Opening eyes to accessibility

Posted October 29th, 2009 at 4:26 pm by Nicki Dugan, Blog Editor

 7 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Video, Working at Yahoo!

Victor Tsaran is one of those people who just impresses the hell out of you. He grew up in a Ukrainian orphanage and is now a talented computer engineer in the U.S. He’s an accomplished musician and songwriter. And he also happens to be blind.

Victor runs Yahoo!’s accessibility program. He helps make it easy for people with all kinds of disabilities to use our sites. When I first met Victor, I had the same naïve reaction most people have – dumbfounded by how he could crank open his laptop and be fully self-sufficient reading email and surfing the web. That’s because I was clueless about all the remarkable ways that people with disabilities use technology.

Victor’s made it his mission to educate our designers and engineers, helping change their assumptions that accessibility somehow requires sacrifice or compromise. On the contrary, Victor argues that accessible design is better for everyone. Just as curb-cuts were designed for wheelchairs, they’re also a great convenience for strollers, luggage and shopping carts, right?

But driving the point home sometimes means making someone walk a mile in his moccasins. Enter the Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, which has been toured by more than 75 product teams to date. It’s filled with a wide array of assistive technologies – screen readers, onscreen keyboards, interactive Braille displays, etc. When Yahoos arrive, they’re told they’ve just had a stroke and can’t type with their fingers. They’re given a rubber ball and asked to type their name. Um… Next, they’re fully paralyzed. “OK, try to send an email.” Uh… After they’re introduced to the technology solutions, they watch videos of disabled people in action.

All this leaves developers making accessibility a goal before they write their first line of code. It’s why anybody can access rich features and tools on products like Yahoo! Sports, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone. It’s why third-party websites that are inaccessible in their own right are now entirely accessible via the new “favorites” area on the Yahoo! Homepage. Victor has helped Yahoo! make enormous strides since joining us four years ago, but there’s still more to come.

We spent some time following Victor with a video camera to not only understand his work, but to appreciate his daily experience. Commuting by train. Playing guitar. Making lunch with his wife Karo Caran, a fellow student from the Overbrook School for the Blind. We watched as sighted people had their first awkward interactions with him. He laughs when he describes how often people raise their hands when he asks questions during his new hire orientation briefings. Well-meaning commuters sometimes escort him to the wheelchair zone on the train platform. It took me a while to realize he’s not offended by questions like “Did you see my email?”

Here’s Victor’s video profile:

Spend any amount of time with Victor and you realize that his blindness doesn’t really make him all that different from anyone else – except that his computer talks to him. Really, really fast.

Read more:

• Victor’s post about screenreaders
• Victor’s post about the launch of our Accessibility Lab in Bangalore
• An interview with Victor about his life and music

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Video credits: producer, Nicki Dugan; cinematographer, Brad Williams; director/editor, Ricky Montalvo
Photo by gingervitis

Tagged: accessibility, Yahoo! For Good

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7 Comments Add your own

Katherine Fellows | October 29th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

I’d love to hear more about this guy and the lab! I’m young and have been looking for ways to branch into this general field, but I haven’t had much luck. Any other info about the program that you can hit me up with? By all means, shoot me an email!

Sarah B. | October 29th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

Great post and really interesting (and well-done!) video. I was hoping to see more of Victor the musician too!

David Bolter | October 30th, 2009 at 9:17 am

An accessibility star to be sure. The Firefox accessibility team hopes to visit the lab soon. I’m looking forward to it!

fourme | November 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm

You and your team are outstanding never look back!

Victor | November 5th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

Thanks all for your great comments.
All I’d like to ask in return, please spread the message about accessibility.

Thierry Koblentz | November 6th, 2009 at 3:04 am

I was in the Accessibility lab this morning. I can say that Victor does an awesome job at Yahoo!

Marc Grossman | December 16th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

Thank you to Nicki and the Yahoo! team for highlighting the advances made by the Yahoo! Accessibility team and specifically Victor. Thank you also to Victor for volunteering his time to meet with AFB staff on several occasions. Hats off to Yahoo! for fighting the good fight.