Voicing the Way to Success

As part of a series on disabled people who test for Applause, I had the pleasure of speaking with Nicole Miller. Nicole has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and also holds a graduate degree in data science. Nicole’s full-time job is an Analytics Manager for health and safety.

In this blog, we cover some common questions and answers that hope to provide insights into Nicole’s disability, how she lives, and how assistive technology (AT) plays a role in her digital interactions.

Hoffman: How has your disability impacted your personal and professional interaction with the digital world?

Miller: It impacts every digital interaction I have. I went through college using common modalities like a keyboard, mouse, and trackpad. About six months after graduating college, I started having severe bilateral upper body musculoskeletal problems that prevented me from typing or mousing. My conditions can be extremely painful, and they still prevent me from typing and mousing 10 years later.

I started using Dragon NaturallySpeaking (voice AT/dictation software) to replace my manual interactions with a computer. Eliminating typing as fast as possible was paramount. The learning curve was very steep for the first six weeks, as it is for anyone. I had no training and had to learn it on my own while on the job. I was a chemical engineer at a very competitive company at the time, and I was trying to keep up with able-bodied people who use standard input devices for computers. I truly felt set up to fail. Tools like Excel and specialty modeling software were particularly difficult to master with Dragon. Now that I have over 11,000 hours of Dragon experience and more awareness of the digital landscape from a voice user’s perspective, the acute stress day to day is much lower than it was when I first started using Dragon.

Hoffman: Now that you are more fluent with the assistive technology you’ve learned, how does that position you vís-a-vís your coworkers?

Miller: Assistive technology software is not cheap and it can use a significant portion of my computer’s resources (particularly memory). Every time I start a new job, I’m asking the company to spend extra money on AT software, RAM cards, and microphones, the first of which often has to be vetted by IT. It isn’t uncommon for me to be the first or only person using a particular software at the company, which can require making a case for my choice of software vs. less robust options that are built into the operating system. It is important for me to articulate the differences and why I need to have the AT that allows me full productivity.

Another item of note is that I have no verbal privacy at work, and my incessant talking can lead to people getting frustrated with me. Sitting in the right configuration (for example, facing a window or wall rather than facing an open bullpen) can make a big difference. When I first started using Dragon back in 2015, people complained to my manager which contributed to my feeling “othered” for using Dragon. However, when I was moved to a new seat to address the complaint, these same colleagues were upset that I was given a desk in a “better” location. Now that I am further along in my career, I am much more okay with the fact that some of the accommodations I receive may upset others, and some people are going to be mad no matter what. Advocate for yourself and get your accommodations!

Hoffman: How have you seen assistive technology progress in your time using it?

Miller: I use Smyle Mouse for eye-gaze tracking when I need to, especially for heavy mousing, like dragging and dropping activities. It has definitely improved over the past five years, including new features to make scrolling easier. However, I am going to limit the remainder of my discussion to tools that are voice-related since I use voice 99% of the time.

There have been many mobile introductions/improvements in voice AT that have been game changing since I started using voice AT. iOS Voice Control and Android Voice Access are both solid voice tools and were easy for me to pick up as a PC voice AT user. However, in general I am concerned about the future of voice technology for PC use, as that is my primary domain. It’s kind of a net zero with the changes made in the last ten years to Dragon, which is the gold standard for customizable voice assistive technology. I am sticking with Dragon for the time being while keeping my eye out for new options.

Hoffman: I’ve heard disabled people talk about how they are physically and mentally tired, as more general effort is needed to function on par with their able-bodied peers. Please comment on this.

Miller: I have to invest extra time in every job coding custom commands to ensure that I am able to work with any software I might encounter. It’s significant unpaid time and effort. I’d estimate that, in my ten years of working, I’ve put in hundreds of hours of unpaid work outside of normal hours to maintain my performance at the level of everyone else. I’d often feel self-conscious about being slower than my peers. I acutely remember the first time my exacting team lead said, “You’re not slower than anyone else on the team.” He was incredibly blunt, and I trusted that he meant it. It was a revelation! Now, when coworkers comment on me finishing a task quickly, it is more than a passing comment to me. It reminds me that the extra efforts I’ve made to customize my AT and manage major hurdles were not in vain.

Being a Dragon user is physically and mentally demanding. For example, I’ve had to memorize hundreds of keyboard shortcuts to navigate interfaces where that is the only efficient method I have available to me. It’s dedicated brain space. Every interaction I have on the internet, with Excel, Outlook, and any communication I use for work – leading a Teams meeting, doing a demonstration, and building slides – is done using voice AT. I went to grad school for data science, and the program had a significant coding component to it. All my coding was done with voice AT. I code in Python (object-oriented programming), query databases, build data models, and train machine learning algorithms. I’m a technical person at heart.

I try to be very efficient with how I use my voice. My use of Dragon has evolved over the years, and now that I am much more experienced with the tool, I am able to use it more strategically. My Dragon motto is “Say less. Get more done.” I’m usually talking incessantly for hours, and I have dealt with prolonged periods of throat strain. I was able to adopt an effective strategy to mitigate throat strain, but it can be hard not to “push out” my words at times. In addition to having to use my voice for all of my work actions on the computer, I’m talking to people all day long, whether it be colleagues, friends, or loved ones. My voice gets quite a workout. Losing my voice is my ultimate nightmare, as you may imagine.

Hoffman: What type of testing do you do for Applause?

Miller: I participate in digital product testing to gauge how well Dragon works with the product and which modalities within Dragon are supported. In addition, there can be other unexpected performance issues with Dragon, such as lagging (sometimes it’s as bad as a one minute lag on every voice command!). I have different expectations of the support provided in web experience versus a desktop application, for example.

The first modality is what I call “Select & Say.” If there is a “Flowers” link in the product webpage, then I should be able to say “click Flowers” and activate that link directly. If “Flowers” is not unique on the page, it should supply me with numbered tags to choose the item I wanted. This is my preferred modality. I can also ask for Dragon to numerically tag any component of a particular type on the page if I want to see all of my options. So, if I say “click next” and there’s an arrow marked “next,” and, in the same sentence or line, there’s a text link that says “next week,” it should tag both of these.

The second modality is what I will call “verbal keyboard,” as I am primarily emulating keystrokes via voice. For this, it is important that the experience uses conventional keyboarding patterns with a proper focus order and a robust visual focus indicator. This is very important for users who are trying to navigate the page efficiently. My least favorite, but often used, modality is called “mouse grid.” It is a mouse simulation technique where the mouse is moved by picking boxes in a smaller and smaller grid until you reach the desired location on the screen to click on a target. Sometimes it’s just the fastest or only way to get somewhere that doesn’t have keyboard support built in. There are plenty of components that have no keyboard support whatsoever, and then you’re stuck with it. But it’s better than nothing. One of the reasons it is less preferred is that it has latency issues.

When testing, I try to avoid using customizations I’ve built to make sure that my peers who use Dragon have representation. In some niche situations, no one else would be able to advocate for what is going to present them issues. For example, let’s say I can’t add text to a text field. This is a surprisingly common issue for what should be a boilerplate component. Often, text boxes require me to open a dictation box and transfer the text in (which adds a time penalty to every text field) or I can use a custom command to brute force text into the text field. Neither of these solutions for the problematic text field are good answers for a Dragon user, but I feel responsible to give the answer that is representative of the larger Dragon user base.

Hoffman: What comes to mind for you when I ask you about society’s view of disabled people?

Miller: I’ve had experience with people who embrace me as a disabled individual while simultaneously perpetuating ableism. They’ll say things about how I don’t seem disabled, and they’ll talk about my talent in a way that implies they believe my talent is an exception rather than the rule. Disability and talent are not mutually exclusive. Telling someone they don’t seem disabled invalidates their disabilities and the barriers they face as a result of systemic ableism.

People who don’t want to take the time to get to know the myriad of disability experiences will likely continue to be afraid of disability in a way that keeps them disconnected from the richness of the disabled experience. I can’t even tell you how many incredible, vibrant, talented, passionate disabled people I’ve had the honor of meeting. I’m richer for knowing them. I think it can feel safer for some non-disabled people to mentally create an “us” and a “them” to distance themselves from the fact that they can become disabled at any time. If someone is under the false impression that disability detracts from the inherent worth that all humans have, I can see how they would fear disability and seek distance rather than working to understand why they have a stigmatized notion of disability.

It’s important to remember that disabled people are not a monolith. You can’t take my word as anything other than the experience of one disabled person. I think it’s really important to talk to individuals and get to know them for who they are. I, too, worry about saying the wrong thing to people with different types of disabilities that I don’t fully understand. However, there’s no way to bridge the understanding gap by avoiding the discomfort. For what it’s worth, I am typically happy to answer non-invasive questions about my disabilities; I want non-disabled people to know that being disabled isn’t a bad thing. So many wonderful aspects of my life are related to my disability, even though many aspects of being disabled can be hard.

To learn more about how people with different disabilities experience technology, read the other blogs in this series:

Autism and ADHD: A Tester’s Perspective on the Digital World

Increase Your Understanding of Persons With Disabilities