Getting Inclusive AF with Michael Paciello

[00:00:00] You're listening to Inclusive AF with Jackie Clayton and Katie Van Horn.

[00:00:09] Hello, hello, Jackie. How are you today?

[00:00:12] Doing great, Katie. How are you doing?

[00:00:14] I am good. I'm speaking as if you and I haven't talked today already and recorded, but first coffee.

[00:00:20] But, you know, what can, what is going on? Is that like a poofy microphone now?

[00:00:26] Now we've got like a whole, it's as I, my hair might have changed because I took.

[00:00:31] I was outside recording earlier and you know, I'm fancy now.

[00:00:34] You are fancy. Jeez, oh, Henry, I didn't know. My goodness gracious. Okay.

[00:00:40] This is the Inclusive AF Podcast. This is Katie Van Horn.

[00:00:43] And I'm Jackie Clayton. And soon Katie's going to have to like strictly go through our admin,

[00:00:49] even though we share, to talk to me because I'm so fancy.

[00:00:53] You are fancy. You have a trophy shelf wall, whatever you want to call it,

[00:00:57] the executive producer has created. You have a fancy microphone. I don't even know you anymore.

[00:01:02] I mean, I just feel as though, you know, we only talk 16 times a day and I barely, barely know you.

[00:01:10] Here we are. We bought matching pajamas and yet.

[00:01:14] Yes. And yet we don't know each other. Yes.

[00:01:17] Those are on the way, by the way.

[00:01:18] So we are, so we have a guest today and I, Mike, I'll give you a heads up that Jackie and I,

[00:01:26] and two of our very dear friends, John and Robin, we are all receiving matching pajamas

[00:01:32] that we will be wearing together at some point in the future.

[00:01:35] I'm not sure when, when we have a slumber party somewhere.

[00:01:40] But, yes. So Mike, thank you so much for joining us. I would love for you to introduce yourself,

[00:01:46] share a little bit about who you are, all that good stuff.

[00:01:49] Yeah. Hey, thanks very much for having me. It's, it's great and a great introduction. I'm,

[00:01:53] I haven't done slumber parties since my daughter was like 13 or 14 years old.

[00:01:57] And that was like 30 years ago. So there you go. You get it.

[00:02:00] There you go. Okay.

[00:02:02] But no, it's really good to be here. I, particularly because this is about inclusion,

[00:02:07] right? So that's a big, a big part of my life. I've been in the accessibility business

[00:02:12] around people with disabilities now since the mid eighties. Actually, this is literally my 40th

[00:02:17] year, 2024, started in 84. Now I work with AudioEye as their chief accessibility officer in my life

[00:02:25] is still pretty much the same thing. It's all about technology, people with disabilities,

[00:02:30] and making people's lives more productive where, where technology is concerned.

[00:02:35] Awesome. Very cool. And I, I think just to start us off. So we were actually just talking about the

[00:02:42] eighties earlier today, because I don't know if you're a movie buff, but Red Dawn came out in 1984.

[00:02:49] We were, we're talking about, you know, end of times that might be happening here soon. And so

[00:02:54] Red Dawn seemed appropriate to be discussing.

[00:02:56] You know, just to keep it light with Red Dawn.

[00:02:59] Light conversation.

[00:03:00] So we're not going to be talking about Armageddon or anything?

[00:03:03] No, no, we don't. We can skip that. We already did it earlier today, so we can move on.

[00:03:07] All right. All right. That's cool. That's fine.

[00:03:09] Would love to, to hear. So what got you started on this journey and, you know, kind of where did you,

[00:03:15] how did you start working in this space?

[00:03:18] Yeah, thank you. It's a, it's, it's a great question. It's kind of an interesting thing. I kind

[00:03:24] of fell into just to be, you know, be very honest and very transparent about, you know, this career that,

[00:03:30] that has kind of, I've, I've evolved into, but I was a technical writer for a company,

[00:03:38] Digital Equipment Corporation, which has long since been acquired two or three times over again. Right.

[00:03:43] And I think it, some of its remnants lie in the annals of HP somewhere in, in, in their, in,

[00:03:50] in their hall of fame. But with Digital Equipment Corporation back in the seventies and eighties,

[00:03:56] they were the second biggest corporation next to IBM. And it was great working with them,

[00:04:01] a great company and very proactive. As it turned out as a technical writer, I was asked if I would

[00:04:08] take over a little project, kind of a pro bono thing that my manager at that particular time,

[00:04:15] Bobby Raska, I had. And he's, the project was simply every now and then, maybe once or twice a

[00:04:23] year, we get a request from the National Braille Press out of Boston, Massachusetts. And that request

[00:04:29] is, can you give our documentation? So back then it was all basically operating system,

[00:04:35] some, some layered product applications, but mostly was operating system type software,

[00:04:40] big reference guides. You know, we're talking five, six, 700 page documents in, and NBP,

[00:04:48] National Braille Press would request that one or two a year. And then they would take that document in,

[00:04:53] in theory, transpose it and put it into Braille. So he gives me this project, Bob gave me this project.

[00:05:01] And the very next day, I got a call from the director of the NBP at that particular time,

[00:05:09] and said, hey, we need X, Y, and Z publications. So I said, sure, I'm the guy, I'll, I want to come

[00:05:17] down, I'll just drive down. But I lived in and worked in southern New Hampshire at that particular time.

[00:05:23] And Boston was about a 50 minute drive, you know, no trip when there's no traffic. So I drove down there,

[00:05:28] went to National Braille Press. And their director, Bill Rader said, hey, Mike, while you're here,

[00:05:36] would you like a little tour? And I said, why not? You know, I don't know anything about Braille at that

[00:05:42] time. And so he took me through basically a workflow, you know, what I would call workflow,

[00:05:47] a process of they get the books, they take the books apart. They've got individuals, many of whom

[00:05:54] were blind or low vision themselves, using Braille typewriters. So we're talking hand-pecking

[00:06:00] Braille typewriters, taking these pages, and then building, you know, a master document,

[00:06:06] so to speak, in Braille, then they would put that through their publishing, their print trees,

[00:06:12] the Braille print trees. If you have any clue about, you know, what a, an average print page of a

[00:06:19] document. The equivalent Braille is three pages. So that's, that's what we're talking about,

[00:06:26] because it's a contracted language. So you take a six or 700 page book, and it's turning into volumes

[00:06:32] of books now in Braille. And I thought, hand, doing this manually, even at the 80s, in the age of what I

[00:06:42] thought at that time was the age of computer, computers, this is crazy. There's got to be a

[00:06:48] faster, better way. As a technical writer, at that particular time, Goldfarb, Charles Goldfarb,

[00:06:55] had already invented what was called markup languages. I think his first version was called

[00:07:02] GenCode. And I was working with that. And it basically, it was the way to take an electronic

[00:07:07] document, which was all text then, just pure text, and then putting code in that text, that electronic

[00:07:13] text file to create structure out of that document. And now you send it to a printer.

[00:07:19] So a document, it's all text, but it's got implied structure like paragraphs and headings,

[00:07:24] et cetera, and so forth, punctuation, now has what an editor, a publishing editor would go and mark up

[00:07:31] a page and say, here's how it has to go. And then they build the galleys out of that.

[00:07:35] We were doing that all electronically. And I was involved in some of the early versions of that,

[00:07:39] you know, what was called the standard generalized markup language for electronic documents. And I

[00:07:44] thought, my goodness, if I can mark up this document, and it can go out to various print

[00:07:50] formats at that time, back in the 80s, why not do this for Braille? So that's how I got started,

[00:07:58] was that. And I started doing, I started doing some research, looked up some people in the industry.

[00:08:03] Now, remember, there's no web then. The internet was, the internet back then was basically email

[00:08:08] and a couple of download services and things like that, that you could go back and forth with. But I

[00:08:13] did manage to figure out, you know, who were some key people. It turns out the big and, you know,

[00:08:18] one of the biggest producers of Braille translation software was right there in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

[00:08:23] So I met them. We formed, a collection of us formed an international working group,

[00:08:30] all pro bono, all on our own. And we built for that working group, an international standard for

[00:08:38] producing electronic Braille, large text and voice ready files.

[00:08:43] Wow. That, I mean, it's just so interesting thinking about what if you didn't go to the

[00:08:50] office or what if you didn't operate tour or what if you, like, that sounds like this world would have

[00:08:55] been completely different.

[00:08:57] Well, yeah, I think so because, you know, the modern day evolution of that simple, small little,

[00:09:06] we call it a fragment of code at that particular time has evolved into what today is functionally

[00:09:14] the web content accessibility guidelines that have become the de facto standard for building accessible

[00:09:20] web environments today. It's still built on markup language. HTML, right? Hypertext markup

[00:09:26] language is a child of SGML. So all there's all of that has all taken place over these, over these many

[00:09:33] years. Yeah, it's, it's, it's quite pervasive and, and, you know, thinking back over 40 years, it's,

[00:09:38] it's sad that I'm that old, but at the same time to be part of that kind of history is, is, is, is a lot of fun.

[00:09:44] And I am humbled by it just, just, just, just by that.

[00:09:48] Very cool. And so how do you corral? So, you know, knowing that this is, Hey, this is a, the way that we

[00:09:56] should be working through the braille language. And then obviously it sounds like it expanded out, but

[00:10:01] how do you get everybody on board?

[00:10:05] It was not easy. It wasn't easy. However, one of the great aspects of being in the world of, of,

[00:10:12] of people with disabilities, the community of people with disabilities is they are gun ho for

[00:10:17] everything and anything very passionate about making their personal lives better, but also the

[00:10:23] lives of their, of their, of their friends and colleagues. Right. And while we were just focused

[00:10:27] originally on people who are blind, ultimately we were at that particular time, we were talking about

[00:10:34] people who were print disabled. So that became a very popular term. What does it mean to be print

[00:10:40] disabled? Well, it's not just the blind, it's individuals who are, have a, what we would call

[00:10:44] visual impairments or, or low vision, maybe legal blindness or have other forms of it. It actually

[00:10:50] included any person who might not have the ability to turn pages. So individuals that, you know,

[00:10:58] were missing limbs and things along that line and some cognition disability. So I'm, I'm looking at this

[00:11:05] and realizing how many people and how many types of individuals with disabilities, where am I going to

[00:11:10] find these folks? What I did was I started to look up conferences and events that I knew these people

[00:11:20] would be at. And, or I, you know, I assumed that these people would be at, and that's really how I got

[00:11:26] started was a little bit of email, a little bit of gopher back then on the internet. Right. And, and using

[00:11:33] that, I came in contact with a, with a colleague of mine who is still a very, very good friend

[00:11:39] himself, just a champion of people with disabilities, especially the blind, George Kersher. And George and I

[00:11:47] started talking and said, let's build this little group. He knew some people who knew some people and now we're

[00:11:54] playing, you know, the, the Kevin, what's the name, uh, game there, the, uh, the actor, seven,

[00:12:00] seven links from Kevin Bacon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Kevin Bacon. I was going to say space enough. Kevin Bacon.

[00:12:06] Right. Exactly. And it's, you know, you know, one person, they know three people, they know seven people

[00:12:11] and it grew. And the beauty of this is that we went international very quickly because we started

[00:12:19] getting involved with the SGML community, which was already an established, you know, new, but, but,

[00:12:27] but established somewhat mature publishing, electronic publishing, uh, environment. So people like

[00:12:34] Goldfarb and, uh, and Yuri Rubinsky, who has long since passed away, you know, were there. These were the

[00:12:40] titans of that field. And they introduced us to guess who? Tim Berners-Lee, who, you know, invented the

[00:12:48] world wide web. So now we're working with Tim, working on the, on all these things. So you just

[00:12:53] see how they expanded the international internationalization aspect of this, um,

[00:12:58] happened very quickly, even back in the eighties and nineties. Well, I hate to tell you, but Al Gore

[00:13:03] actually invented the internet, but that's, you know, I've, I've met the, I've, I've met vice president

[00:13:10] Gore. Um, and you probably know from reading my bio, I've got this kind of word from president Clinton.

[00:13:16] Yeah. I know all about that. And I can tell you, he didn't. Okay. But I did have a question because

[00:13:21] you're an international leader in the space and you said that it happened quickly. And I'm wondering

[00:13:26] how accessibility priorities differ across this, differ across regions or even from other countries.

[00:13:34] What can we learn by looking at accessibility as we look internationally? Yeah, that's a, that's a

[00:13:39] really, uh, a great, great question, Jackie. Um, there are differences, but the differences tend to

[00:13:46] be more subtle, uh, than they are in principle. So in principle, a blind person can't read, they can't

[00:13:51] see. So many of the nuances associated with, you know, how do I read an electronic document? How do I

[00:13:57] read, um, you know, a webpage? How do I render? They're still using the same types of assistive

[00:14:03] technologies and things along those lines, screen readers for the blind, uh, screen magnifiers for,

[00:14:08] for individuals who are a low vision, uh, people with a lot of different types of AT use their

[00:14:14] keyboards. So they're very keyboard centric at the bottom level, principle level foundation.

[00:14:19] They're pretty much the same where they are different is kind of very similar to how language

[00:14:27] is different for us. So you've got grammar that is structured different. So there, there,

[00:14:32] there are differences there technology wise. You know, I, I, I have traveled all over the world

[00:14:39] have been in Japan, Australia, Africa, Europe, South America, by and large, um, you know, here in North

[00:14:49] America, by and large, things are not too, too different. It's just some cultural differences,

[00:14:55] some language differences and nuances at that level. Even the laws that mandate are pretty

[00:15:02] much all based on the fundamental root of what's coming out of the, uh, of MIT, the W3C,

[00:15:07] they're all based on that. So, so not a whole lot of difference at that level.

[00:15:12] I feel like you talk about this from like that grassroots perspective of, you know, you know,

[00:15:17] a friend who knows a couple of friends who knows a couple of friends, like that's such a great way to,

[00:15:21] you know, get some of these things started. And, you know, I, I'm thinking now to, you know,

[00:15:26] where we are today in history with some of the pushback on, you know, some of the DEI topics and

[00:15:33] just some of the inclusion topics and where, you know, thinking about the space that you're in,

[00:15:40] what are you seeing as the current challenges or the current, um, struggles with this space

[00:15:48] from an accessibility perspective? Yeah. Uh, that is, that's certainly one we're thinking a lot

[00:15:54] about now, because as you said, um, it looks like DEI and, or, or, you know, the U S federal

[00:16:02] government had DEI and A, which the A was for accessibility. So that was really crucial for us

[00:16:08] is, uh, going to, you know, probably die a very painful, uh, death. I'm sure there'll be some

[00:16:13] survivors around it. Like there are any kind of civil rights kind of notion. Um, so we do have

[00:16:19] to take a different tack. Now the challenge ironically has up until now been pretty much

[00:16:26] twofold. One is the, um, the business priority, prioritization of it, right? So at, at the, at the

[00:16:34] 30,000 foot level from a business to a level, how important is inclusion? How important is

[00:16:42] accessibility, especially since society now is a digital society, right? So it's more pervasive.

[00:16:49] It's more software, more online. We're not talking about the old days of, of ADA, um, you know,

[00:16:57] where you're talking about the, you know, the built environment. So accessible bathrooms and

[00:17:03] accessible walkways and et cetera, and so forth like that. Right. We're talking about everything that's

[00:17:08] digital in, in all the investments are going at that level. Companies just don't have disabilities

[00:17:16] and accessibility in their scope, in their lens as, as a priority. One of the main reasons why is

[00:17:23] because they don't see them. And why do they not see them? Because frankly, that's where,

[00:17:29] you know, the ADA laws have kind of backfired on us because they, right now, they really don't mandate,

[00:17:36] um, accessibility at that, at that level. Um, but even if they do, it's compliance driven

[00:17:44] and anything that is compliance driven is perceived by business as a cost of doing business. So that's

[00:17:51] why it's not a big priority. And ADA prevents them from knowing, you know, going out and doing their SEO

[00:17:57] and trying to figure out who's really buying my goods, right? They can't, they can't see that.

[00:18:03] They're not allowed to go out and say, is this a screen reader user? Is this a person who's,

[00:18:07] who's deaf that's watching, you know, watching the videos that we're producing to making sure that

[00:18:12] they're, they're captioned properly. They can't see that the law doesn't allow them to do it. So

[00:18:16] in that, in that sense, you've got that. So that's a business priority.

[00:18:21] The other issue is, is compliance also tends to drive litigation. And so in this country, at least,

[00:18:29] um, you know, uh, litigation is, you know, second only to having breakfast in the morning, right? It's,

[00:18:37] uh, the, the, it's, it's part of the American dream, I think literally. And so litigation has given

[00:18:43] the disability and technology and accessibility. I believe it's given it a bad name because you've

[00:18:50] got the ambulance chasers that are out there filing lawsuits against organizations rather than being

[00:18:56] collaborative in nature and working with, they file lawsuits. And whenever you file lawsuits,

[00:19:01] everything becomes contentious. And then everybody's fighting for the minimum. And that's another big

[00:19:08] problem. So those are the two challenges. Now we're entering into this new era of no more, um, DE and I,

[00:19:16] what are we going to do? My colleagues and I, people that I talk with close friends in this industry

[00:19:23] believe we're probably going to have to change the message. And that message has got to be more

[00:19:28] technology driven. So because of artificial intelligence, intelligence, because of, because

[00:19:34] of automation being a big parts of, of the, of the technology ecosphere that we, that we work and live

[00:19:40] in today, we've got to start driving a message that across the enterprises, across the small businesses

[00:19:48] in government and all the other services that basically says, here's the technology. It does

[00:19:53] everything that you need. And then some, and sell that across the board. I really think that's probably

[00:19:58] how we're going to end up having to do this. Um, another big reason for that is because we can't scale.

[00:20:03] We cannot keep up, you know, there are some 250,000 or more websites that are being generated each and

[00:20:10] every day. And I would love to be able to say that there are, there are certainly tens of thousands of

[00:20:15] people like myself that are in the accessibility business, people far smarter, far better than,

[00:20:21] than I ever will be. Um, we just can't keep up with it on a professional expert basis. So we've got

[00:20:29] to find ways to scale. That means we've got to join the club. We've got to get in with AI. We've got to

[00:20:34] use that. We've got to get in with automation. We've got to scale that way. And then we still have

[00:20:38] to apply, you know, what we've always done. You can't do this kind of business without integrating

[00:20:45] people with disabilities as part of the solution. They've got to be there because they know how things

[00:20:50] work for them. And you really can't do this unless you're really focused on, on, um, usability and

[00:20:57] user experience and integrating that part into the past. So a lot of things that have to take place,

[00:21:03] but I really do think that going into this, um, into this new year, we're going to have to change

[00:21:10] that message. And that message has got to be all about how technology will solve these problems.

[00:21:15] I, I can appreciate that. And also in thinking of, of, of creating a platform, it's going to be

[00:21:25] building. It's going to be tough as we move as the speed of technology, as things change. I mean,

[00:21:30] how many times in the last year, have you gone into a room where someone said,

[00:21:35] raise your hand if you can't hear me? Right? Like we're so it's such a six where it's like, okay,

[00:21:40] I can't raise my hand if I don't hear you because I won't hear you. And they just keep going. Let me

[00:21:47] know. Let me know. I'm not loud enough. Okay. Um, I can you hear me now? That kind of thing. Right?

[00:21:55] Right. Like putting my hands up to my mouth. Right here. Maybe. Um, and putting those things together,

[00:22:04] but there is a challenge with technology of how do we integrate and scale this into our existing

[00:22:09] workflow and for years. And I don't know why it's just like we've been hearing since I began over 20

[00:22:16] years ago and recruiting that we don't have enough talent. And we've been hearing that we only want one

[00:22:21] platform for as long as software has come out. Like how, what is, do you have any ideas on how to get

[00:22:29] organizations to integrate these tools into their existing workflow or how does that process start?

[00:22:37] Well, you know, it's, that's where the messaging always becomes the same, same old, same old messaging.

[00:22:43] Right. And, and that is companies need to invest in a workflow and a platform so that they're

[00:22:50] integrating accessibility at the very core, at the very beginning. Right. That is a workflow issue.

[00:22:56] That is, that is a corporation that especially, well, everybody's rolling out digital platforms and

[00:23:02] digital whatever's right. Um, assets as, as they go across, if their development environment doesn't

[00:23:09] include accessibility at each and every key phase. So I talked about earlier, you know, we've got to

[00:23:16] make sure we embed, uh, and invest in people with disabilities to be part of that. Well, part of that is

[00:23:21] testing is what I'm building usable and accessible to these technology that employees or clients,

[00:23:30] you know, with disabilities are using. Well, that is the, that is a message that we have been preaching

[00:23:36] and teaching for a long, long time in businesses still aren't doing it. It's not a, it's not a, you know,

[00:23:45] a blanket statement, meaning that all businesses don't do this, but very, very few, you know, the

[00:23:51] Amazons of the world, the Microsofts of the world, the Googles of the world, they have offices and

[00:23:57] practices built around it. Right. They have their own style guides that say, here's how we build,

[00:24:02] right. When they build their software libraries, that this is how these things should be coded.

[00:24:07] And yet today their software still is not fully usable and accessible to people with disabilities.

[00:24:14] And their investment in measuring, it's like measuring, you know, the federal government's

[00:24:20] investment in the military versus the federal government's investment in people with disabilities,

[00:24:26] right. At that world, we all know it's just not, it's not apples to apples. It's not even close.

[00:24:32] You know, so I would like to believe that it will only take one great strong leader

[00:24:44] to push, to push the agenda, right. To push everybody over the edge. It would be ideal if,

[00:24:52] if Google or Amazon or Microsoft, what have you, you know, you know, if, if one of their CEOs really took

[00:25:00] the lead, set the pace and required everybody else to follow them just because competition dictated

[00:25:07] that they did. And there have been some good messages in that area, but it hasn't been enough.

[00:25:12] Just hasn't been enough. But it's changed. The world has changed. The first thing that I thought of

[00:25:17] thinking of what we might see in the next four years was remembering that they took sign language

[00:25:23] interpreters away the last time that Trump was in office. And, but the difference, there's a lot

[00:25:30] of differences, but one of the differences now is that there's AI generated like translation that we

[00:25:36] never, we, nobody would have even dreamed or imagined that there would be.

[00:25:40] You know what, actually, I saw this 20 years ago, 25 years ago, was built by a company. They were using it

[00:25:47] for a completely different application. It's still a very, very well-known company, co-owned by Dell,

[00:25:56] FYI. And they were doing something for the NSA.

[00:26:03] Right? They were spying. It was for spying, right? But what they were doing is they were listening to

[00:26:09] voices and then creating a text transcript right off of it. And there it was going on using, you know,

[00:26:16] using more machine learning than, than AI, but certainly in, you know, principles of AI built

[00:26:23] into it. 25 years ago, I saw this. I got up in the audience and said, this is brilliant. I've never

[00:26:28] seen anything like it. How do you feel about taking what we've learned here and applying this to the

[00:26:33] media world and building automated captioning then? And they said, the person who was the chief

[00:26:39] science officer at that company recognized me from some other thing that I had spoken at and said,

[00:26:45] are you Mike Paciel? You work digitally? Yeah, I did. I should have thought it would be you because

[00:26:50] you're always talking about people with disabilities. Now we're not thinking about that at all, but

[00:26:53] this is a good idea. Maybe we can talk about licensing this technology. So it's been around for a while.

[00:27:00] We've had the, we've had the goods, so to speak. We're just not pushing it, you know? And so now it's

[00:27:07] good. I don't want to come off and saying we're not doing anything. We are, we have made huge strides,

[00:27:13] huge strides since I've, you know, I started in the eighties and where we are today and where

[00:27:19] accessibility, at least people, when you say by the way, or you say, you know, accessibility, use the

[00:27:26] word, generally speaking, most, most people in the field know it. They, they, they relate to it, but it's not

[00:27:34] anywhere where it should be. So for the folks that are listening, you know, I think we have a lot of

[00:27:40] listeners who are in HR and, you know, either in HR leadership roles or in HR roles. What are your

[00:27:48] thoughts on how we can help as HR professionals to move this forward and kind of, you know, not

[00:27:56] implement it in our organizations? You know, a lot of times we are influencing without authority, but

[00:28:00] to make and create awareness within our organizations about some of these things.

[00:28:07] Yeah. So let me just put a plug in for a couple of organizations that are out there today that are

[00:28:12] in the HR field. I'm sure you're probably disability in, right? And, and what's the, what's the other one

[00:28:19] there? Oh boy, I can't, I lost, I lost the name of it. But, but these are organizations who basically

[00:28:27] are in the HR field and they promote disabilities, right? At that level.

[00:28:38] No, no. I think Mike is.

[00:28:43] I'm drawing a blank on it, but I'll think about it as, as we go here.

[00:28:46] Um, so what I think is going on there is they are a being more inclusive about, about their hiring

[00:28:55] practices. So this is one thing that has to be done. You won't understand unless you start to be

[00:29:02] more empathic in your hiring. So bring people with disabilities in, you know, there's still that mindset.

[00:29:08] I think maybe, uh, Jackie had kind of alluded to it earlier. There are people who still don't have a

[00:29:15] clue about any of this stuff. There's just not enough awareness built around it. This show is a

[00:29:21] great example of something that is promoting it, but there's, there's just not enough. So hire people

[00:29:27] with disabilities into your organization. Number one. Um, number two, I always believe that a company

[00:29:37] needs to have some sort of accessibility strategy or what's popular right now is using the maturity

[00:29:46] model, uh, notion of things, right? The accessibility maturity model, there are a few organizations that

[00:29:53] are out there promoting them. The W3C does the international association for accessible, uh,

[00:29:58] professionals, IAAP. They have them. There, there are a few of them that are out there. Um, the point is,

[00:30:03] it's, it's fundamentally a, you know, a, a, a set of guidelines for how to build an inclusive and

[00:30:12] accessible, accessibility minded organization from the top down. Right. Mike is muted on us.

[00:30:27] Mike, where we are, I have lost the audio on you. Did you hear it? Can you hear me now?

[00:30:33] Now we can. Yes, yes, yes. I'm sure whatever you said was brilliant. Uh, so,

[00:30:40] so what I was saying is, uh, build an AAMM, an accessible maturity model as, as a strategic

[00:30:46] guide for the corporation, right? And, and that has, that's a lot of thought that has to be put into it,

[00:30:52] but it's something that's circulated on the C level at the C suite level, the C CEO buys into it,

[00:30:58] and then it becomes part of HR's rollout. Okay. One other thing I think is really important that we

[00:31:05] have do, we are doing here at AudioEye, I've seen done in a lot of other corporations. I think the first

[00:31:10] one, believe it or not, that I really thought was a model was being done by, uh, Victor Saren and

[00:31:15] Alan Brightman, um, at, uh, and Larry Goldberg at Yahoo several years ago. And that basically was,

[00:31:23] they created a, you know, an educational awareness, um, course that every new employee had to take.

[00:31:31] Uh, so when you come in, you've got a new hire employee, you were introduced to accessibility

[00:31:36] and disabilities. So there's three, you know, potential, um, strategies that, that organizations

[00:31:42] might do that should be led by HR, frankly speaking. That's an HR, uh, uh, strategy that I believe,

[00:31:49] I should be highly promoted and invested in. Absolutely. And, you know, thinking more,

[00:31:54] you know, kind of looking at the business side of things as well from a, you know, UX, uh, UI

[00:32:00] perspective, where can folks find information on how to build accessible websites or to leverage AI

[00:32:10] to create a more accessible website or different tools that they're building?

[00:32:16] Yeah. Well, the first place to go is, is go to the, the World Wide Web Consortium website,

[00:32:21] right? W3C.org and look up, uh, W3C.org slash way, which is the web accessibility initiative.

[00:32:29] So it was an office that I had the privilege of helping start, um, with, with, uh, you know,

[00:32:35] with folks at MIT long before we were talking about web accessibility, that office, uh, is where

[00:32:43] all of the guidelines for building an accessible website and accessible web applications, which

[00:32:48] is important. And to a certain degree, accessible documents, right? Because PDFs are still out there,

[00:32:55] right? Other document forms that, that, that are really crucial to user experience. That's where I

[00:33:01] go first, go there. That's where all the government laws are written and that's what they default to.

[00:33:07] The ISO standards point to those, to those guidelines. So that's definitely a place. They

[00:33:11] have a lot of, a lot of material there, you know, to, in courses that, that you could take to, to learn

[00:33:16] it. In terms of just books and things like that, all you got to do is just type in web accessibility

[00:33:23] and you'll see all kinds of books. I mean, I wrote my book, you know, I have the, the, um,

[00:33:28] you know, distinct, uh, pleasure of, of, of having been the first book out on the topic,

[00:33:33] but it's by, by, by leaps and bounds. There are much, much better books out there than, than my,

[00:33:40] a close friend of mine, uh, two close friends of mine, uh, uh, David Sloan and, and Sarah Horton

[00:33:46] just released a brand new book on, on, uh, on accessibility and in designing and developing,

[00:33:52] uh, the web for people with disabilities. It's also a great book. So, um, there are a lot there.

[00:33:58] There there's a lot there. And, you know, when you, when you think about,

[00:34:03] you know, not just the website, but also just, you know, products, things like that,

[00:34:09] who do you bring into the conversation? Obviously you have been doing this for quite some time and

[00:34:15] have expertise, but who are your people? Who are the folks that you reach out to when you're trying

[00:34:19] to figure out how to solve something or, or, or, you know, how to create something that is more

[00:34:25] accessible yourself? Well, if I tell you that secret,

[00:34:31] no, no, no, you know, um, I've, I've said this many times, uh, in some of my other discussions or,

[00:34:39] or talks that I've given one of the great privileges, personal privileges I've ever had was I created a

[00:34:47] company affectionately known as TPG, uh, the Pacella Group. And that company became the foundation

[00:34:57] for me to do something that I'd always wanted to do back in the, in the nineties and early two thousands.

[00:35:03] And that was to pull together, um, a company built on the greatest, most experienced individuals

[00:35:10] in the world around accessibility. Ultimately, that is exactly what TPG became. And our brand became

[00:35:17] so well known because we had the greatest people, technologically wise, people themselves with

[00:35:24] disabilities, many of them with, with disabilities that would became world renowned. The brand itself

[00:35:28] still stands today. We were acquired by, by Vispiro back in 2017. They've kind of renamed the company to

[00:35:35] TPG I, but beyond that, the, those are the folks that I go to my old colleagues and friends. So the

[00:35:42] Steve Faulkner's, the Jez Lemons, the Carl Groves, the 80 Roselli's of the world. These are all friends

[00:35:49] and colleagues of mine. They're brilliant. They're leaps and bounds, uh, much smarter than I am. They

[00:35:55] know this Leone Watson. Leone is on the board of the W3C and she's one of the chairs of the group there.

[00:36:01] Those are the folks that I go to. Joe Devin, when it comes to AI, I call Joe Devin up. Uh, you know,

[00:36:07] he's to me, you know, you know, probably one of the greatest minds around, around this right now.

[00:36:13] So I go back to my old colleagues, my friends, you know, what do you go play with? You go to back to

[00:36:17] the playground, right? And that's, that, that's what we go to. Perfect. And would love to hear your

[00:36:23] thoughts on what are you excited about in regards to AI in this space? Yeah. What I'm excited about

[00:36:31] is the reason why I came to AudioEye, to be honest with you. And I did that at great risk to my own

[00:36:35] career. Uh, you know, people, AudioEye had a bad reputation because of its, its, uh, style of sales

[00:36:41] and, and marketing. Very aggressive, not always, you know, necessarily being completely honest about

[00:36:49] everything, the way things work and scale. But, but we're, we are, we are bottom line now where I

[00:36:55] believe we were with TPG. At what point we don't have all the expertise, that's for sure.

[00:37:00] But where AI is concerned, we have an outstanding engineering group. These are folks have come out of,

[00:37:06] you know, the Facebooks, uh, other world, Meta, uh, and Google. And these are high class engineers

[00:37:14] that really know their AI. So we're integrating AI into our automated remediation platform.

[00:37:22] I can't talk about more. I can't talk about as much more, more about it than that. Other than that

[00:37:28] is what we're doing right now. You can't share any specific IP with us right now. We would like to,

[00:37:35] no, no, no, yeah. Somehow I think I would, yeah, somehow I think this would be my last show.

[00:37:39] Right, right, right. Right. But what I can tell you is what we all know. Look, AI,

[00:37:45] you know, is it really intelligence? It's building these large language models. I still feel like

[00:37:51] it's more like machine learning, but we're making smart, it's making smarter decisions about things

[00:37:58] because it's learning about environments. It's learning about users and you know, you repeat,

[00:38:02] repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. You correct, correct, correct, correct, correct. And you,

[00:38:06] and then eventually you get to something that, that works and works very well.

[00:38:11] What we're doing today, we know that we can remediate by automation and AI somewhere around

[00:38:17] the 35% in levels of pure what we could capture and fix. Well, 35%, unless you're playing baseball,

[00:38:25] not really all that great from my perspective, right? If I got a 350 average and I'm playing

[00:38:30] baseball, I'm looking pretty good. Probably maybe MVP material, right? So we'd like to look at it from

[00:38:35] that standpoint. The reality is we've got to get to somewhere in the 80, 90%.

[00:38:40] The irony is, is that the validation tools, the automated validation tools that have been

[00:38:45] around for some 25 years now, they're running at that same rate, right around the 35 to 40%.

[00:38:52] So we got to get better at it. And I think AI is the way to do it. And everything that I've seen that

[00:38:57] the devs and the engineers are showing me here really give me, you know, a lot of faith that that's

[00:39:03] exactly what's going to happen. It has to, because if it doesn't, I don't see any way that we keep up with the

[00:39:09] scale of, you know, the digital environments that are being developed in the platforms that are out

[00:39:13] there today. Nevermind the enterprise level aspects of it. We just won't be able to do it, you know,

[00:39:19] manually. And since we can't, going back to our earlier discussion, we can't convince enough

[00:39:24] organizations to invest in building these things, using them accessible out of the ground up,

[00:39:30] we got to do something. And this is, this is my bet. That's my bet. This is the company's bet.

[00:39:38] I think you're, but I agree with you. I think that's a, that is a smart bet and putting those

[00:39:43] things together and hopefully we'll be able to, I think the more accessibility people have,

[00:39:51] the more we can hear the feedback, the more people that can get, we can get this into the right hands,

[00:39:56] the more access and it'll be really enlightening. I know like we're sharing things that we've seen or

[00:40:03] heard or, and you're, you're, you're an expert, but I would love to know what you think is,

[00:40:10] what is something that an organization could do today that like, like start here, that is somebody

[00:40:18] that's interested in trying to get started as something that they feel like they can implement.

[00:40:23] Any thoughts? In terms of making their digital environments accessible? Yes. Starting,

[00:40:28] I was thinking of their website or whatever they're using, their, for cloud. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:34] Yeah. Well, given that this is mostly an HR environment and, and, and audience, let's start

[00:40:41] where it should start. Hire people who know what they're doing, right? Now you're pushing it, Mike.

[00:40:48] Right? In every, I'm dead serious. If I had a nickel, I'd rather, I guess probably have to talk about five

[00:40:55] or 10 bucks now though, with inflation the way that it is. But if I had a nickel for every company that we

[00:41:01] rated to that came to us and said, we don't know anything about this. We've been developing software

[00:41:07] for, you know, forever. And, you know, AI developed platforms and, and VR and augmented reality of

[00:41:15] platforms and media platforms. We don't have a clue about accessibility. What do you mean people? I never

[00:41:21] knew that blind people can even use a computer. You can, there's still an awful lot of that. So how do you solve

[00:41:27] that? Get people who know it and understand it. Get someone, not a lawyer, get someone on the team

[00:41:33] who has some engineering savvy, hire them, bring them in and start to build awareness internal,

[00:41:40] right? The best way to improve is first inside and then spread it to the outside. Get things right inside.

[00:41:47] That would be the first thing that I would do. After that, then you start to do some of the other

[00:41:51] things that we already talked about. Go find out what those web content accessibility guidelines

[00:41:56] that are being promoted, that are the standards for accessibility, web and software today. Find those

[00:42:02] things, learn them, teach them, make sure all your devs understand them, right? So now you've got to build

[00:42:09] on a learning environment, an educational environment. This is something that AudioEye has done. We've built

[00:42:14] our own kind of a help system. We call it AudioEye Queue that we give to our, we give it to our clients.

[00:42:22] And it teaches engineers and dads and usability folks how to build and design and develop accessible

[00:42:30] digital properties that they do. So, so build on the awareness aspect of it. After that, then you

[00:42:38] integrate people with disabilities and your, your workflows. You just be, you just, you don't really

[00:42:44] have to change what you're doing. You just need to be more additive, right? Or, hey, what's the name

[00:42:51] of your program? You need to be more inclusive. Yeah, right. Right? I mean, there's no rocket science

[00:42:57] to this. People feel like this is rocket science that I just said possible to attain what you wanted.

[00:43:04] That's baloney. It's just an excuse. It can't be done. You've got to make a priority. You have to,

[00:43:09] you have to be committed to it. And frankly, you have to have the passion to make it happen.

[00:43:16] Absolutely. So, Mike, I would love to ask, you know, the question we ask pretty much with every

[00:43:21] episode. What is one thing you want to make sure that the folks that are listening heard during this

[00:43:26] episode or one action you would like them to remember from this episode? And it doesn't have

[00:43:32] to be just one because we always say one and then it's like 17 that all of us give. So, yeah.

[00:43:38] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so I thank you. I think it's, I think it's important to drive home.

[00:43:45] One big message is in anything that we do, whether it's technology or anything as a business

[00:43:52] or as an organization, hire people with disabilities, bring them into your organization.

[00:43:58] They're going to be able to help you. They will want to help you help an organization to get better at

[00:44:04] or to make whatever you're doing, whatever you're building usable and accessible. I really believe

[00:44:09] strongly in that. I would never have been able to learn what I've learned had it not been from my

[00:44:15] colleagues. George Kirscher is one of my best friends in the world. He's blind, right? So you think

[00:44:20] about those kind of people that are out there in the world. They're champions. They're the true

[00:44:24] champions. Bring them in and hire them. Secondarily, I think it's important to understand that

[00:44:31] technology probably is going to be the next big wave in terms of really hitting that pervasive

[00:44:39] accessibility goal that we all have. So I do think companies should invest in AI. Everybody is. Are

[00:44:46] they investing in it in such a way that it will improve the accessibility of their digital environments

[00:44:52] and their platforms? I suspect not. I suspect not. So that's where I would like you to focus. If you need

[00:44:59] help companies like mine and other companies that are out there, you know, the Joe Devons of the world,

[00:45:04] we can help you do that. There is one warning. And I'm saying that particularly because this is an HR

[00:45:13] driven platform. One of the concerns that we have about artificial intelligence today is bias,

[00:45:21] right? And I'm sure you've dealt with it yourself. It's what I call edging out, right? So where we,

[00:45:28] the AI focuses on the statistical center of what looks will be the best way to represent or present

[00:45:35] something or how something needs to be rolled out, who you hire. These look like they all go for the

[00:45:43] statistical center at that point where those people with disabilities are on the outer edges. So be careful,

[00:45:51] right? Be strategic about making sure that that doesn't happen. You don't edge out or bias out individuals

[00:45:57] with disabilities, especially at the HR environment.

[00:46:02] Awesome. Thank you. Jackie, what you got?

[00:46:05] Well, it's just, it's the same kind of going along with what Mike was saying. It's be inclusive AF and

[00:46:13] then mind your business. And the reason I say that is because so many people like understand that we want

[00:46:19] to be inclusive and hire people with disabilities. You don't have to guess and ask people that, like,

[00:46:25] don't try to picture everything in your head. You don't have to put all the pieces in your head.

[00:46:30] The, the people that you hire will show you. And that's the part that's frustrating when you hear

[00:46:35] someone say, oh, I couldn't imagine putting my shoes on if I didn't have arms. And it's like,

[00:46:42] and yet there's a person here with no arms, but shoes. Like they have been able to adjust and figure

[00:46:48] this out. Quit trying to put your own experience onto somebody else. Make sure that you have the

[00:46:53] space and then mind your business, like, and just offer support. People will give you the answers

[00:46:58] to the test. You don't have to guess. And I think that's what I think that's called empathic design,

[00:47:05] right? Empathic design. Empathic design. Again, it's something that we've preached and talked about

[00:47:10] for, for, for many, many years, but it's look, it's okay to put myself in your shoes,

[00:47:16] but it's your shoes that I need to see. How do you wear them? How do you use them? Right. That,

[00:47:21] that kind of a thing. I appreciate that. Cause that's the part that always makes me really

[00:47:26] frustrated when I would put people in the places and they were like, did you know,

[00:47:30] this was years ago at the beginning of that. And they were like, did you know that they had one arm?

[00:47:34] You sent somebody over here with one arm. And I said, jokingly, I was like, well, the job description

[00:47:40] did not say that it required two arms. And he was like, oh, haha, hired the guy. He was like the

[00:47:46] best developer ever. And so that was always something that really frustrated me that automatically

[00:47:51] tried to discredit without having the conversation based on their own, you know, lack of empathy.

[00:47:58] It's, it's a, it's a societal prejudice that just doesn't seem to want to go away. And it's not

[00:48:11] necessarily meant to be a prejudice built on, you know, uh, uh, hate or, or, or, or anything like

[00:48:19] that. It's just being misinformed and unaware and uneducated, you know, frankly, ignorant. Right. And it's

[00:48:29] that that's one of the uphill battles that we've all had, you know, for so many years, we just have

[00:48:34] to keep, we just have to keep shouting to the top of the mountains and, um, in, in, in hopefully

[00:48:40] we'll get it. Like I said, where we were when I first started in the mid eighties, uh, where technology

[00:48:47] and people with disabilities and accessibility and usability were then compared to where they are

[00:48:53] today. It is night and day. We've made some huge, huge, uh, advancements and I'm very,

[00:48:59] very happy to be, you know, a part of, of that history with, with, with some of these advancements,

[00:49:03] but there's, there's a lot more to go, a lot more to do.

[00:49:09] And I think that the piece that you said this a little bit earlier, and I want to reiterate it

[00:49:14] because I think that it's really critical. Don't make an assumption because someone has a disability

[00:49:20] that they aren't going to be reading a book or that they aren't going to need access to whatever,

[00:49:25] or they aren't going to want to look at a website and be able to access it in whatever way they want

[00:49:30] to access it. And I think that's the piece is also like stop making assumptions. And then the second

[00:49:37] piece is if, you know, if you want to be a viable business in the future, this isn't a nice to have,

[00:49:43] this is something that we have to be inclusive of everyone with whatever capabilities they have.

[00:49:49] And being able to really think about that and be thoughtful about that is, is really important.

[00:49:54] So Mike, where can folks find you?

[00:49:59] Uh, well, so online, they could find me by email at michael.paciello at audioi.com.

[00:50:06] Okay. Um, I also own another little company that is working on, uh, using integrating AI in,

[00:50:13] in the publishing field and, and, uh, called web able or web able.tv. So you can said,

[00:50:19] send me email there, look me up on the web there. Basically, if you just type my name into the web,

[00:50:24] you're going to find me. It's, it's not something necessarily I'm proud of, but the fact of the

[00:50:29] matter is, is that kids come up to me, my kids come up to me and say, Hey dad, I saw this about you,

[00:50:34] or, you know, things like long lines. Right. So, uh, but I'm at audioi, the chief accessibility

[00:50:39] officer there, that would be the number one place to go to after that. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn,

[00:50:45] you know, uh, I just joined blue sky and, and, uh, you know, I've got, uh, X, I'm still,

[00:50:52] still have presence there and Facebook. I'm there. Um, well, I would love to just say to you,

[00:50:58] thank you for the work that you have done for this many years, you know, and the, the allyship

[00:51:04] and partnership that you have taken on, uh, you know, and almost, you know, from the story that you

[00:51:10] shared almost stumbled into, um, and how you have really brought this message and this work

[00:51:17] so far and advanced it so far. Um, you know, thank you for that. And thank you for your continued

[00:51:21] work on that. I think it's really critical. Um, Mike, thank you for joining us. This is Katie

[00:51:27] Van Horn. This is Jackie Clayton. Bye. Do you love news about LinkedIn, indeed Google, and just

[00:51:39] about every other recruitment tech company out there? Hell yeah. I'm Chad. I'm cheese. We're the

[00:51:45] Chad and cheese podcast. All the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show dripping in snark

[00:51:52] and attitude. Subscribe today, wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.