Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - Silicon Valley

Beyond Diversity 101: Learning from the Perspectives of People with Disabilities in Tech (W/ Webinar video!)

Visitor — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 05:54:16 +0000

Missed our webinar on August 22? Well here it is! [Captioned and all visuals audio described.]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j511DMDAecU?ecver=2]

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People with Disabilities in Tech

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Dennis Billups: An Activist through the Disability Rights Movement, Two Tech Booms, and a Housing Crisis

Visitor — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:36:18 +0000

By: Asa Arnold

The experiences of Dennis Billups reveal two things that are overlooked in today’s discussions of disabled people in tech: 1) we live in a second tech boom (the first was the “Dot-Com” era at the end of the 1990s) and 2) people with disabilities play important roles in tech that are completely unrelated to programming, development and access. Interviewer Asa Arnold and Dennis Billups

As an African-American man with a visible disability, Dennis predated today’s discussions of diversity in tech by a generation. He worked in the dot-com era. Many times, when he took the train to his job in Silicon Valley he was given free fares because people found it so remarkable that a blind man was going to work at all. A participant in the 504 occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building in 1977, he has long been an activist who focuses on increasing economic power for disabled people [click to view our oral history interview with Dennis to learn more]. Since working as a telephone operator and information specialist for various Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s, he has first-hand experience with the effects of gentrification, the changing skillsets required in today’s tech world compared to thirty years ago, and ideas around people with disabilities. In each area, he finds both positives and negatives.

In the mid-80s, Dennis was looking for a job, but was unable to find one that would let him stay close to his wife who he had recently married. After a while, a representative from the Department of Rehab came to him about a job program in Silicon Valley and said, “We want you to become our poster child because you had a good speaking voice, you speak clearly, and you’re around a lot of people and a lot of people like you.” Dennis enrolled in the program and became a phone operator and information specialist at various computer chip companies in Silicon Valley. He describes his job as being “the person who did the calls, made sure packages got out, faxing in and remembering names of people and changing the phone list…letting people know what’s going on with the company.”

Dennis’ experience working in Silicon Valley during the Dot-Com boom was remarkably positive. This can partially be attributed to his job working well with his personality and skill set, but it was also due to supportive coworkers and workplace accommodations. He had documents provided in braille in addition to teachers who explained what he needed to do; his accommodations were “a natural thing.” Dennis also got on well with people in the office; for example, he would tease them when the lights went out, offering to guide them to the bathroom. One engineer and friend of Dennis’ would give him tours of the workplace, saying “you don’t need to be isolated at that desk all the time.”

With the money from his job and some struggle, Dennis and his wife bought a house in Bayview/Hunter’s Point, San Francisco in 1994 so they could settle down. He lived in the house for 20 years. In 2015, five years after his wife had died and 15 years after being laid off from his job, Dennis found himself being evicted due to failure to make monthly mortgage payments. Believing it unfair as he feels he was not given adequate time to prove he could make payments, having been receiving notification in print rather than braille, he has been challenging the decision. In general, Dennis is disappointed in how gentrification is sweeping San Francisco and pushing many (including disabled people like himself) out of their homes. He finds the trend “really uncomfortable, disheartening, maddening…Bayview and Hunter’s Point were the last community for African Americans.” Despite this, his goal is to return to his home and control some property to stop the gentrification and bring disabled people back into the neighborhood. Dennis says, “it’s never too late, as long as you can get one foothold you can get another one just like they do.”

Like many, Dennis lost his job when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, in his case because many of his responsibilities as an operator were becoming automated. He recalls two good friends and coworkers warned him ahead of time, “Den, you’re going to get fired, and it has nothing to do with you, it’s a company thing.” He had an opportunity to retrain for working on the web which was just starting to take off, but he decided to stay at home to take care of his wife who had grown increasingly sick. He has been unemployed since then and now focuses on advocacy. Dennis believes “we have a chance to do something for disability, especially when it comes to economic chances.”

Having lived through a disability rights movement, two tech booms, and a housing crisis, Dennis is surprisingly upbeat. “We need all kinds of people and all kinds of opportunities,” he says. “That’s how change happens.”

Students for Access also sees the chance to do something for disability, and aims to improve the employment situation for people with disabilities in tech through our summer project. We thank Dennis for sharing his story with us. Dennis Billups during the 1977 504 sit-in.

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Triple Minority and Triple Threat: Eboni Freeman

Visitor — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:47:40 +0000

Eboni Freeman describes herself as “a future tech consulting titan who happens to be a Black female with a disability - a triple minority and a triple threat.” As a rising senior at Emory College in Atlanta, Eboni knew Google was the right place for a summer internship due to its positive professional culture. When she disclosed she had a chronic illness in a different company interview, it was suggested that the accommodations Eboni might need would be taxing on the company. Eboni knew that this was not an acceptable response; “I’m not a challenge. I am an exciting, value-adding person on your team. And the fact that I already felt like my disability was going to be seen as a liability was really not exciting.”

In school, Eboni participated in Lime Connect’s national fellowship program, which provided her the skills to ask for the accommodations she needs as well as the confidence to seek employers who would invest in her talents and potential. Eboni admits that during the hiring process, conversations about disability with employers can be difficult. On top of that, having an invisible illness adds to the complexity. The invisibility of Eboni’s illness “is a privilege and a weight to carry.” While people with invisible illness sometimes “pass” as being able bodied and have the option of not always having to disclose, they are often asked to prove that they have a disability. Before her current position at Google, Eboni enjoyed her last internship at a finance service center but occasionally her “Lupus fog” (moments of cognitive impairments that can come with the chronic inflammatory disease) would momentarily get in the way. Eboni struggled to think about the best way to tell her manager without threatening perceptions about her productivity.

Eboni thinks these communication issues could be avoided if these conversations were had at the start of the hiring process instead of becoming an HR problem down the line: “I’d love it if we didn’t even start talking about disability, we just talked about accommodations. Because every single person has different tools that would make them one hundred percent more spectacular at their job. And those tools, resources and open communication can make it better for everyone to work well together and individually.” If companies were up front in initiating causal talk around accommodations, Eboni believes it would signal that they offer a supportive environment for people with disabilities to succeed.

As a “Noogler,” (a new employee), or “Googler” at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA serving as an associate account strategist intern in the global customer experience team, Eboni uses a standing desk along with many other employees. Her desk, along with the company’s instated every half-hour breaks and exercise balls, are not considered accommodations but are instead integrated into the workplace infrastructure itself. Eboni also cites the Google shuttles that she uses to catch an early 7 am ride from Cupertino to Google’s headquarters and around campus as another productivity perk for people of all abilities. But, Eboni says, a generally accommodating workplace culture is not one size fits all: “True disability inclusion means not just providing the custom version of the same solution to each person that requests. True disability inclusion is a conversation, research and analysis of what someone actually needs not just what other people think should work.”

When Eboni began her three-month internship at the beginning of the summer, she discovered Google’s internal disability alliance resource group and joined right away. The group offers a list serve where folks can share perspectives and resources. Eboni also sometimes runs into other Lime Connect fellows around campus and is always happy to see other people with disabilities from her cohort building their careers along-side each other. As a Black, disabled woman, Eboni knows that her identity as a triple minority is not considered to be the typical techie profile, but she tries “to keep it in my mind that not only am I a triple minority, I am also a triple threat because that means I get to bring in three unique perspectives that often aren’t discussed or considered in tech.”

Eboni majored in strategy and management consulting and sees the lack of disabled workers in tech as a business issue. She thinks the tech industry needs to realize that disability is not something separate from them. If approximately 1 in 5 Americans have some form of chronic disability, Eboni said, then this “affects employees, their customers, their stakeholders, and people all over the supply team network.” Hiring more people with disabilities isn’t just an equitable practice, it gives a business access to more perspectives and creates a more accessible product which provides a competitive advantage and affects your bottom line. Eboni cited a recent McKinsey study that backs up her thinking. The 2015 study showed that ethnically and gender diverse companies are more likely to out-perform non-diverse companies above the national medium.

Even though disability is yet to be accounted for in major business diversity studies, Eboni, as a true tech consulting titan would say; “if you are addressing something in the market that other people aren’t, you are going to win a little faster.”

Interested in more on disability in tech? On Tuesday, August 22nd, from 2-3:30 pm PST the Students for Access will be hosting a free webinar “Beyond Diversity 101: Learning from the Perspectives of People with Disabilities in Tech.” To join us, please RSVP. Captioning will be provided.

Read more from our Disability in Tech series here:

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People with Disabilities in Tech

Silicon Valley

technology

The Meta Maker of the 21st Century: Joshua Miele’s Path to Accessible Design

Visitor — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 22:52:50 +0000

By: Danny Thomas Vang, Students for Access Intern

Whether it be the layout of a room, the words on a sheet of paper, or the comprehension of how to effectively use a piece of technology, information is the basis for success. Without access to this information, a person will not have the ability to complete a task to their fullest potential. This is why Joshua Miele has made it his mission to bridge the gap between access to information and people with disabilities. Growing up in New York in a supportive environment, there was no doubt in Miele’s mind that he would one day become a scientist. “I have been successful to the degree that I have because of all sorts of luck and circumstance. I have a supportive family and I am a middle class white male. I come from a family where college was not a thing that you might do, it was the thing that you did.” Photo by the New York Times

In October 1973, Miele lost his vision at the age of four because of an unpredictable action from his next door neighbor. Miele heard the doorbell ring while playing in the backyard, so he went to identify who the visitor was. After opening the gate for his neighbor, the last item he saw was the wood paneling in the vestibule; the neighbor had poured a jar of sulfuric acid on his head. Rather than succumb to a sense of hopelessness and despair because of a sudden life change for their family member, his family was supportive in his recovery and in his future endeavors as a blind scientist and engineer. His father built him a bed that had a jungle gym, his mother encouraged him to feel the art at museums, and his siblings would advocate with him in public/private settings.

Throughout his life, Miele had to identify methods of how to gain access to necessary information in course textbooks, in the presentations in the classroom, and in the workplace. It is a conventional perception that the process of an action commences with the implementation of the action itself, but Miele sees this process as a multi-layer procedure for a person with a disability. “Before we can do the actual things we want to do, we have to create solutions just to get access to the information or the physical aspects of what we want to do. As a person with a disability, you don’t just go skiing. You have to figure out how you are going to adapt skiing to be what you want to do or something fun that you can do.” To be a “meta maker” is to be an individual who has to bridge a divide between themselves and an action before doing the task that was in mind from the onset. With personal experience as a blind person and a meta maker in the technology industry, Miele knew that the path of an information accessibility researcher was where he would be able to make the most significant and tangible impact for the community he cares for. Miele believes that the lack of awareness of accessibility and the lack in representation of people with disabilities in the technology industry is a result of low societal expectations. “The failure comes way before you go in for an interview; it’s in school early on. I am talking about the failure of the system to provide for people with disabilities.” In order to create a culture of inclusion, family members and educators must reach youth as young as possible. It is his belief that teaching students without disabilities about accessible design at the commencement of their education rather than after a product is found to be inaccessible will ensure that there will not be a need to retrofit products and will promote a greater comprehension of disability from the outset. In conjunction, positive reinforcements and opportunities to explore the realm of technology as a youth will allow people with disabilities to decide for themselves if this industry suits their interests.

This is not to diminish the current enthusiasm and effort put forth by those individuals without disabilities who seek to create innovative inventions that may increase access to crucial information for people with disabilities. The issue lies when imagination and cultural assumptions lead the production of a novel product in lieu of practical knowledge or conversational interactions with the community. “Because there is no cultural connection or experience with what that disability entails, they don’t necessarily develop technology that is going to have any relevant impact or usefulness.” Exposure to the barriers in the built environment as a youth will promote the effective and conscious development of products that are usable and practical. At this moment, Miele works on the creation of tactile maps of streets across the nation and the subway/metro system in the local area, online accessibility of YouTube videos, and much more at Smith-Kettlewell. However, his pride lies with the Blind Arduino Project, where youth and adults have the ability to gain hands-on experience on how to utilize an electronics platform to build computerized devices integrating sensors, motors, displays, wireless communications, and a host of other tools. “It’s not that I want every kid to be a blind tech nerd, but I want every blind kid to have the right to know whether or not they are a tech nerd.” Joshua Miele strives to use his experience as a meta maker to ensure that future generations of youth with disabilities have minimal gaps to bridge with access to information while simultaneously providing these individuals the tools to become meta makers as well, should the need arise.

Not all people with disabilities need to develop an interest in the field of technology, but it is imperative that everyone has the ability to explore this area of study. The Students for Access Project strives to capture the experiences of people with disabilities who work in tech and inspire both employers and future techies to push for equitable workplaces.

Interested in more on disability in tech? On Tuesday, August 22nd, from 2-3:30 pm PST the Students for Access will be hosting a free webinar "Beyond Diversity 101: Learning from the Perspectives of People with Disabilities in Tech." To join us, please RSVP. Captioning will be provided.

Read more from our Disability in Tech series here:

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People with Disabilities in Tech

Closing the Doors of Opportunity: A First-Hand Account of Ableism in Tech

Visitor — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 19:21:28 +0000

The following post is part of a series released by "Students for Access," a summer initiative to capture and share disability experiences from inside Silicon Valley. This account of discrimination, an unfortunate reality for many, is provided anonymously due to the risks of exposing such information.

By: Danny Thomas Vang

"It went from making threats, then I called them out on those threats, then the managers told the company that they never threatened me and here is how much of a horrible worker I am, and then I caught them in the lie. The atmosphere was thick with tension and there was complete silence in the office. After months of dialogue about the discrimination present in my work environment and the inaction of human resources, I rolled into the room and sat across from representatives of the company and their legal counsel. A check was slid across the table and it dawned upon me that it was their intent to purchase my silence…”

Jane Doe, who has a physical, visibly-apparent disability, shared past experiences that illustrate some of the challenges disabled employees can face. While reminiscing about her experiences at her former organization Widgets4U, Doe concluded that there are champions of inclusion in tech companies and there are also people who still adopt the negative stigma of disability.

Before Doe started at Widgets4U, the recruiter helping fill the position Doe was pursuing felt the need to give the manager of the team an advance warning that Doe had a disability, not provided for thinking about access, but rather as a warning to “prepare yourself!” Fortunately, the manager scolded the recruiter and even walked him over to HR to arrange a meeting for more education.

Thanks to this manager who understood that disability should not be a mark against a future employee, Doe went into the interview and was able to display her confidence and talent, getting the job. Doe is grateful to the manager who spoke up and later confided in her about this incident, a true advocate for people with disabilities.

But Doe eventually lost this supportive manager, replaced by a new manager who was aggressive and impatient because they did not know what to expect of an employee with a disability or how to handle accommodations in the workplace. “I said that I cannot do the new schedule he was asking of me because it will throw off my medical needs and that is not going to work.” The manager, distrusting Doe, asked for documentation from a medical professional, but Doe advocated that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protected her right to keep her medical information private. She said, “If this position is changing from what I initially agreed upon and what I could do, I am now informing you that I cannot do it because of the new changes that are being made. The reasonable accommodation is that we make the role work with my needs or put me in an equal level role that I can do.”

With little interest in having an open dialogue about accommodations, the manager would halt the conversation by throwing his hand in Jane's face and would leave the premises. After no progress with the manager and no alternative avenues, Doe went to human resources and was informed that all would be well, but they simply gave the manager a slap on the wrist. Doe found this inadequate and did not feel comfortable working with this manager because she thought that their animosity and unwillingness to converse about accommodations would influence the collaborative nature of the team. She sought to transfer to a different team, but found that the manager was actively working to hurt her reputation with the other department. Eventually, Doe was set on a performance plan because there was “confusion” about her performance as the manager told the company that she was not a competent worker. Doe was able to prove otherwise, having fortunately made her own copies of all her earlier performance metrics and reviews.

In the end, Doe left Widgets4U, exhausted by the hostile work environment she was now forced to work in. She hopes that the progress in inclusion that other tech companies are modeling will prompt Widgets4U to follow suit.

Despite Widgets4U bringing their legal team in and asking Doe to take a check to sign papers saying this never happened, she refused to sign and left Widgets4U's doors for the last time, having already decided she would never file suit. Doe recognizes how a discoverable lawsuit will negatively impact her future career since she is already stereotyped as a liability. Just recovering from what happened has taken some time, including checking into a psych program for PTSD, and she is now on anxiety medications indefinitely.

After reading a draft of this post, Doe asked that we add what she described as her "weird thing":

I still deeply care for the company. I understand their inexperienced team backed themselves into a corner by improperly handling two managers' poor behavior. They took their word over mine and were stuck when I provided proof. I want this organization to be successful. Naïve as it may sound, I dream of peacefully returning to their HQ to organize a workshop & help them be allies for their existing minority employees. I think that's why I did this article. Not just to help other disabled employees but to help employers know we're not a liability if they don't make us one. We're allies, and in many cases, willing to educate.

With a mission of collecting and sharing insightful experiences of people with disabilities in tech, the Longmore Institute on Disability appreciates Doe for sharing her story, which reminds us that there’s more to inclusion than just hiring people with disabilities. Companies need to build a culture of support and educate managers about the rights of people with disabilities to accommodations.

For more stimulating conversations, check out our other featured profiles of disabled people working and thriving in tech, coming to our blog in the coming weeks! Additionally, on Tuesday, August 22nd, from 2-3:30 pm PST, Students for Access will be hosting a free webinar “Beyond Diversity 101: Learning from the Perspectives of People with Disabilities in Tech.” To join us, please RSVP. Captioning will be provided.

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