Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, where we talk about issues in underrepresentation and have difficult conversations.
Underrepresented in Tech is a free database with a goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.
Hello, Samah.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello, Michelle.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: I love it when I get to sing that to you. That's so fun.
What people don't understand, I think, or maybe they do, I don't know, but they don't necessarily think about when it comes to our podcast, is that some weeks we don't know what we want to talk about, and we actually have to put on our thinking caps. As my second-grade teacher used to say, put on your thinking cap and do a little web search.
It's not that there are a few issues left for underrepresented people in tech. That is not the case at all.
It's that there are so many that sometimes we have difficulty choosing, and we don't want to tell the same story week after week after week. So we try to. Yeah, we try to, like, change it up a little bit. Right. And so we met this morning, and we were going to talk about Ariana Grande, which I think would have made people like, what?
But we couldn't find. I found the link to the article where she's doing some amazing things, but I could not find the link where people were lambasting her about it. But let's talk about that for just two seconds before we skip to the next one. So Ariana Grande has started. I already lost the link, so I don't remember what the thing is called, but, oh, no, I found it. The Brighter Days Ahead Foundation.
So Ariana Grande started the Brighter Days Ahead foundation, and it includes the Protect and Defend Fund, which empowers grassroots groups that advocate for LGBTQ rights, civil rights, and reproductive justice. Includes grantees such as the Trans Youth Emergency Project and Defunding Our Neighbors Fund.
It has the Heal and Dream Fund, which supports access. Supports access to mental health and community support care. Includes grantees such as Backline and Trans Lifeline.
Seen and Celebrated Fund amplifies LGBTQ voices. Includes grantees such as Gender Liberation Movement and Translash Media. And the Emergency Support Fund, a responsive support fund which helps communities respond to urgent movements with aid and resources.
So in the past, you know, celebrities like her who have so much money from all the amazing things they do, and assuming that they are investing, well, they have even more than we could even possibly think about. Probably like Taylor Swift and some of those people, they get yelled at enough in the media for having the money and not doing things with it. So now this woman is doing something with her money to help the LGBTQ community primarily.
I think others are able to fit in there, too. But like, it's really pointed towards the LGBTQ meeting.
Now, what I saw on Facebook, I expected to read the comments and see people lambasting why you would support the LGBTQ community. Because, of course, a lot of people on the right wing side of things don't want us to support them. Instead, I found comment after comment and comment after comment on her body, how she looks, her hair, she's too skinny, she needs to eat a sandwich. She's the wrong person for young women to look up to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I don't know what her medical history is. I don't know why she is as thin as she is, and I'm not going to comment on that. But I wish that other people wouldn't either because it's none of our business. She's doing well with her things. She has a doctor, she has a family. We all have thoughts, right? I mean, I have thought to myself before, oh my gosh, if her collarbone sticks out anymore, they're gonna cut right through her skin, right? Like that kind of thing goes in your own head sometimes. But that's not the kind of stuff that you post in a comment on Facebook. Unless you really wanna look like an asshole. So anyway, that's the story we're gonna talk about, but we didn't have enough fodder for it today. But just in case you are interested, you can go look it up.
Let me see if I can find the actual link.
There's about. There's got to be a link here. Anyway, she put it on Instagram. So if you go to her Instagram, you can see the outline of the story that she's. Of what she's trying to tell. And it's not that far back, it's just a couple of weeks old.
So you know, please peruse that. Think what you think. But then we started to.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Go ahead, you're just kind of. You're breaking up a little bit.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sorry. For me, I was like saying it was really amazing because of the state of the people. Like she has influence and she's doing impact. And again, we should not stop shaming everybody because we.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: No woman will ever. Anyone will be happy otherwise. You're too thick or you're too thin, you're too tall, or you're too blonde, or what did you do with your hair? And for me, just going after her Physical appearance, it was not okay. She's doing something good. I wish a lot of people who has influencer and have the power to do it to do it. She believes in the community, she wants to help the community, and it was the best option to do it. So.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's great.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: And I will walk with you a little bit to have a better connection.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Okay, so we started to talk about that this way. So, just giving people an idea of what our morning looks like when we start to chat with it. I say morning because it's still morning for me. Well, actually, it's 12:30 now for me, and for you, it's like in the evening, you're ready for dinner. So, so when we, when we first talk, I should say instead of the morning, what our time together looks like. And so then we move from there to like, well, let's just go to ChatGPT and see what kind of issues there have been. And so I said, " What kinds of negative things have been happening in underrepresented communities in tech in the last two weeks? Please provide links. And so it told me that AI-driven layoffs continue. DEI programs continue shrinking. There are accessibility concerns in AI, and growing concerns from advocacy groups because community organizations and funding are shrinking. Support is shrinking. So we looked at all four of those things, and we don't want to talk about layoffs again because, quite honestly,
[00:05:55] Speaker B: I can't hear it anymore.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: I'm still laid off, still looking for, still looking for my next big thing. But we looked at the continued rollback of DI efforts. Is that the one? Oh no. Accessibility still isn't being built into AI products. So I clicked through, right? Is that the one? Yeah. So we click through, and we find this, this letter, this online thing from Ricky Onsman. Now, if you don't know, Ricky Onsman's a WordPresser, and here we like randomly chat GPT, and Googling shows us his article.
The first was from May 19, 2026. The second one was way more frequent than it was on May 20. So don't run that. Not that over two days he wrote this, and it's a very long, very well-articulated article. There's way more in this article than we will be able to touch base on, and there's a two-part series, so you can come back for the second part. So definitely we will link these articles in the show notes. But we did want to talk a little bit about what I mean by AI is all that anybody talks about, and I don't think we've talked about it that much on this show, so I guess we have to get with the program and talk about it.
So one of the things that I read in here, which I thought was like, whoa.
The first is these tools, the tools that we use can save time, help scale accessibility efforts, but they do have limitations. For example, never use accessibility overlays because they actually aren't accessible, as people think that they are. It's a load of bullets. You get sold, just don't. Then it goes on to talk about code suggestions and all these other things. It gets to the system; this area of the article is called bias.
And the first thing that you read is that AI systems learn from data, and that data is not always inclusive. As a matter of fact, most of the time, it probably isn't because history hasn't been inclusive. And so if it's drawing on a lot of history, you're probably not getting good information.
Then it says if an AI system is trained on data that lacks diversity, which it almost always is, it will also reflect those gaps. This could lead to biased outcomes.
So there's a list, there's a bias points, bullet points. My brain is not functioning today either, which talks about the different problems. So I thought we could read down through those and talk about them. So, do you want to start with the first one?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
There's high error rates or complete failure in voice recognition may be evident for people with non-standard speech patterns. This is common in people with viral disabilities. And as an example, they put Stephen Hopkins, who uses a speech synthesizer that AI might have trouble understanding, which is really nice. Good example.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it's really interesting too, even just accents, right? So, like if you have a Google Home or you have an Alexa speaker in your home, it learns to adapt to you, you know, where you're coming from, what you are. So. And I could speak to it in Spanish, right? It understands my really bad Spanish. But somebody else might come in and not speak their native language but try to talk to them, in the car, because I have a car that I can just play music or in the. And it won't understand their Amer, their American language in a foreign accent. And that's just, that's not a disability, that's just saying simple things. But then you get people who have disability with speech. Speech impediments. There's a woman that I follow on TikTok who had tongue cancer and has had most of her tongue removed, and she's learning to speak again, and I have Trouble understanding her. I can't imagine that AI can understand her very well. So that's the first one that's built into this.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: And also, like there was one fun video, like, you know this English, English can go from Australian, American, South African to the British.
It was like in Scotland, they say instead of 11, like 11. And they're in the elevator, and you cannot press the button. You have to say which floor you go to, and then the speaker, like, say, " Can you repeat again which floor? And both of them, they're screaming, they say differently than 11.
And then she could not, and she could not cope with them and they would just get fed up and they went on the stairs. It's a funny sketch, but this is a show that, if different accents are also not compatible with our AI tools, they're not really accessible for different accents or if you have a different pronunciation. Because all of us, I'm not a native English speaker. Sometimes I pronounce things differently than they should be. And that sometimes causes an issue with AI to learn what I'm saying.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's similar to when I was in Italy for WordCamp. Italy, which was in Torino.
And everything had elevators, but the elevators were so small that I had to take the basket off the front of my scooter, go all the way, touch the glass or the wall in the elevator, and hope that the door would still close behind me because they were so tiny. So is it accessible?
Yeah, is it accessible like my polling place?
My polling place is one of those places that has a lift inside. So it's a, it's a church and you. And there are stairs to everything. There are stairs between levels with all this stuff. There's a lift.
My scooter's too big for the lift, so I can't vote there. So now I have to either vote early and go someplace else or vote by absentee ballot because I can't vote in my polling place because even though it's accessible, it's not accessible to me. So anyway, that's one of the ways that says that. So I'll read the next one.
AI facial recognition may not recognize non-standard faces. AI vision recognition tools struggle with non-standard or diverse physical appearances. Again, this is common in people with various disabilities and impairments. And the non-standard face they're showing on the screen is somebody who looks like they might have Down syndrome. And I'm absolutely drawing that just from looks. So forgive me if that's not what they're trying to show, but that is what it looks like they're trying to show. And think about people with, you know, maybe massive scarring or women who have to wear veils or choose to wear veils and face coverings, you know, and. And that's not always going to be something that's accessible for them either. Like my. My.
My PC laptop, which I gave to my boyfriend, because why am I using a PC? I don't game. His computer died, so I gave it to him. Anyway, when you first looked at it, I forgot what password I set up, and it had to do with her Facebook recognition.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: And so his brother was over trying to use the laptop, and he had to keep running out and putting it in front of my face because I couldn't remember the password. So, you know, if you are somebody who knows my face, but let's say I've got a black eye or, you know, I've got a mask on or anything, and then it's not going to work. So imagine for somebody who. It's not a temporary issue. That would be very difficult. For sure.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: All right, the next one.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: AI interaction that relies on touch interfaces is often inaccessible and unforgiving for people with mobility impairments and a lack of digital dexterity.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Dexterity. Yeah.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: AI can make touch targets too small and place them too close together. I can agree on that. Because if you have big hands, or sometimes with the screen touches, or if you have a tiny hand and you have to really push hard on it to see it. Yeah, this is really inaccessible.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it really is. And for people with arthritis and people who, you know, for whatever reason, aren't able to use that touchscreen or see it, understand where. That. Where the goal is. I play one game on my phone that I have to use a tiny little stylus with a little. Little tiny tip underneath the plastic at the end. Otherwise, it hit. My finger will hit four things at the same time. So, yeah, Gen AI that responds to user prompts frequently at this stage, perhaps even predominantly ignores the lives of people with disability in its response.
That's crazy.
I don't even know what to say to that. Like, let's just pretend that an entire group of people doesn't exist.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. It's so sad. Yeah.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: And these are people who pay money for all their services. So pay money to buy clothes, pay money to buy food, pay money to buy all the things in their life, just right. Like the rest of us do. And you're just gonna ignore them? I don't. I don't like that.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: And also, AI trained on board LLM largely treat people with disabilities as exceptions and don't include, consider, or even recognize them unless specifically referenced.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Referenced.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Yeah, this is really annoying because, like for me, it is, how can I say, it's like you're putting one specific group, you're not the target group as a customer, you're not including them. It's kind of a little bit.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: It is not as if for sure. It even says this kind of bias has very serious implications when AI is used to generate models of products or services intended to meet the needs of the whole community. And we've talked about this before, we've talked about how advertising only reaches certain groups of people. How, when there is advertising. The very first time that Cheerios, and it was less than five years ago, the very first time Cheerios showed an interracial couple with a mixed-race child, they got serious backlash because how dare a white person be married to or be in a relationship with a black person and produce this child? You know, that's my child, my child's a mixed-race child. You know, like shut up. Cheerios is doing the right thing, you know, but there are so many people that are just in their own little world and when you only use, I'm trying to think when you only use people who don't require accessibility, when you only use people who are white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant, whatever, the people at the top of the food chain kind of thing, you are missing out on so much rich history and heritage and people who want to buy your product but will look for somebody else to buy it from because you're not inclusive.
So I think it's important, I think it's really important that we think about how we use AI and what story we're getting back from AI, what information we're getting back, and whether it's accessible or not. Does it include accessibility for people like you and me? We're using it. We don't have any of those issues. We don't have to worry about touching the screen, and we don't have to worry about hearing things. We can see everything perfectly fine.
We are not part of the people who necessarily need that accessibility on a full-time basis. But there are times when people like you or me might break a wrist or fall and hurt ourselves or whatever, and have to rely on that technology for a small amount of time. But there are people who live it every single day. And so we really need to make sure that the tools that we use are representing our entire community, not just the parts that we want to show on the back cover. Of a magazine.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: And also as you said earlier, the AI takes from the data which really exist now and the history, and what has happened now, it's like a lot of things are not accessible taking it from it. But also, we can train it, we can add more information because, as you said earlier, it's like accessibility.
Of course, we're talking about seeing and touching. I think with accessibility it's kind of. Yeah, it's not, how can I say it's not physical most of the time? And that's why like. And there's. It's not a large number of people who have accessibility. I have some accessibility, you have some accessibility. We need it. But it's still like the AI tools can be trained, especially in feeding, sharing information and all of, and all of what we mentioned above in the bullet points. This is a nice article. It's a very long one, but it's worth reading. So.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
We would love to have some guests on the show, too. So I've invited a few people who are looking at calendars and things like that. But if you're listening to the show and you have a topic or you've experienced something or you've seen something that you'd like to call out or learn more about with us, we would love to either have your topic for us to discuss or have you on the show to talk about it. So hit us up on socials or gosh, I mean, you know how to get in touch with us right through the websites find you but we're around so make sure that, that you're able to get in touch with one of us because we would love to, you know, show more than just our thoughts and scramble at the last minute for some ideas sometimes.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And we love each other. We love talking with each other, but also talking with other people.
So, more than welcome, feel free to reach out to us.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. So until next week, when again, we don't know what we'll be talking about, but who knows, Something will come up in the, in the news between now and then.
We will be back next week with more, and thanks for hanging with us during that little sabbatical we took earlier this year. And I'm glad we're back and ready to really hit the rest of this year as hard as we can and try to make as much of a change for the good as we possibly can. So thanks for hanging in there with me, Samah, and for being the perfect partner.
Thank you for everything.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Okay, see you next week.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: See you next week.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Bye.
If you're interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode, or just want to say hi? Go to underrepresentedintech.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Com.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: See you next week.
