20-May-19 | News

6-6 Digital Success in less than 3 minutes by Paul Bepey from BBC

Digital Success in less than 3 minutes

We celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day with the launch of 6 videos on accessibility in the workplace.

These videos feature how small changes can make a big difference.

Our vision is to have an inclusive society where disability and health conditions do not present a barrier in education or in the workplace through Assistive Technology, Ergonomics and creating an accessible environment.

This is the last video of our 6 series of accessibility in the workplace.

Let’s hear from Paul Bepey from BBC.

00:00
Digital success in less than 3 minutes. I’m Paul Bepey and I’m the BBC Assistive technology lead for staff-facing Accessibility. I’m actually registered blind, which means I have no sight. So I use a range of technologies from screen readers i.e. text-to-speech to Braille displays which is this thing that I’ve got in front of me here. Voice technology and a whole range of recognition apps that just kind of aid me in my day-to-day life both in and out of the workplace. I guess I do use a whole host of mainstream technologies in a slightly different way than I would if I weren’t visually impaired. Obviously, I’ve got my Apple Watch and things like that I obviously use with
 
00:45
voice over, taping around the screen getting information reading it out loud. Voice Technology is a huge, huge benefit and I do consider voice technology mainstream because it’s not specifically assistive technology. It’s kind of I was look at it as the bridge between mainstream assistive tech. So… You know where you can sort of ask the device to do something for you, I use that a lot. Problems I encounter in the workplace – badly designed systems obviously if I’m if I’m navigating with a screen reader, I don’t have access to
 
01:24
the mouse so I’m literally totally dependent on keyboard controls, items being labeled correctly, what does that button over there do, has it has got the correct text to actually let me know what its functionality is and obviously if the system is designed in such a way where I can’t access parts of it with a keyboard or I can’t get sufficient information from the bottom control I’m at a real disadvantage. Superpowers I’m actually pretty good at finding my way around a new piece of technology or kind of taking a gadget and maybe immersing myself in it for a bit and actually seeing what it does, I kind of I think it’s the kind of techie that
 
02:09
comes out from years ago, like working in IT, looking at new stuff and just basically being a bit of a geek really. What advice would I have for an organization looking to hire somebody like me. To be honest really don’t be afraid about it disability isn’t a huge issue. Just be inclusive and actually if you have a question to ask, ask it. Every question has an answer. Make sure that all of your technology that the individual needs to use to do that day job is accessible from Day One and they can just literally come in and do their job. This video was produced for Business Disability Forum in collaboration with BBC and Microlink. With thanks to: Anya Otto from Atos, Joanna Wootten, Age Disability and Inclusion Expert, Nicola James from Lexxic, Paul Bepey from BBC, Paul Smyth from Barclays, Ross Hovey from Lloyds Banking Group.