Key Takeaways:
- Accessibility Testing and Product Development: AT Guys specializes in evaluating and selling accessible tech products for blind and low-vision users. Their process involves thorough accessibility testing, ensuring that products like power banks with audio prompts and Braille displays can be used independently by their customers.
- AI's Role in Accessibility: JJ highlights the growing influence of AI in enhancing accessibility, particularly through tools like "Be My Eyes," which provides detailed descriptions of images. This technology helps blind users interpret visual content, making daily tasks and tech navigation more manageable.
- Proactive Accessibility in Innovation: JJ emphasizes the importance of building accessibility into products from the start, rather than retrofitting solutions later. This proactive approach integrates accessibility into the product design process, improving innovation and preventing the need for reactive fixes.
Today I’m talking to my good friend, JJ Meddaugh, CEO of AT GUYS. He's an entrepreneur, a podcaster, and a keyboardist, among many other things.
JJ - tell me a little bit about yourself and about AT GUYS.
Our company, AT GUYS, evaluates technology products for the blind. That's a big part of my life. I love tech. I love geeking out with tech, playing with new stuff as it's coming out, trying new things, and going to tech conferences.
That’s how I got into the business as well, selling tech and providing tech consulting services, focusing mostly on people who are blind or have low vision, and everything that people can benefit from.
Personally, yes I like to play the keyboard. I like playing some sports as well, like goalball. Look it up. It's really cool. And, I live in Michigan in Kalamazoo, where right now the Tigers are in the playoffs, and we're happy. It's a baseball town now.
Tell us more about the types of products your company evaluates and sells certain products.
For AT Guys, the ‘A’ and ‘T’ stands for access technology. We look for products that either on purpose or just accidentally happen to work well for blind and low-vision people. That might mean it has voice prompts. A lot of Bluetooth headsets, for instance, have prompts that will tell you when you're pairing, when you're charging it, or when the battery is full or empty. That just happens to be accessible because, hey, it's voice prompts and that's just really useful to us.
We co-designed an accessible power bank, where we took one of those regular power banks that you can get that will tell you or that will help charge your devices when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere, but we added beeps or vibration. Now instead of looking at lights to figure out how much power is left, we can hear or feel the beeps of vibration to know how much power is left. So some things are specialized like that.
But every product we carry has to be accessible or we're not selling it.
How do you how do you test the products? How do you know what to carry?
It usually starts with getting a recommendation. We might hear someone who says, “Hey, this is a cool product and it's accessible. You should check it out.”
So at that point, we will try to see if we can get a sample product, and then we can go from there. We want to make sure all of the features are accessible. That includes setting it up accessibly, making sure it works entirely, and just making sure that a blind person can use the product from start to finish.
Are there impacts that you've seen selling your particularly interesting products?
For me, the biggest impact is when we can help someone have access or use something they didn't think they could do by themselves. They thought it was something they needed to have someone with vision to help them use. That's why we try to find things, whether it's a voice recorder or a Bluetooth speaker or, you know, a talking cell phone, which they make as well. We work to find those products that people can use from start to finish. And it's just when you talk to your customers and you learn how excited they are to set something up or to get something new working for them - those are the best moments for us.
What are some of the technologies you’ve sold that have been the most successful in the workplace?
A lot of what we sell does enable more accessible workplaces, like bone conduction headphones, which are headphones that don't cover your ears so you can still hear your surroundings in your office, and you can also communicate and talk to customers at the same time. Our team consists of blind people who do customer service and sales jobs, and they use them, so we know they are the right products for us to sell.
Braille displays are another example. People can read a Braille display, and can efficiently go through text because we still feel that Braille is a very important medium. It could be more effective and faster than audio in some instances.
It’s not just focusing on the workplace, but focusing on any product that helps people be successful wherever they want to be. These are products that people might use at work but also choose to bring them home and use them too.
What are the various ways in which sell your products?
We are primarily an online company. We do some trade shows as well in person, but about 90 percent of our sales are online. We are an entirely remote team, which happens to be made up of myself and other blind and/or low-vision people. We will use various software to communicate and talk to customers and do all the usual marketing and promotion things that we can to to primarily sell online.
What are some of the software platforms you have chosen to use? And what are some challenges you've run into finding the best software platforms?
I’ll start by saying that every new product or service that we add in to our back end has to be accessible. Because like I said, our staff are blind—I'm blind—so we need to make sure everything is going to work for us. If we download a new product or find some new tool that's being recommended and right at the jump, the login is or the sign up process does not appear to be accessible, it's a no go. We're just moving on, and that company is not getting our money.
Some platforms that work well for us:
- We are selling on Shopify. That's where our website is running now and they've done a really good job as far as making a lot of their website accessible.
- We use Olark for live chat now, and that has worked really well for us. Our customers love live chat. I think a lot of people have been scared away from live chat because blind people just think it's not gonna work and not gonna be accessible. But Olark has done a lot to make their chat experience accessible and a joy to use. So it works on the customer side, and it also works on the back end. Because, again, we wouldn't want something that only works for the customers and needs to work for us, just as well.
You mentioned challenges. There just are a lot of big companies who sadly don't care or try to do the bare minimum. It's frustrating when in many senses they're supposed to account for people with disabilities, especially if they have contracts with the government or universities or anything like that. The law says that your products must be accessible, but companies will try to do whatever they can to either get out of that or to just do the bare minimum. That leads to a frustrating experience and limits the amount of products we have to choose from.
For instance, instead of choosing the one ticketing system that we want and that has the best features for us, we end up having to pick the one that is the most accessible out of a bunch of options, none of which are great.
What are some of the advancements that you've seen in assistive technology that have influenced employment opportunities for the blind community?
Going way back - moving from paper to online has been huge, because so many things that required filling out a form or going in person became something you can do online. That can be good and bad, right? Because, of course, it has to be implemented in a way that is accessible and that people can access and use. But moving services online, giving people self-serve options for things like accounting, research, or shopping - I think that’s all be huge.
Comparison shopping is much easier now because I can just go at my own pace and go through all the products on whatever site I want to use. And it wouldn’t be a podcast if we didn’t mention AI. Certainly AI has helped in many ways, especially in the identification and interpretation of images. That has been one of the more current breakthroughs that's happened in the last year or two.
How are how are you using AI right now?
How am I NOT using AI? For me, the biggest impact has been around images. A year and a half ago, image recognition tools were basic, identifying simple objects like "table" or "door," which wasn't particularly helpful. However, as models like GPT and OpenAI improved, their ability to interpret images in detail advanced significantly.
The app Be My Eyes, which connects blind or low-vision users with sighted volunteers, was among the first to integrate AI for visual interpretation. Introduced at the 2023 CSUN Access Technology Conference, their feature Be My Eyes allows users to get detailed descriptions of images. Now, there are several tools offering similar functionality, making it easier to understand everything from memes to more serious content. Though it's about 90% accurate and has some limitations, this AI feature has been incredibly useful for me in daily life.
Have you used it for other tasks as well beyond images?
I'm definitely one of those who heavily use AI, especially for coding and programming. I often break things, so I find AI useful for automating tasks and writing code. I’ve tried it for accessibility remediation, like generating alt tags for images, but it's hit or miss. While it understands how to structure alt text, it doesn’t always grasp the full context. I see AI as a great starting point—whether for writing code, analyzing data, or automating website tasks—but it’s not perfect and still requires human oversight. It saves time on some tasks, but you have to refine its output.
Are you using any coding platforms in AI?
I have Visual Studio Code, and I have ChatGPT in the cloud. I haven't yet used the new Canvas interface for Chat GPT, but that apparently is pretty accessible already out of the box for doing live editing of code. I definitely think that's an area to explore and to play with more and find more things more accessible,
So speaking of innovation, I've heard folks say that making something accessible slows down innovation. What do you say to those people?
It’s only going to slow innovation if you try to go back after the fact. This is not news to you, but maybe to some of our listeners. If you were designing accessibility at the same time, you're doing everything else. So if you're building it in as you're building your website or your app, then it's just a part of the process. And then you can make updates in real-time, as opposed to doing Band-Aid fixes along the way, and accessibility is just another part of the process, as opposed to an after thought.
If you move if you move accessibility to the beginning, it could be an innovation driver as opposed to a hindrance.
Yes - make it part of the checklist. If you’re testing a new product, you wouldn't release a new product if the screen was blank. But people would release a new product if for some reason the screen reader function isn't working and say, “Oh, we'll fix that in the next iteration. “ No. That's that's not the way to do it.
And some companies will push a new version of an app without doing all the accessibility checks when their old version was accessible. Sometimes we joke that there's no scarier phrase to a blind person right now than an app update that says, “We have completely redesigned our interface.” Oh, boy. Usually, that means we have to wait for someone else to let us know it's okay.
And that’s the sad state of things where that is the knee-jerk reaction: “Oh, they probably broke accessibility.”
Right, uniless you know it’s a company where you know accessibility is something they’re known for.
Like Olark for example. I met you all at CSUN initially, so the fact that you took the time to come to an accessibility-focused conference was a really good sign to me. That doesn't mean everything because some people just show up there and say things.
But now if there is a new version of Olark and I got an email about it next year, then I I would be a lot less hesitant.
And you can tell the companies that do it well, because word gets around fast. For example, Apple—as much as it pains me to say because I'm an Android guy—usually when there's a new Apple product at this poin, the expectation is it’s accessible.
Turning back to access for good jobs for all. Are there specific processes or work that you've seen businesses do for their employees to make their environments more inclusive?
Before implementing accessibility solutions, start by consulting employees directly to understand their needs. Avoid assumptions about what accommodations might be helpful. Ensure that your software and tools are accessible, even if you don’t currently have employees with visible disabilities. Being proactive prevents last-minute scrambling if you hire someone with specific needs. Many disabilities are hidden, so offering versatile systems and encouraging open communication about accommodation requests creates a more inclusive environment. Remember, each person’s requirements will vary, even among those with the same disability.
We talked about innovation in AI. Are there other innovations that you are just generally excited about in tech?
It’s been a long time coming, but I would say one of the big ones that is slowly making its way through is multiline braille. Imagine if your computer monitor went back to 1975 and was one line of text and that’s the only way you could communicate with it. You want to read a whole page, you have to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling down, which can be really confusing after a while.
That’s how braille displays are. Refreshable braille displays use pop up pins so people can feel what’s on the screen. You can use it by itself, or you could use it with a screen reader, which would read the screen to you or any magnification even. There has finally been some research and some movement toward making multiline braille displays, at least five or ten lines or braille plus graphics in a few different, combinations. They're not cheap, so we have a ways to go. But I think as that gets developed, braille and tactile literacy is huge and that can be really important.
What are you excited for for the future of accessibility?
I’m excited about advancements in AI, especially with streaming video that can be analyzed in real-time for accessibility purposes. While AI won't replace tools like a cane or guide dog, it can enhance them. Streaming video, in particular, opens up new possibilities for tasks like designing images and understanding different media formats used on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. It’s also great to see more apps becoming accessible, offering better choices for customer support, website design, and marketing tools. However, as tech advances, we need to ensure new features, like touchscreens, don’t make devices less accessible.
Ultimately, we have to make sure that the new things that come out are also accessible and that we're not taking steps backward while we're taking steps forward.