Welcome to the forty-sixth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.
Episode
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Timestamps
This week on Access On, we make our final visit to New Orlans and NFB25.
- Introduction 0:00
- Glen Gordon and Ryan Jones from Vispero 1:25
- Accessible self-checkout with Target 37:01
- Closing and contact info 1:02:51
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Live like you want.
Speaker 2:
Access On.
Jonathan Mosen:
Welcome to Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This week it's our final visit to the National Federation of the Blind's National Convention in New Orleans. Glen Gordon from Vispero talks about the history of JAWS for Windows, and offers some wise advice.
Ryan Jones from Vispero looks to the immediate future and talks about new features in JAWS. And representatives from Target discuss their fully accessible self-checkout process coming to a store near you.
It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode 46 of Access On. We are getting a lot of listener feedback coming in on recent episodes and we will have a good old catch up with listener contributions next week, so feel free to keep them coming in.
You can attach an audio clip to an email or just write the email down and send it into accesson, that's all joined together, @nfb.org. That's [email protected], and we look forward to going through some of those contributions next week. If you are a member of the National Federation of the Blind, be sure to tell us which chapter you're a part of so we can give a shout out to that chapter.
But let's get right into it for this week. And here's some fantastic presentations from our convention in New Orleans, which was held in July. We're going to Sunday morning for these presentations. Here is President Riccobono to make the introduction.
Mark Riccobono:
Even as we work to create built-in accessibility in the area of technology, we must recognize that there is a tremendous amount of expertise and value that comes in the access technology industry.
And this morning we're starting off talking about what I dare to say is really one of the most significant and important tools that blind people use in accessing information that truly allows us to compete on terms of equality and work and other settings.
It's been about five years since we've had this company represented here on stage with a presentation, so it's a good opportunity to catch up. This company plays a very important role in providing access to information, and I would say its most important product in that regard has been JAWS for Windows.
One of the important values I think that has been built into this product is that it's shaped and informed and directed by blind people. This morning we have Ryan Jones with us who has been with the company for 17 years, but has worked in the access technology industry and as a trainer for even longer than that. You have probably gotten to know him at the booth or other places.
The second gentleman is Glen Gordon. And although you should know him, you probably know him better through the work he's put in to the JAWS for Windows product. Because a lot of the work and design and thought that's been put into it has come from him.
Since it is the 30th anniversary of JAWS, it's a number I like since it's also my 30th convention, and you may have noticed they were distributing lapel pins that had a certain distinctive shape to them. I did know the shape because I did install JAWS that way in the beginning. So it's a real pleasure to invite to the podium from Vispero, Ryan Jones and Glenn Gordon.
Glen Gordon:
Good morning. My name is Glen Gordon, and I'm not saying that I'm old, but two factors that might conflict with that determination. One is I started working on JAWS before many of you were born, and number two, I have no idea of what that song was. So we will proceed.
I'm going to talk for the first portion of the session and then reflect a little bit about where we've been, how we got there, especially some of the early years of JAWS. And then I'll turn it over to Ryan Jones who's our vice president of software, and he'll talk about exciting things that are coming up in the future of JAWS and screen reading in general.
It's great to be here with so many Federationists, people who helped make JAWS be the product that it is, both from using it and from giving us valuable feedback. I've done this for 31 years. I started in 1994, and I've learned a bunch of stuff, some of it more painfully than others. And I'm going to share some of those thoughts with you in the next few minutes. And woven into that will be some of the history of JAWS.
I was really lucky. About 10 years before I started working on JAWS, I discovered that I was passionate about something. Well, I discovered I was passionate about something when I was seven, but that was radio broadcasting, and I decided early on that that probably was not the best way to make a living. So years later I discovered that I was really passionate about software development.
And if I can offer you one big piece of advice, find something that you're passionate about and pursue it even if it's not, quote, "the best way for you to make a living." If you're really passionate about it and you want to do that thing, regardless of whether or not you're being paid, you're going to get good at it and you're going to be successful at it. That's my experience at least.
And once you're passionate about something, get to know people working in your field. If only to call and ask them, "Can we have a conversation? I'm interested in this field. What can you share?" If I had not gotten to know Ted in 1986 when I got a Total Talk PC from Maryland Computing Services, Ted was the tech support training guy, if I had not gotten to know him and if he had not been so generous in sharing his time with me, I would never be working on JAWS. I was the wrong guy. I knew nothing about screen reading.
I was not well connected with the blindness community, even though I'm totally blind. But because I got to know Ted, we formed a friendship, we formed trust, and I did some side projects for him that allowed him to determine that maybe I would be a reasonable person to take a gamble on when it came to working on JAWS for Windows.
But whatever you pursue, there are going to be challenges. Things are not going to come easy. And the other thing that I learned, first from interacting with my instructors at school, where I had to balance advocating for what I needed and communicating to them that I didn't want it any easier than my sighted peers. And that's to learn to be resourceful.
You don't need to have all the answers, but you need to figure out how you're going to get them, and don't make your problem totally somebody else's problem. There's an element of doing your research, figuring out what the options are, and then ultimately you may need to ask somebody else to help you. But if they see you're invested, they will become invested and really want to help too. They will see that you're interested in something and that you've done your homework.
And I bring this up now because when I first started working on JAWS for Windows, there were no good Windows screen readers. And so the question was how was I going to use Windows long enough to learn about it to help work on JAWS? And the answer was, I'm willing to share this now, I ordered a free timed demo of SlimWare Window Bridge, which was the first rather primitive Windows screen reader.
I would use it for 15 minutes at a time because at that point I had to shut it down. There was an operating system called DOS that lots of blind people used. The operating system that we thought nothing could improve upon. Boy, were we wrong. And so I would use DOS to develop JAWS, I'd go into Windows to read the documentation I needed. Go back to DOS, rinse, repeat. And that's how I began to bootstrap myself working on this.
When something feels overwhelming, do two things. This has been what I've learned. Don't procrastinate. Because the longer you procrastinate, the more overwhelming it's going to feel. And take small incremental steps to gain confidence. Even if they're tiny, I have found over and over again that you feel amazingly accomplished for making the smallest stride forward.
And in terms of JAWS, I knew nothing about Microsoft Windows when I started working on it. Well, how's the guy who knows nothing about Windows going to work on Windows? Turns out Ted had a sighted programmer named Chuck Oppermann working for him. Chuck loved everything Microsoft. He worked on Windows. He got the shell of JAWS for Windows working before I even joined the company. The problem is it would only work for about 15 seconds, and it failed in really monumental ways.
But because he had created that framework, I could make small changes and small fixes and fix his bugs one by one by one over the first six months. And that allowed me to do two things. I gained confidence and I learned about Windows. And had he not done this, there would've been no way for me to have moved forward as fast as I did. It was a great way to sort of build up skills and confidence.
The next thing is that we all thrive when we're surrounded by people whose skill set complement those of our own. When Ted founded the company, he was a visionary. He absolutely was. But the other thing that he did is he put together a brain trust of four of us, who each contributed in really different ways and whose skills didn't really overlap all that much.
So Ted was the visionary. Eric Damery was a great salesperson. And even though he's sighted, completely embodied the blindness experience and was great at training. And we had Jerry Bowman, who's a former Honeywell HR executive, and he ran the company both from a personnel and a management standpoint.
And with the four of us in those early days, and then expanding out to hundreds of other people throughout the years, we formed a company of blind people largely for blind people entirely. And we continue to have people with overlapping and complementing skill sets.
Turns out, by the way, that if you're developing a blindness product, having people who are blind working in the role of developers is a superpower. And I say that because if one of us who's also a user is a developer, we're going to be more likely to discover problems early on before anybody else sees it.
We're not going to discover all of them, but we're going to discover a lot of them, and we're going to be able to fix them without going through a couple of other layers of reporting a bug. So that's one of the superpowers. The other one is if you're blind, you are going to work and help design a product that other blind people have an increased chance of wanting to use and being able to use effectively.
So we were really lucky because as we became more successful, more blind people were interested in working for us. And one of those is in this room for sure. There may be others that I'm overlooking. I'm speaking of the man from New Zealand with that profondo voice, the great Jonathan Mosen.
He originally talked to us on Main Menu and other internet properties, and ultimately came in to manage our PAC Mate product, helped us refine our Braille implementation. He did so many things contributing to the legacy of JAWS. And he, by all means, was not the only one, but all because we developed a product that people saw a future in and wanted to be part of.
Luck and circumstance often play an important role, and I'll give you a few examples. There was something called Dueling Windows 1996. At that time, there was no real active internet. If you were blind, you had to hear about things firsthand from your friends and relations. And Dueling Windows at the CSUN Conference brought a lot of blindness companies together to demonstrate what we could do in Windows.
We worked really hard to be well prepared for CSUN. We succeeded there. We were the winning entrant, and that really got people talking about JAWS. We discovered Eloquence. It was the first fully functional software synthesizer, which allowed us to drop the price of JAWS because you didn't need a hardware synthesizer. That was something else that I think at the time was really a revolutionary.
And there are more things I could talk about on this line, but I think given the time, I'll just move on and say that I fortunately felt compelled from the very beginning to make myself available to others. Even if quote, "it was not my job," if I could help someone, I wanted to be there. And I'll tell you one NFB related story about that.
Anil Lewis and I had a conversation back in 1996 or 1997. He was placing blind people in jobs. They needed a terminal emulator program to work. And he and I talked it through over an hour. That's something that was easy for me to do. I was delighted to do it. I moved on. I completely forgot about it, and he's reminded me of this story time and time again. And so we never quite know the impact that we can have on other people.
And providing training and support has also been one of our superpowers. We could not have done it without offering full service. Not everybody is a computer mastermind, nor should you have to be. But you need people who you can reach out to both one-on-one and more generally to get training resources to become really good at software. And our best advertisers have always been all of you, people who have been loyal to JAWS. And thank you by the way for all of that.
But even more important than your praise has been your criticism, has been your requesting features. That stuff matters much more than saying you like the product. Because without that kind of feedback, we won't continue to thrive to be our best. We won't think of some of the best ideas. It's that collaboration between you who use the product and those of us who are involved in making it that have really helped.
I have loved the last 31 years. Even though I'm quote, "software fellow," I'm not put out to pasture. I still get to work on interesting things. And I could not be more delighted that the person who's heading up our software division of Vispero, and Freedom Scientific more specifically, and leading us into the future is Ryan Jones. Here he is to talk about some of the things to look forward to in the not-too-distant future.
Ryan Jones:
Thank you, Glen, and thank you all for allowing us to be here. Don't tell Glen please, but in 1994 when he started, I was in middle school. But seriously, Glen is one of the most intelligent people and one of the most humble people that I've ever known, and it's a great honor to work with him. He actually, he may not remember this, but he was one of the first people who interviewed me when I applied for an IT job at Freedom Scientific in 2005. He interviewed me.
I interviewed with several people. I ended up getting a job doing training at the time, which I didn't realize that I loved training until I started doing it. But Glen was one of the first people I met. And we probably, based on the song that Mark had for us, we would consider him Grandpa Shark I think. But even though I may be his junior, I still have no idea what the song means either. So just be clear on that.
But I'm Ryan Jones, vice president of software at Vispero. I've been in, as Mark said, in this field my entire career. I've been using JAWS since 1999, so 26 years. I live in Kentucky in Lexington.
Where's Kentucky at? There they are in the back. I met a young lady this morning from Lexington that's been coming to convention since the early 1960s, 93 years young, Jan. So that was a great honor to meet her this morning. Yes, it was amazing. Turns out she's practically my neighbor and we didn't know it. So that was a great blessing this morning.
What I've come to realize, both as a user of these products and leading the team that builds our products, is that JAWS isn't just code or keystrokes, it's the tool that enables us to participate in school, apply for jobs, and interact with the digital world around us. And also to connect with our friends, family, and loved ones.
It's a lifeline to independence. And over the past 30 years, JAWS has grown alongside of all of us as we've moved through different stages of our lives, from education to employment to retirement, and all those things in between, JAWS has grown alongside many of us.
And as we celebrate that legacy, I want to talk about where we're heading next, and some of the things that we can look forward to. And how the future of JAWS is being built with the same principles that got us here. And these are some things that you heard Glen speak about, listening to our users, solving real problems, and never settling for good enough.
We're standing at the edge of a major shift in technology. I don't think that's any surprise to any of you, especially if you have listened to some of the other technology related presentations this week. And as we all know, AI or artificial intelligence, it's not just a buzz word anymore. It's actually changing how we interact with the world for blind users.
This shift has enormous potential to break down barriers that we've all lived with for too long. Things like inaccessible graphics and images, disorganized web layouts and page structures. And the time and energy it takes to find that one piece of information in a sea of clutter. Has anybody experienced those problems before? Surely I'm not the only one.
They're not minor inconveniences. The truth is they're the kinds of friction that wear us down over time. And AI gives us a new way forward. But here's the thing, tools only matter if they're built by those of us who need access to them. And at Vispero, we believe that AI should be used in ways that respect your autonomy and your privacy, amplify your productivity, and reflect your real world experience.
And that's why our approach to AI in JAWS is shaped by the people who use it. From engineering to support training to QA. As Glen said, many of us across this team are blind or low vision.
There's not one department that I oversee that does not have multiple, if not entirely made up of people who are blind or low vision. And I intend to keep it that way. And I intend to move that forward and then only increase the amount of blind and low vision people that work on my team because I find that they're some of the best workers that I could ever dream to employ.
And it's because they don't just design things, they actually rely on them. We all rely on them as we build them and test them and help shape the user experience from the inside out. Many of us know the phrase nothing about us without us. And that's not just a slogan for our team. When blind people are involved at every level, the results are just better. The technology is stronger and we all benefit.
Now we all remember, or we may remember, the acronym of JAWS, Job Access with Speech. So let's talk about the workplace for a moment. One of the most important places that JAWS shows up is at work. Whether you're a software developer or a customer service agent, a teacher or an entrepreneur, whatever it is that you do, accessibility at work isn't just about fairness. It's about being able to do your job with the same speed, accuracy, and confidence as your peers.
We've all heard the phrase accommodations are about, quote, "leveling the playing field." But what we are really aiming for in JAWS, what we actually believe in, is making blind professionals not just equal participants, but dominators in your jobs, in your careers. We design JAWS not just to, quote, "get the job done," but to do it efficiently. And this is really about productivity, and productivity equals power.
We know that when technology slows you down, it impacts how you're perceived by your employer, your coworkers, and even yourself. That's why we focus on reducing steps, eliminating guesswork, and helping JAWS users move at the speed of thought instead of at the speed of remembering things.
AI makes this more possible than ever before. If AI can summarize what's on a web page or answer your question in three seconds instead of 30, that's time saved. That's mental load reduced. And that's energy you can put towards actually doing your job and not just figuring out how to use your computer and your screen reader.
And as Glen said, of course, none of this actually works without your feedback. That's why we recently launched in March, the Insert J Club. Any members out there, Insert J Club? Good. There's still plenty of room. This is a new initiative to connect with more of you, our users, our testers, and our community of experts. It's a space where you can learn more about what we're working on in our products, tell us what's working, and more importantly, tell us what's not working for you, and help shape the direction of future updates to our products.
We don't want to guess at what you need. We want to hear it because the people who use JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion every day are the people who should be steering where it goes next. So if you haven't joined yet, I encourage you to sign up. Go to freedomscientific.com/insertjclub, and you'll be hearing from us about opportunities in the future to shape the direction of where we're going.
Now let's focus our last attention around some AI advancements upcoming. This mindset of co-creation or building with you and not just for you has already shaped many of the tools that you use today. Tools like Picture Smart AI. Any users out there? Excellent. Which can describe everything from family photos to complex charts and diagrams.
I will say that this personally has revolutionized my ability to do my work. Or FS Companion. Any FS Companion users so far? Excellent. FS Companion provides step-by-step keyboard instructions in response to natural language questions on how to do things with JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion, and the applications you frequently use like Microsoft Office products.
And now we're taking this a step further. Very soon JAWS will be able to summarize the content and layout of a web page. That means no more guessing about what's on the page, no more digging through headings just to get oriented of what's there. And even better, it will allow you to ask questions about what's on the page in plain language. Questions like, does this restaurant menu have vegetarian options?
Summarize this article for me. Show me the text of the page without all the stupid advertisements and links that are all over the place. You can use that prompt by the way, it will work if you say the word stupid at it. Because we've all felt the pain of this, haven't we? We've all felt the pain of trying to find something on a page that's cluttered with things that's in our way. JAWS will answer clearly, concisely, and quickly.
And we're not stopping there. Coming in September, we'll also be releasing support for multi-line Braille displays. And you may have gotten a chance to see JAWS working with products like the Monarch here this week. We know this has been a long standing request for those of you in our community. For those of you who will use multi-line Braille displays, you know this is a whole new paradigm for access to Braille. And I don't think I've ever seen so much excitement from our team that develops and tests Braille support as they've been working on multi-line Braille.
This is all coming, and we're really excited for you to get your hands on it. So let me show you where this is all headed. You're about to see a short video demonstrating JAWS summarizing and describing and interacting with two live web pages, the restaurant page of the Marriott Hotel, where we are now in New Orleans, and a Wikipedia article about the Marriott Hotel. So let's go ahead and play that video now.
Video:
We've all faced challenges when navigating web pages. Extra links, buttons, advertisements, pop-ups, page refreshes. They all get in the way sometimes of finding that one piece of information that you're looking for coming in the fall of 2025, FS Companion will now be able to describe and summarize web pages, bringing useful information right to your fingertips so you can find exactly what you're looking for.
Better understand the layout of a web page and even get personalized tips on how to navigate the page. Let's try it out. I'm on the Marriott food and dining page here at NFB 2025.
New Orleans French Quarter Restaurants, vertical bar, New Orleans Marriott.
Let's have FS Companion. Give me a summary of the page,
Creating page summary. Page summary. One, the pages structured with a top navigation bar that includes links to different sections like overview, gallery, accommodations, dining, and more. There is a main content area focused on dining options at the New Orleans Marriott featuring various restaurants and their details.
Not only can we have it give us the summary and structure of the page, we can also ask questions. Give me a summary of the food options.
Enter. Give me a summary of the food options. Here are the dining options at the New Orleans Marriott: list of five items. 1, 55 Fahrenheit. List of three items, nesting level one, cuisine: American. Description: enjoy handcrafted cocktails and light bites or shared plates.
Maybe I even find out what restaurants are open at 10:00 PM. Let's give it a try.
Type your... Enter. What options are open at 10:00 PM? Web. At 10:00 PM, the following dining options are open at the New Orleans Marriott. One, 55 Fahrenheit. Open until 12:00 AM. Two, Canal Street Burger Bar. Open until 12:00 AM every day. Three, Canal Street Pantry. Open until 12:00 AM every day.
All right, thanks FS Companion. Now let's check it out on a Wikipedia page.
New Orleans Marriott, dash, Wikipedia.
Let's see if FS Companion can help us out on the Wikipedia page for the New Orleans Marriott.
Creating page summary. Page summary. One, the page provides information about the New Orleans Marriott, a 42-story hotel located in the central business district of New Orleans, Louisiana.
All right, let's check it out and ask a few questions.
Type your question here, edit, enter.
What are some key facts about the hotel?
Enter. What are some key facts about the hotel? Here are some key facts about the New Orleans Marriott: bullet. Location: 555 Canal Street, Central Business District, New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States. Bullet: floors. Bullet, 42 stories. Bullet, completion: built in 1972, architect.
Thanks, FS Companion. Coming in the fall of 2025. Web page summaries and questions with FS Companion brought to you by JAWS.
Ryan Jones:
All right. What you saw isn't just an experiment, it's real, it's working, and it's on the way. But, thank you, even the most productive features only matter if you know how to use them. And that brings me to something I'm also really excited to announce. Starting in August, we're going to be launching a new training series focused on helping you take advantage of AI tools, not just inside of JAWS, but across the board. That includes ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and more.
Because we believe the people who learn to use AI well will be better positioned for success in school, at work, and in life. And we want blind users to be at the front of that wave, not playing catch up. This training series will meet you where you are and help you go further. Whether you're brand new to AI or only experimenting, we'll give you hands-on practical guidance to make them work for you.
So as we close, what does that leave us? It leaves us energized, it leaves us grateful for the journey that you've shared with us so far, and it leaves us with a clear sense of purpose for the next 30 years of JAWS. Which we will use the same convictions that we've always used, that technology should adapt to you, not the other way around.
And that blind people will be involved in every stage of the process from idea to design to support to leadership. We will build better things. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your leadership, your advocacy, your support, and your partnership. The road ahead is bright. We are happy to walk with you and we look forward to the next 30 years. Thank you.
Mark Riccobono:
Great job, Ryan. Well done.
Ryan Jones:
Thank you.
Jonathan Mosen:
And there was warm applause and much gratitude for his contribution on Sunday night at the banquet when Glen Gordon was given the Kenneth Jernigan Award, this award honors a person who demonstrates exceptional service and commitment to the blind community. Well done to you, Glen, and thank you for all you've done and continue to do.
And most of our programs and initiatives that are making a difference to blind Americans are funded by donation. We invite you to support our work. Your contribution will help the National Federation of the Blind continue vital advocacy and programs. And right now, your gift goes twice as far thanks to a generous challenge grant from HumanWare, every dollar you give between now and the end of the year will be matched, doubling your impact up to 50,000 dollars. You can donate online www.nfb.org/donate.
That's www.nfb.org/donate. If you prefer, you can phone us. We'll gladly take your call. (410) 659-9314 is the number here at the Jernigan Institute. (410) 659-9314, and the extension is 2430. That's 2430. We are approaching that time of year where many of us are going to be doing some serious shopping, so it seems timely to include this one right now. Here's President Riccobono to introduce it.
Mark Riccobono:
We're going to talk about accessible independent checkout. How about that? So Target and the National Federation of the Blind are now forever tied together in history. Our relationship started about 20 years ago or so because we sued Target. And that case on web accessibility gets quoted in many places. That's a piece of history that some of you might not have known. Because for the majority of the past 20 years, we've been proud to work closely with Target as a partner in the accessibility journey.
And we want to start this morning by honoring the fact that that target moved from that part of our relationship to really being an industry leader in innovating accessibility. One of the things that Target has done is they've gone out to find the best and brightest work on accessibility. And no surprise, many of those are members of the National Federation of the Blind.
Our presenter today is the director of digital accessibility at Target, and he's brought a number of members of his team with him. He is responsible for leading the corporate efforts to ensure that its digital platforms and experiences are inclusive and accessible.
It's not an easy task, both dealing with the in-person experience and the digital experience. He comes with a proven track record in this area, and I've already told you that Target has made a commitment to hiring some of the best folks to work on accessibility.
And as evidenced by their long standing partnership and being here at this convention, they take very seriously the idea of feedback from blind people. How many of you made it to check out to check out the Target efforts earlier this week?
I didn't make it over there myself, but I heard many people talking about it, and I've been talking to them about the work that they've been doing, and I think it's going to be, you know that I don't use this phrase lightly, a game changer. So here to talk about it, to lead us off is the director of digital accessibility at Target. Please welcome Jake Konerza.
Jake Konerza:
I kind of wish we had Baby Shark, but we'll take that one. Well thank you, President Riccobono, and good morning, NFB.
Audience:
Good morning.
Jake Konerza:
I'm honored to be here today with some fellow leaders from both our accessibility as well as our technology teams. We're here to share our accessibility journey as an organization. Our last address to the convention was 10 years ago, and today we're here to talk to you about how we've advanced both in our accessibility journey as well as our journey for disability inclusion as an organization.
Well, let me start with a quick introduction of myself. As President Riccobono said, I'm the senior director of digital accessibility for Target. I spent the last 15 years in a number of different technology roles. I always focused on improving the customer experience. And it's been the absolute honor of my career to spend the last six years leading digital accessibility.
When people ask me about the impact of digital accessibility, I answer this in a couple of different ways. First, from a personal standpoint, this space gives me the opportunity to be an ally for disability inclusion in a large organization, which really matters. But even more important than that, it gives me the opportunity to give people with disabilities a seat at the table to share their voice directly.
What we find when people with disabilities have a seat at that table, they can bring their lived experience and their unique perspectives to allow us to make even greater innovations. This work impacts friends of mine, it impacts family members, and when done right, digital accessibility creates the type of inclusive world that I want to be a part of.
But beyond that, if I think about why accessibility matters to business, accessibility creates a more enjoyable experience for all consumers. And what I know and what we've seen is that everyone enjoys an experience like that, and it drives business results.
So our message to every organization that may listen to this presentation is that accessibility is the right thing to do. We can all agree to that. But it's really, really important to remember that accessibility is also the smart thing to do to drive business results.
So throughout our presentation today, we hope to bring to life how we've infused this mentality into our organization. Today at Target, accessibility is at the forefront of how we develop and design every experience. So today we hope to share three things with you. One, we want to walk through the accessibility journey we've been on for the last 17 years.
Two, we're excited to share with you what the path looked like for us to create the accessible self-checkout experience that we're rolling out. And thirdly, we'll end with the lessons and learnings that we've had from this journey we've been on.
So President Riccobono mentioned this a little bit, but let's go back to where our journey began. Our journey into accessibility as a company began 17 years ago, initially because of a push from the NFB with a mandate to us to make our website accessible. Early on, we were working in a really reactive way.
We were fixing issues that existed on our website, meaning we were fixing issues that were causing blockers for people that use assistive technology. We spent a lot of time inside our company educating people on why accessibility matters and why we were focused on accessibility.
We used our own internally developed standards rather than industry standards to determine accessibility. It is an absolute understatement to say that those early days were a really tough and uphill battle.
However, if we flash forward to today, 17 years later, we have certainly grown, matured, and evolved as an organization. I'm really, really proud to say that we are strategic partners of the NFB. And what this means is that we go to NFB leadership early in the development of creating new and innovative solutions to get their perspective, to get their unique experiences.
And in fact, we had a member of NFB's leadership at our Target headquarters recently to check out self-checkout before we brought it here. Thank you. That partnership with NFB really, really does matter.
Accessibility is now a part of our culture. As a company, we no longer have to fight for accessibility. Accessibility is not seen as a barrier in technology. Accessibility is seen as an innovation driver. At Target, we have a culture of accessible design, and this culture is embedded within our product, our technology, and our user experience teams.
I'm really proud to work in an organization where accessible experiences are the norm and they are the expectation. They're no longer the exception. And what this culture means is that our website, our digital apps, and all consumer digital experiences are fully accessible.
Why this matters is that all customers can independently experience the joy and delight of shopping at Target, including all customers with disabilities. As we've matured as an accessibility team, we've spent the last number of years expanding our reach to create accessible tools for our employees. Because we know that it's as important to have accessibility for employees as it is for our customers.
One example of this is the main handheld device that's used in-store by our employees to do their job. These handheld devices are used by hundreds of thousands of employees every single day to do their jobs, and these devices are a fully accessible experience. And that's important because that unlocks opportunities for everyone.
We continue to look at how we leverage technology to enhance accessibility for customers and employees. We've not fully arrived because this is a journey and this is a journey which we need to continue on because there is always more to do, but we are really pleased to share our progress, and progress that was started because of a really important push from the NFB.
So now let's shift gears. We're excited to discuss with you all the development of the first accessible self-checkout in US mass retail. Many of you have had the chance to experience it this week, and we're excited to share with you the behind-the-scenes work and partnership that it took to get to what you've experienced this week. So with that, I'll turn it over to my peer from the technology team, Rick Walstrom.
Rick Walstrom:
Thank you, Jake, and thank you NFB. By way of introduction, my name is Rick Walstrom, and I own Target's guest-facing hardware in our stores, including our self-checkout. Creating a sense of belonging for all of our guests is part of our DNA at Target, which is one of the many reasons I'm thrilled to share our work in accessibility with all of you.
To further that mission, I'm so excited to formally announce the first retail self-checkout experience that is fully accessible to the blind. By early 2026, Target will have deployed an adaptive controller and screen reader to every single self-checkout in our stores. This will give blind and low-vision guests the option to independently check out across the nation.
Intentionality is baked into all aspects of our controller, with large tactile buttons, Braille incorporated in important touch points, and an easy-to-grip mount that allows guests a more steady experience while using it. We've also fully integrated the credit card reader into the same audio experience, so guests don't have to move their headset between devices.
And through this deployment, we're also able to help sighted guests who would otherwise have difficulty using a touch screen, including those living with Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and other motor control disabilities. And while I know many of you have tried out the experience, I do invite all of you to check it out in more detail up on the fourth floor in the Bonaparte Room today between 12:00 and 2:00 to experience it yourself.
Now, this achievement didn't happen overnight. Over five years ago when we set out to completely redesign our self-checkout experience, we made a commitment, accessibility had to be integrated from the start. We collaborated closely with internal and external accessibility experts during the design process, ensuring that all physical touch points were well within reach for wheelchair users.
From there, we turned our focus to the needs of the blind and low vision community. We incorporated Braille on interactive elements, introduced high contrast UI modes, and enabled text enlargement. We added audio prompts on our payment devices.
But we knew we could and should do more. So we began the journey toward full screen reading capabilities for the entire checkout software experience. The turning point came through a powerful encounter. My principal engineer Adam Nawrocki, who's with us here in the audience today, witnessed the real world frustration a blind coworker faced when trying to use an ATM.
That moment inspired Adam to build a prototype on his garage workbench using just a basic circuit board and 10 dollars worth of parts. His goal was simple, create a controller that would work with tools the community already uses.
From this humble beginning, we partnered with UI, UX researchers, product designers, software engineers, manufacturers, my teammates here on stage, and of course the Federation to bring the idea to life. And Target isn't keeping this to ourselves.
We freely handed our designs to our manufacturing partners at Elo Touch Solutions so that they can bring this controller to market in order to increase the availability of accessible shopping for all. We're laying out a challenge to other retailers to bring accessibility to the forefront, not as an afterthought.
And the best part is that it doesn't end here. We plan to refine our experience over time and have already collected great feedback from many of you here at the convention that will be incorporated as we roll out. Continuous improvement is our commitment and we'll keep evolving to serve our guests better.
With that, I'm incredibly lucky to introduce Steve Decker, a leader on our accessibility team, and over 20 year member of the NFB who will walk you through what we've learned and where we plan to go from here. Steve.
Steve Decker:
Good morning, fellow Federationists. Thank you, Jake and Rick. I am Steve Decker. I'm a senior manager of digital accessibility. I've been working at Target in accessibility for over 13 years, and I'm so excited to be with all of you today. So I want to share some learnings and lessons from this journey, and there are so many that I don't have time to cover them all today, but I will say we've learned so much even this week, and we will always continue learning and making this better.
When we first set out to make our self-checkout kiosks accessible, we knew that there weren't any reliable existing models that we could directly emulate. Things like voting machines, food service kiosks, and ATMs gave us lots of great inspiration, but there was nothing that specifically existed for blind users that was like ours.
That meant we had to build something new from the ground up, but still rooted in familiar intuitive patterns. One of the most recognizable pieces we designed was the physical controller that Rick mentioned. We worked very closely with many from the Federation staff to ensure we were aligned with real world needs.
I want to shout out Jack Mendez for spending several days at our headquarters sharing invaluable insights and honest real feedback, and even helping our engineers make better changes in real time. Also, Karl Belanger with our Center for Excellence in Nonvisual Access or CENA, who saw a much rougher prototype in January in New York, and gave us great feedback as well, pushing us to do more and do better.
Because our kiosks run Linux, we selected Orca as the screen reader, even though it doesn't fully support touch screens. This limitation turned into a benefit as it reinforced the need for physical buttons which benefit users with disabilities other than blindness. Another key insight was how frustrating it would be to swap earbuds between audio sources. So really early on we prioritized a unified audio experience between the card reader and check-out from the start, knowing we could find a way.
As we tested flows and interfaces, we discovered lots of things. For instance, scanning items turned out to be very fast and easy, but users could initially benefit from some clear instructions on the motions of scanning and bagging items, something sighted people see others doing all the time.
And since Orca doesn't have touchscreen support, team members can still use the screen naturally while blind users can follow along through the audio, building trust in these shared interactions. We also know that we have more work to do to train our team members on the best ways to interact with blind users and help them understand this new experience.
Finally, the process itself was deeply educational. Building this internally at Target forced dozens of people to become deeply engaged with accessibility in a hands-on way more than ever before, including our UX research team, two of whom have been here with us this week. We're not only including blind people in research, we're systemically building long-term processes to do so moving forward.
But our journey doesn't stop here, as Jake and Rick both mentioned. We are committed to refining this experience, guided by your feedback. We'll make the interactions easier, the speech better, and the instructions even clearer. So much of the work we've done to serve our guests has also laid a really solid foundation to create opportunities for blind and low-vision team members in stores. And I'm so excited, so excited, as well as the rest of the entire team to work on this in the coming year and beyond.
Accessibility at Target is not new. It's already a core part of how we build digital products, and now it's becoming a deeper part of our in-store culture too. As that foundation expands, we're scaling our efforts to make accessibility something everyone at Target can own. To that end, we've launched champions programs for designers and developers, equipping even more people with the tools and knowledge to build inclusively.
These programs are growing fast, and they're a big part of how we plan to keep accessibility a default mindset, not a one-time project. We're also exploring lots more, like the role of AI and how we might use it to generate more meaningful alt text for all of those product images out there. But no matter how we innovate, the core remains the same.
Blind and disabled people must be at the center of everything we create. Ultimately, we know that innovation can foster access and accessibility drives innovation. As we continue to build for access, we're unlocking new ways to innovate across Target.
I want to close with a couple personal reflections. How many of you are excited to try out the first accessible checkout in the US? I have a confession to make. I never used self-checkout before Target. That's not the confession. But I honestly didn't think it mattered that much. I mean, I could always ask someone for help or order online through our fully accessible apps and website, and I love to do that.
But after spending a few days demoing what we had built in New York, I was genuinely excited about the independence this would offer. I could grab junk food without judgment. I could make a purchase without small talk or explaining how I became blind for the fifth time that day. And I could have the same privacy as any other shopper.
Most importantly, I could shop like everyone else with all of the same choices on how to do so. My three kids, Kira, Serena and Malia, love roaming the aisles of Target. And while they can help me find the things they want and maybe the things I want, I'm the one who knows how to check out. And that shift is powerful.
Now, the Federation has always invested in blind-centered leadership, and this is deeply personal to me. 20 years ago in Louisville, I received a Federation scholarship. But far more than that, I received the training and the philosophy, the skills and the attitudes that shaped my path.
From my first job at Blind Incorporated, now the Minnesota Center for the Blind, to the work I do today, the NFB's leadership and advocacy, including its legal action with Target in 2006, helped spark needed change. Later our partnership grew because the Federation knows when to fight and when to collaborate, but always it pushes us to do better, raising the expectations so that blind people can live the lives we want.
It's high expectations that help Target build a world-class accessibility team. One that's now a model across the industry. Accessibility is a part of our culture. It's backed by our leadership and it's embraced by our partners. Today we've laid the foundation for accessible independent checkout, and we will keep improving it through your feedback and our partnership with the National Federation of the Blind.
Finally, blind-centered leadership comes full circle. Recently I visited my local Target store with my 13 year-old Kira. Like her amazing mom, Callie, she's blind. And while she has some usable vision, it's not enough to easily check out. But she was able to plug in those earbuds, and she learned how to check out on her own. Most importantly, she learned that working together as part of a movement, we can make the world better. And that blind-centered leadership makes all the difference.
Jonathan Mosen:
That concludes this episode of Access On, the technology podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in a contribution for a future episode, email us. Attach an audio clip, or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon, [email protected].
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To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org, or phone us, (410) 659-9314. That's (410) 659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.