In The Arena by TechArena - Improving Computing Accessibility with I-STEM

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Kartik Sawheny, founder of I-STEM, about his mission for delivering increased accessibility across computing and the challenges inherent in the industry today.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Allison Klein, and today I'm with Kartik Sahani, a leader of the iSTEM initiative and a speaker at Mobile World Congress. Welcome to the program, Kartik. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here. So, Kartik, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and a little bit about your background. I'm the co-founder of iSTEM. We essentially are a digital accessibility company that uses AI to try and enhance access to digital content, be inaccessible and incompatible with the assistive technologies, access to websites, which by the way, over 97% of websites on the internet today are inaccessible. Our role is to try and provide remediation services using AI to try and fix some of those issues, but also provide feedback to developers. Personally, my background is in artificial intelligence, and I was a computer science student, studied human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, worked at a bunch of places like Microsoft, Uber,

IBM, etc. focusing on a wide range of things but I think at the core of all of that was how do I leverage my skills for having like scalable impact. I'm blind myself so this is kind of personal to me and so I kind of wanted to make sure that I'm able to leverage my skills to have an impact on my own community. And so that's kind of how iSTEM came about, where, you know, again, as I said, the idea is to try and work with educational institutions, corporates, governments, non-profits, and help them enhance access of their services to people with disabilities as well. When you look at the societal challenges for differently abled people, we see major gaps at a macro level in education, in our career advancement, and also micro gaps in terms of the accessibility of technology that you're talking about. Why do you think the industry

is so behind in making technology holistically accessible? The key problem is the lack of awareness. I don't think people have bad intentions at all. I think most people are very well-meaning and they want to help. But accessibility is not a part of any of our curricula. You think about the computer science curriculums at all of these universities, the top universities out there, computer science schools, and maybe there's one course and within that course there's one lecture dedicated to accessibility. And so that's not enough. We don't teach our developers, our designers, people in the law school who end up making these policies about the needs of people with disabilities and what they can do to try and improve the lives of people with disabilities. That just does not happen. And so that's a big problem. The other thing is that even today, we think of people with

disabilities more from a charity lens, more from, hey, yeah, they need help and can provide some help kind of a thing. We think of accessibility from a compliance perspective. You know, I've got to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and so I've got to make my website accessible. And that's a problem, because when you think of accessibility and disability from that narrow perspective or mindset, then you can't really use it as an opportunity to innovate for all of your users. You can't use it as a business opportunity where you'll be able to tap into this untapped market that, by the way, controls around $8 trillion of the global economy, which is crazy, right? And so you're not thinking about any of that. You have a rather narrow perspective. And so there isn't any advancement. I use a screen

reader, which reads out stuff to me on my computer. And if I compare the innovation in this technology from the 1990s or early 2000s to where it is today. And I compare that to the broader tech industry. And there's just no comparison. Like, it just has not kept up. And I think that's kind of the major issue, why it hasn't. Because we've just kind of really been thinking about this very, very narrowly and just getting stuff done and leaving it at that and not thinking this is an opportunity. And I also think that when you consider the challenge from a pure technology standpoint,

this is not a challenge with one edge. There's not one thing that the industry needs to go fix. It's multifaceted. How do you think AI factors in? Since you do have an AI background, and that's where your iSTEM initiative is focused, how does it factor in? And is this a game-changing advancement that is going to address some of these gaps? It is, but we should be careful that AI is not the answer to everything, and it is not going to be the answer, the complete

answer here either. But it has a lot of potential. So for example, when you think about accessibility testing tools today, they are only able to automate around 40 to 50% of the test coverage, you know, for our 40 to 50% of the requirements from the web content accessibility guidelines. It's essentially a set of guidelines that, you know, that exists today for web accessibility. And we can only automate testing of around 40-50% of that because of our limitation to have rules to basically be able to evaluate our conformance with these guidelines. But AI provides us with opportunity where we can go beyond that. If you ask me if you'll be able to automate 100%,

absolutely not because when you think about disability, there are people with varied disabilities. Each disability has its own needs and, you know, own requirements and all that kind of stuff. And so it's really hard for AI to automate all of that and give you kind of like that confidence that your website or your app is going to be accessible and usable by all people with disabilities around the world.

But hey, can they get 70% there? Can they get 65% there? Can they get 80% there? Like more than where we're at today? Absolutely. And that's what AI can help you do. Besides that, when you think about remediation and usability, right, that's another area where AI has a lot of potential. Today, if I have cash and I want to be able to detect currency, there's no way I can do that myself, thanks to how all of the US dollar bills are, you know, they basically are the same size and they feel the same. There's no way you can do that. I mean, unless you're really organized, which by the way, I'm not. And so the idea being that, hey, can you leverage AI to give you that information? When I need to, you know, dress up appropriately and figure out like,

hey, you know, are my clothes matching and all that kind of stuff? Like, how do I do that? Right? I mean, that's kind of, again, an opportunity where AI comes in.

You know, we would all be talking about these large language models and generative AI these days with chat GPT and all the crazy work that's happening and the competition between Microsoft and Google

and everything else. You know, that's a really good opportunity for accessibility as well, because you think about all the people with learning disabilities, and how, and the potential this has for them in being able to simplify content, and being able to summarize content, and being able to basically provide a multimodal experience, where, you know, it's not that you just need to learn by just simply reading or by simply listening or seeing something. Well, you can have all of that and you can personalize it based on how you learn the best.

And so those are things that only AI can enable. And so I'm very excited about what's possible. Like even in our work, kind of bringing it closer to home, the only reason we're able to create accessible documents at scale is because of AI. We're able to save on an average about 75% time, even with the most complex documentary mediation, because AI gets us so far. And then, of course, you know, our mediators come in if you want to, you know, deliver a 100% accurate and accessible document. But again, you know, there's a massive efficiency there because of AI. I will say, I think the human in the loop approach

is the best approach right now, where you basically get best of both the worlds. And so that's kind of what I recommend, at least, you know, the capabilities of AI right now. But, you know, I'm very bullish on the future and where, you know, AI will take us in being able to potentially even automate substantially more than what is possible today.

I think that I've been in the industry for a long time. One of the other things that comes to mind is just building an inclusive mindset in developer teams. And you worked at a lot of the large tech companies. Do you think we are where we need to be in terms of thinking and designing and development from the start with an inclusive mindset? Or do we still have a major gap? I think we do have a major gap. We're getting there. A lot of companies are coming together to try and make that happen as well. And I think I really appreciate the collaboration that's happening in the industry,

where a lot of the competitors are also coming together and working on projects to advance disability innovation and accessibility. But I think there's another thing that you mentioned, which is super important, right? Which is inclusive design and really thinking about it right from the beginning. I think the biggest challenge that I see is when you're not thinking about it from the beginning, and then you try and add accessibility to products, and it almost never works, right? Because what one is, you need substantially more resources, and as is, because people don't understand the value of accessibility, well, that's kind of where,

well, it stops. And even if it advances that point, we all are talking about agile development. You might fix something today, but unless you have a framework in place that will ensure accessibility of your product, right, over a long period of time, it just is not going to work. You're going to launch a new feature tomorrow and break that, right? And so how do you make sure that you're being accessible? But even more than accessible,

how are you being usable for people with disabilities and providing them a delightful experience when using your product, right? I think that should be the bar. You don't have to think about standards. Yes, they are a good reference point for you to get started. But beyond that, like depending on what your product is and the kind of technology that you have, I think the focus really should be, hey, am I designing for everyone? And hey, do I have a unique opportunity to innovate

where I can provide a particularly good experience to some of my users? Like, is that the moment? Like, do I have that opportunity now? That is something that I think designers and developers need to start asking right from the inception of the product, right from the design of the product, if you really want to see inclusive products.

And then this is not just for accessibility or disability, right? I mean, this is across the board. And even within the disability community, we see a lot of intersectionality that you have to think about. Two people with disabilities are not always the same, right? Like other things like race and, you know, the kind of income level disparities that we have. And all of that also factors in as well.

And so how are you thinking about all of that as you're designing and designing something that is great for everyone? I think it's key, but we're not there yet. We still have ways to go. Now you talked about iSTEM's mission being related to accessible documentation, but I know that you have some bolder initiatives. Tell me about other things that iSTEM is working on today and how you'd like to see a deeper partnership with the

industry. One of the things that I've realized working in the accessibility space for about a decade now is when you're designing accessibility-related solutions, you're not just designing for people with disabilities. You're designing for a much broader cross-sectional society, especially a lot of the other underrepresented communities. When you think about digital adoption of a lot of these mobile apps and whatnot that we have today, we very quickly realize that we're not there where we kind of need to be, right? Especially in a lot of the low and middle income countries. I'll share a personal example. My mom today, you know, she, for example, needs help when she wants to book an Uber, right? There are a lot of other people like that and a very big

number that aren't all that literally literate. There are other people who might be older. There are people who might, for whom English might not be their first language. There are people who, for whatever reason, just do not prefer reading, but, you know, might prefer, for example, listening to audio. In fact, you know, I forget the statistics right now, but, you know, there was a research recently done around, you know, the number of Americans who prefer audio for learning, and that number was really, really high, right? And so not everyone has to have a disability. A lot of people without disabilities prefer it as well. A lot of other underrepresented communities, like, you know, people who might not be as digitally illiterate, people who are older, etc., might also prefer it. And so for us, it's

really about how do you make content universally accessible? I mean, that's kind of what Google says, and so I don't want to get there. But, you know, in a different sense, like, you know, are you able to, for example, use a lot of the work that's happening in large language models right now, where people can simply ask questions and get the answers that they need in their vernacular languages? Are they able to access content in various formats like audio? Are they able to, for example, consume text as, you know, in a more visual way, if there are visual learners? Is that something that we can facilitate? But at the same time, how do we empower businesses to be able to provide this diversity to their users and customers as well?

How do we work with nonprofits? How do we work with government leveraging this technology that we're building to be able to then really empower a lot of these communities that haven't had

the kinds of opportunities and resources because of this lack of access to information, right? How can we facilitate that? And so that's kind of where iSTEM is headed and what our broader goal is. We started with disability, but we do think there's a lot of potential here in how this tech could be used for a much wider society today. Now you are speaking in Barcelona at

Mobile World Congress, and it's a nexus for the tech industry to be gathered. What is your message going to be at Mobile World, and how does it relate to iSTEM? Well, I think that the most important thing is going to be you've got to start thinking about accessibility and diversity in tech as an investment opportunity, because I don't think, as I mentioned, we're there yet as an industry. And so we need to embrace that. We really need to start thinking about accessibility, usability from the design phase itself. We need to innovate. We just don't have to check the boxes and meet compliance.

Gone are those days when that used to be the case. And so my message is going to be to all technical folks, developers, et cetera, to be more mindful about accessibility, developers, et cetera, to be more mindful about accessibility, usability, about various communities. And then for executives to really think of this as an opportunity to differentiate themselves and their companies by embracing this. And we're already seeing, for example, this play out rather well for a lot of companies.

There's something that's valuable, 500, for example, where 500 CEOs have committed to putting disability and accessibility, you know, on their board agendas. And a lot of them are actually doing really well in terms of, you know, what they can accomplish and what they can accomplish, both in terms of, you know, just branding, but also like just actual gains as well, like business and revenue gains. And so I want to drive that home and encourage executives and development teams to take that seriously, but in an alternate different way than what they have thought about it so far. That's fantastic. I'm so glad that you spent some time with us on the tech

arena, Kartik. One final question for you. You taught me a lot about accessibility in these short few minutes. I'm sure you've piqued the interest of our listeners as well. Where can they find out more about iSTEM and engage with you and your team? So they can visit us at iSTEMAI.com. That's I-S-T-E-M-A-I.com. And I would love to connect with people. They can shoot me an email directly at Karthik, which is K-A-R-T-I-K at inclusivestem.org.

That's I-N-C-L-U-S-I-V-E-S-T-E-M dot O-R-G. Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on today. I really enjoyed the interview. Thanks for joining the Tech Arena. Subscribe and engage at our website, thetecharena.net. All content is copyright by The Tech Arena.