Full Transcript
Larry:
It is the opportunity and the other A in global accessibility awareness day, and in our field, it’s always a question of raising awareness and I feel like we’ve really come to a place where people get it.
Jeff:
Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Verizon Media Group and Blind Abilities presents Larry Goldberg, head of accessibility at Verizon Media.
Larry:
We get to do some innovative things that are pretty off the wall, like working on virtual reality accessibility, and the other project you may know about, Teach Access. Realizing that learning about accessibility has got to start as early as possible, so we decided to focus on higher Ed.
Jeff:
Bringing global accessibility awareness to colleges, corporations, and organizations around the world.
Larry:
We need to know them so they can know us.
Jeff:
Please welcome, from Verizon Media Group, Larry Goldberg, and from That Blind Tech Show, Bryan Fischler and Jeff Thompson. We hope you enjoy.
Larry:
It’ll be online, and how appropriate for us to do a symposium on virtual reality accessibility in virtual environments. That’s July 20, and people can learn about it at xraccess.org.
Bryan:
Welcome to a very special Blind Abilities That Blind Tech Show production. We’re sitting here today with Jeff Thompson. How are you doing, Jeff?
Jeff:
I’m doing great, Bryan. How are you?
Bryan:
I’m good, but not because you’re here. I’m real excited because we have Larry Goldberg here, the global head of accessibility for Verizon Media Group. How are you doing today, Larry?
Larry:
I’m doing great, so happy to be here with you Bryan and Jeff. Been looking forward to this for quite a while.
Bryan:
And we have you here, one because you’re doing amazing things at Verizon Media Group, but also there’s a special day coming up for those of us in the accessibility and assistive technology fields, Global Accessibility Day, this May 21st. Kind of curious, being the global head of accessibility, what does Global Accessibility Day mean to you?
Larry:
I guess I’d have to say, coming right after my own birthday and my wedding anniversary, this is the biggie for us. It is the opportunity and the other A in Global Accessibility Awareness Day. In our field, it’s always a question of raising awareness, and I feel like we’ve really come to a place where people get it. They’re really beginning to understand that accessibility is interesting, fun, at times challenging, but really rewarding field to be in in the world of tech. So, we’ve got some big events planned for internal use. We want to make sure all the people that we work with, all of our colleagues across Verizon Media, have a chance to exercise their accessibility muscles. We’re going to do a big bug bash, getting our engineers and developers together on a 24 hour period and smash all those accessibility bugs that still pop up from time to time. We’ve got some beautiful new education materials we’re creating, with in mind, making accessibility accessible, fun, interesting learning opportunities. We got really nice user videos. We’ve been reaching out to some of our friends across all disability communities and talking to them about what they want, need, and love about accessible tech, and we’ll be releasing that video. So, you got a little scoop here on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We’re going to have a gorgeous video to take about why we care about accessibility, because we care about our users.
Jeff:
Yeah, Larry, I really like what you said about that because your group in accessibility, you’re reaching out to thousands of Verizon employers. So, when you said that you’re doing that internally, that’s huge.
Larry:
Yeah. I think we’ve come to realize, as much as we love going out into the world and bragging about what we do among the tech community, the most important people we work with are the ones who build our stuff. As Bryan has well recognized, for instance, Yahoo Fantasy Sports, the people on those teams, they’re doing an amazing job. So, they’re first and foremost the ones who are enabling us to serve our users better. So, we’re really focusing a lot of our efforts this year on GAD on our own employees. So, in Verizon Media, we’ve got, I don’t know, 11000 people, Verizon Corporate overall has got 130000, and the impact we have is global. The number of customers who visit our sites and who use all of our services is in millions, if not billions. So, we really can have an impact.
Bryan:
And thanks to companies like yours, terms like accessibility and assistive technology, they’re no longer just really known by people in the disabled community. As you mentioned, mainstream companies across the board really know these terms fairly well nowadays.
Larry:
The big companies are all in, middle sized companies are all in. We’ve got some wonderful colleagues across the board on all the big technology companies, on both coasts and in the Midwest, and I think really… I’ve been in this field a long time and I think we’re just always on the rise in terms of the embrace, the interest, people just simply saying… As one of our chief engineers said, accessibility needs to be in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Yeah, people are getting that. We’re also using the term, born accessible more and more. Born accessible and no regression, which I’m sure you both have experience what happens when an app gets updates and you lose all that great access you had. Well, as important as it is that our products are accessible out of the box, they need to keep plunging forward.
Bryan:
Going back a little in your career, Jeff and I had to mention this because we’re both fans of described video and talking televisions. You were one of the architects behind the 21st century Communications Act. What are your thoughts about where the act is now in 2020?
Larry:
Pretty amazing. I don’t know if any of us in the early days of what we call video description, descriptive video service at WGBH, every imagined the reach that we would have with described TV and video these days. We owe a tremendous amount to the early pioneers in the field. A woman named Dr Margaret Pfanstiehl at the Washington Ear in DC, just a relentless, resilient champion of the service. She just wouldn’t let go. So, she drove FCC rule, she drove the legislation, and amazingly enough, the greatest carrier of description are not just the broadcasters and cable casters who are required to do it under the CVAA, but look at what Netflix and Amazon Prime and iTunes and soon to come, Hulu are sending out there, not under requirements from the CVAA, but because consumers like you guys forced the issue. So, there’s so much description out there, and really high quality. I’m just blown away.
Bryan:
Something you’re probably not aware of because it just came out, Spectrum was fairly late. They were one of the cable providers that really you had to pull their teeth out to get them to come out with an accessible box. Well, talk about companies that have just gotten on board, one, their box now is extremely accessible. It’s a specific model, but they just released for anybody here in the United States, an app called Spectrum Access. You do not even need to be a Spectrum customer, and what it does is it’s got about 300 movies, and the app, say you have a sighted counterpart that really doesn’t like listening to the audio description, you could just play it on your iPhone, it syncs up, and you could watch the movie together again, so pretty incredible stuff.
Larry:
I love that. Originally, that kind of concept came out of Pixar, and then it was taken private, this notion of syncing on the fly. Now available on Shubert Theaters, or when the theaters are open. Pretty awesome, Spectrum, give them great, great kudos. Their head of accessibility used to be at AT&T, so I don’t know if he gets credit, Mark Balsano, but hurray for Spectrum.
Bryan:
As global head of accessibility for Verizon Media Group, what really do you do day in and day out?
Larry:
I sit in front of my screen and talk to people. Is that any different than anyone?
Jeff:
I’m just glad to be part of your day then.
Larry:
Yeah, it’s just a regular part. Yeah, we are just connecting with everyone in our own organization, driving [inaudible 00:08:31] company says, “Heading to the left, that is where the products start.” In the earliest creative and production start of all of our work is a huge amount of what we do, and that is the people who are creating our apps or our content, our ads, we’re working really hard to get them to embrace accessibility from the beginning. So, we’re spending a lot of time on that, and having that filter through the whole organization. We got really great buy in from the top executives, through all the devs, some really great turning the notion of accessibility champions who do it because it feels good to subject matter experts embedded within every organization. That’s the way it has to be. That’s what makes it sustainable, efficient, and practical.
Larry:
At the same time, we get to do some innovative things that are pretty off the way, like working on virtual reality accessibility, which is one of our newest projects. It is tremendous fun, really interesting. Created this great collaboration around that, and the other project you may know about Teach Access. Realizing that learning about accessibility has got to start as early as possible, so we decided to focus on higher Ed, and pull together this great collaboration among all the big tech companies to encourage and to help universities and professors teach about accessibility in their mainstream courses, not as a special elective, not as a seminar, but right in their 101 courses. We just announced grants available to faculty members who want some help building it right into their mainstream courses. So, we get to do some of these innovative, industry and society wide impact, meanwhile working and looking at our own.
Jeff:
Yeah, Larry, one of the things that I really like about what you’re saying and what you’re doing at Verizon Media Group, is you’re not only reaching out within your large, immense company, but you’re reaching out across to other corporations, other companies, to the nonprofits, to organizations, and you’re bringing them all together collectively so everyone has resources. That’s really a keep idea.
Larry:
It’s a pretty great community. We all work really closely together. I don’t know if this is true about any other part of the tech sector, but on accessibility, this is… It’s the example of CSUN. The biggest disappointment this year was not being able to go and give big hugs to my colleagues at Google and Facebook and Microsoft. These are all our buddies, and we’ve got a great community. One of the things I love to talk to students about is, you’re going to go into a field, you’re going to find a new career, I don’t know if there’s anyone, any field that is as close and collaborative and just all embracing as accessibility and access tech.
Bryan:
Yeah, it’s a fantastic community, and over the years talked with and consulted with several people at Yahoo and now Verizon Media Group, and it’s funny that you mentioned Teach Access, because Gary Moulton turned me onto to Teach Access several years ago. Working in web accessibility, it still baffles me how many students can go to a major university for a degree in web design, yet it doesn’t seem like they’re still being taught that much about accessibility. Are you finding that the universities are finally buying into accessible design and including it in the curriculum?
Larry:
Some are. Yeah, it’s a different world when you’re working in the academic world and the tech world. In the tech world, we think in quarterly results, and in the academic world, at least previously, they were looking at 10 year turnaround on their criteria for teaching. So, we had to accommodate ourselves to, what’s the pace, what are the incentives for universities to change the way they teach, and we learned a lot. We were able to hire an executive director, Kate Sonka, out of Michigan State. She maintains her connection at Michigan State, and she’s executive director of Teach Access, and she helps keep us honest and true in terms of how do we affect change in higher Ed.
Larry:
Now, even before the pandemic, higher Ed was going through massive changes, and now even more so. So, we are using the opportunity to help reach out to higher Ed and help them grapple with this change. I think it’s happening. It’s happening slowly, but we have to have a broad outlook when we’re looking for change in that community because we need to know them so they can know us. One of the best things that helps incentivize them, aside from grants and money, is the fact they get to buddy up with the biggest tech companies in the world. They like that, and their students like that. So, slowly but surely, we are having an influence. I’d love to see it even more of a hockey stick curve in higher Ed, and I think we’ll get there, but we’re taking it slow.
Jeff:
Yeah, I have a friend out in Washington. She was out in Washington, going to college there, and she did a paper on the exact thing, getting accessibility built into the curriculums for people. She did an internship at Microsoft. That’s when I first heard about it. So, when I heard about Teach Access, I thought, oh this is really cool. Cindy Bennett did a great job, and I’m glad she’s involved in accessibility, and I’m glad to hear about Teach Access because Bryan, right there, he teaches accessibility. I know so many people who are TVIs in the field that they get an opportunity to meet these people, hear them, but not just one company’s point-of-view, but the whole eclectic group of them.
Larry:
I have to say, Teach Access is sort of an obvious idea. It did take a couple of people. My former boss, Mike Shebanek and Jeff Weelan] at Facebook, to sit down and say, “Yeah, we’re feeling this pain together, what are we going to do about it?” Then, we started approaching other companies, and Jenny Lay-Flurrie from Microsoft… If you know her, you know her wonderful accent, and she said, “I’m in violent agreement with you.” I was like, “Okay, Jenny,” and they have. I mean, Microsoft’s education materials are phenomenal, and they’re sharing these days. So, everyone’s just like, “Yeah,” they realized right off the bat this is something that needs to be done, and now we just have to scale it up.
Larry:
Every year we’ve had this visit, it’s call Study Away Silicon Valley. Bring 30 or so students from universities all over the country to Silicon Valley for a week, and they would come and visit, spend a day at Google, a day at Facebook, a day at Yahoo or Verizon Media, a day at Walmart, and boy you watch these students and their eyes are wide open. Last year, Apple was added, so we all got to go to Apple park, and what an incredible experience it was for these students, who will never, ever forget that week, as exhausted as they were at the end of the week. Looking at this, unfortunately we did have to cancel this year, but we’re building up to a big one next year, and the question is how do we scale this up? We have now touched the lives of about 90 students who have come to visit, but that only leaves another 20-30 million who should have this kind of experience. So, we’re trying to think about how we scale up study away.
Bryan:
Yeah, Verizon Media Group had a dinner planned for CSUN, Accessibility: the next generation, that I was really looking forward to. Can you share a little about what might have been discussed that night?
Larry:
Oh my God, would have that been great? What’s funny is we were going to bring in some new and emerging leaders, some still in school, who have embraced accessibility as a field of study or career. We were going to have them lead the night, have dinner with, what was it going to be, 30 or 40 of our best friends in the disability community and advocacy organizations, but the students were going to lead it. They were going to tell us what their journey was like, and what they were looking forward to as they developed their career. Then, benefit from some of the hope or wisdom from leaders in the field from ACB and NFB and the hearing loss association. All of us together in one room learning from each other, but really hearing about the future.
Larry:
It’s funny, of course when I came up this idea of calling it accessibility the next generation, I of course had in mind, a take off on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The students we talked to, had no idea what I was talking about.
Bryan:
They really are young.
Larry:
It was a little painful.
Bryan:
I even bought a new blazer for that dinner.
Larry:
Oh, well. We’ll do it next year, but the idea was great. We did then have meetings with some of those students and say, “Look, really sorry you couldn’t be there.” The organization disability IN was going to fly a student in. It was all going to be really quite a night. The menu was planned, we had chocolates we bought for all you guys, which now we have consumed, sorry. T-shirts were made up-
Jeff:
Hopefully that suit will still fit.
Bryan:
It wasn’t a suit, it was a blazer.
Larry:
It was going to be quite a night, and only one of so many great events that had to be canceled because of it. We’re not going to complain, but we’re going to save the idea, and we’re definitely going to roll it out somehow, some way in the future.
Jeff:
Larry, when you’re talking about accessibility, this is Blind Abilities and That Blind Tech show, we’re talking about vision and stuff like that, but when you’re talking about Verizon Media Group, you’re talking about accessibility for all.
Larry:
Yeah. Yeah, we’re guided a lot by the blind community. We really love the leadership, that across the board both at the grassroots and the national organizations have taken over the years. But, we do of course now and serve people with every disability, and when we say, “All,” we actually mean all. And we also mean people who aren’t disabled. As you guys both know, the kind of advancements you can make in making your tech accessible really do serve a lot more people than those initial primary stakeholders. We’re always looking at that issue. Of course, I come from the captioning world, and we know full well that closed captioning serves a lot more people than deaf and hard of hearing folks. That is proved and we rely on that a lot.
Larry:
So, we look when we develop a way of accommodating a screen reader user in one of our apps. It’s like, “Yeah, who else can we serve? What else is this really advancing in terms of our general population, and our clients, and our sponsors, and our funders?” When we say, “all,” we really do mean all.
Bryan:
I can’t even believe that we’re half way through 2020 almost and technology moves at such a lightning speed, and nowadays so does accessibility. Does Verizon Media Group have any exciting goals for accessibility in 2020 and beyond?
Larry:
Yeah, well we have a strategy for this year to first and foremost drive accessible design and development into the product groups so that they’re owning it themselves, so that we can free up people that we’ve talked about, Gary and Gusaya, to really think about what’s next. What do we really do to push the curve, push the envelope on this? Recently, Yahoo Finance app, people looking at their stock charts, and especially now these days, “Where’s my money? How’s it doing?” So, they actually worked with our, initially, Android developers for the app to make our stock charts audibly accessible. Not just to read out the performance on a particular day, but add tones so you can actually hear the rising and falling over a day, a month, a year-
Bryan:
That might be scary right now.
Larry:
Yeah, you’re going to hear a sad song when you play those tones out-
Bryan:
The cello.
Larry:
On a day to day basis. What an interesting, different way to experience how your investments are doing, by listening to the rise and fall over, pick your period. So, we’re looking at how to really take it to the next level. So, do the basics, do them right, follow the web content accessibility guidelines to a T, 2.1 double A, and then take it to the next level. And it turns out, a lot of our developers are really into hacking accessibility and coming up with new ways of serving screen reader users assistive technology, and then let’s see how we can just build it into the mainstream side of our apps.
Larry:
Take a look at the Yahoo Finance, and you don’t have to turn on your screen reader to take advantage of some of these new audible functionality. It’s not unlike building talking menus into your set top boxes, which now is required, but now it’s available for everyone. So, voice in, voice out, very big, talking advantage of speech opportunities, and I don’t even know what we’re going to find in the second half of the year once we free up all of our developers to really learn more about how the accessibility features and then go beyond that.
Jeff:
I can’t stress enough how important it is that… excited that I am to hear from you so many times that you’re working with the developers. That’s where the incubation starts, that’s where the ideas start, that’s where the building starts, that they are considering accessibility before it even hits the blueprint. That’s exciting to know, because that’s what really has to happen, baked in.
Larry:
Yeah, we’re learning a lot from our developers. We do our own internal user studies when we’re rolling out training, when we’re rolling out guidance documents. First, we go to them, and say, “Is this helpful? Does this explain what you need to know to do this better? What do you need? What kind of tools do you need? What kind of just in time education do you need?” We’re learning a lot from them, and they then tell us, “Well, we don’t really understand this aspect of accessibility. What happens if I don’t get to control this part of our technology? What’s the workaround?” So, it’s a really good iterative process. But, we love how our developers… you know, that goes really back to the early days of Yahoo, where it really was hacking culture. That hasn’t stopped. Most of our developers continue to have that mindset, so they come up with some pretty cool ideas.
Bryan:
Yeah, I find it interesting that you mentioned interactive cable boxes. I do want to go back to your time with the 21st century Communications Act. It’s been 10 years I guess since President Obama signed the act into place. How do you feel companies are doing nowadays with adhering to the act?
Larry:
Yeah, 2010 I was at the White House when President Obama signed the act. There was Stevie Wonder, there was the leaders in congress who drove it through, my own Senator Markey, at that time, Congressman. Two years later, we had the regs all written out of the FCC. I’d say, most set top box manufacturers in the traditional cable world have done what they’re required to do. I will tell you honestly, Comcast has done some pretty awesome things that went far beyond, like eye control, eye gaze control of your menus. Wow, and then I look at the other, newer entrants like Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, they’re doing some pretty awesome things. Coming out of an internet based world instead of a traditional broadcast for cable, they leaped over. So, Apple who built voiceover into the earliest Apple TV boxes have done some wonderful controls, but Amazon and Roku and Hulu, nice work, Chromecast. So, they’re taking the notion of IP protocols and building it in. I’m pretty impressed. I don’t know how many people are using all that functionality, but you know what, it doesn’t. It’s the law, build it in, and whoever needs it can have it.
Jeff:
Options are good.
Bryan:
That’s great. I had a funny thing happened just two days ago, where it’s great with all these companies playing nice together. We call it the A Lady, A-L-E-X-A, so we don’t set off people’s devices when they’re listening. Them and Netflix have finally got on the same page, so you can now talk to your remote and say A Lady, play X, Y, Z title. Well, I finally got around to watching The Ozarks. I said, “A Lady, play The Ozarks,” and I got through about five episodes the first night. And I said to a buddy, “It’s great, but do they ever…” because he had seen the whole show, I said, “What do they tell you what happened in Chicago through flashbacks?” He’s like, “No, it happens in the first episode.” Well, the A Lady, I went back and looked, decided to start playing the show for me in the second episode. So, I had to go back and watch the first episode. No idea what happened there, but I got a good chuckle out of technology sometimes.
Larry:
It’s great that so many remotes now have a little microphone button. That’s hardware, putting it in your remote so you can just simply hit the microphone and speak, that’s pretty great. I happen to have Fios TV in my house. It happens to also be the company I work for. There latest remote has speech in, speech out. So, nice to see how pervasive that is. It takes me back to the days of the TV Decoder circuitry act, where deaf people had to buy this clunky, expensive, big box to watch closed captions. Laws were passed, again Congressman Markey, now Senator Markey got that built into every TV set. So, it went from 300000 set top boxes that people wanted to watch closed caption had to buy to 20 million in the first year free. That was a pretty radical change back in the early 90s, now it’s happening with speech in and out on set top boxes.
Jeff:
Wow. I remember when everyone used to say I buy Apple because right out of the box it has accessibility, and now look at all the shelves, the aisles that we are being able to shop from in a sense of products that come with accessibility. It’s great.
Larry:
Yeah, you know we always have to give props to Apple for the great leadership they’ve shown. Some of the best people came out of Apple that then went to so many other organizations. They stay tried and true with their vertical integration they can assure that everything is working in between, but now you can go to the app store on your phone or on your set top box and get access to everybody else’s stuff too. So, it’s nice to see that variety of choice.
Bryan:
I do want to give a shout out to… I was a Verizon Fios customer, I absolutely loved it. But then, I moved to a building and it’s small building where the owner doesn’t allow drilling. I almost didn’t sign the lease because of that, but I said, “You know what, as much fun as it is to find an apartment in New York, I think I’ve got to settle for the apartment.” But, you guys have done a great job with the accessibility with Verizon Fios, big fan of that. But, you’re a big fan of virtual reality and that seems to be the hot topic nowadays. How do you see virtuality… Pardon me. Virtuality? How do you see virtual reality actually helping improve the lives of people with disabilities?
Larry:
We’re all living in a virtual world these days, so that’s had a big effect. From everything like taking online meetings to living your life online, there are so many promising opportunities, both augmented and virtual reality in way finding, in virtual travel. The idea that no one’s traveling these days, and some people with disabilities simply can’t travel. Well great, why don’t you jump online? Either get a head mounted display, which these days are much cheaper and travel to these other worlds. If you have sight, great, you can go look at them, so you have a mobility impairment. Then, all right, how are we going to make these virtual worlds accessible to people who can’t see or hear?
Larry:
The working groups we set up under the XR Access project are developing some really awesome alternatives so that you can have description tied to objects in virtual worlds. You can trigger them by gestures or eye gaze or which way your head points. There’s a project out of the EU called immersive accessibility that has developed authoring tools and demonstrations that are really knockout. They developed all different kinds of ways that captions could appear in a 360 environment, and because we’re part of Verizon, we look at what 5G can do for you. With 5G, with low latency, high bandwidth, the kind of thing like, would you venture out into a busy street if you had to wait on a buffering of 15 to 20 seconds, probably not.
Larry:
But, with 5G and an augmented reality, virtual reality device, you will be there immediately and get this information right away. Of course, telemedicine is already flourishing and it’s accelerating now so that doctors can do visits. You can get therapy through a virtual reality device or interface. Training of nurses and doctors, when you’re working with… I saw a beautiful project from Cal State Channel Islands, where they’re training their nurses to work with elderly patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s to give them a good feel for what these patients are experiencing. I think that kind of immersion into somebody else’s world is going to be really a great initial foray into how we can make sure than people who have disabilities or chronic ailments can really have their community tied together. Any of us with aging parents will be able to take great advantage of what virtuality… You thought you made a mistake saying virtuality, no people are actually using that term, virtual reality.
Larry:
I think we’re at the earliest days. It’s still not as widely accepted as your smartphone for instance, but we wanted to jump in early with the XR Access project because we saw it’s going to be here, we don’t know how long. It’s been the next big thing for a while, but if we don’t deal with the accessibility of those platforms now, it will be way too late when it becomes common place, cheap, and pervasive. That’s why we jumped in early. We don’t have the answers yet, but we’ve got this amazing community. People everywhere from Magic Leap and Hololens and Oculus to Industrial Light and Magic, universities all over the country. People with disabilities are driving the whole project, so they’re in there. Google has convened a group on immersive captioning driven by a whole bunch of deaf people who are advanced caption users. So, we triggered a community, and now it’s off and running.
Larry:
We had our first symposium last July. We were planning our next symposium this July. It’ll be online, and how appropriate for us to do a symposium on virtual reality accessibility in virtual environments. It’ll be challenging because they’re not all accessible, but we’re coming up with ways. So, that’s July 20, and people can learn about it at xraccess.org, and you’ll be able to attend, at least now that we’ll be online, a lot more people can attend than would have in person. So, that’s one benefit we’re seeing.
Bryan:
Was that on Roosevelt Island last year?
Larry:
Yes, it was.
Bryan:
I like right by there.
Larry:
It was so much fun.
Jeff:
It’s really exciting for me to hear about this. I started thinking, I’d like to sit down and play with Mead Lux Lewis or something or virtual reality. Seeing during this lockdown, a lot of bands are coming on, and they have the lag… When you mentioned cutting down lag time with 5G, we really need to see musicians or music teachers with virtual reality to interact with no lag time. Yeah, just the options, it’s really neat that you’re looking into that.
Larry:
Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. I’m a huge fan of all kinds of music, and seeing what… The music industry is hurting so badly, even before the coronavirus, and they’re making the best of it with a lot of great concerts. Yeah, they’re kind of hurting. We’d all love to go to some shows, but the way the technology is now working, where you can have people all of the world synchronized and performing together, it’s pretty awesome.
Bryan:
Now, obviously we’re all going through this coronavirus, how is it affecting things at Verizon Media Group? Is it just slowing things down? Are people getting creative with new ways to work together?
Larry:
It’s a little scary. It’s not slowing down, it’s speeding up. 98% of our staff is working from home, so some people have to be there to maintain the servers. But, we’re all operating online, we’re producing… For instance, Yahoo Finance is doing eight hours, bell to bell live coverage, and they’re still doing it. They worked out their production from home within a week. So, we’re still up and running on almost everything that we were doing anyway. Maybe the production value isn’t as phenomenal as it would’ve been in the studio, but we’re out there in the world. So, we’re not slowing down. We all wish we could be back together again, but no, we’re up and running. Verizon Corporate is doing daily messages online to everyone. The CEO, Hans Vestberg is all in on making sure that everyone’s safe and still serving all of our users. And in Verizon Media, we haven’t really slowed down at all. Actually, it’s more intense. If you’re working from home, unfortunately the dividing line between work and home went away. So, I’m on the East Coast, I’ve got my team on the East Coast, West Coast, and I get timezones don’t mean anything anymore. We don’t know what day it is and we don’t know what time it is, so we’re just going forward.
Bryan:
I can attest to that because I was fortunate enough to be invited to an event that VMG put on last year, and it was really cool. You guys were zipping around on the screens from New York to Sunnyvale, and I believe Hong Kong even.
Larry:
Probably Taiwan maybe?
Bryan:
Taiwan probably, yeah.
Larry:
Maybe Hong Kong.
Bryan:
It was Taiwan. That was a fun day and everything.
Larry:
We so appreciate your coming there, Bryan. You grabbed our CEO guru, you handled him beautifully. I got to tell you, that video is a marvel of a consumer giving input to the top decision maker with a beautiful mix of complements and advice, and I think it went really far.
Bryan:
I was just happy my guide dog was well behaved.
Larry:
Oh, everyone loves dogs.
Jeff:
I was glad Bryan was behaved.
Bryan:
That’s true. That’s true. I was on my best behavior.
Jeff:
I have great confidence in Wes.
Bryan:
Well also, you’ve got to touch on how do you think… Obviously coronavirus and really for lack of a better phrase, the new world order, how do you think it’s going to impact people with disabilities when we get out and about again?
Larry:
It’s the most vulnerable community and we’re doing our best to heighten the stories of the people who are impacted the hardest. I don’t like the phrase the new normal. This isn’t going to be normal. We’re going to keep changing constantly as we adapt to whatever is going to be hitting us and how we’re going to try to incorporate this into the way we live. But, for people with disabilities, it’s hard. We just put a story on Yahoo live about this deaf man in Arizona, who thought he was having a heart attack and he couldn’t talk to the EMTs, they all were wearing masks and he’s a lip reader. He took it to the next level, his wife helped out, but they pulled out a tablet and started using the speech recognition. He knows the local fire chief in Prescott, Arizona. He then, within a week, had every EMT carry a tablet with them just in case someone couldn’t communicate properly.
Larry:
So, maybe we can use this opportunity where tech is coming into play to help us get through this situation and realize good tech, accessible tech, well designed tech is essential for everyone, not only people with disabilities where it’s a lifeline, but it’s going to help us all get through it. But, right now we’re really paying attention to the fact that the vulnerable populations, people with mental health issues who need to be getting their therapy, physical therapy, mental therapy, are the ones that we need to pay heightened attention to, and learn from. Because as we’re hearing, there’s a lot of people with disabilities who’ve lived their lives online for quite a while. So, it’s like, “Yeah, we were ready for this in some ways.” Then, the video conferencing services bringing in captioning, accessible user interfaces. I think it’s ratcheting up both the need and the response.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think it’s really great. You guys are building this from the beginning with the developers, it’s baked in. It sounds like you’re building systemic cultures within companies, not just your own company but you’re really fostering it to happen everywhere and bring them all together and sharing in the great community for accessibility. So, hats off to what you’ve been doing, Larry. It’s been great talking to you and what results from all this is nothing but beneficial to the blindness community, and everyone with disabilities.
Larry:
Well, we always want to stay in touch with you and our other friends in the blindness communities. We’ve always learned so much, from my earliest days with descriptive video service. You may know people like Bryan Charlson and Kim Charlson They were there from ACB, from the first minutes of us developing these new technologies, and they keep us true.
Bryan:
and I just have to say, thanks so much for everything all your team members do other at Verizon Media Group and trickling down to Yahoo and the Huffington Post because they have really been the leaders, and a lot of other companies are starting to come on board with accessibility now. I know I spend hours upon hours on that Yahoo Fantasy app, and during this time with no sports, it’s amazing how much you can get done with no sports and B, no fantasy sports.
Larry:
I hope you’re making a few bucks there too. You probably can do some betting there. You’re a more advanced user than most, so make a few bucks for yourself.
Bryan:
Oh yeah, I’ve came in second place in my Yahoo pro league last year. So, yeah, you guys offer free leagues as well as the pro leagues. I actually was signed up for a Yahoo pro league for baseball, and I said, you know what maybe I should just drop out just in case. Yeah, we’ll see what happens here now with them talking.
Jeff:
I have to say that the fantasy football app from Yahoo, Bryan’s the commissioner of it, and he’s able to set up the entire league. We have an entire blind owner league going, Blind Abilities league, and it works. We’re doing it, and we’re not amazed anymore, we just use it because now it’s competition. So, I have to say that it’s awesome.
Larry:
That’s great. It’s so good to hear, and you can be sure that our friends who are developing that over at Fantasy are going to hear about it. They love to hear from you guys.
Jeff:
Yeah, we almost started a second league, I just didn’t have the time for another league because we had so many listeners who want to get in and everything. So, I don’t know, we’ll have to see what we do this year. Well, Larry, this has been such a treat for us to have you on Blind Abilities and That Blind Tech Show. We’re just absolutely thrilled with having you on, and just amazed at your commitment and all the work you do.
Larry:
Well, it’s my great pleasure. I thank you for giving me a good job to go to every day.
Jeff
Thank you, Larry.
Bryan:
Thanks, Larry.
Jeff:
Such a great time talking to Larry Goldberg on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Be sure to check out Verizon Media Group. Go to the show notes and you can find all the links. Be sure to check out your state services for the blind, your voc rehab, and see what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. And most of all, I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff:
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