How You Can Future-Proof and Differentiate Your Business

What I'm going to do is to spend the next 30 or 40 minutes, kind of give you a bit of a perspective on how I view accessibility and from the business perspective, I know the Accessibility Meetup in New York City, you actually have many, many very good speakers, and many of them are quite technical, and so this talk today is not going to be technical. This talk is really sharing with you actually how my personal journey, both professionally and personally, led me to this point today, and also what I view as what we need to do as a community to influence the business to think about the topic of disability.

And, most importantly, as in this post pandemic world, just when we thought pandemic is the biggest thing we have to deal with, and then come the The Great Resignation, because we don't have enough labor. And now there's talk about pending recession. And then, on top of that, we have wars going on. The world is really turning upside down, so if you are a CEO, or you're a C-suite executive in business, your head is spinning about all the changes and all the challenges you face in business.

So, how do we, as a community in this kind of a very unhinged environment, still be able to talk about accessibility, get the attention of the C-suite executives to make decision, make investment, and put a priority on accessibility or digital inclusion? That is what the talk is, is that I'm going to share with you basically the approach that I have taken over the years, both inside IBM, and also now, like Joseph said, that I now have my own strategy advisory company, how my collaborators and I present the topic with accessibility to the business executives to get them to understand how this topic works.

As I am standing in front of you, for those of you cannot see, I am an Asian female, in her... I don't like to tell my age, all I can tell you is that I spent 37 years with IBM, and now I have my own business for six years, and I have three granddaughters, so you can see my rough age. I'm not going to share the detail with you. My perspective of the accessibility comes from my personal experience as a first generation immigrant born in Taipei, Taiwan, grew up in Hong Kong, came to the United States when I was 19, and I can relate how I really wanted to be, quote unquote, in the mainstream society, whether it's in the workplace or in the marketplace.

And so, when I started getting involved in accessibility at IBM Research, to head of the team worldwide, I really can feel and see some parallel between an immigrant experience trying to break in, and also a person with disability and trying to be recognized. So, I truly believe that, and also I have lived the experience that, , thanks to company like IBM, and also my personal family, that accepting the diversity, or accept the difference that I bring to the table, and then celebrate that and then turn that into an advantage.

Just to give you a little background about my life and my journey. In this picture, for those who you cannot see, it's a picture of a kindergarten graduation class, about, oh, probably 50 people, and my picture is in the back row. I'm the tallest girl in my class standing right next to a tree. All my life I've been the tallest girl, in a society which really don't value height as an advantage.

Remember I'm Chinese, the kind of traditional view of a Chinese girl, demure and slight and delicate. Here I am, quite tall. So, in the school play, I always get the assignment to play, for example, a tree. And so, it's kind of a funny that, as I look back at my kindergarten graduation picture, I'm standing right next to a tree.

Being the tallest girl actually gave me a very different perspective. I still remember when I was growing up, we have to be weighed in on the first day of school every year, and my classmate literally will wait for me to get on the scale and the height and they will laugh, because I will be the heaviest and the tallest girl. I remember going home crying about, I guess in today's terms, you would say that I was bullied, and my mom just looked at me and said, What's wrong with that?

You got noticed!, So, that's how my mom raised me, is that anytime when there's adversity that I face, she turn it around, just make it an experience to say, Hey, the teacher won't know other student, but they will know you because you've been laughed at, so you actually end up on the positive. So, with that kind of a spirit, I joined IBM back in 1979. Now I just realized that some of the Gen Zers don't even know what IBM is.

Now, raise your hand if you don't know what IBM is about. Whew. Okay, good. For the first time I realized that, because IBM's business has changed so much, for those of you on the Internet, you know, we probably have some Gen Zers, that IBM actually was the first one invented the computers.

We were the one behind sending people to the moon. We created a social security system. If you do banking every day, nowadays, or book your airline, chances are it's the IBM big computers in the background, running all these applications. So, I joined IBM, was very fortunate that IBM recognized me as an individual, and I joined IBM in '79 in Lexington, Kentucky.

Think about this. Lexington, Kentucky. This is what 43 years ago, and I've only been in the United States for three years, so my English wasn't even that great. But, somehow, the company recognized that there is that about me that I have a desire to learn and I have a desire to really to sell.

So, I was given the opportunity to join IBM as a systems engineer. For, I would say, the next 25 years, I was in the, I guess you can call it, a mainstream roles, I was in sales and marketing, and, in the mid nineties, I was assigned to open up China financial services sector, including banking, insurance, and financial market, for IBM, because I speak Mandarin, speak Chinese and write Chinese. but, in early 2000, around 2002 timeframe, I had the opportunity to join IBM Research.

By then I already have done a lot of work. All the divisions, hardware division, software division, global services, software, I've done it all. The only organization I didn't have the chance to go into is IBM Research, and IBM Research, as you can imagine, has a lot of very smart people. They're all PhDs from MIT, from Caltech, and all that.

I remember my son who was 16, he's really 16 there, they think they know the world, so he came up to me, he says, Mom, are you sure you're going to go into IBM Research? You don't even have a masters degree, you're going to handle all these PhDs? And I'm like, your dad is a PhD, but he needs somebody like me to keep him grounded, to tell him what to do. So, I went into IBM research to head up the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center, and, truth be told, I knew nothing, zero, about disability.

I didn't know anything about disability. I just looked at it as, from a career perspective, it was great opportunity to work with very smart scientists and developers and all that. Until this day, I think it was a good thing. Because I didn't know anything, I waited with a fresh set of eyes.

One of the first things I did was to interview some of our senior executives, and what they said to me, it still holds true. They said, accessibility is about personalizing the technology for individual use, in that we have to think about designing technology to be the simplest form. And yet, simplest form, it's the most elegant form, is actually hard to achieve, and therefore IBM research has to be involved in this pursuit.

That's point number one. Point number two, it was instilled in me, this is a global topic. Because why? Because this is a human topic.

So, I was asked, and therefore a champion of the effort to bring the whole concept of accessibility globally. In this picture, you will see on the right hand side in 2006, I went to India and worked with IBM India research lab, and then we launched the accessibility center in India in 2006. And back in 2004. I actually went to China and helped the Chinese government translate the word accessibility from English to Chinese.

And I can tell you that, today, whether some of the company like Alibaba and Baidu and TenCent, they are actually implementing... In this case, Alibaba is the first company to implement WCAG 2.0, and we are working to have IAAP certification curriculum transported over to China. So, you can see that the effort that I and my team was involved, has over 18 years of history now in this field of accessibility. Now, of course today, a lot of people will say, we don't hear anything about IBM doing accessibility any more, and this is very interesting, because it really is also a indication of accessibility, at least from the business perspective, has to be in the context of a company's strategy, because we're a for-profit organization, we're not advocacy group, and IBM actually is going through another kind of a transformation.

For those of you who don't know, IBM has been in the technology business for over 120 years now, and so, every, 10, 20, 30 years, we go through transformation. IBM originally had a lot of ThinkPad, I still use IBM PCs. We have a lot of customer facing, user facing solution like Lotus, which was the original office suite, but now we have completely divested those business. We're now into the infrastructure, what we call infrastructure business, lIke AI and hybrid cloud.

So, in the entire IBM portfolio, very few product touches user. So, therefore, the accessibility as a topic is not as visible as some other user facing technology companies. In about 2014, I was, like Joseph said, very lucky and very honored to be IBM's first Chief Accessibility Officer. And, to me, the biggest point is not about the work we do, but the fact that the industry's begin to recognize that this is a field, and that's why the Wall Street Journal headline is 'A New C-Suite Mandate, Accessibility'.

So, nowadays, of course we have many, many accessibility officers. And here we are in New York City, so I do want to bring up my connection with New York City. IBM actually received the first ADA award from Mayor Bloomberg, and for those of you who know the previous commissioner, Matt Sapolin was a very strong advocate for accessibility, and, in 2011, this is before wayfinding is even a word, we actually worked with the City of New York, with the Bloomberg's office, and with MapQuest.

People still remember MapQuest? Of course Google Map is taking over, or Apple Map, but back in the beginning, MapQuest was the organization. Then we work with them to create, in this case, Accessible New York City app, like first of a kind mobile, that can route you. If you landed at, let's say, LaGuardia airport, it takes all the information that was sitting on the shelf, like where is a...?

Let's say, I know, for example, subway 6 has a elevator in Canal Street in Chinatown, because my mother used that all the time. So, we took all that information that's usually on paper, convert it into digital form, so we can map out accessible routes. So, that was the kind of a use cases we got involved in. And then, in 2016, I hate to say, I retire, I use the word, I graduated, from IBM, but I knew that I wanted to continue working this field, and bring some of my business background to help really elevate this topic, this disability, from just a technology or a compliance to a, what I call the business imperatives.

So, I formed my own company, and also, at the same time, that's when, around 2018, I decided I need to write, put some of my thoughts on paper. And also, frankly, it was reacting to some of the DEI movement. In 2015, if you remember, there was a big Google walkout about tech industry, in this case, not inclusive enough of women. And, since I'm a woman, I'm a minority, I am over age 50.

and now I'm acquiring, you know, if I don't wear my contact lenses, I'm legally blind, so I kind of hit all the categories of the inclusion. And, to me, it is very important that company, when they... not just talk about inclusion, but what I call the Authentic Inclusion. In this case, to me, the Authentic Inclusion is the intersection of inclusion and technology.

Of course, I'm a technologist, I spent, like I said, 37 year at IBM. So, when I look at a problem, I always come in from the technology angle. So, what I wanted to do through my book, and through my talk, and through my advisory work, is to educate the C-suite that if you are going to talk DEI, which is probably the hottest topic, you need to think about technology. And, of course, in this case, technology translates into digital inclusion and accessibility.

The business trend is such that... Why do I talk business trends? So, if you get to the middle to upper management level, especially a C-suite level, they actually look beyond the horizon and they want to understand where the trend is going to make the investment decision. Many of them actually prefer not to spend any time looking at, for example, the compliance topic, because, from their perspective, it's more of an operational issue that they can delegate down to other people to do.

And as a CEO, as a C-suiter, your job is to look forward and future looking. So, a lot of times I go to these executives, C-suite, and then spend time to talk to them about business trends. There is four, or three or four, major mega trends that's happening, that make this topic a business imperative, not just a compliance. Why is that?

First, you look at the demographics, right? The aging population issue is huge, especially right now. I don't know if you've read the report, the birth rate is going down, down, down. So, you're going to have a society that's aging, not enough young people.

Whether it's World Health Organization, or UN, everybody's anticipating that we're going to have a problem of not enough economic labor resources to sustain the societal movement. You see that happening in Japan already, right? But then country like... Did you know that Spain and Italy, already over 25% of the population is over 65?

So, this is a huge issue in that we can only..., we have to lean on technology to help address that. And then you also, of course, have the legislation, I don't want to drill too much on that. You all know what's happening, whether it's Canada, whether it's EU, there's all these different accessibility law regulation coming. You know why?

Because technology has moved from the back office, mainframe processing, you know, speed and feeds over productivity, to in the front pocket or front purse, in the form factor of, like, a iPhone. So, when you start talking about consumerization of technology, then things like privacy and security and accessibility is a must, too. It's not a 'nice to have', because human beings care about their privacy, care about security and accessibility, and you already see that this kind of focus on what I call the the human first topic is emerging And this is a survey coming out of Deloitte.

Of course, you'll know that for any organization, whether it is a private or public, the board actually advises the C-suite as to their direction. The latest survey is that 73% of the board member now think about workforce diversity and inclusion as a key topic. Now, of course, we're still at the very beginning of this. I'm not a baseball fan, but I'm a Bostonian, so we know the Red Sox and Yankees are always fighting, but I was given this expression, we are just in the second inning versus, you know....

So, in other words, we're just at the beginning of this journey, a lot of these business executives is beginning to come aware of the topic, but they don't know what to do yet, and collectively, frankly, that's our job and our responsibility to lead them or to teach them, to educate them as to what to do. They really come into this topic, in many cases, with innocence and ignorance. And any time when people are innocent, ignorant of a culture or of a topic, it's okay.

I can tell you that, for example, going back to a personal example, back in 1981, my first customer is in Grand Rapids, and I went to see this customer, and the first thing, he's never seen a Chinese person, let alone a kind of a business person from IBM. And the first thing he asked me is, How do you make fortune cookies? Now, of course, I can take it in many different way.

First, I didn't know fortune cookies. Did you know that fortune cookies is an American invention? So, I could be insulted. I could be, but the way that he asked me, because he lives in Grand Rapids in Michigan, and what he does on the weekend is go hunting and fishing, I guess you can call it a really very American lifestyle, so I don't blame him for asking a question like that.

The same thing with a lot of the executives at the C-suite level, they actually don't know. They don't know what they don't know. And so, I think, in some cases we were just talking on the sideline, that sometimes we get a little heated about lack of progress, and we get mad, we get sad, and whatever, but I think we have to really keep a long view. This is, accessibility is going to be one of those things that will never go away.

As long as there's technology, there will be challenges for you to work on. So, let's take a breather and be very calm about it, and work on this. Here's another survey, by Gartner. For those of you who don't know, but C-suite executive today, especially in the technology area, they look to Forrester, they look to Gartner, they look at IDC, these analyst companies to give them some kind of a headlight as to what's happening.

So, it's actually very fitting that, for example, the Gartner talked about 2022, 2023, the strategic business priority focus includes topics like workplace diversity, which of course played directly into our area. And, for the first time, we're beginning to see that not just price or revenue matters to the C-suiter, but people and purpose. So again, you are seeing the way the beginning to come in, maybe not to the extent that we would like, but the reality, and we have to celebrate when we see something that's different, that the business is beginning to recognize that this is something they have to do.

So, there are some proof points, right? We have seen that, in this case, the gender diversity action really led to the CEO action. For example, for inclusion, we also see in the business round table led by a conglomerate of all these top companies in the United States, led by JP Morgan Chase and Jamie Dimon, talked about how we need to put diversity, or Larry Fink at BlackRock, right? In his letter to the shareholders, he talked about inclusion being very important, just like environment.

Last year, he wrote a letter to the investors. I mean, BlackRock, for those of you, if you're into the investment community, they are the biggest investment. We're talking about billions and billions of dollars of investment. So, when these CEOs speak, other CEOs listen.

And, in our own backyard, Valuable 500. How many of you have heard about Valuable 500?

Okay, you should look it up. Valuable 500 is a very interesting initiative, it's started by this lady from Ireland, her name is Caroline Casey. I've known Caroline for many years, and she used to work for Accenture. She's low vision, and a very smart lady.

Anyway, for many years, she's trying to promote disability, inclusion, and employment, and just kept hitting her head against the wall and not making progress. So, she finally decided that she's going to take this all the way to the top. So, in 2019, she went to Davos World Economic Forum. Everybody heard about World Economic Forum?

That's like the who's who, right? It's like the Hollywood party that you want to be seen. It's invitation only. And supposedly these people go to Davos and WEF to talk about what the future of the world, future of the society, future of technology will be.

Anyway, she was able to garner up the. top companies around the world. That's why it's called Valuable 500. You're talking about Accenture, you're talking about Unilever, you're talking about IBM, you're talking about Microsoft, taking a pledge in terms of a focus on hiring people with disability.

Now, the critic will say, just putting out an accessibility statement, or whatever, doesn't do anything, but that is the beginning. So, the Valuable 500 is actually helping to galvanize, to create a movement in this area. And recently, I just did a little Googling, and some of the headlines already show how business is beginning to use accessibility as a differentiation, and also as a market expansion play. Earlier, I talked about China actually adopting WCAG 2.0.

In this case, Huawei MatePad 11 July, 2022 update brings new accessibility feature. Now, who would've thought Huawei, a company that's in the telco space, highly controversial, that they will do accessibility? They actually have a full blown Tech for Good program, and actually putting some money and investment into this area. Then you also see Forbes writing up, The Power of the Purple Dollar: A Business Case for Web Accessibility'.

You have, in this case, New York Times talk about hiring an individual by the name of Jamie Tanner as the Accessibility Visuals Editor. So, you can see that accessibility is beginning to seep into the mainstream press, and also actions. The latest headline that I just got from AdWeek... Of course, we all know that advertising's huge in influencing people's perception, because we live in a consumer world, right?

We are all influenced by what the advertiser tell us to buy and to do. And so, in this case, AdWeek had a article on the importance of digital accessibility in the new economy. So, these are mainstream press carrying this kind of message. And this is actually quite important, because that's what the C-suite will respond to, that the article is coming out.

Let's say, American Association of People with Disabilities, not that it's not important, it just doesn't have the kind of impact as do some of these mainstream press. And we're seeing startups beginning to pick this area up as their differentiation play. On this chart I listed four startups, AIRA, Personal AI, 3Play Media, and Inclusively. These are four startup companies that I actually have the honor to advise or work with, and it's absolutely encouraging.

For example, Inclusively, Charlotte Dales, she's probably in her thirties, CEO, never knew anything about accessability, but she has a cousin who has Down Syndrome. So, she would inspire her cousin to create a business over hiring people with disabilities, and she's learning as she goes. And then, because she didn't know anything about accessibility or disability, again, she came in with very fresh perspective. In just one year she created an employment platform, and now you have major players like Charles Schwab, Microsoft, advertising on her employment platform, focusing on hiring people with disabilities.

AIRA? Some of you who are here in the audience know AIRA, AIRA started out to be more of a wayfinding kind of a technology, still does very well. They now just came out with a new glass, what do you call them? Wearables.

So that it can be hands free, not using their cell phone for navigation, but they're pivoting, for example, adding additional learning use cases. And so, these are all companies who are for profit, and I'm always for profit, because I think for profit is the way you sustain and you can scale, are making a difference. The 3Play Media of course, is started with two MIT Sloan students doing captioning. they feel that there's a need.

Again, they knew nothing about... They weren't deaf or anything, they just felt like this is the right thing to do. Now they just bought, for example, National, Captioning, of Canada, it's growing very fast. So.

If you're... how many of you are Peloton? I'm not by the way. But anyway, they caption for NFL, Peloton, especially all the streaming medias, the top end streaming content, they do a lot of work for them.

By the way, I just learned actually from Meryl Evans about. If you want to have a best practice captioning, and audio description, watch the mini- series of Stranger Things. How many of you have seen the Stranger Things? I just finished the ninth episode of this season.

No? Oh, don't give it away. Okay, I'm not going to give it away, but fascinating to learn, from Meryl, analysis of how the Stranger Things becoming a phenomenon., I mean, I hate scary movies, but I even watched it. So, this all leads to that, as far as I'm concerned, when I talk to business, government business, nonprofit business, or business business, you know what I try to advise these C-suiters is that you have to understand that, if you are talking about innovation, which everybody talks about, they want to differentiate, they talk about innovation, then you must recognize and understand that diversity is the difference maker.

Because, I can tell you because of my background, because I'm different, I look at the problem differently, I solve the problem differently. So, each one of you brings a unique perspective. If you have the homogeneous same kind of a people or background, you're not going to have the breakout creativities. I also challenge them that talking about inclusion's not going to be good enough.

You have got to operationize it. When I say operationize, that means you need to have process, you need to have a procedure, you need to have governance, and to make it a enterprise-wide or company-wide initiative, not a one-off thing. And then, last but not the least, you have to think about this as if your future depends on it as a strategic imperative. If you think about it as a compliance, just checking the box, in some cases don't even bother, because, frankly, your customer, your employee will notice that, right?

That's why my book title is Authentic Inclusion Drives Disruptive Innovation, and the keyword is authenticity, to me. We all know who's real, who's not real. And I think, especially in the DEI world, we're getting to the point just talking about is not going to be enough, you have got to be able to do it. So, this is just a quick, 6-E framework I use with some of my strategy advisory work.

I'm not going to go through the detail, but it's a holistic view of implementation that I suggest to companies. Start with Embrace. A lot of times the question is, does your CEO, do your senior board members embrace the idea of digital inclusion? Now, just because you embrace it, can you articulate?

That's the next E, which is Envision. Can you envision that? What does that translate into strategy for your company? Okay.

Once you translate that into your strategy, can you Enact it? Enact includes processes, governance policies, so that it stays, versus just maybe a goodhearted CEO promote accessibility, and then he or she moves on, and then everything collapse, and, in order to sustain it, you have to have policy. And then, can you Enlist resources? Resources means physical resources like people, budget, money.

The next E is Enable. Are you enabling your employees? Are you training them? Are you sending them to IAAP to get certification?

And, last but not least, Ensure. Do you have metrics that's relevant to your business today, that you measure the progress against? So, I try to use it, what I call the 6-E Framework, to work and educate the executive in this area. And, a lot of time, I also talk to them about leadership in this whole area of diversity or inclusion, especially in the area of disability.

For us to be able to lead in this area, you first have to learn. You really have to be very humble, and learn about what this thing is about. Like I learned about disability by having people on my team who's blind, who's deaf. Some of you probably know Dimitri Kanevsky, who's now at Google.

I learned from Matt King, who's right now at Facebook, blind, deaf, real scientist engineer that taught me things. And I listen to their requirements. I cannot assume that I know. A lot of people go through the empathy training, and then start approximating the experience.

No, you cannot. You have to listen. And then you have to go through what we call the lived experience, then you can lead. So, in order to make inclusion to be truly authentic, you actually not just need to have the technology, or business, but you really have to have a leadership approach that's different.

Why do we need it now? Like I mentioned, we are in the point of lots of distraction in the marketplace, but accessibility can really help to make sure that, if you do it right, it can provide the product differentiation, the market expansion and talent acquisition. I'm going to start ending in my talk about... To me, this topic, I always say, started out to be a job, and then became a career, and then become a calling.

Because I, in my 37 years of IBM, held many positions, never had I have one job where I actually can align the principle, what I believe as an individual, and a purpose that why I'm here in this world, at the same time be able to generate differentiated, revenue or profit or income for a company, and for myself. So, this is a great area, especially for younger people who want to think about career path.

I truly believe that this will be one of the lasting career opportunity or path. And I also do a special shout out, especially, to women in tech, because a lot of times when we talk about combining accessibility user experience, it really is understanding, having that empathetic orientation, and in many cases, women, frankly, in general have that kind of innate capability. So. I'm going to end my presentation.

During the pandemic, when everything was looking really, really gloom and sad, and I didn't want to read anything that's heavy, so I went back to read this, my favorite book, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupé ry, and one of the famous phrases from The Little Prince is, "Here is my secret, it is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

So, what we're talking about here, accessibility, is about human experience. Maybe you cannot see it. Maybe you don't have data. We are like a data driven society.

No, sometimes data does not tell all the story. So, trust your God. Trust intuition. And, believe me, when you actually talk to the senior executives, you cannot make enough case by translating the revenue accessibility is going to bring to the company, but you can change heart.

And, that's what we need actually, to really make this a successful and sustaining movement. So, if you're interested what I have shared with you, like Joseph said, I wrote a book. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and, yeah, so I am doing my thing as an independent, I guess you can say entrepreneur, learning the business. Every day is different, but really enjoying this journey.

And, hopefully, you enjoyed learning about me. So, I guess at this point, thank you.

Thank you so much. So, we do have some questions from the live stream, which I've got on my phone right there, but we'll start off with in person. Would anybody in the audience, does anyone have a question for Francis?

I don't have a question. I would like to say, I am severely visually impaired, and I am also very hard of hearing. I am considered deaf blind, and champions like you are making a difference. I am employed at a tech giant and everything.

There's so many tools inside the company, and so many different aspects of employment, to create the complete picture that literally everyone can jump aboard. And so, thank you for helping to make it possible for people like me to be employed. Well, thank you. Francis, this one is from the live stream.

The first question is from Christine, and it is, How do we help use this upswing in C-suite and board level interest awareness, and engagement in DEI, as a powerful enabler of A11y and accessibility, rather than a frustration that DEI is in focus and disability often is not? Well, this actually takes some strategy to plan out. In my advisory work, a lot of times I work with an executive who's been given the responsibility to champion the accessibility, but how do you do that?

How do you get started? I think one very important thing is, find the opportunity to, in some cases, do reverse mentoring to your senior executive, get that hard share. Like I said, sometimes it just start with little things, but if we overwhelm the executive with all the problems that we have... because, let's face it, in the accessibility world, we have a lot of problems.

But, executives don't like to hear problems, they like actually to hear, I will say, good things only, but I think sharing some of these broader business trends, and also these bigger stories, sometimes can catch them in the different mindset. And then give you the forum to go further.. Alright, next question, from the livestream, from YouTube, How do you influence the C-suite? Where would be the best way to start engaging with them, to get them to think about people with disabilities?

One of the key themes of my book.... It's ironic because I'm a technologist, I'm a business person, but I actually have put out this whole thing about Human First. I think we are at a point in our society that we have to do away with all these labels, all these topics, and then meet each person as an individual first. And so, when I engage in the executives, I actually try to spend the first minute, or it depends on how much time I have, but the first part of the time is always trying to get to know him or her as an individual.

Because, what you will find that, by engaging at a personal level, sharing either your history, your background, really make that a conscious effort, that actually give you more leeway to then present your point of view versus just coming in, go facts only, or data only, because our topic is about human being, you know. We actually want to stop sometimes these C-suite executive from reading a spreadsheet, or thinking about only numbers matters, because you are doing the on data kind of initiative.

Thank you very much. That was, a great answer. I've got another question, from Thomas, actually. What companies do you think are doing great work in accessibility?

I think, I mean, from the product side, I think we all would agree, Microsoft as a company, right? And then you say, why? Well, you know, because Satya Nadella, there's a CEO live the experience, and therefore he leads with authenticity. So, that's why I think that company has gone from...

Actually, we worked with Microsoft quite a bit on the standards, when ARIA and all these things were coming out, 10, 15 years ago. It is a different world now. I mean, Microsoft certainly is leading. I think, in the consulting world, a company like Accenture is doing a lot of good work in bringing up this topic.

You see more and more company actually do it. And also, even like Deloitte and Forrester, everybody's beginning to have a focus in this area. So, it's not just one company. Used to be for longest time, it's just tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, but now you've seen a variety of industry coming in, which is great.

Thank you very much. Alright, one more, from Meryl. Meryl's talking to a leader in diversity at a company, and asked if they had like a senior leader focused in accessibility. They said, Not yet.

Is there something that I, or you, could say to someone working at a large company, to make sure that they take action to make accessibility a priority? Well, yeah, I think if you Google, like I said, this is only... When I was IBM's Chief of Accessibility, that was 2014, that's eight years ago, at that time only us and Microsoft. But, if you Google Chief Accessibility Officer, quite a few of them now.

And, on LinkedIn, I know there are actually people, recruiters are out there, looking for talent like that. So, the question I would say is, How come you haven't? Like, you're going to be late to the game. Again, going back to these business imperatives, people don't just create this kind of a title for the fun of it, there is a reason behind it.

And you have major company like a Microsoft who's leading, who's stock prices is going up, up, up and away, then maybe they should take a look, you know? So, this is how you can get their attention, by referencing external companies and other data that prove that this is actually an in thing to do so to speak. Yep. They're a great example.

I've got a question from the audience. In your work as a business strategist and executive coach, what are some of the main themes and challenges that you come into, working with your clients? Well, believe me, right now, when I do presentation, people think, you know, wow, everything seems to be so, you know... There are many, many challenges, right?

And, in some cases, actually learning when to retreat. There are situation or individual that you just cannot win over, and that one, actually to know that, okay, it's okay not to engage because you know, um... I don't know whether you know, but the Chinese, there's a very famous military strategist by the name of Sun Tzu. If you go to the West Point military academy, all the military academy actually studies Sun's strategy.

You can Google it, they are like 36 tactics, and the last one is actually when to run away, you know? I actually use that.. So, I save my own sanity, and save my team's resources, and just know that I need to either hold, or retreat and wait it out, because, again, accessibility is a long game. It's not going to go away.

It always going to be here. So you kind of have to learn to pace yourself. Leaders come and go, things change, but if this is what you believe is the right thing to do, sometimes you just wait it out. Not everything can be solved.

It's because, again, coming back, we are talking about human topic. Human is the most stubborn and hard to change thing in the world. So, have patience and know your limit and... Don't get angry.

That's the thing, do not get angry.

Anger doesn't do anybody any good. That's why I'm getting more and more Zen, partially, is because there are frustrations, but be okay with it.