Episode 8
Technology Always Evolves Faster Than the Ethics Behind Using That Technology
Sheri Byrne-Haber, Vmware, All around evangelist
Sheri and her daughter have disabilities and that provided a launching point for advocacy for accessibility. She brought that interest into her work as a software tester and now building out the comprehensive internal and external accessibility programs at VMWARE.
Mentioned in this episode:
Info about Accessibility at Blink
Transcript
(upbeat music)
Speaker:- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility
Speaker:The People Behind The Progress.
Speaker:I'm Joe Welinske, the Creator and Host of this series.
Speaker:And as an accessibility professional myself,
Speaker:I find it very interesting as to how others
Speaker:have found their way into this profession.
Speaker:So let's meet one of those people right now
Speaker:and hear about their journey.
Speaker:(upbeat music)
Speaker:All right well, welcome.
Speaker:And I have pleasure today of talking with
Speaker:Sheri Byrne-Haber.
Speaker:Hello Sheri, how are you?
Speaker:- Hey Joe, I'm doing really well thanks.
Speaker:- So glad to have you in this conversation.
Speaker:We've met in person before,
Speaker:but it's good to have a chance to talk to you
Speaker:in this online format.
Speaker:Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:- I live at the top of Table Mountain,
Speaker:which is, the post office calls us Cupertino.
Speaker:But if you ask anybody who works at Apple,
Speaker:they wouldn't know that we existed.
Speaker:So just outside of Silicon Valley on the mountain
Speaker:that makes Silicon Valley a valley.
Speaker:- And is that been a place that you've been
Speaker:for a long time?
Speaker:- I've been here since 1993
Speaker:was when I moved back here from Canada.
Speaker:So I'm originally from the province of New Brunswick,
Speaker:in Northeastern Canada, the main side of Canada.
Speaker:- I've always wanted to visit
Speaker:that areas, tour around and check out
Speaker:some of the natural beauty of that area.
Speaker:- It's a great place in the summer.
Speaker:It's the lobster capital of the world,
Speaker:so hopefully you're not a kosher
Speaker:or allergic to shellfish 'cause that would just be sad.
Speaker:- (laughs) Well, I wanna kind of cover different parts,
Speaker:so you know, where you get to where you're at today,
Speaker:but like why don't we kind of start at that today part,
Speaker:you know, what are you involved in right now?
Speaker:- So I've got my fingers in a number of
Speaker:different pies right now.
Speaker:I am an accessibility architect at VMware.
Speaker:I've been with VMware for going on three years now.
Speaker:I founded the accessibility program,
Speaker:and then it grew big enough
Speaker:that one person couldn't run it anymore.
Speaker:So I had to choose this piece of the baby I wanted,
Speaker:I could either run the remediation programs
Speaker:and have all the people reporting to me,
Speaker:or I could go into innovation and outreach,
Speaker:was what they were calling it at the time
Speaker:and be a senior individual contributor
Speaker:at the architect level.
Speaker:And I had just won the pitches on,
Speaker:which was an internal contest.
Speaker:And my idea was to build a better
Speaker:accessibility testing tool using machine learning
Speaker:and I was really excited about that concept
Speaker:because accessibility testing is notoriously bad
Speaker:for automation, and I thought that
Speaker:I could make a difference.
Speaker:And so I decided to pick the architect side of things.
Speaker:We rolled out our tool,
Speaker:which is called Crest about two months ago,
Speaker:and we're looking at...
Speaker:So when we started a year ago,
Speaker:it was about a 30, 70 split.
Speaker:So 30% of accessibility could be tested
Speaker:in an automated manner, but 70% is manual.
Speaker:We've got it to 34, 66 in our proof of concept.
Speaker:So we took five things that could not be tested manually.
Speaker:Sorry could not be tested in an automated manner previously,
Speaker:and we automated them with a very high level of
Speaker:reliability using machine learning.
Speaker:And we think we can get that to 50, 50
Speaker:in the next couple of months.
Speaker:And it's open source.
Speaker:So just go to GitHub and look for VMware Crest
Speaker:and you'll be able to find it.
Speaker:- Well yeah then that's something
Speaker:I'll definitely put a link into
Speaker:and in the notes associated with this.
Speaker:And I know you're involved with a lot of other things
Speaker:right now as well, and we can come around to that,
Speaker:but I was thinking now maybe you kind of
Speaker:push back into the past,
Speaker:and I think we all have, you know different reasons
Speaker:and situations that brought us into the accessibility area,
Speaker:but kind of where did you start with your career
Speaker:and how did it sort of move to where you're at today?
Speaker:- So definitely been a long and windy path.
Speaker:I am wheelchair user.
Speaker:I have a congenital orthopedic issue
Speaker:and people just automatically assume
Speaker:when they see me in my wheelchair,
Speaker:and they hear me talking about accessibility that,
Speaker:oh yeah, that's your connection.
Speaker:I didn't actually get into accessibility because of that.
Speaker:I got into accessibility because my middle daughter is deaf
Speaker:and I happened to have a computer science degree
Speaker:and was a lawyer at the time
Speaker:that we discovered that she was,
Speaker:she had a progressive form of hearing loss.
Speaker:And so I went into advocacy for the deaf at first
Speaker:suing insurance companies and school districts
Speaker:for refusing to cover things
Speaker:that deaf children need to be successful.
Speaker:And won a class action lawsuit against Blue Cross
Speaker:kind of put myself out of business.
Speaker:Once you went against Blue Cross,
Speaker:everybody just basically gives in.
Speaker:They realize that there's no point in continuing to fight.
Speaker:And I thought, well, let me see,
Speaker:I've got this computer science degree,
Speaker:I've got this law degree, what can I do with this?
Speaker:And that was just about the time
Speaker:that accessibility was really starting to take off.
Speaker:So that was about nine years ago.
Speaker:And I've been doing that solid ever since.
Speaker:- Yeah, and just to stop there for a minute,
Speaker:I mean, you have this situation with your child, you know,
Speaker:certainly that's a motivator.
Speaker:It is kind of a much bigger step for a lot of people
Speaker:to take it to the point where you're
Speaker:going into, you know, legal battles
Speaker:and being a you know, an upfront advocate.
Speaker:Was that just something you were always comfortable with
Speaker:or did it all kind of stem from this
Speaker:and you realized that was,
Speaker:it was just something that you had
Speaker:an affinity to be able to take things that way?
Speaker:- So anybody under the age of probably let's say 35, 36
Speaker:doesn't remember life before
Speaker:the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Speaker:No, I do, I was the eighth grader
Speaker:who didn't get to go on the graduation trip
Speaker:because Yosemite wasn't accessible
Speaker:and they couldn't take a wheelchair on the school bus.
Speaker:You know I was the kid who couldn't take
Speaker:you know British literature class because it was upstairs
Speaker:and I was at a high school with no elevator.
Speaker:So my parents always did a really good job
Speaker:advocating for me.
Speaker:There was no lowered expectations.
Speaker:It was always expected that I would go to college.
Speaker:It was always expected that I was gonna do
Speaker:everything that everybody else did.
Speaker:And so I think I got a lot of it from them,
Speaker:but, you know, I had the good fortune.
Speaker:My family moved here from Canada when I was eight.
Speaker:And yeah I was the first Girl Scout
Speaker:to get a badge in computer science.
Speaker:So, you know, I've always been around computers.
Speaker:I've always been around tech.
Speaker:I went to the (indistinct)
Speaker:in the computer club that we belonged to
Speaker:together many years ago.
Speaker:So it's always been great for me to have
Speaker:an activity where despite my disabilities,
Speaker:I could still be on an equal playing field
Speaker:with everybody else and that's what tech means to me.
Speaker:- And then so was it that your...
Speaker:How was your career moving along,
Speaker:like in what areas was that going on
Speaker:at the same time that you were focused on
Speaker:getting equitable service for your child?
Speaker:- So for the first 10 years after I went to Cal,
Speaker:I did primarily just generic software testing,
Speaker:taking the parts of vacuum cleaner
Speaker:and figuring out how it works,
Speaker:that was the kind of kid I was.
Speaker:And so I bring that with me into accessibility
Speaker:because I think to a certain extent,
Speaker:accessibility is just a specialized form of QA.
Speaker:I mean, we all have our reasons for being in it,
Speaker:but at an abstract level, it's regulatory compliance.
Speaker:It's not that much different from, you know,
Speaker:security or privacy or any of the other laws
Speaker:that you have to test
Speaker:and make sure that you're compliant with.
Speaker:You know, yes, you want it to be usable.
Speaker:Yes, there's a really good reason, you know,
Speaker:that you don't wanna exclude people with disabilities.
Speaker:But a lot of the principles
Speaker:that we've learned over the years in QA,
Speaker:like trying to shift the bug discovery earlier
Speaker:in the process that also works very well for accessibility.
Speaker:And so that's something that I've really been focused on
Speaker:the last couple of years at VMware,
Speaker:as we've made this massive migration
Speaker:from doing monolithic large software releases,
Speaker:maybe two or three a year, you know,
Speaker:like one major and a couple of minors,
Speaker:to releasing you know,
Speaker:sometimes a couple of hundred times a week.
Speaker:- And where was the point where
Speaker:the technical part of your career started
Speaker:to move into actively being involved
Speaker:in accessibility as part of that career?
Speaker:- Yeah, so I did software testing.
Speaker:Then I decided to go to law school.
Speaker:It was my last year of law school
Speaker:that we discovered that my daughter had
Speaker:a progressive hearing loss.
Speaker:So I did advocacy for the deaf for about eight years
Speaker:and then went into accessibility after that.
Speaker:So I'm kind of on my third career at this point,
Speaker:but I'm planning on sticking around in this one for awhile.
Speaker:- Well, it was interesting the way that you mentioned about
Speaker:kind of the world before the ADA legislation, you know,
Speaker:initially changed things so dramatically,
Speaker:but then it was still a long time
Speaker:before digital products and services
Speaker:became supported by legal issues and so on.
Speaker:I imagined that that was something
Speaker:that may have affected your daughter's ability
Speaker:to consume things, and yet impossibly you're on as well.
Speaker:- That is true.
Speaker:So the ADA's gonna be 31 in a couple of months,
Speaker:and 15 years ago was when the target case was decided.
Speaker:So that was the first big accessibility case
Speaker:that actually went through to a written court decision.
Speaker:So, yeah, it took about 15 years before the first
Speaker:digital accessibility case was decided.
Speaker:And in their infinite wisdom,
Speaker:the government decided not to adopt
Speaker:WCAG 2.0 into the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Speaker:So the Americans With Disabilities Act
Speaker:is actually written to be a very open updatable document.
Speaker:The internet didn't exist when the ADA was passed
Speaker:yet courts have decided
Speaker:that the ADA does apply to technology,
Speaker:does apply to the internet.
Speaker:Isn't necessarily limited just to places
Speaker:and stores that people go to.
Speaker:And this has been really important during the pandemic,
Speaker:because you think about the situation
Speaker:as somebody who's blind, you know,
Speaker:you're bubbling at your house.
Speaker:You're not supposed to be interacting with other people.
Speaker:If you go to a store, you need help.
Speaker:You can't read the soup can signs
Speaker:or, you know, see what's are green and which bananas aren't.
Speaker:So you wanna go and order online,
Speaker:but if it's not accessible you can't do that either.
Speaker:So people with disabilities really have struggled
Speaker:during the pandemic from that perspective.
Speaker:And 97.4% of the web is still inaccessible to them.
Speaker:It's a really depressingly high figure.
Speaker:- Well, you know, you live that with your self
Speaker:and your daughter on having such a,
Speaker:where you have a kind of a long view so far
Speaker:of how things have progressed.
Speaker:To me I'm kind of interested in knowing like,
Speaker:how far do you feel we've really come
Speaker:because now you're actively involved in accessibility.
Speaker:I think to some extent,
Speaker:we have a greater awareness of it
Speaker:in professional circles and in the technical areas.
Speaker:But sometimes you know, I look...
Speaker:I started to get involved in it around 1998, 1999,
Speaker:doing some work with the W3C
Speaker:when they were first coming out with
Speaker:the web accessibility initiative.
Speaker:And in some ways I feel like there's been
Speaker:really dramatically interesting, valuable things,
Speaker:and then on a day-to-day basis,
Speaker:sometimes I get frustrated and I'm like,
Speaker:it never seems like really moving the needle that much.
Speaker:So I'm interested in kind of
Speaker:how your perceptions of that evolution.
Speaker:- You know I kind of feel the same way sometimes.
Speaker:There are days where you feel like
Speaker:you're smacking your head against the brick wall
Speaker:and stuff never moved as quickly as you want it to.
Speaker:I think one thing I find over and over
Speaker:is that we as a society tend to be somewhat
Speaker:ethically challenged in that technology always
Speaker:evolves faster than the ethics behind using that technology.
Speaker:And I think until we solve that root problem,
Speaker:access at things like accessibility
Speaker:are always gonna be playing catch up
Speaker:because the technology just moves so quickly
Speaker:and the standards and the ethics
Speaker:behind how to use it don't keep up.
Speaker:We have AI, right?
Speaker:Are we using our AI in an ethical manner?
Speaker:Are we making sure that people of color
Speaker:and women and people with disabilities,
Speaker:that there's no bias in the coding,
Speaker:that there's no bias in the data sets?
Speaker:Heck no.
Speaker:We see that all the time,
Speaker:but that doesn't stop us from moving on
Speaker:to the next evolution of AI.
Speaker:So sometimes the regulations take care of that,
Speaker:sometimes they don't.
Speaker:But the nice thing about the ADA
Speaker:is you don't have to go back to Congress
Speaker:to get it to change.
Speaker:The ADA was written so that
Speaker:when new things are adopted through
Speaker:the technical access manuals,
Speaker:they automatically get incorporated into the law.
Speaker:So it is an easier process to update it.
Speaker:So things today, like a hotel,
Speaker:swimming pools, and movie theater accessibility,
Speaker:which was really never contemplated
Speaker:when the ADA was originally passed 30 years ago,
Speaker:those are now part of it.
Speaker:- Well, I mean you're actively involved
Speaker:in accessibility on a regular basis
Speaker:and have for many years now.
Speaker:You get the opportunity to work at some
Speaker:fairly large organizations
Speaker:and being involved in accessibility.
Speaker:Are there any things you can talk about
Speaker:with respect to your experiences there
Speaker:and kind of, you know, how that moved your career forward?
Speaker:- So I think I've determined over the years
Speaker:that the number one factor in determining
Speaker:whether or not an accessibility program
Speaker:is gonna be successful is the presence
Speaker:of an employee resource group dedicated to disability.
Speaker:When you don't have that, it's a much bigger struggle,
Speaker:and, you know, people think of those two things
Speaker:and then they're like,
Speaker:well, wow, how were those connected?
Speaker:No matter how big your accessibility program is,
Speaker:you're never gonna have an accessibility person
Speaker:in the room all the time when the decisions are being made.
Speaker:But if you have enough employees
Speaker:with disabilities in the room
Speaker:and they're willing to talk about it
Speaker:because they feel psychologically safe
Speaker:to discuss their hidden disabilities
Speaker:or to discuss a relative with a disability,
Speaker:or a child with a disability,
Speaker:then the right decisions get made
Speaker:because it's being discussed even when
Speaker:a member of the accessibility team isn't in the room.
Speaker:So that was something that I was really happy
Speaker:to be able to start at VMware.
Speaker:And we just held a psychological safety event yesterday.
Speaker:It was our kickoff to Pride Month.
Speaker:So we did it in conjunction between
Speaker:the women's employee resource group,
Speaker:the pride employee resource group,
Speaker:and the disability employee resource group,
Speaker:and we had 600 people attend.
Speaker:- Wow. Yeah, that's really amazing.
Speaker:And so how do you...
Speaker:What type of, if we look at your current situation,
Speaker:VMware kind of what's the overall corporate philosophy
Speaker:around supporting accessibility, you know,
Speaker:both internally for your employees
Speaker:as well as the things that you're doing
Speaker:with the products and services that you produce.
Speaker:- So VMware has always been committed
Speaker:to making sure that people with disabilities
Speaker:can use our products.
Speaker:We tend to grow by acquisition which has presented
Speaker:a sort of a unique challenge
Speaker:in that we've acquired, I think,
Speaker:18 company in the three years that I've worked for VMware.
Speaker:So that means you're getting, you know,
Speaker:every few months you're getting hit
Speaker:into the whole new suite of products
Speaker:and maybe they're accessible and maybe they're not.
Speaker:But we've gone from 92 products to 140 products
Speaker:in the three years that I've been there.
Speaker:So that's been an interesting challenge.
Speaker:We just recently passed
Speaker:an equal of internal accessibility policies,
Speaker:so our employee facing policy is now identical
Speaker:to our customer facing policy.
Speaker:And we're going through our tools and, you know,
Speaker:prioritizing the ones that everybody uses first
Speaker:and many of our vendors who may be listening
Speaker:to this are going, oh yeah, we know Sheri.
Speaker:Because I, you know,
Speaker:meet with several of them frequently
Speaker:to get them on the right path to accessibility.
Speaker:And it's one of the great things about working for VMware,
Speaker:because we believe in using our leverage, you know,
Speaker:to create a better environment for everybody.
Speaker:So we're not asking Slack or Atlassian,
Speaker:or any of the companies that we worked at with
Speaker:to fix it just for us,
Speaker:we're really trying to get them to fix it for everybody.
Speaker:And we're willing to help them on our dime,
Speaker:the VMware, you know, dime to do that.
Speaker:- VMware is such a large organization,
Speaker:probably so many different departments
Speaker:and so many projects going on at any given time.
Speaker:How are things organized to support accessibility?
Speaker:Is there sort of a central group
Speaker:that assists with supporting that,
Speaker:or are individual departments
Speaker:do they have their own people
Speaker:that become advocates in those areas?
Speaker:- So if you look at any of the six accessibility
Speaker:maturity models that exist out there in the world,
Speaker:you can never get past the middle tier
Speaker:without having a centralized accessibility system
Speaker:and a centralized accessibility budget.
Speaker:When you allow each business unit
Speaker:or each department or each product
Speaker:to handle accessibility differently,
Speaker:that's where you get into inconsistencies.
Speaker:And that's where you get into,
Speaker:okay, this department is financially challenged.
Speaker:So they're just gonna do the minimum
Speaker:to get by on accessibility, where that department,
Speaker:maybe the department has a child with a disability
Speaker:and so he's really committed to doing it right,
Speaker:or she's really committed to doing it right.
Speaker:So the whole mindset behind the way we do it at VMware
Speaker:is it is centralized.
Speaker:There is one approach.
Speaker:Because we have so many products
Speaker:what we found as we are remediating products,
Speaker:we're getting into a situation where you transition
Speaker:from one VMware product to another VMware product,
Speaker:and maybe things don't work exactly the same way.
Speaker:Like they're both accessible,
Speaker:but they're accessible in different ways.
Speaker:So let me give you an example.
Speaker:W3C is not particularly prescriptive in the WCAG guidelines.
Speaker:So if you've got a slide to yourself
Speaker:that moves around WC3 doesn't say you have to have a button.
Speaker:It doesn't says you have to have a mechanism.
Speaker:And maybe one business unit wants to do it
Speaker:with green buttons in the lower left corner
Speaker:and another business unit wants to do it
Speaker:with a toggle in the upper right.
Speaker:Okay. Well, yeah, those are compliant,
Speaker:but that's not the best user experience
Speaker:because you didn't care when they transitioned
Speaker:from one product to the next product,
Speaker:they just want it for it.
Speaker:So we realized that,
Speaker:and when we got to a certain level
Speaker:in our accessibility maturity,
Speaker:we said, okay, wait,
Speaker:we wanna create an accessibility style guide
Speaker:so that all the product teams
Speaker:are drawing from the same design patterns
Speaker:and the same resources,
Speaker:so that they're all implementing
Speaker:magnification in the same manner.
Speaker:And, you know, slides telescope
Speaker:in the same manner and motion and haptics and all that.
Speaker:So that's something we're actually
Speaker:putting quite a bit of effort into right now.
Speaker:- And then for the individual practitioners,
Speaker:let's say a product manager
Speaker:or a interaction designer,
Speaker:or a developer, you know,
Speaker:how are they able to acquire the skills
Speaker:or know what part they play
Speaker:in that overall accessibility plan
Speaker:that you mentioned that might be set by
Speaker:the centralized authority.
Speaker:- So many opportunities.
Speaker:So we have training programs
Speaker:that the employee resource group has deployed
Speaker:on our centralized training platform.
Speaker:We have a deep dive on accessibility that's role-based.
Speaker:We have a program manager course,
Speaker:a content manager course,
Speaker:a developer course, a QA course,
Speaker:so that everybody only has to learn
Speaker:what they need to know
Speaker:in order to do their particular job.
Speaker:We have webinars, we have a champions program,
Speaker:we have slack channels, we have office hours.
Speaker:We have every communications.
Speaker:We have accessibility week,
Speaker:the first week in every February,
Speaker:which is the beginning of VMware's fiscal year.
Speaker:Where we do an accessibility summit
Speaker:and we talk to customers
Speaker:and we do accessibility research,
Speaker:and we've got an accessibility hack-a-thon
Speaker:scheduled for this November coming up
Speaker:because WCAG 2.2 should be coming out this fall
Speaker:and we wanna get a headstart on that.
Speaker:So we're all gonna do the WCAG 2.2 updates together
Speaker:so that we can kind of crowdsource the opportunities
Speaker:and make sure it's done consistently across the product.
Speaker:- Well, there are apparently most definitely be
Speaker:you know, support from the top levels of the organizations
Speaker:because obviously there's a significant commitment
Speaker:of resources for people, you know,
Speaker:to set up those activities
Speaker:and then give people the time
Speaker:to be able to embrace them
Speaker:and get involved in do that training.
Speaker:- Yeah, we have had a little bit of turnover,
Speaker:and our upper levels originally our big product champion
Speaker:was Reggie from (indistinct)
Speaker:And he unfortunately left to go to a competitor in February,
Speaker:but his role was taken over by Ragu.
Speaker:And then when top left Ragu became a CEO.
Speaker:So we definitely have an accessibility champion
Speaker:with respect to a CEO.
Speaker:I get a lot of support from HR.
Speaker:We're working on new reasonable
Speaker:accommodations processes for example.
Speaker:And obviously the DEI team is a big part
Speaker:of what the accessibility resource group
Speaker:is able to accomplish as well.
Speaker:- Well, you know, just talking a little bit more
Speaker:about the things you're doing right now,
Speaker:you're always visible in the various communities,
Speaker:you know, writing things to share about your ideas
Speaker:about accessibility and you've also been working
Speaker:on a new book, do you wanna talk about that a little bit?
Speaker:- Yeah. So I was named the UX Collective
Speaker:Medium Author of the year, last year
Speaker:and early this year the UX Collective came to me and said,
Speaker:we wanna publish a book on global accessibility.
Speaker:What you gonna say, will you write it with us?
Speaker:Well, I love writing.
Speaker:And I like to think that that's one of my takeaways
Speaker:from law school as I'm actually a decent,
Speaker:but probably more importantly a staff writer,
Speaker:it only usually takes me an hour to 90 minutes
Speaker:for one of my blog articles.
Speaker:And I hate logistics(laughs)
Speaker:I'm terrible at it.
Speaker:And I can't draw a straight line with ruler,
Speaker:so graphics are not my thing.
Speaker:And they had designers and graphic designers
Speaker:and they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker:we're gonna make this into an audio book.
Speaker:And they had all that stuff locked down.
Speaker:So it was just absolutely a fabulous partnership.
Speaker:And so that came out on Global Accessibility Awareness page
Speaker:and the whole book is almost finished,
Speaker:and I'm talking to a couple of
Speaker:different publishers right now.
Speaker:But we had 27,000 downloads
Speaker:in the first, like 10 days when the book was out.
Speaker:It's just been a crazy popular
Speaker:beyond my wildest dreams.
Speaker:You know, when I was writing it I'm like,
Speaker:is anybody but my dad gonna read this?
Speaker:And it turns out yeah,
Speaker:a lot of people apart from my dad are gonna read it.
Speaker:- Were there any parts of it that,
Speaker:I mean, obviously you made the whole thing happen,
Speaker:but were there any parts that you are particularly
Speaker:passionate about as you put it together?
Speaker:- No, I think my things right now
Speaker:is giving people who are just getting started the tools
Speaker:that they can turn back and take to their organizations
Speaker:who are maybe recalcitrant
Speaker:or don't even know what accessibility is,
Speaker:or kind of locked into
Speaker:some of the myths around accessibility ,
Speaker:and giving them the knowledge that they need
Speaker:that does not come from accessibility boot camps
Speaker:on how to change there mindset.
Speaker:I'm all about changing hearts and minds.
Speaker:If you wanna read a book on how to implement aria,
Speaker:you know, there's stuff,
Speaker:there's plenty of material out there already on that.
Speaker:I try to stick to the more abstract stuff,
Speaker:and, you know, I tell people
Speaker:if I have to answer a question twice,
Speaker:I usually start an article on it
Speaker:because they I figure, okay if I write an article on it,
Speaker:then I can just point people to the article in the future.
Speaker:- Well, I haven't had a chance
Speaker:to get into the book yet,
Speaker:but I'm looking forward to reading it.
Speaker:And I wanna thank you for just taking this time
Speaker:to chat with me and let people know
Speaker:a little bit about your story and you know,
Speaker:what accessibility is all about
Speaker:from the perspective of Sheri Byrne-Haber.
Speaker:- Well, thank you very much Joe.
Speaker:And I just wanna remind your audience
Speaker:that if you are interested in accessibility,
Speaker:there are all kinds of volunteer opportunities.
Speaker:So I work with the W3C on the silver,
Speaker:which is the WCAG 3.0 which will be coming
Speaker:kind of towards the end of 2023,
Speaker:or maybe the beginning of 2024.
Speaker:There's always volunteer opportunities there.
Speaker:There's volunteer opportunities with IWAP
Speaker:with Lighthouse for the Blind,
Speaker:with Center for Independent Living.
Speaker:I recently worked on the
Speaker:Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo rebuild.
Speaker:So the place that I couldn't visit
Speaker:when I was a kid is now gonna be fully accessible,
Speaker:that I'm really excited to try that out
Speaker:in a couple of weekends.
Speaker:And, you know, just look through
Speaker:places that you can help,
Speaker:because accessibility does not require a college degree
Speaker:all it requires is some knowledge
Speaker:and a whole lot of caring.
Speaker:- A lot of what we do are little steps,
Speaker:iterative pieces, and hopefully, you know,
Speaker:we just keep moving forward.
Speaker:- That's how I ended the book.
Speaker:It's just keep moving that accessibility needle forward
Speaker:backwards is not an acceptable direction.
Speaker:- Well, thanks again Sheri and I look forward to seeing you,
Speaker:hopefully at a physical event sometime soon.
