Sakai Virtual Conference Lightning Talk: A11Y Experiment
In my December 15 blog, “Sakai Virtual Conference – Accessibility Report Card” I referenced a super-cool, and super useful technology called Otter AI Auto-Captioning which the Sakai Virtual Conference organizers used to create real-time captioning for all of the presentations, including the five-minute Lightning Talk that I did titled, “A11Y Experiment”.
As a practical way of demonstrating exactly how this technology works, I thought I would share the transcript from my Lightning Talk, along with a link to the video of my presentation, so you can all see (and hear) for yourselves how good of a job Otter AI did at accurately transcribing everything.
To make it easy to spot the errors throughout the transcription, I have included any incorrect words or phrases in brackets prefaced by the word “incorrect”, which I immediately follow with the corrected word or phrase in a second set of brackets prefaced by the word “correct”.
The only other changes I made to the below transcript produced by the Otter AI Auto-Captioning tool were to add speaker names (which appear in parenthesis), fixed some references to proper nouns like Learning Experiences which needed to be capitalized, changed the size/type of font and added a few punctuation marks for ease of reading.
Otherwise, this is a pretty accurate reproduction of the original transcription right down to the timestamps which appear in several of the places where there were pauses or transitions between speakers.
Chris Knapp speaking during his session of the Sakai Lightning Talks.
To view a recording of my “A11Y Experiment” Lightning Talk, click here.
And if you are interested in trying out Otter AI Auto-captioning for yourself, click here.
“A11Y Experiment” Lightning Talk Transcript:
(MARTIN): Okay, now I want to introduce my friend, my new friend Chris Knapp. And I want to, I want to tell you a little bit about Chris because this is important to understand his presentation. Chris suffered late onset blindness in his early 20s, as the result of an autoimmune disorder that attacked his retinas. The current vasculitis, retinal detachments and multiple surgeries and procedures left him with a prosthetic eye and [incorrect: at] [correct: 80] over 200 vision in the lower periphery of his right eye, which resulted in him becoming statutorily blind. Starting with his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University and throughout his 15 plus year professional career, 15 plus year professional career, he's had to rely on assistive technology to do just about everything, including locating information, effectively communicating with others, and competing on the same level with, if not outperforming his non disabled sighted peers. A couple of years ago, after leaving the government sector, he started [incorrect: nap strategic] [correct: Knapp Strategic] and launched his accessibility, his [incorrect: access diversity] [correct: Accessiversity] accessibility, usability testing service, and his Tales of the reluctant [incorrect: wind] [correct: Blind] blog. He never planned to become disabled, let alone an advocate for the disability community, but now has an accessibility consultant, and through his blog, he has realized that he has a platform for helping advance the important conversation about different accessibility and disability related topics, including projects like the one he's recently started with Learning Experiences, and with [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai]. So I've really been impressed with Chris and what we practice together just to make sure everything was working. He's going to tell us about the ally experience, if that's how you all pronounce it. That's how I pronounce it. But Chris, you are ready, sir. If you're ready to start sharing or just talking to us, go ahead.
1:08:45
(CHRIS): Yeah, so I'm not sharing any slides. So I don't need the screen share. But can you hear and see me okay?
1:08:50
(MARTIN): You are great, sir. Go for it.
1:08:52
(CHRIS): Great. Awesome. And it's nice to see you again. Martin. I'm honored to be invited to be part of this, such an esteemed group. So for those of you that don't know, um, about a month ago, Learning Experiences contracted the services of my company [incorrect: nap strategic] [correct: Knapp Strategic] and [incorrect: access diversity] [correct: Accessiversity], which Martin mentioned is my accessibility and usability testing service to help out [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] with both accessibility related issues as well as with Quality Assurance. So when Dr. Chuck first pitched this idea of embedding me with the Learning Experiences [incorrect: in Sekai] [correct: and Sakai] QA testing group, I imagine, you know, something like Bear Grylls, the x Special Forces guy being dropped off into the middle of the jungle somewhere with only a basic survival kit and his instincts to fight his way out. And after all, that's the type of scenario that a blind or low vision user finds themselves in when they encounter a digital environment that, that for the first Time, as they work their way, you know, go through all the unfamiliar systems and screens and tools and with only their assistive technology and their instincts to help them see their way through. But that's kind of the point of this immersive experience, to assess how well the system's, tools, and processes being used by the [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] community work by having a blind user who knows nothing about [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] jump right into the middle of all this and see how well I can do to figure out you know, how to be a productive member of the [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] QA testing team. So, we're about a month in and so far, we have made a lot, quite a bit of progress. Of course, it certainly helps that the entire [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] community is supportive of this work, because I think you all understand something that most of my [incorrect: excessive versity] [correct: Accessiversity] clients find out, which is that accessibility equals better usability for all your customers. Now, I know I only have a few minutes to cover this topic. And I just wanted to touch on a few of the basic ground rules or tenets that I've been kind of sticking to as I go about this work. So the first one that I would say is that there's no shortcuts, this sort of immersive experience is supposed to be difficult. Although it may be very tempting to have someone throw you a lifeline, as soon as you get stuck. The point of this whole exercise is to, you know, methodically wake your way, work your way through these hard to solve problems, so that you can start to get a better idea at the root causes of what are causing these issues. The next point is that failure is okay, just as long as you continue to learn from your experiences. In my experiences, some of the best type of learning has occurred through trial and error. This is especially true when you're talking about evaluating a complex set of systems, processes, and tools, which, you know, are almost impossible to anticipate, planned for, simulate every possible testing condition. It's not uncommon for me, for instance, to test a feature over and over and over and over and over again, switching from one screen reader to another or alternating back and forth between web browsers. Because just because something works with one set of conditions present, or doesn't work, because of one set of conditions present doesn't mean that it won't work if you were to change those conditions. So it's always a moving target. It's like trying to pin down jello.
1:12:52
And again, it's a rather tedious way of doing things. But ultimately, this is the best way to learn how a system, or learn about a system, to try and try again. And again just as long as you document all those experiences. The third thing is to keep in mind is accessibility doesn't happen overnight. It requires a long term commitment. A while back, [incorrect: excess diversity] [correct: Accessiversity] introduced a new tagline to go along with our thumbprint graphic that's in our logo. The tagline, leave your print on a more accessible world. It's more than just some catchy slogan. It's a call to action for organizations and individuals to take a more active role when it comes to accessibility. We all have a role to play when it comes to making the [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] community accessible or helping to maintain systems, and processes, and tools once they've been made accessible, so we're going to need to continue to have everyone that's part of this [incorrect: Sekai] [correct: Sakai] community putting their fingerprints all over this project. So I'll stop there if folks have questions, or if you have anything else that you would like to ask Martin.
1:14:05
(MARTIN): That was, that was actually your timer {they – that} just went off. You timed that beautifully. That was, I'm impressed. And I'll just say to folks, Chris is a neat guy. And I'm so glad he's a part of [incorrect: this] [correct: the Sakai] community because he brings a, can I say, Chris, [incorrect: I] [correct: a] needed perspective. Is that [incorrect: a fair] [correct: fair]?
1:14:19
(CHRIS): Yeah, yeah. And we all have, we all have perspectives that we bring to this work. And so mine just happens to be, you know, related on accessibility and disability. Yeah. It makes for a rich learning environment.
1:14:34
(MARTIN): Indeed. We're glad you're here. All right. Yeah.
1:14:36
(CHUCK): This [incorrect: check it out. One final comment] [correct: is Chuck, can I have one five second comment?]
(MARTIN): [Incorrect: We've asked] [Correct: Be fast].
(CHUCK): Chris wasn't clear on it. I think maybe because he thinks everyone already knows it. My goal [incorrect: was being Christian] [correct: with bringing Chris in] was not just to make our product better, but to make our community better, make all of our, talked about processes. And his goal is to be not just an accessibility tester, but to be a community member, and to make our whole community and everything that we do be accessible.
(MARTIN): [Incorrect: Hair hair] [Correct: Here here], well said.