Social Media and Accessibility: Shifting Perspectives on Product Development

Technology changes people’s lives. I have always been fascinated with technology that changes people’s lives in a consequential way. Whether it’s the internet, whether it’s phones, cars, whatever technology comes about. And if it changes the way society lives, if it changes the way people behave or people work or people interact, and whether that makes it a lot more effective, efficient, whatever the situation is, I have always been fascinated with improvements in our lives and how certain products, and in particular technology, helps with that.

And I never in a million years would have thought that maybe one day I’ll build something and be responsible for building something, be part of something that changes people’s lives in a consequential way. And in this video, I’m not at all going to suggest that I have done that, if Vista Social is somehow changing people’s lives in a dramatic way. I think we are a super helpful tool. It’s a very necessary tool, but perhaps not life-changing or not overly consequential in the biggest scheme of things.

However, there are a couple of stories that I want to talk about that have kind of altered my perception, my sort of vision of what it means to be ultimately responsible for changing somebody else’s life.

The Silent Connection: Technology Bridging Communication Gaps

And I want to start by one example. The example goes back many years ago when me and my wife, we were renovating our home. And we have this crew of painters that they’re painting the walls, and they were deaf. They were deaf.

We communicated mostly through writing. One of them was able to hear a little bit. The other two couldn’t hear anything. And nevertheless, they worked and they did their job. They got paid and they just functioned in the society. Before my project, and I’m pretty sure they’re still working out there somewhere.

And this one day, I come into the house knowing that they’re there, knowing that they are working, and it’s completely quiet in the house. It’s just dead quiet. Nothing is going on. And naturally, I’m like a little nervous, like, you know, why is, you know, why is nobody doing anything? And I start going from room to room looking to see if I can find somebody. And lo and behold, I go into one of the rooms and there’s one of them sitting there eating lunch in complete silence. And I go around him a little bit just to wave. And as I’m walking around them, I’m seeing that he is eating his lunch and he has a phone, an iPhone, in front of him and he is FaceTiming with somebody on the other side.

And mind you, this is probably 15 years ago, where smartphones are still a new thing. FaceTime is still pretty new. And what I’m realizing is I’m standing there for a little bit, kind of just, you know, kind of peeking into his life a little bit. I’m realizing that he’s talking probably to his girlfriend, to his wife, and they’re not saying anything. They’re using the sign language to communicate. So, and I was just blown away by that.

A Support Ticket That Changed Everything

And, and I completely forgot all about this, right. Then years go by and here, here we are building our product. And often times I, I’m involved in support tickets and there is this one peculiar support ticket that comes in where apparently the user is suggesting that he cannot find a button, right, a very important button. I can’t remember what the button was, but he just simply can’t find the button. And right away I’m thinking, oh, you know, some sort of responsive issue, device issue. So I’m going to figure this out. So it gets escalated to me. I start working on it. I start asking questions, like an old browser, even, you know, and I asked all my questions and I still can’t figure this out. He’s on an up-to-date browser, normal computer, good internet speed, etc. We’re communicating via support chat system at that point.

I ran out of my options so as the next step, I obviously offer the screen share. So I said, let, let’s screen share real quick so I can kind of see what’s going on. Uh, the person agrees, which schedules the meeting. We jump on the meeting and he shares his screen. And right away I, I’m totally confused. I’m not sure what I’m looking at. It’s a screen. I kind of see part of one window, maybe I maybe see part of another window, but I’m not seeing what I’m expecting to see. So I go, hey, what am I looking at? And the person is like, well, I mean, looking at your site. I’m like, I’m sorry, but, you know, I can’t see it on the screen. And the person says, well, of course you can’t see it on your screen because I’m using a screen reader. I’m legally blind. I can’t see anything that’s on your screen.

The Humbling Realization

And I for a second, I simply freeze. I, I, I, I don’t know what to say. I am, I’m at awe. I’m not even sure. I’ve never, I’ve never run into a situation where the person is blind using our product. And in the end, it turns out, right, that our button was simply missing an alt text. For those of you who know, alt tags basically defines in text what the button says. This is called accessibility. Apps should be built using, uh, no stacks specifically to facilitate screen readers.

But I was completely humbled by that experience because I always, I always neglected those tags. Like I, I never cared about those tags. I, I, I kind of saw them as a nuisance. And here an individual who is blind, is now able to use our platform, further once we introduce the tag. And, and obviously the person is very thankful and he is just, you know, he’s can thank us enough for working with him on this. But as I’m receiving the thanks, I’m kind of thinking to myself that I should be thanking the person, right, for the experience.

Beyond Functioning: Enabling Contribution

I was blown away. I haven’t changed the world. I haven’t, maybe even consequentially changed that person’s life, right. But I was, I was really shocked by perhaps, um, the fact that I had no idea, the fact that I’ve completely ignored the fact, right, that people with such disabilities, that they could be using something that we’ve built. And and it’s, it’s, and it’s such a simple thing for us to do to enable tools for such people, right. And ultimately, they are able to not just function. They’re able to contribute to the society, right.

So in this example, we’re not changing the world because we’ve built a revolutionary tool. But the fact that we’ve somehow enabled people not just to function, but to live, that to me is both humbling and, um, I, I, I’ve taken that as a lesson that I now implement in, in my daily work, right, to think about accessibility and to think about the people who may be using the product with a disability, with a slow internet connection, right, with, um, a public computer. Like, whatever, whatever the adversity may be, right. We are still here to help and to be available for people to conduct their work, to, to be productive, to earn money, to, to, to partake in, in whatever activities they want to do.

Lessons in Humility and Inclusive Design

So, I wanted to share these examples. I wanted to share these stories. I wanted to share the stories just to sort of, um, talk about both something that is, uh, super humbling. Something that has altered my perspective on how to build products. And and, and this is really an example of how a place where we may find sometimes ourselves, a place of confidence, right, a place of, I know it all, is really wrong. Like, there is always an unexpected, there is always a something completely new, completely unexpected that could sort of happen and and and then we need to prepare for it and we need to be aware that that could happen.

So, I hope you found the story interesting. This is the kind of story that stayed with me for a long time and there are a few more that I’ll try to record at some later times.