Episode 11 - Stacy Cashmore

The fantastic Stacy Cashmore drops by the podcast this week, joining Mike for episode 11.

In this podcast we talk through the usual questions, and explore some interesting viewpoints around what Accessibility means - not just from a "functional" perspective but also the quality of life aspects.

As always we take a look at the impact of AI and Copilot, and try to gaze into the future to imagine what an Accessible future looks like with AI.

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Transcript

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Hello there everybody Welcome to another episode of 365 ally the podcast the most Originally named podcast you can possibly imagine my name is Mike Hartley and I'm your host on this podcast and Today I am joined by the wonderful Stacey Cashmore who I am delighted to Potentially meet for the first time or maybe we've met before neither of us can kind of quite work out which is Really really good for me because it lets me off the hook, but I'm dreadful with names and faces So Stacey either it's really good to see you again or it's really good to see you in person for the first time outside of WhatsApp So welcome to the podcast. Please introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about yourself Hi. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here. It's especially with the subject of the podcast. It's a subject that's really close to my heart. So hi everyone. I'm Stacey Cashmore. I am a tech explorer DevOps based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which is a wonderful job title. I got to pick it myself. It means everything and nothing. Basically I get to figure out what is important looking at new tech. looking at new ways of working, new possible new functionality, experimenting and then trying to sell it to the company to put into our application. With having ADHD, that is such a wonderful job because the whole I've been there for three weeks and get bored doesn't really happen because I can always do something new. Nice. I've been developing software since the middle of the 1990s. And I swear I'm going to stop saying that at some point, because I'm starting to feel really old now when I say it. Since 2019, I have been giving talks on stage via podcasts. And since 2020, I think it was, I am super honored. to have been called a Microsoft MVP, which is something I never ever expected to get. In the dev tech community, basically just because I love talking about computers, I love talking about how we can work and improving things. And I found out from my first tour that I just love standing on stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with that I'm really nervous and I dread it and Then after about three minutes of being on stage You struggle to get me off. So yeah, yeah It's a fun one. It is but no it is wonderful. Welcome. Welcome along It's awesome to have you on the podcast. I'm I'm really pleased we've made this work. So as folks know, I have a standard set of questions that I go through with all of the guests, just so that we can experience different people's perspectives on kind of a standard set of subjects and then our wonderful viewers can see how different disabilities, neurodiversities have a different perspective on what things mean to us. Because we don't live in a one size fits one world. Most definitely not. So that being said, let's crack on with the questions. Let's get on with the show. And the starting point really, is the foundational question for us is what does accessibility mean to you? That is such a big question in such a small sentence. If I had to batten it down for an accessible answer, it is making sure that nobody is left behind being able to either do the things that they need to do to live their life or do the things that they need to do for enjoyment. just because of any restrictions that either their body or their brain or anything else puts on them. So that can be from making sure that we have web pages that are easy for screen readers, for example, making sure that we please use a proper semantic HTML for a web page that actually works, making sure that we have decent contrast on our web pages so that we can... read the things that we need to read on the page. I have an issue there myself. I don't have great eyesight, but I don't have bad eyesight. But if I compound that with my chronic fatigue, certainly when I get tired, if it's not a really good contrast, I struggle to read what's on the screen. For entertainment, it's important. For real life, it is absolutely vital. And so for me, accessibility is just making sure that you can do the things that you need to do without it costing you extra energy. Hmm. Yeah. No, no. I love the fact you mentioned enjoyment there as well, because it's something that people can overlook so easily. think, well, accessibility is making sure I can file my taxes correctly without any issue, or I can access my banking app, or I can read the news website or things like that. But the whole thing of life, we're meant to enjoy life. We're meant to enjoy life and just because people have accessible needs doesn't mean they're less deserving of having that enjoyment factor in their lives. So, no, I love the mention of enjoyment there because I think that is... so important and so often overlooked. Absolutely. It is the difference between existing and living to me. Yes, yes, definitely. It really is. And particularly, I mean, particularly if somebody is going through a hard time, they're really struggling with their physical health, with their neurodiversity, with their mental health, then having some capability to find enjoyment becomes even more I mean, say laughter is the best medicine and sometimes, yeah, laughing or watching something that makes you cry or something that takes you away into a distant galaxy and a completely unrealistic universe where you can escape and forget everything that's going on in your day to day is... that one that you just said reminds me of something which I think wraps up accessibility and enjoyment. in a really good way for me. I am an avid reader, at least I used to be an avid reader. I struggle these days with the energy to be able to do it. However, I've started to listen to more audio books because it takes less energy to read a book with an audio book than it does to read the letters on a page sometimes. And you have the discussion. If it's an audio book, have you actually read the book? It's like, yes, you have absolutely read the book if it's an audio book, because that is the way of consuming the book that works for you. for whatever reason at that time. I have it. Technical books I struggle to read because I'm... Apparently, I've never been tested, but I've been told by people who are trained to spot it. I'm dyslexic and my school missed it. And reading a technical book is so hard because you have to read every word on the page in the right order and as it's written. And the reason why I was never... Um, class does this lecture at school. I was one of the best readers, but if you asked me to read out loud, I couldn't do it because I don't read every word on the page. I read every two, three words and my brain finishes the sentence for me. Can't do that with a technical book when you're trying to learn because that just doesn't work. You need to actually know what's on the page. Listening to a technical book on the other hand. works so much better for me. So any non-fiction that I read, I always read as an audiobook and some fiction I will read as an audiobook if I don't have the energy to pick up the actual paperback or hardback. And that I think that is accessibility right there, making sure that anybody can access this material in the way that they need to get the enjoyment from it. Yeah, yeah, and I will confess, I've always been a reader. I was a reader right from a young child. I would devour books at the fastest rate going. And if you'd have come to me 10, 15 years ago, I would probably have been one of those that said, unless you've held the book in your hands and you've flicked the pages, you've not read it, you've just heard it. And it's only through my own personal journey, but also seeing and hearing other people's journeys that that view has shifted. And part of it, My eldest son is dyslexic and fairly bad as a child and he surprised me a few years ago because I went up to his room. He's grown up, he's an adult now, but I went up to his room and he's a proper geek. He's got three monitors and everything else. And on one monitor he'd got... Edge browser in the read mode, reading mode. And he was listening to an audio book and Edge was highlighting the line for him. And I'm like, are you reading or are you listening? went, I'm reading, but the listening's just and he's taught himself to work around his dyslexia. He'll watch anime. but he will watch it in the original audio with subtitles. And it's that kind of thing. And seeing that, that made me go, he's read those books probably more than I would have done necessarily. He's paid attention to it. He knows the value of it. He soaks it in and... I've seen that with other people and it, yeah, it, it's just that whole journey thing. It's changing perception and understanding. yeah, no, that, that, that's really cool. Um, so I mean, we, we, we've kind of answered the, uh, answered the second question in a way, but, um, accessibility in your daily life, um, what What's that look like to you? How does that work for you day to day? In my day-to-day life, it is things like I don't work with a desktop. I work with a laptop. And that is so that where my body can work, I work. I I have chronic fatigue. I know that we're not supposed to say chronic fatigue. You're supposed to use a proper name for it, but I can never remember or pronounce it. So M-E or chronic fatigue. Some mornings. I have the energy to come up to my office. I love being in here. I spent a lot of time getting this. I want to say into this state. And then I'm looking at the screen in front of me and it's an absolute mess at the moment because I'm halfway through remodeling. But I love being in here. I love working in here. I have my decent camera, my decent microphone. I've got two 4k monitors in front of me. The prompter that I'm talking to you on. It's fantastic. This is on my second floor and climbing stairs can absolutely knock me over. So sometimes I will work in the living room on the laptop with a travel screen that actually I brought that just to give technical demos at conferences, because then I can have my notes and I can have my screen, which is just the repeat of what's behind me. So I don't have to be looking at the screen as I'm typing. Yeah. it's really useful at home as well. If I'm in the living room, I can get out my second screen and I've still got a two monitor setup. If I can't do that, then I have a table that goes over the bed. And last year we brought an electric bed. Not so much because electric beds are cool, but electric beds are cool. but because with my condition, I spend so much time in bed, propping myself up on pillows was causing me, muscular skeletal issues. Yeah. So now I have a bed and I have a remote control and I can do the whole bed goes up, bed goes down from Homer Simpson and get into a comfortable position where I'm fully supported with this table across in front of me and my laptop where I can work. And that's kind of where most of my things for accessibility are in my life. It's making sure that I can do the things that I have the energy to do. Some days I can't do anything and then I'm just in bed. It's, I have an understanding boss who appreciates the condition that I have. and yeah, if I can't work, then I can't work. Um, but I have these like three different stages of being able to work so that I can do something without spending too much energy. and that goes into transport as well. So until I got ill, I was trying to get fit and I got myself a really nice road bike. And then after I got ill, I couldn't cycle anymore. So I now have an e-bike. because if I want to cycle to the shops and back, sometimes on the e-bike it's not possible, but on a normal bike it's absolutely not possible. So I wanted to be able to go to the shops without having to take the car every time. And the only way to do that was an e-bike. So I got that. The car is another accessibility aid for me because on the days where I can't... ride the e-bike when even that is too much effort and energy, I need to take the car. it's basic. My things are all... How can I use whatever energy I have in the best way? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's you have to live with the power scheme that you can apply to your own personal life on any given day. So, so yeah, and I'll admit, I'd never actually thought of a laptop in that perspective until until you started to say and I thought, I know where this Yeah, right. Yeah, of course. No, no, thank you for that. tell you every single episode I do of this podcast I learn something new from every single person and it's great I've got my own I'm getting my own personal private tutoring fantastic so AI that topic those two letters that I think are burned into our retinas now because we've heard it so much, AI co-pilots, Claude, Antigrav, ChatGPT, all of those things that have become so prominent. Kind of a twofold question really here. And the first part of it is from what you've observed, experienced, seen, what would you say the impact of AI has been either positive or negative or both? And then what would you hope or what would you envisage the future of accessibility to be? in this AI world? And I know that's a really cruel question because AI is developing at such a fast pace that the future of AI and accessibility might be three months down the road rather than three years. yeah, so the whole ball of AI and accessibility. Whenever I'm asked this, the one that always springs to mind is it has to be subtitles for me. We've had it for a while, they're improving and it's also a double-edged sword. Being able to tell YouTube, put subtitles on my video is... It means that if you don't have access to the funds to get your video properly captioned, that you can still give access to people to your content, which I think is fantastic. The reason why I say it's a double-edged sword is because people trust it too much. The amount of videos that I watch... I have slight hearing issues. got hearing aids for the first time at the end of last year. I have ADHD and I have audio processing issues on top of that. And I always watch things with subtitles. And you'll be watching it sometimes and it's like, what did they say? Because they go, the noise that you hear doesn't match what you've just seen. And on top of that, if... you're watching it without sound, then it's just like, where the hell did that come from? That makes no sense. What are we doing here? Because you've got things that maybe sound similar and people don't check them. So I think it can be used as a fantastic tool. If you don't have the funds to get captioning done, invite real people, experts who um are far better. than AI at this, that I can't afford to pay a caption in person for my personal videos. I don't get paid for them. I don't get any funding for them. But you do need to make sure that when you use captioning, that you then go through and check what has been written, which is a laborious step because if you have made an hour long video, you need to watch an hour's worth of video to make sure that the subtitles match what you're saying. It's also a little bit of a two-tier world there because it depends on the quality of your tools. YouTube subtitles are kind of okay. CapCut are weird an amount of the time. I am lucky enough to have the paid version of DaVinci Resolve. So far that has a hundred percent hit rate on the videos that I'm doing. I'm very surprised. um Yes, but I still go through and check it every time because I want to make sure that what I'm saying is what people are reading if they're using the captions. Where it's going to go... I imagine the bit that's going to help a lot is things like alt text for images. We already have things like blue sky you can upload when you get a GIF on blue sky, it will automatically um caption it and you just have to fix the caption. I am in the 100 % club for blue sky. The first thing I did when I signed up was I turned on the do not let me post an image without alt text. Please everybody, do that. You will find it super annoying, but it is so worth it to the people that need it. And I love the fact that Blue Sky have that option there. It should be on by default, but I love the fact that it's there. But I think... The next step that I can see is making sure that those things are alt-texted, even if somebody hasn't done automatically. I think that would be a good use case. But again, the automatic text on Blue Sky, if you use a GIF, it's not perfect and you generally need to go in and fix it. So it's still going to be one of those things where... It can augment what we can do, but we still need to be in control and make sure that it's working. Yeah, yeah, totally agree, totally agree. And the whole thing with the subtitles, I watch everything I can with subtitles on. I don't have hearing issues particularly. do have unofficially diagnosed ADHD, let's say. So my attention wanders and for me subtitles help keep my focus on what I'm watching. And with this podcast, I make sure that the videos that go out have captions on them. I will confess, I don't go through them the whole episode. I will correct the things that stand out glaringly obvious. But that's me with my ADHD. Because if I went through, I would end up correcting every bit of grammar, every capitalization and no episode would ever get out the door. But yeah, the auto captions. that I get from this platform, which for people looking for a podcast platform, Riverside is really easy to use. I'm not being paid to say that, but I'm getting podcasts out the door, which is an impressive feat, trust me. And the captions are pretty good. They're not perfect. And I know that the videos that have published There are errors in and I apologize for that. But then I also make sure the subtitles are embedded for things like TikTok because the auto captions on TikTok, they either work only if some of the time and not on every video. They're too small that you can't read them and they don't have the color contrast ratio. or they're completely inaccurate and they're badly out of time and it makes them in many respects worse than useless at that point and but I do sympathise with people when the words don't match and this is why I feel some guilt in not checking them all but I know I can't because I would just go down a rabbit hole. but I, I'll watch. So I'm currently rewatching all of Stargate SG1 and I have the subtitles on and a lot of subtitles, they'll skip words to just put up the rough sentence of what's been said. that does my head in because I've heard one thing and I'm reading something else and because my brain's expecting the two to match, it pulls me away from where I was when they don't match. so yeah, I really do hope that please let's get, let's get some better transcribing. But What I will say is I also love the fact that we've got a lot more in the way of live captions now. So in things like Edge browser, in Windows and other platforms as well, you can turn on live captions. And if you're watching a program on say Netflix that doesn't have subtitles, It will still show subtitles on live captions, which is brilliant. It is fantastic. Is it a hundred percent accurate? No. Is it a hundred percent better than it was before? yes. Because all of a sudden that episode's become massively more accessible. And I think this is one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn at start of my accessibility journey is it's progress over perfection. It's better to take those steps and do the thing, even if it's not 100 % perfect, because you're never going to get 100 % perfect. I could transcribe every episode perfectly, beautifully, get the grammar dead right. You could guarantee that somebody would complain the way that the subtitles split across the line or the speed of the subtitles, even if they match the speech. You would guarantee there would be something that wouldn't be right for somebody using them. And that's OK, because. already said, it's not one size fits one, we're all unique, but we shouldn't let. that stop us from doing the thing and actually getting things in there. doing the best that you can and learning along the way. Yes, 100%, 100%. I look at where I am compared to where I was six, seven years ago and I know so much more than I did back then. I also know that I know a lot less than I thought I knew back then and I can see that there is so much more that I need to learn and there always will be and that good. kind of exciting. I've always got something to learn. Yeah, yeah it does and it's always good to learn something new. I always feel my day has had purpose when I learn something. It's good. So final question really because yeah we've rocked through the rocketed through the time. But the final question is, what would your personal hot tip be for accessibility? If somebody came to you and said, where should I make a start or what should I do day by day to improve accessibility? What would your top tip be? That's a good one. I think first of all, I would just say you've taken it by asking the question. I still struggle with so many people trying to get them to take accessibility seriously. So the fact that somebody asks that question is already an excellent first step. The second one that I would probably say is if you're in any way involved in a user interface, look up the accessibility guidelines, learn about contrast, learn about color blindness and be deliberate when you are making your screens and keeping that in mind. Yeah. There will always be resources that you're going to need to read. There's always new things that you need to do. But just being deliberate in that choice is going to make 80 % of the difference because you're not just going to be saying, well, this looks cool. And other people are going, yeah, but I can't read this. So that, that I think is already the first one. And the other one is just, you never know what somebody's accessibility. Needs are. I have depression, I have ADHD, I have chronic fatigue and all those other things. None of that is visible. Although I have a chronic illness, I look healthy. When I stand up, I can be a little bit wobbly as the room starts to spin and things like that. But if I'm up and walking, You might not think that there's anything wrong with me at all, but at the same point, if you give me a ramp that's too steep, I will have to stop halfway up to take a breath. If you tell me to climb a flight of stairs, I will either struggle with it or when I get to the top, I will be near collapse. So don't just assume what somebody's needs are. because you think that they look like they don't have anything. It's, what's a wonderful phrase? Everybody will have accessible needs at some point. The question is when and what they are. Um, and yeah, it's, it might show, it might not show. so don't question people. That's another wonderful accessibility thing. It's, Something that like before we started recording, I said, I'm really sorry. I've got to go to the toilet because my bladder sometimes just goes, no, it's now. if I'm out and about and I get that urgency and I absolutely have to go and there was a big queue for the, normal toilets, I will use a disabled toilet because it is an issue for me. but you will see me go in there when you'll probably go look at that queue jumper. So yeah, it's get people the benefit of the doubt. You have no idea what they're going through. Yeah, yeah, no, totally, totally agree. Totally agree with all of that. All of that. And yeah, that's just awesome. I hope people really listen and take that to heart. So much encouragement in there as well as sort of rallying cry for people to do the thing and to actually get on there but so encouraging at the same time so Stacey thank you so so much it has been such a joy this episode and I've learned a lot and it's been really good talking to you and spending this time chatting Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure to be here. It might my pleasure, honestly, as I say, I've learned so much. So thank you. And with that, folks, we reach the end of another episode of 365 Ally, the podcast. So once again, my big heartfelt thanks to Stacey Cashmore, the wonderful guest for this episode and. Thank you to you all for watching and listening and paying attention and being willing to take on board what we're saying. So thank you so much. Please do share, please do spread the word, tell everybody about it, share it on your internal company, Teams, Slack, whatever channels, just shout about us please and then. Do all the other stuff, like and subscribe and all those joys. And I will catch you on the next episode of 365 Ally the podcast. And so I will say now so long and thank you. Goodbye, everybody.