AXSChat Podcast with Axel Leblois. President and Executive Director at G3ict - The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs

Axel Leblois spent over 20 years at the helm of information technology companies in the United States including as CEO of Computerworld Communications, CEO of IDC – International Data Corporation, Vice-Chairman of IDG – International Data Group, President of Bull HN Worldwide Information Systems – formerly Honeywell Information Systems, CEO of ExecuTrain and President of W2i, the Wireless Internet Institute. Axel Leblois served as a Senior Special Fellow of UNITAR, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and is a founding trustee of its North American affiliate CIFAL Atlanta. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of USICD, U.S. International Council on Disabilities, and GAATES, Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Board of Mada, Qatar Assistive Technology Center, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of Cloud4all. He is an adjunct professor at OCAD University/Inclusive Design Institute. He served as chairman of the board of the Atlanta International School and is chairman of the board of CASIE, the Center for the Advancement and Study of International Education. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities organized for policy makers, civil society and the private sector to foster collaboration among multiple stakeholders. In his capacity, Mr. Leblois oversees all the publishing, capacity building and advocacy activities of G3ict. Mr. Leblois holds an MBA from INSEAD and is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris.

Transcript

0:00

This is a draft transcript produced live at the event and corrected for spelling and basic errors. It is not a commercial transcript. AXSCHAT Axel Lebois

NEIL: 0:07

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted to welcome back to Axschat after a long break, several years, since we last welcomed Axel Lebois. Axel is founder of G3ICT, which is also responsible for IAAP and the M-Enabling conference which is taking place this month in Washington. Welcome Axel, it's great to have you back. I think it's 11 years since the first M-Enabling Conference and this will be the tenth edition of the conference. So, long running now and I think that an awful lot has really changed in the, just over a decade of time that's intervened. So, what are the sort of key things that are going to be happening in the conference this year? So, what are the real key themes?

AXEL: 1:03

Well, first of all people I've not really met in person for a long time although we did have the conference in person late last year, I think this year is getting back to normal in terms of size and the variety of speakers and attendees. So, I think the first thing is people getting back to meet each other, stakeholders who need to interact are back and it's very important because as we all know, in matters of digital accessibility, you need all the parties involved to create solutions together. A person with disabilities, companies who use technology, technology providers, policy makers, every single category of stakeholder is crucial to make progress. So, that is our main attribute at the conference, is to be a neutral friendly platform for everyone to meet and be productive in brainstorming new solutions and pushing the envelope, every year, after year, after year.

NEIL: 2:14

So, one of the things I really enjoyed about the conferences that I attended previously is the fact there have been a lot of decision makers and corporate strategists and policy makers at the conference, which is somewhat different flavour from some of the other accessibility conferences that we go to which are all about technical implementations and so on and so forth. So, I think I found it really useful to have those corridor conversations with people that are implementing policy in large organisations and really having those rich discussions about some of the challenges that we face, actually doing this in the complex world of organisations that are, you know spread across hundreds of countries with many, many thousands of employees and multiple 0different types of technologies and so on and so forth. So, you know the depth of the conversation and some of the topics I think are somewhat different from other conferences and I think that that is, you know. It's good that we have all types of conferences but it's definitely for me I found value in attending and being part of those conversations with policy makers and you know you've had chairmen of the SEC along, so, you know it's really a mix of practitioners and regulators and so on and so forth. So, I think that's of benefit, but how do you think the attitude towards regulation and sort of enterprise deployment of accessibility has changed over this decade?

AXEL: 4:02

Well, first of all, ones a year, we have that survey coming out which the state of accessibility report which we have done with our long-time partner, Level Access. And one of the very interesting plan we have noticed about the past three years is that historically, when you ask an organisation why and by the way that survey has about 1,200 organisations participating, so, it's a large survey with a large sample served in outside the US and in the US and when I say outside the US, it's a large part European companies and what we found is that the main driver for accessibility implementation in large organisation used to be compliance. And, since I think it is last year, compliance was bypassed by the desire to meet the objective. So, in all terms the inclusion values of the organisation seem now to be the number one motivation for large implementation of accessibility. And that is a sea change honestly. So, to answer your question about attitude towards regulation and so on and so forth. I think in a way Europe was ahead of the curve there because we found in Europe also many companies dedicated to accessibility for value proposition reasons, you know because they want to make sure that they pursue social responsibility objectives in the best possible way and that includes possibilities but again, in the US the compliance was such a concern that it used to be number one it's not anymore. It's number two behind you know meeting the objectives of the organisation. So, that's a big change. Regarding regulations, I would tell you that one area of great concern is web accessibility and as you know, even from your own experience Neil, the issue of web accessibility is extraordinarily complex, especially for some organisations that have to manage millions of pages and millions of electronic documents, tens and hundreds of new transactions. You know, to be a hundred percent, to be honest, I mean I don't think anyone will pretend they are 100% accessible. There is always somewhere on the back and so, the way in the United States and even outside the United States, the lack of precise definition of where basic obligations were, was a disservice to everybody. So, you saw in the US certain amounts and legal disputes and everything around web accessibility and fortunately enough, quite often it ends up being a negotiated settlements and people commit to improve and so on and so forth. But it's still like, if you are like ahead of compliance to answer your question about attitude towards degradation, you already want to know what you have to do and you need to know it very clearly. So, the interesting thing is last week, on September 29, Senator Duckworth, one of our colleagues in the House of Representative in the US introduced a new legislation on web accessibility, which actually a game changer if it were to move forward from the way it's currently written. Of course, you can bet this would be an intense subject of conversation. But I would say in general, entrepreneurs advocate everybody saying hey, let's have a proper clarification of what it is and make sure that whether we are legislation or regulation is implemented, is realistic and actionable because if it's not then it's like you have done nothing and for that you also need feedback from everybody, from big users of internet and web services, folks who provide technology and remediation services and of course person with disabilities. This is going to be a very, very, interesting debate, very, very and we are glad that it happens we are just there when it comes out. So, the Summit would be the first venue where it will be discussed at length.

DEBRA: 9:03

Axel, welcome to the programme. Welcome back again to the programme. One thing and Neil had written in the window it was Senator Sarbanes along with a wonderful congress woman. But one thing that I saw, whenever you first started the M-Enabling Summit, I was sort of surprised because the M was mobile and no one else was talking about mobile, only web, we were only talking about web at the time. Also, I was very involved in the disability inclusion conversations, but I didn't see anyone talk about accessibility except in little possibilities. I know I was on the board of a very well-known business to business organisation. That supports businesses with disability inclusion, and we weren't talking about accessibility. And I don't know how you do disability inclusion without accessibility. So, that was another thing that you decided you were going to talk about and then just to make things more boring, you were going to bring in the aging. Aging in place. Nobody else was talking, nobody brought those together. And then assisted technology, accommodations or adaptions and then you're going to talk about it from a global perspective, not the US perspective, which is what everyone else talking about. Every once in a while, we'd talk about whatever in the UK and this European's. But it was all about the US until M-Enabling Summit and it just changed everything. I remember, one of the first, I can't remember if I've been there all ten first years or not. I know I missed one, but maybe I missed two. But you also brought the FCC in, the government into this conversation, but not just our FCC which is our communications agency in the US, but you also brought in our Office of Disability. Our Department of Education, our OCERS. We have a lot of departments and government agencies that support people with disabilities and somehow you brought them altogether as well. Why? How did you know so much was going to happen? I mean, ten years later, it seems like maybe you had a crystal ball or something, I'm just curious.

AXEL: 11:18

Yeah, the history is as follows, when it was in 2009, 2010, more or less, I think we were going to many meetings around the world and in the US about accessibility and especially assistive technologies. But then we saw the global mobile market place was growing exponentially and that the sheer size of the mobile market would allow industry to invest far more in accessibility features in the operating systems and we felt the scale of the market would continue to drive application and services that otherwise would not be economically feasible and more importantly, likely going to be helpful to everybody using a mobile phone or a mobile device and therefore, you know having an incredible momentum that would then in turn help all persons with disability. So, for instance, text to speech, speech recognition, geo organisation, the office of communications, of course, camera and video communications and so on and on and on and you know the whole issues and mobile phone, you have the whole history of past ten years right there in terms of what happened. Imagine that ten years ago, 11 years ago that the M-Enabling Summit, there was no such things. So, we felt that having the M-Enabling M Summit staged in Washington, where a lot of decision makers regarding accessibility are located on the disability side, on the government side, on the cooperation policy maker side would be a good, good platform, a good venue to really start this very high level, executive level dialogue about accessibility and digital inclusion. But also, as we were looking at the transient industry, we felt staging competition for accessibility would be the best possible advocacy strategy we could pursue. And so, very quickly and you will see this year, Apple is here giving a presentation the same way they did 11 years ago at the first summit. And you'll find the same for Google and the same from Microsoft and so on. You could see that suddenly we recognise the merit of those innovators in big tech groups but we put them on the stage so each would come and would say, hey, look at what I did this year, those new futures and this and that. So, I think we had with that event, a little bit put competition in the picture for accessibility. And this was, if you ask me what are most part of. I think that is our best achievement was to serve, leverage market forces to benefit persons with disabilities for competition for better accessibility.

DEBRA: 14:26

And that's when we started seeing the brands stepping up too. I want to shout out for AT&T because Susan Mazruhi was such a, there's so many people to shout out for. I know Antonio has a question; you go ahead Axel?

AXEL: 14:40

I was going to say Susan is a godmother for us.

DEBRA: 14:45

I love Susan. AT&T is blessed to have Susan. Go ahead Antonio.

ANTONIO: 14:52

Axel, you were mentioning Apple and Microsoft and Google but, I was interested in knowing that if you look to the profile, of the people that companies are sending to M-Enabling, the profile of the employees, the people that are going there, have you noticed any change on their profiles? Are they more senior today than they were in the past? What nuances have you spotted there?

AXEL: 15:18

Yeah, so we in the beginning had a lot of folks from disability movement, governments and assistive technology and IT players and we had companies that are mainstream companies using technology for their business, but I would say that last segment has gone tremendously in terms of who attends the summit, and we did a little exercise for our own kind of marketing thing. And there were about a third of the Fortune 500 companies over the last four or five years had delegates attending the M-Enabling Summit. So, it tells you that large organisation that are involved in accessibility, they like to come to a M-Enabling Summit because it's the mix of information and the peer to peer informal exchanges that they need to actually better understand what is going on and so, we focus a lot of our programming on that segment, on folks that are like me for instance, decision makers in very prominent large organisations that need to be connected with their peers, to discuss all kind of matters that are important for the implementation and you know, it's becoming almost like a second nature for us that everything we plan or we do, we try to do it within our mind, this type of audience. It's very important. So that you know, at least once a year there is a place to go to, to see what is going on.

NEIL: 16:53

So, I think that absolutely large organisations need to do this and the other element that I think Antonio was alluding to be the elevation of the importance of the accessibility role within these organisations, have you noticed that becoming more consistent? Obviously, we've had chief accessibility officers for Microsoft and IBM for a considerable amount of time but now we have chief accessibility officers at country level like with Canada, for example. Do you see that this is really a significant trend within the attendees?

AXEL: 17:34

Yeah, I think you'll see many more folks with even job titles to just start with that simple example. There are chief accessibility officers, sometimes you will find this funny, it's a very interesting exercise, if you go to the website of Fortune 500 companies and check which ones have web accessibility statements, most of the time that will indicate who is responsible for it in the organisation and a large proportion of folks are in the high sector. So, it is really interesting that what I was explaining about the survey we do every year, that shows that the inclusion objectives are more and more a driver. I think also from a title standpoint, you see a bit more folks who are productively heading up inclusion matters and digital accessibility matters, as you know their main goal, rather than someone strictly in compliance reporting to a legal department, if you will. And that's a very significant change I think again that we see among our attendees. But this year you know, you have folks, I mean, you can see it on the programme, we have speakers from some of the largest companies in the world, you know. Walmart, Accenture, Price Waterhouse, you know, big tech companies and so on and so forth. ATOS, and so you know, it is, just look at the list of speakers you'll see who is there. I mean that, to answer your question, it is exactly what is happening. There is that elevation of the function in organisations But, I will say, quite a bit driven by the inclusion objectives.

NEIL: 19:30

So, I think this is interesting because there is a couple of drivers for inclusion objectives as well. So, I think that, for example, within ATOS we have, you know very strong ESG credentials, you know? We've been leading on decarbonisation for a long time and sustainability, and we've sited accessibility within sustainability and ESG. So, we map all of the and accessibility stuff to our ESG. We shape our programme in the same way that we shape our decarbonisation programme, and we essentially treat inaccessibility as a negative externality. So, we are applying that same kind of frameworks, so the drivers for inclusion aren't necessarily coming from DEI. DEI overlaps with it, but it's actually part of the financial reporting and sort of key drivers and so those things which also include, of course, working and influencing our supply chain and our procurement because, when you look at decarbonisation, it's three scopes and we take those same three scopes when we address accessibility and the disability inclusion eco system. I think when we look at analysts and that was the one area, we hadn't really talked that attends also and that I hope will be really engaged this year. The analysts are zoning in on ESG. The gardeners, the Everests and the ISG's and the foresters, which influence business tremendously, they are seeing when it comes to sustainability and ESG, it is the social that is really of interest to investors and people that are buying. So, I think there are a number of angles where inclusion agenda is being driven from the business that are not just compliance anymore. So, it's interesting to see that sort of coming together of different forces that are all driving this forward.

AXEL: 21:56

I think you are away ahead of the curve Neil in describing what ATOS does and that's the direction we are seeing globally. I mean, that's a terrific actually evolution, I think, that companies see inclusion and accessibility as a core attribute they should cultivate and make sure they implement. It's encouraging. It really is.

DEBRA: 22:23

And I would also say, also kudos to ATOS and some of the other brands that we mention here that are really trying despite everything being grey and everything. But I want to shift to another direction, because I do not perceive that the M-Enabling Summit is just about accessibility or nor is anyone saying this, but I was just saying, one thing that I've always liked about the M-Enabling Summit and my team has always volunteered and helped because we believe in the work and we're stronger together. But the reason why I thought it was different was we keep, I find often people are trying to look for the easy buttons, and their thinking, let's talk about accessibility, no let's talk about disability and inclusion. No, let's talk about DEI or ESG or STGs. But the reality is we need to enable humans, we have to enable humans and we have to continue to think about all these things differently, which we all agree with. Now, we are talking about the Metaverse, which you have a session on the Metaverse. I mean, I know that Neil and Susan Scott Parker and I forget who else, they are talking about AI at an ILO event. So, we got to keep talking about all these big things. But I would like to sort of shift a little bit here because one thing that I appreciate about M-Enabling Summit and G3ICT is that you care about our community and I do not see our conferences caring about our community and how I'm going to ground that statement is I remember, I was always supporting you with the accessibility desk because I believe in this work. And so, one thing we were seeing was we were trying to figure out how to support the deaf speakers without you know ruining the budget for the conference. I'm just being serious, there was an issue I was working with Axel's team, EJ Crouse and the G3ICT team and we were trying to figure out what do we do because this is really expensive and so, I went and talked to other conferences who I will not name around the world and what I was told confidentiality was that we do not include them, they are too hard to include. So, think about it audience, how many times have you gone and seen a deaf speaker, speaking about this content, how about a deafblind? How many times have you gone for a deafblind? So, one thing I like about M-Enabling Summit is that they actually are including our community across the board. I've never seen so many attendees that are deafblind. I mean, so, I am a fan Axel of you, and I am a fan, but this is how we move forward. This is how we get the ATOS's to care about our community, to learn our community but I don't see other conferences doing it. Unless you're a deaf conference. So, I just thought maybe you could tell us, why Axel did you do that? Because it cost a lot of money. There's a lot of headaches, but now you have set the standard very high.

AXEL: 25:27

As I said earlier, we envisioned that progress can be achieved if all stakeholders are involved in the discussion. They have to be there on equal basis with others and have the ability to communicate, to exchange, to share thoughts, to speak. And there is no way round it. You have got to do what you preach. So, yes, we, since the very addition of the M-Enabling Summit, we ensure that we had all the accessibility services that should be expected in a meeting where people have to really participate. So, that's really the main motivation is to create an objective of complete inclusion of all communities involved. I also should say that in Washington, we already have an environment where a lot of governments do a great job with accessibility services, you can't go to the meeting without having full captioning and sign language. You can't go to the Federal Agency meetings without the same type of services. So, in a way we also helped by the eco system in Washington where we've great services for accessibility. So, it's another dimension I want to mention because it's not always easy to have, especially in person services, accessibility services. In our case we have a little bit of a positive help from our immediate environment.

DEBRA: 27:05

I know there have been wonderful supporters and Klaus Schwab, but it was just interesting because I don't always see disability and inclusion, accessibility conferences walking the walk. Their websites aren't accessible, they are not having captioning, they are not doing CART services right so and I am not criticising because I do things wrong all the time. But we do have to just give kudos to the M-Enabling Summit. That's why my team gets behind it, but I'll be quiet and turn it back over to you, Neil.

NEIL: 27:31

All right, thank you and I agree it does cost a lot of money to do this stuff and I think that there are a few conferences that do it well. M-Enabling being one,[unclear] has been good with you know signing and when you go to the ILO you always get International Sign language but part of the problem and Axel kind of eluded to it that Washington is a good place to have access to services is the scarcity of those services.

AXEL: 28:07

Exactly.

NEIL: 28:08

It's actually really hard to book sign language interpreters, try getting them for Global Accessibility Awareness Day huge every year when there is this sort of huge competition for everybody to show how accessible they are, and it becomes even more fraught. So, I think there is also a case for looking at ways that we can apply technology to make these conferences more accessible as well.

AXEL: 28:35

You're right Neil and one of the sessions this year in the M-Enabling Summit is the role of automation in accessibility and what are the upside and risks of automation. But many people will tell you who are in that space for many, many years, like yourself, I guess. In order to scale up accessibility long term to all type of organisations, small and large, automation will have to be leveraged and it's very controversial because there are many cases where automation creates little disasters, we have an example, with the [unclear] situation, it's very well documented, it was a great New York Times article not too long ago about it, you know. So, it's well intended but with huge problems. So, and it's the same for services, captioning, automated captions. It's the same for essentially automated descriptions for alt text. It's the same certainly for others for sign language which are you know taboo for deaf persons because some of it misses completely the cultural aspect of sign language and you know a human-to-human touch of sign language that is necessary for persons to communicate. So, it's tough. It's very tough.

NEIL: 30:04

I agree it is.

DEBRA: 30:07

Right.

NEIL: 30:09

You know, we certainly know that the people have fair criticisms of the accuracy of automatic captions and of alt text and everything else. At the same time, the progress that has been made over the last few years has been really significant. So, the quality has improved an awful lot and what we can expect is that the quality will improve again and get to a point where it becomes much more acceptable and mainstream. At least for certain scenarios. Now, there will always be a place for human-to-human services where accuracy is more greatly needed. But I do think that if we want ubiquitous accessibility, we have to rely on technology but we've to build that with the community. I know that Antonio has got a quick comment before we close.

ANTONIO: 31:13

Don't you feel that sometimes we also need to look at the way in which we train accessibility professionals at university level, at different levels for them also to consider the needs and that business can actually become customers. I'm telling you this for a clear example. My niece is about to finish her sign language studies in Portugal and everyone in their class is being driven to work in the social sector. So, I ask her, can you talk with your professors, how would they relate if you were to work in a business to support business communication, oh, no, they told me not even to go there. Don't you think we need to sometimes build these bridges and sometimes make these shifts. What is your view on that?

AXEL: 32:05

You mean for is your question related to an Academy in Portugal.

ANTONIO: 32:10

No, the way in general we educate accessibility professionals in different areas, in sometimes in some countries can be focused to do social sector, to health and delivering service to business is not really in the mind of those that educate?

AXEL: 32:26

Right. So, in fact, that's a great question, as we may know we contact what's called the DARE Index Research, their index was covering 37 countries and we collect data from groups of customers with disabilities and experts in accessibility that gives us information what is happening in country in terms of what is happening. And we divide that Index in 20 variables and they are five variables for commitment, five variables for capacity to implement and ten variables for actual outcome for persons with disabilities in different sectors. In terms of accessibility and, in the capacity to implement, we ask a question about the availability of courses for accessibilities in the country either in universities or for professionals and it's a problem where more than two thirds of the countries have nothing. And that is one of the key issues that we are facing and that and the fact that locally person with publicity is not involved in policy making or monitoring for accessibility. So, education is crucial. Certainly, I see two initiatives worldwide today which are very important, there is teacher access which promotes curriculum for college and universities in accessibility which I think addresses the vacuum that exists in many places where you train computer engineers and folks who are going to be involved in accessibility decisions in companies with digital matters, but they have no what digital accessibility is about. Not even the faintest idea. They never heard of it. They are going to be designing systems and software user interface user website. And they have never heard about accessibility. So, trying to teach people at the university and college level is extremely important not only in the computer science domain but in every domain that eventually is going to be involved in using technology. Now, the other aspect is training the huge number of professionals who are dealing with accessibility. Of course, that's something that we, at IAAP we try to do. As you know, we have that certified professionals in accessibility core competency certification exam and we put at the disposal of all members and everybody else outside the association are joint course with Princeton University on accessibility and that's a very strong foundation for folks, who understand the fundamental issues around disability, barriers to digitals interactions and solutions that exist, so, at least when they're in executive position, they have a notion of what to do, you know what is happening what are the solutions, you know. So, to answer your question, that's probably the most important way for an organisation to make progress is to ask their folks, I mean to take the course to get certified. Actually, at the summit, we'll be celebrating our five thousand certified person, since we started the programme four or five years ago. So, it's going phenomenally well and we see that as a very practical, very necessary step for organisation and we have seen various organisations where you have decentralised units and that's true in academia and in the private sector or even in government agencies that the strategy is offered to at least one champion that is CPAC certified so there is someone there that can raise a red flag or give advice or guidance to their colleagues. So, one certified guide is going to influence hundreds of situations where otherwise you'll have inaccessible output you know for the organisation. So, I think it's, unfortunately we will need five hundred thousand, not five thousand, you know. But you have got to start somewhere, and we are dedicated definitely to push in that direction. And Antonio, thank you for the question, that's fundamental issue today, is the gap in knowledge, skills and motivation to get things done, to be accessible.

NEIL: 37:01

Thank you Axel and we have been working with IAAP, when we created the digital accessibility apprenticeship standards, as well so, again skills initiatives in business are really important and that sort of professionalisation at all levels, across all of the domains, is much needed. So, thank you very much. Just a reminder, if people are interested in registering M-Enabling.com. We need to thank My Clear Text for keeping us captioned and accessible and thank you everyone for joining in the chat. Don't forget that parent organisation is, G3ICT.org. And don't forget, if you wish to support us, you can support on Go Fund Me campaign to keep us on air for another eight years. thank you, Axel!

AXEL: 37:58

You Neil, thank you Debra and thank you Antonio very much. Great to see you and great discussion! Thank you.

DEBRA: 38:03

I agree great discussion.