Kelsey says: “[If] your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what’s going on. And I don’t have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. ”
Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.
Transcript
Nic
Hi, I’m Nic Steenhout. And you’re listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder that the transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available at the time of the publication on the website at a11yrules.com. I want to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. And they do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I’m talking with Kelsey Byers. Hey, Kelsey, how are you?
Kelsey
Doing pretty well, thanks, Nic. How about yourself?
Nic
I’m doing good. I’m glad we connect. We’ve been speaking on Slack mostly for for a number of years. And we get to connect and I get to grill you with my with my usual questions.
Kelsey
Yeah.
Nic
So let’s let’s ask you what’s your disability or your impairment?
Kelsey
For sure. So I’m actually multiplate disabled. That’s the words that I use to describe my disability. Most of them come from Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a genetic condition that makes my joints loose and wobbly and causes pain. I’ve also got ADHD and I’m also autistic. And there’s a variety of other stuff in the background.
Nic
What’s the interaction between all these is there? Is there anything that you know, when I don’t know if you have a joints getting particularly more loose? Is that going to have an impact on how ADHD is playing with you? Or is it pretty much each in their own silos?
Kelsey
That’s actually a really great question. So there is a lot of research that shows that people with ADHD are more likely to be hyper mobile. Some of them to the extent that they are diagnosed with Ehlers dauntless. And also autism is more common in Ehlers Danlos. So we think they’re definitely related. But I don’t think people have built figured out like the biological mechanisms behind that.
Nic
Fair enough. So what what impairment, what condition has the most impact for you on your use of the web?
Kelsey
That’s a that’s a really good question. Actually. It’s one that I didn’t mention, which is auditory processing disorder. So or APD. So this is a condition where, like, I can hear and my peripheral hearing is okay. But my ability to process audio in my brain is a little bit strange. So like, I have trouble processing sound with background noise. It’s a cocktail party problem. And so anytime I’m listening to recordings, or seminars, if there’s not, for example, the ability to see the person at the same time and do a little bit of lip reading a how have a lot of trouble.
Nic
Would you say that’s your biggest pet peeve or a barrier on the web, the inability to process audio?
Kelsey
Yeah, definitely. It is it is one of the two biggest barriers I have, I would say. So I was recently attending a course that had recorded lectures. And the lectures are great, but I couldn’t see the lecture. And so I had a lot of trouble following the lectures, which was frustrating. And in person, this wouldn’t be an issue. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to attend the course in person, but it was frustrating to not be able to understand very well.
Nic
We’re in year three of a worldwide pandemic right now. We have discovered that providing the ability of working from home or doing remote learning is critical. And yet, we’re still providing courses where we’re not doing everything we can to make things accessible. And the issue you’re describing to me seems like while it’s pretty critical for students doing high school or even college that are actually paying to attend to be able to access information. You work in academia, I believe. How would you say this translates into your into your job rather than you as someone attending courses?
Kelsey
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I don’t teach and therefore I don’t normally process how I would interact with students in an accessible fashion because I’m not normally teaching. But for example, when I give seminars I tried to do audio description of what people might be seeing on the slides that I’m giving. So, if the slide contains an image, I’ll try to describe what the image is showing so that people can process it in different ways. Or, for example, someone with visual impairment could process the image and understand the slides. But certainly, in academia, we have courtesy the pandemic, we’ve gotten a lot of online seminars, which is great, but specialist language means that captioning tools often don’t work if they’re auto captions. And auto caption quality, as we all know, is not what it could be.
Nic
Certainly would not. If you had one message to pass on to designers or developers about accessibility, what what would that be?
Kelsey
I would say for me, transcripts are actually the biggest thing every time I go online, and I look at someone recommends me a podcast, for example. And I look online, and I see the podcast, I don’t do audio input only very well. And so I don’t tend to listen to podcasts. But for example, your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what’s going on. And I don’t have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. So anytime I see something that has transcripts or where someone’s put a video on YouTube, and they’ve also added subtitles or even just enabled auto subtitling or community subtitling and like, Thank you, this is not that big of an ask, but it is so helpful.
Nic
I’m glad my transcripts are helping you consume the show. I I think and one of these podcasts host a rare bird that actually does not listen to podcasts because I actually need transcripts to process that information as well. So it’s one of the reasons why I care about having transcript from my show. Anyway, Kelsey, thank you for sharing some of your experiences with us and we’ll see you around on the web.
Kelsey
Thanks so much, Nic. It’s been great