- Gene and Dave show. - This program was made possible from the support of VSA of Texas. And Amerigroup. - I'm Gene. - And I'm Dave. And we're the Gene and Dave Show. - Gene and Dave Show. - This is our South by Southwest 2019 episode and what an amazing South by Southwest this year. - More than amazing, Dave. It was historic on several levels. - I don't know about you Gene, I know you've done a lot of crazy things in your time, but have you ever been shot out of a canon? - No, I haven't. - I think that South by Southwest this year was like being shot out of a canon. I mean it was just, there was so much going on. Meeting all the people from different countries again. Just an amazing time this year at South by Southwest. - And I felt like a real person this year, rather than just some disenfranchised entity. - Right, right, because the focus this year was so much on accessibility. I mean they even added an accessibility track to the conference, which was just amazing. I learned so much stuff while I was there. And not only, you know, kind of like our motto, we preach accessibility but we also have to do it. You know, we've got the accessible website and we close caption these shows. And South by Southwest has taken a lesson from us. - I think they are. - And there's a lot of things this year that were more accessible than years before. - Yeah, that's why I say on so many levels, I mean the accessibility track, there were 12 sessions all on accessibility and disability. - Yeah and sometimes we had to separate ways and go to different stuff because there was really good stuff happening at the same time. - Conflicts, yeah, yeah. - And we've been preaching on accessibility for so long at South by Southwest, and finally this year, those changes were made, but also I got stopped by the shuttle service, the transportation people that were taking people around from venue to venue. 'Cause it's kind of, it's a spread out deal now. - Oh yeah. - And so big. And they said, we remember talking to you a couple years ago and you guys were rippin' us new ones about not having accessible shuttle service. And they said, and now we have one! They had a van, a customized van with the ramp that comes out and everything. - Oh nice. - And they were transporting people. Oh in fact, here let's roll this clip about me talking about the transportation service. Gene and I have been preaching ever since we started going to South by Southwest, I don't know eight years ago about accessibility at South by Southwest. Every year they seem to make little steps to improve it including this shuttle service that will, there's an ADA shuttle service that will take you anywhere on the South by Southwest route. All you have to do is request it from one of the shuttle managers or I also have the phone number that I can call. Great new service, thanks a lot South by Southwest. Love it. Now I'm in the South by Southwest shuttle. - Well sweet! - Got right up in there and off I went. Man, it was really cool. - Now the phone number for that service will be on our webpage on the summary page for the show so you'll want to see that. - Yeah, call that next year. Or you can just go to the shuttle service place and they can pick you up right outside the convention center. Take you wherever on the South by Southwest tour you want to be. You know it was really expensive though to ride that shuttle. - Really, how much was it? - Yeah, it was free. - Whoa! I would ride it just for the sake of getting a freebie! But that is great. Great news. Okay, number one, the accessible shuttle. A history making event, South by Southwest. Movies, we had three disability related movies. - Yeah, I think there were more too. We just, there were so many, only had so much time, but we did go to three and I think all three of them were pretty amazing. - They were, they were. - The first one that I saw is called Come As You Are. Unfortunately we don't have a clip of it, but we've got this picture from South by Southwest. It's a very interesting story. It's about three guys with different disabilities. One's a power chair user, one is a standard wheelchair user, in fact they nickname him Biceps 'cause he pushes himself around all the time. And the other guy has a visual impairment. He has limited vision. So they get together and they decide that they want to go to this brothel in Montreal. And they're taking steps to their independence and it's just an amazing film. They do away with all the pity things that you normally see in films that focus on disability. You know, they actually show these guys running around drinking beer and fighting with each other and fighting with other people. It was a very, very good movie. And also, there were several parts that were so real life. You know, things that happen to us when we're on trips. Without spoiling too much, they take an attendant with them, they get to the hotel and their attendant collapses and goes in to a diabetic shock so the ambulance has to come get the attendant. And then these three guys are left there, you know, without any help to get in bed or out of their wheel chairs or whatever. Anyway, that's just one example of just real life scenarios that this film had. It was an excellent movie and you've gotta see it. - I've heard so many good things about it. Now we also saw Vision Portraits, which is a documentary. - Mm-hm. - Want to tell us about that, Dave? - It was directed by a guy that was totally blind. - Yeah, you don't see that much often. - Right, how did he know what was going on on the screen? But, you know, he had a lot of references and I think probably the part that stuck out to me the most was the psychedelic references that were in the movie. The visuals were actually really incredible. - They were. So you've got visually impaired actors. Well, on-screen talent let's say. Visually impaired director. - Both in front of the camera and behind the camera, yeah. - And they put together a movie that was just really well done. The third movie we saw, Anyone of Us. Now this one really hit close to home for me. - Yeah, this was your favorite, right? - Yeah this is my favorite. This is about a professional mountain biker. This is about a professional mountain biker, Paul Basagoitia, they call him Bas, who suffers a spinal cord injury, a life-changing event, while in a race. Now, this movie is different from anything you've ever seen on someone getting into an accident. For one thing, it features Paul as a person with a spinal cord injury. - Right. - A real live person, not an actor, but someone who's actually got the disability. And it takes you through his first two years post-injury. Now the backstory on this is a week before Paul gets injured, he gets a video camera. So he has a video camera. - A GoPro. - Oh, okay, yeah. - It's a GoPro video camera that he uses while he's riding his bike. - Ah, all right, yeah. And then, he gets injured and there's actual footage of him being injured. So he's in the hospital and he's thinkin' I might as well video myself. - Gotta do something with this camera. - Yeah. - So he just starts videotaping his feelings so it's really a great movie that's just raw and you know, really the feelings that he was going through the whole time. - I think raw is a very good word, yeah. It can get pretty intense if you're, if you're a sensitive type person, it may be hard to watch. 'Cause there are some really pretty gripping scenes in here. But we gotta show this one clip, Dave, from the panel, and hear what Paul says about one of the most memorable events that he had during rehab. - I appreciate every little milestone in life. And especially now. Like, I will not ever take a piss ever again without a smile. And that's the truth. - Who would've thought that being able to pee would be-- - Yeah, that was his big moment, wasn't it? It really changed his view on life. Yeah, just being able to stand up and go to the bathroom. - Yeah, that was something else. And it'll talk about his attempt to get stem cell therapy to improve his ability to move. And you'll see what happens with that. It's called Anyone of Us and please see it, it's an incredible movie. - Definitely check it out, it's worth your time. - The one event that you and I go to every year is the community service awards. And I'm afraid I was a little bit late to this year's community service awards. What we did see was really worth watching. I remember there was one clip of a high school student who made a 3D printed prosthetic arm. And we've seen these the past couple years, people making 3D prosthetics. But this guy was a high school student. So young people getting involved in this kind of stuff was really nice to see. But the one that stood out to me is Sheena McFeely. Sheena lives in Austin, and she's the ASL Nook founder. So she's got a webpage where she's got a whole number of clips on various activities. Sheena is deaf, she has one daughter that's deaf, one that isn't. And she thought that there would be a need in the community for people to find - For the children. - Yeah. To see how deaf families get along. And that's what she won a community service award for. Although I did go to the ASL Nook founder page. I'm afraid I didn't look at any of the videos because I, it asked me if I wanted to allow Facebook to use cookies and website data while browsing, and I didn't want to do that. So I didn't have access to the videos. Plus I also heard you had to be a Facebook member to view 'em. But if you don't mind that and you want to see these videos, I heard they're, well obviously they must be good, she won an award for it. We've got the webpage on the screen here and we'll also have it on our show summary page. And in the mean time, enjoy this interview that Dave and I did with Sheena. Tell us about your program that got you here today to win this prestigious award. - Well it's really a very long story. It started about 10 years ago. And we set up an awards show to honor different deaf women from all over the country, from different fields. And we would follow that individual and film them and then post that video onto YouTube. And the comments from those were so powerful that it made me realize that we were really spreading awareness. And I have two girls. I have a deaf daughter and a hearing daughter that both sign. And so in just thinking about my childhood coming from a family that didn't know sign, I didn't learn sign until later in life, I was considering that there were probably other families that look very similar to mine and their childhood looked the same. So Manny and I decided to set up ASL Nook, which is our website and it's our family teaching sign language. And it's been going on for six years. And it has had millions of views. - How do you spell that? ASL Nook? N-O-O-K? - A-S-L N-O-O-K. - Great. It's so important for many of us to have role models, and so when they can see people succeed like you're bringing to their attention, it's helping so many people when you do that. - Definitely. Yeah, it's really so powerful because if you don't have people like myself and my husband and my daughter, then you don't have those examples. And we do really want to set those examples and hopefully we will start a trend and other deaf people will latch on and start doing the same sort of thing. I know my video, you know, there are different sign languages all over the country and we hope that the trend continues all over the world. - Do you have a plan for expansion? Or have others expressed an interest in seeking your help to build? - Well we just finished the sixth year of ASL Nook, but I do have some other ideas in the works. I'd like to go into I would like to go into mainstream Hollywood, and I'd like to produce some kind of movie with a deaf production team. And hopefully in the future, we'll be able to have a large production movie that's done by an entire deaf production team. So that's one of my future goals. - Cool, I can't wait to see it. - I apologize for my ignorance. Are there many deaf production teams? - There's a lot of individuals like me. Like setting up ASL Nook, I've produced my own thing and there's a lot of individuals out there doing similar things. But that have come together? No. We face a lot of adversity in Hollywood. It's difficult to get deaf folks in deaf roles, and there's a lot of overlaps that deaf individuals share in the field. My family just participated in a documentary that followed three deaf families. And we were hoping for it to become a TV series and the network decided that it would be a one-time special. They didn't believe in us. They didn't think that we were able to carry a show for a series. And we just felt, we worked very hard with a very large production company. It was a production company that had won Emmys. And I felt like if that production company couldn't carry us, couldn't get this going, I feel like the deaf community has a long way to go in the field. - Whenever I hear something like that, I'm reminded that Star Trek was canceled after three seasons. And here it is, they've been having shows on it for 20 years now. So people, the higher ups don't always make the right decision about which shows to make and which to cancel. Now Dave and I caption all our shows. But what else can we do to make our shows better for the hearing impaired community? - Well, let's start with we don't use the word hearing impaired, which is a terminology thing. Which is okay. We're always learning, right, this is a great exposure, learning opportunity. So really two terms. We use either the word deaf or hard of hearing. Those are what are considered the updated, current lexicon for that. So, captions are fantastic and interviewing more deaf and hard of hearing people would be great. I think, you know, having that reference and I can even refer some people to you for future interviews. - It was really great talking to her. And my favorite part was when she threw you under the bus about calling people hearing impaired. - She took me to school on that, didn't she? - Yeah, she did. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get her to say her favorite show was the Gene and Dave Show. - No, no! We couldn't do that. But yeah, I was talking about how we make our webpage accessible. And I was mentioning people who are deaf and hearing impaired, and she didn't like the word hearing impaired. - No, she didn't. - So deaf and hard of hearing folks. So learning something about the deaf culture today. But we enjoyed that interview very much. Okay, the trade show. Every year there's three or four days of trade show. A number of vendors, in the past years, we would meet various vendors. Now sometimes, they had products specifically for people with disabilities, which is great to see. Sometimes they had products that you and I could see how someone with a disability could take advantage of that. - Like the year we saw the headphones. - Yeah, good example. - The touch pad on the side. - I didn't see a whole lot of that this year. - No, no, the trade show was not as exciting as it has been in the past. But we did get to see some of our friends. And definitely going to the Nobility booth was a highlight for me, of the trade show. - What do you guys do? - Nobility is a non-profit organization that is committed to helping create a more inclusive world for people of all abilities. What that means is we want to teach people who create digital assets, websites, anything that is to be used on the internet, we want to teach folks to build it in such a way that everyone can use it. - So we got to the Nobility booth, and there was Jillian who's the communications coordinator there. And Jillian was watching the Gene and Dave Show. - She was, it was right there on the screen. Pictures of us teaching at AccessU. - Yup. And speaking of AccessU, you and I will be teaching there this May. - We will, this May. Doing another course on closed captioning. - Mm-hm. For those of you who use Final Cut Pro as a video editor, they've got some new features on captioning that we'll go over. Talk about some other services that are available. - So maybe we'll see you at AccessU. - And we'll give you links for that as well. Yeah, so, here's the table that Nobility had all their programs on. And it may be hard to see there, but there was a picture of the back of my head. I think they're actually focusing on the computer and the mouse. - They got your best side, Gene. - Well, thank you very little, Dave. - Nobility does a lot for the accessibility community and I can't thank them enough. They're really good people doing good work. So check out AccessU if you want to learn more about accessibility from websites to PDFs to closed captioning your videos. - Yeah as a matter of fact, Dave, I'm glad you mentioned that. They helped us get together with Trademark Media, to make our website really accessible. - Which is now called Mighty Citizen. - Might Citizen instead of Trademark Media. - Mighty Citizen is their new name. - Yeah, they do a super job and won some media awards for accessibility. - Yeah, they know about accessibility. So they're a good place to go to if you're needing to have someone develop your website for you. - Excellent. - Speaking of developing websites, Gene, the first one that I went to in the track was called, Design For Inclusivity, How and Why to Get Started. And they took it from the very beginning of accessibility needing to be during the design phase of whatever product you're making. Whether you're making a digital product or something physical. Having talks about design and accessibility in the forefront is imperative. Very important to make a good product. 'Cause if it's accessible, anybody can use it and it really increase your market for that product. - It really does. If a page is coded to be accessible, it'll download quicker than one that isn't. And if you're a business and you want someone to get your information quicker, this is the way you do it. - And that's just one of hundreds of examples that accessibility will help you with on your site. Here's another historic first for South by Southwest. There was a session called We Are The Original Life hackers. And Liz Jackson made a presentation on something called Thisten. And Dave, you're the tech guru of our group here, can you explain how Thisten works? - So Thisten is like a closed captioning software. So people in the audience could have their phones out and they could read the captions from the conference, from the meeting that was going on right then. It would show up on their phone as it was being said. And I think the cool thing about it is they're using software to write the captions out, to transcribe them. But also, there's someone sitting there, on a laptop listening and watching and making corrections on the fly. They want to do away with that term called craptions. - Ah, yeah, yeah. - So that you don't get all those other words in there like when somebody says WCAG, it never types that out right. - True. - So they can correct that on the fly. And it was just an app download with Android or iPhone and you can watch it right there on your phone. And then once you install it, you can also see transcripts of the entire presentation. - It was a fantastic job. Now Liz told us about the evolution of Thisten. It became a two year project and we'll show as much as we can here 'cause it's worth the listen. - Absolutely. - End of the phone call I basically said to him I'm going to make a technology that's going to shed light on these accessibility failures at South by Southwest. And he basically said, fine, do it. And I was like, fine, I'm gonna do it. And we hung up and I was just like, shit. So this is sort of where the story gets just wild. So I have a website called The Girl With The Purple Cane. My purple cane has been a large part of my identity for the last six years. And about two years after I had started my blog The Girl With The Purple Cane, the designer of my cane, her name is Rie Norregaard. So Rie had reached out to me and had started mentoring me as a designer. And right before South By, she had said to me, she said, why don't you come into this place where I work, the place is SYPartners, it's a design firm, why don't you come in here and just work for a few months and see if anything comes out of it. So I agreed to and my very first day there was the day that I had my contentious phone call with Hugh Forrest. So I literally, I hang up the call with Hugh and I walk into the kitchen of SYPartners, and this guy walks up to me and he says, what are you doing here? And I was like, what are you talking about? He was like, what are you doing here? And I was like, well my mentor Rie said I should work out of here. He said, no, well, were you at South By? I said, yes. He's like, you weren't at a disability panel. And I was like, yes? He's like, oh my god, that night I went home and the only thing I told my wife was how impressive I thought what you said was. He said, it really changed my mind about how I was thinking about these things. I was like, huh. And he was like, well what are you doing here? And I was like, I don't really know yet. I was like, what are you doing here? He's like, well I'm the head of product. And I was like, well that's funny because I just got off this call with Hugh Forrest and I told him I would make this thing and I have absolutely no clue how to do it. So, I tell him what it is. And he's like, oh, that's easy, let's make a demo. So a few days later, I got a demo of this idea. And the idea is what is in front of you. It's Thisten. This is the word I blurted out to Hugh on the phone. I saw it as this and listen. So the physical act of listening. And all it is, it's a simple speech to text app. And what I could do at the time was you can't just use automated sort of live speech to text, the automated transcriptions because they're known in the disability community as craptions. Right, you get these pesky errors that really destroy your experience. So I was thinking about it and I was like well, if we crowd-source corrections in the way that Wikipedia does, then we could have automated captions. And then I started thinking about it and I was like well how do you incentivize crowd-sourced corrections? So this is where the importance of a network effect is. So if you go on the app, you'll see that you can comment directly in there. So my feeling was, if I can get people to engage in this app, then they would also be incentivized to make it more accurate, and therefore have captions for everybody. So that was the basic idea. So I got this demo. And the demo was just very, very simple. And I get this call, and I didn't know what to do with the demo. I got this call two weeks later. And it was somebody from Google Creative Lab. And they said, we are having an internal hackathon, and we'd love for you to come in and speak with us about this. And I said, well, what's the internal hackathon? And the basic premise of it was that they were going to be designing solutions for marginalized communities. So I had gone in, so I agreed to it, and I went in and I gave this talk about designing with rather than designing for. And up until that point that had been a large part of my advocacy. So if you were to go onto Google and search design for disability, you'll see that it yields more than twice as many search results as disability design. And I find that very frustrating because this idea that we're recipients of design has embedded itself into our language. And what I was really interested in was this notion that we are the original lifehackers. Like disability ingenuity it created the bicycle, it created curved pipes, created email, created audiobooks created cruise control, created the electric toothbrush. You know, item after item. And so, for me I see that there's as much a value in actually bringing in disabled people and amplifying them in the process. And so I went into Google Creative Lab and I said I have this idea about designing with. And I think because there were every level of designer at Google Creative Lab, they were very receptive to it. At the end of the day, the head of Google Creative Lab reached out and he was like, you know, I was really impressed by this, and let's keep talking. So I built up the courage and I wrote them a couple days later. And I said, so there's this other thing that I didn't talk about which is that I have this idea for an app. And I told them and one thing led to another and they said, okay, we're going to build the backend and we're going to give you a 50,000 dollar grant to build this out. And so I reached, like every point of this has been me reaching a dead end. So first, I hung up with Hugh and I was like I have no idea how I'm going to do this. And then, suddenly there appeared a way to get the demo made. And then, suddenly I had the backend built. And what I knew was is that I knew that I needed a CEO for this organization. And so, I'd been going back and forth with a couple of mentors, figuring out, okay now that I have the backend built, how do I build the front end? And we couldn't find the right person. And I woke up one morning and I just remember saying Ben Grynol. And I was just like, huh. And so Ben is the designer. I have two canes. Ben is the designer of my other cane. And he had created a company called Top And Derby. They make canes and compression socks. So he had, he and I had sort of fallen out of touch about two years prior because he had left that company. And I was just like, I wondered what he'd been up to. So I reached out to him and he'd been studying the last two years building what is, I think, Ben, is it the fastest growing company in Canada, or something like that? - Yeah, one of the fastest growing in North America. - Yeah, and so he was like, it's funny because I'm actually looking for my next project. I was like, huh. And so, he said yeah. We also have a developer, who, that's Sudep right there and then Ruiz is actually in the other room transcribing. And so they've been working on this for six, eight, months, a year now? - Six months. - Yeah, six months. And it took me two years to do it, but I came back this year and we're doing exactly what I told Hugh Forrest. So it's the world's longest fuck you, but in the process, he's actually become an incredible mentor and I have his ear on a lot of this stuff. And so, so yeah. - Well, I'm sorry that's all we had time for there, Dave. But yeah, Liz talks about there was a need. She had two deaf friends she really wanted to hear at the conference. And their needs weren't adequately met. So she came up with this product. - And Liz is such a great person we could do like a whole show dedicated to her and Thisten. But we've got a lot to cover so we'll keep on going. - So Liz, the co-founder, and then there's Ben Grynol, I think is the other co-founder. They gave us the transcript for the 12 accessibility sessions, and they gave us permission to share that with you. So these transcripts, loaded with information. And now available to you. And of course you can also go to Project Thisten at www.projectthisten.com. - So check out our website for all the transcripts of the accessibility track, the accessibility track presentations that Thisten was involved in. - You know, Dave, we talked about the energy at South by Southwest. - Right. - I mean, it's palpable, you can feel it there. South by Southwest brings in the highest concentration of people that can make things happen. And by chance, I ran into a young lady named Xian Horn, who recently addressed the United Nations on the International Women's Day. And Xian is a woman who serves as a teacher, speaker, beauty advocate, blogger, and exemplar for AT&T NYU Connect Ability Challenge Towards a Creation of Assistive Technology. She was named one of the 21 leaders for the 21st century by Women's eNews in 2017. And guess what, she has a disability. Yeah, she has Cerebral Palsy and often speaks on the empowerment of people, especially women, with disabilities. So, what would happen was she was trying to get through a crowd. A friend of mine, George Cummings, who was my dive buddy when I went SCUBA diving. He was accustomed to helping out folks and he cleared the way for her. They got to talking and he says, well you've got to meet Gene Rodgers. So I was going through a crowd one day and she found me. - All right. - So we got to chat and here's a bit of the video we did. So enjoy. - Okay, well, I think the thing that amazes me is, you know, I was a very stage frightened person. I didn't think should advocate, just because that was what people always told me to do. But it wasn't until I realized that there are young people with disabilities who struggle with identity. I wanted to share some positive ideas around disability that thanks to a lot of support from my parents I always felt that disability was something that added to my life, and you get to cut the lines at Disney World, the airport, people don't forget you, you know. - You get a parking space. - Oh, yeah. - You get a parking space. - Exactly, so there are perks. And I always kind of, you know, I think that's sort of the way my brain works is I always kind of look at what are the upsides of things. But as a result, I didn't realize that disability advocacy was important for me until I realized there was a need for it. And that's when I was able to start classes at NYU, initiative for women with disabilities, on basically self discovery and empowerment for girls and women, people with disabilities. - You said start classes at New York. But you didn't say you were teaching them. Go ahead and tell us about that. - Oh, well, I didn't say I was teaching them, because I learn more from them probably than they do from me. But I think, you know, part of our process is we talk to the girls about things that have hurt them, things from the past, things that they're currently grappling with in order to kind of try and reframe those experiences. For example, girls may say to me, you know, I don't like being stared at. And we'll analyze, okay, why is that? For me, I've always thought that, I'm going to look at somebody with purple hair, so I'm not necessarilly going to assume just because someone's staring, that it's a bad thing. You know? And it's not really my business why people do what they do. It's my business why I do what I do. So those are the kinds of discussions that we'll have about kind of trying to reframe, 'cause we don't have control over how people treat us, but we do have control over how we react. And that's something I think many people talk about, not just us. But, you know, being able to address anything that's painful or anything that may be preventing someone from fulfilling a dream or some kind of purpose or talent that they may have, that's my goal, honestly. - That sounds incredibly insightful. How did you learn all these things? - Well I just wrote, actually, an article called 15 Things I Wish I Knew When I was 15, for Ariana Huffington's site, Thrive Global. And it was truly born out of the fact that at age 15, I saw so much beauty and gifts in other people and had real trouble in seeing what I could contribute and what I could bring into the world. So when I realized that you know, being loved, or loving people, doesn't mean you have to be defined by others. That was, I think, the beginning for me of finding empowerment. And it's because I understand insecurity so well that I'm able to facilitate this for others. And it's still a work in progress. I definitely don't do it because I'm the most confident woman in any room, but because, again, I understand insecurity and I truly believe though that no matter what we feel, we are all enough and we all have beauty and gifts to share with the world. That's really the truth. - You're an author, you write for Forbes, is that right? - Yes, Forbes Women, on the topic of leadership empowerment from a disability lens. It's a relatively new gig, but it's been a really amazing platform to touch corners of the world and hopefully kind of change perceptions about what disability looks like, even from the inside. I want all of us with disabilities to know that we are leaders and that we have leadership ability. So that's very exciting for me to have a platform to share some ideas and share people doing great work in their corner of the world. - And you also recently spoke at the United Nations. How did that come about? - Oh, you know, I was already scheduled to come to South by Southwest, March 7th to the 14th, and then I got a call from a friend. I was actually on her show, and she got an opportunity to do for her non-profit, one of the events for the UN for International Women's Day. And, you know, it's interesting because it was co-hosted by the Republic of Djibouti. - Yay Djibouti! - Yes, yes! And it was about women in STEM careers. And because I had actually judged in the assistive technology competition through AT&T, I was able to kind of bring some non-professional perspective on innovation in the sense that, you know, as a person with a disability, you're an expert in your own needs. And you know, I was able to talk about the value of that, and the value of creating with the people that you're trying to help or serve, not just creating something and then fixing it afterwards. So it was a very powerful afternoon and I'm so grateful that I got to represent not only women, but diversity in the sense of represent women with disabilities. And it was a beautiful event. - She's involved in so many things, I don't know how she does it. It was nice that she took the time for us. - Yeah, it was. And speaking of people making things, another one that sticks out in my head is the inclusive design, nothing about us, without us. And that was actually held by some folks from Microsoft. And they went into all the details of developing the accessible joystick that they now have for the Xbox. They worked with people at Craig Hospital in Colorado and tested it and tested it and tested it with people that actually have disabilities. - Wow, what a shock! - Yeah, so it was really a great story of how they came to develop this product all the way up to the end result. - I believe you had a question for them, didn't you? 'Cause you have an 11 year old son. - Right, right. And I wanna play Xbox with him, but I went to buy the joystick and by itself it's, you can't use it. You've gotta have other things like switches and joysticks and things tied into it. And they didn't have those available at the Microsoft store. But they told me if I checked online, I could order any of those products. It's so adaptable for anybody, that the possibilities are endless with it. - Can I use it? - Sure! - Excellent, I'm up for that. - All right. - And speaking of which, we have another gamer coming up on the show who's totally blind. - Yeah, that was an amazing story too. - Another session that Dave and I attended too, there was another session Dave and I went to, it was really impressive, by Visa, gentleman by the name of James Green, called Add Accessibility to Your Process the Easy-ish Way. - The easy-ish way, yeah. That one's kind of hard to say. - Now James is a very talented, very bright guy. And I gotta tell you, Visa as a company, really cares about accessibility. - Yes. - They don't just do it because it's the law, they really embrace the concept and just really want to improve everything for people that need accessibility. - Yeah, and you know, WECAG can be so confusing. WCAG is-- - Do you want to explain what WCAG is? - The web accessibility, kind of the rules, the guidelines to go by when you're developing a website. And it can be confusing. I mean, people that do it for years have arguments about which way to go and is this a failure or not. And kind of to help some of that at Visa, they developed their own guidelines from those that they follow to make sure that their products are accessible for the most amount of people. - It was a very impressive presentation. Sorry we can't show it all. We can show a little bit. - And you can check out their website too. Developer.visa.com and you can see their vPad information. - Not to be outdone, accessibility, designing for the other billion users. Google was there at South by Southwest and they were talking about the work that they had to do. If you go to Google Design you will see some of the work they're doing. They've got a lot of graphics on there and videos. And I'm just impressed that Google has set up something like this for all of us to see what they're working on, what they're doing. - Yeah, and there's features right in their development pane when you pull up the developer tools on changing contrast colors and just some really amazing stuff that they're doing. - So hats off to Google and Visa. All right, another presentation we went to. Navigating the New Frontiers in Accessibility. All right, so there were three people presenting, Adriana Mallozzi, who is a wheelchair user. She has some mobility impairments that make it difficult for her to use her arms and legs. And there were two gentlemen, Cagri Hakan and Emre Sarbak apologies gentlemen if I mispronounced your name. So, here's the way it works. First of all, Adriana has, like I said, trouble using her hands. So she was, she thought there's got to be a way to make a device where I could use speech to access my smartphone and my computer and this and that. And she got to work on that and is making some great progress towards it. Now the other two folks up there, they approached accessibility from a different standpoint. They both had a certain set of, they had certain skill set that allowed them to use artificial intelligence to look at things in a way that maybe you and I don't. So they wanted to, they thought, we've got the skill set, how can we use it to help people? And they thought, wow, we can help people who are blind navigate independently. - Yeah! - And the whole idea was to develop an app for a smartphone and a person say going down a hall could just move the camera on the phone around and the artificial intelligence part of this app would tell them-- - What they were looking at, what was around. That's real important when you're trying to find the bathroom. - Essential, yeah. When they started off though, they included all kinds of information in there that a blind user finds, less than important. But as they made progress on their app, they improved on it and they learned about including someone with a disability from the very beginning of starting on a project. - So important to do. Talk after talk that we heard, featured that. Using people with disabilities to actually test your product and even design and develop it. - And of course, we've got more information on these folks on our summary page. We have Austin's Blind Gaming Champ Shares His Amazing Story, Michael Espinoza. Michael will be a guest on an upcoming show. But Michael is totally blind, yet is developing mad online gaming skills. In his presentation he made, he reflected on what he learned about tackling technology that isn't typically geared towards someone with reduced vision. So Michael talks about when he was a child, his parents gave him a console, an electronic game console. - Well I think he started playing with his cousins on a console in a family member's house. And he just picked up the joystick and started playing. And eventually his parents bought him one and he learned how to play the games just by listening to the sounds. - And play them quite well, he did. - He did! - To get an idea, if you've got stereo sound you can tell what direction the sounds are coming from. So if you're a player, you know if you're on the left or the right side. He could tell when characters switched sides. If they're on the right side of the screen. - And the sound where the punches landed or the punches were blocked. And he actually got called by some sound designers here in town and went to their house and helped them to design the sounds and told them the things that helped him. And what he used. And he said that the end product, you could even tell what character was on the screen by the way that their footsteps sounded. - Whoa. - And crushed the rocks underneath their feet. Or if they were like really a big person, you know, the gravel was much louder when they stepped on it. So even the footsteps, he could tell what character was coming out to fight him. - It was amazing. Here's a short clip of Michael. - I started playing video games when I was probably about six years old. My grandmother had a Sega Genesis. My grandmother didn't play the Sega Genesis. She had it at her house on one of the TVs in the house. My dad's side of the family is from Mexico, they all moved here to Texas and they have a a wonderful little house which is exactly what one might expect. That is to say, it's all of our relatives crammed into one awesome little house with three or four TVs going at once all playing different sports in Spanish. And it's great. And I couldn't asked to have grown up and spent more time in a more awesome and encouraging environment. But on one of those TVs was a Sega Genesis. We actually don't know who owned it, it just kind of ended up hooked up to that TV. I'm sure it was one of my cousins. But we started playing video games there. Now, I wasn't always as great at video games and on the Sega Genesis there were a lot of very timing oriented jumping games and such that weren't really an option for me or were really kind of hard for me to do. But I realized that if I kept trying I could start learning where my character had failed. Where I died, and using sound effects to remember the locations of items in levels or jumps or things like that. So I could use timing and memory to pick up where vision had left off. - And of course the transcript of his presentation is available courtesy of Thisten now on our webpage the Gene and Dave Show, the summary page. - Gene I know how much you really love watching the cooking shows. - I do. - There was Master Chef season three, if you've seen this, there's actually a woman on there that is blind. And she cooks on the Master Chef show. She talked to us about some of the things that they did on the show to adapt it so that she could be on the show. For instance, she had a runner. So if she ran out of sugar or whatever, and she said, go get me the sugar, this runner could run across the stage, grab the sugar and bring it back to her. But they didn't want to give her an unfair advantage. So whenever she asked the runner to do something for her, she had to step back away from the stove. So she said even if her food caught on fire, and started burning, she couldn't do anything until this person, her runner, got back to her. So, it's just an amazing, an amazing talk from her. I went back and watched those Master Chef shows and it's really an amazing story. Season three, Master Chef. - And I believe we have that transcript available as well. - That's on there too. - So you're definitely gonna want to check out the Gene and Dave Show to get a hold of those transcripts, find out what people are doing. And I just wanna say, if you want to make this world a better world, get involved, be part of the solution. - Accessibility just doesn't happen over night. It takes people to learn how to do it and then make it happen. Lots of great things coming. Thank you for watching the Gene and Dave Show. - Until then, I'm Gene. - And I'm Dave. - And we're the Gene and Dave Show - Gene and Dave Show. - And can mom afford to have help preparing her meals? We know what you're going through. Amerigroup has a plan for people with Medicaid that helps then get the services they need to live at home. Amerigroup, choose us for helping your loved ones live at home. Call 1-800-964-2777.