Promoting Accessibility On Video Calls - BBC Click
50So all of us have had to adapt the way that we work, but for some disabled people that has meant getting to grips with a completely new way of communicating. Paul Carter has been chatting to Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer to find out more. Full transcript below.
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0:01
In just the course of a few weeks, through a screen has rapidly become one of the main ways we stay in touch with friends, with family, but also our colleagues. But for one section of the community, that change has brought some other very specific challenges.
0:18
I have profound hearing loss and I'm essentially what I call deaf as a post.
0:22
I'm profoundly deaf and my voice is very deceptive, but I don't hear you. You sound awesome.
0:29
for the Deaf and hearing impaired community, this change has meant a new reliance on a rapidly developing and improving accessibility technology, live captioning, which uses AI to provide real time on screen transcription of what a person is saying. And most of the most popular platforms are now included. One person with experience of this on both sides of the fence is Microsoft's chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay Flurry, who I spoke to with the assistance of her sign language interpreter.
0:58
The accuracy bar has steadily increased very quickly as a result of artificial intelligence. And they're now in, really, in most scenarios, a superb illustration of what's being said. Are they perfect? No. And I think captioning was something where there was a lot of nerves in some ways a lot of empowerment that came from it, but also some nerves. That's changing.
1:24
five years ago this would not have been possible. This shift to mobile work would have been absolutely impossible for me to succeed in. Because I would not be able to follow this conversation, without everybody using written communication.
1:38
But live captions are only one solution, and they aren't suitable for everyone. The Disability charity Scope have put together a comprehensive breakdown of the accessibility features of all the major video calling platforms. And they have concerns about the range of access across different programmes,
1:55
inaccessible video calling software - it was already an issue for disabled people. This technology it was available before COVID-19. And automated captions have been around for a really long time. The fact that there isn't consistent accessibility features, quality, availability across the different platforms, really demonstrates how low on the priority list accessibility has been. What I would say about disabled people is that they are the original life hackers. But when you talk to disabled people, that's not ideal. What they really deserve is equality of access to products and services for any business.
2:36
if there's one thing that we as a community are is born problem solvers. And I think this one's a little bigger than the normal size problem that we have to deal with. Every aspect of disability is having its own learning curve. And, and I think in years to come, we will write down these learnings for future generations.
3:01
But with new solutions comes new problems.
3:05
One of the challenges with any video conferencing software is the issue of eye contact. The difference between using caption at the top of the screen like I'm doing right now - I can feel that I'm looking at the screen, I look active and engaged in the conversation. If you compare that to the other option, which is at the bottom of the screen. And now looks like I'm actually not engaged in this conversation, and I'm doing something else. So if the perception somebody relying on captions gives when they're looking at the bottom of the screen like this is that they're not paying attention or they're disengage, it can really damage their perception socially.
3:40
So could one tiny glimmer
3:41
of light from this pandemic be that it kickstarts new and accelerated innovation in the world of accessibility?
3:49
When you put technology and when you put use through a completely new set of scenarios, which is what we're doing right now. You're going to get an enormous amount of learning. You're gonna generate a huge amount of innovation on the back of it. One, I would say that there is an enormous amount of stuff out there to help employers, help employees work in the remote world. We're doing it. And there are moments and days where it's not easy, but I would say that, man, it's a lot easier than we thought it was gonna be. And so really, really well just know that it is entirely possible.