Please Don’t Let Accessibility Become the Next DEI in Tech - axe-con 2023
Alright, hi everybody thank you so much for coming to this debut talk, I've got house notes before a few we get started, first there are images in this presentation for more decorative images I have integrated into my descriptions narration, and for key images I will comment with an explicit description, for those following along with slides following the link for axicon I do have apologize there been been some changes made since then, working diligently with and I'm the axicon team to get the latest slide deck up for you. For all participants, a link to all of the references and resources made in this deck is available in the chat and will be shared at the end of the chat. And for my last note heads up that on the next slide there is a full slide moving GIF on loop. I want to make land acknowledgement to an indigenous raise awareness of the genocide and violence done to the people of turtle island. This gif generates the population in diminishing
what we call the united states from 1776 to 1930. Today I am presenting from unseated tomfool land, and I encourage you to get involved too by learning what native land you are on researching land back and missing murdered and indigenous women, girls, and two spirit movements, and if you are able, pay your land tax. Alright, gif is gone, and so let's talk about how we got here. In full transparency I
applied to axicon four months ago because I was wanted to mad. I make a spicy talk because of my daily 5 minutes of LinkedIn, for a straight week it seems like everyone had an opinion about the relationship between DEI diversity, inclusion. equity, and And web accessibility. Things like web accessibility needs to be part of DEI, and DI has no place in web accessibility. Other folks that get DI people to
do D11Y2. And lastly, your ethnicity marker like race gender ethnicity isn't important to your work. While some posts were insightful some of them also felt ignorant. They were posts from majority groups such as white cisgender male non disabled straight people, which are not the folks that I necessarily want to hear from first when it comes to either industry. And some would even shame or gaslight people for the same ideology that promoting on they were their post. So it begs the question, are It's 2023 we OK? the answer is no, but I digress. How can people who support equality
through one access of disability not extend the same support towards another access of identity like gender and race? And vice versa. And hence this talk. Hi, my name is Alexis Lucio are you she her pronouns. Some of you may know me, or my past work establishing an accessibility program at splunk as one of two full time employees dedicated to web accessibility. But you may not know, is prior to A11Y, I was deeply involved in resource groups. For those unfamiliar think of this as volunteer LED, company groups, backed affinity based on underrepresented such identities, as women, LGBTQ plus, people of color, and more. I participated in a queer arg
and co LED a That became resource group. one of the most engaged and visible ergs in 18 months. With the the midst pandemic in of it all. In fact, how I got the opportunity to work on a 11 Y was because of my passion for DEI. In holding many traditionally marginalized identities such as non binary, Latin X, first generation high school college grad, in my family. I am used to being undervalued and underestimated. And so, with my lived experiences worlds, in both and those who have shared their insights with me, come take this intersectional journey with me. We are going to level set, define what DEI
and A11YR, and how they began. We will then talk about the bottom line prioritizing profits over people, content Warning here, COVID-19, black death, and layoffs. We will then turn it to us, and talk about how we just can't blame corporate environments. Content Warning white supremacy, eugenics. spend We will the bulk of the presentation in the examples, go through some learnings based on those then wrap up examples, and with resources and takeaways for the next part of this journey. Content warnings will be repeated at
the beginning of their sections, and I have included visual and audio clues to help in case the content. I encourage you to do what's for you.. And so, let's level set. Based on my circles experiences and observations,
DEI equity, stands for diversity, and inclusion. It can combine other elements like belonging, DEIB, or EDI. justice, J Responsibilities include but are limited to to gathering limited stats, diversity retention of employees, and company training. In many cases, DEI is headed white woman by a whose job it is to hold status quo or a black woman whose expectation it is is to change the world as one individual. And DI is usually centralized in a company., compare that to web accessibility or its numerous A11Y, which is the practice of ensuring there are no barriers to by websites and applications people with disabilities. Be it a physical disability,
situational disability, or environmental, like socioeconomic Responsibilities status. include but aren't limited to, education, product remediation, policy making, and engaging with folks who have never heard of accessibility before. There is common paths to a team, like volunteer scattered departments, suddenly across spawning A-team due to reactive measures, or that leadership funds 1. And for an example of leadership funding the check out recording of alethea's talk scaling accessibility and accessibility design managers to help. A11Y teams are often decentralized, yet may centralized in more mature programs. Again, this is my
experience, and factors like company size, budget, self awareness of leadership can change this. And so in prepping for this talk, and talking to other people, I realized that some of the newest departments in corporate tech setting are D11Y 811 Y and DPI settings period and that they came from litigious beginnings. Dei corporate America comes from 1916 as a result of legislation from that decade, like the equal pay act, title 6 and seven of the civil rights act 1964, and the age description and employment act of 1967. Accessibility is all the same, with the rehabilitation act of 1973. The americans with
disabilities act in 1990, also known as ADA, and the rehabilitation amendment to the act of 1938 known as section 508. And so, I joke with people that dei prepared me for web accessibility because a the same lot of phrases that I have heard in dei came back to me in a 11 why. But now I feel oddly validated. For instance, someone would say
well you can do DI on top of your regular job right? And I want to call the hypocrisy here. Because if you're telling employee to take on a company extra work, and in the context of DI it's probably someone who has one or more marginalized identities, and then say that their work doesn't count towards promotion quote unquote, that's exploitation. I will give you an example. I had already transitioned to web accessibility work when during a department business rep encouraged junior designers take to quote unquote on leadership roles within employee research groups to gain promotion. I
was still an ERG lead at the time and I said if that's the case why was I discouraged from including my ERG work in the bonus packet, and why wasn't RG included newly in our released framework? The reply was well it's not directly related to being a designer. I provide this anecdote because I'm companies unfortunately do sure many the same. And I see a parallel with folks who have limited accessibility knowledge, or are interested in switching into the field but experience the same level of exploitation. The can quote you do web
accessibility on top of your regular right? Kyumak and next up we have we don't have time money or resources for dei right now, I hear this often doing employee resource work, and it's not that we lost on me don't have time or the resources for web accessibility right now, or accessibility in general, it's also a common phase. And lastly, the age old favorite, we'll deal with the lawsuit when it regardless comes. Which, of whether you are in DE or A11Y, this sucks to hear. When we think about it, out of the sense of single
cost, for single people, priorities shift period which leads me to our next section period at the bottom line here again, content Warning, black death, layoffs, this section lasts 5 minutes, until section 3, there are no triggering visual visuals just audio, you know your needs best. Now, this warrants its own section because as I web have experienced expressibility and dei share the same blockers, and there is no better example than the last three years. 2020 started with a global pandemic that forced many of us to work from home. Many disabled folks vocalized a benefit to remote work, including not having to worry about changing power wheelchairs every day, not having to put themselves in harm's immunocompromised way due to nation and public transit, and being able to just work in a way that benefited them, the advocacy physical accessibility allowed physical greater visibility to digital accessibility. Then in June 2020 came the murder of George Floyd. Suddenly,
people who worked in de I and were in employee resource groups had money that wasn't available prior. Task forces and solidarity groups were formed at work as well. And so, in the brief and anxiety of our new world, there was some long overdue flexibility and resources that And benefited all. that all came crumbling down as economic downturn and scarcity mentality hit this last fall. As fast as the
money came in, it it's gone. DEI and A11Y teams became some of the first people, or in the blueprints case team laid off. And there's a bunch of articles in the resource doc that support this motion. And,
speaking of resources there are substantial long standing data that trans disabled and black indigenous people of color, communities have a higher percentage of hospitalization and deaths from COVID-19 compared to their cisgender non disabled NYC commuter counterparts counterparts. Affects disenfranchised group, like trans, disabled, black employees. So not laying off dei only does and 11 wide teams and employees in a moment of crisis retraumatization these communities, it denies every employee from the teams that could provide the closest thing to a support system. In less words, we are worse off
than where we started. Now, what sparked this all? That's a whole other talk, but ultimately comes down to a sense of urgency. And this poses a huge challenge to DI and web accessibility alike. Because compared to the world in buffer development or, also known as move fast and break things, we move slower out of necessity. Intentionality. However, if we impose the same standards of success metrics of software development those departments will never get a chance to succeed. And as much as I want to continue blaming corporations, because I can, they are not the only ones that we need to call here.
It's on us too. Content Warning here, white supremacy, eugenics, this section lasts 5 minutes, and there is triggering text and audio. Now, in order to continue this talk, we have to define and be aware of two important concepts. The first is white supremacy culture, definition this has been adopted from dismantling racism works, and it is the ways in which people hold and hoard power in the united states can be applied to the Western world too. To protect and reinforce the concept of race, to create whiteness in the hierarchy of racialized value to disconnect and divide white people from black indigenous people of color. Bipac from each other, white people from other white people. All of us from the
earth and those inhabit it who also such as animals and plants. And us from ourselves. If you are wondering why are you sharing this as an at an accessibility conference, because, we all regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, disability, ability, nationality, socioeconomic stock economic status, sociability and born, grow more, we are up, and work. And live in a world based on this culture. If we don't talk about it, we can't move past our current state of industry. There are about characteristics of a dozen white supremacy culture, but for the sake of this talk I'm going to talk about 6:00 that I believe impact DEI and a 11 why the most. Sense of urgency, this makes it harder for us to distinguish what is really urgent to what feels urgent, and that leads to mental, physical, intellectual and spiritual burnout and exhaustion. There is fear, that discomfort in speaking
up about injustices based on what will happen to retaliation. you. Like A change in relationships, a loss of followers. Third is individualism, valuing competition over cooperation period and failing to acknowledge any of the ways majority groups shave cultural norms and behavior. right 4th is to comfort. Which is
targeting and isolating those who named racism and is ballism injustice, rather than addressing the actual injustice 5th is is defensiveness, like web accessibility with objections or criticism, making it difficult for others to understand. And lastly, there is worship of the written word. I want to be clear that this is not tied to religion despite the use of the word worship, more accurately it's believing academic sources, documentation and notes written over information that is shared through stories, or a history and community. One more concept I want to get into is eugenics. And that is
the study of how to arrange reproduction within a population to increase the amount of quote unquote desirable traits. It can be divided into positive two groups, and negative. And it's not good and bad, it's actually from a pure mathematical sense. Positive eugenics sets conditions to set those with quote unquote - 8 negative sets conditions to discourage and prevent offspring with those undesirable traits such as non white, homosexual,. Peerk again, I am sharing this to answer a question that I ask myself when I started my web accessibility career, which was, why didn't I learn about web accessibility in school? And this was a part of my own harsh learning, because for all of my traditionally marginalized identities I have privileged to. I hold citizenship in the country I live in, I'm a native english speaker, and I went to an institution regard as league.
an ivy Now the second most popular degree of my alternator is computer science, which on a good year produces about 800 new undergrads. Third most as my major, product design. Neither talk about accessibility. Physical, or digital. To the scale that
every degree holder will learn about it. And it's not a matter of being understaffed or resources, so, what gives? It took being in a community college course on gender studies to learn that the founder of my Alma mater was friends with many leading eugenicists of the the 20th century, and his founding friend, the president of Stanford openly despised mexicans. And their friends, is leading eugenicists promoted and taught their textbooks calling an end to black americans indigenous communities eastern European immigrants gay people, and disabled people. AKA Genex. Until less than seven years ago, so similar to this HR business rep EG story, I guarantee that my Alma mater isn't the only one. And that our boot
camps, certification programs and workplaces deep down share the same reason, if not talking about accessibility or DEI. Eugenics. And I double down on this because regardless of your work function, PM, engineering, design, HR, seals, operations, anything. You will at some point in body these characteristics. I have had many discussions with designers on how web accessibility does not stifle creativity. It's because ableism is a key component of design by. Peerk yet accessibility designs are made to be the quote unquote bad cop. And personally my role
in this scenario reinforces the spicy Latina trope, which don't ever say spicy Latina trope ever please. And if you don't respect what I have to say because of my gender identity, race, and who I love. We won't succeed as a team because I won't feel safe expressing my ideas, nor will users who share my identities in their research. Excluding specific groups of people in your work is a modern form of Genex. Which supports white white supremacy
so, with culture. And that, I want to take what we learned and apply it to some real world examples. And I realized that I've set up the logic to apply while just make web accessibility and the DEA the same comment I'm going to repeat myself for clarity, no, you cannot just make web accessibility and EI quote unquote the same thing. One, it's called burnout. And shell little gave a great talk yesterday about the accessibility to burnout pipeline. Even work if you don't in web accessibility, I encourage you to watch it it. Because I think you will get
a lot of validation and affirmation from that. 2, even if you are superhuman, which I applaud you in 2023, honestly. There is a dangerous precedent being set where we allowed one person let alone A-team to account for the myriad of lyft experiences that we need to consider in a hybrid, international world. Tamo Kun cocreator of dismantling racism says the longer you swim in a culture the more invisible it becomes. And today, I want to expand on her analogy for the level of complexity that we are going to experience in the Following. Thank you
fun fact I can't swim, so this is actually the levels of fear that I have about water. We have the shallow end, even if you can't swim, there is a confidence in handling, you may even have a gut reaction of what to do if it's the right thing, or something like that. We've got the deep end, we are starting to not feel the bottom of the pool, you may tread water or need to call a lifeguard. The situation feels tougher, because we need to
have both web accessibility and EI. And even more lived experience accounted for to make the best experience period going to get back and we're to open water in a second. Let's start at the shallow end. If you are new to web accessibility, or maybe you are someone in dei and you've been tasked suddenly to make your company site accessible with no resources and no 11 why headcount, you might resort to an accessibility overlay. And I hope, 11 Y community, we have agreed today that overlays are not a solution in the short or long term. Like the gallery of articles that I'm showing on this slide. And yet, a sense of urgency
can enable this purchase to be made. And in addition when the initial backlash of accessibility overlays took place, some characteristics that I mentioned earlier manifested, such as defensiveness from overlay company founders to the point of disabled folks being blocked for their opinions. And worship of the written word from accessibility organizations who supported these companies. I was happy to see our company rallied together to question the ethos when it was happening. Starting from the dei side,
just four days ago, vice released an article titled WSJ wall street journal wonders. Did silicon valley bank die because one black person was on its board? The article goes on that yes to say one of the 11 founders of S VB is black, one is LGBTQ plus and the other ten are white period SVG's board is less diverse than any of the countries top banks. This is kind of wild honestly I feel. And, the original wall street journal article harbors sphere, characteristic that we discussed earlier. And vice has a quick Beatty headline because of the worship of the written word. A wrote in news
journal therefore it must be true, even if it's misinformation. And so let's move to the deep end where it's not that simple. One example near and dear to my heart is the gender drop drop down. You need both web accessibility and EI insight to work on this. Because exclusively focusing on one
side causes harm regardless. If it's not accessible, keyboard only and screen users can't get more COVID tests, or gender affirming care. Abelism, gets in the way of your job. And, if the content is not inclusive you can effectively brawk obtaining crucial documentation someone from or gender affirming care, right to comfort gets in the way of your job, so even if you do have a color contract or proved keyboard accessible great screening experience of a drop down, you can take the gender as a societal construct a little bit too far, as the website genders dot WTF shows us. Image description I have a required gender drop down that has expanded now with five list items. Mail, female, NA, not applicable, unknown, and
tax entity. Now, queer community I understand humor helps with the pain, and I have also witnessed people abuse pronoun functionality on social media in the workplace. And it hurts. And because it's 2023 I have to unfortunately add this element which is, do you need this data? And if you do, are you collecting data on the state without information in the wrong hands can land someone in jail or have their child stripped away from them because of it. Let's venture into the physical world. It wouldn't be my talk if I didn't get to talk about bad bunny. He's a Puerto Rican
artist who for the past three years has been the most listened to artists on spotify. Surpassing other well known artists such as drake, Taylor swift, and BTS. So, imagine the excitement of the folks he myself included to know opened the 2023 grammys this past month. Image description bad bunny is singing a song, microphone all up, vibing, there is a maringa band behind him of black and brown men, and in the foreground we have a bunch of people dancing, it's lively in color and emotion. I hope that we can all agree here regardless of background that captions are necessary. So
when folks turned captions on, they discovered that the captions read in brackets singing and non english. Which persisted as speaking and non english, when he gave his speech for his best of the album. Let's unpack this what is the impact of saying non english versus calling it for what it is? Spanish. Also, the fourth most spoken language in the world. Also,
according to US census data the second most spoken language in the 38.3 US with million speakers. Now, a corporate candid response said we couldn't find a Spanish speaking captioner for the event, but programming those months and ahead what songs would be played the album has been out since may of last year, and mind you see VS is one of the biggest media companies in the US, how many board meetings, emails, messages, were made about this and yet the priorities were loud and clear. Now, 11 why folks might advise us a chance to remediate this, WSC one type 2 please provide captions on the recording.
But as of last week when I took these screenshots from YouTube, captions still don't exist. For his performance and acceptance speech unless it's the three sentences that he said in english. However if you pay for paramount plus you can see captions in Spanish. And so, I can't give you a better example of accessibility that is hindered at minimum, it's hindered by linguistic. Now I want to move us to open water,
open water is terrifying, whether or not you can swim. There is no boundaries coming you can't take a break, you don't know what sea creatures or riptides are out there, the weather can affect water at any time and yet, you are here. And so I want to talk about masking. Last year I went to an accessibility conference in person, and I was hyped to meet people who I looked up to in real life. And also, meet new people. Now, the week before mask mandates in that country were lifted.
But as people who work in accessibility, a key part of disability justice I figured people will mask, it's winter, were coming from around the world, just makes sense. And I was wrong. And now, as someone who lives in the US in aurora county at that, I'm accustomed to the anti mask arguments that start with defensiveness and are ultimately rooted in right to comfort and individualism. And, how can
we work in accessibility without recognizing that compromisation is a disability to appear and you can say that's why there is additional format of the conference, and, how is it that we in digital accessibility make it a pattern to start with the most accessible experiences first. But when it comes to physical accessibility, we are the opposite. The point is, if the values of our practice only go so far as our individualism isn't and comfort allow, is that really value? Kyumak and because I put it in the talk description we are going to talk about speaker disruptions. On a panel last summer we were called performative by somebody in the chat by providing image descriptions. So I wanna post who are the first descriptions that you hear about speaker speaker descriptions, in my experience it's blind white men, what about blind people of color? When you do image descriptions, don't skip race, don't leave room for harmful assumptions. And this comes from a video where haben describes that someone thought she was white for a few months at a time. She's not the only
blind person of color who has expressed the importance of speaker descriptions. Now, in this video haven raises another point that I support, which is that ultimately it's the choice of this speaker to disclose their identities. Because, and from talking to folks from different backgrounds, they were answered depends on context, in the accessibility and community we have more grace towards ability and disability, yet we still default to white male cisgender. And when someone isn't, that is important to label. From my dei experience in coaching able bodied people on speaker descriptions, I found that they were uncomfortable because it forces us to confront parts of our identity that we don't want to believe play a role in how we are treated. That's an extension of fear and right to comfort. Because some of the reality is that people do
get treated differently based on their identity. A white speaker should definitely differently than than a black speaker parag and accessibility folks we are so used to rallying for the ambiguity of accessibility and speaker descriptions apply. For some speakers both disabled and non disabled, identity markers affect how we operate in a space period we may choose to take up more space as the only person who has that identity. Or past the proverbial physical mic to others to ensure all voices are heard. We may not even disclose parts of our identity given the description of a person or audience. It's complex, and there's no right counselor. I will note that when your individualism and
your defensiveness get in the way of other people's access and accessibility, then you are doing a disservice to everyone. Yourself included. Since we are already in open water, I want to talk about AI, yes, I has the potential to improve accessibility and bring innovation, it's unknown and that's what makes it exciting and innovative, I also acknowledge folks in DI and anti oppression call that AI's a contentious point in ethics, because for decades, it has been known to be a weapon against communities of color. Particularly black and indigenous communities, it is a great aid in their surveillance. And folks are quick to blame AI for being gaslighting or elementary or bias, but here's the thing, AI isn't biased, biased people feed AI biased material. HK
hung tech justice and activist recurs to the current race to buy racist products assist racist products without care, technological manifest destiny. The digital version of the philosophy eradicated all indigenous people , individualism, sense of urgency, and fear. Fear that someone will beat us across the finish line. And so, asking your lived experience who is excited about AI? Who is weary? For me, I see clear trends based on race, gender, and ability. I'm going to take a pause on this, and let this all set in. Because it is a lot. In my rumination, with others, we realize that what makes EI and A11Y difficult is that sometimes we are our own blockers. Our identities are deeply personal because
there are as. And when we are called out or called in we are seen as a failure of ourselves, and that's not the case. And when emotionally charged we start relying on certain characteristics and old patterns. Fear inhibits us from dreaming of a different world. Worship of the written word provides biased examples of why things are the way they are, and write to comfort reinforces the status quo. Individualism makes us
silence and ignore the experiences of those most marginalized in society. And defensiveness upholds it all. So, whether you work in a 11 Y, DEI we all have at some point traded our humanity for pixels codes and data. And forgot that our work affects people. We took a grassroots movement that
continued to be led by predominantly black indigenous people of color, disabled people and clear trans women, and made it palatable for more people to consume, we grew really tired of this complex, threatening world on fire, and decided to isolate ourselves. And the challenges what do you do once you acknowledge this. And so, for me it's to say accessibility community please don't let web accessibility become the next de EI in tech. Because, so long as we
are working in the same systems of power and oppression, no one will live in a habitable just accessible world. And to my dei folks, thank you for your labor. And I remind you that it is never too late for you to change, and for us to change. The way we hold ourselves accountable and hold each other accountable is within our realm of possibility. So, come dream
with me for a little bit. And I also want to acknowledge some great work here already happening in our industries. I want a workplace where race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability and more are not political. They just are. And my friends
told me to put this on a big slide so here it goes. Because my identity cannot be placed on a coat rack when I go to work. My work is informed by my identity, and necessary in bringing change. So, when you say that my race, ethnicity, gender expression identity and ability has no place in my work, that is right to comfort. And another characteristic we didn't
cover called objectivity. It's just called politics. Because our society has deemed politics too much for the workplace . To extend this dei practice into accessibility I want to workplace where disabled people aren't tokenized as an assistive technology users, they are just users. And on that note, I want to shout to the high heavens about Michelle Williams and delivering a fantastic talk research through broken lenses yesterday, that really dives into this topic. Too often we see feedback from
disabled users in a sense of urgency, to validate this bug to fix this issue, that's preventing this deal from going through. And it reinforces this we don't have the time, money, or resources to find disabled users, and that's a mentality that needs to shift. Speaking of shift, for both DIY and accessibility, the shift from everyone's voices heard, equality, to those affected most are driving the work and are supported by leadership to make that impact. Equity. Now, this comes with nuance, no one should be forced to work in either of these fields because they hold traditionally marginalized identities. However, swinging in the metaphor to the other side, and not hiring anyone from these groups or having exclusionary hiring and retention policies that prohibit you from attracting diverse candidates in the 1st place, isn't the move either. Thank you this also includes awareness of the gender race disability wage gaps. And embracing appropriate success
metrics and timelines for projects. 11 white community and this is something many of us advocate for, I want to offer a friendly reminder that we have plenty of room to. Peerk out of 504 responses, 55% of A11Y partitioners do not identify as disabled or have a disability, and 56.9% do not identify as neurodivergent. Next, it's more tech leadership having diversity equity and inclusion attached to their bonuses, some companies have adopted this approach, which is great. And I want to extend that to have accessibility too. With more tech leadership having the number of accessibility bugs in their products attached to bonuses. Both web
accessibility and dei, begin as grassroots bottom up approaches within companies. If leadership wants to choose profit over people, then we need to structure our accountability to match that. And lastly, hot take, having neither de I or A11Y under HR or reporting to one another. I hope that through especially our open water examples we can show the human condition is too complex, and that we need a system of checks and balances in order to make our work successful. Now, we've only scratched the surface of this work and what will be 45 minutes, thank you for bearing with me, so I want to start wrapping things up. I have
left a view only Google doc of references, for the presentation resources, the link is also going in the chat. For all things after this. And I also want to help answer what can I do? Because you might have this sense of urgency to do something. You can educate yourself with the provided resources and your own, start observing trends in the workplace such as who's getting promoted and whose departing, ask questions about data on company diversity, and if you're making product decisions ask is this truly urgent or made out to be urgent? Whose perspective is highlighted in this situation? Who's are excluded or missing? You can support people with marginalized identities one on one or through groups. Oftentimes employee resource groups will have friends G+ friends, and that allows you to passively see the experience of that marginalized group. An example of one on one support was I had a white male engineering colleague who had noticed my opinion was often shut down in meetings as the only farm in the room, and the only person of color. We worked together such that when I said
something that was rejected or shot down he would repeat it within 5 minutes of me saying it. If the idea was accepted or well received, he pointed out that that's what I had said prior. And the contradiction between female. Thanks Cody. And if able
support financially, this really helps for long distance efforts, and I want to acknowledge that there are at least 23 states with active anti trans legislation, so please support the folks who are on the ground doing the hard work. But, don't only do this. Don't only do it in a sense of urgency. And so, with those action items and these takeaways of the compliance based origin of corporate America dei, 11 Y, paved a similar path for their development and treatment in moments of crisis, we too must hold our colleagues themselves accountable for the complacency and participation in white supremacy culture its impact on our work, and how that affects the people we aim to to serve. That the human condition is too complex to create solutions based on one single identity marker like just gender, just race, justice. Peerk and that deer and A11Y can honor one another's expertise and support each other's efforts to benefit both employees and users alike. And lastly, I want to affirm that this is hard. If it were
easy, it would be done already. This talk would have been said already, and it doesn't happen overnight. This personally for me spans five years of work. And especially with topics like anti
oppression and disability justice and anti racism, there will be discomfort. And that's how we grow. To make our workplaces, industries and world a better place for all. It starts with us. And so,
thank you for your time, we can continue the conversation on Twitter at Alexis X Lucio and again I want to stress that this is the bare minimum for this work, your feedback can help inform which areas I can continue to elaborate on and how we can connect HDMI and A11Y together. Lastly, I am in gratitude to the people who gave their time and attention to making this talk what it is today. Be the activist and advocates for their labor and resources to this talk come of the captioning team in ASL interpreters, and my colleagues and friends for giving feedback and calling me in through this talks evolution, or for unknowingly providing some of the best liners. Thank you. [Tracey Long] Wow well, Alexis wow that's all I have to say. Thank you. For a very necessary conversation. I cannot wait for you to see the feedback that you are getting in the chat. Folks are not only loving what you have to
say, but they are appreciative that you're saying it. So, again, thank you. With that, we have time for a few questions. So, I have been looking through the questions and there are several different versions of the same type of question, and that is on alternative text. As it pertains to race. Can you give a little bit of guidance there? [Alexis Lucio] Yeah, my teammates and I have a long standing joke that the number one answer of an accessibility practitioner is it depends, and that is the answer. There are sometimes where we get these shallow end examples, one article that I read, and this was a really great example, was providing Alt text for a website that was about the advocacy of minority women in new Zealand. And in that case yes, you do want to put that the Alt text is of Modi women, because that is their advocacy and they are the people who are doing the grassroots activism there. I also acknowledge that say if
you're doing ADEI annual report, I think that's what they're called these days, you may want to put that there is a range of identities. You might not know the exact races and identities of the stock images. So there could be some room for ambiguity, but so long as you are noting that it's a diverse group, also, this is going to be its own talk in and of itself, but sometimes we just don't know the identities of people. And part of my work that I have been working on is acknowledging the afro indigenous and afro latinx community, but our world in colors and media say those people don't exist, and that's not the case at all, so there is a really great article it isn't in the resources doc by my friend tolu, that says the importance of putting racial descriptions in Alt text, I highly recommend recommend looking at that to learn more. [Tracey Long] Thank
you, we have another question here as one of those disabled white women in charge of the I and accessibility, what is the most important thing to keep my focus for actually changing the accessibility of the status quo. [Alexis Lucio] Thank you for that question I just got chills, thank you for that question and attending this talk, I identity based on the identity markers that you have provided me, I think that you are kind of in this gray area where yes you have that lived experience and your lived experience is important, and it's asking yourself what other voices do I not know about? What communities who maybe are part of your workplace do I not have connection to? I think one of the best things that you can do is, there's a concept in dei, sorry it's also a little ablist, step up step back. So say if, someone comes up to you and says we want a disabled speaker, but maybe in the history of a company you've never had a black disabled speaker. That could be a really good opportunity of yes, I am disabled and I have an opportunity to lift up somebody in the disability community who has a different experience than maybe what I'm used to. And so, also acknowledging that there are constraints and you probably can't tell me all of the constraints that your company has come up but I think also working with yourself is where am I willing to put a little more pressure on leadership, and where am I not? Maybe it's a speaker is not available right now because we don't have it in the budget, you could go talk to an employee resource group, and say hey I'm interested in putting a panel to raise the awareness of disabled bipac. Would folks be Wheeling. And also, not being upset if people say no. I think I said
it's 2023 three times, but people are tired. We might not have capacity. Or, fun fact you might go to an erg and you're like ohh yeah, we are already going to an event that focused on disability three months from now. And so maybe the easiest thing for you to do is give them monetary support or to compensate panelists for their time. That's also a really good thing and I know a lot of us are talking about compensating bipac disabled queer trans folks for their labor. I feel like that is everything but also not an answer at once, but I hope that can provide a little bit of introspective for you to figure out what makes you comfortable, and then also find a another space, like I want to try this one thing in six months that's out of my comfort zone and I think it's going to benefit a lot of employees, and my team.
[Tracey Long] Thank you, Alexis we have another question and I think we have time for one more comment it kind of ties into what you were wrapping up there, with compensation. Without exploitation. So, during your talk you talked, you mentioned how asking folks to do accessibility work without compensation is exploitation, do you have any techniques or advice for pushing back on this within your organization? [Alexis Lucio] Yeah, I referenced Michele Williams box, she references this and I think that can be applicable in saying hey I'm doing a lot of work, and it's ultimately up to you and you know your own boundaries best of how much work you want to put in, and sometimes yeah you might want to do that accessibility project so you have something in your portfolio so that when you go and apply for an accessibility job you have something to talk about, and if you are literally doing like 120 hours of work a week, I think a majority of folks majority of folks can agree that that's exploitation. So it's about having a conversation with your manager, acknowledging that there can also be boundaries, I've had managers where I wasn't comfortable talking about this stuff with them, because it just got really awkward. So you also, one you want to assess the safety, like do you feel safe enough to advocate for yourself coming if the answer is no, maybe the answer is leaving. And I acknowledge that leaving is a comfort place of privilege, 2023 layoffs economic downturn, so I think there's a lot to consider in your experience, and hard boundaries, continuous advocacy, like sometimes folks, I tell people when I do educational programs with a 11 Y like I will never blame you for making something accessible, because you don't know what you don't know. But the thing is what do you do with that knowledge. And the
thing is sometimes managers don't know because they have 100 other things that they're thinking of, but maybe it's talking with your director, managers on board, the two of you can tag team how to switch your role into who have accessibility. Because having that conversation as a team versus you individually is like a lot less scary. [Tracey Long] Thank you, thank you. Now again that concludes the time that we have, thank you again the chat is blowing up with people singing your praises right now so thank you, also know that you have have a grand effort to get you your own Ted talk. [Alexis Lucio] It's a dream, can we make it
happen? Let's go. Thank you all, please let's continue the conversation, 45 minutes is not enough time, but I hope it allows for some introspection and that you connect with people who are like minded, or also want to get engaged, and even form book clubs, knowledge groups, safe spaces to talk with us to talk about this. When we act as a community and not as individuals we get a lot more support than we think. [Alexis Lucio] I love that, thank you Alexis we appreciate your time and the preparation that has gone into this, this very needed talk. And thank you all for joining, I hope you enjoy the rest of axicon.
2024-08-21 09:09
