Episode 8 - Sandra Kiel

Accessibility, Neurodiversity, Tech, and Gaming all meet head on in this episode of 365 a11y the podcast where Sandra Kiel is the guest.

With a definite gaming feel to the discussion, Mike Hartley asks the regular questions and gets some fun answers and some new lessons.

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Hello everyone and welcome again to 365 Ally the podcast with me, Mike Hartley your host on the podcast. And today I am absolutely loving the fact that I'm joined by Sandra. We were just talking before the podcast and sort of sharing memories of different things. First time we've ever spoken to each other. So really cool. But Sandra, thank you for joining me on the podcast and introduce yourself. Tell us about yourself. Go for it! thank you very much for being here. I'm really appreciate that because it's always for me really difficult, difficult to join English speaking podcast and it's a kind of challenge which makes me day before really crazy because it's always out of my comfort zone. Yeah. So I'm Sandra, I'm M365 MVP and Clipchamp, one of three in the world. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a, think it's a new category from the last year on. So, and I made a lot of community work in Clipchamp and use it every day. So yeah, I'm MVP in the fifth year. Yeah. I started as an MVP in the mixed reality area. So I developed mixed reality solutions earlier for HoloLens and for VR, for all space VR and mesh. But now, as we know, there is no mixed reality category. yeah. Yeah, I have a HoloLens here in my board. Fully work. I love my HoloLens, but yeah, Time changes. Now I'm MVP for M365. Yeah, but my main job is like you can see in the background. building architecture, designing cars and planes. Yeah, anything with gaming. Okay, I'm a huge Minecraft fan. Yeah. I would never have guessed. Why not? It's- I don't know. mean, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really a fan of this creeper, yeah, because it's always in my bag and then... And I died so many times, so many times regarding a creeper. So it's my favorite. Yeah, so my job is about bringing gamification or game mechanics in business apps or in business processes. Not only that, because we also in development We also develop games for customers, for example, for financial education or insurance education, or also for sustainability to teach children or young people in their language because their language is gaming. So when you come with PowerPoint or any slides or whatever, they don't... accept this as a learning way. They like games for learning, so we develop games for learning. And also for Microsoft products or Microsoft ecosystem things like power apps. The easiest thing is make power apps more gamified. Oh excellent! Oh brilliant! I love it! accessibility. Bring more accessibility in Power Apps. If you think about games which you play, when you play games, you always have another kind of UI and UX like in business apps. and you play games in your free time and you like it and it's a motivational kind of spending time, not with business apps. So why not bringing these kind of UX and UI and customer journey and player journey in bringing in the business to foster adoption of anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've got my Asus Xbox ROG Allie X. I've got my Xbox Series X on my desk as well. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it. I get it. no, that is seriously cool. So, so yeah, as I do with all guests, we've got kind of some standard questions and We're really keen on hearing everybody's different voices and different views on things because it's not one size fits all. Accessibility means different things to each one of us and we all have our own personal experiences and needs. this is really just a great chance to get your voice on these things and help people see things from a different perspective, which is cool. So that, that being said, the starting point as always is really what does accessibility mean to you? Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is really a cool question because my whole current life is about gaming. And when you think about a game, a video game, and you see that these video games include all people, because they have some... features inside which you don't have in business, yeah, mostly don't have in business apps or in business processes. You can start with an easy mode or you can start with a medium mode or you can start with a difficult mode. It depends from where you are, from where you come. You can also say, okay, I start with the easy mode. as well as can do the second or the medium mode. But you can choose. You can choose from your side what's good for you. You don't have to do this and this and this and for all people the same level. You can choose the level. You can, for example, when you start with kind of... Let's talk about Minecraft. When you start with Minecraft, you have an open world game. You can decide if you start with a killing ghost to have meal or you can start with making tools. It's up to you what works for you and each people or each person in Minecraft starts in a different way because it comes from the player what you want, what you need in this moment when you start with the game. So this means for me it's the kind of accessibility. You are in the center of the process and you start from where you are, from... where you should be from the designers. And if you think about video games, another one is sometimes you have the possibility to play video games on mobile. Most children play on mobile. Then you have also the possibility to use your controllers. If you like controllers, you can play with controllers. Do you have any business process which you can play with controllers? No, no, I can't say I have. Yeah, and then at the end you can use your keyboard for the same game and you have one game and you have five, six different devices which you can use to play the game. Yeah, as well as the VR glasses. Yeah. So this is accessibility for me because you can choose what you want from where you come. Yeah. What you like. It's not fixed. a fixed given pattern where you have to do. You can choose what you want. So this is a kind of inclusion of all people because I don't like mobile. I don't like to play on the mobile because it's too small. You have this small window and then you have to with my big fingers. Yep. Yeah. But for the children, it's really easy and natural to play with the mobile because they the whole day on the mobile. They know better how they can jump like me with my mouse and my keyboard. and this is, yeah, that's accessibility for me. If you can start from where you are. and not start from what an architect or designer has decided for you. And this is really, really complex to implement, I know. But from the point of games, they all have this. Hmm? Yeah? I would say the most of the games have the, the have a really high level on accessibility. Yeah. So that, that's my, that's what accessibility means for me. Yeah. And if we, if we, we think about how we can improve business processes or business apps or any kind of business tools. and think about how games works and how we can bring this in and also in a business tool. And I think the adoption of tools can be much more better than today. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I think that's brilliant. No, I like that. I like that a lot. I think that is excellent. rolling off that question quite nicely is for you in your daily life, what's accessibility for you in your daily life? you It's hard to answer because when I see my daily life, I have lot of barriers. the first thing is when I have different business customers. Yeah, we have gaming, but we have business customers. and all business customers have different tools. So with one customer, I work in the Microsoft ecosystem. With the next customer, I work in Slack. And with the next customer, I work in Google Workspace. And with the next customer, I work in Jira. I have to manage four. tools the whole day because when we have different projects we have different tools. when it comes to all these tools. The example Jyra. Jyra is so complex. It's always the same. When I start working with Jyra during a day, I always sit in front of this tool and I think, where should I start? What was my last thing? What I have done? So this is not accessible for me. It's really hard, it's always really hard to find, to come in the process. Yeah, that's... I would say it can be much more better, but... Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to work with these four tools. because, yeah. And in my daily life, I don't have these problems because I built my universe at home, yeah, so that I can manage all these different private things. So therefore I don't have the problem. It's all accessible for me, but in the business it's hard. In the private it's easier. Yeah. Because I can start from my point where I am. You can control things in your private life, whereas with work, you've got to live within that. No, no, that makes perfect sense. yeah. So, I mean, working with lots of different customers, working with different tools and different ecosystems, as well as sort of the Microsoft stack. I'm guessing you'll have seen a wide range of AI over the last few years. Yeah, yeah, maybe just maybe just one or two bits. And I guess I guess really. It's, what would you say, sort of twofold is, what would you say the impact of AI has been so far as far as accessibility is concerned? And what do you think the future of accessibility could look like with this sort of AI? MCP agent driven world that we're sort of rushing into now. Yeah, I think I'm absolutely positive regarding AI because for me it's... I was one of the first, I think, chat GPT movers and users and I worked in the early phase with the graphic tool here. What is the name? Dolly 2 and the other one what was accessible with Discord. Yeah, it doesn't matter. For me, I cannot today, it's not possible that I can, that it's not under or I cannot imagine. not to have AI. Yeah, because it's not about using agents or whatever. Yeah, it's for me, it's more about I'm a really creative person, really creative. Yeah, I have to design games, have to design stories. And when I but I have also this kind of problems in my brain because of all these influencing things during the day, the HD, HD thing. And yes, sometimes I lose my focus. Okay, not sometimes, permanent. I lose my focus during the day. Yeah, because I'm the company owner, I'm the CFO, I'm the creative mind behind, I'm a developer, I'm a coach for the team. Yeah, so I have a lot of jobs during the day. And then I have also these kind of creativity. Yeah, I'm in the forefront of the customer for starting points with customers. So I have always to find answers on how we can create a cool experience. And then my brain starts to work. And if this is the case, then my best friend is my mobile and the different AIs. And the best AIs for me are the AIs where I can talk. Not right because I cannot write. I think you can imagine the problem with writing. So the best case for me is talking to AI and have a kind of conversation with the AI so that I can discuss my thoughts about ideas or about different topics so that I can discuss it. And then for me it's really positive because I have a kind of sparing with the AI. And also when I think about building agents which are more precise in answering my I built in the early phase, I built the kind of agents with JetGPT, where I trained the chats, so that I get always the right answer. For me, it's a daily work with the AI. I'm always talking in my phone and talk to the agents to help me. finding focus, finding ideas, being a little bit more creative with me together, brainstorm some ideas. yeah, it's really a positive feeling for me. But there's also some thoughts about... When you are a creative person, yeah, and you think about that AI is your discussion partner instead of another game designer. I have some thoughts about losing a little bit of my creativity over the time. Because the AI provides a lot of things which I normally have to work on my own. Now it pushes me full of ideas and I have always to pick the right idea and make the next step. Yes, it's faster. But I think we will be in the future. I'm really... yeah angry about that we are all will be a little bit more stupid Yeah? Yeah? because, yes, it helps, but... That's my little bit of fear, a fear about AI. In the past, we had more kind of creativity sessions to come to a result. And today, you don't need these creativity sessions in a room with post-its, and discuss, and making points, and decide, and so on. I miss this complete, but today it's fast, fast, fast. We are run, run, run from date to date, from project to project. And I think we will lose a lot of our creativity. Yeah, yeah, I think we're already seeing it to an extent with all of the images and videos that you see and everything else. I think on the one hand it helps some people who aren't necessarily creative to be able to create stuff, but... it then takes away things from people who genuinely are creative and yeah I think it's it is a challenge it really is so yeah I think Yeah, also if you think about M365 Co-Pilot, yes, okay, you can summarize a lot of emails in only five seconds, yeah. And that's really productive. But it's only productive. It's not good for our brain because... In the past you search for the emails, you read the emails and then you make the conclusion. And now you have this in five minutes. I think it's always... Yeah, it's also a negative thing, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think it is. So yeah. Okay, so... Final question really is what would your personal hot tip be for accessibility? What would you say to the people who are watching or listening to the podcast? When you create a software and you design a software and you are on the point that you think about who will use the software. That you not only think about your own person or your colleagues or other people in your bubble, so that you also think about people who are not so fast, who are not so focused, who have different skills and who have different starting points. That you create a user journey, which not only includes your bubble, but also the bubbles of others or also think about people who are not in the area of or in the in Yeah, who are not the normal way. Because when I see that sometimes software is really or business apps are really overwhelming, I lost the focus, complete. When I see this, it's not possible that I concentrate on what I have to do. I always struggle with, should I do this or that or that or that? Yeah. So for me, accessibility as a hot tip is building a user story or a user journey, which includes all kind of people and all groups of people, the most groups of people to me. build business apps like you wish to will play a game. Yep. No, I like that. I like that. Yeah. and a Mario, Super Mario Kart game in the business process. Yeah, can I have an excuse to sit here at work doing... I like that idea. I like that idea. love it. thank you. He's a boof. Jump balls. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well Sandra, it has been absolutely brilliant having you on the podcast today. Thank you so much. yeah, I just love all the, I love all the gaming talk and everything else. And I've got to say, I mean, I'm loving all the Minecraft stuff. It's excellent. So thank you so much for taking time out to. to talk and yeah, it's been wonderful. Thank you so, so much. Thank you that I can talk about and being here. Thank you too. you are more than welcome. It's my pleasure. And so folks, that is it for another episode of 365 Ally, the podcast. And once again, thank you to Sandra and we'll catch you all on the next episode. Oh, we've got a guest. There you go. We will catch you on the next episode of the podcast. So have a good one, folks, and take care. Bye bye now.