The Art Parlor for May, 2025 Presents: Johnny Cassidy

May 12, 2025

Episode Notes

Welcome to the May edition of The Art Parlor! This month, oru guest is Johnny Cassidy. He is a BBC journalist and a fellow for the Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism. Johnny Cassidy has been a TV and radio producer at the BBC for more than 17 years. He has recently moved into a new role into digital news, working on longer-term projects, specifically on how to best reach opportunity and under-served audiences. He is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion and believes strongly in universal accessibility for everyone.

We are proud to now offer you a transcript of this episode and those in the future. Thank you and enjoy!

AI-generated Transcript

Opinions expressed on ACB Media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by Friends in Art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff.

Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work.

Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world.

And now, here's your host, Ann Chiappetta.

Welcome to the Art Parlor.

I'm your president, Ann Chiappetta, and the Art Parlor is brought to you by Friends in Art, the place where blind and low vision artists and audiences thrive.

You can find us on www.friendsinart.org.

Today's guest is Johnny Cassidy.

He's a BBC journalist and a fellow for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Johnny Cassidy has been a TV and radio producer at the BBC for more than 17 years.

He's recently moved into a new role into digital news, working on longer-term projects, specifically focused on how best to reach opportunity and underserved audiences.

He is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion and believes strongly in universal accessibility for everyone.

Welcome Johnny.

Hello, Ann.

How are you doing?

Thank you so much for having me here.

Yeah, wonderful.

I'm glad you could make it and we managed to figure out the time change.

At last, eventually, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So before we get started into my questions, I just want our listeners to know how we met and we met through the Descriptathon of all things.

And I just wanted to know what you thought of the overall experience for anyone that's listening that might be considering to do a Descriptathon.

Well, the first thing to say is, if you are considering to do it next year, go for it.

It was a fabulous, fantastic experience.

Not least because I got to meet you, Ann, and we're talking here today.

So if nothing else, that was a huge bonus.

But the Descriptathon, it was a really good experience.

It wasn't anything that I had experienced before.

I didn't know what to expect really from it.

So it was totally different.

I think, you know, trying to work like that in such a big, massive collaborative way with so many people, hats off and huge kudos to the whole team at Descriptathon who managed to corral and manage that big group of people.

And I think for so many people to show a passion and an interest in making images accessible to blind and low vision people, I think, you know, it's a it was just there's so many positives from it.

It was just really, really good.

So if anybody is considering it for next year, definitely go for it.

I thought it was fantastic.

Yeah, I totally agree.

That's why I keep coming back.

I think once you do it, you can't stop.

It's just it's such an affirming experience for everybody.

And you know, and it's not an easy thing either.

There's, you know, times where you're like, oh, boy, I got to keep going.

There's a lot of frenetic parts that just kind of come together.

You don't think it's going to come together.

And you say, oh, oh, wow.

You know, I don't know if we'll make it to the end.

But then you do.

It's like, I don't know how it happens, but it happens.

I think the management team must be doing so much really, as you say, frenetic stuff in the background, behind the scenes, under the waterline.

Because it does.

You know, I was exactly the same as you.

I was thinking this is chaotic.

And then it slowly but surely comes together and you find your feet.

You know what it is that you're doing before you know it.

Those three days are up and three big full days and they're open.

There's really good, solid product to show for it.

So yeah, brilliant experience.

Yeah, I agree.

Wow.

OK, so there's a plug for the descriptor that's done.

So more serious things, I guess.

Could you share with us your vision loss journey and maybe incorporate that into who you are and maybe how you got to be a writer and that kind of.

Yeah, from a young age, I was always short sighted.

I wore glasses, first of all.

But when I was I think I was maybe as young as seven, I started wearing contact lenses because there are these big, heavy glasses that I wore.

They were big, thick glasses.

And my mom used to say that, you know, I don't do a national health.

The UK is the National Health Service and they were the ones the most comfortable glasses.

I don't know if anybody remembers the wire framed ones with curly wire that went around your ear and really hurt my ears because there were heavy lenses.

And, you know, my mom used to say I used to hide them down the fields and, you know, I would always have to be getting new ones and everything.

I ended up wearing contact lenses and lenses for a good while.

But then when I was 11, I you know, people can hear from my accent.

I grew up just outside Belfast in the north of Ireland.

When I was 11, I.

Part of the situation that was there, I was beat up.

I lost the eyesight of my right eye straight away.

That was a detached retina.

But then for years, my left eye was fine.

And it didn't really bother me at all.

You know, I went to mainstream school.

Luckily, I did.

I learned to touch type of school.

Maybe there was a prediction of what might happen later on.

But when I was maybe early 20s, I left.

I started going.

I had a series of detached retina operations, maybe five or six operations.

And it slowly, gradually during my 20s and deteriorated more and more.

And such times that I had to start using the white stick when it did start going, my left eye, I was actually studying at art college in Belfast.

I was studying fine art as an artist, as a painter.

But my eyesight started getting to the point where I just couldn't do it anymore.

So I left.

I got a bit lost for a while.

Didn't know what I was going to do.

And I come up with this really, sort of, I thought, very sensible idea of transferring my understanding and experience as an artist into sound art.

Something that was tangible to me.

I no longer could see visually enough to paint or to draw or to do clay work.

I suppose I could have done clay work.

But I had this idea of going into sound art.

So I went to study sound engineering and that never really took off.

But, you know, again, went out into the wilderness, lost for a while and went to university, studied literature, history.

And my mum passed away.

She left a few pounds and it wasn't that much at all.

But I used it to do something really concrete.

And that's when I decided that when I was at university, I studied or discovered a penchant, a liking for writing and research.

And I thought, hmm, and I thought maybe I could move into journalism.

So I went and did a postgraduate qualification in journalism.

And rather naively, the first job that I applied for after completing that postgraduate qualification was at the BBC.

And weirdly, I got that job.

And I do, I do.

I still say, I think to this day, it was my mum.

My mother was there.

You're sort of guiding.

She was at my back.

She, as soon as she seen that it got settled with the first job, then that was it.

It was almost, I always knew you from the point that I decided that's what I was going to do.

I committed myself so much to it.

I've done lots of things in the past that if I look back on it now and look and ask myself honestly, I don't think I'd committed wholeheartedly to it.

But I think because of the.

The intrinsic value of being able to do it as a memory for my mother, I knew in my heart that it wasn't that I was 100% committed to that I was going to be successful at.

Your journey is very similar to my own.

When my mum passed away, it's so odd that you mentioned all this.

She made me promise that I would finally publish my my book, my poetry book.

And then, yeah, like I always and I was like, OK, I'll do that.

Right.

And then when we were going through her, her stuff, we're going through all of her items in her apartment.

We found her poetry that she never showed us.

And she wrote I there's two poems that since they were handwritten, my my sister in law, she transposed them for me and put them in word and sent them to me.

And that was just like, OK, I know where this writing thing came from.

I know where this compulsion or this connection to the written word and literature and art and all that stuff came from.

I didn't really fully understand it until then.

So that's a beautiful thing, you know, I think in the same vein, it's almost.

You know, it gives you an answer, but it also gives you something to aim towards.

No, you're not doing it for yourself.

You're somehow putting that goal.

And it is a goal, you're doing it for someone else.

So it makes it you almost.

You are non-selfish thing.

So you're doing it for what might be considered a right reason.

Yeah.

It just seems natural, right?

It's where you should be at, you know, and and then you can apply it to whatever you want in your life.

Right.

It gives you the freedom to do that.

I think that's that's I think what now that I think about what happened and how things were and, you know, all these little symbols and things that happened along the way after mom passed away.

Like, you know, gave me freedom to do what I wanted to do or what I was meant to do.

Like permission or, you know, I don't know.

I think age is a wonderful thing as well.

You know, I'm becoming a bit older.

I'm a bit more in the middle age now, whatever middle age is.

But I think that.

You know, I have heard it said that.

Use this wasted on the young anyways, it is.

It's true, isn't it?

Because you you become so much wiser and you can see things a lot clearer.

The older you get.

Yeah.

Wisdom is hindsight is wisdom, right?

Yeah.

Oh, interesting stuff.

So let's pivot a little and talk about your professional life and your work with BBC and Reuters.

And talk about your project that you mentioned to me.

Yeah.

What you currently do and what drives you to do that and that kind of stuff.

Well, when I started and again, this is when I started to BBC, I started as a business and economics journalist and I.

I was a huge surprise to me, first of all, that's where I ended up to a lot of friends and family who you could never envisage me as a business journalist.

You know, I'm rubbish with money.

I don't have a clue about cash flow.

You know, I live for today and I've always been like that.

And I am again naive.

But when I was a business and economics journalist and that's been primarily what I what I did at the BBC 17 years this year, I've been there.

And I think for 14 of them, I was a business and economics journalist.

But then.

I think, you know, I started understanding the direction of travel really for the news industry and journalism as a whole, and it was moving digital and it was moving away from that linear right of TV and radio, which is what I had mainly worked in.

I'd worked in all of our major network news programmes and on TV and radio.

I'd done a bit of digital online stuff, but an opportunity arose and I moved over into.

It was a brand new team that was part of a new structure and it was called Digital Special Projects.

And the beauty about moving into a new team, a brand new team that is virgin territory in a way, is that everybody was finding their feet, trying to figure out what this team was.

Your digital special projects.

I thought, well, that sounds that sounds fascinating.

That sounds intriguing.

So we're trying to figure out what this was and what the position was.

And when I moved into that, fortuitously, again, an opportunity arose for a fellowship at.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, prestigious, well-known across the university.

Yes.

And.

Again, you sometimes you get this feeling in your gut.

And I looked at this opportunity as part of the application process.

You had to pitch a project idea that was going to be a benefit to the news organisation where you work, but also to the journalism industry as a whole.

And it wasn't long, really, after the big main part of Covid, you know, there'd been lockdowns, there'd been tragic deaths.

And we were covering it a lot.

And a lot of other news organisations were talking about it.

But I started noticing with our digital content and digital content of other news organisations, and just the amount, the sheer vast, massive, huge amount of visual data journalism that was being produced that was conveying a lot of important messaging.

You know, the number of Covid deaths, for example, but then you're looking back really as my career as a business journalist, you a lot of charts and graphs and infographics were being used constantly for really important data, not just health data, but financial data and all stuff.

I got started.

I started, you know, as an industry.

We are relying a lot more on this visual data journalism, but we're not considering people like me who don't access information or what might be considered that traditional way.

I usually.

So I started researching it to see what other people were talking about.

There is and there was and there is some people working on this that have got a real understanding of the value of data visualisations and working on how to make them more accessible.

So I worked up a pitch anyway as part of my application process to the Reuters Fellowship.

And I was lucky enough to get through.

And as part of that, I was a cohort of 16 international journalists.

I was the only one from the UK and I was the first one in the whole history of the fellowship to be blind or have any sort of visual impairment.

But I went there and again, I think you're right.

I've always looked into things with a naivety and you know what?

It's funny when I look back now, you know, I appreciate just the enormity of that opportunity.

So since I did that, I was able to publish my paper.

It was so good to be able to go and sit in the Bodleian Library and the University of Oxford.

Oh, my goodness.

You know that I did and said, study and have access to all of the resources and the different people and experts.

So that paper was published.

And when I come back to the BBC, I wanted to do something with that research.

So I went presented to it's called the BBC News Board.

Give me a mandate to make the BBC the best mainstream digital news provider for blind and partially sighted audiences.

So that's something that I've been working on.

I said, I knew that the visual data journalism element was a tough nut to crack.

But before we got to that, there was a low hanging fruit of the alt text on all of the images that we were producing, even just photos and like images of text, screenshots of tweets or whatever.

Yeah, no thought was being given to how that visual information was being conveyed to screen reader users.

So that was low hanging fruit.

I created a really detailed guidance for all of our digital journalists.

And I was keen that what that just wasn't kept within the ivory tower of the BBC.

So it was published externally as well.

Anybody can find it online.

You can maybe share the link.

But it's excellent.

Other news orgs are using a night.

I started training all of our digital journalists and I think we're up to about maybe eight or nine hundred digital journalists that have been through the training that I've created as well.

So.

You know, it's it's again when I look at the BBC News website every day and see the quality of the alt text on images, you know, standard photos, but also those complex images, your charts and graphs and maps and infographics.

I think, yeah, that's a good job, you know.

But the weird thing is that.

You know, the audience for that is although it's big, it's quite minor in the scheme of things, senior leaders, senior journalistic figures don't really see that advancement that was made because they're obviously not screen reader users.

So but a lot of people who are screen reader users say to me all the time, oh, my goodness, look at that.

That is really good.

And you might know this only for years.

We were totally underserved with alt text and you just simply don't know what you don't know.

But it's only I think when things like Be My Eyes and Be My AI came out and we started using tools like that that we realised, oh, my goodness, look at that.

Look at that rich, vast description that is on our fingertips.

I know he looked like that or.

Wow.

This is, you know, yes, yes, absolutely.

And there's huge, huge cultural significant moments.

You know, I remember the image because I've got this visual library and a lot of people will have that visual library who have been able to see.

Right.

There were no iconic images.

Yeah.

Just off the top of my head, you know, Jim Morrison, you know, or right.

JFK, you know, when he was shot in the car or like like just the Coke logo.

Absolutely.

Coke logo look like if you've never seen the Coke.

Absolutely.

No.

What I know.

I know that visual library is very, very important for people to.

Yeah.

When I'm doing the training and training journalists, you know, a lot of questions will come at me.

She would describe colours.

Absolutely.

Yes.

She'd do even if you've never been able to see a colour as a sign or signifier.

But even more lately, when we talk about iconic images, do that picture of Donald Trump after the assassination attempt of Philadelphia.

You know, I looked across different news organisations.

Yeah.

See how they were treating that.

And a lot of people just were describing it as Donald Trump.

And you know, right.

Donald Trump, I don't understand or something.

But, you know, everybody will know.

No.

And if you can see that image forever, more will be seared into your conscience.

And we need to consider how we're going to offer that same equitable experience to people who don't see it visually.

But if you can really do a good, strong all text or text description of that, you then you're offering that equitable experience to everybody.

And that's what drives me to do stuff like that.

So I really want you could be considered a selfish act.

But, you know, I do want to have that equal and equitable experience that everybody else who can see it gets.

Yeah, so it's not selfish.

That's that's that's forward thinking.

That's paying it forward to the future, you know, and teaching people who are coming behind you or your colleagues to to make those considerations as no more afterthought to to make it as easy as everything else.

It's incredibly absolutely.

And, you know, it's been.

You know, it'd be wonderful if I had journalists coming through that I'm training now to hear the reaction to the people that are old, grizzled hacks to have been in the journalism industry for years.

I wish I had this training when I was younger.

This is the most practical and useful training I've ever had.

And, you know, I think as a storyteller, as a journalist, I love to take people on a journey.

So when I start the training, I start with sharing my screen, sharing my son with the screen reader and open up a story that maybe somebody in that day's training has written.

I look at the old text that they've done and say, look, this is what I get.

And let them listen to Joe speak.

This is what I know.

With that image that you have chosen and the girl.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They don't.

They're like, what is that?

What is that?

Yeah.

So they then.

Because.

I go through the training and I've got to know me and I'm a bit jokey about it and everything, then when they come to do their next piece and they're putting up an image and they're all Texas, they're like, oh, right, OK, right.

Let's do this, because I know now how a screen reader works, because a lot of people don't know how a screen reader works because we are as blind people, many busy peddling, paddling under the surface, under that waterline, you to try and exist in a world that's not designed for us.

But we don't want to show it about it.

We don't want to make a big deal.

I would try to make the world work for us.

So people don't who have never experienced a screen reader before.

Why would they know?

It's an abstract concept.

The new.

Theoretically, what all text is, but they don't understand the benefit of whether it's done well or the deficit when it's not done well.

Yeah, most people, they they say we they know we have things to help us, but that's about their extent of their knowledge about what we have to help us.

I like like if I have my air pods in and I'm looking down at my phone and but I'm listening to my phone.

But, you know, but I'm looking down at it like I would like a sighted person does.

You know, it's just like a natural thing you do when you have your phone.

They think I'm actually seeing my phone.

I know they don't know that I'm listening.

I know.

I think you would lose people's minds.

I was away with a whole group of friends for a big significant birthday not that long ago and we're in Budapest.

And one of my best friends, his brother in law was with us and he seen me just exactly as you describe.

I have my phone, I have my air pods and I need to look at me and he said, what are you doing there?

And I said, I'll just check on Facebook and he said, I'd like to do that.

You can't say and I said, oh, no, no, I'm listening to it.

And he goes, oh, I took care of it because I have my screen turned off.

You have to see it because it's not needed.

Oh, OK.

And you said, oh, OK.

And I let him listen to it because I understand what that's saying.

But then he afterwards, he says, oh, yeah, that's great.

Why are you looking at your phone now?

And I thought, you know what, that is a really good point.

It's just what you just said.

It's a habit maybe because we've been able to see or do you?

You know, I definitely do.

I look at my phone and I can't see it.

No.

And the people, people that can be just people because they don't understand, you know, it's funny.

But technology has done so much and opened the world up so much.

Yeah.

Even you're not smart speaker in the corner.

I won't say her name because she'll ask me what I want.

But yes, you know, you're not like you.

My audio player, my radio, my.

Yeah.

You know, sound system.

It's everything.

And technology has just given us so much.

And.

Do I think we have to remember what it might have been like, like, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago for people who before this technology existed and massive, massive big up and kudos to the engineers and designers and businesses that have understood.

Joe, did the benefit of designing for everybody.

Yeah.

And who've recognized that the value to the monetary value of of designing for everybody, you know, because we are there and we're a big part of the market.

You know, we're consumers just like everyone else.

Absolutely.

You know, we deserve to have that.

I mean, let's let's face it.

We want to consume what everybody else wants to.

We want to be on social media.

We want to know what Donald Trump looks like, you know.

Yeah.

And, you know, we want to understand the, you know, what everybody else is absorbing.

Yeah.

And so it's cultural significant touch points, isn't it?

Yes.

People are talking about things you want to be able to join in the conversation with your peers, with your family who are talking about it.

And go back to the Trump example.

Joe, you might not know.

But if you have a really good, strong, brilliant alt text of somebody who understands the value of why they're writing that alt text, then that's not equitability.

Yeah.

Interesting stuff.

I know personally that when I was in graduate school and I was starting to lose the ability to like even understand graphs and things like that, you know, it was really difficult for me to keep up with everybody.

And I just, you know, that that extra accommodation, you know, if I had had some kind of, you know, a digital, not even that, if I had some other way of accessing a graphing map or something, might have been a little bit easier for me.

Yeah.

Take a lot of the burden off me as a student, you know.

Everybody else took it for granted.

They just look at the page and they got it.

I couldn't do that.

I had to get somebody to blow it up for me.

And then I had to get somebody help me figure it out and, you know, track the graph.

And, you know, yeah.

Yeah.

I think that has evolved.

People's understanding of how people learn has evolved.

Universal design for learning is a big thing.

You even if you can see you, you might have different cognitive things that mean that you don't take in information in the same way as somebody else.

So you can't you.

I think we're becoming a society that does understand that people take in information and learn things in different ways and you can design accordingly.

But, you know, that takes awareness and exactly the same way as you need to have awareness of what all text is and why people are using a screen reader or how they're using it.

And it's all of those things.

You know, it's about awareness.

But.

Do we're rich tapestry of people, aren't we?

You're all doing different things, but for the same aims.

So are you are you the only visually impaired person, you know, in in your cohort or in your your group of of colleagues?

Are there other people with disabilities working?

You know, the BBC, yeah, there are the BBC is a really good employer.

I think it's.

You know, it is because of the unique funding model that we've got that it's.

The BBC license fee is a legal requirement for all households to pay, so.

I think because of that funding model, it is incumbent on the BBC as an organisation to be serving all audiences.

And the best way to serve all audiences is to employ people from different backgrounds and different demographics with different lived experiences who can feed into the decision making that the editorial or let that be creative decision making.

So I think there is a real innate understanding of the value of that.

And we're moving even more joy in that right direction.

So there are a lot of disabled people in and around the BBC, you know, and I know the mind as well as a journalist, being a journalist.

I'm also the co-chair of our disabled staff network.

But the BBC, which is we have got a whole set of different networks from people from different backgrounds and characteristics and lived experiences.

So for LGBT plus colleagues or black, Asian minority, ethnic colleagues or people from those socioeconomic backgrounds.

So.

And it's a real it's a real tool to try and push an understanding into an organisation that perhaps in the past could have been criticised for for being what we call male pale and stale.

Yeah, so, yeah.

Hey, Peter.

Hi.

I don't mean to interrupt, which I just did.

You did.

I'm really curious about your I find this really fascinating and I appreciate your sharing your experiences.

And I'm really curious to know what your take on AI artificial intelligence is going to play a role in journalism and specifically how you think it might impact the way people with disabilities are reported on or how it might change the way we experience things and sort of consuming journalism stuff.

Yeah, I was a brilliant question.

I think.

I was with anything.

I generated a I do the pros and cons.

There's massive opportunities, but there's huge threats that we need to be mindful of.

I have to talk, first of all, about the opportunities do that.

There are endless.

Do the possibilities that the technology could bring, especially for journalism, you at the moment for somebody, a journalist writing an alt text or a really complex image, a graph or an infographic.

Do you know that that's quite hard to do?

And you think on the face of it, describing an image.

It's pretty straightforward.

And that happens when I'm training all of the journalists to think at the start.

Yeah, well, it's pretty easy.

But then you're thinking, right, well, what are the important bits?

And with a complex image that is conveying really important information, health information or financial information, there's a real danger that a human leaves important bits out and generative AI and you use a probably experienced to use and be my eye.

But if you try that with a graph or something, it's really, really good.

It's really good.

And it gives you a detailed description of that.

So I think that's firstly a massive benefit, but that's only at the foothills of it.

Do you know the possibilities of multimodal considerations for different pieces you could have if you're deaf?

Capital D are hard of hearing in any way.

Do you know you could have a transcript done of a radio programme that is really, really good.

I've heard of newsrooms experimenting with changing a radio news report into a visual news report.

There's other news or experimenting with stuff for younger audiences.

There's a newsroom in South America, for example, that has used generative AI to change its main evening news bulletins into a graphic novel or into a graphic comic book offering.

Yeah, I've heard of that.

Yeah, pretty weird.

Yeah.

But for younger audiences who mightn't come and sit down for appointment TV to watch that late night news bulletin or mid evening news bulletin.

That's a fantastic way of getting them.

So I think in answer to your question, you know, those opportunities, it's huge and expansive.

We're just at the very start of what this is doing.

Your journalism newsrooms across the world are really trying to figure out the benefits.

Why is being mindful of those threats that I talked about?

The threats are for for people that are disabled.

Is that the societal biases are just exacerbated?

And that, you know, a large language model is only trained on the information that's there digitally.

That's on the Internet.

And that is a new shape or form, the complete understanding of human existence in history.

You know, it's from a very Western, North European, North American bias.

There's lots of stuff in what might be considered the global size of the global majority that isn't digitized.

That doesn't.

Therefore get integrated into what a large language model is using.

And there's been numerous experiments of.

You would say if you ask Chachi BT or other LLMs are available to to give you an image of a disabled person by and large, it'll be a wheelchair user, it'll be a white wheelchair user, and it'll be a white male wheelchair user.

You know, so that very narrow bias that exists in society, you will be exacerbated if disabled people aren't involved at the very, very start of this journey in the decision making that the likes of open AI and meta and Google are taken.

So the opportunities are huge, but the threats are as huge and it could double, triple, quadruple.

You know, that societal bias that we all know that really still does exist.

But I am very, very excited.

And I write about it a lot.

I've got a newsletter on LinkedIn and it's it's specifically about journalism and digital accessibility.

And every week there's more stuff about generative AI and the benefits of it, but also the threats.

And I guess as a journalist, you know, I've always had that impartiality thing, you know, in a balance.

You write, you have to.

You know, even if something looks brand new and shiny and beautiful and the best things in sliced bread, as a journalist, I'm always looking for that downside.

You're what is that?

What you are kind of and we should not be somebody that drinks the Kool-Aid about the benefits of generative AI without being totally mindful and aware of the downside.

But I think it's this is this is the industrial revolution.

This is the Internet over again.

This is you, the discovery of fire.

This is how important I think this technology is going to be to society and humanity.

So it's massively, massively important that not just disabled people, but people from all traditionally oppressed backgrounds are involved in it or would you.

It's just going to speed up the oppression that people have always historically had.

And I have one more sort of unrelated question.

It's a cultural question.

I actually worked for Reuters about 20 years ago.

I was the diversity person for Reuters North America journalism.

And one of the things I found fascinating about its culture is that these these were a bunch of the journalists that I worked with were very hard, hard driven.

They worked really, really, really hard.

They didn't like pie in the sky lingo.

They really wanted a quick explanation.

And I learned really quickly to speak in very practical terms about this whole diversity stuff.

And I'm curious to know if that's if that if my experience jives with yours and how you've sort of communicated within that culture.

Yeah, another great question.

I think as a journalist, you we all have heard of that term, the elevator pitch.

You get one shot at if you are in a lift and you see an editor of a program, you've got maybe 30 seconds to get what you think is the best story idea across them before they're going to ding and they're getting out the door.

So you're absolutely right in that you need to be able to convey a concept very quickly.

But I think I find that you got to convey it in a way that is going to be understandable to whoever it is that you're talking to.

So when I first started talking, as soon as I came back from my fellowship about accessibility and I was talking to senior leaders, I could tell that it was losing them.

Because for senior leaders who don't have that need or lived experience of accessibility for them, it's something that is over there.

That's not practicable to them.

It doesn't.

You know, it's nothing to do with them.

They do know theoretically why it should be done, but it doesn't really.

But the thing that they do care about is audiences and audience reach, and especially at a time where, you know, there's so much competition for eyeballs.

You pardon the pun, really pardon the use of that.

But so much competition from all quarters, you know, phone screens everywhere.

You know, your people's attention span supposedly is getting shorter.

We need to be reaching people in a way that they understand.

And for me, it is about audiences.

So when I flipped that around and instead of talking about accessibility, I started talking to them about.

Potential audience reach and the gains that they could get from being able to just pivot slightly and reach into the corners and other news orgs weren't perhaps reaching.

You then that's when the penny dropped and they understood.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

And then I was given a mandate to go on ahead and do it.

So I think it depends who you're talking to, Peter, you know, and what it is that they care about.

I think.

No, we should have moved on, but there is definitely a current climate and we all understand, you know, that diversity and inclusion initiatives are perhaps becoming under pressure.

But.

When you talk about it in cold, hard business terms or return on investment or something that is whoever it is you're talking to, you might be talking to somebody who works in finance.

Tell them why it's beneficial if you're talking to somebody in editorial, talk about audience reach.

And that's the way I find it.

They need to know if they're going to agree that there's something in it for them.

The other thing I found really interesting working with that with that audience is this was 20 years ago and the websites were far less accessible than they are now.

They're still not great, but they're better now than they were back then.

And what I would do is I take a journalist and sort of show him or her the problems I was having with something and they go, wait a minute, you may not be able to use it at all, but I have trouble using it, period.

So what they got from the experience and what I learned is, you know, what didn't work well for me.

Didn't work well for anybody else either.

And I just thought that was a fascinating thing that I hope journalists took as they sort of thought about these issues, you know, reported on stories like this.

Absolutely.

And that's a really good indicator of bad design.

You know, and it's not it shouldn't be for me.

It's not really about accessibility.

It's about the user experience.

It's about usability.

Yeah.

You know, and there are so many different websites that you come across.

You go, my goodness, this is terrible.

This is terrible.

And you think, oh, this is because this is not accessible.

But then when you talk to somebody who uses it, you know, and what might be considered a traditional way with a mouse and point it, it's a terrible experience for them as well.

You know, and that's down to bad user experience and user design.

And I think that's becoming something that's more known about, you know, you need to really understand that user journey.

I think physical stores and physical supermarkets or physical grocery stores or whatever have understood that for a lot longer than people in the digital world.

Oh, yes.

You know, we get people in and they know how to string them along.

I'm sure they're going to go to the other side in the register and their basket is full.

Absolutely.

And we are being led by the nose.

We are being led by the nose.

The minute we go in, we we we can smell a beautiful bakery.

And that's not by accident that that's at the back of the store.

You have to walk past everything else.

You are on your way past.

You might say, oh, look, something that you didn't think that you wanted.

You know, when I go into to do supermarket shopping with my wife, I say she needs to put on a pair of blinkers, you know, and not be not be sort of taking everything.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But I think the digital experience, it has been quite transactional, perhaps in the past.

But I think people are really starting to understand the value of really good design and keeping you in there and making sure that, you know, if it's a bad experience, you're going to go away.

Because if you can't do something on one website, there's going to be another website that you can do the same thing a lot easier.

And it's going to be a lot more enjoyable.

Yeah.

You know, I was shopping.

Yeah.

Well, I guess I have to quote hard dollars.

That's right.

If you can't find what you want on website a, you know, if you want to buy something, you know, like a clothing store online, if that clothing store is just horrible experience for you, you go to another clothing store online.

That's better.

That's more usable for you.

And that's where you stay.

I think that choice is becoming bigger as people understand the value of it.

And, you know, I'm a huge fan of Apple products.

And I think that's a loyalty that a lot of blind or visually impaired people do have because.

In the past, I remember having to pay extra money to get screen reading capabilities put on to a phone.

Yeah.

But then when that came along and it was built into the operating system and anybody could turn it on, you didn't have to pay any extra big bucks for it.

And that wasn't done out of.

Altruism, that was done as a cold, hard business decision because they understood that value of a consumer point.

Yeah, that's right.

Interesting stuff.

I don't think lots and lots and lots of pieces in the past about that, about the value of the so-called purple part of the purple dollar and why businesses need to pivot and use disabled models and their advertising campaigns.

And it's just it's just absolute sense when people see themselves and think, OK, yep, that is somewhere that I want to be and that's something that I want to invest in.

Yeah, it's all about identity.

Yeah, and I would imagine that artificial intelligence is going to totally revolutionize over the years how websites are designed or how they're how you do the research on the site.

I don't know what that's going to look like, but I suspect it's not going to be the way it is now.

Yeah, well, the possibilities are endless and I think it's just down to people's imagination and creative innovation.

You know, the race is it's just getting faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster.

So I remember when the first iteration of Chachi BT came was actually when I was at the Reuters fellowship, you know, and I was thinking, oh, you know, that was only two and a half years ago.

And you know, in my research, I didn't even touch in general because it was so new, it didn't even really exist, the opportunities and understanding of it weren't even there.

So we've come so far and it seems now that there's not a day that there's each of the big the big beasts involved in the release of a new version that can do so much more.

But that agents is something that's going to be.

Joe, invaluable and that you no matter how you input into your phone, your laptop, your computer, you're because you're us.

Being able to speak at your laptop and say, yep, can you go to such and such a website?

I want to book me a flight to there and then once I'm there, I need to have a car that will take me to their book me that hotel room at the minute.

You have to go to lots of different websites to do that and hope that they're all going to be accessible.

But at some point, you're using these chat agents or that will just be able to be done, you know, just by talking.

But then we'll have to be mindful of people who perhaps you have got a disability with their voice or can't speak and they use other modes of input.

Do all of these things need to be taken into account?

So nobody's left behind.

But the opportunities are huge.

Yeah.

Kind of makes me not want to talk about it because it's so overwhelming.

Well, I think for we artists, I mean, we are an advocacy organization for visually impaired artists of all descriptions, music and and writers and visual artists and whatever else, whatever other artists, graphic designers.

We need, you know, the whole issue of AI and how it's going to impact the way creativity takes place as a whole nother thing.

Yeah, it's already impacting us now because when I do blogging, you know, I do little bios and stuff like that on people.

I use perplexity.

All I have to do is ask it a question and it just takes off and answers my questions.

And it's unbelievable how it helps me and how it makes me get information faster and quicker and more accurately than I could do myself just by going on Google.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah.

The quality of it is just wow.

You know, it's kind of scary.

I think there is something that we need to be aware of as well, apart from the bias that I talked about in the past.

I think there is a huge issue around copyright and ownership and how, you know, somebody who has produced a beautiful piece of art.

It can just be scraped by an LLM and butchered and utilised and amalgamated.

And then if it's made up of ten thousand different pieces from from ten thousand different artists, where does that copyright lie?

Does it lie with you who typed in the prompt or spoke the prompt?

Does it lie with the big tech organisation that owns the LLM?

Does it lie with the ten thousand of artists that have been butchered or their stuff taken and stolen?

Really?

You know, so there's lots of issues.

I was reading something yesterday that really blew my mind about music being generated by generative fire.

And there's so many different fake bands.

There was somebody who had put up music on Spotify.

I think maybe it wasn't Spotify, but it was some online music provider.

But then that we know that you may get like you may be a percentage of a percent or a penny each time you get a play of music.

And they had generated bots that will go in and get auto plays.

So they had generated tens and tens of thousands of dollars for themselves because of stuff that they had generated using generative fire.

That was music that didn't exist as a band and that had been obviously stolen from other artists that do exist.

Right.

You know, you just think, how is somebody being able to even conceive that scam and do it and put it into practice?

Yeah, that's yeah.

That's the consequences of the, you know, of the movie of moving forward.

That's the consequences of the progress you're making.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

Technology's always been something you write from the beginning.

You could be used for nefarious reasons.

And I think you will always have bad actors that are going to use technology in whatever way they want.

But I think at some point there will be a complete pushback, I think, in the same way that maybe you might have seen in the 60s when the space race was on and modernity was a big thing and clothing that was made of nylon or rayon became fashionable.

But then there's a pushback to your perhaps your more natural fibers and natural.

Right.

Are you in the heavy movement and everything you can see that.

But I think even, you know, there's something even more existential, possibly, and that we see that it is being used to manipulate truths on how important journalism is at a time of this when.

Joe, I can be used to disseminate missing this information at lightning speed.

Do what what really we could get to the point where.

You know, for example, if the race is so much for getting people to click into your journalism stories, then you could personalize what people want.

And then suddenly your news provider has become an echo chamber for what it is that you believe the world to be.

You know, in exactly the same way that we've seen the algorithm and social media feed people what it is that that algorithm thinks that they're into.

So it exacerbates their understanding of that echo chamber of what the world is.

And you could see the same thing happen to really good news websites if they were doing that, rid of using AI to personalize what people's news feed should be.

And that's dangerous.

This has been just fascinating conversation.

I'm so glad you came.

But I wanted to get to this last thing that I have on my list here.

The conversation about the phrase fabric and stone.

And I don't know why I have to ask you about this, but I just felt compelled to say, like, what does that mean to you in any context at all?

Whether it's in your life, your profession?

I mean, you did meant you did actually say that.

And I was just I was just intrigued by that.

I think if I remember right.

And I might be totally wrong, but I think it was a previous conversation that you and I had, I was maybe talking about writing or art or my desire for writing creative writing.

And I think, you know, I'm Irish and you were described as the land of saints and scholars.

And I think you're writing a story telling is in the fabric and stones of what it is to be Irish and what Ireland is to me.

It's probably the same for other people across the world from different different backgrounds and lived experiences.

But.

For me, certainly storytelling and the oral tradition of storytelling through songs, through writing, through literature, through poetry.

Do it there.

It exists in the landscape and it's there.

It's a serial after a blow in through the trees and it is you in the streams and rivers and brooks.

And you can you can hear the echoes of all of those stories that have been there through the ages.

And that for me is, you know, I think where I was going with that talking about that.

It's in it's just in the fabric and the stones of of Ireland.

That's beautiful.

I really is beautiful, inspirational, and maybe I'll get to hear that when I get to Ireland.

Twenty, twenty six.

That's right.

Yeah, well, definitely, definitely.

You have to just cut your rear cut your rear at a certain time of the day and you'll definitely hear that.

You'll hear it in the fabric and the stones.

But, you know, I think all Irish people that have been away from Ireland developed this romantic notion of what it is.

You know, I haven't lived in Ireland for 30 years.

Although I go back all the time, back two or three times a year.

But you're actually live there.

It hasn't been for a long time.

So I definitely have developed a romantic idea of what it is to be Irish.

But, you know, it is it's definitely always going to be there.

That's beautiful.

And that's that's part of the way it should be.

You know, we should have an attachment to where we came from and what it means to us and and how to express it.

Funny enough, I'm saying that I was born in Australia.

Yeah, I read that.

And I was like, oh, all right.

But you didn't stay there long, though, right?

No, no, no.

My mom and dad emigrated out there just at the start of the troubles, really.

And I think maybe 1969, 1970, when I was born.

And I don't think the state my mom was home, my mom was she was a country woman.

And I remember her telling me that when I was a baby, she brought me to the doctor and said, look, I don't know what's wrong with him.

He's burning up.

He's got a fever.

And the doctor says, you're from Ireland, aren't you?

Yeah.

And he says, and it's very cold there, isn't it?

And he says, well, it's thirty five degrees here.

So you can take some of those blankets off him and maybe he won't be as hot.

So she was doing exactly the same way.

She had seen everybody at home in Ireland swaddle and make sure that they had lots of blankets, not realising that thirty five degree heat was going to have a bit of a temperature.

So she did.

We moved back.

I think I was only maybe two when I moved back.

I'm very much Irish.

But when people find out that I was born in Australia, you know, it's not even Irish or born in Australia.

My response is always just because you're born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, you have any final thoughts that you want to share?

No, not really.

I think I just want to say thank you to you and Peter for for inviting me to come along.

I think from the script of song getting to know you, you know, it's it's been it's been beautiful getting to know you.

I really do appreciate you invite me to come along to talk here today.

So I said to my wife that I've been asked to come and talk and she says, well, people want people want you to come along and talk about yourself.

I said, I know, I know.

Oh, my goodness.

Do you know what to let themselves in for?

Well, I'm glad you came.

And I know you had a lot to say about just a lot of different things.

We captured some of that here today.

Maybe we'll have you back to talk about more.

That would be wonderful.

Yeah.

And I'll keep in touch and I'll let you know when everything gets gets done.

And when this gets put out on on replay on ACB Media so that you can listen to yourself.

And you have your wife listen to.

Art Parlor is brought to you by Friends in Art and ACB Media.

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