 Welcome, Bruce and Ed, live from New York. I'm Ed. And I'm Bruce. I almost forgot. It's a gorgeous day in New York again. Oh my god, I love this time of year. I wish I could just turn the camera around. Pretty soon we're installing this new fancy, what's it called, tricaster software system and we're going to have like all seven cameras. It's going to be so cool. We'll be able to transition scenes and stuff and you'll be able to see what we see. This beautiful view of the river and the sailboats and everything. It's a gorgeous day. But anyway, welcome, welcome, welcome. And today with us, you may have already noticed, Sachin Malhan, did I pronounce it right? Kind of. Close. Better than most. He's one of the co-founders of an amazing movement website around a movement or movement around a website called inclusiveplanet.com. So welcome. Thank you. All the way from India. All the way from India. Absolutely. Thanks for coming by our studio. We came all the way from India just to sit here with us. And I can't fix your computers. You can't fix them? You can't? You know, they're going to be started. One time I called Microsoft, okay. And I probably talked to somebody in your town. And I'm sure, you know, because what city are you from again? I'm from Bangalore. Well, I'm not sure it was Bangalore. We're all the car centers. That's what I thought. Well, I called Microsoft. You've heard of this company. Well, I called Microsoft for tech support, which, you know, don't even bother. And, uh, but, but I know that I waited on hold for 45 minutes and I got through. And this very nice gentleman said, you know, I told him the problem. And he said, okay. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. So polite. Could you please spell this word of windows? I'm like, windows. Microsoft windows. Is this Microsoft? Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. But could you please spell this word of windows? And I'm like, oh, never mind. Never mind. But he said, thank you. He said, thank you very much. Several times. Several times. It's very polite. But he didn't know the word windows. You don't know what to appreciate. I know. I know. Exactly. Oh, I appreciate him very much. Always get the good first. Yeah. It's Microsoft. I didn't appreciate that. They didn't train these people. They don't even know the name windows. But what you didn't notice was he nodded as well. Oh, I'm sure. Of course you were talking to them on the phone. No, no. Oh, I don't hold it against him. Not at all. It's the company that doesn't train the people. But anyway, it's not his fault. They're doing their best. They're doing their best. They are doing their best. I know. They're doing their best. It's the company. It's the American company that just didn't train the people. It really is. I like that. It's so sad. But anyway, but no, they're very, very polite and wonderful. And they do their absolute darn it. Considering the circumstances, you know, we would just walk off the job. I mean, you know, we won't even do the job. That's why, you know, we're sending our calls there. But they're doing a fantastic job. So tell us about Inclusive Planet. Well, first, I wanted to ask him, are you, is this your first time in New York? Nope. It's my second time in New York. And how is it? I know you've been here for 20 days or so. I've been in New York for six days. But before that, I was in the Bay Area sometime. In San Francisco? In San Francisco. So you're partly working? Yeah. So this trip was all about work. Last time I came here. Speaking to the... Yeah, this trip was all about work. The last time I came here, it was just exploring the place and discovering it. Yeah. Cool. And I was like, wow. So how do you... What do you think of New York? How does it compare to India? That's a loaded question. Yeah. Then we always start off with a loaded question. Like, yeah, Hanuman. And what do I think of New York? I mean, New York's a great place because you've got a bunch of different people and different cultures. You feel that everywhere, you know? And I guess some people find it rude, but, you know, I'm okay. I'm a place where you always have a billion people clustering around you and pushing you around. So, you know, that doesn't sort of freak me out a lot. But I think New York's a great place. But I don't know if I can compare it with India because India is so fundamentally different in experience compared to anything else. And I'm not saying it's great. I'm not using adjectives, but it's just bizarre in many ways. So it's very hard to, you know, compare India to anything. It's like two different planets, right? Two different worlds. Yeah, and one is a freakishly bizarre word. Well, New York isn't that freakishly bizarre. Well, it can be at night. But time's square on the weekend or driving on the weekend. But that's cool. We've never been to India yet, but we have some invitation now. Guys, I invite it. Thank you. We can't wait to go. We've got some great friends that live there. But anyway, so one of these days we'll get there. I used to live in Taipei, Taiwan, so I know about the culture shock of a completely different culture. It really is. I always told my American friends, I said it's like getting on a jet and flying to another planet. A different planet where they know about us. We don't know anything about them. We think we do, but we don't know anything about them. And the reality, they know a little bit about us because they've been getting our TV signals and our movies. So they know a little bit about us. We know nothing about them. And it's just like, it really is a shock. That's why they call it culture shock. It's like aliens on a different planet. You're like, oh my God, they do everything different. Everything about them is different what they believe and think. Yeah. Indians can feel like aliens within India. So for foreigners to come to India and experience India can be quite an experience. Because there's just so many different cultures and subcultures and languages and religions. How it comes together is just mystery. In the history, like you said, it's an ancient civilization, one of the oldest in the world. And the interesting thing to me is that, I forgot what I was going to say. I totally lost my train of thought. Too many interesting things in your head, Bruce. Just too many interesting things bouncing around. I'm privatizing the problem. Oh, I know what I was going to say. I'm sorry, I remember. Because what we were talking about off camera before we started was about how generationally, history of generations always affects the current generations in every culture. And having overcome so many things, these new, young generations of Indians are striving and thriving to succeed in the world. And they are. And the other thing about Americans' perceptions here in the US of Indians and also of Asian countries and so on, is we think they're so brilliant. They're the smartest genius. It's distorted because only the best and brightest come over here and the best and brightest and richest get to come over here to go to college. And so the ones we meet are brilliant scholars. Of course, there's only a couple billion others back home. And many not so brilliant. Really? No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that for the record. But you know, it's just a normal country. We have a mix of good people, smart people, not so smart people. But it's diverse. And that's what makes it special. Yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to visit now. I'm excited. We've got to go. So all right. So now, I want to ask you, how did this whole concept of inclusive planet come about? Right. And what is it? Start with what it is. Give you an idea of what it is. Yeah. So inclusive planet, you know, actually the best way to explain it is to describe the problem. And then what inclusive planet is becomes kind of apparent when you understand the problem. And the community we deal with is what can be called the print impaired community. And this is people who can't read. So you can't, you can't read letters and you can't read off paper whether it's on screen. So they could be illiterate. They can't read. Yeah. So that's that's a great question. I'll tell you why the immediate reaction is, okay, so you're blind if you can't read, but it's not just the blind. It's also people who have, say, severe dyslexia. They can't read because they can't make sense of, they can see, but they can't make sense of the letters and the figures. Or it could be people who have a physical disability that prevents them from concentrating on what has to be read, because you have to look in one place to read. Right. Or it could be people who are illiterate, people who can comprehend what they're hearing, but they cannot read, you know, because. They just haven't learned to read. Yeah. And the thing is that. As well as obviously the visually impaired. Absolutely. So if you look at these multiple categories, visually impaired, severely dyslexic, physically disabled from reading, and like you mentioned, people who are illiterate, they are really under one super category called the print impaired. And what unifies them is that they need to consume content by hearing rather than by seeing. Print impaired. Yeah. Print impaired. Print impaired. Pretty simple ones you get, right? So they need to consume content by hearing, but that doesn't mean that they need to get content that's human voice. It's not as if they need to hear human voice. It could be something that's a simple text document and that could be converted to speech because there are software today that simply convert a text document into speech. Right. What's called text to speech software. Right. And you have it and most computers have a basic version of it. Right. So as long as the content is in those formats, it's accessible to these people because it can be converted by the software to speech. Of course, human voice is a luxury. If you have something in human voice, well, all of us like it, right? Regardless of new print impaired. Sure. It takes no hard to any brain activity to comprehend. Yeah, just to enjoy it. And it's much more pleasant than the robotic voice. Absolutely. Even the best robotic voices can't compare to modern voices. No doubt about it. But so, you know, now, so that you've understood what accessible means, accessible content. The problem is there's not much accessible content in the world. In places like the US, there's much more because there's government effort. So maybe the percentage is supposed to be somewhere in the region of five to six percent of all content is accessible. That means one twentieth of what you and I get is accessible. But in other countries, it could be as low as one percent or even lower than one percent. How do you define accessible then? Are you saying, like, if it's just text, is that considered accessible? Yeah. So digital content is, of course, much more accessible than books and magazines because that's per se inaccessible. Right. If you look at that, digital content is more accessible as long as it's not in image formats, as long as it's in an open text format. Right. And as long as it's findable, you know, it's like saying it's great to have a digital content which is accessible, but it needs to be on a site that a person uses. Yeah, that a simple site that can take a person there because the same person who's having a problem with content is also going to have a problem on that site. There should be a Google for the visually impaired. Google that links directly to the text of it instead of the whole fancy. Well, you know, you should have been in Google because the truth of the matter is that there is a search that helps you find more accessible things. It's called the Google Accessible Search. I knew that. Yeah. It was my idea, like Windows 7. Yeah. No, Windows 7 was not my idea. Don't blame me. All right, go ahead. Is Microsoft one of the sponsors of the show? No. No. Definitely probably never will be at this point. I don't know. Okay. Sorry, Bill. Yeah, sorry, Bill. But so that's, so, you know, so coming back to the issue of accessible content. Now, the question becomes, how do you, if content, if there's so few content, how do you make content available to these people? The way the world has been dealing with the problem is by going to publishers and, you know, kind of reaching out to them and saying, can you guys put more content in accessible formats? That is one way. That is going to take time. Publishers need to come around to the idea. We believe, and this brings us back to what we, what is our core belief, our core belief. And I'm sure this belief is shared across the world by many, many people who are print impaired, is that there is tremendous promise in print impaired people connecting with other print impaired people online. Because of two things. One, when they form a community, this community can do a bunch of things. One, of course, just the joy of forming a community, because very often print impaired people don't end up socializing in the same way, especially blind people, don't end up socializing in the same way as the sighted people do. The real offline world can be quite inaccessible. So connecting with each other is a joy by itself. But after you connect with each other, there are some phenomenal things that can come out of that, which is that you can, each print impaired person, aside from being, you know, because of the fact that they have the experience of either dyslexia or blindness, are also incredible problem solvers. Think about it. You have to be, right? Your entire life experience is problem solving, right? The size of the brain. Yeah, all the time, because you have to think, you can't use this tool because it's not designed for you, so how do you get to use it? You've got to do this particular activity, but it's tough for you, so what is the best way to get to this activity? And many, I don't know what percentage, but many, if not most, will just not even use a computer. I've met blind people who just say, oh no, I won't even try a computer. I've never tried, because especially if they're older generations, even, who are in their 60s, many are like, oh, computers, oh, they're phobic. But you know, incredibly when they start using it, it's almost addictive because the digital world is much more accessible because it's text-to-speech convertible than the offline world. So if offline world you see an advertisement, it's not text-to-speech convertible, right? So coming back to that, each blind, each print-impaired person, not just the blind, are problem solvers, and one of the areas where they really solve problems is in terms of whether they need a book or a magazine or anything else, somebody helps them convert it into accessible formats. So whether it's father, mother, friends, or they themselves by finding it. So over a period of time, they aggregate a bunch of solutions, and that includes accessible content. Now if you were to, so it's a bit of a treasure box, right? And they can share it with a social network. Exactly. Now if you are able to allow this treasure box, which contains not just content, but also solutions to problems and information, personal experiences and relationships and work challenges, and you can somehow unlock it in an intelligent manner across the world, then people are going to be not just aggregating useful content, which they can find intelligently, because they can just run a search for a person who's in a similar position to them, and then actually find content that's useful to them, but they can also share information that's vital. So it's a bit like unlocking these treasure boxes and creating a much larger box. It's a window into a whole new world, right? Absolutely. And they probably don't realize it until they're in there, and then now they're tapped into people that love to go skiing or whatever, you know. And they can share that with them. Right. So I think... There is a way to do what you want to do. I heard about it, and they can connect the people, yeah. You know what, by the way, this little sidebar, one technology that I think has proven super, super powerful for the visually, the site-impaired reading, print-impaired is Twitter. Absolutely. Because I'm big on Twitter, and I have... I've made a lot of connections. Well, that's how we connected, too. I've made a lot of connections of visually-impaired people, because I might work in Ubuntu Linux and this bread tech enterprise thing on the site, where I wanted... I determined that I wanted to make it accessible, because my one friend Dave, you know, and I'm like, you know, I want every bread tech computer to be 100% accessible. You just push one button and it speaks to you right out of the box. And so I kind of used him as a consultant to help me do that. And through our conversations, he's connected me to all these other people on Twitter. And Twitter, obviously, is an excellent tool because it's a little tiny tweet, a little 140 characters. The Twitter interface is also extremely accessible. In fact, there is an accessible version of the Twitter interface called accessible Twitter. And it speeds themselves up phenomenally small and easy to digest. It's also the interface, which is easy for blind people to use, because they're using the text-to-speech software on that interface, right? Perfect. So the best example would be, it's not just the city that's great, the road to the city is also great. But then once you get there, the destination can be like the links, then it's another world, because then now you're back on the internet. It seems more attractive because if I was printing there, that would be very alluring to me, because I only have to read a few words and then hopefully I can get it. That makes me want to... This is an interesting one, because I'm not so sure whether that's the case. One would think that, so I'm glad that you asked this question, because I know a lot of people come up and say, is that the case? But you know, print impaired people consume by hearing much faster. If you ever hear a print impaired person listening to the text of speech, they listen about 6-10 times faster. So the sounds, you can't even hear the sound, it's so fast. Do they play it in fast motion? Fast reading, because the hearing becomes much more enhanced. One of the things about the problem with us is we are hugely biased towards our own perspectives. So when we see, for us the world is visual world, but the auditory world, what are the joys of the auditory world is a far unexplored sort of area. And people are doing some pretty interesting work in that. So I feel that there's something to be gained from a community that has such sophisticated comprehension of the auditory world. So that's why inclusive planet is not exclusive planet. It's not just for the print impaired. Ultimately we want the community to be built and then to start sharing useful experiences and content which can be entertaining even for sighted people. I joined it. I want it as an auditory description. I got tons of welcome messages. Everybody wants to be my friend. They're like, welcome, welcome. Like you don't even know me. How do you know you want to be my friend? You will. But yeah, it's cool. It's the friendliest site I've ever joined. It's going to be friendly. And we hope that Monday a person who's blind describing his experience of a musical concert. How's that? His experience of walking down a street in New York. And what does that mean in terms of content? Just imagine how interesting that would be. Just out of my first thought after you saying that would be, wow, I can really learn how to listen more acutely from someone that is so experienced at that. I can see where I can get some lessons from that analogy. Exactly. That's the long-term vision. The vision is that one day as this community builds and builds across the world, it's going to be inclusive. It's going to bridge back into the sighted world and you're going to find content being created which is not just useful for print and pet people, but content that's phenomenally attractive for sighted people. So we feel that if we can get the community going, that's where the challenge lies. Once the community gets together, that's where this stuff happens. But getting the community going is the challenge of the next few months. How long has this existed? Seven months now. Oh, that's it? Oh, my gosh. Well, I don't think it's going to take long because through the power of Twitter, people are connecting just one of the most beautiful things about Twitter, back on that again, but when I search for something, if I'm interested in a topic, I search Google like everyone, I do. I go to search.twitter.com and you search for the same term and you get wealth of information. They're different because obviously Google is giving you web pages and news articles, blogs, things that people have put time into creating, but Twitter is like now, thoughts right now. I bought it, it didn't work, whatever. Like boom, boom, boom. And then I can actually talk to those people. I can send a reply and say, why didn't it work? What are you doing? This person doesn't know what they're talking about. This person is a genius. He developed the software. He's like the developer. So you can really connect. And so how that ties in is that the accessible community is obviously on Twitter, like you said. So they can talk about inclusive planet, they can tweet about inclusive planet and boom, it's got to be exploding, the membership. So you know, the challenges are this, which is currently we're at about 4,000 users from 75 countries. But you know, seven months. That's good. Yeah, but I think there are certain challenges. We have a fairly realistic view of what the challenges are. And the challenges are that we're a small team and the number of print-impaired people who are really we're a small team. And the number of print-impaired people who are using networks like this is not so much. So if we want this to really succeed, we want this to penetrate to a wider audience of people. We're looking at reaching out to millions and not to a few thousands. So I think we will have to look at how to build those networks in different countries and working with people in that process, getting all types of support, looking at what kind of content would be attractive to people. Because if you look at the challenge now, if it's a since it's a community-driven site, in the early phases, when a user comes, he's not going to get much if there's very few users. Because he's not going to find other users similar to him, find content which people have shared which is interesting. So you need to seed and put content out there. So right now we're on the lookout for I think two things and this is also a call to everybody who's listening in. We're on the lookout for people to partner with us and provide interesting content on the platform which can be seed attract the seed honey to attract people to come and use the site even before there are that many users. And we're also looking for ways in which to spread the word amongst the print-and-pad community. And we're looking for ideas and collaborators. I think Bruce, you said something very important in the beginning. You said this movement. You used the word movement. Inclusive Planet is not an idea coming out of a particular place which is then being pushed across. It is an idea, it's an open idea which is evolving. The core of the idea is to build a wide global community of print-and-pad people and everyone's welcome to join as co-founder, as a member of that idea, as a progenitor of the idea. There is no propriety attitude to this. The idea is to build a vast global network. And so anyone who feels that there is a synergy that they believe in this can come in and collaborate and contribute and build this. I have an idea to contribute. We've created... You already are. Yeah, well, I have another one. She's smart. I can have more than one. Right? So, Ed and I have created social networks for special interest groups before. And one of the things actually Ed came up with is I think it would work very well in this. You know, the people who are print-and-pad, who are already into technology, they already are visiting websites, they're already reaching accessible information, those people are easy to reach because through Twitter and through all the other communication mechanisms like this, this broadcast, they are finding out about Inclusive Planet, they're going there, they're discovering it on their own because they're tech-savvy. But there's probably maybe even a majority of print-and-pad people who are not so tech-savvy. And that's who you want to reach, I think. Absolutely. So one of the ways, I think one of the best ways might be through institutions like schools for the blind, institutions, there are... I know in New York City, there are organizations that are specifically for the blind and those people, even the directors and the administration are not so tech-savvy. So reaching them is critical. So reaching out to them. And I can suggest several ways. One way any of you who are watching could do this. You know, contact Sashin and InclusivePlanet.com and if you have time and you're willing to do this, what you can do is get your hands on a list of such organizations, which I'm sure you guys have this. A list of all the 10,000 organizations just in this country. And you've got it in your country, too. And then reach out, find their email address, find their phone number. Don't be afraid to call them on the phone and say, look, there's this thing, InclusivePlanet. We want you to teach people, teach your clientele, your patrons or whatever they're called, people about how to use it. And we'd be happy to come in and show you how to do it. And so, like, if you can volunteer to reach out by email, reach out by phone to all these organizations and institutions and to actually, if you're able to, if you have the ability, to go there and even do a workshop or what would you call it, like an orientation to teach the staff how to teach the people how to use it. Bruce, you're a genius. I had a suspicious, I had a creepy feeling you were, but you've proven it. But that's the thing. That's a huge key. There's a huge percentage that are not tech savvy. I think so. And you know, absolutely. And what happens is if you look at the idea of social networking, you have the social networks that exist today are a little too sophisticated and a little too complicated. We take them for granted because we have the benefit of being able to see all the multiple features they provide and all the elements, but they're not that accessible. Even for sighted people, like Twitter, it's so simple to me. It's as simple as a doorbell thing. But for many, many people, they're like, oh, I don't understand it. I don't get it. But Twitter is great. And these are sighted people. Twitter is great. I mean, look at Facebook and a bunch of other, they are even more complicated. I don't understand it. Inclusive Planet offers the opportunity of having a very simple designed for the print impaired social network. And which we can, in the long run, bridge to Facebook and bridge to, so we can offer, you know, an access route. Bridges, tunnels, connections. My message to people is just visualize the power of print impaired people coming together and the multiple things that will happen there. Not just the socialization, but the sharing of information and content. I mean, you know, I don't think one needs to articulate that vision in great detail because it's pretty obvious the power of community that is there. But thanks, Bruce. I'm going to do that again, like a call to everyone saying, if you can, if you want to join in this idea and want to help us build this in some way. How do they reach you? What's the best email? The best, I guess you can mail me at Sachin Malhan S-A-C-H-I-N Dot Malhan M-A-L-H-A-N At InclusivePlanet.com Even if you get that complicated Indian name wrong, just write to anyone at InclusivePlanet.com. Well, we can, and we'll put it in the show notes. If you go to breadtv.com B-R-E-D-T-V.com B-R-E-D-T-V.com and just look in the show notes and there'll be a link to it as well. But that's great so they can contact you or you can contact us and we'll forward the message on whatever is easy. I wanted to ask you when you say like content and like honey for the bees, like what is it that attracts the members? The members that, like is there three things that you can say on the top of your head that everyone just, you know, clamors for? That's, that's, so I think, you know, that would vary in different parts of the world. For instance, if you look at India, India has a lack of even basic accessible content like even things like books and articles, you know, which are important for school, important for college, you know, there's a lack of even that stuff. So educational? Yeah, educational material is therefore extremely important. But, you know, all forms of even stuff to do with travel and I think one thing that pretty much attracts everyone is relationships. I think people want to connect with each other and share their experiences about relationships. I mean, think about it. For them, it's such a unique experience, right? So I think that's something that we've seen is, but you, but it's easier to club this into categories, simplified categories actually a wide variety. Content is such a gateway, right? Go get everything. My question is kind of like asking what name three good reasons why I should use the Internet. Oh my gosh, you can't even begin in three, but it's like, it's like it's the gateway for the Internet to the print impaired. So it's your Facebook, it's your connection, it's your Google, it's your access to all the, you know, much reading we do online, you know, it's their access to all the reading, all the content, whether it's academic or social or fun or just comedy or anything. Whatever your interests are. I just thought maybe there was some driving force behind it. There is one little thing which I think you brought to life which is important, which is that in different parts of the world the proportion varies. For instance, in India, because there's a lack of basic content, people want to connect and even share basic content. But in the US where there are a lot of organizations that provide basic academic content, learning content, that is maybe beyond that. So it's not so fundamental. It's social stuff. It's, you know, it's just fun and it's leisure. But in India, it could be not just leisure but really high utility because that's what you don't... There's one Internet. So in India, they're able to access the same academic content from here. They are. But unless it's like local... No, they are able to access. The only thing is that the needs are varied. So therefore, if you come, if you're in the US, I think that the value of inclusive planet or what inclusive planet means might vary slightly. I think the community aspect might be more important than the sharing of content necessarily. Let me see what you're saying. As far as the importance. Yeah, also US users are more sophisticated in understanding the value of community. So I think that, again, we're not experts. We're far from experts. We're not. We are experimenting and figuring things out. If anyone disagrees for good reasons, I'd want to be a student. But it's different things to different people. Basically, that's the right line. I can understand relationships because that's a... A lot of... Maybe some of these people are ostracized for whatever reason or they live out in rural areas and they have no form of communication. I think the best answer is what do you use the Internet for? Use it for communication. Use it for making connections with people. You use it for research and for learning, education. You use it for shopping. Use it for, I mean, anything. Everything you use the Internet for, that's what this can be for because it's not only the... It's like the Facebook and all that, the connections, social network, but it's also the links to whatever, whatever it is you want to do. Here's an accessible way to do it. I found a great way to find this or that or whatever and get right to the accessible meat of the content. Exactly. I know, like several years ago, I saw a movie called The Secret. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. I've heard of the book, Rod number one. And I started a blog, a Spanish-speaking blog and it was amazing to me because it was the opposite. I mean, people love the movie but they really wanted the script because they wanted to read it while they're listening to it and it's so important to unite all those things together so I can understand where, you know, for what you're doing, the opposite is true, obviously. Absolutely. It's a good example. Well, let me ask you why. So it started in India in the server. It's all set up in India. Who's idea was it in the first place? Right. So, again, you know, before I answer this question, I think it's important to repeat what I said in the beginning which is that I think we fundamentally believe that the world gets trapped in these questions. You know, we have numerous organizations that say, you know, what's the idea? And I feel it takes away from the constant evolution of a thought and so I want to put that out there. And this is to recognize the incredible contributions of the early members of this community and the members of the team who joined later. I think you can tend to... And equally the ones who are about to join today. Yeah. And the idea may evolve dramatically but right in the beginning, the origins of this idea that there are three people who originally began to work on this and my co-founder, a guy called Rahul who's in Geneva right now, he's involved in policy discussions in the area of the print impaired and he came to the U.S. to work on the Treaty for the Blind and there he saw this shortage that was there and he came back to India with a thought why don't print impaired people share more with each other rather than depending on other people to provide them information and content. So when he came back he connected with so I connected with Rahul and another friend of ours and then we started working on this and then we refined the idea to understand what would it be to bring people together. So I guess that was the origination and since then it's been a bunch of very, you know, kind of diverse group of people who come together and contributed and who are trying to shape this into the right and this could, and it's in the early stages so it's very possible that there are more people who come up and contribute to something so what inclusive planning comes to mean in the U.S. could be, like I said, a different concept as compared to but these are the origins of the idea. When we totally believe that when there's an idea that's like we call it a divine idea or divinely inspired idea or something it's the idea itself that has the life, the universe conspires for it to succeed. So it's just like a magnet. Everything is attracted to it and you're just suddenly overwhelmed by the support that comes out of the woodwork. Everybody's helping. If the universe can send some funding away to be fantastic. Yes. And it can. It absolutely can. It will. So now you, is anyone in your family a print and parent? I don't know. There's no one in my family who's print and parent. I've had, you know, experience with disability in my family. So one awareness was that when people get disabled their needs change and their experience of the world changes and that presents an opportunity to look at design and technology as ways to address that different perspective a different need requirement, right? I mean that's the beauty of diversity, right? Diversity creates opportunity. Absolutely. And so diversity creates challenges as well because we can tend to focus on the most well known categories and we ignore certain other categories. But today the beauty of technology is that you can apply it to a variety of different categories at less cost. So I think I was sensitized to this because of the fact that I had experienced disability in my family. But as for the team we have people who we know who are print and parent. And in fact part of the team now is a group of the early members who are print and parent. So they, you know, for us it's, they are the most important part of the team. Is there a full-time staff? Or, yeah. Yes, there is. There is. There is. Right now as we speak there are six full-time members of the team and one person who is a part-time. And so they've been working on this project for over a year now. We've been, three of us have been working on this for about two years but the full-time team has been working for more than a year now. That's great. And what is the, I mean besides what you've already stated what is their actual duties? Like what is their, like one has individual duties for one specific goal? I think, you know, for instance, there's of course a development of the technology and the design of the platform. But excluding that, there is also nurturing the community, understanding what they want, how they interact, holding hands. See this is an early, early phase. When you build a community there's a tremendous seeding phase that is critical. You can't just say, you can't go hands-off and say people are going to meet people and stuff's going to happen. This is a concept that has to be encouraged, has to be nurtured, has to be, has to be. And that is a critical phase we're in right now. So where we really, and it might happen that after a few months we can be more hands-off. But at this phase we need lots of people to be hands-on, contributing content, working with the community, interacting, engaging, telling people, this is the critical phase. Most communities fail to take off because there's not adequate seed attention. If I, if I have, like you were saying, my own little treasure trove of accessible content or methodology that I use to reach this amazing, open, accessible content, how can, how do I contribute it? Once I join InclusivePlanet.com how do I contribute that? Right. So, you know, what content you can share depends on also where you're located. Right? Because there are, you have to look at what the laws of that country are. And for instance there are applicable copyright laws that prevent you from sharing and accessing certain types of stuff. Which is of course, it's a bit, it's a bit of a country by country and of course we have print impaired people who look at us and say, you know, my law prevents me from doing this but I don't have this content so I need to get it. So it's a need over anything else kind of discussion. There's like the, there's the law law and then there's the moral law. Moral law is, come on. I can read a book. If I hand it to you, you can read the book. Yeah, so it's the same book. But it's a delicate issue because you know, the copyright debate has become such a powerful debate in especially this part of the world that people can tend to see that issue even before they see the fact they get a powerful solution. It's a bit like saying, you know, I want to reach Mars but somebody set a speed limit on crossing the atmosphere. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So. You can't go to Mars. You can't go to Mars. So again, but there are terms and conditions and people exercise choices and we have to do that because, you know, we want to respect the law but we want, we want to give people the choice. Yeah. So people exercise their choices. But if you link to content that's hosted elsewhere then does that just take you off the hook then? If you're linking, you know, if you're linking to a site, well then it's the site's own responsibility. No, no, no. Then if you, that's called content discovery, right? You're helping people discover. Yeah, like Google. That's fantastic, right? That's fantastic. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. And to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my knowledge, there could be some section 2.0, 0.5, 0.6, point something, which, you know, point depth. You know, to the best of my knowledge. But, you know, at the end of the day, people are the powerful, powerful force of this world, right? Right. And, you know, they'll find a way to get what they need. They'll find a way to empower other people. Right. So, but back to this. Do they upload content directly to the site or do they just put links? No, no, people can upload content directly to the site. Oh, okay. So they share just the way on YouTube. What forms of content? It could be audio. It could be a digital document like a doc file or a TXT file or any type of readable digital document. It could be more specialized formats. So anything that is accessible and at the lowest end of accessibility is a simple text document and the highest end is human voice. Mm-hmm. You know? Just in terms of the range of accessibility. Right. And then they, so, but as far as inclusive planet uploading content directly, then they have to check off, yes, this is Creative Commons, shareable public domain, I own the rights or something like that when they upload it directly, they do it. Right at the beginning of when they sign up their terms and conditions that say, please check with, you know. Don't upload stuff that's copyright. No. In your country. Do, here, you take responsibility for that. So that means that I think it's important to understand that there's some people who could, people respond differently but they should be informed. They should know, you know, what they're doing. Right. And I think that's, we leave it, we give it to people and we take whatever precautions we can on our own. So somebody does upload something that a publisher has a problem with, then we react by taking down, you know, taking down the policy like YouTube, like everything else away from copyright and all that, IP stuff. That downer topic for me. The, what was the next question? Oh yeah. Is, is it possible for you to do grant applications and get grants from private, you know, foundations or from government entities in different government, different countries? Do you have anybody working on that? You know, we don't. And I think the challenge is, again, like I said, a small team, go on the idea and get it done. So there's another volunteer opportunity. If you know how to write grant, what is it, grant applications? Please help out. Please apply. More than anything else, join us. Join us. Absolutely. And I keep saying this, which is, Everybody can join? Everybody can join us. I can be a co-founder? You could be a co-founder and you could, and the idea of this project is a social venture, which is ultimately we believe that this can be commercially viable because if we deliver products, deliver services to the community, we'll want to go through us. And so there's a commercial opportunity here. And I think that, again, we are opening out an opportunity to anyone who wants to join in this platform, sees a social, commercial, model, opportunity there. You can come. So how will it be commercial? Will it be advertising, sponsorships, opportunities? Advertising paid services down the line. So, you know, currently we don't because, you know, we haven't really changed that. But what we do do is we take the expertise which we have in developing accessible systems. Because at the end of the day, we're one of the few people designing an accessible web 2.0 platform. And we take that and we offer that as a consulting service for people who are creating websites. Saying that, you know, if you're creating a site that you want also to be accessible and the best people to help you out with that is us. And we can test your platform, across the world. So, that's the best testing environment. So, that is something that we're doing now and we're working with a couple of people making a little money on that. So, that's something we're doing, trying to see how independent that can become. You see an opportunity in terms of collaborating with us on that or you want to, you know, help us with that. All I can tell you is extremely competent team of people working on design and technology. So, there's another opportunity to help out is if you have a company, if you have a company or a business that you want to market your product or your service to the print-impaired community around the whole world. 4,000 people in 75 countries and growing. Yeah, you can contact them and be one of the first advertisers to place an ad and reach them. Now, are the members of the community going to be able to skip the ads or is it going to be like, you're going to have to hear it if you go through this content? I think that's a good question. I think, you know, we don't know as yet and we're probably going to do something. So, definitely, whatever we do, I'm sure there will be people who may not like it, but I think by and large, the community wants to support something that supports itself. Yeah, that's true. And down the line, we want to hand this, you know, a large part of the ownership of the initiative to the community and ownership is already with the community, but I mean even technically. Yeah. Taking shares of the enterprise and actually of the venture visually impaired community and Twitter, my impression is that they really, really want to be self-sustaining. They want it. They support companies, companies who are really pro-accessibility, they really want to support. But they're also, they really hold them accountable. Like, your accessibility has to be real accessibility, not just in name and, you know, and then you actually doesn't work. It has to actually work. Right. And then if it actually works and you're committed to just talk, talk, talk, like some companies, then they really are loyal and they spread the word. Like, then there's no better advertising than word of mouth. Absolutely. And that's it. And, you know, I think it's important to remember in terms of commitment to the cause. We're not creating something that's designed for the sighted and adapted or made accessible to the print impaired. We're designing for the print impaired. So our platform is not even accessible in the conventional sense. It is designed for the print impaired. It's designed by the sighted people. Yes. Exactly. But you know the amazing part is something that's designed ground up for the print impaired usually ends up being accessible to sighted people. Because it follows It's simple. Yeah, it's simple. It's not cluttered. It's not cluttered. That's the problem. You know, it's like so many of these, you know, Google and the, like you name so many, like MySpace and stuff. Did I say Google? I meant to say like Facebook and all those MySpace. Can you imagine MySpace? I mean, it's so simple to read even when you're sighted. It's such a mess that the fact that it's really, really simple and clear. Like, I guess Twitter is probably the most popular example of something very simple and un-pluttered that it's just text, text, text, text. It's so easy, easy to organize. Now on inclusive planet, are there are there sections, because I just joined and I haven't had a chance to explore it too much, but are there sections for like what we would traditionally call forums and like threaded conversations and what else? Is it more like a social network like Facebook with friends and links and all that? Or is it more like like a forum for discussions? So first, it's not a conventional social network like a Facebook. It's an open community in the sense that when you make a friend you don't just see the world of your friends. You see the entire platform. So it's more like it's more like a like one of the popular discussion board platforms, but enabled with friend-to-friend transactions and stuff. But in terms of are there threads and stuff? Absolutely. They're what you call channels on inclusive planet. So if you want to start something that where you want the conversations and the people and the content to be focused on a particular area you can start a channel. So people have started channels on a variety of stuff. There's a channel called Love Actually on relationships that people share all sorts of interesting stuff on relationships. There's a channel on education and computer science. So they're like in a discussion board what we call forums we would call the terminology would be a thread. It would be a forum about bird watching or whatever. There'd be a thread about a certain blue sparrow. The thread is a channel. The thread is the channel. The thread is the channel. Okay. That was the terminology that threw me. When I went there I'm like, okay, this is a channel. What's a channel? I don't know what a channel is. Obviously you catch on. If I were visually impaired I'm hearing it. Then it is a channel. It makes sense. It's a channel. To someone sighted it's like, okay, what's a channel? Because I'm not thinking if I covered my eyes I would get it. I would get it. But since we wanted to be equally appealing to the sighted I think we'll have to look at some bridging. The challenge is one of retaining perspective on both sides. Yeah, that's true. I wanted to find out like you have so many threads and channels and interests. Like how do you determine the social policies that you're going to pursue as far as enabling or helping the community itself in a social or government setting and what you're doing with that. Sure. I think the thing is we believe in people power. We believe that we are enablers and people will that people need just a few nudges to get them in the right direction. So once the community starts building we don't try to moderate the platform at all. We're faced with people to people connect and do stuff. So we hope that once a larger group gathers this group will itself use the platform to do other stuff like policy change you know collaboration around that and in fact we had a very interesting situation of a South African association the South African national commission for the blind I think pardon me if I'm a little wrong but they actually used our community to get feedback on something a template that they had created so they used and people from all over the world gave them feedback and they were absolutely thrilled to get that feedback so it's a classic example of what collaboration can do and what people can do so that's what's setting the presidents for like any kind of political or any kind of social change absolutely I mean we believe that there's gonna be 100 plus things that are gonna happen once the community comes into play people are gonna but we're trying to stay focused on the challenge of building the communities and problem with communities they can be language specific and region specific and nurturing each of these can be a challenge it's not so easy to sit there and just know that's why we need I think the term movement we need a wide variety of people to collaborate to help us build this and conversely we need to then not be proprietary about it and open up right so um Makes sense I have a question I just thought of as a as a sighted person who is into technology and I have you know I have websites and I have you know a lot of us are you know techno weenies we're into all sorts of things if I create a blog let's just say a very simple thing I create a blog and I want it to be accessible if I just go to wordpress.com and create a free blog is it gonna be accessible do they have accessibility templates or they do they do so do you have to select a special theme for that or can it be accessible every template I think there will be select designs that you know but there's something else that you can do you can just plug your blog into inclusive planet that you can do that and then that all the content gets taken out and delivered in a completely accessible way it just strips it all out I mean you should like an RSS kind of porting like a what like you have RSS oh RSS so similarly you just like reader like reader you know RSS makes everything accessible yeah that's true so you just plug it into inclusive planet there is when you get on to inclusive planet and you kind of there is a tool that allows you to you know link and if you have trouble with using the tool getting touch with us can help you do it there's a tool to make so you go to inclusiveplanet.com and you sign up and all that and then what's the tool called what do I look for no you just look for you know when you get to post under your posting there's a tool that allows you to just kind of connect your blog or import the URL of your blog content is it now permanently available or is it just a one posting like in the channel no it's permanently available but like I said like a link like posting a link yeah people are not able to find it just we can in one step we can connect it for you we can do the same either now what's the advantage in doing that versus just using the RSS feed because the RSS feed would be just text also yeah you can does it do something smarter no I don't think so it's about the same publishing your blog onto Inclusive Planet it stays with you anyway but it also reaches this much wider community which gets bigger so you know you got an ad so there are people in fact there are some people who are print impaired themselves who are publishing their blogs on Laura Legendary who has her Legendary Insights blog which is really great she's based in Washington she you know her blog is on Inclusive Planet and so that's a classic example of getting more content which is useful content so what I would want to do is I would want to have a really beautiful theme for the sighted and then also Inclusive Planet and then have the other link for the print impaired so you don't have to compromise so you get the best of both best of both all the content goes both ways okay because otherwise it would just be cluttered on most of those themes so alright so so would I use that tool or I use the RSS or I try both and see which one comes out better the tool actually uses the RSS oh okay that's smart very smart okay cool so you can so everybody who has a blog or a website anything that you have an RSS feed for go to InclusivePlanet.com and look for the tool and import your blog onto InclusivePlanet.com and instantly get thousands more subscribers who are reading your content and from multiple countries they'll probably love it do you analyze the like currently what countries the audience is from currently of course India because that's where we started off Turkey is we're available in English, Turkish, Arabic and now we're introducing Spanish the reason is that it's the community itself which is translating so they themselves have told us give us the text strings of your platform we will convert it into our language and then you just deploy it and it creates a new language version for them wow yeah so therefore that blows my mind so they can actually go there and they can click Turkish and is automatically translated into Turkish? no the site is in Turkish the whole site but the content is a file so that could be in Turkish or any language for that matter it's a file it depends on their screen reader on their desktop which is going to read that out to them but they need to use interface to be in their language as well so therefore we wanted it to be in Turkish because the Turkish community the Arabic community itself is growing fast Spanish is something we really want to work on but you can never just put it into the language you need early users to seed and to work with you can't just say you're going to put it in the language what are people Spanish users going to come maybe he can use the interface but it doesn't find anyone else doesn't find useful content doesn't find a useful community experience so that's where the seeding becomes really critical that is where the bow can break so here's what you can do you can if you're native languages in English then you can just send out that email or tweet and say go to inclusiveplanet.com and tell them you want to join this community start a channel and say you want to you want to be an early seeder for the Spanish language or whatever Chinese language whatever language you speak you can dramatically change your world when it comes to printing people by helping us with this initiative and you know join us become a co-founder that's great now are people taking it like a step further beyond the cyber world like are they using it for like gatherings meetups conventions meetups I think that's our vision I think it's a little early for that but our vision is that one day inclusiveplanet members who've connected and inclusiveplanet can meet at a coffee shop in a city where they are all from and in that coffee shop they can get a preferred treatment I'm just imagining walking in with an inclusiveplanet card or walking in with and saying hey you know and we get 20% off here that's that's just going to happen yeah we have one it just happens without even planning it because people on Twitter are like oh I'm going to be in your city let's meet so we have one deal where you know a friend of mine runs Indian raps you know like your Lebanese raps Indian raps joint in Soho in London and raps as in the sandwich not as in the music yeah yeah yeah Indian raps Indian raps nobody wants to listen to that that's a seller so fortunately he went in the right business the food business but so here's a raps joint in Soho called Moolies and he basically Moolies is our first kind of partner and you know people from England who go to London you can go to Moolies and get you know treat them specially they can have their meetups at Moolies so that's the long term just go I can say I'm a co-founder of inclusiveplanet and you can get your lamb roll or whatever it is what about discount we get a discount that's right absolutely oh my gosh well this has been wonderful such a learning experience and we have a lot more to learn we just the tip of the iceberg that we got from this but it's fantastic to know how you can get involved and how you can help in so many ways your imagination obviously can run wild absolutely when it's such a great great thing that you're doing for the world I mean that's a great vision you know and it's not only for the print impaired it's the whole planet that's why I love the name inclusiveplanet because it actually is all mankind all humankind because we are losing out all of us sighted people are losing out on the the minds and the brilliance some of the most brilliant artists and musicians and creative minds on this whole planet are print impaired and we're losing out on the connection with them and if we help them and help help themselves to link them to the rest of the world through the power of the technology and the internet and the community we're just like boom we just added 20% to our brain of the whole planet absolutely we just have a few minutes I wanted to ask you really quick what new technology is coming down the line that is real thrilling or exciting when it comes to all this I think you know we've got 30 seconds I think two things one is mobile network so not just inclusive planet to be accessed through you know the PC but also through you know simple mobile phones we're looking at that but there are a couple of technologies in the print impaired space you know including actual site through different cognitive centers of the brain so that stuff's going to take time okay alright we're going to have to we're definitely going to have to follow up we can even when you're back in India we can get you on Skype get you on Skype and share this thank you so much everyone thank you thank you for joining us we're doing inclusiveplanet.com checking it all out inclusiveplanet.com and of course BreadCV we'll have all the notes on the show notes B-R-E-D-T-V.com couldn't be easier spread the word yes thank you bye see you all bye see you tomorrow