Lori Samuels, NBCUniversal, Accessibility Director

Lori talks about her early exposure to the discrimination her disabled sister experienced in school. She describes her professional introduction to accessibility working with consumer multimedia software and then helping to build the accessibility program at Intuit. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(soft music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,

The People Behind The Progress.

I'm Joe Welnske, the creator and host of this series

and the accessibility professional myself.

I find it very interesting as to how others

have found their way into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now.

And hear about the journey.

(soft music)

All right, well, here we go

with another one of our interviews

with accessibility professionals.

And today I am pleased to be talking to Lori Samuels.

Hello Lori.

- Hi Joe, how are you?

- Yeah, everything's going well in my Vashon Island,

a home office, which is near the Blink Seattle Headquarters.

Where are you talking to us from today?

- Yeah, so I'm from, I mean, Logan, Utah,

a little town called Logan Utah.

Home of Utah State University and just a pretty spot, Utah.

- Well, I'm glad we were able to have you here

to talk about your experiences with accessibility

and why don't we just start

with you talk a little bit about

what you're doing right now?

- Yeah, sure.

So currently I am the Accessibility Director

at an NBC Universal that's under Comcast as well.

I work closely with the Comcast accessibility team

and NBC Universal is actually comprised

of a lot of different businesses.

So it's a really interesting role.

I get to work with sports

with streaming apps like Peacock

and also entertainment and film,

television and news as well.

So, and also our parks to me.

So lots of fun.

- Yeah, I'm sure that there's a quite

a lot of accessibility activities going on there.

So like what's a typical like day in the life for you

that work or maybe a week in the life?

Are there any things that you're always having to deal with?

- Well, lot of it is initially, you know,

kind of raising awareness around accessibility,

what it is in the digital space

with all websites and mobile apps.

Again, I don't come from a broadcast

or media industry background,

so I've been also my own education and learning about

accessibility considerations

for media in broadcast television, et cetera.

But typically I would just work with digital product leaders

around training, you know, engaging on looking

at the current accessibility and how we can improve that

make improvements, roadmap it, prioritize it.

Also do a lot of work over and kind of the DEI side

and culture and HR,

work with our disability inclusion

focused employee resource group called My Abilities.

So lots of different sort of irons in the fire,

but a lot of fun.

- Well, we'll come back and dig in some of the things

you're working on today,

but one of the purposes of this activity is to find out

how people got to where they are today and accessibility.

So maybe we'll go back in time now

and you can sort of pick out some of those early experiences

or milestones that started to lead you to a accessibility.

- Right, well, I will have to go way back

to a very long time ago to my childhood.

And just tell you about

I guess my connection with disability starts in my childhood

with my older sister who has cerebral palsy.

We grew up, we also have two brothers

and we grew up in Boston and the 1960s and '70s.

And at the time of course the Americans

with Disabilities Act had not been passed into law yet.

So my sister did not attend Boston public schools

like my brothers and I did.

She went to a separate school.

And so I think I was aware from a very young age

of the segregation and discrimination

and othering that my sister experienced

and her friends as well.

It also on a positive note,

I played and hung around with kids with disabilities

because they were just my sister's friends.

So I got an early opportunity to kind of, you know,

interact with and play with those kids, which was great.

So then we'll fast forward a little bit to my college years,

I decided to major in computer science at Boston University,

ended up getting my bachelor's

and master's degrees together in computer science

and went out and started building work

for a little company that was building consumer software.

So we were built, we were writing code,

you know, releasing products,

back in the days of DOS and Apple II computers.

So this was again very long time ago,

but, you know, so I started my life

and my career as a software engineer.

I then moved to California a few years later,

about five years later,

moved to Northern California in the Bay Area

and ended up working

for a company called Broderbund Software,

which probably is best remembered as being a large consumer

educational software company

that specialized in multimedia CD-ROM software.

So this is all still pre-internet.

I joined and I became the engineering director there,

and I was working specifically

on home productivity products, like the print shop,

which is sort of our big flagship product at the time.

And it was there that I started getting more interested in

what was the early days of technical accessibility,

meaning this was now.

So now we're about 1993ish

and the ADA had been passed into law.

So the Americans with Disabilities Act was now a law.

And what that meant is that kids with disabilities,

unlike my sister's experience,

were now starting to go to mainstream public schools.

And I started doing some volunteer work

with a computer lab that was testing out

different types of assistive technology

or adaptive devices that were attaching to regular computers

like adaptive keyboards and track balls

that kids could more easily manipulate instead of with less

fine motor control than a mouse.

And so this was the early days of assistive technology

and I was working for again,

kind of a popular software company.

So I started thinking about how could we make sure

that our products, which kids loved to play with,

and there was schools could work with these different

devices and peripherals.

And I came up with this great idea

that if we just followed standards,

that would somehow make it easier to be compatible

with these new devices.

So, and I'm joking, of course, you know,

there really weren't any standards at the day

'cause this was all fairly new technology.

So I started going to conferences like CSUN

and closing the gap back in the 1990s.

And it was kind of funny because Broderbund and Microsoft

were really the only two mainstream software companies

that were showing up at these conferences

back in at that time,

everything else was just was assistive technology

and adaptive, you know, quite well,

early screen readers and tele tools.

And there's other things like that, which again,

we're looking at how can we make these personal computers

usable for people with different types of disabilities.

And so that was the Genesis of my entry into accessibility.

- Well, I mean, that's really fascinating.

I started working when the world wide web consortium

came out with the web accessibility initiative,

but you know, this things you're talking about predate that,

and yeah, it's really fascinating thing about

working with assistive devices at that point in time.

So, I mean, you were really, you know,

out there at the forefront of things.

So then you kind of what happened in that next stage,

you know, eventually we did start to get to a place

with standards where you still working

with accessibility all through that time?

- It not consistently, but, you know, sort of, you know,

again, at that time there wasn't any such thing as a career

and accessibility really,

we were just going and we're sort of going in and out of it

or trying to raise awareness.

But so, you know, for example,

I was working at a couple of .coms during the .com boom,

out in the Bay Area,

just kind of leading engineering teams

and doing technical program management.

So not particularly accessibility focused,

but then I got an opportunity after taking a little time off

to raise kids and be home.

I came back to work in about 2010, '11,

and joined into it.

And I was interviewing

for a technical program manager kind of role.

But when I was interviewing with the CTO there,

the chief technology officer,

it was a little yellow sticky note on his desk.

And it just had the word accessibility on it.

I thought this is a sign from the universe.

So I just asked him, I said,

"So are you doing anything with accessibility?"

And he said,

"No, you know, legal has been asking us to, you know,

to kinda pay more attention to this".

And I said, "Well, I'd be happy to help you

start up a program".

We said, "Okay,

we should probably have you do that".

So I got the chance to start

into its global accessibility program

kind of from scratch back then.

And that further kind of just cemented my interest

and passion and love of all things accessibility.

So I got to do that at Intuit.

We had some fun, you know,

wonderful progress and projects that got to work on there.

We worked on QuickBooks specifically to really try to make

QuickBooks more compatible with screen readers,

so that folks who wanted to kind of independently manage

their small business finances could do that.

So it was a very exciting and very community-based project

with some great executive sponsorship.

So, you know, was a wonderful experience doing that

and also trying to get the program off the ground

and handed it over to the fabulous Ted Drake

who's now has just taken it to new heights

and just I so admire what Intuit is doing in that space.

So really proud to have started that

and left it in such good hands.

- You know, I'm looking forward

to have an appointment scheduled

with Ted Drake for next month.

So I'm looking forward to that.

And I know about that relationship.

So that's, that's great.

I love the anecdote about the sticky note

with accessibility because you know,

those little things sometimes are the pivots

that change so much.

And then you mentioned the person

that you were interviewing with at the time

it brought up the compliance issue.

And of course that's where a lot of organizations,

maybe the C-suite first starts to seriously think about it,

but then, you know,

we know that there's so much possible return on investment

for people that maybe have been shut out

of using digital products and services.

And so I'm sure into it,

you know, was able to reap the benefits from that as well.

- Yeah, and, you know,

I can't emphasize enough how important it was for us

at the time at Intuit to connect with the customers

who needed us to work on accessibility

in QuickBooks in this case

it was so essential to them.

And they had been, you know,

frankly kind of asking for a while,

and it hadn't until someone came in

and started pulling it all together

and making the right things happen.

We had a wonderful team and an engineering team in India

that was really passionate about trying to improve this.

But what really struck home to me was

we need to bring the voices of disabled customers

to the table and make sure that they're heard by leadership,

because that was what turned things around

once leadership understood that they were, you know,

there was a segment of their consumer base

that they weren't serving well,

it really changed things again to their credit,

to the leader's credits

will take that seriously and actually invest in fixing it.

So that was a great experience.

And after Intuit I got the opportunity to join Microsoft

as a consultant and worked in different

product organizations there entirely in accessibility.

So again, I've sort of seen this transition

where accessibility has become a field that you can work in,

which is great.

Didn't used to be, but now it is.

And I'm just really feel so privileged

that I get the opportunity to do that and grateful for that.

- Well, that brings us kind of up to date

to where you're at now.

And I mean, the organization that you work for,

I mean, there just must be just enormous

amounts of opportunities and level of work to do

to be accessible in that space,

where there are any particular passion projects

that you have on going on right now, or any things that are,

you know, taking up the majority of your time?

- I'm not necessarily taking up all my time,

but something that has been something that's just been truly

delightful to be involved in is we,

and it started before I got here, but it was underway,

but it was very happy to support this,

the work that we're doing, that NBC Comcast,

NBC universal is doing to provide live audio description

for certain premiere live special events

and the Olympics and Paralympic games.

So we work with a company called Descriptive Video Works,

who are fabulous,

and they actually have people describing the visual context

for folks who are blind and visually impaired

to be able to understand what's happening in the sports

or in, for example, the Macy's day parade

or the 4th of July fireworks

or the inauguration, presidential inauguration.

So we've kind of crafted the approach to that

and all of the technology that goes into making that happen.

And it's been really well received by the blind community

and advocacy organizations.

So proud, very proud of the company

for the work that they're doing in that space.

You know, there's always room to improve in accessibility,

always, always, but I think that's an example of where

we've intentionally been inclusive

and found a way to make something better

and more accessible.

And so, you know, again,

it's just been a really fun thing to understand,

to get involved in.

- And are there any things that you're looking forward to

or thinking are important moving to the future?

Because I know I haven't been attentive to this space

as long as you have,

but, you know, I think back 20 some years ago,

and in some ways it's amazing

what has developed and what's available in accessibility.

And then in other ways, you know,

I really thought we'd be farther along than we are today.

Like, you know, just based on my own perspectives.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

- Oh, I have thoughts on that.

(laughing)

Just as a general thing, you know, I think that, gosh,

not specific necessarily to my current role,

but I'll get to that in a second.

I think that in accessibility

and one of the things I'm excited about

what Joe Devon and Jennison are doing in

with the Global Accessibility Awareness Day Foundation

is to begin focusing on some of the foundational,

unintended building blocks of the web.

You know, it's still such a wild west

from a technology standpoint in, you know,

on the internet where there's so many different tools,

there's frameworks, there's libraries, there's JavaScript,

there's all these stuff.

There's not a consistent way of building websites.

And so, as a result, we see a lot of websites

that are inaccessible.

The vast majority of websites unfortunately

have accessibility problems.

I think we have to shift left

and not just in terms of educating our product organizations

about how to do things right with accessibility,

but we also have to shift the tooling left.

We have to make sure that anybody

who's using tools to build a website,

have accessibility checkers baked in,

have that, you know, catch those problems early.

Let the people know that who are building the cyber,

designing the site that,

Hey, we're going to flag the problem for you here.

And you can, here's how you can take care of it.

I think we could have much more intelligent tooling

in the build process, in the design process,

in with those tools.

And that's something that, you know, looking at again,

what the GAAD foundation

is doing is looking at huge like React.

How can we make these building blocks more accessible?

It doesn't solve for everything,

but we could solve a lot of things upstream

from where we're solving them today,

this idea of building a whole production website

and then finding out after the fact that it's inaccessible.

It's obviously not as safe sustainable model

because we haven't succeeded in doing that.

So that's my little thoughts on that.

So I think the opportunity within media and television

and film and news and sports is also one

that goes beyond accessibility.

It gets into things

like authentic disability representation.

How can we make sure that disability is represented

authentically and with real casting and in front of,

and behind the camera?

So that is an exciting space.

It's not my real house per say.

It's not a technical issue,

but just being inside

and being a disability inclusion advocate

from inside the company is a really fantastic place to be

and see that there's already really great work

happening in this space at NBC Universal and elsewhere.

So that's a fun part about being in this space.

- Well, your passion for the subject definitely stands out

And it's a great to have an advocate like you involved

in continuing to push things forward for accessibility.

And I appreciate you taking the time today to chat with me.

Maybe we'll meet up together at a conference

when we actually do that stuff in person again.

- Absolutely, that's great and my pleasure,

I'm always happy to talk about this

and just encourage people to learn more, it's a practice.

It's something that you can just get better at over time.

So don't be afraid to start.

And I hope more people get into accessibility

and build a more inclusive world.

- Well, thanks a lot, Lori.