Atlassian Verified Government Partner Addteq shares how their Unstoppable app helps visually impaired users to have full control of Atlassian products such as Jira and Confluence.
Roberto Musso: Welcome to the Atlassian Advantage Podcast Series. Here's our next episode, Unstoppable, keep the world working.
Sean O'Sullivan: Hello everyone. As a business, the health and wellbeing of our customers, our team and our partners are always our top priority. We are closely monitoring the coronavirus situation as it unfolds and are continuing to adapt, following the guidance issued by the government and health authorities to help keep everyone safe as possible. Our thoughts go out to anyone who has been personally impacted and we hope to have you and your families safe as well. Today's podcast will focus on working remotely with a disability, such as visual impairment, and how Atlassian and the unique unstoppable ad tech solution is helping to keep the world working. I'd like to welcome back Addteq's VP of Marketing, Jaclyn Mazzarella. You all may remember she was recently featured in our podcast, focus on the federal 508 mandate and how agencies can be compliant in support of visually impaired workers and constituents. Hi Jaclyn.
Jaclyn Mazzarella: Hey Sean. Glad to be back.
Sean O'Sullivan: Glad to have you. Jaclyn has also brought a special guest with her today. Jaclyn, if you don't mind introducing us.
Jaclyn Mazzarella: Yes, of course. Thank you, Sean. I've brought along my colleague Nathan Clark. He is currently the Quality Assurance Analyst at Addteq. And one of his job duties is to test our unstoppable app for JIRA, JIRA Service Desk and Confluence.
Sean O'Sullivan: Awesome. It's a pleasure to have you with us, Nathan.
Nathan Clark: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Sean O'Sullivan: So I think for most people these days, right, this is a unique moment in our lives, I guess we'll say. What do you think the impact is on the workforce who doesn't have accessibility tools available, right, what's your take on that?
Nathan Clark: So I'm going to say that hopefully I hope people will understand that for the future, that accessibility is, it's a big deal. I mean it's a big deal for everyone, no matter if you're disabled or not because if you're a CEO of a company and you have some disabled workers and your systems are not accessible and we have another pandemic and they can't go in and have someone who's not disabled, go into the office and help them and they have to do everything remotely, making sure that those disabled workers can do the same tasks as their non-disabled peers remotely as they can do in the office.
Sean O'Sullivan: Okay. So we'll take that now and segue a bit in talking about Atlassian and the unique Unstoppable Addteq Solution and how it's keeping the world working, right? So if you could, just for our listeners Nathan, just give a quick overview, what is Addteq's unstoppable solution?
Nathan Clark: So Unstoppable for JIRA and Confluence is a tool that has been developed by Addteq, here in-house, where it helps blind and visually impaired users access JIRA and Confluence just like their non-disabled peers. So JAWS stands for Job Access With Speech, and it's talking software, speech synthesizer tool that reads everything on a computer screen. So when I use my keyboard and hit enter key on a link, it will tell me what link I selected and then it tells me what's the next screen or function that I'm on.
Sean O'Sullivan: Gotcha. And I guess you've already started to address it, but I'll ask anyway. Why then is it so important to you?
Nathan Clark: Without Unstoppable, JIRA and Confluence would not be accessible for me. As a quality assurance analyst here at Addteq, my job is to make sure that JIRA and Confluence wants is accessible. And so Unstoppable is the tool that helps me as a blind user level the playing field so that I can do the same thing as my sighted peers can.
Sean O'Sullivan: I got you. So then what value do you think Addteq is adding by creating a tool like Unstoppable?
Nathan Clark: It is bringing a tool, a very valuable tool, to the disabled community so that they can do the exact same thing is they're sighted or non-disabled peers. So it's opening it up to the world to the disabled community so that they can participate both in, obviously my situation as a valuable member and employee of Addteq, but just in the community itself.
Sean O'Sullivan: Right now, I've heard you have a unique way of using Unstoppable. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Nathan Clark: So as I mentioned earlier, I use a talking software program called JAWS. It stands for Job Access With Speech and so it's a talking software program that I use to interact with the computer in everything I do, so going on the internet, going on word using JIRA and Confluence, obviously this is what Unstoppable was made for, but it helps me interact with my computer.
Sean O'Sullivan: Sure. So obviously Unstoppable is very, very important, right, from an accessibility perspective. So what major takeaways do you have then from having used Unstoppable?
Nathan Clark: It is a very valuable tool and it is definitely a game changer for the disabled community when it comes to interacting with JIRA and Confluence. And I'm on JIRA all the time, so I need the Unstoppable plugin with JAWS all the time. It's what I do.
Sean O'Sullivan: I gotcha. Do you find some of your relationships have changed while working with Addteq and while using unstoppable? Does it influence your take on technology?
Nathan Clark: So I've used obviously a lot of different pieces of technology in my life. As I've gotten older and as new technology has come out, it's just Unstoppable is just another tool that I can add to my toolbox for helping me both as an employee of Addteq, but just accessibility in general.
Sean O'Sullivan: I got you. So there's clearly a lot of valuable information to take away from this discussion today. I definitely want to thank Jaclyn and Nathan. So either of you, if you could just... where do you suggest our listeners where to go to learn more about Addteq information, Unstoppable, and all that for government agencies?
Jaclyn Mazzarella: Thanks Sean and thank you Nathan for the great commentary on everything. I think users can go ahead and get more information specifically on Unstoppable, at addteq.com/unstoppable or you can contact us at sales@addteq.com. Furthermore, of course, you can reach out to Carahsoft for some great information as well.
Sean O'Sullivan: Perfect. Great suggestions as always, appreciate it. Jaclyn. I want to thank everyone today so much for their time as well as their valuable insights and information are for our listeners. You can always check out ad tech suggestions and the resources we also have on Carahsoft Atlassian Advantage Website. Feel free to give us a shout at any time as well, atlassian@carahsoft.com or you can always drop us a line at 833-547-2468. Thanks everybody, have a great day.