Mizuki & Gary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nGary shared his interesting background. <\/span><\/p>\nHis first job after gradate school was as a clinician. <\/span><\/p>\nHe worked on a project that provided early intervention for children with disabilities. <\/span><\/p>\nThe theory at the time was, the earlier you identify a child with a disability and provide intervention (e.g. speech therapy), the more easily it would be to integrate that child into the educational mainstream when that child was old enough for kindergarten. <\/span><\/p>\nDuring this same period, he taught child development and human development to undergrad and grad students.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the first Apple computer came out, he started developing software programs that could be used to improve cognitive abilities (e.g. sight-word vocabulary). <\/span><\/p>\nIn 1985, Gary visited Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAt that time, Apple was selling computers to schools and those computers had to be accessible for students with disabilities\u2015US education law required that students with disabilities needed to be integrated into regular classrooms. <\/span><\/p>\nApple wanted someone who had experience working with people with disabilities and hired Gary for their Disability Solution Group.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
After working at Apple for 10 years, Gary moved to Microsoft and worked on its accessibility team for 17 years. Yahoo, where he works now, needed someone to work on the accessibility of its Web properties and he was hired there in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gary also talked about two laws that changed the lives of people with disabilities and impacted the high-tech industry.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
First is the Federal law mandated that the US federal government can’t buy any electric office equipment that isn\u2019t accessible. <\/span><\/p>\nBecause the US federal government is the largest employer of people with disabilities it is a big market. <\/span><\/p>\nAs a result, high-tech companies like Apple and Microsoft need to make their product accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other law is the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). <\/span><\/p>\nThis Federal law mandated that anything that provides direct one-to-one communication such as email is required to be accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The above bit of accessibility history was really surprising to me. <\/span><\/p>\nToday many people with disabilities can use computers, smartphones, and other electric devices. Technology changed the lives of people with disabilities and helped them to be more independent. <\/span><\/p>\nIt could be argued that access to technology for individuals with disabilities is the result of the Federal laws in the US. <\/span><\/p>\nWithout those laws, there might be no devices that could be used by people with disabilities today.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Personally, accessibility of technology helps not only people with disabilities but people who are learning a different language or getting older. <\/span><\/p>\nFor example, when Jeff moved to Japan, he couldn\u2019t really enjoy watching Japanese TV programs with me. <\/span><\/p>\nIt was hard for him to catch up with what people were talking about in Japanese. <\/span><\/p>\nTherefore, we started turning on the captions so that he could read the Chinese characters (Kanji). <\/span><\/p>\nIn other words, captions helped him understand the content of Japanese TV programs.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
One day, Jeff and I visited my mother, and turned on captions on my mother\u2019s TV. <\/span><\/p>\nThen she said \u201cOh, the captions are really good. \u00a0<\/span>Sometimes I cannot catch up what they are talking about.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nAt that moment I realized that though she doesn\u2019t have a disability, she is getting older and cannot hear as well as she could when she was younger. <\/span><\/p>\nWithout accessibility to technology, people who don\u2019t have \u201cstandard\u201d skills or abilities would have to give up many things. <\/span><\/p>\nI really appreciate those leading edge high-tech companies that have put a lot of effort into improving access to hardware, software and Web properties.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be continued\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have visited Yahoo HQ in Silicon Valley. Gary Moulton who has a long career in accessibility in high-tech industry shared its history of accessibility with me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,135],"tags":[114],"class_list":["post-8546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","category-research","tag-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8547,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8546\/revisions\/8547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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