First Time Speaking with a Mask at an Event

Over the past couple of months, I have started losing my ability to talk without a mask. One of the effects of a disease, ALS, is that I am losing the ability to breathe without support which also impacts my ability to talk without my ventilator. This past weekend I did my first speaking engagement at Derby City Data Days in Louisville, KY. As the saying goes, “It takes a village.”

As many of you know, I have been producing a video series called Fabric 5 which contains five minutes snippets about various Microsoft Fabric architectural topics. I was going to use some of that content to create a slide deck about medallion architectures in Fabric. As the day got closer, I was concerned I would not be able to maintain the ability to speak during an entire presentation in my condition. My wife and I thought that we could use my videos for the presentation, so we recruited my son, Alex, who does video editing, to put together the videos for the presentation. That only left the intro slides and the ending slides to be covered by me or someone else.

My daughter, Kristyna, was presenting right before me in the same room. She and my wife managed most of the introduction including the sponsor slides and the user groups. I was able to kick off with a microphone that was provided by the venue through Redgate. Then we kicked off the video and took questions during the session. I was able to answer questions with the help of my wife and using the mic provided in the room. We wrapped up with a final Q&A and a couple of references to help people in Fabric.

A quick video from the session

Overall, this was a wonderful experience for all of us and I appreciated the patience of everybody in the room as we worked through this process for the first time. Here are the Fabric 5 videos that were used during the presentation so you can follow up with it later and references are down below from the end of the presentation. I would like to thank the organizers – John Morehouse, Josh Higginbotham, Matt Gordon – once again for the support and the help as I presented masked up for the first time!

Fabric 5 Videos Used in the Presentation

Fabric 5 – Introduction to the Series and OneLake

Fabric 5 – Why Capacity Matters

Fabric 5 – Medallion Lakehouses

Fabric 5 – Medallion in a Lakehouse

Fabric 5 – Medallion Workspaces

Fabric 5 – Medallion with Compute Workspace

Fabric 5 – Centralized Data Lake

Fabric 5 – Dimensions and Master Data

Fabric 5 – Workspace Sources

Fabric 5 – ADF to Bronze

References

Microsoft Fabric Career Hub Page

Data On Wheels YouTube Channel – Fabric 5 Playlist

After Party Fun – Stayin’ Alive

During the after party my ventilator ran out of power and my car charger did not work. This presented a problem because the trip home was over an hour. When we went out to the car, we had a moment of panic because the ventilator ran completely out of power. We went back to the bar where we were at for the after party to plug in, but the charger wouldn’t work. I was without the ventilator for 15 to 20 minutes while they troubleshot the issue. We started to think that they may have to call 911! However, this issue was resolved due to a loose connection. I must thank all of individuals there that helped including John Morehouse who went to get a battery backup system to make sure I could make it home and to my son-in-law who went to our house to bring us our backup battery generator as well to help us get home.

Working with ALS is not always easy and all the help from everyone around me is genuinely appreciated!

Working with ALS – Insights from the Ability Summit

The 14th annual Ability Summit is a global event that I attended a few weeks ago. It is hosted by Microsoft, and it presents the latest technology innovations and best practices for accessibility and inclusion. The event has three main session tracks: Imagine, Build, and Include. Each track examines different aspects of how technology can enable people with disabilities and make the world more inclusive. The event is free, and anyone can register online to attend. All sessions are recorded and can be watched at any time on demand.

Ability Summit 2024 Highlights

As we think about our enduring commitment and goal at Microsoft, which is to build that culture of accessibility and embed it into everything we do, grounded always by the insights of people with disabilities. – Jenny Lay-Flurrie

In the first keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie talked about how AI can remove obstacles and create more accessible experiences, while also addressing the challenges and concerns of responsible AI. The keynote showed several examples of how AI can help people with disabilities, such as voice banking for people with ALS, descriptive audio for people with low vision, and Copilot for people with diverse speech patterns. It was very impressive to see Team Gleason featured as a partner with Microsoft to work on AI to help the ALS community preserve their voice.

Team Gleason and Microsoft Team Up to Give an ALS Person His Voice Back

As a platform company, we have to absolutely lean into that and make sure that everything we’re doing, whether it’s Copilot and Copilot Extensibility or the Copilot stack in Azure is all ultimately helping our ISVs, our customers, our partners, all achieve their own goals around innovation, around accessibility. – Satya Nadella

Build Session: Bridging the Disability Divide with AI

The conference had many sessions and keynotes, but this one about the disability divide and AI was very interesting to me. These are three main points I learned from this session: 1) how people with disabilities are benefiting from AI in their personal and professional lives; 2) advice on how to begin and advance the AI journey with accessibility as a priority; 3) the significance of accessibility as a basic value for developing technologies that enable everyone.

This session also provided some resources and opportunities for us to learn more about AI and accessibility, such as the Accessibility Bot, which is a chatbot that can answer questions about Microsoft’s products and services regarding accessibility topics; the AI Studio, which is a platform that allows users to explore and build AI applications using various cognitive services and SDKs; and the AI Platform Team, which is a group of developers and researchers who work on making AI more accessible and inclusive.

In Real Life

I belong to the ALS community (I have ALS), and I rely on a lot of accessible technology both hardware and software to accomplish work. I used a combination of Voice Access in Windows 11, a Stream Deck foot pedal, a foot pedal joystick on my wheelchair and Microsoft 365 Copilot to write this blog post. Voice Access helps me with dictation and specific commands like selecting paragraphs or capitalization. A Stream Deck allows me to do backspace and deletes. A foot pedal joystick acts as a mouse. Copilot assists me with summarizing and rewriting content. As you can tell, we need a whole set of tools to suit our needs, and there is no single tool or method that works for us. I’m excited to see how AI will enhance accessibility for all of us. My goal is to keep sharing the tools and techniques I use to live and work with ALS through my blog and YouTube channel.

2023 in Review – Steve’s Perspective

2023 was another transition year as I continue to navigate my ALS with work. It has become harder to write or at least more work is required. I use Voice Access day to day which allows me to operate my system and dictate everything from messaging in Teams to documents and blog posts such as this. While the technologies allow me to continue to contribute in a variety of ways they are not without their flaws. I find myself doing a lot of correction or relying on friends and family to correct and modify documents and PowerPoints in particular. Despite these limitations, I continue to find ways to contribute and be productive at work and in the community when I am able.

Where I Am Today

At the beginning of the year, I was using a smaller wheelchair but was able to get around well and was still able to go to Usergroup meetings and travel the country. My wife and I made a trip to Disney in May of last year. This was a great opportunity to experience what Disney had to offer for those of us with the accessibility issues. I will tell you they do a great job! As a year progressed, I started to lose more functionality in my legs. It was particularly bad after surgery in June. At that point it became increasingly difficult for me to participate in events further away in the region.

I now have a great new power chair which allows me to get around easily and we can use a mobility access van as well. There are still limitations on my ability to travel but we were able to make it out to Kristyna’s wedding in October using these tools.

The other big change for me has been the effect on my breathing. This has limited my ability to talk in long sentences or for long periods of times without requiring a breathing break. Because of this new limitation, I have begun limiting my external speaking and webinars because I would not be able to maintain a long session over 15 minutes or so. As you can imagine this is very disappointing for me as I spent much of my career in the public speaking arena.

I mention all this not so that you can feel sorry for me, but so that you can understand why you may see me in different circumstances or contributing in different ways I’ve never done before. I have always loved working in the community and wish to do so where I am able to. And more about that next.

Contributing to YouTube

This year we launched the new YouTube channel for Data on Wheels. We launched this channel to give me a voice to support some of the working with ALS content I have been creating. My first content was related to using Voice Access. This is a series of videos that introduced users to how to use Voice Access in practical ways. It has a particular focus on enabling users like me on the capabilities on Voice Access. I use Voice Access for most of my navigation and dictation needs in the day-to-day work. I do however lean on Microsoft 365 dictation for longer content creation such as this blog post. Someday I hope to do all of it in one tool.

One of the big contributions I wanted to make was a series of discussions on Microsoft Fabric architectural decision points. That was how the Fabric 5 was born! I was able to maintain about 5 minutes of good conversation regarding Fabric and the various architectural decisions customers should make. This is allowing me to continue to contribute to the community despite the disabilities in front of me. I look forward to contributing even more this upcoming year as Fabric continues to change the landscape of data analytics as we know it.

Spirit of 3Cloud

This year was capped off with my company awarding me the Spirit of 3Cloud award. This award reflects the contributions I have made to the company while battling my disability but at the same time providing support for other team members and growing our organization. I believe this award represents my ability to continue to encourage others to give their best in their lives and in work. Thank you to all of those who continue to support me in this journey, and I hope to continue to represent 3Cloud well throughout it all.

What’s Next for Data on Wheels

This year I am handing the primary reins all the Data on Wheels blog and YouTube channel over to my daughter, Kristyna, as well as our Data on Rails program for new bloggers. I look forward to seeing great things from her as she continues to grow in her experience and community involvement. You should continue to look for great content from her as she takes the primary role and voice for Data on Wheels. I have truly enjoyed contributing to the blog for over 12 years and will continue to contribute as I’m able to both the blog and YouTube channel.

I am not totally getting out of all of this but want to express my sincere thanks for all the support you all have given us through the years. As I continue to work through my ever-changing disease, your support continues to be appreciated and I will keep you all up to date.

Thank you and Happy New Year!

October Is National Disability Employment Awareness Month

As many of you know, I was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease a couple of years ago. Since then, I have 9 made it a personal mission to write about my continued journey to continue working while the disease progresses. (You can follow my personal story on our Caring Bridge site.) For example, this post will be included in my Working with ALS content that highlights the methods I use to continue working through the various stages of the disease.

Supportive Tools

Tools and Software Presented at Kentucky ALS Resource Meeting

After becoming part of the disabled community, I wanted to learn more about the tools that support accessibility and how I could use those tools to keep working. I am truly thankful to companies like Microsoft who make accessibility a key part of their overall mission with their tools. I am an avid user of Voice Access including using it to write and edit this post. I have also used some of their adaptive tools such as buttons that allow me to do more work with my feet. I share about these tools because I want others to know that having a disability should not prevent you from working.

Supportive Employers

I really must give a shout out 3Cloud who have really supported me in the transition to being disabled in the workforce. I find some irony in the wording that I just used, as I would insist that I am still able to work though I have lost certain physical functionality along the way. It is their belief in my ability to continue to work while doing it differently that has made the transition easier. They continue to work with me to find great ways to work together. Sometimes this includes specific hardware or software to make my job easier. Other times this includes patience during meetings and supporting specific collaboration needs I might have. The support from leadership to my peers has been great.

Working Through Difficulties

It is not always easy to keep working. There are days when I am frustrated because I am unable to work as quickly as I used to work. My mind works faster than my body in most cases. Because I use voice for most of my work from controlling my mouse to typing up documents, what used to be a single click, now takes me multiple commands which can often result in a weird type of context switching.

While the tools are great, they are not perfect. Some tools are downright hard to use because they are 100 percent designed for mouse usage. For example, whiteboarding tools assume you can easily drag and drop and make connections between objects. Many times, this simply cannot be done with the tools that I use. I have relied on others for help when trying to use tools that are difficult to control the voice. Two of the biggest examples for me include Lucid which we use for charting and collaborating with whiteboards. The other example is PowerPoint. PowerPoint assumes you can work within boxes, move them around, and is not very good to use with dictation.

I often need help from family and friends to make these tools work. For me one of the most difficult parts of this is trying to explain what I am thinking in terms easy enough for someone to translate and produce something on the screen. In some cases, this is not that difficult but in brainstorming sessions it is very difficult as a thought poorly formed is not easy to express.

A Hope and a Future

Those of us that have physical limitations can and do continue to work and be productive in the workplace. Employers who support us are highly valued and appreciated. Often what we think in our minds outpaces what we can express with our bodies. As we look at future tools such as CoPilot from Microsoft which use AI to support a variety of tasks in our day-to-day work, there is a lot of promise to make us more productive in the workplace. Thank you to all the companies who support us through tools and employment. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Demonstrating How I Use Voice Access

As part of my effort to inform people on how to use tools with their disabilities and continue working, I created a series of videos that demonstrate how I use Voice Access to perform a number of activities that support my work. As we mentioned in the previous post, we have launched a Data on Wheels channel on YouTube. Over the past few days, I have created six videos which will walk you through various processes or types of work using Voice Access. You can get to the entire playlist here. I plan to add additional videos as I find more ways to work with Voice Access that might be interesting to others.

Here is a list of the videos I created with a summary if you are interested in just a single video as opposed to viewing the whole list.

Working With ALS: Voice Access-Introduction and Setup

In this video I walk through what Voice Access does and how to get it set up in a Windows 11 environment. If you are unfamiliar with accessibility capabilities inside of Windows 11 this is a suitable place to start.

Working with ALS: Voice Access-Using Grid Overlays

This video focuses on grid overlays used to manipulate mouse location and the ability to click various locations on your screen. This and the number overlays which are next are key command sets used to reduce the need for a physical mouse when working with Windows.

Working with ALS: Voice Access-Working with Number Overlays

Voice Access gives you the ability to click any location on a screen that can be clicked with meaning. It assigns numbers to all the locations in a window or on your entire screen depending on how you use it. This video walks through a number of examples of using number overlays to navigate a couple of different applications.

Working with ALS: Voice Access-Changing Modes

Voice Access allows you to issue commands and dictation at the same time when using the default mode. There were two other modes that potentially can be helpful depending on what you are trying to accomplish-dictation and command. I demonstrate how to use both modes and some of the difficulty of using these modes as they do not always work as expected.

Working with ALS: Voice Access-Navigating Web Pages

Whereas the first few were about specific functionality inside of Voice Access, navigating web pages is how to accomplish a specific task using Voice Access. In this one I move through a couple of websites interact with those websites using Voice Access functionality has been demonstrated previously.

Working with ALS: Voice Access-Real World Dictation

In this video, I demonstrate how to use dictation in a real world setting. I create a journal entry for my Caring Bridge site using Voice Access. This gives the viewer the opportunity to understand what is required to use dictation and commands to create content. This shows how I typically create documents, blog posts, and Teams discussions. Voice Access is unique in that it allows us to use commands and dictation at the same time.

I realize not everyone has a need to use Voice Access. But if you work with someone who has limited functionality in their ability to navigate with a mouse or to create any type of content with the keyboard, these videos may help them understand how Voice Access can be used to improve their day-to-day work.