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HPE news. Tech insights. World-class innovations. We take you straight to the source — interviewing tech's foremost thought leaders and change-makers that are propelling businesses and industries forward.
Aubrey Lovell (00:09):
Hello friends and welcome back to Technology Now. Our weekly show from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, where we take what's happening in the world and explore how it's changing the way organizations are using technology. We're your hosts, Audrey Lovell.
Michael Bird (00:23):
And Michael Bird, and in this episode we are taking a look at how advancements in technology are shaping the experiences of people with disabilities at work. As December 3rd marks the start of International Disability Week, we'll be looking at how accessibility issues are being approached in the workplace, and also addressing the issue of inclusivity within the tech industry and how it can be changed for the better.
Aubrey Lovell (00:45):
So you know what I'm about to say. If you're the kind of person who needs to know why, what's going on in the world matters to your organization, this podcast is for you. And if you haven't yet, send us some love and subscribe to your podcast app of choice so you don't miss out on the latest. All right, super excited about this one. Let's get into it.
(01:06):
As is tradition on this podcast, we're going to kick off with a few facts and figures, and the headline is that slowly workplaces are becoming more accessible. In 2022, the British Office of National Statistics announced that 1.3 million more people with disabilities or accessibility needs had been employed since 2017. Also, in 2022, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about 21% of people with a disability in the US were in employment. That was 2% more than the previous year and the highest rate since they began tracking the numbers back in 2008. But overall, the numbers are still way too low. For instance, those Bureau of Labor stats are way behind the 65% workforce participation rate for people with no disabilities, and the numbers suggest wider issues.
(01:56):
A survey by the Business Disability Forum showed that out of the 1500 disabled employees surveyed, 78% of them said they were the ones who had to approach their employers to ask for adjustments to be made in the workplace. One in eight said they're still waiting for those adjustments more than a year later. Meanwhile, according to a report by BCS, the British Computer Society, in 2020, the gross hourly pay for IT specialists with disabilities in the UK was 12% less than IT specialists without reported disabilities.
Michael Bird (02:28):
So what can employers do to be better and how is technology benefiting people with accessibility needs in the workplace? Well, here to help answer those questions is Rob Koch, principal of data engineering at Slalom Build and founder of virtual user group Deafinthecloud.com. You'll be hearing Rob's voice today through his American Sign Language interpreter, Amaelia. Hi Rob. Thank you so much for joining us. So first question, what's the biggest issue you've personally encountered in the workplace?
Rob Koch (02:59):
I would say number one is with accessibility is getting your foot in the door with any company really, because many times companies will use networking to get in the door if you are being referred. I think it made it a little easier to get in and I think that is in general. As a Deaf and hard of hearing person, I think in general we struggle to, depending on where we go to a Deaf school or we have limited social connections and networks growing up and maybe we can't get a foothold in the industry that we're trying to pursue in general. So I would say that that's a weak point or a weak area. So maybe it's two or three times as hard to get into the workforce compared to others. And I think that all of us are chronically underemployed as a community. If you're not employed, then you are constantly looking for work and it puts us at a financial disadvantage, of course. That's kind of where I'm seeing most of the limitations within this particular space.
Michael Bird (04:10):
And Rob, what's the biggest challenge at the moment for disabled people or people with accessibility needs at work?
Rob Koch (04:16):
Getting in, that's one big accomplishment, but also you have to deal with technical terms. We really need, well-versed interpreters in the tech industry. We work with things like Kubernetes, which we sign K8 or SQL databases or different NoSQL products and all the varying things, big data products, all of these things that we use in technology and interpreters in general don't know those technologies. So it's not really a straight translation. It's kind of iffy. I have to spell out a lot of these things and it takes a bit more time and the interpreters may get it that way. I consider myself lucky that maybe I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth basically in that regard. I have an interpreter here who's on the call today. She and I have been working together for about 10 years and she knows the stuff that I work with and we're always communicating.
(05:14):
So if you have different interpreters every time, no one has enough time to learn anything or get it to stick, right? Interpreters have a really tough role of trying to pick up everything. Maybe they do an hour job that's medical application and then they're switching to tech and then they're working with somebody who's a lawyer and then they're jumping to somebody who's working with car mechanics or all of these things that interpreters do. They really have this breadth of knowledge. It's pretty impressive. But going back to the point of your question, I think having different ways to communicate is helpful. If an interpreter can't be in a meeting, I tend to use email. We use chat a lot more often, in general. Anything like that to correspond with people and help facilitate that communication a little bit smoother. I think companies are really trending towards agile methods like Scrum and various types of things out there. All of those different types of meetings that we do to prepare in that type of a setting, that increases the importance of having great sign language interpreters, I would say.
Michael Bird (06:26):
Is technology actively playing a part in allowing inclusivity in the workplace?
Rob Koch (06:31):
We have gotten way, way better as far as inclusion in the tech space with that. Looking at auto captioning, we do have that addition in technology. If we're watching a video, we can see the auto-generated captions that way, where that can help with getting the right terms in there. Sometimes the words don't come across just right and some things are a little odd. Sometimes acronyms are tough, but also a speech to text on my mobile phone, if I'm turning that on for the Notes app, let's say. If you bring up a Notes type of app and you put the mic on and people speak to it, then I can see the text coming through and be able to read that.
(07:21):
In the old days we might use pen and paper to write things down and that takes a while and somebody can speak into an app, it's much faster and more fluid. I think also I get the notes out of it too if people are speaking into it and there's a record there and I can take that and make an outline, let's say, to fill out the requirements of a particular project or something. So I think it's really a win-win for everyone.
Michael Bird (07:50):
So Rob, you are a data engineer. How accessible are the programs that you use?
Rob Koch (07:56):
For me, all the programs that I use are accessible. One thing that's missing is something like, for example, tutorials. Various companies don't add captions on their tutorials. So that's something that is needed and we're trying to encourage. I use auto captioning in various things, like browsers have live captioning that you can have set and brought up based on the sound of your computer. Whatever's being put through the speakers can go into autogenerated captions, whereas tutorials have heavy tech terminology. And so with things like that, the auto generated captions don't work very well. So that's kind of where it's nice to have the vendor themselves make captions within their videos. I know what people tend to do is maybe go through a video, make the captions, save it as a file, then review it and tweak some of those words. I don't mean to put people through a lot of effort and extra work that would take a lot of time out of their day, but I think the vendors did that more and more, that would be helpful.
(09:04):
I would also like to mention it benefits people internationally who have a foreign language as their primary language and maybe English wasn't their first, so that's helpful for them to get the context also to help maybe learn a little bit more English that way too. So I think there's a lot of benefit. Somebody who has audio processing disorders might also benefit from that. So there's a lot of different reasons to have captioning no matter what. And so that's kind of where I'm seeing, it's accessible for me, but it's really accessible for all.
Aubrey Lovell (09:37):
Rob, tell us about Deafinthecloud.com.
Rob Koch (09:40):
Sure. So Deafinthecloud.com is a website that is set up hopefully to have more deaf people interact and talk with folks and share their experience in tech, share their stories. So my idea with that was to spread awareness and overcome barriers to the employment within our community. And that's kind of really the whole point I think is not wanting to be a recruiting an agency or a contractor, nothing of that. We would've like to spread awareness. Now I'm involved with the CNCF, Deaf and hard of hearing working group and trying to encourage Deaf and hard of hearing folks to become more aware in the open source community. The ultimate goal of that is to help Deaf and hard of hearing folks in the tech space. Right now there's a good number of Deaf and hard of hearing in the tech space, but I'd like to see more of that and more folks coming in and increase their earning power.
(10:54):
Then you can donate to more of Deaf and hard of hearing causes and give back to your alma mater or university like RIT or Gallaudet or NTID. So that's a National Tech Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York. And so there's various nonprofits also that the goal is to increase their earning power to help the community do better.
Michael Bird (11:20):
So before we have a break, what's the benefit to employers of investing more in accessibility tools and diverse hiring?
Rob Koch (11:27):
If you're hiring someone with a disability specifically, let's say there's a disabled person in the company and there's a hiring manager and they see that employee and they see them interact with folks every day, now that's in the back of their minds. So it's things like that employer sees that employee here and it opens up in a way I would call it understanding, opening up the acceptance within the company and that potential for that to be there. So you see the Deaf person working here successfully, they think, "Great, we can hire another Deaf person." And so it's just seeing that example. It's always nice to have to the diversity and those perspectives within a company as well. For example, a lot of products are made with hearing folks and you have a privilege of Insight, for example. In other words, almost like "normal" people.
(12:29):
And so you have all of these type of things in the way they see it and maybe we need to hack those programs to be a little bit more accessible for folks that are blind and folks that are limited in mobility and people who have hearing loss. So things like that, we have to kind of hack our programs after the fact. So if we hire disabled people from the beginning, then when we're developing products and programs there, it will be, in a way baked in as part of the product itself because we're getting those different perspectives from the beginning instead of hacking it after the fact. So it's kind of shifting left on the spectrum a little bit to develop that process where we're putting in accommodations first and accessibility and tools and things like that after the fact. I guess a better word would be put the features in first and then the rest will be developed a lot easier with that perspective in mind.
Aubrey Lovell (13:28):
Rob, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. And we'll be back with Rob Koch in a moment, so don't go anywhere. All right, it's time for Today I Learned the part of the show where we take a look at something happening in the world we think you should know about.
Michael Bird (13:44):
Yes. And I'm going to start with a riddle for you, Aubrey. Here we go. When is the moon not the moon?
Aubrey Lovell (13:53):
Oh my goodness. I haven't had enough coffee for this. Okay, fine. I'm going to say honeymooning.
Michael Bird (13:59):
Okay. Well the answer is when it's part of two other planets, so not quite anyway, which it could actually be according to a new study. So back in the '80s, two blobs of matter were discovered buried deep within Earth, one beneath Africa and one beneath the Pacific Ocean. Until now, it's not really been known what these objects called LLVPs or large low velocity provinces actually are. However, a team of researchers now believe these two blobs are actually the remains of a planet called Theia, which they believe was swallowed up by a young planet Earth after a collision in the early solar system. Now to add to the mystery, no trace of fear has ever been found in asteroid belts or meteorites. Scientists were searching for seismic waves traveling through the earth when they discovered these masses and both were found to contain unusually high levels of iron.
(14:58):
And do you know what else contains a high level of iron? The moon. So the researchers have carried out simulations which show that when Theia collided with baby Earth, parts of it became embedded in its core and the other part along with Earth debris flew off to become the moon. So it's a fascinating theory, which could answer important questions about our early solar system and ultimately how the planet we know and love came to be. It's interesting, eh?
Aubrey Lovell (15:26):
It really is interesting. I've never heard of that ever. So I'll have to do some research on it. That's amazing. All right, thanks for that, Michael.
Michael Bird (15:36):
So it's time for questions from the audience you've been sending in your questions to Rob Koch on technology and accessibility and we've pulled out a couple. So Rob, first question is from Jane in Bond and she has asked, "Are there any tech developments around accessibility that excites you at the moment?"
Rob Koch (15:53):
What everyone's really talking about right now, of course, Gen AI, we're on the way to figuring out sign language type things within that space. Sign language is a spatial language. So in front of me, I sign and my face and my body are part of that. Using directionality, by pointing in different ways. Anything behind means something of the past. So we have a sense of time because of this facial language aspect. So sign language is basically an X, Y, and Z access. If you're looking at a grid, it's more of a cube. A lot of images are 2D. And so with that and Gen AI getting more intelligent, being trained, we're able to figure out 2D and becoming that 3D assumption making from there, then we can come up with various ways to find out what I'm signing. So that's been kind of exciting. You're really in the infancy of just starting that kind of thought process, so that'll be really exciting.
Aubrey Lovell (17:11):
And Kristen Boston wants to know, "What is your most frustrating, easy to fix, gripe when it comes to the workplace?"
Rob Koch (17:18):
The ability to have captionings right the first time. That can be frustrating, but can be an easy fix. Sometimes there's delay or tech issues with that. Recently I attended a conference and the captioning on the keynotes failed because the network connection was lost and no one to blame for that, but just tech problems. But that happens to everyone. But in terms of tech stuff, not too bad at the moment, just because we are improving, we iterate on everything to a point where we're making accessibility improvements to products pretty often. I would say all big companies are in the accessibility days. So I think there's a lot of releases and it's always fun to watch and see what comes out of that.
Aubrey Lovell (18:17):
All right, thanks so much, Rob. It's been great to talk to you and you can find more on the topics discussed in today's episode in the show notes. All right, so we're getting towards the end of the show, which means it's time for This Week in History, a look at monumental events in the world of business and technology, which has changed our lives. And Michael, the clue last week was it's 2003 and this bill is junk. Did you get it?
Michael Bird (18:47):
I think I did. I'm guessing it's like junk mail spam, that sort of thing?
Aubrey Lovell (18:51):
Well, it's not the easiest one we've done, but happy 20th birthday to the CAN-SPAM Act. It was the first ever attempt to create national standards for junk and advertising emails. It was a controversial piece of legislation by codifying spam and regulating it by saying there had to be opt-out options, for example, campaigners argued that junk email was effectively being legalized. Now that said, hundreds of companies and individuals were prosecuted under the act over the years. And by 2005, the volumes of junk email being sent were said to be leveling off, though that's arguably in part due to better filtering on email systems. Anyway, here's to you, CAN-SPAM. Now share this podcast with 20 of your friends for good luck. Okay, Producer Sam, okay.
Michael Bird (19:39):
Now next week, the clue is it's 1882 and this holiday season, may your dreams be merry and even brighter. So that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week.
Aubrey Lovell (19:53):
Thank you to our guest, Rob Koch, and to you for listening.
Michael Bird (19:56):
Technology Now is hosted by Aubrey Lovell and myself, Michael Bird. Thanks to Rob's ASL interpreter, Amaelia Frooshamer. This episode was produced by Sam Datta-Paulin and Al Booth with production support from Harry Morton, Zoe Anderson, Alicia Kempson, Alison Paisley, Alyssa Mitri, Camilla Patel, Alex Potmoore, and Chloe Sewell.
Aubrey Lovell (20:16):
Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wessinger, Judy Ann Goldman, Katie Guarino, and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, Carlos Alberto Suarez, and Ambar Maldonado.
Michael Bird (20:27):
Technology Now is a Lower Street production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and we'll see you next week.
Aubrey Lovell (20:33):
Cheers.