Powering Accessibility in the Modern Workforce

Rachel Cossar: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode in conversations in the future of work. I am your host, Rachel Cossar, and I am thrilled to be focusing on powering accessibility in the modern workforce. We’re dealing with a lot of different workforce formats, whether it’s fully in person, fully remote, or a hybrid of both. And thinking about accessibility is and has always been a big priority. And so I’m very excited to have Alex Dunn, founder of Seppable with us today. Alex. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Yeah. We’re, oh, yeah. Don’t go ahead. If you wanna just share a little bit with our audience, Yeah. So I’m I’m Alex then. I’m the founder and CEO of Suffable.

Alex Dunn: My background’s mostly in product development and applied machine learning, and for the last sort of 5 years, been mostly focused on accessibility and assistive tech. Both in play and in work and home and sort of everywhere else. But anywhere where you’re touching digital tech, trying to make that a bit easier, level to playing field for everyone, and create some sort of fun and engaging experiences too. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: So this, this whole space I find fascinating because I would imagine that technology really does open up some amazing opportunities for this group of people, and I’d love to know. You know, I mean, in what ways does our new world of work, right, with with these more flexible terms of engagement as professionals make it easier for individuals who are neurodivergent, to express and connect. Yeah. I think there’s a few different ways.

Alex Dunn: I think being in a hybrid environment, especially. Well, I guess not every company is, but for companies that are in some form of a hybrid environment, having a virtual space where people can bring themselves to to meetings to sessions to conversations in a way that works best for them is is super important. We’ve seen sort of the advent of stuff like, avatars in the in the sort of virtual conferences and things like that, which is really cool. Things like, within Microsoft teams that you can set up your own avatar. And we’ve got a lot of feedback from folks that use that. To represent themselves in ways that they wanna express even if they have a hard time sort of expressing themselves on camera or they just don’t feel comfortable on camera and still sort of having that, like, somewhat face to face, I’d say, is is really cool. But I think it’s really about just bringing yourself in whatever way you want that to be to your team and to your work environment and to, you know, the sort of greater internet as a whole. I think the advent of, AI and sort of the pretty quick adoption of it also, creates a really interesting space to make work easier for folks that are neurodivergent, whether it’s just trying to explain something in a different way that might be easier to understand or having something explain back to you in a way that you understand better and sort of having that, like, really personalized experience that, you know, for a long time was challenging to achieve in the workplace. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: I always like to think of our devices as an extension of our of ourselves. And so I would imagine that in that sense with some of this more cutting edge advanced technology Like, that be and especially with the work you’re doing at Suffable, there’s this degree as you said of personalization where these individuals where any individual can really make choices that really make sense for them. Definitely. Yeah.

Alex Dunn: I mean, even if it’s simple things, like, with Suffable, you know, we’re we’re a software platform our focus is like giving you the means to set up controls that work best for you. So whether it’s like you have a hard time with a keyboard and mouse and you wanna use adaptive voice controls or camera based controls or having an easier set of buttons on your phone that you can tap, like, automate certain things. Basically, simple instances like being on a team’s call or a Zoom call and just saying, like, well, when I lean away from the camera, I want that to mute me so I’m feeling like I’m naturally disengaging from the conversation and having Sethibles AI to sort of set up those controls for you. Or when you lean back in to unmute you, We see a lot of sort of, like, simple interactions in terms of, like, pairing up functionality to to, like, these sort of digital controls having, like, a really impactful set up for an individual because it’s about personalizing your own experience in the end. And when you have the means to personalize it without having to go through and, like, manage all these wild configurations, and you can kinda just talk to your computer essentially or to any of your devices the way that you want to. Mhmm. It it really frees up the the sort of learning curves of new apps. It frees up the frustrations that you might face in trying to interact with different pieces of technology. And ultimately, it just makes things more fun and and engaging in product, really more productive too. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: And on that point, like, from my dancer mind, you know, I’m like, it’s it’s I think I think it’s always beneficial when you can engage more of yourself in in whichever capacities, whether it’s more voice, more vocals, more non bulls, more movements, in in this, otherwise, relatively 2 dimensional world. Definitely. Yeah. That’s really cool. So, I mean, that all sounds very positive. What what What are some of the challenges do you see? Yeah.

Alex Dunn: I think there’s there’s always challenges in virtual environments with trying to feel connected, and trying to maintain what otherwise it can be a sort of that two dimensional face of someone versus a three-dimensional person and not seeing all of who they are in context. Those are definitely some of the place that are challenging on more of, like, the technology side. It’s like there’s so many different tools in in the toolboxes that you have to manage as well. And also trying to figure out really what works best for you as an individual. So it’s whether it’s, you know, finding the right assistive technology to to be able to stay productive and connective and and having to configure that or have someone support you in configuring that, that can be frustrating or even just, like, general business productivity tools, like managing all those things. One of the, for example, like, to sort of stay connected in getting past, like, the two dimensional person on camera, to the real sort of three-dimensional or four-dimensional person in terms of personality and and context. Is that that, you know, we sort of focus on from even our internal team is trying to find ways to connect in person when we can Yeah. For folks that are comfortable with it. You know, of course, like, that connection in person isn’t always a comfortable experience for everyone. So it’s about that, like, setting up flexibility for our own team members, whether it’s, hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna be at this event. Let’s bring in some folks that might not even be participating in this trade show or conference or event, but just have some time to connect with the other team members who are there. Or we do, like, these sort of larger everybody get together sort of off sites, stuff like that too. Right. Yeah. I know you had you had mentioned that, right before we started.

Rachel Cossar: So I I’d love to hear, and I’m sure our audience would as well. Like, what are some of the creative ways that acceptable as a a remote first company has designed those meetings of the of the minds physically. Yeah. I think there’s there’s, a cadence in in the virtual meetings that’s important to maintain.

Alex Dunn: So everyone sort of knows. 1, like, have your videos on when you can when you’re comfortable. Like, we see a lot, especially, like, you know, we we sell B2B software. We interact with a lot of other enterprises and stuff too. And you can just feel how disconnected it is when, like, nobody joins with their camera on. And it’s just, like, It’s like the I’d say the olden days of, like, 5 years ago where you’d sit on a conference call with, like, a conference phone in a room and not talk to people. And it’s like, you lose so much connection there. And especially if you’re doing that internally with your team members that you work with every day. It’s just like, you can kinda chip away at that connection pretty harshly. So we sort of start there. Like, hey, if we’re gonna be all remote, let’s make sure that when we are connecting, we’re fully present. We’re not, you know, doing a whole bunch of other things. We’ll also talking. And so, therefore, we also need to be intentional about, like, when we are asking for people’s full attention. We do have this sort of, like, we call it our our chair turning, methodology, which is, like, when you are in an office, we like to set up this culture of, like, you can just turn your chairs around talk to each other. And trying to sort of recreate that in a virtual way where it’s like, hey, I need help with something. Like, throw your hand up, raise the flag, and, like, be able and willing to just jump on a call and and sort of have that openness. And, like, let everyone sort of know what what’s going on and and that sort of awareness across the team. But that’s the only goal so far. So, like, we can do things like virtual game nights and those are fun, but we still find that at least everybody on our team, and of course, every team is different. Still finds a ton of value in in connecting in person. And so we do these twice a year off sites where we fly everybody in the company to a specific place in any changes. Like, we’ve done some in Maine, some in Massachusetts. We just came back from the Salmon Islands in Washington. Where everybody is sort of bringing their full selves. We’re in a room together for, like, most of a week, if not all week, we’re mixing, like, doing fun things together versus strategy sessions and working sessions and there’s a there’s a level of trust that’s built, when you do have that time together. That’s that’s hard to maintain when you’re completely remote all the time. And, like, perceiving how someone is talking to you, their intentions, and their personal context can be very different if you’re just seeing them in that that sort of 2 d face on camera or even worse if it’s just chat and that’s sort of it. Right? So it’s it’s our way to to build trust within the team. Also, just get stuff done, like, we sort of focus it around bigger things that are coming out, whether it’s whole new product offerings that we’re working on or different changes in business strategy that’s coming up to make sure, like, everyone is heard in those sessions. Everyone feels like they have a place to speak, and they can also just not feel like they’re out of the loop on anything either. Right.

Rachel Cossar: It’s it’s so refreshing to hear the level of intentionality that you and your partners have brought to the table with this. I think that’s oftentimes what’s what’s missing is, you know, understandably, there there tends to be like a knee jerk reaction to some of these work policy settings, where it becomes pretty all or nothing. And the nothing side is like, well, then you can’t work here. Yeah.

Alex Dunn: I mean, like, from my perspective, like, bringing building a team is hard, right, because you wanna build the best team that you can. And and the way we approach it is we take a lot of time to find the right people that are gonna bring the best value to the company, to the product to our users, especially, and sort of understand the context of working in in the space of individuals with disabilities. Mhmm. And basically going from from trying to find the right team members, to, well, building the successful companies, you have to make sure they’re as comfortable and as productive and as happy as you can. And so, like, big part of my job is just making sure as we’re building the team that every person has whatever they need, in order to be successful.

Rachel Cossar: And whether and I don’t just mean them the sense of, like, assistive technology, for example.

Alex Dunn: I mean, like, whatever sort of means it is for them to feel connected and and, productive and happy while they’re they’re doing things that are impactful to people, it maintains that impact that we’re making. That’s ultimately our goal. Like, we we wanna impact the lives of folks with disabilities and level the playing field for people and work and then play and in schools. And so it takes a lot of work to do that. And so it also takes a lot of making sure everyone’s happy doing that work the whole time too. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: It takes a lot of, like, explicit, you you can’t leave anything up to kind of people’s assumptions, you know, like, has to be made explicitly clear. Expectations have to be set as you mentioned in terms of those internal teams. Like, we’ll be intentional with asking for your time and then also asking that you do show up you know, as appropriate with your video. And I think that’s there’s there’s also the theme that I’ve noticed and I I think it mostly comes out of the pandemic where, like, everything was a video meeting. Right? And we went so overboard with this requirement to be on video all the time. That now it’s, like, internal meetings are somehow viewed as, like, lesser than. You know? This is an internal meeting. I’m not gonna turn my video on. It doesn’t matter or whatever.

Alex Dunn: You’re like, no.

Rachel Cossar: Like, to your point, like, these are the people who you have to work with and partner with and collaborate with and trust. Yeah. A 100%.

Alex Dunn: And, you know, it’s it’s even worse, I think, when people are in external meetings and they’re still just like no video. And I’m just like, the one guy on video. It’s funny, but it’s it’s so uncomfortable at times, but it’s like, I still want them to know that I’m bringing that intention. Totally. Yeah. I mean, like, internally, like, to some extent, those are the most important meetings you’re having. Like, that’s when decisions are made. That’s when stuff gets done. And it’s with the people that you’re making those decisions with and the people you’re getting stuff done with. So Yeah. On operating your full self. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: So, and I I don’t know if you ever experienced this, but we experienced this with our users at virtual Sapiens where there’s this, like, level of, expectation around ai where it’s, like, people expect it to be magical all the time. Like, and if something doesn’t work or if it, like, malfunctions or hallucinates, it’s like, oh my god. I can’t believe it did that. And it’s like, well, very much in, like, a, like, advanced technology that we’re all trying to figure out. So what are some of the current limits, with with AI in your opinion? A lot.

Alex Dunn: So, I mean, we’re we’re an AI software company in in both the true I I would the traditional sense from, like, 4 years ago. We do a lot of machine learning, but we also use generative AI, in a few different ways. Both, like, internally as, like, our own productivity tools with, like, chattyBT and Copilot and stuff, but also, like, within our actual app experience. I mean, Like, our our goal is that you’re you’re talking to Sethible and you’re basically just telling your computer what you want it to do. And Sethible just kinda does it for you. All of that is a whole bunch of AI stuff behind the scenes from, like, handling your speech recognition or tracking your different face movements and then applying that intention towards doing something and and automating that and figuring out, like, hey, you’re in this app. For example, you’re in Microsoft Word and you’re trying to save save, well, what do I need to actually do? I need to, like, hit a keyboard shortcut or I need to go through the menu and find something and doing that level of automation. So in even in, like, that story, which is, like, obviously, that’s the happy path from, you know, like I mentioned earlier, if I lean back, I wanna mute myself in my Zoom call or I wanna say save or I wanna be able to tap a button and have it, like, go through my common task. Like, there’s there’s a lot of edge cases where that can start to fall apart. And and honestly, the main reason why I feel, like, to your point, some people find this sort of, like, magic in AI, and then the magic is gone when you see it fails. Yeah. This I think there’s a general lack of understanding on, like, how these types of models work. Totally. And the applications of them, because we’ve started to see, I think a lot of it’s because developers have seen the magic of, like, I gave it text and it gave me text back that I was expecting. Therefore, I can turn this into anything I want. Where a lot of applications are applying it and and I mean, specifically generative AI and text generation in ways that, like, aren’t text generation. And so you’re trying to sort of force a model that its whole job is saying, what is the next letter that I need to actually spit out. And then it’s turned into chat, but that chat is still just predicting, like, in a conversation like this, what would be the next thing that that I would expect to see? And that’s kind of all it does. And so when it starts to make stuff It’s either because it’s hidden context window limits. It’s a limit of the model itself, or it’s pulling from information and and training that you didn’t necessarily expect it to have. And now we we do a lot of work with on device AI, which means we’re even more limited because we’re not working with, like, big data centers. We’re working on, like, your laptop or your phone. So the processing that we can do, you know, has its own limits as well. But, you know, we were starting to play with some new versions of, generative controls. And the way we use generative AI is we say, like, hey, you opened up word. I’m gonna go generate a set of controls behind the scenes that you can use. It’s not necessarily like a chatbot. Mhmm. But it might say, like, you know, hey, I saw that you open Microsoft Word. So I’m gonna go set up all of these controls for Microsoft Word so that you can say save and I know what to do. So it kinda does that on the fly and and ahead of time, but we, for example, work with smaller generative models or get SLM small language models, even though they’re still gigantic. Mhmm. I can run on devices. Yeah. And we’ve seen just, like, some ridiculous stuff. Like, I was trying to test this newer model, and I won’t name and shame it. I was I was testing this newer model to create controls for PowerPoint, which is like one of our staples. It’s one of the most common things that our users do, whether intentionally or behind the scenes. And it started to do it. And I was like, oh, here’s, like, new slide and and, like, the the process that it should go through. And then it just started writing about a debate on the ethics of lying, which I found it extremely ironic, but also is like, uh-oh. Like, something is off here. Totally. So I think there’s hard limits. There’s hard limits in AI on processing power. Right? For offline AI, we have a lot of more advancement lately with, like, Neural processing units being built in like Copilot plus PCs and Ai PCs. Neural Engines being built into Mac, M2M3M4 chips, things like that. Mhmm. Then there’s also the soft limits that from, like, a consumer of AI’s perspective. Like, you don’t necessarily see until you hit it. Right. And then it’s like, well, now what do I do? So, what I like to see improve the most, I think, is a little bit more on, like, education on how AI works from, like, the general population and understanding, like, what the limits are. So that is we push the limits someone now knows what it can do. Yeah. And and I definitely would like to see more hardware that we can basically use on on for on device processing. I mean, in the end, it it means we can build more private and more personalized AI. You don’t have to give your data to one of the big tech giants that’s processing that against the model. You can just use your computer and chat to your AI and or and generate things that you need to. Mhmm. But definitely education is the big thing. That’s that’s the biggest missing gap, I think. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I was just thinking about that, with one of our newer clients, organization wide, they have a push to to have people be exposing themselves to different applications of AI and becoming familiar with it and understanding some of those boundaries, you know, the limits of it. And Yeah. It’s it’s so interesting because I think now at least people are pretty familiar with like Chachi PT as this, like, conversation kind of application of of of AI gen genai and which is great, and it’s just so interesting. Like, I I was thinking, you know, it could be interesting for virtual sapiens in our capacity of working with the individuals across this organization to also give maybe some educational content in terms of helping them understand what’s going on behind the scenes with the computer vision models and application of AI as a coach. You know? Because I do think, like, even some of the stuff you’re talking about in terms of on device processing versus server side and, you know, where is your data, for people to understand that is is very It’s just very important. Definitely.

Alex Dunn: I mean, it’s it’s it’s data privacy and data protection in the end, and it’s being aware of where your data is going and what it’s being used for. Right.

Rachel Cossar: Because it can just feel so, like, I mean, it’s just so, like, in the cloud. Like, it’s not the scenario. You know? Yep. But, yeah, I also I was, I saw this video the other day. It was so, so funny of, this AI that, it’s known for being more like emotionally intelligent, but it just started the conversation, like, laughing like a maniac for 5 seconds. Is that not how you start every conversation? Oh my god. It was so amazing.

Alex Dunn: I was like, this is just incredible man.

Rachel Cossar: So but, yeah, I mean, we’ll we’ll look at there eventually, I think. Yeah. It definitely improves very quickly.

Alex Dunn: Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: So what is I mean, you’ve shared a little bit about this, but just just to cap us off. Like, what’s your long term vision for sufferable.

Alex Dunn: I mean, our our mission is to basically make it so that you could walk or roll up to any piece of technology and just interact with it in a way that works best for you. If you have a hard time with a physical input, whether it’s a touchscreen, a keyboard, a mouse, a stylists, you know, whatever it is to to have an alternative, but to also do that in a way that’s not just like some niche assistive technology that is so generally available that, you know, you can you can do that. You can just open up a PC, or walk up to an ATM and and have it know who you are and be able to interact with you the way that you want to. A big thing that we see in in the space of assisted technology is how much work is put on the individual with a disability to, like, get anything to work for themselves. And that’s a big gap that we’re trying to fill. And, you know, there’s there’s a few different approaches to it. There’s, like, get developers to make their stuff compliant with basic accessibility standards, which is like, we should do that, but it’s still kind of a failing thing right now because that’s existed for, like, 10 years and over 95% of, like, websites don’t meet basic requirements. It’s like, those types of things we have to continue to do, but it feels like there’s an opportunity to fill that gap quicker by empowering individuals personalize their experiences on the go. Yeah. And, you know, the the way we’ve been sort of going about seeing that through has been really intentional. Like, we started with very specific, like, we wanna know how users want to interact with their machines, with their apps, with their games, with their, connected apps, so, like, meetings and things like that too. And to sort of not just make assumptions around that user experience and to see as we start to introduce a little bit more automation, a little bit more of, like, new types of inputs? Like, how does that change? And so we’ve sort of done that in a very, again, again, intentional way, but where an individual’s, like, manually mapping configurations, they’re saying, like, when I say click, I want it to click. And and you’re sort of building that that configuration out. Initially, then we built ways to automate on top of that after seeing ways that people wanted to interact. And now we’re sort of looking at that next stage of know, we can generate controls for you on the fly. So you can just say, like, open word and it’s got word control set up for you and you’re good to go. But into a, like, how do we do that in a place where, you know, you you haven’t signed in and personalized this whole thing for yourself. And it’s a new device or a new app or a new game or a new piece of technology to understand who you are while also maintaining that who you are in an extremely private way. That’s not like Cephyibles managing information about you. So that’s that’s sort of where we’re heading is, like, the taking those steps to, like, build the best personalization and understanding context, build the best controls and automation on top of it, and basically bring those together, and then working with our partners, like, different PC builders from HP and Lenovo and Dell and Microsoft and some of the mobile device makers to basically enable this stuff out of the box so that really can just, like, pull up whatever hardware it is, and it’s it’s got you. From there. And I know who you are without having to give your data away. Yeah. Wow. That’s I mean, that’s the holy grail. That’s amazing. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: We’re getting there. We’re making really a little bit faster than we expected, I think. Wow.

Alex Dunn: That’s amazing.

Rachel Cossar: Alex, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your your insights and experience. It’s it’s been fascinating. How can people follow your work, connect with you? Yeah.

Alex Dunn: So we’re we’re just at seppable.com, cephabel on all socials were unceffable, or atceffable, I should say. If you wanna find me on LinkedIn or you wanna reach out to me via email, I’m just Alex atceffable, or you can just look up Alex Dunn, Sethwell. I’m sure I’ll find you’ll find me somewhere. We’ve got ways to try our stuff out. If you’re interested in trying it for your personal use, it’s totally free. If you got folks on your team that are interested in trying it out, we’ve got really easy to set up, you know, 30 day free trials. If you’re a developer that wants to try to add these things to your own experiences, We’ve got SDKs and tools for that too. So we ultimately just wanna build the most accessible place we can, and we’d love to connect with whoever’s interested in doing that too. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you again.

Rachel Cossar: And as always, thanks to our audience for tuning in. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.