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Incorporating Accessibility into UX Education from the Beginning
Episode 32nd January 2022 • Digital Accessibility • Joe Welinske
00:00:00 00:22:42

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Reginé Gilbert, NYU Assistant Professor

Reginé talks about growing up with a family member who is deaf and taking that awareness into her UX studies and the digital accessibility community. She describes her research evaluating the accessibility associated with immersive technologies. 

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Transcripts

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(dramatic upbeat music)

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- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility

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for People Behind the Progress.

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I'm Joe Welinske,

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the creator and host of this series.

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And as an accessibility professional myself,

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I find it very interesting

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as to how others have found their way into this profession.

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So let's meet one of those people right now

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and hear about their journey.

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(upbeat music)

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Well, let's get into this interview

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and I'm very pleased to be talking today

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with Regine Gilbert.

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Hello, Regine.

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How are you doing today?

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- Hi, it's good to be here.

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I'm so happy to be talking to you today.

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- Yeah, well, we hadn't talked before,

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so that's really good to able to meet you in this format.

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And I'm in my home office

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in Vashon, Washington,

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which is an island near Seattle.

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You either have a beautiful background

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or a beautiful place,

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but why don't you let us know

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where you're talking to us from?

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- Yeah, so I'm actually sitting in my office at NYU

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in Brooklyn, New York.

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- All right, well, I'm glad

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we're able to get together for this.

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And probably a good place to start is, you know,

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if you just talk a little bit

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about, you know,

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the work that you're doing right now

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and then we kinda go from there.

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- Sure, so I'm currently an industry assistant professor

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in the integrated design and media program

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that's part of the Tandon School of Engineering.

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And I teach user experience design,

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as well as I co-teach an assistive tech class

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with Gus Chalkias

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and we teach students about the assistive tech

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that blind and low vision folks use.

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Gus is blind.

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And then I bring in the UX piece and my,

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I mean, he is definitely way more of an expert

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on assistive tech than me,

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but I have learned so much from him

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and teaching the classes is a lot of fun.

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And this upcoming semester,

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I'm actually going to be teaching

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a voice user interface class for the first time

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and incorporating accessibility into it.

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- Well, everything you just talked about

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is really progressive.

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Is that department that you're in,

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you know, particularly pointed

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toward providing that type of curriculum content

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or is it something that you've thought

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and it helped foster there?

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- Yeah, so this department I really love

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because it's really diverse

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in the learnings that students can get.

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My colleagues are, you know,

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experts in virtual reality, in augmented reality,

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in wearables and technology and art,

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you know, and like biology,

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and really like working with plants and technology.

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So there's like all kinds of things

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that folks are working on in my department.

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So students have a lot of options when it comes to learning.

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- Well, yeah, I wanted to talk more

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about the work that you're doing now,

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but one of the themes

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of this series of interviews that I'm doing

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is to look at the journey

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that people have taken to

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that has resulted in where they are today.

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Maybe you could think about, you know,

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a place that you'd like to pick as a starting point.

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It doesn't have to be accessibility specific.

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You know, and just maybe help us understand

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what some of the formative things were

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that got you on the journey to where you are today.

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- Yeah, one of the things that had a huge impact on me

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when I was growing up is my cousin, Tammy, is deaf.

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And like interacting with her,

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learning a little bit of sign language,

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getting to see how she is in the world,

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and that really had a lot of influence on me

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saying, you know,

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I think I started questioning when I was young,

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like, "Why isn't more stuff better?"

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Like, "Why isn't this thing better?"

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Or "Why isn't this thing better?

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And why can't we do more things better to communicate?"

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And then, you know, fast forward.

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Years later, I worked,

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I worked in information technology

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for a lot of years

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and I got bored

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and started taking UX classes.

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And in my UX class,

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there was one slide about accessibility.

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This is what I remember clearly.

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And I think that sparks something else in me.

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And that led me to wanting to learn more

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and going to a meetup.

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And from there,

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it's just I dove right on in

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and got really interested in learning,

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in doing incorporating it into my UX job.

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I created guidelines at one job

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and nobody asks for them.

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I created accessibility guidelines

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because I was so interested in it.

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I really wanted people to apply it to their work.

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And then I started teaching UX in 2015 at general assembly.

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And I incorporated

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accessibility into my courses

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by having my students do a lot of assumptions

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around what in particular blind folks might do

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when they're in the kitchen.

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And I would have my students come up with a concept,

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you know, sketch it out.

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And I say, "You know,

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you should be able to describe this."

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And then I actually brought in

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folks who were blind to critique.

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And that really was informative for my students to say,

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"Oh, you know,

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this is user experience, right?

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You have to talk to people.

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You can't just assume

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because all of their ideas

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were busted, right?

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Like they realized, you know,

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we can't really make stuff

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if we don't involve

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and talk to the people who this applies to.

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- Well, you know, just going back a little bit,

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you know, before the teaching to that work

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that you were doing in UX for organizations,

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I know, you know, as a lot of us,

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you know, that's a logical stuff for a lot of us,

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but sometimes, you know, we'll do things,

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but then we run into obstacles at an organization

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that maybe isn't ready to put in the resources.

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Some of the Fortunate few

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find that they're, you know, immediately supported.

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What was that experience like for you?

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You're not necessarily, you know,

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specifics about an organization,

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but I mean what was your experience there?

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- I mean, I've had both

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where people are very supportive

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and where people just don't care.

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So when, you know, I was getting support

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and the higher ups were like,

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"Yeah, let's do all of the things."

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It just made my life easier.

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Made my job easier.

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It was easier for communication

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between the developers and our teams.

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And when we didn't,

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you know, have support,

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it was a challenge.

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It was a huge challenge to kind of fight for what's right,

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but then have to back down.

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- And in those situations,

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what type of strategies did you use?

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Was it like, you know, return on investment metrics

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about maybe, you know, audience that was new,

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or was it kind of more the stick versus the carrot

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related to legal or what.

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You know, what were some of the ways

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that you were able to build support for that

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or build a case for your work?

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- The ways that I built a case

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was search engine optimization

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and partnering with the marketing teams

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in the search engine folks.

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That was one that was very successful.

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Another way, yeah, is to dangle that carrot

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about the legal reasons why,

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you know, we should be accessible.

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And then I think the biggest and best strategy

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is to just ask questions,

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and to ask questions

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that are promoting accessibility

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but without saying the words.

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Because what I found in my previous work experience

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is when I said accessibility,

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automatically people would shut down.

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Say that's too hard, right?

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So then it was asking the questions.

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You know, "Are we sure about these colors?"

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"Are we sure we wanna do this thing, right?"

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"Have we thought about this, right?"

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So just asking questions

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related to what we were working on

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and seeing what people would answer.

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'Cause then I could say,

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"Oh, we could maybe try this."

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Or, you know.

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So that was my way around.

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I think asking questions

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is the best thing anyone can do

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to get people to think,

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I like to say, you know, as an educator,

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I cannot teach anybody anything.

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I can only hope that the questions that I ask

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provoke people to think.

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- Well, it sounds like a great approach.

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And, you know, you mentioned the SEO,

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which is something that,

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you know, that I've delved into

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related to accessibility.

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But I think a lot of people,

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even in the accessibility area

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may not, you know,

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understand the how's.

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How the two pieces can really work together

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with accessibility components

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adding signals to search engine optimization.

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And was that something

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that you just like identified individually

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or was there GF some colleagues in marketing

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where you explored this area?

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- Oh, yeah, so in one particular instance,

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I work directly

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with the search engine optimization person,

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like the person in the company.

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And I was like.

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And he was like,

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"I know that accessibility helps SEO.

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I don't know how it does it exactly,

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but I know it works."

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And so I said, "Okay, great."

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You know, he was so happy

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to have someone,

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you know, support him and he supported me.

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And then we got marketing involved

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and marketing's like, "Yeah.

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We need to be at the top of Google.

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So how can we do this?"

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- Well, now that you're involved

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in the work at NYU

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and in teaching regularly,

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how does that kind of manifest itself

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with your students?

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Are they interested specifically in that topic

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or they maybe are just

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exploring it or a mix

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or kinda how is that set up where you're at?

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- Yeah, so I teach user experience design primarily,

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and I incorporate accessibility from day one.

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Like we started talking about it from the beginning.

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And therefore, the students work on,

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my students will work on

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individual projects and team projects.

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And their team projects are always with a real-life client.

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Both our team and individual projects

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have accessibility components in them

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from the beginning,

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from the research phase,

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from the planning phase.

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And just this past semester,

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and even this summer,

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my students are working on a project

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that is through Arista Labs,

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and Arista Labs received a grant from NASA

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to make the eclipse

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that are upcoming in the next couple years

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accessible in particular to the blind

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and low vision community through sound.

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And so this particular project

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involves a lot of data and sound.

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And so my students last semester did a lot of research

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in regards to best practice.

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They did user interviews.

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They did, you know,

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looking at scholarly articles.

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And this summer,

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my grad research assistant and I

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are working on the designs.

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And to do that, we have been working

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with subject matter experts,

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as well as people getting input from folks

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in the blind and low vision community.

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So we are...

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And my teaching is also practice

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because we're always working

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with real-life clients every semester.

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- Well, one of the things that I read recently

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was the article that I saw on LinkedIn,

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which was where you're talking about

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developing accessibility guidelines for extended reality.

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And that was an area.

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I mean, there's so many areas of accessibility.

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It's hard to keep up with everything.

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But it was one that I hadn't really been familiar with,

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thought about at all,

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but I found the article,

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you know, really illuminating.

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Maybe talk a little bit about that technology

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and your work specifically in that area.

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- Sure, you know, in my past life,

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I had a consulting business.

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And I worked in a coworking space

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with a group that was working on augmented reality.

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And they were like, "We need UX help.

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And I was like, "What is this stuff you're working on?

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It seems cool."

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And so I ended up doing some usability testing

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for this augmented reality company.

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And that kinda got me

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into what they call XR.

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Some people, it's extended reality.

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So extended reality XR is an umbrella term

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for virtual reality,

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augmented reality, mixed reality,

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and any sort of immersive technology

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or anything that's using spatial computing.

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AI could fall in that umbrella, too.

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And so I started thinking about,

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and this came from last summer,

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what I was talking to Gus,

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my co-teacher for the assistive technology class,

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and I was talking to him about Pokemon Go.

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And he said,

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"I wish I could play Pokemon Go."

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And then I thought to myself,

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"Well, okay, Gus is blind,

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and he can't play Pokemon Go because it's not accessible.

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Why isn't it and why isn't augmented reality accessible?"

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And so last summer,

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my students worked with Gus

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and a company called Rose Digital

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to create concepts around accessible augmented reality.

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So they didn't build anything,

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but they did create concepts.

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And that had me thinking about accessibility overall

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in the XR space and where does it start?

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You know, "Where do you start?"

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And he said, "Well, people start with the tools."

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And are these tools accessible

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not just from a standpoint disability,

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but accessible from a cost perspective?

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And so my grad assistant,

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Saki Asakawa, and I

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went through as many tools

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as we could find the popular tools.

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And we looked at about 60 tools,

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specifically looking at the price,

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looking at the hardware needed,

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software needed to run these programs,

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and if there was any accessibility associated with them.

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And from there,

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we ended up writing this article

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and we created a subway map,

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which this upcoming semester

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I hope I can make in a tactile version,

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but we created a subway map

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and the subway map lists out

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what's free, what costs money,

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what has accessibility related.

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And each subway line has a purpose.

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So there's, you know,

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for like drawing or things of that nature.

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So that's kind of the long story of how I got into that.

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And in addition to that, I'm part of XR Access,

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which was started by Cornell Tech,

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and it's really,

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it's a large group working to make sure

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that accessibility is getting built into,

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you know, this emerging technology

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that a lot more people are using.

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And I'm also doing a research with design patterns

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with an organization called Vail

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and it's researchers from all over the world

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examining design patterns with different tiles.

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And then I'm working on a second book,

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which is I'm co-authoring with Doug North Cook.

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And it's about the human side of spatial computing

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where we will talk about accessibility in there.

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So yeah, that's in a nutshell

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how I got into the XR Suisse

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and what I'm doing now.

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- Well, yeah, that's a great story to hear about that.

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And it's obviously gonna be something

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that we're going to be learning about

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and working with more and more moving into the future.

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You briefly mentioned, you know, a new book

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and some things that you're working on.

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Maybe talk a little bit about, you know,

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kinda what future plans

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or things that you're currently really passionate about,

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anything you can share about your latest projects.

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- Yeah, sure.

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So the NASA soundscapes project

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is an ongoing project.

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It's a five-year project

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and my students will be every semester

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working on something different with the project.

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And my research

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around inclusive and accessible XR,

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it continues I'm hoping in the coming time.

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Actually, because of the pandemic,

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I felt a little thrown off with, "Where do I go?"

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"What do I do if I'm not able to be with people?"

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So what I'm working on now

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or what I've been working on over the summer

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is looking at inclusiveness and accessibility

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for different titles,

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specifically with one type of headset.

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So it's my hope to expand that,

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to try other headsets and see how that goes.

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And in addition,

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continue working and researching for my book

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and getting real understanding

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of the layout of the space

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and really the human side of things

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and how we can make these experiences

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overall more accessible,

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not just from a disability perspective,

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but from a true inclusive perspective.

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- Well, yeah, obviously keep yourself really busy.

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And I wanna thank you for taking time

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out of your busy schedule to chat with me

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and good luck with your book.

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And hopefully we can meet some time in the physical world,

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but if not, it's really great chatting with you.

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