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TRANSCRIPTUSBLN

OCTOBER 2, 20133:45 P.M. PST

Digital Accessibility in the 21st Century Workplace: the Imperative Plenary

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>> Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Our program is about to begin. Please silence your cell phones as well. Thank you.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the program manager accessibility and diversity for Starbucks, Marthalee Galeota.

(Applause.) >> MARTHALEE GALEOTA: Hello, hello.I hope that we are keeping you caffeinated. I'm from

Starbucks. And with these marathon days, I know you need a little something extra. Seattle weather has changed so I switched to the hazelnut macchiato but here in L.A. the caramel Frappucino is good. I hope you enjoyed your Braille card you got in your registration bag to get something to drink. This next session is about digitally quality. Who here in the room knows about web accessibility? I see probably about 30-40 hands. How many people in the room would say that your Web site, your company's Web site is 100% accessible? Not as many hands in the room. But maybe 5 or 6.

Okay. So you're in the right place.We're here to talk about Deque. And I'm not talking about

-- I'm not talking whether the ice cream and Dairy Queen but I'm talking about the company d-e-q-u-e, which started back in 1999 and has quickly become a market leader in digital accessibility. So some of the -- they have three really huge components. One is called world space, which is an enterprise testing tool and

© 2013 US Business Leadership Network. All rights reserved. 1

remediation tool. Fire eyes is another one, which is a free plug in testing. And then amaze -- you like the aims of these programs that they have. It's new software which is used for triaging accessibility in a remediation tool and they received an award in June of 2013 this year for that. And it was the computer world 21st century achievement award for innovation.

So I want to tell you a little bit about Preety who is going to talk with you. She is the CEO and cofounder. Yes, she has fire in her eyes and she is amazing the world with the things that she's doing. Pretty was the -- has a position of Vice Chair of the GSA sponsored accessibility forum. She serves on the board of the international association of accessibility professionals and the Yes, I can foundation. She's also a member of the World Wide Web consortium. And a member of women in engineering and yes, it goes on and on and on. Women in technology. Northern Virginia Technology council. The IEEE, the association of computing machinery. I just thought der and she also contributed to a book with the United Nations G3 ICT. If you don't know Web site accessibility, this is all related to that. She knows her stuff.

She is somebody who can talk to me as a layperson about Web site accessibility because sometimes it's not so easy. I mean, you do want your Web site to be compatible with adaptive equipment like screen readers. And you also want to make sure that your flicker rate is not over the rate that can inadvertently induce seizure. But she can talk to you about how to make things work in real layman's terms and talk right around and talk to the IT expert in language that I have no idea what she's talking about and I need an interpreter. So she has a power packed presentation for us. Let's give a warm welcome to Preety

(Applause)>> PREETY KUMAR:.Thank you, Marthalee.Unbelievable. Well, I have to add to the list of my

credentials the latest and greatest. I'm on the board of USBLN! Yoohoo! That's amazing. You know, I want to thank Marthalee for the wonderful glowing introduction that embarrassed me. But more importantly, I want all of you to know how lucky Starbucks is to have Marthalee.

Before digital accessibility became anything that we all knew about, she got the program started at Starbucks.

They're lucky. So take a bow, Marthalee.(Applause.)Before I tell you about digital accessibility, why it's

important, why your companies should be doing something about it, I would like you to meet Todd Waites. Todd, if you would, he's


the newest employee in the Deque family who just happens to have a disability and he's goings to tell you a little bit about his life and then I'll tell you about digital accessibility after that.

>> TODD WAITES: Thank you.(Applause).So all of you that can see me, I know what you're thinking.

And to all of you who can't see me, let me explain what they're looking at. I'm not very attractive person with crazy hair and face hair.

So now that you have that visual, I know you're thinking wow, that Bethany Hamilton, that girl from Soul Surfer -- I'm sorry, I broke something. Ha. That ghoul from Soul Surfer that got her arm bit off by a shark that they made the movie about, she's really not aging very well, is she? She is looking rough.

So with that said, let's start with a song, a song we all know, okay?

if you're happy and you know it stomp your feet. That gets them every time. So yes, I am Todd Waites, I'm with Deque Systems and it is such an amazing honor to be here with you folks

I'm in business development. I spend my days, my career is based on evangelizing and convincing people that accessibility is important.

That they should care, that they should do it for the right reasons. And we're surrounded with people that get that.

Not because you have to, but because you want to.I want you to look at your neighbor and applaud them.(Applause.)thank you. I thank you. What you're doing truly matters.

And within Deque, we are filled with people all over our company, every single person shares that same passion. But I have to tell you it's not for everyone. It's for each one.

And we truly adopt that. We truly mean that. So why I'm here, I just want to take a few moments to encourage you. And I want to say right off the bat that I know we all have a story. I know that we have all faced adversity. And would guarantee that most of you if not all of you have a much more exciting story than I do. But there is a very distinct difference between you and I. They gave me a microphone.

(Laughter)So look at that same neighbor or a different neighbor that

you just applauded and say "You're different." Now say, "cool that's cool. I'm different too."On top of working for Deque, I also had this amazing

privilege in life to go to schools and different events and I speak to 10,000 people a month average and it's very, very


rewarding for me and I always walk away more inspired by them than what I feel that I instill in other people. And I speak about a lot of things, self-acceptance, overcoming obstacles, into anti-bullying, anti-suicide. And I also have a family. I have a beautiful wife who I still can't believe ever gave me her phone number. She can't believe she gave me her phone number. I have three children. 24, 20 and 5. Life is really interesting. And people wonder how do you fit all this in. Dang! If you take five 5-hour energy drinks a day, you don't waste your time on sleep and you gain an extra hour every day.

(Laughter)But a big topic that I talk about is the fact that we really

are all different in some way or another. All of us. The myth is that that's a bad thing.

People don't want to be different. But man, it is a blessing to be different. If everything tasted the same, if everything looked the same, if every song was the same, if every single note was the same, life would be pretty boring.

Now, there's a detail that you probably don't know is normally when I speak, I have a musical keyboard in front of me. I'm a keyboard player. And I started playing when I was four years old on a big Phantom of the Opera granny looking wood grained side equivalent of a wood grained side station wagon with that awkward seat that faces the wrong way. I started on that. But I knew at a very young age that I had a dream. My dream was to be a keyboardist, a musician. It was the only team I ever had and it never changed. And who would have known at 14 years old when I was playing football and I broke my arm that cancer would show up on the x-ray? That my arm -- my bone was so riddled with cancer that they had to remove my whole arm, my whole shoulder, I was given an 18 month schedule of chemotherapy, was told that I probably wouldn't make it. That was 31 years ago. That is awesome!

but who would have known. But when I woke up one day with one arm, there was no difference. Absolutely no difference. My dream was the same. And it wasn't to be a hand model. So that worked out really well. So since then, we'll fast forward to what has happened between then and now is I've toured all over the world. I've had the tour busses -- I've been in a lot of different bands. I've recorded CDs, live DVDs, the keyboard player from Bon Jovi cut off the tip of one of his fingers and I got to coach him on how to make up for that. This little small potatoes guy got to do that. I've been on a lot of different news outlets and today really get to just share this story of hope with folks like you. With your children, with your neighbors, and it is so much an honor to do that. And -- but I have to tell you that it wasn't always this way. There


definitely was a time that I hated myself. I hated looking in the mirror. I hated seeing my scars, which are now reminders every day of why I'm here and it is to help people. But I hated that. So something obviously changed. What it was making the choice that we all have. We can dwell on what we don't have, or we can be very happy and grateful for what we have. We all wish that we can do something somebody else can do, we all wish that we had things that somebody else has. We wish we so run faster. But there are people that wish they could even get up and walk.

People wish they could see better. There are people who wish they could even see at all. So we have a choice to be happy about what we have. And believe me, I am grateful for this hand but people try to knock me down. People told me I couldn't. I got daily reminders when I was in school that I was different. And back then, I didn't know that that wasn't a bad thing. And as much as I tried to block them, I would put my finger in my ear and say la la la, but this ear was always open so they would -- I couldn't avoid it.

(Laughter)My desire to chase dreams had to become bigger than their

desire to stop me.And I'm not -- this is the most important thing I could tell

you is that I'm not bragging about what I've done. I'm bragging about the fact somebody that faced adversity with the will of a giant achieved really cool things. You guys with me? Awesome

(Applause.)Thank you. So my dream job Deque. Now, with my employment

with Deque, started with my ability to do cartwheels or clap really loud. I probably would have had to go look elsewhere.

And a lot of us don't know that's what it is like for folks with varying disabilities to work for a company.

So what I mean is a company can be extremely passionate about hiring folks with disabilities. And that is awesome. But they may not know that they don't have the operational tools to do so.

If you look at the process, if you take a step back, finding the job online, clicking that career opportunity, applying for the job, getting the job and being on-boarded, accessing the HR portal, getting your benefits information -- that can be the equivalent of me doing a cartwheel. I promise you, identifying out a way to do it. But I promise you somebody else would do it better and that person would get the job. Or maybe I would give up. We have as close to the silver bullet for this as possible. So with that, I'd like to introduce my friend and our CEO again. I don't have as good an introduction as you did. But all the stuff that she said, this is her.

(Laughter)


(Applause.)?>> PREETY KUMAR: He's the funny one. Okay? I'm not. But thank you, Todd.

So like each one of us, each one of you, like Todd, this has been a long journey for me. Digital accessibility. Online accessibility, mobile accessibility has been my passion and Deque's mission for 10 years.

So what got me here? I think it's important for you to know what every Deque person feels like because it comes from me. I got into accessibility from a deep sense of justice. Okay? I accidentally fell into accessibility. I didn't know what I was doing, you know? I got a little calendaring application in 2000 that I was porting to a cell phone. And I started reading these standards online. The same difficulties it was a 4 by 12 screen, no mouse, keyboard only. I said oh, God, what a nightmare, all right.

But the deep sense of justice that comes from a different place. I actually think I got into this field because of my mother. So my mother was this person who could not tolerate discrimination of any sort. She would not stand for it. Arrogance had no place in our house at all. She wanted to make sure that me and my sisters understand that we have to live each day of our life by giving the most of what we've got and living to our the best of our potential, whatever that may be. We had a seal but it was our pen -- ceiling but it was our potential and we had to give. How did she go about doing this for us? Every other weekend, every other weekends we would have kids coming from the local orphanage from the house. They would spend the weekend with us, kind of like a foster child thing. They would spend the weekend with us. We would understand their difficulties, their life and we would end up feeling really lucky to have such loving parents. Right? Now the weekend that we were not having these kids come from the orphanage, one day of the week we would go to the local school of the blind. And this is since I was a little kid. So we would go and we would start the day off in the Dehli School of the Blind on a Saturday morning and we would distribute food, breakfast to the entire student population. After that, we would go to classes with them, you know, help the teachers, we would be the helpers in the classrooms. And I remember so distinctly there were three classes that were taught. Number one: Candle making. Number 2: Basket weaving. Number 3: Masala making. For those of you who don't know it, it's like ground spices, okay?

but those were the only three jobs that somebody who was blind at that time could get.

So I was very upset as a child. I said how come they don't get to go to school like we do? So my mom said well, you know,


they can't get to the books, they can't get to the knowledge that you guys have. And that was good enough for me.

You know? That answer was good enough. And then she said well but you know what? You're really helping them because I could -- you know, I think she could tell how I felt. It was so disappointing. She said well that's good enough because you're helping them. What you do is helping them become independent productive adults.

And that's very important. So I said okay, great, fantastic. But remember, the career choices they had back then candle making, basket weaving and masala making, kind of weird. I know, let me fast forward a little bit. The year was 2002. I had spent the previous three years of my life in my basement coding this software first generation software called Ramp. And I toiled you how I fell into this accidentally but reading the standards

A.I felt I could out mate this, right? And the idea of Ramp was digital ramp, right? So I was bankrolling the payroll by putting a second mortgage on my house. And then when that kind of ran out, those funds ran out, I said okay, well, let me get a credit card so I put the next payroll on the credit card. When that credit card was maxed out, I got another credit card to pay the first credit card and continued so on and so forth. And like you know, Mr. Richard Marriott, the distinguished guest, the keynote speaker at lunch said yesterday, no journey, getting there isn't easy, right? No journey is easy. But not for a moment. You won't believe it because it was tough. But not foray moment did I believe this journey was difficult. And the reason for that is because I was on a mission and I had a cause and there was just -- you know, it was easy.

And I could not believe -- because 2002, the Internet was beginning to explode. We were living online. We were living -- well we were beginning to do a lot online. The World Wide Web, the biggest game changer since the printing press, the greatest equalizer where knowledge could be in the hands of many, right? It would be a shift of power once again, it was great. It was not accessible to people with disabilities. I could not believe it. It was not okay, right? But I also knew on -- with the effort of Internet operators, all of us, we could actually fix this pretty easily. We would get people with disabilities have access to education, knowledge, and jobs.

That simpleWell, again, in the year 2002, to the relief of my husband

and my family, I finally managed to start selling this desktop product Ramp, right? And I paid off the credit cards and we could all breathe again.


You know? He once told me that you'll be giving access to the world but we won't have access to the house.

You know?(Laughter).We would have lost the house. I was like okay.I did some projections and I figured out we could hire our

first employee. Great moment. So I get this resume. Penn State University, Penn State people? No. Okay. Well, I have no affiliation to Penn State except this resume I got. Penn State University. Masters in -- a master's thesis in assistive technology and web accessibility. This was an emerging field. Who got a masters in that. I was shocked. I said I have to check this guy out. I did a phone screening and wow, he was good. He knew the subject matter so then I said okay, let me give him a test and I sent him a very complicated 3-page Web site and I said go fix it. Make it accessible and get it back to me. He did and he passed with flying colors and I said well, okay. You know, I'm slow to hire, fast to fire. I'm a smart business woman. I'm going to get him in for a face-to-face. So I call him up and I say okay, I've been going through the dates in the calendar and we nailed down a date and time that I was going to interview him. Then after a moment of hesitation, he's on the phone with me after one moment of hesitation, he says, "Can you pick me up at the bus station in D.C.?" I said sure, no problem.

You know?And then he says and by the way, can I bring my wife with

me? And I thought weird dude. You know, but Okay. Fine, bring your wife. Whatever.

I was taken aback for sure.But it didn't dawn on me that he was blind. Okay? And I

was in the field, right?It was one thing to access knowledge and content on the

Internet. It was fight another thing, I thought -- quite another thing I thought back then to code. How can somebody sit in an editor and do syntax checks and debugging? It seemed a little complicated to me, right?

Well, he was our first employee with a disability and he has taught me a lot. Okay? Since then we've hired a number of people with disabilities and I have learned from them and from just learning in the field there's nothing that you cannot do -- that they cannot do as long as they have access to information.

That's it. As long as we do our bit.And all of you are here -- all of you are here because you

believe in hiring people with disabilities. I understand that. And I think I've talked to all -- a lot of you for the last couple of days and I think you are here because you believe not


in lib service, but you believe in actually doing it all the way, going all the way, you know, doing it right.

And I think you do that because you want to work for a company that cares.

Right? And we all want to work with, for companies that we can trust to do the right thing. All right. So I mean that's what I've learned here. And I look around the room and I think about it. You know, again, I've talked to a lot of you. A lot of us have benefited from companies doing the right thing. So women for example -- how many women, I can't even tell. Quite a few women, right? Can you believe it? Until 100 years ago we were considered property. Zune that we could not vote until 1920? Do you know that we make up 50% of the workforce now? African-Americans. In August of 1963, the March for jobs and freedom made sure that we could all have access to jobs right? And now the LGBT community is having the same access because of companies that did the right thing. But a word of caution. Good intentions, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So we have to do something and not just talk about it, all right if how does digital accessibility play a role. I'm going to turn on my screen, I think. Can you see the screen? Great. Yeah, perfect. All right. When we talk about making the digital world accessible, that means ensuring web applications, mobile Web sites are usable by people with disabilities. People who are blind, people who are color blind. People with dexterity problems, all kinds of disabilities can use, enjoy, interact with Web sites just like everybody else.

A lot of people with disabilities use something called assistive technology. How many of you have heard the term technology? A lot of you. It's hardware, software that helps translate, accommodate, and make information accessible to people with disabilities. A very come example of this is somebody who is blind will use a Korean reader that recites a web page out loud -- a screen reader that recites a web page out loud. What somebody would read, it recites it out loud. So how do we go about opening it up and making hiring of persons with disabilities easy and mainstream in no longer one off thing that somebody does because you know, they're good hearted people here that recommended them. Make it mainstream. How? The same way the rest of us live it. Apply for a job, we get on boarded. We're able to do the job with software and we're able to get promoted. Those are the four functions of a career, a successful career, you get hired, you get on-boarded. You do your job well, you get promoted.

And you move up.


Okay. . Well, you know, if I'm in HR, I'm going to want access to my ERP. If I'm in sales, I will want access to my CRM. Don't you love all the acronyms? All right.

But I want to personalize this for you a little bit.Tell you what the experience is really like.So let me introduce you. I created some personas. Meet

sergeant Damon. He's in his early 30s. He's married. He is has a two-year-old son. He has dexterity problems. He's a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

And let's talk a little bit more about him. I'm going to give you some background. Sgt. Damon recently lost both his arms to an IED explosion. He returned home to Alabama and has been trying to readjust to this new reality. He got vocational training in computers and uses a computer keyboard using a mouth stick.

That means no mouse.He got recruited by a retailer who was hiring veterans with

disabilities. And now he works in the retail store answering questions, you know, looking up product questions. Scheduling deliveries. And I don't know how many of you have been to a physical, but I guess most people go to a physical store sometimes still, right? Okay. You've been to a physical store. What happens is when you walk in and you say oh, can you help me? The person says sure. And they pull up their Web site. So it's not a separate little system that they used to use. It's the Web site and they'll do everything there.

So that's what happened to sergeant Damon and I'm going to show you a couple things. Getting the job done. Training was not accessible. But Damon managed to get into a classroom where he was taught what needs to be done. Now, he couldn't go back like the rest of us and do a refresher. So he had to get it in one time. All right? Training was not accessible. He couldn't sign up for benefits because none of the benefit portals or the -- you know, time sheet, none of that was accessible. But he got Keith, his boss who had brought him in, nice guy, to do it for him. Well, who needs privacy anyway, right? It's overrated.

Okay. So his day one on the job. What happens? I'm going to show you. Well, maybe I'm going to show you.

So this is his retail Web site. Can everybody see the Web site? Sergeant Damon is using a keyboard alone, he comes in, he's tabbing, tabbing. Suddenly there's no focus on the Web site. I don't know where I am. He doesn't know where he is, of course, he says.

Tab -- do you know where he is? Can you tell where the focus is? It's definitely not visible.

But sergeant Damon is smart. He looks at the status bar and says I'm in the cart. Okay. The customer told me I want to


schedule a delivery and he knows the way to do that is to go to the contact form on the Web site and fill out a form. That's what he's trying to do. But it took him a little while because he couldn't see what the visual focus was. Finally he's at the contact -- well no, not really sure. Where is he? Oh, he's on the search. Okay.

Home, well that means it's gone right past the menu. I'm going to go back. Hmm.

Hmm. Where am I? Okay.He figures it out. Contact. He goes there.Whew.Okay. Let's do this again. I know where I am this time

around. Okay. I need to go to the form. And this calendar pops up.

Guess what? It's a keyboard trap. He can't get out of it. He has to call Keith again. What a frustrating first day on the job. Not good.

All right. That's Sgt. Damon. I'm going to introduce you to Alicia.

Meet Alicia.She's in her late 20s. She's divorced with a 5-year-old

child. She's blind. She's a UVA post graduate and she's a cancer survivor.

Okay?Let me tell you a little bit more about Alicia. She

graduated with a master's degree in chemical engineering and married her college sweetheart.

She was working at a Fortune 500 company, bright career, ambitious woman. She was going to move up. UVA is not an easy school to get into, so she must have been bright. And she's going through life. She decides she's going to start a family. A lot of us women have to do that, take a break, but, you know. she was going to start a family, daycare worked out and she had a daughter.

Soon after she had a daughter, she was diagnosed with para nasal cancer. She lost her eyesight but successfully fought the cancer her husband could not deal with a blind wife and left.

She's just starting to put her life together. It was tough, but she needs to do this for her daughter. She learned how to use a computer with JAWS and screen readers, she's good to go and ready to apply for a job.

So what does she do? She applies for a job online like the rest of us, right? Take a good look at this picture. This is a map. Very often on Web sites we'll find a map that says select where you live and you'll get the job listings in your area. How nice. How personalized. I love it. All right. I do. I'm not


kidding. I do. But let's see what it's like for Alicia. If you could please turn the screen off.

It is off. Perfect.Because you want to have this real experience, right? All

of you. Okay. Great. I just wanted to make sure. All right. I'm going to turn voice over on. It's a screen reader

>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .voiceover on Chrome fortune 100 energy company. Window HTML

content has keyboard focus.>> PREETY KUMAR: .I do have to tell you something. I went to 20 Web sites of

Fortune 100 companies.>> You're currently on HTML content. To enter the web area,

press shift down arrow, voice over off?>> PREETY KUMAR: .Everything you're hearing here is will real. I have edited

it so there can be anonymity. I don't want to embarrass anybody. Everybody is trying hard. The point is to show you what it's like, right? What are the barriers. But it's like 20 Web sites in 20 phone calls, you'll see.

>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .voiceover on Chrome fortune 1 zero zero company, HTML

content.>> PREETY KUMAR: .I'm in the right place.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .skip to main content.>> PREETY KUMAR: .Oh, my God. The first indication this company is taking

care to involve me.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .HTML content to press the link press control option space>> PREETY KUMAR: .I click skip to main content?>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .visited link company. List six items.>> PREETY KUMAR: .It didn't work. It wasn't coded right. It didn't work.

But it's there.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .link consumers, link media visited link investors, visited

link careers.>> PREETY KUMAR: .Ah, careers. Enter?>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .


link skip to main content. Visited link energy company keyboard search visited link home list six items

>> PREETY KUMAR: .I have to do this all over again because the skip to main

content doesn't work. So just -->> SCREEN READER VOICE: .you're on a link inside a list to press this link click

control option space>> PREETY KUMAR: .Just like somebody blind you have to listen to the links.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .link consumers, link media, visited link investors, link

careers.>> PREETY KUMAR: .But I'm on the careers page, am I not?>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .contact us, energy, safety, link community and development,

link about us. Link skip to main content. Visited link career opportunities, list one item, link, employment policies, list one item. Link HR, link explore our history. Link five items, programs, link safety, link Twitter, link YouTube. Visited link view punts

>> PREETY KUMAR: .View opportunities. That's what I want. View

opportunities. That's what I want.>> Weight, height, scroll,?>> PREETY KUMAR: .What?>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .visited link image.>> PREETY KUMAR: .That doesn't work, sorry, guys?>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .visited link home, link consumers, link media. Visited link

investors. Visited link careers. Link contact us. Link energy and technology. Link safety and environment. Link community and development. Link about us. Visited link skip to main content. Link career opportunities list link employment policies. List one link HR list one item. Link explore our history. List link programs. Link safety. Link Twitter, link YouTube.

>> PREETY KUMAR: I'm getting close.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .link global Web sites, list two items, link contact us, link

copyright, list five items>> PREETY KUMAR: Copyright?


>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .link terms and conditions>> PREETY KUMAR: Terms and conditions, that Sounds like I'm in the footer.

That entire image you saw.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .to click this link>> PREETY KUMAR: Not available. I'm frustrated.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: .link privacy policy. Visited link accessibility.>> PREETY KUMAR: Oh, they have an accessibility link on their Web site. I'm

going to get some help.>> SCREEN READER VOICE: accessibility has one accessibility statement. If you have

visited our site on search of information on U.S. employment opportunities and you require an accommodation please con us at 800555-5555.

>> PREETY KUMAR: I changed the number of rest is all accurate. Turn the

screen on please? >> SCREEN READER VOICE: you're inside PowerPoint,.PPTX PowerPoint slideshow

voiceover off.>> PREETY KUMAR: I turned voiceover off. Applying to the job didn't work too

well, did it online. But I have a phone number to call. Let's do it. Ready.

>> Familiar with screen readers or any type of web accessibility.

>> Unfortunately, I'm not.>> PREETY KUMAR: Is the company?>> Um, I can't -- can you see at all.>> PREETY KUMAR: 100% visually impaired.>> We don't have any way for vision impaired people to

utilize our Web site. Do you have a friend that could help you?>> PREETY KUMAR: The recording was very, very poor. So I'm going to repeat.

The context was she called the number that was in the accessibility page. And Alicia said, "I'm blind, I'm trying to apply for a job online."

And the person on the other end said, "Okay, you know, so are you totally visually impaired?" And she goes "100% visually impaired. Do you know screen readers?" She's not familiar with


and she says you know, our Web site is not designed to work for people who are blind. Do you have a friend who can help you? This is real.

by the way, this is not the exception. We called 20 companies out of the Fortune 100. And most were very similar. Some said we'll return your call. Three days later, no response.

So you know, around -- I guess let me shift gears a little bit. This is pretty intense, right? You guys are feeling wow.

Around three years ago after eight years of working with Fortune 500 companies and large government institutions, I tried to reflect on what we had achieved. And I realized not much. One billion pages are produced daily. Most of them inaccessible. Why is that? The -- we're using the battle. So I want us to think about why the progress is so slow. And I guess I started to really think about the realities in Fortune 100, 500 companies. Your companies. Web pages, Web sites are complex beasts. Hundreds of people touching it, contributing to it. Doing stuff. There's some legacy stuff that nobody wants to touch. There's some legacy stuff where you know the developers are dead. You definitely don't want to touch that, right? It's all under one corporate brand. The other problem it's not all yours. Third party content from everywhere. Okay? I bet most of your job portals are not your applications. They're actually provided by other vendors, most of them. Makes it hard to sync up, you know? then I realized people were making an effort to train their developers, their QAI their content contributors. But training is a massive exercise, right? You have people on shore, offshore, distributed, everything you can imagine, right? And it's like security. Accessibility is like security. You always have to fix it, test it, and repeat. Shampoo rinse and repeat, all the time. So this is stuff, you know? and as I started thinking about this, I said from that day onward to my team, we've got to figure something else out. I don't want to hear anything about reports. Because until then we were producing reports, giving these reports to people to go fix and nothing was getting fixed, right? Because people were busy, all this other stuff that I talked about.

I told my team, I said, the only metric I care about from this day onwards is how many pages have we fixed? I don't want to hear anything else. Luckily, they take me seriously every now and then.

They took up the challenge. They created a maze, our chief inventor at Deque invented a product -- invented a product called Amaze, no change to underlying code. It's like Saran wrap on top of a Web site that fixes the issues while the page is being sent to normal users without having any visual change to the page for the most part. Except where you saw the focus. In that case you


may want a visual change. The page will be -- it will go and get the stuff that, you know, you need to make it accessible as an overlay in the browser. No change. I guess that's the closest thing to a silver bullet but it's not quite the silver bullet. I would be lying if I told you it is.

There's no such thing. Yeah.Unfortunately.We all here understand how important digital accessibility

is with more of us doing more stuff online all the time.And I've been thinking about this meeting for the USBLN

conference for the last few days.You know, the opportunity of meeting the rock stores here,

all of you are rock stars, okay?Jill, Keith, Richard Marriott, and many, many more. And I

thought wow, the possibilities of this group going out there and carrying a message back to their companies, I need to be able to clearly distill down for you what you can do.

What are the next steps? What can you do? What can we do? Number one: Well, raising awareness is important because we all know how many of you really feel you get digital accessibility today? After this presentation? Okay. Some of you do. I'm glad. At least at the level of the barriers, right? You get the barriers now.

You need to go and get executive support. People like Richard Marriott, if they're aware of this, are not going to say ah, you know, what? I want to keep those people with disabilities out of my Web site. They're not going to do that. They're going to give you the funding, the support you need.

Number 2: Put issue complaint handling in place today. Why? Complaints equal risk. Why do I bring up risk? None of us need to be convinced of risk. We care. But you need allies in your companies. You need those compliance legal departments to be your allies. It's a good thing. And with a call like what Alicia made, what you heard, she went through the same very similar stages that you go through, your five stages of grief. Number one: Denial. Feeling alone. She felt alone.

Number 2: The next phase she went through was anger for not being heard. And the third thing she wanted to do was regain control, whether it meant filing lawsuit or whatever she had to do. You can put a rapid complaint handling in place, but it must have these components to it. It must provide a rapid -- I keep saying rapid because it's no point if you get WAC to somebody in three months. Empathetic. I hear you, I have actively heard your problem. I've analyzed and understood the nature of your problem.


Then you must equip them to make an informed response and get back to that person. No point if you get it and you don't tell them I get it. Right? Get back to them.

Then the third thing you have to do is provide a technology fix. To fix the problem quickly

so number two: Put some complaint handling in place.Number 3: Find out where you stand. Because a lot of you

know you're not 100% accessible but how many of you knew that your job portal is horrific? Not because you don't care, not because you're not trying to do something. So find out where you really stand.

And you know, don't do the whole thing. Don't say I'm going to undertake this massive project and do nuts to bolts everything. Eat an elephant a bite at a time. Find out, get a sampling.

Then you start prioritizing, get a roadmap, start fixing things that are important. It should help you. You can do prioritization on highly trafficked area, most visible. Whatever. You should do that. Prioritize and fix things that are important.

And finally, stop the bleeding. What I mean by stop the bleeding -- that sounds to horrific, you know? I mean stop the bleeding, what do you mean? New content is being created every day. Get your folks the training, the tools, expert help, basically make it systemic in your company.

And lastly, with mobile apps we have a unique opportunity. People with disabilities are going on mobile deviations and United Stating mobile -- devices and using mobile apps faster than you can imagine. We can get it right in the very beginning. Make your mobile apps accessible from the ground up.

I wanted to say thanks for listening. Thank you for your time. And together hopefully, we can make a difference and I hope I've given you a sense of where to start

(Applause.)Thank you.

>> RHEA NORWOOD: Let's give Preety another hand.A.A round of applause. Thank you. I don't know about you

but my eyes are a little more open.>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: And I have to say as a Microsoft

representative, it's -- I'm so glad you're opening those eyes. I think it's a subject that's dear to a lot of us. If there's one other thing to add to all these beautiful noises, check your Power Points, go to file, check issues, you'll be amazed how inaccessible you are. And it will tell you how to fix them.

Simple things can change the world.


So we're here to do the prizes and the awards!(Cheers and applause.) I'm Jenny Lay-Flurrie Rhea Norwood and I'm Rhea Norwood.

We have a terrible duo. We've been together for two days now. We're about to be separated. It's probably a very good thing at this point. So representing Microsoft, and Lowe's. Am I saying it right?

>> RHEA NORWOOD: Of course.>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Absolutely. I know there's a great

table here for Lowe's. we're here to present a couple awards. So let's get that moving. So first off we have an OfficeMax laptop overnighter from OfficeMax.

And the glamorous assistant is going to pull the yellow sheet. You're going to do it up in the air and do it --

>> RHEA NORWOOD: .I don't know. Let's see. From Highmark Health Services,

Phyllis Rupert. Phyllis are you in the room? Aha!>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Come on down.(Applause.)Congratulations. And the next we have two gift bags from

T.J. Maxx companies Inc. >> RHEA NORWOOD: PH must be really working. The U.S. Department of Veterans

Affairs, Phillip Moranin.>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Are you in the room?(Applause.)?>> RHEA NORWOOD: And the second one goes to Byron Kelly of Northrop Grumman.(Applause.)?>> RHEA NORWOOD: You don't have to because you get to pull one now. And I'm

really excited to say this one because I get to do something new. We have one Starbucks gift basket. And it's going to --

>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: Hang on. Hang on. It's a man thing today. David Bartish from Procter & Gamble.

(Applause.)And the other was Ron Kelly from Northrop Grumman. Is Byron

here? If not, we're going to pull again. Pull again!>> RHEA NORWOOD: Northrop Grumman is definitely getting the prize.>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: That's because they've got so many

people here. I'm going to say this wrong.Mim Cohen?>> RHEA NORWOOD: And now I think we're bringing Linda Engstrum from the

people department manager of Southwest Airlines.


>> LINDA ENGSTRUM: Hello, how are you all this afternoon? Hopefully, one of you is even going to be better because I'm going to pull a name for two round tip tickets anywhere that southwest flies. We are in our 43rd year of service. And we travel to 97 destinations. You can pick any one of those destinations. And that is in 41 states and the District of Columbia. And recently Puerto Rico. So, if you want to go to Puerto Rico, you can use these tickets any time within the next year. So let's see if we can pull our lucky winner.

>> RHEA NORWOOD: You come out of Charlotte, maybe, don't you? Now you do.>> LINDA ENGSTRUM: We do.>> RHEA NORWOOD: This is no name. Sorry.>> RHEA NORWOOD: Are you kidding me. Northrop Grumman again. Shannon

Nelson.>> LINDA ENGSTRUM: Congratulations.>> JENNY LAY-FLURRIE: We have a wrap for now? Have a

beautiful evening. Come back for the awards at 6:00. Reception starting at 7:15. See you there. Good-bye.

>> Starbucks winner are you still in here.>> Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we do need to ask if

everybody could please leave the ballroom because we need to prepare for this evening's gala. Thank you.

***This text is being provided in a rough draft format.

Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a

totally verbatim record of the proceedings.***


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