AXSChat Podcast with Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh and Neil Milliken

On this episode of axschat, Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh and Neil Milliken do a short review of 2020 and changes occurred in relation to accessibility and future of work

Transcript

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Neil Milliken: Hello and welcome to our Christmas edition of access chat. We're just recording this short little message today to wish everyone that's part of our community.

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Neil Milliken: Happy Christmas. We hope that you're going to have a a safe restful and enjoyable festive season and we really wanted to say thank you to you all for being part of our community, whether you're

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Neil Milliken: Taking part in the Twitter chats. You're part of our community of guests that have come on and share your wisdom with us or

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Neil Milliken: Very close to our hearts. The people that support us like Barclays access my clear text and micro link that keep the show on air. So for me it's happy Christmas 2020 looking forward to a better year in 2021

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Debra Ruh: So true. So true, so happy holidays everybody we've, you know, it's been it's been a very interesting year and 2020 and I think the world has woke up to the reality that we've been talking about a long time that

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Debra Ruh: People need access people need access and you know before we always the people with disabilities weren't included in were, you know, having to stay at home and

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Debra Ruh: Then the rest of the world joined us. So I think that we learned a lot. It was, gosh, it was a hard year I'm definitely, I don't think I've ever looked more forward to a new year than I do this year.

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Debra Ruh: I am looking forward to have 2020 rearview mirror but at the same time. I'm so glad that we want it because I think society's learned a lot about

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Debra Ruh: What's wrong, where the opportunities are where the gaps that people are living unequal lives often do to things that are beyond their control. So I think now.

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Debra Ruh: We, you know, a lot has been revealed. And we now need to look and see how do we really make the world work better for more people. So I'm excited about that. Antonio, let me turn it over to you.

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Antonio Santos: THANK YOU, DEBORAH, of course, I definitely agree with you or not. We all learn how to make the world better for for for better people and the needs the things that we need to work to work today and and to go along with our lives at work, particularly for those who

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Antonio Santos: Can work.

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Antonio Santos: From home. It proves that this is achievable. No, there's not such a thing. Oh, it's not possible to work from home, it's perfectly possible under certain conditions.

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Antonio Santos: So I think, you know, even I definitely miss some of the events that they have the opportunity to cover. I really like to go to those events.

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Antonio Santos: I don't particularly like to know, not be doing events like the one that we're doing now, it works. In some cases, but it doesn't work for for absolutely everything so

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Antonio Santos: So I'm very hopeful that you know that we can at least get back part of some of the things that were in the past, and we can meet people again in 2021 and maybe if I'm lucky enough to meet person in person, some of the members of our community.

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Debra Ruh: I agree, and I think we are going to do this, moving forward, as far as conferences. I've been pondering that a lot myself because

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Debra Ruh: You know, we were having these conferences that had hundreds of thousands of people, Adam, and maybe now that seems otherwise but

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Debra Ruh: hobby and I know that they actually have had some conferences in China, you know, over the last few months with success. But what do you think, what do you think is going to happen.

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Neil Milliken: Well, I think there's there's going to be a desire to to go and do some physical stuff. I think we're going to end up with blended conferences, and I think that finding the right blend is going to take a while because

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Neil Milliken: What you want to do when you're physically as a note at a conference is very different to what you want to do when you are, you know, watching something and actually

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Neil Milliken: What I've seen is that there's been a lot of webinars and you're observing things rather than participating and and what I found was that I started

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Neil Milliken: Observing less as the year goes on and then the, the number of these conferences just exploded right I'm learning lead because actually, what's happening is I'm only going to

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Neil Milliken: Where I'm speaking. And I, I actually am sick of hearing my own voice, and would like to go back to where we can have discussions and everything else. So I think there'll be a mixture. I think that at the time of flying or traveling for a one hour face to face meeting is past.

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Neil Milliken: For longer things, whether you're meeting more people you're doing something deeper and richer, then I think we will still continue to convene in person and I look forward to that. Actually, I miss the the sort of in formality. The after event staff, the

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Neil Milliken: Yeah, the not the speeches, the sort of the conversations you have in corridors. The that's where the real spark is. And so I'm looking forward to eventually some of that happening again.

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Neil Milliken: But recognize that at the same time remote conferences have enabled lots more people to participate. And some people that would never be able to travel have been able to participate in things that

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Neil Milliken: wasn't possible before. So we have to find that balance. We can't just go back to the exclusive little bubble of

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Neil Milliken: Traveling for the privileged few

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Debra Ruh: That's some really, really good point. You brought up especially about people not being able to participate. So in Tokyo. What do you think

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Antonio Santos: Well, I have the feeling that is almost like it's almost like every all of us ever kind of a live video feed.

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Antonio Santos: And then you everyone taps into into each other and we were all in this kind of a video feeds all the time. It's, it's extremely overwhelming in terms of consuming all this information and

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Antonio Santos: I'm the type of person that when goes to events I particularly like not to go to the to the stages and listening. I like to go and network and talk with people go around grab my phone and interview one person here, one person there, and I'm not able to do that in this kind of format.

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Antonio Santos: At the same time, we have seen a good number of startups and companies established companies trying to enter on this market.

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Antonio Santos: Of video to create their own platforms and ecosystems and to be fair and things are not particularly positive on the area of inclusion and no more. Some of the most

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Antonio Santos: Popular platforms being used don't allow building captions is very difficult to make an event accessible. I know. And most of them. It's, I can count with my fingers, the number of platforms know like zoom who allow some minimum

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Antonio Santos: Levels of responsibility or others are terrible. And then as they want. They want to somehow emulate networking, because some of these platforms they want to find ways

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Antonio Santos: Where the participants can network with each other. Outside the the live feed those those platforms that network is completely inaccessible.

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Antonio Santos: And and what I found interesting as well is that when you go to the websites of the owners of those platforms.

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Antonio Santos: And they, in some cases, you are able to rate and ask for a new service or ask for a new feature, and they and they they still believe that, you know, making the platform accessible should be

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Antonio Santos: Rank side by side and compete with someone that was an emoji, you know, and it's quite absurd to see that because they should just make the platform. The festival by default. So that's our

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Antonio Santos: Our. I see. So it's becoming competitive, but not as inclusive as as to be so hopefully in the new year we'll, we'll return to a kind of a brief a brief model where you have live events physical events, allowing more people to participate from their homes. But that's how I see things going

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Debra Ruh: I agree. And it's, it's amazing that you know I'm sitting here looking at the zoom recording the the

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Debra Ruh: Bottom and they have closed captioning.

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Debra Ruh: And I love that Google Chat. You know, they're, they have automatic Google Chat.

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Debra Ruh: Which is pretty accurate. It's very accurate. And so I like that they understand. Now this is a competitive thing that they've got to do. That's what came out of coven

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Debra Ruh: Because how many years that we've been saying this, but then they got it, they also got because I remember there was one

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Debra Ruh: I'm like, you guys have been on so many of these. And there was one and the person had a very thick accent and most of the audience wasn't as familiar with that accent and somebody said, Well, turn on the captions and so

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Debra Ruh: I like that society is realizing the value that accessibility gives to all of us. I think that I think society learned a lot about accessibility. This year I think they finally got what we've been saying not oh please include as pleated

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Debra Ruh: But will know this is really valuable for you when you make things accessible everybody's going to be able to do a better job. I think this is also the year that

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Debra Ruh: We, we realized that people have lives outside work and I knew that such a stupid thing to say, but don't you think this is the year that corporations realize that we're caregivers and we're, you know, we're

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Debra Ruh: You know, there's a lot going on in our lives, and you don't always, why the hell. Why do we always have to go to the office.

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Debra Ruh: You don't need to go to the office all the time. It's not good for our traffic and our roads in our planet, but I think we learned a lot. I kept thinking about this was years ago, but the and I can't remember her name, but the CEO, the female CEO of Yahoo who a few years ago, not

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Neil Milliken: The alert. Yes.

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Debra Ruh: Right, yeah. And she she said that nobody could tell her work anymore. And it's like, I just was thinking about her often as the entire world began to tell a work and also think

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Debra Ruh: The and I liked that Twitter showed leadership and just said, everybody is, you know, from now on, doing it.

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Debra Ruh: But I'm hoping some of these corporations will realize it doesn't make people don't always have to be in the office right beside each other and assuming that people

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Debra Ruh: You got to see their them in the office to know if they're working. That's a really bad way of managing things. So I think there's the opportunity to to take a look at these gigantic campuses that have been built and maybe rethink, you know, how can we support.

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Debra Ruh: You know housing for homeless people for veterans, for you know people that get in trouble. I think

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Debra Ruh: There's an opportunity to rethink a lot that we're doing all over the world. And I think that's the and I'm hopeful about that. But what I don't want to do is I don't want us just to think that we need to go back to

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Debra Ruh: The normal because the normal wasn't working for a lot of people, the normal was only working for a very, very small part of society. Now, I don't want to do that anymore. So I am hopeful I'm hopeful and

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Debra Ruh: Hopeful today on my birthday. So when we

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Antonio Santos: Do Christmas.

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Debra Ruh: So yay.

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Debra Ruh: Find things to celebrate. Don't you think we have to find things to celebrate

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Debra Ruh: So before we get off. I think we should talk just a little bit about how we're going to celebrate. So, Antonio,

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Debra Ruh: You're on my screen. So how are you going to celebrate with your family. I assume you're not in Ireland that you're in Portugal, and I don't know that you've been in Ireland. This year even though you live in both

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Antonio Santos: I was, I was in Ireland this year.

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Debra Ruh: We're in the early

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Debra Ruh: Part of the year. Yes.

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Antonio Santos: I will just stay at home. You know, I don't have any plans to visit anyone, even if they are you know 20 minutes from my house. I do. I don't have any plans to go there at all. So,

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Antonio Santos: We might go there to drop some stuff at the door and tell them it's there and we will leave but we don't have. We don't have any plans to

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Antonio Santos: Have all the family together. We're just saying the three of us and the Christmas tree. And, you know, and then we'll meet our family members over no system like this over a phone call. And that's how we will be doing it.

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Debra Ruh: You know what, I keep thinking and this is probably because I have two very, very vulnerable family members that

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Debra Ruh: We don't want to get coven 90. We don't want Sarah with down syndrome to get coven 19. We don't want my husband with dementia, because it's already rip it apart. His brain right now so

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Debra Ruh: And I thought, don't be careless. Don't be careless Deborah, don't be careless is to close the UK already has a vaccine. There are ready vaccinating people in the US to I was talking to

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Debra Ruh: A friend yesterday and she said, her sister who's a health care worker got the vaccination yesterday in the state. So, you know,

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Debra Ruh: It will be sad, the last people would get code when we actually have a vaccine and under people are nervous about the vaccine but

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Debra Ruh: My feeling is going to take the vaccine because I need to protect my daughter, my husband and also I want to move around in society. I've been invited to speak at or into attended event.

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Debra Ruh: In Shanghai and may God sort of like to go. I don't know if I will be able to go because I will. I assume we should do these vaccines, according to

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Debra Ruh: Priorities and I'm not as much of a priority, Miss somebody like my daughter or my husband. So, and since we didn't order enough. Whoops.

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Debra Ruh: So, and whatever. I don't even care about stuff like that but i i just think about that sometime. So you'll have and I'll just go ahead and talk a lot. I'm talking but we're doing the same thing. We're just and today is my birthday. And so my

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Debra Ruh: My son and his fiance are going to come and see me this. I have not seen

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Debra Ruh: I have seen them, but I see him in the car in their state, we've been really careful.

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Debra Ruh: And so they're going to come over today and but it's going to be the same thing they're going to, we're going to be outside, even though it's chilly here.

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Debra Ruh: We're going to have a face mask. My daughter's coming, but we've are I've already around her a lot because I see her a couple of times a week, but

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Debra Ruh: We're being very thoughtful about our bubble, because I think you really have to be. And then same as you. We're just gonna, we're just going to be very quiet. I won't see my sound on Christmas. It'll just be my husband, my daughter myself so

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Debra Ruh: You just have to still be careful. I mean we have to be careful, how about you do

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Neil Milliken: So same yeah we're not saying like, we're going to, you know, have a video family video conference on Christmas Day and, you know, share a few drinks over there in the ether and the rest of the time we spent a relax at home. I'm going to take the opportunity to, you know, unplug a little

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Neil Milliken: As

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Debra Ruh: Really unplug early and

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Neil Milliken: Watch them junk TV go for some walks and yeah recharge the batteries, because I think the 2021 there's a load of stuff plans to happen.

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Neil Milliken: That I think is going to really move the dial on on accessibility and inclusion, so I'm looking forward to it. So thank you everyone. Happy Holidays. See you on the other side.

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Debra Ruh: Thanks, everyone.