August 26, 2025 • 24 mins
In the "Tech Hawks" podcast series, Feliciano School of Business faculty member Dr. David Eisenberg, Assistant Professor in the department of Information Management and Business Analytics, discusses key issues facing business, technology and society. In this episode, Dr. Eisenberg speaks with Dr. Alex Cohen, a legally blind business professor at West Chester University, who is also Chief Marketing and Accessibility Officer of Accessible Pharmacy, Inc. Together, they discuss new research into digital accessibility and technological discrimination, as well as the benefits for business leaders of providing accessible options for workers and consumers alike.
Dr. David Eisenberg is an Assistant Professor in the department of Information Management and Business Analyticshas completed two masters degrees, from Virginia Tech and Rutgers University, prior to completing his PhD at New Jersey Institute of Technology. David has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings, was named a Georgia Tech Research Institute Fellow, National Science Foundation I-Corps Fellow, George Mason University Mercatus Fellow, Junior Scholar of the American Marketing Association’s Public Policy Conference, Founder's Award recipient and Emerging Scholar of the Society of Business Ethics. He has served as 2023-2025 American Association of Information Systems Future of Work track co-chair, their 2023-2025 Cognitive Information Systems mini-track co-chair, and the 2025 Workplace Equality and Diversity Session Chair for the Society of Business Ethics.
Dr. Alex Cohen, this episode's guest, is an Associate Professor in the Marketing Department at West Chester University, where his research focuses on marketing to the disabled community with the goal of creating a more inclusive marketplace. While earning his Ph.D. in marketing from the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University, he co-authored publications enhancing the assurance of success in online programs for students with disabilities. Prior to beginning his doctoral program, Cohen worked in the hospitality industry for 15 years where his experience includes: holding positions such as director of sales & marketing, general manager, and senior VP of operations. As a non-traditional student, he completed his Master’s degree in hospitality management in an on-line program at Drexel University. Diagnosed at age 20, Cohen has a degenerative retinal disease known as Retinitis Pigmentosa which has robbed him of most of his vision. He lives in downtown Philadelphia with his wife and two young sons, and spends his spare time as an avid runner, novice musician, and remains deeply involved and committed to the Foundation Fighting Blindness.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, I'm David Eisenberg, Assistant Professor
in Information Management andBusiness Analytics Department of
the Feliciana Business Schoolat Montclair State University.
I'm excited to have you join metoday to speak with Dr Alex
Cohen about his journey towardsmakinga difference to research
and society in the area ofdigital accessibility and in the
fight against digitaldiscrimination.
Welcome, Alex.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you very much, David.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's great to be with you so why don't we start by
just you telling us a little bitabout yourself and your journey
to doing the kind of researchand having the kind of impact
that you do today?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, well, I have a degenerative retinal disease
called retinitis pigmentosa thatI've had my entire life.
It's a blinding condition whereI lost my sight over a period of
time.
It was first noticeable as ateenager, but then, once I was
(00:55):
in my 30s, my sight reallydiminished and I decided that I
actually needed a career changeand wanted to become a professor
, a marketing professor.
And you know, whileinvestigating what it would take
to make this career changehappen, I was, you know,
(01:17):
continually told about you know,how much research is involved
and what do you think your areaof research is going to be.
And I really decided at thattime that I wanted to make a
difference, initially just inthe blind and low vision
community, trying to explore theexperiences of the blind and
(01:44):
low vision consumer in today'smarketplace, both online and
offline.
But as the research grew, youknow, it really became much more
generalizable beyond just theblind and low vision, into other
groups of consumers with avariety of different
(02:06):
disabilities, and then actuallyinto different DEI spectrums.
And so that's where I reallystarted.
Once I was lucky enough to getenrolled in my doctoral program
at Drexel University, 100 yearsago, whatever that was.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So can you explain a little bit more about your own
condition and what that means,because I think a lot of people
listening, as well as myself,may not be completely familiar
with that condition.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, so people lose their vision for a variety of
different reasons.
Degenerative retinal conditions, whether that's retinitis
pigmentosa or Stargardt'sdisease or all sorts of a
variety of different maladies,can affect vision over time, can
(03:06):
affect vision over time.
There's also age-related eyediseases, like you might have
heard, like macular degenerationand things like that that
normally affect olderindividuals.
But then one of the highest,well, I guess one of the biggest
reasons why working age peoplelose their vision is due to
(03:27):
diabetic retinopathy, acomplication from diabetes.
So I mean, you know it's not ahomogenous group by any stretch.
For example, you know most blindpeople don't read Braille, for
(04:07):
example.
You know most blind peopledon't read Braille.
You know, because you come toyour vision loss a bit later in
life and then become morereliant on digital accessibility
, whether that's screen readingsoftware that converts text to
speech or, you know, voiceovertechnology on a smartphone.
But people who might have losttheir vision, either you know,
at birth or much earlier on,might learn to use Braille.
So something like Braillebuttons in an elevator does very
little for me.
However, you know, having theelevator tell me what floor I'm
(04:30):
at is actually incrediblyhelpful.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
That's really interesting because I think a
lot of people would just assumethat you know that everyone
who's blind, you know, justautomatically understands
braille.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And sometimes I, you know, and I play along.
You know, at this point I use acane to help me navigate the
world and I will go into arestaurant and the host will
give me a Braille menu and Iwill say thank you, and I will
(05:03):
accept the Braille menu and haveit open in front of me while
I'm asking the person I'm withwhat's on the menu, because I do
want the person at therestaurant to feel as though
their accessibility, effort isreally appreciated and so tell
me a little bit about how youknow, why you decided and how
(05:29):
you feel you can make an impact,addressing this issue through
business and research as opposedto through, say you know,
medicine.
Well, the marketplace inmedicine is very different.
You know I am getting more andmore involved in healthcare
(05:52):
marketing but initially, asthings begin, there's still so
many opportunities to exploreaccessibility dimensions in the
marketplace and for whatretailers and organizations need
to know about these customers,not just the blind and low
(06:13):
vision, but customers withdisabilities in general.
If you think about it this way,essentially one in five
(06:38):
customers have a disability ofsome kind that you know prohibit
them from accessing the issues,whether it comes from
disabilities related to, youknow, cognitive impairments or
hearing or vision or mobilityissues, whatever it might be,
there are barriers that need tobe overcome with good, universal
(06:59):
design approaches, for example,an accessible website.
It's not just inaccessible toblind and low vision users using
a screen reader to navigatetheir computer.
Think of it this way it couldbe inaccessible to anybody that,
(07:21):
for any reason or any kind ofdisability, is unable to use a
mouse.
They can't appropriatelynavigate that website and are
therefore having anunsatisfactory consumer
experience with that retailer orwith that organization.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So how have you found the blind and disabled
community receptive to whatyou've been working on and doing
in your research?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, they're incredibly receptive because,
like me, they feel that thisresearch that we do, that we
conduct, can create anappropriate awareness.
Now that lends itself, you know, in terms of a research scope,
(08:10):
and I've often been told notjust by, you know, my colleagues
at my university or in mydoctoral program that your
research is too practical, youneed to have more theoretical
development, and so you know,I've been working on that, but
at some level it's, you know,what's going to make a change in
(08:33):
the marketplace.
And so initially the thoughtwas like, well, if we bring
awareness to these companies,then they'll make everything
accessible because it's theright thing to do.
It's almost like the Adam Smithinvisible hand approach, like
doing the right thing is justgood for the marketplace to be
(08:55):
inclusive and accepting and makeeverything accessible to all
people at all times.
And that's a wonderful notion.
That doesn't really work.
It's not that I feel thatthere's inaccessibility with
NALIS.
I don't think that the CEOs ofa bunch of these giant retail
(09:16):
organizations are meetingtogether on a skull-shaped
island like, hey, what can we doto exclude this entire
community?
I really don't think it's likethat.
But you also need to show thatthere are economic consequences
to inaccessibility and in someof the research that I was able
(09:38):
to conduct, not only, forexample, avoidance behaviors,
that with inaccessibility issuesfor consumers with disabilities
.
Yes, there's going to beavoidance behaviors from that
direct population based onaccessibility issues, but it
(09:59):
actually does affect theavoidance behaviors of people
without disabilities who hearabout these.
You know, if I have a lousytime at a restaurant because I'm
blind, because I wasn't treatedwell, or the bad service
(10:35):
experience is somehow directlyattributable to my disability,
that's different than a sharedexperience that we could all
have, where the service is lousy, the food was, you know,
quality was poor, the place wasdirty, you know whatever like
that could be a sharedexperience that could be felt by
anybody.
But if I were to tell mybrother, who is sighted, about,
(11:00):
you know, this restaurantexperience I had where I felt
that I was poorly treated due tomy blindness, um, he would
avoid that that restaurant inthe future as well.
So it's not just the, thedirectly affected consumer, it's
also, uh, radiates out to theirnon uh, disabled, you know,
(11:20):
social network.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
That makes sense.
So, kind of getting back intosome of the, just to kind of
introduce this part of theconversation, alex and I have
been working on this research,or kind of a continuation of his
research, for the last fewyears now, for the last few
(11:42):
years now, and we just presenteda paper at the Society of
Business Ethics in Copenhagen,which was a very exciting
conference and venue, and sowhile we were there, the topic
of that presentation was to lookat how digital accessibility of
(12:09):
websites, particularly of jobpostings and job listings, could
lead to people who are visuallyimpaired to not be able to
apply for those jobs.
When that happens, you knowthat then could be, you know
could be disenfranchising peoplefrom work opportunities.
(12:31):
How, alex, how does that?
How does you know not beingable to apply for those job
listings you know would affectthis particular population?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
you know would affect this particular population.
Well, there's already atremendous economic financial
inequality between people withdisabilities and without, and
just in the blind and low visioncommunity alone, I believe the
last statistics were somewhereat an unemployment rate
(13:07):
somewhere between 70 and 75percent, which is astounding.
And especially with theadvances in technology and so
many jobs and career paths being, you know, based through a
computer, working remotely,there's really no reason why so
(13:32):
many blind and low vision peoplewould be left out of the job
market.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And in which you're a living and you know example and
inspiration of someone who hasa you know, who has a you know
terrific job and is, you know,and happens to be low vision.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well, I'm very fortunate.
But I also took advantage ofthe programs that were available
to me.
So for years I worked in thehotel business.
That was.
My dream was to be the generalmanager of hotels and resorts.
That's what I went to schoolfor.
That's the industry I worked inuntil the loss of my vision
(14:15):
really made that just aboutimpossible.
And so I applied for socialsecurity disability and got it,
because, you know, I have allthe appropriate medical
documentation saying that I amblind.
And so I did that.
(14:36):
And then I went to thePhiladelphia um, uh,
pennsylvania office ofvocational rehabilitation and
the office of blindness andvisual services, uh, and they
have wonderful um resourcesavailable for job training.
I said, okay, well, mr Cohen,what do you want to do?
(14:56):
And I said, well, I want to bea college professor.
And they're like oh well, wehaven't had somebody ask about
that before.
What exactly do you need?
And I said, you know what?
I'm not exactly sure, let mecheck.
And so I knew people who workedat the Office of Disability
(15:17):
Resources at Drexel University,where I was, you know, looking
at, looking at the doctoralprogram, and I asked about, like
, well, what type of technologyis available if I wanted to go
back to school, you know,because being in the hotel
business versus being a studentare two entirely different
(15:41):
things that you know you wouldneed to approach.
And so what I did is I built acollaboration.
I built a team Team, alex, ifyou will between the Office of
Disability Resources andBlindness and Visual Services
and the people at Drexel to cometogether to give me everything
that I need and show me what isavailable to provide these
(16:05):
accommodations to get me throughthe program.
And I can tell you that some ofthe people in my doctoral cohort
were a little jealous where Icould just sit there and listen
to an academic article beingread to me through a screen
reader, as opposed to having to,you know, read through all
(16:26):
these things and scan everything.
You know it was a remarkableexperience.
It was still incrediblydifficult.
My doctoral program was verychallenging, but I really did
have a team of people to help mego through and I really had a
supportive wife at home and Ihad young children and I really
(16:48):
looked at this as a job and puta lot of strength and energy and
determination that like, look,I'm going to make this happen.
This is going to make my familylife better, it's going to make
my wife and my children proudand it's going to give me career
satisfaction and fulfillment.
That you know I'm going toenjoy what I do and I love being
(17:09):
a teacher, I love being aprofessor and working with the
university on all the differentcommittees that I'm lucky enough
to be part of, and I love doingthe research I do and hope that
it can, can make a, make adifference.
And, yes, um, you know, uh, theresearch that I do could have,
uh, you know, a direct effect onyou know myself or other people
(17:33):
like me, and, and you know, I,I like Terrific All right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So let me see, I think that you know, just to
kind of like wrap up, let's talka little bit about the paper
that we presented at the Societyof Business Ethics, and so I
think that you know in thatpaper it was specifically
talking about kind of thepotential, I think, for there to
(17:59):
be career discrimination oremployment discrimination.
You know that could be going ondue to people literally not
being able to access the jobposts that were, you know that
are, that are being madeavailable by companies but not
in the, not in the format that'srecommended by the ADA.
Can you talk a little bit abouthow we figure that out, whether
(18:24):
it's accessible or not?
And then also, what does itmean to have these ADA or kind
of guidelines that are put outthat companies are supposed to
follow to create their websitesand make them accessible for
people who are visually impaired?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Well, you know, that's actually one of the
largest challenges, david, isthat you know, yes, the ADA was
signed into law what July 1990.
So we just celebrated a prettybig anniversary for that.
But also the trouble with beingcodified in 1990 is, you know,
(19:07):
the internet really was notthought of yet.
So the accessibility of that,and so there have been a number
of different lawsuits.
Now the three major titles ofthe ADA Title I, title II and
(19:27):
Title III, you know, workplaceaccommodations covers what we
were looking at in this paper,or at least you would think it
would, and Title III coverspublic places.
So if you were going to go to aphysical store or a place that
(19:48):
was open to the public, it'ssupposed to be made accessible,
at least according to the ADA,but there weren't specific
guidelines adopted within theADA.
Now there's the World Wide Web,consortia guidelines.
(20:10):
I don't know what point they'reup to now.
Maybe you do, david.
I think it's 3.1.
Yeah, I mean, it keeps moving,which actually is wonderful
because it's making things moreaccessible.
But, as you would imagine, italso makes it a lot more
difficult to push any policybecause you're going to say what
are you going to adopt andthat's going to be the law and
(20:33):
but it keeps changing.
You know, accessibility in andof itself is kind of a moving
target based on these, the WorldWide Consortia guidelines,
especially as the web becomesmore and more advanced.
Like, if you could think of theyou know Internet in the 90s
through your prodigy, it wasmostly or AOL, it didn't have
(20:57):
that many images and actuallyvideo was even more difficult or
took a lot longer.
And so, as processing speedsbecame faster and the
capabilities more and more canbe added to these websites and
they're incredibly robust, likejust you know, if you can
(21:20):
imagine the website of aprofessional sports team and all
of the different things thatare possibly available on that
one website, and trying to makethat accessible.
It's a heavy lift.
Now I'm not saying that thatshouldn't happen, um, but it is.
It is difficult to adoptspecific standards.
(21:44):
So, um, and for years, decades,and in fact now uh companies
could just throw their hands upin the air and say, well, we
don't know what to do.
We don't know what to do, wedon't know how to make this
accessible.
And that's really not truebecause the worldwide consortia
and other uh, the rehabilitationact of 1973, 504, 508, you know
(22:08):
, compliance, uh, that that'sfor the accessibility of uh
government websites, or at leastit was at at one time before
the the, the W3CG were put intoplace.
So it is difficult.
I don't want to just say it'seasy.
Website developers know thatthis exists.
(22:28):
They know how to make websitesaccessible.
In computer science and MISprograms and programming,
accessibility is a part of thecurriculum and perhaps maybe it
should be a larger part of thecurriculum because it's not
(22:51):
really leaking into the publicdomain in the way it should.
So I don't know if you could.
You know, if a company said howdo I, you know, wanted to say,
how do I make my applicationprocess more accessible to
potential recruits withdisabilities, it would be very
(23:15):
easy to find that information.
It's not a mystery and it's nota easy to find that information
.
It's not a mystery and it's nota mystery to the web developers
.
It's just something that's nothappening.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, I think that's a good note for us to pause on
and thank you again so much forexplaining all this and joining
me for this talk and, you know,for this talk and and for
telling your story.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, absolutely, david.
It's been great to be with youand, again, anybody who's
looking for information aboutaccessibility or website
accessibility it's it's easy tofind, but one of the best
sources out there is WebAIM.
It's W-E-B capital A capital, Icapital M dot org.
(24:01):
And, you know, try and makeyour things accessible.
It will be worthwhile andeverything will be opened up to
you.
Know a lot more people andyou'll be surprised at the
capabilities and enthusiasm ofthis community that's been, you
know, unfortunately blocked outdue to inaccessibility issues.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, hopefully the research that you're doing is
helping to change that.
That we're doing, my friend.
Thank you All right, okay,thanks.
Thanks so much.
Hello, I'm David Eisenberg, Assistant Professor
in Information Management andBusiness Analytics Department of
the Feliciana Business Schoolat Montclair State University.
I'm excited to have you join metoday to speak with Dr Alex
Cohen about his journey towardsmakinga difference to research
and society in the area ofdigital accessibility and in the
fight against digitaldiscrimination.
Welcome, Alex.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you very much, David.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's great to be with you so why don't we start by
just you telling us a little bitabout yourself and your journey
to doing the kind of researchand having the kind of impact
that you do today?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, well, I have a degenerative retinal disease
called retinitis pigmentosa thatI've had my entire life.
It's a blinding condition whereI lost my sight over a period of
time.
It was first noticeable as ateenager, but then, once I was
(00:55):
in my 30s, my sight reallydiminished and I decided that I
actually needed a career changeand wanted to become a professor
, a marketing professor.
And you know, whileinvestigating what it would take
to make this career changehappen, I was, you know,
(01:17):
continually told about you know,how much research is involved
and what do you think your areaof research is going to be.
And I really decided at thattime that I wanted to make a
difference, initially just inthe blind and low vision
community, trying to explore theexperiences of the blind and
(01:44):
low vision consumer in today'smarketplace, both online and
offline.
But as the research grew, youknow, it really became much more
generalizable beyond just theblind and low vision, into other
groups of consumers with avariety of different
(02:06):
disabilities, and then actuallyinto different DEI spectrums.
And so that's where I reallystarted.
Once I was lucky enough to getenrolled in my doctoral program
at Drexel University, 100 yearsago, whatever that was.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So can you explain a little bit more about your own
condition and what that means,because I think a lot of people
listening, as well as myself,may not be completely familiar
with that condition.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, so people lose their vision for a variety of
different reasons.
Degenerative retinal conditions, whether that's retinitis
pigmentosa or Stargardt'sdisease or all sorts of a
variety of different maladies,can affect vision over time, can
(03:06):
affect vision over time.
There's also age-related eyediseases, like you might have
heard, like macular degenerationand things like that that
normally affect olderindividuals.
But then one of the highest,well, I guess one of the biggest
reasons why working age peoplelose their vision is due to
(03:27):
diabetic retinopathy, acomplication from diabetes.
So I mean, you know it's not ahomogenous group by any stretch.
For example, you know most blindpeople don't read Braille, for
(04:07):
example.
You know most blind peopledon't read Braille.
You know, because you come toyour vision loss a bit later in
life and then become morereliant on digital accessibility
, whether that's screen readingsoftware that converts text to
speech or, you know, voiceovertechnology on a smartphone.
But people who might have losttheir vision, either you know,
at birth or much earlier on,might learn to use Braille.
So something like Braillebuttons in an elevator does very
little for me.
However, you know, having theelevator tell me what floor I'm
(04:30):
at is actually incrediblyhelpful.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
That's really interesting because I think a
lot of people would just assumethat you know that everyone
who's blind, you know, justautomatically understands
braille.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And sometimes I, you know, and I play along.
You know, at this point I use acane to help me navigate the
world and I will go into arestaurant and the host will
give me a Braille menu and Iwill say thank you, and I will
(05:03):
accept the Braille menu and haveit open in front of me while
I'm asking the person I'm withwhat's on the menu, because I do
want the person at therestaurant to feel as though
their accessibility, effort isreally appreciated and so tell
me a little bit about how youknow, why you decided and how
(05:29):
you feel you can make an impact,addressing this issue through
business and research as opposedto through, say you know,
medicine.
Well, the marketplace inmedicine is very different.
You know I am getting more andmore involved in healthcare
(05:52):
marketing but initially, asthings begin, there's still so
many opportunities to exploreaccessibility dimensions in the
marketplace and for whatretailers and organizations need
to know about these customers,not just the blind and low
(06:13):
vision, but customers withdisabilities in general.
If you think about it this way,essentially one in five
(06:38):
customers have a disability ofsome kind that you know prohibit
them from accessing the issues,whether it comes from
disabilities related to, youknow, cognitive impairments or
hearing or vision or mobilityissues, whatever it might be,
there are barriers that need tobe overcome with good, universal
(06:59):
design approaches, for example,an accessible website.
It's not just inaccessible toblind and low vision users using
a screen reader to navigatetheir computer.
Think of it this way it couldbe inaccessible to anybody that,
(07:21):
for any reason or any kind ofdisability, is unable to use a
mouse.
They can't appropriatelynavigate that website and are
therefore having anunsatisfactory consumer
experience with that retailer orwith that organization.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So how have you found the blind and disabled
community receptive to whatyou've been working on and doing
in your research?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, they're incredibly receptive because,
like me, they feel that thisresearch that we do, that we
conduct, can create anappropriate awareness.
Now that lends itself, you know, in terms of a research scope,
(08:10):
and I've often been told notjust by, you know, my colleagues
at my university or in mydoctoral program that your
research is too practical, youneed to have more theoretical
development, and so you know,I've been working on that, but
at some level it's, you know,what's going to make a change in
(08:33):
the marketplace.
And so initially the thoughtwas like, well, if we bring
awareness to these companies,then they'll make everything
accessible because it's theright thing to do.
It's almost like the Adam Smithinvisible hand approach, like
doing the right thing is justgood for the marketplace to be
(08:55):
inclusive and accepting and makeeverything accessible to all
people at all times.
And that's a wonderful notion.
That doesn't really work.
It's not that I feel thatthere's inaccessibility with
NALIS.
I don't think that the CEOs ofa bunch of these giant retail
(09:16):
organizations are meetingtogether on a skull-shaped
island like, hey, what can we doto exclude this entire
community?
I really don't think it's likethat.
But you also need to show thatthere are economic consequences
to inaccessibility and in someof the research that I was able
(09:38):
to conduct, not only, forexample, avoidance behaviors,
that with inaccessibility issuesfor consumers with disabilities
.
Yes, there's going to beavoidance behaviors from that
direct population based onaccessibility issues, but it
(09:59):
actually does affect theavoidance behaviors of people
without disabilities who hearabout these.
You know, if I have a lousytime at a restaurant because I'm
blind, because I wasn't treatedwell, or the bad service
(10:35):
experience is somehow directlyattributable to my disability,
that's different than a sharedexperience that we could all
have, where the service is lousy, the food was, you know,
quality was poor, the place wasdirty, you know whatever like
that could be a sharedexperience that could be felt by
anybody.
But if I were to tell mybrother, who is sighted, about,
(11:00):
you know, this restaurantexperience I had where I felt
that I was poorly treated due tomy blindness, um, he would
avoid that that restaurant inthe future as well.
So it's not just the, thedirectly affected consumer, it's
also, uh, radiates out to theirnon uh, disabled, you know,
(11:20):
social network.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
That makes sense.
So, kind of getting back intosome of the, just to kind of
introduce this part of theconversation, alex and I have
been working on this research,or kind of a continuation of his
research, for the last fewyears now, for the last few
(11:42):
years now, and we just presenteda paper at the Society of
Business Ethics in Copenhagen,which was a very exciting
conference and venue, and sowhile we were there, the topic
of that presentation was to lookat how digital accessibility of
(12:09):
websites, particularly of jobpostings and job listings, could
lead to people who are visuallyimpaired to not be able to
apply for those jobs.
When that happens, you knowthat then could be, you know
could be disenfranchising peoplefrom work opportunities.
(12:31):
How, alex, how does that?
How does you know not beingable to apply for those job
listings you know would affectthis particular population?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
you know would affect this particular population.
Well, there's already atremendous economic financial
inequality between people withdisabilities and without, and
just in the blind and low visioncommunity alone, I believe the
last statistics were somewhereat an unemployment rate
(13:07):
somewhere between 70 and 75percent, which is astounding.
And especially with theadvances in technology and so
many jobs and career paths being, you know, based through a
computer, working remotely,there's really no reason why so
(13:32):
many blind and low vision peoplewould be left out of the job
market.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And in which you're a living and you know example and
inspiration of someone who hasa you know, who has a you know
terrific job and is, you know,and happens to be low vision.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well, I'm very fortunate.
But I also took advantage ofthe programs that were available
to me.
So for years I worked in thehotel business.
That was.
My dream was to be the generalmanager of hotels and resorts.
That's what I went to schoolfor.
That's the industry I worked inuntil the loss of my vision
(14:15):
really made that just aboutimpossible.
And so I applied for socialsecurity disability and got it,
because, you know, I have allthe appropriate medical
documentation saying that I amblind.
And so I did that.
(14:36):
And then I went to thePhiladelphia um, uh,
pennsylvania office ofvocational rehabilitation and
the office of blindness andvisual services, uh, and they
have wonderful um resourcesavailable for job training.
I said, okay, well, mr Cohen,what do you want to do?
(14:56):
And I said, well, I want to bea college professor.
And they're like oh well, wehaven't had somebody ask about
that before.
What exactly do you need?
And I said, you know what?
I'm not exactly sure, let mecheck.
And so I knew people who workedat the Office of Disability
(15:17):
Resources at Drexel University,where I was, you know, looking
at, looking at the doctoralprogram, and I asked about, like
, well, what type of technologyis available if I wanted to go
back to school, you know,because being in the hotel
business versus being a studentare two entirely different
(15:41):
things that you know you wouldneed to approach.
And so what I did is I built acollaboration.
I built a team Team, alex, ifyou will between the Office of
Disability Resources andBlindness and Visual Services
and the people at Drexel to cometogether to give me everything
that I need and show me what isavailable to provide these
(16:05):
accommodations to get me throughthe program.
And I can tell you that some ofthe people in my doctoral cohort
were a little jealous where Icould just sit there and listen
to an academic article beingread to me through a screen
reader, as opposed to having to,you know, read through all
(16:26):
these things and scan everything.
You know it was a remarkableexperience.
It was still incrediblydifficult.
My doctoral program was verychallenging, but I really did
have a team of people to help mego through and I really had a
supportive wife at home and Ihad young children and I really
(16:48):
looked at this as a job and puta lot of strength and energy and
determination that like, look,I'm going to make this happen.
This is going to make my familylife better, it's going to make
my wife and my children proudand it's going to give me career
satisfaction and fulfillment.
That you know I'm going toenjoy what I do and I love being
(17:09):
a teacher, I love being aprofessor and working with the
university on all the differentcommittees that I'm lucky enough
to be part of, and I love doingthe research I do and hope that
it can, can make a, make adifference.
And, yes, um, you know, uh, theresearch that I do could have,
uh, you know, a direct effect onyou know myself or other people
(17:33):
like me, and, and you know, I,I like Terrific All right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So let me see, I think that you know, just to
kind of like wrap up, let's talka little bit about the paper
that we presented at the Societyof Business Ethics, and so I
think that you know in thatpaper it was specifically
talking about kind of thepotential, I think, for there to
(17:59):
be career discrimination oremployment discrimination.
You know that could be going ondue to people literally not
being able to access the jobposts that were, you know that
are, that are being madeavailable by companies but not
in the, not in the format that'srecommended by the ADA.
Can you talk a little bit abouthow we figure that out, whether
(18:24):
it's accessible or not?
And then also, what does itmean to have these ADA or kind
of guidelines that are put outthat companies are supposed to
follow to create their websitesand make them accessible for
people who are visually impaired?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Well, you know, that's actually one of the
largest challenges, david, isthat you know, yes, the ADA was
signed into law what July 1990.
So we just celebrated a prettybig anniversary for that.
But also the trouble with beingcodified in 1990 is, you know,
(19:07):
the internet really was notthought of yet.
So the accessibility of that,and so there have been a number
of different lawsuits.
Now the three major titles ofthe ADA Title I, title II and
(19:27):
Title III, you know, workplaceaccommodations covers what we
were looking at in this paper,or at least you would think it
would, and Title III coverspublic places.
So if you were going to go to aphysical store or a place that
(19:48):
was open to the public, it'ssupposed to be made accessible,
at least according to the ADA,but there weren't specific
guidelines adopted within theADA.
Now there's the World Wide Web,consortia guidelines.
(20:10):
I don't know what point they'reup to now.
Maybe you do, david.
I think it's 3.1.
Yeah, I mean, it keeps moving,which actually is wonderful
because it's making things moreaccessible.
But, as you would imagine, italso makes it a lot more
difficult to push any policybecause you're going to say what
are you going to adopt andthat's going to be the law and
(20:33):
but it keeps changing.
You know, accessibility in andof itself is kind of a moving
target based on these, the WorldWide Consortia guidelines,
especially as the web becomesmore and more advanced.
Like, if you could think of theyou know Internet in the 90s
through your prodigy, it wasmostly or AOL, it didn't have
(20:57):
that many images and actuallyvideo was even more difficult or
took a lot longer.
And so, as processing speedsbecame faster and the
capabilities more and more canbe added to these websites and
they're incredibly robust, likejust you know, if you can
(21:20):
imagine the website of aprofessional sports team and all
of the different things thatare possibly available on that
one website, and trying to makethat accessible.
It's a heavy lift.
Now I'm not saying that thatshouldn't happen, um, but it is.
It is difficult to adoptspecific standards.
(21:44):
So, um, and for years, decades,and in fact now uh companies
could just throw their hands upin the air and say, well, we
don't know what to do.
We don't know what to do, wedon't know how to make this
accessible.
And that's really not truebecause the worldwide consortia
and other uh, the rehabilitationact of 1973, 504, 508, you know
(22:08):
, compliance, uh, that that'sfor the accessibility of uh
government websites, or at leastit was at at one time before
the the, the W3CG were put intoplace.
So it is difficult.
I don't want to just say it'seasy.
Website developers know thatthis exists.
(22:28):
They know how to make websitesaccessible.
In computer science and MISprograms and programming,
accessibility is a part of thecurriculum and perhaps maybe it
should be a larger part of thecurriculum because it's not
(22:51):
really leaking into the publicdomain in the way it should.
So I don't know if you could.
You know, if a company said howdo I, you know, wanted to say,
how do I make my applicationprocess more accessible to
potential recruits withdisabilities, it would be very
(23:15):
easy to find that information.
It's not a mystery and it's nota easy to find that information
.
It's not a mystery and it's nota mystery to the web developers
.
It's just something that's nothappening.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, I think that's a good note for us to pause on
and thank you again so much forexplaining all this and joining
me for this talk and, you know,for this talk and and for
telling your story.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, absolutely, david.
It's been great to be with youand, again, anybody who's
looking for information aboutaccessibility or website
accessibility it's it's easy tofind, but one of the best
sources out there is WebAIM.
It's W-E-B capital A capital, Icapital M dot org.
(24:01):
And, you know, try and makeyour things accessible.
It will be worthwhile andeverything will be opened up to
you.
Know a lot more people andyou'll be surprised at the
capabilities and enthusiasm ofthis community that's been, you
know, unfortunately blocked outdue to inaccessibility issues.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, hopefully the research that you're doing is
helping to change that.
That we're doing, my friend.
Thank you All right, okay,thanks.
Thanks so much.
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