Serial Number Virtual Dj Le Mixt
Christian Erdmann
Any Slate Digital users out there? For some reason the virtual mix rack only shows as VST2 but looking at documentation, looks like it should have VST3 and I see the .vst3 in the scanned VST3 folder. Any suggestions?
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to convert their daily work lives to a "virtual" format, in which they connected remotely from home. In this new, virtual environment, accessibility barriers changed, in some respects for the better (e.g., more flexibility) and in other aspects, for the worse (e.g., problems including American Sign Language interpreters over video calls). Microsoft Research held its first cohort of all virtual interns in 2020. We, the interns, full-time members, and affiliates of the Ability Team, a Microsoft research team focused on accessibility, report on our experiences navigating the challenges of working remotely. We constituted a variety of abilities, positions, and levels of seniority. Using an autoethnographic method, we provide a nuanced view of how the virtual setting affected the experiences of our mixed-ability team, the strategies we used to improve access, and areas for further improvement. We close by presenting guidelines for future virtual mixed-ability teams to improve workplace accessibility.
This shift to remote collaboration impacted access for many people with disabilities. Since 2020, several papers have explored the challenges and benefits of a virtual setting in the context of accessibility, focusing on specific technology features (e.g., the effects of text chats during video calls19) and people with specific disabilities (e.g., people who are Deaf14). However, no work has yet explored the challenges and synergies of meetings among people with multiple abilities in a virtual setting (e.g., blind, d/Deaf, and non-disabled). Mixed-ability teams must not only ensure that individual team members have access but also face the challenge of communicating and coordinating across disabilities. For example, accommodations may conflict between different disabilities11 [e.g., a preference for visual communication by deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) individuals versus oral communication by blind team members]. Organizations may not be prepared to accommodate such diverse teams and needs, especially during a rapid shift to virtual environments.
In this work, we examine the interplay of virtual work and mixed abilities to help address such problems and enrich the growing field of work about virtual engagement. Utilizing an autoethnographic research method, 11 of us who were members of or affiliated with Microsoft's Ability Team journaled about our experiences on the mixed-ability team for three to four months. Five authors, whom we refer to as "meta-authors," then iteratively examined the data, to identify five key, interdependent themes. We experienced several virtual (in)accessibilities that arose from the new, online context. As this was the first virtual internship and the Ability Team's intern cohort with the most diversity in abilities, we experimented with ways of establishing and executing accommodations in the workplace. We quickly found that the list of mixed-ability accommodations we needed to follow was difficult to remember, and in some cases, accommodations conflicted with each other in ways that had not been experienced in person. Finally, we discussed how important allyship was this summer, and how power dynamics impacted overall accommodation success.
In summary, this work contributes: (1) in-depth accounts of five key factors that influenced our experiences (virtual inaccessibility, difficulty remembering access accommodations, conflicting accommodations, allyship, and power dynamics), (2) reflections on how these factors interplayed, and helped or hindered the accessibility of the group, and (3) a set of guidelines for future virtual mixed-ability teams.
A growing body of literature within HCI investigates accessibility in mixed-ability teams. Bennett et al.1 put forth the concept of interdependence, which draws on disability studies and activist work.12 Access is conceived of as co-created and sustained through "relationship between people and things." Related prior work has explored the ways in which blind and sighted people collaboratively establish accessible living spaces3 and perform shared tasks such as writing6 together. A common thread in prior work is that accessibility is produced through "care work"17 where people with and without disabilities continually attend to each other and fluidly adapt their work routines.2 For instance, Jain et al. shared how graduate students with disabilities and their able-bodied allies established "uncharted accommodations," and minimized accessibility issues by customizing technologies in-situ.13 Still, these studies revealed tensions arising when people with diverse access strategies collaborate,7,13 and how people compromise and work through conflicting access needs.7,11 Situated in this emerging literature, our work brings in new perspectives by exploring all-virtual mixed-abilities collaboration.
The concepts of disability identity and visibility have a fraught history within the human-computer interaction (HCI) and assistive technology literature. Recent studies within HCI and ASSETS that draw upon disability studies scholarship reject a medicalized deficit narrative. They foreground the lived experiences of disabled people to uncover the nuanced personal relationships people have with disability identity, visibility, and disclosure.22 For instance, the use of visible assistive tools (e.g., wheelchair or cane) can be beneficial in certain situations by "legitimizing" disabled behaviors,18 while also perpetuating harms imposed by stigmatization.22 Thus, visibility of disability (and assistive technology) and social acceptability complicates when and how disabled people choose to hide their disability and when they disclose and advocate for accommodations.5 Related to this discourse, researchers have also foregrounded the invisibility of access labor,4 which refers to the (often unacknowledged) labor that is put into a scenario to improve access for an individual or group (e.g., scheduling interpreters).1 Power dynamics and ability-based hierarchies also play a role, where part of the invisible work involves the emotional labor of weighing potential social costs against accommodation benefits6 and navigating ableist institutional systems.21 In our mixed-abilities experience, we explore the impact of virtual collaboration on visibility of both disability and accommodations, and the impact on access, allyship, and team dynamics.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft had its first all-remote summer intern cohort, which introduced accessibility and other challenges. Additionally, the group of interns hired by our team, the Ability Team, had a diverse range of abilities. We describe the team and internship experience to contextualize our findings around working on a mixed abilities team in a fully virtual, industrial setting.
In Microsoft's first-ever all-virtual internship, the Ability Team replicated many in-person experiences typically offered during summer internships. Work meetings, such as the weekly Ability Team meeting that existed pre-COVID, persisted in virtual form over group video calls. During these meetings, the team introduced interns, shared announcements, discussed research, and gave presentations. To replicate impromptu socialization, the Ability Team manager created weekly meetings intended for non-work conversation. Interns created their own weekly lunch chats among themselves, which became an informal social space.
Meeting exclusively through online collaboration technologies directly impacted accessibility, especially because many of our group meetings included a mixed set of abilities, assistive technologies, and accommodations. Meeting virtually did provide one accessibility advantage23: the inclusion of text chat in all video calls19 meant that people could easily choose a modality of contributing that fit their abilities. However, our mixed ability team communicating in a fully virtual space did result in several accessibility challenges largely revolving around (1) incompatibility between videoconferencing software and assistive technologies and practices employed by people with diverse abilities, which often led to (2) decreased visibility of disability and increased access labor.
Seeing a signer clearly was more challenging when participants shared their screens. The video call's interface gave more screen space to screen sharing, which was afforded by reducing the number of video tiles and the space for live text captioning. This limited screen real-estate when screen sharing could mean losing sight of an ASL interpreter unless their video tile was pinned. Bragg and Glasser's lab spent considerable time developing a protocol that involved pinning interpreters and then screen sharing. This solution was not perfect (technical issue arose) and it took many rounds of iterating, escalating, and collaborating with technical support and leadership to get implemented.
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