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Most designs are built for the 'average user', a person nobody has ever actually met. These are conversations with the people changing that: researchers, practitioners and advocates working in inclusive design, accessibility and disability inclusion. Join Hyun Song, a service designer in Sydney, on her journey to learn what works, what doesn't, and what it takes to build experiences that truly honour human diversity and dignity.
Hyun (00:00)
Hi, I'm Hyun, and you're listening to Inclusive Design Sessions, where I chat with people doing exciting things in inclusive design, accessibility, and human-centered design. From reimagining technology to challenging the way we design everyday experiences, we explore creative ideas that are making our world more inclusive. I'm so glad you're here. Now, let's get into it.
Hyun Song (00:25)
Hey everyone, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining you
today from the lands of the Gadigal people. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to any and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners of this podcast. My pronouns are she/her and my visual description is: I'm an Asian woman with dark shoulder-length hair, wearing headphones and an orange top, and behind me is my very unexciting living room wall with framed prints.
Today I'm super excited to be joined by Solomon Romney. Solomon is a Senior Accessibility Product Manager at Amazon, and before that, he was the Accessibility Program Manager at Microsoft, where he created the Inclusive Tech Lab and launched groundbreaking inclusive products like the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Today we're exploring how inclusive ideas actually become real products and what it takes to create experiences that respect people's choice and dignity. Solomon,
Thank you so much for joining me.
Solomon Romney (01:24)
Thank you. It's a delight to be here. my pronouns are he/him. My visual description is I'm a averagely built white man, bald with a short beard, and I am sitting in my library surrounded by a number of very beautiful books. But yeah, as as a accessibility PM for Microsoft, I got to oversee the construction and operation of the second version of the Inclusive Tech Lab.
I was involved in the making of every single one of Microsoft's adaptive products from the Xbox adaptive controller, Microsoft's adaptive accessories, updates to the touchpad with adaptive touch mode, the bold addition of the Surface Pro keyboard, Surface Adaptive Kit. It's a whole bunch of stuff, but those were all my projects. And then now at Amazon, I'm working on a whole different set of
of features and products because where Microsoft was very business focused, Amazon is very much a consumer brand. And so it's a lot more television and reading and a whole whole interesting new suite of of experiences to explore. So it yeah, it's it's been a good transition. Very happy with the work I got to do at Microsoft, very happy with the work I get to do now at Amazon.
Hyun Song (02:47)
That's amazing. And that really very naturally segues into the first question that I was going to ask you, Solomon, which was what does an accessibility product manager actually do?
Solomon Romney (03:02)
It depends who you ask, but PMs they are the folks responsible for getting everything done, ultimately. It's in some ways it's a catch all job, in others it is specializing as a generalist. PMs are are sort of the glue that sticks all of the other bits together. So
as a PM I work with engineering, I work with design, I define a product vision, I write the requirements, set the timelines, make sure everybody stays, you know, that we're meeting our milestones, that we have clearly defined success metrics. essentially, I get everyone else to do the work.
And my job is to make sure that they are all doing the work and that they have what they need to do it successfully. I may be being a little a little cheeky about it, but but yeah, that's in essence it's it's making sure that all the pieces keep moving together and that everyone understands what the end goal is and how we get there and how we measure it. And so
and so it is very much a a relationship-based sort of approach. You've got to be able to understand the different technical languages.
Design speaks a different language from engineering. They both speak a different language from marketing. and so you as a PM serve as sort of the the translator between all of it. And that's that that's an interesting challenge that you face is being able to connect all of these different pieces and get them to understand one another so that we can all ultimately make this thing.
Which, you know, for us is a, you know, focused on accessibility. It's it's a thing that is, you know, delightful ideally for people with disabilities, where we're actually making in many ways wholly new experiences that have not been envisioned before, have not been designed before. And so it is this this wonderful sort of double-edged sword of
We're making groundbreaking products, but that's also really hard, which means it's hard to know when we get it right because there aren't other examples necessarily to compare to. And so that's part of the challenge. You get a little more ambiguity. And it it requires, I think, a lot more social skills than hard technical skills. You know, it's it's there's still very much a human element.
that's required and the PM really sort of has to embody that, I think, in many ways, most of all.
Hyun Song (06:06)
something people may or may not know about you is that you've got a theater background. I've heard you speak before. You're such an amazing storyteller, and has that background shaped the way that you work?
In your current role, but also in past roles in accessibility.
Solomon Romney (06:26)
It's very kind of you to say, first of all. and yes, you are correct. I am a classically trained, conservatory trained actor and Shakespeare scholar. So all of my degrees are fine arts degrees. I don't have formal technical training. but to answer your question, I would not be in these roles. I would have not, I think, even gotten into accessibility were it not for.
My theater and academic background. Because it turns out, and this was something I was lucky to find out about a decade ago, is that storytelling is really powerful when it comes to product. And being able to clearly articulate an experience, a customer need, a challenge, a journey.
you know, to really put the human story in the center of what we're creating was a rare and very necessary skill. And so absolutely, I in many ways, I use this work, that background on a daily basis. I am writing constantly. I am writing narratives. I am telling product stories. I am
working with marketing teams and different things, more so at Microsoft and at Amazon, but to to define how we talked about disability and how we talked about product and and there are so many different ways we can say the same thing. But that becomes a challenge when we are trying to to define very specific
Behaviors or action. and for technical specificity, we have to be very clear on those terms. And that is something that having a a literary background makes easier. so I spend a lot of time focused on language around disability, around product. It's yeah, I write all the time, and so to sort of get back to the point.
None of this would be possible. I wouldn't be doing any of this work if it weren't for having that kind of narrative background and being able to tell.
meaningful personal stories. You know, if we're up on stage doing a product launch, I will write the script for what I'm going to talk about. Obviously I'll review that with the people, you know, who need to approve it.
But it's my words, it's my story, and I will go through and score it like I would any monologue. I'll write my beats, I'll note my change of tone, my where am I pausing? Where am I using silence? What is the right way to pause to really land a point? Silence is so important in storytelling. I think people miss that. And so
The emotions I convey, the stories I tell, they're still personal, they're still me, they're still genuine. It's just it's just I've composed it. It it's just it's been a part of the of the work, my professional work for so long. It's just sort of become a natural way of telling stories, but but that is what a meaningful story is. This is why Steve Jobs was so great at what he did. He could tell a really compelling story about a product. And by that it was really about the customer.
You know, he was telling a human story. And that's why people found him so fascinating. and so yeah, I think I I think absolutely vital. And I would argue very strongly, especially in the age of AI, that it is those artistic and literary and humanities backgrounds that are going to be especially useful and powerful during this time. Because I think
When people think about AI, they focus on the first L and the in an LLM, in a large language model. They think large and they think model and they forget about the middle one, the middle L. And I would argue that is actually the most important one of the bunch. If you're trying to achieve a very specific outcome from a model, you need to be very clear on what those terms mean, because it will it will conflate, it will invent, it will choose synonyms.
And being able to get it to articulate clearly, you have to be able to articulate clearly. And so I think I think having that background is going to prove to be surprisingly useful in a more automated world.
Hyun Song (11:17)
With that background, like can you give us an example where it's helped persuade
Solomon Romney (11:22)
True.
Hyun Song (11:23)
people or shift a conversation or help people envision something that they hadn't really thought of, especially where it comes to accessibility and disability inclusion.
Solomon Romney (11:38)
One of the probably the first real major talk I ever gave at Microsoft, I had been asked to present to all of the Microsoft Stores leadership.
So three hundred and fifty ish people at this at this all store meeting, to present for about twenty minutes on accessibility.
And that was all they told me. And, you know, I talked about my experience. I talked about the first time I ever ran into a into an accessibility barrier. Because and I forgot to say this earlier in my audio description. I only have five fingers. I'm I don't have fingers on my left hand. They never developed. I have what's now known as amni amniotic band syndrome, which is a I never had I didn't
have fingers and lose them, they just never grew. which is a an important distinction. But so I talked about that. I talked about how frustrating PlayStation controllers were for me and and how much of a the revelation that that was why I couldn't finish a game was because the controllers were designed in such a way that I physically could not move around it. I talked about my frustration with doorknobs.
That's actually well documented, my hatred of doorknobs. I have called them the worst thing ever invented. door levers are so much better, but you know, so explaining to people like I ranged far and wide. I talked about what hostile design was, even if it's unintentional, and how so many of the things that we do are are hostile to people with disabilities, even if we didn't intend them to be. I talked about Microsoft products.
It clearly landed with folks because there were folks for years after that, up until I left Microsoft, who were there and would bring it up. They said, I still remember that. And I remember when I got off stage the facilities, you know, our real estate team
one of the guys pulled me aside and he said, We need to talk about doors. And I was like, Great, let's talk about doors. And that led to the installation of powered open doors in some of our stores. That changed how we designed new stores. It changed how they built the kiosks. that the the the small mall stores that didn't have their own four walls. They were
you know, little islands, but they installed wheelchair height flip up tables and you know, and these were all things I consulted on with them about it. Like it it changed the way stores thought about well, the entire store's experience and the employee experience and the type of events we held. Like it it could have just been a hey, here's some demos of Microsoft products. And everyone would have been like, that's cool.
But instead, you know, I decided to tell a story. Tell my story, tell the story of people I knew.
for s for some of these folks, and this is not a judgment, I think this is just a statement of fact. This is probably the first time some of them have ever heard had ever heard a first hand account of a disabled experience. And so that was that was a powerful moment. And it it really did it changed what I did at Microsoft. It changed the entire direction of my career. You know, they put me in charge of accessibility for the entire stores operation.
For a while and gave me essentially an open, you know, an open field to follow and pursue and do and advise. And I continued to sort of serve in that role for years to come. You know, and and as that percolated out, we had stores starting to do things like inclusive gaming events as the controller came out and all sorts of stuff that all sort of rippled out from this one talk. And so it was a situation where I got to see over the course of years.
the value of that story, of telling my story, telling a product story, and how it resonated with people and it changed behavior. And so yeah, that that was a that was a moment where telling a story to the right room full of people made a huge difference for years to come.
And so that the importance of that I don't think I can overstate. And obviously I'm biased, but I think if you want to be successful in any business, in any undertaking, you need to be able to tell a compelling story.
Hyun Song (16:34)
Yeah, yeah. Lived experience is so powerful. As you said, when you deliver it in the right way to the right room of people, there's so much that you can impact. Yeah, I think that's a really great example.
Solomon Romney (16:50)
Well, I think it gave people permission, as weird as that might sound, because I cannot tell you how many of those people came up to me individually over the, you know, following years to talk about how they had a condition they'd never talked to anyone about, or they had a family member, or they'd encountered something where they finally felt like they they could talk about it. It meant a lot to people to finally feel like they had a had permission, had a safe space to raise
questions to identify differently. you know, and that's the leadership of storytelling is is once you put that out in the collective cultural mind, it it helps them feel comfortable. It helps them feel seen. And that's that's hugely important. and I've seen storytelling go the other way too where where we tell a really great story, but it may not necessarily be the truth
Of the product or the experience and the people that we've actually designed for, then don't see themselves in the product. So, for example, the Xbox Adaptive Controller, all the marketing, amazing commercials came out in the Super Bowl that year. People still cry about it. I still cry about it. It's an amazing commercial. Bunch of kids, limb different kids like me, you know, talking about what it was like to game in their own words.
You know what the challenges were, what was great about the new controller for them. But we didn't design the controller with those kids. We designed the controller with wounded veterans. Because gaming is such a big part of the military culture. We had a lot of folks coming back from overseas who had lost limbs you know, in service. And if you weren't on duty, you were usually gaming. That was
you know, that was such a big part of it. That was your social circle. And if you could now not game, you were you become very isolated in in some really people got into some dark places by losing that that social connection. And so that's the that's the audience we really worked with to bring accessible gaming at Xbox to life. But they weren't in the stories that we told.
And so a lot of the folks that we actually designed it with and for didn't see themselves. They went, Xbox made a controller for limb different kids. That's great. So I guess it's not for me. And it's like, well, no. So you also have to be really careful that you're not that even if you are telling a good story, it's not that you're not sacrificing the the authenticity of the experience.
There are always opportunities to tell a better story. It w who your audience is also changes. So you may tell the same story in a different way, depending on who your audience is. And that's also important. I think a lot of times people think, well, the story's the story. I I think what people forget, or maybe not forget, they just don't know, you know, but the things we learned in theater is is a performance is a dialogue between the people on the stage and the people in the audience.
And even if you brought those exact same people on both sides to the exact same theater and did the exact same play again the next night, it would still be different. And so there's a there is an ephemeralness is a word we use a lot in theater. There is this this impermanence about these experiences, but I think that also extends to understanding that not every audience, even if it's the same audience, isn't going to experience that story the same way twice.
And that different audiences are going to be focused on and experience the story in different ways as well. Like the story that I tell to executives to get buy-in on a product is not the same story that I tell to the disability core audience, is not the same story that I tell to the curb cut audience, the extended folks who you know who benefit from it but may not be the ones we designed it for.
And so each of them needs their own version of the story. It doesn't make the story less true for one or the other. It's just that how you phrase it matters depending on your audience.
Hyun Song (21:23)
Yeah,
yeah. And going from storytelling now to the design and build aspect as well, because after all you are a PM. I I I was wondering like what does that then look like in the designing and building of a product? 'Cause in inclusive design we often hear that phrase designing with, not for. In in that part of the product lifecycle, what does it look like for you?
Solomon Romney (21:53)
Yeah, great question. that is really where user research and human factors and to a certain extent marketing sort of come into play. Because user research is where you really you get to focus on the customer need. You can have an idea, you know, and marketing can help us sort of scope that out of going
You know, this is a gap. We hear these sorts of things from customers. This is feedback we're getting. This is an area where they'd like to see more. It's you know, customer signals. it's what they call broadly like listening mechanisms across the companies of how do we get feedback from customers. And then user research uses that to help define what we want to go study. What are the questions we want to answer? Which cohort do we want to focus on? human factors.
for hardware especially comes into normally human factors covers, you know, the center of the bell curve, the standard bell curve, so the eighty percent. And where where human factors get stretched in accessibility is into that last twenty percent.
And so they come in to help define, you know, they generally have a pretty good idea what the what the typical looks like. And then we help them look outside of that by bringing in customers with disabilities, by doing home visits. Like this is where research and human factors and all of that come in, where we we really study, we listen to what customers need, we study how they use products, we study where the limitations are, we study where they find delight.
you know, there's a lot of listening and co-designing, and depending on what we're making, it could be, you know, regular active interactions where we have people as part of a, you know, an internal testing or beta program or what have you, where they're providing feedback throughout the development of a product. could be advisory boards, you know, that we sort of regularly pitch product ideas to or we show them things that are in flight.
it it could be community, you know, engagement with spaces like the Inclusive Tech Lab and Amazon's new accessibility learning center. You know, we actually have places to bring the community in and have meaningful talks in space, surrounded by product where we can listen. I I think that's really the important part. But then it's our job
It's the listening is what matters. It's not us telling them things. It's us listening and then using our understanding and our technical knowledge to suss out things that maybe they didn't say specifically, but that we maybe hear in the subtext or across multiple conversations, and then it and then we take that. We don't just go do what they say. Because customers customers usually know what they want, but they don't know what they need. Oftentimes
Maybe not often, but it does happen where they will have a very strong opinion about something. Well, I want to be able to do this. And we hear it, you know, we hear the same, I want to be able to do this from multiple people. But then when we sit down to look at the technical feasibility of that and go, Well, could we do that? and the answer comes back and goes, Well, well, no, because if we did the way they want it to do, it would actually not be useful at all.
You know, because the timing would be off, human reaction takes too long, any number of other factors where we go, we aren't just going to go build that. We have to use our technical knowledge to to you know distill down the actual desire or the barrier and figure out a meaningful way to actually address that. And so it's not a it's not a have the community tell you what to do. It's have the community explain to you the troubles, the barriers, the needs, the desires.
And then we work out from that what needs to get done.
Hyun Song (26:03)
Yeah,
yeah. And and and like just on that point, it could be almost an unfair ask to just invite community and say, Hey, now you tell us like everything all the solutions that we need to do. That's a pretty heavy burden to place on people as well.
Solomon Romney (26:20)
It could be seen as asking them to do our job. both of the companies I work for have very good compensation policies. So we're never asking folks to do this work for free. You know, we're not we we are not interested in exploiting the community.
for our own benefit. Like that's not why we're in the business. That's not then that that has been a a rock solid principle at both places. Equitable compensation for equitable effort. We compensate by effort, not by time. Because if someone can you know if a non-disabled person can come in and do a study in 15 minutes because it doesn't take a lot of effort, but someone with a disability needs a half a day to do the same, well
We're not going to compensate by the end result, we're going to compensate by the effort. Because that's the that's the right balance. and so yeah, it is it is very much about making sure that the dialogues are meaningful. It is about checking in repeatedly through the process. It's not a one-and-done conversation usually. It's a it's a hey, we're gonna sync up regularly as we evolve and iterate this idea. Because
This is how you build trust with the community. You show them you listen, you address their needs, you check in with them regularly. That's how you build with, where
In
the name of expediency or or we fall into the trap of, well, we're the experts. You know, that's that's how we that's how '[designing] for' happens is we go, we have this really great idea. We think you know, we think this will be really beneficial to someone, but we've not actually talked to anyone about it. And then we make something with the best of intentions. That's the other thing. Like people
When people are designing accessible experiences, they always do it with the best of intentions, but they don't necessarily know how to do it with the best of execution, which is the actual involvement with the community. you know, every every year at Microsoft I would see really wonderful, well meaning hackathon projects made by people to, you know, support folks with disabilities, but with glaring holes in it because they'd never actually talked to those folks.
There is an important role that those of us with experience in the field have to play in those situations. Because there's essentially two ways you can handle that. You can come in and just hammer them about everything they've missed. About, well, you didn't do this, you didn't talk to these people. How could you think that? And that is a great way to guarantee they will never, ever try to do accessibility again. Or we can get alongside them.
We can explain the shortcomings. We can help them fix those gaps. We can teach them. We can use it as a way to improve a process. Because the idea itself may be quite sound. It's just the execution might not have been right. And so, and the last thing we should be doing is trying to curtail people's enthusiasm for this sort of work. Because accessibility is and always will be a very personal, passionate field. People generally get into it because they know someone, or
They have their own disability needs or things like that. So it is something that ties to people's emotions. and so we we should always encourage that behavior. We should not we should pay respect that everyone is on a different place on their journey, whether it is their personal journey with accepting disability in themself, which I I could tell you about my own struggles in that space and and the same kind of struggles that my entire limb different
community have gone through in dealing with our own internalized ableism or where they are in their professional journey, just in terms of are they new to the job entirely? Are they new to accessibility? Like it is it is coming with an open hand and a and a desire to teach and guide. Because the more people we can encourage that way, the more people we can train up to do that, the just the better it's gonna be all around.
That's more people willing to do the work, more people willing to advocate. That's how you scale. You have to build champions. You have to teach people. You have to build their confidence.
Hyun Song (30:47)
I totally agree with you. It's such a important point that gets missed sometimes because how of how passionate people are and because of their history of you know being discriminated against.
Solomon Romney (31:02)
And I think you've hit on a on an important point.
Which is something that people also tend to not realize, which is one, disability is very personal. Like my experience as a limb different person may be very different from every other limb different person I know. Yes, there are definitely similarities, but how we've had to deal with it, how how the society around us has addressed it or handled it has been different. Like so everyone's you know, I had a I have a friend who says if you've talked to one person with cerebral palsy, you've talked to one person with cerebral palsy.
You know, and I think that's true with a lot of disabilities, like that is one person's perspective. And so I think, you know, we that's another one of well, we we just went off and did what they said. Well, you did what one person said. You didn't necessarily check with with others, but I think the other piece that I would put to that, and this is maybe the more subtle one, is that disabilities change over time. People's bodies change over time.
other disabilities co-occur. There's there's always this sort of belief that I've run into in product, which is that and I see this a lot in in accommodations, which again is not to knock anybody in accommodations because they're trying to solve a problem in a moment in time. But there's this assumption that that moment, the state in that moment is what it will always be. You know, that your needs aren't going to change as you age or even throughout the course of a single day. And that's just not true. There
There are a lot of folks day to day or hour to hour or across years whose abilities change. I I think that is is one of the challenges we see in product making is especially in hardware, we have to make one choice. Software's different. We can iterate, but in hardware we've got to make one choice ultimately because of physics. And so we're we're, you know, we're serving a snapshot in time.
And we've got to build enough flexibility into these solutions that they can evolve with people. I think that's also a part of the 'design with' aspect. you know, I'm in a I'm working on a project right now and we're looking at a whole like slate of of features. And everybody's like, Okay, which one? And I go, No, no. It's all of them. We get it's not just one, you know.
I I I said because no one of them serves every part of the community that we're addressing. This is this has such a spectrum of need and and ability across this this one particular group that that we have to offer, you know, five different options to do the exact same thing because there are at least five different
groups within that that are going to each need one of those solutions and are not going to be able to use others. And so it's I mean, and this gets into a whole other simplicity versus complexity thing. But we have to have enough flexibility. We have to have enough personalization that it can grow with people's needs as they change. But it also has to be simple enough that someone can
Change it easily with minimal instruction. You know, when we talk about especially mobility disability, especially when we get to really severe mobility disability, we're actually serving two audiences in product design. We're serving the end user. And we want to make sure that that experience is accessible. But we also have to address everyone around them, their circle of carers or partners or support folks.
Because these are the folks who actually are going to do the setup and the maintenance and all of the you know, the the background technical work to make sure that this all is working correctly. And in my time, I worked for Tobii Dynavox, and they make eye tracking devices and augmentative and alternative communication computers and stuff. It's fantastically good work that they do bringing voice to the voiceless. And
I would work with people there who had spent years trying to get a device. And we finally got it approved through insurance. We get them the device. I'd go out and set it up with them. I'd train the family. I'd work with the with the the end user. And I'd come back and check on them in a month or two or three. And the device has just been sitting in a closet. Because the learning curve, and this is not a knock on Tobii by any means. This is this is true for everybody. You know, the learning curve for new tech is already steep.
It's even steeper when it's assistive tech, and it essentially curves backwards if you are, say, a parent of a young child with with you know substantial motor disability needs, and you also have other children, you don't have time to spend hours a week learning and setting this up. You have maybe 15 minutes a week to learn this. And so
There that is the other side of it. It has to be simple enough to learn and use and set up that someone can essentially walk up and do it. And so finding ways to balance that, those two audience needs, those two extremes of of lots of personalization, but also a lot of simplicity is is a it's just a significant design challenge when it comes to making inclusive products. You've got to be able to serve both of those audiences equally.
Or it's not gonna be a successful experience.
Hyun Song (37:04)
Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like we almost need a sequel to this conversation where I ask you like exactly how do you how do you solve for that incredibly complex design challenge? Because yeah, they're sort of almost opposing things, but they're both necessary to ensure that people can use your product to the way that you've intended to and that it is solving for a real problem that they
have.
Solomon Romney (37:32)
Well, and I I think it comes back to storytelling, because we're talking about two different audiences. Like, yes, is the experience the same? Yes. Is where they fit into that experience different? Yeah. Is their knowledge and their time different? Mm-hmm. But we still need to be able to tell a coherent version of that story that works for both sides. Like you, end user, let's talk about all the amazing things you're gonna be able to do. And you
Support network. Let's talk about how easy it's going to be for you to help them do that. You know, that essentially means we have to have two completely different story tracks that we have to develop on and two different customer needs that we have to address, and you know, almost almost two completely separate, you know, design requirements that we then have to somehow marry together in this one experience.
I can certainly say for myself, I have yet to find that balance. You know, we we have gone different directions across the different products of, you know, not enough instruction, too much instruction, too much personalization, not enough personalization, too complicated to set up, too simple to set up, like if that's a thing. But you know, it's it's a pendulum, and I don't think we've quite yet
hit the center mark perfectly. But, you know, that's that's also sort of the beauty of accessibility is it's always a moving target. And it's it's a it's about refinement. It's not about, we've cracked it. We've solved it. It's, you know, we do better than we did before. I think one of the delightful things about it from a product making standpoint is just the variety of things that we get to work on. You know
I may be working on a mobility feature right now and in six months I may be working on a vision or a hearing feature, which is a completely different set of needs and tools. You know, it's it's we never lack for accessibility projects. It's not like we're gonna run out of things that could be more accessible, even though that is, I think, the goal of everyone in the industry is to reach a point where we just don't have to have these jobs. But but there is a really wonderful variety that comes to the work.
It keeps you in this sort of constant learning cycle. And things that may work really well for one audience don't make sense for another. And you've got to potentially solve the same problem in a completely different way. And that that as a thought exercise alone is a really it's just it stretches our creativity and our thinking in such wonderful ways. You're never going to get bored, and things are never going to get dull in accessibility.
There are always new challenges. There are always new ways to look at things. as you get deeper into the different communities and you start to see the intersections and the connections and most
Hyun Song (40:33)
And and the innovations that come out.
Solomon Romney (40:35)
exciting parts. Yeah, absolutely exactly. Yeah, the innovations that come from it where it's like, I've been thinking about this this thing in mobility for a decade, and now come to realize that same way of thinking or that same approach is also really useful.
for a vision feature or or the opposite, where it's like, I've been stuck in this way of thinking. And that's completely backwards from how I need to approach this other this other
And so yeah, there's this, there's this, there's this always a sort of sense of unknown, but in a really wonderful way. And these are big problems that we're solving. on the Surface Adaptive Kit, you know, it's a box of stickers. And that may not seem like a big deal until you realize, well, without it, I can't open my laptop lid, or I can't find the keys that I need. Like, sometimes the biggest problems are also the simplest ones.
And so the there's just so many wonderful constraints and tensions in inclusive design that I yeah, it's sometimes frustrating, you know, but but never boring. And when you get it right, you feel it more. because it is such a personal thing. You know, I everyone who works on something has someone they're thinking about when they're working on it. And so, you know, when you complete something.
There's always this, I can't wait to show it to whoever. Like I can't wait to I mean, I cannot tell you how many times and it never got old. It was always just moving and emotional. And it's powerful. We we did a private event with Goldman Sachs. and they had been really wonderful supporters of accessibility. And we were involved in at the time the Governor's Committee for the Advancement of People with Disabilities and Disability:IN and a bunch of things. And so
They were having a they wanted to have a celebration. The controller had come out and one of their VPs has has this amazing standing wheelchair that could actually transform. It's it's a fantastic what he's got. But he hadn't played video games in 30 years. And we got him set up pretty quickly, and he's playing Rocket League. And we're all just
You know, the Microsoft Store folks, the Goldman Sachs folks were all just sort of standing there looking at each other and everybody's like, Wow, this is a moment. Like this is important. We put a lot of work into this for moments like this so that so that people like him could go back to doing something they loved. And it just it was powerful, you know, or the the kids who'd come in. I I we had a children's hospital in Salt Lake as well.
And I'd have parents come down about kiddos who were in the hospital, you know, kids who'd had strokes or paralysis or, you know, traumatic amputation or any number of other unfortunate accidents or or conditions from birth or things like that that had put them in the hospital. and I would spend three hours with these families in the store setting up.
controllers for their kiddos. where they had motion, what they could use, what kind of game they wanted to play. Like I also did a bunch of pre work for every one of them as well. It was usually a multi, multi stage visit. But you know, it was always really powerful to be there.
And seeing the joy, you know, once we got the kiddo playing again and the just absolute, you know, emotional reaction of the family of going, Yeah, we we didn't just build a game controller. We
It it was more than that. We built a
We helped people rediscover parts of themselves that they thought were gone. Or to discover parts of themselves they never thought they would be able. You know, experiences they never thought they'd be able to enjoy, expression that they never thought they'd be able to have. And it it just, yeah, it it really brings it home, you know, and these are these are stories and encounters and things I'm gonna remember.
For the rest of my life. Like powerful for me too. I may not remember their names, but I absolutely remember the emotions and the work that we did and how much it meant to everyone involved. And those are the stories that stick with me. and it yeah, it's
meaningful. Yeah.
Hyun Song (45:21)
Pretty powerful. Yeah.
Yeah. I think this is such a meaningful conversation for me. not only because you shared with us like the practical realities of inclusive product work, but just the kind of human experience behind it and dignity for people just to be able to enjoy playing games, doing things that they didn't think they could do.
And just yeah, how do we kind of honor relationships as well? 'cause it's an ongoing conversation, not a transactional one off thing. I really appreciate this. It was so good to talk to you and hear about these experiences. So thanks for sharing them.
Solomon Romney (46:06)
You're very welcome. It's always a pleasure.
Hyun (46:10)
Thanks for listening to Inclusive Design Sessions. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who might enjoy it too. Thanks again for joining me, and I'll catch you next time.