Beyond the Checkbox - The Future of Accessibility in Product Management

Speaker A: Welcome, um, to Practical Product Management. This is the product management podcast where we talk about doing product management in context. What's practical? What's the best way to do it given the current environment you're in, not just what everyone tells you in theory. So today Marilyn and I are super excited to have Mike Paciela with us and um, Marilyn and ah, Marilyn is familiar with Mike and his business and so I'm going to throw to Marilyn to do a little intro. Mike, you can introduce yourself after that and then we're going to dive into the topic today.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, thanks Leah. Mike, I am thrilled to actually speak to you in person. Um, we've been sort of uh, professionally adjacent for a little while. I know I've worked with your former company, the sale group for a while with accessibility. And I've always had kind of like a soft spot in my heart for accessibility. But at the same time, um, almost uh, um, a frustration. Because accessibility from my perspective is not just about like putting some tags on a website and passing a test. Although that's what a lot of us think when we think about accessibility and building products. Um, and that's probably from, you know, what part of the business is concerned about accessibility. But really, you know, how do you build products that humans, that lots of humans can and will use easily is kind of my jam. So I'm thrilled to have you here today. Um, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about what you're up to right now.

Speaker C: Sure, yeah. Thank you Marilyn. I really appreciate it. And Leah, nice meeting you as well. Very excited to be on the show today. I, every time I get a chance to kind of pontificate, so to speak about accessibility and you know, what you're talking about, Marilyn, you know, the human side of product development if you will. It's a great thing to do. Um, Marilyn, you know me from my namesake company, uh, tpg, the Paciello Group. Uh, ran and owned that for about approximately 16 years and then sold it to Vispuro back in 2017. Uh, raised two of my kids, two of my sons up through there. Now they're both off with competitors so, uh, it's all in the family at that level. Um, I now uh, work as chief accessibility officer for AudioEye. We are, um, a company that is deeply uh, invested in human technology, making uh, web and web services and web apps usable and accessible to people with disabilities. Our, the part of our business where our strength is, is in automation and AI and the integration of that as A as kind of an equalizer in terms of what we need to do uh, to uh, kind of achieve scale which, which is a big problem as you know, um, in this industry where accessibility and compliance is concerned. Um, a little bit of my background for the folks on your uh, um, you know, they're watching you, watching your show. Um, I started out actually as a technical writer. Uh worked in the very first versions of Goldfarbs, uh, what eventually became sgml. Right. Standard Generalized Markup Language. I uh, was at Digital Equipment at that time. So Marilyn, you probably recalled uh, DEC back in, in the 70s and 80s and early 90s where we were second largest company next to uh, next to IBM. Um, worked there, eventually worked on creating ah, a DTD or standard for creating accessible documentation with some friends and colleagues. We released that, then went out, created the first DVDs that were accessible and usable and those became a Deck product. We distributed those, uh, consolidated distribution that went out until someone figured out hey, there was a front end reader that decided uh, um, that would go with the product. And everything that I built was all text, was all for, you know, all text related. So they said forget the reader, let's just take the text. They bought my version of the same thing that was being sold with a uh, with a uh, with this, with this viewer. And Deck said ah, uh, no, this is cutting into our profits. We can't have that. We killed the product after six months.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh.

Speaker C: But it was fun. It was fun. It was the coolest. It was the first thing out there I left that started getting associated with the World Wide Web Consortium down at mit. We're working there. Tim was already there. Tim Bernersley was already there. Um, I did, was doing some accessibility. We're just basically putting together some guidelines at that time. Ultimately that led to Vice President uh, Gorett connecting with Tim. And we're looking at. They asked us could you create an office, you know, um, that would be international in scope and would promote accessibility and get companies to start building uh, accessible websites. This is, this is back in 95, 96 at that time.

Speaker A: You're the reason I always say I'll go invented the Internet.

Speaker C: No he didn't.

Speaker A: I know he didn't. I know he didn't. I don't want anybody to think I actually think he does. I just always say he does.

Speaker C: He's got his finger on the pulse of everything. Right? That's the, that's the idea. But anyway, to his credit at that time, President Clinton's, they love this idea Tim came back to me and a couple of others at mit, Jim Miller, Daniel Daddier, uh, and said, hey Mike, if you could help us build this project, let's put it together. Ultimately that led to the, uh, creation of the Web Accessibility Initiative, which is their key office right there where all of the web standards around accessibility, um, are. They still rely on. They still are there. They, you know, are continuing. I think they're working on, uh, version three right now. I'm less involved in that activity, but that's where all that grew up. I wrote the first book on web accessibility called Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities and started a company and you know, the rest of it is all. It's in my bio.

Speaker B: I love it. And I. So I feel like, um, I feel like you were like you've sort of led this mission, um, for lack of a better word, to actually help everybody be able to interact with, with web interfaces, um, which is great. And, and I think that um, I think that it's kind of a pity that it's really just become a checkbox in a lot of people's toolboxes, especially when you talk about people building products. So we're talking really to the product managers that actually build products and think about products. One of my jams has always been like, you know, this, this web interface is not the only interface that's ever going to exist. And you really want to meet people where they are, wherever they are. I think we're now on the cusp of this revolution, um, with the, with the sort of like, um, democratization of AI. And um, I'm going to talk about gen AI specifically and, and these things that people are now calling agents and agents, being able to talk to agents. So, so we're very concerned about this interface between humans and technology. But we're now seeing technology and technology interfaces getting more interesting too. And that will fundamentally change the way we build product. And I actually think it's going to make it much easier for us to build product for people that need to access content differently than just on the web. And I know you've done a lot of really deep thinking about this sort of area in general. Um, and I'm really sort of two things. Like what have you seen as the seismic shifts in the last year or two years? I know really the last year has been sort of like the most interesting one. And what are you sort of predicting for the next year and, or two, um, for the people that are sitting in product roles right now, where should we be looking?

Speaker C: Excellent questions. Actually Very, very, very good questions. So, uh, let me, let me first say that something that both of you, um, have discussed. Accessibility is a very personalized user experience, right? I mean if everyone, if the only disability in the world were that people were blind, it pretty much would be, excuse the expression of black and white, right? It just would be easy. On, off screen reader, on, off. And you'd be working maybe. At best we see some improvement in voice interfaces, right? I mean, I go back all the way to the times of dectalk when Stevie Wonder was looking at us saying, hey, I can use this voice exercise to work with some of my music, right? So we've come a long way, uh, since then in the last year though, and I'm glad you brought that up, Marilyn. Where I think the rubber has met the road is the, is the entree of two things. Um, automation at scale and the integration of gen AI. Okay? So there's no doubt that both of these two are kind of running a parallel path that should result in the enhancement of interfaces that faster, better and most importantly at scale. One of the fundamental problems that we had at tpg, and I say problem, I should really call it a problem, just was a challenge was scale. MasterCard, you know, to go back, could call us in and say, hey, look, we've got X portfolio of web domains, right? And we need you to come in and look at each one because we split them out for different clients, different, different, uh, vertical, different markets, right? And they all maybe work from the same cms, right? And kind of have a little bit of the, the same look and feel to a certain degree with a logo and some copyright. But after that everything's different and the user experience is different. Well, that's where you need experts and you particularly need experts with disabilities to be involved with that product because they're the ones that can actually give you, you know, the true user experience. You write a workflow that says a person should do this, go to this, go here and go there. And the reality is, is the screen reader, for example, doesn't quite work that way. Or someone who is bound to their keyboard, it doesn't tab through that interface. So, so I just want to emphasize first and foremost, the personalization is huge here. And I'll come back to that in a little bit more. Why I think that's even likely to get better as a result of AI agents and things like that. Likely. Um, why is everything a checkbox? Because everything about accessibility is basically compliance driven, right? And so whether it's section 508 whether it's the EAA, whether it's section 504, whether it's uh, whether it's the WCAG, uh, requirements, whether it's uh, you, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Anyone that had any, any country or you know, government that has any investment in accessibility or requirements, that's what they are, they're rooted in requirements. Very interesting experience that I had. I, myself and my uh, colleague who has since passed away, Jim, uh, Tobias were the co chairs of the last section 5 away, section 255 which is the Telecommunications Act Advisory Committee. And Jim and I have been in the business, Jim even longer than I uh, have been. Uh, he goes back into the early, into the mid, early 60s. Um, but he passed away about four years ago. But we had come to the conclusion that all of these requirements, technical requirements, product requirements were a waste of time because they would become exactly as you stated, their checkbox. And if I could create a voluntary product accessibility accessibility template, a vpat, and get that through to a government system and just say yeah, check, check, check, check, check. We did all this. I, I'm good at gold. And then a contract can get signed, right? What we wanted to work with were the, the principles um, of accessibility which are rooted in the um, fpa, which now just because I'm trying to think of it, I can't remember what FPA stands for. But they are the principles of developing a product that is usable and accessible. So in order to achieve accessibility for a blind person, an organization had to ensure that it was usable and accessible. I'm um, using the shorted shortest version of the word to a screen reader, period. That's all it said. You test it, design it doesn't matter how you do it, just make sure that a screen reader user can use it. Make sure that it is usable and accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. So there's all your media, there's all your captioning, there's all your real time captioning, right? There's all that emergency uh, uh, call uh, uh, centers and things along those lines. They have that if it's a person who is using um, who's in a wheelchair, right? And maybe they're using some sort of. Was very popular now a little less infrared type technology where they dwell on the screen. So I don't know if you've ever seen this, they put a, like it looks like a little dot right here in the head of the forehead and they look at the screen and now they can move across the screen and cause interactions in the interface on the screen. So you've got to make sure that your products are usable and accessible to people without, you know, with physical disabilities or mobility disabilities. And you just go, you go through cognitive disabilities, hearing disability, you know, uh, low vision disabilities. If you go by those principles, there's no need for checkbox. Right? So, so that's why we are where we are today. Everything is about compliance. And with some of the stuff that's going on, you know, at the federal level particularly, um, it's going to be really interesting to see how much those requirements. I just saw a news brief come across me this morning that I have to go back and look at where section 504, which is basically, um, education and requirements around accessibility there, uh, are being questioned about whether or not anyone needs to even meet them anymore. So I think compliance is a bad, is ultimately a bad approach. And it's certainly from a businesses, from a business standpoint, um, it just doesn't create a business value proposition that a company could buy into. Right. So the, the approach is usually just get done, whatever has to get done. It's the minimal standard. This is what we have to reach. Just do that, nothing more. And uh, that from the standpoint of a product developer, I mean I worked in a number of products over the years and I know product developers, they want the best, they want all the features, they want it to be feature rich, they want to be, they want the functionality to work, you know, A to B, very quickly. Um, and they want, you know, they want to show, they want to show the rest of the rest of the, uh, their customers what, what they can and what they can do, what they can achieve by using our product. They do not want to be handcuffed, um, by compliance. And so oftentimes at the corporate level now we're not talking about development. Maybe, maybe VPs of engineers and whatnot might do it at that level. They don't want to pay the cost, they just don't want to do it. So just get done the minimum criteria. That's it. So that takes us into the next to your next question, which is, okay, AI agents now are starting to become a thing. Jacob Nielsen just released a very intriguing, um, very interesting. I'm still honestly trying to digest it and think about it, but you know, functionally what he's talking about and ironically the fact that he titled this article, uh, AI Agents Rest in Peace Accessibility was just huge. To have someone of his stature to write a big headline. And when you Read through that article. It's a lot more than accessibility that he's, that he's talking about. Right. But he does a great job, I think, of explaining where things are going and where he sees where things will go in the next four or five years. And I agree with him. AI automation, AI agents could very well become. I find this so ironic. Uh, the new accessibility, assistive technologies, adaptive technologies, they could be. Right. They do the speaking for you, they do the reading for you. Right. Um, just, there's just all. They do all the manipulation for you. Now if you enter into the robotics, it could even go even further than that. But that's functionally what he's saying. You a. The, the, the tools that people with disabilities use today, the applications, whether they're software or hardware, will be replaced by these agents. These agents will be so intelligent they'll know what you want to say if you're non verbal and they'll speak it for you. Right. And then they'll act, they'll interact with you because they got brain interfaces tied to them.

Speaker B: The most fascinating thing about that from a builder perspective, and I'm going to shut up here in a second, Leah, so you're going uh, to. You're far enough away, you can't kick me under the table is that. Let's, let's think about this from the perspective of a builder. Um, so I have worked with builders for like 100% of my career pretty much. Um, and this will change the way we think about what we build and how we produce information. Because if our interface is now an agent, the website's probably not the most effective way to get them the information they need. Structuring a website like it's always been historically with the. About us and like, you know, FAQ isn't all. That's not the right way to structure content for an agent.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So what we build um, to, to disseminate the information that we want out there, it's probably not the, the classic standard shopping cart and all the shit that we make humans go through. Sorry, language. But um, I think that's really exciting from my perspective and I think that's like the big aha. Like who are we actually building these interfaces for? I know Leah, you're, you like you're deeply ingrained in the travel and specifically some of these like custom package, uh, I think it really sort of blows apart industries like that.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean because ultimately, you know, when you're building sort of custom packages like you, the goal is you show up and say this is where. Who I am and this is what I want to do. Make the connection m. That, you know, today is a lot of like, let me ask you 10 questions. And then some human goes and does a thing and then we. And there is AI that can do it. But it's not as good as it is when there's somebody in country that can say, this is, you know, where I'm. This is what I know about this country. But I do think that with AI and the knowledge base of those people, like, there's so much we can do that will change how we have to build, how we interact, what we're interacting with. Because, I mean, this, like, walk me through a, you know, a funnel of questions is, is. I mean, it's. It's going to be dead to us. Right?

Speaker C: So, yeah, yeah, I. And by the way, I want to correct something I said. I was calling those, uh, principles of accessibility, fpa. And, uh, it just came to me and I knew, I knew it would functional performance criteria. So if you go and you look up in section 5, 8, you'll see there's about 8 to 10 of them that are there, you know, principles of accessibility and how to design or who you should design, design for. But let me just tell you why I find Nielsen now. He, this is his second, um, article, blog, whatever he, whatever he calls them that he's written in the last year, which basically says we're not going to do accessibility the way that it's being done today. And last time it was artificial intelligence is just going to replace accessibility. It was just kind of a blanket statement. And now he's saying artificial intelligence is going to replace, you know, assistive technologies and adaptive technologies through these AI agents. And here's how that's going to happen. So we're one step further. What I find incredible about that is, uh, when I wrote my book, which was back. This is the 25th year. Yeah, 2000 was released. In 2000, I said what we. And I was actually citing a, um, principal engineer, uh, at Digital Equipment, who passed away not long after the book came out, David Stone. And he talked about how can we personalize, uh, software in the web for people with disabilities. And he talked about this notion of interconnection and smart devices. But there's a layer that he talks about, and he called it this framework that he figured every application of the world would hook into and it would deliver whatever it was that the user with a disability needed, however they needed it. So I called it pervasive accessibility. Okay. And so um, that was what I called it in my book. And I said, eventually we're going to reach a time. And I. So here's the connection I'm making we with these AI agents as I understand them. And I will not, you know, uh, say that I'm an expert by any source of the imagination. But what I understand, how they work and how we're using them here at AudioEye helps me believe that we will reach a point where the system and the interface will adapt to the user rather than the user having to adapt to the interface, which is what people with disabilities have to do today. They want to interact, they've got to plug in their device or turn on their screen reader or, you know, whatever, whatever, um, adaptive or technology they're using. I don't want that. I think we reach utopia when the interface says, oh, you're blind, use you, you need voice output? Do you need voice input? Because you can speak to me now in here. I'm going to read everything. How do you, what do you want to do? What tickets you want to buy? Where do you want it? You know, to your point, Leah, and, and the blind person will just sit here and it'll be 2001 a space odyssey right out of the box.

Speaker A: I mean, using travel as an example, like I think the day when the, when, when the experience becomes not only am I getting my tickets booked and my whole bespoke trip booked or whatever my trip is, whether it's bespoke or not, but I don't have to as a traveler go tell Virgin Airlines that I need assistance in the airport. It knows I don't have to tell the hotel that I'm going to need a room on the ground floor with uh, you know, wheelchair, blah, blah, blah. It knows I don't have to say when I'm in, you know, Greece, I'm going to need certain support because of the stairs. And uh, it's going to know. And I think that is then. And it gives me chills to think about it because that is then when we give people access to the world.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: From a travel perspective. That's why I do. What I do is so that people will go places. And I think we, when we're able bodied, we just, and uh, maybe that's not even the right term, but when we have, when we don't have these kinds of disabilities that can keep us from travel. Like I think we don't recognize or even realize that some people just can't.

Speaker C: Right? That's exactly true. That's Exactly. Or, or they just don't. They just don't. Right. I mean, people say black people use computers, right? Using it for 60, 70 years.

Speaker A: And why shouldn't a bl. Blind person get access to all of their senses in the Coliseum?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Because they can't see it. Why shouldn't they get to eat a meal in Italy just because they can't see it?

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker A: Like there's. That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker B: And I think this is why, like, it's, it's. It is incumbent on product to take accessibility back from compliance.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: To use your words, Mike, this is a personalization journey that we can now enable at scale because technology has advanced to a point where we can serve people. And it's not like this generic can use a website person. We're now actually serving people with all of their various needs in context in a way that they want to communicate. You might be blind, you might just be driving and not be able to look at something right now, like, why are we leaving this, this sort of opportunity in. In the hands of compliance? It's an obligation. You must do it. Like, I feel like this is just like this moment where we need to lean in.

Speaker C: There is an answer to that. There is a reason why we have to use compliance as the stick, because businesses don't bite the carrot. They just don't. They don't see. One thing that I've argued for years is that we have never truly made accessibility a business value proposition for an organization. But if we did for accessibility, what we've done for, for other, um, you know, technologies or, or markets, say, for example, alternative energy. Right. And we, we gave tax breaks and we gave financial incentives and we gave research grants, and we threw all that into it and really put behind it. Now companies could say, you know, I mean, whatever reason. What am I read, what am I reading about Elon Musk every day? The guy lives off of government grants and funds, right? So if we put those kind of dollars into accessibility, not just here, everywhere, all over the world, we wouldn't even be talking about this. There's something else that I want to make sure they get. Accessibility is about a mindset. It really is. If you're not thinking, if you're not thinking about the Persona types that exist, whether they're elderly, whether they're a person with a disability, or whether, as you said, Leah, able bodied. And that's a, that's. That term is fine. Right. If you're not thinking about those Personas who you're going to Interact with and how they're going to interact. Why would you think accessibility? You won't.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: I prefer the term democratization of technology. Right. I get it. Right. You have to, you have to do accessibility because. Because, you know, to get people to do anything, you need to stick. But I also think making it as easy as. As easy as possible for anyone to interact with your product. There is a business rationale there. There is. There is. Someone in product just needs to do the freaking work to say, this is why we need to do this, because here's the opportunity.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I just want to say this. As you're saying this, I'm. My brain is exploding a tiny bit. I think the shallow thinking around AI agents right now is how much, how many jobs can I cut, how much money, how much efficiency can I get in my company so that I can go public? How much? I mean, listen, I will blast Klarna all day for firing 750 people and using agents but not thinking bigger than that.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: About how they are a consumer brand. How does your consumer brand enable? How does it. How can you use that technology that is brilliant. They've built brilliant technology to enable. Not just cut your margins.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker A: Or cut your cost so that you can increase your margins. Right. Like I think we're the CEOs and the product people today, we're all thinking so shallow.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: About how we can use these things that we're not thinking about the beauty and the depth of how we could use it.

Speaker C: We're not really creating a digital society.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: We're trying to create a technology that fits in, you know, the bespoke society, if you. If you will. Right. And we should be looking at it. One thing we all know, every great invention, regardless of what it was, has always led to new possibilities, new job markets, new economies of scale and what have you. New producting and. Right. They just, they just do. I mean, just look at what, you know, to keep it, keep it remotely current. Look at what the Internet and the web have done for us and how they've changed life, you know, since the 90s. Right. Going into now. So now we're moving to AI. I'm all for it. I always have been. What I don't want and what those, my fellow colleagues and friends and colleagues, and a lot of them are themselves individuals with disabilities. What we don't want is to be left out. And that's a big problem with AI, is being edged out that bias. Right. Something that you kind of alluded to, Leah, if Someone if the system hasn't been trained, so to speak, the AI hasn't been trained to recognize what those typical personalization, uh, uh, user interactions are for any given individual or any given Persona type.

Speaker B: So let's, let's actually, I think this is. That's a really good call out. Right. Um, so you're a product manager. You actually really want to serve a wide population. You want to be able to make sure that you have as many Personas in your quiver as possible. Because, um. And to go back to a point you just made, Leah, this is not a cost cutting exercise. This is not a. I'm treating this like it. So I want it to be cheaper. I am looking for ways to take my existing resources and apply them in broader business cases and make more money and what, like whatever your business is up to. So where, where is the best place for me assume, um, I'm a product manager at a company and I really want to be able to build products that anyone can buy and use. How do I get those Personas, Mike? Where do I go?

Speaker C: Um, yeah, well, so, so, um, I'm looking at my bookshelf here, looking at a couple of books that I just say here. I remember a conversation I had with Jared Lanier. I don't know if you remember who Jerry Lanier is. He's the one that came up with virtual reality. The coined phrase virtual reality. Uh, so he and I were having a conversation one day writing standards for virtual reality that. For accessibility. And uh, he said, you know, Mike, what this is, this is very cool. We were talking about the notion of caves. And he said, at some point it'll be offices and I will take this pen and hand it to you through this virtual experience and you'll be able to take it back. That's that I think is, is, is, is very cool. Um, in terms of, I think some of the possibilities that we could, we can grab. Now where was I going with this?

Speaker A: Where book books that you were just talking about, like,

Speaker C: so, so yeah, that's where I was going. I wanted to hand you a couple of books I have right here that I have. So two authors, um, Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenberry, wrote a couple of books, um, on creating Personas for people with disabilities. That is my go to book. Now Sarah and her husband, M. David Sloan, just released another brand new book which also talks about Personas. So I owe you the titles of these books so that your audience can see them, but that they literally talk about Persona development.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: From a UX perspective. So that you could do that kind of in from a product development perspective that I think are the best in the world. Literally the best. Now I'm also a little bit, you know, David and Sarah both work for me. So I can say. And Whitney, Whitney was always on the committee with me in section five way. We're best buds. So these are people. But I know from the base that they speak and I know it's focuses on user experience to truly grasp and enhance that experience, make it optimal for people with disabilities.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I'll just make a note here that if you're listening and you go to our website in the resource page with this episode, you'll see all of the articles and books we've mentioned will be listed there. So we can make sure that. So I have a bit of, ah, maybe a little oddball question. Um, I think one of the things that is popping up for me, I'm in addition to leading product teams, Mike, I'm also a coach, um, and I coach mostly people in tech. And I mean I have 26, 27 clients. And I would say half of them or more are somewhere on the neurodiversity, um, universe.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: On the journey of neurodiversity. Some of them are very late to their diagnoses. Some of them are women who just got missed and then late in life are like, what's happening in my brain? And suddenly finally said, you should see a doctor. How, how do we. How should we think about. Have you get. I mean, um, if you don't know, it's fine, but I assume you do. How should we be thinking about neurodiversity and accessibility?

Speaker C: Boy, that's. That is an excellent question. It's one that we have struggled with for a long time. Clay Lewis was perhaps our first, um, expert. He was a professor of cognitive science at the University of Colorado Boulder. And uh, Clayton and I have a very unique experience. We both graduated from the same high schools in two different generations. Him in the 60s, me in the 70s. And the fact that two people would come out of this small high school in Connecticut and be in the same field. But we've been talking about cognition and disabilities around cognition, which of course now has evolved to do neurodiversity. And it is being taught. There are working groups at the web consortium in the Web Accessibility Initiative who are addressing this, uh, this topic. My personal experience has been kind of more, um, a little bit more stringent in terms of, uh, more nearly focused.

Speaker B: 1.

Speaker C: I've had a lot of interactions with individuals who are autistic, we very often run into them, you know, speaking at conferences and things. So I've learned a lot about autism and I have friends, you know, who are on the spectrum and whatnot at that level. In fact, I have a very good friend I've ever just, just was with him just about an hour ago. And um, it's just, you know, we learning how to interact and relate from one human to another, you know, who's, who, who, who is, you know, challenged by neurodiversity. It might be the best word to express, um, is an interesting human experience, period. You know, it's a human to human experience that you have to learn.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I have that background. The other thing is I, for about a year I worked for Pearson, Pearson Education. And um, Pearson holds a contest every year for someone to come up with the next big thing, next big product in the education space.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So there was a guy that was a product manager there came um, up with this idea of basically building a software interface that would allow someone with um, autism or neurodiverse forms of neurodiversity to interact with other humans in a way that, you know, because more often they have a hard time understanding human expressions, reading eye expressions and things along those lines. Yeah. So he, he had this idea and someone said why someone said it, I don't know. Someone said, hey, why don't you run this by Mike Paciello? He's the guy I just had just gotten hired. So I looked at it.

Speaker A: I bet we know why.

Speaker C: Yeah. I said, this can't be done. I've worked in his field. This, what he wants to do can't be done. And then I remember my own, my own credo, right. My own motto is if it's software, it can be done. I literally said that many times. That's right. If it's software we can make. I don't know how to do it all the time, but we can. So I spent the weekend, you know, whiteboarding to death. You can see my whiteboard over here, uh, whiteboard to death. Thinking about this. And that's okay. Send him quick meal. Said, wait, I think we can. Here's why, here's how. If your guys can develop it, I can help at the architectural design level. We won that contest. Uh, it was amazing. And it was because we developed software interface that basically shows facial expressions using extended reality as, ah, the basis for, for conveying um, communication.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: To those. So that's where I lie at, at that level, beyond the knowledge of saying, yeah, there Are standards that are being developed, things that, that developers, mostly designers, mostly architects, need to keep in mind as they're designing, developing, uh, you know, uh, a ui, an interface?

Speaker A: No, I love that.

Speaker C: Both of those.

Speaker A: Like the example of the, of the, uh, you know, winning the contest. But also just that there are standards being created. I think just for a lot of product managers, I would assume many of us don't even know. We're just like, I don't know how to solve this problem. I mean, I've had my own engineers come to me when I was building health care that were like, listen, if this was what you put in front of me, I couldn't use it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because they are somewhere on the spectrum. And I'm like, okay, what do we need to do?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so we had, we played with it a bit, just using. And I know it's sort of against the rules to make ourselves the customer, but these guys were saying, I am the customer, and we're in Seattle, so there's a lot of engineers in Seattle who are the customer. So I was like, all right, I'm willing to do this this time. Right? But I, but it was a. It was, it was tricky. Like, it's tricky to have those conversations and figure out, like, what could we do?

Speaker C: So one of the world's experts on this area is Bryce Johnson up at Microsoft, and I was just with him just a. Just a few weeks ago in Orlando, and I, uh, could talk. We could have these conversations all day. He's brilliant. He, uh, he was the one that invented the, uh, Xbox adapter for people with disabilities with that. But he, he, he and I did it. It's, you know, it's a brain dump that. But, um, but he, he is one of the best when it comes to neurodiversity and understanding the needs of users at that level. So he's a great resource. Love that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Marilyn, you get one more question.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. I have so many. I don't know if I can just pick one. Um, well, let's, let's think about this from a user perspective. So, uh, what is, what is the one thing that I, as a product manager who's listening to this podcast, Mike, Beyond. Beyond the sort of the references and the books, you've sort of recommended me, I'm going to go to work tomorrow. Um, or Monday, because it's, you know, it happens to be Saturday today, and I'm not going to work tomorrow. Um, I'm going to go to work on Monday. Um, and I don't even know how to start. Right. I got a product. I'm neck deep in it. I, um, got a backlog that never ends. Everybody's yelling at me. I'm trying to keep the house from burning down. But this, all this stuff is very real. Um, so what is step one for me?

Speaker C: I can think of a lot of ways to tackle this, believe it or not, different approaches. One thing I would recommend. In three weeks, the largest international, um, accessibility conference in the world will be taking place in Anaheim, California. It's called csun, as in Cal State University of Northridge. They host it. Right. Go there, buy a guest pass, get whatever you get in there, or just call it, because I'm on their board, I'm on their advisory board, and just spend a day or two there and just absorb. That is one way to do it. You'll. You'll see people with disabilities of all walks of life. You'll see. All the experts in the world will be there. My old company will be there. I'll be there. With a new company. We will all be there. I think maybe it's kind of like, you know, this is osmosis at its best. Just let it sink in. Learn products, companies will be there. Vendors, exhibitors will be there. That probably, uh, just because it's in two weeks, I couldn't make a better recommendation. Now, if you really want it from a product standpoint, I would say look at your requirements and develop a pattern library around it that serves people with disabilities.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, uh, love that. Uh, love it. All right, lightning round. Are you ready, Mike?

Speaker C: Here we go. Okay.

Speaker A: All right, three questions. First question is if you. If you could. If you. If people could know one thing about accessibility, that you're just like, this is the thing you need to know, what would. What would it be?

Speaker C: The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative Office. That's the central space to go. Get all the guidelines, get all the direction. Get all the document. It's there. Go there.

Speaker A: Very cool. Um, what are you hopeful about?

Speaker C: I'm hopeful that these things that we've been talking about, we can develop a pervasable web, that it will be interfaces that adapt to the user rather than the user adapting to the interface.

Speaker A: I love that. I love that. And then related to this topic, or not at all related to this topic. What's a book you would recommend to our product managers who are watching this?

Speaker C: Yeah. Rethinking Competitive Advantage.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: And you probably think, why in the world. It's written by Ram. Sharon. Ram Sharon Rahm. Is one of the guys. I, I really would like to meet him. And I'm, I'm. It's one of my. My bucket list items to meet him and talk to him. Because I've read almost all of his books now. Everything that I've talked about today in relation to personalization and AI and algorithms, he talks about in this publication. This is the new digital economy. This is where we're going. This is where social media. This is where socialization on. On the, on the Web and in the Internet or whatever, we build this thing for, uh, the next, you know, the next interface, communications interface is. That would be the book, believe it or not. Now, I could recommend 20 assistive technology books, not the least of which wouldn't be mine. Right? But I think if you, if, as a product manager, read that book because he focuses on personalization and AI and automation so much, you will see, you'll see accessibility should come out in spades.

Speaker A: Awesome. Marilyn, have you read that book?

Speaker B: I just ordered it. Like, I put it in my cart and I put it. It'll be in my house tomorrow.

Speaker C: Yeah, good. Good for you.

Speaker A: Um, I'm looking forward to it. I always love. I always love when something crosses my path that I'm like, I would not have even. That would not have crossed my path, probably. So I'm super excited about it.

Speaker C: I quote from it quite often just to. Actually, I just did just the other day, and in Jacob's. As a response to Jacob's, uh, article, I said, here, this is where we're going.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Very cool, Very cool. Well, Mike, thank you so much for coming and talking to us. Marilyn, thank you for bringing Mike to us.

Speaker B: I'm thrilled. This has been. This has been like, uh, a fan girl moment for me. So thank you, Mike. Uh, I love having these conversations. I, you know, obviously have a passion for, you know, how technology interfaces are changing and what is our obligation to change our endpoints. Um, so this has been awesome. Thank you.

Speaker C: Great. And for the folks that are listening, please feel free to give me a call, email me. It's Michael Pasiellodioeye.com But I mean, just look it up on the web. You'll find me. I mean, I need to sound that way, but it's true love, um, to talk. This is. This is my passion next to my wife.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. I mean, she's glad that she's first. Yeah, I'm sure. I don't even know her, but I'm sure. Awesome. Uh, thanks again, Mike.

Speaker C: Thank you guys. Appreciate it.