Christina Mallon: Chapter 2: The Technology Life of a Person with a Disability

It's Machine Yearning from Assist. It's a podcast where we think and dream about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. This chapter is an excerpt from our interview with Christina Mallon, and she's talking about a subject area that matters to every single person. Seriously, if you lead product or are a CMO or anywhere in the org chain, you need to take notes and share this one around. Christina Mallen, our guest, is a designer, advocate, and authority on designing for the disabled. In this chapter, she walks us through her technology life. It's a powerful view into the ways our current product options are, and mostly are not, working for one-fifth of the population. This is just a taste, so make sure you grab the full episode and subscribe so you never miss a single Machine Yearning. Christina Mallen.

Can you walk me through your technology life? Like, what do you use and how do you use it?

I would not be able to thrive without technology. It evens the playing field for people with disabilities. Um, you know, when I wake up, I use Alexa to find out what the weather is like and to find out the news because it's hard for me to access my phone or even grab a newspaper and flip through it or read a book. So I have Amazon Alexa reading books to me. So really how I take in content is so important, be when it's voice activated, because I won't be able to learn things without that since I can't really type. And then I get into work and I use Dragon Dictate, which is dictation software. And that allows me to have a job because everyone commutes via email. Um, some other technology is how I feed myself. I use an Obie Robot, which is a tiny robotic, um, bowl and cup that feeds me based off of, um, push tabs on the side of it. So it, it gives me information, um, and then also I'm able to eat. And then there's just tiny devices like magnets and zippers in my clothing that are allowing me to dress myself. So really, all of this technology from magnets to different coding and voice automation allows me to live as a person rather than a vegetable in a hospital somewhere.

Did voice change a lot for you?

Yes, very much so. And I think voice will allow me to thrive even longer and do more as the technology of voice becomes better and better over time.

What's missing? What needs to be better?

I think that— Some activities can be done by voice, but not all of them. So I would like to see being able to cook or talk to my microwave or talk to my clothing and my clothing dress itself. And that's one thing that I'm really interested in. I study a lot via my nonprofit Open Style Lab is how can we have self-dressing clothes that dress you? Using your voice.

Can you say more about that?

Yeah, so I would love to be able to talk to my pants and say, "Pull up pants," and the pants just shoot up. Now, we've really been able to see if we can do that with air, and that's something Open Style Lab has explored, but I would love just to talk to my clothing and it dress me, or having a robot being able to do that. Would be amazing, and doing that all via your voice.

There's so many things I've never thought about.

It's very meta.

Are there any other technologies that have fundamentally changed things for you?

I think Dragon Dictate has really changed a lot for people with disabilities, but then people who don't type as well or type as quickly that are just adapting to the technology age. I see a lot of people in their 50s and 60s that depend on it very much so to kind of help them compete in this internet technology fast world. I would say that has the most effect on my life, but things like Uber, all of the on-demand apps allow me to get around New York City that's not accessible. So I really look to those, like food ordering apps since I can't cook myself. So I think apps have been very helpful for me to outsource all the tasks I can't do. I don't— I haven't been in an actual store in forever and bought something. It's— everything's via app and it's really changed my life. And I've lived alone for the last 4 years. And because of that, I'm able to.

That's incredible. How are you thinking about the future of mobile interfaces? And specifically, I think an area of the phone that many people might not go is the accessibility area, but they've done a ton of work here. And I'm curious, you know, what that area looks like for you or people you know and how that evolves in the future.

I think that when I look at one of the best accessibility offerings from a phone, I think it's really the screen reader. I have two guy friends that are blind and they live alone in the city and they live a very, very full life, a very successful life. Their, their companies It's called the Two Blind Brothers. And they run the entire company along with their partner, Court. And they use their phone for everything. They really don't use a laptop too much. And they use their phone because of all of the accessibility offerings that Apple has really thought about from the beginning. And from just zooming in to— it does— reads the text and puts it out in voice. For things that are really small because many mobile interfaces are not screen reader friendly. So most people with disabilities cannot use them. So I think it's very important, and why I stick with Apple over Samsung is because of the accessibility features within the mobile.

Do you use Siri?

I use Siri a lot. It's so, so helpful. If you think about a lot of— I type with my feet and that takes a little longer than typing with your hands. And Siri saves me a few seconds every single interaction, and that really adds up. So it was really wonderful when the phone changed and I was able to use Siri without having to touch the phone, because at one point you had to touch the phone to enable Siri.

Can you say more about you type with your feet? Because If you say that statement, in I think many people's head listening as well as my head, I'm like, I don't know how I would type with my feet. What is the process like? How does that even work?

So what I use is an iPad. So I use— everything has to be touchscreen when I'm typing. I just can't use a regular hard plastic keyboard and I just have to take my shoes off and I put the iPad on the ground and I type with both feet. Uh, and it's a little bit slower than being able to type with your hands on a keyboard on desk, but it gets the job done. I use it a lot when I'm outdoors, given that all of the noise around me doesn't allow for the microphone to pick up what I'm saying via voice. So at home I use voice, but in public areas I use my feet to text on an iPad on the floor.

Is there a world in which voice, specifically in public settings, because it's hard to hear, it interrupts your friends, when the camera in the phone now is so good at seeing your face, do you see a world where it's more gesture or lip reading or it allows you to actually use voice without speaking?

Definitely. I think lip reading is definitely an option. Another really interesting thing is a lot of the eye tracking technology. That has not been perfected yet, but Microsoft is doing a very, very good job to make eye tracking a little bit faster, 'cause there's a big delay when you use your eyes. But I think, you know, lip reading would be really a great, amazing solve. To allow me to function better in public places when it comes to communicating, because everyone's just talking to their phone now and I can't do that. So sometimes I do get a little frustrated in public places when I can't communicate or communicate fast.

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