AI Hero: Cristian
Cristian was a teenager with many passions, but he needed a push to help him enjoy them to the fullest. Oddly, that push came when he was 18 years old and was involved in a car accident that caused full and permanent blindness. When he talks about the accident, you won’t hear any complaints. Actually, it’s just the opposite. He sees that accident as having created a new opportunity for him to find joy in things he was taking for granted and motivation to pursue those passions.
Cristian was energized by the accident, and saw it as a chance to learn things again and feel that sense of accomplishment that other people usually have just once in their lives. How many of us can remember how amazing it was to learn how to read? You probably weren’t even conscious of the world of possibilities that opened up to you in that moment in your life. Cristian was fortunate enough to reexperience that moment when he learned how to read Braille at age 19. He still remembers the sense of accomplishment and his joy at the possibilities that would bring to him, like being able to choose the music he wanted to listen to from his collection of vinyl records.
Learning to read again was just the beginning. Everything that Cristian had liked to do as a teenager was now more exciting because he had to learn it again. Like many of the AI heroes in this book, Cristian also had a personal computer, on which he learned to program (parents of today: think about that for your kids!). In his case Cristian got an Apple II, which he was able to earn by sacrificing a vacation trip.
His blindness only fueled his passion for computers. He learned to program again, with the help of specialized hardware that could make the text-based interface of those times accessible for him. Cristian went from being a mediocre student to wanting to excel at everything that he did. He went to college to study computer science, but even before finishing he felt he needed a new challenge in his learning journey.
He left college and decided to focus on another one of his hobbies from his teenage days: skiing. And he experienced the same joy relearning how to do this as he had for reading, programming, and taking a bus. Again, the learning opportunity ignited a passion to excel. From being a hobbyist skier with sight, he became a multiple-time champion in Spain and Europe and even went to the Paralympics in Japan in 1998.
Cristian kept on working with computers during this adventure. With the birth of graphical user interfaces things became a little more difficult for the blind community: a revolution meant to bring computers to more people was actually a big barrier for the segment of the population with visual disabilities. Again, this only motivated Cristian even more. Not only he did not run away from graphical interfaces, he embraced them and drove change.
Cristian specialized in Windows and Office. He was a trainer and often delivered courses to enterprise employees. I would easily sacrifice my pinky toe to see the faces of those employees when they realized their teacher was blind.
At around that time, Cristian’s attention was captured by ONCE, a Spanish organization that provided services to blind people. It had its origins during the Spanish civil war, with representatives selling charity lottery tickets that funded the social services provided to the blind. Eventually ONCE diversified its business through the ONCE Business Corporation, with stakes in hotels, services, and food companies. Today, ONCE Group employs more than 136,000 people, 88% of whom are people with disabilities. Its nonprofit arm, the ONCE Foundation, is one of the most impactful organizations in the world for people with disabilities: it works in diverse areas of accessibility, from urban architecture to employment, sports, and digital technologies.
It’s in this last area where ONCE and Microsoft’s stories come together. In 1997, the companies signed a collaboration agreement to adapt the popular Windows 95 for people with reduced vision. ONCE specialists worked together with Microsoft engineers in Redmond to create what was the most accessible graphical operating system at that time: Windows 98.
By now you probably only remember Windows 98 for its support of Plug and Play and its early demo during which a very young Chris Capossela received the most famous blue screen in history, live on stage with Bill Gates. However, two other notable things happened after that.
First, Chris became chief marketing officer at Microsoft. He’s a big advocate of “courageous learning,” just like our AI hero Cristian. He will tell you that the only way to grow is to make mistakes and feel uncomfortable, like he did in that demo. He applies that approach to other areas in his life too, like becoming an advocate at Microsoft for diversity and inclusion—a role in which, as a white middle-aged male, he again had to find the courage to feel uncomfortable and learn from it.
Second, thanks to the partnership with ONCE, Windows 98 was the beginning of accessible graphical operating systems. It included many capabilities that were unique at its time, like high contrast, zoom, voice integration, and an accessible internet browser, and played a big role in bringing technology to the low-vision community in the world.
Cristian joined ONCE at around that time, after his skiing adventure. He started in the sports area, helping to bring the same joy he’d experienced to other people with disabilities. Soon enough, he was working in the technology area, and after a few years he became the CIO of ONCE. Since then he has been working very closely with Microsoft and other providers to make sure technology doesn’t leave anybody behind. He and his organization work with regulators to make accessibility a requirement for any website or software application, and as CIO he leads the internal IT team at ONCE.
In this journey, Cristian has experienced a fundamental change in technology and its relationship with accessibility. For years, Cristian and ONCE were focused on breaking down barriers between technology and people with disabilities. In a sense, they were doing a defensive play: by working with providers and regulators, they were making sure that the advances in new technologies were not limited to just one segment of the population.
A great example of this was the point-of-sale (POS) terminal modernization at ONCE: the organization deployed a fully accessible POS terminal to all its sales points, allowing its blind sellers to make transactions, check for prizes, and void unsold tickets. This new system saved them a daily trip to the central office. By removing a technological barrier, ONCE was able to bring the benefits of the IT transformation to all its employees.
Then, something wonderful started to happen. What previously had been seen as science-fiction technology was becoming a reality. Artificial intelligence was already providing very promising results in the fields of perception and human interaction. When computers can see, hear, and speak, they can remove not only technological barriers, but also barriers in the physical world.
Suddenly there was the potential for technology to take on a huge new role for people with disabilities. What was a defensive play in the past, just trying to make sure they were not excluded from advances in technology, could now turn into an offensive play. Artificial intelligence can connect people with disabilities with their environment. It can narrate to blind people what is happening around them, transcribe human voice for deaf people, help nonverbal children on the autism spectrum communicate, automate wheelchairs for people with reduced mobility, and so much more.
Cristian was putting a hundred percent into this opportunity, but believe it or not, he had more to do. After becoming a skiing champion and spending eight years working at ONCE, rising through the ranks to lead the IT team at the company (which by then had more than 100,000 employees), he decided to pursue yet another of his passions from before he’d become blind. Cristian wanted to be a chef.
Like everything else, Cristian also had to relearn how to cook. He still remembers the tears in his eyes when he was able to cook his first grilled cheese sandwich as a blind person. That burnt piece of bread with greasy butter and cheese seemed like the most exquisite delicacy he’d ever eaten.
Some years after that sandwich, while still working at ONCE, Cristian decided to open a restaurant. He was involved in all aspects of the business, including the kitchen. Watching Cristian cook is an amazing experience. The rest of us rely heavily on our sense of sight, which if you think about it shouldn’t be the most important for cooking. Cristian uses his senses of smell, taste, touch, and even hearing to prepare wonderful meals that would delight the most demanding chefs in Spain.
After accomplishing this amazing achievement, Cristian realized he couldn’t maintain both his restaurant and his position at ONCE; even our AI heroes have their limits! So he decided to sell the restaurant and again focus entirely on ONCE—where he has transformed the IT organization into the AI center for the company.
As CIO Cristian now leads an initiative called ONCE Innova, which brings together the business units (which at ONCE align with disability challenges, such as urban environments, home, rehabilitation, and training) and IT. The model he has put in place follows many of the principles and concepts you have read about in this book. The only difference is that instead of just focusing on improving business processes, at ONCE they also focus on improving the quality of life for their employees as well as the rest of the community with disabilities—they are not only removing barriers with technology, but using technology to remove barriers with life.
Cristian’s team encourages new ideas from the business units and from ONCE affiliates by running idea contests in a growth-hacking mindset. They still collaborate closely with Microsoft and pioneered the use of Microsoft Seeing AI, an app that narrates the environment around you: it can describe the scene you are looking at, identify the people close to you, read restaurant menus and other documents, recognize paper currency to pay at a store, and more. Cristian himself can testify to the impact this app had on his life, not only in facilitating basic tasks but also allowing him to finally catch the jokes from his friends on WhatsApp who were sharing memes in their group all the time.
In city environments, ONCE is also unlocking the possibilities of smart cities applied to disabilities. With ambient AI, the city can describe itself, making people with disabilities aware of permanent barriers or temporary constructions. Ambient AI can also provide guidance to a destination, acting as a virtual guide dog or a virtual cane.
In this area ONCE has again collaborated with Microsoft on a promising technology called Soundscape that uses 3D audio to provide a rich awareness of the user’s surroundings, using audio cues as guidance. ONCE is bringing this technology to the Way of Saint James (or “Camino de Santiago”), a pilgrimage route followed each year by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from more than 100 countries around the world in what is considered a spiritual retreat from modern life. Thanks to Soundscape, blind people will also be able to experience this life-changing journey: equipped with headphones, pilgrims will be guided with 3D audio cues along the path, providing the equivalent of an audio-based augmented reality experience.
I’m rooting for Cristian. I can’t wait to see what else he will accomplish in his life, and the impact he will have on the lives of others. I do know this is just the beginning for him—not because he’s a great leader and a brilliant mind (though he is), but because of his ability to reinvent himself.
Every time you think your company or your team is not prepared to embrace AI, that there’s not enough talent or that the skills gap is too big, just think about Cristian. Maybe that gap is exactly what’s needed to reenergize people and motivate them to achieve new accomplishments. Upskilling an organization can be a great opportunity to find new interests to pursue and new sources of joy, just like Cristian did when relearning to read or cook a grilled cheese sandwich. That approach is critical to building an AI organization, as you’ll see in the next chapter when we discuss the culture of talent.