Incorporating Accessibility into UX Education from the Beginning

Speaker: 00:00:00

(dramatic upbeat music)

Speaker: 00:00:06

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility

Speaker: 00:00:09

for People Behind the Progress.

Speaker: 00:00:11

I'm Joe Welinske,

Speaker: 00:00:12

the creator and host of this series.

Speaker: 00:00:15

And as an accessibility professional myself,

Speaker: 00:00:18

I find it very interesting

Speaker: 00:00:19

as to how others have found their way into this profession.

Speaker: 00:00:23

So let's meet one of those people right now

Speaker: 00:00:25

and hear about their journey.

Speaker: 00:00:27

(upbeat music)

Speaker: 00:00:34

Well, let's get into this interview

Speaker: 00:00:36

and I'm very pleased to be talking today

Speaker: 00:00:40

with Regine Gilbert.

Speaker: 00:00:41

Hello, Regine.

Speaker: 00:00:42

How are you doing today?

Speaker: 00:00:43

- Hi, it's good to be here.

Speaker: 00:00:45

I'm so happy to be talking to you today.

Speaker: 00:00:47

- Yeah, well, we hadn't talked before,

Speaker: 00:00:50

so that's really good to able to meet you in this format.

Speaker: 00:00:53

And I'm in my home office

Speaker: 00:00:57

in Vashon, Washington,

Speaker: 00:00:59

which is an island near Seattle.

Speaker: 00:01:03

You either have a beautiful background

Speaker: 00:01:06

or a beautiful place,

Speaker: 00:01:07

but why don't you let us know

Speaker: 00:01:08

where you're talking to us from?

Speaker: 00:01:10

- Yeah, so I'm actually sitting in my office at NYU

Speaker: 00:01:14

in Brooklyn, New York.

Speaker: 00:01:16

- All right, well, I'm glad

Speaker: 00:01:18

we're able to get together for this.

Speaker: 00:01:20

And probably a good place to start is, you know,

Speaker: 00:01:24

if you just talk a little bit

Speaker: 00:01:26

about, you know,

Speaker: 00:01:28

the work that you're doing right now

Speaker: 00:01:30

and then we kinda go from there.

Speaker: 00:01:32

- Sure, so I'm currently an industry assistant professor

Speaker: 00:01:36

in the integrated design and media program

Speaker: 00:01:39

that's part of the Tandon School of Engineering.

Speaker: 00:01:41

And I teach user experience design,

Speaker: 00:01:44

as well as I co-teach an assistive tech class

Speaker: 00:01:48

with Gus Chalkias

Speaker: 00:01:50

and we teach students about the assistive tech

Speaker: 00:01:54

that blind and low vision folks use.

Speaker: 00:01:57

Gus is blind.

Speaker: 00:01:58

And then I bring in the UX piece and my,

Speaker: 00:02:03

I mean, he is definitely way more of an expert

Speaker: 00:02:07

on assistive tech than me,

Speaker: 00:02:08

but I have learned so much from him

Speaker: 00:02:10

and teaching the classes is a lot of fun.

Speaker: 00:02:14

And this upcoming semester,

Speaker: 00:02:16

I'm actually going to be teaching

Speaker: 00:02:17

a voice user interface class for the first time

Speaker: 00:02:20

and incorporating accessibility into it.

Speaker: 00:02:24

- Well, everything you just talked about

Speaker: 00:02:27

is really progressive.

Speaker: 00:02:28

Is that department that you're in,

Speaker: 00:02:32

you know, particularly pointed

Speaker: 00:02:34

toward providing that type of curriculum content

Speaker: 00:02:38

or is it something that you've thought

Speaker: 00:02:40

and it helped foster there?

Speaker: 00:02:42

- Yeah, so this department I really love

Speaker: 00:02:46

because it's really diverse

Speaker: 00:02:49

in the learnings that students can get.

Speaker: 00:02:53

My colleagues are, you know,

Speaker: 00:02:55

experts in virtual reality, in augmented reality,

Speaker: 00:02:58

in wearables and technology and art,

Speaker: 00:03:05

you know, and like biology,

Speaker: 00:03:08

and really like working with plants and technology.

Speaker: 00:03:13

So there's like all kinds of things

Speaker: 00:03:14

that folks are working on in my department.

Speaker: 00:03:18

So students have a lot of options when it comes to learning.

Speaker: 00:03:22

- Well, yeah, I wanted to talk more

Speaker: 00:03:24

about the work that you're doing now,

Speaker: 00:03:26

but one of the themes

Speaker: 00:03:28

of this series of interviews that I'm doing

Speaker: 00:03:31

is to look at the journey

Speaker: 00:03:34

that people have taken to

Speaker: 00:03:36

that has resulted in where they are today.

Speaker: 00:03:40

Maybe you could think about, you know,

Speaker: 00:03:42

a place that you'd like to pick as a starting point.

Speaker: 00:03:45

It doesn't have to be accessibility specific.

Speaker: 00:03:49

You know, and just maybe help us understand

Speaker: 00:03:51

what some of the formative things were

Speaker: 00:03:53

that got you on the journey to where you are today.

Speaker: 00:03:56

- Yeah, one of the things that had a huge impact on me

Speaker: 00:04:00

when I was growing up is my cousin, Tammy, is deaf.

Speaker: 00:04:05

And like interacting with her,

Speaker: 00:04:10

learning a little bit of sign language,

Speaker: 00:04:14

getting to see how she is in the world,

Speaker: 00:04:16

and that really had a lot of influence on me

Speaker: 00:04:20

saying, you know,

Speaker: 00:04:21

I think I started questioning when I was young,

Speaker: 00:04:24

like, "Why isn't more stuff better?"

Speaker: 00:04:27

Like, "Why isn't this thing better?"

Speaker: 00:04:29

Or "Why isn't this thing better?

Speaker: 00:04:30

And why can't we do more things better to communicate?"

Speaker: 00:04:34

And then, you know, fast forward.

Speaker: 00:04:36

Years later, I worked,

Speaker: 00:04:40

I worked in information technology

Speaker: 00:04:42

for a lot of years

Speaker: 00:04:43

and I got bored

Speaker: 00:04:46

and started taking UX classes.

Speaker: 00:04:48

And in my UX class,

Speaker: 00:04:51

there was one slide about accessibility.

Speaker: 00:04:54

This is what I remember clearly.

Speaker: 00:04:59

And I think that sparks something else in me.

Speaker: 00:05:04

And that led me to wanting to learn more

Speaker: 00:05:08

and going to a meetup.

Speaker: 00:05:10

And from there,

Speaker: 00:05:11

it's just I dove right on in

Speaker: 00:05:17

and got really interested in learning,

Speaker: 00:05:21

in doing incorporating it into my UX job.

Speaker: 00:05:25

I created guidelines at one job

Speaker: 00:05:28

and nobody asks for them.

Speaker: 00:05:29

I created accessibility guidelines

Speaker: 00:05:32

because I was so interested in it.

Speaker: 00:05:35

I really wanted people to apply it to their work.

Speaker: 00:05:39

And then I started teaching UX in 2015 at general assembly.

Speaker: 00:05:44

And I incorporated

Speaker: 00:05:48

accessibility into my courses

Speaker: 00:05:50

by having my students do a lot of assumptions

Speaker: 00:05:53

around what in particular blind folks might do

Speaker: 00:05:58

when they're in the kitchen.

Speaker: 00:06:01

And I would have my students come up with a concept,

Speaker: 00:06:04

you know, sketch it out.

Speaker: 00:06:05

And I say, "You know,

Speaker: 00:06:05

you should be able to describe this."

Speaker: 00:06:07

And then I actually brought in

Speaker: 00:06:09

folks who were blind to critique.

Speaker: 00:06:12

And that really was informative for my students to say,

Speaker: 00:06:15

"Oh, you know,

Speaker: 00:06:17

this is user experience, right?

Speaker: 00:06:19

You have to talk to people.

Speaker: 00:06:21

You can't just assume

Speaker: 00:06:22

because all of their ideas

Speaker: 00:06:24

were busted, right?

Speaker: 00:06:25

Like they realized, you know,

Speaker: 00:06:28

we can't really make stuff

Speaker: 00:06:30

if we don't involve

Speaker: 00:06:32

and talk to the people who this applies to.

Speaker: 00:06:36

- Well, you know, just going back a little bit,

Speaker: 00:06:39

you know, before the teaching to that work

Speaker: 00:06:41

that you were doing in UX for organizations,

Speaker: 00:06:45

I know, you know, as a lot of us,

Speaker: 00:06:48

you know, that's a logical stuff for a lot of us,

Speaker: 00:06:50

but sometimes, you know, we'll do things,

Speaker: 00:06:53

but then we run into obstacles at an organization

Speaker: 00:06:56

that maybe isn't ready to put in the resources.

Speaker: 00:07:00

Some of the Fortunate few

Speaker: 00:07:02

find that they're, you know, immediately supported.

Speaker: 00:07:05

What was that experience like for you?

Speaker: 00:07:09

You're not necessarily, you know,

Speaker: 00:07:10

specifics about an organization,

Speaker: 00:07:12

but I mean what was your experience there?

Speaker: 00:07:17

- I mean, I've had both

Speaker: 00:07:19

where people are very supportive

Speaker: 00:07:21

and where people just don't care.

Speaker: 00:07:24

So when, you know, I was getting support

Speaker: 00:07:29

and the higher ups were like,

Speaker: 00:07:31

"Yeah, let's do all of the things."

Speaker: 00:07:34

It just made my life easier.

Speaker: 00:07:36

Made my job easier.

Speaker: 00:07:37

It was easier for communication

Speaker: 00:07:39

between the developers and our teams.

Speaker: 00:07:43

And when we didn't,

Speaker: 00:07:45

you know, have support,

Speaker: 00:07:48

it was a challenge.

Speaker: 00:07:53

It was a huge challenge to kind of fight for what's right,

Speaker: 00:07:57

but then have to back down.

Speaker: 00:08:01

- And in those situations,

Speaker: 00:08:04

what type of strategies did you use?

Speaker: 00:08:07

Was it like, you know, return on investment metrics

Speaker: 00:08:13

about maybe, you know, audience that was new,

Speaker: 00:08:17

or was it kind of more the stick versus the carrot

Speaker: 00:08:21

related to legal or what.

Speaker: 00:08:24

You know, what were some of the ways

Speaker: 00:08:25

that you were able to build support for that

Speaker: 00:08:27

or build a case for your work?

Speaker: 00:08:30

- The ways that I built a case

Speaker: 00:08:32

was search engine optimization

Speaker: 00:08:34

and partnering with the marketing teams

Speaker: 00:08:37

in the search engine folks.

Speaker: 00:08:39

That was one that was very successful.

Speaker: 00:08:42

Another way, yeah, is to dangle that carrot

Speaker: 00:08:45

about the legal reasons why,

Speaker: 00:08:49

you know, we should be accessible.

Speaker: 00:08:52

And then I think the biggest and best strategy

Speaker: 00:08:57

is to just ask questions,

Speaker: 00:08:59

and to ask questions

Speaker: 00:09:01

that are promoting accessibility

Speaker: 00:09:05

but without saying the words.

Speaker: 00:09:07

Because what I found in my previous work experience

Speaker: 00:09:11

is when I said accessibility,

Speaker: 00:09:13

automatically people would shut down.

Speaker: 00:09:16

Say that's too hard, right?

Speaker: 00:09:19

So then it was asking the questions.

Speaker: 00:09:21

You know, "Are we sure about these colors?"

Speaker: 00:09:24

"Are we sure we wanna do this thing, right?"

Speaker: 00:09:29

"Have we thought about this, right?"

Speaker: 00:09:31

So just asking questions

Speaker: 00:09:33

related to what we were working on

Speaker: 00:09:36

and seeing what people would answer.

Speaker: 00:09:38

'Cause then I could say,

Speaker: 00:09:39

"Oh, we could maybe try this."

Speaker: 00:09:41

Or, you know.

Speaker: 00:09:42

So that was my way around.

Speaker: 00:09:45

I think asking questions

Speaker: 00:09:49

is the best thing anyone can do

Speaker: 00:09:52

to get people to think,

Speaker: 00:09:53

I like to say, you know, as an educator,

Speaker: 00:09:57

I cannot teach anybody anything.

Speaker: 00:10:00

I can only hope that the questions that I ask

Speaker: 00:10:03

provoke people to think.

Speaker: 00:10:06

- Well, it sounds like a great approach.

Speaker: 00:10:09

And, you know, you mentioned the SEO,

Speaker: 00:10:13

which is something that,

Speaker: 00:10:15

you know, that I've delved into

Speaker: 00:10:18

related to accessibility.

Speaker: 00:10:19

But I think a lot of people,

Speaker: 00:10:21

even in the accessibility area

Speaker: 00:10:23

may not, you know,

Speaker: 00:10:26

understand the how's.

Speaker: 00:10:29

How the two pieces can really work together

Speaker: 00:10:33

with accessibility components

Speaker: 00:10:36

adding signals to search engine optimization.

Speaker: 00:10:39

And was that something

Speaker: 00:10:40

that you just like identified individually

Speaker: 00:10:44

or was there GF some colleagues in marketing

Speaker: 00:10:47

where you explored this area?

Speaker: 00:10:49

- Oh, yeah, so in one particular instance,

Speaker: 00:10:52

I work directly

Speaker: 00:10:53

with the search engine optimization person,

Speaker: 00:10:57

like the person in the company.

Speaker: 00:10:59

And I was like.

Speaker: 00:11:00

And he was like,

Speaker: 00:11:01

"I know that accessibility helps SEO.

Speaker: 00:11:04

I don't know how it does it exactly,

Speaker: 00:11:07

but I know it works."

Speaker: 00:11:09

And so I said, "Okay, great."

Speaker: 00:11:10

You know, he was so happy

Speaker: 00:11:13

to have someone,

Speaker: 00:11:15

you know, support him and he supported me.

Speaker: 00:11:17

And then we got marketing involved

Speaker: 00:11:20

and marketing's like, "Yeah.

Speaker: 00:11:21

We need to be at the top of Google.

Speaker: 00:11:25

So how can we do this?"

Speaker: 00:11:28

- Well, now that you're involved

Speaker: 00:11:33

in the work at NYU

Speaker: 00:11:35

and in teaching regularly,

Speaker: 00:11:39

how does that kind of manifest itself

Speaker: 00:11:42

with your students?

Speaker: 00:11:44

Are they interested specifically in that topic

Speaker: 00:11:49

or they maybe are just

Speaker: 00:11:54

exploring it or a mix

Speaker: 00:11:56

or kinda how is that set up where you're at?

Speaker: 00:11:59

- Yeah, so I teach user experience design primarily,

Speaker: 00:12:02

and I incorporate accessibility from day one.

Speaker: 00:12:07

Like we started talking about it from the beginning.

Speaker: 00:12:09

And therefore, the students work on,

Speaker: 00:12:12

my students will work on

Speaker: 00:12:13

individual projects and team projects.

Speaker: 00:12:15

And their team projects are always with a real-life client.

Speaker: 00:12:18

Both our team and individual projects

Speaker: 00:12:20

have accessibility components in them

Speaker: 00:12:22

from the beginning,

Speaker: 00:12:23

from the research phase,

Speaker: 00:12:25

from the planning phase.

Speaker: 00:12:27

And just this past semester,

Speaker: 00:12:30

and even this summer,

Speaker: 00:12:31

my students are working on a project

Speaker: 00:12:36

that is through Arista Labs,

Speaker: 00:12:40

and Arista Labs received a grant from NASA

Speaker: 00:12:44

to make the eclipse

Speaker: 00:12:46

that are upcoming in the next couple years

Speaker: 00:12:48

accessible in particular to the blind

Speaker: 00:12:51

and low vision community through sound.

Speaker: 00:12:53

And so this particular project

Speaker: 00:12:55

involves a lot of data and sound.

Speaker: 00:12:58

And so my students last semester did a lot of research

Speaker: 00:13:01

in regards to best practice.

Speaker: 00:13:02

They did user interviews.

Speaker: 00:13:05

They did, you know,

Speaker: 00:13:07

looking at scholarly articles.

Speaker: 00:13:10

And this summer,

Speaker: 00:13:12

my grad research assistant and I

Speaker: 00:13:14

are working on the designs.

Speaker: 00:13:16

And to do that, we have been working

Speaker: 00:13:19

with subject matter experts,

Speaker: 00:13:21

as well as people getting input from folks

Speaker: 00:13:23

in the blind and low vision community.

Speaker: 00:13:25

So we are...

Speaker: 00:13:29

And my teaching is also practice

Speaker: 00:13:33

because we're always working

Speaker: 00:13:35

with real-life clients every semester.

Speaker: 00:13:39

- Well, one of the things that I read recently

Speaker: 00:13:42

was the article that I saw on LinkedIn,

Speaker: 00:13:46

which was where you're talking about

Speaker: 00:13:49

developing accessibility guidelines for extended reality.

Speaker: 00:13:53

And that was an area.

Speaker: 00:13:54

I mean, there's so many areas of accessibility.

Speaker: 00:13:57

It's hard to keep up with everything.

Speaker: 00:13:58

But it was one that I hadn't really been familiar with,

Speaker: 00:14:01

thought about at all,

Speaker: 00:14:03

but I found the article,

Speaker: 00:14:04

you know, really illuminating.

Speaker: 00:14:06

Maybe talk a little bit about that technology

Speaker: 00:14:08

and your work specifically in that area.

Speaker: 00:14:12

- Sure, you know, in my past life,

Speaker: 00:14:16

I had a consulting business.

Speaker: 00:14:18

And I worked in a coworking space

Speaker: 00:14:20

with a group that was working on augmented reality.

Speaker: 00:14:25

And they were like, "We need UX help.

Speaker: 00:14:28

And I was like, "What is this stuff you're working on?

Speaker: 00:14:30

It seems cool."

Speaker: 00:14:31

And so I ended up doing some usability testing

Speaker: 00:14:35

for this augmented reality company.

Speaker: 00:14:38

And that kinda got me

Speaker: 00:14:39

into what they call XR.

Speaker: 00:14:44

Some people, it's extended reality.

Speaker: 00:14:48

So extended reality XR is an umbrella term

Speaker: 00:14:51

for virtual reality,

Speaker: 00:14:54

augmented reality, mixed reality,

Speaker: 00:14:57

and any sort of immersive technology

Speaker: 00:15:00

or anything that's using spatial computing.

Speaker: 00:15:02

AI could fall in that umbrella, too.

Speaker: 00:15:05

And so I started thinking about,

Speaker: 00:15:11

and this came from last summer,

Speaker: 00:15:14

what I was talking to Gus,

Speaker: 00:15:17

my co-teacher for the assistive technology class,

Speaker: 00:15:19

and I was talking to him about Pokemon Go.

Speaker: 00:15:23

And he said,

Speaker: 00:15:24

"I wish I could play Pokemon Go."

Speaker: 00:15:27

And then I thought to myself,

Speaker: 00:15:28

"Well, okay, Gus is blind,

Speaker: 00:15:30

and he can't play Pokemon Go because it's not accessible.

Speaker: 00:15:34

Why isn't it and why isn't augmented reality accessible?"

Speaker: 00:15:38

And so last summer,

Speaker: 00:15:39

my students worked with Gus

Speaker: 00:15:41

and a company called Rose Digital

Speaker: 00:15:44

to create concepts around accessible augmented reality.

Speaker: 00:15:49

So they didn't build anything,

Speaker: 00:15:52

but they did create concepts.

Speaker: 00:15:55

And that had me thinking about accessibility overall

Speaker: 00:16:00

in the XR space and where does it start?

Speaker: 00:16:03

You know, "Where do you start?"

Speaker: 00:16:04

And he said, "Well, people start with the tools."

Speaker: 00:16:07

And are these tools accessible

Speaker: 00:16:08

not just from a standpoint disability,

Speaker: 00:16:13

but accessible from a cost perspective?

Speaker: 00:16:15

And so my grad assistant,

Speaker: 00:16:18

Saki Asakawa, and I

Speaker: 00:16:22

went through as many tools

Speaker: 00:16:24

as we could find the popular tools.

Speaker: 00:16:25

And we looked at about 60 tools,

Speaker: 00:16:28

specifically looking at the price,

Speaker: 00:16:31

looking at the hardware needed,

Speaker: 00:16:34

software needed to run these programs,

Speaker: 00:16:36

and if there was any accessibility associated with them.

Speaker: 00:16:40

And from there,

Speaker: 00:16:41

we ended up writing this article

Speaker: 00:16:44

and we created a subway map,

Speaker: 00:16:46

which this upcoming semester

Speaker: 00:16:48

I hope I can make in a tactile version,

Speaker: 00:16:50

but we created a subway map

Speaker: 00:16:52

and the subway map lists out

Speaker: 00:16:54

what's free, what costs money,

Speaker: 00:16:56

what has accessibility related.

Speaker: 00:16:58

And each subway line has a purpose.

Speaker: 00:17:02

So there's, you know,

Speaker: 00:17:05

for like drawing or things of that nature.

Speaker: 00:17:10

So that's kind of the long story of how I got into that.

Speaker: 00:17:15

And in addition to that, I'm part of XR Access,

Speaker: 00:17:19

which was started by Cornell Tech,

Speaker: 00:17:21

and it's really,

Speaker: 00:17:23

it's a large group working to make sure

Speaker: 00:17:26

that accessibility is getting built into,

Speaker: 00:17:30

you know, this emerging technology

Speaker: 00:17:33

that a lot more people are using.

Speaker: 00:17:35

And I'm also doing a research with design patterns

Speaker: 00:17:41

with an organization called Vail

Speaker: 00:17:44

and it's researchers from all over the world

Speaker: 00:17:46

examining design patterns with different tiles.

Speaker: 00:17:49

And then I'm working on a second book,

Speaker: 00:17:53

which is I'm co-authoring with Doug North Cook.

Speaker: 00:17:58

And it's about the human side of spatial computing

Speaker: 00:18:01

where we will talk about accessibility in there.

Speaker: 00:18:04

So yeah, that's in a nutshell

Speaker: 00:18:08

how I got into the XR Suisse

Speaker: 00:18:12

and what I'm doing now.

Speaker: 00:18:14

- Well, yeah, that's a great story to hear about that.

Speaker: 00:18:17

And it's obviously gonna be something

Speaker: 00:18:21

that we're going to be learning about

Speaker: 00:18:23

and working with more and more moving into the future.

Speaker: 00:18:27

You briefly mentioned, you know, a new book

Speaker: 00:18:30

and some things that you're working on.

Speaker: 00:18:35

Maybe talk a little bit about, you know,

Speaker: 00:18:38

kinda what future plans

Speaker: 00:18:39

or things that you're currently really passionate about,

Speaker: 00:18:43

anything you can share about your latest projects.

Speaker: 00:18:47

- Yeah, sure.

Speaker: 00:18:51

So the NASA soundscapes project

Speaker: 00:18:55

is an ongoing project.

Speaker: 00:18:56

It's a five-year project

Speaker: 00:18:58

and my students will be every semester

Speaker: 00:19:00

working on something different with the project.

Speaker: 00:19:04

And my research

Speaker: 00:19:07

around inclusive and accessible XR,

Speaker: 00:19:12

it continues I'm hoping in the coming time.

Speaker: 00:19:18

Actually, because of the pandemic,

Speaker: 00:19:20

I felt a little thrown off with, "Where do I go?"

Speaker: 00:19:22

"What do I do if I'm not able to be with people?"

Speaker: 00:19:26

So what I'm working on now

Speaker: 00:19:29

or what I've been working on over the summer

Speaker: 00:19:31

is looking at inclusiveness and accessibility

Speaker: 00:19:35

for different titles,

Speaker: 00:19:36

specifically with one type of headset.

Speaker: 00:19:39

So it's my hope to expand that,

Speaker: 00:19:41

to try other headsets and see how that goes.

Speaker: 00:19:44

And in addition,

Speaker: 00:19:46

continue working and researching for my book

Speaker: 00:19:50

and getting real understanding

Speaker: 00:19:51

of the layout of the space

Speaker: 00:19:55

and really the human side of things

Speaker: 00:19:57

and how we can make these experiences

Speaker: 00:19:59

overall more accessible,

Speaker: 00:20:01

not just from a disability perspective,

Speaker: 00:20:04

but from a true inclusive perspective.

Speaker: 00:20:09

- Well, yeah, obviously keep yourself really busy.

Speaker: 00:20:11

And I wanna thank you for taking time

Speaker: 00:20:14

out of your busy schedule to chat with me

Speaker: 00:20:17

and good luck with your book.

Speaker: 00:20:19

And hopefully we can meet some time in the physical world,

Speaker: 00:20:24

but if not, it's really great chatting with you.