Celebrating Disability Pride Month with Lori Samuels, NBCUniversal's Director of Digital Accessibility

Can you tell us a bit about Disability Pride Month and what that means to you as NBCUniversal’s director of digital accessibility?

July is Disability Pride Month, which began as a celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which was passed into law on July 26^th, 1990 in the United States.  But now Disability Pride Month has gone global and has been rapidly gaining in popularity over the last few years.  It’s a chance to celebrate ourselves as we are, to recognize that disability is simply part of the lived human experience – not something to be shamed or stigmatized as it unfortunately so often is. 

I’m excited to see that more people are learning about Disability Pride, including the history of the disability civil rights movement and the ongoing fight for greater accessibility.  It’s a way of educating people about the social model of disability, which says that people are disabled by inaccessibility and societal barriers, not inherently by their conditions.  For me, it’s also a chance to celebrate the power, talent, and connectedness of this community – the largest minority group in the United States and over 15% of the world’s population.

What is digital accessibility and how did you choose this as a career path?

If you stop and think about how much of our daily lives we spend in the digital world – work, school, play, social connection, banking, shopping, and more – you can begin to appreciate how important it is to make that digital world accessible.  But to do that requires that we understand how people with different disabilities use technology, interact with websites and apps, and consume digital content, etc.  People who are blind or have low vision are likely to be using screen reader or magnification software to read and interact with websites and mobile apps.  If you don’t have the use of your limbs, you might be using your voice to navigate a digital experience.  The Deaf/hard of hearing community needs closed captions on video and would like to see more options for ASL in the digital future.  So, the work of digital accessibility is very much an integrated part of designing, building, and testing digital experiences and content – with a goal of ensuring that people with disabilities can enjoy those experiences along with everyone else.

I started my career as a Software Engineer after getting my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science. My interest in accessibility started back in the 1990’s, after the ADA had become law. I was the Engineering Director for a very large consumer and educational software company building popular multimedia CD-ROM products.  I began learning more about assistive and adaptive technologies being developed to help children with disabilities in public school computer labs. That was the genesis of my interest and then commitment to making technology accessible to everyone.  As I continued in my career in various Engineering leadership roles, I began to advocate for and incorporate accessibility wherever I could.

In 2011, I joined Intuit in their CTO organization and volunteered to start their global accessibility program. I loved the challenge of building the program, driving cultural change, and seeing product teams embrace accessibility as part of their process.  Just before joining NBCUniversal in 2020, I spent 4 years at Microsoft as a consultant helping several different product organizations and their Enterprise IT organization launch and optimize accessibility programs. I feel incredibly fortunate to be working on something every day that I find so meaningful and important.

What is NBCUniversal doing to support accessibility for the Paris Olympics and Paralympics?

NBC Sports has had a longstanding commitment to accessibility, and we are very excited to continue and expand on that tradition for the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Specifically, we have been focusing on continuing to improve the accessibility and usability of our Olympics digital platforms.  These include Peacock, the NBCOlympics.com website, NBC.com, and the NBC Sports apps.

As for the events and coverage itself, closed captioning will be available for all Olympic and Paralympic events airing across NBCU’s broadcast and cable networks. NBCUniversal will also provide closed captioning for all digital livestreams with commentary across Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, and the NBC Sports app.

We’re also very excited to be expanding the amount of coverage which will offer live audio description for viewers who are blind and low vision.  All coverage on NBC, including daytime, primetime, and late night, and the Gold Zone whip-around show on Peacock, will feature audio description provided by Descriptive Video Works.  We’re also proud to share as a first for a U.S. broadcaster, audio description services for NBC coverage will be provided in stereo, enhancing the quality of sound for our viewers.

Why is it so important to include people with disabilities when working on digital accessibility?

There’s a phrase in the disability civil rights movement – “Nothing about us without us” and this applies in digital accessibility as well.  It’s essential to include disabled people and their feedback throughout the software development lifecycle – from design to release.  This engagement can be accomplished in a variety of ways.  Of course, hiring people with disabilities into your organization to be part of the creative process is one of the best ways to drive accessibility and disability inclusion from within.

At NBCUniversal, we also partner with Fable, which has built a large community of testers who utilize assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnification, and alternative navigation tools such as voice, switch devices, and more.  At every stage of the digital product development lifecycle, we’re able to gather feedback from these testers and use that to improve the accessibility of our features.

What is the role of NBCUniversal’s MyAbilities Employee Resource Group? 

I’m honored to serve as one of the Global Advisors for our MyAbilities ERG.  MyAbilities Network creates representation, expands awareness, builds empathy and promotes equity for people with disabilities and their allies within NBCUniversal through increased exposure, leadership and development opportunities, while championing a safe, accessible and welcoming disability-inclusive work environment.

It’s so important to have an ERG that focuses on disability inclusion and provides safe and welcoming community for our employees with disabilities, their families and allies.  While this is the most important role of the ERG, at NBCUniversal our members are also encouraged to drive initiatives that advance authentic disability representation in media, educate our colleagues about disability inclusion and accessibility, and build strong partnerships with disability advocates and organizations.

What are you most excited about for the future of accessibility and disability inclusion at NBCUniversal?

I’m always excited about the many opportunities to embed accessibility more deeply and broadly across NBCUniversal and continue our leadership role in delivering accessible entertainment, news, and sports for everyone to enjoy.

But digital accessibility must also keep pace with emerging technologies, or we risk leaving people with disabilities behind.  We know that entertainment experiences, whether at our amazing Universal Parks or in our living rooms, are going to become more immersive and the lines between physical and digital worlds will continue to blur as we enter the age of spatial computing.  It is both exciting and challenging to think about how we ensure that those experiences are accessible to people with disabilities.  The good news is that this is where innovation happens: history has shown us that focusing on “solving” for the disability community is a rich source of innovation and results in solutions that work better for everyone.

AI brings challenges and opportunities for accessibility as well.  For example, we’ve seen steady improvement in the quality of automated speech recognition for closed captions, and better image descriptions being generated by AI. But the accessibility industry has also been plagued by AI companies offering supposed “quick fixes” for inaccessibility which themselves create accessibility barriers.  Strong accessibility leadership will be essential for AI to deliver on its promises to make life easier and better for everyone.

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