Shaping an Inclusive Future in Tech

Darryl Adams, a luminary in the field of accessibility, joins us to share the extraordinary path that defined his 28-year career at Intel, shaped profoundly by his personal experiences with retinitis pigmentosa and single-sided deafness. Darryl's story is a heartfelt exploration of how Intel's inclusive culture, coupled with his relentless passion, empowered him to champion accessible technology for all. Through his reflections, we learn not just about the technological strides made at Intel, but also about the wider impact of fostering diversity and inclusion within the workplace.

Darryl takes us on a journey into the future of technology and communication, unveiling the world of possibilities opened by machine learning and conversational AI. Imagine a world where interactions transcend traditional interfaces, transforming into seamless, conversational exchanges that nurture human connection. Darryl shines a light on the transformative potential of these technologies to enhance communication tools, especially for those with speech differences or hearing loss, promising a more inclusive and interconnected world.

As we navigate the ethical dimensions of technology, we are urged to consider the responsibility of major tech companies in shaping AI that prioritizes inclusivity and fairness. By weaving together cybersecurity, accessibility, and ethics, the conversation addresses the need for personalized algorithms that cater to individual needs, ensuring trust and enhancing user experiences. Darryl's insights underscore the importance of refocusing tech industry objectives from profit to user-centric optimization. Finally, we reflect on the shifting demographics of an aging population and the vital role this plays in the ongoing dialogue around accessibility, urging collective efforts to embrace and address these emerging challenges.

Chapters

• 0:01 Advancements in Accessibility and Technology
• 16:50 Future of Technology and Communication
• 22:39 Ethics in Technology and Accessibility
• 31:28 Aging Population and Accessibility

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:01

Hello and welcome to AccessA Chat. I'm delighted that we're joined by a returning guest today, Daryl Adams. Daryl, you last joined us pretty much four years ago to the day, and it's a bit special because you've just retired last Friday from working at Intel after 28 years.

Neil Milliken: 0:25

Now, that's a pretty long stretch. It's double my current longest stretch with any employer, so that's a long time to spend in any place, but it also must give you an amazingly and a unique perspective on advancements in technology and advancements in accessibility over that time. So, firstly, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you back on and tell us a little bit about what you've been up to over the last few years and then maybe later on we'll get into what you've got planned coming up.

Darryl Adams: 1:01

Sure thing, and thank you, neil and Deborah and Antonio, for having me back. Appreciate it. It's kind of a neat anniversary four years, yeah. So I have just retired from Intel as the Director of Accessibility and it's been a long ride, as you've noted, but it's been an exciting career. The beginning of my career was not directly related to accessibility, more other than the idea that I do have retinitis pigmentosa and losing my eyesight from the outside in Single sided deaf in my right ear. And as we're progressing through my career, I was really recognizing the fact that I'm going to need to really understand and embrace assistive technologies in order to actually continue to do my job. And that just parlayed into a passion around not just how can I do my job with assistive tech, but how can I help Intel and help the industry just make better technology that works for more people and that's kind of how I've evolved in the role that I had.

Darryl Adams: 2:04

So it's been really exciting and I just would. It's bittersweet for me because I've you know, for my career I've identified as Intel. Now I'm making a big switch, which is exciting, but it's a big change for me and I do think a lot like it's incredible to work for a company that you, that you admire, like intel has been leading and basically inventing the future of technology for like four decades and it's uh, you know everything.

Darryl Adams: 2:42

It's not just the microprocessors, everything that's inside that computer. Much of it was either invented by or intel's deep ties into things like pci and intel invented usb and wi-fi, uh, bluetooth. All these things are so fundamental, the contributions from intel. So when I think about all the things that we use on a daily basis, I'm pretty proud of that career, and it's just now recognizing that I have the time.

Darryl Adams: 3:11

This is the time for me to be able to go out and continue to make a really big difference when it comes to the future of accessible and inclusive technology.

Debra Ruh: 3:24

Daryl, thank you for coming back on the program and congratulations on your retirement.

Debra Ruh: 3:29

I know that you talked about this on the first show, so we'll make sure that we put that in the show notes so that people can go back and watch the first show.

Debra Ruh: 3:37

But one thing that you talked about before about Intel and I'm a big fan of Intel as a consumer, I have a lot of the same perceptions you do, and that I do think it's a really important brand that's made a lot of difference in the world. But one thing that made me like Intel a lot more was when I heard about your story, because you did start losing your eyesight as you were working for Intel, and I think that Intel tells a pretty powerful story based on how they supported you so that you continue to lead and add great value to them in the community. But I was just wondering if maybe you would talk a little bit more about that story again, because one thing that we really obviously care about in the community is we care about employers that really include us and accommodate us or provide adaptions, or you support us on our life's journey, and I think that your story is just a wonderful example of what a brand, an international brand, can do to support their talented employees.

Darryl Adams: 4:42

Do to support their talented employees. Yes, yeah, I think it's in hindsight I'm really appreciative of that. But what's an interesting way to consider this is that it takes both the employee and the company and then also to build also the culture that enables everything that you've just said, and what I mean by that is at the beginning, when I still had a fair amount of eyesight and I didn't actually have to go and tell people that I couldn't see something. It was really difficult for me to make people aware of that and it was years of going through a process of me coming to terms with vision loss and how it was going to impact me and who I am, how I work, and so there wasn't a lot Intel could do at that time because I wasn't letting anyone know.

Darryl Adams: 5:37

But the thing that was amazing is that once I actually took the big step and said and admitted it to to myself, admitted it to anyone who needed to know, it was incredible like the is there's, maybe intel proper is was behind me, but also everyone that I worked with, it became just a much easier conversation.

Darryl Adams: 6:00

Uh, people were extremely happy to assist wherever needed. I'm just, you know, looking out for me if there was something that needed to be done that I couldn't like, naturally do well or whatever. So all these things, just it just makes a makes for the relationship development so much better. Like I think that's been a core part of how I've evolved at the company is that it's really based on on relationships and building out whether they're the people on your team, within your organization or even beyond. Having those like meaningful relationships helps you work together and get things done. So it's been really effective in that way and I think Intel does a nice job helping develop that culture and that culture with the resource groups and leadership councils and things like that that are all really just dedicated to this cause.

Debra Ruh: 6:56

Neil is talking, we can tell, but Ah, yeah, and Neil has muted.

Neil Milliken: 7:01

So yeah, there we go. So what you just talked about is, you know, a hot topic in companies around self-identification, because you basically self-ID'd and it made your life easier. But companies are squeamish because especially international companies, because of the variances in legal requirements and cultures and everything else, self-id is a complex topic and it requires trust. Right, you had to trust your colleagues and you had to trust the organization to feel comfortable telling them about your condition and luckily, they were trustworthy and it worked out. But there's a lot of people out there that are not sure whether it's going to or not.

Neil Milliken: 7:50

Um, and and building that culture of trust to enable people to be comfortable to then ask for the things that they need and for the companies to grow as well is, I think, definitely a global work in progress. You know, I think that we have examples of where it's worked really, really well, and then other things where you think, well, wow, I still have a lot to learn. You think about the cultural differences where actually, you know, in certain cultures, disability is seen as a punishment from God and accepting the support of an organisation might be seen as going against the will of God. So you know, there's all of these variances that in a Western culture we've not even thought about. So those are things that keep me up at night right now, as I'm trying to, you know, build a way of supporting everyone within our multicultural organization, how you said you had at Intel employee resource groups were they homogenous or were there different ones in different countries?

Darryl Adams: 9:14

So mainly it's with our disability. We had a disability and accessibility network, which was our erg, and it was homogenous in the sense that we come together globally. But then we have site chapters that do things that really organize local events and local connections. And then another notion of peer groups, which is not so much geographical but aligning with people who are sharing similar experiences. They can get together in a safe space and talk about how their experience is, things that are working, things that are not about how their experience is, things that are working, things that are not. All of this just as true peer group type of value, which has been also fantastic. But I agree, I think your point about trust is really the fundamental point to be made is that trust is everything and when you do trust, then you're much more inclined to be open about your needs but then also help understand your value.

Darryl Adams: 10:23

And I think it's really difficult because building trust in a relationship one-on-one is hard. And if you think about trying to scale that to being trusting an entity, an organization, by which many of the people involved you don't even know, that's a hard, that's a high bar, but I think it can be done. But it's not like something that you just do and then it's done. That's just something that you have to work on and work toward forever.

Darryl Adams: 10:52

It's always about how do you build, continue to develop that culture that your employees and your customers trust.

Debra Ruh: 11:02

And you know, as both of you're saying, it really is complicated because, first of all, you have to be willing to tell people that you have something that needs to be addressed, and so you have to have confidence, like you said, daryl, in your employer, but also the people that work around you, and when we get it wrong as a brand, as an employer, you know it makes the employer look so bad, right? Oh, I cannot believe they did not support that person that was deaf, how you know when? Actually, as you both said, this is very nuanced and I know it, it creates a lot of heartburn, and I've heard people say about brands that I've heard very positive things about. I've heard them say, yeah, they didn't help me at all, and so I.

Debra Ruh: 11:50

It just feels like it's very difficult for employers to get this right. I do have a lot of empathy about that, because that's a lot of times where we see the real criticism coming after our brand. Certainly, when the brands aren't accessible, it will come, but when you're not taking care of your employees, it appears that way, right? So I just want to say it's a very nuanced, tough, tough thing for a brand, just just to be fair to them.

Darryl Adams: 12:18

Well, I think making anything systemic is just it's a large task, large job, and I think that we we don't, and it's not limited to how do I support my employees who we know have disabilities and maybe who have asked for accommodations, or what are the, what are the process that we have in place to make this a welcoming place to work. It's also recognizing that you've got plenty of employees that you don't realize have disabilities, because they haven't been.

Darryl Adams: 12:47

They haven't been open about it for whatever reason. I mean, they might not even be open about it to themselves. I think a lot of like I know I was like. Now I know I look back, I was not honest with myself about this and I think everyone goes through that. If you have anything, that's a degenerative condition. Everyone goes through this process, and so we know that every company is going to have employees that are going through this and they're doing it on their own until they're not, until they decide to say something about it. So we should be thinking about how we're creating that environment that helps people move through that journey more efficiently.

Antonio Santos: 13:29

I think that is particularly important, considering that, particularly for organizations who are spread around the globe, and sometimes we see and observe countries leading on initiatives around disability very centered in one region or the other, and then employees who are located somewhere else in the world get a little bit a feel of disappointment. Okay, no, no, it's so nice that they do this out there, but here, where I am, nothing really happening. The other point is sometimes we see organizations also with disability support groups working, operating almost like in a niche in the organization, completely separate from, sometimes even from, leadership. So what I would like to hear from Dara is how can we mitigate silos and how can we actually build a community within the organization that is supportive and gets some support from leadership to move things forward?

Darryl Adams: 14:39

Well, I think the way that you framed that question is almost the answer in the sense in my mind, in the sense that the resource group or it doesn't even have to be a formalized resource group, but it's helpful to have it formalized but the idea that you bring people together that are outside of their organizational structures, and so you're not just talking about the people that you sit around geographically, you're not talking about the people that all report to the same manager, you're talking about communities that develop within an organization, that have some sort of shared experience or shared interests, all these things. And so when you bring those groups of people together, it's very powerful because they're very naturally wanting to be together and it just enables very useful conversations, and then you build relationships that way.

Darryl Adams: 15:32

And then you also build a foundation of trust within that sort of subgroup or community.

Darryl Adams: 15:38

And I think a key piece to this where I think your mileage varies from company to company for sure is the need for these groups to have very strong executive sponsorship, because what happens is the group itself will identify what's needed, identify the gaps and really bring them to surface these things. But it's not enough to surface them. You have to have some ability to address them, and the stronger that leadership is to witness it, to recognize it, then to say we're going to do something about this and have the authority and the ability and the wherewithal to do it.

Darryl Adams: 16:23

that's the make or break. People that do that well will drive organizations absolutely in that right direction, where the company is in alignment with what the employees are looking for. When that is absent, all you're doing is surfacing the challenges without providing the solutions, and so I think all of these things are really it all has to come together.

Neil Milliken: 16:49

Excellent. I'm going to change tack a little bit now. So I mean, you just spent 28 years working for one of the big drivers of technology and computational power, has been a driver at Intel, and all of these changes that we're seeing right now in the environment that's around us with you know, large language models and conversational AI are very exciting. You know, we all know that machine learning has been around for a long time, but it's really come to the fore and it's bringing new opportunities in terms of accessibility, particularly around cognitive accessibility, organisational stuff, et cetera. So you've been at the coalface, if you like, of computational power growth over the years. Where do you see this going and what are the opportunities that you see this going? And where you know, what do you? Uh, what are the opportunities that you see coming in the next few years? And as you are now moving into a new stage of your your, your life and a new stage in a career, what of those excite you to to sort of grasp and say, well, this is an opportunity for an inclusion.

Darryl Adams: 18:12

We could do a series on all of this.

Neil Milliken: 18:17

Sorry, that was a really Deborah-style six questions in a sentence.

Darryl Adams: 18:23

Yeah, but fantastic.

Darryl Adams: 18:25

I think there is so much goodness ahead in terms of how technology will be employed to help people and help humanity in really just profound ways, and it's hard for me to talk about this without sounding sounding hyperbolic, but I do believe deeply that there, that there's a tremendous amount of very positive impact over the next three, five plus years.

Darryl Adams: 18:56

You've mentioned the advancements in machine learning. I do want to just suggest that, while the language model evolution is interesting because it's now given us all a new vocabulary around, being able to describe what it means to have a a different relationship with technology, one that you can actually just natively speak to and have a conversation with. It's never been, never before been possible and really makes makes us think more about how, what it means to interface with technology. No longer is the keyboard necessarily the requirement or the mouse, so we can have these more natural conversations, and I think that alone is a really big deal for a lot of people. But it really is just the beginning in terms of how our relationship with technology and also how technology will mediate our relationships with each other is going to evolve.

Darryl Adams: 19:58

So I think my view, my vision for this is that, or my goal, I will say, is to work with technology to better, basically improve human connection and shared understanding. And that really boils down to our ability to communicate and our effectiveness in that communication and how we can use technology to improve all of this. And so, in a disability context, we can look at communication where you have a sender, you have your message and you have a receiver and communication can break down across all of those components. If you're unable to speak, if you have difficulties with speaking, you have a really difficult time communicating and that's a tremendous barrier. So if we can help with technology, if we can help people with speech differences be more effective communicators, that's a huge win. And on the other side of that equation, with hearing, we've got over a billion people with hearing loss of some sort and as we age, most of us are losing some level of hearing. This is a human challenge. And the bigger challenge with hearing is that often people don't really admit it Profound hearing loss.

Darryl Adams: 21:20

You get hearing aids or, if you're deaf you're completely communicating with a different type of language, with sign language, but with mild to moderate hearing loss. What you're doing is you're missing the point a lot of the time and you're not dealing with it.

Darryl Adams: 21:37

So if we can help solve for that and help people who have challenges with hearing have a much better and more consistent way of hearing the message correctly, then we're going to all communicate with each other more effectively, and so I look at this just as an end-to-end challenge to help improve communication and so we can connect more effectively, we can build better relationships, and really that shared understanding is. The key to all of of it is, when you have a shared understanding, then you can, then we, then we can learn more about each other and our needs and our wants and we can have uh, we can understand the differences that we have and then celebrate those differences, and I think that all told, makes just the world a better place essentially.

Darryl Adams: 22:33

So yeah, there's a lot there that we can probably go into as well.

Antonio Santos: 22:39

We know that sometimes cybersecurity gets in the way of accessibility. Now how do we look at generative AI and these new technologies? How can we find ways where ethical considerations, who are really important in generative AI, don't somehow get in the way of progressing on accessibility in order to make people to benefit from it?

Darryl Adams: 23:14

So there's a lot in that. So I think there's two different pieces to this. So one thing around ethics is that I do think that we can make a, we can make significant strides forward, as long as the, the major players that are developing the foundation models and are building out the technologies that are the like these foundational building block technologies that will drive all of this future change. We have to be proactively looking at responsible ai and making sure that projects as they come through the pipeline is something intel does, I think very well, very well. Sure that projects as they come through the pipeline something that Intel does, I think, very well is that projects get vetted at their inception around what is the objective of the project? What are the data sets you're either going to use or you're going to create? How are you going to make those data sets inclusive and educating on what that actually means?

Darryl Adams: 24:13

Like how, how do you ensure that you're to, to the extent that we can and to the extent that we know how to, today, make those models represent society as a whole and not leave people out, and that's a huge problem Like there, like it's very easy to to miss on this, but it's not to say that we have to try, we have to make sure that our processes, that we have in place, are actually supporting the notion that the teams that are doing this work have the tools at their disposal to do the right thing.

Darryl Adams: 24:56

So I think there's a long road there, because I know a lot of this is happening without that. But the way that you impact at scale is you work with the companies that are creating the scale to make sure that they at least have the right processes in place to to make to, to make it to, to help remove as much of the bias as possible and I say that bias is another big issue, that's it's very difficult to to solve for, but it's all but it's, but it's not difficult to make strides toward making it as unbiased or just minimize bias in algorithms, so huge problems.

Darryl Adams: 25:42

These are systemic things, but I think as long as you have processes in place and you have enforcement and audit and those mechanisms in place to help improve. We can hope for that continuous improvement type of thing to really push this forward. And we have to be vocal as a community as well, to recognize when things that are not being inclusive or damaging.

Darryl Adams: 26:06

All these kinds of things are important. The other side of it, though I think it's really noteworthy is, I see, like there's going to be I believe there should be and there can be a fundamental shift in how this is all working in terms of the relationship with technology and people. We need to make it much more personal, and so what I mean by that is the algorithm should be personalized, and this may be. In often cases, this is going to be machine learning, but it doesn't even, it's not even limited to that. It's just anything that's automated. Automation, these kinds of things.

Darryl Adams: 26:44

Um, my, my device, my system, should understand me as a person and understand that. For me, eyesight is is a significant challenge, but I still use it a little bit, so I want to see some things, but I have a lot of constraints around what it is I can see. My system should understand that and present that information to me, because now, with generative AI, you can generate experiences in real time. So why not generate the experience that works for me specifically in real time? So why not generate the experience that works for me specifically and that you can extrapolate that to hearing loss and neurodiversity and cognitive impairments and various things. So we need technology to understand us better. In order to do that, we need to build trust with technology as well, because you need to share that information with your technology, which is going to be a tall order, but we can. When we remove the incentive around advertising and monetizing the information personal information like this then you can begin to develop trust.

Darryl Adams: 27:52

So this is important because, if we think about today, everything that we've experienced with these algorithms is they all have the objective function, which is the key. Like. The mission of the algorithm is what it's designed to do is not for the user. These objective functions are to maximize profit or maximize clicks, or maximize engagement, sales. These are all aggregated things that are helpful to companies. Nothing wrong with that, with the exception that we need to be thinking about how do I optimize for me? And so that when I am being, when things are being suggested to me, they're actually suggested because they're the best thing for me and not the best thing for the companies that are trying to sell me things. So there's a really there's a switch here that I think we'll. We'll flip, but the the challenge is that it it changes the dynamic of a lot of how industry, um the, the business and the economics of technology. Not so much the technology itself that needs to change. It's the business models around it that we need to evolve.

Neil Milliken: 29:06

Great points.

Debra Ruh: 29:06

Daryl Deborah, did you have a?

Neil Milliken: 29:07

question.

Debra Ruh: 29:08

I did, but I know that we're out of time, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the people retiring, but I know that we ran out of time.

Neil Milliken: 29:18

Well, we can squeeze it in a little, okay, super.

Neil Milliken: 29:23

So, daryl, it's, as ever, been a pleasure, and you've given us some real profound things to think about. You know, in terms of especially around things like business models and monetization and personalization, the benefits we've had have been side products at the moment, and they need to be mainstreamed, so thank you for that. I sincerely hope that someone that's listening to this is going to go. You know what this is. What we need. We need to speak to daryl because he's, uh, got some time on his hands to help us come and solve those problems. So it's been but, also but also.

Debra Ruh: 30:03

He's been doing this work for a long time for a major technology brand and this kind of legacy. As people retire, we can't really afford to lose this um legacy, so I am hoping that daryl will continue to uh help with these issues.

Darryl Adams: 30:22

One thing that I will be doing just in the next few months is I'm working with the Consumer Technology Association, so CTA, the organization that's most known for producing CES and what's wonderful is that they're creating a new working group for age tech and accessibility, and I'm going to chair that working group. So we'll be at CES this year and so for anyone that's planning to attend, meet up there. Continue to bring technology that is, accessibility and age tech focused onto the largest stage in the technology industry and making that a bigger deal and making it more shining that spotlight on it, I think is a really nice step forward to help show the value of this work and how, when the industry comes together, we can make meaningful change. I think is a really nice step forward to help to show the value of this work and how, when the industry comes together, we can make meaningful change.

Neil Milliken: 31:25

Yeah, fantastic, and it needs to be mainstream. And, by the way, 2024 is the year that the global population of over 65s outnumber the global population of under 15s. So age texts not going away, you know, and age and disability being interrelated so great, let's close it there. I need to thank Amazon and MyClearText for keeping us captioned and supporting us to remain on air and amazing conversation, so look forward to continuing this online. Thank you, Daryl. Thank you. Thank you.