Science Friday - Ancient Algae, COVID Holidays, Accessible Pregnancy Test. Nov 6, 2020, Part 2

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

How Algae Survived A Mass Extinction Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan peninsula, it set off a period of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists think a majority of land species went extinct during that time, but what was going on in the planet’s oceans? And how were these ecosystems able to bounce back?  In a new paper published in Science Advances, researchers say what saved Earth’s oceans may have been a type of algae that could hunt for food. Ira is joined by one of the paper’s authors, Andrew Ridgwell, a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Riverside, to discuss the little algae that could.  Gathering Together (Carefully) For A Pandemic Holiday The winter holidays hinge on gatherings of multiple generations of family and friends, indoors, for long periods of time. These are all factors that increase the risk of spreading COVID-19, or unintentionally infecting your loved ones. The CDC now defines a “close contact” as spending 15 minutes within less than 6 feet of an infected person, over the course of 24 hours—encompassing pretty much any holiday gathering.  With Thanksgiving looming, new cases are setting records all over the country, and mayors like New York’s Bill de Blasio are urging people not to travel. Many are rightfully now weighing whether they can in good conscience get together. Some epidemiologists, including Anthony Fauci, aren’t outright telling people to cancel their holiday plans, even as they worry about a further surge in the pandemic tied to winter gathering. But if you do choose to travel, there are things you can do to reduce the risk you’re taking, like isolating before you go, getting your flu shot, and taking well-timed COVID-19 tests. Science journalist Kate Baggaley and epidemiologist Julia Marcus discuss how to identify the risks you might encounter, and minimizing those risks you can control—like the choice between driving and flying, how much faith to put in coronavirus testing, and indoor versus outdoor spaces.  This Accessible Pregnancy Test Has Results You Can Touch Whatever answer you’re hoping for from a pregnancy test, taking one is rarely a low-stress occurrence. And for many who are blind or vision-impaired, taking a pregnancy test can be even more tricky: the tests use visual displays, and often the only solution for knowing the result is to call a friend, family member, or even stranger into a very private moment. The app Be My Eyes is now partnering with pregnancy test maker ClearBlue to offer volunteer services in reading pregnancy tests—but that still brings a stranger into the process. The UK’s Royal National Institute for the Blind, however, now has a new design for a tactile, accessible test that could be taken privately. It’s colorful, high-contrast, and big enough to use without full sight. And the results appear as bumps that anyone can feel. SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to Gizmodo reporter Victoria Song, Blind Motherhood blogger Holly Bonner, and Procter & Gamble accessibility leader Sumaira Latif about the value of accessibility in pregnancy testing, and how a good idea might become an actual product. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, if you've decided to gather for holidays this year, how to maximize the safety of pandemic travel, and when to actually cancel your plans. But first, 66 million years ago, when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, it set off a period of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists predict the majority of land species went extinct,

but what was going on in the Earth's oceans and how were these ecosystems able to bounce back from it? What may have saved the Earth's oceans may have been a rare type of algae. My guest to tell the tale is Dr. Andrew Ridgwell, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Ridgwell, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. So your models help us understand what ocean environments were like right after that asteroid impact. What did the post-impact ocean look like? Well, we don't have direct evidence.

So scientists like to do a lot of speculation, but based on what evidence they do have. We're pretty sure that there would have been a period of darkness from all the soot and aerosols thrown up by the impact. And so we wondered what the little algae in the ocean were doing in a long period of darkness, which maybe was a few years. we don't actually know how long. Because that would be rare. Don't algae usually needs photosynthesis to survive? They need the sunlight. Exactly.

They're just middle plants in the ocean. They're sort of unusual and they're different from the plants on land is that they have a very short generation time. So sort of every day they're looking to divide and split apart and make another algae. And so they really can't normally go very long with a lot of darkness. So trees have strategy of having seeds in the ground or maybe ferns have a lot of their biomass under the ground and they can sprout back up again when conditions are good. But it's not clear. At least it wasn't clear before our study to us what would happen to little algae in the ocean.

Yeah, because two years is a long time for plants to survive without any sunlight. So what allowed the algae to survive? So we already knew that some algae like diatoms, they have a little resting stage. You could almost look at them. It's not quite like a seed, but you could almost imagine them like diatoms making a seed, and then if conditions are better in the ocean, they can sort of pop out again. But the major player in the ocean at the time didn't have a resting stage, and they all went extinct.

And there was almost no evidence of them for about two million years after the impact. So the question to us was, well, where did they go? Because after two million years, they sort of came back alive in kicking and they're still a dominant species in the ocean today. So it turns out to be, I mean, a nice story would be as if they suddenly looked around, they couldn't flutter synthesize and they started eating everyone else. It's a little bit more evolutionally complex than that. So the ones that could only photosynthesize when extinct, but there were some rare cousins of them who lived maybe near the coast and could both photosynthesize and eat other organisms,

a little bit like venous fly traps, both on land, the plants. They photosynthesize and they also try and catch flies and digest the flies. So these special shelf cousins took over, and they could do some further synthesis, this, but they also did a lot of eating of bacteria. And who knows, maybe in the aftermath of the impact, there was sort of, you know, dead dinosaur sludge coming down the rivers and all sorts of yucky stuff with lots of organic matter that if you could consume organic matter in the ocean, you would be in good

shape. So how long did they survive in this sort of environment? They clearly survive, these sort of specialists, they clearly survived the post-impact darkness. by eating whatever they could eat. But the original photosynthesizing only cousins of them who went extinct, of course, and not around them. So there was a very long and interesting period of about two million years where these sort of interlopers ruled the roost. They would sort of periodically go extinct, and a new variant of them would turn up,

and they would go extinct and then be replaced by yet one more, almost as if Darwin was rolling the dice, You know, like this is not the best species we could have. Let's try another one. This one's no good. Let's try another one. And this went on for about two million years of these sort of repeated rolling of the evolutionary dice until one day they're called Mixer Trots is the technical word for an algae that can both synthesize and eat someone else. But after about two million years, they re-evolved to just be plants.

So they re-learned to not have to also eat other people. people once, you know, the conditions were good and the sunlight was back. And we still don't know why there was this two million years of instability. No, and this is a, you know, a topic of ongoing research. And it's something that I help develop models to try and understand. It's sort of really enigmatic because these algae are dividing, you know, their generation time is one day. So in a few years or decades or 100 of years, they should.

be evolving to some new state or to take advantage of some new environment that they could be successful in. So why it took 2 million years of evolution, you know, if you imagine 365 times 2 million, that's a lot of generations. So there must be something else about how the environment of the Earth interacts with life. So evolution doesn't just proceed independent of climate and nutrient supply as life evolves, it modifies maybe the climate or the environment around it, which then also redirects the direction of evolution. So my suspicion and something that I want to develop some models, computer models to test, is that somehow there's this interaction of normal rates of evolution with how it interacts with the Earth as a whole. And during those 2 million years,

What was the rest of the ocean like? Were there higher forms of life that died out also? Or were they evolving ways to survive also? It partially recovered in terms of the production in the ocean and who eats someone and someone else eat someone else. So there was different layers to the ecosystems. But the various lines of sort of some of them, chemical evidence suggests that the sort of pumping of carbon around the ocean

wasn't operating as it's normal rate. So we certainly had production in the ocean and different trophic layers and fish, but there was something still not right about the ocean for about two million years. And then once these mix of troths reverted back into being just the palm's little plants again, this settled everything down. And the sort of the carbon cycle reverted back to sort of a normal mode of operation. and over the following sort of 10 million years, then diversity gradually increased

until we got back to roughly the state prior to the impact. You know, I find it surprising because I don't know much about oceans and mass extinctions, but do you find it surprising how short a time it took for ocean environments to collapse after that mass extinction? What? We're talking two years? Isn't that basically nothing in geological time? I was surprised thinking about it

how vulnerable the entire ocean ecosystem is. There have been many mass extinctions over Earth history. This one is super interesting because it seemed to strike at the very heart of the whole ocean ecosystem, which are the primary producers. If you don't have algae, photoscenticizing to make food for the zoo plant, for the fish, for the sharks, for everything else, everything would completely collapse. So we lost most of those precious key photosynthesizing algae just after the impact. Probably what sustained us or sustained the ocean at the time was cyanobacteria,

which are very, very ancient, bacon photosynthesize. They go back more than three billion years to very early Earth. And I guess they've seen a few, you know, evolutionary, they've seen a few things in their time. So they're a very, very, very hardy organism, and they sort of provided probably that tidying over of, you know, light-based primary production until these sort of these algae got their act back together. What do you need to know or what tools would you like to have so that you know what was happening during those two million years? Time machine. I got one right here. Back of my office.

I have a lot of colleagues who have, you know, very expensive, very complex instruments for measuring tiny ratios of atoms. And these machines seem to get bigger and more complex and they're measuring even even tinier ratios of atoms to try and learn something about, you know, the past environment. And sometimes I just think, shouldn't we spend the money building that time machine? Because then we can just go back, you know, go back with a beaker ensemble. What I would like to know, because it's my colleagues who do all the hard work, getting samples of mud that are being drilled from maybe four, five kilometers down in the ocean from the ocean floor. And they wash the mud and they sift it and they spend hours, weeks, months, years, looking down microscopes, picking apart the remains of these tiny organisms to identify them, see who is there, see who disappeared, find out. when people came back again. I sit at home in front of a computer writing computer code. So it's very easy for me to say, what would I like to know? Sure, I'd like them to spend a lot

longer looking down microscopes finding these things. You know, there's some debate these days about whether it was the asteroid impact or the volcanic activity that caused the Cretaceous extinction or possibly some combination of the two. What does your gut tell you about all of this? I think it's pretty well my up that it's that one shot, big rock slamming into the earth that had this catastrophic sudden rapid extinction. There was certainly volcanism before episodic and there was volcanism after. And in other times of earth, in earth history, we think that it was volcanism driving extinctions. but I would say something from the perspective of why did most of the photoscent-sizing algae in the ocean go extinct?

You need this period of darkness. You need a lot of stuff, a lot of rubbish put up into the atmosphere that doesn't come down for a year or so. That's an interesting point of view, Dr. Ridgwell. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Dr. Andrew Ridgwell, Professor of Earth System Science at UC Riverside. We're going to take a break.

when we come back, the holidays are coming and there's no such thing as safe travel during a pandemic. Is there? Or maybe there is? There are risky choices, less risky choices. We're going to talk about how to assess the options and decide what's best for you, even if it means, well, staying home. We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I am Iroflato. With Thanksgiving around the corner, are you worried about getting your family together for the holidays, worried about catching or possibly spreading COVID-19, a virus that seems to be reliably spread when groups of people spend sufficient time together indoors. But even Dr. Anthony Fauci wouldn't tell people definitively to not travel, telling the Washington Post that some people may find

their need to be together more important than the risk of catching COVID-19, as long as people understand there's a risk. Some of you have given it a lot of thought and have told us of your decisions via the Science Friday Voxpot app. I would like to encourage everyone to stay home this Christmas season and give our health care workers a break. We don't need to overrun our hospitals and make life difficult for all of those people. We normally have my parents and my sister over for Thanksgiving and for Christmas, but this year, even if they quarantined or got a single test, the concerns about not catching a possible infection with a single test, and the issues with asymptomatic spread, even if you've quarantined in our area, just make it

too dangerous and we've decided to not see each other at all. I'm only traveling about 50 miles to my kid's house. We keep a low profile and don't visit elsewhere if possible. This year, I'm not so sure if I am going to spend Christmas alone or not. And I wish I knew what to do to stay safe and have a happy holiday season. Thank you, Jan Marie, Scott, Chris, and Tula for your thoughtful comments. We may have some useful information and advice for you. So please let me introduce my guests. Dr. Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist, associate professor of population medicine at Harvard Med School. Welcome, Julia. Thanks for having me. And Kate Bagley, a freelance

science journalist based in New York, she's written about this conundrum for popular science. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much. Let me begin with you, Julia. There's no arguing, is there, that more people gathering indoors is going to lead to more cases of COVID-19, right? Yeah, at this point, with the level of community spread we're seeing across the U.S., it's pretty inevitable that if if people gather across the country and travel and gather in indoor settings for Thanksgiving, we will see some cases attributable to that holiday. So why give advice on holiday gatherings then? Well, I think this is just like many other areas of health,

where we have to acknowledge that we can't just tell people, you cannot do this. If we think about how well that works for, let's say, encouraging teens to not have sex or telling people, you know, don't use drugs, this just say no approach, it always fails. And actually, it's counterproductive because in reality, some people are going to have sex, use drugs, or in this case, get together with their loved ones. And they need tools. They need information about how to mitigate risk if they do gather. Kate, as a journalist, you talked to a lot of epidemiologists about how

holiday travel. Let's get into that. Was there a number that they were able to put on how risky it is to celebrate with families this year? No, they weren't. That's one of sort of the most frustrating things about this. At one point, I asked several of them, well, okay, how about a number, how many people? And they said, oh, it just depends on so many variables. It depends on how much COVID-19, how prevalent it is in the community where you're coming from, where you're hosting. it depends on how much space you have. And if you have any ability to have your gathering outdoors, if you can have it socially distance indoors, it depends on how compliant all of your guests are going to be. And if everyone's going to be on the same page, there's just so many different

variables that go into it. Julia, as an epidemiologist, do you come up with a number? Do you try to come up with a number? Well, you know, binary thinking is very appealing. And, you know, we want to have some metric we can use, like six feet is, within six feet is unsafe, beyond six feet is safe, and any other number of binary ways we can think about this. But the reality is that risk is not binary. It's actually, it's a spectrum. What we can do instead is provide relative risks and say, you know, doing this is going to be safer than doing this. And that, I think, even though it's maybe less satisfying for people, is more true to the uncertainties here and the way that risk works and at least gives people a framework for decision-making.

All right. Then let's talk about some of the things you can consider. Give us, Dr. Marcus, some idea of the things we should be thinking about. I think when we're thinking about assessing risk, there are a few things to consider. Some of them are more in our control than others. So the first thing I would say is thinking about community spread in the area where you're hosting or traveling. And of course, it's pretty high in a lot of places right now.

And that's something we can't personally do something about. I mean, obviously our collective actions are going to influence community spread, but at any given moment, as an individual, we don't really have a lot of control over that. Another thing to consider is people's vulnerability to a bad outcome from infection. So thinking about the people involved in any gathering, are they older? Do they have any underlying conditions that might put them at higher risk? And that may influence decision-making. And again, that's not really within our control.

And then a third factor that is within our control is what is the risk of the actual activity that we're thinking about engaging in? So everything from air travel to if we're thinking about Thanksgiving, a gathering, is it going to be indoors, outdoors, masks, no masks, how many people? And those are all things that we can tweak. And that's where we're really going to see potential for risk mitigation. And then just a fourth thing to throw out there, even though this is not about risk assessment, it comes into our decision making here is what are the best. benefits of this gathering or this activity that we're thinking about engaging in. Is it something that we can easily forego without any real impact on our mental health or other aspects of our

well-being? Or is it something that we really need to do. And that, I think, is something that we're always factoring into risk calculus, but we don't really talk about it as much. That's a very interesting last point there, because I think we all think about that. Kate, I know that you have made us a timeline if we decide to travel for Thanksgiving, which is coming up in, let's say, about three weeks. What do we need to do to plan for it now? Yeah, one of the researchers I spoke to kind of made the point that, yeah, there are ways that we can reduce our risks around Thanksgiving, but it does require some advanced planning. A lot of the steps, though, are variations on things that we've already been told to do, which is, you know, wearing your mask out in public, social distancing,

in your hands frequently. So one thing right now you can do is get your flu vaccine. It takes about two weeks after you get it for your immune system to develop antibodies. And what you kind of want to avoid is a situation where it's Thanksgiving, you start to feel sick and you're like, oh no, is it COVID? Is it the flu? Another thing to do is have a conversation with everyone who would be at the gathering and set some ground rules. What precautions is everyone going to take before? What's going to happen on the day of that kind of thing? Another is really stepping up your social distancing efforts about two weeks before the gathering. So really, to the extent you can, not going out to eat at a restaurant, not taking other trips, avoiding other gatherings,

staying as home as much as possible. So just really minimizing the chance of coming into contact with it. So this is something that, especially that last point, I know, because we're trying to plan our gathering and we talk to our relatives, are you going to be social distancing? Are you going to be staying in your little bubble. And this is something because we are a few weeks away, that's something we need to start doing pretty soon now, right? Yeah, it varies from person to person, but the amount of time between, you know,

when people get infected and they start having symptoms, you know, can be two to 14 days. So really having that cushion gives you sort of the best chance possible of reducing that risk in being able to go into that gathering, knowing that there was as little chance as possible for you to have been infected. sort of bring that into the gathering. And let's talk about one of the great unknowns, I mean, or the great fears of the unknown that people talk about all the time, and that is the fear of flying.

What about the choice to fly or drive? I've seen mixed reviews of air travel so far. Let me begin with you, Kate, is flight an option? Yeah. So I think if you can drive, that is the safest option, especially that is if you're driving with your immediate household. you are coming into contact with fewer people, especially if you have a plan ahead of time where you're going to stop, be in and out quickly of the rest stops. For flying, you know,

that's something that researchers are still looking into. One good thing is that planes tend to have pretty good air filtration systems. But, you know, when I spoke to researchers, one of the, you know, points they brought up was they're like, well, you know, okay, airplanes, there are things that can be done for that. The waiting area of the airport is what I'm really concerned about. It's really crowded. There's so much you have to do in the terminal before you and get to the plane. So they really stress if you're going to fly being vigilant about how close people are around you, not stopping for a meal and that kind of thing. You know, what's interesting is that I find in my own situation, we are constantly talking with our friends and relatives about where they

stand. And we're sort of allowing them the option without feeling guilty about canceling their plans at any time beforehand if they feel like it's too much of a risk. I would think the communication, Julia, is a big part of this. Yeah, the communication is huge. And I think it's, it's interesting for me as an HIV researcher, this is something we've thought about for a long time in the context of communication between partners around, let's say, STI testing or HIV testing. And it's something we've really tried to promote in the sexual health world is this non-judgmental open communication where people feel like they can share their risk and their testing status. And now it's something that we're kind of navigating on a much bigger scale around social interaction. And I think

a lot comes into play there around people's different levels of health literacy and risk tolerance, and people are getting their information in very different places and interpreting it in different ways. So there's a lot to navigate. But I think as much as it can remain an open non-judgmental conversation, and like you're saying, allowing people to change their minds, I think that will help. Kate, what else should we be ready to? change as we're leading up to Thanksgiving itself? I think one thing is thinking about what's going to happen on the day of the gathering. So, you know, again, if you can do it outside, that's great. If it's going to be inside, how much can you space everyone out so they're not all sort of crowded around one

table? Can you have windows open? Can you have things like paper towels in the bathroom? You know, for guests, you know, do you have some extra hand sanitizer and thinking about things like not hugging or kissing when you greet people like you normally would? And, you know, wearing masks when you're not eating, even though it's kind of weird and awkward and things like that. Julia, does seem that ventilation is a topic that we really don't discuss it. I know we've talked about it here on the program a lot. Perhaps don't be afraid to put a fan out too, Julia? Yeah, I mean, I think a fan on its own is not necessarily going to do much. I mean, it will disperse particles, but I think opening windows is particularly important and maybe the combination of those two

things. The idea is that you want to have air exchange and you want to be keeping the air moving throughout the room. So if you have a window open on one side and a door cracked on the other, that's great, because then you end up having the air moving across the house. Even Dr. Fauci is saying some people would be justified in seeing their kids or grandkids this winter. How strong, epidemiologically speaking, is the argument that mental health is more important than keeping ourselves at low risk for COVID? I don't think we can say it's more important. I think it comes back to this question about everybody making their own decisions around this risk benefit calculus. And for some people, and depending on the situation, there may be times when a risk of COVID transmission acquisition or transmission is not as great as the

risk of, let's say, loneliness. Or, you know, there may be specific situations where people are at the end of their lives and this may be their last Thanksgiving. And so that is going to factor in. And so it's not really about saying one thing is more important than the other categorically, but more about allowing that some people are going to be weighing these competing risks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

In case you're just joining us, we're talking to journalist Kate Bagley and epidemiologist Dr. Julia Marcus about minimizing risks if you travel for the winter holidays that are coming up and things that you might consider because this certainly will be a different holiday season. Julia, do you have any advice on what to do after the party is over and you're on the plane and you've gone home or what steps you might want to follow as a follow-up? Yeah, I mean, I think this is all about layering different risk mitigation strategies with none being full proof. And so as much as people can minimize contacts after the event, and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be 14 days of strictly quarantining. But if, you know, if you can do a few

days, even that is something, four or five days can help. If you can get a test, that's great. And I think also just being conscious of who you're interacting with after gathering with people and trying to avoid seeing any elderly relatives or other people who might be particularly vulnerable for some period of time. And all these things we've talked about today. And all these things we've talked about today. It means a lot of work, really, calculating the risk and forcing distance, all this extra planning, just to put a nice meal on the table with your friends. And you know what happens sometimes is that you let your guard down, right? How can we keep up this amount of vigilance and still experience the joy of gathering during the holidays? Because when we get together,

then we sort of forget sometimes. Can we really do both things at the same time, Julie? It's such an important question that I think really applies so broadly right now. How can we minimize the risk of transmission while still enjoying our lives and connecting with loved ones? So I think finding the places where it's most important to be vigilant is really important and devoting our energy to those settings, those highest risk settings where we can try to mitigate risk and be a little more careful, or especially around people who are particularly, vulnerable. And we don't have an endless resource of energy to devote to this. And so I think we have to recognize that as well, that we can't drive ourselves crazy with trying to eliminate risk in every situation because it just isn't possible. And so as much as people can try to relax in lower risk settings and really enjoy, you know, being outdoors, having a picnic with people

and finding some sense of normalcy in that so that they can reserve their energy for the places where it matters most. I think that will really help. Katie, do you have plans? Yes, I'm with my parents now and my brother who lives in Florida is going to join us. So we talked about whether he could drive, but we decided his car wouldn't make it. And it's a long drive. So he's going to fly the week before Thanksgiving and start quarantining, you know, before he flies. And then we have friends who have an extra separate space where they used to have an in-law living. So he's going to quarantine there for a couple days, take a test before he leaves and then take one, you know, after he's been there.

for a few days. And so that's what our plan is. Well, we wish you the best of luck and following your plans. And thank you both for laying out some good advice to all of our listeners. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thank you so much. And that's about all the time we have. I want to thank my guests for joining us, Dr. Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist, associate professor of population medicine at Harvard Med School, and Kate Bagley, a freelance science journalist based in New York. York. Her most recent story about Thanksgiving safety appeared in popular science. We're going to take a break, and let me come back. Women who are blind or vision impaired want a pregnancy test that they can read themselves without help. What could that look like? We'll find out after this break, so stay with

this. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. In all the nerve-wracking process of figuring out if you're pregnant. Taking the pregnancy test should be the simplest part, right? Pee on a stick, wait a few minutes, and interpret the lines that appear. Or if you pay a few extra bucks for a digital test, it's even easier. Just wait for a pregnant or non-pregnant to appear on the screen. But what if you can't see the display? This is the case if you're blind or even visually apparent. Science writer producer Christy Taylor tells this story. Staten Island mom, Holly Bonner, already had a one-year-old daughter when she suspected she might be pregnant again. You know, I really wanted to have one of those moments, like those TV moments.

You know, the woman goes in the bathroom and takes the pregnancy test and then comes out and, you know, maybe surprises, you know, your spouse with the good news. I also didn't want to disappoint him if I wasn't pregnant. She took two tests. One, the kind that shows you lines and a digital test that translates those lines into a more sense. straightforward, pregnant and not pregnant. But she had a problem. She has severe visual impairments to the point where she identifies as blind. With the small bit of vision she has in her right eye, she still couldn't make out the result. She tried using a screen reader to tell her what the test result was. No luck. The test wasn't designed with screen readers in mind. But there was an occupational

therapist in the house that day working with her daughter. And I run down the stairs and I'm like, I know this is going to sound really weird, but I really need you to read my pregnancy test. And I could not see her reaction, but there was like that long, dead silence where this lady probably thought I was out of my mind. But she looked at it and she says, I think you're pregnant. Then I showed her the digital one and not confirmed the pregnancy. So, yes, it was very, very strange. And I wish I had had the ability to just find out for myself. I think that it should be your choice, how you want to be able to experience taking a

pregnancy test. You are the one that's carrying that baby. So you should be the first person to know that that child is inside you. It wasn't just that Holly felt like she'd missed out on privacy or a special moment that she wanted to share with her husband. It was also the response she got from the person who helped her read the test, as well as others in her life. Well, as a blind woman in general, I think your fertility is often, you know, something that is kind of taboo to talk about. I myself, becoming pregnant with my second child, I had a lot of judgment. One was enough. We should have stopped at one. A blind person can only handle one child.

I'll even say that the woman that, you know, read my test that day was quite taken back, you know, by the situation. And, you know, did you want to have another one? You know, were you planning on having another one? This was a person that came into my home once a week for 45 minutes. But in the moment, she was the best that I had. For Holly, and many others she's heard from through her website, blindmotherhood.com, that judgment is all too common. And what if you're not excited to be pregnant, but rather afraid of a positive test?

Consider having a stranger or even someone you don't feel close to walk you through that experience. But as Holly points out, there's a lot that could be changed about the current lineup of pregnancy tests to make them accessible and private for the 97% of blind identifying people who still have small amounts of sight. My ideal pregnancy test would definitely be something that was not white, because white is very difficult to stay. The other thing I would say is that the strip that women have to urinate on, you know, to find out, you know, if you're pregnant or not, even just doing that part of the process is very difficult. I mean, I don't think it's going to kill anybody if they make it a little bit longer. Having a good grip on it, a good indentation or some type of marking for where

your thumb goes to hold the test. And then I would like, it to be either, you know, a bump-type feel to let you know if you're pregnant or not pregnant or something that is large enough and dark enough that you would be able to see visually or maybe a combination of both. And even if you had to use some type of assistance technology to, you know, read it like a screen reader or a closed-circuit television, you should be able to do that yourself. So what will it take to make a pregnancy test that's accessible? Sam Latif, who is herself blind, works as the company accessibility leader for Procter and Gamble in the United Kingdom.

Their products include Clear Blues pregnancy tests. And she says, to create truly accessible products, you have to start with that goal from the beginning. Accessibility is like an ingredient in a cake. It has to be baked in from the beginning. Otherwise, it's almost too late to fix it. So imagine, you know, sugar in a cake. If you bake the cake and it's out of the oven,

It's not going to do much good putting some sugar on top, right? It needs to be baked in, right? And that's what accessibility is. The bad news for pregnancy tests is that the big companies have already done the initial design. And starting over to make them accessible would come at a cost. It's a huge investment. It requires millions and millions of pounds to do. And they don't touch that kind of technology that often, if that makes sense.

So making something that's already existing. accessible, it's quite hard. Here's where the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the United Kingdom comes in. They've designed a prototype for a pregnancy test that's fully accessible, with results you can touch as well as see. But as Gizmoto reporter Victoria Song has written this week, a prototype is a long way off from a product that people can find in the drugstore when they need that crucial, am I or am I not, question answered.

Welcome to Science Friday, Victoria. Hi. So Victoria, describe first of all, this. accessible pregnancy test for us. What does it look like? What does it do? It kind of looks like what you would expect a pregnancy test to look like in that it has the same kind of stick shape and like the little bit at the end where, you know, there's the strip that you pee on. And the main difference here is that it's much bigger. It's it's much bigger. It's colored more brightly so that it's easier for people with low vision or vision impairment to actually see there's tactile bumps on it so that they

can actually navigate different sections. If you could just think of a pregnancy test that's bigger, brighter, and has like pads on it that are tactile and textured, that's basically what this test looks like. As for what it does, it actually functions a lot like, well, I actually don't want to say a lot. I just want to say it like functions exactly like what a normal pregnancy test would be like in that, you know, it uses a little strip. That strip detects whether there's enough pregnancy hormone. And then the difference is, is that where a regular digital pregnancy test would have like an optical sensor in it that then communicates with an LCD or some sort of display to say yes or no, this one has the same type of optical sensor.

But instead of moving to a display, it's going to trigger a mechanical response, which is basically there's a tactile pad on it and it'll create bumps so that that person can actually feel it and then know whether they have a positive or negative test. And so the different bumps will tell you whether it's positive or negative. Well, if there's bumps, that's positive. If there's no bumps, that's negative. That's negative. Yeah. Gotcha. So why would such a pregnancy test be necessary? Why is there a need for pregnancy tests that people with low vision can read themselves? Well, like, if you've ever used a pregnancy test, there's a lot of high attention, high anxiety that comes with that because there's a lot of different experiences that you could be taking. You could want to have a pregnancy or you could not want it or you could be superstitious or you could, you know, it's a private thing. It's an intimate thing.

And with people with low vision, that traditionally has meant that they have to invite someone. else into that process. That means, you know, you either have to go to a family member, which, you know, that can be fine if you're good with that family member or it could extremely not be. Or, you know, there's, there's, um, clear blue is actually one of the pregnancy test makers. They have a partnership with Be My Eyes. So that's an app where a person with low vision or vision impairment can be paired with an anonymous stranger. And then that stranger can, you know, read the test for you or, you know, in the clear blue case, they'll have someone who has training to read the test. But anytime you invite someone else into that process, you'd expect people not to be,

you know, jerks, but any judgment you can give can be, you know, it can be, it can be hurtful. And then, you know, even for people who don't have a vision impairment, reading these tests is not necessarily really easy. That's why we have digital pregnancy tests that say yes or no, because the lines are difficult even if you have full use of your vision. So, you know, this would actually be great for people without vision impairment as well. All right. So is this the first then accessible pregnancy test design that you've seen out there at this point? Yeah. So like when I think of accessible gadgets or accessible design, it's something that everyone can use and is affordable. And unfortunately, No pregnancy test out there is something that everyone can use

and digital pregnancy tests, which might be easier with if you have only partial vision loss. Those are, they tend to be more expensive than your regular. Just let me see if I can decipher what these lines are pregnancy tests or even just buying the HCG strips in bulk, which are very inexpensive, but that's not an option. In my personal opinion, there is no, accessible pregnancy test out there. And to be clear, the design that we're talking about right now

that the Royal National Institute of the Blind put out is just a prototype, but the R&B has released this design for anyone who wants to try to mass produce it. So what would it take to get this kind of test in the hands of people who do want them? So there's a couple of options. Probably the way that would most likely happen is a Kickstarter. Someone with the means and the wherewithal could raise that money to get this out there. That would take a long time because, you know, we see like I do consumer tech gadget reviews all the time and we see lots of pitches for Kickstarter, but it's hard. It's hard to cover those things because a lot of them become vaporware.

And vaporware is a product that is promised on these crowdfunded platforms that just never make it to the consumer. So, you know, there's that danger if you go to the kickstarted route. But on the other hand, that's a bit easier because it's, you know, you can go directly to the people. You can have someone perhaps with vision impairment lead that charge, have a really compelling story and then get that funding. Alternatively, a big manufacturer like ClearBlue could, you know, just go like, oh, yeah, this is a segment that isn't being served. We have the supply chain. We have the branding. We have the means to make this happen.

Let's make this happen. But a lot of times that doesn't happen without some sort of public pressure or a campaign or just like press coverage to say like, hey, you should do this because this doesn't exist. And this prototype is cool. Let's get together and do it. So, you know, they would just really have to feel a sense of like social and corporate. responsibility in this case to make it happen. And they could do it. They absolutely could do it. It's just a lot of times when you talk big companies, you start hearing things about profit margins and whether they're going to make it back and like assessments on whether enough people would buy it.

And that's really a shame because, you know, these big companies, they could just make a few changes to existing products out there that would make it maybe not fully accessible, but better. What they could very easily do is make all pregnancy tests brightly colored so that the contrast is easier for people to see. They could make the plastic tactile so that it's easier to navigate. It could make them wider. It makes no difference to me, a person with full vision to have a really fat pregnancy test that is easier to navigate if it means someone who doesn't have vision.

can use it that way. So they could literally just make this device easier to navigate and use for people with partial vision. Just a reminder, I'm Christy Taylor, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking to consumer technology reporter Victoria's song about pregnancy tests that are accessible for people with low or no vision. Yeah, and as you mentioned, these digital pregnancy tests are much more expensive without necessarily being any more accurate, but could they end up worth the price if they do incorporate accessibility features like this? It could be, but then you know, you start paying a tax because you're disabled. And that's really not fair.

If we want to talk true accessible design, it needs to be affordable. It's really morally gross to ask people with disabilities to pay more for a device. And, you know, I have a pair of the Nike adapt sneakers that are self-lacing. That would be really great for people with limited mobility in their hands. Unfortunately, the $400. It's not actually accessible. When I covered it, I was like, oh, this could be useful one day for people, but because it's so expensive, it's not really a piece of accessible technology, although maybe one day

it will be. In order for this to actually happen, what you need is more disabled people to be in the room when they're designing these products, because it's very natural if you don't have those things to contend with, that you go like, why would I want to voice control? my sneakers. Someone who is disabled, if they're in the room, they would go like, actually, I could use that. So it's not stupid and you should actually think about implementing it in this way or that way. So like what we really need is more vision impaired people consulted during the process when these things are designed. Thank you, Victoria, for being with me today. Yeah,

no, thanks for having me on. Victoria's song is a consumer technology reporter for Gizmodo. She's based in New York. All right, so we have a design for an accessible pregnancy test, but what's next? Could this lead to other pregnancy tests being designed with accessibility baked in? Sam Lateef, the Procter & Gamble accessibility leader with a direct line to clear blue, says she thinks so. So this is now inspiration for any new company that would be thinking about creating pregnancy testing, that this will be something that they should consider. So if they have in their scope that they want it to be accessible, they could take some of this into their new design

and make it fully accessible. Which, she says, should be a mandate for anyone designing any new product. I think it's imperative. The sad thing is that it's probably not even that hard. It's just that it's not on top of mind. It's people don't know what they don't know. It's just equality to opportunity, access to a product or a service.

Now, unintentionally or intentionally, I don't know, but we're excluding people and discriminating against them. And it really breaks my heart to see that happen. For more information about the Royal National Institute for the Blind's prototype pregnancy test, visit our website, sciencefriety.com slash pregnancy. For Science Friday, I'm Christy Taylor. Really interesting story, Christy.

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