Over the past year, many of us in the technology community have spent a lot of time in video meetings. Endlessly staring at others in their little boxes on Teams or Zoom, listening through speakers or headphones to their voices (usually a fraction of a second out of synch with their mouths). This has become our “new normal” for communications with co-workers, partners, and customers, not to mention friends and families and students and teachers.

At the same time, interactions when we are out and about shopping, visiting dentists and doctors, ordering in a restaurant, are conducted between people wearing masks. Masks that obscure the mouth and muffle sound.

The typical person adapts. But what of the person who is Deaf or Hard of Hearing, Blind or Low Vision, or with Mobility or Cognitive disabilities? How do the billion people worldwide with some form of disability adapt?

Let’s make the question personal. I am significantly hearing impaired (I prefer this term to “Hard of Hearing” to refer to myself and understand not everyone in the community agrees with this usage) and have worn hearing aids for most of my adult life. Without my hearing aids, I can’t hear normal speech at a level for it to be understandable. With my hearing aids, I still need visual cues (e.g., lip reading) to achieve full comprehension. My reality – my disability – is often invisible to others, except when I miss something they say and they chalk it up to inattention, rudeness, or my not understanding.

As a person with a hearing impairment, existing in a world where others are wearing masks has created significant added stress to my life. Removing most of the visual cues to help understanding reduces my comprehension a lot. On the other hand, spending my days in endless Teams meetings has given me the gift of real-time captions on every conversation. Technology to the rescue!

Thursday, May 20, 2021 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and a great time for everyone in the technology business to consider how their products are used by all their customers, and how their own organization accommodates the needs of a wide range of individuals across the full spectrum of abilities and challenges. It is long past time for companies to fully embrace the wealth of tools and technologies available to them to create accessible systems and content. This includes things that are mandated, such as accessible websites, as well as things that are still voluntary, such as full audio descriptions for videos. If the pandemic year has taught us anything, it is that providing the right technology tools is critical to everyone being fully participating and productive.

The other day I was thinking about an online seminar where the presenter said, “There is a lot on this slide, so I’ll let you read it for yourself.” This immediately set off my internal alarms when I thought about the audience members who may not be able to see the slide being projected. Then, as the slide occupied the screen for a bit, the presenter – now invisible – continued to speak. The platform we were using did not provide captions, so I found myself trying to read and listen to poor audio simultaneously. The whole experience left me feeling frustrated and angry. Both the person speaking and the technology were at fault, most likely due to ignorance. I know we can do better, and today is a good day to start.