of the companies that are involved in this whole process of making websites usable are or should be the enemy of consumers. And I know you mentioned before, there's been a fair amount of heat that has been brought to bear on excessive B to I think, a greater degree than maybe some of the other companies but the heat It has been there. And there's probably been some justification. But there's also been a lot of misunderstanding. And I think that, and I've said it a couple of times, I think that what's most important is that we, as a community of persons with disabilities acknowledge the transformations that are taking place, excessively is not the company, both in messaging and an action that it was 10 months ago, it is different today. It is doing a lot more just doing different things. And I think that's extremely important for, for people to recognize the very fact that people like you are here, you mentioned, by the way that we are as a company, and I say we because I am the chief vision officer for accessibility. As listeners know, you mentioned that we look for people who can help with usability testing, and helping us to make the website more accessible. How can people explore doing that? Where would they go? Who would they contact? Or what would that process be? Do you know? Gal Bareket 1:01:17 So again, parts of our CEOs vision is to and and our, and our, and our CEO, our chief marketing officer and our CRO is to be able to support the community. And the way that we currently understand the community gets supported is through the various umbrella organizations such as the NFB that you mentioned before and allowing and then working in collaboration with these organizations that are not necessarily in it because they did not I didn't see that they were providing it but organization that provide the tools that facilitate the onboarding and recruitment of these type of individuals that some have said that they disobey some of the individuals we are bringing into we are opening roles within the the US market within a the new the New York office for people for people with disabilities over a two we'll be able to have to work with it to work with people disabilities closely to allows us to have not just Sing Sing Sing saying the word inclusion, but also living living it firsthand. So what they can do is they can go to our website, and enter and reach out through various ways through our through our emails to the to the solution department. And we would love to have a conversation with with them with each with each individual, either direct them to the right local organization in their place, we can work with the umbrella organization or works directly with with them. Michael Hingson 1:03:04 And I think that's important to to note that that there are ways that people can reach out so people can go to www dot accessibile. Calm, excessive B is spelled ACC e ss i b e.com. And as listeners of this podcast, no they can also reach out to me if they would like Michael M i ch AE L H AI at accessible calm. And I'm glad to help steer people to the right place or answer any other questions that that people have on the podcast. I think we're getting close to our time but is there any last thing that you would like to say or any point you'd like to make? Gal Bareket 1:03:48 I enjoyed this conversation with you Michael immensely. I think that I would have are totally finished with accessibly is growing and changing as a company just maybe echoing the last thing you mentioned. In you know, in ways that I haven't seen any other company grow and I sit on I sit on various flow advisory roles or board roles in different companies. There is there is a sense of fulfillment waking up in the morning and coming to the company there is ongoing communication that is day by day becoming better and better with between the various departments are working as a right organism to provide service for the industry. There is an immense care for the community. It's what people are waking up for in the morning and are trying to see whether the community was happy today was dissatisfied too then how could the community feel better and feel? And there are main efforts that are being done to take care of that on day two? The basis, the company is also taking into consideration the business aspect and then working on providing additional services, additional solutions, providing additional automation enhancing and improving all the processes or older processes that can now become better and are now better. And we are open to whoever wishes to come in receives type of each one of those services to come to us to see how seamless how short it is than the regular and what there are expected to, and how we are keep evolving and growing as a company, for ever for for for both our end users and our customers, which is wonderful to see is wonderful to see. And be part of Michael Hingson 1:05:52 the way I would also say that if any of our listeners, if you are a person with a website, and you want to see how accessible your website is, go to www dot accessable COMM And there you will see a link to something called ACE AC e which is the accessibility audit tool that you can run, plug in the name of your website. And you can get an audit that will show you how accessible your website is today, based on the guidelines and standards that exist in the world. And it will show you the things that you need to improve upon. So we'll give you a good idea. It's totally free. And if you want to work with accessibility, then the contact information is there to do that. To explore working with accessibility and letting accessibility help you make your website more usable. And for consumers. You can go and check any website as well with ace so we do invite you to do that as well. Well, Gal I really appreciate you being here. And we didn't talk about the fact that golf stands for wave like the wave in the ocean. You you said that? Typically Israeli names have have meanings other than to being just names or Gal Bareket 1:07:16 Abraham Hebrew names Hebrew days, right. Right. Michael Hingson 1:07:20 Now if I talk to enough people, I'll learn some Hebrew that way I guess. Gal Bareket 1:07:25 For sure. Michael Hingson 1:07:27 Well, I want to thank you again for being here with us. Go vericut. And definitely we will have to chat some more and, and compare some more stories. But thank you for being here on the unstoppable mindset. And I hope everyone will tune in next week. And of course, if you liked the show, please give us a five star review with your podcast host of choice or wherever you listen to podcasts. So thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time Michael Hingson 1:08:02 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Les références : AccessDV Linux, distribution GNU/Linux gérée par l'association ACIAH Koena Les principes d'accessibilité numérique (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) édités par le World Wide Web Consortium Le lecteur d'écran libre Orca) (page de présentation sur Wikipédia) La Convention internationale relative aux droits des personnes handicapées CIDPH, adoptée par l'Assemblée générale des Nations unies en 2006, et que la France a signée en 2007 et ratifié en 2010 Fiches pédagogiques simplifiées pour la prise en main d'AccessDV Linux Forum d'AccessDFV Linux Présentation du projet Koena Connect Instance Mobilizon de Framasoft Plateforme de médiation de MobilizonVous pouvez commenter les émissions, nous faire des retours pour nous améliorer, ou encore des suggestions. Et même mettre une note sur 5 étoiles si vous le souhaitez. Il est important pour nous d'avoir vos retours car, contrairement par exemple à une conférence, nous n'avons pas un public en face de nous qui peut réagir. Pour cela, rendez-vous sur la page dédiée.

Jim Allan is a teacher in Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. He has worked in Assistive Technology and Accessible Information Access. He is also a Webmaster and Statewide Technical Support Specialist and became an Accessibility Coordinator.He is a participant in the World Wide Web Consortium's-Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C – WAI). He is the current Chairman of the User-Agent Working Group that developed browser accessibility guidelines and Co-Chairman of the Low Vision Taskforce. Jim is committed to accessible web design, the development of accessible multimedia textbooks, online learning materials, and assessment. He has been teaching developers how to create accessible websites. He presented various national and international conventions on website accessibility, and Accessibility Judge for International Accessibility Internet Rally, and judging nonprofit and art organization websites for accessibility during redesign competitions.Jim was also a member of the Space Camp Hall of Fame 2009. He helped Space Camp be accessible to visually impaired students and has been bringing students for 23 years. He worked on state and federal legislation related to accessibility and was an alternate representative to Section 508 Refresh. He is a recipient of the 2011 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award.https://higherorbits.org/presenting-team/jim-allan/https://knowbility.org/instructors/jim-allan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Statt joins the show to discuss a big week in gaming news, including Valve's new Steam Deck console and Netflix's push into making video games. Then, Issie Lapowsky takes us inside the World Wide Web Consortium, where there's a high-stakes privacy battle being waged over the future of privacy and the internet. Finally, Biz Carson talks about SoftBank, Tiger Global, and a massive shakeup happening inside the VC industry.(Programming note: We're off next week, back the week following.)For more on the topics in this episode:Nick Statt on TwitterValve announces handheld Steam Deck console for playing PC gamesWhy Netflix is getting serious about video gamesIssie Lapowsky on TwitterConcern trolls and power grabs: Inside Big Tech's angry, geeky, often petty war for your privacyBiz Carson on TwitterTiger Global vs. SoftBank: Inside the investing playbooks that upended Silicon ValleyFor all the links and stories, head to Source Code's homepage.

Jessica and Jon discuss a new holding in a website accessibility case. For more resources: World Wide Web Consortium: www.w3.org

Another presentation from the Brighton SEO conference on a topic that is really new, but important for every website owner. Website accessibility is a hot topic because lawmakers all around the world are writing laws that require you to make your website accessible to people with different disabilities. Luckily, a lot of the things that you have to do will have a positive impact on your SEO. Lea is an SEO expert and understands the link between those two. You can find her on Linkedin, Twitter or on the company website. Here is the transcript of the recording: Hello, and welcome to the Time for Marketing podcast, the podcast that brings you the best marketing conference speakers and makes them sum up their presentation in five minutes. My name is Peter, and I'll be your podcast's host. This is episode number 37, and if this is your first time you're listening, please go back in the library and find the excellent guests that we had in the past, that I had in the past. There's some gold in there, because I try to find people who have evergreen content. There are excellent episodes back there. If you have other people that you can promote the podcast to, I'll be glad if you do that. I'm very glad that I have today's guest on the podcast. Lea, hello, and welcome to the podcast. Lea: Hi, thanks for having me. Peter: How is Lake Superior? Lea: It's gorgeous, as always, deep blue and angry. [laughs] Peter: Me and Lea, we talked before, and I'm very intrigued by the name of the lake at which she has the office. She was kind enough to show the lake view from her office. Lea, you are the SEO analyst at Aimclear in Minnesota US. What are you as a company, and what do you do there? Lea: We are a digital agency company, award-winning. We love our US search awards. We do everything from web development to paid and, of course, SEO, like I do. Then also with SEO, we roll in accessibility and work between the teams to make sure that we're checking things like contrast and all text and all the things from the ad side to the web dev side. Peter: For you personally, why SEO? Lea: SEO I fell in love with almost 20 years ago. I worked for a company that built websites for dealerships that sold power sports. I just really fell in love with the idea of helping those small business owners get found and sell product. When I figured out how to move the needle, it was really exciting. Then I started leading a team, and that's what we did. Then after that Aimclear was the next big challenge because I wanted to see what else I could do, so applied it and here I am. Peter: What do you do in Aimclear? What are the things that you do daily, and what are your favorite things to do? Lea: I do SEO. SEO. [laughs] I also work with accessibility to make sure that the stuff we put out is accessible to as many people as we can. That's what I spend most of my day doing. I really love it when we have a site that is not performing come in, and I get to take it by the reins and make it show up and help meet goals, sell stuff, find dealers, or find leads, and that sort of thing. Peter: Excellent. I invited you to the podcast because you had a presentation at Brighton SEO, probably my favorite marketing conference. The presentation was called Digital Accessibility and Compliance: Essential for Users and Good for SEO. Why accessibility? Lea: Why have I chosen to go down the accessibility route? Peter: Yes. Lea: Oh. Short story is, I had a really good friend that was diagnosed with ALS which is a neurodegenerative disorder that takes your ability to speak and use your arms and things like that. It's horrible. While we were helping her sell her house and move her mom into assisted living and then help her find a place to live, she'd stopped communicating with us. It was because things like Facebook's Messenger doesn't rotate, and things like, Twitter doesn't rotate. She couldn't communicate back and forth in the text messages the way we used to do it. I was really frustrated when I wasn't being communicated back to, and I was trying to help her with things, and then realize that it wasn't her, it was the software, or it was the phone, or whatever. For whatever reason, once it was mounted on her wheelchair and it was mounted at horizontal so that the fonts were big enough to read, literally things wouldn't rotate. That was the starting point. Then, from there, I realized how important SEO actually is to accessibility and how they are siblings. They're brother and sister, and you need one for the other, and vice versa. Peter: A lot of basics SEO stuff is actually also a lot of basic accessibility stuff, right? Lea: Yes. If you actually look at core web vitals, it's accessibility. If you go through the pieces of core web vitals and what they're asking us to do and how search console is notifying us, "Hey, this is too close together." These are accessibility elements right at their core. Google might call it something different, but that's what it is, and you can see it. Peter: Lea's presentation is going to get you to be in line with your local laws. It's going to help more people see you. It's going to help you be in line with Google. It's going to help you with web vitals and all of the updates that come. Whatever Lea says, has to be gold for you. Lea: I just want to open everybody's eyes because a lot SEOs thinks the elements aren't as important as they really, really are. Peter: With no further ado, here are your five minutes. Lea: My main goal is to change the perception so that SEOs and developers and designers and content creators start thinking that accessibility is about people, because a lot of times we get hung up on- they're not our customers, and that's not the truth, they have wallets, so they're your customers. We need to make sure that we're thinking about accessibility because if we're States side, we're talking about one in five people need accessibility when they're using the web. If you talking about the UK side, we're talking about 22%, which is a little bit more. There's one in five people need your site or need your app to be accessible, so that they can use it easily. Accessibility is really important because it bridges the gaps between physical disability like location, but also socioeconomic status, education, language, gender, and so many more things they can-- The list is endless. Accessibility, it focuses on people with disabilities or that have a disability, but it greatly benefits everybody around us, including our aging parents. It's really important that everybody thinks about accessibility as empowering users to use your stuff. Use your app, use your website. When we go through, and we talk about accessibility, and everybody's working to get their website to revolve around core web vitals and getting your site up to speed and making it fast and nimble, without considering accessibility, you're ignoring 10% to 15% of the global population, and in an age when we're all responsible for making money or hitting that bottom line, why would you just automatically cut off that many people? It doesn't make any sense. Since we're all in the process of meeting the core web vitals, and making sure that we don't miss any of those potential sales, because we're not ranking well, it's the same thing as working accessibility into your websites. There's basically five things to look at. If you haven't started a web accessibility site or information on your site, start by making yourself an accessibility statement and just owning up to the fact that you haven't gotten there. Make sure that you do some tests. Just try tabbing through your website and make sure you can do all the things on your website, like make a purchase, contact fuzz form, things like that. Whatever the main goals of your site or app are, see if you can do it with just having. Then, when you get down into that stuff, go use your site on your mobile. A lot of people test, test, test on their desktop, but they don't actually take their site outside and see if it's really easy to see during a sunny day, or make sure that everything's easy to click on and nothing's too small, or nothing like a pop-up as the X isn't off the screen. There's little things like that you can do. Probably the biggest thing is having people with disabilities at your table when you're making the plan. That is the biggest thing I need to advocate for because we as a group, SEOs, we don't know all the things that actually need to be done, and having people that need the assistive technology or need these elements put in place, having them at the table during the planning stage is imperative. Peter: That's it. Excellent. Lea: That's it. That's the big one. Those are the big things. Peter: How do we get people to our table, people that can tell us how they practically are using our website? I get the idea. You've done this a couple of times. What's the most practical way to do it? Lea: It literally depends on what your budget is. [laughs] As everything, right? You can hire within, hire people within to do testing and to work on your dev team, or work in your SEO team, you can do that. There are resources out there, there are companies out there that they have testing available, and it's beyond the computer. Anything that gives you a badge just because a computer tested it, said you're good to go, even the WAVE tool, which is created by the W3C, which is leading the charge and accessibility. Even if you have that, those badges really don't do anything if they don't have individual people testing in the background. Look into companies that offer accessibility testing with live humans that are going to go through your site. That'd be beautiful. Peter: When should we involve them? Should that be when we start thinking about new web page, when we start developing it, or graphics, wireframes? What is the best time to do that? Lea: Right at the beginning, because they're going to have tips for you to help you get started on the right foot, because you can go through the whole website and build it all out, and every website goes over timeline. It just does. There's always something like, "Oh, we forgot to tell you we needed a whole blog system," or, "Oh, we forgot this," or, "Oh, you know what? We really, really want it." We get those comments after things are already built, right? I can see you. Every SEO or dev person right now is calm faced, right? They all have had that experience. Having them at the beginning is really important because retrofitting rarely works. It gets really expensive, and at the end of the day, you most of the time end up scrapping the whole thing and starting over. Yes, start planning from the beginning and test, test, test all the way through. Peter: I feel that if I want to have a very accessible web page, I have to put aside all of the great ideas that my developer had, how we're going to have a unique website. I have to have the F structure and everything has to be squared, and colors have to be four different. How do you answer that? Lea: I'm not a dev, I'm definitely an SEO. I can read enough code to be dangerous and a lot of times be like, "It's broken somewhere right here." Our designers, they think about accessibility and color right from the beginning. When I see a design idea or the first mock-up, that's the first thing out of my mouth is, "Is it accessible, are all the contrasts?" Then I'll look at the colors and we'll test them because the math. A really good tip right off the bat is go look at your website. If you have gray font on a white background, people that have glasses have a hard time reading that on their mobile phone. Skipping gray font, gray font is font spam, and it isn't a good experience for anybody. Black is best. If you're doing a black background, white font is best. Make sure that that contrast is there so that it's very easy to read. From the beginning onward, you can still do really beautiful sites. Our designers and developers are doing really beautiful sites that are accessible, because we're starting at the beginning. Peter: Okay. Yes, probably start at the beginning is the same way. Linking accessibility to SEO. How does that work? Lea: Okay. Accessibility when you go through the W3's website. The W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, right? They have the w3.org/wai. WAI, it stands for Web Accessibility Initiative. That part of the website takes you through everything. Accessibility is related to alt text, because if you have really great alt text that actually explains the image or the reason for the image, that also helps with search. We know that. We know that if you do alt text that images help. We know that Google is moving more and more and more towards image in the SERPs. Because we're doing more and more images in the SERPs, we need to make sure that those images are relevant to the content. You can do beautiful design elements, but then we just mark them as an alt. The things that would rank it would be make sense and ask yourself, "Are my users searching an image search for this content or for this information?" Then make sure that your alt text is relevant to what they were likely searching. That's one. Accessibility relates to SEO through headlines. A lot of people, there's a lot of websites out there, where they think that H1 is just to make big, pretty font, and so there's multiple H1s on the homepage. abc.go, the ABC News station's website, that entire homepage is nothing but H1s because it's just-- Peter: It's good for SEO. Lea: It's not. [laughs] It's not. It's really horrible for people that are going through and doing the use kit. My computer, I have set up to go headline to headline. People using their keyboard to navigate versus a mouse, because, say, they have low vision or no vision, then they will do Ctrl and H for next headline and they will pop through and listen to the headlines to get to the story they want to listen to or read. Those headlines, if they're in improper order, they're sending people all over. It doesn't make any sense and they're going to bounce off your site. Again, remember, it's one in five, need accessibility. You're really limiting the number of people to your site. Those are just a couple of the ways that it is related, but they're pretty big ways. Peter: Very important. I'm really happy when I get people talk about things that I haven't really thought about, talked about. Lea: Thought about? Yes. Peter: Yes, that word. Getting something new to the podcast is great. Lea, thank you very much for that. If people want to talk to you about accessibility or SEO, where can they find you? Lea: You can hop onto aimclear.com and reach out through the Contact Us form and they'll connect us. That's probably the easiest way. Otherwise, you can find me on Twitter, Lea Scudamore. Just no H on Lea, it's just L-E-A. Three letters, really easy. Peter: I'll add that into the show notes so people can find you there. Lea: Yes, so you can find me there, too. Peter: All right, excellent. Lea, thank you very much. Do you ever go and swim in the Lake Superior, and does that make you superior? Lea: It doesn't make me superior, but it is a great time. Peter: I'll do that once. Lea: Yes, please. Please come. Please come to Duluth and come hang out at the lake with us. Come in mid-to-late June, beginning of July, because we're still talking snow here right now. Peter: See, this is why I was yesterday at the Croatian seaside where we had 20 degrees Celsius. We were almost able to go to the sea, but in shorts and stuff. This is why we go to Croatia. Croatia is great. We're just rambling, I'm rambling. Lea, thank you very much to be in the podcast. Have a great Monday. Lea: You, too. Thank you so much. Peter: Bye-bye. Lea: Bye.

Melissa Jay Murphy 0:06 Welcome to this week's Title Now Pop Up webinar, I'm Melissa Murphy General Counsel at The Fund, and I have the pleasure of hosting these weekly pop up webinars. For those of you who might be new to this, we offer them pretty much every week. They are on Thursday’s at noon. 30 minutes. I'm pretty strict about that, and they are free, and we just try to touch on a variety of topics that would be of interest to real estate practitioners, Fund Members their staffs, and anyone interested in the real estate and settlement services industry. We also push the audio content out on our podcast, which is also called Title Now, so that's easy to remember. And you can subscribe to that podcast anywhere that you subscribe to other podcasts. So, sign up, and then you can get the audio content if you miss a weekly webinar. So, thanks. Many of our past webinars have focused on an issue related to the pandemic, that we are all currently experiencing remote online notarization altered office practices, eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, which by the way was extended today, until September 1, and the economy. But today we're going to learn about an issue facing many businesses that is not related to the pandemic. So, we're all aware of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And some of us are certainly more aware than others just based on your circumstances. But have you ever thought about whether the ADA applies to websites or to your website? We have the perfect guest with us today to talk about that. So, I want to introduce Adam Chotiner, he's a shareholder with Shapiro Blasi Wasserman Hermann in Boca Raton. He's been practicing law for 22 years. Adam is board certified by The Florida Bar in labor and employment law, but throughout his practice he has also had extensive experience defending public access discrimination claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and various types of Fair Housing Act claims. He has counseled countless clients on accessibility matters, including physical barrier issues and website accessibility concerns. So welcome Adam, thank you so much for being with us today. Adam Chotiner 3:12 Thank you, Melissa, and welcome to everybody. I'm going to jump right into it. As she said today, I'm going to speak with you about public Access Disability Discrimination claims. For more than 25 years extensive substantial amount of such claims have been filed against private businesses and property owners under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Recently there's been a new trend that has developed, where real estate agents and brokers are getting hit with claims that their websites are advertisements, under the Fair Housing Act, and are not accessible to visually impaired individuals. So, let's start at the beginning, which is the ADA. The ADA has three parts to it. Part One deals with employment. Part Two deals with state and local governments. We are dealing with Part Three, Title Three. Title Three became effective in 1993. Beginning around the mid-90s, mid-to-late ‘90s, a wave of ADA lawsuits began to be filed and Florida has consistently been one of the top states for ADA lawsuits in the entire country. Now, when it comes to physical structures and surrounding architectural issues, there are literally hundreds of regulations that specify how these properties and facilities are to be compliant. It covers everything from how wide a parking space needs to be to the slope of the parking lots and ramps to table heights to door widths to even the height of the toilets and the type of faucet handles in the bathroom. The level of detail is actually staggering. But it generally makes it easy to determine whether something is compliant or not. You take out a tape measure, or a level, and it's either compliant or it's not. Since the effective date in 1993, all new construction has had to comply 100% with the regulations. Existing structures at time also need to comply, there is no such thing as being grandfathered in where you just don't have to comply at all. Existing structures have a different standard though they have to comply, but they only have to comply to the extent it is readily achievable. Now what is readily achievable. It's sort of like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder. But ultimately if a property or a business is not 100% compliant. Then there is potential exposure and a risk of being sued. And if you cannot achieve 100% compliance, for whatever reason, then the goal is to be as unattractive a target as possible. Melissa Jay Murphy 6:20 What do you mean by an unattractive target? Adam Chotiner 6:25 The example I always give is this. Let's say you have a restaurant. It's a free-standing structure, and it has a restroom, of course. Let's say that everything inside that facility everything from the parking lot to the interior everything is 100% compliant, except the size of the restroom. Okay, even within the restroom, the fixtures are correct, the toilet is the right height, the grab bars are in the right place, but ultimately there's, it's just such an older property that the only way to get sufficient clear floor space within the restroom, is to start knocking down walls, you need to enlarge the restaurant. So, you have a situation like that. But again, everything else is compliant. In my experience, that is not a property that is likely to be sued. Because it's simply an unattractive target to a plaintiff's lawyer. Why, because in that situation, the defendant, number one probably has a good argument that it is not readily achievable. And number two, as part of that you may very well be backing the defendant into the corner where it might be better for the defendant to actually fight the case and establish that it's not readily achievable. And this is a good example of what readily achievable means. It's not just the cost of doing the work. Say again in the restaurant example. Well if you're going to enlarge the restroom, you're going to make something else, smaller, and let's say as a result of enlarging the restroom, you actually lose one or two tables for customers to sit at. Alright well now, there's a different party analysis which gets into ongoing damage ongoing loss of revenue. So that's what I mean when I say, an attractive target. Melissa Jay Murphy 8:24 Okay. Adam Chotiner 8:25 So, until several years ago, pretty much all of the ADA lawsuits were these kinds of physical or architectural barrier cases. Then the attorneys who file these cases decided to try something new. They started suing businesses by claiming that the business's website is inaccessible to visually impaired individuals. Now blind and visually impaired individuals can access and use websites and the internet, using what's called screen reader software. But for the software to be effective, the website itself, simply needs to be programmed in a certain way. And the essence of the claims, was that the websites were not programmed in the right way. Now, these website cases are especially challenging. The main reason is that unlike with physical structures. There are no regulations that specify what it means for a website to be compliant. We just don't know specifically what it means. A secondary challenge is that the law is currently unsettled as to the extent to which a business's website can even be challenged under the ADA. In the 11th circuit, as it stands right now, there needs to be a nexus, or a connection to a physical location that a person may seek to access or learn more about such that the website is treated as an extension of that physical space. Melissa Jay Murphy 10:07 So, have any website cases been brought to trial and end been ruled upon? Adam Chotiner 10:16 So, the question today in the entire United States, there has only been one ADA website case which has gone all the way to trial. Not coincidentally, that was in Florida. In fact, in South Florida, and that case was brought against Winn Dixie the supermarket chain. Winn Dixie lost. Now, before going on to talk about that case this is a good point to discuss what I call, or what people call ‘WIC AG’, WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. WCAG comes from an organization called the Web Accessibility Initiative, which in turn is part of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, the consortium is an international community, that helps set standards for the web, so that the web is more uniform and runs better. For a few years, the standard, quote unquote, for website accessibility under WCAG has been what we call WCAG 2.0. Now that version of the guidelines has 38 of what are called success criteria, which are things that at least ostensibly can be measured in some way to determine accessibility. And recently, they came out with WCAG 2.1, which adds 12 new success criteria for a total of 50. Melissa Jay Murphy 12:00 What are some examples of this success criteria, because I'm trying to envision what it is about a website that is critical? Adam Chotiner 12:11 Sure. Here's just a handful of things that are identified as success criteria. Is there are there transcripts available for video only and audio only content? Is there closed captioning for videos with sound? You cannot rely on color alone to display or convey information. You have to be able to pause, stop or mute any audio conveyed on the website. All content and functions on the website, must be accessible by keyboard only without using a mouse. Users have to be able to navigate through a website in a logical sequential order that preserves meaning. Now, that's a little vague but that is one of the criteria. Melissa Jay Murphy 13:04 You would think that we need that on all websites. Adam Chotiner 13:06 Yeah, you would think though. Form errors need to be easy to identify understand and correct. One of the newer success criteria is to make sure that text spacing is able to be adjusted without causing a poor experience using the website. So those are just some examples of the success criteria. Now, I've handled many of these ADA website cases. And everyone that I've settled on ultimately, we have settled by using the WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 standard. Again, there are no regulations. But WCAG is pretty much the closest thing we have right now to some sort of objective criteria. Melissa Jay Murphy 13:55 So those WCAG guidelines had been used to settle a case but no court has ruled that those are the applicable standards. Adam Chotiner 14:04 No, actually that's what happened in the Winn Dixie. Okay. The Winn Dixie case Winn Dixie lost, and the judge imposed WCAG 2.0 as the standard. Now Winn Dixie appealed that decision. Now oral argument in that appeal before the 11th circuit was held, almost two years ago October of 2018, and we still do not have a ruling. Now, in my experience that's kind of a long time for an appellate court a federal appellate court to, to not rule. We're not really sure what they're waiting for at this point. But those of us who practice in this area are very anxiously waiting for some kind of guidance. So with all that in mind, I'd like to just briefly talk about what I mentioned was sort of the latest craze, which is that a lot of real estate agents brokers and realtors are receiving these demand letters and draft complaints. Now, so far, based on what I've seen these demand letters and draft complaints are being asserted under the Fair Housing Act. As I'm sure you know the Fair Housing Act, anti-discrimination provisions apply to any advertisements. Unfortunately, it's probably difficult to argue that a website, on which available housing can be viewed, is not an advertisement. I think that's the essence of what these demand letters are claiming. Now, a question is why are they traveling under the Fair Housing Act and not the ADA? I believe there's two reasons. First, the ADA only applies to quote places of public accommodation close quote that generally means places like restaurants, stores, shopping centers, malls, movie theaters, gas stations, office buildings, and similar private businesses with a physical location that is open to the public. I think it's at least arguable that real estate agents and brokers, maybe some of them do not represent places of public accommodation, particularly if they maybe work out of their home. So rather than even fight that battle. These lawyers sending these letters are going right to the Fair Housing Act. The second reason why I think they're traveling under the Fair Housing Act is that the ADA does not allow for damages, a plaintiff suing under Title Three of the ADA is not entitled to damages or monetary relief. They're only entitled to injunctive relief, basically in order requiring the defendant to fix the property, of course, that also entitles the plaintiff to have his attorneys’ hourly fees paid. And because it's an only injunctive relief. There are no jury trials, under the ADA, but with the Fair Housing Act damages are recoverable and jury trials are allowed. Melissa Jay Murphy 17:08 So, How are these cases against the real estate agents and the real estate brokers? How are they being defended can they be different? Adam Chotiner 17:18 Well that's a, that's a good question and I think it's the answer is, I'm going to answer it in a more broad sort of way, which really it applies to any of these sort of public access type disability claims. You know, in theory, they certainly can be successfully defended, but it is often cost prohibitive to take that approach. Under these laws, a prevailing plaintiff will recover the attorneys’ hourly fees and costs, however, except in extremely rare situations, a prevailing defendant gets nothing, and a prevailing defendant should not expect to recover their fees and costs. So, most of these cases do settle for nothing else than a business decision in terms of overall cost and expense. Plus, in my experience, it is unusual for there to be insurance coverage that defends these claims. I have seen it, but it's definitely on the unusual side. Now, for many years, a typical defense in an ADA case at least would attack, the plaintiffs standing, essentially, arguing that the plaintiff was not a genuine customer but instead was, you know, a serial filer of lawsuits. Unfortunately for those of us who defend these claims and they in the businesses they get it back in 2013, the 11th circuit held that ADA plaintiffs can have standing as testers, which basically took a bad situation and made it worse. And actually, made it easier for these cases to be filed. Nowadays they the most effective way to defend a claim is for a defendant to fix everything that needs to be fixed and to do it ASAP. Under the ADA, if a defendant fixes everything that's wrong, then the defendant can seek a dismissal based on mootness, since only injunctive relief is available. If everything is fixed, then there's no relief to grant. Significantly infant case is dismissed due to mootness, then the plaintiff is not entitled to attorneys’ fees, even if the defendant only fixed everything, because a lawsuit was filed. Now, in any of these matters there's always two goals. Okay, at least from my standpoint, representing a client. First you want to address and resolve the pending claim. But second, you want to take steps to prevent future claims, because of issues remain. There's definitely exposure for a subsequent lawsuit. Now, for several reasons, you know, certainly, it'll typically take a client, some time to come into compliance. Once a matter settles. Now, if it's a private settlement, and the property or website remains non-compliant pending any modifications, then there is a risk of another claim being asserted, and the fact that you've reached a private settlement with another plaintiff, but yet haven't yet finished the work is not a defense is not a defense. Having said that, if an actual lawsuit has been filed as opposed to a pre-suit settlement, then you can choose to settle the matter via a consent decree, which basically serves as an order of the court. And so, if during the compliance period, and I've seen it anywhere from six months to three years or more. But if during that period another claim is asserted, then you would have an excellent argument that the new law suit is moot and shouldn't be dismissed, because the defendant is already under a court order, meaning this consent decree, and that order provides remaining time to comply. Ultimately, the sad truth is that when it comes to these public access claims. There really is no sort of get out of jail free card. There's no, I say there's no VIP lounge or champagne room, you know, they need to be addressed and ultimately it's going to cost money plain and simple. Adam Chotiner 21:47 Now, I will say this. One of the issues with website issues is that taking the approach or quote unquote fixing everything right away is challenging. Why? Because there are no regulations, and so it can be very difficult to convince a court that your website now complies with the ADA or the Fair Housing Act. When we really don't know what it means to comply in the first place. So that can be really challenging, but I when I speak about these public access claims I always like to tell the Clint Eastwood story. And I tell it to clients as well. The Clint Eastwood story doesn't necessarily make my client feel any better once they've been sued. But I do tell it to demonstrate that that businesses and individuals who get hit with these claims. They shouldn't necessarily feel powerless, because they're the little guy. The truth is sometimes you can't fight City Hall, no matter who you are. For many years, one of the primary gripes about these public access claims, is that the law does not require pre suit notice it simply does, you can just go right into filing a lawsuit. There have been attempts to change the law, including a couple of years the House of Representatives passed the bill. But it went nowhere in the Senate. And I will tell you having followed this issue for many years. This is not some kind of political hot potato issue. That scenario I just described is played out many times over the past 20 years, with different parties in the two houses and in the White House. It just doesn't matter who is in charge. It just hasn't happened, and I don't think it's going to happen. So about 15 to 20 years ago, Clint Eastwood got sued. Regarding the restaurant that he owns in Carmel, California, where many years ago he was the mayor. Now, like many people. He couldn't believe that the law didn't require a pre-suit notice, but unlike most people, and because he's Clint Eastwood. He was able to go to Washington DC, and he spoke before a congressional committee and implore them to change the law for all the reasons you might expect. But as you've already heard nothing happened, law hasn't been changed. The moral of the Clint Eastwood story is that in Dirty Harry couldn't get something done really what chance do the rest of us have, again, doesn't necessarily make feel, make people feel better, but it might make them feel a little less powerless that ultimately you're just up against something that it's very difficult to fight. So, for now, like I said, We await further guidance from the courts, particularly on these website issues. But ultimately, if someone does get hit with an ADA claim or a demand letter under the Fair Housing Act, really they need to try and look to achieve the same two goals I mentioned earlier. You want to address an obvious thing resolve the immediate claim, but it is important to take steps to try and prevent future claims. Thank you. Melissa Jay Murphy 25:08 So, Adam a couple of questions, with regard to the website situation. Are there companies out there that are sort of in the business or are in the business of helping companies fix their websites? Is there a burgeoning industry out there? Is that a well-established industry? Adam Chotiner 25:38 I'm not sure I would describe it as well established, but it is an industry now I will say this. Nowadays, there's things that you can buy that I've seen this sold called widgets that are ostensibly these autonomous programs and sort of apps that you can install on a computer system that are intended to, you know, address these kinds of website issues. However, in my experience, what I've found is that they're better than nothing, but in many cases I believe that the level of compliance that they help you achieve is still significantly lacking, and does leave you exposed. If a company came to me and said, you know, money is no object. We want to be as compliant as possible. We want to comply with WCAG 2.1 to the maximum extent. How do we do that? Then I would advise them to engage a company that does specialize in website accessibility compliance, and there are companies like that. There are companies that I've referred clients to. And what these companies do is, it's not merely a matter of programming to achieve true compliance, you want to do human auditing. What the widgets purport to do is sort of autonomous auditing, but it just isn't as effective. So these companies make the programming changes to the website, but then they literally do human spot checking. They actually check the effectiveness of the changes they go through, the success criteria, and they see hands on is this stuff, you know, now compliant the way that WCAG intends. Melissa Jay Murphy 27:55 So you need to make sure that whatever company or product that you buy knows what those guidelines are and agrees to bring you in compliance with whatever the most current version of those guidelines would be on the pretty reasonable assumption that that's going to be the measure, or the standard against which you're going to be measured. Adam Chotiner 28:20 That's true. And I will say I mean, you know like, when a lot of things you do get what you pay for the widgets are generally an economical option because it's like I said it's sort of autonomous. But to give you an example when the Winn Dixie trial took place. The testimony at that trial was that for Winn Dixie to get its website to comply with WCAG 2.0, that the cost involved in that was a six-figure number. So now granted the Winn Dixie website has hundreds maybe thousands of pages to it. Because presumably you know if you click on a product, you know it might have its own page so it's an extensive website and generally speaking, the cost of modifying a website is largely tied to how many pages the site consists of, but it's not necessarily an inexpensive proposition to have a company do it with human auditing. But again, if you're really looking to protect yourself and you're looking to maximize or minimize your exposure and risk, then that's the way to go. Melissa Jay Murphy 29:44 Well, Adam, we are out of time. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us and clearly you've just touched the surface with us on this issue but I think you've done a great job of telling us what we need to know in order to know how much we don't know which is always helpful in my estimation. Adam Chotiner 30:09 Everybody now knows enough to be dangerous. Melissa Jay Murphy 30:11 Very, very. Melissa Jay Murphy 30:14 That's always our goal in these webinars. Adam Chotiner 30:18 You're right. You're very welcome Melissa Thank you very much. Thank you everybody for having me. Thank you. Melissa Jay Murphy 30:24 Thanks everybody for attending. You can catch the audio content on our podcast I will remind you of that and look for the notifications of our future pop up webinars, Thursdays at noon 30 minutes. And as always, Thank you for your support of The Fund.

Chris Castle, a Developer Advocate with Heroku, is joined by Tobie Langel, a longtime web developer and member of the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. The W3C is an organization where the standards that define the web are being built. It's a consortium of different industry players, like browser vendors,universities, and governments. These different stakeholders come together and decide how HTML, CSS, and JavaScript API should behave. The W3C effectively lays the groundwork for browsers to agree on how a website should look and behave. They do this through long, thought out processes of standardization. If each browser ends up implementing its own HTML tags or CSS rules, then the web would become fragmented, as sites would require you to use a specific browser. For something to become a W3C recommendation, two different browsers with different code bases need to successfully implement a specification. This is done to build confidence around an idea, to ensure that browser vendors understand it, as well as to identify ways which frontend developer will make use of the new technology. Much of the conversation between Tobie and Chris goes over how, exactly, this timeline works in practice. Links from this episode W3C is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web Specref is an open source database of web standards PR Preview adds preview and diff to spec pull requests.

Digital accessibility came into my concern five years ago when I design the user interface for a physical product. I wondered how people with disabilities may actually use this thing I just designed. Fast forward five years and I sit with clients and partners on developing universal design strategy to embed accessibility standards through the entire product lifecycle. Digital accessibility lawsuits are on the rise and Beyonce and Dominos are only just the beginning. This episode talks about my history with digital accessibility, legal considerations and history, maturity of teams to embed accessibility standards into your design systems, and where you can go and learn about digital accessibility. I start off this episode pissed off because as a design professional, this is a no-brainer. But in this age...I can't take anything for granted.

Interview avec Harry Halpin reateur de la startup Nym Technologie Nym fournit une confidentialité complète pour que toute application, service ou blockchain puisse défendre son trafic réseau contre les systèmes de surveillance les plus sophistiqués, en mutualisant les ressources sans avoir besoin de créer une confidentialité à partir de zéro, tout en maintenant la durabilité opérationnelle et financière. L'intérêt permanent de Harry est d'utiliser la cryptographie pour étendre la liberté humaine et mettre fin à la surveillance de masse. Il est un informaticien de renom et un leader dans le mouvement contre la surveillance, ce dernier en partie en raison de sa propre expérience de surveillance de son activisme contre le changement climatique. Il a travaillé avec l'inventeur Web Tim Berners-Lee au World Wide Web Consortium au MIT, créant ses premières normes de cryptographie et dirigeant le Web Cryptography Working Group qui a harmonisé les normes entre tous les principaux navigateurs Web. Il a quitté le W3C, croyant que la gestion des droits numériques avait sacrifié la sécurité des utilisateurs au profit de quelques plates-formes centralisées. Tout en travaillant à l'Inria de Paris, il a dirigé le projet NEXTLEAP de décentralisation de la messagerie privée, a été responsable de la commercialisation de PANORAMIX, a démarré la recherche sur la blockchain au Sociotechnical Systems Research Center du MIT et a fondé Nym Technologies. Tout en travaillant à l'Inria de Paris, il a dirigé le projet NEXTLEAP de décentralisation de la messagerie privée, a été responsable de la commercialisation de PANORAMIX, a démarré la recherche sur la blockchain au Sociotechnical Systems Research Center du MIT et a fondé Nym Technologies.

Today is April 8, 2020, and for this Wednesday Wisdom episode we're covering: W3C Website Redesign When to Use a Microsite Converting Your Store to Online Let's dive in! ---- W3C, or the World-Wide Web Consortium, is the main international standards organization for the internet. Today they announced that they would be starting the process of a much needed website redesign. W3C will be using Studio 24 to work on the redesign and will be keeping as much of the process in the public eye. ---- Creative.onl published a post this week detailing when it makes sense to use a microsite. Microsites are small off-shoots of a main site that serve a separate but related purpose, perhaps as a marketing campaign. However, it does not always make sense to create one, such as when you consider the SEO effect of using a separate domain. ---- We are currently seeing the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on retail. Stores who made most of their sales in a physical location are taking the biggest hit. In response, Shopify released an extensive blog post today regarding tips to convert your store to an online shop to help. ---- Want to know more? Head to fewdaily.com for more of today's topics and other front-end web content! If you liked what you heard be sure to rate, review, and subscribe on your platform of choice. That's all for today, tune in tomorrow! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Wie wird CSS eigentlich weiterentwickelt? Cascading Style Sheets stellen einen globalen Standard dar, der heute aus keinem Browser mehr wegzudenken ist. Daher ist die Frage wie es zur Weiterentwicklung dieser Norm kommt besonders spannend. Zusammen mit Adam Argyle, Chrome CSS Developer Advocate bei Google, finden wir darauf in Podcastfolge 55 eine Antwort – erstmals auf Englisch! Als Stylesheet-Sprache gibt CSS Gestaltungsanweisungen für HTML und XML vor. Definiert wird dieser Standard durch das W3C, kurz für World Wide Web Consortium, das als Dachorganisation der CSS Working Group auftritt. Adam ist Teil dieser Arbeitsgruppe und erzählt uns in dieser Folge, wie sich eine übergeordnete Organisation wie die W3C strukturiert. Er erklärt uns, wie die Arbeitsprozesse zur Weiterentwicklung von CSS-Vorgaben aussehen und sich aus Proposals und Drafts Implementierungen ergeben. Ausgestattet mit Tipps zu Tools und Best Practices, verrät uns Adam außerdem sein liebstes CSS-Feature! Ihr könnt Adam auf Twitter folgen, auf seiner Webseite mehr über seine Projekte erfahren und euch so zusätzlich von seiner Expertise in CSS überzeugen lassen.Diese Folge ist die erste, die wir auf Englisch veröffentlichen. Schreibt uns doch, was ihr darüber denkt – ganz einfach auf Social Media oder per Mail! Hier findet ihr, was Adam ansprach: Motion Blur Draft von Adam Draft zu cubic-bezier to take additional pairs von Adam CSS Typed Object Model CSS Houdini Spec Wiki CSS Houdini Spec Dev Timecodes (00:48) Who's Adam? (04:27) What's the CSS Working Group?(06:14) How does a new idea come to CSS?(15:35) Some exciting new CSS specs(25:16) Loved and hated CSS features(31:38) Animation curves and motion blur(33:43) Browser support(38:27) Some history of CSS(40:58) Will there be a CSS4?(45:43) How to mix JS and CSS the right way(51:55) Future of the browser platform(57:00) VisBug: a FireBug for designers(59:35) Picks of the DayPicks of the Day Adam: Hat dein Lieblings-CSS-Feature es noch nicht in alle Browser geschafft, kannst du es mit PostCSS-Preset-Env konvertieren, sodass es von den meisten Browsern verstanden wird! Tutorial: How to Use CSS Logical Properties to Control Layout Adams Tweet: Logical Property Equivalents von Höhe und Breite Sebi: Mit Wakamaifondue Eigenschaften einer Schriftart herausfinden, die man nicht direkt erfassen kann. Jojo: Vue CLI Plugin zum einfachen Überführen einer Vue Single-page Application in eine Android- oder iOS-App mithilfe von Capacitor. Schreibt uns! podcast@programmier.bar Folgt uns! Twitter Instagram Facebook Besucht uns! Meetup 

In this podcast, we ask Brock about the changes she has seen in the U.K., post-Brexit, as well as the open source culture in the country, and what can be done to bring more visibility to the vast pools of developer talent that the country possesses. Then later in the show, we discuss the top topics on the site for the week, including the need to improve user interfaces, Bruce Perens' departure from the Open Source Initiative, a new World Wide Web Consortium standard that will help distributed tracing, and the surprising utility of the humble Unix awk command.

In this podcast, we ask Brock about the changes she has seen in the U.K., post-Brexit, as well as the open source culture in the country, and what can be done to bring more visibility to the vast pools of developer talent that the country possesses. Then later in the show, we discuss the top topics on the site for the week, including the need to improve user interfaces, Bruce Perens' departure from the Open Source Initiative, a new World Wide Web Consortium standard that will help distributed tracing, and the surprising utility of the humble Unix awk command.

This day in History in 1997 HTML version 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.The HTML standards have been changed many times over but God's commandments have not changed.

In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, host Angelique Carson chcats with Robert Robbert van Eijk, who's recently joined the Future of Privacy Forum as its managing director for Europe. Prior to serving in this position, Eijk worked at the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) for nearly 10 years and has since become an authority in the field of online privacy and data protection. He represented the Dutch DPA in international meetings and as a technical expert in court, and he also represented the European Data Protection Authorities in negotiations of the World Wide Web Consortium on Do Not Track. Van Eijk discusses the future of online advertising and what it's like working within the walls of a data protection authority.

Marianne Castano Bishop, Ed.D., Platform Product ManagerMian Bishop has been passionate about accessibility and internationalization since she was a young girl growing up with neighbors from different countries and a few with disabilities. She has been a steadfast advocate for people with disabilities while serving as manager, administrator, trainer, faculty member, researcher and as a doctoral student at Harvard. She prefers to use the term “diverse abilities” as she believes each individual has a set of gifts that makes him or her unique. Diversity and inclusion have always been part of her personal and professional life. She echoes the World Wide Web Consortium’s message that web accessibility is essential for some and useful for all. Quoting Tim Berners-Lee, she agrees that “the power of the Web is in its universality.” Everyone should have access to the Web. She can be reached at mbishop@ebsco.com.In this episode, we discuss the usability of library resources and accessibility (A11y) for all.

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Today we're going to look at the Tech Model Railroad Club, an obsessive group of young computer hackers that helped to shape a new vision for the young computer industry through the late 50s and early 60s. We've all seen parodies it in the movies. Queue up a montage. Iron Man just can't help but tinker with new models of his armor. Then viola, these castaway hack jobs are there when a new foe comes along. As is inspiration to finish them. The Lambda Lamda Lamda guys get back at the jock frat boys in Revenge of the Nerds. The driven inventor in Honey I Shrunk the Kids just can't help himself but build the most insane inventions. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters. There's a drive. And those who need to understand, to comprehend, to make sense of what was non-sensical before. I guess it even goes back to Dr Frankenstein. Some science just isn't meant to be conquered. But trains. Those are meant to be conquered. They're the golden spike into the engineering chasm that young freshman who looked like the cast of Stand By Me, but at MIT, wanted to conquer. You went to MIT in the 50s and 60s because you wanted a deeper understanding of how the world worked. But can you imagine a world where the unofficial motto of the MIT math department was that “there's no such thing as computer science. It's witchcraft!” The Tech Model Railroad Club, or TMRC, had started in 1946. World War II had ended the year before and the first first UN General Assembly and Security Council met, with Iran filing the first complaint against the Soviet Union and UNICEF being created. Syria got their independence from France. Jordan got their independence from Britain. The Philippines gained their independence from the US. Truman enacted the CIA, Stalin accounted a 5 year plan for Russia, ushering in the era of Soviet reconstruction and signaling the beginning of the col war, which would begin the next year. Anti-British protests exploded in India, and Attlee agreed to their independence. Ho Chi Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and France recognized their statehood days later, with war between his forces and the French breaking out later that year resulting in French martial law. Churchill gave his famous Iron Curtain Speech. Italy and Bulgaria abolished their monarchies. The US Supreme Court ordered desegregation of busses and Truman ordered desegregation of the armed forces and created the Committee on Civil Rights using an executive order. And there was no true computer industry. But the ENIAC went into production in 1946. And a group of kids at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology weren't thinking much about the new world order being formed nor about the ENIAC which was being installed just a 5 or 6 hour drive away. They were thinking about model trains. And over the next few years they would build, paint, and make these trains run on model tracks. Started by Walter Marvin and John Fitzallen Moore, who would end up with over a dozen patents after earning his PhD from Columbia and having a long career at Lockheed, EMI Medical who invented the CT scan. By the mid-50s the club had grown and there were a few groups of people who were really in it for different things. Some wanted to drink cocacola while they painted trains. But the thing that drew many a student though was the ARRC, or Automatic Railroad Running Computer. This was built by the Signals and Power Subcommittee who used relays from telephone switches to make the trains do all kinds of crazy things, even cleaning the tracks. Today there we're hacking genes, going to lifehacker.com, and sometimes regrettably getting hacked, or losing data in a breach. But the term came from one who chops or cuts, going back to the 1200s. But on a cool day in 1955, on the third floor of Build 20, known as the Plywood Palace, that would change. Minutes of a meeting at the Tech Model Railroad Club note “Mr. Eccles requests that anyone working or hacking on the electrical system turn the power off to avoid fuse blowing.” Maybe they were chopping parts of train tracks up. Maybe the term was derived from something altogether separate. But this was the beginning of a whole new culture. One that survives and thrives today. Hacking began to mean to do technical things for enjoyment in the club. And those who hacked became hackers. The OG hacker was Jack Dennis, an alumni of the TMRC. Jack Dennis had gotten his bachelors from MIT in 1953 and moved on to get his Masters then Doctorate by 1958, staying until he retired in 1987, teaching and influencing many subsequent generations of young hackers. You see, he studied artificial intelligence, or taking these computers built by companies like IBM to do math, and making them… intelligent. These switches and relays under the table of the model railroad were a lot of logical circuits strung together and in the days before what we think of as computers now, these were just a poor college student's way of building a computer. Having skipped two grades in high school, this “computer” was what drew Alan Kotok to the TMRC in 1958. And incoming freshman Peter Samson. And Bob Saunders, a bit older than the rest. Then grad student Jack Dennis introduced the TMRC to the IBM 704. A marvel of human engineering. It was like your dad's shiny new red 1958 corvette. Way too expensive to touch. But you just couldn't help it. The young hackers didn't know it yet, but Marvin Minsky had shown up to MIT in 1958. John McCarthy was a research fellow there. Jack Dennis got his PhD that year. Outside of MIT, Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby were giving us the Integrated Circuit, we got FORTRAN II, and that McCarthy guy. He gave us LISP. No, he didn't speak with a LISP. He spoke IN LISP. And then president Lyndon Johnson established ARPA in response to Sputnik, to speed up technological progress. Fernando Corbato got his PhD in physics in 1956 and stayed on with the nerds until he retired as well. Kotok ended up writing the first chess program with McCarthy on the IBM 7090 while still a teenager. Everything changed when Lincoln Lab got the TX-0, lovingly referred to as the tikso. Suddenly, they weren't loading cards into batch processing computers. The old IBM way was the enemy. The new machines allowed them to actually program. They wrote calculators and did work for courses. But Dennis kinda' let them do most anything they wanted. So of course we ended up with very early computer games as well, with tic tac toe and Mouse in the Maze. These kids would write anything. Compilers? Sure. Assemblers? Got it. They would hover around the signup sheet for access to the tikso and consume every minute that wasn't being used for official research. At this point, the kids were like the budding laser inventors in Weird Science. They were driven, crazed. And young Peter Deutsch joined them, writing the Lisp 1.5 implementation for the PDP at 12. Can you imagine being a 12 year old and holding your own around a group of some of the most influential people in the computer industry. Bill Gosper got to MIT in 1961 and so did the second PDP-1 ever built. Steve Russell joined the team and ended up working on Spacewar! When he wasn't working on Lisp. Speaking of video games. They made Spacewar during this time with a little help from Kotok Steve Piner, Samson, Suanders, and Dan Edwards. In fact, Kotok and Saunders created the first gamepad, later made popular for Nintendo, so they could play Spacewar without using the keyboard. This was work that would eventually be celebrated by the likes of Rolling Stone and Space War and in fact would later become the software used to smoke test the PDP once it entered into the buying tornado. Ricky Greenblatt got to MIT in 1962. And this unruly, unkempt, and extremely talented group of kids hacked their way through the PDP, with Greenblatt becoming famous for his hacks, hacking away the first FORTRAN compiler for the PDP and spending so much time at the terminal that he didn't make it through his junior year at MIT. These formative years in their lives were consumed with cocacola, Chinese food, and establishing many paradigms we now consider fundamental in computer science. The real shift from a batch process mode of operations, fed by paper tape and punchcards, to a interactive computer was upon us. And they were the pioneers who through countless hours of hacking away, found “the right thing.” Project MAC was established at MIT in 1963 using a DARPA grant and was initially run by legendary J. C. R. Licklider. MAC would influence operating systems with Multics which served as the inspiration for Unix, and the forming of what we now know as computer science through the 1960s and 70s. This represented a higher level of funding and a shift towards the era of development that led to the Internet and many of the standards we still use today. More generations of hackers would follow and continue to push the envelope. But that one special glimpse in time, let's just say if you listen at just the right frequency you can hear screaming at terminals when a game of Spacewar didn't go someone's way, or when something crashed, or with glee when you got “the right thing.” And if you listen hard enough at your next hackathon, you can sometimes hear a Kotok or a Deutsch or a Saunders whisper in your ear exactly what “the right thing” is - but only after sufficient amounts of trial, error, and Spacewar. This free exercise gives way to innovation. That's why Google famously gives employees free time to pursue their passions. That's why companies run hackathons. That's why everyone from DARPA to Netflix has run bounty programs. These young mathematicians, scientists, physicists, and engineers would go on to change the world in their own ways. Uncle John McCarthy would later move to Stanford, where he started the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. From there he influenced Sun Microsystems (the S in Sun is for Stanford), Cisco, and dozens of other Silicon Valley powerhouses. Dennis would go on to found Multics and be an inspiration for Ken Thompson with the first versions of Unix. And after retiring he would go to NASA and then Acorn Networks. Slug Russell would go on to a long career as a developer and then executive, including a stop mentoring two nerdy high school kids at Lakeside School in Seattle. They were Paul Allen and Bill Gates, who would go on to found Microsoft. Alan Kotok would go on to join DEC where he would work for 30 years, influencing much of the computing through the 70s and into the 80s. He would work on the Titan chip at DEC and in the various consortiums around the emergent Internet. He would be a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium. Ricky Greenblatt ended up spending too much of his time hacking. He would go on to found Lisp Machines, coauthor the time sharing software for the PDP-6 and PDP-10, write Maclisp, and write the first computer chess program to beat world class players in Hubert Dreyfus. Peter Samson wrote the Tech Model Railroad Club's official dictionary which would evolve into the now-famous Jargon file. He wrote the Harmony compiler, a FORTRAN compiler for the PDP-6, made music for the first time with computers, became an architect at DEC, would oversee hardware engineering at NASA, and continues to act as a docent at the Computer History Museum. Bob Saunders would go on to be a professor at the University of California, becoming president of the IEEE, and Chairman of the Board during some of the most influential years in that great body of engineers and scientists. Peter Deutsch would go on to get his PhD from Berkeley, found Aladdin Enterprises, write Ghostscript, create free Postscript and PDF alternatives, work on Smalltalk, work at Sun, be an influential mind at Xerox PARC, and is now a composer. We owe a great deal to them. So thank you to these pioneers. And thank you, listeners, for sticking through to the end of this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're lucky to have you.

Frankenstein Linux malware and a Docker bug that's blown out of proportion get our attention this week. As well as the new GParted release, the Unity Editor for Linux and the Browser vendors struggle with the W3C's latest twist.

Frankenstein Linux malware and a Docker bug that's blown out of proportion get our attention this week. As well as the new GParted release, the Unity Editor for Linux and the Browser vendors struggle with the W3C's latest twist.

Frankenstein Linux malware and a Docker bug that's blown out of proportion get our attention this week. As well as the new GParted release, the Unity Editor for Linux and the Browser vendors struggle with the W3C's latest twist.

In Episode 80 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with CTRL-labs CEO Thomas Reardon, about his company’s ground-breaking innovations in neural interface design, computational neuroscience, and machine learning that turn science fiction into reality. Thomas Reardon’s career is no less impressive than his most recent endeavor to displace the graphical user interface and revolutionize immersive computing. He is a founding Board Member of the World Wide Web Consortium and famous for having created Internet Explorer at Microsoft, which, at its peak, represented 96% of all web browsers in existence. Over one billion people on earth have used Reardon’s software to access the Web. After leaving Microsoft, Reardon decided to go back to school, receiving his undergraduate degree in Classics from Columbia, gaining fluency in Latin and Greek. He followed that up with a Ph.D. in Neuroscience split between Columbia and Duke.     It’s hard to capture the paradigmatic nature of the innovations stemming from the work being done at CTRL-labs without seeing it for yourself. Anything that I can say is insufficient to capture the awe of watching someone type on a screen without moving his fingers, use her intentions to pick up and finely control objects in three-dimensional space or play a video game while remaining visually motionless. The implications of this technology are perhaps, rivaled only by the practical genius of its implementation. By focusing their attention on translating only the final, neuronal output of our brain’s commands as expressed through electrical impulses sent directly to our muscles, the team at CTRL-labs has managed to create a device that can capture the brain’s intentions non-invasively, through the use of a simple armband that you can wear like an article of clothing, a wristwatch, or a fancy bracelet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this technology turns yesterday’s future into today’s reality, blowing wide-open the world of immersive computing and expanding our sense of possibility beyond our wildest imagination. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In this episode, we talk to Terence Eden, Open Standards Lead at the Government Digital Service. We discuss his job, a digitally-equipped civil service and emerging technology in government. The full transcript of the interview follows: Sarah Stewart: Hello. Welcome to the second GDS podcast. I’m Sarah Stewart, Senior Writer at the Government Digital Service. Today I’ll be joined in conversational paradise with Terence Eden. Terence is known variously as a tech enthusiast, as a digital troublemaker, as the man who hacked his own vacuum cleaner to play the ‘Star Wars’ theme tune, but in a professional capacity he is the Open Standards Lead at the Government Digital Service. Terence, welcome. Terence Eden:  Thank you very much for having me. Sarah Stewart:  So how do you explain what you do? Terence Eden:  What I tend to say, in a very reduced vocabulary, is, “We have computers. Government has computers, and those computers need to talk to each other, but sometimes those computers don’t speak the same language.” It’s my job to say, “Hey, can we agree on a common language here?” Then, when we can, those computers speak to each other. It’s, kind of, as simple as that. If we publish a document and it’s in a format that you don’t understand, that’s a barrier to entry for you. You can’t get access to the data or the information you need. If we publish it in such a way that it’s only available on one manufacturer’s type of smartphone, that’s a barrier. We can’t do that, so it’s my job to say, “No, let’s make it available to everyone, in a common language.” I’ve got a big sticker on my laptop which says, ‘Make things open. It makes things better.’ That applies to a whole variety of things, and there are people here working on open data, and open source, and open government, but my part of the mission is to say that, when government produces documents or data, everyone should be able to read them. It’s unacceptable that we say, “Okay, if you want to interact with government, you need to pay this company this money, for this software, which only works on that platform.” That’s completely antithetical to everything we’re trying to do, so my mission – our team’s mission – is to go around government, saying, “There’s a better way of doing things, there’s a more open way of doing things, and we can help you with that.”  Sarah Stewart: That sounds completely straightforward. Terence Eden: You’d think, wouldn’t you? Most of the time it is. When you tell people and you say, “If you publish it like this, then only people with that computer can read it,” it’s like a light goes off. Sarah Stewart:  Do you go out to departments proactively, or do they come to you? Terence Eden: It’s both. I spent last week talking to the DWP and the Government Statistical Service, and I’m speaking, I think, this week to a couple of different departments and ministries. We go out, we chat to them, but quite often they come to us and say, “Hey, users have complained about this,” or, “Hang on. We think we need to do something better. What should we do?” and we offer just a wide range of advice. Sarah Stewart: Government is huge and technology changes all the time so how do you make sure you are progressing in the right direction, that you’re achieving what needs to be achieved, and that your work is ‘done’, I mean is it even possible to say your work is ‘done’? Terence Eden: Wow… It’s a slight Sisyphean task, I think, because there’s always going to be a new department coming online which doesn’t get it, or someone who’s come in, and a bit of work which only gets published every five years, and the process is never updated. It’s a rolling task. We monitor everything the government publishes. My team, when we see a department which only publishes something in a proprietary format, we drop them an email and say, “Hey, look, here are the rules. This is what you need to do. Can you fix it?” Most of the time they do, and we’ve seen… We’ve published some statistics. We’re seeing a steady rise in the number of open-format documents which are being published. That’s great, so we’re on our way with the mission. You can’t expect everyone to keep on top of every change in technology and the best practice all the time, so there is always going to be a need for bits of GDS to go out and say, “You know what? This is best practice. This is the right way to do it, and we can help you get there and make things more open.” So… we need to do, I think, in GDS and across government, a better job of understanding what our users want – what they need, I should say – and also explaining that user need back to the rest of government. Sarah Stewart: But what’s your focus at the moment? Terence Eden: We have a problem with PDFs. I don’t think that’s any surprise. I’ve published the stats, but there are some critical government forms which are being downloaded millions of times per year, which could be better served being online forms. When someone has to download, print out a form, fill it in by hand and then post it back, for someone else to open it up, scan it, or type it in, we- Sarah Stewart:  It’s the worst. Terence Eden: It’s the worst. It’s rubbish. It’s a rubbish user experience. It’s expensive and it’s not very efficient. It means you’re waiting weeks to get an answer, whereas if you can just go on your phone and type in your name, address, and all the other bits that they want, and hit ‘go’ and then get either an instant or a rapid decision, that just transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, as we say. So, a large part of the next six months is going to be finding those… It’s not low-hanging fruit, but it’s just those big, horrible things which just no-one has got round to tackling yet. Some of them, there are good reasons and there are whole business processes behind, but we need to be pushing and saying, “Look, in 2018 this isn’t good enough. This isn’t the way that we can behave anymore.” A lot of what I do is going round to departments, and doing presentations, and talking to people individually and in groups. I see that continuing. We also work a lot with SDOs: standard development organisations. I’m on a committee for the British Standards Institute, and I work with World Wide Web Consortium, and so we’re making sure that the government’s view is represented. We don’t ever want to produce a standard which is a government standard, and it’s the government’s own standard. It’s the only one, and we’re the only people who use it, because no-one wants to deal with that. We want to have… We want to be using internationally accepted standards. If you’re an SME, if you’re a small-medium business and you want to pitch for some work for government, you don’t need to go and buy a huge, expensive standard, or you don’t need to do a piece of work just for us. Your work can be applicable everywhere. That said, it’s important for us to be on these standards development organisations so we can say, “Actually, our user needs are going to be slightly different from a FTSE 100 company, or from a charity, or from someone else.” We can just shape those standards so that they’re slightly more applicable for us. Sarah Stewart: Someone listening might ask: why can’t government use, say, something like Google Forms instead of a PDF? Why can’t government just do this? Terence Eden: In some ways, they can. With that particular example, we need to understand people’s concerns about privacy. If we were using a third-party form supplier, for example, do you want, if you’re filling in a form which says how many kids you’ve got, how many have died, and your health issues and all that, do you want that going to a third party to be processed? Some people will be comfortable with it. Some people will, rightly, be uncomfortable with it. We need to make sure that any solution that we pick actually addresses users’ very real concerns. There are several pieces of work around government trying to get forms right. Part of the problem is that each department has their own set of users, with their own set of user needs. If you are a, I don’t know… If you’re a farmer applying for a farm payment, you have very different needs to if you are a single mother applying for child benefit, to if you are a professional accountant trying to submit something to HMRC. So, just saying, “We’re going to have one standardised way of sending data to the government” might actually not work. We have to realise that users all have different needs. It’s tricky, and there are ways that we are helping with it, but I think that’s going to be a piece of work which is going to continue rumbling on, just because some of these processes are very old-fashioned, and they still rely on things being faxed across and being handwritten. Sarah Stewart: Faxed? That can’t be right. Actually, no, I can believe it Terence Eden: Lots of stuff just goes through via fax because, if you’ve got a computer system built in one department, and a computer system built by someone else in another department, and they don’t speak the same language, actually the easiest way to do something is to send a photo of that document across. That’s easiest and quickest. Fax is relatively quick, but it comes with all of this baggage and it doesn’t always work right. We see that fax machines are vulnerable to computer viruses and stuff like this. Sarah Stewart: And the noise. Terence Eden:   And the noise, but sometimes we have these little stopgaps, which are good enough for the time, but they never get replaced. Part of the work that we’ve done with the Open Standards Board is to make sure that all emergency services use a standard called ‘MAIT’ – Multi Agency Incident Transfer – which basically means you don’t need a police department to fax across details to an ambulance or to a coastguard. Their computers, even if they’re made by different people and run different operating systems and programs, they all speak to a common standard. So trying to find where those little bugs in the process are is part of our job. If people want to help out, if they know where problems are, if they come across to GitHub, we’re on ‘github.com/alphagov/open-standards’. They can raise an issue there and say, “Hey, there really ought to be an open standard for,” dot, dot, dot, or, “Look, this process really doesn’t make sense. There’s this open standard which would save us a lot of time and money. Can we adopt it?” It’s as simple as raising a GitHub issue with us. We do most of the hard work to find out whether it’s suitable, and we take it through a slightly convoluted process, but it keeps us legally in the clear. Yes, then we can, hopefully, mandate that across government and start the work on getting people to adopt it. Some of the stuff we do is small. Saying that text should be encoded using Unicode UTF-8, that just basically means that, when someone sends you a document with an apostrophe in it, it doesn’t turn into one of those weird… We call it ‘Mojibake’, where there are just weird symbols in place of- Sarah Stewart: The squares. Terence Eden: Yes, the weird squares. That is a really boring, low-level standard, but it just makes everything easy, all the way up to something like MAIT or International Aid Transparency Initiative, which allows you to see where all the foreign aid that we spend, and all the grants that we make, goes. That’s hugely important for understanding, if you’re a taxpayer, where your money is going, but, if you’re in the charity sector or the aid sector, understanding how government is using funds to improve lives. We don’t want information to be locked away in filing cupboards. We don’t want it so that, if you request some information, you have to send an FOI and then you get a scan of a fax posted off to you. That’s rubbish. We want this information front and centre so that, if people want to use it, it’s there, and that it works absolutely everywhere. It doesn’t matter which phone you’ve got, which computer you’ve got, you should be able to access all of the information that you’re entitled to, with no intermediaries, no having to pay for extra software. It should just be there. If we make things open, then we make things better. Sarah Stewart: Another area of focus for you is emerging technology - innovation is a hot topic in government at the moment with the publication of the tech innovation in government survey, the GovTech catalyst fund, and the development of an innovation strategy. How do we make sure that government doesn’t just grab at new fashionable tech because it’s new and fashionable? Terence Eden: The author William Gibson has a beautiful quote, which is, “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed yet.” That’s not really the case. The future isn’t here. We’ve got glimpses that, if we can build this huge dataset, then we will be able to artificial intelligence the blockchain into the cloud and magic will happen. You’re right: people just go a little starry-eyed over this. What we need in government is people who understand technology at a deep and fundamental level, not people who see what a slick sales team is selling, not people who read a report in a newspaper and go, “We could do that.” You need a fundamental understanding. Sarah Stewart: Do you really think it’s possible that every Civil Servant can understand the fundamentals of emerging technology and digital practice? Terence Eden:  Yes. Sarah Stewart: Because it can seem quite frightening. Terence Eden:  Yes, absolutely. We wouldn’t accept a civil servant who couldn’t read or write. We can be as inclusive as we like, but we need to set minimum standards for being able to engage with the work that we do. Similarly, we wouldn’t accept a civil servant who couldn’t type or use a computer in a basic way. I think there’s a lot of nonsense talked about digital natives. What a digital native is: someone whose parents were rich enough to buy them a computer when they were a kid. That’s great, but not everyone is that lucky, but what we can do is say, “We’re not going to just train you in how to fill in a spreadsheet. We’re going to teach you to think about how you would build a formula in a spreadsheet, how to build an algorithm,” and you can start building up on that. We have to be committed to lifelong learning in the civil service. It’s not good enough to say, “Okay, this is your job. You’re going to do it for the next 25 to 40 years, and there will be no change in it whatsoever.” That’s unrealistic. I think as part of that – and it’s not going to happen overnight – we need to make sure that when someone comes in and says, “We’re going to use an algorithm,” that everyone in the room not only understands that but is able to critique it, and potentially be able to write it, as well. I think that’s what the ‘Emerging Technology Development Programme’ is about, is making sure that civil servants can code, making sure that they understand how they would build an AI system, understand what the ethics are, learn about what the reasons for and against using a bit of technology like distributed ledgers are, because otherwise we end up with people just buying stuff which isn’t suitable. We have a slight problem in that we don’t want to tie ourselves to tech which is going to go out of date quickly. It would have been… You can imagine a GDS in the past saying, “Let’s put all of government onto Teletext.” That would be great, but that has a limited shelf life. We’ve got a statement which says that government shouldn’t build apps, because they’re really expensive to use, and they don’t work for everyone. Okay, maybe there are some limited circumstances where we can use them, but by and large we should be providing on neutral technology platforms, like the web. We need to understand exactly what the limitations are when we say, “Bitcoin, blockchain, the cloud, AI,” anything like that. So, there are new technologies, and we do adopt them. We can be slow to adopt them, and part of that is: are we chasing fashion, or are we chasing utility? It’s very easy to confuse the two. We wouldn’t, I think, go for transmitting government documents by Snapchat, for example. How cool would that be? Sarah Stewart: The filters, yes. Terence Eden: Brilliant, but what’s the user need for it? Is it just we want to do something that looks cool? That’s not a user need. Sarah Stewart: Yes. The amount of times I hear people talking about headsets, as though everybody in the country is going to have a VR headset. Terence Eden: Yes, we’re all going to be jacked into the cyber matrix, (Laughter) watching VR stuff. Yes, and maybe VR will take off; maybe we will… In a year’s time, I’ll be the head of VR for GDS. How cool a job title would that be? Sarah Stewart: Well, remember me, or look for me in the matrix. Terence Eden: Yes, but is there a user need for it? For some parts of government, you might say, if you’re doing planning decisions, for example, “Would it be good to strap on a VR headset and take a look around this 3D representation of the town after the remodelling or after the bypass has been built?” whatever it is. Okay, yes, you could make an argument for that. Do people want to interact with government in something like ‘Second Life’, or ‘Minecraft’, or ‘Fortnite’, (Laughter) or any of these things which are just coming out? Maybe. Sarah Stewart:  I’d love to see the customisable characters. Terence Eden: Yes, brilliant. We’ve got to be ever so slightly careful that this cool, shiny tech is going to last, because, if we make an investment in it, that’s other people’s money that we’re spending. When I was in the private sector, it’s shareholders’ money that you’re spending. It’s still someone else’s money that you’re spending, and you have to have a really good business case. It’s alright for us to experiment. Some people in Department for Transport are brilliant at this. Take an idea, run it for a few weeks, and don’t spend more than a few thousand pounds on it, and a few people’s time. Can it work? Does it work? If it doesn’t work, brilliant, we’ve saved money by saying, “Look, doing it this way is probably not going to work for us.” What we don’t want to do is go full in and say, “We’re going to make 3D ‘Angry Birds’ avatars of all civil servants, and then you can play them on your Oculus Rift, or something like that. It’s nonsense. Sarah Stewart: Is sandpit testing something that happens across government, it happens loads in the financial industry, but in government does that exist? Terence Eden: In part it does. One of the big problems that I see is people are afraid of failure. They shouldn’t be. If we were to say, “We are…” It’s very easy to run a procurement exercise and say, “We’re going to choose the best,” but sometimes what’s the necessary thing to do is, “We are going to ask three or four people to build something, to build a prototype in a few weeks, and we expect two of them to fail.” When you say that and you say, “Hang on, we’re going to spend money and we know that it’s going to fail?” Yes, but we don’t know which one is going to fail. We need to try four or five different approaches. Rather than wait until we’ve spent £1m and there’s a public enquiry on it, let’s get the failure out of the way as soon as possible. That’s really scary for people of all levels in the civil service, but it’s absolutely necessary. We need to experiment. We need to take risks – small, self-contained risks where, if it fails, okay, so we’ve spent a bit of money, but not an extortionate amount. We’ve spent a bit of time, but only a few weeks, and what we’ve come up with is: “You know what? Doing it that way, it just won’t work. We’ve experimented, we’ve failed, but that’s going to save us more money in the long term.” It’s a mind-set change, and it’s psychologically difficult to turn to your manager and say, “I want to fail at something, please,” but it’s absolutely necessary. Sarah Stewart: So somewhat related to that is learning and development. I know that you were involved in the pilot ‘Emerging Technology Development Programme’, which was run through the GDS Academy, could you tell more a bit more about that? Terence Eden: So, I’ve already gone on a course to learn ‘R’, which is statistical language. My statistics skills weren’t great, if I’m honest, so being able to learn how to use a really powerful tool like that, and start doing some machine learning on the data that we’re getting in, has been incredibly useful for my job, but I’m also going around talking to other civil servants about things like facial recognition and digital ethics. It’s really easy for us to see, “Wow, we can do something like face recognition. How cool would that be for our department?” but we also need to think about, “What are the problems? What are the dangers? What are the moral, legal, and ethical considerations that we have to do?” We know, for example, that, with a cheap webcam and some open-source code, you can do crude gender recognition, so you can say that “This face looks 90% male,” or, “80% female.” That might be useful in some circumstances, but it’s also particularly scary, and difficult, and troubling if you get it wrong, or if someone doesn’t want their born gender revealed, or anything like that. Where we see bright, shiny, new technology, “We could do something really cool with this,” we also need to temper it and say, “Well, what are the downsides? What are the moral limits to what we can do with this tech?” Sarah Stewart: You mention moral limits, and I would like to talk to you a little more about government and ethics, especially as it relates to emerging technology - what is our responsibility? Terence Eden: I’m not sure – I’m not a politician, obviously – I’m not sure whether it’s our place to say for the private sector, or for individuals, or for open-source projects what to do, but we absolutely have a duty to talk to civil servants about what they are responsible for. We have a civil service code, and it says that all of us have to act impartially, and a whole bunch of other things, but it doesn’t… It talks about acting in an ethical fashion, but it doesn’t necessarily address the code that we create. If you’re working in a big department, and you’ve got a big project and we’re going to create some cool machine-learning thing to look at data, then you should be doing an ethical review on that. The Department for – what are they called, ‘Data and Ethics’? Sarah Stewart: Oh we have the Centre for Data Ethics. Terence Eden: Centre for Data Ethics, yes. If you’ve got a big project that you’re working on, and you’re doing some big data, and you’re trying to learn something from there, then talking to the Centre for Data Ethics is a good thing. You should absolutely be doing it, but, if you’ve just got your laptop one lunchtime, and you’ve downloaded some open-source code from GitHub, and you’re running a machine-learning algorithm on a huge dataset, you can do that by yourself, with no oversight. Should you? What are the ethical considerations that you, as an individual, have to consider? Sarah Stewart: Okay, cast your mind back to July. You were at the National Cyber Security Centre. I was there, too. I saw you with a robot. What was all that about? Terence Eden: The robots are coming for us. There’s no doubt about that, (Laughter) but what we have to understand is, when we say, “The robots are coming for our jobs,” what jobs do we mean? What are the limits of robotics? What can they do? What can’t they do? We built a really simple Lego robot which solves a Rubik’s Cube. You can go online. The instructions are there. The source code is there. It took my wife and I an afternoon to build it, and this solves a Rubik’s Cube faster than nearly everyone in the building. There’s one person in this building who can beat it, so his job is safe. (Laughter) Okay, so government doesn’t sort Rubik’s Cubes, generally. That’s not our job, but we do lots of repetitive work with data which is just rote work. Can we train a robot to do that? How do we deal with edge cases? What are the limits when we start doing robotic process automation? That’s what people need to start thinking about now, is what value do they bring to a job which couldn’t be encoded in an algorithm? I think that’s a challenge for all of us. Sarah Stewart: Just to confirm, the robots are or aren’t coming for our jobs, specifically writers? Terence Eden: Yes. Do you have a spell check on your PC? Sarah Stewart: I do. Terence Eden: There we go. There is a piece of AI which is doing your job. We don’t think of that as AI, but there’s some really sophisticated technology going in to say, ‘Not only have you misspelt that word, because it doesn’t match the dictionary, but, looking at the context, you probably mean this word.’ Sarah Stewart: Yes. That’s already happened. Do you remember the Microsoft paperclip? It looks like you’re writing a letter. Terence Eden: Yes. Sarah Stewart: Actually, I was having a conversation with someone a couple of months ago about speechwriting and how, if you have all of the elements of speechwriting and a computer program, so kind of the rule of three, repetition, a story that includes a beginning, a middle and an end, you actually don’t really need a human to do that. Terence Eden:   Absolutely. Sarah Stewart: Although I probably shouldn’t say that, because I need my job. Terence Eden: I think what we’ll see more is robotic enhancement, if you like, so, as you say, writing a speech, maybe having Clippy coming in and saying, ‘You’re writing a speech. Do you need help with that?” isn’t- Sarah Stewart: Clippy, yes. Terence Eden: Maybe that’s not what you want, but having something which will gently guide you down the right path, making sure that your spelling and grammar is correct, that the structure is correct, that will all be great. Similarly, when you receive a document and your email program has already scanned it and gone, ‘Well, that’s the address, and this is the person who sent it,’ and things like that, you’re just being augmented a bit by a robot, by a bit of artificial intelligence. That’s slowly creeping in. I think lots of email programs now offer buttons at the bottom where you can just read the email and it says, ‘You can either reply, “Yes, that’s great,” or, “No, I need more time to think about it.”’ Realistically, that’s what you want to say, quite a lot of the time. So… Robots are coming for us all now. Sarah Stewart: As long as they don’t come for us in… I’ve seen, like, five films in my entire life, and there’s… Is it ‘I, Robot’, with Will Smith? At first the robots are friendly, and then in the second half I think the robots try to kill… This is like when I try to explain ‘Star Wars’ to you, and you actually know... Terence Eden: We need a podcast of you explaining ‘Star Wars’, because it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Sarah Stewart:  It’s really complex. Let’s talk about the past - you used to sell ringtones - what made you want to work here? Terence Eden: Working in the private sector is great, and working in the public sector is also great. I think people get really hung up about there being a difference, and there isn’t. I’ve worked for some of the biggest companies in the UK, and they have all the same problems that a large government department has. I’ve worked for tiny start-ups, and they can be just as agile as GDS is. There are positives and negatives. I’d spent a long time doing private sector stuff, and it was great fun, but I saw the work that GDS was doing and thought, “I want to be part of that. I want to be pushing the conversation forward. I want to make sure that the government, the civil service in the country where I live, is doing the right thing.” It’s really easy being on the outside, snarking, and I think we’ve all done it. (Laughter) It’s like, even if you’re just snarking about the train company or whoever it is, it’s really easy just to go, “They’re all useless,” nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, but it’s harder to come in and say, “Right, I’m going to try and push from the inside.” I don’t think I’m going to succeed at everything that I want, and I’m not coming in with the attitude that I’m going to revolutionise government. I think it would be dangerous if any one civil servant could do that. (Laughter) Sarah Stewart: I did try. Terence Eden: Did you? But I’ve come in with the attitude that there is a task here that I believe in that I think is important for this country and internationally. If we can lead the way, then we can help influence other people in other countries to do the right thing. That’s fantastic. I’ve met with government representatives from around Europe, from around the world, and they’ve been consistently impressed with what GDS is doing. Some of them are going, “You’ve got some open-source code. We’ll take that, thanks. Wow, these open standards principles that you’ve got, that makes complete sense for us. Yes, we’ll take it. We’ll shuffle it around to meet our local needs, and go off and do it.” That’s brilliant. This job wasn’t my career goal. It just so happened that all the work that I’d been doing with standards, and with open source and stuff like that, suddenly this job seemed to fit perfectly. I’ve not had a career plan. I’ve just, sort of, jumped from thing to thing that I found interesting and has coincided with what I’ve been doing anyway, so, yes, it’s mostly luck. Don’t get me wrong, ringtones are fun – but this is actually having a positive impact on people around the world. That’s great. I love it. I’m proud of the team. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done. I’m proud of the departments who have invited us in, been sceptical and gone, “No, alright, yes, we’re going to make some changes to that,” and I’m proud of the fact that, when we go around to departments, they quite often… I had a lovely chat with a department who said, “We’ve done this, and we’ve done that, and we’ve opened this, and we’ve opened that. How are we doing?” (Laughter) When I said, “My goodness, you are just streets ahead of everyone else,” they just beamed with pride. That was absolutely lovely. Sarah Stewart: For the uninitiated, can you explain what open standards are and what open source is? Terence Eden: They’re two very different things. Open standards means that, when you’ve got two computers that want to communicate, the language that they use is standardised. Everyone can understand it. We actually have a 48-point definition of open standards, which I’m not going to go onto here, but basically it’s the organisation which creates it. They create it in an open fashion. That means you can see the process by which it happens and that you can go in and make some changes. They publish it for free – we don’t want government departments to be spending thousands of pounds on standards again and again – and that they have wide international adoption. That’s what open standards are. It just means that our computers can work with computers around the world for free. Sarah Stewart: Tell me about open source. Terence Eden:   People have the right to see how decisions are being made. Open source is about… In one sense, it’s about publishing the code that we use to run bits of the country. You can see how the GOV.UK website is built. All the code is there, but when we start saying, “Okay, this is how a decision is made, this is how systems integrate with each other,” we should be publishing that. There are several good reasons for doing this. Firstly is it increases trust. If you can see, if you’re a user and you can see how this code works, hopefully you will trust it more. Sarah Stewart: So how are we doing in the world stage on open standards? Terence Eden:   Good. Could do better, but I always think we can do better. We’re involved with some EU committees around the world, and we are one of the few governments which are on the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium’s advisory committee. Yes, we are going out, we are leading the way in certain areas, but what we’re seeing – and I think this is fascinating – is some countries leapfrogging us. When I worked for the mobile phone industry, one of the problems with the UK was we had this huge investment in 2G networks, and then another huge investment in 3G networks. You would find countries in Africa which never had, even, landlines before, going, “We’ll just build a 3G network.” They don’t have any of that legacy investment, so they were able to leapfrog us in terms of speed, and connectivity, and price. GDS has been going for, is it, like, six years now? Sarah Stewart: Seven. I think we’re approaching our seventh. Terence Eden: Six, seven years, yes, so, naturally, we’ve got a lot of legacy stuff that we’ve built up. That means some processes which are a bit slow, and that’s fine, but then you see other countries who’ve skipped to the end. They said, “Okay, so we’ve seen all the mistakes GDS have made. We’ve seen what they’ve come out with at the end. We’ll just take that end piece and run with it.” Brilliant, that’s great. I think we have paved the way for lots of people, but there’s always more we can do. Sarah Stewart: So internationally, who do you think is doing good work - which governments are piquing your interest? Terence Eden:  I’ve got to give a shout out to New Zealand. I think they’re doing some amazing things, making their government more open, more transparent, getting on board the open source and the open standards train. That’s partly – that’s entirely – a testament to the people who work in New Zealand’s public service. They absolutely get it, and we’re seeing them spread out around. I know that some of them have gone off to Australia, which is great. We’ve got some GDS alumna off in Canada, and now they are doing brilliant stuff. One of the lovely things about Canada is lots of their digital strategy is on GitHub, so you can just go along and say, “Hang on, you could do something better there,” or even as simple as, “There’s a spelling mistake there,” and fix it. I think that’s wonderful for openness. Sarah Stewart: You’re a bug hunter yourself, aren’t you? Terence Eden: I am, yes. Sarah Stewart: You’re in Google’s Hall of Fame. Terence Eden: My wife and I are, yes. Sarah Stewart: Oh both of you? Terence Eden: Yes. No – well, it was my wife who discovered the bug, and then I reported it, so we’re joint recipients, think. Sarah Stewart: What was the bug? Terence Eden: So Google Calendar, if you typed up a reminder to yourself which said, ‘Email boss@work.com about pay rise,’ if you put that in the subject line, it would automatically copy it to your boss’ calendar. Sarah Stewart: That’s a big bug, isn’t it? Terence Eden: Yes. Basically, yes that’s what happened, so we reported it and they fixed it, but finding bugs is good fun. If people find bugs in government, they should tell us, because we’ll fix them. Sarah Stewart:  So what does your vision of a future government look like, a successful future government, look like? Terence Eden: The government of the future – I hope – will be more open, and it will be more collaborative. I don’t want GDS to be a single government department. I want GDS to be everywhere. I want everyone to know what good looks like and how to code in the open. I think the government of the future will have fewer barriers. Someone asked me the other day what department I was in, and I said, “GDS.” They went, “No, which subdivision of GDS?” I haven’t got a clue. I just work for GDS. Really, I work for Cabinet Office. If I’m completely honest, I work for the civil service. If someone from DWP says, “I need some help with something,” I’m going to go and help them. Of course I will. If someone from anywhere in the country in the civil service says, “We need some help with this,” why wouldn’t I go and help them? I think we need to break down these barriers. If the best team at content design happens to be in Defra, or wherever, great, we should be learning from them. They should be teaching us. I would love it not only if the government of the future was more open, and more transparent, and more open source, and used more open standards, but that the civil service was really just one civil service. It wasn’t just based in London, and that we can… It’s not based in London now, but that we felt free to move more or less anywhere within it and give people the help, and the advice, and the support that they need, and learn from anyone in any department, because we are not Defra, and DWP, and Department for Health and anything else. We’re not. We are one team, OneTeamGov. Sarah Stewart:  It’s really interesting that you've said that – we’re actually recording a podcast with Kit Collingwood from OneTeamGov and DWP fame in December. Okay final question – you’ve hacked your vacuum, your car is on Twitter, your house turns off when you leave it – what’s next? Terence Eden:  The next thing that I’m interested in is biohacking. So I’ve got some fake nails, just like fashion nails, and they’ve got a small bit of computer circuitry in, which is kind of like your Oyster card. It’s an NFC chip, and they glow when I put them around electromagnetic fields, so, if I’m on the tube and I put my hand against an Oyster card reader, my fingertips glow. You can also put data on there, so I can transfer data from my fingertips. That’s kind of silly, but I’m fascinated by how we can enhance people. What are the things that we can put on us and in us which will make us better? That’s what I’m interested in. Sarah Stewart: Terence, thank you so much. Terence Eden: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. Sarah Stewart: That brings us to the end of this month’s podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll listen again next month when we talk to another interesting person about interesting things. Until then, farewell.  

Piroさんをゲストにお迎えして、Netscape、Web標準、Mozilla、『シス管系女子』、ANDの才能、などについて話しました。 【訂正情報】 「株式会社クリアコードの立ち上げメンバーで現在残っているのは3名」という発言がありましたが、正しくは4名とのことです。 【Show Notes】 シス管系女子って何！？ - 【シス管系女子】特設サイト Piroさんの個人史 PC-9801とは - NECパソコン一覧 Weblio辞書 N88-BASIC - Wikipedia Netscapeシリーズ - Wikipedia 秀まるおのホームページ(サイトー企画)－秀丸エディタ HTML版『スタイルシートWebデザイン』 World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) - Wikipedia Gecko - Wikipedia 利益ではなく、人々のためのインターネット - Mozilla もじら組 - 日本で最初の Mozilla コミュニティ ORCA Project： ORCAとは Anthy - Wikipedia フォクすけ - Wikipedia もえじら組 - Wikipedia 株式会社クリアコード - Groongaサポート・Mozillaサポート・Rubyを用いた受託開発 Groonga - カラムストア機能付き全文検索エンジン Thunderbird — メールをもっと簡単に。 — Mozilla NaClについて | ネットワーク応用通信研究所 OpenOffice.org - Wikipedia 当時のOpenOffice解説連載の挿絵絵柄 日経Linux - Wikipedia "構造化美少女W3C子"/"Piro/結城洋志" series [pixiv] 採用情報 - クリアコード ゼロから始める技術書執筆 by 湊川あい> まんがでわかるLinux シス管系女子3 | Amazon 配信情報はtwitter ID @shiganaiRadio で確認することができます。 フィードバックは(#しがないラジオ)でつぶやいてください！ 感想、話して欲しい話題、改善して欲しいことなどつぶやいてもらえると、今後のポッドキャストをより良いものにしていけるので、ぜひたくさんのフィードバックをお待ちしています。 【パーソナリティ】 gami@jumpei_ikegami zuckey@zuckey_17 【ゲスト】 Piro@piro_or 【機材】 Blue Micro Yeti USB 2.0マイク 15374

La sortie de Java 9, la mise en open source d’une mégachiée de projets, la sortie d’une tétrachiée de framework webs et bien d’autres choses encore. Enregistré le 26 septembre 2017 Téléchargement de l’épisode LesCastCodeurs-Episode–178.mp3 News Langages Java 9 est sorti avec plein de choses dedans 9 Java Champions on Java 9: Part 1 Part 2 Mark Reinhold sur le changement de rythme de Java Inférence de type locale avec var pour Java 10 Langages de programmation et sécurité chez noLimitSécu Les outils proprio d’Oracle JDK open sourcés et donnés à OpenJDK ? Au revoir Java Embedded IBM open source sa JVM J9 JShell a aussi une API pour son intégration Middleware Première Release Candidate pour Reactor Core 3.1 Java EE rejoins la fondation Eclipse IBM open source Webshere Liberty sous openliberty.io Web Angular 4.4 The Past, Present, and Future of the Angular CLI Angular CLI Diff, l’outil développé par Cédric Exbrayat Yarn 1.0 Brace yourself, Babel 7.0 is coming Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js Pourquoi j’ai choisi vue.js vs react ou Angular 2 Polymer 3.0 arrive * Les vidéos du Polymer Summit Ionic passe aux Web Components Webhooks vs WebSub par notre Audrey !!! Outillage IntelliJ et Java 9 junit 5 est sorti Intégrer des screenshots à ses tests Geb Méthodologies Strategie de branche de l’equipe Spring Data Le papier original sur la methodologie Waterfall Sécurité Equifax et la faille de securite d’Apache Struts Loi, société et organisation World Wide Web Consortium abandons consensus, standardizes DRM with 58.4% support, EFF resigns Annonce de l’EFF qui demissionne du W3C sur l’API video DRM Biased Algorithms Are Everywhere, and No One Seems to Care Oracle a tué Sun Le brevet sur GraphQL La promesse de brevet de Red Hat La GPL testée en proces et confirmée Loi de sécurité intérieure : des conséquences pour la vie numérique de tous Outils de l’épisode Filtrer les emails GitHub Garder macOS propre Stride Keybase Teams Conférences Devops REX le 2 octobre à Paris DevFest Nantes les 19 & 20 Octobre - Inscriptions Scala.io le 2 et 3 novembre à Lyon - Inscriptions Devoxx Belgique du 6 au 10 novembre - Inscriptions Codeurs en Seine à Rouen le 23 novembre 7ème édition de SoftShake le 26–27 octobre à Genève (seulement 3h de Paris en train !) le CfP est ouvert 3eme édition du Paris OpenSource Summit les 6 & 7 Décembre Snowcamp 2018 du 24 au 27 janvier ; le CFP est ouvert Nous contacter Faire un crowdcast ou une crowdquestion Contactez-nous via twitter https://twitter.com/lescastcodeurs sur le groupe Google https://groups.google.com/group/lescastcodeurs ou sur le site web https://lescastcodeurs.com/ Flattr-ez nous (dons) sur https://lescastcodeurs.com/ En savoir plus sur le sponsoring? sponsors@lescastcodeurs.com

Vi besöker två utställningar om övervakning i Berlin. Men först ett nyhetssvep: * Vilka underrättelsetjänster har tillgång till bankernas Swift-system? * World Wide Web Consortium på väg införa DRM i webbstandard för video. * CIA-chefen Michael Pompeo kallar Wikileaks en "non-state hostile intelligence service". * Franske presidentkandidaten Emmanuel Macron säger sig vilja förbjuda end-to-end-kryptering. * Facebook planerar åtgärder inför det franska presidentvalet. 5 juli-podden görs av Karl Andersson och Henrik HAX Alexandersson. Varje tisdag. Watched-utställningen löper till 23 april 2017: http://www.co-berlin.org/en/watched-surveillance-art-photography-0

This week, one man has been warning the world about an impending disaster for years, but no one will listen. Also, Alex makes a dumb decision. Further Reading W3C's proposed standard W3C Director, Tim Berners-Lee, posts "On EME in HTML5" Mozilla's blog post "DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users" Cory Doctorow's post "The World Wide Web Consortium at a Crossroads: Arms-Dealers or Standards-Setters?"

New Zealanders are concluding a conversation about a Disability Strategy. When the strategising is over, what will the Government do to turn the strategy into real, positive change? Jonathan Mosen speaks with Hon Nicky Wagner, New Zealand's Minister for Disability Issues.There's controversy within the World Wide Web Consortium about a proposed new standard for video on the web that incorporates digital rights management technology. Some are concerned that it could stifle innovative solutions that might make video more accessible. We discuss this issue, as well as the wider question of the balance between protecting intellectual property versus the rights of content consumers, with Cory Doctorow. Cory is a digital consumer rights activist, best-selling author, blogger, and a key figure in the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

New Zealanders are concluding a conversation about a Disability Strategy. When the strategising is over, what will the Government do to turn the strategy into real, positive change? Jonathan Mosen speaks with Hon Nicky Wagner, New Zealand’s Minister for Disability Issues. There’s controversy within the World Wide Web Consortium about a proposed new standard for video on the web that incorporates digital rights management technology. Some are concerned that it could stifle innovative solutions that might make video more accessible. We discuss this issue, as well as the wider question of the balance between protecting intellectual property versus the rights of content consumers, with Cory Doctorow. Cory is a digital consumer rights activist, best-selling author, blogger, and a key figure in the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A typical online transaction today isn’t very different from how it was done 25 years ago at the dawn of the Internet. In fact, online payments haven’t changed much at all. When we want to pay for something online, we copy very sensitive credit card information into a form on a website and trust that website to capture it securely and make proper use of it. If this seems like an old and antiquated way to pay, that’s because it is, and it costs billions of dollars per year in security and fraud prevention. The World Wide Web Consortium wants to standardize the way we pay online, making it more secure, and hopefully a better experience for users. is a computer scientists and Standards Lead at the W3C. We talk about some of the core problems with dealing with credentials on the web and making online payments. Specifically, we discuss the Web Payments Working Group (WPWG), and their efforts to bring banks, payments providers and browser manufacturers together to converge around a standard set APIs to make for a better and more secure payment experience for all users. Topics covered in this episode: Manu’s interest in Bitcoin and blockchains His role in building the JSON-LD standard What is the W3C, what are it’s roles and how does it operate The level of interaction between the Bitcoin community and the W3C The fundamental problems of dematerialised payments online What it means to standardize payments online The Interledger Payments Community Group Manu’s company Digital Bazaar Episode links: Web Payments at the W3C Digital Bazaar This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/118

Good morning, welcome to Payments Monitor, my name is Faisal Khan, today is the 22nd of October 2015, some trending stories for today are: TOP STORIES The Dutch bank ABN-Amro is setting up a 10 Million Euro fintech fund. Not wanting to be left behind in the recent wave of banks like BBVA, Santander and Barclays who are pouring money in fintech, ABN-Amro’s Digital Impact Fund (as it is called) will invest in companies that have already launched a product or a service and are in their growth phase. European Union’s top court rules in favor of Bitcoin. The top court for the EU cites that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies transactions are exempt from VAT. eBay’s first post-split quarter results were better than expected. Revenue was slightly down 2.4%, but still at a healthy $2.1 billion. American Express reported its earnings that declined 16% from a year ago. Stronger US Dollar and higher expenses were some of the elements contributing towards the decline. Amex’s breakdown with Costco is also to be blamed for lower earnings. W3C or World Wide Web Consortium launched a Web Payments Working Group that will help come to a consensus on how to facilitate payments easier online, as the world gravitates to a more digital world. The group will study all the existing standards and protocols (including bitcoin, distributed ledger, etc.) and then standardize this into a an API for all to use. Network International launches NeO (Network Online), a payment gateway in UAE. it is the first gateway that is created for the middle-east market that takes into consideration the local payment options and the needs of local merchants and consumers. Just yesterday we discussed YouTube and its paywall, well it's here. YouTube Red is a membership program designed to offer users with exclusive content, better steaming (including the ability to save videos and no ads), all for $9.99 per month. BLOG OPINION: If you’ve ever wondered how the FDIC (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) works, there is an informative YouTube video from 2009, done by 60 Minutes on the FDIC and how it takes over a failing Chicago Bank. The link is provided on faisalkhan.com/podcast. CLOSING THOUGHTS RushCard a prepaid debit card provider recently suffered a technical issue which prevented 100,000s of its users from using their prepaid card. The outage which in many instances lasted for more than a week for some, users simply did not have to their money. Whilst a prepaid temporary block may not mean much to you and I, it does mean the world to people who barely make it over the poverty line and are what I would call the lower-banked people. Luckily in the US, the Consumer Protection laws are inherently better than the rest of the world. Imagine no access to your money for one week. We certainly have to work together to improve on this problem for financial inclusion and financial services provisioned for the lower-banked population. That’s all for today, my name is Faisal Khan and you’ve been listening to the Payments Monitor.

We chat with James Mickens, researcher and most likely funniest man at Microsoft, live on stage during Øredev 2014. Topics include C development, the purity of incrementation, death by specifications, scandinavian death metal and its font choices and also British football, distributed systems and the problems you encounter dealing with them. The downsides of being stuck alone in a set of universes is that Stack overflow can’t help you. And how should we fix the Javascript and web browser technology world? Comments on the internet? No. This recording exists as good as it is thanks to Stephen Chin of nighthacking.com for providing and masterfully wrangling all the necessary technology. Comments, thoughts or suggestions? Discuss this episode at Techworld! Links Freedom fries Microsoft research Distributed systems James' talk at Øredev 2014 Handling the zombie apocalypse - James' article “The night watch” James' talk at Monitorama 2014 Satya Nadella - CEO of Microsoft Nuclear proliferation Segfault Logical shift Logical AND Malmö Logical OR W3C - World wide web consortium Web components Web components templates Gorgoroth Fibonacci Factorial Fizz buzz Sepultura King diamond British steel Notepad Web workers Crom - James' system for speculative Javascript execution Speculative execution Total recall Firebug Galactus Odin The Shellshock bug Turtles all the way down Jquery Angular XHR MDN - Mozilla developer network, great source of Javascript and browser API documentation Git The grandfather paradox Polyfill asm.js NoSQL Mongodb Bare metal Just in time compiler Maslow’s hierarchy of needs let-satement Zeus Quirksmode.org Yo Leviticus Registry ASCII art About:config Max TCP connections Shockwave Singularity DVR - Digital video recorder Futures Bendgate Captain America’s shield Georgia Tomfoolery 4chan Huge sloths Titles This is just Hollywood stuff We’ll edit this out with CGI What happens on the set #freedom #america What prevents me from being a happy person in life It cheapens the art Homelessness is bad too At least you have hope Do you like iteration? I only increment variables Only go forward Black Gandalf Not just fair or balanced Otto von Hyphen We laugh to stop from crying Darkness is delightful The great thing about scandinavian death metal What would Beelzebub do? That TV is in the cloud now Like jazz musicians Like trying to write Inception 2 The left hand of satan Multiple speculative universes What universe am I in? A low-rent Stephen Hawking Firebug had no notion of my separate universes The Odin object In the regular development world Chicanery all the way down Function calls are not our strong point Not nothing will happen XHR:s over passenger pidgeon LOL I took a hard dependency on it It’s very difficult to make a joke in this space We don’t even issue writes devnulldb But we have hoverboards Tread carefully on the polyfills Close the tab and reboot the machine This is such a character builder Mumblefoo.js Fast Javascript, and cancer No-lock cancer Asynchronous cancer That kitten on a tradmill is not going to watch itself Another special type of disaster Folk wisdom on the web 127i content Emu futures If I had a website, I’d run it like Singapore Every computer should come with an old person This whole alternate semantic reality

Opera, the Web browser that has consistently maintained its policy of working within the World Wide Web Consortium's standards, is a browser that more people should consider. If you'd like better e-mail security, but thoughts of public keys, private keys, and encryption sound like Old Church Slavonic to your ears, take a look at ProtonMail. In Short Circuits: The hacker turned informant avoids a long prison sentence; even so, a survey of business and government officials says hackers are winning; and Intuit acquires Check in a bit for more mobile capabilities.

The hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more: - What can we learn from the rich history of data visualization to inform our designs today? - How can we do amazing work while battle the constant constraints we find ourselves up against? - How do we really incorporate users into our practice of user experience? Jeffrey Veen is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and user experience consultant. As a consultant, Jeffrey has been involved in designing the leading blog and social media applications on the web, including Blogger, TypePad, Flickr, and more. Jeff also led the creation of Measure Map, the well-received blog analytics tool acquired by Google in 2006. After five years with Adaptive Path, where he was a founding partner, Jeff moved to Google, where he where he lead the redesign of their Analytics product and managed their web apps UX team. He left Google in May, 2008, to work on personal projects. Previously, Jeffrey served as the Executive Director of Interface Design for Wired Digital and Lycos Inc., where he managed the look and feel of HotWired, the HotBot search engine, Lycos.com and others. In addition to lecturing and writing on web design and development, Jeffrey has been active with the World Wide Web Consortium’s CSS Editorial Review Board as an invited expert on electronic publishing. He is also the author of the acclaimed books The Art & Science of Web Design and HotWired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites. In 1998, Jeffrey was named by CNET as one of the "First Annual Web Innovators" and has won the Communication Arts Interactive Annual award for his work on Wired News. Other clients include Technorati, Creative Commons, Macromedia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and National Public Radio. Jeffrey specializes in the integration of content, graphic design, and technology from a user-centered perspective. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

It’s no secret that just as the web has revolutionised business, the media, and many other parts of our lives, it is also revolutionising how governments and citizens interact, and how government provide services. But how to do it well is still something of a black art. In this keynote presentation, the lead of the W3C’s eGovernment initiative, José Manuel Alonso, looks at the opportunities the web provides governments, the challenges, old and new, the web poses, and the role of the W3C in helping to develop underlying, interoperable technologies with which to build these services. José’s presentation will cover best practices and methodologies for providing eGovernment services, and look at case studies of how governments and communities are connecting via the web around the world. José is the eGovernment Lead at the World Wide Web Consortium. Prior to joining the W3C, he was the Manager for the W3C Spain Office for three years and also served as the Advisory Committee Representative for CTIC (host of the Spain Office). José has broad experience in project management, software integration, customer relationship, PR and IT consultancy. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Masters in Enterprise Application Integration, both from the University of Oviedo, where he also worked at the Research and Innovation departments as a researcher, developer and lecturer. Previously he worked as consultant and even founded his own web company back in 1997. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

Larry Weber talks to Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium, where he handles overall management of Member relations, the W3C Process, the W3C Team, strategic planning, budget, legal matters, liaisons and major events.