Accessible Web Podcast: Deaf Link’s Kay Chiodo and Dan Heller

Peter Jewett
All right, 321 and going live. Give it a moment. All right. Welcome, everybody to Episode Four of the accessible web podcast. Today we are here with Deaf Link’s, Kay Chiodo and Dan Heller, and we have Paige Kirby doing ASL translation for us. So welcome, everyone. Full House.

George Heake
Thank you. Pleasure to be here. I introduced Kay Chiodo. Chiodo. You’re very lucky she let you go and very excited to have Kay with us, I go way back with then. Back in 2005 or so. Kay is a certified sign language interpreter with over 32 years of experience 1990 Kay founded services by vital signs and San Antonio, Texas, the great Lone Star State. Today vital signs is one of the oldest and largest onsite American ASL interpreting agencies in Texas. Kay’s leadership has been recognized with numerous awards, including the recipient of the 2008, 21 century Achievement Award by Computerworld for the use of technology to deliver accessible communications. Recipient to Cleave Allen for 2009 National Hurricane conference. And the list goes on and on. I am humbled to walk in her shadow anytime.

Dan brings 37 years of business experience and executive level management as an entrepreneur and corporate executive in the logistics industry. He came to work at Deaf Link while system k with the first deployment of AHAS and ShelterLink. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. services during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hurricane quote from Dan, Hurricane Katrina changed my mission in life. I met hundreds of evacuated evacuees from Louisiana, in Texas and shelters who are deaf or hard of hearing blind or deaf blind communication, communication challenges were enormous. I have devoted last 14 years to working with definitely in developing accessible communication solutions that support emergency management in other agencies through the combination of technology and human resources to meet ADA requirements for equal access to information. And in the emergency management response arena that’s how I connected with Kay and Dan. And we’ve been working together for many times. I went down there for a while and see the magic behind a hash, which is the accessible hazards alert system will let them describe that. So welcome, Kay and, Dan.

Kay Chiodo
Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Good to see you.

George Heake
So why don’t you introduce what AHAS is and what the challenges have been from the very beginning leading up to this point, because I think that’ll open up the discussion for accessibility.

Kay Chiodo
Dan, do you want me to take it?

Dan Heller
You’re the person who bore this.

Kay Chiodo
Well, the Accessible Hazard Communication System, AHAS, It’s something that started really the concept when I was a child. And I’d like to take full credit for the concept. I really can’t. I grew up with deaf and deaf blind. And of course, being a hearing child, I took full advantage of that by knowing that someone’s got, oh, I know someone’s gonna knock at the door. I know, oh its going to rain because I could hear the thud. But, you know, through my growing up, I realized the barriers and the challenges, and a lot of the people who are deaf are saying, you know, we really need to know, the same thing, you know, the same information that the hearing world’s getting, especially, you know, in the Arkansas area with the tornadoes and the alerts that went out. That families didn’t have a chance with knowing that even though it might just be a few seconds, those few seconds could save lives. So the concept of accessible hazard alerts really came from the interaction with what I learned from the deaf community through deaf children, and then later deaf adults. But it’s, it said equal access all lives are important. And the accessible hazard alert system gives you the ability that if you’re deaf, and you’re at home, and you have children, or just a deaf individual, there’s a chemical spill in your area. And there’s an evacuation. You know, you need to know the same thing that you’re hearing neighbors are getting. And so you click on your phone or whatever device that’s internet capable, you click on the link, it comes up in sign language tells you the exact same thing that the other people are getting. And the same if you’re deaf blind, those alerts are formatted word will raise the dots on your refresh Braille reader, and give you access, their voice, where right now we’re doing English and Spanish for some of our clients. So you know, it helps people with literacy challenges. And it’s about it’s about all lives are important. That doesn’t matter with or without a disability. Everyone’s important.

Dan Heller
If I can add the challenges of getting the program in place, have tracked well with just the education needs of all communities, with executives with agencies, who don’t fully understand as I didn’t, when I came to Deaf link, what the real issues are. But it is changed over the last. Well, George, since you were with us, back in 2005, things have changed tremendously. And so the ability to access information through the web, or access information through a phone, iPad, mobile technology is driven, the need, frankly, to be more inclusive. But it’s also opened a host of other opportunities where, for example, the AHAS program initially, simply sent an email with a video. And that was it, it did not have an SMS, small message system capability. But now we can send a link with the information through SMS, we can now send because the world’s Emergency Alert System has expanded for the Fed. And you can now integrate a link into that so that you consume content differently than you used to. But now it allows for that information to go out and be accessed by people who are deaf, and more and more of that community, just like us that are hearing, we spend more time on our phones and we do in front of our computers. We sometimes spend more time on our phones than we do in front of TV, but it gives them a platform and through our program allows them to get the same information. So you know, we’re blessed to have a number of large communities that have taken on the program. San Diego is one of our oldest supporters of the program. They actually are the what’s the number five in terms of population in the country. We’re getting ready to close a contract with Harris County, which is number three on the list. When you start adding these large communities have now beginning to understand what Kay has been preaching for all of these issues about the need for access, that there are groups of people you’re not even aware or there that need communication, when you start getting these larger communities to begin to, to understand the need for access, and the services like ours, that are available, that is a wonderful thing to see happen. And I might go a little farther in that the AHAS program has basically birthed a new opportunity. And that is what we would call the Accessible Community Portal. And by that I mean that what we did during the pandemic, for example, was that you could send out information through our system that was short in nature, but gave back just the fact what people needed to know. But if only a weather alert, if it was only a chemical spill, that did not answer the question during the pandemic, because what was happening, you had issues about whether or not to stay in the stay home issues, you had issues about whether or not to wear a mask, where you needed wear masks whether or not you could go to the grocery store, one of the first things that happened was is that the the transportation labs in San Antonio began to get changed, because they didn’t want the buses to run the way yhey always had they needed to change some of those routes. They needed to give people free finger for example. But it’s a lot of people were losing their jobs, that information could be driven through the AHAS program. The other thing that happened was when people lost their jobs, they couldn’t pay the rent. So the city had the capability, many cities had the capability to send information about where they could get rent support. What about the you know, CPS, in our case, the electrical provider?

People couldn’t pay your electric bill? How are they going to know that they didn’t have to worry about that there were resources to help them. So what happened during COVID was at the very platform we use for emergency alerts and disasters, now prove the point that you could provide other information that was relative to an emergency, like a pandemic. But there were so many people in so many things that were affected, you needed to have that capability to expand information stream. And that’s what was proven during, you know, the covid 19 pandemic was, there are solutions out there. And that’s what we’ve done. So as a result, you know, we’re very proud to say that San Antonio, fully utilize the system. Austin, Texas, utilize the system. San Diego, Long Beach, California, and a number of locations, took the opportunity to use the system for things other than tornado warnings, and send that information out. Because that was a captive market that they knew they had, that they could send information to. And then as Kay will tell you, once it gets into the hands of a deaf individual, then we’ll share that. You know, word Panda, she always calls it gets out there very quickly. So it’s a force multiplier. And I can go on and on. But AHAS been, I think, probably the single most important thing that Deaf Link has done since Kay began the company back in 2002. And technology has driven it to new places where it’s never been before. It’s really created something for communities that in the past wrestled with how they can get information out, they now have a resource to do that. So

Kay Chiodo
I wanted to add one of the one of the important factors of all of this is and it’s an educational piece that never can be repeated enough is that as the deaf would say the hearing world doesn’t understand that. Because we hear it all the time. Well, why don’t they just read it? Why don’t they just this? And I don’t, I don’t like explaining it in the terms. The simple way of people that well, you mean they can’t read, know what I mean? It’s not their language, and getting the hearing world to understand that sign language, even though it’s called American Sign Language. It’s and George knows. We’re working with doctors without borders in Haiti during the cholera outbreak and we made him Information about boiling water and stuff like that accessible. The deaf in Haiti, we’re using the same sign language that the deaf use here in America, don’t get me wrong, they have Russian sign language I have Chinese and it is different. Even Mexican sign language is totally different. But the point is that American Sign Language has no roots in English. It’s one of the third most top foreign languages in our colleges today. And it’s one of the few languages in the world that has no writing system, or orthotic or wait a minute, I can sign that word, can’t say it, orthography behind it writing system. And so those written words, for a lot of Dev, it would be like you giving me an emergency text message in Swahili. It’s not going to mean I can’t take that as actionable information because I can’t understand it. So getting the hearing world emergency managers, first responders to understand that, yes, I have friends who are deaf, that can read write English, better than I can. Majority of my friends have that maybe second third grade, maybe fourth grade reading level of English. Because it’s not their language. My reading level, I live in Texas, my reading level of Spanish. It’s pre K. Actually, I always thought that when they’d say “por que”, they felt sorry for me. Does that tell you anything? So it’s it’s getting that understanding out there into the emergency management world, just into the world in general, that this segment of our population is, you know, you would never tell someone who’s who’s blind? Can’t you see just enough to read that emergency text message? Or Can’t you walk just enough to get in my building without that wheelchair ramp? but yet the comfort level of being able to say, Well, you know, it’s not my fault, they can’t read written language? Can’t they read enough? Pick a few words to why would you tell this to a pop, this is one of our most the Deaf and deaf blind population. This is my opinion as one of the most underserved populations in our nation. And, and it’s a challenge, and they’re covered by that same law, the ADA as someone who requires your ramps or maybe grow. So this is i think it’s it’s an educational, you know, issue on both sides of the coin, and getting the deaf community to understand it is their right to have that equal access to that information that can save their lives and the lives of their family members. So that is, one, that’s the reason why we do what we do the accessible hazard alerts. And I am so proud of the cities and in San Antonio, the emergency managers here and their disability office, our team, which we have deaf members, Deaf staff, who watched everything their English, you know, they are skilled at English, they would watch what’s going on. So you know, this needs to be accessible, that you can ride the bus free, because if you’re having to choose between riding the bus to go get groceries. So now you can only buy bread and not bread and milk because you’re very limited on your money. This is important things to know. And word of hand does spread in the deaf community. So getting that out there is just important. It’s a it’s just a it’s an opportunity to serve your whole community.

George Heake
And some of the magic, and I will call it magic that I learned when I was with you early on was that you can’t, you can’t solve any of the problems. During grey sky times of a disaster. You have to do to work in blue sky times, you have to, you know, emergency would pass in K, we just keep on going. And I learned well, you know this, we need to still work with people even when something’s not going wrong. And a lot of what I learned when from being with you guys is what I hope to bring with Accessible Web and not just being accessing accessibility. But a big part of what we’re going to do is outreach, because I think when you think about accessibility and where we’re going with law, the laws aren’t going to solve the problem. We need the community to be aware of what the challenges of the Deaf, deaf blind, deaf and hard of hearing are going through. We need to make that mainstream we need to come across more in the universal designed so everybody understands it. So everybody gets that information. And, um, and without it No, we most likely the ADA will. The WCAG, or web content accessibility guidelines will be folded into ADA probably within the next two years. We’re very excited about that. But it’s going to take it’s it’s going to take the entire tribe or entire society, to be aware to make that mean anything. And that’s why the model he has, I think it’s universal, not just and it improved both fruit with Coronavirus, getting general public information out that people should have access to, you know, back when we were dealing with FEMA, Puerto Rico came out with a program of close a weather alert. The VA got a grant and they identified who the blind were in Puerto Rico. And when a weather weather disaster was coming, they would print out the weather alerts in Braille, and give it to them within hours of of that broadcast. And just simple low tech stuff. And we need to, we need to keep doing that and not give up even after the disaster passes. And I had the great opportunity of going to a winner setting up field hospital in El Paso, and you haven’t lived until you’ve been in a car with Kay driving, interpreting to someone that was signing in the backseat going at relatively high speed. I’ve recovered since then. Very exciting. I’ve always remembered that, be careful. And plus Kay was a great driver.

Dan Heller
A quick story of Mike Houston, which you know, George is deaf, in use to work with us. FEMA have poached him and took him away from us. But he and I were on a business trip in Houston one time. And it was when mobile video was becoming just in its first inception. And Mike was driving, Mike decided he wanted to call somebody so he opened up his laptop. He added connected through my Wi Fi. We’re in downtown Houston. And he’s signing and he’s talking and he’s driving trying to get off the freeway. I slammed his laptop shut before I died. But it was it was interesting. And that that is that is where technology begins to really begin to take effect. And so age point two is that we have run out of excuses to not provide access. It’s no longer a technical question. It’s a question of willpower commitment, and getting the right minds in the right places to say yes, we need to do this and make it part of the cost of operation. And by that I mean case said it 1000 times you will not find a building that’s built anymore, that doesn’t have a ramp built as part of the plant. So why not accessible communication? Why not all the other things that invite flow, full participation and inclusion from this group of tremendous minds, they just need that extra accommodation to help them contribute. So there’s a lot there that is better than it was. But it’s still a challenge. And it’s always a question of funding. Everybody always says, you know, well, we don’t have the money to do this. I find it interesting that some of the largest communities in this nation have found the heart and the funding to do what’s right in their community. Just right oh, you know, we just in military terms is sustaining the attack. You can’t start and then stop we player because you got tired. You have to keep going. It’s a collective effort is finding the like hearts and minds is finding folks like y’all that have engagement in this process and using the tools like you’re using right now to help get the word out. And it’s people like me They can can educate others, like our interpreter Page, Page can do the same thing. I mean, we’re all engaged in this. But it is more different than it was 15 years ago. George wanted, when you first got engaged with us, it’s better. But it’s still challenging.

Kay Chiodo
Yeah. And I would like to add, I think now I’m going to get into my complaint mode here. And it’s really, I’m really not, I am complaining, but I don’t like someone complaining unless you bring me a solution. And, and I believe that I try to practice what I preach. During COVID. By we have a nonprofit side, which is called no barriers, communications. And actually the name of that came from from George, he was all all over the Yeah. And, ya know, so everything we do we blame on George if it doesn’t work, right. And it’s, it has really, it’s really grown. And so when we have a challenge, like we did during COVID, and we had already seen some of the challenges before COVID hit, but it just amplified the situation, we set up in his name is ginger, y, y e n, t, er yenter, two and Pammi pa m i E, who’s deaf, and they’re on our staff, myself, we set up VPS, I’m talking with an S VPS in our home, where we could take calls. And I’ll tell you why not because we didn’t have anything better to do. But we started getting our r1 Vp, we were getting calls from people, not just in Texas, not just in San Antonio, we were getting them from all over the United States and outside the United States. I need help. And they, we would get them caught. I’m not the brightest one in the box here. 30. Some years ago, I posted it. So my business cards, which are recently took off, but my cell phone number is out there in the deaf community. I’ve always believed that you do not serve a community and they can’t get ahold of you. I don’t care if you’re CEO. That just means you. You’re more responsible, you should be available. Okay, like I said, not the brightest one in the box. But I would get calls of someone Kansas, showing me Look no food and show me their kids. You know, we’re out of food. We’re hungry help. Talking about web accessibility. If I’m deaf, and I depend as my primary language, I’m so sorry, Page as my mode of communication. I can’t read your website. First of all, I don’t even know there’s a website. We tell one per person, you need to find your food bank. No, my bank only takes care of my money. They don’t get food. And that’s not making fun of someone that’s we learn all of these things is hearing people growing up. They don’t teach you about doing taxes in school. You hear that from your parents. 90% of deaf kids are born to hearing parents. Sorry, parents out there. Majority of those parents never learned to sign beyond basics. So now we’ve got people calling us who don’t know what a food bank is. If we take these calls, we turn and we’re talking VP this person’s up on the VP here. We’re turning to our computer. Okay, state which one Where do you live? city? Okay, we’re trying to find their food bank and we’re registering them. My frustration is novacom no various communications. We showed it to NBC or novacom. made videos, several 1000s of dollars worth of videos and gave them to a food bank said you know, set the example for the nation. Let’s make your signup page accessible. won’t even go there. Never got to even talk directly to the CEO or anything but we’re working on it. This is this is an emergency y’all. We got families here with no food. I had one Food Bank Tell me. They can just come by we’ll just give them a bag of food. Wait a minute. What about that Deaf mom and dad who doesn’t read your language but yet they’ve got a kid if they eat something with nuts in it. They got this going on? swelling up and electric shock, just but they can’t read the ingredients, they need to talk to you and say, please read the label of that and doesn’t have this or that they need, sometimes they need a little bit more help. And

they’re going well, we don’t have time we This isn’t a pen, this is a pen. So yes, my language can get a little bit tinted at some point. Be quiet, George. So, Peter, stop laughing. So the education process doesn’t need to be happening in the middle of a pandemic. And George is exactly right. If you have anything that serves the public, you need to think of this population. You and I’m saying the 99% of these agencies is business. They want to help they want to take care of but they need to understand the barriers. They said, well, no one came to us that was deaf and ask for help. Because they know they can’t communicate with you. So you know, we deal with this. And, and, and, and thank God that the FEMA with the inoculation sites giving the shots here in San Antonio, they set up, we were very blessed. They had all the people at the the Alamodome had badges on with the definitely logo had iPads were ready to help. All the information they sent out about where you could go and get shots was on that accessible community portal. It was invoice it was inside courses and text. So websites are very important part of the hearing world. And don’t get me going on the workforce Commission’s how many deaf weren’t able to apply because they couldn’t read that word that website? No various communication has been doing the work for Social Security offices, workforce Commission’s food banks. That’s pretty much an unfunded nonprofit. And we were working around the clock. We were getting calls from each coast, asking for help. So I can’t begin to push hard enough how important your web access is, and not have a video here and there. If I’m deaf and I land on your your page that comes up, I can type in anything, any address you give me, I’ll be able to read it. I can type in W is exactly how I type WWW. But you bet. So the thing is, once it comes up, if I don’t see the ASL, ASL, I came in fine thank you page. If I if I can’t see that, or see a logo that I recognize, I’m not gonna find those videos. So you’ve got to have a lead to that information that’s accessible. And once you do that, you’re going to be impressed. And I want to give you an example that goes back. Oh, Dan, I don’t know Hurricane Ike in Texas. 2008. We convinced I didn’t even bribe him with Margarita or anything. But we convinced a news station along the coastal areas when the hurricane was coming in. You know what? Put these accessible nurses on your TV. Just try it when going to cost them anything. There was amazing. They said that they monitor their viewership goes through the roof. Why? Hello, of course. And so but here. It’s funny. I have a friend who’s deaf and she’s from Poland. Their their news is all signed, she said of course it’s controlled by the government. So she doesn’t know if she can trust it or not. But the point is, we don’t have that here. I mean, access to information is so limited, and especially when lives depend on it. That I will always be grateful to Mr. Jack Collie who passed away. What five years. This did 10 years how long ago in 2011. He was the emergency manager for the state of Texas and he did a contract for a he has for the whole state and he said every life is important to me. They will not die on my watch. If there’s any thing I can do.

It is. And it’s sad because he he got it. And just because it was the right thing to do, and he he cared he truly cared about, as he said, serves. So we could get that across whether it’s web access to vital information, and emergency information. And when I say emergency, the fact that city of San Antonio, James Mendoza, and Eric wash, the, you know, here in San Antonio, and the disability office with Debbie charbon, definitely to know, their electricity was going to get cut off, they needed to know that, you know, my waters not going to get cut off, they needed to know I could I could ride that bus free. They needed to know these things, because it impacts the quality of their life. I’m very proud of what has happened. And I hope I live long enough to see that access spread across our nation. So and that’s why I appreciate the opportunity to talk today with y’all and pick on George,

Peter Jewett
you guys are blowing my mind a little bit here. You know, when when George and I decided to do a podcast a few months back, we had just done a, you know, kind of this happy hour with Dan Goldstein, and had you know, had so many answers, good questions answered about the legal landscape. And accessible web is admittedly a new company in the web accessibility space, you know, we’re really trying to align ourselves with the community and to do things right, with, you know, the whole spectrum of folks with disabilities. But you know, we were new to this, and we have a lot to learn, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of knowledge we don’t have, not having immersed ourselves in SEO, George has definitely been way more immersed than I have, I’m kind of a web guy that, you know, certainly think of myself is very empathetic, but I didn’t really even understand that web accessibility was a thing until a few years ago. So So anyway, the reason we wanted to do this podcast was to really get a lot of voices on this, and to let people talk and kind of let us learn. And, you know, this is, this has been tremendous today. Because, you know, I continuously find myself kind of humbled, and you know, maybe embarrassed isn’t the right word, but you know, it the lack of knowledge that I have, and I’m, you know, trying to grow this web accessibility company, and until today, I really had no concept that, you know, someone that spoke ASL might not have, you know, reading and writing English literacy skills, I’ve never really thought about it is two separate languages. So very, very, very enlightening. Um, I guess I wonder too, like, my brain immediately, immediately goes to like technology solutions, and our team was just chatting today about be my eyes for the, for the blind community, the app that you know, lets you FaceTime with anybody and have somebody you know, if you’re in a store, trying, your person is blind in a store, trying to find, you know, oat milk or something on the on the shelf, have someone on the other end that might be able to see through your camera, let you know, but are there any opportunities like that? Or is that on your radar to build a tool like that, that might help to, to interpret text in sign language for people and and then I guess my next question, really, because obviously, that’s going to be very limited by the amount of people out there that know ASL, and that can actually accurately interpret. But are there any technologies that are emerging? You know, watch a page here? Are there any technologies that can go English to sign language with kind of like, you know, an automated automated sign language basically with a set of column animated hands on a screen that can convert tax because one of one of the big things that blew my mind is we first started down this accessible web journey is how huge the invention the, you know, the internet and digital text was before digital tax, they were newspapers, newspapers had to be, you know, delivered with these thick tomes in Braille, or they had to be delivered over like the NFB Newswire, where you had to call in and listen to the, to the newspaper, and all of a sudden they would digital online and any screen reader could parse through and all of a sudden that that digitization gave a person is blind, the ability to have a screen reader read text. So are there any technologies that you know have on the horizon that are can translate that digital text into sign language.

Kay Chiodo
There are a lot of companies out there. In fact, we recently spoke to one in New Zealand who are awesome people. And the thing is the it’s funny because if you look back at like Disney, how they animate cartoons and too bad Mickey Mouse only had three fingers and stuff, but, you know, it’s, they’re working on it, it’s not there yet. And because like if you watched, you know, Paige, you’re gonna see her make these expressions. She’s like, okay, I’ve seen it. But that is part of the language when interpreters are tested for their abilities. If I was to say, you know, if I’m signing, I really like you. But if if I’m like, but if I’m like, yeah, you know, without that you’re not part of the language and getting the animation and that expression to match up. There’s avatar apps right now I have one on my phone that I carry to use as an example. And my favorite one is when the emergency manager, one mergency manager says, I have this, let me show you this. And he, he voice, you need to evacuate this area right now. And they punched it target two managers said, you need he be a C as I said, you know, their spelling this year. This you’re hearing word is but it’s in their ABCs still, you’re hearing word. And so then it you know, it was it was word English word order. ASL has its own unique syntax and grammar. It’s, I guess, if you’re going to relate it to something maybe more like Spanish, you know how it’s not English word order. But it’s a little bit of a complicated language. And so they haven’t quite gotten there yet. Now, using those apps, if I’m a deaf lady, and a hearing guy wanted to come up and was trying to talk to me at a bar, we am maybe I think I need a drink a few more before I’m going to really accept this. But it it’s, it’s okay in a fun type situation. But for emergency information is not there yet. Eventually, we will have holograms that will come up and and page will be on it. And but if it’s not there right now, we still need to save the lives and not wait for the Holograms. And I’ve actually had emergency people managers Tell me, Well, you know, maybe in the future, we can include them. What you’re doing here the rest of conversation. That’s bleep bleep bleep. But anyway.

George Heake
on the technology side, Kay, until that happens, what can we do on accessibility technology side to support? What’s trying to be done with the deaf community is just putting SSL videos on our site. Is that what else can we do to help get the word out and support the deaf community?

Kay Chiodo
Well, actually, it would be the same thing. If I skew your websites all in Spanish, what would you do to support the people who read English, you would put English on there. So it would come down to putting ASL videos on there. And you know, people say, well, that’s kind of interfering, and it’s too expensive. You know, what? Put the important stuff. If you look at a lot of stuff on people’s website, there’s a whole bunch of filler and they’re never better that put the information out there. We we had someone who wanted the first survey definitely made the first accessible survey, because they wanted to get feedback from the deaf community. Well, hello. And they sent it out in an English text word, not going to happen. So we made that accessible. And then they said, Well, I said, Well, what did you do with it? Well, we posted on our website. Okay, that’s not gonna happen. So we actually worked. We’ve worked with FEMA and with Georgia Tech on a lot of this stuff. And it’s amazing that when you give them the opportunity to be included, they will help educate you on what the best way to provide that but right now, it’s giving ASL and it’s theirs. What can I like?

Dan Heller
Let me let me add a little bit to that. And that is it no question that the web has got so much information. And it is physically impossible to make every piece of that accessible NASL video. However, there are key messaging, anything that’s public facing through any agency. And I’ll just start with the government. There’s information they want you to know, every person that is on the front page of their website. And generally, it’s the most important stuff that’s there, right? And it may change depending upon, let’s just say a water. Water Company has an issue with a bottle of water notes. Right? So where does it appear? It appears on the front page while that event is active. It should be in ASL as well. Why? Because death by water, just like you do. But what happens is that they may make it accessible, or they may not. If they don’t, nobody knows. If they do, nobody knows. So you’ve got to find a way to educate what I would call critical needs, providers of service starting with government, okay. And then making sure that those ancillary industries or or businesses within a community that the city uses or the county uses, also take information and make it front and center. That is the most important thing. They want to tell the community right now. public facing information. Now, I will tell you that week when we get a National Weather Service alert, it comes in and it’s two pages long. It’s got every conceivable thing on it, that has absolutely no value for the listener or the viewer. Because it’s not a call to action, except for maybe six or seven lines inside that document. When we look at the National Weather Service, or we pare it down to the actionable information, because that’s all anybody cares about. There’s a thunderstorm warning. Here’s a map, here’s where it’s getting ready to hit. It’s going to hit my house in about 30 minutes. Does it have hail? Yes, it has hail. But do I really care about the longitude and latitude of where that thunderstorm? It’s No, I just want to know it’s coming. I want to know how long it’s going to be four hits me. And I want to see a map of where it’s at. Those are all visual components, which can be obviously translated into ASL and becomes a complete message for them. Yeah, it’s true of every, every website I look at, do we really need to do the platitudes? And all the stuff that has been content on the website? Do we need to have all the bibliography translated into ASL if the end of an article, I mean, if you think about it, George, you’re an expert at this stuff and stuff. So if you’re looking at anything on the web, and you could pare it down to information, which is absolutely critical, it narrows it down, I would guess probably 2020 to 20% of that total content. That’s the stuff that you got to make accessible, because it’s the right thing to do. There’s a law that says it. And you can afford to do that, you simply cannot afford to do everything. So we have to be smart about it. And I think that, you know, your organization, as it gets further into this will find situations where critical information can be made more accessible if you’re ready to sell, and it should be not everything. I’ll give you a quick aside, when we were doing our work with FEMA. We didn’t even ask us about their website. They want to make it accessible. I actually did a research on that. And we ended up estimating and this is 2007. It was cost over $600,000 just to make the content on their website, accessible ASL video, and it never took the links, that you would drive to somebody else’s third party website where that information was not accepted. So in 2007, numbers, you’re now 1314 years down the road, the cost has come down. It’s become easier to make content accessible, but you can’t do everything you need to do what’s most important for the community. So if you’re going to address the community’s needs, look at that first and make that content accessible, and make it visible and easy to find your website.

Kay Chiodo
And one of my biggest pet peeves is I was on when the celebration for the ADA birthday again. I was on several, Ada webinars, not not as a presenter, I just clicked on I’ve joined, I wanted to see my staff did to know interpreters, ADA, one of them, I actually got off and called this office and said, nicely sort of for me, amateurs? Well, we never got a request for it. I said, I’m on your site right now about this. And where does it say you have to request? And she says, Well, if you and she took me to it, I said, Now I have deaths that work with me that aren’t going to be able to read that, how are they going to know who to contact? Where and how? Well, you can tell them. Now, if you’re going to put something on your website that says, if you want to request assistive services to this zoom meeting, or whatever, contact this person to this number, usually a standard information you’re going to use again and again. Put it in a video. I mean, my gosh, put it right up there. I mean, I don’t know how many time difficult, but it was for ADA. Don’t ask me I have no idea. But the point is, you can’t request something if you don’t know how to access the information to do so. That makes me furious. Don’t make me come up there. You need a video George, call us. That’s a very short video. Come on. I’ve even offered it to people for free. But the point is, you don’t request I don’t have one. So even the access to request wasn’t accessible.

Dan Heller
Let me let me hear something back for a second, you talked about avatars definitely has always tried to remain aware of changing technology. And we do not discount it all the avatars at some point will be adequate to do certain information. So if you’re looking at taking a website, you’ve got to make it accessible with an ASL component. And the program exists that you can actually type it in and text and out the other end comes an ASL video in an avatar, and it is accurate, and it conveys the message the way it’s supposed to. That’s a great thing. We’re not there yet. And here’s the difference. If you were to try and use an avatar right now, and you type something in, it kicked out a message, and you just grabbed and threw it up on your website. What if it was wrong, but you know, it was wrong, right? Yep. You know, our messages to the system are all vetted by interpreters who have the ability to look at that message and know that they need to resign this a different way for work. And it could be a localized thing, as a matter of fact, okay. But the bottom line is right now you need to cognitive ability of an interpreter to look at a message and convert that into ASL and the right way. avatars can’t think for themselves. They’re only taking your message and converting it into what it thinks is ASL, but not necessarily in every case. So we’re not there yet. We’re AI has totally taken over the ability to generate ASL.

Kay Chiodo
Basically, our I have hit you with all these different scenarios. And, and I think, today, I talked with a young lady who wants to work with us on a project. And I said, you know, the most heartbreaking story that I’ve ever told George George can lip sync, this is after Katrina, and I was in the shelters. We were sitting up definitely, so they could communicate with doctors and stuff. And I had a lady come by and grab me and literally pull me on chair and as she’s dragging me where the medical area of the shelter and she’s kind of dragging me along. She’s turned she’s fine to me, interpret me interpret me. And I’m like, so she’s smiling. Wait, wait, I need to talk to the President. I need to talk to the President. So I’m yelling. And this was Mayor Nagin of New Orleans who wasn’t the president but evidently he was on TV a lot. Remember her concept he was a president. Evidently of New Orleans. So, of course, he stopped and turned because he was someone called me president. And I’m trying to be nice about the story. Quick reading Peter. So she said, I need you to bring back my old three. My my son. He goes, ma’am, that place is vacant. There’s no one there. And she goes, No, he stayed bringing back. And he says, no one’s there. I’ve made I can promise you there’s no one there. So she said, No. She said the water it came up. She goes house, she does a roof. She’s sitting on it is her legs. She said I could see soon happened dark. And she signed snakes water. You know, and it kind of got quiet in that area now. And then she said, I need to move for safe. And she said I could see water dark, dead. Floating by. She said I could see when she did that. That whole area got quiet. So she acted because the interpreter standing there with tears. I hadn’t slept in like two three days. So that’s my excuse. Honestly, honestly, Paige, I’m professional. But I’m standing there she’s and she’s doing about. She’s on the house. Oh, three. Oh, he’s on her back. Then she does twins. And she motions signing off fighting off the roof in the water and trying to swim. And she’s doing the baby’s legs and pushing off the cars that are under the water. And people are like, Oh my God. You can hear him saying oh my god. That’s terrible. That’s terrible and heart wrenching. And she goes maybe she got right up in his face. Maybe God punished me because I’m deaf Mom, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m deaf. I couldn’t hear Oh, three yell mom tired can’t hold you find him back I very who you decide death not no evacuated. That’s why we don’t stop. So I’m done. Right. Paige, thank you for your patience with me. I am so sorry.

Peter Jewett
No, thank you. Kay. And, Dan. Wish we had a high note to end this on? That’s certainly certainly bring this up, bring yourself full circle and you know, shows the importance of what would what you’re doing and you know, very enlightening conversation today. I really appreciate you all joining.

Kay Chiodo
Thank you for caring and I know you must have, as I say a deaf heart or you wouldn’t be tolerating George. Alright,

Peter Jewett
a couple of housekeeping here. We’ve got to give away a couple shirts, um, to our LinkedIn and Facebook followers. So if you want to be entered to win a T shirt, sweet, accessible web t shirt. Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook. For LinkedIn this week. It’s Tom Duhamel and for Facebook it is Kaylee Ladd. So, if you’re watching, drop us a chat. And we’ll get your address. And if you’re not watching, we’ll track you down. George, you have any closing comments here today?

George Heake
I was on the federal emergency shelter inspection team for the feds. And I remember coming into on Hurricane Ike and I remember coming to an airport and seeing that video on the TV screen and definitely

It’s amazing. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Let us know how we can work with y’all. We appreciate. Oh yeah, let’s let’s do this again. And we will do our best to evangelize AHAS and what you do and I’m looking forward to working with you guys.

Kay Chiodo
Well, can you see us bring Peter page you can come to

George Heake
work for Ken is in San Antonio. So we have a web accessible web person there. So actually is probably listening. So Oh, yeah. I don’t need much to come down there. Especially the Austin.

Kay Chiodo
Yeah. Well, no, Austin, you get in trouble. San Antonio, we have a room. Come on.

George Heake
Get in trouble, too. But yes. Thanks. It was. I love you guys. Thank you, everybody.