E52: Bridging Accessibility, Law & HCI: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Lazar

Dr. Jonathan Lazar shares his journey into human-computer interaction (HCI) and digital accessibility, driven by a passion for using technology to create inclusive experiences. As Executive Director of the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility, he discusses the critical need for integrating legal knowledge with design and research to effectively advocate for digital inclusion. His reflections highlight how early influences and legal training have shaped his work at the intersection of accessibility policy, technology, and user experience.

Transcript

Speaker 00:04

Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast. Today, we're honored to feature Dr. Jonathan Lazar, a leading expert in digital accessibility, human computer interaction and accessibility law. Dr. Lazar is a professor at the University of Maryland and the Executive Director of the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility. With over 200 publications and 17 books on accessibility, usability and technology policy, his work has shaped federal regulations and influenced inclusive design worldwide. In 2024 Dr. Lazar was honored with the IAAP Accessibility Initiative Award, recognizing his outstanding contributions to advancing accessibility in policy, research and education. Join us as we explore Dr. Lazar's insights on the intersection of accessibility technology and policy, covering legal frameworks, inclusive research methods and the future of digital accessibility on the United in Accessibility podcast.

Sam Evans 01:19

Hello. Thanks for joining us. This is Samantha Evans, the certification director at IAAP, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. And I'm here today for the podcast. A great opportunity to sit and talk with Dr. Jonathan Lazar, who makes his professional home at the University of Maryland. Dr. Lazar was awarded the IAAP Accessibility Initiative Award in 2024 at our M-Enabling conference in Washington, DC, for a lot of his work and some of his initiatives. We'll talk about that as we get further into our conversation. Dr. Lazar, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Would you be willing to just spend a few minutes to introduce yourself and share a little bit about your journey in the field of accessibility and HCI, or human computer interaction, and what sparked your interest in starting this journey? 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 02:11

Sure, thank you again, Sam, for having me. I'm Jonathan Lazar from the University of Maryland. It's been a really interesting journey in human computer interaction more broadly and accessibility more specifically. So, I actually discovered HCI in a really interesting way. I was an undergraduate at Loyola, what's now Loyola University, Maryland, and at the time, I had been an economics major, and it just wasn't a good fit for me. You know, I cared about helping the world, and I just thought maybe I could use behavioral economics to do that, and I had a professor who taught Information Systems who said, you know, if you're kind of looking for a major, why don't you come down with me? There's this open house at the University of Maryland called the Human Computer Interaction Lab. They're having their open house and symposium. You know, you could come learn more about this field, maybe this is a good fit for you. Your kind of like technology? Ahh, I kind of like technology and but you said, you really want to do something helping people. And I said, “That’s right. And so, I came down, and at the time, it was the 10/12, years old, the Human Computer Interaction Lab. And Ben Schneiderman, of course, founder of the lab, and really one of the founders of human computer interaction was there talking all about how we use technology to make the world a better place, and how we're going to use, you know, we're going to do this human computer interaction work to make it so that grandparents can email their grandchildren, and we're going to reduce medical errors, and we're going to, you know, help people with disabilities get access to technology. And it was all about making the world a better place through the use of technology, right? And it just, I mean, I said, that’s what I want to be doing with my life, right? I want to make the world a better place using technology. And I don't think that ever really changed. I've always kind of had this interest in trying to use the right tools and knowledge that we have to make the world more inclusive. I gave a talk a few years ago at Loyola, sort of an alumni talk, you know. And I talked about how there was a project that I highlighted from the student newspaper when I was an undergrad, and I was in student government, and we were trying to use voice mail messages, voice mail messages for commuter students, because commuter students had not been getting access to like campus events. And I said, you know, if you take the using a new technology to help be more inclusive and of an underrepresented population, that's kind of what I've been doing most of my career, except I've course been doing it about people with disabilities. It was just very interesting. So, it's like I was kind of doing this as an undergraduate without realizing it. I've always been fascinated by the gaps between the knowledge that we have to solve things and make the world more inclusive. And why is it that we're not widely implementing those? And of course, we have a lot of things that we still need technical solutions developed, and we need engineering, and we need computer science, but we also have some things that we actually need to apply the knowledge that we have. And so, you know, these things have always fascinated me, and you know, I started as a professor at Towson University and studied computer and information sciences there, and I've been doing accessibility my whole career. What was interesting, though, is about the mid-2000s, 2005 2006 2007 I started getting all of these invitations and requests. Could you come testify to the state legislature? Could you come give, you know, could you work with us as an expert witness in a legal case? Could you talk about, and I was always input in these situations of being asked to have legal knowledge, and, you know, opine about things within a legal policy and realm, using my HCI expertise, but kind of put it in a legal context. And I really didn't know much about law before that. And you know, over time, I'd been trained by some amazing Disability Rights Activist people like Sharon Minecke in the state of Maryland, amazing disability rights lawyers, people like, of course, Dan Goldstein, who, you know, is involved now with IAAP. Steve Ill, who was the lead disability rights person at the Department of Justice, Mark Maurer, president of the NFB. You know, I just had these amazing legal mentors, and that led overtime for me, thinking, I need to go back and study law so I can be a more effective accessibility advocate. So, I took a leave of absence from Towson and went back and earned an LLM degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. And so, it was a great experience, but it’s interesting sometimes you go on a journey and you don't know exactly where you are going to wind up, but you know it's you're going in the right direction. And for me, I knew I had to go back and be a graduate student and study law because there were so many situations where I could be a more effective advocate if I had legal knowledge. And hilariously, now I teach legal research methods to non-lawyers at the University of Maryland, or, as I say, how do I teach people who are passionate about a topic to become just a little bit more dangerous and knowledgeable, to have more of an impact in the world? 

Sam Evans 07:00

My first job in association management was with professors that had terminal degrees in information systems, and so they were teaching Masters in Information System degrees. But there was this quirky little lab that was also part of a community group in the association that was, where does the information system meet the human and how do we make that more friendly? Which that team then, of course, this is more than 25 years ago became the HCI division, and so some of those professors from many moons ago, I'm still in touch with, and they're really excited to see their work that was originally about information systems they've picked up interest in. Well, why can't everyone use this? And why does this process not work, and how should we change it? And so, it's interesting for me, 25 years later, to the professors that I first worked with that started teaching me a little bit about usability testing and user testing now they're also in our circles again, for accessibility. So HCI, I think, is probably an area that I think a lot of people don't know as much about unless they happen to work in academia and computer science. So, for people that might be our policy colleagues, or might work in built environment or physical spaces, you want to talk a little bit about the lay person definition about what the HCI team does, and then we'll talk about how that kind of shaped your work towards the initiative for digital accessibility, and MIDA.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 08:24

Sure, I'm happy to do so, and I'm so glad you asked that. So, you know, a lot of times, right? People working in disciplines focus on sort of like in economics, the rational decision maker, right? But humans aren't necessarily always rational, and they build, you know, a computer system for the ideal user? Well, maybe not all users, right, are exactly who you think they are, and human computer interaction focuses on, how do we understand what humans need? How do we document, understand, measure what people need, so that we can build systems that match their needs and provide them with systems and interfaces where they can be productive and safe and keep their data private and secure. So human computer interaction, I'm going to quote Ben Schneiderman here, of course, Ben Schneiderman, as I said, one of my mentors and kind of the person who introduced me originally to human computer interaction. He's often talked about twins separated at birth, human computer interaction and user experience. And so there may be some people who have heard the term user experience. Think, how does that relate to HCI? Typically, when we talk about human computer interaction, we may be talking more about, like, the research and development side. And we talk about user experience, we may be talking more about the kind of the practitioner, implementation side, but we're all interested in the same thing of, how do we make a more productive, more successful, happier error, free user experience? How do we make sure that when people use technology, they're able to accomplish their tasks goals. That's often like, one of the core things in HCI is, you know, always focus on your users, their tasks and the environment. What is it the users want to accomplish? So even when you hear now about like, human centered artificial intelligence, the idea that we want to put humans at the center of that loop and be transparent and let the humans be the ones driving and making the decisions, not kind of autonomous AI that just makes decisions for people. So, I've had ever since I learned about it from Ben Schneiderman at the HCl open house at the University of Maryland. I absolutely loved what human computer interaction as a field is about, and I've always viewed digital accessibility, because I know you talked about built environment and things like that. Boys view digital accessibility as being sort of one subset of human computer interaction. However, to solve the problems related to digital accessibility, I think we have to have a much broader view. It's not just the user experience in the interface, it's the policy, it's the management. It's trying to deal with the ableism in the world, right? And trying to understand all these things, I mean. So, a great example of how it's a multi-faceted issue is years ago, Peapod, the grocery delivery company, they were forced by the US Department of Justice to make their mobile app and their website accessible. Now, it's not as if knowledge of how you make the website or mobile app accessible was lacking. It's that Peapod said, like, we don't want to do this. We don't view this as a priority, not understanding the business opportunity in grocery delivery, where you have a lot of people with disabilities, maybe for whom transportation is an issue. Like, there’s a market opportunity. But Peapod as a company, didn't make that a priority. So, to solve that problem, that's not really a technical problem, right? I mean, it's sort of like the ongoing legal battle that Domino's was fighting because they didn't want to make their Domino's Pizza. They didn't want to make their mobile app and website accessible. It's not hard to make a pizza website and mobile app accessible. I mean, you have a very small number of choices. What size pizza? What are your toppings? Do you want the cheesy crust or not? That's not really a technical problem. That's a problem in management, business prioritizing, maybe the legal framework they felt was not clear. You know, it doesn't make a difference. But digital accessibility is a multi-faceted problem. A lot of times it's actually not just about the human computer interaction side of it, and that's why I'd gone back to law school, and that's why I work a lot with practitioners and industry and disability rights groups. I'm interested in making the world of technology more inclusive. That's my overall goal. I'll use whatever field of study, whatever tools I need. I'll work as an expert witness. I'll go testify to legislature. I'll work on writing Bill text. I'll work. I'll use Figma with my graduate students come up with a new interface design, whatever the tool is to get there. Count me in. 

Sam Evans 12:56

So I think one of the things that you've talked about before, and I think would be interesting for people who are listening or reading along with us, is to understand that you have kind of you've taken the two sides HCI as a as a discipline or an area of practice and academic topic, and you have this really great interest, where you are combining that with your interest in engaging with practitioners, people in the field, people doing the work they're front facing. And so I think I have this right, that kind of a lot of the goals between the five level goals that you have for the Maryland initiative for digital accessibility, where you're Executive Director, and so there's this great program that you're working with that is taking some of your passions and your expertise, and while it's at the university level, I think it also is a really nice way to build on your approach to not just academia, not just in research, not just in concept and theory, but but the actual, real people that are impacted, and the programs and services and or companies that may or may not choose to take on born accessible or do the right thing for the right reasons. Who may I don't know, like Domino's spend as few million dollars when, for $35,000 they could have solved their problem, but that's a story for another day. 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 14:05

Yeah, do you want me to talk a little bit about MIDA then.

Sam Evans 14:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do let's talk about MIDA. Is that how you pronounce it? 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 14:11

Maryland initiative for digital accessibility, MIDA, MIDA. 

Sam Evans 14:14

Okay.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 14:15

MIDA I should start with, is funded by a grand challenges grant from the University of Maryland. So post pandemic, obviously, there's so many problems in the world that need to be addressed. The University of Maryland put out a large funding call for people to work across campus in different disciplines, to work on kind of the real-world problems. And for me, you know, obviously that's a great fit. So, I led a team of people and again, we are a large team. At this point. We're over 50 faculty and staff from different disciplines and all across campus in putting together this proposal and putting together this organization. And the idea behind MIDA, you mentioned the five goals. First of all, accessibility is a multi-faceted problem, so we really need to have people from different disciplines, not just human computer action, but people in education and law and engineering and Media Studies and hearing speech, sciences, and you name it. But it's not enough to connect people across the University of Maryland campus. We also need to connect people on the University of Maryland campus with the outside world. We need to connect people with disability rights groups. We need to connect people at the University of Maryland to tech companies, to policy makers in DC. You know, working in the Washington DC area, it's like you're in this amazing environment, but it's a missed opportunity if you're not engaging with all these people, like most of the disability rights groups have their national headquarters within an hour drive of the University of Maryland campus. Obviously, national policy makers do. Our state capital, Annapolis, is less than an hour away, so we have a lot of opportunities to connect. And obviously we also have graduate students who are working with the 50 faculty and staff. So, it's actually much larger than 50 people. We focus on building community at the University of Maryland. We focus on setting up mechanisms to connect people at the University of Maryland with all of these outside groups, and we work on the born accessible approach. And one of the most interesting things is that, you know, disability rights advocates are often saying, make it born accessible. And if you look in the research and practitioner literature, there isn't, like, a full methodology for what it means to born accessible design. Now, book publishers actually do have methods for like born accessible books, but that's very different from interactive technologies. 

Sam Evans 16:29

Application is very different because you can structure it into semantic document word processing design elements. And so, it's different than the rest of the world.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 16:38

Exactly. And so MIDA has a great leadership team. People on the leadership team like Galina Reads and Paul Jaeger, Baron Jordan, Anna Paula, and you even see the different backgrounds. Like Anna Paula, who is the director of digital accessibility for the campus. So, Anna is a practitioner focusing on implementing everything at the university, right? So, like, those are exactly the type of people. Gulnoza Yakubova. Gulnoza Yakubova, who works in special education. You know, even our leadership team is drawn from all these different aspects of the campus. And the idea is, everyone who's involved with MIDA has a passion for making the world of technology more inclusive. We come with different skill sets, right? And for people who are newer, in many cases, they want opportunities for engagement. So, we try to find a lot of ways, and I'm always sending out project opportunities for you know, would you like get involved in this and that? We want to increase the number of people who are passionate about accessibility, and for people who are ready or passionate about accessibility, we want to grow their involvement. Help them grow as a professional. So MIDA includes all of this, the disability rights advisory boards, working with tech industry, working with tech companies, working with policy makers. So I mean, we do everything from work with Adobe on building born accessible interfaces to submit comments to the DOJ on rulemaking to working with the director of digital accessibility for state government in Maryland, Andrew Drummond, to you know, your normal community building stuff, like we're going to have a baked goods gathering because the weather is sunny, and we should get together, and I'll have some croissants and cookies. 

Sam Evans 18:09

Oh, that sounds charming. I think it's interesting to see in accessibility, in the profession, we have so many colleagues that are focused in everything, but I really like to see cross disciplinary interconnectedness that you'reworking with at MIDA, and that work, you mentioned a little bit about some of the disability rights organizations that have homes in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, that you've got it within an hour's drive, which is, you know, that's all at arm's length, so to speak. Some of that touches on public policy, and you talked a little bit about being invited in for testimony. Can you speak to a little bit of the difference between being an expert witness and then the difference of being also testimony about the art and science of accessibility as a discipline? Because there are two different things. One is a legal stance of one party versus the other, and another is educational and informative to policy makers?

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 19:04

Sure, absolutely. Well, a good way to think about let's actually just start and remind people that at our federal level and in most state governments, you have a generally judicial, executive and legislative branch, and there's an opportunity for accessibility engagement in all three branches at both the state and at the federal level. So typically, for instance, at working with the legislature, right you can, and I've done this with both the US Senate, and also with Annapolis, with the Maryland State Legislature. So, there are often bills that come up related to digital accessibility. And so, when there are bills, there are usually some type of hearing on the bills. And so, either disability rights advocates will reach out to me and say, Hey, Bill coming up. I want to make you aware, please come out, you know, give your feedback. I've actually now started to hear sometimes from the representatives themselves at the state level, like, please come there's a bill. We know this is an area of interest for you. And the idea is usually to shed some scientific light on the topics in the bill. Right? Anytime there's a bill, I mean, obviously you look and evaluate and say, like, does this bill make sense? Is this going to help people with disabilities? Is this inclusive of people with disabilities, or people with disabilities included in the, you know, in the process? So, for instance, recently in Maryland, we've had two bills that have been turned into law that I've been involved with, one relates to accessible technology procurement and the other relates to digital accessibility in K to 12 educations, right? And so, it's a combination of, how would you test, what are the technical standards you use? Along with you should have indemnification clauses. So, if a vendor right, you know, says, Well, I'm not going to sign a contract with indemnification clause. Indemnification clause, sorry. Let me explain indemnification clauses when the vendor will indemnify you as the government agency, school, whatever, in case you get sued for inaccessible technology. So, let's say vendor x there will be in the procurement contract and indemnification clause, where, if you get sued because the technology is not accessible, vendor X indemnifies you, basically, they are the ones financially on the hook. And I always say that every government agency should sign every contract for technology procurement with an indemnification clause for accessibility, because, you know, government, state universities, K 12 schools. They can't be bought in accessible technologies, and vendors should know that they're on the hook if they build it inaccessibly. So, you know. So, it's a combination of technical standards testing. I've given testimony 20 times in the Maryland State legislature over the years, different committees than both the House of Delegates and the Senate. I've been working recently with the US Senate Special Committee on Aging, as they've been investigating section 508 and so I've been advising their staff, and also, I submitted written testimony. Typically, the committee hearings at like the federal level are sort of much more staged, and maybe they have four speakers who speak for a longer time, whereas you know, anyone can submit written testimony, though, but at like, the state level, it's kind of open. Anyone who wants to sign up can sign up, and you have two or three minutes or whatever to speak. So, you know, that's a way of being involved at the legislative angle with kind of, you know, bills as they're being written, and you know committees that are maybe doing some investigative work at a judicial level, you know, certainly there are loud disability rights groups that file lawsuits, and so there's always the opportunity to serve as an expert witness when called upon, and I've done that in a few cases related to web accessibility and voting accessibility. That's judicial. And at the executive branch, of course, you have federal agencies such as HHS and DOJ and the Access Board that do rule making. And so, there's the opportunity to respond to a rule making. And, you know, rulemaking is when they basically put out, we're thinking of, we're proposing this rule. We want feedback from the community. And you know, anyone can submit written, you know, feedback. And typically, I mean, you get at least a few 100 people or organizations who submit on anything related digital accessibility, but there's no reason not to. I mean, there are so few people who have the knowledge and the data that if you have something really important to say, you should say it. I mean, there's an example from the regulations associated with the Air Carrier Access Act, and when the rule making was out in the like early 2010s. I put up, you know, I wrote up some, some comments and basically cited a paper that I had done with my students about the reason why you have to have an accessible website for an airline is when you have an inaccessible website, even though, at the time, the regulations say, just call up the airline, they'll give you the same price. We documented how people who are blind would face discrimination online and get higher prices. And, you know, submitted this and like, here's why requiring accessibility and requiring involvement of people with disabilities in the process of building websites is important. And when the new regulation came out, it specifically cited that article and said, like, we've noticed the documentation from Dr. Zar and his students about that, right. Nothing could be more gratifying than that, right, which is work you've done with your students, the students and you have worked together to collect data to understand a phenomenon. Your sponsor’s rulemaking, and then in the final regulation, it actually cites your work and says, and this is one of the reasons why we are requiring this because we realize that accommodation often is not equal. So, I mean really, when it comes to sort of policy and law, look, you could get involved with rule making and the executive branch. You could get involved with bills that are coming up in the legislative branch. You could get involved as an expert witness in the judicial branch.

Speaker 24:37

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Sam Evans 25:15

Somebody asked me recently for one of our certifications CPACC, the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies has a section in the third domain, which is about laws and regulations around the world, which are laws, which are regulations, which are standards, which are efforts to ensure accessibility and equitable services. And somebody asked about the Air Carrier Act and why they needed to know about it. And I said, well, here's where it started and so they said, but in 2017 it didn't pass. And I was like, oh, but there's a lot of iterations of this law and the act itself. And so I said, you might be interested to go back and read. And so, I pulled up the citations that you can find research from, and I did pull up your paper, and said, here's a research study that happened some time ago. This is how our lawmakers decided to begin to implement this into law, and they were like, oh, I didn't know back that far. I just thought somebody put it in in 2017 and it didn't go and it's like, well, since 2017 some things have changed. And so, we have some really interesting discussions with people who aren't as familiar with law and how things become the difference between a law a regulation and so they were like, oh, well, that's really interesting. I didn't know it went that far back and said, well, this is how our community of practitioners, professionals and experts work to build this. So, these are your colleagues in action. And so, they, they were quite impressed. And so, it's in for us, when we have resources in our materials for certification, it’s always of interest to me to be able to pull out our actual peer to peer, you know, colleagues in the field that are still living, breathing, working, doing this work every day. And it makes it a little bit more real for people that it's not some ephemeral, you know, just somewhere out there in the ether this information. And so it kind of brings it back to the fore that these are your peers and colleagues that are still doing this work, and so the Air Carrier Act in particular, that's something that I get questions about all the time, and so I often pull that up to show people the the history of the act across the years and been happy to see the changes in recent years, in the last two years, so. 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 27:16

I'm so glad that you read through the regulation and that you saw that my paper inside and read the paper that that gives me great joy. Thank you. 

Sam Evans 27:22

I'm a little bit of a geek when it comes to that, because if people ask me why it matters, where did it start? I kind of want to be able to speak with at least some history and some basis and in what our community has done and so I usually come with receipts about law, case law, citations and things, so that I can show there's some history in it, not just an idea that some group of people has. So, one of the other things I think, as a profession that's really important is to be considered in the in Department of Labor List of Professions, there have to be people who have provided expert testimony and expert witnesses. It's one of the interesting requirements. And I think people that are building professions maybe don't know how those things happen. It takes a good bit of time, but we're really excited to see a large number of people that are not necessarily paid expert witnesses, but provide expert testimony in legal findings, so that we can start to advance the build and recognition in that practice in the US, specifically, I say Department of Labor, that's a US organization, the way they classify professions and employment levels, job tasks, that sort of a thing. So, all of those work from people like yourself, that do provide the expert witness, and a testimony build the opportunity for us to help build the profession, to have it recognized, not just as a skill set or task. So, all of those things may be built up bigger pictures than maybe what you might have initially imagined, but all of those contributions really do help towards helping us build the profession to have it recognized. So, because I'm not sure if you said, oh, I work in accessibility at a party of people that don't work in this realm, that they would know what that means yet.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 29:06

But you know what the great thing is, is you have so many passionate people about accessibility, they'll be happy at that party to tell you.

Sam Evans 29:12

They will and they will keep talking and share, and people will walk away with some aha moments. So let me come back to some of your research side of things. So, on ICT information, computer technology, you've done some research specifically on ICT accessibility in developing countries, where economies, infrastructure and systems are not as advanced and stable and reliable as you might find in US, Canada and most of Europe. So that's a big bridge there from one to the other, but can you talk a little bit about, since we are a global organization, and the world doesn't stop at geography points anymore, what are the bigger challenges we you said, we all know how to fix things. You know why haven't made things accessible. But what are those challenges that exist in parts of the world that prevent some of the progress to be made. So, you've got some research. And so, can you talk a little bit about that piece of your research portfolio? 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 30:09

Sure, absolutely, there's actually, and there's a book that I did accessible technology and the developing world, which was an edited book with Michael Stein based out of a workshop we did at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. And so, what I'm actually going to talk about is some of the findings from what people wrote in that book. Because an edited book, first of all, I want to mention that the DARE Index, out of G3ict and IAAP, I think, is always a first stop resource, because what I love is how it breaks down and almost tries to identify for the different countries. Which is the part that's strong and which is the part that you know? Is it the legal framework? Is it the capacity? So, you know, typically, we think very much of this idea of technologies developed or created, I should say, in socio economically rich countries, and ported to other countries. And actually, I don't think that's always a true story, because I think there's so much innovation that is developed in right other areas of the world that are maybe not as socio economically rich, and it's so innovative because it basically accomplishes some of the same things, but with much less resources. So, when you talk about sort of around the world, in different countries, there are so many different aspects of understanding accessibility. So, in some cases there are regional strengths. In some cases, it is because there are language strengths, and they basically build on this was some of the data, I think, from the dare index originally, and from some of the chapters written by some of your folks from IAAP about how they were able to use resources for some countries that already exist in the language that they wanted. But this idea of innovation originating in the Global South, I think, is really important, and in many ways, when you don't have, let's say, the existing infrastructure that you have in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, that actually lets you leapfrog a little bit, because you're not saying, Well, we're going to stick with the infrastructure we're having, you're building for kind of the next infrastructure. So, I think it's just a fascinating area, and I want to encourage more people to investigate whatever topics they're interested in, also investigate in other countries. And there are even differences in the legal frameworks, obviously, because, you know, legal frameworks, or national legal frameworks, not International, and how those impacts. So, for instance, what is the strength and the role of a disability rights organization in that country? Specifically, whatever that country is that has such a massive impact on what happens with technology in that country. The ability to, you know, teach people to be self-advocates, the ability to advocate, the ability to use the legal system, that the presence of a disability rights organization has just such a big impact on what the outcomes are in that country. So I want to encourage everyone right, investigate outside of your own country as well, right? And look at areas that are maybe low resource, but high ingenuity, high creativity. I think that's always such an important factor. There are so many projects and products that we looked at where they were innovative because of the lack of resources, and actually they were very innovative and really came up with some unique creative solutions. 

Sam Evans 33:19

It's interesting that the pivot between perceptions of people that live in work in countries where infrastructure is stronger and more readily available. I had someone say, well, why would I not want to give anyone my telephone number. Not everybody has a telephone. And I said, but you realize that in most of the world, people don't have computers, they have phones. And so, you can always have a virtual phone number from someone else, I said, but a lot of people carry their technology in their hand or in their pocket, versus having a computer and a telephone. And so, they were like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. And so what I we've got colleagues that are working in Sub Saharan Africa and in Asia and other parts of the world that are the creative approaches to digital accessibility for them is stepping over all of the steps that most of us have thought about with computer technologies and bandwidth, those kinds of things, and they just skipped over all of it because that doesn't exist. So I think the ingenuity, and I don't know if it's a fair analogy, but I think it is disabled people are the original creatives, because it's been, it's been, it's been responsibility of disabled people to find ways around, to find ways to live, work, play, in their community of choice for decades, and around barriers and using whatever their assistive technology choices. And so, I think some of that ingenuity also happens in countries that don't have, you know, advanced infrastructure, support systems. And so, when it's people with disabilities doing that ingenuities work to make things accessible, I hope that that has an exponential increase in the impact on what happens. So, I don't know if you're doing research in that area. We hear from friends with our country representatives from G3ict how things are changing, and it's always fascinating to learn they've just skipped over the last 30 years of technology development that happened here and have just moved straight forward.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 35:10

I completely agree with you. I want to quote Richard Ladner, who's professor emeritus at the University of Washington, would often say that he said "People with disabilities are natural innovators. Why? Because they have challenged every day where they have to innovate and come up with a solution. They do it every day." I want to give an example from the research. This is a study we did, oh, it was published in 2007 so it's coming up almost on 20 years we were looking at how blind users, we did a study of 100 blind users and how they respond to frustrating situations, and we actually found that blind users were more effective in overcoming whatever the frustrating situation was on the web than people who then compared a group of people who could see. And so, when I mentioned this finding to some of my friends at the National Federation of the Blind, they're like, Well, of course, right? We have challenged every day. Like we generally don't give up. It's like we've got at least three or four strategies up our sleeve. So, and I mean, at a very basic level, you had people, visual people without any disabilities, who are just like, oh yeah, I don't know what to do. I'm just going to restart the computer. Whereas the blind users will often be like, well, I'm going to try these four strategies, right? And so my blind friends were like, well, of course, like, Yeah, nothing works right the first time. We're used to problem solving, like we're natural problem solvers. We do it every day. But actually, data that that point that out that it was very true, they were more effective. It was a time savings. Having blind people try and solve problems was time savings. 

Sam Evans 36:40

I have a math disability, dyscalculia, which impacts for me, numbers and trying to do things in my head doesn't work. And spatial relationships for things are challenging. So, I often get called on to do usability studies for websites and site map kind of stuff. And for me, user interface kind of heat map stuff, it didn't work for me, and the F trends on things. I was like, no, my brain doesn't work that way. So, I think you work with a lot of different types of groups of people across different disabilities in your work. What you mentioned is some of the research you did with NFB and with blind persons that were problem solving on things. What other groups within disability worlds have you done research with or worked with, or do you most look forward to working with in the future? 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 37:22

Oh, great question. So certainly, I have a, you know, I have a record of working with the blind community for over20 years. But one other thing that's a little bit less known is our work involving people with Down Syndrome. And what’s very interesting is we, you know, we typically think, when we think of blind users, we're thinking, okay, people are using screen readers. People are using right refreshable braille displays. You know, if they're low vision, maybe they're using magnification. What's very interesting is, when we first started doing the work involving people with Down Syndrome, there was very little research on that. And so, there are all of these assumptions which were not based on any research, but because people hadn't done any data collect. Oh, well, people at Down Syndrome are bad at using computer mice and they like the Comic Sans font, neither one of which is actually true. It was very interesting. You know, it was actually, it was started by, we were at a my family was at a friend's house, and their son had Down Syndrome, and he was showing us all these PowerPoint things, and he was going through and parent said, why is it the school is not focusing on technology skills, like he shouldn’t be doing one of the typical jobs of you know, like cleaning up tables or yard work. Look, he's got really good computing skills, right? And it caused me to look and so you're like, oh, it's kind of interesting. There's really nothing out there about this. Let's investigate this more. And so, what you found is what people have been advising about computer interface design of people down syndrome was not really based on data. There's no actual preference for Comic Sans. People Down syndrome are actually fantastic using computer mice and other pointing devices. And so, what was interesting is, once you start documenting it like there's even this built in Assumption of, oh, person with a disability uses assistive technology. We generally were not finding anyone with Down syndrome who's using any specialized technology. They were using built-in features in the operating system and in the, you know, applications themselves. So, like, you know, password saving features and auto correct, and you know things like that, auto complete, right? They were not using any specialized features. And what we actually found, so just, just a few notes. So, doctors would often say things, medical doctors, but people down syndrome, based on their understanding of what they thought from their medical knowledge, would extrapolate technology often wasn't actually accurate, right? So, we found, for instance, people had no trouble with pointing devices. People Down syndrome are very visually strong, so they were like fantastic, very high rate of success at solving like visual captures and noting things in the environment, like a low battery or something like that. But, you know, even looking at what, when we looked at a series of adults who use technology professionally, adults with Down syndrome use technology in paid jobs. And often, what we found was something that was a really simple intervention. The people who had taken typing classes, you know, keyboarding classes, were the ones who were the most effective users, because they were actually touch typing, both hands, both fingers, rather than kind of hunt and peck, right? And you think, okay, well, that's a really easy intervention to give someone a keyboard in class, if that's what's going to get like they had all the other skills that they needed. It was just the keyboard. 

Sam Evans 40:32

Sometimes the solutions are easier. We already know how to solve that. We already know how to solve mor effective using a computer. Teach them how to use the keyboard 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 40:40

Exactly. And so, you know that work started around 2005/2006, and you know, we haven't done it continuously over the years as much as we've done like the work with blind users. I mean, when I say we, I mean my colleagues, my graduate students that I work with. But for instance, one really interesting project right now is PhD candidate Rachel Wood at the University of Maryland, who has been working with people with Down syndrome, because think about how much now of your health care management is based on your ability to use a portal, medical portal, and look at health trends with the data on your phone. And so, this idea of, oh, well, you can manage your own health, right? She is actually investigating and building tools for helping people with Down syndrome, who maybe tend towards being visually very strong, but maybe not as strong with numbers, right? How could you develop different types of tools, interfaces and data visualizations, that allow them to better track and understand their own personal health data to allow them to advocate better. And I think, you know, you go from years ago, kind of the basic studies of how people with Down syndrome use technology to know where it's like, okay, we're actually building solutions and, you know, trying some interventions and all to help them. Because if the goal is then being able to advocate for your own health.

Sam Evans 42:03

Your health, your finances, live independently in your community of choice, to have some of that capacity where the systems aren't the barrier and that you can still engage, that an individual can have that choice.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 42:14

Exactly a better interface, an interface that meets their needs. Leads to all those things you were talking about. That's what I was just getting to about you. To about independent living and employment and health management, right? You take what you know from the medical literature in this realm, but you don't assume anything about the computer usage you know. So for instance, we did  a few years ago when I was on my sabbatical I work with the people at Mass General Hospital on trying to create an app to help people down syndrome manage their nutrition. And so the idea there is, okay, they know from the healthcare research that there are challenges related people with Down syndrome making healthy food choices, especially in independent living settings. You know, where they're where they're able to kind of manage their own food. But there wasn't really any work on, okay, well, what do we do about it? Like, what does that mean in terms of a user experience? Like, what are our solutions? How do we actually do something to help people manage their food intake and make healthy eating options? And so, Rachel's work is just one step further than that. It's the next step forward of, how do we help people manage their health more broadly, by better understanding their personal health data. 

Sam Evans 43:23

So one of the things I like that you're talking about, I hear and everything in your research and all of your work, is talking about people with disabilities being included from the beginning of this and being your advisors in them, leading the learning so that it's not those assumptions that come out of systems that have been around for many, many eons likely that create biases and making sure that people with disabilities are the ones who are guiding and helping to direct the outcomes and the findings. So that's not the case everywhere. So, the premise of Nothing about us, without us, is entrenched in in your born, accessible tenet. So that's always exciting. 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 43:59

Absolutely no, there's no question about it. From we always try and involve at all stages, at all levels, individuals with disabilities and disability rights groups. You know, in some cases you need users right to take part. In some cases, you need co designers, like the nutritional app I was telling you about with Mass General Hospital, which is available on your app stores by the way, it actually, it involved co designers with Down syndrome. This wasn't an app that the doctors built and then tested. The app was built. You can read an article in the Journal usability studies all about this, about the CO design involving people’s down syndrome in Rachel Woods’ recent work, as I mentioned, with managing your personal health data, right? She has co designers with Down Syndrome who are doing this with her. So, you know, it is always important to include either individuals or disability rights groups or both, depending on what your needs are, from the beginning, as early as possible, to make sure that you're meeting a real need, and you're doing it in a way that actually solves the problem, right? That actually helps people reach their life goals of, again, independent living, employment, etc. 

Sam Evans 45:07

I'm going to ask for a personal reflection for you. So, we'll come back to this. I'm going to close on another point. But so you've published a good number of articles, several 100. I believe you've got several books, but you also have some patents, which I don't know anything about your patents. But what are you most proud of in your career so far? The reason that IAAP awarded you the Impact Award in the Initiative Award is because of all of this huge body of work that you do. But what are you most proud of, and what legacy do you most hope to leave to those who are going to follow in the next two to three generations in the field of accessibility? 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 45:41

Wow, that's a big question for me. I'm proudest of the projects I worked on and the students I trained, and where it led to real world impact. And, you know, I always view it as you talk about, oh, yeah, well, whatever, hundreds of research articles. The research article is not the end, it's just immediate. It's a stopping point. The goal of the article is to accomplish something. It's a means. It's not the end, not like what we post the article we're done. What I'm most proud of is the situations where there's a statute or regulation in place that is more inclusive, like so we talked about the Air Carrier Access Act One recently, I've been working with policy makers on trying to get born accessible concepts into policy right. And so the term born accessible design is actually in the new state of Maryland government digital accessibility policy. You will find in the White House memo in 2023 on improving Section 508, there are a lot of born accessible concepts because born accessible isn't fully define the law, yet they don't use the phrase born accessible, but you'll recognize the concepts in there of involving people with disabilities from the beginning. 

Sam Evans 46:46

You know it when you see it, when you read it, yes.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 46:48

Yes, you'll read it, you'll be like, oh, weren't accessible? Yep. So projects with tech companies that led to improved interfaces or actual real world either improvements in accessibility or apps designed to meet a specific need, like the health app. It's called Mango that I've been talking about, that was developed with the people at Mass General Hospital, and also the students who I worked with over the years who are out there doing great work. I mean, like, I'll give an example. I'm very proud of my former student, Kenny Zimnik, who took his first accessibility class with me, and now works on the Access Technology team at the National Federation of the Blind. You can imagine, I'm very proud of him take great joy in that. So, it's really a combination of the, you know, the students I've worked with, and the people who I've mentored, who are out there doing great things in the world, and the projects I've worked on. I mean, hopefully the work we've been doing now with Adobe will lead to Adobe having more accessible products. That's obviously for many years; people have found Adobe products hard to make content accessible. I've been working with some of my graduate students and colleagues with Adobe on potential solutions, including born accessible solutions that help the content creator as they're creating the content, not remediating the content after the fact. So, we're working on it. I hope someone later will be listening and saying, oh yes, I've used that tool with that enhancement. So, it's really the real world impact for me is where I take the greatest joy that we made something good happen in the world. The world's a little bit more inclusive because of the work of the team. And again, it's a team of people, its colleagues, its other professors, its research scientists, it's graduate students, it's undergraduate students. We all make this happen together. It's also all of the organizations I was talking with you about earlier, right? So, it's the disability rights groups, groups like National Federation of the Blind and AAPD. It's the policy groups. We work very closely with the Maryland State Government and so are some of our partners at MIDA, the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility, the Maryland Department of Information Technology, Maryland Department of Disabilities, we work very closely to try to improve not only with tools, and not only nationally and internationally, but also locally for Marylanders with disabilities. So, you know, it's really important to engage with all those different groups, national groups, as well as local groups and state groups. 

Sam Evans 49:10

So, I'll make one cheesy comment as we come to a close. As I was reading about MIDA and all of the work that's happened there, I just thought when I read my day, I was like, I wonder how they say it. I wonder if they pronounce it MIDA as in Midas. And I was like Midas Touch, the Midas touch, I think that your impact in the work that you're all doing across your teams really will have that gift of longevity, ingenuity, creativity and advocacy to empower people, whatever their role is, to help move things forward, to remove barriers and to include disabled people in achieving their independence and access and all that is just so amazing. We have such a great gift at IAAP, getting to work with and support people like yourself and your projects. Thank you so much for making time to meet with us today, Dr. Lazar, it was great fun getting geared up for us before we got started on the podcast here, but thank you so much. And Dr. Lazar, anything that you want to shout out before we wrap up for our podcast tonight. 

Dr. Jonathan Lazar 50:07

First of all, I want to thank you for doing the podcast, and IAAP for the award and for all the great work. There is so much work in the world that needs to be done on digital accessibility and inclusion. So just I want to encourage everyone, keep at it. Large scale change is possible. I've had a long enough career doing this work that you really get see like I made that happen. I made and other colleagues have done the same thing and had changes in, you know, apps and websites. You know, change is possible, and it you can make it happen. So, the best is yet to come. To quote my mentor, Ben Schneiderman, the best is yet to come. We have much more that we can all do work together. Please find out more about born accessible design if you're hearing this podcast, and please push for born accessible design and encourage people but also train people and never be afraid to explain the basics of accessibility, because we want to all be educators. We want to be people out there. I have a great story. I was I had a situation where I got, I missed a train due to weather situation, wound up staying at a hotel. The next morning. I wound up on a three-and-a-half-hour bus to Heathrow Airport. The person I was sitting next to, you know, what do you do? And I started scripting. Said, I don't know anything about accessibility. I said, we've got three and a half hours. What do you want to know? You know, like, never be afraid to be proud and enthusiastic and be a teacher and share your knowledge proudly about what we do in accessibility and why it's important and how we can all work together to make the world of technology more inclusive.

Sam Evans 51:46

I think it's a great charge and a challenge for all of us to follow your lead and help make ourselves agents of that change. So again. Dr. Lazar, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening and or reading along with us on the United in Accessibility podcast from IAAP. Have a lovely day.

Speaker 52:06

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals. Membership consists of individuals and organizations representing various industries, including the private sector, government, nonprofits and educational institutions. Membership benefits include products and services that support global systemic change around the digital and built environment. United in Accessibility, join IAAP and become a part of the global accessibility movement.