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Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020 Special May 21, 2020

Global Awareness Accessibility Day 2020! This is the third year I'm having a special episode for this event. I started with panel discussions for the day - and was planning on keeping that up. However, technical issues limited our ability to come together and have an actual discussion. So I got my guests to record their answers and this is the show. Thanks to Donna Vitan, Alicia Jarvis, Katriel Paige, and Matt May! Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is a special episode for the Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020. The idea was to have a panel discussion like I presented in the last few years. However, despite planning this for the last three months, a series of technical difficulties arose including congestion on the internet pipes. Thank you COVID, and particularly internet providers that aren't up to delivering service they should. Talk about a lack of accessibility. Anyway, I asked my guests to record their answers, and this is what I'm presenting to you today. Obviously it doesn't have the same dynamics that an actual discussion would have had, but the answers are fantastic and thought-provoking. My guests are, Donna Vitan, Katriel Page, Matt May, and Alicia Jarvis. Nic: Donna is a user experience interaction and visual designers committed to inclusive design. She's currently working on the TELUS design system for TELUS digital. Katriel or Kit is a non-binary professional with chronic illnesses who works in digital accessibility as well as in tabletop gaming spaces. Matt is head of inclusive design at Adobe, and Alicia is the inclusive design practice lead within the RBC digital design team. My first topic is about non-disabled allies working in digital accessibility and doing consultation. Is it good or bad? And why? Donna says... Donna: I'm a non-disabled ally working in digital accessibility. So I am mindful and aware to make sure that I don't overstep good common sense when you try to speak for someone else. I do cringe at the idea that there are people who take advantage of the accessibility industry that they give bad advice and can potentially harm a lot more people. I often reach out to the accessibility leaders in my organization, Beth Sullivan and Oscar Western, to get their feedback on what I'm thinking, what I'm considering as recommendations because I don't want to give that level of bad advice. Nic: Matt says... Matt: So, I think that there's no guarantee that we're going to be able to do all of this ourselves. And I think that there are lots of people that are interested in accessibility because they find a way to help. And actually that was how I was before I really understood my ADHD as disability. I had already been diagnosed, but I worked for a good long while in accessibility before I actually connected it to what I had gone through school and in life before. All of those things started to come together and I started to understand that the role of my life in being a decent advocate for accessibility. So I think there's always room for people who are willing to listen in communities like accessibility and that we always know that we're going to need abled people to partner with us, whether they're engineers or product managers, or any other kind of role that we're working with. So it has to be a symbiotic relationship between the disability community and outside of it. Matt: There's one part of this that I want to caution people about, which is that there are more people like me, people that don't identify as being disabled but still have a disability that shapes their worldview. And when we get into these conversations, it's very easy to erase those people. And I've had it happened to me for one, I was giving a talk at Adobe for global accessibility awareness day. And I saw a comment, I think it was on Twitter, where somebody just posted... No, it was a Slack that I was a member of. It was, "here's an abled white guy, that's talking about accessibility" and partial credit Fair play, most of those things are true, but how are they supposed to know that I was abled? And so whether or not we can be out for some sense of the word, or like publicly identify as having a disability is one thing, but to assume that the person that you're talking too, does not have one. It's leaving out a whole bunch of people with invisible disabilities. Matt: And I get very angry about that ever since I put those pieces together. That's an important detail that we need to realize, that not all of us have this identity or think of it as a political or empowered identity and that we can't create walls like that among people who are experiencing the same kinds of issues that we do as disabled people on a regular basis. Nic: Alicia says... Alicia: It's both good and bad. It's good because accessibility is everyone's responsibility, so everyone should learn what accessibility is, the requirements. What can I get is all of that. But I think we all have to be mindful that beyond WCAG it really comes down to user experience and the real experts are the users themselves. So whether you are disabled or not, working in digital accessibility, as long as you understand your affordances in that and what you bring to the table and that it is only your perspective and that the users are the experts in all of this. And we all work towards meeting WCAG and being as accessible as we are. But then also requires us to ask who is not in the room and create more inclusive ways to engage as many different perspectives as possible in our work. Nic: Kit says... Kit: I have very mixed feelings about this because I believe there is a time and a place for non-disabled allies, right? In the sense of they have power in the sense of people tend to listen to non-disabled people over disabled people, whether or not the disability is invisible or not. If you're read as not being disabled, you tend to be listened to a little bit more. So there is a place to do that, but I also believe it's very context-sensitive. If you do have somebody with disabilities, the ally might say, oh, let's listen to my colleague and enable their voices instead, because they would have that lived experience, right? The person with disabilities would have lived experience of certain things even if you're dealing in digital accessibility and not all of the conditions may be applicable. Digital accessibility tends to have this issue of... From my experience, a lot of people working in it are abled people they don't necessarily identify as having disabilities. Kit: And so some of the issues I've seen are literally people asking on an accessibility mailing list, for example, is there some automated tool in which I can put a non-accessible site in and get an accessible site out? In this case, you really do want somebody who is disabled in some capacity to check and be like no automated tools don't work like that. Even the best-automated checkers can not do that. And not necessarily because it can't though technological limitations are what they are, but because user design in general, would you really want to? Would you want it to have it at the mercy of automated tools? Automated tools can help, but they're not the final word. The same thing of non-disabled allies could definitely help and especially bring more attention to issues of disability and accessibility. But I really do think that they shouldn't really have the final say. Kit: Systems being what they are, they often are superiors. They often are managers. They often are the only coordinator given the accessibility hat. So again, I have very mixed feelings about this. It's not that it's always good or always bad. It's just that it's very nuanced and very much a time and a place thing. And of course, my opinion may vary, just because I'm disabled doesn't mean that all disabled people have the same opinion either. Nic: The second topic is selling accessibility from the perspective of side benefits. For example, contrast is good for folks with low vision and is good for folks on their mobile or crimp cuts are good for wheelchair users and are good for parents with strollers. Yes or no? Matt says... Matt: I tend not to like this one much at all. And the way that I describe it is, if you are dangling money in front of somebody and then a task in the other hand, they're not going to be focused on the tasks, they're going to be focused on the money, right? They care about the thing that motivates them. And I give search engine optimization as a classic example of this. You had so many people in the olden days of the web, and even still today, where they heard a message that, okay, so Symantec's are good for SEO, they're good for accessibility. Great. Okay. That's somewhat accurate in a fairly narrowly defined sense. But then you ended up having people that were just SEO experts that were only ever motivated by SEO that were selling their SEO services as accessibility services. Matt: And now you're not focused on the right thing. I have a Zen Buddhist quote by DT Suzuki, which talks about the finger and the moon. And it is, to point at the moon, a finger is needed, but woe to those who confuse the finger for the moon. We are talking about accessibility and you're talking about something different. And as soon as we have distracted people from accessibility as the core value of this thing, and we're trying to sell-side benefits, then they're going to be motivated to get those benefits. And they're going to do it by any means necessary, even if it ends up throwing accessibility out the window, but they heard the story that I did this work, and now I am going to be more accessible because I did some kind of Symantec body blow over here without ever putting those pieces together. Matt: And that's why we have things like the techniques behind the web content accessibility guidelines because we talk about this stuff. We are trying to get people to do this work, and we need it to be done the way that we intended it to be done. And we need it to benefit the users in the use cases that we have defined. And if nobody's going to go into that detail and they're not going to try to learn why. Which is what all of those techniques are about, then we're not going to make any progress in the grand scheme of accessibility. I think that the SEO as accessibility thing and the same thing with just generally be a good web standard esta, because it's good for accessibility, did us a lot of damage in the long run. Matt: It might've helped in certain ways. And I think if we take things like responsive design, I think that was a net positive for us because we ended up with a unified use case. And the people that advocated it the most were good, responsible citizens, and always were talking about accessibility. I think about Ethan Marcotte, as an example of this, when you see him talking to a mixed community, you always hear him talk about what you have to do to make a responsive web design accessible, that this is one step of that, it's not the whole thing. And I think as long as you have somebody that is doing it from a spirit of a community where they're actually doing something that has beneficial. I think that's really important. And as far as all of these other cases that you're talking about, curb cuts being good for wheelchair users and et cetera. Matt: We always have those. We can talk about email, we can talk about keyboards being done for the benefit of somebody to communicate with somebody else. I think in both the case of a typewriter and email, we have cases of people wanting to talk to deaf or hard of hearing loved ones. And that's a powerful message to get people to focus on the fact that we're actually the ones that are bringing a lot of the technology forward. And I think about things like Siri, where we have speech recognition and speech synthesis to a level that it wouldn't have been unless we had had 40 years of refinements that were made specifically for people with disabilities. And I want people to understand that first. That we're doing good things for people in public, but we're doing it for us, and you get to enjoy those benefits. Matt: If you're just doing it by parroting us, it's like making a song on a computer, there are all of these machine learning techniques for generating lyrics based on or melodies based on previous hit songs. And they're all honestly, just crap, right? The intention is the thing that matters the most. And that's as true for us as it is for any other kind of like, let's automate this stuff. I think we can't forget why we got what we got by doing things accessibly. And we should be claiming credit for the work that we do there. Nic: Kit says... Kit: I tend to use this myself. And again, this is very context-sensitive of when I get resistance to, oh, we don't have users that we know of with disabilities. Then that's where I tend to point out the side benefits of yes, but increasing contrast is not only a good idea and useful for in case people have migraines issues or temporary disability, they're also good for these other populations and segments of users as well. I usually only do this when I encounter initial resistance, because you do see those arguments. You do see the arguments of, we don't know anyone using this that's disabled or, and I've heard this too of, oh, I felt a blind person won't be able to use a computer because they're blind, which is horribly wrong. And not the case, I know people that are legally blind that use computers, screenwriters exist, assistive tech exists, but you do run into cases like these, where people will throw up resistance and say, things like that. Kit: I don't like selling accessibility that way. And in certain contexts, accessibility may be the law, if you're dealing with US federal agencies, that is the law. Recently there are questions on if the ADA is covered and court decisions have so far said, you can use the WCAG guidelines to meet the ADA requirements, especially in the cases of stores that have an online presence. Yeah, in some cases you may have to do it because it's the law, you may be invited legal aspects to it. Is that necessarily a good argument for accessibility? No, I don't like ending the conversation with it's the law, or these are the side benefits. I shouldn't have to argue my need for subtitles or captions by saying that it's good for all these different populations. I shouldn't have to argue for that in that way. But reality being what it is, a lot of times I have to. Nic: Donna says... Donna: Accessibility is definitely a multiplier of benefits. When it comes to stakeholders and decision-makers, it really helps to provide a list of benefits rather than meeting one criteria. And it's not to say that one criteria is not worth being addressed. I'm just making it harder for the stakeholder or the decision-maker to say, no, how can you say no to this amount of benefit? Nic: Alicia says... Alicia: I would say, do what works. And oftentimes when I'm talking to stakeholders, you really have to connect with someone. And one way that we connect with people is establishing common ground. So if there's something that I can say or do that brings me closer to the person I'm talking to, to get mutual understanding, that's what I'll do. So yeah, selling it in any way that we can is great. And making those connections is also important because I think when we're talking about this, we have to be mindful that disability comes in all shapes and forms. You can have a permanent disability, you could have a situational disability, we're all living in right now in COVID-19, or you can have a temporary disability that goes away after a certain period of time. So even us permanently disabled folks need to keep that in mind and make sure that we're accounting for some of those temporary and situational disabilities as well. Nic: The third and last topic is, what's one surprising aspect of accessibility for folks new to exploring this topic? Donna says... Donna: I think people who are new to accessibility have this expectation that you're coming into a yes or no checklist. And it's not as simple as that. To me, working inaccessibility is more than compliance, because there are multiple solutions that can meet a criteria. What I like to do is to help provide rationale and resources to support that decision. And then hopefully that will help someone else make informed decisions and considerations when they're trying to solve for accessibility. Nic: Matt says... Matt: I think the idea that we are pioneers in a lot of ways in using technology at its apex and we're the early adopters of these new technologies. And then because disabled users got some benefit where they weren't able to use something at all, and now they can use it a little. And I think about the curse while reading machine from the 1970s, it scanned this snail mail letter and would try to read it out to the users. And that was mid 70s that this is the technology that's out there. We take that for granted. The optical character recognition is everywhere, but we wouldn't have had that if we had not been focused on users with disabilities first. And it's that missing link I think in a lot of the technologies as they come to fruition, that once we have a common set of users that are more interested in being able to enable something than having 100% accuracy, that's a great research area. Matt: And of course, researchers depend on those cases to have enough runway to get to that point that it's a 100%. So I want us to get more credit for that. I want us to be considered rightly as the pioneers in a lot of these kinds of technologies. It's important for us to know our history and who those pioneers are and how we got here. And the research center, it's like the trace center or the inclusive design research center, or like Leonard Caz day at temple university. There are these people like Jim Thatcher, who passed away recently, but who was creating a screenwriter because he was using it to communicate math with a peer who was blind, not somebody who was working for him, it was a peer to peer relationship. Matt: And because of that, we have what are known as screenwriters and it's those kinds of trailblazing technologies. We have so much that is owed to that, not just in the disability community, but in technology in general. And I feel like we need to get people to understand that, because as long as they feel like we're dragging them behind, because we're doing standard stuff, that we have to meet five away and then we're done, we don't have to care about disability or accessibility ever again because we met the letter of the law. But to think, okay, great, you figured out a way to do this task, that makes you a traders person. You are able to do something repeatedly in a certain way, and good for you for doing that. But a professional knows the right way among a universe of different ways to reach a given destination. And with that means, we have a requirement that everything from the beginning of our ideas has to be accessible, that we don't just think about it later on. Matt: But as soon as we've gotten to the point that there is a final form of this object that we had in our heads, that's in the world, we have to think about how are we narrowing down the potential world of users because it requires vision, it requires mobility, or it acquires hearing. It requires a tactile ability that may be smell and taste, eventually we'll get there. I think that's one of the senses that we just don't have that much, where we have room to grow, we have more to learn about. But we ought to be recognized as the leaders. And that's one of the first things that I try to get people to understand about accessibility when they're just coming into it. And the thing about that is when you tell people that you can actually make a difference and that you can grow both individually, technically, and professionally, by thinking about this stuff, that I think is when a lot of people start to make the connection. Nic: Alicia says... Alicia: The aspect of accessibility is that really it applies to everything and anything, and that we're all affected by accessible or inaccessible situations. I think we're all experiencing that right now in COVID-19. We've had to adapt to new ways of working and that's what... The most surprising aspect of accessibility is that it's ever-changing, I'm learning every day, new things it's ever-evolving. And there are many facets of accessibility that you can get involved with. You don't have to necessarily be an expert in order to help work towards more accessible solutions for everyone. Nic: Kit says... Kit: Surprising. I don't know if it's surprising so much as there's a lot of disability myths that I have to reiterate over and over again in helping people explore accessibility. And sometimes it's just dealing with people with disability, it does not necessarily mean people who are receiving disability payments, though that is a subset. Just because in the US context, that's extremely difficult. But there's plenty of us that have disabilities that are receiving SSI or SSDI. But there's also plenty of people who can not or have been refused. Or the definition of disability used in those contexts is so strict, or they just can't afford to plea the court case. That is one of those myths that I have to contest over and over again. A lot of us are working or a lot of us have freelance gigs that we're working on. We just want to send pictures, relatives might send us pictures or some other mails or update the update us as to what's going on with a lot of our lives being done online from making appointments to going to the movies, to just socialization. Kit: People do tend to forget if they're able, they tend to forget that so many people use computers or it might not be the newest ones, we may be using older tech, and they might not be aware of just the costs involved in using screen readers or AT. And it compounds if you're on SSDI, your assets are limited. And so you may be using old tech, because you could only use your jaws license at the library or something. You can only use your particular screen reader, or you may be having to bounce between two different screen readers. Just kind of dispelling those disability myths. I've gotten a lot of surprise and people literally not knowing whether out of ignorance or just because they didn't have that lived experience of being told you're disabled, but not disabled enough to count. And even though accessibility guidelines have been in effect for about 20 years and that's counting both federal guidelines and things like WCAG, they've been around in some form for 20 years. And yet, if developers know about it at all, it's like that one-hour training that everybody forgets a year later. Kit: People tend to not prioritize it. And that's where you start seeing this ingrained myth and ingrained bias and ingrained ableism of that. I started incorporating into presentations now because it's just so much of people not knowing what the reality is of accessibility and that, yes, just because it is a law or there are guidelines. They're out there, but people don't use them or it wasn't considered a priority or with the pandemic, all of a sudden people that we're trying to work from home due to chronic illness, as an accommodation were told, they couldn't do it and now with the pandemic orders, all of a sudden now everybody's working from home, right? There's a certain amount of lived experience and frustration and disability myths that people that aren't disabled literally have no idea what they're saying. They assume a lot and never actually take a moment to ask someone who is disabled. I know that's a really big aspect, the disability myths aren't really investigated, they don't really look at it to see if it's a myth or not. They just take this at face value. Kit: But I think people new to exploring accessibility, that's a major hurdle for them. That's a major surprise when something that you took for granted really isn't. So that's my major one. I know that's not probably the best answer, but in my experience, that's been the way it is to the point where I've had to touch on various disability stereotypes and myths, that disability is not an on-off switch. I may have issues with vision, but most of mine I can just correct with glasses. That doesn't mean that I don't still benefit from captions and whatnot. It just means that certain impairments we're used to as a society. I go and get glasses. In the US that's actually fairly easy to do. But people don't think of that as a disability anymore. And so if I say, well, what about arthritis? What about if somebody has an injury and you can't use the mouse and that really surprises people. "Oh, what do you mean I can't use the mouse?" Kit: What do I do then if I can't use the mouse? And they're kind of facing. You bring up these cases or bring up these personas, or you bring up examples, and not just of statistics, but you may say, one of the user personas may be someone with arthritis or joint issues. And to test, say keyboard accessibility, and you have to introduce keyboard accessibility in that way of, yeah don't assume a mouse is there. Don't assume you can use a mouse. And I know that I'm starting to ramble now, but just having an abled audience, exploring accessibility and realizing that there's guidance there, but not realizing having to examine all their assumptions. Especially for abled people and accessibility, I think that's a very surprising thing because they have to face those stereotypes and they have to face those myths and decide if they're going to double down or if they're going to start paying attention. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening. And a quick reminder the transcript for this and all other shows are available under the shows website at a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit https://patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the Accessibility Rules Podcast.

E097 – Interview with Joe Devon – Part 2 Apr 30, 2020

Joe Devon says the one thing people should remember about accessibility is that building great products is about listening to your user. And if you are not making your products accessible, you are not paying attention to your users. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 97. I'm Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: In this episode, I'm continuing my conversation with Joe Devon. Last week was really splendid. We talked about obviously the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We spoke a little bit about how accessibility also is around knowing the culture and the different communities that view accessibility differently. And Joe was telling us about the mission of Diamond, which apart from building accessible software, he also wants to grow the field of knowledgeable quota about accessibility. Welcome back, Joe Devon. Joe: Thank you. Pleasure to be back. Nic: So we finished last week on a bit of a high note talking about what made you the proudest in terms of accessibility. Let's start on a more pessimistic look. What's your greatest frustration in terms of digital accessibility? Joe: Yeah, it's definitely painful when you look at the WebAIM million [report] and you see the numbers of ... what was it? So last year it was almost 98% of the top million websites were inaccessible with almost 60 errors per page. I forgot the full numbers, but this year it was 98.1% inaccessible, and I think the numbers of errors per page grew as well. Those are unacceptable numbers. And it's very painful to see them. And I actually am trying to address it with ... we're creating a state of accessibility report, and we are collaborating with WebAIM. And our idea is to take the top open source project, that when implemented ... and this is inside the WebAIM million report, the ones that when you implement that framework or that open source project and it causes accessibility errors to ... or let's say increases the average number of accessibility errors on the pages that implement them. Joe: So we want to kind of do this sponsorship, where we're sponsoring an open source project, try and get the community behind it. It's a concept that I started last year, but it didn't quite have the right note to it. And this year we're launching it under the GAAD Pledge. And the idea there is that the community will spend about a month looking at that open source project and doing a virtual hackathon. And then we're trying to partner with some brands, where a brand can sponsor this group and we'll give an honorarium to an accessibility subject matter expert to be an advocate for that open source community. So the idea is that we'll give them a bit of a kickstart by focusing on their project for a month, and then with somebody that will keep the ties strong between the accessibility community and the open source project. So I hope it'll work. Nic: I really like the concept of reaching out to open source project that drive the web and fixing the web at that level. It's like we're going to fix the prebuilt foundation and then the rest of the house should be a little bit more straight. I really like that. Have you identified an open source project for this year that you want to look at already, or is that still a little bit under wraps? Joe: I don't know when we're going to announce the first one but we have the first one and it's a well-known name. I'm extremely excited about it, but I don't think I can share it yet. Sorry- Nic: That's fine. Joe: ... and then I'm looking for 11 more. I'm looking for 11 more but if the audience has any open source projects, where they have an in with a core developer or somebody that's a big contributor, we'd love to connect with you and add them to the list. Nic: So folks that are listening to this show, you heard it from Joe. If you know an open source project that you have an in with some of the developers, reach out either to Joe directly or to me, and I'll connect you with Joe, and let's make this happen. This is exciting stuff. I love how you went from describing your greatest frustration to going to troubleshooting mode, and how do we fix this? I really like that. Joe: Yeah. It's kind of a strange thing because what really happened is ... it's kind of embarrassing. You conceive of this event that goes viral, and then you have a lot of people thanking you and just saying really embarrassing things to thank you, essentially. And then you get ... I have this tweet, this is what really prompted me to say this, that GAAD isn't enough. There was a tweet from The Blind Onion that said something to the effect of, "Now that Global Accessibility Awareness Day is over, we look forward to 364 days of global accessibility oblivion." And then I was like- Nic: I remember that. Joe: Yeah. I'm like, "This isn't working. It's getting more people aware but it isn't working." And I'm like, "I got to create a state of accessibility report for my own knowledge. Is it getting better or is it getting worse?" And while I was working on that, all of a sudden Jared Smith at WebAIM came out with exactly what I wanted to create from Diamond. And so I met him at CSUN and I said, "Hey Jared, how about we just collaborate? So if you can do a little bit of just an update or just a little bit more information and just collaborate on the state of accessibility report, that would be great." So that's what we did last year and we're doing it this year as well. Nic: I look forward to seeing this year's version. Joe, do you think there's conventional wisdom about accessibility, the one thing that everyone knows about it? Joe: When you say everyone who does that mean? Is that everyone in accessibility community or out in the world? Nic: I'm happy to hear your take. How would you define everyone? And what does that everyone know about accessibility? Joe: I don't know. I struggle with this question. I would say that there's a lot of misconceptions. People that don't know that much about it think that it's only about screen readers, that it's only affecting a small population, which is absolutely wrong, that it's not important, and all of that is wrong. Nic: So it sounds to me as if you think that what most people out there know about accessibility is actually myths. Things that are mis-perception rather than accurate understanding of the need for and implementation of. Joe: Yes. I think it all stems from perspective. And I'd say so much of life is about perspective. We're so divided in so many ways and it's because we develop our ideologies, we develop our concept of the world and then we ... what do they call it? Cognitive dissonance? Essentially where you're just trying to find proof that your view of the world is correct and you'll just keep going with your view of the world. And perspective means that you try and go outside yourself and imagine being in someone else's shoes, and then all of a sudden, that's the only way that your opinion can change about something. Joe: And anytime that you're just sitting out there and taking a population for granted, it's because you haven't put yourself in their shoes. And when it comes to accessibility, for almost everyone it's just a matter of time until you will confront it. Whether it's because you get older and you start to have your own disabilities, or whether someone in your family has it or an accident. So many of us are going to face this and now all of a sudden, here you are, you were a developer for all these years and you just didn't realize how many people and how important it was to build accessibly. And now you may be in a position where you're not coding anymore, where you're unable to code anymore. How are you going to fix the problem that you yourself created? And I think if you approach work that you're doing that way, you may view it differently. Nic: What do you think the main reason most people fail to succeed with implementing accessibility? What would be the biggest blocker there do you think? Joe: I think it's just lack of doing your homework and having that ... viewing accessibility first of all is part of the craft. If you're implementing front-end technology, you have to know CSS. I don't really enjoy front-end work. I don't consider myself really good at it. I don't have a good sense of design. I was always more like a database guy and a backend programmer, but I knew that if I would ever do any front-end development, I have to be really good at CSS. And that just takes a little bit of effort, especially if you don't think like that. And the exact same thing is true if you're doing something in accessibility, you have to put in the hours and if you don't put in the hours, you won't get it right. But it's not all that hard. You just need to learn. Nic: I tweeted something a couple of days ago, which really surprised me with the response I got that's got nearly 140,000 views of it. And I said that we don't really have an accessibility problem, what we have is a lack of basic HTML knowledge. And that if front-end developers knew how to code proper semantically meaningful HTML, a vast majority of accessibility errors would disappear. And I think it echoes what you're saying in terms of, we need to build our basic skills. It's not enough to take a framework and output whatever it is because that's what everybody else is doing. We need to know why we're doing what we're doing and how we can do it better. So doing the homework, I like that perspective. Joe: Yeah, and you're right on the money. It's the craft of code. If you're taking something that has a semantic element and you just did a horrible quick start on one of these single page application frameworks where you're just making everything a div and then styling it and forgetting all the other things that are baked into that native element, how can you consider yourself a great coder? And that's another angle I like to try and tell developers, if you're ignorant of accessibility, can you really call yourself a great coder? You're just missing so much. Nic: In the same vein, I often tell people, people whine at me. They say, "Oh, but accessibility is so hard." And I say, "Yeah, but you're a coder. Coders like challenge. Why don't you think about accessibility as a coding challenge?" Joe: Exactly. Nic: And that gets a few wake up calls there. I think people suddenly start shifting the way they think about it. Joe: Yeah. How many programmers are sitting there, they're learning a language and they're like, "Ah, this Go thing came out. Why don't I try Go? Okay, try Go but why don't you try accessibility? Nic: Yeah. Joe: Why don't you get the basics first? Nic: You've been involved obviously for 10 years in growing awareness of accessibility and getting a good feel for the pulse of it. What you do you say the greatest challenge for the field of accessibility and moving forward? Joe: This is an excellent question and it's ... I have even done a presentation on this, which I probably should polish and do some more. It is actually a really big problem and a lot of people I've noted ... again, coming from the outside in, a lot of people are very upset about how long it takes everything to come together and to improve, but the issue is multi-tiered. If you're a developer ... and it's multiple levels because you have, first of all, the business person. So if you take it from a Fortune 500 company, you'd have to start with a C level. They need to understand that it's important. They need to understand why it's a problem. They need to see the perspective of their users and they need to make it a priority from the top. And then from our perspective in order to get that awareness of how we need a marketing budget. And who has a marketing budget in the accessibility field? Not a lot of folks. Joe: And I was really conflicted to tell you the truth about starting an accessibility practice area because I did not want to compete with these wonderful companies that both embraced GAAD and that are just doing such incredible work. But then I realized that I can only do so much if I don't have a marketing budget. And so I can use the resources of the company by doing something like the state of accessibility report if I can attach marketing to it. So that marketing budget is important. And then you need to educate the people on the perspectives. You need to educate developers and designers on the perspectives. You need to do things like explain to a designer that if you're doing something like Slack, or Skype or anything where there's users that are online or offline, this is the kind of thing that will speak to them. The famous thing of having a light that's either green or red and that indicates if the person is active or inactive. Joe: And when you tell them that there's a large population of people who are colorblind, and they can't tell the difference between red or green, and accessibility we'll teach you this if you put in some effort there that you need to provide a text along with that color and that way the colorblind population will know about it, then all of a sudden they start to realize that, "Oh my God, the reason that accessibility is so important is that there is everybody's individual and there's so many people that I have to pay attention to and all it needs to do is do a little course on DQ, particularly focus on the design, on the design courses and all of a sudden I'm going to be a much better designer." So that education has to happen to the QA, to the product people, to the designers, to the developers. And you need the technical people to get the right technical education. So all of those taken together are definitely a big challenge and we need to start with awareness. Nic: Joe, we only have a few more minutes. I would like to wrap this up with asking you, what is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Joe: I'd say the one thing they should remember is that building great products is about listening to your user. And if you are not making your products accessible, you are not paying attention to your users. Nic: That's really powerful. How do we listen to users and make sure that we catch disabled users? Joe: You have to do testing with disabled users. You can't really fully pay attention to your users if you're not capturing their experience fully, so it's all in the user testing. Nic: User testing. User testing with real user with disabilities. When would you say the best time to do that is? Is it at the end of the project, or start of the project or? Joe: That's a great question. It really depends. You have enterprise level projects which are quite different than building something as a startup. It's just important to have that in mind, but really you need to speak to a UX specialist that makes sure that user testing is part of their process, and follow their directions on an individual basis. Nic: Yeah. With the understanding of course, that the UX specialist actually understands a little bit about accessibility, right? Joe: Oh, of course. Of course. That goes without saying. Nic: Fantastic. Joe on that note, thank you for being such a great guest and I will see you on the interwebs! Joe: Great. And thank you very much and see you all on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Nic: Third Thursday of May. See you then. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening. A quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shoutout to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout, that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.C-O-M/S-T-E-E-N-H-O-U-T if you want to support the Accessibility Rules Podcast.

E096 – Interview with Joe Devon – Part 1 Apr 23, 2020

Joe Devon tells us that lot of accessibility is knowing the culture and different communities that view it differently. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 96. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing-fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: This week, I'm speaking to Joe Devon. Joe, thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility. Joe: My pleasure. I really enjoy your podcast, so it feels funny to be on the inside, so to speak. Nic: Thank you. If you've listened to the show before, you know that I like to let guests introduce themselves. Briefly, who's Joe Devon? Joe: Well, briefly, I am the co-founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It's something that I co-founded with Jennison Asuncion back in 2012. If anybody doesn't know, it's basically a day that is to get developers, designers, and anybody who builds digital products, that it should be built with accessibility in mind. Joe: I also around the same time co-founded Diamond, a digital agency that focuses on building accessible, highly scalable, and well-crafted software. Basically, those two grew quite well but separately over the years, then last year, we launched an accessibility practice area. This has really been my focus for the last decade or so. Nic: You're really focusing enterprise-grade focus on accessibility, right? Joe: Yes, absolutely. Essentially, the founders and the partners at Diamond grew out of americanidol.com, which this is where we all met. Then eventually, we started the agency. Internally, we had accessibility as a core value, but we just felt that there was... I created GAAD as a developer. I didn't come in as an accessibility subject matter expert, so it took a little bit of time to really develop that know-how, but I'd like to do a shoutout to Deque University. That was really what helped me to overcome the missing pieces because it was a little bit hard to figure out how to run and build a company while really becoming an expert on accessibility. Nic: Yeah, that's an interesting journey, from developer to enterprise leader to accessibility delivery guys. That's cool. We're talking about accessibility. I find there's a lot of different definitions of the term. How would you define web accessibility? Joe: If it's web accessibility, I would say building websites that are accessible to people with disabilities, keep it as simple as that, but I typically prefer to talk about digital accessibility, which includes all digital products. That would include mobile apps and it would include AR, VR, and the technologies that are coming down the pike that will replace the smartphone before long. Nic: In your day-to-day life, where do you fit in the puzzle? How do you fit accessibility in? Because I imagine you're no longer spending a lot of time coding. What do you do accessibility-wise? Joe: I haven't really touched too much code in the last decade since starting the company. However, I still felt it was important to know it because when you're hiring subject matter experts, you really want to know what you're doing. I don't literally work on accessibility myself, but it's more about managing the team, making sure that we include hours in every project where there's accessibility, subject matter experts in everything we do, and then leading the team in order to start new engagements. Joe: I would say that there's some tricky parts to it and some opportunities there, or challenges, really. Essentially, there's lots of really great companies out there that are doing audits and helping with some degree of remediation, but what I felt was really missing from the market is folks like us who are software builders and we really create software from scratch and doing that with accessibility in mind is something that you just don't find really out there. There probably are a couple, but I don't know too many. I think I've run across maybe one or two companies that do it. Joe: The challenge, really, is that we have a growing team where it changes every week, but we're at about 60 people. We have an internal recruiter. You can't hire a developer that has accessibility already. I mean, it exists, but it's not too common. Most people that have accessibility are doing accessibility audits or that type of thing. You have to grow it from the inside, so there's a bit of a challenge there because when you're bringing in a new client, you want to put somebody that's already a developer that's already good at accessibility, but you can't bring in somebody new, you have to train them up. It takes time and it's a little difficult. Joe: I'd say those are the biggest challenges, but at the same time, I feel that as part of the mission that as a company, in a way, I'd rather hire somebody that doesn't have accessibility but that cares about it. You can see that when you're interviewing people, sometimes they haven't even heard of it but they do a little research on you and they're like, "I see accessibility is important. I didn't realize what it was and I'm really excited to work on it." Joe: Those are the people that become the best developers because they understand that accessibility is part of the craft of development and at the same, time they become passionate later and then eventually, they'll move on to another company and they're going to bring the accessibility with them because this is what helps to grow the accessibility. You can see where the challenge is when you're taking on a project, you just can't... You have to pair it with an accessibility subject matter expert or it's just not going to work. Does that make sense? Nic: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Have you found that there's a better benefit to hire a dev interested in accessibility that doesn't know about it that you can teach accessibility the way you perceive it or do you think if you could find accessibility coders, if you want, would you prefer to hire someone who knows their stuff already? Joe: Yeah, that's essentially what I was trying to say is that it's way, way easier if you hire somebody that already has accessibility know-how, but then for the mission, I don't feel like it's as good because you're not growing the field. There's just too few people that have it, but regardless, it's almost impossible to find somebody that that is a great coder and also already has the accessibility chops. It's very rare, at least in my experience. You're just going to have to realize you're growing it. Joe: I feel good about it because I think that's it's important to grow it. Every person that joins gets it, Deque University, our company, including people who are in non-coding departments are given a Deque University license. It's very inexpensive, a great way for them to learn. We had somebody who was doing admin work that actually took to the course immediately and has taken her CPACC certification, which hopefully, she'll find out soon if she gets it. We've already started putting her on project work. It's a company-wide core value and anybody who wants to get involved, we're happy to support that internally. Nic: How did you become aware of accessibility and how important it is? Because you're obviously passionate, you're obviously really keen to evangelize, if you want, about accessibility, obviously, with your Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the mission you have your Diamond. How did you awaken to the importance of accessibility? Joe: That's a great question and I really love this story because all that happened was I always sucked up information and, as I like to say, I always wanted to be on the bleeding edge of tech, I wanted to know what was next. I had never heard of accessibility, I'd never heard of a screen-reader. Joe: Then I was watching a video by Victor Tsaran, who is now a computer programmer. He's blind, by the way. He's a computer programmer at Google today, but back, then he was at Yahoo and he showed this video of what it was like for him to use a screen-reader and see the front page of yahoo.com. I was completely blown away: "What? They're reading the page to him and if we build this wrong, we're messing up his experience?" That was incredible. Joe: Then the very first event that I personally ran for GAAD was at Yahoo and they were incredibly supportive. They said, "We're going to give you a couple of speakers," and one of them was Victor Tsaran, so he was at the very first GAAD event that I had done here in Los Angeles. It happened, there were lots of other events around the world, but it was great to see him. We've become friends. He's just brilliant, a brilliant dude. Nic: You've been doing accessibility fairly seriously for at least 10 years. Has your view of accessibility changed during that time? Joe: I would say it changed in the sense that I just kept learning more. There was a lot to learn and a lot of it is culture, too, because accessibility means different things to different people, I'd say. I guess one of the things that's interesting is that the different communities view it differently and I guess what I've come to learn is important internally for us is to come together and work together. Sometimes I feel like we don't all work together or we're not always on the page and we really would benefit tremendously if we united our efforts a little bit more. Nic: How do we do that? Joe: I wish I knew. I don't know. I don't know. I'm certainly no expert. I would say I'm a learner. I'll always be a learner. I don't know. Nic: Yeah, it's a bit of a trick question, I guess, because I've been asking myself that for a very long time. Beyond just the field of digital accessibility, I've been asking myself that, "Why is there so much fragmentation within the disability communities?" People who are blind have their own need, their own perception, and often it seems like there is no communication with people who are wheelchair users. Within wheelchair users, there's this hierarchy: If you're a quadriplegic, you're more real disabled than if you're just a paraplegic. Nic: This whole perception of fragmentation in the community really has bothered me a long time. I wish we did all come together and we did provide a united front because we are arguably the largest minority around. I've seen numbers anywhere between 20% and 30% of adults in the United States have a disability, a significant one, so if we united, if we had the same message, I think we would be so powerful. Joe: Absolutely. Recently, I heard that the WHO announced that in terms of visual impairments, I think it was 2.2 billion people have a visual impairment and if we look at it as individually everybody is different and everybody has different issues and the accessibility, instead of necessarily focusing just on "This is to create technology that works for people with disabilities," if you look at it a bit more of a universal design, I wonder if we're not going to get more uptake where people are like, "Oh, wait. It's really about personalization, making things work for everybody," because what winds up happening is if you think about closed captions, and I've seen this happen by people that actually care about disabilities, "Well, which percentage of our users are deaf? You know what? It's a big cost to us to provide closed captions." Joe: When you're thinking about it in those terms, then you're doing divide and conquer and you're like, "Well, why do I need to care about this population?" whereas if you think about it in terms of, "Everybody's different and we're making sure our technology works for everybody," then your numbers are higher and you're delivering a much better experience. Nic: I had a discussion last year with a group of developers at fairly large Fortune 250 company and a similar question was asked, it's like, "How many people with screen-readers are coming to our site?" I said, "Well, you can't really tell," and I said, "But if you want to play the numbers game, which I tend not to like, there's probably about 10% of people that have a significant visual impairment that probably are using screen-readers." Nic: Then I asked them, "Which version of IE are you still supporting?" and they said, "Oh, we still support IE 9." I said, "How much of the percentage of the traffic coming to your site comes on IE 9?" and they said, "Mm, 0.4%." I say, "I'm willing to bet that if you're supporting 0.4% of people on that older browser, you probably would want to support screen-reader users and suddenly, it was like, "Huh." The penny dropped. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, it's funny. So much of this is about perspective and looking at it from someone else's perspective. I was working a reality show website and we tried to get rid of IE 6 and we finally got approval. We got it all done and we were so happy. Then we're about to launch and all of a sudden, we heard, "We have an emergency. We absolutely have to get to IE 6 to work." It turned out that the CEO of the biggest advertiser of the reality show was on IE 6 and went to the website and got this notice to upgrade his browser and he said, "What? No, you've got to make it work for IE 6." Nic: Wow, yeah. Stories from the trenches. Joe: Sometimes it's one user you have to... Yeah. Sometimes you need to support one user. Nic: Yeah. Yeah, I guess in the end, that's why I feel numbers are meaningless, because in the end, if you exclude even one member of your community, you're not accessible at all. You're no community at all, even. Joe: Yeah. I'm with you. I tend not to talk about numbers. It's not a winning conversation, but your approach is definitely right. I mean, "What version of IE do you support?" That's a great question. Nic: Joe, did you face any barriers in your journey to learn about accessibility? You mentioned going through the Deque University program and that there was a lot to learn, but what kind of barriers did you come across yourself? Not from a disability perspective, but from a learning about disability perspective. How did you get over that? Joe: Oh, my god. I'd say the biggest barrier I had was in my own head because I have a lot of pride in craftsmanship and what terrifies me is this is the ninth GAAD, so it's nine years now where I'm on podcasts like these giving talks and I have a terrible fear that I'm going to say something stupid, which I'm sure I've done many times, that I'm going to be attacked for something that I said, and maybe offend somebody or show how stupid I am. That's why I didn't want to launch an accessibility practice area until I read every single word of Deque University. It took me eight months, but I really wanted to know what I was talking about to a certain degree. Joe: I'd say the biggest barrier is actually being willing to go out there and stick my neck out and be ready to make mistakes. I think for the community, the lesson is nobody is going to be perfect. If we attack companies that aren't perfect too much, it scares them from even engaging in the community. I think most of us are pretty good about saying, "Okay, they're trying, they care and they're putting an effort, so we're not going to rip them if they make a mistake as long as they're good about fixing it and engage in terms of fixing it." I really feel as somebody that had come from the outside of the community in, that that would be the message I would pass along to folks. What do you think about that? Nic: Mm. I like that. I really liked that, yeah. I like the idea that the biggest barrier is often internal. A lot of people tell me around this that it's difficult to find information about accessibility, that the information is fragmented, that it can be really difficult to digest the web content accessibility guidelines and that kind of stuff. I think there's value to that, but if you've sorted it out in your own head and you've decided to, "Yeah, I'm going to do this," then all the rest is becoming somewhat smaller and easier to overcome. Nic: Joe, what is your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Joe: That's a no brainer. That's Global Accessibility Awareness Day. I mean, I don't think anything in my life will ever approach Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It definitely took off way beyond anything I expected. Nic: Tell me more about that. Joe: I mean, I had a very popular blog called mysqltalk.com that probably got 10 users that ever looked at a single blog post I wrote and I just came up with the idea for GAAD. I wasn't even smart enough to tweet it out, but WordPress auto-tweeted it. Jennison saw it and said, "This is a great idea. Let's make it happen." Joe: A reason I even call it an achievement is I'm scared to look at code that I've written three months ago because I'll just destroy myself about how bad it is because I've learned something since then back when I was coding and then anything I look at historically, it's very painful to look at. Joe: Then finally, last year, I really re-read the post in its entirety and I was like, "Everything that I wrote in there worked and actually happened." If I look at any old article or anything that I've written in the past, I'll always have 20 changes. I almost would have no changes in the blog post. It just hit right. For some reason, I had good inspiration and got lucky and it worked. I certainly would just say it was luck more than anything, but yeah. No question, that's probably the biggest, the thing I'm most proud of in my life. Nic: What kind of reach does GAAD have today? Joe: Last year, just on the GAAD hashtag on Twitter alone, there was a Twitter reach of 195 million users. There's no way to actually know how many people beyond Twitter have been reached, but it's certainly a really big number, yeah. Nic: 195 million people that you know for sure have seen messages about accessibility just through Twitter? Just through Twitter? Joe: Yeah. Nic: Yeah, that's really impressive and definitely something to be proud of. Joe: Thank you. Nic: I've done a couple GAAD special episodes of the show and I'm working on one for this year and I have to admit, I got myself confused for some reason I thought it was on the 1st of May rather than the third Thursday of May, so I have a couple more weeks of breathing space to organize everything, so that's a bit of a relief. I just really love this. I've seen it grow over the years and I'm just in awe of what you've accomplished. You say you've been lucky, but don't you make your own luck, too? Joe: Yeah, but I mean, it's something that you can't decide what's going to go viral and surely, you have to put it out there. Honestly, what made it take off was the community and it brought me more than I brought it. It taught me something that I tried to pass on to other people, which is that if you have a good vision for something and you combine it with community, you can achieve a tremendous amount. Joe: Everybody around me that I meet that has some great idea, I recently came across someone who started telling me some crazy stories related to... I don't want to go into too much detail, but basically related to some orphans and it was an extremely shocking story and I'm really trying to encourage her to do TED Talks and to take the vision she has, maybe build an organization around it, take it to the community and achieve more. Joe: This is, for me, the biggest lesson, that if you have something in your life that you're passionate about, that you feel that if a community would get together, get out there, go to Toastmasters, learn how to do public speaking. Eventually, we'll probably do public speaking again beyond just webinars and podcasts. Joe: Do your TED Talk. What's your TED Talk? That's a question right there for everyone: What are you passionate about? What's your TED Talk? What effort have you made toward actually having your TED Talk go out there? A lot of people that are listening to this are in the accessibility community. That's fine, too. What's your TED Talk around accessibility? Or is there another topic? Nic: Joe, thank you for that challenging question: What's your TED Talk? I think I'm going to wrap it up for this week on that. Thank you for being a guest. I'll talk to you next week. Joe: Awesome. Thank you. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening. A quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shoutout to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do. To show, do visit patreon.com/steenhout, that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot C-O-M forward slash S-T-E-E-N-H-O-U-T if you want to support the Accessibility Rules Podcast.

E095 – Interview with Devon Persing – Part 2 Apr 03, 2020

Devon Persing and I talk a little bit about burnout in the web accessibility industry. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 95. Hey, only a few more episodes and we'll be hitting the show's 100th episode. How fantastic is that? I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: This week I'm continuing my conversation with Devon Persing. Last week was really cool. She told me about an idea that I had not quite voiced in my own head, which was that the idea of accessibility as compliance is a model that doesn't really capture the whole picture of accessibility, and then when we think about accessibility in those terms, we are really limiting the way we can actually take up accessibility at all stages of a project. That was really a good idea. Anyway, Devon, welcome back. Devon: Thank you. Nic: We finished last week on a high note, talking about greatest achievement. Let's flip the coin and ask you: what's your greatest frustration, in terms of web accessibility? Devon: One thing that I've been thinking about lately is the idea that it's simple, and I think this comes from the eight billion articles about ARIA that are just everywhere now, and I think two things. Less than a few years or so, the biggest take-up of accessibility discussion online has been for developers. Developers obviously like a technical solution. They like code snippets, they like prototypes, they like working examples, and so there's been a lot of emphasis on building stuff, and lot of emphasis on building stuff with ARIA specifically to the point where I talked to developers who think that for something to be accessible it has to have ARIA. Devon: They don't really know what it's doing. They don't really know who it's actually for or what tools actually access it. But they read an article about ARIA and so they know that they're supposed to use ARIA. And that's when you get things like button tags that have a role of button, which isn't the worst, but also is completely unnecessary. There's been a saturation of technical knowledge or technical information that isn't inaccurate but isn't really that helpful and doesn't give people the context of when to use those solutions and when not to. It's also pushed the narrative that: accessibility is a technical problem. Devon: Some things are, a lot of things aren't. That has been challenging too. When I talk to designers or content strategists about accessibility work, it's much more difficult to find resources for them because most of the articles are like, "Here's the 97th article about color contrast." There's only so many ways to talk about that, but it's also much more difficult to talk about workflows and tab order and interactions from a design perspective. It makes things a little bit easier as more designers are using more live prototyping tools, things like Figma and Sketch versus more static tools like Photoshop. But I do still see a lot of that emphasis, that misunderstanding, that accessibility is a technical problem that's to be solved by developers. Nic: Yeah. ARIA all the things, right? Devon: Right. "If you put ARIA on it, it works." And then I like asking people, "What is this for?" And then they're not quite sure or they're also just not aware of accessibility beyond screen errors, a thing that comes up with that a lot as well. They think that screeners equal accessibility. Nic: Yeah. I was really interested to see the one million report that WebAIM did that showed that the top 65% of sites that had accessibility errors were also the size that had the most ARIA peppered throughout. That was interesting. Devon: Yeah. Analog of the issues of that report raised were the same issues we've had for years. It was missing all attributes, poor color contrast, things that are very easy to catch and things that are very easy to not do, but also they're the same problems we've been seeing for decades. Nic: Yeah. Do you think there's something that everyone knows about accessibility? A conventional wisdom? Devon: Once people hear what the word means, and I've also talked to people that were like, "Well what does that mean?" Because it's also a word that's used in many different ways. So when I explain what digital accessibility is, or what web accessibility is, they're like, "Oh!" People that aren't as technical or aren't as involved in web work might think that that will just all be taken care of in some fashion. Or they say, "I've never thought about that." They've never thought about how someone might use a digital technology without their hands or without their vision, et cetera. So for some people it's eyeopening, but it's also, for some people, they're just like, "Well, why doesn't that just work?" And then they really don't want to hear about accessibility APIs and browsers. They don't want to hear about that. So then trying to explain why it doesn't work gets difficult. Devon: From a lay person perspective, it's very confusing. I guess it's not surprising that when people find out that they're being sued for ADA noncompliance, or what have you, that it seems weird that that's something that's not just taken care of. Or why do we have to do 'extra work' to meet these guidelines? That is still a challenge: trying to explain it to those folks that aren't bought in and don't understand how digital products are made. They are throwing stuff at teams and just see magical webpages come out of them basically. That is still difficult, because those are the folks that do a quick Google search and are like, "Oh look, they should just put some ARIA on it." That's why we often just see people putting ARIA on things because they don't have time and they're just doing it to make their boss happy, unfortunately. Nic: Yeah. What do you think the number one reason is for most people to fail at implementing web accessibility, other than there's two billion ARIA articles out there? Devon: People aren't given enough time. They're not always given time to learn on the job. They're not always given time to really focus on their craft. Teams are encouraged to work so fast and put out content so frequently that people never come back to do improvements. They have to move on to the next thing. Even if we know that there's issues and we know that we need to fix them, they stay in the backlog forever. Not just for accessibility. That's a general problem around testing and workflow and process for teams in general, they're just not given enough time to truly explore the best way to do something or the best way to implement it or the best way to maintain it. Maintenance is a big thing too. Part of the rash of overlay type products we've seen in the last couple of years is related to that. Devon: Teams are already having a struggle to have enough time to do their own maintenance, they don't have time to go back and work on things that they've already released. That's not the fault of those people doing the work, it's the fault of management and leadership pushing in a very unsustainable way. It's a bigger problem than just accessibility. It's just a general industry problem, but it's all tied into this idea that we don't have time to go back and fix things, or we don't have time to really do this the best way, the way we want to do it. We have to do it in this amount of time so we're limited in what we can actually do. Nic: Playing devil's advocate here, you said people don't have time to learn. Isn't there an argument to be made that accessibility is a basic skill that, at least, developers should have? Just the same way they should know HTML and they should know CSS and they should know JavaScript, and there shouldn't be a need for the time to learn how to do your job? Devon: I totally agree. That's the thing that came up a lot. I used to also do some workshops and teaching occasionally and some mentorship at a local boot camp style dev program, and that was a thing that, when I would go in and talk about accessibility, sometimes the students would express concern. They assumed that people who went to, say, a four-year program for a CS degree or a web dev degree, were learning all of this stuff about having to do with accessibility. And I reassure them that, at the time at least, that was not the case. They probably were learning more from me in an hour than a lot of people were learning in programs that they were paying a lot more money for. Devon: So I think that there is an assumption that it is a basic skill. I totally agree that it is a basic skill, but I do not think it is taught as a basic skill in formal programs. And I think that that is a surprise too. When I talk to managers and folks about what accessibly skills people should have, they're often surprised because they're like, "Well, why don't they know that already?" The short explanation for that is: ableism. That's why it's not included in curriculums in lots of areas. It's just not thought of as a thing that is needed and it's not thought of as something that's complicated enough or important enough to warrant dedicating time to. Also, folks that are teaching those programs also don't have that expertise because they didn't learn it. Until more recently, there hasn't been pressure to learn it as much. That's also an ongoing struggle, trying to explain to people that: yes, people should be able to do this stuff and they should know this, but they don't and that's not their fault, usually. Nic: How do we change that? How do we push for boot camps and computer science degrees and even online tutorial? How do we push for making sure accessibility is included as part of the basic skills? Devon: A lot of it right now is coming down to folks who were in the accessibility community going more mainstream, and I'm seeing that partly in folks leaving agency work and going to work for, say, a product company or a company that does frameworks or just inserting ourselves into the broader tech world. And then asking those hard questions and being that person to say, "Hey, no, we need to stop and include this in internal training, in our expectations for advancement," that sort of thing. Devon: It's still going to be awhile because there's only so many of us. But that's what I'm seeing happen where organizations are actively hiring accessibility specialists or creating specializations within engineering roles or design roles that focus on accessibility. And then those people are creating training internally for their companies and that is also starting to bleed out into... 'Bleeding out' sounds bad. I didn't mean it in like, "Oh, we're bleeding out." I meant moving out into other fields. It's going to take a while, but it's really going to take emptying out our agencies and folks moving into product companies and doing more mainstream roles. That's a start at least. Nic: Yeah. What would you say the greatest challenge for the field of accessibility moving forward is? Is it going mainstream or is there something else? Devon: It's a combination of becoming more mainstream, which I just love as a concept, and when sometimes people are like, "Aren't you worried about..." I would love to not have to do this work anymore, because everyone knows it, everyone's doing it. That would be cool. I can go do something else. I think it's that. It's also the challenge of, we talked a little bit last week about, inclusivity and centering people with disabilities while also recognizing the intersections of how different people are oppressed. I don't think I said that in so many words, but thinking on those lines and trying to figure out ways to increase the idea of accessibly work as a type of protest or a type of activism and seeing how it relates to other forms of activism in technology, in academia, that sort of thing. Devon: So some of it is finding allies in other similar fields and working together. Where I'm going with this is: one of the biggest problems is burnout. I see people on this field get burnt out a lot and it's because we feel we often do very isolated work. We're often the only person in an organization or one of few people in an organization. Or, if you're a consultant, you're basically just telling people that they're doing things wrong all day, which gets really stressful, really tiring. That combination of things makes it very easy to burn out. And usually people are also extremely passionate about this work. So you're already at a heightened sense. You're already putting a lot more of yourself into the work than you might be otherwise. Devon: Burnout, the only solution is mainstreaming and finding allies in other types of work around marginalized people and trying to figure out how to do this work together in a way that's not as harmful to us as it often is. Nic: Yeah, burnout, that definitely is a problem and there's such a high level of frustration that's there. It's working in isolation and saying the same thing over and over, but also coming across the same attitudinal barriers where you have to convince people over and over again and you see the same kind of silliness. That's probably something that triggers that. Devon: I actually have a question for you on that front, because you've been doing accessibility work much longer than I have and I know that you've done also activism work around physical accessibility in the ADA. How have you managed to not get super burnt out and just peace out? Nic: Ah, well, there's a few things. The first thing is that accessibility, whether in the built environment or the digital world, for me is not just a job, it's a passion, it's a lifestyle. And the other aspect is that I encounter a high level of frustration quite often, especially when I'm facing the same kind of issue over and over and over again. It might be some silly things like somebody asking me to pet my service dog. That's one tiny little silly thing, but when I have literally 15 people a day, every day, asking me, "Can I pet your service dog?" It becomes a trigger. It's the little things that build up, and I can't lie, I have my moments of total and sheer frustrations and anger. The way to not turn that into burnout is to actually take a step back, take a breather, do something that is totally unrelated to what I've been doing that triggers that. Nic: So, for me lately, it's finding artsy hobbies that are not related to touching the computers. When I turn down my computer at the end of the day, I don't touch my computer until I start working again the following day. And I do other things. But perhaps the biggest key to keep persevering, if you want, is to remind myself that the job we're doing changes lives, quite literally changes lives. That's just so important. I have somebody, not that long ago, that said they listened to one of my podcasts and suddenly realized that maybe the problem they've had all their lives with not being able to understand their readings was that maybe they were struggling with dyslexia. And they went and they got tested and suddenly they got tools to be able to get through what they were doing. And for me it's just so powerful, changing people's lives for the better. And that's where that balances the frustration and avoid burnouts. Devon: And I really like that. Nic: But I think ultimately, it's going to be a question of: everyone has to find what works for them, because my solution, going out and taking photos of bird and wildlife might not work for you if you live in Downtown Seattle for example. Devon: Right, yeah. I think it's also nice that you mentioned even just things not working for everyone. That is just a repeating theme in this work, both how we teach people, how we recover from the work we do and how people approach it. And I also love that you brought up someone, through the process of learning about accessibility, realizing that they might have something that they never really thought about. That's something I've been thinking about a lot and something I got at Accessibly Toronto Conference last year... It's last year now, it's 2020, Geez. Devon: Cherry Rae, who's a wonderful consultant in gaming accessibility, they gave a talk about that burnout cycle of doing accessibly work and how exhausting it is, but also through the process of learning tactics and the thing I mentioned earlier about earplugs, and seeing, learning more about yourself and your boundaries and what you can do and what you should be doing for yourself. And also just identifying your own particular set of barriers that you run into, and one possible being open and talking about that can be really, really valuable for other people. That's one of the reasons, at that same conference, I included in my talk, it was probably really the first most public places I'd said, I have depression and anxiety, because it was just a very safe space and a lot of people were disclosing. Devon: A lot of people were giving talks that related to their disabilities. It was a very welcoming environment. And then later I had a coworker, who I had just recently met, someone I've never worked with specifically because it's such a large company, but someone who was attending the conference sent me a message later and was like, "Thank you so much for saying that because it's something I struggle with talking to my teammates about." And then we had a little conversation about some things they could do to make that a little bit easier. Devon: And again it comes back to: it's also pressure and maybe burnout, pressure to disclose and to talk about that openly. But talking about it, people always find things, like, "Oh, I didn't... That's a thing? Other people don't experience that?" I've thought I've been lazy," or whatever and laziness is a construct, it's completely made up. That's where I was going. That was one of the things that Cherry was talking about in their talk, this concept of laziness that we enforce on ourselves. Like, "Well, other people are doing it, so if I just try harder, then I'll do it too." And that's not how it works. Nic: Yeah. I spoke to Cherry Ray for my soundbite series of podcasts and it was a really powerful talk as well. It's funny when people go and they think, "Oh, you mean my normal isn't actually normal? My experience isn't something that everybody else around me is going through?" And that moment of realization can be... It's enlightening of course for the person who has that revelation, but when you see it happen often enough it becomes... It's not something that's made light of, but... I don't know how to verbalize it. It just makes me happy. Devon: And that comes back to that idea of: it's easier to talk about accessibility work when it's talked about from that people focused perspective, and also coming back to the idea that nothing, no one thing, will work for everyone. That's also something, it's very easy to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, especially from that compliance model we've been talking about. Whereas it's really: nothing is going to work perfectly for everyone. That scares people too because they're like, "Well, we've done a lot, we've checked all the boxes and the thing we made is supposedly accessible according to all these tests we're running, but you're still saying someone might not be able to use it?" Devon: And the answer is, "Yeah, sorry," This is a work in progress, this is stuff we're going to have to do forever. People seeing examples of that in the wild and talking to each other and seeing that there is no normal, that's really scary but it's also really liberating and then people are less worried about trying to make the perfect thing and just trying to do better. Nic: Yeah. Devon, let me ask you one last question. What is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Devon: Just put a dang alt attribute on your images. Come on, it's 2020, just describe your images. Come on! That's honestly the biggest thing. If everyone started doing that, that would be great. Nic: It's funny, I had that very discussion with no less than five people in the last two weeks. That's hilarious. Devon Persing, thank you so much for being a guest. It's been a great discussion and I look forward to bump into you again at some conference or other. Devon: It's been lovely. Thanks so much for having me. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening and a quick reminder: the transcript for this, and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the Accessibility Rules podcast.

E094 – Interview with Devon Persing – Part 1 Mar 27, 2020

Devon Persing tells us that the compliance model doesn't capture the whole picture of accessibility. And it feels like a separate thing from design/dev work. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 94. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: This week I'm speaking with Devon Persing. Devon, thanks for joining me in this conversation around web accessibility. Devon: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's good to chat. It's been a while. Nic: You may know this by now, but I like to let guests introduce themselves. So in a brief elevator style pitch introduction, who's Devin Persing? Devon: Good question. Mostly I do accessibility work at Shopify. I also help run the accessibility meetup community in Seattle. And I also teach a workshop, at a place called the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle to, mostly UX certificate students but also members of the public, whoever comes in. So I do like teaching and a lot of training and a real lot of documentation these days. Nic: Documentation. Documentation about what? Devon: Well, something I've been trying to dig into more is trying to teach teams having to do with accessibility work. And I think a lot of accessibility education has focused around roles. What are designers supposed to do, what are devs supposed to do? And I think what then happens is we teach people stuff and then they don't know what to do with it in relation to their teammates and their projects. So one of the things I've been trying to focus on this year is just trying to bridge that gap, which is tricky because teams all work differently. But figuring out ways to kind of fit best practices or accessibility into teams, workflows, their rituals, their processes so it feels less like a discipline specific thing and more of a thing that everyone on a team is responsible for. Nic: Cool. Devon: So I ended up writing a lot of like Wiki type documentation or articles that I have been working on are more about doing daily work versus getting people on board. Nic: That sounds really cool, actually. It's funny, I'm a bit of a documentation geek. I love good documentation. And it sounds like you're doing that. Is it going to be something that's portable or really more Shopify oriented? Devon: I think portable. So a lot of it comes from work that has come from years of consulting. My colleague Scott Vinkle and I, who you also know, we do a lot of collaboration on training and teaching. And so a lot of the documentation we have has either been things we've made internally or things that have come from other workshops or programs we've done. So the information isn't new. It's more about just kind of packaging it in different ways for teams to learn about it when it makes sense, but also to try to adapt to different learning styles. A lot of it's written at this point, but we're also working on doing more video and doing other things that are more interactive, which is also nice teaching at SVC because I get to sort of try new material on people a few times a year and then bring it back into other teaching I do internally. Devon: So it's nice to have a few different venues for doing different types of teaching activities or writing. I do like writing. I have a background in writing as well, but it's also really nice to just actually interact with people. I also work remote, so it's also a been a consideration for us to figure out ways to do teaching and training that don't require people to be in the same space together. That's often ideal for some activities, but for a very large, increasingly distributed company and also just for learning online in general, I think it's helpful to think about ways to do teaching that aren't in a physical classroom. Nic: Switching a little bit topic, tell us something that most people would not know about yourself. Devon: My go to for that question, I come from a family that runs an amusement park. I grew up in central Pennsylvania and it's currently run by my dad's cousins. But my great grandfather founded an amusement park. It's called Knoebels. It's still there. It's still open. It's open seasonally. So I grew up working at the park. Nic: So you're a carny at heart? Devon: I am. Nic: That's so cool. Obviously the main topic of conversation today is web accessibility. Everybody I speak to seems to define it slightly differently. So what's your take on what web accessibility is? Devon: The version I usually teach and, kind of the elevator pitch version, it really depends on who I'm talking to. But in general, I think it's about making digital spaces inclusive to everyone. And it's been interesting reading material about inclusive versus universal design or design thinking because they're kind of the same, but most of the material I've read has universal design being kind of like a giant bucket or a giant or a mountain or something very large. Versus inclusive thinking tends to start with the people doing the activities. So I've been leaning more towards that framework and being inclusive and kind of centering people in that discussion, which is also a little weird because I come from an information school background. When HCI was still, what we would call UX now I guess human computer interaction. It was very much about teaching humans how to interact with computers versus trying to create digital spaces that are good for people. So I think things have shifted in that direction. So I usually talk about it as being inclusive, creating digital inclusive experiences because I also includes other things like cultural background and other things that impact how people use technology. Nic: What would you say to people who believe quite strongly that when we're talking about accessibility, we need to really center people with disabilities and it's so, talking about accessibility is good for everyone is actually erasing the presence of people with disabilities? Because that might be something that might be concerning of people when we're starting to look about inclusive design in term relations to accessibility and looking at all the other factors of inclusion when we're thinking about accessibility. Devon: Yeah. And that's something I definitely go back and forth about. And I think it depends on who I'm talking to. Again, like who am I trying to convince? I really prefer the model of thinking of talking about like this is a deal breaker for people with disabilities. And it also as a side effect is typically good for everyone else. And like I said, I think it depends on the audience. I think I also have been steering more especially talking to people doing digital work. So designers, devs, versus people in management. Talking about that deal breakerness and showing examples of that and demonstrating that and through usability studies or through other ways of collaboration with people with disabilities demonstrating, yeah, you might think that that color is a little weird or this is a pain to fix, but a person literally cannot complete a task, for example. Nic: Yeah. Devon: And that means that they can't use it. And that's the thing that needs to be addressed. I think it's also been helpful in that discussion to help people expand their idea of what disability is. And so that's something I always include when I'm teaching, is just talking about what disability can entail and how varied it is and how it's different for everyone and how things that people don't necessarily think of as disabilities are and that they affect how people can interact with the world around them. So I think that, part of it is sort of like centering people with disabilities, but also trying to expand the concept of what disability can actually be. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Give me, for instance of a disability that people don't necessarily think of as a disability immediately, but that is a good illustration of it. Devon: I have depression and anxiety and I have days when I have serious brain fog and I've found the last few years I have to be really careful about how I manage my energy for work. If I have a really intensive day and then have to like have a chiller day just because I can't sort of keep up. So there's some days when I just am not functioning super well and I have to kind of like take care of myself. And those are days when I'm doing things like paying bills online or other types of activities that require certain types of attention can be really, really difficult. And I think that's a case where I definitely, depending on my energy level or the things are going on, how noisy and environment is sometimes. I'll have issues with arbitrary processing or other things that make it difficult to receive information. Devon: And it's been interesting that doing disability research and working accessibility, I've been able to learn more about cognitive disabilities in particular and identifying more things. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's a good idea. I started wearing earplugs when I'm in loud spaces and that's a lifesaver. It just never occurred to me. I have to give a shout out to Shelle Little for that because she really turned me on to earplugs, and I'm like, yes, earplugs all the time. So, yeah, things like that, that I think people don't think of as that might be situational or periodic that they don't necessarily think of as has having a big impact on how people can use technology or just interact with the world around them. And I think going back and forth about being open about that and talking about it. But I've gotten really good feedback from people when I mention it, like when I give talks and that sort of thing. So it's something I'm trying to talk about more. Nic: Disclosure, especially around depression and general mental illness is such a tricky topic because it's better received, but I think perhaps people out there don't really get it unless they've experienced it themselves because you can't touch it. You can't see it. It's not like, this guy's in a wheelchair, yes, so he's got a problem walking or, oh yeah, this person doesn't have any arms so probably a keyboard is not going to be really useful for them. Depression, I think is another beast. So thank you for coming out and sharing that and helping people understand a little bit better. Devon: Yeah. Yeah. I like what you said about "invisible disability", which even definitely extends to people with physical disabilities as well because people get judged for using all sorts of devices. The, you're not actually disabled, you don't need that type of view, I guess. So and also I tried to be careful about disclosure in general and it's one of those things that doesn't work for everyone and there's no reason why people should feel like they have to disclose a disability to get the things they need. And so it's something where like I feel privileged and that I feel comfortable doing that and I feel like I'm in a situation in my life where I can do that. But also, it shouldn't be that way. We shouldn't have to tell strangers or friends on the internet what our deal is. It shouldn't matter. Nic: Yeah. How did you become aware of Web Accessibility and its importance? Was it related to having depression and dealing with that or was it something completely unrelated? Devon: I don't think I started putting that together until embarrassingly recently, but I do think a lot of it came out of my former life as a librarian. So before I got into web work in general, I went to an information science school and I thought I was going to be a librarian. I worked in libraries for a few years. I ended up kind of transitioning into a role where I was doing front end dev and UX and IAA work for projects in libraries. So I worked in my local public library growing up. I worked in my college library. I've worked in public libraries and research libraries and academic libraries. And I think centered in that work is getting people access to the information they need. So I think that was kind of the seed. There was never a moment where I was like, ah, I'm going to be a web accessibility specialist. Devon: It just kind of happened gradually and I think because I worked in a place and was doing web work and environment that was specifically geared toward making sure people could access stuff. That just kind of came naturally when I transitioned into doing web work full time. After I left libraries I moved to Seattle and worked at a startup for a little while. Was kind of surprised at how, like we were talking about, when CAG existed, we were talking about web accessibility in work at the library. And I get sort of fog that was normal. It was just part of making teachable resources. So then moving out into these sort of more mainstream tech space and it not being really a discussion, I was a little surprised. And then I ended up leaving that job and going to work for an agency, a general tech agency and expressed interest in accessibility as sort of part of my interview process. Devon: And basically was given the opportunity to specialize in that and can focus on that and be kind of the accessibility person at that agency. So it happened very gradually and I was very lucky I had some great mentors along the way to help me through that process. It's really only been the last, I don't know, eight or so years and I'm like, oh yeah, this is my job. I'm an accessibility specialist. I don't like to say expert because I think that's a very loaded word. Nic: Yeah. Devon: But yeah, I've been doing this work, I would say definitely via libraries and via information services. And yeah, it's really only been the last few years, like you said, that I've kind of put together, maybe one reason I've also been interested in it is because of my own issues with using technology. And again, I think I've become more conscientious of that as I've gotten older and I've had to be more thoughtful and be more planful about how I just do stuff in general. I guess don't have as much energy to burn on things that aren't working very well for me. So I think the last few years it's definitely impacted my work more. But for a long time I think it was just like this is what information scientists do, so that's what I will do. Nic: Has your view of accessibility change in the last eight years that you've realized, hey this is my job? Devon: I think so. I think my introduction to it, like a lot of people's, was from the kind of compliance model. We had a client who for legal reasons needed to have an accessible product. It was an organization that had previously been sued. And so I came to formally serve, do accessibly work via, ah yes the WCAG success criteria and doing testing and reporting issues. And I think I was still looking at it from a kind of usability perspective because that was also my educational background. But I think it was later when I started doing teaching and training that I started to think more about how the compliance model doesn't, definitely does not capture the whole picture. Devon: And I think ultimately is not actually that great of a teaching tool because it's not interesting for practitioners. It feels like a separate thing than designer dev work. And so I think approaching it from the perspective of you're already doing design work or you're already building websites, so these are things to do while you're doing that, versus here's how I can do accessibility as a separate thing and here's absolutely no information or context about how to actually integrate it into your work. The checklist model is great to get started, but I think unless a team or organization can move beyond that, it still feels like a checklist that happens at the end of a workflow versus being something that just needs to be considered throughout. Devon: So I've even backed off from the workshop I teach at SVC. I talk about WCAG a bit, but it's definitely not the center of the workshop. It's more about best practices and showing how those fit into WCAG. But I show the web WCAG site for like, we maybe talk about it for like 10 minutes because I usually am teaching designers and it's also just extremely dense documentation that is not interesting or fun or enjoyable to look at, really. Nic: Yeah. Devon: No offense to the people that run it because it's extremely important and someone has to write that documentation. Again, documentation. But it's not great as a teaching tool and it's not great as a day-to-day work tool, I don't think. But it's very important that we have it because we need those guard rails, especially when people are first getting started and they don't have that context and they don't have maybe access to usability information or other ways of seeing how people experience things. So I think that's been my biggest change is kind of going from compliance a checklist to just integration into how people do work. Nic: I love what you say that the compliance model doesn't capture the whole picture and that using that model it makes it difficult to integrate and to integrate accessibility into every stage of the process. I had not verbalized it to myself quite that way and I think that's a very powerful statement. So thank you for that. Devon: Sure. I'm glad. I've had enough coffee so you hit me at a good time. My brain is working. It's great. Nic: Right. Yeah, that's right. You're in Seattle. So coffee is a big part of the culture there. Devon: It's also morning still. Yes I do. I've always been a coffee drinker but yes, coffee, we do like our coffee here. Nic: What barriers did you or are you now facing in terms of implementing accessibility? Devon: I think a lot of it is just scale. In my day-to-day work, Shopify is a very large organization. Has many moving parts, many products. And I think that's probably something similar that folks that work in other product companies face especially really large product companies, is scaling. We rely heavily on folks that are kind of ambassadors for accessibility as a concept and I've been starting to call them kind of our local experts who are scattered around different product teams. Devon: But that's also something I see in the events we organized for the meetup and also the class I teach, is that a lot of folks are bought in, a lot of folks that do digital work. Again, designers, developers, content strategists. The folks that do the work are bought in. And now they're struggling to figure out, again, like how to actually do that work and sometimes how to convince their managers or their leads that it's important. So that's, the workshop I teach has definitely shifted away from, we definitely talk about best practices and doing work, but we also talk about how to talk to other people about it. And then also I think the thing that I struggle with too is, now that you've convinced people, what do you actually do? How do you actually build out, how do you actually like build out a sustainable program and what are all the moving parts of that, like testing education workflows, tools. Like figuring out all those pieces, again in like a scalable way. Devon: So that's a lot of the stuff that I'm thinking about right now and figuring out kind of, it's interesting because it's kind of moved past the specifics of how to do accessibility work and more into how to make it part of those processes and workflows. So it feels a little bit more like project management work or program management work I guess, which is interesting. It's not something I ever really envisioned doing but I think that a lot of organizations are at that point now where they're trying to figure out how do we actually make this work now that we know it's important and people are on board. There's always going to be people that still require, hand holding and still require convincing. But I think a lot of people who actually do day-to-day work, even if they don't know a lot, they've heard about accessible at this point. There's so much information available online about it. They know they're supposed to do it, but they're not exactly sure how. Nic: I do think being to scale sustainability is going to be one of our biggest challenges in coming few years, I think. Let me ask you one last question for this week, finish on a bit of a high. What would you think your greatest achievement is in terms of web accessibility? Devon: Greatest achievement? That's a great question. I think personally, I'm kind of an introvert and so getting more involved in the community I think has been really great. I'm not quite sure if this is where you're going with that, but I think for me from like a professional standpoint and from the community standpoint, it's been really good to be involved. It's also been very interesting. It's been really cool watching folks from my, I guess sort of cohort in the accessibility world, like publishing blog posts and doing talks. And I think just seeing the way that the community is changing and the way it's getting broader and again, more inclusive, I think has been really cool. It's also been cool watching folks, there being more overlap between different fields like gaming and other areas that where accessibility is kind of a newer thing. It's been really interesting watching all of those things kind of come together, that people getting that this is something that affects so many facets of people's lives. Devon: I think also just that we're at that point now where people are talking about how to do it, versus not. So I guess for me getting folks to that point in organizations that I'm in and in groups I'm in, I guess that's something I feel very proud about that folks are now at the point where they're like, okay, you convinced us. Stop talking about it. Nic: Yeah. Devon: What do we do next? Nic: Yeah. Devon: Which is challenges challenging and scary, but I think that's probably, that's something I feel very good about right now. Nic: I think it's something to be feeling good about, when you've managed to get that little spark of light of understanding in somebody's eyes and you know you finally got over the biggest hump because convincing them or making them realize the importance is the biggest battle. The rest is just technical building understanding of skills and it's just like understanding implementation of accessibility. It's just like understanding how you write HTML and CSS and JavaScript. And it's just, yeah. Devon Persing, thank you for being a guest this week and talking candidly about all these things and we'll talk more next week. Devon: Thank you. Looking forward to it. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening. And a quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/Steenhout if you want to support the Accessibility Rules podcast.

E093 – Interview with Tony Coelho – Part 2 Mar 05, 2020

Congressman Tony Coelho tells us that people with disabilities must have the right to fail. Without failure you can't learn from the mistake. Without failure there's no growth. Without a right to fail, your growth is stunted. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 93. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies, create blazing fast compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: In this episode, I'm continuing my conversation with Tony Coelho. Last show was really awesome, fantastic conversation with Tony who tells us how he got to author the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. And spoke about all kinds of stuff from trips to the Vatican to getting stuff done for the rights of people with disabilities. We finished last week on the note that while we have rights, we also have responsibilities and I could not agree more. Anyway Tony, welcome back and thanks to you for being a guest on the show. Tony: Thank you, Nic. Enjoy it. Nic: Let me ask you this. What kind of barriers are you facing in terms of disability and accessibility, if any, at this point? Are you still struggling once in a while or are things all good and peachy? Tony Well, I still have seizures. I've had seizures for 60 years. I have medication that helps me control them, the severity of them, the amount of them. But I still have seizures. I'm very open about it, as you can tell. And I think it gives me an opportunity to educate people as to not only epilepsy but what you can do and attitude in regards to your disability. I think all of us with a disability have ability and the issue is for we ourselves to stress our ability and convince others of our ability. And so, as I go out to businesses and trying to get them to hire people with disabilities, I'm always addressing the fact that each and every one of us have abilities, no matter if we have a disability or not. And so it's important for people to look for our ability and give us an opportunity to fail. And I say that very directly. If I don't have the right to fail than I can never succeed. So I want a right to fail and if I get that right, I'll take advantage of it and I will succeed. Nic: That is actually, yeah, that's wonderful. I never really had heard that phrase that way, but I think it's super important here. If you're not going to fail, you can't learn from your mistake. You can't grow. And if you don't have the right to fail, then you're being stunted in your growth. That's really great. Tony Well, what goes on Nic, as you know, is that our loved ones have a tendency to protect us out of love, but protect us. You can't do that. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. And I tell parents all the time, give your child an opportunity to fail. You can't protect them. You've got to let them try to do what they want to do. And if they can't do it, that's fine. Kids without disabilities can't do everything, either. And also it's the same thing for you as a person with a disability. Tony Try to do something, find out what it is that you like that you can do. For example, with my epilepsy, I can't drive a fire engine. I can't drive a police car. I can't carry a gun. So all those things, I know I can't do it. But boy, I can do some things better than a lot of other people. And that's what it's all about is finding out what you can do. And that's true with everybody. It's not just those of us with disabilities. And so it's no different. And that's the thing I keep trying to impress. For those of us with disabilities, a lot of people without disabilities struggle as to what they can do or what they want to do and so forth. So it's the same struggle, but we can't let the disability hamper us. Nic: Yeah. Are there any problems you encounter using the web that is directly related to your epilepsy? Tony Well the first problem is at 77, I'm not acclimated to the web like somebody who's younger like you or others. You're not afraid to make a mistake. And I always worry that I'm going to make a mistake and screw everything up. And so that's the problem with those of us a little older. But I love the Internet and I use it a lot because it provides me opportunities that I've never had before. And the same thing is true as a result of Audioeye and other companies. But Audioeye, that I'm on the board of, it provides access to the Internet for any disability and there's all kinds of options and so forth. They have a marketplace at different costs and so forth. But for me, the Internet gives me an opportunity to participate just like anybody else. And I carry on my businesses and so forth through the Internet just like anybody else. And I don't have difficulty. Tony I know that some of my guests, people who are blind or people that can't use a mouse or people who are colorblind, even though we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, we have Section 508 we have the web content accessibility guidelines, we have all that there. They're still experiencing barriers on the web. So that's where my curiosity came from is if you had a direct barrier that was related to having epilepsy for you, is good to hear that you're able to function and actually benefit from this communication highway as you raised it earlier. Tony Yeah, yeah. Communication highway is very important for us to think of it that way. And that's the reason that I say with the Supreme Court Decision, it basically said the whole communication network is like a highway. It's a highway for information, highway for commerce. It's everything about us today. A highway for news, it's a highway for, no matter what it is. And so it's important for us to be able to connect and that's why it is important for technology to come into place to provide an opportunity for each of us that are different in some way, so that we can connect. Tony And so that's why I got on the board of AudioEye because I felt that this was really an important vehicle to make the Internet accessible to all of us and that's the key. And then now what we have to do is, we have to convince businesses of that if they want to participate in the Internet highway, they have to make it accessible to everybody. And that's I think what is now taking place and some lawsuits are being filed against people who don't. And they should and so compliance becomes necessary. Nic: I would assume your greatest achievement in terms of accessibility and disability discrimination is getting the ADA passed and having that amendment who you suggest those, as well. The flip side to that is, what would be your greatest frustration related to accessibility to disability, to discrimination? Tony Yeah. My biggest concern is what I call stigma. There is a stigma that attaches those of us with disabilities. And that is that people, businesses, think that we can't do something. They look at those of us with a disability, if they can see it. My disability, they can't unless I have a seizure and then they can. But if they see our disability, they immediately discriminate. Or there's a stigma. They have a certain impression is that you can't do something, you can't do this, you can't do that. And also there's a paternalistic feeling if they see a person with a disability, Oh I'm sorry or I feel sorry. I'm not sorry that I have epilepsy. As a matter of fact, I thank God for my disability because it's made me a stronger, better person. It may force me to know myself and I think that's really important. Tony So those of us with disabilities, we have to play harder than others. We have to struggle harder harder than others to get done what we want to get done. And I think that makes us stronger people. And so, I thank God for my disability. And so the stigma that is attached to us is something that really bugs me. And how do we get rid of it? And I think the way to get rid of it is by movies and by TV and by ads and newspapers and so forth. Showing those of us with different disabilities doing what everybody else does. It's what's happened in regards to women who were discriminated against just because they were women. People of color are discriminated against because they're a person of color. Tony And the stigma that was attached to both of those and the gay community because they're gay and so forth. So we're facing the same thing these other communities have faced. And the most important thing about it is for us to address it, to speak up. Now don't be afraid of your disability, be proud of it. You know, I am. And if we show positiveness about our disabilities that will connect with other people and eventually we can get rid of the stigma. And the stigma is a thing that, as you can tell, really bugs me. But it is something that people immediately have an impression about our disability. Nic: I'm sharing your opinion that we need the exposure out there and probably one of the best way to get the positive exposure is through the media, whether it's movies or the papers, literature, whichever. But it seems that when we're looking at how people with disabilities are portrayed, especially in the movies and on TV, we tend to have one of two mischaracterization. One is either people with disabilities are superheroes. If someone is blind, they have super accurate hearing. And then the flip side to that is we have villains. You look at all those old movies and the villain was always either deformed or using a wheelchair and that kind of stuff. How can we get past that? How can we get the people that are producing these shows to actually portray disability accurately? Tony I think the issue on that Nic, is that I started the Coelho Disability Center out in Los Angeles at my Alma Mater, Loyola Marymount University. And one of the things that we're working on is the movie industry and so forth. And there's one of the concerns we have is that a lot of these disabled characters are not really disabled people. They are people who pretend to be disabled. And one of the things we're working on is to get disabled actors, and there are disabled actors, into these roles and to be projected in a positive way. And we've made some progress, but you've got to get to the writers of the scripts so that they then put somebody in a position that can project a positive, in regards to a disability. So that you're playing a role and you just happen to be disabled as opposed to a disabled character people feel sorry for. Tony And so I think what it does is, it takes an effort to go after that industry, TV and the movie industry. But it's the writers and producers and the directors that are important to engage. And I'm involved in that with the Center and also involved in that with some other, like the Ruderman Family Foundation in New York, they are very involved in this, as well, and I'm on their board. So it's a question of going at it, not accepting it. Going at it, trying to make some changes and adjustments and we're making some progress. You now see on TV, people with disabilities in minor roles and also in TV ads now and so forth. So it's starting to happen. But I go back Nic, that we're no different as a community than what women, people of color, gays and others have gone through over the decades. And it's our turn at the bat to try to make a change. But you've got to fight for it, you can't just accept it. You got to fight for it in order to get it. And that's what we're doing. Nic: Wonderful. What do you think? What would be the main reason why companies fail to get this thing about, you can't discriminate against people with disabilities? Why don't they get it? Tony I think it goes back history wise and that a lot of religions felt sorry for people with disabilities. And it was sort of a pity thing and a lot of religions, as I pointed out with the Catholic Church. But a lot of religions have this paternalistic attitude towards those of us with disabilities. It's a pity, it [inaudible 00:16:35] misdirected and it's a question of trying to get that change, but that takes time, too. But that change, again, I go back to others, you know, women, people of color, gay, so forth. That's all the same problem there, too. And that's changed dramatically with the women now are involved in everything, right? Which is great. Tony And now trying to get women elected President or Vice President, but they're in the Senate, they're in the House of Representatives. And people of color now are in lots of different places doing things and a lot of TV and movies are based with women stars and people of color and stars and so forth. And the gay community has now gotten marriage among gays approved in most states and so forth. So progress in all those, some progress on ours, but we got to fight for it. All these different groups fought for it. We have to fight for it, too. It's not going to be handed to us. We've got to change that perception of love misdirected. That it's nice to feel sorry us, but what you got to do is, you got to give us an opportunity to fail, not feel sorry for us. Nic: Thank you for that. What would you say the greatest challenges for people with disabilities are? We have to fight for it, but apart from having to standing up for ourselves, what are our challenges moving forward? Tony Well, I think the one big challenge is for us to believe in ourselves. Not only to fight for it, but to believe for ourselves as a person to believe that we can do things. To not let people convince us otherwise. And for us, I'm a realist as I pointed out to you earlier, I realized I can't be a cop. I can't be a fireman. To realize there are things you can't do, period. And then to realize, now there are things I can do and that's true with everybody. But those of us with disabilities, because of our disability, there are things that we can't do. And so there's a lot of things also that people say that we can't do, that if they gave us a chance, we could do. So it's whether or not you believe you can do it or not. Tony If you believe you can do something, regardless of what people think, if you believe you can do it, you ought to strive and do it. But don't become negative just because of the attitude of people and so forth. A lot of people who end up with a prosthesis, a limb missing and so forth. They do amazing things today with a prosthesis. And so it's us making sure that we know what we can do, what we can try to get done and what we want to get done. It all comes back to us. And as opposed to letting other people dictate what we can and should do. Nic: That's very much the, nothing about us without us, motto, isn't it? Tony That's exactly right, that's exactly right. It's believing, it's believing. That's one of my favorite words, is belief. Believing. You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to believe that it's us, you've got to believe that things will change. You can't sit back and be negative and say, it'll never happen. We'll it'll never happen if we don't push. It'll never happen if we don't believe that we can change. Nic: Thank you. Tony, one last question before we wrap it up. What's the one thing people should know about accessibility? Tony Well, the one thing about accessibility is that you want to permit everybody to have access to the Internet, but access to anything and everything that anybody else has. Because what that means is that you're not wasting a human life. And that if you give me access to the Internet, if you give me access to a job, I can work and I can eventually get a home or rent or have a car or whatever, or use Uber or whatever, to get to a job and do things like everybody else. Tony I think it's so important with Uber and Lyft now is that, I don't have to drive anymore. You can use public transit or you can get a car that'll take you to church or take you to a shopping center and take you back home or take you to a doctor's and so forth. So accessibility in all different ways is critical. Accessibility to the Internet is important because that's how we get an Uber. That's how we can buy things on the Internet. So those of us with disabilities have the same right to be able to do that as anybody else. So accessibility gives us the opportunity to be just like everybody else and that's what I want and believe in so strongly. Nic: Tony Coelho, thank you so much for sharing this time and your wisdom with us. I thank you on behalf of everyone who's listened to this episode for all your hard work to make society a little bit more friendly for people with disabilities. It's an honor, pleasure and a privilege to have spoken with you. Thank you. Tony Thank you, Nic. I enjoyed it very much. Appreciate it. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening. And a quick reminder the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com4/Steenhout. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com4/S-T-E-E-N-H-O-U-T. If you want to support the Accessibility Rules Podcast.

E092 – Interview with Tony Coelho – Part 1 Feb 27, 2020

Congressman Tony Coelho talks about his life with a disability, his journey of working for the People, and how he introduced the ADA. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 92. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. This week I'm speaking to Tony Coelho. Hey Tony, thanks for joining me for this conversation around accessibility. How are you? Tony: No problem. Look forward to talking. Nic: So I like to let guests introduce themselves. Brief intro, who would you say is Tony Coelho? Tony: Well, I'm a former member of Congress and for this podcast I was the author of the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, when I was in the Congress. Disability is my ministry and my passion. Nic: That's wonderful. So, that's big actually, the ADA. I'm Canadian, but I moved to the US in the mid nineties and I started working in Disability Rights at the time and everybody was really excited about all the changes. Obviously, I'd like to ask you how did that happen? How did you come to author and sponsor the ADA? Tony: I'll have to give you a little bit of my background in order to do it. But when I was 16, I was on Canal Bank in Central California. My parents' dairy farm, and the pick up tipped over into the canal, hit my head, came out of it, had a headache, but was safe and went back to milking cows and doing what you do. And a year later, I was in the barn milking, and next thing I knew I was in bed and I had just gone through a major passing out spell as I called it. And the doctor was called in and called my parents and I think what it was that but my parents didn't tell me, and I didn't know what the doctor had said. Tony: So, I then went to other doctors and basically again, in those days, I'm 77 so, in those days doctors didn't talk to the patient, they talked to whoever else was in the room, I guess. But they didn't know what it was. My parents told me that it was a lack of calcium. It was this, it was that, and so forth. So then, after that I then went to witch doctors, and the reason is, is that the doctors were telling my parents that I had epilepsy and in their culture, Portuguese culture, if you have epilepsy, it means that you're possessed by the devil. And something that was preached by the Catholic church. Tony: So, I then started going to witch doctors and after the third one I decided that I wasn't going there anymore. I told my parents I would not go there anymore. So, I continued having these passing out spells, not knowing that it was epilepsy. And then, when I graduated from high school, I went to college in Los Angeles, Loyola University, now Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. And I continued having my passing out spells and I was active in student government and so forth, and got good grades. Tony: And when I decided to ... what I was studying for, was to become a lawyer. And I decided in my senior year that I didn't want to because John Kennedy had just been assassinated and I decided, I was very impressed with him and followed him. And so when that happened, I decided I wanted to do something more public service. And so, I thought about it a lot, decided to become a Catholic priest. And as I always say to the shock of my girlfriend of several years and my fraternity brothers, and so forth, I decided to become a priest. It was announced and so forth. Tony: And after I graduated, I went to take my physical, the doctor said, "I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that your 4-F, and that the term in regards to qualifications to serve in the military, and 4-F meant you are not qualified. And the reason is, is because you have epilepsy. And he asked me if I knew what that was and I didn't, and he told me about it. He said, "The bad news is, that you cannot become a Catholic priest because Canon Law in 400 AD, said that if you have epilepsy, you're possessed by the devil, you can't be a priest. Tony: So, I was denied entry into the seminary. I didn't worry about it at that particular time. I was excited that I knew what my problem was. He prescribed a prescription for me to reduce the severity of the seizures and not to cure, obviously, but to reduce the severity of a man and the amount to them. And that made me happy. And when I left, I called my parents to say that I had some good news and I said, doctor determined that I have epilepsy. Tony: And my mother said, "No son of ours has epilepsy." And that sort of ended our relationship there. And I just took it well that's the way it is. And then, because I was student by president, outstanding senior and so forth, I'd gotten a lot of job offers. And so, I started applying them, going after these offers and I would fill out the application and I never got a call. And I realized that on every job application was the word epilepsy. And I checked the box, I wasn't going to lie, and I never got an interview. Tony: So, I realized then that that was the problem. So I started drinking, I was a drunk by two o'clock in the afternoon most days, and then I became suicidal. And because I thought that everything I'd ever loved in my life turned against me, my parents, my church, God, so forth. And so, I was basically given up. And so, on the day that I used to go out and drink on a mountain in Griffith park, there are no mountains, but if you're drunk, there are a lot of mountains. Tony: And so, I would drink on top of this hill and I decided to do the dirty deed that day. And as I was about to, I had heard a voice and instead, you're going to be just like those little kids, in the bottom of the hill, there was a merry-go-around. And you're going to be just like those little kids, and you're not going to let anybody or anything stop you from doing what you want to do. And that jolted me and I have never gotten depressed again. Tony: I drink, but I didn't get drunk. I believe that there was something there. A week later, I had an opportunity to live with Bob Hope and his family for a year and I did so. And he basically talked to me about my future and so forth. And one day he said, "Look kid, you think that a ministry is only practiced in a church. A true ministry is practiced in sports, in entertainment, in business, in government. Where you want, is in politics and that's what you ought to pursue. Tony: So I thought about that and decided that was an interesting concept. And I wrote a letter to a Congressman who I didn't know and he happened to be looking for somebody young that had an agricultural background, and that was not a strong left or strong right politically, and I interviewed, got the job, moved back to Washington and worked for my Congressman for 13 years, became his chief of staff. And when he decided to retire, he asked me to take his place and I ran and won. Nic: Wonderful. Tony: And during the campaign when I ran, one of my opponent towards the end of the campaign said to a group at dinner that, "I don't know if you know it or not, but Tony's a very sick man. He has epilepsy. What would you think if he went to The White House and had a seizure?" Some reporters heard about that. Several people at the dinner called me, Porter called and said, "I understand your opponent said X last night. What's your reaction?" My first reaction was, "Well, in the 13 years that I was in Washington, I knew a lot of people who went to the White House and had fits." At least, I'd have an excuse and that ended it. Tony: Nobody's ever took my epilepsy against me again. I wrote a letter, got the job, I then got elected to Congress. And when I got elected, I decided that I wanted to be involved in disability issues. And so I had my boss, he had helped me connect with a lot of different people. And so, when I started offering these amendments, I realized that it didn't do me any good to offer them, because we didn't have our basic civil rights, that if you were sight-impaired and you went to a restaurant and asked someone to tell you what was on the menu, they could kick you out because you were nuisance. Tony: If you went to a movie theater, wanted to go to a movie theater, they could kick you out if you were in a chair because you were a fire hazard. If you went to get a job, the employer could ask you if you had a disability and say to you, "Because of your disability, you're not qualified." So, all those things were going on. And I realized that our basic civil rights is what I needed to be pursuing. So that's why I had worked on, and developed a bill. Tony: Now, grassroots community in the United States had been working on legislation and President Reagan, his administration, had a group that they were working on a legislation. And so, I put in legislation and it was interesting when I put it in, I sent a dear colleague letter to all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, and told them I was putting in this bill and why, and asked for people to co-sponsor it. And people would come up to me, they were Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, men, women. Tony: They would say, "I don't like the way my brother, my sister, my aunt, my uncle, my father, my wife, whatever, is being treated because of their disability, and I want to be on your bill. And I got a lot of people on my bill because of that. And then we moved forward from there. But that's the reason I got engaged. And so, I sort of believe that, that was one of my destinies to be able to get elected- Nic: That's a wonderful story Tony. Thank you for sharing that. Obviously, my podcast is generally more focused on web accessibility, but I think I'll put for the purpose of this discussion, I want to expand it a little bit more to accessibility in general because it's such an important topic and obviously it's where you got started. Now, everybody I speak to has a different definition of accessibility. How would you define what accessibility is? Tony: Well, we've adopted a definition in the United States, and that's something where it's something that impairs your ability to function. And so it can be mental, it can be physical, it can be whatever. And the language in the legislation that was adopted, when it got signed into law, Supreme Court after some challenges to it looked at the ADA, and said that they felt it was only meant for people with physical disabilities. Tony: And so they kicked out the rest of us, and I helped write it. And so, I felt that they were telling me I didn't know what I was doing, because I excluded people with epilepsy and other disabilities. And so, what we did then is that we put in a bill, I was out of Congress, but I got a bill introduced to dealing with the other disabilities and it's called the ADA Amendments Act. Tony: And so, that was introduced. And so, it was basically to reverse the Supreme Court decision. And so, we got it introduced, passed it very quickly and by big support in both the house and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and we got it through. And now, the ADA has amended, covers all disabilities. Nic: One of the things that has been making a lot of noise in the last year or so is all these lawsuits against websites that are not accessible. And you probably have heard of the Domino case that went to the Supreme court recently. And it seems like all these businesses are saying, well we don't have to be delivering accessible website because the ADA does not specifically mention the web. So, of course you know when you folks wrote that the internet was really not something that was really a thing yet, but now it's everywhere. As the author of the ADA had the situation been different had the internet been around? Would you have included that in the text of the ADA? Tony: Of course. But we also felt and the Supreme court basically agreed that the intent of the legislation was to include all accessibility so that you know, I take the view that the internet is the major highway for communications. Right? And so that if you develop a new highway or a new system, that would be covered because the ADA originally said access period. And so the lower courts ruled in favor of the ADA and the Supreme court did not accept Domino's requests for them to review it. Tony: So, basically the Supreme court is supporting my view that the ADA did cover the internet. And so that's where we are now. And so the compliance then is that everybody with a website needs to make sure that it's accessible, if they are dealing with the general public. If they're dealing privately, they don't have to of course. But if they deal with commerce in any way, it has to be accessible. Nic: I think that, that was great that the Supreme court came and said, "Hey, no it does apply and go back to be real and work on accessibility." Tony: Nic, in fairness, I'm sure that somebody else will come up and try to say something different, and they'll go through the court system end up in Supreme court. But I hope that basically as a result of this decision it will discourage people to do so. And the lower courts will refer to this Supreme court decision and reject the application, I think. Nic: That's my hope as well because it's ... as both an accessibility consultant and a person with disability myself, I'm tired of having to do that fight. And you know, hearing you talk about all the discrimination you faced in employment and everywhere else, it just gets tiring. So hopefully this decision will have a really positive impact, at least in the next few years. Tony: Yeah, and I think, Nick, the issue is that those of us, you and I, and others in the disability community, all we want is the same thing that everybody else has. We don't want anything more. We don't want anything less. We want to be able to access the internet just like anybody else. And the great thing is that ... like, I'm on the board of AudioEye that provides access for any disability in any language and so forth. Tony: And that's what it's all about. It's that these businesses have no excuse not to provide accessibility because of folks like AudioEye that provide that ability to connect. And so, there's no excuse anymore. And so from our point of view in the disability community is that we feel very strongly that businesses need to use AudioEye to provide access for those of us in our community. Nic: Yeah. So Tony, you've been obviously working in accessibility and fighting discrimination for a number of years. Has your view of what is accessible and what isn't accessible changed over the last, say 10, 15, 20 years? Tony: Well, I think it's an evolution. I think it keeps changing. Every year it gets better and better. And that's true Nic, with most laws, is that it takes enforcement and with the ADA itself, it took time for enforcement to go in place and like you said originally that people have filed suits in regards to accessibility to an office place and so forth. And so those suits have been filed. They've been ... most of them kicked out. They're trying to get legislation to amend the ADA. That has failed and I expect that as the author of the ADA, it's not something that people are going to accept totally. Tony: But eventually it's getting there. More and more people are accepting. If you go to curb cuts, you can go to all kinds of different things where you see that not only those of us with disabilities but the individuals without disabilities are using the accommodations that are provided for us. Curb cuts, volume controls, go on and on. And so the [inaudible 00:20:54] of it is, it's going more and more. Tony: I just want to say one thing real quickly and that is that in case people wonder about it, I am a devout Catholic and when I was whipping the United States Congress, I got to take a trip to the Vatican and with a delegation and met with the Pope and my comments were pre-approved by the state department, done by the Vatican. Tony: But when I got up to speak to the Pope, I gave my very boring speech and then at the end of it I said, your holiness, I cannot live with myself if I didn't say something personal. When I was a young man, I decided to become a Catholic priest and I was denied entry because I have epilepsy. Canon law in 400 AD said that if you have epilepsy, you're possessed by the devil. You can't be a priest. I think that's very un-Christian of our church. And I wish you'd look into it. Tony: And you know his minions around the room are going to dah, dah, dah. My delegation was looking at me as if I was crazy, but I did it because I felt strongly about it. And when we got through, he held my wife's hand going to the door and turned around blessed her and turned to me did not bless me. So as a Catholic you think you're going straight to hell. He doesn't bless you. Tony: But he then, and he said to me, "Young man, I heard your comments," and walked away. So I didn't know what that meant. And so two years later, Canon law was changed to permit people with epilepsy to become priests. Nic: Wow. Tony: Now I'll quickly say, I don't know if it was my comments that did it. I don't know what did it because nobody ever told me. But I know I did it. I've evidence that I did it at the delegation that was there that heard me. Plus I have pictures of it. But anyway, it was changed so I think, I believe strongly that those of us with disabilities when we have the podium and opportunity to speak up and speak out, that we need to in order to address things that are wrong. Nic: Yes, I think that's absolutely spot on. We have rights but we also have responsibilities and we can't just sit passively and wait for things to fall into our lap. Tony, I think that's a wonderful spot to top our conversation for this week. Thank you so much for being a guest, and I look forward to a chat with you some more next week. Tony: Thank you Nic. I appreciate. Nic: That's it. Thanks for listening and a quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my patrons and my sponsors. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot C-O-M/S-T-E-E-N-H-O-U-T, if you want to support the Accessibility Rules podcast.

E090 – Interview with Emily Lewis – Part 1 Sep 07, 2019

Emily states: "Hardest part of the job is coming up with solutions. It's one thing to identify what's wrong, it's entirely another thing to give clients an alternative solution that's accessible to start with but also reasonable for them to implement." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 90. It’s going to be a bit different because it’s been so hot where I’ve been that I could not go without turning off the air, ac unit, which means I could not actually record without making airplane noises in the back so I’ve invited Christopher Schmitt, a colleague of mine and previous guest of the show to be the guest host. So, I’ll leave that to them in a moment. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. I also want to thank Gatsby, a new sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast and compelling websites without needing to become a performance expert. Christopher: Hello, everyone. My name is Christopher Schmitt. I am not Nic but I do welcome you to the Accessibility Rules podcast. Nic can’t make it to the podcast this week, he is out traveling where it’s so hot he can’t actually have great audio. It’s my understanding. So he asked me to guest host today. So, I’m really honored to do that. And, with us, today as a guest is Emily Lewis. Hello, Emily. Emily: Hi, Christopher. Christopher: Hey, great. You are also where it’s really hot. Emily: It is. I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think we’re going to hit 100 F today. Christopher: Oh, well, nice. Emily: But, I have air conditioning so… Christopher: Yeah, we have air … we have silent running air conditioning, which is… which I am grateful every day as I am living in Austin, Texas now, so… yeah. We are actually celebrating the 28th day of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Emily: Ah, good times. Climate change. Christopher: Yeah, definitely. I think we have a parade a few months ago out here. But, yeah. Let’s just get started with you so… Welcome to the podcast, Emily. To get started just tell me one thing most people don’t know about you. Emily: I don’t know. I’m a pretty transparent person and I’ve been fairly public within the web community in the past 10 years or so, so I guess if they don’t know it about me I don’t want them to. So… Christopher: That’s Ari. I must admit, we have known each other for a long time, right? Emily: Yeah, yeah. Christopher: Right, I’m just checking in to make sure we are right on that one. We’ve known each other for a while. Emily: Full disclosure. Christopher: Did you know when we first met? Because I’m terrible with this. Emily: I do. You reached out to me to ask me to do one of your online summits. Christopher: Oh really? Emily: … and then I happened to be going to South by Southwest later that year and you and Ari took us to BBQ. We didn’t know you and it was a long road through backwoods and I was with Jason and he and I were looking at each other like, “I hope these people are safe” Christopher: And it turned out we’re not. We …. No, actually, Texas chainsaw massacre was filmed like 45 minutes from where downtown Austin is so… Emily: I believe it. Christopher: So we usually do a … if we have people from out of town we … Ari, my girlfriend and so we should do… we invite people to BBQ. Especially for South by Southwest. So it’s not... South by Southwest is not the web geek mecha it used to be, right? Emily: No, not anymore. Christopher: So that’s like… I don’t know… 80,000 people descend upon Austin whereas when I first started going it was more like 4,000 people going. So, it’s a little different. Different scale of economies there. Emily: Yeah Christopher: So...And so yeah, one of the things we do… and, you know, you did a great job at the summit and you just have a great personality on stage. You’re so thorough and I just… you know… every time… because, before accessibility, before working with Nic and Knowbility we ran a conference, a web conference company and every time I could, you know, I thought you’d be a good fit. I’d try to get you involved in some way, in some projects like that. So, just because you’re very thorough and you have great stage performance. I mean, it’s not a performance, I don’t know what it is but it’s just you have a … going on stage you do a great job. So.. yeah. Emily: Ah, thank you. It doesn’t feel that way inside. Christopher: No? Oh no, it definitely does. It’s like, I kind of … I tried stand up comedy and just all the little things. I think everyone else is now because every comic ha a podcast now and they talk about the process a lot more than they could, like in the ‘90s and whatever. And so, it’s just amazing how much little things they have to do to win over a crowd and all the things they have to think about when you do that too. So, it’s kind of refreshing in a way when you think about it. We are just speaking at conferences isn’t our … it’ normal in our industry but for a lot of other industries it’s not normal. Emily: Right Christopher: Because our industry change so much. So, like, when I was first starting out about it, there was 2 ways you could tell people you know what you’re doing. One, you could actually write books about it or you go to conferences about it and then somewhere along the way something called Blogs happened. So that was networking. Right...so enough about me and all. So I’m honored to guest host the podcast with you, actually. Emily: Thank you Christopher: So, yeah. There are many definitions of the definitions on web accessibility. How do you define it? Emily: For me, it’s really simple and aligns with my new job with Knowbility. It’s equitable access. Making it possible for anybody to access digital information, digital experiences, commerce communities. All of it. Just making it possible. Christopher: So is there a difference between equal access and equitable access? Emily: Well, I think equal access equality is based on the same for everybody and equitable is providing the means for people to have accessibility maybe based on different needs. I think that’s accurate. It’s not … equitable is not making it the same for everybody, it’s about building experiences that different people can use different ways but they can still fundamentally achieve the same goal. Christopher: Okay, sure. Okay. And where does your role fall within the work of web accessibility? Emily: So, right now I’ve only just recently shifted my career to really, really focus on accessibility so right now I’m doing auditing and assessments of sites and making recommendations for improvements. I’m getting to do a little bit of client support and client training. And, most recently I got to do some usability studies which were just awesome. And, it hasn’t shown up too much because I’m still new to the job but advocacy and education that I think that is going to be a big part. So, social media, community engagement, writing, presenting… Christopher: So you’re really excited about usability testing that you did. What about it did you like? Emily: I’ve never had a chance to watch someone interact with a website with speech to text software or eye-tracking software or you know if you’ve ever done like a ...you’re testing screen magnification on our browsers we just resize the text but there’s actual screen magnification software that’s very different and I got to watch someone use that on their phone which was mind-blowing. So, just seeing first hand how someone is using a site in a different way than I ever have or seen anybody. So, it was eye-opening Christopher: How did you become aware of web accessibility and it’s importance? Emily: It really kind of was just a job. One of my first jobs in web development was for a US federal agency. The USDA which is focused on agriculture, and I was a webmaster for one of their conservation sites and the bulk of that job as a webmaster, which tells you how old I am, was keeping the site up to date with 508 standards. So USDA staff would update the site and edit it and do things and I would go behind them to make sure that what they had done met those accessibility standards. It was kind of like an ongoing or rolling audit job. Christopher: Nice Emily: Yeah, so I at the time didn’t really have a complete appreciation for the accessibility part of it. Like, I knew it was about accessibility but I didn’t have that kind of connection I was just talking about with the user experience. But, I liked … it was a set of rules and I was a new developer trying to figure out how to be a developer so a lot of rules made a lot of sense and made my job easier. So, yeah, but I was attracted to the standards aspect of it before I really understood the accessibility aspect. Christopher: And do you feel like there's a difference between usability and accessibility? Emily: Well, yeah. Something can be technically accessible and not really usable. So, I feel like… my partner Jason - my boyfriend, they don’t make a word for people who are in their mid 40’s and aren’t married but he does usability work for the government but accessibility is a part of it. So, fundamentally things have to meet accessibility and then on top of that, it goes through usability testing. So I guess that accessibility could be viewed as a part of usability. Christopher: Yeah I always have a tough definition there. There's a definition about it that separates usability from accessibility but when I started out it was always tough to separate the two as two distinct items. Because, I felt like if it’s not accessible it’s not usable, right? You can’t have a good user experience if it’s not accessible. It was always just like… it still is the barrier of what the difference is between those two. Emily: I honestly feel like our industry is still defining it. I mean, I see it with Jason all the time with his work and he works with the government which are really large projects with lots and lots of people and they’re still trying to define this stuff. So, yeah, I think it’s ongoing. It’s sort of evolving as we understand this stuff. Christopher: Right, and our industry changes so fast, right? Emily: Oh my god yes. Christopher: 5 years ago we were not even talking about tablets. Like, you know. Emily: Yeah, and there’s going to be so much more. I mean, as we are seeing now people having these … Echos and … I don’t know, I don’t have them in my house but these voice-activated devices and, you know, the more that stuff evolves the more our role, our jobs and the aspects of accessibility and usability are going to change too. It’s hard to challenge it. Christopher: Yeah, it is. The conventional UIs, I mean with Echos, yeah, That’s a bit of trouble, yeah. So, I do have them in my house So, um… Emily: They’re watching you. Christopher: Yeah, I call them peeping Toms. That’s what I call them. So… but, it is kind of weird but it’s basically how much I hate light switches. And so that’s why. I just like walking into a room and like, alright, turn it on and then sometimes I get a cold or the flu and you know, your throats sore or whatever and you’re like “Man, I wish I had a light switch right now!” Emily: So that would be the thing that most people don’t know about you. Your hatred of light switches. But now they do. Christopher: Now they do, yeah. I don’t know what they know or don’t already. Just, yeah, so...alright. What barriers did you or are you facing in terms of implementing accessibility? And how are you getting over them? Emily: Well, I mean, in my job now that I’m focused on accessibility it’s a little different than when I ran an agency and accessibility was just … it really wasn’t a priority for my job. So, today I feel like the hardest part of my job is coming up with solutions for some of the sites and interfaces that we work with because it’s one thing to identify what’s wrong. It’s totally a different thing to give them alternatives solutions that’s accessible to start with but also pretty reasonable for them to implement and on some level I can’t help still being a client. You know, having worked with clients for so long. Like, you still have to support their overall design in business school. Christopher: Right Emily: I think that’s incredibly hard. Christopher: Yeah I mean, it’s .. it was like, Friday, I left work and I was trying to figure out in the back of my head … we tabulate what we do each day but they’re kind of broad strokes. We don’t have to do like a timesheet like what we do every hour and so I was trying to figure out where did my afternoon go. And, part of it, I realized on my way home I was like, “Oh yeah, I had to deconstruct this bad code example the client had used and then try to reformulate it into an accessible standards-based solution” and it took forever. Emily: Yup Christopher: Just to do that, right? And, it was a total time sink. Emily: Yup Christopher: Not like… I mean, it was good. It was a good challenge to do it but it still takes a long time to do that if it’s not something easy code. It’s amazing. And, I said this sarcastically last week. I was just impressed with the ability of the developers to avoid Semantic HTML. Emily: Yeah, I mean… Christopher: Yeah Emily: I was working on that same system with you and it was just, every day it was just an “Oh, that never would have occurred to me to do that.” Christopher: Yeah. Exactly. It was kind of crazy. But, yeah, I think that’s also kind of our … like what we do is a benefit too. It’s like we actually give alternatives to clients. I guess that's what we … that’s kind of neat too. Emily: Yeah and I also like… you know we work with some really, really smart people who have a lot of experience and so, you know, watching what they do. How they make suggestions and solutions, really helps me expand what I might have considered in the first place, as a way to make a problem access… you know, solve it and make it accessible. So, yeah. I feel really lucky we have a lot of people who have so much more experience than I do. Christopher: What is your favorite word? Emily: Well, I don’t know if this is like a PG-13 podcast so Nic can … I’ll give you two options for Nic to choose from, but Christopher, you know this. Fuck is probably my favorite word. But, for the PG-13 listeners - ice cream. Ice cream makes me so happy. If someone says ice cream I’m instantly looking forward to it. Christopher: Oh man, you are going to enjoy Access-U, which is the conference that Knowbility puts on. It’s for practical training purposes in accessibility. Ah, for the last two years they’ve brought an ice cream truck to the event. So, you will… Hopefully I made you happy and looking forward to May already. Emily: Alright now I’m like - I’ve got to get some ice cream today. Christopher: So, yeah. So like, I feel bad because Nic asked me this question and I just… I whiffed at it and so I didn’t answer the question. And so, now that I have a second chance of sorts. If you don’t mind me saying what my word is? Emily: Oh yeah, do it. Christopher: It’s moist. Emily: Oh, you like that word? Christopher: Yeah, that’s exactly why I like that word. Because everyone hates it. So, I feel like it says what it is in a way. It’s like… it’s kind of gross. Yeah. Emily: I like it for cake. Anything else just makes me think of humidity and discomfort. Christopher: Yeah, well I grew up in Florida. So I feel… Emily: Yeah, you love that, right? Christopher: Yeah, I just can’t wait. Yeah. The move from Florida to Ohio which didn’t happen in the end… I was just like, “What the heck. What’s going on over here?” Christopher: What was your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Emily: I really don’t feel like I’ve achieved it yet. I mean, I’ve been doing front-end development, CMS development, project management for digital products for like 23 years or something like that and I’ve always built with standards of accessibility in mind but it’s never… it’s never been the focus. I’ve only just done that shift a few months ago so I haven’t had a chance to do anything great. Christopher: I see ...I see some of your issue reports. I think you’ve done some great issue reports. Emily: You know, I will say that I used to have a podcast myself and it started, I guess about 8 or 9 years ago which was kind of early and we had transcripts right from the beginning. That was really important to me. Christopher: Yeah Emily: I don’t know if that’s a great achievement but it was a commitment that I felt was important. Christopher: Yeah, just think about how many podcasts there are that don’t have transcripts. Emily: I don’t understand that. Christopher: Yeah Emily: I really don’t understand that. Christopher: Yeah, I felt bad because I don’t have transcripts for my own podcasts that I used to run and I just … there was all this content that was just waiting to be discovered and all this content that’s not been discovered. I mean, even though they have video of a podcast that they turn into audio and they don’t have a transcript for it. Emily: Mmhmm, well I mean, it’s an accessibility issue. But, there’s business reasons for it. I mean, Google eats that up. Your podcast gets a tonne more exposure. I mean, our podcast was getting high… high up in the Google search results for almost all of our web topics. Because we had lots and lots of keywords. Christopher: Yeah. Emily: And also helps you consume the content in a different way. Like, maybe you can’t listen to it and you want to scan the transcript for saline information. It just makes sense. Christopher: Yeah, I think so. Okay, cool. Well, that’s awesome. Well, that’s a good place for us to wrap up for now. But, thanks for being on the Accessibility Rules podcast. Emily: Thanks for having me. Christopher: Okay, awesome. Until next time. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E091- Interview with Emily Lewis – Part 2 Aug 27, 2019

Emily Lewis said: Accessibility is not about screen readers or keyboard navigation or code. It’s about people. And them being able to access information and resources, community… all of it Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript

E089 – Interview with Amberley Romo – Part 2 Aug 20, 2019

About one thing everyone knows about accessibility... Amberley says: “I think everyone knows when something is not acceptable to them” Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 89. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. In this episode I’m continuing my conversation with Amberley Romo. Last show was really awesome. We had a good conversation about assistive communication devices and their evolution. We spoke about the fact that accessibility and HTML CSS is a continuing process. It’s not just binary. Amberley, welcome back. Amberley: Thank you. Good to talk to you again. Nic: I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Gatsby. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast and compelling websites without needing to become a performance expert. So, at the end of last week we were talking about your greatest achievement and you mentioned it was something around seeing the penny drop about...when you speak about accessibility ,in people's mind. Let’s flip that a little bit and start by asking you what your greatest frustration is in terms of web accessibility. Amberley: I think my greatest frustration is that we can constantly make a really good case for why web accessibility is important. Both in a human rights access sense and in a business sense also. But it’s … despite that it’s still so difficult to get people to invest in it. Either personally, whether that’s an individual developer in terms of spending time on learning, or, if you’re talking about a business in terms of dedicating time and dollars on projects. And, that’s not to say there's a problem of people not being aware of it but most people I talk to I say, “Actually, this is a thing, and this is important.” Most people aren’t turning around and saying to me like, “Nah, I don’t think so. Let’s not worry about it.” They’ll acknowledge that it’s important, and they get it but translating that into effort is hard. And then in terms of being a front-end developer it’s already kind of like drinking from the fire hose to try and stay current on front-end web technologies. Nic: Yeah Amberley: So, getting… convincing people what to spend time on...you know, what will make them hirable if they’re boot camping themselves trying to learn to get their first job or what-not. And, then in terms of company priorities people worship shipping at a high velocity. Which I get because they have to build businesses but, it has a cost - like, technical debt and inaccessible applications. So… Nic: Yeah, I don’t know how to convince people of that. I keep talking about the 3 legs of a tripod. You have performance, you have security and I think you have accessibility and those 3 are so important to get right. And, people seem to understand why security and why performance is so important but a lot of people don’t understand the importance of accessibility. That’s a frustration to me. Amberley: Yeah, and it’s really.. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t say it’s surprising to me at this point but one of the … but it does sort of still even know sort of surprise me because accessibility is so interwoven with some of those other concerns. Like, I’ve often said just good semantic markup is great for SEO… you know… making things accessibility to a wider range of people is better in terms of… you know… having a larger spending audience if you’re trying to sell someone or convert leads or what-not. Nic: Yeah. Amberley: Like why you would have… forms are notoriously, you know, super inaccessible. Why you would have a lead generation form that’s super inaccessible … you know, it just … you shouldn’t have to but you can tie back accessibility into so many other core concerns that people do understand. And that’s the part that baffles me. Nic: Yeah, it baffles me too. You mentioning accessible forms and it reminds me of an experience I had earlier this week. The Lonely Planet has put out a fantastic guide for accessible travel… Amberley: I saw you tweet about this which is why I’m laughing. Nic: Yeah… and the bloody form to actually ask for the PDF is … there’s no labels, it’s just… it’s not accessible. It baffles me. You know, lead generation forms in general not being accessible but a form specifically to request something about accessibility that’s not accessible. I … it befuddles me. I just don’t get it. Amberley: A rich irony to be sure. Nic: Yeah, a rich irony. I like that, yeah. Amberley, what do you think there’s one thing that everyone knows about accessibility. Amberley: I think everyone knows when something is not accessible to them. Nic: Yeah. Amberley: The concept of accessibility becomes very clear to anyone when they’re faced with an accessibility that affects them. So, and that’s just like a human experience understanding thing. Like, you can try to explain it to people but the minute it affects them they’re just like… they understand that something is a barrier to them. You know? Nic: Do we need everyone to have an impairment or a disability for the web to get better from an accessibility perspective? Amberley: I mean… I think it’s very likely that most people will experience that. I mean, Chris Coyier recently broke both of his arms - which is terrible but I would be interested to see if he had something to write about accessibility after that experience. Nic: Mmmhmm Amberley: For example, so we talk a lot about the idea of a permanent disability versus a temporary, situational disability. And, when I said what I think one thing most people understand about accessibility like, in the moment… with the … especially for a temporary or situational issue… people might not tie that personal experience back to something lighter or larger than themselves, such as the concept of accessibility. But in that moment they understand it. Nic: Yeah, obviously they don’t have the answer. I don’t think anybody does, but I’d love to do some thinking around how do we take that moment of insight and translate it into a wider understanding of accessibility for each person that experiences that. That would be quite a nifty trick to have, I think. Amberley: Yeah that is a magic question for sure. And, I don’t think this is the answer but it makes me think of something adjacent which is the interesting things… I’ll pre suffix. I can’t do If you V.R - Virtual Reality, because it makes me feel sick but some of the interesting things I’ve seen or read about in the V.R area around creating experiences that allow people to sort of virtually experience something that let’s them empathize with someone else’s experience. Nic: Yeah Amberley: So, like I said, I don’t think that’s the answer but some things are happening to experiment with stuff like that. Which is cool. Nic: What’s the number one reason people fail to succeed with web accessibility? Amberley: And this is assuming that they know that it’s important, like they’ve already been convinced? Nic: Yeah Amberley: Okay, then I said it a little bit earlier but I think the number one reason people fail to succeed in implementing accessibility is because a) there are so many things to think about and learn about in front-end development. Especially now. Like, current front-end development. And then the other thing is learning about and implementing accessibility isn’t a step 1, step 2, step 3 process. Like, I think if it was… if it was so easy to define it might be easy… easier at least, to get people to sit down and do like 1, 2, 3 - I’ve learned it. But, it’s not a 100% clear laid out process to learn it. And then there’s the whole thing we were talking about last time with the continuum of support. So not only having that awareness to learn about something but having that awareness consistently through personal projects and through projects that you work on for work, your career… but then even if people are aware and are thinking about it continuously as sort of on that continuum it reminds me of … like, actually, I didn’t know until that WebAim report came out this year that only 25%... is it 25%? It’s somewhere around there of WCAG failures are programmatically attestable and identifiable. Nic: Yeah Amberley: So, even for someone who knows what they’re doing. They think they’re doing the right thing… they’re running Lighthouse, they’re running aXe, they’re running these different testing tools. And absence of detectable errors doesn’t meant the website is accessible. Again, I mentioned Manuel's article earlier which I thought was stellar at showing that. So, on the one hand, I think it’s great that we have these tools but on the other hand the limitations of the tools themselves can give otherwise well meaning folks a false impression. Nic: Yeah. Amberley: And, then there are things like… you know, I think a lot of people, particularly… you and I met at AccessU this year and one of the sessions they were talking about… and, I don’t know a whole lot about the actual WCAG process and proposing new things - those conversations that happen, but someone was talking about a lot of things that were proposed in the area of cognitive disabilities were sort of tabled. For this iteration. And, people who are aware of web accessibility think of it as “Oh, it’s accessing the web with a screen reader” or maybe even having an experience with seeing color a different way, or something . But, there’s this whole other world that I’m really sensitive to because of my sister and growing up around people with ADD, but there’s this whole concept of accessibility in a cognitive space. And, part of that is the way that you craft content. Which is why it’s not just a developer concern or a designer concern… it’s also a content creator concern. And sort of at all levels it affects everyone who is building. Nic: How do we pass that message along? That accessibility is not just for screen reader users or just for people who are colorblind? How do we open that door to a wider understanding when it’s already difficult enough to get people to understand that - Hey, accessibility is a thing and it’s important. Amberley: I super wish I had the answer. I really do. I really do. Yeah… because it’s not like… for example, my sister’s not going to go on a banking website, right? I mean, you don’t know her but she’s not. So there’s this whole certain squishiness of like how do you account for a different cognitive disability? What… like, it’s so much harder to formalize and define. So, I understand the challenge there. So… Nic: Yeah. Amberley: If you can’t sort of formalize and define that. How do you persuade people to behave in a certain way or change the way they do something along that spectrum. That becomes even harder. Nic: Would you say that’s the greatest challenge the field of web accessibility faces? Or is there something else that would be more critical to us as accessibility experts? Amberley: I mean, for me personally I think the biggest challenge is we are failing to fix the issue of new folks entering the industry who never are exposed to accessibility. Like, the issue of cognitive disabilities is interesting to me personally. It’s important to me personally. But, like you said … again, we were talking at AccessU and you said something like “I’m still telling people about fricken Alt tags!” You know? Nic: Yeah. Amberley: So, it’s a conversation that’s so much further down that line and you’re still telling people about Alt Tags. You know? Nic: Yeah Amberley: And I looked at the website of that non-profit that I worked at years ago and I ran aXe on it and you know… missing Alt and color contrast and these are people who are the national office non-profit for people with disabilities. But it’s a whole...you know, I know they have a small web team. You would think like, of anyone… those are the people who have to have it figured out, right? Nic: Yeah. Amberley: And it’s not the case, but… yeah, bringing it back to what I was saying… front-end development continues to get more complicated and there are a lot of concepts and things to learn that are fighting for people’s attention. So, somehow we need to be doing a better job in College programs and Bootcamps and the way we teach online. I went through a Bootcamp myself, I can’t remember if I said that earlier. Nic: Yeah, you did, last week. Amberely: Mmm, and in the one that I went to… again, I had been building static websites for a long time so I had used HTML and CSS and I had learned about web accessibility from earlier experience. And, the Boot Camp itself, learning about HTML and CSS was pretty much just like pre-course work before the Boot camp. They were like ‘Here’s a HTML course, you should do that’, ‘Here’s a CSS course online, you should do that’ …. And then web accessibility was literally not once mentioned. The only accessibility content that was there while I was there was a presentation that I gave. Nic: Well, that’s cool. Amberley: I’ve since gone back to the Boot camp a couple of times. A couple of different Boot Camps, actually, and given sort of like an introductory accessibility talk. But, you know, it’s still not part of the curriculum on not any one particular Boot Camp. I’m not aware of any of them that have it as a particular focus of any part of the curriculum. But, yeah, all CSS programmes and all of that. Nic: Yeah. Years and years ago I was really befuddled - to use a term I used earlier, to learn that architects in their 4 year program have about 5 or 6 hours of tuition around accessibility. So, they learn a whole lot about a whole bunch of stuff but they don’t really learn a whole lot about accessibility. And, it’s no wonder we have buildings that are barely accessible. And, it’s the same thing when computer science programs and boot camps and code samples and all these things don’t include accessibility … it’s no wonder that people don’t have a chance to learn. Amberley: Even the best meaning people. People who absolutely mean well are just not exposed to it. Yeah, it’s no wonder. Nic: Who inspires you? Amberley: In an accessibility sense? Or in general? Nic: However you want to take it. Amberley: I’ll do both. Well, it might sound obvious but the first person that comes to my mind is my sister. Because she’s such a skilled communicator. People are always amazed at how efficient she is at getting her point across. Non verbally. And she just lives her life so fully. Without reservation. Like, she doesn’t have some of the filters of ‘maybe people will judge me for this. I should be embarrassed about it’. It’s just like, she just does her thing. So, I think about that and I try to sort of live like that as best I can. Because, she just lives with such joy. And then in the web accessibility space Marcy Sutton is like such a … I always really looked up to her. It’s kind of really a dream to get to work directly with her and learn from her. I feel really lucky for that. And then other people who have taught me a lot like Aaron Gustafson, and Dave Kennedy and… you inspire me too! Because you keep at it. You know, we talked about how easy it is to get jaded in seeing the same stuff over and over again and you’re a long time veteran of working on this topic. So, you keep doing it. Nic: Are you saying I’m old? Amberley: No. You established your credibility that way at AccessYou and I’m giving you a compliment. Nic: I appreciate that. Thank you. Amberley: Because it’s true. You keep at it and you do this podcast and you keep moving and… you know... You keep working to put a dent in it and so… Nic: Thank you. Let’s wrap this up with one last question. What is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Amberley: I’m going to cheat a little bit and just assume that we are past the one point where people are aware of it … Nic: Okay Amberley: Because the baseline is that people should be aware and know about it and find it to be … be convinced of it’s value and importance. But, the one thing past that, I think, especially aimed at developers… is that I think people should remember that perfect is the enemy of done. Or at least the enemy of progress. And, you know, there's a lot of nuances to web accessibility and it takes a learning oriented, curious, open mindset. It takes consistency so… you know, have a growth mindset toward it. Don’t look away because it seems hard or unclear. Just keep chipping away, keep learning about it, keep caring. Nic: I love that. What a fantastic note to finish on. Keep caring. Amberley Romo, thank you so much for coming on the show and chatting with me about this, that and the other thing and we will see you around. Amberley: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E088 – Interview with Amberley Romo – Part 1 Aug 07, 2019

Amberley defines web accessibility as "building for the web in ways that ensure it’s usable by everyone. There aren’t barriers to use for anyone. So, I would say it’s about digital equal access, kind of along the same lines as physical equal access. So, just putting people at the center of building for the web." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

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Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 88. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. Nic: To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice SMS and video at twilio.com. Nic: This week, I'm speaking to Amberley Romo. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Amberley. How are you? Amberley: I'm good. Thank you for having me. How are you? Nic: I'm good. I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, who is Amberley Romo? Amberley: Of course. So, I'm a software developer based in Austin, Texas in the U.S. And I'm currently working on the Gatsby team, which is a React based framework for building fast websites and web apps. I touch a lot of different things, but I'm currently aligned with the learning team. Anything to do with the experience of learning about Gatsby, understanding what it is, how to use it. And we cross over a lot with developer relations, which is really fun. So, I get to talk to a lot of people and also the core team. So, in terms of supporting people in the main repo and building documentation as things change. I also recently started recording screencast lessons, so that's a new medium for me that's fun. I recently joined the ranks of podcast hosts like yourself. I recently started a podcast with a friend of mine called Fullstack Health. Nic: What's it called? Fullstack? Amberley: It's called Fullstack Health. Nic: Fullstack Health. Tell me a little bit more about that. Amberley: Yeah, it's about the projects and initiatives, things people are building in the tech health and wellness space, and also the health experiences of tech workers themselves. We're also trying to, for each longer episode, talk to an actual health professional on a topic that's adjacent to whatever we were covering in the first interview. Amberley: So, we found that there's a lot of fitness twitter in the dev community. And then, there's also a lot of conversations about mental health and wellness happening and those conversations don't overlap, don't tend to, at least a lot. So, we wanted to do something that sort brought the two topics under one roof. Nic: Awesome. I'll have to check that out. That sounds very interesting. Amberley: Yeah, we just started. So, we've got our first two episodes under our belt. Nic: No, I well remember my first two episodes and that was quite a big hill to climb in terms of a learning curve. But before you know it, you'll be at a hundred episodes and you'll be a grizzled veteran. Amberley: The hardest part is scheduling. Nic: Yes. Yes, indeed. Hey, Amberley, tell us one thing that most people would not know about yourself. Amberley: So, not accessibility related? Anything? Nic: Oh, anything that somebody would not know about you. Amberley: Well, this is kind of random, but one of my grandfathers recently passed, so it's been on my mind. Something that most people wouldn't know about me is that I have some really fun family history. On my mother's side are California pioneers, specifically Santa Cruz, California, back in the 1800's. And then on my dad's side, the Spanish side, there's a Catholic Saint, Santo Toribio Romo, who's known as the patron saint of immigrants. And then El Sid who's sort of a Spanish folk hero. Amberley: So, I don't personally know a ton of details about them, but both of my grandfathers before they passed were very interested in genealogy. So, they did a lot of research and interesting work. Nic: I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but I'm also fascinated to hear about your history because I was recently traveling through Wyoming and got a chance to see some of the Oregon trail, and California trail, and Mormon trail, and that was really fascinating history to visit. So, now you tie that up with back to present day and I like that. That's cool. Thank you. Amberley: Yeah. Nic: We're talking about web accessibility today. How would you define that? Amberley: So, I would define web accessibility as building for the web in ways that ensure it's usable by everyone. There aren't barriers to use for anyone. So, I would say it's about digital equal access, kind of along the same lines as physical equal access. So, just putting people at the center of building for the web. Nic: I like that. Putting the people at the center of building for the web. That's a very nice turn of phrase that I had not heard before. Nic: You told us a little bit about what you do at Gatsby. How does that roll in with accessibility? Day to day, what do you do accessibility wise? Amberley: Well, the day to day, I'm on the learning team which is primarily responsible for maintaining the docs and the learning pathways of the different topics around learning Gatsby. So, I would say the primary way is ensuring that those pathways are well thought out, the content is well-written, things are find-able to people. So, a lot in the area of content. Amberley: And then, also things like when I first joined, there wasn't a lot of focus on making the examples accessible or the starters. We have starter repos where someone can clone a project and get started. And we've put effort into making sure that our examples and our starter code and everything is accessible. Amberley: So, it sort of is more on the learning team, at least, I work with Marcy Sutton formerly of Deque, so we're trying to inject accessibility-minded thinking where we can across the whole team and especially, obviously in the learning area. Nic: That's quite fantastic because it's one of the things I keep telling people is how are people expected to learn about accessibility if none of the tutorials, and code samples, and examples out there include accessibility. People can't learn if it's not there. So, I love to hear that you folks are doing that with Gatsby. It's good news. Amberley: Right. And we also have the issue of, and this is just a general learning question, is we're a react-based framework. So, we always have to balance how much do you delve into teaching react versus teaching Gatsby? The same question I always have in my mind of, do you teach HTML? Do you teach CSS? Do you teach JavaScript? Do you teach accessibility? Amberley: And I think the opportunity with Gatsby is really interesting because a lot of entry level and early career people are using Gatsby to learn, which I really love. But I want to make it as supportive of an entree as possible. And I did a bootcamp, so I'm very aware of the gaps in all the different learning pathways, especially around accessibility, but also around things like HTML and CSS. Amberley: So, it's kind of a balance of how much can we, we can't teach everything, but we also don't want to be a part of persisting those gaps. So, I think there's a lot more we can do, for sure. Nic: I think it's a tough act to balance because in theory you shouldn't have to teach HTML, CSS, and the basics of JavaScript, but in practice, I think too many people that are doing development these days lack those skills. They lack that knowledge. It's certainly reflected in a lot of the audits I'm doing where basically HTML, CSS is not understood. Nic: So, I can see where you folks at Gatsby would have a tricky decision ahead of you as to how much of each you cover. Yeah, I know that leadership, especially through Jason is really interested in accessibility, but how's the shift to more of an accessibility mindset through everything, how easy is that to work on with all of the Gatsby team? Amberley: So, our team, in general, really wants to do the right thing. And the challenge there is that like any other really small team or sort of early team, we have the challenge of this whole array of priorities that we have to tackle. And so there's always more on your plate than you can tackle at any one time. So, it's not a matter of convincing people that it's important. People take our word for it. They're, yeah, we're on board, we get it. But it's that natural sort of challenge of, as an organization what you focus on. Amberley: And so I think the cool thing about it is that hiring Marcy, to me, was a big competence indicator that they supported it and they believe that it's important. And because, at that point, it was just me in the room saying this is important, I think we should do this. But having someone who's a really strong proven industry voice, that puts someone in the room who will consistently raise challenges and challenge people to to do things differently and do things better. So, having that kind of consistent. Amberley: I saw this tweet actually from Eric Bailey, I think maybe earlier this week or last week, on the accessible market being a continuum of support and not a binary state. And I think of teams in the same way, where it's a continuum of a process where you can't say everyone is 100% on or off accessibility. It's this continuous process of bringing it up, and working through it, and prioritizing it. Nic: I cannot do anything but agree with that. It's a little bit like people telling us, oh, my site is accessible and well yeah, maybe your site is mostly accessible now, but you can always do more. The web is an almost breathing, living thing, so it will change. There's not a start and end. Amberley: I see a lot of parallels sometimes with web performance, too. Because all it takes to put a dent in homepage performance is for someone who doesn't know any better to throw up a giant image that takes forever to download and that puts a dent in your web performance. Amberley: Same thing, you could have a fully audited, accessible site or page and maybe someone well-meaning goes and adds a feature, adds something that introduces inaccessibility to a formerly accessible page. And then, that's where the continuum support comes in, where you're constantly reevaluating and retesting where you are. Because the web is a breathing, living, changing thing. Nic: I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor Gatsby. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: So, you said you were pretty much the lone voice championing accessibility at Gatsby before Marcy came in. How did you become aware of web accessibility and how important it is? Amberley: First, I would say that it was through my initial interning experience with a disability nonprofit, but really that made me aware that I became aware of it earlier. Because, actually, when I was growing up, my sister has a genetic disorder called Angelman Syndrome. She's extremely expressive, but she's nonverbal. The only word she can say is Mama. She can make the "B" sound, also. Amberley: But anyway, when I was growing up, her method of communication was my mom would take a bunch of pictures, photographs of things, cut them out, laminate them, and stick Velcro on the back. She'd have baggies of topics, like a baggy for school, and a baggy for food, and different life areas. And she'd carry these Manila folders with Velcro strips pasted in them to stick these picture cards onto to form something she wanted to communicate to someone. Amberley: That was back in the early-mid nineties and as the sort of digital revolution happened, her communication methods changed really quickly. She had assistive communication devices made by DynaVox for awhile. We could customize what was on the screen, she could press it, and it would verbalize text to speech or really picture to speech. Amberley: Then the iTouch and later the iPad came out. And that was just a freaking revolution to my family. Because as expensive as the Apple devices were, especially at the time, they were still less expensive by a lot than these dedicated augmentative communication devices. And people were building communication apps for them like Proloquo. She still uses Proloquo on the iPad today. Watching her navigate an iPad, she intuitively interacts with touch devices. It's amazing. Amberley: So, that was my first inkling of, okay, tech and hardware design and everything is a game changer. Apple devices aren't just pretty to look at. Their design was actually changing the game in so many other important ways, particularly in this case around usability. So, she was the reason that I was inspired to seek out interning at an org that served people with intellectual and developmental disabilities or IDD. Amberley: So, that's why in college I interned and then later worked part time, and then full time, at the National Office of the Arc, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it's a nonprofit that advocates for and provide services to people with IDD across the country. So, when I started off there, I wasn't working in the web area even though I'd been building sites for fun for a long time. Nonprofits don't have a ton of money to throw around, so the web department was never super robust. Amberley: But, there was someone who started working there while I was interning or part time interning I think, who was working on the web team and had just a deep personal curiosity and drive for making the web more accessible. He also has a sibling with a disability. He really bootcamped himself and taught himself a bunch on the job. Amberley: That person is Dave Kennedy who has been at Automatic now for the last three, four, five years. He was the one who really made me aware in terms of web accessibility. And he was actually really my first mentor on the web. He was very encouraging and made me realize that if I wanted to I could build a career building for the web. But, that's a different conversation. He was the first voice to turn on that light in my head about the importance of web accessibility. Nic: That's really interesting. I'd like to circle back a little bit to what you were saying about how the iPad revolutionized communication for your sister and your family. Have you seen or experienced how not only the Apple device is cheaper, but it's also less scary for people that don't know your sister to interact with because it's a device they actually know and are familiar with, as opposed to big clunky DynaVox. Is that something that you've experienced? Amberley: Oh my gosh. It's so funny that you say that. Yeah, because when she had the DynaVox, it was this assistive device. She was in elementary school or something and it was this big thing that set her apart. Because with my family, she really is bad about, we call them her words, she's really bad about using her words because she can communicate non-verbally with us super efficiently. But it was more important for her to have it with her all the time at school for people who couldn't communicate with her like us. Amberley: And so, back to the point, carrying that sort of set her apart. Then when she started carrying the iTouch, because my parents were pretty early adopters with that, they hopped on that pretty fast, when she started carrying iTouch, and then an iPad mini or whatever it was called, a lot of kids her age didn't have those devices. It wasn't like now where 12 year olds have iPhones and stuff. So, she would carry around these Apple devices and all these kids who thought they were awesome but couldn't have one or weren't allowed to have one, they were like whoa, she has an iTouch or an iPad, that's so cool. So yeah, absolutely. Nic: I've heard stories similar to that from other people. So, it's kind of neat to see that it seems to be a fairly consistent experience from people that were using old tech to moving to new tech. Of course, people today that don't know anything else aren't aware of this old tech, which was pretty revolutionary in and of itself. But, it's a circle of evolution in assistive software, isn't it? Amberley: It is. And honestly, sometimes I marvel. I feel really lucky to be born when I was, because the era that I grew up in where it was sort of the very beginning of all of that about to take off and watching her communication methods change over the course of that specific 10 years. Of course I didn't realize it at the time. You only realize it in hindsight. But looking back on it, that was a really fascinating time for that to happen. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed over the last five or 10 years? Amberley: Not the concept of accessibility, I don't think. But, the practice of working with accessibility on the web has. Because before I was full time working on the web, it was kind of mystifying to me. It was like, where do you learn this? How do you become a specialist in this? When do you know enough to say yes, I'm an authority on this or whatnot? So, I figured when I got further into my career on the web that would be clearer. And it's not really. It's still pretty murky. Along the same lines of, what's the bar of you must fulfill these requirements to be a web developer? What's the bar of you must fulfill these requirements to be a credentialed accessibility specialist? Amberley: And of course, there are certifications like the IWP certifications. But, in general, I feel that there's a huge gulf between people who build day to day for the web and people who are accessibility experts. Nic: Yeah. Amberley: And then, of course, the results from the WebAIM analysis earlier this year were not competence inspiring on that. We talked a little bit about this earlier. On the one hand, it can be cool that there's not a standard way to enter this industry. But on the other hand, the fact that there's not a standard way to enter this industry and the primary ways, like a CS degree, or self-teaching, or being community taught by the internet, or bootcamp don't prioritize or even include mention of accessibility. My view of accessibility hasn't changed, I would say, but my view of working with accessibility has not become clearer. Nic: Oh, yeah. So, would you say that's a barrier for you to overcome? Amberley: Yeah, I would say so. Nic: And I would imagine it's a fairly similar barrier to other folks that are coming into the web as developers wanting to learn a little bit about accessibility. How would you suggest people go about overcoming that barrier? How do they get over that and get past that? How did you manage to do that for yourself? Amberley: I sort of have and I sort of haven't. I think about it a lot and I'm pretty knowledgeable in it, and I particularly know what tools and resources to use to test certain things. But, I would say, the thing that I always tell people to start with, actually, the thing that I would tell people to start with is to start with something like Lighthouse. And there are issues with Lighthouse. It's not comprehensive and you can game a Lighthouse accessibility score. Manuel Matosevic wrote this great article, how I built the most inaccessible site that got a hundred score on accessibility and Lighthouse. Amberley: But for people just starting to learn or even a baseline of a working developer, just running Lighthouse or the axe tool and just learn by looking at a violation and figuring out how to fix it. If that was a general practice for people, whether that's beginners or in the industry practicing developers, just that would make a difference. Nic: I just don't know the answer because there's- Amberley: Yeah, none of us do. Nic: I keep asking, hoping that somebody is going to give me the million dollar answer, but I call these fragments of solutions that you've given me a bit and other guests have given me this too, and eventually maybe we'll find something that works. Amberley: Yeah. And going back to Gatsby, talking about developers who are adopting new technology and stuff. We're trying to do things like build in linting with the JSX-A11y linter. So, it won't catch everything, but a developer sees a warning in their terminal, it's like, oh, what's that? It's one way to surface that to someone. So, trying to do things like that, too. Nic: Yeah. Amberley, what's your favorite word? Amberley: My favorite word. Well, in general, I really love words that sound like what they are. Nic: Give me an example. Amberley: I don't have one single favorite word, but words like elegant. The word elegant sounds elegant. Nic: Okay. Amberley: But also, two of my favorite words are kerfuffle and foofaraw. Nic: Okay. Amberley: They make me laugh every time. And every time I use one of them, especially foofaraw, someone is like foofaraw, and that just makes me smile. Nic: What's your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Amberley: Well, staring at the WebAIM results, it's hard to think of a greatest achievement. But, I think I would have to say once I became aware of web accessibility, turning on light bulbs in other people's heads at all of my jobs. Amberley: For example, I was a technical project manager at an agency after I worked at the nonprofit. And accessibility was hardly ever brought up or mentioned except when there was a CFP or something that was subject to section 508 or something. And even so, people at the agency would say, yeah, accessibility. And I'd say, how exactly are you ensuring that you're building in compliance? Because I'm not equipped to evaluate that personally. And how are we evaluating that? We still have to write the proposal. Amberley: But, I kept trying. I kept bringing things up and trying to make myself heard about it. Actually, I asked Dave to come in to do an accessibility workshop afternoon session with all the developers at the agency and same thing at Gatsby. Like I said earlier, when I joined it was like 12, 13 people and it was a small enough group that I could say, hey, this is important, I think we should be investing time and energy into this. So yeah, consistently fighting to make the case in whatever setting, nonprofit, agency, web framework startup. Nic: Amberley Romo, thank you for chatting with me and we'll catch up next week and continue this conversation next week. Amberley: Yeah, nice to talk to you. Talk to you then. Nic: Thanks for listening. Nic: Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all of the shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com. Nic: Big shout out to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/Steenhout if you want to support the ecstasy Accessibility Rules podcast. Nic: Thank you.

E086 – Interview with Christopher Schmitt – Part 1 Jul 09, 2019

Christopher says that for someone who likes Design so much, he didn't realize how important good color contrast was, and how bad color contrast issues are. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 86. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking with Christopher Schmitt. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Christopher. How are ya? Christopher: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing? Nic: I’m doing good. We’ve been talking a lot on Slack through work and Twitter and all that but it’s good to have a dedicated discussion about accessibility and your background and interest in it. I like to let guests introduce themselves, so in a brief intro… who is Christopher Schmitt? Christopher: I am a designer, developer, author, speaker, event organizer, and beginning the accessibility work. I guess that's… it’s pretty… there’s a lot around. It’s pretty good. Nic: With all that do you have time to sleep? Christopher: No… I do not sleep at all, no. Nic: You do not sleep (laughing). Right...okay. So, you’re a little bit like a vampire then. Christopher: Yes. Nic: Yeah. Hey, um… let’s get warmed up. Tell me one thing that most people would not know about you. Christopher: I…. What would you think would be interesting… um… I… I don’t know. I’m a semi-secret Disneyphile. I like things about… I guess the parks of Disney. I guess that’s part of it. I like the theme parks and I like… I guess it kind of goes back to my family when my parents… my mom was a math teacher and my dad was a computer engineer. And so… and I had a big family and we lived in Florida so we would go to Disney a lot. And, we would go to Disney in a really strange way in which… I’m not sure how my parents got this… made this happen, but we would sit down the day before we would go to Disney and we would just map out the route of what everyone wanted to do. What all the kids wanted to do. We actually had a mutual understanding of what rides we wanted to do. Nic: Right Christopher: Then we would just conquer Disney that day and then it’s only later when I would go to see with other friends… they wanted the whole experience, you know? They wanted to go over here and see bands or see all of these side attractions and I’m like, no… it’s not the rides. But anyway… I lived in Orlando for a little bit and I used to go to the parks a lot during that time…. Nic: Right… yeah. Okay, so… roller coasters… woodies or metals? Christopher: I prefer with woodies, personally. But I do like how crazy metals can get. But there’s nothing more nerve-wracking than getting on a wooden roller coaster. I think that’s part of the edge. Nic: I’m in favor of wooden roller coasters as well … but anyway. Hey, we are talking about web accessibility, not coasters… how would you define web accessibility? Christopher: That’s a good question. I would probably define it as making… in terms of web, I would define it as making anything you put on the web open to everyone to use. Nic: Okay, so… make sure everything on the web is usable by everyone. Christopher: Right. Pretty much. Nic: Yeah. I like that because it doesn’t limit you to just people with disabilities or to… Christopher: No Nic: … or to screenreader users or something. Christopher: No, I mean like when I first started out in web design it was… I wish I had a really great definition for you… I wish I was just like, “here it is!” But, it’s still a great confusion to me when people separate usability from accessibility or like they define like there’s a difference between great usability and great accessibility. And, I mean there is some distinctions in there where I find that we can talk about how someone moves through a website. And we can talk about that in terms of usability but we just can’t leave behind anyone. And so I think that’s kind of like the narrative and I think that is a part of usability. It’s like yeah, we can get people from point a to point b but if we leave someone behind we are really failing the user experience. Nic: How did you become aware of web accessibility and it’s importance? Because you’ve been on the web for a while now. For… you can’t look at the history of the web and not bump into one of the many books you’ve written or conferences you’ve organized so when did you… when did it start twigging about accessibility? Christopher: I’m not really sure when it really happened. I just know that... I guess when you learn about the alt tag and what it’s importance was for. So I guess that’s from the beginning of the web. I guess. And I guess that’s when Netscape brought in images to the web and then we had… I’m not sure when alt tags became a thing. So, yeah. That’s when I knew about it. Nic: Yeah. Christopher: So… I’m an old person. Is basically what you’re trying to say. Nic, I appreciate that. Nic: Nah… Nah. No. We’re both, in terms of the web I think we’re both ancient but that’s alright. We at least know how to write HTML and CSS, right? Christopher: So, yeah. I mean... To answer your question, I feel like ever since I’ve known about it I’ve tried to incorporate it, accessibility into my work, into my books. And so, like, you know with what I mentioned earlier in one of the editions of my CSS Cookbook I wrote a chapter about HTML and that was… and how to write semantically. And so that… and so...and the goal of that chapter was to… was kind of multi-folded. The purpose of that one was if you don’t write clean HTML your CSS is going to be harder to write in order to apply the CSS roles to and, or, maintain. Right? So… Nic: Yeah. Christopher: Also, if you actually write with semantic and native HTML elements you’re going to make your site accessible. And so that’s… I just feel that that was part of it. Like you just want to rely on that. And, there was a period of time when, you know, beginning out with the web that I really disliked using innovational elements because I designed… I actually have a design degree. Nic: Right Christopher: I have an Arts degree actually so I have an Arts degree with an emphasis on design and so there was a period of time when I was like, it’s all about design and trying to break through this craft of this limited nature of the web. And, you know, HTML tables were laid out and that was a great idea. He says sarcastically… but...and so, it’s been a part of what it is. It hasn’t been a main focus in my career until now but it’s always been there and we always try to… my partner and I, when we did conferences we always make sure we’d have some accessibility in there or we would do online conferences that were just focussed on accessibility. So it’s always been part of it. It’s just … I just feel like it’s … now, I don’t know how you feel about it but I feel like now accessibility is a hotter topic and concern than it has been. Nic: Yeah I do think [cross talk 08:24] it’s becoming something that people are paying more attention to. Maybe because there are so many lawsuits and complaints about it. But I also think that there’s a large crowd of organizations that don’t even know what it means. I mean, I had a conversation with somebody at a conference a few months ago and when I said I’m an accessibility expert they kind of went, “Well, yeah, our sites are accessible. You know. You can get it on mobile, you can get it on desktop….” Not exactly what I meant. Christopher: You’re accessing it, you’re not making it accessible. Nic: Yeah Christopher: Yeah Nic: You started doing full-time accessibility work a few months ago. How has your view changed looking at accessibility now compared to what you were thinking about 5 years or maybe 10 years ago? Christopher: There’s just a lot of unknowns. There’s a lot I didn't know about accessibility. And, I would have conversations with Glenda whose a friend of mine, Glenda Simms and every once in a while if I had a question here or there. But, I felt like when I would talk to her I would feel like I would just get a little bit of insight into what’s going on and so now that I’ve come here to work I realized, like, wow. There’s just a lot of bad code out there and there's a lot of work that needs to be done in order to fix it. And, personally, for me just one color contrast I didn’t realize how pervasive of an issue that is. You can see that in WebAIM's One Million project and as someone who went to school and got an art degree, and likes design and color is really important to me… it’s just I feel like that was really shocking how bad it was on the web, in terms of color contrast issues. Also, how people use screenreaders is kind of new. I still feel like I know… I wish I knew what I know now before I joined up. Because I feel like that just opened my world up a lot more in terms of the issues that we have to deal with and people have to deal with in terms of... I mean, people who use screen readers are a very forgiving bunch because there are just a lot of bad websites out there... Nic: Yeah Christopher: ... and if you just meet them halfway in terms of creating a site I think they’ll be able to use your site a lot more but I wish I knew more about screen readers and how they worked before that. Nic: Yeah Christopher: And then, I know a lot of programmers who use keyboards for navigating the web, you know? They don’t want to use the mouse for whatever and they think they know how they’re making their sites keyboard accessible but still just tabbing and going through the motions. You know, there's a method of making sites keyboard accessible and they kind of miss that with like, focus order, reading order...so that’s something too… Nic: Yeah Christopher: And so that’s to lead into what I’m worried about next, is… Not that I worry about to the point I don’t sleep, I worry about is CSS Grid and flex order. You actually change the order of the content to make really funky designs, which, as a designer, I really love a lot but then I worry about accessibility and what that goes into. So that’s kind of…. Yeah, so there’s a lot of things I worry about. Nic: Yeah Christopher: I know about… I know a lot more than that but I'm not sure that answers your question, Nic. So, there you go. Nic: Place yourself in the shoes of the Christopher that you… that you were, say, 6 months or a year ago that knew a little bit about accessibility, that knew about alt attributes and that kind of stuff and, what advice would you give yourself now in terms of, you know, what should you be doing to learn about accessibility? What should you be paying more attention to? How would a developer that is vaguely aware of these things, how would you say they should go about improving awareness? Christopher: I think cold turkey, just try to navigate sites with a screen reader. And, you know, if you ever use a Mac you can just use voice over with Safari and make sure you use Safari. Just try a screen reader. If you just can’t do it then that should lead you… if you can’t actually navigate your site that should lead you to more issues and how to make it. Because I feel like… I mean, that just… I just… if you can make it work with a screen reader I think you’re golden. But, I think… also, I think just embrace native HTML. It’s a lot more… I feel like a lot of people just bypass HTML altogether and that’s… you know, I felt that way before I started in Knowbility but now I just… it’s like… yeah, you need to be using some native HTML. That’s for lists, headings, heading structure, basically, anything that was important in 1990s would go on that. In terms of semantic. I used to make a joke, it was like, “Hey, if you want me to show you how to build accessible…” oh, man. I forget what the joke was but it was just like if you want to build a … the joke now is, if you want to build an accessible website, here let me give you this web design book from the 1990s. Because I feel like… Nic: Yeah Christopher: Just like, I think Jeffrey Zeldman's book about building semantic, probably like his blue beanie book is probably still valid… Nic: Yeah Christopher: ...for the most part. So… and I’m pretty sure I wrote an HTML book back in the day that was accessible, so...yeah, so I think… but back to the point, it’s mostly about semantic, structures, making sure… I think that the tricky, that a lot of people get stuck on also is this rush to build this web, this phone app experience in browsers and trying to shoehorn where the web has never been. Right? Which is, the web is a great document sharing experience. It’s opened eCommerce, it’s made Amazon, Amazon… it’s done great things for everyone. It’s opened amazing doors. But, you know, just to try and get this great experience on your phone and shoehorn it into the website you’re going to have to make compromises and those compromises you might leave out people. Nic: Yeah Christopher: And, yeah. So…. Nic: So… do you think maybe the frameworks out there, Angular, React, View… you name it… do you think those have a responsibility towards the fact that a lot of developers don’t understand the basic of semantic HTML and you end up with tag soup? Christopher: Well, I mean, it’s like, are you as good as your tool? Or are you at the mercy of your tool in order to develop? I mean, you can build a really great website with a framework and I think I threw frameworks underneath the bus but I just feel like… you know… there’s this meme that went around and I lost it but it’s like there’s this person looking at staircase and the steps you need to take in order to become a Javascript developer….HTML, CSS, Javascript and then it was just up there….React. Right? And so the next step is… the first step the person takes is going to the React step on the stairs which is 7 stairs up. And there’s just this mad rush to get to… people to learn to code with the framework of your choice and so they bypass the basic understanding of that. I put together a boot camp once and it wasn’t my Bootcamp, the way I would’ve run it but we only had one day dedicated to HTML. And so… which was crazy, right? HTML is great, right? It’s so easy to understand. Pick up everyone, everyone’s having a great time. Day 2 is CSS and everyone's having a great time until they introduced HTML form elements and styling those HTML form elements. And then also, HTML form elements are really tricky if you’re just learning HTML the day before. They’re not like anything easy to understand. I remember when I learned them it was one of the hardest things to understand the concept of. Radio buttons versus checkboxes, right? Like, what are you talking about… Nic: Yeah Christopher: Why can I select only one radio button but like, checkboxes, I don’t understand… oh, that’s what… and then labels, and fieldsets and that semantic stuff. Yeah, so we just… I think people just don’t value how great HTML is and then how much work a browser can save developers by using native HTML elements. So … and there’s this big rush for people to learn JavaScript, and I don’t blame them. You know, it’s… you know, a verb is exciting. I think of HTML and CSS and JavaScript as like nouns for your HTML, adjectives are your CSS and verbs is your JavaScript and verbs are exciting. They’re the exciting part that gets things done. And so, you know, nouns are… just sit around the house. Nic: How do we get people enthused about HTML then? Christopher: My flippant answer would be lawsuits. But uh...I don’t know if you can. I just think… I love the web and everything about it so I think HTML is pretty awesome. HTML 5 now is… seems like the working group submerged with HTML 5 I guess. They should go with something that’s going to be more rapid development, HTML 5. Someday it will help things more, but I think… I don’t know. It’s just … I don’t know the answer to that Nic. I wish I did. I mean, if you have answers let me know. Nic: I keep asking everybody I can ask because I don’t know the answer and, nobody seems to know but somewhere the answer must exist I think. I hope. Christopher: I think it’s just the most amazing thing. You can create a page with HTML and just upload it to the internet and then have it, the chance that it’s read by someone across the country. Or across the world even… Nic: Yeah Christopher: ...is amazing to me. What shocks me and scares me a little bit is people think Facebook is the internet. And that’s what is kind of scary to me a little bit more. So... Nic: Well, is that very different from people used to think that AOL was the internet? Christopher: Um, a little bit. Yeah. I think it’s a little bit different. I mean, just the sheer number of people tracking your information compared to then and now. I think that’s a … I mean, it’s a … grown-up internet now and some of it’s not good. Nic: Teenager, if not fully grown-up anyway. Christopher: Yeah Nic: You’ve not done specific accessibility work for a very long time but what would you say your greatest achievement in terms of accessibility is? Christopher: I was one of the first people who put a list of links in an unorganized list. I was one of the first people to do that and actually, I can… I’m so old … that’s how things are. So, that pattern I think is … I don’t know if people know this or not but this set pattern is 25 years ago, so… Nic: That is awesome. I did not know that. So when I tell Clients that they really need to put list items into an actual list that’s because you started doing that. Christopher: Yeah, I was one of the first people who started doing that. I actually showed it to a couple of people and, it’s actually written up in an old Listener article where I think Paul Newhouse, like, he actually wrote it up and was like, “Hey, this is how you should do unordered lists” and so I showed it to him and also showed it to Porter, who showed it to Eric Meyer… so, yeah. So… that’s my minor claim to fame. But I think it’s fun in terms of when clients come back and they actually make changes that we recommend and it makes the site more accessible. I think that’s always awesome. I think it shows that things are working on a scale. I think it’s… I think it’s pretty awesome. Nic: Yeah Christopher: Hopefully we will be able to do it more. Bigger scale, in terms of outreach and whatever that, means… blogging or speaking or whatever that means. So… Nic: On that note, Christopher I think we will call it a day. Call it a week and thank you for coming on and sharing with us, and we will talk to you next week. Christopher: Yeah, cool. Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E085 – Interview with Jessica Ivins – Part 2 Jun 22, 2019

Jessica suggests that accessibility is a competitive advantage. The more people can use your product, the more likely they are to spend money on it. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 85. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in an accessibility, hey, this shows for you. To get today's show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Nic: Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. In this episode, I'm continuing my conversation with Jessica Ivins. Last show was really good. Do check it out if you haven't already because we spoke about important stuff, but particularly around education and designers and how the Center Centre, where Jessica is working incorporates accessibility throughout the curriculum, rather than give one accessible classes somewhere less than the end of the program, like so many other schools do. So welcome back, Jessica. Jessica: Hello. Thanks for having me again. Nic: We finished last week talking about what your greatest achievement was. Let's start this week with what's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Jessica: My greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? I would say, that's a good question. I have to think about that for a minute. I don't know that it's a frustration. One thing that's been on my mind lately is all of the... So I think there's a double-edged sword going on here. I think there are good things and bad things about this. But there've been a lot of attention lately in the past year or so in particular, about accessibility lawsuits and companies kind of having the CYA reactive measure to the commonality of lawsuits now. How they're doing across accessibility audits and they're trying to basically retrofit their designs because they're afraid of being sued. Jessica: While I think it's a good thing that lawsuits are raising awareness of accessibility, I also really hope that as the awareness is happening due to a legal reason, I hope that the awareness evolves and that more companies, especially not necessarily design professionals and developers, but the people above them. The people who have the power to make decisions and the people who control the money. I am hoping that what this kickstarts is that, those people in power start to see accessibility not as a liability and something that they have to comply with to keep from being sued, but more like a part of good design practice. Jessica: Because, as you know Nic, that when you make something accessible, you tend to make it more usable for everybody. So it's part of good design practice and part of just the right thing to do. I'm hoping that we start to see a shift now that, instead of lawsuits becoming more prevalent, that companies are trying to CYA and protect themselves. That maybe this will kick the snowball down the hill and as that snowball gets larger, more and more people, and especially people in the companies who have the power to make decisions and the power to spend money, will start to invest in accessibility. Jessica: Not because they're afraid of lawsuits, but because they want to produce great design that works well for their customers and brings in money, by the way. Because it's not just about making things that are easy to use, it's a competitive advantage. The more people can get done with your design and the more they can accomplish, the more likely they are to spend money on your product. Nic: It's this thing that, we were looking at accessibility from the legal compliance perspective or the business case perspective. But we also have to look at it from the corporate social responsibility, that more and more companies are starting to espouse. So I think that doing it because it's the right thing to do would be wonderful if that was the approach. Jessica: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah and we're starting to see... So there's this thing called design maturity, which you may or may not be familiar with. Design maturity, there are all sorts of design maturity scales that you can look up out there. There's articles about it and everything. Design maturity is essentially a way to measure an organization's investment and practice of design. Jessica: So there's usually a scale of one to four or a scale of one to five for design maturity, where one is basically the dark ages of design. Where design is just about making things pretty. All the way up through five and five is we have a mature design practice, we have a mature UX practice, we take accessibility seriously. We invest in accessibility because we understand that it's not just good for business, that is good for people and it's not just a liability, it's a benefit. We have a robust user research practice because UX and accessibility are very, very closely related. Jessica: So anyway, you have the scale of maturity on a scale of one to five and there's more and more executives, in talking about the people in power and large organizations, are starting to see the value of design. It used to be that UX designers had to go out of their way and bend over backwards to prove their worth. Jessica: Now, that's becoming less of a thing and more people at the top, VP's, even executives, are bought into design. So I think as we see the maturity continue to grow across organizations, I think understanding of accessibility will grow with that. And again, that people will start to see accessibility as a benefit to the business and not just something that they have to do to prevent lawsuits from happening. Nic: Jessica, what do you think the number one reason is for most people to fail... to succeed at implementing accessibility? Jessica: I was just reading an article about this, this morning. I'm guessing that it's just lack of awareness or lack of skills. I read this article this morning that made me laugh out loud and it said, most developers don't wake up in the morning going, "Okay, I'm going to go to work today and I'm going to build something that 20% of the population can't use." Right? Jessica: I mean, I don't know anybody who does that. I don't know any designers who do that. Right. "Well, I'm going to design something that people who are colorblind or people who have low vision can't use because that's my goal." I really don't think that that's happening. For the most part, I think folks just don't have the skills and the experience that could really benefit their ability to make things accessible. Jessica: Again, that's what excites me about our program at Center Center so much, like I was telling you about in our previous interview, because we do bake accessibility throughout the courses in our curriculum. We are now taking advantage of this time we have in between cohorts of students to take another look at the curriculum, take a deeper dive and look for opportunities where we could bake it an even further. So that as our students learn to be designers, they're just applying accessibility at every step and it just becomes normalized. It becomes just as important as user research. It becomes just as important as knowing how to prototype. Just as important as knowing how to write good content and all of these other skills that students have. Jessica: It's just something that happens every step along the way, where it just becomes part of what you do, rather than something you have to go out and figure out on your own or hope that somebody else takes care of or try to remember only at certain points when you're coding or when you're making the visual design. It's just something that you apply to every decision you make. Nic: What would you say the greatest challenges for the field of accessibilities are moving forward, looking down the road, five years, 10 years down the road? Jessica: Yeah. I think it's going to be equipping everybody on the team to have that broad knowledge and to know how to bake accessibility into all the decisions that they make. I think it's awesome now. I'm seeing more and more companies have a dedicated accessibility expert on the team and I think that's awesome. At the same time, I don't think one person can do it all, right? Jessica: Because one person can't be in every meeting, they can't be involved in every decision. So for example, I have a friend who now just focuses on accessibility and she was a user researcher for a long time and she works at a large financial company. She works on a very large team that works on lots of different products in the financial company and she's the one accessibility person. Jessica: So if she's out on vacation or if she's not in a certain meeting or whatever, decisions are being made without accessibility kept in mind. I'm sure, knowing her, that she's doing the best to equip her team and spread her knowledge and spread the skills. At the same time, I think if the organization isn't invested into spreading that knowledge around, I think they might just depend on this one person. While having that one person is awesome and that's a great start, I don't necessarily think it's enough to make sure that the broader team is equipped to make good decisions about accessibility. So I'm hoping that, that begins to change going forward. Nic: That would be awesome. I think perhaps that requires a complete paradigm shift for everybody out there or just about everybody. I mean, some companies are already doing the accessibility dance at every step of a project and they even have a accessibility mindset, accessibility culture. But most of them I think, are barely on the stage of even having an accessibility champion, a dedicated one. So how do we make that paradigm shift happen? How do we convince a bunch of companies, government corporations, small agencies, to think accessible? Other than obviously, the good work you're doing at the school. Jessica: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I think there's lots of different ways to tackle it. I mean, we talked earlier about the fear of lawsuits. Which, that's not my go to approach. Like, "Hey, CEO, make this accessible, so you don't get sued." I mean, that might actually get the CEO's attention because I guarantee you the CEO doesn't want his company to be sued or her company to be sued. Jessica: But again, that brings me back to what I was saying earlier, where accessibility is not just about a legal liability. It's about making good business decisions and making good designs that will support the business. So I think there are a couple of different ways to approach it. One could be starting, by hiring an accessibility specialist. Jessica: Now, like I said earlier, I don't think it's the best way to address the problems, but I think it's a great start, right? If the company's willing to pay one person a salary to focus on accessibility, then that's a great start. Another thing that I've seen done in large-ish organizations, I haven't seen this done at the enterprise level, but 100, 200 person-level organizations, where you just kind of start small and you find allies. Jessica: People who believe in accessibility and are invested in accessibility. When you're working with them on a project, you put a lot of time and energy into working together as a team on how to make this project accessible. So it could be one feature that you're working on. I think if you start doing that and you get a small group of people invested, it'll kind of have the ripple effect. The next time you work on a project, let's say there was four of you who worked on this one project and you took a really deep dive into accessibility and shipping this feature that was accessible as you could get it. Jessica: Now, the next project that you work on, the four of you are going to be even more equipped to make the next project accessible because you've already been focusing on it. As you spread out and work on different projects with more people, you can spread that knowledge to them and it kind of has this ripple effect and grows from within. And I've seen that be really effective before in organizations because it kind of happens from the bottom up and it takes time, obviously. You can't do this overnight. Jessica: But eventually, VPs and executives and directors, they start to catch wind of this and they start to see it happening and they see, "Oh, this is actually a great for business because these new features that are shipping, they are usable by our customers with limits." So I used to work somewhere where we had a customer support team and when we did focus on accessibility and ship new features or update features and address accessibility concerns, we had fewer calls coming into the call center. Jessica: So again, that's a way to measure success, right? I mean, that'll get a CEO's attention. If you're getting a bunch of calls because your design's unusable and therefore, probably inaccessible. But you address the usability and the accessibility issues, then you're saving costs because people aren't calling in about the problem anymore. But you can start to see change happen in that way or even not necessarily the call center example, but a CEO or a VP seeing that, "Wow, we've shipped this and it's really easy to use and we're actually getting more conversions than we were with the previous feature." Jessica: Chances are, because it's easy to use, it's probably more accessible and so on and so forth. So it just kind of grows. I don't necessarily think it's an overnight thing. If you're at a small startup and you're in the really early stages and somebody with a lot of accessibility knowledge comes on, I think you can enact change pretty quickly at that point. Jessica: But not in a larger organization and not... I mean, I've worked in organizations before where it felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. I started small and I did my best and this one particular organization, by the time I left, there was much more awareness about accessibility and there was at least more effort. Developers and engineers, in particular, were starting to think about it more and include it in their practices. So I was really proud about that. Jessica: So I made it better. There's no such thing as a perfectly accessible and inclusive design. I don't know of any, if they're already out there. But we can still strive for the best that we can do and if we can get it 80% accessible and inclusive, that's better than the vast majority of designs out there. We can always just strive to do the best we can and then during the next iteration strive to do even better. Nic: Yeah. I often talk with people that tell me, "Oh, I can't make my site comply a 100% with WCAB." And I tell them, "Nobody can." The idea is to open as many doors as possible, but there's always going to be a barrier somewhere for somebody. So we shouldn't abandon the idea of implementing accessibility because we can't get everyone through the door at the same time. We just need to chip at that rock a little bit at a time. Jessica: Yeah. That reminds me of the old mantra that, perfect is the enemy of done. Right? Nic: Yeah, exactly. Jessica: So if you can ship a really good product that's very accessible, but it's not perfectly accessible, ship it. I mean, that's the way I see it. Because it's kind of like how you're never... I have never seen a piece of software that has no usability issues whatsoever. I've never seen a piece of software that works smoothly and swimmingly for every single user who uses it. I've just never encountered that. It's a fantasy, as far as I know. Jessica: But I've seen, there are a few gems out there. Really, really good software that is really, really good at what it does and it serves the primary user base really well. It's not perfect for everybody, but it does a fantastic job at doing what it's set out to do. I think that's the principle that we want to apply to accessibility. Nic: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Jessica: I'd have to think about that. I feel very fortunate that I love what I do. I feel like I was put on this earth to be a UX designer because I'm just so nerdy and in love with it. So I'm very, very lucky, in that regard. I mean, if I were to win the lottery and didn't have to work anymore and I could just work for fun, I don't know, something with nutrition. I'm really into wellness and eating well and eating good food and making, talk about accessibility actually, making good quality, organic, real food, more accessible to people who don't have a lot of money. So maybe something in that regard. Nic: So you don't eat at McDonald's very often then? Jessica: No. No. Not My cup of tea. Nic: Who inspires you? Jessica: Great question. Who inspires me? I recently watched a TED Talk not too long ago and I can't recall the woman's name and I heard about it on a podcast. It might've been this podcast or another one and it was about... It's the woman who founded, Girls Who Code, I believe. She talked about how she's really trying to encourage women and young girls to embrace challenges rather than striving for perfection. Jessica: Because she talks about how women and young girls tend to be socialized to be perfect, where men and young boys tend to be socialized to embrace challenges and go for challenges. She said that because of the cultural expectations that we have of girls and women, that girls and women tend to be very self-limiting. She has seen young girls trying to code who threw up their hands and give up because they can't get it perfect. Even though, when the instructor comes by and goes to look at their code, they were so close. They just had one little piece that was off, which is normal with coding. Jessica: Like anybody who codes will tell you that it happens all the time. But because these girls, they were learning to code, but they were so hard on themselves because they didn't get it perfect, that they were willing to throw up their hands and give up and walk away. She's written a book on this topic as well, and I just can't for the life of me recall her name, but it was just a fantastic talk. Jessica: I really admire people like that who are pushing to make the world better, pushing to give opportunities to people who are marginalized. Whether it's women or people of color, people who have disabilities, immigrants, whatever it is, that is something that I really admire. That people who put their energy into making the world a better place for other people who don't have the advantages that everybody has. Nic: I think this is an important topic to explore. I wish it was more out there. I mean, I see it a little bit in my bubble or on Twitter and other social media, but I really wish that it was much more prevalent out there. Jessica: Yeah. The world's never going to be perfect. The world is always going to have problems and that's the pessimistic view. But the optimistic view is that it gives us opportunities to work toward making it better. Nic: Jessica, what's the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Jessica: So the big thing would be to keep it in mind at all times and try to incorporate it into every stage of the project that you work on. Like I said in the previous episode, and I think I touched on it in this episode as well, that accessibility, it's not a one stop thing. It's not like, "Okay, we're three quarters of the way through the project, so now it's time to make it accessible." It's something that just needs to happen from the early inception of the project all the way until it launches and even after launch, when you're maintaining and iterating on the design. It needs to be applied there. Jessica: So just needs to be at every stage of the process. I love your quote. I heard it in one of your podcasts a month or two ago and I love it where you talk about blueberry muffins. Where when you're baking blueberry muffins, you can't bake the muffins and then add the blueberries. You have to add them in from the beginning and you have to make sure they're mixed in at the right time or else, you can't go back and retrofit it and designs the same way. Jessica: It's extremely difficult and expensive to go back after you've already designed and coded something and try to make it accessible then. It's much easier and more feasible to just consider accessibility from the beginning and it doesn't take that much more time. It doesn't take that much more money. That's another myth about accessibility, is that we don't have time or money for it. But again, it's part of good design. So if you're making your design accessible, if you're being inclusive with your design, then you are opening it up to more customers and you are opening it up to people who don't have disadvantages and don't have disabilities as well. You're usually making it better for everyone. Nic: Jessica Ivins, thank you so much for your thoughts and the conversation today. I look forward to chatting with you about these things online a bit more. Jessica: Thank you, Nic. It's been great being a guest here. Thanks for having me. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn't not continue to do the show. Do visit Patreon.com/Steenhout if you want to support the Accessibility Rules Podcast. Thank you.

E084 – Interview with Jessica Ivins – Part 1 Jun 15, 2019

Jessica and I ponder whether low-literacy could be considered a disability, and regardless of the answer, that factor needs to be taken into account when designing sites and content. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 84. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility hey, this shows for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking with Jessica Ivins. Hey, Jessica. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility Jessica: Sure, Nic. Thank you for having me Nic: I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, whose Jessica Ivins? Jessica: Sure. I’m a faculty member at Center Centre, the UX design school here in Chattanooga, Tennesse in the US, and we offer a 2-year full-time program that offers you as a student to be an industry ready designer. So you attend school for 2 years. We model the work… school environment more like a work environment, so you’re in school Monday through Friday, 9-5. About two-thirds of your time is spent working on real-world projects. So, by the time you graduate you have almost 2 years of experience, and you have a portfolio, and you are industry ready, and prepared to get a job. Nic: That sounds fantastic. We’ll probably talk a little bit more about that, but, one of my pet peeves is that so many design and development courses don’t cover accessibility. Is this part of the curriculum at Center Centre? Jessica: Yes, for sure. Accessibility is a big part of what we do. And, back in the beginning when we were designing the school. So, we are a relatively new school, and we built the program from scratch. And, back in the beginning, we were talking about how we wanted to include accessibility in the curriculum, and how wanted students to learn about it because we knew it was important. We wanted to make sure that it wasn't an afterthought. We wanted to make sure that it was part of what the students did at all times. And, that’s when we arrived at the conclusion that, you know, we have 24 core courses throughout the 2-year program, and instead of making one of those courses an accessibility course we decided to infuse accessibility throughout the program, so that students learn how to make design decisions that factor in accessibility throughout each stage of the design project. Nic: I love that. You need to go and speak to every single computer science and design outfit out there in the world and sing that gospel. That’s fantastic... Jessica: Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead Nic: … yeah, no, I was just going to say I normally get people warmed up by asking them to tell us one thing that most people would not know about you. So, is there something that most people would not know about you? Jessica: Yeah, you know, this is a fun one. So, Center Centre, the school where I’m a faculty member, we were originally known as the Unicorn Institute. We called ourselves the Unicorn Institute before we were authorized by the state on Tennessee to officially call ourselves a school, but, before we got that authorization we wanted a way to talk about ourselves so we were known as the Unicorn Institute. And, back when I applied to be a faculty member here at Center Centre we were still known as the Unicorn Institute, and it was so funny that I got the job here to my parents because I was the girl who loved Unicorns growing up. As a little girl, I just drew Unicorns all the time, movies with unicorns in them I watched over and over again. I just loved unicorns. And, then when I tried to tell my parents with a straight face that I got a new job in Tennesse at the Unicorn Institute they were… “What?” they thought I was joking. They didn’t realize I was serious, so that’s a fun fact about me. That I ended up working at a school that used to be called the unicorn Institute and I was the girl who loved Unicorns. Nic: Oh that’s awesome. That’s just awesome. So, we’re talking mostly about web accessibility, how would you define that? Jessica: Sure, so, we kind of see accessibility as a holistic thing. So, we see it as making… this is what our students learn. Our students learn accessibility is about making your design usable and open to as many people as possible. And, we also talk about inclusivity as well. So we talk about inclusion versus accessibility with the students, and we have lots of conversations as they’re very closely related. Almost 2 sides of the same coin. Inclusivity is more the principle or the mindset of thinking constantly about how can I make sure that people with a disability or people using a non-conventional device or people in a less than ideal situation can use my content, can use my design, and accomplish what they need to accomplish. And, the accessibility is more like the tactical end. So, that’s more like the implementation. Like, okay, we want somebody blind to be able to use this design so what kind of tactical implementation can we put into the design to make that possible. Where the inclusivity part is more thinking ahead, thinking holistically about how can somebody who is blind or how can somebody who has limited cognitive disability… how can these people use my design and accomplish what they need to accomplish. Nic: Yeah, it’s an interesting distinction that. Jessica: Yeah. You know, we have a lot of conversations about it and there's been some folks who have written some great stuff on the distinction and I just love how they work together very well because accessibility I think a lot of people can get a very… I don’t know if fixed mindset is the right word or just a very narrow view of accessibility where accessibility is about screen readers. So, we need to make sure our code is compliant and that a screen reader can understand the design and read it aloud to the person who is blind, and that is important but screen readers, and designing for people who are blind is only a part of accessibility . There’s so much more to accessibility there are cognitive limitations that you need to consider, low literacy… here in the US, the statistics are pretty staggering about how many people walk around and get through their day who are low literacy. So we need to make sure our content is written in simple and plain language that’s easy to understand. We also need to think about somebody with a cognitive limitation like somebody who is on the autism spectrum, so they process information differently from somebody whose not on the spectrum. So, how can we open up all of these designs and make them accessible and usable to a diverse population with different needs. Nic: I find it interesting that you bring up low-level literacy. Would you say low-level literacy is a disability? Jessica: I don’t know that it’s necessarily a disability. It could be due to a disability. It could be a cognitive limitation you have. Like a learning disability. It could be a result of lack of access to education. There could be lots of reasons for it. But, I just know as a designer, I think what’s important for … and what my students learn is that there's a significantly high percentage of the population who has low literacy so how do you make… how do you open up your content and make it understandable to them? And, we talk with our students about using simple language, using language that the user understands, so, for example, years ago when I was at a different job I was working on a redesign of a hospital website and the main audience for the hospital website was patients and caregivers. So, we actually found during user research that the term heart doctor was much easier to understand for most people than cardiologist. Even though cardiologist is the accurate medical term for a doctor who works with patients on their heart, a heart doctor was much more understandable. So, it’s things like that that are really eye-opening and that help you understand how to make your content as useful and understandable to people as possible. And, a lot of push back that I get when I talk about simplifying content is that people think that you’re dumbing it down. They think, why would I dumb down content for some of my audience or maybe even most of my audience has a college-level degree, so they can read college-level writing so why should I dumb my content down? And my response to that is, it’s not about dumbing it down, it’s about opening it up to all of your customers and all of your users so that they can understand it. And, when you use simple language, even if somebody does have a high reading level… let’s say they have a college degree and they can understand larger words and more jargony words… if you make that language simple for them it’s easier for them to understand because there less cognitive processing that they have to do in order to really understand the content. Nic: Yeah. Jessica, what do you think is the designer's responsibility in making sure developers code accessible pages? Jessica: So, I would say as a designer in terms of coding accessible designs, I’m a big believer in knowing how to code as a designer gives you huge advantages. Now, if you ever want to get somebody riled up in the UX field, ask them, should UX designers know how to code? Because there's lot’s of strong opinions about this. People, are, you know, either they go one way or the other and I’ve seen people get really heated up about this. But, the way I see it is the more you know as a designer the more equipped you are to understand your medium and produce better designs. So, as a designer, if you know how code works then that gives you a literacy and a way… and understanding and you can then work with developers on… you know… collaborating on how to make the code as accessible as possible. Whereas if you’re a designer who doesn’t know how to code and you are working with developers and you are trying to figure out having conversations with them about how to make the design accessible, it’s going to be very difficult for you because you don’t have that knowledge of the medium. So, I think it’s a huge advantage for UX designers who know how to code. I know I started in the industry as a frontend developer, years and years ago. I was a frontend developer for about four years or so before I moved into UX design. Probably even longer because I was coding a lot in College before I got my first job after college. But, I’m so grateful that I have that background because coding has changed a lot since then but the basics are still the same and I can look at front-end code and I can understand what it’s doing, what it’s attempting to do and I can have conversations with developers. I know what ARIA rules are, I know what all sorts of things are so that, you know, if you put me in front of a text editor and said “code this thing and we are going to launch it into production today” that I wouldn’t be the best person to do that, but because I have the literacy and the understanding of the code I’m much more equipped to talk with developers in making accessible code. And, again, going back to our program at Center Centre that’s why we have so many courses, and we do have at least 2 courses that are focused on front-end development so that our students graduate as well rounded UX designers who know how to code. They’re not front-end developers but they know how to code, they understand it, and they can work with developers. Nic: It’s funny, it reminds me of my days when I was younger, still a teen, I was studying to be a chef. And, part of our classes were how to do front room wait staff. We had to learn about that to understand what went into the role of a waiter and, I think it’s the same approach you folks are taking where having the tools really solidify your ability to actually accomplish your work well. Jessica: Yeah, I think what you’re talking about sounds like getting a well-rounded education in what it’s like to run a restaurant and to work a restaurant. Right? Just not just in the kitchen but outside of the kitchen, and we strive similarly, we strive for that with designers. You know, what is it like to work with copywriters, as a student here you have a whole class on copywriting and content strategy. And, we’re not producing you to be… we’re not training you to be a content strategist but we are training you to be able to write good content, and also give you the knowledge that you need to work with copywriters, and know why they do the things they do, work with content strategists, know why they do the things they do…. So yeah, it’s… we are big fans of producing generalists here. That’s what we’ve designed our program to do. And then our students go off and they graduate and most of them get generalist positions but if they want to specialize later they can. But, at least if they specialize later in their careers they’ll have that well-rounded foundation and they’ll understand all the different aspects that go into UX design. Nic: Yeah….. How did you become aware of web accessibility and it’s importance? Jessica: I would say it probably started back when I was a front-end developer just learning about...you know it really started with screenreaders because I think that’s where a lot of people start. That tends to be the focus, or that tends to be the place people go when you think about accessibility and, it started there, and then throughout my career it’s something that I continue to keep in mind and I continue to try to work toward. But, it wasn’t until I got to Center Centre and I was building the curriculum here where I realized all the opportunities you have to really infuse accessibility into the work you do every day. There are far more opportunities to apply it to your work than the more obvious opportunities like frontend development with coding and making it accessible to screenreaders. Or, there's some more obvious opportunities as well with visual design. So, making sure that you use sufficient contrast with text on the background, making sure that you don’t rely on color to convey information in case somebodies color blind…. So on and so forth. There are a lot of resources about that but there’s also some…. I guess less prevalent ways to infuse accessibility into your design. So, speaking of which, we are, at Center Centre, we are between student classes right now so we are using this time to take an opportunity to take a deep dive into the curriculum and look at places where we can infuse accessibility even more than where we have already infused it. And, we have already found a few interesting opportunities. We have a course on critique, so how to give and receive a critique of design work and we hadn’t infused accessibility in there. So we looked for opportunities and we decided right now we’re talking about, so we are accompanied schools, so you don’t get letter grades here. It’s pass,fail. So you basically have to do all the things on the checklist in order to meet the requirements for the course. So we are adding actually things in that checklist that say when you are presenting your design work for critique make sure that you set … make sure that you request feedback about the accessibility of your design. And, also set expectations about what feedback that you want. So, if you’re presenting content that you’ve written and you would like feedback about the accessibility you’re not going to be really focussed on, can a screen reader read this because you're just focussing on content, you’re probably going to be focussing on ‘Does this use simple language?’ ‘Does this use terms the user understand?’ So, and then… that’s… although we already have competencies in the copywriting and content strategy course that requires you to write in simple language we are reinforcing it by making sure that you address it during critique as well so that it doesn’t, you know, slip through the cracks. But, even more importantly so it just becomes normalized. And it becomes part of everyday conversations throughout the design process. So, it’s been really interesting going back in our curriculum and seeing even more opportunities to infuse accessibility and, we are even finding opportunities that haven’t been addressed by the industry. So, what I just explained about putting in competencies where students are required to discuss accessibility during critique, I’ve been researching and looking around and looking at books on critique and I don’t find really any resources that directly address how to talk about accessibility during critique. So, it’s pretty cool that we are actually finding opportunities to add value to the industry that other people haven’t addressed yet. Nic: How can the accessibility industry help with these kinds of things? Jessica: How can the accessibility help with these kinds of things? Or, sorry, how can the industry help with these kinds of things? Nic: Yeah. How can we as accessibility professionals help people like you, the educators in making more of that stuff happen? Jessica: So, I would say I love the accessibility resources that I find. I’m always listening to your show. I’m always on the lookout for new articles and what not. I would say if you come across an idea… if you have a new idea, something that you want to share… maybe you do have an idea on how you can address accessibility in critique, please, by all means, share it. Because people like me and other people out there like there… excuse me, folks like me and other designers do really care about accessibility and are open to ways to infusing it into their practice. So, I would say if you’re an accessibility expert or you just happen to work in this industry and you have an interest in accessibility and you discover something new… or something that’s already been talked about but you have a new perspective on it… please, by all means, share it because folks like me would love to read it. Nic: Thank you for that. So, yeah… I think there's often this balance between rights and responsibilities. And, I do think that accessibility professionals do have a certain responsibility to help people teach and implement accessibility and I think that hearing that voice from someone like you that’s a little bit on the periphery of things is helpful for me to be able to reinforce that message. We should be helping people helping us. Jessica: Of course, yeah. I’m always like I said, I’m always on the lookout for articles. One of my favorite resources, by the way, is the accessibility weekly newsletter which you may be aware of. There's a gentleman who puts it together and it goes out every week and he does a fantastic job of just scouring the web for new articles and podcasts and whatnot, about accessibility. He compiles them, basically creates a list of links and sends it out as an email. He finds fantastic stuff. I’ve found so much new good stuff through that newsletter. It’s resources… I review the resources, We meet about it as a staff here at Center Centre and we talk about, ‘Wow, this is a great idea. This article addresses something that we haven’t thought to address yet so let’s talk about ways to fuse it into the curriculum.’ We recently found great ways to add more competencies to our user research practices course to make sure that… we already require students when they do usability testing or user interviews… whenever they have a user research study they have to have at least one participant with some sort of disability. But we are also looking at ways …. We found some great articles on how to moderate a user research session if the person has a disability. Just great tips on how to make the person comfortable, how to communicate with the person what data to collect… to look for because you’re not just looking for how can we make this design accessible to this person who has a disability but what can we learn from this person who has a disability in making the design not only better for them but better for everyone. Because, as you know, accessibility is expansive so the more accessible something is generally the more usable it is for everybody. So we’ve just been… I think it was through that email newsletter actually that we found some great articles on user research and accessibility so we’ve been…. And you know, again, our curriculum is a living thing. We constantly update it, grow it and evolve it with industry. Because this industry does not sit still. As you know it’s constantly moving so our curriculum evolves with it as well. So it’s been a lot of fun actually. It’s been almost like this treasure hunt that I’ve been on lately while we are in between students and looking for more accessibility resources and finding some real gems, and talking about it with the staff and infusing it into our curriculum. Nic: Yeah. I find it interesting you mention the accessibility weekly newsletter because just yesterday I discovered that he had included one of my podcast episodes in there. So that was quite a bit of an interesting find to see that the show is starting to reach out to these areas. You know? Where people that I don’t personally know start talking about the show. It’s quite good. Jessica: You know, I saw that email today. I read it this morning and I was like “Oh. Accessibility Rules is in there. That’s awesome.” So I did see that today. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed over the last 5 years or so that you’ve been focussing on accessibility? Jessica: Oh, for sure. Like I said earlier, I’ve really started to understand the breadth of accessibility and I’ve started to think about it beyond… like I was talking about it earlier, how to make code accessible to screen readers, and how to make your visual designs accessible to people with visual impairments. That’s all important. And, on top of that, I’ve learned to see accessibility from so many different angles. Like writing content, as I talked about earlier. Making sure that if somebody with a motorskill limitation is using your design that they are able to use your design. Making sure on a touch screen that the tap target size is large enough, you know? Like, I think of my nephew, he’s been disabled since birth and he has limited use of motor skills so he doesn’t have fine motor skills and I’ve seen him use an iPad before and he can use it but the touch target areas need to be larger... Nic: Yeah Jessica: ...and making larger touch target areas doesn’t just help somebody with a disability like my nephew but it helps everybody because you have… there’s just more room for error and more room for forgiveness while you’re tapping around and using the design. So, all sorts of ways. To think about it, again, I talked earlier about somebody on the autism spectrum. It’s very helpful if you have a user who is on the autism spectrum to be as consistent as possible throughout your design. Always putting things in the same place when relevant and when applicable. That really puts people at ease and calms their stress levels if they’re on the autism spectrum because it can be stressful dealing with a design that’s inconsistent… Nic: Yeah Jessica: And again that can help somebody who's not on the autism spectrum just because consistency tends to create predictability. And of course, we can go down a rabbit hole in terms of consistency because some designers get so focused on making things consistent that they don’t make it usable. That’s actually a thing and I’ve seen it happen before in the industry, but, to back up and just keep it at a high level… it’s good to keep things consistent, not just from visual design and branding and aesthetic perspective but also to ease the cognitive load on your users. Nic: Jessica, let’s wrap up this week with a last question for you. What would you say is your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Jessica: I would say the thing I’m most proud of is what I’ve been doing the last week here at Center Centre which really is taking a deep dive into really searching between the cracks and looking for more opportunities to help other people learn about accessibility. You know, reinforcing the more well-known approaches that we can take and also looking for newer approaches that either aren’t as popular or aren’t as well known or aren’t even out there yet. It’s been really, really exciting and it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot. Nic: Wonderful. Thank you. Jessica Ivins, thank you for being such a great guest. We’ll continue our conversation next week. Jessica: Thank you so much. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E083 – Interview with Stephanie Walter – Part 2 May 27, 2019

Stephanie Walter says there’s a lot of things she thought everybody knew about accessibility that actually not a lot of people knew. So, she thinks in general people know that somewhere on the internet some people are blind. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 83. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com This week I’m continuing my conversation with Stephanie Walter. We had a great chat last week, spoke about all kinds of things including the differences between regulations in Europe and North America, and Stephanie was telling us how she managed to use the color yellow in her portfolio and keep it accessible. So, that was kind of interesting. Stephanie, welcome back. Stephanie: Hey Nic: We were talking last week about really positive stuff. Let’s look at something that might be fun but also can show a little bit of the problems with accessibility. What would be your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Stephanie: Generally it's the lack of knowledge. And, like, design decisions you can change. For instance, when you arrive on a project and they use this really pretty but super like, green or orange color. And, you’re like, okay I’ll have to deal with that. And, then the client really wants to see this color because it’s the color for the graphical identity. So they kind of expect that if for instance, the color of their graphical identity is orange or light green they expect the call to action to be in this color, and things like that. But, if you want a call to action with an orange color you end up with having dark text on it which is cool for Halloween… but not super fun for the rest of the year, you know? Nic: Yeah Stephanie: So when you have to deal with these kinds of things… sometimes you can cheat a little bit. Sometimes, for instance, I add, like, this visual identity with different shades of grey, and they were using one which was called light grey, as a text on white background. And, you wouldn’t pass the contrast ratio. What I did, I just changed the grey because I knew that nobody was going to check this. So, it was on internal products. It wasn’t like something that was going to be public on the stores, and things like that. Because I think you can’t do that, for instance, you have marketing people checking in every color. But, this was for an internal product, so, I kind of took the liberty. I asked the project owner and we decided to do it together, and I said “yeah, I’m going to change a little bit the grey so it will pass the contrast ratio. It will be easier to read. If you need to kind of go top and down all of the different level of hierarchy to manage to change your grey or change it, nobodies going to notice.” Nic: Yeah Stephanie: So, for somethings sometimes you get lucky. Especially in, like, internal projects they don’t really care. But, if you’re working for other companies with, like, super light colors or things like that… Nic: Yeah Stephanie: … it can be really, really, really frustrating. And, also, like, another thing is when you arrive at the beginning of the project and they’re like, “yeah, we don’t care about accessibility“ and you tell them it’s a legal requirement and you insist and you insist but at some point you need to know, also, how to pick your battles. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: I’m usually like...if I warned you 3 times I consider that as a consultant I did my job. So if you’re still want to go against my advice, in the end, you’re the client. So, I’m not going to force you and what happens is like, 3 years later the client comes back and complains because someone arrived and said yeah, this isn’t accessible. You’re supposed to be accessible and you’re like, “yeah, told you so” la la la la la. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: And then the issue with that is that you have to correct all the accessibility issues of the website. And, usually, it’s the worst because you should do it from the start and you put it into your process, usually it doesn’t cost that much money, but if you had someone that built a whole website and then you need to fix all the code to make it accessible… Nic: Yeah Stephanie: … that’s when it’s going to cost you a lot of money. Nic: How do you protect yourself as a consultant against these kinds of clients that don’t want to know a thing, and then, you know, 2, 3 years later come back and they say “hey, we got sued and we have complaints and it’s all your fault.” How do you document that so you can really protect yourself? Stephanie: In Europe, like, not in the UK, I know there were legal suits in the UK, that’s why I’m saying in Europe. But, I haven’t heard of a country in like France, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, where there was a legal suit because of accessibility issues. I’ve heard this in the US, like, have actions. So, that’s maybe another thing. It’s like the threat isn’t real so they don’t really care but what we usually do is like first I do an email, then I escalate it to the manager and usually, it’s the manager or project deliverer… someone higher in the hierarchy who is sending the email. Nic: Right Stephanie: At some point it’s like, you keep the emails and you have someone say, “Okay, this is what our expert told you. If you don’t want to do it, well we won’t do it.” But, yeah, have like email and things like that to make sure a few years later you can say, “Yeah, but this isn’t our fault.” Or even contracts, I don’t think you can sign a contract to say you don’t want it to be accessible. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: That one reaction is awful. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: But, I have signed documents. I know designers who do that. When their client wants to do something they don’t really agree with or they’re afraid it’s going to backfire they make them sign a document telling that it’s the client's responsibility if something happens. Nic: What do you think is the conventional wisdom about accessibility? You know, the one thing that everybody knows about accessibility? Stephanie: Wow. There’s a lot of things I thought everybody knew about accessibility that actually not a lot of people knew. So, I think in general people know that somewhere on the internet some people are blind. That’s kind of level zero so they acknowledge the fact that there's blind users. But, that’s pretty much it. They… I don’t think most of the people kind of understand the range and spectrum of different disabilities. They see blind people because they kind of, I think, in their mind understand that someone who is blind can’t process a website in the same way. But, even that there’s some misconception. I remember there was an article… I don’t remember if it’s Buzzfeed or something else, it was basically, like, top ten fails and one of those fails for them was a blind girl, she had a cane, and she was looking at a phone screen. It was like, ha ha ha blind people don’t use a phone screen… yes! They do! Nic: Yeah, I remember that. Stephanie: It was awful and backfired. But, that's the thing. There are so many misconceptions. And even with like, blind people, I studied languages with someone who was blind. Everybody assumed he couldn’t see anything because he had a cane. He could see things, he just needed to have examiner events in a super big font so he could read it. If he put it pretty close to his eyes he could read it. So, even that. Like, it’s not black or white, it’s not like… even for blindness, like people understand some people are blind but they might not imagine that even there-there are a huge variety of disabilities. Nic: I think the misconception is definitely something that is a problem, you know? Stephanie: It’s the same for wheelchairs. I knew someone who, I don’t remember the name of the syndrome but she’s super exhausted. So, sometimes she needs a wheelchair to rest because she can’t walk but the issue is she can stand… well, not the issue but for the people around she can use her legs so when they see her standing up and going out of the wheelchair but they don’t know her, it’s the same thing. Like, “oh, you’re not really disabled,” yes she is. She can’t stand up for 15 minutes otherwise she will be exhausted so she needs the wheelchair, but, just because she's in a wheelchair doesn’t mean she can’t sometimes use her legs. So, it’s kind of the same issue. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: People imagine the extreme… They imagine it's like black or white. And, they can’t really… they usually don’t see what’s in between, and that’s the complicated thing about accessibility I think. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is for most people to fail at succeeding in implementing web accessibility? Do you think that’s the issue of misconception or something else? Stephanie: They just maybe don’t know. It’s the same for my developer who didn’t know that they could link the label to the input in your form and add it. So they… once you’ve told them they will do it because it’s kind of easy and doesn't cost a lot of time to do that. But, most of the time they just don’t know, and they also might not know where to look for information. I had someone ask me about the accessibility of native apps. And, frankly, I didn’t know where to look. I checked little bit US guidelines… Nic: Yeah Stephanie: ...but, it was a React app… Nic: Yeah Stephanie: .. to be honest, I’m so much used to frameworks not caring about accessibility that I didn’t think about checking The React documentation for accessibility guidelines. And, actually, they have a page on accessibility. But, I’m so used to frameworks doing whatever they want and not caring that’s… yeah… looking at the documentation of the framework wasn’t the first thing I thought about. And someone on Twitter was actually like, “React has a really nice page on accessibility “ and I was like, “yeah, that makes sense.” Nic: Yeah. That’s interesting because I’m also a little bit like that where I think frameworks are indeed doing whatever it is they want and not necessarily caring. Or, perhaps not really knowing… I don’t know if it’s a lack of care but I would not have.. My first reaction would not be going to look at the documentation for the framework. Stephanie: Yeah Nic: Yeah… What do you think the greatest challenges are for the field of web accessibility moving forward? Stephanie: Making people care about it enough to build accessible frameworks. I’ve got another issue, it’s like I’ve certain times read tutorials on React or Angular and stuff like that and the code isn’t accessible. Like, a simple form isn’t accessible. And, then you tell the author and they’re all like, “Yeah, but this tutorial is about the javascript, not the HTML. If you want an accessible HTML you can add your forms and your ideas.” I’m like, “Yeah, I can. But, the issue is like, a lot of people learn by copy-pasting code so if you’re writing a tutorial with non-accessible code you are kind of spreading these… not misconception but you have a lot of developers who will learn by copy-pasting this code, and yeah, it’s totally normal to not know how to bind a label with an input if you’ve never seen it in any tutorial. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: It’s silly but it’s the same for CSS tutorials. When someone is writing a tutorial again… I think I have an issue with forms on the web because this is where I see the things you could really, really quick fix. And they don’t do it. So, it’s the same as in this article and the CSS was amazing and then someone in the comments just told the person to add the right attributes into the form, and the author was like, “yeah but this is about CSS” and, yeah… same answer. Okay, but people will copy-paste your HTML as well. Nic: Yeah. That is a problem. I think education in a computer science degree’s and definitely tutorials all over the place, that don’t include accessibility, will cause a long term problem. Stephanie: Yes Nic: If you weren’t a designer what profession would you like to do? Stephanie: I don’t know. Hair colorist Nic: Hair Colorist. Stephanie: Yeah Nic: Would you use yellow and orange as well in hair coloring? As you did in your portfolio? Stephanie: Yes. It’s actually my current color is like purple, pink, orange and yellow. Nic: People can see you come from a distance. Stephanie: Yeah. But it’s a nightmare because when you wash them it kind of merges and mixes. Sometimes it bleeds out, like, the purple is especially annoying one and bleeds on the yellow one. So, yeah, I think I will have also a lot of issues with hair color. Not the same one as a web designer but still. But, it is fun, you can do a lot of stuff with hair color. Nic: Who inspires you, Stephanie? Stephanie: A lot of people. I follow a lot of people on Twitter and, yeah, usually. I don’t know. I’m really bad at names. I can see the avatars but not the names. I’m sorry. Nic: That’s okay. A lot of people inspiring you, that’s fine. So, let’s wrap up with one, perhaps critical, question. If there was one thing people should remember about accessibility what would it be? Stephanie: It will cost you a lot of money if you do it at the end of the project, so do it at the beginning of the project. Something like that Nic: Yeah, that’s a good thought. I like that. Thank you. Stephanie Walter, thank you for being such a great guest and I will see you around on the internet. Stephanie: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this, and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com. Big shoutout to my sponsors and my Patreons, without your support I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit Patreon.com/Steenhout if you want to support the Accessibility Rules podcast. Thanks you.

E082 – Interview with Stephanie Walter – Part 1 May 24, 2019

Stephanie Walter tells us that designers should provide a roadmap to their design for the developer, but in many projects, there just isn't time to do that. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is episode 82. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking to Stephanie Walter. Stephanie, thanks for joining me for this conversation about web accessibility. Stephanie: Hi, thanks for having me. Nic: I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief introduction who is Stephanie Walter? Stephanie: Oh. So I’m a user experience designer currently based in Luxembourg. I’m super interested in a lot of things, especially mobile design and also a little bit of accessibility. Otherwise, I like to travel a lot and give conferences all over the world. I teach at the University. I do a lot of things. I also have a blog with a few articles on it. And, yeah. That’s pretty much it. Nic: You’re juggling a lot of different things. Stephanie: Yeah. Nic: So, let's get warmed up, and, to get started tell me something most people would not know about yourself. Stephanie: A few people might know it now because I put this into a conference description but I actually designed a crane monitoring application. Which is kind of super weird. And, also I really really enjoy not design. Like a lot of designers want to do this really nice cute things. I kind of enjoy designing supercomplex forms, tables, things like that. I had once to redesign a form that was automatically generated using a SVG file and it was a form with seven levels so you could have box into box into box into box. You could have until seven different levels of reusable and editable components in this form. It’s for customs and taxations form. But, yeah. I had a lot of fun doing that. Nic: You know, that sounds like a great challenge. Stephanie: Yeah Nic: It’s one of the things I talk with people a lot and they tell me, “Hey, Nic. Accessibility is so difficult. It’s such a chore” but you seem like you’re actually tackling it like as I tell people, you like a challenge. Look at it as a challenge. Stephanie: True Nic: What was the biggest challenge in making that form work from an accessibility perspective? Stephanie: Ah, I only designed it so I didn’t do the HTML and CSS. But already from... Nic: Okay Stephanie: ...from an accessibility perspective, for instance, like error messages, they were in red and that was pretty much it so the difference between an error message and information message because they also like this for taxations. So, we have a lot of different information messages and the only thing that was differentiating those two messages was the color. So between blue and red which is already an issue… Nic: Oh yeah Stephanie: So even that kind of thing. It was a quick fix, we just added a little icon, a different one for the real errors and another one for information. Nic: Right Stephanie: But that was like, big improvements already, and like, information architecture. So, this is more about visual information but basically one of the biggest issues at the beginning is when you have seven different levels you weren’t quite sure in which level you were. So, really having a visual with also like the developer did a lot of things to have an information architecture that let people understand on what level they are. It was quite the challenge. I ended up printing the form on A4 sheets and went with a ruler and tried to put those lines on top of the form to understand indentation and tried to make sure the current information was put together. It was crazy. I don’t know how long the form was but… yeah. It was fun. Nic: Excellent. So the primary purpose of our chat today is web accessibility and every person I speak to seems to have a slightly different definition. How would you define web accessibility? Stephanie: Making sure it works for as many users as possible with different disabilities. Also, different context. Like, make sure that you build a website that isn’t going to be an issue for some of your users. So, like, try to not put more fences than there is already in some technologies. Don’t make it worse, because, I think there was this fucking webpage website that was basically a webpage without any CSS, without any Javascript. Just text. And they were like, “yeah this is responsible, usable and accessible “ I’m not… I don’t 100% agree with the usable because since you didn’t have a container the number of characters were line dependent on your browser size. But, still, the idea was to say to people, yeah look, by default whatever you put in the browser is kind of responsive, accessible and we with our technology break that. It is easy to do because it was just so many, like, text. If you start playing around with forms and all of those supercomplex content, of course, it gets a little bit more messy. But, the idea behind was quite interesting, saying okay, we have the tool to build something that works and isn’t broken but sometimes we add some extra layer of whatever technology and we break it. Usually not on purpose. Nic: Yeah, usually not on purpose but often out of ignorance I think Stephanie: Yeah. But that’s the thing. I’m not a frontend developer but I know about HTML like Semantic HTML because of my background, and sometimes I have to fight just to have a label linked to the input. Into the forms. Like, I’m not talking about fancy ARIA stuff, things refreshing on the pages, complex repeatables, form elements… I just want to have a label linked to the input and because… yeah, this is important for accessibility but it also adds usability to be able to actually be able to touch the long label instead of sometimes those little checkboxes or things like that. And even that I’m sometimes confronted with developers who are like “What, how do you do that?” Sure, let me show you. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: So even that is complicated sometimes. Nic: This is an interesting topic. One of the things I am always curious about is what is a designers responsibility in making sure a developer codes an accessible page? Because often… often developers get a design and it’s a little bit like a photo of a good looking cake but there's no real recipe on how to make the cake and when you compare what the photo was to what the final design is, what the final… not design, the final page looks like, it’s often very different. So, where does designer responsibilities start and end with that? Stephanie: I think it depends on what your designer does, because as I said, due to my background I have knowledge in HTML and CSS so a little bit about accessibility and code. I know a lot of designers that don’t do any HTML and CSS but still, I think as a designer you’re supposed to give some elements to your developers to help them. For instance, were you designing a form you can be like… I don’t like to say lazy so I’m going to put a big warning in here. I don’t think designers who only design one input sheet are lazy. Sometimes they don’t know and sometimes they don’t have the time to do more which usually, for instance, when designing forms, the input they have a style for the default. I have a style for the focus, I have the style for the input when it’s filled, it’s the same for a button. I have a style for hover, I have a style for focus and things like that. So, I think this should be the designer's responsibility to provide those kinds of components in different states to the developers. The issue is in many projects they just don’t have the time to do that. So, that’s why I’m not saying it’s like… most of the time I don’t think they’re lazy. Sometimes you just forget. Okay the developer is going to take care of this kind of effects because it’s happening in the browser. And, whether you’re designing in Sketch or Adobe XE or Photoshop. All of those tools are still static so what you design, as what you said, a pretty picture but you don’t have all the interactions. So, I think the first thing to do as a designer is if you have time and if you have a budget to do that… prepare those interactions so the developer actually also thinks about doing that. Sometimes they just forget about the focus or the hover over buttons or form fields and things like that. And, then make sure it got implemented. So, ask to see the final result and test it into the browser, like, not only visually testing checking if it looks … Nic: Stephanie, how did you become aware of the importance of web accessibility? Stephanie: I think I was… it was a conference in France that’s like… yeah, there’s a few conferences in France and you have ParisWeb that had a huge track on its accessibility. So, this was kind of the first time I heard about it a little bit. We spoke about it while learning HTML at University but it wasn’t a big focus on accessibility, it was a focus on semantics which results in accessible code which is great but it wasn’t like, ‘do semantic for accessibility’ it was ‘do semantic to pass the W3 validation test’. Because that was the times when you just have these W3 validated little yellow stickers at the bottom of your website. So, yeah, I kind of learned about it at conferences. Then I was a little bit more interested and when I came back… I was working in Germany, and then I came back to work in France for a small web agency and they had an accessibility expert when I arrived. Then they hired another one so we had nine people in the team with two accessibility experts, which is kind of amazing compared to the number of accessibility experts you see in other companies. So, yeah, one of the main focus of this small company in France was actually to introduce accessible code and also acessible designs. Nic: Right. So, has your view of accessibility changed over time since you first started becoming aware of it to where you’re at today? Are there things that you used to think that have changed or… yeah. Stephanie: I feel like when I started I think performance was still in the definition of accessibility at that time. Something like making a website accessible to people whatever they were using, and I think performance was a criteria as well. People with slow bandwidth and things like that. So I think they removed it or am I mistaken? Nic: I don’t think performance was ever part of the… Stephanie: Okay Nic: … standards in North America. It might’ve been in Europe so I’m less familiar with that aspect. Stephanie: Yeah, maybe. And, yeah I’ve seen more and more countries embracing accessibility today. Like, you have the Microsoft inclusive design principles and things like that. And, also, the thing like they added a few things in new norms which are more like in what they would call cognitive issues. So, I feel like at the beginning it was a little more restrictive and they kind of widened the accessibility spectrum. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: Because there's something about animation, motion sensor, motion sickness… things like that into the new criteria. Nic: As a designer how do you leverage the new WCAG success criteria that target cognitive impairments? How does that help you or make your life more difficult? Stephanie: For the moment… the thing is, in Luxembourg, there wasn’t… no not only in Luxembourg but in Europe there was a law that was trying to influence the WCAG criteria but it was the 2.0 so, to be honest at the moment I would be super glad if we were even able to inform the first version, like 2.0. That would be amazing. So, that’s still, like… yeah… this is kind of a big issue for us as well. Like… Nic: So, you’re saying that in Luxembourg you have to… you have to adhere to version 1.0 of WCAG, not the… Stephanie: No, 2.0 Nic: 2.0. Okay. Stephanie: It’s a little bit strange because, you know, in France, they have the RGAA which is kind of based on the WCAG but a little bit different. And in Luxembourg, it’s supposed to be the WCAG 2.0 but they have this thing called Renow which is guidelines not only for accessibility theres also guidelines for user experience. Thing’s like that. But, yeah, it’s basically the same criteria so when you’re doing a website for an institution, something like that, you are supposed to follow the rules but usually, I’m like the elephant in the room. I arrive, I’m, like, “yeah you have bad accessibility “ and people are like “what are you talking about?” “well, you know, you’re an institution, this is a public website so…” the strange part is usually I’m the one kind of bringing the news about all of the legal aspects of that. I’m like, “Hey, hi, I’m a designer” I’m not supposed to be the one, like, you’re supposed to know about that. You have a public website or something. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: But, yeah, it also kind of brings a lot of issues. For instance, one of our clients, we needed… they needed to use, or they wanted to use a framework and they ended up in a meeting where they asked me, “Yeah can we use prime MG?" and I was like, I’m not even sure what the project is about and you’re asking me what framework you can use? So I got the frontend developer and the accessibility expert of the team and he told them that, yeah, you could use whatever framework you want, you know, because it’s angular so in the end it's HTML and CSS. We just have to make this component accessible but the question was, how much work is it going to be to just make this component accessible? Nic: Yeah Stephanie: So it’s always kind of complicated and a huge debate when you’re the one asking about accessibility while you’re not really the kind of expert in the team. You’re just a designer raising a few questions. Usually, people look at each other like, “What? What is she talking about?” Nic: So, yeah. Other than some surprise what are your clients' typical response when you say, “Hey, you have to build something that’s going to be accessible”? Do they typically go, “Oh, alright we’ll make it happen.” Or are they kind of negative and are they pushing back about it? Stephanie: It really depends on the client. Usually, they are kind of okay as long as it won’t impact the budget. That’s usually not a given. But the thing is with the European website, for instance, they have created this framework and if you use it the right way… like you use those colors the way they’re supposed to be combined and their components… you have this whole framework that has already accessible components. So, usually when I… what I do now is like, “Are you going to use this European framework for the redesign of your website?” and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to use it” and I’m like, “Okay, sure” so that should be fine. But for some of the clients, I think as long as nobodies complaining. But, sometimes people do complain, for instance, we have a website with all the laws of Luxembourg and we were asked to do an accessibility audit review of this website because some blind users complained. So, some blind users went to the government and were like, “Hey, this is the website with the law of the country and we can’t access those. Nic: Right Stephanie: And we’re supposed to… I don’t know about Luxembourg but in some other countries, it’s like, thou shall not... they shall know about the laws or something like that. So as soon as a law is published you’re kind of supposed to know about it but if you can’t access those laws… so, even those websites are not like perfectly accessible. It was fine, there were a few issues with the search. That was the main big problem but frankly was complicated because, again, those are … the websites, they’re doing it themselves. The content of the law is generated using a PDF that gets parsed and then it tries to generate whatever HTML it can. Nic: Yeah. Stephanie: So, basically there's no title hierarchy for instance. So, it’s just like a big blob of HTML soup. Nic: Yeah Stephanie: .. and totally understand that a screenreader goes crazy with that kind of soup. So, yeah. That’s what it is. That’s the complicated parts. This is the thing we told them we can help you with whatever’s around the law but if you’re generating this with your kind of HTML and CSS soup we can’t do a lot about it. So, you need to change that as well. Nic: Yeah. That makes sense... Stephanie: … you need to change that as well. That’s the complicated… But I checked in different countries. France it’s the same soup and I think that… I felt that the one in Quebec was going to be a little bit better but it’s still like super, super ugly HTML. Nic: Yeah, it’s very tricky. I think any country that decides to draw their own standards instead of rely on the W3C’s, WCAG guidelines is going to end up having issues. It’s a… I think it’s unavoidable. Stephanie: Oh but no, in Luxembourg there is like WCAG is just like this Renow thing is just a nice way to tell them they have to follow the WCAG. Nic: Okay Stephanie: You know, more kind of digest way. Nic: Right Stephanie: And also they put, as I said, usability performances. Renow is kind of basic guidelines for websites in Luxembourg. Nic: Stephanie, what’s your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Stephanie: Can I brag? Nic: Yes, of course! That’s the whole purpose of the question. For you to brag. Go for it. Stephanie: Using yellow in might portfolio Nic: Okay… Stephanie: No, I’m kidding but it’s quite a challenge to use yellow on a design and orange so I’m super happy to. I found a way to use yellow and it’s not like, not readable and still accessible and it works pretty well. So… guess that was one of the challenges. I was like, yeah I really want to use yellow but it’s going to be a nightmare for accessibility purposes. Nic: So, describe to us how… how did you make it work? Stephanie: I have this big place where I have like yellow background so I use a really dark color on top of that. Like, the buttons are pretty much okay. I have an issue with the linking at the beginning where I was just underlining those with yellow but it didn’t have sufficient contrast. So, what I ended up doing is like, having a double, kind of, line. Like the CSS underline of the link plus the yellow. Nic: Oh yeah? Stephanie: Which is no… and also I have some fun. I really wanted to keep this kind of strange effect where the underline goes a little bit further than the actual text, so I played around with a CSS line to make that happen. That really was quite a… yeah, it was kind of my challenge. I was like, yeah, I really want a yellow and purple website but that’s going to be a nightmare to make that accessible. So, I… yeah, I used a color with small little touches at different places. Nic: That sounds really interesting. We are going to have to provide our listeners to… with the link to the site so they can actually have a look and see what it translates to. Stephanie, let’s finish this first conversation with a simple question. What’s your favorite word? Stephanie: In English it’s ‘moist’. Nic: Moist. Why? Stephanie: I think it’s super funny. Nic: Okay Stephanie: I just don’t know why. It’s just like… “moist”, “moist”, “moist”... yeah. Nic: Okay, thank you. Stephanie: It doesn’t have any meaning. I just like how it sounds. Nic: You like the way it sounds. That’s wonderful. Alright, Stephanie Walter, thank you for being a guest on the show this week and I look forward to continue talking with you next week. Stephanie: Thank you Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2019 Special Episode May 16, 2019

To highlight Global Awareness Accessibility Day, I had a wonderful panel discussion with four people involved in accessibility: Courey Elliott, Dennis Lembrée, Shannon Finnegan, and Dan O'Mahony Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: You’re listening to the Accessibility Rules podcast. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. This is a special episode. Today is the 8th Global Awareness Accessibility day. The transcript for the show is available on the podcast website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio. Connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video. Twilio.com. Last year GAAD’s special episode was very well received so I’m using the same format. I have 4 guests with me and we will have a panel discussion about … well, accessibility of course. So I’ll let them briefly introduce themselves before we dive into the discussion. Hi everyone. Dennis: Hi Dan: Hello Shannon: Hi Courey: Hello Nic: So, I’m going to pick on Dennis. Why don’t you go first? Dennis: Sure. Thanks for having me, Nic. My name is Dennis Lembrée. I work as a senior accessibility consultant at Deque Systems, about 3 and a half years now. Before that, I was at eBay and PayPal and I am pretty well known for a blog and a Twitter account called Web Axe and a web-based accessible Twitter app called Easy Chirp. Nic: Thank you. Shannon, how about you? Shannon: Hi, yeah. Thank you for having me. I’m Shannon Finnegan. I am an artist and have recently been doing work around web accessibility through a year-long residency that I’m doing at an arts organization in Brooklyn, New York called Eye Beam. That’s an organization that kind of supports artists who are working around the intersection of art and technology. Nic: Sweet. That’s going to be interesting to hear about. Not a topic we often discuss. Dennis: Very Cool Nic: Yeah. So, Dan, all the way from Ireland. Tell us a little bit about you. Dan: Hi, everybody. Yeah, my name’s Dan O’Mahony and I live in Dublin, Ireland. I work for a charity called Child Vision. I’ve been there for 12 years and I work with accessible documents and creating visual accessible materials for kids who are blind and visually impaired throughout the country of Ireland. In my other life I kind of like to talk about web accessibility and basically assistive technology… things like that. And, I kind of design websites and apps and have great fun with all that too. Um… yeah. That’s me! Nic: Do you have any time to sleep with all that? Dan: Do you know, you’d think. I’m always doing something and it’s really enjoyable and I don’t know why I like it so much but I suppose when you find something you really like go and grab it with two hands and keep running with it and you don’t know where it’s going to go. Nic: Yeah. Thank you. So that leaves us with Courey. How are ya? Courey: Hi, I’m Courey Elliot and I am a software engineer at Lonely Planet and I do general engineering as well as I participate on our accessibility team. Nic: Thank you. Right so we’re talking about accessibility especially awareness of web accessibility today and one of the things that I’ve noticed over doing accessibility work for well over 2 decades by now, is that we’re still facing the same basic accessibility-related problems today that we were facing 20 years ago. For example, you know, there’s not a single audit I do that I don’t have to talk about form labels and alt text for images and that kind of stuff. So, why are we still facing those issues do you think? Courey: I feel like a lot of the time it’s one of those issues of if you don’t need that there’s a lack of awareness that there is a problem. So, I think that a lot of times people just don’t know. It’s just plain ignorance. Dan: Yeah, I would agree and I think sometimes it’s not that they don’t want… someone doesn’t want to put accessible features onto their website. They’re just not aware of it. And there’s been many occassions where I pull up a website, someone's website on my phone and I turn on the screen reader just to show them how their website performs and when I’m accessing it in a different way other than the normal visual way and they’re kind of… they say, “Oh, that’s so cool” but it’s kind of like it’s a novelty thing, you know? It’s not seen as… important is not the right word, but it’s not seen as something they would bother too much about I think that sometimes they’re always thinking of their bottom line and how to get something done as quick as they can and get it out. Get their website up and out as quick as they can. And sometimes the whole accessibility part of it is kind of left by the wayside or it’s factored into their usability testing at the last section which just doesn’t work with … by that stage it’s just… you know, it’s just not going to work in that way. Dennis: Yeah, I totally agree with those points. Another big issue, I think, is education. And, I think that semantic HTML is a huge part of accessibility . At least on the web. And can benefit other areas too. But web accessibility, I mean, semantic HTML as a lot of us knows, is extremely important and unfortunately that slips through the cracks. You know, HTML isn’t given nearly as much attention as it should be in education. And also, not only in schools but like, online too. If you were taking some kind of web development course implements of HTML is often… semantic HTML is often overlooked… yeah. Dan: Yeah, I read a great quote one time. I don’t know who said it but he said HTML is grey, HTML is boring but it provides a very solid foundation on which to build fantastic products. Once you have it right from the beginning it just grows from there. Dennis: I think another piece is taking a look at organizations that hire designers and accessibility should definitely be taken into account when hiring and asking what are your qualifications. I think if that’s done more then that would mean more people aware and interested in digital accessibility. And, hiring, you know, folks to do that would just show that this is important to the organization or the company and that’s extremely important. So, job postings hopefully… you see it more now, it’s becoming … with all the lawsuits in the United States there’s much more awareness but fortunately we are starting to see some of that in job listings in asking if you have IAAP certification and things like that so I think that’s going in the right direction. Nic: Shannon, you had a point you wanted to make? Shannon: Yeah, I think... You know, I work across digital accessibility and physical accessibility and I think one of the big issues that I see is really around a failure of imagination and a failure to recognize disabled people as kind of part of our communities and part of… and not only as kind of people who might be receiving information but also as creators and thinkers and leaders and I think as we see more disabled people entering into design roles and if we can kind of shift some of these pipeline issues around that then I think that will really help. Nic: Is that a little bit the concept of nothing about us without us? Shannon: Yeah. I mean, I think… yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s in terms of… yeah, that just having disabled people in the room is always going to be the best option in terms of approaching accessibility. We are the experts about what we need and how we engage with different systems and so the more that I think disabled people can be involved in the creation process, that's going to be really beneficial. Nic: Hmmm Shannon: I think it’s important to note though that the onus should not be exclusively on the disabled to educate and further that. That should be a universal. We should be involved but that should not be, you know, “disabled people want access so you should make access. Courey: Yeah. I think it’s really different to have this kind of expectation that someone whose disabled is going to be able… is always going to kind of push for accessibility and that they will understand all types of accessibility. And, I think that’s really different than, you know, specifically hiring someone for their expertise and kind of working with someone in that way. Nic: So we are talking about 3 possible solutions to increase awareness. We’ve mentioned getting more people with disabilities involved. We are talking about including accessibility in the general education whether its as computer science degrees or it’s just tutorials online and online boot camps. Um, the question I have for you is...I read just today actually that last year there were over 2500 lawsuits for accessibility in the United States. Do you believe lawsuits will help resolve that? Help improve the general awareness about accessibility and actually change things? Dan: Unfortunately, yes. Accessibility hasn’t… digital accessibility hadn’t really taken off until… at least in the United States… until all these lawsuits started happening and, as unfortunate as it sounds that’s the reality. These large companies, you know, profits is… you know. Money and profits is the goal of a large corporation so if we can avoid bad PR and avoid lawsuits etc then that benefits them so it’s in their advantage to make their product accessible. Now hopefully in that process, a lot of companies and a lot of organizations will learn that, hey, this accessibility thing is pretty cool and really helps usability and all these other things. So, in the long run hopefully, that will happen and so we’ll see. Dennis: It’s kind of like the ground up. The designers… if they’re educated in accessibility they’ll motivate the middle managers and hopefully the CEO at some stage to kind of take into account that this is a really cool thing. That you’re increasing it for everybody. You’re increasing usability for everybody by designing a product that’s usable by everybody. Which is going to impact your bottom line. I was going to say in terms of… I kind of follow what’s going on on the other side of the pond in terms of all the lawsuits and stuff. It’s slightly different over here in Europe. Dan: Slightly? Dennis: Slightly. As in, I haven’t seen as many lawsuits going on. I haven’t read about as many. We just passed the European Accessibility Act just passed I think a couple of days ago. So this is kind of like an EU wide part and that’s giving organizations, sorry it’s giving goverments I think public bodies 6 years to get into line, for want of a better phrase and have everything conforming to WCAG 2.1 version AA or whatever. I’d say that’s the standard that’s going to hit but that going… I don’t know how that’s going because each country has their own national laws while the EU law is superior to every other national law, it’s going to take a long time to get it into place so, I mean, the more that people like us and anybody that has any sort of interest in this kind of areas, to post it from the ground up, it’s just going to benefit. And, then in terms of the European Union, if you look at Ireland… I was saying to people, Ireland is very immature when it comes to accessibility, unfortunately. But, you know. Dan: Yeah, laws… Nic: … thank you… Dan: … I think laws can definitely help but, enforcing those laws is a whole ‘nother thing. So, Nic, I don’t know if you have any input about the AODA in Ontario what happened or didn’t happen with that. Or look at sections 508 in the United States, or 504… yeah. So those, it’s hard. It takes a lot of energy and resources to actually enforce. Nic: Yeah, the enforcement is always the tricky bit and I think the cultural background of each country’s areas is going to have a strong impact on that because, you know, we all know the US is lawsuit prone but that’s not so much the case in Canada or Europe or New Zealand or other places. But we need to make change happen. Let’s go onto my next question, which is not really a question but a challenge for you folks. Accessibility in Javascript frameworks. Discuss that. Dennis: That’s a loaded question. Dan: Which Javascript framework?... Nic: Yes… Dennis: Well they all work fairly similarly, I mean, I think… I mean I think they break, you know, accessibility right off the bat, I mean, a lot of folks will tell you... A lot of developers will try to defend the Javascript frameworks and say it doesn’t but, I mean, it does. It breaks the whole basic functionality of a webpage. So, two things particularly is when you’re reloading a web page you’re not reloading a web page in a Javascript framework, you’re just re-rendering the [dom?16:30] and kind of injecting a new screen onto that same page. So, the 2 main problems I see with that is 1) the page title often isn’t updated to reflect the content of the page, of the screen and 2) maybe more importantly is that the focus, keyboard focus is lost or is not managed so if I’m any kind of keyboard user I’ll end up in the bottom of the page or in some strange place that makes no sense and I either have to start back from the beginning and … Dan: Yeah Dennis: … or just wander around and figure out what happened or where I’m at and what’s the content now. Dan: Yeah I tried building… I wouldn’t have too much experience with Angular but I was playing with React which is the Javascript framework that everyone’s talking about and has been talking about for the last year, but what I found myself doing was I’m just putting ARIA everything into my HTML that’s going to be rendered to the root node, but, then when I was playing with my screen reader, and this could just be my own fault, but I tried to test with a screen reader and that virtual buffer just wasn’t updating and I probably needed to put in ARIA live here, there, and everywhere and it just seemed like a lot of work when, as you said, Dennis, HTML made it a lot easier. So I just went back and recoded it all in just plain HTML for the purpose of this specific web app it worked… but I don’t know. Nic: Courey, as a developer with Lonely Planet and you’ve done some backend stuff, you’re doing frontend stuff… how do you feel about all that? Courey: I would agree. I have used ARIA as a way to work around that. I think that that’s definitely a challenge and I think that it’s one that’s hard to teach people. If you have not used a screen reader before the reason ‘why’ sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. You can explain the concept but until you actually walk somebody through a website using a screen reader it’s hard to understand how those changes can be disorienting. And so I think part of the suggestion that I have is to have those tools available and take the time to teach your average developers how to use those tools so that they can go, “Oh, wow, this is terrible. This doesn’t make any sense at all” and find ways to work around it. Like, equip them with the ability to do it instead of having to go back and say, “Oh, this isn’t accessible. You need to do x,y, and z.” So, in the end, you have more people that are aware and when they move on to other jobs they have the ability to, you know, teach other people how to use those tools and how to hone those skills to figure out exactly what needs to be done and why. Nic: I really like this idea of equipping devs with the tools to understand ‘why’ accessibility. I think that’s very powerful rather than just say, “Hey… you can’t do this” or, “fix this that way” Dennis: The 2 issues that I mentioned when we first started discussing Javascript frameworks are definitely fixable and some developers know how and do fix that but it’s, you know, a very low percentage of these implementations. I think that’s just a piece of the puzzle. You know, a lot of just the way developers are working nowadays is just they’re not developing things from scratch anymore. They’re just pulling in libraries... Nic: Yeah Dennis: … and MPM Modules and, you know, if all that stuff is not accessible then… which most of it is not, then that’s another problem. And so I think in defense of Javascript frameworks, it’s not… oftentimes it’s not the actual framework itself that’s the problem. It’s all the other junk that’s getting pulled in to the projects that are just bad code and not accessible and not semantic. So, I mean, one way to resolve that… Mike Gifford is a big proponent of, you know, open source code and providing these kinds of things. Open source free code and modules that people can pull in that are accessible. So that’s one way to approach it. Courey: One of the things that Javascript does have to offer, and this is kind of a low bar, but you can add linters in so that nobody is able to ship code that does not meet a certain minimum standard for accessibility Dennis: Yeah. Linters will definitely help unit testing. There are tools to do all that definitely all helps. But again, going back to, you know, the fundamentals, I mean, if developers knew the fundamentals of HTML the fundamentals of semantic mark up then we wouldn’t have the problem in the first place. Nic: Fantastic, thank you. So, let's pivot a bit and talk about one last general topic before we wrap up. And, I’m going to ask this in 2 different ways because we have technical folks and not so technical folks on the chat but I think the issues are important. So, if you could change only one thing about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, what would it be, and that’s approaching it from a really technical perspective. The other aspect would be, as an individual with a disability what aspect of accessibility requirements are not working for people with disabilities, in your opinion? Without necessarily getting technical. Dan: I would love … I think ARIA details this as a technical thing in their Web Accessibility Content Guidelines, I would love if that was more… if people knew more about that. That that was pushed forward. I think there’s so much power in that. That one specific section of the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines, for… Nic: Yeah Dan: … complex images and graphs and stuff that you can actually, you don’t have to use alt text, you can actually describe something in a really detailed fashion for someone who can’t see it. And, I think that’s really powerful and I would love to see more. I’d love to see people talking about it more instead of seeing the same... and maybe talking about it in "accessible ways" so people who may not be technical could understand it. I think it’s a great one. It's one that I’m having fun with. Nic: Thank you, Dan. Shannon, what do you think? Shannon: I think… one thing that I think about a lot is just this compliance-oriented mindset that I think a lot of people are in round accessibility and how that leads to a kind of checklist mentality instead of approaching accessibility in a really creative and generous way. So the… and a project that I’ve been working on is about alt text and I think what’s been interesting to me is that because of social media I think most people who use Twitter or Facebook or Instagram have the opportunity to be describing their images but don’t necessarily know that or know how to do that. And, it’s been interesting as I research that, there’s been some guidelines around… I mean, that alt text is really important and then also some guidelines around actually how to approach writing it. But, I think coming from an arts background and thinking about a museums website where a lot of the images are artwork it becomes really complicated and interesting to think about how to translate the visual information into text. And so, that’s been something I’ve been really interested in recently is kind of how we can approach describing images in more kind of creative ways. Nic: Yeah, that’s cool. Dennis? Dennis: Two big things come to mind that I think a lot of people would say and it’s much easier said than done but, the first things are like, make WCAG simpler. Easier to read and simpler. And I… yeah. I mean… I agree with that, yeah, obviously. But I mean, I don’t know if… I mean, what I think the bigger problem is you have to know how to read the guidelines and what are the different… Because the actual WCAG guidelines are very short it’s just all the supporting documentation and the cross-linking and everything. It gets much longer and much more complicated. So if someone was to understand how all that works and, you know… then I think it would be easier to comprehend that. The other thing not as many people say but bothers me more and more is the levels. The A, AA, AAA levels in WCAG, because I’m often confused as to why they’re set that way. Sometimes they don’t make as much sense as other times but I think, from what I know, both of those issues will be addressed in the next big version of WCAG that’s being worked on at the W3C right now. I don’t know what-what it’s going to be called. Silver is the code name for the project. WCAG 3 or something but I know those 2 issues are definitely going to be addressed. Nic: Cool. Courey, what do you think? Do you have any wishes to change in WCAG? Courey: So my… I have 2 things that I would really love and I think one of those is fairly general. I wish that web accessibility was something that was just a given. Just like if somebody is building a brand new building they’re going to be like, “Oh, we’ve got to put a ramp in here and an elevator to go up to this floor.” I would hope that someday soon that accessibility will be very similar to that in that if you are building or changing a website it would just be a thing that you would consider. ANd, that project managers and developers alike will all have the awareness of the importance and the factors necessary to make it accessible to everybody. And, kind of in keeping with that, I also wish that the tooling around testing websites was more accessible to people that don’t use that very often. I find it very difficult to find the time to teach somebody to use the tools appropriately. I mean, it’s a big learning curve. So I think that if we had some sort of developer tool that made that more accessible… I know that a lot of the developer tools like Firefox, in particular, I really love the things that they’ve done recently to kind of surface accessibility alone in their developer tools. So I think that as we create more tooling that makes it… that ironically makes it more accessible for the people that don’t have disabilities and don’t know how to navigate with a disability, the easier it will be to teach people how to be aware and how to program for those things. Nic: Yeah. Thank you for that. Thanks, everyone. That’s been a really, really fun conversation. So, thanks for that. Nic: Yeah I’ll just wrap up by thanking the audience for listening. If you enjoyed the show do tell your friends about it and let’s continue the conversation on Twitter because there's a lot to unpack here I think. A reminder that you can get the transcript for this and all other shows at A11yrules.com and of course thanks again to our sponsor, Twilio for supporting the transcript for this episode.

E081 – Interview with Damien Senger – Part 2 May 07, 2019

Damien tells us "Later does not exist in our industry. Don't push something without accessibility now. Because you will NOT go back and fix it later" Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

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Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. This is episode 81. I'm Nic Steenhout, and I talked with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Nic: Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at twilio.com. Nic: In this episode, I'm continuing my conversation with Damien Senger. Last show was actually quite good. We spoke about different things, including how Damien learned about having ADHD and how that influenced his work in accessibility and how he managed to build an accessibility culture within his organization. Damien, welcome back. Damien: Thanks for having me again. Nic: We finished last week talking about your greatest achievement. Let's look at what's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Damien: I don't know if I can choose one, but I have two. The first one is, I think ... it's also going better and better every day. It's the lack of care of people around accessibility. I'm saying this because I worked with a lot of different developers, and I don't think developers are doing an awful job, but I just have the feeling that more and more in companies, there is a lot of focus on choosing the right framework to find a lot of developers, but not choosing the right framework to help the consumers. One of my frustrations into this is the fact that even if you can convince people that accessibility is important, I sometimes struggle to push accessibility as a requirement. For example, applications offer the choice of a specific framework or this kind of stuff. So this one will be the first. Damien: The second one is ... relating to this one, so that's why for me they are going together. Even if this one is really going better, it's the lack of care in a lot of events. So this one for me is going better because more and more conferences are trying to select accessibility as a topic or to look for speakers speaking about accessibility, but it's a bit like inclusivity. It was a known topic for a lot of time, and in some events, there is still like a lot of resistance, because like it's only for eight persons. Damien: I still heard, I think in the last month in a discussion with a developer, this sentence that I found awful all the time, which is, "Why just spending so many time into something made only for five people?" No, no, please no. So that's the frustrating part, there are still a lack of care most of the time in the community, development community as a whole. Even if you manage to push accessibility as a product decision, it's really hard to push the fact that accessibility is not only what you produce, but also what you work with. And it's not only for the consumer, but also for people within the organization. Nic: That is something that I see change, but sometimes I feel like not fast enough. I think I do share that frustration, that not just developers, but all stakeholders, from designers to site owners to even QA testers that, "Why are we spending this much effort for just a handful of people?" It always boggles me. Nic: Then I start giving hard statistics to people. The recent change in the U.S. census, that it's not 1 in 5 person in the U.S. that has a disability anymore, it's 1 in 4. Nearly 25% of people in the U.S. have a disability. I think that number is probably reflected all over the world. Damien: Yeah, and for me, that's also one of the game changers. It's the fact that ... it's also thanks to including the cognitive disabilities into the census on this topic. Damien: I'm working a lot with reading impairments these days. It's a topic I really find amazing, because when you ask someone, "How do you read a text?" for example, you cannot answer that. We don't know, "How do we read?" It's like something automatic for our brain, but it's so much work, in fact. I find it amazing to see the direction of people. Damien: Like in one of my last meetup participation, where I explained that depending of the census, reading impairment can be up to 20% of the population, depending on how do measure and what are the limits for reading impairment. Once you touch like the 20% of the population, people are like, "Hmm. That's maybe important in this case," because 20%, we can look at our neighbors, like our direct neighbors in the room, and we should find at least one person. Nic: It's always interesting that some companies, designers, developers are going to be really keen to make their design, their site, their app work in Internet Explorer that still has maybe 4% of the market share of browsers, but they're going to totally ignore accessibility, which is anywhere between a fifth and a quarter of visitors. That always amuses me. Damien: Yeah, I agree. I'm smiling, because I had this discussion, including my current company, like a few months ago with the same arguments. But what I found even more funny is ... because this one, we can fight against it. We have statistics, and we can show statistics. The one I'm really struggling with most of the time is, "Let's do this later. Do we really need this? Can we just not push the feature without caring about it and fixing it later? This one is the one I'm always smiling with, because I'm like, "Why?" We all know that later is not existing in our industry. We're never coming back on features, except if you're working at booking, Airbnb, Facebook, like really big players. I don't know a lot of early stage startups, service A startup or service B startup, with time to go back. Nic: I love that statement. "Later does not exist in our industry." I think that's a really important takeaway. Damien: And it's costful. Even if you need to, because ... for example, regulations, if you're working in Norway, for example, with one of the strictest, I think, regulation on accessibility in Europe. If you really need to go back later, it's costful. It's so expensive, because in this case, you need to create new stories, you need to go back through all the meetings, all the refinement, all the discussions. Damien: People don't realize how expensive it can be when you need to do the whole cycle again, and the fact that sometimes ... most of the time, all the accessibility fixes as I'm requesting from my developers, it's a ten minute job. It's aria-labels, it's asking for some IDs linked to specific DOM points to explain the different relations between screen readers. It's having specific text only for assistive technologies. It's fixing some copies for cognitive impairments. Damien: Most of the time, it can be a lot, but it's not rebuilding a complete feature. I think it happens only once in my life to ask engineers to redevelop entirely new features, and it was because it was the navigation. Yes, if you have your navigation completely fucked up, you need to start again. Nic: Yeah. This reminds me of an example I like to use. When you build a house and you put in a narrow door and two steps in front of the door, and later on you have to actually remove the steps and change the door so it's wider for a wheelchair, that will be very costly. But if you build it with a wide door and no step at the entrance to start with, you're cost increases negligible. So I think it's what you're talking about. If you know there's something to fix with accessibility in your current project, just do it now. Don't wait until later. Damien: For me, it's where it's really important to get support and to get support from your stakeholders, because it cannot be a one person job. That's why I'm really grateful for my current company, because I have a lot of support from my manager, which already walked and purchased accessibility even before I started to the different stakeholders. But it cannot be like a one person job. You cannot spend all your time explaining over and over again why you need to do that at one point. It's not sustainable for yourself. Nic: Damien, what is the one thing that everybody knows about web accessibility? Damien: I hope it's never, never, never not adding alt to an image. An image tag needs to have an alt. Even if it's an empty one, but it needs to have an alt attribute. I hope that's the case. Please tell me that it's the case. Nic: It's funny, because I've been telling developers about the alt attribute for a very long time now, and the kind of things I was finding 10 or 15 years ago when I do accessibility audit is still the same thing I'm finding about images. Either there's no alt attribute at all, or the text, the value of the attribute is problematic. So maybe people do know about the alt attribute, but they're still needing to understand things a little bit better. Damien: Yeah, I agree. That's where I have an issue with our current industry, especially on the developer side. Not with developers, with really the industry, because HTML is not viewed as a real skill when it's a real skill. It's not only just adding these to make design on top of it. I really like REACT. I really like all this new, shiny frameworks. I really like what they're doing with JavaScript. I think it's going in a really good direction, in a really good professional direction with this language. Damien: My main issue, and it's related to the alt attribute in a way, is the fact that they are simplifying so much. The HTML can easily become inaccessible. I'm thinking about the alt attributes for the images, but also something I'm seeing morbe and more, not only from the students I'm teaching to, but also in job applications. When I'm seeing some exercise and assessments, it's the fact that people now for forms inputs are just using inputs. "It's a text input? Great. Let's just use input. Why is there any other attributes? I don't know, but it's not useful. We need to have the smallest DOM as possible. Let's do inputs." It's the same. This is not sustainable. We cannot just remove complexity for performance reason. First, because it's not important. Removing two attributes will not increase the performance of your website. Nic: I would like to see a time where accessibility is viewed on the same level as the importance of performance and the importance of security. I think that would be really fantastic. If you sell your services as a design outfit or a web developer outfit, you don't charge extra to build a secure website, and you shouldn't charge extra to build an accessible website. It should be built into what you do. But maybe it goes back to the point you were making about lack of skills, lack of understanding of basic skill sets, like knowing HTML or knowing CSS. Damien: Yeah, I think it's tied to that. I also think that .. and I still stop attacking developers. I will attack designers a bit more. I think designers are really responsible for that, too, because if we care so much about performance, it's also because not only developers care about it, but designers, because when it's not loading quickly enough no my super iPhone X, I will shout to the product team. Because I'm a designer, the product team will listen to me. When there is no alt on images or when there is no keyboard support, for example, and no keyboard navigation possible, because the DOM is going in all direction, or because in practice we've been doing this a lot, a lot of nodes are removed from the DOM when they are not displayed. Damien: Designers don't care, and product managers don't know that they have to care about. So it's not only, for me, an issue with the skill sets of people building the solution, but it's also because nobody else care. For everything else, accessibility ... oh, for performance, or just for the UX, and the way that the design would be displayed in the end, there is enough people to shout when it's not working. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is for most people failing to implement accessibility? Damien: In my opinion, it's because people believe that it's complex. There is always this image that accessibility is obscure, it's complex, it's a lot of rules. Yes, it's a lot of rules, but it's not this complex. If you're doing a semantic HTML, have off this job is already done. If you want a good UX with a good readability for your design with color contrast and a great heading hierarchy, again, 20% of the job is done. In the end, if you care about your product and if you want to do something which is not revolutionary, but which is functional, it will work. So I really believe that the reason why is just because people don't know and they think that it's too complex. Nic: How can we make it appear more simple or less complex or more approachable? What can we, in the industry specifically, do to help people get over that sense of, "Oh, it's too difficult"? Damien: That's a really good question. I'm not sure I have the answer, but I think that talking about, what you're doing with this podcast, is already a good way to show that. Just adding a way to show that there is a lot of people who can help you. There is an open community. There's a lot of people on Twitter, a lot of articles. There is a lot of resources. So just maybe being more public sometimes. Damien: have the tendency to think ... at least, I'm thinking a lot that our community sometimes is ... which is great, but is focusing a lot on some details and some implementation details. Sometimes, I think we just ... like when people are asking questions on specific ways to implement accessibility on their project, I think we just forgot to answer something which can be quite interesting and quite important. It's, "Do it." It will not be perfect, because you will never be 100% accessible to everybody. Just do it. If it's not perfect, it's okay. It's better than not doing it. I really believe that sometimes we forget to say that to people. But just don't do this with ARIA. No ARIA is better than bad ARIA. But aside of that, doing a bit and imperfect accessibility is better than no accessibility. Damien: For me, there is another part which is more difficult to this answer, which is ... but it's complicated, and I'm not sure that people want to hear that, but it's something that I discussed about in a conference like a few days ago. We don't want to see ourselves impaired. We don't want to see ourselves in this kind of position. And because we don't want to see ourselves with disabilities, we are lacking empathy. I would love people to understand that they don't need to see themselves in position with impairments. They don't need to try to understand how is my life with ADHD and being on the spectrum to just fix what could be needed to have a better accessibility for cognitive disabilities. Nic: I think that's a very profound thought, the fear of facing your own fragility as a barrier to implementing accessibility. That's something I'm going to have to think about some more. Thank you for that thought, Damien. That's good. Damien: Thank you. Nic: What would you say the greatest challenges for the field of web accessibility are to move forward? Damien: I think that one of the things that we need to fix once and for all is the discussion around accessibility versus inclusive design. I would love the community to compensate and say, "We don't care." We're just fixing our solutions, we're fixing our products and our project for people to use it, everybody, regardless of specific abilities or environmental situations. If the whole community could move forward in this direction without spending more time discussing is it toxic or not. I think it could be better for everybody and it could be also a good way to bring on board more designers, more developers, and more product managers. Nic: Hey, let's finish with one last question for you. What is the one thing people should remember about web accessibility? Damien: That it's fun. That it's really fun. I think that people, and especially like Castor, where I'm working, I think they cannot imagine how fun it is to work with this. Yes, of course, there is guidelines that you need to follow and success criterion It can be boring sometimes to read this and to check it. But aside of that, it's fun, like discovering new ways to use a computer. It's incredible. Thanks to that, and thanks to the fact that I was interested in the possibility, I've learned how to use a screen reader, and now the screen reader is helping me with my dyslexia. I found ways to finally read and understand text again, really long ones thanks to that. Accessibility is fun. If you want to spend a bit of energy to learn more about it, if you want to spend a bit of time to discover it a bit more, you will maybe discover ways for you to improve your relation with your computer thanks to accessibility. In one word, accessibility is fun. Nic: Accessibility is fun. Damien Senger, thank you so much for your participation and your willingness to answer all my questions. Damien: Thanks for inviting me. That was really, really nice to discuss with you. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com. Big shout out to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your supports, I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the A11y Rules Podcast.

E080 – Interview with Damien Senger – Part 1 Apr 29, 2019

In which Damien Senger tells us "Universal design is the answer, more than accessibility. Because people are on a spectrum." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 80. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show is for you. To get today's show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio: Connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at twilio.com. Nic: This week I'm speaking to Damien Senger. Thanks for joining me Damien to talk about accessibility. How are you? Damien: Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for inviting me. Nic: I like to let guests introduce themselves so in a brief introduction, who is Damien Senger? Damien: That's a good question. I am not sure that I really know myself. I'm a mix between a designer and an HTML/CSS lover, so I'm working mainly as a designer for a company in Amsterdam called Castor EDC, where to be exact I'm Design Systems and Accessibility Lead. So half of my job is making sure that our development team is doing a correct job in what they're delivering, correct job in the design, like how they implement it but also to a level of accessibility that we're trained to achieve for our products. Aside of that I'm, like I said an HTML/CSS lover. I love to share my life, so I'm doing conferences, I'm trying to do articles but it's really hard to find time and, yeah. That's a bit of me, I'm living in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam, like a bit between both of these two cities so it's a bit complex, but yeah, that's me. Nic: That's you, wonderful, thank you. We're talking primarily about web accessibility today. How would you define it? Damien: Defining accessibility. Ah, that's quite funny because it's what I'm trying to do at my job these days. I'm writing an accessibility policy for the company, so trying to define what we want to achieve for that. For me it's mainly tied to universal design. So, I really believe in the vision with which the web was created, so I think content accessible to everybody regardless of their specific abilities, so for me, accessibility is just being sure that we're creating experiences that are exactly the same for everybody regardless if they can use a mouse or not. If they have really good attention span or not, or if they're just really distracted in their environment. Damien: So yes, I'm really focused on cognitive disabilities. I think it's maybe one of the most interesting things for me into this part of the job. Nic: Cognitive disabilities is an area of accessibility that has, until relatively recently, been mostly ignored on web and I'm glad to see more and more of that being discussed and solutions to barriers found, so good to hear you're finding an interest in it. But why do you think it's such an interesting part of the field of web accessibility? Damien: Mainly because for me, it was forgotten by a lot of the community during a long time. As you said, the WCAG only started working on cognitive disabilities a few years ago, and the WCAG version 2, especially version 2.1 was the first one really trying to embrace this topic. Damien: And for me it's also really interesting because it's invisible, so it's even more difficult to work with it because it's something that you cannot see at first sight, and also it's something evolving, evolving a lot. We have a population which is aging. All the web specialists, all the web designers, all the web developers, all the web workers are quite still young in a way and the web is aging with us, but I'm not sure that the way the web is aging is fully prepared to all the different disabilities that we will get in the next years and in the next period of our lives. Nic: How de we get prepared? Damien: Yeah, how do we get prepared. I'm not sure that we can really know what our future will be made of, but there's a lot of things that we can already prepare. Like when we see that all the experiences that we are creating right now in the web industries are based on getting the biggest attention span of people, that we are trying to get all the focus of people on specific action, that we are trained to always be in this mindset where we want to get more, and more, and more energy from people. This is not sustainable and this is one of the issues of cognitive disabilities. Damien: The way we're building the web it's going not only from part of the products that are timed. But for example like something we all love to hate which is sliders, are one of the good example for me, where things where we build and we design in a way which is not inaccessible for key bots and assistive technology but also for our brains, because we were just like, "Okay, when web designed it, I was able to read it. Ten seconds was okay." But you can never be sure that ten seconds will be okay for everybody, because you can have issues, I'm not an English speaker, like a native English speaker so the difference is something I have to deal with almost every day. But also you don't know what the person is doing and what are the different cognitive capabilities of someone in front of the computer. So we are making a lot of assumptions that have an impact into the way that we're [inaudible 00:06:49] the web, which is great for people within their twenties, thirties, forties years old; but maybe not for a population going with users of sixties, seventies, and so on. Nic: When did you become aware of web accessibility and its importance and how did that happen? Damien: When I ... it's a mixed answer. I think I started to really truly learn about accessibility when I was working still in France for a web agency called Alsacreations. They had web accessibility expert within the team, and they really cared about doing good quality work compliant with all the standards. So that was one of my first professional experience not as a freelancer, so that was a good way to start working with accessibility. When I really changed my mindset from accessibility is part of the job and really important but as important to doing a lot of different stuff in design, when I really started to focus a lot on accessibility was when I more and more issues with pronouns related to the fact that I am ADHD, and as a lot of people with ADHD when kind of somewhere in the spectrum between ADHD and autism, I was like yeah so maybe it's not me, maybe it's the way that we are building not only the web but product, and the society is not good enough to include everybody. Being someone in this field with a way to change the way the web is built was for me a good way to push myself working the accessibility field. Nic: Obviously it has had an impact. But what kind of things can you tell us about this impact of discovering that while you maybe your impairment, your disability, how did that influence your perception of web accessibility specifically? Damien: That influenced it in the way that I was mad. Seriously, I was mad because I worked for this agency which was really great but what I discovered when I was working with them is that all web accessibility concerns were mainly on the usability, like using specific assistive technologies, using keyboard, and using specific short cuts, and what was based on the hardware and the software, but not always on how do we build in a way that it's inclusive for everybody. This focus on, that we can see in the first version of the WCAG, this focus mainly on the technology and not the way that we are building, the way that we are designing, and the way that we are trained to understand how people are using not only just the tools that they are using was something important for me. The fact that cognitive disabilities were not part of the early versions of specification was something where I was like, "Okay, there is maybe something I can do to help and have better accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities." Nic: What do you think of the current efforts to include cognitive accessibility, cognitive disabilities and accessibility in the guidelines? Do you think it's enough or not enough or going in right direction or not? Damien: I think it's going in a really good direction. I really appreciate to see all the user interviews. For example made by the web accessibility initiatives to understand for people with autism, for people with ADHD, for people after having a stroke for example. Damien: I really find interesting to not only the fact that they've done this work but also the fact they published all of these user interviews, all of the conclusions. So for me it's going in a really good way, but still we can continue to go forward because right now I really like the way WCAG is evolving on this going more and more into the patterns of litigation, going more and more into usability concern and issues to fix. I just think that we can still continue in this direction. For example the fact that there is not a clear point on when do we need to communicate the time needed to actually complete form, or the fact that we don't need to communicate, like there is one point on the triple A, I think on communicating the difficulty of some tasks. The fact that we don't have more work and more identification on what do we need to do on the level A, level AA, and level AAA in this direction is still inefficient. It's still not sufficient access for me, but it's going in a really good direction. Nic: I've spoken to a couple that didn't think it was quite enough but while I acknowledged that I'm thinking that it's better that than nothing and there is quite a bit of effort happening so it makes me happy to see that we're slowly starting to think in terms of inclusion for all conditions, well inclusions for people that have different conditions because it's not just about screen reader. Damien: Yeah, I fully agree. It's really nice to see the support. And every time ... Working for screen readers is really important. In my daily life, like when I'm working for customer, I say that most of the recommendation doing, giving to engineers are based on how can we improve the navigation and the experience for users of assistive technologies. Damien: Firstly for screen readers so working with screen readers for me it's still really important it's just that I really hoping that a lot of people and more and more people, and not the expert because I think that most of the experts are already got this in their mind, but I feel that the designers, the developers are a bit of where our accessibility can get this information that's accessibly is not only for people with vision impairments. It's not only working for braille platform and screen readers. It's also working for someone who just got a stroke. Damien: Especially for me , like what isn't trusting and an argument which is always difficult to use in a way because I don't like going in this direction but still working quite well for me is like most of the people where for example the autism spectrum or people with after a stroke they will be more ... how can I say that, they will be more inclined to use still a computer to communicate with the rest of the world. So to be consumers because that's sometimes one of the only options for them to be able to buy something. Because they can create so many short cuts and their family can, after a stroke for example, create so many short cuts, so many way to help them to actually ... easy, medium, and complex tasks that like if you remove from your consumer all the people with cognitive disabilities, it's like starting to be a lot of people removed from your potential market. Damien: So like that's an argument always, like difficult to use but ultimately that's the only one working at the moment, but working continues. But, yeah so that's something that I really want people to understand, it's not only. [crosstalk 00:15:46] Nic: I like this statement you made that the argument may not be a great one but it's the only to use. It reminds me of this, the economy where, well not the economy, this difference of opinion between people that say, on one hand we shouldn't talk about accessibility is good for everyone, we shouldn't say that color contrast, good contrast is good for people with low vision but it's also good for people that don't have a disability that want to interact with their website on the phone. There's this going back and forth, I'm a long term disability rights activist and I believe that we should use all the arguments at our disposal and if it helps people without disabilities to understand that, yeah you know making these changes, improving accessibility will actually improve usability for everyone. I think that's a great, great way to look at it. Damien: Yeah, I fully agree with this because for me the fact that we forgot for a long, a lot of time like community disabilities, for a lot of them it's important. Damien: For me, universal design, it's the answer more than accessibility because also on the cognitive side of disabilities, a lot of them are spectrums. Because of this idea of spectrum, you're already in this way of inclusive design. That's why I really love the inclusive design for work made by Microsoft. Like this idea of, you have life long impairments, temporary impairments, and situational impairments. Damien: Yes, unfortuantley I don't like the fact that some people will only listen if it's because they could be concerned. But at the same time that's true, by working for life long impairments you're improving the life of everybody regardless of their specific abilities, regardless of their environment and context. As an LGBTQ activist I really like this argument because you cannot make assumptions on the environment of people. Every time we are trained to make assumption on the environment of people we are marginalizing people. So for me universal design is the answer for that. Damien: Focusing on that is also a good way to explain that we need to not track users using assistive technologies. I'm saying this because I read this morning, I think, an article, or no a tweet on this question, the fact that now we could have a way on iOS to track users with assistive technologies. For me that is one of the issue related to not thinking about universal design. If we are not in this idea of we can improve the life of everybody at the same time we will again be in the mindset of providing experiences for people and providing experience for all of the others. Nic: Yeah. Separate and not equal. Damien: Yes, we know this is true of the web. We know that every time we are trained to create something separate, like it's made by companies where with like specific goals most of the time, commercial goals. [inaudible 00:19:32] two different platforms, two different content if it's for like the same purpose it's not working. Nic: Damien, did you face barriers or difficulty when you were trying to learn about accessibility and if you did how did you get over that? Damien: Yeah, I think I faced some difficulties but not really into finding the resources, because that's for me one of the really really incredible stuff about accessibility. If you're speaking english you can you find a lot of content, a lot of opinions, and let's face it right now the way WCAG is also a wonderful source of information. Especially like the fact that there is indication how you can implement specific success critierias. So finding the information is maybe not for me the most difficult, but what I was troubled with at the beginning and especially when I was working as a freelancer was more finding how to convince people and how to convince people when they're wrong. Nic: Yeah. Damien: And, I still don't have a good answer for that. Nic: Yeah, I wish I had an answer for that as well because maybe our lives would be easier. But, yeah. What's your favorite word? Damien: My favorite ... word, my favorite word that's a really interesting question. I don't know. Um, like the only thing coming in my mind right now it's inclusivity because I'm talking all the time about inclusivity. But, I find it silly as an answer. But, yeah I would say inclusivity. Nic: It's a good word. It truly is a good word. Let's wrap this section of the show with asking you what's your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility. What's the thing that makes you the most proud? Damien: Oh. I think it's in my current position. The fact that, it's not like an achievement visible for the customer that we have at Castor but it's more the fact that I was able to evolve in a position where like I can focus on accessibility. The company was already aware of accessibly and the need for accessibility. We are working in the health industry so that was a bit more easier, but the fact that at one point the company trusts me to make this job to have this commitment and to accept that, a really important amount of my time when I was not employed at the beginning for that is a reason for now for accessibility. Damien: It's maybe, yeah, something I'm really proud of because it shows that even if I don't have any certification or if I learned this on my own, like first I have an impact and people are trusting me for the accessibility on this. Also because it shows that I managed to convince them especially because we are in the health industry and we have a platform which can be used by patients, it's really important that we need to focus right now even if it was not right at the binning the priority of the company. So, yeah, I would say my current achievement. Nic: I think that's a good thing to be proud of to have managed to influence an entire company that provides healthcare information on web application, I think that's mission critical that these apps be accessible because, well, not everybody who is sick has a disability but a lot people who are sick and needing health information have accessibility needs. So, well done. Thank you. Damien: Thank you. Nic: So, Damien, I will say thank you and we're going to call this today and we'll reconvene next week. Damien: Yes. Thank you for your time. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the shows website at https://a11yrules.com . Big shout out to my sponsors and my patrons without your supports I could not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E079 – Interview with Liz Jackson – Part 2 Apr 22, 2019

In which Liz Jackson tells us she wishes people viewed accessibility as an opportunity to engage, rather than a legal compliance thing. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 79. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility hey, this shows for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. In this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Liz Jackson. Welcome back, Liz. Liz: Thanks, again for having me. Nic: Thank you. So, the last show was really great. We talked about quite a few things that are not necessarily the usual topics of this podcast, including disability culture friction and nothing about us without us, so that’s been really powerful stuff. We finished last week on a great positive thought of “Let’s make this fun.” Let’s flip that a little bit and ask you, Liz… What’s your greatest frustration about accessibility? Liz: My greatest frustration with accessibility is I think the fact that people view it as a box to be checked. That there’s a minimum amount that you need to do and that I think is fundamentally lacking in creativity. I’m not saying that that's what accessibility is. I’m saying that that is the perception of what it is. I think people view it a lot in terms of legal compliance. And I just… I wish we could sort of view it instead as an opportunity to engage. And I’m going to pause for a second because… you’ll hear why. Nic: You were saying we should view accessibility as an opportunity to engage rather than as a compliance thing. Liz: Yeah, I think right now the way accessibility is being done is oftentimes at the exclusion of actual disabled people. I oftentimes use the example… I have sort of an obsession with National ADAPT, and so I oftentimes use the example of; Okay, so how did… What happened with that original gang of 19 and bus lifts? And this is really the thing that I saw. So, what happened was, in the early 1970s, right, this is the first time in history that disabled people were actually escaping institutions, right? So out in society, they looked really radical. And they wanted something very radical. The wanted access. They wanted accessibility, and they wanted it in the form of bus lifts on busses. And they went about it in a radical way. They parked their bodies in front of buses and intersections in Denver, and they protested for access. And, at the time society was probably incredibly frightened of these bodies that they hadn’t previously experienced. But, if you look at sort of what happened in the years after what you see is that suddenly people stopped perceiving those bodies as being so radical. They became accustomed to seeing disabled people out in society, so, they became less radical, and their ideas became less radical. People started thinking, “Yeah, access is a human right. Buses should come with bus lifts.” And, ultimately buses did start coming with bus lifts and this idea of buses on buses, it was so potent that in the 90s when the ADA was written buses were written into the ADA. And, I think for me, it is. It’s very easy to look at this and sort of view it as a success, but I actually see something a little bit different which is that the very moment that bus lifts were written into the ADA, at least it feels to me, that the national adapt and the people who fought so valiantly for it were no longer needed in the thing that they advocated for. And so, I think in this work that we’re doing I wonder how often we are actually inadvertently advocating for our own exclusion by advocating for our own inclusion. And so, for me, the question is how is it that in web access and in these various things that we’re fighting for, how is it that we can sustainably advocate to participate. And so for me, it’s that mantra. It’s design with disability. It’s nothing about us without us. How is it that we can ensure that the things that we fight radically for don’t turn into things that are empathetically done for us? Nic: So, I often say that one of my ultimate goals is to do such a good job as to put myself out of a job. So, you know, do enough advocacy and do enough education and do enough work in the accessibility field that this kind of work would not be required anymore. Because, everything would be accessible. Everything would be done with an inclusive mindset which kind of closes the circle, because if you’re starting to think of a culture of inclusion, you have to think about getting people with disabilities involved. So, even if I do manage to put myself out of a job as an accessibility specialist I think that the job will be truly, properly done when even though I may not be an accessibility specialist anymore I would still be included in the discussion and in the design phase, and everything to make sure that people with disabilities are part and parcel with the process. Not just an afterthought, or, not just something we do for them. Liz: Yeah, I think… I think that even in this idea of putting… wanting to put yourself out of business… I think there’s a part of me that worries that… are we too in the frame of mind of problems that need to be solved and are we separating culture from access too much? I think I’m someone… I view you as someone who I think is deeply creative and I don’t think for a creative person the work ever stops. Nic: Totally. Liz: And so for me, the question is, okay, well, say on this very logistical side, yeah you do put yourself out of business. Okay, so then the question becomes “What’s next?” Nic: Absolutely. What’s next. Product design, which you’ve been quite involved with… How can your experience in product design benefit people involved with web accessibility? What lesson could you share from learning about product design that web accessibility people can implement? Think about? Liz: When there does seem to be a product that’s framed around creating accessor a product that’s inclusive of disabled people, when it’s put out into the world it’s oftentimes framed through the lens of empathy. And, I think that there are other ways that we can perceive the works in this space. We don’t always have to view disability through this empathetic lens. And, so, I actually have been spending the last couple of years pursuing my own product. More… it’s a little bit less about the product, and it’s a little bit more about a statement of why… what this work can sound like in terms of tone. And, so the story behind the product is… a couple of years ago I was at South by Southwest, and there were some major accessibility problems. And, it ended up leading me to get into this contentious back and forth with the head of South by Southwest, this guy named [Hugh Forest? 08:27]. And, in one of the phone calls, I basically told him I was going to create a product that was going to basically shed light on the accessibility issues of South by, and to my surprise he was really supportive of it. I had some people who were supportive all along, and I ended up going back to South by this year with an app. It’s really my answer to craptions. So a craption is basically those pesky errors that happen in automated captions. I call it thisten, so it’s basically ‘this’ and ‘listen,’ for me, I sort of see it as the physical act of listening. And, you know, I think this is one of the conversations we’ve been having about the product. Typically when somebody looks at this product, they’re going to say, okay, well this is definitely something that benefits somebody who is hard of hearing or deaf. But, I’m saying no. We’ve got to flip this. This is a product that can not succeed without a massive untapped pool of deaf and hard of hearing talent. And, I think to myself - okay, so then people are going to frame this product as something that solves a problem. And what is the problem that it solves? Well, traditionally I think that society would say this solves the problem, almost, of deaf people. But, that for me is not the problem. For me, the problem is this solves the problem of conferences and events failing to take into account accessibility. And so, I think, every step of the way I’m trying to shift the way our objects and our products are positioned in society and I’m just trying to make sure people fully understand what is it that we are actually solving for. I’m not solving for a deaf person. If I did, I’m sure a deaf person would tell me to go F myself. They don’t need me. What I’m solving for is a fundamental, societal problematic lack of access in some of the most influential spaces in the world. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is that most people fail to take accessibility into account or fail to succeed with implementing accessibility? Liz: This has really been a passion point for me. And, it’s one of the reasons why now I’m trying really hard too. In design schools wherever there is a class that teaches accessibility, I’m also trying to implement a disabilities course work alongside it. Because I think people are learning the ‘how’ without the ‘why’ and it’s… I think there is a fundamental lack of understanding there in what it does, what it does in the long run, what it does in the short term, who it impacts and how it shifts our lives in small but very profound ways. And, it’s learning about why do we think about the way we do about x or y. And, I think this is the thing. It’s like I love disability. This is the passion of my life, and I think… I look at design, and I see… a designer might, at a very young age, realize ‘I have a knack for this,’ but they don’t think that they can just design. They know ‘okay, I’ve got a knack for this. I’ve got to go to school. I’ve got to educate myself,’ and then they usually encounter me as they’re continuing their education in a conference or educational setting. This is a life-long commitment, and yet these are the very people who they sort of turn to disability, and they think they just know. And, I think they think they know because they’ve been taught to feel a certain way about it, whether it’s inspirational or empathetic or whatever the case may be. Whatever these sort of societal narratives are. And so, for me, it’s about, well, how do we as disabled people how do we intervene in that sort of expectation of ‘we just know?’ How do we intervene and say, ‘No, disability is a creative process.’ It is something that you can be passionate about, you can love, and you can commit to. And, you can have ongoing education, and I think the majority of designers don’t even know disability studies exist as a field. And so, for me, if you can teach people that this is not just a portfolio or a brand enhancer but rather this is something you can endeavor in and be passionate about and delight in… I think we would have a much easier time. And, I think the thing that sells it short is this frame that we’ve historically done of just framing something as: simple problem, simple solution. If we could break away from that and delve into the complexity, I think people would get really wrapped up in it. Nic: There’s been a lot on Twitter, quite a few threads on unpopular tech opinions. Would you have an unpopular accessibility/disability opinion to share? Something maybe controversial or something that you think you really believe in but other people might not necessarily agree with. Liz: Yeah. Oh, do I have one or do you say you have one? Nic: No, do you have one? Liz: I suppose I think my thinking about wanting to incorporate disability studies into the accessibility conversation. I think… I don’t think it’s unpopular in that people don’t like it. I think more often than not people feel very drawn to it and can almost sort of… sort of… once its...I’m unable to articulate it, they feel a bit of relief. Like, yeah, I think that’s sort of the missing piece. But I think it is unpopular in the fact that we didn’t previously consider it. And, so, maybe it’s something that just needs to gain a little bit of traction. But, I suppose I fundamentally believe that if I do my… perform the role that I set out to do, which is incorporating a culture into the work that you’re doing. I fundamentally believe that I will make your work easier for you to do. And, so, for me, I think even though I’m not tech savvy, I can barely find my way through the internet. The thing that I’m trying to show is a commitment to a handful of people. And, so, who are those people? I think those people are allies. People who are doing this work that makes the internet accessible. I think I'm also trying to amplify the work of academics, the people who are building the theory and doing the work that has long existed inside of paywalls, how is it that we can bring that out into the mainstream? And, so, if I say sort of I’m trying to honor the friction of my disability I also feel like I’m trying to honor all of those who came before me and have been doing this work much longer than I have, and who are much more adept at doing the physical things that I just don’t have the capabilities of doing. I think if anything I like to look and see all of our roles in this and figure out, ‘how is it that I can take a little of the burden from this person so they can thrive better?’ Because that’s what… I think the allies have been doing, that’s what the academics have been doing for me and for others as well. And so it’s like, “Okay, how do we sort of complete this circle?” Nic: How do we? Indeed. My… one of the thinking I have around accessibility itself and one of my frustration is that so many designers and web designers and web developers today don’t even know that it exists let alone know about alt text, and I’ve only been advocating for alt text since the mid 1990s. So, it's not a new topic for me and yet kids coming out of a computer science course should know the basics. They don’t even know the basics exist in terms of accessibility, and I want to see that topic taught in computer science and design and development courses, boot camps… I want at least some people to have a basic understanding. And, in some ways it seems like what you’re talking about doing is post-graduate work rather than entry level, 101, 100 level courses. So, I’m not sure how to reconcile what you’re talking about,which I think is mission critical, but also, make sure that people at least have a basic understanding and awareness of. Liz: Yeah, I think… and I think maybe I might see this in a different way, I think … it’s so easy to get caught up in language in disability, I think… and there's really 2 specific places I see this where I feel very protective of the language and that is the word mobility and the word accessibility. If you look at the word mobility, for me it means wheelchairs and access and all those different things but I sort of feel like now the word mobility is evolving to sort of mean autonomous vehicles and this other thing that exists outside of disability, and so as this word is being brought in to mean so much more and so many more things suddenly the things that I think it fundamentally means to me become a small piece of that. And so, say you want to teach the basics of accessibility as initial course work in… maybe even in high school or in a first-year design school. The thing that I find myself fearful of is that I feel like the word accessibility has become… because it has become this sort of trendy, increasingly trendy word, I feel like it’s broadening to mean so many things that even to sort of teach the basics of accessibility I worry that’s going to sort of be taken away. Does that make sense? Nic: Yes. That makes sense. So how do we… how do we teach these topics that are mission critical if we want an accessible web? A web usable by all regardless of disability, without diluting the word accessibility? Liz: And that's… I think that’s the thing that I’m really grappling with right now. ‘Coz it’s not just mobility, it’s not just accessibility there’s other words too, they’re just not coming to mind at the moment. But, I think, I remember at some point in my work I think, “Well, what is disability?” Disability fundamentally is the absence of a trend, and I remember I wanted to create this thing called the absence of trend report where we sort of just report on things that exist. Like, regardless of trend. I think I do find myself a little bit fearful that if accessibility does become a trend then that means there's an end to it. And, then people are going to lose interest and then they’ll kind of fall into another space. And so, for me, there’s this way in which I want to just sort of pull back and be like, no, this is… this exists regardless of whatever feelings we may be putting on to it, whatever momentum and whatever CEO is spousing it’s virtues. It exists regardless of that. And, so, how do we take ownership of it and say… I don’t want to say it’s small because it’s big, it’s everything, but there’s basics. There are fundamentals that the people who are spousing their virtues probably don’t even know. And I think I find that scary and I want to figure out how do we protect it. Nic: Certainly something to think about. I’m grappling with that as well. So, hopefully, you’ll wake up one morning and go “Ah ha! I have the answer” and [crosstalk 22:03] able to share that. Liz: Yeah, I hope so. I think it’s important. You know, it’s not something I take lightly. And I can’t imagine you take lightly either. Nic: No, no I don’t. Liz, let’s wrap this up with a final question for you. What’s the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Let’s focus that specifically. What should people remember about web accessibility? Liz: For me, the one thing that people should know about web accessibility is it’s a learning process. We may not realize that we need it until we need it. We may not we realize that it’s there until our failure has left somebody out. We may start to hear the word and not necessarily know what it means and it’s okay to not know and it’s okay to have been naive. But, once you know and once you are aware that this is something that exists it is something that I believe we have a responsibility to better understand. Especially if we’re creating things that go out into the world. And so, for me, I… if your design process is a learning process, if everything that you do is built upon everything you’ve done before then I hope that you will treat web accessibility the same way. I’m no better or worse than the next person. My initial website, seven years ago, was wildly inaccessible and yet now it has become a predominant focus of my work. And the same can be for you and you can feel really empowered in it. Nic: Thank you, Liz. That was a really good thought to finish on. Liz: Thank you. Nic: Liz Jackson, thank you and go out there and continue doing the good work you’re doing. Thank you for that. Liz: You too. You too. You’re doing some pretty profound stuff and I’m honored to be on your podcast. Nic: Thank you. Liz: Thank you. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E078 – Interview with Liz Jackson – Part 1 Apr 15, 2019

Liz Jackson says it's not enough to fix accessibility, people with disabilities must be included. She says: "I think somebody thinks that if they just smooth something out and they make it usable that we won’t have feelings about it. But, we are a people that probably hungers for choice, right? Like, we want to have opinions about things. We want to be delighted. So to simply try and smooth something out and endeavor no further, I think is… we’re missing something." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 78. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility hey, this shows for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking with Liz Jackson. The girl with the purple cane. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Liz. How are you? Liz: I’m good, I’m good. Thanks for having me, Nic. Nic: Well thanks for joining me. I know you’re herding a lot of different cats lately. I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, whose Liz Jackson? Liz: So, whose Liz Jackson. I am a disability advocate. I’m somebody who found my way into disability right before my 30th birthday. So, I’ve been a disability advocate for going on 7 years now, and my advocacy has sort of caused me to fall into the design world. And, so, increasingly I’m also starting to see myself as, what I’ve been saying, as a design strategist. Nic: Tell me one thing that most people would not know about you. Liz: That’s such a hard question. What’s something that people might not know about me. I don’t know if I have an answer for that. I think. I think… the thing that’s coming to mind is this increasingly on the internet and in my work I’ve started phasing myself out of the work so it’s less stories about me and it’s more stories about the work. And so I think right now at this point in time I do sort of wonder if there are ways that I could’ve actually gotten lost in this work. So I’m at a point in my life right now where I’m trying to also separate myself from this in some ways. Because, it’s really easy to get caught up in the day to day, and really figure out what I want to do outside of, what I perceive as, a fight. I’m in the fight. So. Nic: Yeah, I have a t-shirt from a guy called Dan Wilkins, I don’t think he makes those shirts anymore, but it says, more or less, ‘there comes a day when even best advocate needs a day off from this stuff.” And, I think separating yourself from the fight is probably a very wise and healthy thing to do. Liz: Yeah, I’m actively always looking for things, but it’s interesting because even as I look for things to do, I find myself pushing them away because I… there’s so much now. You fight for so much, and finally, things start to catch on so there are now so many things that I can do, that I’ve been given access to and so I’m trying to achieve that balance. Nic: We are talking about web accessibility specifically, but I know… I would like to open that a little bit more because of your personal work in accessibility and advocacy. How would you define accessibility as a whole? Liz: How would I define accessibility as a whole? Increasingly I’m seeing accessibility as one half of disability. I think you need really two parts to have… to kind of achieve whatever it is that you’ve set out to do so you need the access, you need people to be able to do the thing that they’ve set out to do but I think the other half is the culture. And, I really look at the culture through the lens of disability studies and so for me, if we were to look at it in terms of study… How is it… if you wanted to have an all-encompassing background in disability, you would need to have equal parts accessibility and equal parts disability culture so you could comfortably navigate between the two. Nic: I like that. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it that way, but I think it makes a lot of sense. You were saying you came into disability around your 30th birthday. What’s your personal experience of disability, Liz? Liz: It’s complicated. I am… it’s actually through the onset of neuromuscular condition that I actually came to realize that I am somebody who has actually dealt with disability throughout my life. It’s through the navigation of this new illness that I discovered... I’ve had tourettes my whole life and sort of really being able to define it and how it impacted me and so… I talked to… I often times talk to Lawrence Carter-Long about this. He’s somebody who very much identifies as he would say freak and I’m somebody who identifies as sort of always being slightly askew. And, so I think my experience of disability is one whereas I come to educate myself about it. I also come to know myself better and to gain confidence in who I am. Nic: Has your experience of disability have an influence on how you think about accessibility? Liz: Absolutely, I think about the things that make me the most frustrated, and it’s when something doesn’t quite work for me and just sort of feeling the rage and the frustration. I think I’m very fortunate in that I think so often society tries to tell us that we are the problem. Like there’s something wrong with us. I think I am somebody who is very fortunate that for some reason I’ve never really thought about it that way. For me, it’s been more the case that I’ve seen the outside factor as the problem. And, I think in some ways my feeling about accessibility provide me this kind of looking at this through the lens of ability. Nic: That’s profound. I just so love talking with you, Liz. You throw ideas that are really thought-provoking. That’s wonderful. Liz: Well, thank you. Nic: What kind of hurdles did you find, or meet, when you’re starting to think about this world of accessibility and of culture as well? Disability culture. Did you find barriers? Were there things that were particularly difficult for you? Liz: Yeah, I think more than anything, what it comes down to is perceptions. Lately, the thing that I’ve been saying is I want to be able to commit to the friction of my disability. I want to be able to honor the friction of my disability and I think so often we work to accessibility and we sort of envision this smoothing out. Right? That if we just make it usable everybody would be okay but I think things that we don’t necessarily take into account are… you know, when we smooth something out we end up prescribing how something is going to work and how we are either going to communicate or whatever. And so, for me, when I really look at accessibility I sort of endeavor to look at it more complexly. How is it that… like, Shannon Finnigan is… she’s an artist. She’s disabled and she’s been playing around with this idea that alt text is poetry, right? So how is it that you can really kind of, fit something in there that honors the person instead of just seeing their role in this process as one of just being smoothed out. Nic: Tell me a little bit more about this concept of friction. Liz: Yeah, I think… one thing that I didn’t expect was that as I got into this work I didn’t expect people would take an interest in me speaking publicly. But that has been, for me, a way that I can pursue this work. It allows me to fund the work, and it allows me to get my point of view out into the world. And I can talk about the most recent conference that I spoke at. So, I went on stage and I gave a talk. And, in the talk, I talk about these ideas that I have on empathy. I talked about this idea that maybe it’s not that we always need to be fixed or that we need things fixed but that we just need to be able to be included in the process but also to lead in the process. And I talked about this idea of honoring the friction of my disability. And, I got off the stage and as soon as I walked backstage the conference organizer said to me, you know, in the ten years we’ve been doing this conference that was the best talk we’ve ever had. Right? So, I very much was praised for what I brought to this conference and what happened later on in the conference is I acted on the very thing that I talked about. So, I did the thing that I said. And as soon as I did that, my ideas suddenly seemed a lot less embraced and I sort of felt this coldness, whereas before there was only warmth. And so, for many, I see that I’m really struggling with this idea that people want me to talk about things but they don’t actually want me to do them. And I’m somebody who simply wants to do them. Nic: Yeah, it’s fine to get people thinking about accessibility and make them consider things but from there to actually action it seems to be quite a step. Isn’t it? Liz: Yeah, well it does, right? I think somebody thinks that if they just smooth something out and they make it usable that we won’t have feelings about it. But, we are a people that probably hungers for choice, right? Like, we want to have opinions about things. We want to be delighted. So to simply try and smooth something out and endeavor no further, I think is… we’re missing something. And so, for me, it’s how can we add culture to accessibility? Nic: What’s disability culture? Liz: What’s disability culture? It’s, you know, it’s… that’s a good question. Disability culture to me is… I remember I recently said online, and it was actually after this conference. I was kind of thinking of this idea of vulnerability. And, I was saying I might make myself vulnerable or I might become vulnerable at no choice of my own but I’m not somebody who will be vulnerable. I think ‘be vulnerable’ is this mantra that we’re told on… you know, on podcasts there’s the Chris Tedibit podcast and the Oprah Supersoul conversations and I think vulnerability is this thing we are sort of always told is something we need to be and it’s never made sense to me. But, remember that as I was thinking, as I got back to New York from the conference and the next day I had gone to… there’s another… there are a few disabled people that I really am attached to here in New York City, one of them is Chancy Fleet who is the accessibility coordinator for the New York public library and she was hosting this event and there was a bunch of disabled people there, and, I remember I just went into the room and I walked in there and I saw a few friends that are very active in the disability community and I remember I just felt… I teared up, I just felt so safe. I felt I was with people who would understand the discomfort that I had gone through and I just felt understood. Right? So, what is the disability culture? It’s the solace that we take in each other so that we can nourish each other and go back out into the world and do the work that we are committed to doing. I think that’s the best definition I have of disability culture. Nic: Playing devils advocate here, several years ago I wrote an article called ‘Disability Community? What disability community?’ Where I was talking about the differences between the group where there’s seemingly a hierarchy if you’re a quadriplegic you’re better than someone whose paraplegic. If you’re totally blind you’re better than if you only have low vision and this kind of concept where there’s a lot of disability groups that are pitting each other against other disability groups. And, I’d like to throw this at you in terms of… Is there a single disability culture? Or are the cultures so different between disability groups that it makes for a fragmented experience that would be really hard to reconcile from one to another. Liz: Yeah, I think this something everybody in… that is… everybody who is very active in the disability space, we don’t call it a disability community but somebody who's trying to work and create progress in this space. I think there are these very tangible, very visceral ways that we do bump up against each other and it’s uncomfortable. I think a lot about the pecking order of disability, right? It’s almost like the more visible your needs are the more likely your needs are… like, nobodies getting their needs met but the more visible the need the more likely you’re about to come close to getting your needs met. I was talking to somebody who's long been active in national adapt recently and I’ve sort of long seen National Adapt, like the guy in my team there, their fight for bus lifts on busses. That… this idea of a bus lift came to me more than any sort of one community. It was sort of like this object that regardless of whether or not you needed a bus lift, if you were active in the disability space in the late 60’s / early 70’s this was something that everybody came together and they sort of valiantly fought for. And, I was actually wondering to him if we exist in a time where, yes, we have various needs and we have various things that we’re trying to accomplish but I actually do wonder if straws in the straw ban have actually become that for us now. And, that, maybe we’re not always going to be able to come together on things but maybe from time to time there are objects and there are goals that regardless of our need of that object or that goal we will support one another. And, so, I guess if we are looking at modern overarching disability community, for me, the question is ‘Okay, well who's been concerned about the straw ban’? And maybe that could be an identifier for us. Nic: Yeah. I accept that. Liz: It’s the best I have. I think this is something we’re all grappling with but there are those moments and when we do find ourselves in those spaces it does feel good and so, what if we pay attention to those little things where we can hopefully assume it feels good for many, many people. Nic: Yeah. I like the idea of trying to find similarities and shared experiences rather than try to fragment people with disabilities more. Because, I mean, we’re about 25% of the US population so if we came together rather than bickering we could actually have quite a bit of power here. Liz: Yeah. I think it’s interesting. I myself participate in some of the bickerings. And, this is another question of mine is, I think in any given community there are people who will bicker simply out of frustration without actually having a goal in mind and then there are others who are engaging in these fights but they have something very specific that they’re working towards. And, so, for me, I think well how in these battles do we start to delineate ‘Okay, maybe there’s something of substance here.Like, maybe this person’s actually trying to say more and maybe we’re missing something’. Nic: Hmm Liz: And so I think I’m trying to figure out, okay, when is it that one persons trying to know another person down versus when is it that one person’s actually really trying to say something. Nic: What’s your favorite word? Liz: Right now I decided my word of 2019 is ‘usurp’. Nic: Okay. Why? Liz: So, this idea of usurping. So, for me, it’s… I remember I was talking to this guy who's a… he’s an entrepreneur and he talks… he often times sort of talks to various companies about entrepreneurship. And, as of late, increasingly charities are approaching him and they’re asking him… I’m sorry, not charities but philanthropists are approaching him and they’re asking him. ‘ How do we get more bang for our buck?’ Or ‘How is it that we can assure ourselves that the money that we are giving to charities is being used effectively?’ and what he was saying to them is, well, what he was telling me was is that, he says the same thing to philanthropy after philanthropy and that is that there’s only one way for them to assure themselves that they’re getting the most bang for their buck and that is.. Is that they give a certain amount of money to a charity based on an individual served. So say they decide each individual is worth $100 and 100 individuals are served then that’s $10,000. Right? And they would get that amount of money. But he says no philanthropist has ever been willing to do this ‘coz no charity will do it. And he never understood why no charity would do it and I was like, ‘what you don’t understand is that the second that the people who are being served realize that there is an amount they can get per person the people who are being served will actually usurp the charities and will find out how to fund themselves and we will no longer need the middleman.’ And, so for me this idea of usurping is like, how can we simply stop being a population that is served and really start driving our conversations and our needs. And so that’s… I think it’s something I’ve been thinking deeply about. Nic: Does that tie into this motto ‘nothing about me without me’? Liz: Yeah. I think it very much does. I think I found my way into that motto in a little bit of a different way. And, the thing that I saw is… when I first started thinking about design the thing that I quickly started realizing why is that there are people in this world who have changed the world through designs simply through the lens of their disability. Right? So I talk about Stephen Farffler created the many moated carriage which was the first self-propelled wheelchair and it’s the precursor to the modern-day bicycle. Wayne Westerman created the iPhone touch screen. And so… Ralph Teedar and cruise control. And so you have these ways in which disabled people are incredibly genius and so it struck me as interesting that given our proclivity to innervation the phrase is designed for disability. If you Google design for disability you’ll see that it yields more than twice as many search results as disability design. And, I find that really frustrating because I felt this idea that we are recipients of design had embedded itself into our language even though it’s actually not the reality. We are actually drivers of design. And so, for me, it evolved into ‘design with disabilities’… sort of design for disability and through a friend of mine, Alex Haggard, they really now honed in on the phrase ‘disability led design.’ And so, yeah, I think, I think it took me an evolution to get to ‘nothing about us without us’ but I am fundamentally there and it’s… I think it’s the core of my thinking and of my work right now. Nic: Let’s finish this week with the question, what would you think your greatest achievement is in terms of web accessibility? Liz: It’s complicated. I think I’m on the cusp of a couple of ideas but I don’t think that I would look at anything and sort of say I have achieved anything yet. And I think that the reason why I’m a little bit hesitant to say that I’ve achieved anything is because… and this is actually an idea that I sort of have around accessibility where right now the way accessibility is treated in design is you frame a problem and then you come up with a solution. And then, once you’ve come up with a solution then that’s the end of the story. And so, for me, I’m really interested in... okay, like… every other format and every other form of design is a progression or an evolution and so how is it that accessibility/web accessibility evolves. And so, I think we could look at something as simple as alt text, sorry. Right, so I started out and I didn’t even know what alt text was. Right? So that’s like, my entry into this space. I had a WordPress website to go with purplecane.com and I didn’t even know what alt text was. And so my captions were written in the caption space below the image and I … somewhere along the lines I learned that ‘oh, okay, that caption also needs to go in the alt text box’ And then I realized, now they’re being told twice. And so, like… and then you start to get playful with it. Okay well, now you have this box where you can communicate so what can I say that’s really interesting or amusing and I’ve reached this point now where I think I sort of see the alt text box as a sort of a wink. What is it that I can say in here that only people who use screen readers will be able to access that everybody else misses out on. And so, I think for me, I really kind of like to look at the progression of my thinking and how it was sort of… it went from something that I didn’t even know existed to something that I felt that I needed to do to this point where I’m like, oh, I can only reach certain people and I can have fun with this. And so, I think if anything it’s like, how do we start to show other people like, okay let’s have fun with this. Nic: I like that idea. That’s a wonderful thought to finish this week on. Let’s have fun with this. Liz Jackson, thank you for being such a great sport and we will talk to you next week! Liz: Perfect, I can’t wait. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn’t not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

E77 – Interview with Amy Carney – Part 2 Apr 08, 2019

Amy Carney tells us accessibility is not just a checklist of standards but that we really are building experience for people and allowing them to open up opportunities. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 77. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m continuing my conversation with Amy Carney, we had a great show last time talking about all kinds of things but also the wins that Amy has been able to be part of and trigger in accessibility in Alaska. So, that’s fantastic. Amy, welcome back. Amy: Thank you. Nic: We finished last week on a high note talking about all the good stuff that’s happening in Alaska, accessibility wise. Let’s switch to something else. What would your greatest frustration be in terms of web accessibility? Amy: You know, I think WebAIMprobably pointed those out in their WebAIM million report. The frustrations are probably the realization that people have simple choices to make a lot of the times, not all the time but a lot of times its simple choices and they just don’t quite understand quite how simple it is to make some fixes, and it isn’t really cost heavy and just a little extra time. And so, trying to explain to people that accessibility, for the most part, is easier than you think, and, also the frustrations of… I think I’ve seen this on Twitter, of having to go over HTML again with people. It comes down with some basic changes to your structure and … Nic: Yeah Amy: … element choices. So, yeah. I think it’s frustrating that people don’t see how easy it is sometimes and that it’s… it’s gained a lot of traction it feels like, in the past year for people talking about it but it’s still not as sexy as other things people are learning. Like, “Oh, you know about React and how to do this” and so many other trends that go on that people really spend a lot of time learning but then it’s kind of just a, “Oh, yeah, accessibility, I’ll think about that when I’m done with my project here”. Nic: What do you think the one thing everyone knows about accessibility is? Amy: The one thing that everybody knows… hmmm Nic: Yeah Amy: Well, I think the universal point is it has to do with people with disabilities. And, I feel like, you know, the image ALT attribute has been fairly common. I was even learning when I started dabbling in doing our library website and I remember our IT guy was like, “Well you have to have the ALT attribute or it’s not accessible.” There was no other discussion about accessibility but the ALT attribute had to be there and so I feel like I see that a lot even though that’s a common fail for places I feel like it’s also a win for a lot of places too. Even if the text inside isn’t always great. But the ALT attribute is there, so that’s fine. I feel like people have made a step forward. Nic: Oh we’ve only been advocating for the ALT attribute for, since 1995 or so. It’s good that it's finally starting to sink in a little bit. Amy: I didn’t hear about it when I was doing Geocities. Nic: Oooh you just dated yourself. Amy: I did. That was my first flavor of web design. Nic: Yeah, well that was mine as well. Geocities, yeah, I had a cooking website way back then. Amy: Oh, cool. Mine was StarTrek fanfare. Nic: StarTrek fan. Hmmm. May the force be with you, right? Amy: What?! I can not believe you. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is for most people to fail to succeed in implementing accessibility? Amy: Hmmm. Well, I guess it depends on the site being built. You know, I see a lot of people when they’re working on their applications and their single page applications that the focus can be an issue of getting the focus in the right spot for somebody to understand where they’re at. But in just static webpages I feel like some people struggle with headings and heading levels. Maybe that’s just me but, you know, when you’re having to get back the same… you know, there’s CSS for that and you know, you’ve just created a section and that’s actually a heading for that section instead of a paragraph. I don’t think I run into too many Divs and Spans… as much but, well sometimes I do, but, yeah. I feel like it’s still on a basic level that I feel like I’ve mastered a long time ago and some people, they’re thinking ahead to a certain outcome in their mind and how to build it. They just take a different way of how to build it than I would’ve expected. That kind of goes back to the HTML thing. Nic: How can we help them avoid these kinds of failures? Amy: I’m still asking myself that question. Nic: Fair enough Amy: There’s uh… checklists are one thing that pops up in my mind but I don’t know when people are working on stuff if that’s really help or just an extra burden. Having people put stuff into their process, like, AXE or something like that that’s more automated to let people know or I know, [Hayden Macraine?06:48] has done some of that, here’s things in the CSS that could pop up right at you if you have that CSS file in development. And so, yeah I almost see an automated thing would be the easiest low hanging fruit. Nic: Yeah Amy: But just constant reminders maybe of regular education and reminders because I find that’s the only way I can keep on doing this too. Because my barriers are very low for accessing technology and so if I just remind myself other perspectives and this is real and real blocks for other people and just reading stuff, keeping myself educated keeps that in the forefront of my mind. So, I don’t know how you do that with other people. Some kind of reminder to keep it in the forefront of their mind. becomes more natural to develop it into a workflow. Nic: Yeah, totally. What do you think the greatest challenge for our field, for accessibility, are to moving forward? Amy: The greatest challenge to accessibility, well, probably going back to the last question keeping the awareness up. Keeping up the steam of advocacy and keep on repeating the same things over again… Nic: Yeah Amy: … I think that. People feeling like a broken record can be very exhausting and even I can understand that point. Like, I feel like people I work with at work, that I’m repeating myself and I’m like, “Didn’t I tell you this already?” But, it just… yeah, it’s just that keeping it to the forefront for people so… and understanding that they’re not thinking about this every day or they have other things that they’re dealing with in their day-to-day work. So… Nic: Yeah Amy: … yeah. I think it’s just the advocates and professionals and experts out there just keeping up the good fight. As they would say. Nic: Yeah Amy: And not growing tired of it. Nic: I typically ask people what profession other than your own would you like to attempt. This is your second profession since you were a librarian before. Is there something else you’d like to get your hand onto if you were to do another career change? Amy: I don’t know if I would. This was… this was a long time coming for me. As you see me when I was dealing with GeoCities back at the end of Highschool there. And, I really thought that’s what I wanted to do. Website stuff but it was still so new and I just didn’t know how I could even get into it and make it a profession, And I didn’t have enough encouragement or direction at that time. I started out trying to do a computer science degree and that first class after squeaking by trying to learn C++ was just, like, this isn’t really what I had in mind and the teacher wasn’t very supportive and it was a little awkward being the only girl in class and there’s just so many things. I was just, I don’t think this is where I’m supposed to be. So, I kind of floundered around a bit after that and did different things. But, yeah, after I had this opportunity to come on with the State of Alaska, with the Libraries, Archives, and Museums, ‘coz I actually really love that sector and so it was really great to be doing web stuff for that sector… combination of those sectors I should say because they each have their own specialties and mission… so this has been great to get into it and learn more and get paid to do it. So, I don’t know if when I hit 50 if I will be like, “Okay, that was fun, now let’s do something else maybe a little more physical with my hands” something that doesn’t require staring at a screen all day. But I don’t know what that would be because I haven’t really found that as a side hobby. I don’t really have a lot of hobbies on the side that would motivate me to go onto something else yet. But, that’s yet. That’s a little way down the road. Yeah, so, I keep it open to… you can definitely be more than one thing and I count on probably wanting to move on a couple of decades from now because I’ll have a different mindset and different interests. Nic: And the technology will change. Amy: And it will. Yeah. Imagine the opportunities there. Will I want to change with that technology? Or do I want to do something else? Nic: Who inspires you, Amy? Amy: Lot’s of people. From the undersung like my mom who put aside her own personal interests to take care of her family to people who are well known like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr… people who have spoken up for peoples rights and civil rights. To other women in tech. You have well-known names like Grace Hopper or you have other people that are just making their way now like Rachel Andrews and Jen Simmons… so, yeah, depending on what subject we’re talking about I could let you know… Nic: Fair enough Amy: .. who exactly inspires me. Mostly people who are… who haven’t been afraid to step forward and say, “ I want to try this and I’m going to do as much as I can, learn as much as I can” and not afraid to speak up about it and it takes courage to move forward and do what you really enjoy doing or want to do or feel like it’s going to make a difference. So… coz I still have a pretty small voice. I’ve never been someone that is loud or really spoken up for myself unless it really absolutely matters I guess and makes a life-changing difference of what options I get. But, it’s neat to see people who have really put it out there, on the line and the difference they’ve made. Nic: I think you don’t give yourself enough credit. You may have a small voice but you were instrumental in affecting significant change in accessibility for the State of Alaska. I think that’s… you know, that’s a big accomplishment, You really should not reduce your achievements there. Amy: Well, I hope it continues on. People after me can speak up. Nic: Hmm. Yeah. Let’s wrap the show up with asking you, what is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Amy: That it comes down to the people. It’s not just a checklist of standards but that we really are building experience for people and allowing them to open up opportunities. Technology, computers is I think why I was drawn to it because it opened up opportunities for me and so I think we have to give that benefit an opportunity for other people no matter if they’re certain... Or use a computer the same way we do or don’t. It’s people. Nic: It is people. Totally. And I think that perhaps that’s one of the pitfalls people fall into. That they think, well, we’re in a tech field, we have tech solutions so it’s a tech problem. But, it’s not. It’s not. It’s about people. It really is. Amy: Yeah. Nic: On that note, Amy Carney, thank you very much for being a guest on the show. It’s been a great chat and I look forward to connecting with you again on Twitter and maybe see you at a conference some time. Amy: I hope so, someday. And, it was great being on your show. You’re very welcome and, thank you. Nic: Thank you and have a good day! Amy: You too! Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com. Catch you next time!

E76 – Interview with Amy Carney – Part 1 Apr 01, 2019

Amy Carney tells us that accessibility "comes down to a design perspective. We’re designing to include people, specifically people with disabilities. And that is based on enabling people with disabilities to access content and web applications online." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 76. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking to Amy Carney. Amy, thanks for joining me in this conversation about web accessibility. How are you? Amy: I’m good. Nic: Good. I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a couple of sentences… who is Amy Carney? Amy: Well, I’m definitely more than one thing as Daniel Tiger would say, my son’s show. I’m a web designer and developer. I’m also an Alaskan and Kansan. Mum, wife and middle child. And, not necessarily all in that order. Nic: That’s a few hats to wear. That’s cool. Let’s get started by telling us one thing that most people would not know about you. Amy: Unless you went to school with me most people wouldn’t know that from 4th to 11th grade I was a drummer for our school band. So, I do just a variety of bass drums, snare drums, cymbals… kind of whatever triangle. So, yeah, that was really fun. The marching band was probably my favorite bu highschool. Nic: And do you still play music? Amy: No. Probably not since I moved to Juno. I did fantasize that I would continue on after I was an adult and even dragged my drum set around with me up to Alaska, but they’re just sitting in boxes in the last city I was in. So they never made it to Juno with me. They’re still in our cabin in Stewart. So, no. I haven’t played for a long time. I still end up tapping out beats sometimes when I’m listening to music but that’s about it. Nic: Professional hazard. We’re talking about accessibility today. How would you define web accessibility? Amy: I think that for me it definitely comes down to a design perspective. We’re designing to include people, specifically people with disabilities. And that is based on enabling people with disabilities to access content and web applications online. Nic: That’s interesting because I’ve never heard that aspect of accessibility that it comes down to a design perspective. I’d love you to elaborate a little bit more on that because it’s a take that isn’t talked about very often. Amy: I think part of it comes from me. I do a lot more design work. I still do a lot of code which is what I enjoy but it’s a lot of HTML and CSS and as I’ve been doing this for about 5 years professionally… when you’re building something you have to be able to keep the user in mind and decide how they’re interacting with your page, and that has so many different components whether it’s the base HTML structure that’s underneath and how things are spaced out, how the reading flow would go even just for a visual person. And just user experience I guess. Which user experience is built with design and recently I’ve been reading Web for Everyone by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. I don’t know if I pronounced that right… Nic: Yeah Amy: … and so, and they really put a lot into that which is actually really refreshing to read because they draw a lot from not just WCAG but universal design which is design and just web design of how people are interacting with different pieces on a page so I’m not very far in their book yet but it’s been very great to hear that perspective because you’re right, I feel like when I really started out it was very development based on, okay what kind of code can we use to make it more accessible and I find when I teach people it ends up coming back around to you teaching them HTML all over again or you’re teaching them design tips that this is how you make it better for somebody and that’s why it makes it better for everybody because you’re designing an experience you aren’t just keeping things from being broken. Nic: That’s great. Thank you. You say you’ve been doing this kind of work professionally for the last 5 years or so, what does your day to day work look like? Where does your role fall within web accessibility? Is it… you say you’re designing but are you working solely in accessibility or… how does that integrate itself? Amy: Accessibility probably came up more like 2 years ago for me. So I was hired about 5 years ago with the Alaska State Libraries, Archives, and Museums, it’s a conjunction of all 3 sectors and it’s under the umbrella of the state of Alaska so it’s within state government and so with the Libraries, Archives and Museums that we call LAM I was hired on as their publication specialist which is kind of like a catch-all term. I think it started out as more of a marketing, kind of making posters and flyers and yeah, we need a webmaster too so why don’t we do that too...And the job … Nic: Typical Amy: … yeah, so the job has evolved even before I got to it. It started out even as a librarian position and it’s just kind of morphed over the years that it’s existed. So when I got hired on by that point they were saying, ‘We need somebody who’s about 80% webmaster and then, by the way, can you make posters and flyers? Have you done any work like that?’ and so, that’s another way I’m able to focus a lot on design is going between paper and between pixels… it’s actually really interesting to see the relationships. I know some people who have had design backgrounds and it’s helpful to them for web design and development but for me, it’s been learning because I was a librarian before this and so the last 2 years we’ve been making more of a push. I’ve mentioned it before where I was like, ‘Hey, I think this is an important issue but I don’t know how we get there’. And then our overarching department, the Department of Education has had to take it seriously in the last couple of years so we’re all learning together and doing that push so I’d say in the past year, even though I’m doing the day to day webmaster stuff like posting new content or creating new pages for information we have to offer, for services we have to offer, probably 90% of my time has been accessibility remediation just because we have a mandate and we are going through our own audit right now. And so, that’s been a learning experience which I am so grateful it’s there because I think it’s important. It’s not just we have to do this. Nic: Was this mandate for your organization to have an accessible website… was that how you became aware of accessibility and how important it is or did you have other triggers before that? Amy: I had some other ones before that. Reading just all the different aspects of web design and I was interested in it from a user experience perspective but I just didn’t know how to get there and I didn’t have any support or motivation from above to do it. So it’s just kind of like on the list, ‘yeah we will learn about that sometime’ and I want to learn about it but it’s just not the priority. Nic: If I understand correctly you recently completed a ‘100 days of’. Is that right? Amy: I did. Nic: So you obviously did make the time to learn about accessibility because you learned about accessibility and spoke about accessibility on your site for 100 days. Tell us about that. Amy: Well, it’s actually a second round that I did. A couple of years ago when I really started trying to learn web accessibility that first round was kind of like, directionless. I was just grabbing anything I could find online, I didn’t know where I was going with it as far as I needed some guidance but didn’t know what that guidance was. So, it felt like a lot of random information at once and obviously WCAG. You hear about WCAG the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines but that was about it. And, starting to follow people on Twitter that helped some but this time around I needed those guideposts and some of my own success criteria, you could say. And so when I discovered the international association of accessibility professionals that had their certification for a web accessibility specialist I said, ‘this is what I’m looking for. This is the guidance I need’. It’s not just about the certification but they have actual things that make you a more educated person understanding web accessibility in depth. And so I used that as my goal and was able to do. The 100 days has worked for me before for coding, I used to do 100 days of code rounds that Alexander … Nic: Okay Amy: … and so that’s where I got the idea first to do 100 days the first time so this time I was like, this works for me. I can do it and stay committed and I’ll learn so much more for it. And I did. And that goal was actually good in studying for the certification. I feel I know so much more and am satisfied with what I learned as opposed to the first time around. Nic: That’s awesome. Do you think your view of accessibility has changed over your 2 rounds of hundred days of accessibility? Amy: You mean for better or worse? Or just the things that I know? Nic: Yeah, for better or worse. Has your philosophy or your understanding of it or maybe just things that went click, aha! Amy: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I think the biggest change has been… this really isn’t as hard as we make it all out to be. When you first start out during my first round it’s kind of like… okay. It’s kind of like, mystifying. What are we supposed to be doing here? And yeah, we have these guidelines but is anybody really going to be sitting and doing a checklist of these guidelines. You know, something more beginner level like. Or friendly to someone who just doesn’t quite know what they’re getting into and I think the second round really became more of ‘I don’t expect anybody to follow my lead and do 100 days. That’s a bit much for most people but, I feel like as I did my tweets every day that it was like, ‘okay, this is advocacy and it’s education. Like, all these little things matter in accessibility and if you learn about this thing, cool. You’ve just made your site better if you do it this way. So, I feel like it came down to just publicly putting out tidbits now and then for people. Yeah, I definitely feel like it’s not as hard. And, there’s actually a really supportive community out there of people advocating for web accessibility and that’s been really cool too. That was hard to find in the beginning. Nic: The community is growing but I think also we are getting more and more interconnected and it’s easier to find one another. I’m certainly growing the number of people that I connect that are doing accessibility or have an interest in accessibility and that’s fantastic for me to see that happen, because 5 years, 6 years, 7 years ago especially on Twitter it was almost a small, very family like grouping of maybe a couple of dozen people at most but now we are connecting to all these people and I think it enriches the community and it enriches the message we are able to collectively put forward. I just think it’s wonderful. Amy: And maybe I’ve gotten lucky to see that transformation because I’ve … I don’t remember how long I’ve been on Twitter but through the hundred days of code I was able to connect with people with that hashtag and it was interesting to start getting broader perspectives of that and not such a narrow view of people I had met in person. And so it was neat to be able to use that and find the A11y hashtag and just slowly building on finding people and finding peoples articles that they’ve written online. It’s …. Yeah. That’s cool to see your perspective of how it’s transformed. Nic: Did you come across barriers or difficulties when you were learning about accessibility and if so how did you get over it? Amy: Well, the first round, like I say, I think WCAG was intimidating and that was before the web accessibility initiative had redesigned their site and so their site didn’t feel really friendly before. When I saw references to it I still kind of feel like I’m not quite making connections with the dots. So, yeah, I guess at the very first round I felt like there were more barriers. I think it clicked a lot more in the second round of having a particular goal, having that body of knowledge document from IAAP and having those … that guidance for like, okay, so yes, you need to understand and learn WCAG and you need to learn ARIA and I mean, that can be a life long learning there of understanding ARIA. Nic: Yeah Amy: But, also ATAG. I hadn’t known about ATAG before the offering tools for accessibility guidelines. Nic: Yeah Amy: And so, that was good. It was like, okay, I know I need to learn these but they had additional guidance for that. Like, okay, here's how to understand how people with disabilities might access the web depending on their assistive technology or strategies that they use. Even if it’s something as simple as finding the screen. So, yeah, the second round I didn’t feel like there's quite as many barriers. Then it suddenly started clicking like ‘Oh, okay I need to continue just looking at people as the people having this experience and what these challenges feel like to them’ and then WCAG started falling better into place. I can’t remember every guideline or success criteria mostly but I start to remember a little bit as I start to encounter the different disabilities or the different assistive technologies. So, yeah, I don’t feel like I ran into as many barriers the second time. The first time I just felt kind of lost. Nic: Yeah, I’ll let you in on a secret that’s probably not all that well kept but most people that are doing accessibility don’t actually know WCAG top to bottom, front to back and all that. I certainly don’t. I know what all the criteria are all about, and if I need to reference that then I can find it easily but I would be the first one to admit I can’t quote you all the success criteria by ear. And, I think, for me anyway, at this point WCAG is important because it’s our guiding standard but it’s also tricky because it’s not, to me, it’s not about compliance. We shouldn't use WCAG as a be all and end all. IT shouldn’t be the target. It should be a tool to help us make things more accessible. So… Amy: I definitely agree. And, that I think is what I learned in the second round. That it’s a great starting point and it can be overwhelming but it’s not the endpoint. And that comes down to design again as you strive for a more universal experience for all and testing with actual people and seeing how it actually works for them and not just… kind of like automated testing. It’s like, okay, we’ve kind of met this and these are things being pointed out to us but it’s not the end. We need to keep checking that it works for real people. Nic: Yeah. Would you say your first round of testing was… the learning was more difficult because things were more scattered but having had that first round of learning you had more of an idea of where you’re going and then you found the resources at IAAP and that allowed you to really focus? Amy: Mmmhmm Nic: Do you think if you’d found the IAAP resource before your first round that your first round would’ve been easier? Amy: That’s actually a very good question that I’ve even asked myself. Was this… do I feel like I’m late finding it or is it just a matter of progress, the way I’ve been searching out things and I don’t know? I sometimes think I don’t think I would’ve been ready to study all of that stuff in the body of knowledge that they put out because of some things that they review for me and it’s just like, ‘ oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that already.’ And I know what I need to add on and fill gaps but, yeah, a couple of years ago I felt, I feel it probably would’ve felt overwhelming. Even more overwhelming. Right now I’m just nervous about the [XA? 19:25], you know but I feel like I’m confident. And, before that, I think I would’ve felt just as overwhelmed about looking at the WCAG documentation. Nic: Yeah Amy: And saying, ‘What is all this about?’ So yeah, it’s… Nic: So when is your exam? Amy: April 3rd. Nic: April 3rd. I will be thinking of you. I will be thinking of you and wishing you the best of luck for that. Amy: Thanks. Nic: What’s your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Amy: My greatest achievement? Nic: Yeah Amy: I think… because of these last 2 years and really pushing for it, despite the frustrations I walked away within the first round and not feeling like I actually learned what I hoped to learn, it motivated me to talk to people and so I actually ended up starting that year a web accessibility working group for the state of Alaska. It started out, it was a great time to spark a conversation. We had just started a new branch, the office of Information Technology, coz they were trying to do a lot of centralization with IT and they hired on their first CIO and he was very new, he had only been there a few months and I already had all this web accessibility stuff in mind and I said you know what, I think OIT needs to have some part in this so I contacted him, he responded and said, ‘Yes, we can have a meeting and talk about this.’ And so… Nic: Wow Amy: … I brought in some other people, some other webmasters that I had already gotten to know that I knew were interested in web accessibility, that cared about it but just didn’t have any support or hold on really making a difference. And so, we had a conversation with him and he had a background with the Federal Department of Education and he was saying, “I don’t even know why this is in question here, this should be happening.” And so he goes, “I don’t know what the Office of Information Technology can do aside from if it’s any kind of procurement issues but, okay.” So we got that rolling, we involved them and we ended up starting an actual working group with this small group of people that I had and had one of their OIT staff sitting in on it and then we just started talking about, okay well, what do we want to accomplish? Well, we all know that we need training… I don’t know how we are going to do that but, okay. And then we need to set some kind of standard that’s actually… people know about because I think that some people had the idea that WCAG 2.0, a AA level was what we were striving for but I think it wasn’t Statewide knowledge as far as people working as webmasters so, we’re like, we really want to make sure that that’s understood by people. And, what about testing tools. I mean, I think a few copies of JAWS was floating around here but maybe if everybody could have a copy to test with and maybe some kind of automated testing tool because some departments had purchased some kind of scanning software and others don’t have anything. And so, we just had those conversations and we just kept meeting on a monthly basis not knowing what we were doing and eventually that State A to A coordinator position got filled which was a miracle because it had been open for, like, 2 or 3 years, vacant. And so we invited him to come and he was like, “This is great you’re doing this”, and “let’s see what we can do.” And so through his push, he’s had the higher up support to put out memos and recommendations and so after that time, we have now definitively gotten a policy saying okay, the State of Alaska is going to follow, or strive for WCAG 2.1 AA level… Nic: Nice Amy: … And everybody was supposed to put that on their department homepage. Some kind of link stating this is what our efforts are going to be and then we’ve started discussions about trying to figure out, at a Statewide enterprise level, figuring out what automated testing scan we can have for everybody and exploring also what should all our public computers look like? What kind of tools should we offer people? What is our baseline? Is it just going to be magnification? Are we going to have a screen reader on there? Are we going to have special keyboards? Or mice? And so, we’ve made a lot of progress which is kind of astounding to everybody because some things just move really slow where people drag their feet and it’s been timing. Nic: Yeah Amy: It was all timing. And, I feel great that I was a part of that, of just asking that one guy, and he’s not even a CIO anymore, just like “Hey, can we meet about web accessibility?” So, I’m kind of proud of that. Nic: So you should be. This is amazing work. And, now you need to go to all the other States and replicate that. Amy: I would actually like to see what other States do and how they’re doing it or where they’re at I guess. Nic: Yeah. Hey, Amy, thank you so much for that wonderful conversation. I think we’re going to end this on a high note and resume next week. So, Amy Carney, thank you for being a guest on my show. Amy: Thanks for inviting me. It’s great to be a part of it. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E75 – Interview with Alli Berry – Part 2 Mar 27, 2019

Alli says that getting the right people in the same room at the start of a project is very difficult and can impede accessibility. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 75. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m continuing my conversation with Alli Berry. Hi Alli, welcome back. Alli: Hi, thanks. Good to be back. Nic: Last week we talked about a lot of really interesting stuff and for those of you out there who have not heard the episode, I really invite you to check it out, because we spoke about the importance of language, the relationship between search engine optimization and accessibility and a few other interesting things. So, yeah, check it out. So, this week what are we talking about? Well, we are talking about accessibility again. We finished last week talking about how you managed to get one of your third-party vendors to understand the importance of making their content accessible by providing text or alternative text rather than putting all the content in images, so that was really positive but let's explore the dark side a little bit more. Alli, what's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Alli: I think, a lot of times it’s getting the right people in the room for the beginning of a project. I’m thinking about a site rebuild or some larger… building a new website from scratch type project. A lot of times what happens is you bring in a design agency and they do these amazing designs but they’re not necessarily approaching things beyond the visual, right? And there’s a lot that needs to go into a website to make it work for people. So, thinking about both from an SEO perspective as well as a web accessibility perspective is this site actually going to work how we need it to, is the information going to be in HTML, is it going to be… it’s amazing what agencies can come up with in terms of where they want to put information. And so I think that a lot of times it really comes down to having the right people in the conversation early into a project instead of being, like “Hey, we’re launching a site tomorrow do you want to just check it over and make sure it’s going to be good for search” or, “is it going to be good for users.” And then, of course, you’re going to find large things that need fixing and suddenly you have a fire when you absolutely didn’t need to. Nic: It’s better to be proactive than reactive, isn’t it? Alli: Definitely. Well, and just to think about everything from the start. That’s going to make your agency partner more effective too if they understand everything… all of your requests and needs for capability. Nic: How do we make that happen? How do we help stakeholders understand the importance of bringing everybody in at the start of a project, from designers to developers to everybody and think about accessibility from the get-go? Alli: That’s a good question. I feel like if I had the answer to that I… I feel like it happens so often. SEO’s like to joke with each other too about being brought into a project at the very end of it. I think… I honestly… I think it’s on everybody to be more assertive. You need to know that the project is happening first of all but to ask more questions of your stakeholders and to find out what they’re planning, how you can get involved. Just giving them things to think about. Often times they don’t know what they don’t know. And so it does come back to the advocacy component. Just to be curious and to constantly be that person in your organization that’s asking questions, that wants to know what’s going on. I think that’s going to help you, help you be a more active partner. Nic: So you’re saying being curious and asking questions in your organization is a good way to be champion within your internal teams. Alli: At least that’s kind of… at least that’s what’s worked for me in the past too and especially when I was working on the agency side I feel like if you don’t ask a lot of questions of your client and try to dig in more and understand their processes it’s pretty hard to insert yourself into them. But, if you can at least find out, like, “Who is in charge of that?” and “How often do you guys meet and what do you talk about?” and like, “Oh, hey, you guys might want some feedback about X, Y and Z, would you ever want me to be a part of that meeting?” that can get you further and further into an organization. Nic: What would be the one thing that everybody knows about accessibility? It’s conventional wisdom if you want. Alli: God, I don’t know. That we need it, perhaps. Nic: Do you think really everybody knows we need it? Or something that most of us in the field know and understand but maybe stakeholders don’t understand that. Alli: That’s a good point. Yeah, maybe people don’t actually know that we need it. I honestly think the… you know, people who don’t have to think about assistive technology don’t. That’s a very fair point. Or, if you don't accessibility a website differently than other people, you’re not going to think about it. I do think that the ‘we need it’ component comes in more and more especially as you get higher into an organization because there is the fear of a lawsuit. Nic: Yeah Alli: So I think at least from that perspective there's more awareness than there used to be but … and I would like to believe that people are empathetic, at least to a point but they also want things to be done quickly and efficiently and on a budget and I do think people get intimidated with how much you have to think about with accessibility so I think for a lot of people it’s easier to just not. Nic: It’s funny, I think most people actually are good people and they’re not mean or lacking empathy. It’s really this question of ‘if I don’t have experience or understanding of the needs then I won’t know that I need to do these things.’ For example, I bet you were looking at storefront entrances a lot more after you pushed your classmate in Washington state, pushed her wheelchair when you were 13. That was probably an eye-opening thing that suddenly you were paying attention to accessibility access everywhere, even when you weren't with your classmate, right? Alli: Totally, yeah, no I totally agree with that. I think, yeah, having experience, yeah, definitely. That’s what sticks with you more than anything else. I used to… the blind film critic, he was pretty big on Twitter for a while, I used to watch videos and see how he uses his iPhone. Of course, things I had never thought about because I never had to. So, yeah. I completely agree that yeah. If you have experience with one type of disability, whether it's you or somebody else, like, naturally, like that’s going to feel less intimidating to you than not even knowing anything about what somebody might need for a disability or just unfamiliar with. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is for most people failing to succeed with implementing accessibility? Alli: I actually think it’s what we are talking about now. I think that there’s just so many… I think that people just don’t understand the spectrum of needs. When you think about disabilities you think about a physical disability, you think blindness, you think deafness but there’s so many more. It’s more of a spectrum than that. And just, there’s so many different needs I think it can be intimidating for people to even know where to start. And I think there’s so much more happening with the creation of websites that because it’s just such a big thing to tackle and if you don’t know very much from the beginning… you have so much to learn I just think it’s hard to get people to really dive in and learn a ton about it to be the most effective. Nic: It’s interesting you’re saying we don’t think about the experience of people with impairments that are less known or less understood when you veer away from sight impairments and hearing impairments. I sat in on a usability study recently and the person we were working with had a traumatic brain injury, and they were telling us how the yellow logo signified a ‘Hey, attention there's danger here’ because yellow was the color for danger. So instead of being a positive and happy and fresh looking logo, it was ‘I don’t want to look at this because I don’t think I should be on this site. It’s a …. There’s danger on this site.’ Alli: Huh Nic: And I’ve been doing accessibility for 25 years and I never really thought about that. So… yeah. It’s really great to interact with people with impairments that we’re not familiar with. Alli: Yeah, no kidding. That’s super interesting. That’s something no matter how you understand about accessibility... and I’m certainly not at the top of your normal guests' list by any means... there’s always so much more to learn and understand the complexity. That’s super interesting. Nic: How can we help people that lack this areness of th different conditions, the different combination of imapairments or experiences… how can we help them get that knowledge, get that awareness? Alli: That’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about this more and more too and just like, the give on my own team or what have you. We do so much user testing but we don’t do… so, we do user testing in that we test AB landing pages or we do heat mapping on a page or we take user recordings of people using a page and trying to figure out where they’re having difficulties, but we don’t do user testing from a disabilities standpoint. And I think that it would be really powerful to actually bring in some people who access our website differently, and actually see them try and do it, and learn from that, and hear what their struggles are, and how we can make changes. I feel like that would be something really powerful, and it would stick with everybody every day. Nic: Yeah it’s certainly stuck with everybody I’ve interacted with that actually sat in or looked at a recording of such a … such a session, and it… yeah, it’s really eyeopening. What would you say our greatest challenges are for web accessibility moving forward? Alli: I think… I mean, I do think awareness continues to be a challenge and just all of the things we’ve just talked about too. Just having more understanding of disability, in different forms. I also think getting web accessibility just prioritized. There’s just so many teams out there running websites that are short-staffed, lean, going in 800 different directions, trying to do 800 different types of marketing, and I think that accessibility sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. It’s important that it doesn’t because there’s so many potential people we could be reaching that we’re not. But I think sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that because you’re tracking who does use your site rather than who you’re missing out on. There’s no way to gather that kind of data. Nic: Yeah, the lack of metrics for people with disabilities using a website is something that… it’s a complain that I hear a lot of from stakeholders and on the one hand I’m thinking it would be powerful to be able to give that information. On the other hand, I’m thinking that means gathering data on people that they don’t necessarily want to share. Alli: Right Nic: How do we resolve that? Alli: God, I would love to know because you can pull things like a bounce rate. You can see how many people left a page, but you don’t know the reason. So, it could be anything from ‘this just wasn’t what I was looking for’ to ‘hey, I came to your site and I literally couldn’t access the information I needed.’ I don’t know another way to gather that data other than to do actual user recordings, but even then you don’t know for sure what the core issue is. The only way I think you can do it is actually bringing people in and watching and that just… that takes time and could be expensive. You know, it’s not a … marketers are always looking for ways to get a large sample size for a low amount of money. You know? Nic: Yeah there’s no doubt that user testing with real users with disabilities can take time and can be costly. It’s so worth it though. Even if you do...you know, use a sample of 5 or 10 people to go through this it is just so worth it. Alli: Absolutely Nic: Alli, what profession, other than being a geek in SEO, would you like to do? Would you go back to special education or would you like to try something else? Alli: That’s a good question. I often think about how I could go back to special education and not work in the school system. So, that would definitely be one place to go. Another thing I’ve always wanted to do is be a documentary filmmaker. I love film and I love helping people tell their stories, and it’s cool that I do get to do an element of that through content. And I love to travel. So I feel like if you’re making documentary films you are going to travel. You’re going to meet new people and hear their stories and help them tell them, and, yeah, I think that would be really cool. Nic: In a way helping people tell their stories is what I’m doing with this podcast and also for the shorter series of the Accessibility Rules soundbites where I get people with disabilities to tell us in their own words what barriers they encounter. So I certainly can relate to this desire of helping people tell their stories. Alli: Yeah. Yeah, I think you have a cool job. Yeah, I think podcasting would be super cool, I think consulting would be super cool to help just raise more awareness and understanding and, yeah, help businesses do a better job of being accessible. Nic: Who inspires you? Alli: Who inspires me? I feel like the next generation of young adults. I keep thinking about this… there is that kid who's just all over everywhere, the news, who had posted on Reddit about wanting to get vaccinated because his parents wouldn’t do it. Thinking about how much courage something like that would take, and then to testify it in the Senate. The kids at Parkland high school who are refusing to let politicians pay lip service to gun violence issues… I don’t know, I just look at this generation that’s coming and … they’re amazing. I just can’t wait to see all that they do for this world because I think that … when you’re thinking about advocacy this is a generation of kids who are coming and I think they’re going to do amazing things. Nic: Yeah, I look forward to that. If we leave them a planet to actually be able to [crosstalk 18:23] Alli: Right, there is that. Nic: The rate it’s going… What would be one thing you would like people to remember about accessibility? Alli: I would love, at least for people in SEO to remember that you can make a site as accessible as ever to search engines but at the end of the day what actually matters is that it’s accessible for the people because once somebody gets to your site it’s ultimately a human who needs to have a good experience using it, and that should really be what you’re focussed on at the end of the day. It should be about your users not about your search ranking. Nic: I love that. I’m making a note because I love that. Alli, thank you so much for your time and conversation. It’s been really interesting to talk about accessibility and SEO and the junctions between those 2 things. Alli: Yes! Nic: Is there anything you would like to share that I haven’t discussed or brought up? Alli: I don’t think so. I super appreciate you having me. This is a topic that I absolutely love talking about, and, yeah, I love… I think we need to have more conversations between our communities. The SEO community and accessibility community and developers and, yeah, I love this. I would love to have more collaboration going forward. Nic: That would be awesome. Alli: Yeah. Nic: That would be awesome. Let’s try and think of ways we can make that happen. Alli: I’m in. Nic: Alli Berry, thanks again and we will catch you on the web Alli: Sounds good, thanks so much for having me. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E74 – Interview with Alli Berry – Part 1 Mar 18, 2019

Alli tells us how experiencing lack of accessibility for a classmate of hers in the built environment helped her understand the importance of accessibility on the web. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 74. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking to Alli Berry. Thanks for joining me with this conversation around web accessibility, Ali. Alli: Thanks so much for having me. Nic: So I like to let guests introduce themselves. In a brief intro, who is Alli Berry? Alli: So I am the SEO and content lead for the Ascent by the Motley Fool. So, if you are familiar with investing at all the Motley Fool is a pretty big brand giving investment advice to people. So, my part of the business, we are a sub-brand of that, and we’re focused on creating free personal finance content, and my job is really to make sure our site is accessible … as accessible as possible for search engines, and to help our pages rank well, and to get our content to as many people as possible. And what’s fortunate about SEO is that often what is accessible for search engines is also what is accessible for humans so by approaching websites from an SEO perspective we’re at least on our way to helping make websites more accessible for humans too. Nic: Yeah, that’s something I would like to explore a little bit in a moment but to really get warmed up… tell us one thing that most people would not know about yourself. Alli: Sure. I started my career as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in Japan, and what I loved the most about doing that… I did that for a couple of years. I taught special education as well, so I came back to the US, and I really wanted to pursue that field of work so I got a job doing SEO, my very first SEO job, to pay the bills, and then I was doing a Masters in special education at night. And I ended up staying on the SEO path, there’s a lot going on in Chicago public schools at the time, and I decided I should probably just stick with the career path I was on but I’m super grateful that I had that background and experience ‘coz I had to read that ADA and the IDEA and learn about assistive tech, and I feel like having all of that background has really helped me better understand the people component to my job, and who is actually impacted by the decisions that we make on websites. Nic: That’s interesting to hear about your background in special education. It seems that a lot of people in tech that are interested in accessibility have some kind of background that directly relates to disability in some way. Alli: Yeah, whether they even realize it or not I think we impact so much, and I think often that gets lost. Nic: How would you define web accessibility? Alli: How do I define it? I think it’s allowing people to access content on the internet in the way that they want or need to consume it. Making flexible… making websites flexible enough that they can cater to all needs. Just so that, yeah… it’s important that people can access things in the way that they need to but also thinking about two peoples preferences as well. Nic: Yeah the aspect of choice I think is important and often forgotten about even though the accessibility guidelines talk about it in a few ways. You mentioned that your primary role is SEO, how do you implement accessibility in your day to day work? Web accessibility that is. Alli: So, basically what I do I’m always advocating for making sure that our web site is accessible as possible to search engine bots, right? So, thinking about all kinds of things from visual media, making sure that we’re using alt text on images or we’re transcribing videos using captions, transcribing podcasts, and also thinking about the mobile experience, and that’s becoming a much bigger deal in SEO. Google is now indexing the mobile version of websites over the desktop version so suddenly you have everyone thinking more about what a mobile experience looks like, and actually thinking about text enlargement which is helpful for both the aging population, people with visual impairment. That’s been interesting how that’s been aligning, a lot of time people are also thinking about… more about voice search and how information can be consumed via Alexa units or Google Home, and actually… Nic: Yeah Alli: ...that’s super interesting because that’s something that people using speech to text readers have been obviously needing for forever but now you have the entire digital marketing community essentially thinking about that more as well. Nic: It’s something I’ve always found interesting how accommodations and systems that are originally designed for people with disabilities come into the mainstream, and suddenly everybody's paying attention to them. It’s an interesting circle. Alli: Mmhmm Nic: I often tell people that Google is the largest screenreader user on the planet. Would you agree with that? And if you do could you elaborate on that from a SEO perspective? Alli: Yeah. Oh, that’s super interesting. I’ve never thought about it like that but I totally agree with that. I guess I often try to frame things too, like Google essentially, just another user with unique needs so kind of similar that they both struggle with the visual components. They struggle with things like iframes, it’s really important to have easy and simple navigation to help Google understand the most important pages to your website. Adding site search on your websites also super helpful because you can uncover what content is really hard for people to find. Again thinking about mobile. It completely is essentially a giant screen reader, and it’s almost better to think about Google as another human that’s trying to consume your content. Nic: You did special education for a while. Is that how you became aware of the importance of web accessibility? Or was there something else that triggered that awareness? Alli: That’s a good question. In terms of web accessibility yes. In terms of accessibility in general… when I was in school... when I was a middle school student one of my classmates had cerebral palsy so I was kind of her designated helper, and I used to take notes on carbon paper and give her copies. She and I and a bunch of our classmates went to Washington DC on a school trip, and I got to experience what it was like being in a wheelchair trying to get into really old government buildings. It was an awful experience. We had to walk … we had to go so much further just to get inside places. There were actually places we couldn’t go at all. We got stuck in an elevator in one of the monuments. Just as a 13-year old that experience really stuck with me, and I actually went home and wrote a letter to Paul Wellstone when I was 13. Because for my friend Amy that’s a part of her day to day, she’s very used to that experience. As somebody with privilege I … that was my first encounter with it, and it was an eye opening experience I guess, and that stuck with me for a long time. But then from the web perspective, learning assistive technology I’m certainly not an expert in it but at least having the exposure to it helped me see the complexity around web accessibility and how many things we need to be thinking about when we are creating websites, and stuff. Nic: Do you think your experience in Washington when you were 13, obviously it opened your eyes but did it create a negative perception of what it might be like to live with a disability? Alli: I don’t know about… I mean, it certainly it gave me a negative perspective on just how little thought people give to ableism, just to basic rights that people with disabilities have, and that’s getting completely disregarded a lot. Nic: Mmmm Alli: Yeah. Nic: Yeah Alli: It definitely fired me up and got me thinking about how I can try to help. Nic: That’s good. So you’ve been doing web work for what, about 5 years? More or less? 10 years? Alli: I’ve been SEO since 2011 so I guess 8 years now Nic: Yeah. 8 years. Cool. Has your view of accessibility changed over that time period or do you think things are more or less the same? Alli: Good question. I think, at least from my line of work people are becoming more and more aware of the need for accessibility.I think a lot of that is actually coming from fear, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best reason to be thinking about it but the fear of a lawsuit, of PR issues, is very real, and I work for a very large company. Accessibility is very top of mine because The Fool has had some issues with accessibility in their past. We … I worked for another company, Kaplan Professional Education, they were also realizing that they had.. They still had a ways to go on the accessibility front. But, I do feel like there's been a lot more push to start actually making some changes which I think is a really good thing. And I think just as technology evolves, and stuff I guess my hope is that people are starting to think about accessibility from the beginning, rather than from cleaning things up after the fact. Nic: It’s always easier to make it happen from the start rather than to try and retrofit accessibility in that. It’s interesting that it’s a topic that comes back over and over again with different guests I’m having. It’s this thing, you gotta bake it right in from the get-go. It’s like a blueberry muffin, you can’t put the blueberries in the muffin after the muffins are baked. Alli: Exactly. Nic: So… Alli: Yeah, everything will work a lot better if it’s in the planning from the beginning. Nic: Have you faced barriers in your… I’ll say work as a champion, internal organization champion of accessibility … are you finding barriers or is this fear of lawsuit really pushing everybody from legal to dev teams to everybody in the organization? Alli: There’s, I would say, at least in my current role this is I think the most aware a larger team has ever been about accessibility. But, I do think, of course, there's going to be barriers. One thing that would be amazing to have that I don’t think exists anywhere is to have a tool that would allow you to see if a page is failing some sort of assistive technology and why. You can put a search, or a website into a Google search console type tool, and see that search engines can accessibility something and why … it would be really cool if you could do that for different types of technology as well. Just because, a lot of times we don’t know what wouldn’t work for somebody unless you do user testing with people. Nic: Yeah, that’s an interesting concept. There are a few automated testing tools that basically do a Yes, No, Pass, Fail kind of approach for some of the things but what you’re talking about is more an emulator of the various assistive technologies out there. Is that correct? Alli: Yeah. I think there's a hole in the market for it. That would be a really cool thing to develop. I wish I knew how. Nic: That’s an interesting thought, maybe one of our listeners that are so technically minded might look at doing something like that. On the other hand, it’s interesting, because assistive technologies seem to be used differently by different people, and the same setup will behave completely differently from person to person so it would be interesting to see if something like that can be developped. Alli: Yeah. I don’t know. I challenge everyone out there to come up with something. Nic: There’s a challenge let’s make sure we put it out there. Jumping about on a different topic… Ali, what’s your favorite word? Alli: I knew you were going to ask this question ‘coz I’ve listened to enough episodes now to know it’s always coming…. I was thinking about this, and I don’t know if I have a favorite word necessarily but does it have to be in English? Nic: No, not at all Alli: Okay. Well, there's a word in Japanese that I think is really interesting. The full… I guess it’s technically 2 words, Kuuki Yomenai a lot of times people just shorten it to KY but it means ‘someone who can’t read the air. Or like somebody who can’t pick up on social cues, on social expressions…. Just can’t read a room and kind of adjust themselves accordingly. I think it’s an interesting word just because there isn’t an equivalent in English, and I think that says a lot about the cultural difference between Japanese culture and American culture. The Japanese are a lot more… it’s a collective society, there’s a lot more emphasis on fitting in whereas we’re a little bit more individualistic and being unique, and … I don’t know, I just think there's … I think that’s cool to.. You can uncover bits and pieces about a culture from the language. Especially when there's no equivalent word in your language and thinking about why. Nic: Yeah, for some reason what you’re describing makes me think of situation awareness or lack thereof. Does that relate or is it different? Alli: No, I think that’s it. Situational awareness, and just… In Japanese culture you’re not going to ever receive direct feedback, as an American that can be really frustrating because we are very feedback oriented so a lot of it is dependent on you being able to pick up on when you’ve done something wrong, and kind of correct yourself, and that can be a really hard thing to tackle. So, yeah… it’s just a very different culture. Nic: That’s interesting Alli: Is there anything in French that’s… doesn’t have an English equivalent? I know you speak French. Nic: Yeah there’s probably quite a few things but my bigger problems from having grown up in French and learning English as a fourth language have been what I would call false friends. Words that are on the surface very similar but in reality quite different. For example the word eventually. In French, we say "éventuellement" and they are very similar however, there is a significant difference. In English eventually means, yeah we will get to there at some point in the course of things whereas in French "éventuellement" means we may or may not get there depending on the events we are going to encounter. Alli: Huh Nic: So these kinds of … these kinds of false friends can be really throwing people for a loop, and causing a lot of angst when you’re trying to communicate something, and you’re not realizing the subtleness of words that sound so similar, that appear to be so similar that have some massive differences. Alli: Yeah. That’s so interesting. Language is such a hard thing to master. Nic: Language is fascinating. I mean, it’s veering off the topic of accessibility in some way but at the same time, I think communication and words and language is part of accessibility we have to make sure we’re speaking clearly and there are things in English that boggle me. Of course, there are things in French that boggle me too but things like why do you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. Alli: That is a great question Nic: Yeah Alli: I never thought about that. … Exactly, it’s totally counter-intuitive, and we expect everyone to just know that and accept it. Nic: Talking about language, bring it back to the topic of accessibility, one of the things that we tend to promote a lot is the concept of plain language or plain English because we’re in English now. Does plain English help in SEO? And if so, how? Alli: Yeah. That’s a great question. So, yes, plain language is definitely helpful. I used to do content audits when I worked for an agency, and depending on the topic we would generally… we had a tool that could tell us kind of the average reading level of somebodies content, and actually, the 8th-grade reading level is about what we would… we are shooting for in the majority of most cases. So, that’s definitely a helpful piece but I think it also comes back to keywords, and a huge piece of SEO is uncovering how people talk about essentially what your company does. Like, how do people… so, for example, just thinking about credit cards because I guess that’s what I focus a lot on… uncovering how people search for credit cards, the terms that they use, what are their longer queries about credit cards, figuring out what the search volume is. There's a bunch of tools that will give you an average monthly search volume, and then matching that language on your website in a way that’s really natural. Trying to pick up how people are talking about what you do and then giving them the answers in the language that they're seeking it. Nic: There's really a nice intersection between the 2 fields, I think that needs to be explored, and perhaps if… perhaps if more stakeholders understood the importance of accessibility and how it can help with SEO maybe some things would change. Of course, we don’t want to just look at doing accessibility just because it’s good for search engine optimization but it’s certainly something to look at. Alli: I totally agree. Yeah. you certainly wouldn’t want to do it only for the SEO component but you can make a pretty compelling argument about revenue on a couple of different fronts because there's, like, organic is such a big piece of traffic for a lot of websites, and revenue and then there's also the component of 20% of the population has a disability so that’s also potential customers. So when you combine all of that information together it’s actually a pretty compelling business reason to make changes. Nic: For what it’s worth there was a new census data that came out at the end of last year, it’s actually 25% of the US population that has a significant condition that significantly affects one or more condition of daily living. So, it’s 1 in 4 now not 1 in 5. Alli: Wow. Thank you. Thank you for that. Nic: Hey, Ali, what’s your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Alli: Hmm what is my greatest achievement? … In terms of web accessibility, and not SEO accessibility … well, I don’t know if this is my greatest achievement, this is my most recent achievement. We have, and it’s small but it’s important. We have an agency partner whose doing a lot of research studies for us and they do a really great job of serving people and getting unique data but they keep… they’ve been putting the data into… the majority of the good interesting information, they’ve been putting it into images. And that’s been a big challenge for us to get all the important information into, say, alt text so that it’s accessible for everybody. Right? I had to have a hard conversation with them this week and explain why we need all of that information into our articles and not necessarily just in the image, in the visualization component of it. And explaining both why that matters for people and why that matters for search, so, I’m hoping… because they create a lot of content for a lot of different brands, that they actually take a step back and look at the larger picture of how they can do this better for everyone. Fingers crossed. Nic: Yeah, that would be great if 3rd party vendors that ‘oh well, this client is requesting this change for accessibility but it makes sense. Let’s implement it for all our clients.’ That would be powerful if that happened because I think the uptake on accessibility would probably be a little bit faster if that happened. Alli: Yeah. I really hope that they rethink kind of, how they do things because, I mean, they said yes it makes sense for your brand but it’s like, no it makes sense for every brand. So… again, there’s just so many people out there that need to access information in different ways so let's do better. Nic: Let’s do better. That’s a great statement to end this week on. Alli Berry, thank you for joining me and talking about accessibility in SEO and language and all that good stuff. Alli: Thanks for having me Nic: And we will talk next week, Alli: Sounds good. Thanks! Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E73 – Interview with Jen Luker – Part 2 Mar 11, 2019

Jen tells us to start accessibility today, to start with one thing. Then to do one more thing, and then one more. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 73. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. So in this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Jen Luker. Last show was quite awesome, do check it out if you haven’t already, but we spoke about accessibility obviously, but also explored a little bit of the relationship between knitting and weaving and coding, and the impact that can have on helping people learning to code. So that was awesome. So, welcome back, Jen. Jen: Thank you. Nic: We finished last week talking about your greatest achievement and how you built a workflow that was really monitoring accessibility at all stages of the project. From coding to checking on the live site with real data. A flipside to that, what would be your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Jen: My greatest frustration is people that, no matter how much you try to explain how it’s useful they just shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t have time,” “It’s not important,” “maybe we will get to it in a few years.” There’s so much low hanging fruit that you can get to with just a few minutes of extra work that completely transforms the entire web if we all did it and it doesn’t have to be some big, giant initiative or an extra thing. It can be a few minutes, it could be “I’m going to think for five seconds on what to really put in this alt tag,” or it could be, “..you know.. I think I’m going to use a button instead of a Div here” or “... maybe an ARIA role will help here when I have to use this thing but, it’s not very accessible.” Just a split second decision makes a huge difference, and it doesn’t… at the moment the perspective on accessibility is that it’s a feature. And that’s so disappointing because it’s not a feature. If you couldn’t get through your funnel and buy the product, you would be flipping out making a hotfix to get it to work, right? Nic: Yeah, yeah Jen: But there's a huge amount of people that actually can’t buy your product and nobody cares. Accessibility isn’t a feature. It’s a usability bug. And changing the… Jen: Right? So, I mean, when you’re dealing with accessibility issues they’re accessibility bugs, and they’re bugs in your system. They need to be documented, they need to be fixed. Especially if they’re affecting your funnel. So I think that’s probably my hugest frustration, is trying to change the perspective from “It’s a feature we can do in a few years when we get around to it” to “These are actually usability bugs.” Nic: Why do you think there’s this mindset of … “Oh well, it’s a feature” or “It’s too hard” or “I can’t be bothered”? Why do you think people, even after you’ve spent some time, energy and resources trying to do a bit of education … why do they keep that attitude do you think? Jen: So, there’s some really cool tools like Lighthouse for Chrome or aXe for Chrome or Firefox and when you load it up, and you run a quick technological audit on your website, and 900 issues come up on one page… that just goes into shock overload, right? You just look at it and you’re like, “that’s one page out of hundreds so how much does that really add up to as far as accessibility problems” and, it just seems...it can be really overwhelming. It can be hugely overwhelming to look at that huge number, and realize how many problems you might have. And I think that that number is a little bit deceiving because of the fact that you might get dinged 37 times for one minor color change that would solve all of those. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Jen: Or, you’re dinged on not having a label in a field, and if you just modified the component that you’re using to include a label section it would solve all of the form label issues on the entire website and not just one place. So, some of those things... they tell you every single time there’s a problem even though the solution may be one place. One small item that you could do that would solve a lot of those issues. So, I think that it’s overwhelming and we’ve gone so long without really thinking about it that now that we’re thinking about it we all have brownfield projects that have been around for ages and modified and tweaked and quicked and spaghetti code, and it’s just… it’s so much that we shut down and we just shrug our shoulders and move on, and I think that it is much easier to say, “the time to start thinking about accessibility is before you start” … Nic: Yeah Jen: … And that really alienates the people that are like, “But my project has existed for 15 years in various renditions. So what am I supposed to do now?” Nic: Yeah, that’s a good point because I often say that. You know? I often say you have to bake accessibility from the start of a project. But, yeah, I can see where it might be alienating for people that have had a project going for a long time but, maybe we need to start thinking in terms of... not so much the start of the project but the start of redesign or just start of implementing new features. And… Jen: Mmmhmm Nic: ...If you can make concrete parts of a project more accessible, eventually as you redraw your entire app or system you’ll end up with an accessible system. Jen: I like to say: Just start with today. Like, I’m sorry the rest of the code isn’t… it’s not accessible, but that’s okay because I’m going to start today. And, today I’m going to a linter on my computer that I’m going to run by myself. And any code that I write is going to be accessible based on the linter. That’s going to help everything that get’s through your door. And after that, it’s a matter of, “okay, well. Now I’m going to start applying that to PR’s. I’m going to start mentioning when I start seeing accessibility issues in PR’s.” And then it becomes more of a team effort, and everybody installs the linter. It becomes part of your process. It becomes part of [CIA and CB?07:56] at that point. And then maybe you install aXe, perhaps … aXe core as part of your, you know, selenium tests and it’s like a one-liner that you can add that then checks your components for accessibility and that becomes eventually part of your CI and with all of this also comes talking to QA and saying, “Hey I saw these issues. Can you also look for these issues when you’re testing?” and that starts to spread… Nic: Yeah... Jen: … and it starts with one dev doing one thing, today. And as you’re going through you fix things as you find them. You fix things as they go. And it slowly starts evolving into an accessible website over time. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that the entire company buys in and we’re all starting from the beginning or even starting from the beginning of a redesign. It can come from just one dev starting today. Nic: Yeah Jen: And it spreads. Nic: Yeah… Jen: And yes if you … Nic: [crosstalk] … need that dev… Jen: … [crosstalk] right! Need that dev. If you are… if a rewrite is coming down the pipe start bringing up the concerns. Start talking about them. Make sure those things are heard. Push back a little. It’s okay to push. And that's a way that you can take a website that already exists and evolve it into something that's accessible, even if it’s not today. And like I said, no one's ever going to reach the end goal of “My website is accessible, and I’m done,” it’s always a moving target, and it’s always an evolution. So there's nothing wrong with starting your evolution today. Nic: What do you think is the conventional wisdom about accessibility? The one thing that everybody knows about web accessibility? Jen: I think the one thing that everybody knows is… like HTML is inherently accessible. But, how do you take the fact that HTML is accessible and turn it into a website is accessible, especially when you start bringing in interactivity and more than one page and passing through information and … it’s easy to say HTML is accessible and it's a lot harder to say, but how do we end up outputting accessible HTML? Nic: Especially when nowadays so many projects seem to rely on frameworks that haven’t really considered accessible HTML output so you end up with masses of Divs and Spans that have zero semantic meaning and it seems, at least to me, that so many of the younger generations of programmers out there don’t actually know the basic skillsets of HTML. Jen: They haven’t needed to. I mean, when HTML 5 came out a lot of those devs were super excited about it because it included a lot more definition as part of our basic HTML code base. Nothing had been just a straight Div, we had an actual header tag and a main tag and an article tag and nav tag, you know? So we had more descriptive tags, but it was kind of a weird evolution in the HTML 5 came out and then it was kind of adopted over time but by the time that it was really adopted and started gaining traction the Javascript frameworks really started taking over. And everyone just kind of dropped it. Nic: Yeah Jen: And it just kind of slipped by but those things still exist. They’re still there, they’re still extremely useful and a lot of the accessibility audits like Lighthouse and aXe, for instance, they tell you about those things. They tell you about the fact that you’re missing some of those HTML 5 tags which is kind of nice. Nic: Yeah Jen: But, with those outputs and the way that we have trained and educated the new devs we’ve forgotten this big important thing, and I think it was because HTML, with it being inherently accessible we still didn’t think about it even then. So, now that we are writing a bunch of Divs and Spans it’s a matter of remembering why the web was structured around HTML. Why we structured it that way and then why we need to think about it when we are outputting our code as well. And then train everyone. And part of that training come in the docs that you write, the examples that you put online. If you made those examples using best practices in accessibility, then it becomes a lot of copy, paste automatically accessible as new devs are learning. I don’t know about you, but that’s how I learned to code. “Oh look, there’s a stack overflow thing. Let’s just copy and paste that, modify it for what I need to make it work the way I need it to…” right? Nic: Yeah Jen: So, I mean, but what if that example were accessible? What if it included all the tags and everywhere you looked for an example it always included those tags? I have a story from [Niggling Hughger?13:21] who said that when she was learning to code she was surrounded by devs who also were pretty passionate about accessibility so when they would work together and write this code with her, they would always use certain tags, they always used certain formats to develop… buttons were always used for buttons and links were always used for links and so… she ended up going to a coding interview and coding, you know, whiteboard coding what it was and the interviewer was like, “wow, accessibility. That’s really cool that you care about that. And she was just confused. She was like, “What? I just thought this was how we are supposed to code it. I thought this was just how it worked.” That really blew my mind that if our examples were accessible, to begin with we would literally learn that’s just how we are supposed to do it. And it wouldn’t be a question of, “Is this accessible, is it not?” it would be a little bit more like, well that’s just how you do it. Nic: Wow. That’d be the day. Jen: Right? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Nic: Yeah. What do you think the number one reason most people fail to succeed with web accessibility? Is it this sense of an overwhelming amount of stuff to do or is it something else? Jen: I think that it’s easy to skip. It's easy to look away and not look at it. It's easy to just run through your quick test of what you need to do to get something to pass and then move on. I kind of like to say that the job of developers is to understand how it works. And the job of QA is to understand how it shouldn't work. And because of the fact that the mind frame of devs is how it works we forget about the ways it shouldn't work, we forget about our failed cases and I think that's probably why its so difficult to get accessibility in from, like, the developer standpoint is because we know how it works for us and it works when I put in the right information, and everything is fine. And we forget about, well, what if someone were holding a baby? Would they be able to navigate their website with one hand? Or, what if they’re in the middle of a bar and they want to share a video? Would they actually be able to do it? Could you even hear the video? Maybe a transcript or subtitles would be nice. What if someone in a different country is trying to understand the things that they’re ready or English is the second language or 5th language? Or German is a second language? Nic: Yeah Jen: So it’s easy to forget about people that aren't you, when you’re going through and writing code. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily a malevolent intent. I think that it’s much more forgetting. Or not thinking about it. Nic: Yeah. In some levels, I’m wondering if I wouldn’t rather a specific desire to exclude rather than an “I don’t really know, I don’t really care.” Jen: Mmhmm Nic: Because it feels a lot more exclusive to not even be worth the thought than to have someone who does it on purpose and, yeah, I don’t want you here, and it’s something you can actually sink your teeth into and actually build anger around it. And from anger, you can have righteousness. But if it’s a question of “Hey you know what? I don’t even have enough energy or desire to think about the issues you might have on my website”, that’s a lot more difficult to handle I think. Jen: Ignorance is always the hardest thing to fight. And, habit is also a very hard thing to fight. Nic: Yes Jen: We are having the same issue today in, don’t use guys because it’s not inclusive. And "guys" is a term that everyone uses everywhere, right? It’s just.. It’s a … and the thing that I’ve heard there is it’s just a phrase. It’s just… it’s a phrase. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m not trying to be exclusive. It’s just a phrase, and the answer to that is, no. It’s a phrase that’s been developed over time, and it’s not only… it continues to propagate the same connotations over time. And, by teaching the next generation that guys is fine, it’s the same… it’s propagating that thought process further down. And, it’s kind of the same thing with accessibility in that if it’s just not something you think about, it’s not something you know it’s not something that you even know to invest any time in. It’s harder to fight. I mean, something people say or people will ask me, “What can I do to try and convince my boss to let me start implementing some of these deeper [tech that stories for accessibility ?” and I usually say, “one in eight men are colorblind, go find the colorblind guy in your office and take him to your boss and say “Boss, can you please explain to them why we can’t work on accessibility ?” Nic: Yeah Jen: And I find that knowing someone... just one person, who is affected by an accessibility bug is enough to get people to start thinking about it. Like, well, can Craig read this? Can Craig work with this? Nic: Yeah Jen: Craig at the office… What’s Craig’s thought on this? It becomes a person to identify with and it becomes the start of changing that thought process. Because we are so insular and we think of ourselves in our little tiny world and it’s hard to break out of that little box or bubble that we’ve developed for ourselves that finding one person that is actually affected by something accessibility related is enough to pop that bubble. It’s enough to make a door or a window in our box. And to give us a small look at what happens outside of that. And, it gives us that way to get through to bigger, and more. But it just takes knowing someone. So, if I were to give anyone advice on accessibility it would be to find the one colorblind person in your office. Start there. Nic: Yeah. I like that. That’s a good thing. Jen, what do you think the greatest challenge is for our field moving forward? What do we face as an accessibility community if you want? Jen: I think the thing we face is the continued evolution of languages and frameworks. Right now, in Javascript, for instance, we have Angular, we have React, we have View, and the further away from HTML we get the more we have to think about it. So I think the thing we are facing is, how do we develop tools to make it easier to do the right thing than do the wrong thing? Some of that is education. But, I also wonder if there aren’t tools we can start implementing to help. And, I mean, we do have some. But technology isn’t the start and the end of it all. Nic: Do you think it’s our responsibility to ensure that all these new shiny frameworks are actually working in ways that are accessible? Jen: I think it’s everyone's responsibility. Nic: Hmm. Jen: I think everyone from the developer to the user all the way out to the person using a website. From framework creator all the way out. It’s everyone’s responsibility. And if you see something, say something. As they like to say. Nic: Yeah. If you weren’t doing the job you’re doing now, what profession would you like to attempt? Jen: Triage surgeon Nic: Why? Jen: I am not squeamish and I love fixing things. Particularly people. In this case. Or helping people. With growing up with my terminally ill sister there was thousands of surgeries and procedures. There were multiple organ transplants and there was always something magical about watching the body heal. Being able to intervene in a situation that might be permanently debilitating and helping make it a little bit better. Or preventing it from being so debilitating. Giving that extra chance. And often times that starts with the moment of the problem. The very beginning. When an injury happens, for instance, and doing everything you can to prevent further damage. And to try to repair some of the damage that’s been done. So...that’s what I would do. Nic: That’s very cool. Let’s finish off by asking you the one thing you think people should remember about web accessibility? Jen: Start today and start with one thing... and after that one thing do one more thing … and after that do one more thing. Because Rome wasn’t built in a day but each step, each brick makes a difference. Nic: I like that. Start today and start with one thing. Then do one more thing… yeah. I think that’s a wonderful thought to finish on. Jen Luker, thank you for having been such a great guest on the show this week, last week. It’s been a great conversation and hopefully, I’ll bump into you at some point in the future at a conference or other. Jen: I certainly hope so and it’s been very fun. Thank you so much. Nic: Thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E72 – Interview with Jen Luker – Part 1 Mar 07, 2019

Jen Luker tells us, among other things, that with thoroughness comes confusion - if you're trying to learn all of WCAG and ARIA at once, you'll get overwhelmed Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 71. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking to Jen Luker. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Jen. Jen: I’m glad to be here. Nic: I like to start the show by letting guests introduce themselves. In an elevator-style pitch introduction, whose Jen Luker? Jen: Who is Jen Luker? Jen Luker is an engineering manager with Formidable who specializes in accessibility auditing and just making the web better in general. So, I am an avid knitter. I like to say that I knit and then I’m a programmer. Other than that just a nerd like all the rest. Nic: I like, like all the rest. Yeah. I’d like at some point during the show to talk a little bit about your talks that tie the relationship between knitting and coding. Jen: Yes! Nic: I think that could be interesting, however, to get warmed up a little bit… tell us one thing that most people would not know about you. Jen: I’m a pretty open book so trying to find something people don’t know about me… I am a huge Space nerd. I was the president of the Students for the Exploration Development of Space, in College. Nic: Cool. Very cool. What’s your favorite fact about Space? Jen: There’s more minerals, and they’re easier to get to in asteroids on Earth or in the Moon. So if we were to ever get to the point where we are actually mining those asteroids, we could dramatically reduce things like pollution on Earth and still have the materials we need. Nic: That’s a nice bit of trivia. But let’s circle back to the main topic of conversation which is web accessibility. It seems like every person I speak to for the podcast has a slightly different variation on that definition. How would you define web accessibility? Jen: Web accessibility for me is the ability for everyone to use the web. It doesn’t even have to be similar fashions, it just needs to be that they’re capable of using it and developing their own identity and resources and what-not. And them being able to also interact with it in a way that’s meaningful to both the companies and to the users. Nic: Yeah, that’s good. I like the concept you proposed that it’s about not everybody uses the web in the same ways. How do you describe different ways to use the web for people that could be striking for maybe some of my listeners that are less used to those different ways? Jen: So, have you ever gone to a website and you are trying to navigate around, but it’s in a foreign language? That makes it very difficult to be able to utilize the website in said way. So sometimes the website ends up being used in conjunction with, like, Google translator or something to that effect. So being able to overlay different types of assistive technology is to be able to utilize the web. Whether it be a translator or a screen reader it really does make a difference. Being able to change the color scheme in order to accommodate for any sort of visual issues they might have, or maybe it’s a cognitive issue, where bright colors cause them issues, so they end up dulling everything. There's lots of different ways to interact. It’s not just a screen reader and a keyboard which is what people often times think about when they’re talking about accessibility. There’s just so much more than that that’s involved. Nic: Yeah, I like that. Thank you. So you say you have a focus in accessibility in your work. How… what does that look like day to day? Do you consult with your teammates? Or do you tell them, “Hey don’t forget about accessibility? “ Or… what does accessibility in your job day to day look like? Jen: In my job day-to-day, because of the fact that Formidable is a consultancy, often times it has to deal with working with both my teammates and the client and their teammates to not only educate them on the types of accessibility technology they can utilize to limit the amount of accessibility problems that they run into but also how to test and how to look for those, how to use a screen-reader, how to change the language or the way that they pass people through the funnel from homepage to purchase. To allow for ease of use and to allow for as many people as possible to be able to use their website. So a lot of it is education, and a some of it is auditing. Nic: Do you find your clients are quite responsive to your education efforts? Jen: Most are. There’s always some push back. Always some, you know, “do we really need to deal with this? We really just need to get it out the door” or “Oh, blind people don’t buy rainbows, so we don’t have to worry about that” and it’s kind of disappointing when I get those responses, and so I do often times, I do push back. In the end, sometimes you just have to pick your battles, go for the things that are easy and try to get through as many of the stuff that they’re willing to do as possible and don’t let myself get hung up on the frustrations of, well this is a roadblock, and we can’t get past it right now. Nic: Yeah. Jen: So trying to get at least as much cover as possible and leaving those really hard points to the end if I have to. Nic: Yeah I think that picking your battles is important, but progress, any bit of progress is good. Jen: I mean, if you go through and you just add alt tags to your images that’s a huge amount of people that can now comprehend what’s going on in all those images. Every little itty bitty teeny tiny bit helps and makes it so one more person or many many more can use your website. So even if you can’t make it perfect today, and there’s no such thing as perfect, there’s always reaching towards that goal, but even a little step is going to be much better than what you have now. Nic: Even printed material, even books are never really finished because otherwise there wouldn’t be all these subsequent publications of the same book. You know, first publication and second publication and it’s not just that a book runs out but there’s updates and stuff, so I think it’s even more important on the web to think of, well actually your site or your project or your app will never truly be finished. You can always improve it. And that involves improving accessibility. Jen: Absolutely and with any maintenance, we add testing to make sure that we have regression covered. We add different use cases, so we cover the places that we missed last time. The same thing for accessibility I mean there’s multiple ways of adding the technology to audit it. But then there’s ways of developing relationships with people that use those assistive technologies every day to get repeated occasional audits so that you’re not stuck being the only one looking at it through a screen reader and you’re not familiar with screenreaders. There’s lots of places to cover and the more you can develop those resources, the better off you’re going to be. Nic: What brought you to accessibility? How did you become aware of its importance? Jen: So I was raised with a nearly completely deaf mother. So I’m a CODA kid. Nic: Okay Jen: And because of that I’ve watched my mother go through my whole entire life where she had limitations, and we didn’t. Where we were the ones that had to reiterate communications back to her because she couldn’t hear them very well even with hearing aids. And then I also had a terminally ill sister who got progressively worse as she went through her saddeningly short life but by the time she died she was deaf she was blind and she was immobile, so I got to … even going through elementary school I’d get up on stage, and talk to the entire elementary school and her card and how you could still play with her and how you had to make accommodation for her to try to make sure that people understood that she wasn’t scary and she wasn’t weird, she was just a kid and these are kind of the rules in which you can play with her and hang out with her and still relate to her. So, I mean, it’s kind of been a part of my life forever. However, it wasn’t really until React rally 2016 where Marcy Sutton was standing on stage, and she gave this amazing talk that used one of my favorite kids' games, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego... Nic: Oh yeah. Jen: And it was ‘Where in the Stack’ is Carmen Sandiego and it was hilarious, and it was awesome, and it is on Youtube so please go watch it, but it was a way of showing how you can find accessibility problems and where they’re commonly located within a technology stack. At that point, it was just like this magic dawning moment sitting in this theatre going, “you mean there's people that don’t understand some of these things? This is something that I’m passionate about. This is something that I live” you know, “these are problems that I watch my mother go through every day these are frustrations I run into, and this is a field?” And so essentially the next day I hopped as fast as I could into learning as much as I could about auditing and accessibility and tools to test for it and ways to improve the problems that existed. And that’s kind of what lead to here. Nic: Has your view of web accessibility changed since you had that ‘Ah ha!’ moment with Marcy? Or has your experience growing up surrounded by your mom and your sister, pretty much shaped your thinking about accessibility from way back when? Jen: I think that I definitely had a vague shape develop as I grew up just watching their frustrations and where they did well and where they didn’t but it was really eye-opening to see the real world effects of how accessibility isn’t limited to people who are deaf or blind or physically disabaled. It does reach into cognitive impairments and temporary disabilities and circumstantial disabilities. Like, trying to navigate while holding a set of twins while they’re sleeping get's really tricky. Nic: Yep Jen: That was a fun situation. Watching my child who had to do online homework but her eyes got dilated that night. So seeing that all of these limitations that maybe people run into that maybe don’t last for very long but still actually impact their lives. Hanging out in a really noisy bar and joking about something and wanting to show them the video in which it references. All of these technologies are there and where often times created specifically for people with disabilities, but they end up being super useful to everyone. Who hasn’t put on subtitles occasionally or only read the subtitles in bed? Nic: Yeah Jen: That I think has really changed shape in my mind over the last few years is watching as implementing things that we consider accessibility features which I would really love to think of more as accessibility bugs and watching that actually affect a much wider audience than you would ever think of. Nic: I often say accessibility is good for everyone and I sometimes get pushed back because I’m accused of forgetting the primary reason for accessibility which is making things more usable for people with disabilities and as an individual with a disability myself I can never forget that, but I think it’s important to realize that… yeah, it is good for everyone, and we do have control over the impact we have on not just the 20 or 25% of people with disabilities that are around but for everybody. Situational impairments and all of that kind of stuff. Jen: One of my favorite quotes is… and I don’t remember the quote exactly, and I will find it for you for later but it essentially says that, yes ramps do help those who are in wheelchairs be able to get to the sidewalk or up to a building that usually has stairs, but it also helps the parents with the stroller, or it helps the delivery guy with a bunch of packages, or it helps the person on the bike. It helps a lot of different people, and though they may not necessarily have a physical impairment that requires a wheelchair and a ramp as their only access point, it’s still dramatically useful for a wide amount of people. Just because you may be focussing specifically on certain portions of your website for those with disabilities it doesn’t change the effect that it has on everyone. It’s not just, you’re helping the 25%. You’re helping a lot more than that. Nic: Did you encounter any barriers as you went about learning about accessibility when you were learning about auditing and all these things? Was there anything that you found difficult to get the information you needed? Jen: I’m not sure it was necessarily difficult per se but, it was difficult to understand. The world of ARIA. The website itself is very very thorough, and unfortunately with that thoroughness also comes confusion. There’s a lot of overlapping, there’s a lot of use cases, there’s a lot of possibilities, there’s a lot of should I - Shouldn’t I, how do I actually work with these rules … and, I heard one person at some point say that it’s difficult on purpose because you’re meant to avoid using them. The first rule of ARIA is never use ARIA, right? So … Nic: Yeah Jen: But at the same time I think that sometimes you don’t get the opportunity of revamping your entire website to go back to a similar, more HTML based structure. And you need to use the rules as a stop-gap, even until you get to the point where you can revamp it. Or, perhaps you are head to head with a designer product team and they really want a feature and there’s no amount of arguing and fighting is going to change the fact that this is the feature that’s going to be implemented. The ARIA rules go forth to help smooth over the rough edges that would otherwise be caused by that feature. They’re there for a reason. They’re there because they’re useful. We may not want to use them as often as we can but it would be nice to make that a little bit clearer and a little bit more simple to understand when and why you’d want to use those. In the cases that you need to use them. Nic: Yeah. Jen: Another thing is there’s so many… the basics of accessibility. Websites, and talks that trying to dig in, and understand that there’s more than just screen readers, and keyboard navigation. There's just not a whole lot of easy to find resources when it comes to anything deeper. Like, what are the different cognitive types that you’re dealing with and how are they conflicting and contrasting, and how do you solve for both when they literally are exact opposites as far as the recommendations they give you, and the fact that internationalization is, in fact, an accessibility feature. Or how do you phrase things in a way that makes them more accessible than others? How do you have a lot of words for people that need a lot of words, and hardly any words for people that don’t need words and just want to get to the end. There’s all these conflicting things, and trying to suss out a lot of that deeper information seems to be … there’s just so much less of it. It would be nice to see more resources there too, and when I say it would be nice … part of that is that I need to step up and do a little bit more in that field to try and make it more accessible to understand accessibility and it’s something I’m working on as well, but one person does not change the world. It takes all of us. Nic: Yeah. It’s a lot of work for one person alone. So let’s circle back a little bit about knitting and coding. Jen: Yes Nic: I know it’s not exactly accessibility but I think it’s a intriguing concept so tell me a little bit more about the relationship between those 2 items. Jen: As far as accessibility slant I think that it actually… there’s an interesting story there in that there are programs that teach women to knit because they don’t have access to computers as easily as they otherwise would have. And the concept between a knitting pattern and programming are almost identical. They’re all … 'do while' and 'for each' and if you have this do this, else, do that. There’s just a lot of the basic concepts that you need to understand for programming and, when to use them and how to use them built into the structure of knitting. With that being said the two in a language and knitting in a language is just syntax differences at that point. So knitting could actually be used as a computer simulator or programming simulator in a similar fashion that pilots learn in a simulator before you put them into a real plane. Being able to develop those thought processes before giving them code to learn with, and it makes learning … Nic: That’s fascinating Jen: .. coding much easier. And I think again that’s how I was able to pick up coding so quickly, is because I picked up knitting just before that and I had been crocheting since I was a kid and the patterns are very similar but with knitting there's a knit stitch, there’s a purl stitch and there's a yard over, and it’s very much like binary but your 1’s and your 0’s are your spaces so I learned how to knit and a year later I learned, a lot deeper coding languages beyond HTML and it really jived well with that. Made them click and then going beyond that into some more of the relationships between knitting and programming there’s actually a lot of historical connotations that go with the two. For instance, in World War 1 there were women that would knit codes into their sweaters and they give their sweater to their son or ship it off to their son, and in fact, it was military positions of the enemy and where they were located to let them know what was going on as far as that goes. And everyone thought it’s a sweater, no big deal, right? It’s not like it’s a security breach except it really, really was, how cool is that! Nic: That’s really cool. Jen: Some very very early cryptography is actually associated with knitting and cryptography is actually what led to some of the computing that we do. Some of the computers that were very first built in a way that we would recognize them was to break military codes. That’s an awesome thing, and then if you go to weaving, less than knitting there’s some jacquard looms, in 1855 I believe were some of the first loom cards came out... And the thing about weaving is that you have patterns in your fabric that you’re weaving one row at a time, right? So you have your rafting you’re weaving your row one row at a time, and if the yarns were up then the yarn you’re putting through goes underneath it and if they're down it goes on top of it, and you can make these really complex patterns. I mean you could create scenery, if you like, based on how this works, so they decided instead of trying to have to do it by memory they set up a system of cards that every time your pressed the pedal it would move the card one space further and then it would know based on needles that would go up through holes in these cards, grab a yarn and pull it down, or not allowing the spaces to be created. These cards were patterns. They were programs that would make these patterns in the yarn or in the fabric itself. Nic: Yeah Jen: What’s great about these cards is, punch cards used for computing are directly related to those jacquard loom cards. There are holes in blocks of wood that are 80 characters long. 80 characters on punch cards. They were 80 holes wide on the Jacquard loom so you had multiple cards wide, and multiple cards long. There could be thousands of cards to solve a single pattern in fabric. There could be thousands of cards long to just tell a computer to do something. Punch cards literally came from the idea of Jacquard looms making fabric. Nic: Sweet. I learned something. That’s really fascinating, thank you. We’re reaching the end of our first half hour. I was wondering if you could tell us what your greatest achievement is in terms of web accessibility? Jen: My greatest achievement in web accessibility has probably been a recent project that I worked on where I figured out multiple layers of, at least technologically, testing for accessibility which meant that on the developer side we used a linter to catch as many problems as we could while we were coding. And then once we were done with that it would test each of the components itself, themselves, using rough data to verify that the accessibility features would be covered given the right amount of data, and then once the pages themselves were converted into static pages with real data we went through and tested again to make sure that it still complied before launching that. Nic: That’s cool Jen: We ended up having three different layers to verify all the way through that we were covering accessibility features. So that was pretty cool to be able to cover all of the technological bases before it hit live. Nic: Yeah Jen: And after that, there’s always so much more to do but it was a very accomplished moment to have a company that was so onboard with accessibility that they were perfectly happy to make sure that every step of the way we were covering our bases. Nic: That’s very neat. Very neat. Is this something that’s reproducible by other companies? Something you have out there as a resource? Or was it really just internal to that company? Jen: For this company it was internal. I’m likely going to write a blog post on it to try and share what we did there. I’ll give you the link when it’s finished. Nic: That would be great. I would really love to hear about that. So, hey Jen. Thank you for this chat. So everybody, Jen Luker who shared some great stuff about accessibility and coding and knitting. Thank you. Jen: My pleasure Nic: Catch you next week. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E71 – Interview with Chris DeMars – Part 2 Feb 25, 2019

Chris tells us "the biggest challenge that [the accessibility community is] going to have, and it currently stands now, is the never-ending library framework" Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

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Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 71. I’m Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. Welcome back to the Accessibility Rules podcast everyone. In this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Chris DeMars. Last show was awesome. We spoke about blueberry muffins and compared that to accessibility. We talked about Chris managing to roll out an accessible app despite very short buy-in from everybody else in the company and a few other things so if you haven’t checked it out I strongly suggest you do. Welcome back, Chris. How are you? Chris: I’m doing good, Nic. How are you? Nic: I’m doing alright. I’ve fumbled a few words today, but that’s alright. That’s part of live podcasting, even if you don’t do it live. Chris: That’s right Nic: That’s right. So, last week we finished talking a little bit about your greatest achievement. Let’s flip that and start with… What would your greatest frustration be in terms of accessibility? Chris: Oh the greatest frustration I would have in web accessibility … Oh, let me see, let me see, let me see… It would probably have to be the passion behind it. I know when we were talking before you have some developers out there who are super passionate. Marcy being one of them, yourself and a handful of other people. Then you have some devs out there that just either don’t care or they’re just uneducated as to the importance of it. I think more education should be out there. And another huge frustration, and I’ve heard this countless times, and I’ve experienced this myself… traditional schooling, if you go to university or four-year college, 2-year college, whatever the case may be… even, I’ve heard some boot camps… nobody is teaching this stuff. And that’s a problem. You're .. most universities are teaching stuff their students need to know today to get a job besides theory and traditional computer science. But, I think accessibility in a web program, it should be taught, and there’s not enough people out there doing it. I think Marcy mentioned it in one of her episodes with you that she wanted to maybe get into teaching and that can only be something cool. You know? Teach web accessibility somewhere outside of a meetup. Outside of a conference workshop. I think that would be a cool idea. Nic: How do you get, say Bootcamp organizers to add accessibility to the curriculum? Chris: That’s a good question. I know, knew or know a couple or not really organizers but instructors… well, I did at least … I don’t know. I guess… it’s kind of the same way you would in a company, right? Show why it’s important … I mean, they should already know it’s important. Especially if they’re teaching a front end Bootcamp, right? You should already know this. This is not news to anybody. Maybe ten, fifteen years ago… yeah, I could see why you wouldn’t want to do it because it wasn’t a huge thing. Even though it was a huge thing at the time but a lot of us were uneducated that long ago. I think it’s just explaining the importance. If they don’t already know and maybe, see if they can set time aside in the curriculum to go over some introductory wins. I don’t like saying easy because what might be easy to me might be hard to you and vice-versa. Nic: Right Chris: I don’t like using the term easy. But, like, intro wins, like semantic markup. You’re already teaching semantic markup, explain why that’s good for accessibility. And it’s accessible by default. Go over the reason why you need alt attributes on your images. Go over ARIA labels on non-contextual elements. Like social media icons or x’s and modules. Go over what a screen reader is, why it’s important. You don’t have to cover the whole [gammet?5:16] of accessibility. That would take a full course. And even then I don’t think you’d be able to fit it all in but go over main concepts and main accessibility fundamentals. It’s only going to help your student body. Nic: I think it’s super important for every teaching environment whether it’s formal computer science programs or Bootcamps or what not to actually cover accessibility and I wish it was more out there and you’re right, it doesn’t have to be a whole course on it. It can be weaved in and out of existing classes if you’re talking about web semantic sure, talk about why it’s important. All the accessibility wins you get from using a label element or using an anchor, or a button rather than a div or span. So, yeah. Is there, do you think, conventional wisdom about accessibility? Something everyone knows about it? Chris: Yes and no. Everyone knows that it’s out there, but not everyone knows why and why it’s important. I think that's like a big thing, right? Because you can say the words web accessibility to anybody and nine times out of ten, they’re going to nod their head like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah…..” But if you ask them why it’s important nine times out of ten they might look at you and be like, “Oh well, you know, uh, well, uh, you know, uh… blind users”. Or “deaf users” like, you hear that all the time and that’s not just who we’re working for. Not everybody’s blind, not everybody’s deaf. It’s not what having a disability means. But a lot of the time that stigma’s out there. Like, “Oh, well, they’re blind or deaf, so we have to make things accessible.” It’s like, “No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the case, let me educate you a little bit.” Nic: Yeah. I’ve had a recent discussion with a developer who said, “Of course our site is accessible just go to mywebsite.com, and there it is” and they just did not understand this concept of accessibility and the context of disability access. Chris: Right Nic: That ended up being an hour long, very educational experience for them. And for me, because I didn’t remember how some people just don’t have that exposure out there. So, I want to build the exposure out there. Chris, what do you think the number one reason is for most people failing to succeed with implementing accessibility? Chris: Arbitrary deadlines and, being told “no.” I think those are the two big things. Alway’s being-- Nic: What do you mean? Chris: -- Being told, “No, you can’t do that right now, this is more important.” Being in situations like that or even being in situations where somebody from the top down tells you that it’s not important. Somebody that has no reason to have their hands in IT at all but they’re the ones saying, “Oh, no, this is priority, or this is priority” but their direct leader… anybody within that kind of IT family tree can’t have a say in it. That’s also an issue, and I’ve seen that before. I’ve seen where people who are outside of IT have their hands too deep in IT and start making decisions that shouldn’t be made. And that can cause a lot of problems across the board. Nic: You have a ‘for instance’? Chris: Oh. For instance… let’s see here… let’s say that… for example, let’s say that you worked at a company and maybe you had an IT in the order of 100 people. Right? And developers, QA’s, BA’s, etc team leads. And you had CTO’s, COO’s, COO, whatever C level execs you have. And the ones calling the shots in IT are not CTO. It’s everybody that’s above him that runs the rest of the company. Nic: [cross talk 10:05] Chris: They throw their two cents in the pot and start telling you how to run things… that’s when it starts to get to be a problem. Because they might not have a single clue about what you’re doing or what your organization as a whole are doing, within IT that’s when you can start getting into problems. Nic: I see that. Yep. How can we avoid this kind of failure? How can we try making… changing these “No’s” towards “Yeses”? Chris: That’s hard. That is. It’s truly, truly hard. Especially when you work for a company like that or if they’re out there and they exist, which I’m sure they do. You kind of turn that territory too of overstepping your bounds and stepping on people's toes and you don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. Scheduling skip meeting to a skip skip meeting and a skip skip skip meeting… that can be a pain in the ass. The best way… the luck I’ve had to get No’s turned into Yes’s is just showing the importance of it. Showing the data. Because people like numbers, you know what I mean? Especially like leadership. When you’re in a leadership role, you tend not to write code as much, if at all and it’s always about numbers so you can take those numbers to your leader. If you can show numbers and you can prove that this stuff matters, then there's more chance that you’re going to get that buy-in and those No’s will turn into Yeses. It’s no different if you show someone… I did this with performance before too. I showed what our numbers are and then our people… our users started complaining, and they’re like, “Oh, shit. We need to start working on performance. Chris, can you fix the front-end performance?” I’m, like, I talked about this over a year ago. And nobody wanted to do anything. Or six months ago and now somebody complains, and now you want me to fix it. Right? It’s the same thing with accessibility; it’s the same thing with security. You start showing numbers like, “Oh, well we had three different penetration attacks in our front-end or our back-end.” If you show that then they’re like, “Oh, shit. Security matters, we really need to tighten things up.” Nic: Yeah Chris: Right? Nic: What would you say the greatest challenge is for the field of web accessibility are moving forward from now into the next 5 or 10 years? Chris: I think the biggest challenge that we are going to have, and it currently stands now, is the never-ending library framework. You know, the ‘Flavour of the week’ in the Javascript ecosystem. It blows my mind. I’ve… I know that there's a handful of different view libraries out there that are not accessible. Other than that, at a conference, I was speaking at I heard the React team is doing good, but some of the Angular stuff isn’t accessible. The Web was never built with Javascript in mind, and we did just fine. Right? It was accessible by default. Now we start throwing a shiny tire on this side of it, some spinners on the other side and some hydraulics on the back… none of that shit’s accessible. So we are doing ourselves a disservice when we should be improving the accessibility. Yes, we are improving it, but the web is starting to become like Frankenstein's monster. You know what I mean? Nic: Yeah Chris: There’s a little piece of this and that and every single thing. Not every single thing we’re building out there is accessible, but we are using libraries and frameworks to help us in our efforts. But yet those libraries and frameworks aren’t completely accessible. I think that’s going to be the struggle. And, who knows what’s going to be out there this year… the next six months. What new framework and libraries are going to be out there. Who knows. Nic: It’s interesting because a few weeks ago I was speaking with [Unsure 14:32] who is a developer based in Nigeria and she was saying that we’re going to have much more of an impact by convincing the framework developers to make their frameworks accessible than trying to convince individual developers that are right left and center, all over the place and what you’re saying somewhat echos that statement, so it’s interesting to see that this is a concept that, at least in the accessibility community is starting to take flight. So, hopefully, we’ll be able to reach out to these devs and make sure their frameworks are more and more accessible. Chris: Yeah, and I know that Ryan Florence is doing stuff with Reach and that’s supposed to be accessible React library or whatever the case may be. So, that’s really cool that he’s already taking that step to make those applications accessible. I think that’s a huge win. Nic: Chris, what profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt? Chris: Um, let’s see… when I was younger, I always wanted to be a Herpetologist. A Herpetologist is the study of reptiles and amphibians. I was super, super obsessed with it when I was a kid. I used to have snakes, I used to have frogs and turtles. I wanted to breed Leopard Geckos, I wanted to breed Corn Snakes. I just loved it. I loved learning about them. So, I think if I could be anything that’s like, I could legit be currently a Herpetologist ‘coz I still have a love for reptiles and amphibians and still hope to one-day breed Leopard Geckos and Breed Corn Snakes. It’s just been one of my things. Nic: Who inspires you? Chris: My mom. She’s one. She’s always been my biggest fan. I’ve always had her support for everything. Let’s see… the developer community inspires me. I have a lot of friends out there who bring me up, and they kind of hold me together. Even when I feel like giving up. They definitely inspire and support me to be a better me every day. The current team I work with, they inspire me because they’re a lot of amazing, smart, brilliant people and I wish I was as smart as they are. They inspire me. Yeah, I think a lot of people say actors, actresses, music… you know, not really so much the case for me. I think it’s the people I surround myself with that inspire me. And I feed off of that. And I feed off of the energy in the developer community, and that’s why I try to engage as much as I can in the developer community and I even have friends on the speaker circuit say, “dude, you need to chill out”, “you’re going to burn out”, “we don’t want you to get sick or anything like that” and I keep pushing. I know the reality of it. I may burn out at some point but as long as I can travel. Speak, put talks together and make great content for the development community you bet your ass I’m going to do it. Nic: Cool. To wrap things up, if there’s one thing you’d like people to remember about accessibility what would that be? Chris: Focus matters. Never ever remove focus from your experience because you remove it for one person, you remove it for everybody. Don’t do it. That’s my one. Nic: How would you explain why or how focus matters? Chris: Well, you can come see my talk called ‘Focusing on Focus.’ I’ll be giving it this year at a couple of different conferences. No, I wrote an article about it too. Just showing what it is and showing the importance of it. Really, it boils down to marketing and branding. You get a lot from your design team and market team. Like, “Oh, you know, we don’t like that ring, that blue and gray or blue ring that’s around buttons and input and stuff like that. Can you remove it?” It’s like, yeah, you can remove it but what are you going to do to replace it? And if we need to match branding, then we can do that. Those are options that are available to us. We just have to talk about it and collaborate. Nic: Yeah. Last month I saw a site that they had matched the background color of the page exactly to the hue of blue of the default focus ring in chrome. So, it was quite amusing to see, “Well, we didn’t remove the focus outline”... no, but you made it totally unusable man. Chris: Oh, that’s horrible. Nic: Yeah Chris: Wow Nic: Anyway, Chris thank you very much for your time and your thoughts and hopefully we get to bump into one another at a conference this year or sooner rather than later. Chris: Yeah, thanks for having me again. I really do hope that you and I cross paths. Hopefully soon, this year, somewhere. I’m sure we will see each other. Nic: I’m sure. Chris, thank you very much and have a good day! Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store

E70 – Interview with Chris DeMars – Part 1 Jan 31, 2019

Chris is a front-end Transcript Nic: To get today’s This week I’m Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: So we are talking Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Sweet Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Mmmhmm Chris: Nic: Yeah Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Yeah Chris: Nic: Chris: Yeah Nic: So Chris, did Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: What’s your favorite word? Chris: Nic: Chris: Fuck Nic: Why? Chris: Nic: Chris: Go figure Nic: Chris: Nic: Nic: Chris: Nic: I’m curious. Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Chris: Nic: Cheers Chris: Later Nic: Everyone Catch you next time! developer based in Detroit, MI. He tells us, among other things, that learning about accessibility is an ongoing process. Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 70. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. speaking with Chris DeMars. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Chris. How are ya? I’m doing good, Nic. Thanks for having me. You’re very welcome. Hey, I like to let guests introduce themselves so in a brief introduction, who is Chris DeMars? Oh, who am I? Well, I am a front-end developer. I’m from Detroit, Michigan. I work for a company called Tuft & Needle. I am also a Google developer expert in web technologies, Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies and I love community, love speaking all around in the world in Web Accessibility and other front end fun stuff. That sounds like it’s keeping you busy. Do you speak to a lot of conferences? Or just the occasional one? Oh I did 22 events last year. Not including meet-ups so probably 30 talks altogether. Including one workshop. So, yeah. I’ve been around a little bit. You have been. How do you find conferences are receiving your talks about accessibility? You know, I’ve gotten amazing feedback from both organizers as well as attendees. Because you know you don’t see a whole lot of people submitting accessibility talks to a lot of conferences unless it’s like that type of niche. But I mean, I’ve been at events where I’ve given the only accessibility talk and I’ve been at events where I… there might be 3 or 4 accessibility talks. So it really just kind of matters the area, the region, what kind of speakers are being selected. Stuff like that. Let’s circle back around that in a little bit. To get really started tell us one thing that most people would not know about you. Lets’ see here. Let’s see...Um, I have a gold tooth. Does that count? Sure thing. Most people would not know about that so that’s certainly an interesting bit of trivia. about Web Accessibility, right? How do you define Web Accessibility? You know, I get that question a lot. And I kind of talk about it, touch on it a lot in the talks I give. There is a quote out there I think it’s from the W3 and it says “Web Accessibility is for people that can use the web” for people that can use the web. Or for people with disabilities so they can use the Web. And I don’t really like that quote. To me, Web Accessibility is for everyone. Everybody should be able to have an amazing accessible user experience regardless of disability. That’s what-what that means to me. And I always have like a “Why?” behind it which we can go into that later if you want but there’s always a “Why?” in the method behind the madness but it’s definitely for everybody. You know what I mean. That’s… we’ve gotten to a point where people use the Web almost every single day so we have to make it accessible for them. Yea. I can’t say that I disagree with you but playing devil's advocate here… I’ve heard quite a bit of push back from some people with disabilities and some accessibility advocates that this attitude kind of erases the disability experience and the reason for accessibility in the first place. What would you say to that? Oh. It’s a tough one. Because I mean, it is an open Web, right? And if..we’re supposed to be making it inclusive. Inclusive means taking everybody into consideration. Regardless of disability. I mean, I say it all the time like not everybody has to have a disability to make it accessible. Specifically for me at the moment I don’t have any type of disability that would hinder me from using the web. But if you were to put some content out there and I didn’t understand what you were saying, or the language or anything like that, automatically I have a disability of understanding what you’re trying to tell me.right? So I might not have some type of physical disability or disability that would hinder me from using that experience but if something stops me from using that experience, at that point in time I have a disability and we’ve got to make sure we stay away from that. So you’re, I guess you’re introducing the idea of situational impairment? Yeah, I talk about that a lot. And it kind of blows people’s minds when I talk about the 5 main types of disabilities that we encounter out there on the web and the 5th one being temporary impairments. I don't like calling them disabilities. I like calling them temporary impairments. And when I bring up a broken hand or a broken finger or even a single parent with a newborn jaws drop. They’re like, “Oh Shit, I didn’t think about that. Wow, I’ve been in that situation before but I never put myself in the other person’s shoes even though I’ve worn those shoes.” So it really… I like watching the audience light up when I start talking about that. It’s really fun. Where does your role fall within the work of accessibility? Because you don’t do accessibility full time from morning to night. You do mostly development work so how do you implement accessibility in your work? You know, I was hired… one of the reasons I think I was hired… I like to think I was hired at my new gig was because of the accessibility stuff that I do out there. And my last role at my last company I was at I really advocated for it because it was just an afterthought. Nobody really cared. Until I kind of put my foot down and said, “Hey, listen. These are the things we need to do. These are the steps we need to take so we can avoid issues later down the line.” So I was the first one to actually build in accessibility at one of the projects and got it in front of the business and stakeholders and they finally softened up and were like “Oh yeah, we really need to do this, this is really important”. And I .. I think I did 99% of the accessibility on it and that was the first application that was ever shipped from the company that was fully accessible. So that was a huge win. Yeah, that was a huge win for me. A huge win for the company. A huge win for accessibility in general. Currently, right now I'm kind of doing the same thing. I’m working with accessibility working with some of the designers coming up with some documentation around accessibility. Like the conversation you and I had the other night about branching strategies, naming strategies when it comes to documenting accessibility violations … I’m doing that and I finished that documentation so it’s kind of like planting seeds and educating where I can and then filling in those gaps for the other developers, designers, and engineering team that might not be familiar with accessibility on the web. How did you become aware of web accessibility and how important it is? How… was there a specific “A-ha!” moment or was it something incremental? What happened? It’s a funny story. I love talking about this story. It’s kind of like the reason behind my “Why” but so I started building on the web about 22-23 years ago and back then web accessibility wasn’t a huge deal. We always had our alt attributes in our images...it was like table … building tables for your layout you’ve got to make sure they’re accessible. So we always had that and I never gave it too much forethought or thought about it too much and then a few years ago, probably 2013,2014 I started seeing Marcy giving her talks on YouTube. I’m like “Oh wow, I don’t see anybody else doing this” and she's talking about web accessibility and users with disabilities and stuff like that… I’m like, “Shit this is like super super important” and she was one of the only people if not the only person out there doing it at the time. And the landscape is still really small. But she set the stage for it. And I was like, Alright I’m going to see if I can find any other videos of her speaking and see if I can get a grasp for this accessibility stuff. A more in-depth grasp I guess. And I just started watching her videos and her and I started BS-ing on Twitter and her and I became friends. She started working at DQ and DQ is here locally, right outside of Detroit. And yeah, it was just her that kind of made me see the importance of it and kind of springboard me into the whole speaking world and then I like to say I like to build accessibility because I’m thinking of my mum a lot. Coz she’s of the baby boomer generation and she wears glasses and she has trouble hearing.. She can’t remember things as well, she has arthritis… so she kind of has all of those, like, 4 out of the 5 main types of disabilities that we look for, right? And if I could make an accessible user experience for her at the end of the day...mind you, she doesn’t have a computer, she still has a flip phone but if she were technically savvy... If I could make the experience for her that much better at the end of the day I’ve done my job. And that’s my “Why?”. And I say that at every event. Some people they kind of get teared up. Which is cool, you know. We’re there to have fun and share emotion and experience that together, but..and I usually tell people, you know, at the end of this session reflect on your “why” and then maybe you’ll see why accessibility matters. If it’s not you that is experiencing it. I like that. I like that… I might steal that from you. Go for it, brother. Yeah… so you’ve been vaguely aware of accessibility for 15-20 years and about 5 years ago you really got into it. Has your view of accessibility changed much over the last 5 years? It has and it hasn’t. Like, if anything it’s gotten better and I've been able to notice a lot more out there than I would’ve 5 years ago. Right? Especially when it comes to certain libraries and frameworks that are out there in the JS ecosystem that might not be completely accessible. Or even new stuff that’s coming up like with what Marcy’s doing with Grid and accessibility. That's super cool. I never thought about that but she’s on that and that’s really cool that she's doing that. And even in the product space when Xbox launched their… Microsoft launched Xbox pad for users with disabilities to be able to play Xbox. That’s huge. I talk about that in some of my talks too. Or even braille machine readers that … there were 6 female engineers from MIT, I think it was MIT, last year or the year before created this really nice, really neat braille machine reader that would read books. It would scan the book and then print out the braille with pins and needles and stuff. That stuff’s cool. And it doesn’t have to be digital accessibility. It’s accessibility none the less. And the more and more you can get wrapped up into that the more cool shit you’re going to see out there. There’s a lot of cool shit out there that people don’t realize comes directly from advances for people with disabilities... … Siri on iPhone to name one is digital assistance but that really started for helping people with disabilities. Heck even the keyboard, computer keyboard we either love or hate every day, 150 years ago was an implement to help people write faster and better. It’s just interesting the advances of all these neat technologies that fascinate us and how they kind of move into the realm of everyday access that we don’t realize. you find any barriers when you were starting to look at implementing accessibility or learning about it? Oh, the learning part is... We are always learning, right? And especially if you’re going through all of the documentation that’s out there there's always new things in there, there's always things you're discovering. Even recently with things I’ve been doing for work, there's certain things I didn’t know or success criteria. I didn't know you could have multiple success criteria for a single role ID or anything like that so… and I learned that from you because we were talking about that last week or whatever. So, yeah, there’s always stuff to learn and there's always going to be issues trying to get imple- like, people to back you on implementation. I mean, even developers. Developers you work with, some of them might be like, you know what, we’re not really going to care about that right now, it’s not important. And it gets even worse the higher up you go up the chain. And I fought tooth and nail at my last gig to have them care about accessibility. I got up in front of 400 plus people in IT and said “listen this is what we do as a UI team. This stuff matters” and once I started putting my foot down and kind of giving them the finger and building it in and showing them that, “hey, this is the first application we’ve built and I don’t think any of our competitors have something that’s fully accessible either so this just kind of puts us at the top of the food chain” they were like, “Oh, wow yeah that’s pretty good and we won't face possible lawsuits because things are looking really good and, yeah, this stuff matters”. But it’s definitely hard to get that up the food chain and get it prioritized. Because it’s never the first priority. Same with performance. Yeah, see I’ve said this before often enough that there's 3 prongs to a project that really should be built in from the get-go. One is performance one is security and the third one is accessibility and these things, if they don’t happen they are difficult to implement later on. I say the same thing. I always say that. Especially the security thing. You don’t wait ‘til the end of the project to bake in security. You don't. It’s the same with accessibility. I have a quote, I always say it and it’s “accessibility is not a requirement it’s a must”. It is your job as a web worker to care and make these things happen, implement these things for everybody because if not what are you doing. Do you have any suggestions that you’ve tried and tested that actually works to help developers or stakeholders at ay level care more about accessibility? Yeah, I kind of throw... I like to go and nip it in the bud right away and I always throw out the lawsuit thing. Because that gets peoples ears perked up. Whether they like to hear it or not. That's me. I don’t bullshit. I’m not going to beat around the bush about it. I’ll tell you flat out. You could experience a lawsuit. It may or may not have happened if it did happen none of us are going to know. Their discretion, they’re going to keep it behind closed doors. But it’s always a possibility and if you want to avoid that, then we need to do A, B and C and here’s why. And kind of throw out some statistics. There's a couple different charts I use from different law firms. From federal website lawsuits around the country… case studies, the stuff with Target and [Redrew Fin? 17:05] and Winn Dixie even Financial Tech. Fin-Tech...just because you work for … at a Fin-Tech company does not protect you from a federal website lawsuit. Accessibility lawsuit. Bank of America got hit pretty hard. Once you start throwing that at whatever industry you're at they start to listen, like, “Oh, shit. We are in this industry too. We aren’t protected”. So once you have the proof you can kind of start to get that buy-in. On the other hand using the threat of lawsuits, doesn’t that cause an issue where people start thinking of accessibility as compliance only and what is the minimum effort I can put in to avoid the lawsuit rather than thinking about what can we do to make this product work for as many people as possible regardless of abilities or disabilities. Yeah, it could definitely go both ways and I think you really have to pick your battles and because I try and pick all the battles. And I try to win them all but it really boils down to who you’re talking to as well. Like, if I were to go up to somebody in legal and compliance and be like, “Hey, you could get a lawsuit”, well the first thing they’re going to hear is “We’re going to get a lawsuit, we’re not in compliance, we need to do the minimal we have to do to make sure our ass is covered when it comes to legal and compliance”. Not that the user can use it. Right? But if say you go to a direct lead or somebody like that or even like a team member and you do come up with the lawsuit stuff but you also say “Hey, look at the bigger picture though. What is our user base? We don’t know if our users have a disability. We have people that are working on this application that have disabilities so if 20% of the people in house have it, have a disability 20% of the people outside of here are going to have some kind of disability”, right? And if you can kind of pinpoint the demographic to the application that you’re building it makes perfect sense. The company I left, a lot of our client base was of an aging population. So right there is my argument. I don’t have to say lawsuit, I can say aging population. Boom. Okay, well we need to make this work for our aging population as well as the thousands of other people that touch this application on a daily basis. Yeah, that’s fair enough. Ooooh. Can I say it on here? Throwing you a bit of a curveball here. Sure Coz it, you know, Matt Damon… there was an interview with James Lipton, an Actor’s Chair or whatever it was and he always asks his guests “What’s your favorite word?” and Matt Damon said “Fuck” and James Lipton wanted to know why and he pretty much said because it can be used so many different ways. You can use it in anger, like “Fuck you”. You can use it in happiness like “Fuck yeah” or you can… it can be a bridge between words like “You’ve got to fucking be kidding me”. Right? There’s so many different uses of the word it’s just great. It’s a great word to use and I love it. It’s my favorite one. Alright, well… I congratulate you, Chris. You are the first one to use a somewhat off-color word as a favorite word so this is a first. It’s good fun. I don’t think anybody will go above me.[crosstalk] [crosstalk] ...first. What’s your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Is it managing to make that app ship being fully accessible or do you think you did something else that you’re really proud of? Or more proud of? It’ll be a handful of things but definitely I would say that number one is that… and like. When people interview me or I’ve had interviews for jobs and they ask “What’s the one best thing you’ve done at your current company or previous company or whatever the case may be” that’s my go-to. I made this application accessible when nobody gave a shit about it and nobody cared because it wasn’t a priority and I did it anyway. And they saw the value of that and they started moving forward with all the other applications to make sure that they were accessible. That right there would probably be my biggest accomplishment in accessibility . The other ones, all the conferences that I speak at that's always a win. I spoke for the first time in front of 600 plus people in London last year on accessibility that was huge. I’ve never been in a situation like that. A lot of the accessibility work and talks I’ve given that are… that kind of helped fuel me getting closer and closer to becoming a GDE, becoming a Microsoft MVP… that had a lot to do with it too. I mean, everywhere I look around there’s big wins but shipping the application and being the first accessible application out of the company was a really, really big one. It is big and you should be proud of that. How do people react when you speak about that? When you’re talking about “I did it despite people not buying into it. Despite people not being interested”. What’s normally the reaction of the people you are speaking with? Particularly if they’re potential employers? Oh, I mean, it was always… they always gave me the look of “yeah, okay, we’ll worry about it at some point”. Like the current company I’m at right now, it’s definitely priority and everybody knows it and everybody does the best that they can to make it work. And that’s cool that they care enough where security performance and accessibility are the top priorities of those applications. It’s good to be working in a company that sees that value. But in other companies that I’ve worked at I’ve always gotten, not everybody but I’ve gotten the eye roll or like “Okay, yeah we will put up a backlog” and “it’s not priority we need to get this shipped in the next 2 months and we have to build it from the ground up” blah blah blah… those are the kinds of reactions I’ve gotten. But if you’re already there building out the stuff and you know what to do, just do it. You’re already there. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, ask. It’s that simple. Especially if you’re a salaried employee. I can see if you were an hourly employy and you were spending more hours, overtime hours or whatever building in accessibility… okay I get it. If that’s the.. The budget isn’t baking in that for you but if you’re a salaried employee you’re getting paid the same amount of money regardless if you work 20, 30,40 50 hours a week. Just do the shit while you’re there. It’s harder to retrofit accessibility. That’s why it matters so much to bake it in from the beginning. Yeah. There’s somebody in the accessibility community that used a really good example or analogy and she was saying “accessibility is a little bit like the blueberry in a blueberry muffin. Once the muffin is baked you can’t put the blueberries in there. So you really have to make sure that you bake it in right from the get-go. And I always thought that was a great image. I like that. I might have to steal that. I’ll have to find out who it was and steal it because I dig that a lot. I like blueberry muffins too. I’m not a huge sweets or baked goods eater but, man, I can mash on some blueberry muffins. That’s the first thing I learned to cook when I was a kid. Blueberry muffin out of a box. Oooh can you teach me? Oh, wait if it’s in a box the directions are on it. Yes. RTFM, Chris. On that jolly note, I think we are going to wrap up for this week and thank you so much for coming on and I look forward to continuing our discussion next week. Alright, sounds good, Nic. Thanks for having me again. out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store

E69 – Interview with Ire Aderinokun – Part 2 Jan 25, 2019

In which Ire tells us that she thinks convincing framework developers to implement accessibility will have more impact than trying to change individual developers' minds. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the a11y Rules podcast. This is episode 69. I am Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you are in interested in accessibility, hey, this show is for you. To get today's show notes, or transcript, head out to a11yrules.com. In this episode, I am continuing my conversation with Ire Aderinokun. Last show was really great. We spoke about all kind of things, but some concept that I found really important was the idea that automated tools are a great way to get started with understanding and starting thinking about accessibility. And, the other things was that Ire pointed out accessibility will not take you ten times more effort if you only use HTML properly. So, those were great. Welcome back Ire. Thanks for joining me again. Ire: Great to be back. Nic: So, we finished last week with your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility which was a nexus ability cheat sheet you wrote that has been really popular. A flip side to that would be, what's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Ire: Okay, greatest frustration. Well, I don't know if this is a frustration with web accessibility, but is more with the frameworks and tools that we're using. So, one thing that's frustrating me a lot right now, is that, for my job, BuyCoins that I mentioned, we are building a cryptocurrency exchange. I do a lot of work with the Ionic framework, and we had to use this particular framework because I primarily use angular and front end code and we needed to have mobile applications. But, the problem with Ionic is that it is really not all that accessible and it's kind of been very frustrating because I have had to use this particular framework, which has ended up in the resulting products not being the way that I would like them to be. And, of course, - Nic: Yeah. Ire: ... I can try and contribute to the Ionic source as much as possible, which I am trying to do slowly, but trying to do. But, it's really frustrating when the makers of these tools, and I know they are only humans, and they also have limited time, so they obviously can't do everything, but it is just really frustrating when I feel like I am forced to use a particular tool or a particular framework and I have to deal with the fact that it is not very accessible. Nic: This idea that when we want to work and we depend on frameworks that have not done the work to do accessibility can be quite limiting and frustrating. You said you were contributing to the framework. How have you found the reaction of what you are contributing? Are people receptive, or do they seem to just not really care one way or another? Ire: No, I think they care a lot and this is something that's relatively new to me. We've only just begun really digging in and using the framework. So far, I have started with helping raise issues and wherever I see something that I feel like I can try and solve, I try and do that as well. Generally, I think they are very receptive, and they're open to it. And, that's kind of why I said that I know that they have limited time and resources themselves, so it is not like they didn't do this because they just didn't want to do it. It's more like they, I guess, they didn't prioritize it, which is also part of the problem, that it's considered okay to release something that is not accessible. It's also part of what is frustrating about, I guess the community, is that it would never be accessible to launch a framework or launch any kind of library or sort of projects and it's been incredibly on performance, but it's okay to do it if it is really inaccessible. So, yeah, that's kind of one of the problems at the moment, I guess. Nic: I often talk about this tripod of three different aspects of web development that really should be considered in same kind of level of importance. The first one is performance, as you said. The other one is security. And, the third one is accessibility. And, we should no more build sites or apps or anything that isn't secure or isn't performant, but by the same token, we shouldn't build things that are not accessible. Ire: Yeah, exactly, if there was some security flaw in ... I mean, we have even seen this in the past whenever there is a security flaw in Angular it gets resolved within 24 hours, they have released a new patch, everything is cool. But, there could be an issue about this accessibility flaw for months and it never gets fixed. It is just not really considered a high priority at the moment. Nic: Do you think there is something that everybody knows about web accessibility? Ire: I don't think everybody actually knows about web accessibility, because whenever I write about something or I just even in an article that isn't focused on web accessibility, if I mention something to do with accessibility, I always get a comment from at least one person saying, "Oh, I really didn't know about that." or "I didn't really consider that.". So, I think, even though for me, maybe because I follow a lot of these people and I am very interested in the topic, I feel like everybody is always talking about it. But, it seems like there's a lot of people who still actually maybe have not even really thought about it. And, I am sure some of it is new people entering the industry, but I still feel a lot of people who have been writing websites for years and years, probably still don't know a lot about accessibility. I think there is still room for a lot of content and people trying to spread the knowledge more. Nic: How do we make that happen? You mentioned people that are new to coding and people that have been doing it for a long time. So, it seems like there is two targets. What would you think is the best way to reach either of these target? Ire: Well, there are two ways we could go about it. One would be to outwardly just to have more content that's focused on accessibility. So, in conferences, there should be more talks where the actual primary focus of the talk is accessibility. But, I think maybe a more impactful thing would be to just make it part of everything. So, whenever there is a talk about flex box, for example, there is always going to be an accessibility part to any topic. So, I feel like it should just be part of everything and, even like I mentioned in the previous episode about whenever I had code samples, trying to make sure that it's written in a way that's accessible code. I am not putting out code samples that are using the wrong elements or anything. I think it goes a long way for people to just see accessibility being in part of everything. So, like I mentioned, a talk about flex box, for example, you could also mention that, "Oh, make sure that you don't completely reorder the order of the elements in the document and back.", that's accessibility related topic. You are still talking about flex box, but you are just bringing along the accessibility concerns, like you would with performance for example. Usually, if somebody is talking about some new framework or something that is not directly related to performance, there is usually some mention of performance or something that's tangential to it as well. Nic: Yeah. Ire: So, I think it should just be brought along with everything because really it's just about writing code that is valid and writing it in the way that makes sense. I think in addition to it being more out there in terms of topics specifically about accessibility, it should just be part of everything and people should, as much as possible, put out accessible code in whatever they are doing. Nic: I like that. I like this idea that we should talk about accessibility with every aspect of things we're presenting at conferences. I have been talking about accessibility specifically at a lot of conferences. I do think that if more people, even if you have a don't know, a 45 minute talk slot, even if you spend 5 minutes covering accessibility in that, you are right, it would increase awareness tremendously. Ire: Yeah, and one thing about the conference talks is that the people who are going to attend the topic on accessibility are probably more likely to be people who already ... it's in the back of their mind even if they don't consciously work with it every day or it is something that they are already interested in. That's why I feel like it needs to creep into everything else. So, people who aren't really thinking about it, that kind of force to confront it because they have to realize that it's not just a topic on its own, it's related and has impact to everything else. Nic: You are giving me so many good thoughts. Thank you Ire. That's really good stuff. Ire: I'm glad. Nic: Really good stuff. Yeah. I think my listeners are going to be enjoying this conversation quite a bit. Ire: I hope so. Nic: Yeah. What do you think the number one reason is for most people to fail to succeed in implementing accessibility? Ire: I think maybe it forces people to think about how they are writing particularly HTML in a different way. So, if you are not really thinking about accessibility, or I guess just like writing HTML in the way that it is supposed to be written, then you kind of write HTML very differently. You kind of just structure things in whatever way. It is kind of like div vomit, and you just put anything - Nic: Yeah. Ire: ... anywhere and you just kind of like, "Oh, as long as it shows up on the page, then that's fine.", right. But, I think when you start to think about accessibility, it kind of forces you to really think about the way you structure your documents in a totally different way. And, that is probably something that I realized was more of a shift when I started thinking about it more because I realized that I started to think more about, "Okay, so which element should I actually use here?", and, especially, when all these new HTML five elements came out. We had a header element, a main element, and aside and a footer, and it just made me think, "Okay, I can use this element in this way and I structure it in this way.", and it's kind of just a different way of thinking about how you write HTML. That might be something that you need to overcome if you are just getting started and you are used to looking at what is the result of your HTML, instead of also looking at the HTML itself and making sure it makes sense on its own. Nic: How can we make sure people take the steps and click to that fact? Ire: Well, I found it's almost easier actually to do it this way. Especially, when you learn about the, like I mentioned, HTML five elements, it just makes more sense and the HTML that you write actually comes out ... it is more maintainable because you are not just putting divs everywhere. It makes more sense when you are looking at just the HTML. So, I am not sure how you can over-comment, but I guess maybe if you see what a properly structured document looks like you might be convinced that this actually just makes more sense, especially in terms of the developer experience and how you are going to continue maintaining this document in the future. So, maybe it is just like you see how much better it is and hopefully that convinces you to try and learn how to do it this way. Nic: What do you think the greatest challenge is for the field of accessibility is going forward? Ire: Well, I think one of the challenges are the way we are starting to write our applications nowadays. So, a lot of stuff is completely powered by JavaScript where a lot of people are doing less, just writing HTML and relying more on frameworks and things like that. Even the example I gave, my problems with working with Ionic, a lot of people are learning frameworks rather than just learning maybe HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and so, it's going to be a problem if these frameworks don't really prioritize and put a lot of importance on making it accessible. Because I don't know what percentage of the web is powered by these frameworks, but I am sure it's quite a significant percentage and, I am just going to throw out a random number, but if 50% of the web is like React, it is important for React to make sure that they are making their framework really accessible. So, I think conveying the importance and making sure that these platforms and these frameworks that people are building their own sites upon, making sure that they are considering the accessibility is important. That is really important going forward. Nic: It's mission critical from frameworks to do that. I was involved a long time ago with the Joomla CMS and it was important for Joomla to be able to provide accessible output, but also an accessible interface for people to be able to manage their content. And, it's the same thing with WordPress. I think they're saying it's 35% of all website are powered by WordPress today. And, yet, WordPress is going to release with a new editor that is not accessible. So, when we are thinking about that I think you are right. If we only could manage to convince the frameworks to do something that gives the bare bones of accessibility that gives best practices for developers to able actually understand that it needs to happen. That might actually make a massive impact on the overall health of web accessibility in the future. Ire: Yeah, exactly. I think if we are thinking about what is going to make the biggest impact, probably going after the frameworks is going to be more important than convincing each individual developer that they should think about accessibility. Because like you said, WordPress, 35% of the internet, that's a huge amount, and in one upgrade they could drastically change the accessibility of their editor. Nic: Yeah. Ire: Yeah, it's quite significant, and quite important. Nic: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? So, if you weren't a web developer, a front-end developer, what would you like to do? Ire: Okay, this is a good question. Well, I would start with what is more likely. At university I actually have two separate degrees. I first studied psychology, then I studied law. So, realistically, if I wasn't doing web development, I would probably be a lawyer or go into psychology. But, unrealistically, I used to want to be a dancer and I am quite good at dancing, but I also wanted to be a musician. I really have the worst voice ever. I am glad that dream sort of died. So, I think starting in terms of what is more likely, maybe a lawyer, then a psychologist, then a dancer, then a musician. Nic: How does one go from studying psychology and law to become a web developer? Ire: That is a good question that I get asked very often. I started doing web development as a hobby since I was teenager, but, at the time, I didn't know it was a career. And, I didn't even know that computer science was something that I could study at school. I didn't get that much information about career options when I was choosing - Nic: Right. Ire: ... what to do in university. So, I just kind of picked my favorite subject at the time, just psychology. And, it wasn't until I was doing my masters that I actually realized that web development was a thing that I could do. So, once I graduated I decided I needed to give this a try, because this was something I've been really interested in for as long as I can remember and so I started doing some freelance and I basically did some self-teaching through looking at other websites and just reading people's blogs and some things like Codecademy was really useful. It is like a short course to learn new topics. So, that is kind of how I transitioned. Nic: That's fascinating. I'm interested because my background is ... I've had basically, this is my third career in a way. I started as a chef when I was young and foolish. I was a professional cook. And then, when I had to use a wheelchair full time, I switched away from professional cooking. I did a lot of work with non-profits and working with and for people with disabilities. And, as part of that work, I was developing websites for fun and taught myself about accessibility and that was 20, 25, 26 years ago, and over those 20-odd years, I actually became a web accessibility specialist and that is what I do full time now. So, - Ire: Wow. Nic: ... I am always interested in the way people come to accessibility. I think your journey is quite interesting. Ire: Yeah, yours is really interesting as well. A chef, that's amazing. Nic: Who inspires you? Ire: I always find this a difficult question to answer, because a lot of people inspire me. Maybe I have a problem with the word inspiration, but I think that a lot people are doing some really amazing things and I follow a lot of people on Twitter and I am also very inspired and interested by what that people do. In terms of specifically accessibility work, a few people that I can mention are Heydon, Léonie ... I don't know how to say people's names ... Léonie Watson, I think. Nic: Yeah, that's okay. Ire: Yeah. And, Rob Dodson, those are three people that I've been following for a while and they always put out really interesting content and they have also inspired me to research a lot more. They are always putting out interesting things that always sends me down a research rabbit hole and learning like, "Oh, I really didn't know about this thing.", and then I spend ages just researching this particular topic. Nic: Yeah. Ire: Yeah. I am sure that there are so many people doing amazing things but those are three people I can probably mention that I have been following for a while. Nic: Rob, Léonie and Heydon are really dynamite and they are rock stars in the field of accessibility. It is not surprising that you find value in what they share. I find value in what they share, too. Ire: Yeah. Nic: So, it's good stuff. To wrap things up, I would like to ask if there was one thing you would like people to remember about accessibility, what would it be? What would be the one message you think people must have in their minds about accessibility? Ire: Okay, this is something that Léonie said I think in one of her talks, but it is probably the thing that stuck with me the most and I don't know if I would say inspired, but it definitely rings in my ear every time I think that maybe what I am doing is not enough; is that accessibility doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be a bit better than, I think yesterday is what she said. So, people can tend to look at maybe the list of errors on their sites and feel like, "Oh, this is so much. There is no point in even starting.", or "There is no point in trying to get all of these stuff done because it's a long list of things that need to be fixed.". But, I think it's okay to just start with fixing one thing if you only go and change one button on your sites. If you change it from a span to a button. If you only go home today and do that one thing, I think you can still feel good about that. And, you can still feel like you are making an impact and making progress. Because that is still progress and maybe that's the one button that somebody really needed to access to be able to submit that form, for example. And, that actually made a difference to the person. So, I just think, there are so many things to think about when it comes to accessibility and just in general it can start to feel like a lot, but the thing that you should realize is that you could just start with one thing. You don't have to make it perfect to feel like okay you are starting to do work with accessibility. You just need to start. Nic: Yeah, I like that. Don't focus on doing everything all at the same time, just make it a little bit better every day. Ire: Yeah, exactly. Nic: It's a good approach. Ire, thank you so much for your time, your candor and your wonderful thoughts. I really enjoyed this conversation and I think the listeners out there will as well. Ire: Thank you so much for having me. It's been really great and I hope people do enjoy it. Nic: Alright, thank you and catch you on the web. Ire: You too. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all of the shows at a11yrules.com. And, a quick reminder, you can get yourself some neat A11y Rules branded swag at a11y.store. Catch you next time.

E68 – Interview with Ire Aderinokun – Part 1 Jan 17, 2019

In the first part of my interview, Ire Aderinokun tells us that accessibility will not take you a massive effort if you're using HTML correctly. Ire is a front-end developer and user interface designer. She currently is working on a startup called Buy Coins. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules podcast. This is episode 68. I'm Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show is for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week, I'm speaking with Ire Aderinokun. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Ire. How are you? Ire: I'm great. Thanks for having me. Nic: Thank you. So I like to let guests introduce themselves. In a brief introduction, who is Ire Aderinokun? Ire: Okay, so I'm a front-end developer and user interface designer. I live and work in Lagos, Nigeria. I'm currently working on a startup called BuyCoins, and we're building a cryptocurrency exchange that's targeted at Africans, and Nigerians for now, Africa soon. I also write a blog. It's called bitsofcode where I write a lot about front-end development. So, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I'm actually currently trying to write almost every day, so I'm trying to do an article every weekday for the next about 30 days/30 articles. There's a lot of content going on there right now, so that's what I focus on. Nic: Right, so that would keep you busy. So to get going a little bit, tell us something that most people would not know about yourself. Ire: Interesting. I guess people would not know that I'm really scared of flying, because I'm flying a lot because I travel for things like conferences. I'm traveling at least maybe every month, every two months or something, so people might not be aware that I'm actually really, really scared of flying despite the fact that I do it a lot. Nic: Yeah, that would be problematic. From Nigeria, it's a bit difficult to get anywhere really unless you're doing a lot of African continent conferences. But I think you're coming over to the States and to Europe quite a bit, aren't you? Ire: Yeah, so recently in the past, maybe a year, I've been going particularly to California a bit mainly because the startup I was working on, or I am working on, we got into Y Combinator, so we're there for most of the summer. Also, a few conferences I go for are usually in California, but I also go to Europe quite a bit. Yeah, every conference I go to is at minimum six hours away, so it's kind of a struggle. Nic: Yeah, I can imagine that. I can imagine that. So the podcast is about web accessibility, and there seems to be as many variations of the definition of web accessibility as there's people I speak to on the podcast. How would you define web accessibility? Ire: That's a good question actually. Well, I just think of web accessibility basically like any form of accessibility, and it's just about access to the platform. In this case, the web to as many people as possible. People tend to focus on specifically people that have disabilities. So how does somebody who is, for example, blind use the web? That's one of the major things people might think about. But it's just about making the web or whatever platform we're talking about, making it easy to access for as many people as possible, including people who might have a disability. But I always say that accessibility is not only about targeting the people who have a disability. It's just about increasing access in general, and that might also mean that people who don't have disability will be able to access the content in a better way or in an easier way as well. Nic: Right, so in other word, accessibility benefits everyone? Ire: Yes, exactly. Nic: I'm curious about where your role falls within web accessibility. You were telling us you do a lot of writing and you're working with a startup about cryptocurrency. How do you weave web accessibility into that? Ire: Yes, so I think web accessibility is a really big part of the job of the front=end developer. It is part of everybody's job in some way or the other, but I think it might be the most important for the front-end developer because most of the time their decisions either make or break whether a website is accessible or not. So how they decide to build links if these sites are used, like the correct elements for the correct things. Those are a lot of the things that really impacts whether a site is accessible or not probably more so than how the content is written maybe. So a content developer's job and probably also the designer. I think in how I decide to build the websites, that's really important, and accessibility comes a lot into that. Like I mentioned, doing a lot of speaking and writing a lot, I try as much as possible to think about accessibility in whatever I'm writing and even in topics that are not necessarily directly related to accessibility, I try and be as conscious about it as possible. So even in things as simple as code examples, making sure that I'm not giving an example that's a poor example for accessibility because that really affects a lot of people I've found. So if I have a simple HTML document, for example, making sure that there is a language attribute on the HTML elements, that goes a long way because a lot of people who are beginners might not necessarily have started thinking about things like accessibility. They're more likely to just copy and paste what you do, and I have to think and make sure that I'm not assuming that they know that this is not the most optimal way to write this. I have to try and be as conscious as possible in things that I write and examples that I give. Nic: I must thank you for that because it's one of my pet peeves that so many tutorials and code samples up there actually are not focused on accessibility or even just properly formed HTML. It's a pleasure to hear that you're doing that, so newbies in particular, but also experienced coders actually see this is how you do it. So, thanks for that. Ire: You're welcome. I mean, I try. I'm sure it's not perfect, but I definitely try. Nic: How did you become aware of web accessibility and how important it is? Ire: That's a good question. I haven't really thought about it. I think it probably started as part of my blog. So when I first started writing, I had initially challenged myself that I needed to write every single week, and I actually did that for the first two years or so. So every time I needed to find something to write about, it really forced me to do a lot of research and try and understand things a lot more. So I think it probably started from me digging deep into HTML and understanding what each element does, what it's for, what everything means, and I think having a greater understanding of HTML made me understand ... made me better at accessibility because I truly understood the difference between a button and a link for example. I could understand why it's important that you should use the correct element for each thing and also because of writing and forcing myself to research things more. I'm sure I just across the web content accessibility guidelines. That's one of the things I even wrote about in the first year of my blog, and I actually read as much of it as possible. I didn't actually read everything, but I skimmed as much of it as possible rather. Reading that really gave me a much better understanding of why it's important, and I guess it kick-started me into thinking a lot more about it and consciously trying to make the effort to find content that talks about it or follow people that are talking about it so I can be exposed to as much of that kind of information as possible. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed since you became aware and then started digging into it? Ire: I would definitely say that what I think about accessibility and just generally about it has changed from the beginning to where I am now, because I think when I first heard of it or even first begun researching it, I was still very much of the mindset of, "Okay, this is only really important for people who are blind for example, and because I am maybe not building a site that a blind person might use." So even though I'm aware that accessibility is a thing, I still had that very closed-minded view of why it was important. But I think as I've grown more and starting to research more about it and just learning more in general, it's like I said at the beginning that I just tend to think that's it's better for everyone, and it just generally makes an overall better experience for your sites if it's accessible. So I would say that's the biggest change in my mindset, and it has also made it easier for me to put more importance on it when I know that, "Okay, maybe even if somebody who's disabled never accesses or never tries to use the site, I know that I've still made the experience better. I've still made a better site." Nic: I think your experience, what you describe, is a critical change in perception, and it probably is where a lot of developers out there are stuck at thinking, "Well, accessibility benefits only a few people, and I'm not building websites for these people anyway, so I can forget about it." What would you say to the old you that was thinking that way? How would you convince yourself to actually pay more attention? What would be the argument that we could use to really convince people? Ire: Well, I actually do a talk similar to this topic, which is about why accessibility is important and why it can be easy. So the main things that I do say in that talk, and which is the answer to the question is two things. The first is that accessibility, contrary to what many people believe, it's not actually going to take you 10 times more effort or more time to make a site more accessible. I always point out the example of people trying to use a span or a div as a button instead of just using a button element. It does not take you more work to just use the correct element. So it's more just about how you write your HTML or how you architect your app rather than you having to spend so much more time doing it to make it more accessible. So the first thing is that it doesn't have to be something that's you're taking on this huge new task and it's going to be really, really difficult. It can actually be pretty simple, and it's just about what you write or how you write it rather. The second thing is what I mentioned before, which is that you may not think about it, but if you make a site that is more easily navigable or your content is easier to read, that helps everyone. A good example of this is responsive design. When we were all building sites that were only for desktop, and the fonts were maybe really small, or it was laid out in a way that wasn't really responsive and couldn't really be changed much. That was because we were just thinking, "Okay, everybody's going to be on desktop." But if at that time we had been thinking that, "Oh, what if somebody needs to increase the font size? Or what if somebody needs to have everything much bigger?" If we were already thinking in that mindset, the whole concept of responsive design and making sites work on mobile would have been a much easier shift if that makes sense. So it's like ... I'm trying to think of how to ... I don't know if that made more sense. Nic: Yeah, that did make sense. I like the couple of aspects to it. I particularly like this thing of, you know, "Accessibility will not take you 10 times more effort to make happen if you actually use HTML properly." Ire: Yeah, exactly. I think even myself, and a lot of people used to think that you have to just do so much extra work. It's only going to be a lot of extra work if you don't think about it till the very last minute and then decide, "Oh, I need to make this accessible." Then you realize that you've used all the wrong elements or you've relayed out everything using Flexbox instead of just using the actual source order in the DOM to make sure things make sense in that way. If you had just done it the normal way or the way that would work for all kinds of people, it would have been actually easier for you than doing it the way in which you're trying to hack things in a strange way. Nic: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Ire, did you find you were facing barriers when you were learning about implementing accessibility and when you were doing it? And if you did, how did you get over them? Ire: I think it was a bit daunting getting started just because my first instinct was to try and read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and that's a really large document. It's probably one of the biggest specs or documents that has been created, so it was a bit daunting looking at that and thinking, "Oh, wait. Do I need to read all of this to understand accessibility or to build accessible websites? I quickly realized I didn't need to do that. What I just needed to do was rely on a lot of tools that are available." Nowadays, there have been so many more tools that make trying to make your site more accessible. They make it pretty easy because you just click a button, and they'll tell you exactly what you need to fix. So at the time, I was using a Chrome plugin called ... I think it's just called Accessibility plugin or something like that, and it basically added a tab to your developer tool so that you could inspect any element, and you could see, "Oh, does this button have the appropriate label? Is this not visible or anything like that?" It was also really helpful for things like color contrast and making sure that things were of the appropriate contrast ratio. That was really good at the time. Now, with Lighthouse, which is built into Chrome. You can do pretty much the same thing. I think even into Chrome Developer Tools, they already have a lot of these features so you don't need to install any plugin to have it anymore. It's just there by default. I was mentioning Lighthouse. You can do really quick accessibility audits. So with two clicks, you just select, "Oh, I want to have a report on the accessibility of this particular page," and it'll give you a report and tell you other things you did well, which is great. But it also tell you the things that you need to fix specifically. So that's a really great starting point. If you're just getting started with accessibility, you don't necessarily know what the rules are: What is good, what is bad, what you should or shouldn't do. It's really great to rely on tools like this because they just tell you. It doesn't go anywhere. Maybe it should actually be a button instead. There are so many tools. Another really great tool that I use is called Pa11y, and it's a command-line tool. It does something similar to Lighthouse, but I think it gives a much more comprehensive report, so it'll even tell you things that, "Oh, you need to make sure that this, like the title of your document. Does it actually correspond to what is on the page?" It also just gives things like that where you should just think and you might not have really previously given much thought to. If you're just getting started, you might say, "Oh, the title of my document should just be the title of my website." But then it just gives you something to think about. Yeah, I really Pa11y as a way more comprehensive report, and you can even integrate it into things your continuous integration. So you can make sure that your sites doesn't pass the test. It doesn't move to production until it's passed this Pa11y to make sure it's actually accessible. So there are so many tools that you can use now that it really just takes a lot of the effort of feeling like you need to know absolutely everything. It takes a lot of that away. Nic: I like this concept of using automated testing tools as a way for new developers or developers that are new to accessibility to get familiar with accessibility, because obviously, automated tools will not catch every issues out there. But if you don't know where to start, it probably is a great way to painlessly get a start with understanding accessibility. So thanks for that concept. Ire: Yeah, it is because, like you said, if you don't know where to start, a lot of these tools will just give you the right things to start thinking about. So if you had never really thought about labels for form elements before, and you get a warning that says, "Oh, this input doesn't have a label," then next time you're writing a form, you're already in your mind be thinking, "Oh, this needs a label," and you wouldn't need the tool to tell you the second time. Nic: Yeah, I really like that. I've been doing accessibility for over 25 years by now, and I've had a love-hate relationship with automated testing tools because too many people relies too much on testing tools, and I think they're really a powerful part of how we can test for accessibility. But I never really considered this idea that automated testing tool can be a form of learning about accessibility, and I think that's a really powerful way to look at that. So thank you, Ire. That's a really good thinking for me to ponder over the next few days. Ire: Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, of course, tools won't catch everything, but I think a lot of the tools have improved a lot over the years. So maybe when you first were looking at these tools, they were really catching much. But nowadays, I think they catch quite a lot, and they're probably sufficient for at least beginning, and of course, with actual user testing, you can find more things. But it's better to start with them than without, I think. Nic: There's no doubt about it. You have to use automated tools. It helps catch so many of the nitty-gritty of the coding errors and things that you might miss otherwise. I was reading a study last year or the year before. They pitched all the big-name automated testing tools together. It was a UK government department that did that, and the best automated testing tool for accessibility found only a little bit less than 40% of all the errors that they had created. Ire: Oh, wow. Nic: So it's good. Yeah, it's good to be able to find 40% of errors right there on a page. It's a great tool, but you still might benefit from doing manual testing after the fact. But as you said earlier, as part of your coding practice and making sure that your project at least meets these things, these basic things that can be tested automatically, I think it's mission-critical to have these automated tests and as part of your processes. So from designing to developing to QA and before release, absolutely. Ire: Yeah, and I find that a lot of these tools tend to catch the probably more critical errors, like something like a missing label for example. That's something that a tool will very easily be able to catch, and that's also a very critical thing as well. Nic: Yeah, that's good stuff. Ire, what's your favorite word? Ire: My favorite word? Nic: Yeah. Ire: Oh, man. I've never thought of that before actually. Nic: What's the first word that comes to mind? Ire: Chocolate. Nic: Chocolate. I think that's a good word. That's a very good word. Do you prefer milk chocolate or dark chocolate or flavored chocolates? Ire: Milk chocolate. Well, that might be my favorite thing, so I guess it's also my favorite word because it instantly brings me joy. Nic: What's your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Ire: These are good questions. My greatest achievement ... Actually, I think I might say an article I wrote might be my greatest achievement, and it's an article which boils down the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines into ... It's kind of like a cheat sheet or at least that's what I called the article, like Accessibility Cheat Sheet. I think it is my greatest achievement because it's probably ... I think it still is one of my most popular posts, so I think I feel like I probably had a lot of impact with that, and a lot of people have read it and realized that they need to do certain things. So I would say maybe it's probably had the most impact of anything I've ever done, so it's probably my greatest achievement. Nic: I think education is definitely a massive achievement, and if you've made an impact with that writing on all the people that have come and read it, I salute that. That's a very important part of it. Ire, I think we'll wrap it up at this point for this week. Thank you for being a guest and willing participant to my questioning. Ire: Thank you so much for inviting me. Nic: We'll catch up next week. Ire: Okay, speak to you soon. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com. And a quick reminder, you can get yourself some neat accessibility branded swag at a11y.store. Catch you next time.

E67 – Interview with Beth Raduenzel – Part 2 Dec 07, 2018

Continuing my chat with Beth. We discuss, among other things, accessibility as a coding challenge vs having to meet tight deadlines - and how sometimes developers chose to do things the way they know to meet these deadlines. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules podcast. This is episode 67. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved, in one way or another, with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out https://a11yrules.com. Nic: In this episode I'm continuing my conversation with Beth Raduenzel. The last show was really cool. We spoke about a lot of things. A couple of things that struck me that you said, Beth, last week was comparing accessibility to the five stages of grief. I thought that was really brilliant. I'd never heard that before. So thank you for that. Beth: Yeah. Nic: Should we- Beth: Have you experienced that? Nic: Yeah, actually I have. As you were describing it last week, really, I could actually see clients' faces when you talk about that, or you do a presentation at a conference and you see peoples' faces fall and it's like, "Oh, yeah. What am I going to do?" So it's very apt, I think. Very apt. Nic: We finished last week by talking about your greatest achievements. So let's start this episode with something that's a bit of flip side. Beth: Okay. Nic: What's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Beth: Oh, my greatest frustration, I think, is that I'm not a developer. I used to code way back in the day, when everything was sliced images thrown in tables which are probably the worst thing you could do, now that I am an accessibility person. Just having the ability to design and code just from idea to finished product was really great. Beth: It's great when I can work with developers who understand accessibility, but when I'm working with people who are still learning, it's a little frustrating because I can't give them the solutions. I can tell them, "This is a problem and you need to make it like this," but I can't give them the exact piece of code that they need to be able to solve that. That's been really frustrating for me, and it's something that I would like to learn, but I don't know that I will ever find the time to be really good at it. Nic: Playing devil's advocate again here. Beth: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nic: Don't developer usually like a coding challenge? So it's not necessarily bad to say, "Hey, this is the result you must to get to, and here's your challenge. Fix it?" Beth: I think they do, but I think in the real world a lot of times developers get really tight deadlines. When they're used to doing things a certain way and you tell them they have to figure out a new way to do it, I think that kind of throws them for a loop and it's hard for them to keep their deadlines. Nic: Yeah, I think that's a fair point. That's a fair point, yeah. What's the one thing that everyone knows about web accessibility? Maybe the conventional wisdom, if you like? Beth: The one thing? Nic: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Beth: I feel like most people don't know about web accessibility. Have you had people ... does it seem like everyone knows about it? I run into people all the time that they just have no clue how that works. Yeah, I think ... well I'll say this, one thing that I didn't initially think about was people who are deaf. Beth: You would think about that if you were talking about YouTube or a video site where there's audio, but when you have just a normal non audio, what do you call it, a non audio-based website or product, you don't typically think of people who are hearing impaired because you think that you just see everything and there's no problem, but there actually is a problem because a lot of times if you have a customer service number or something where the only way maybe to update your account is to call this number, and then now you can't because if you have someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, that's not going to work for them. There are things, actually, that you need to think about in giving people alternative means of picking up the phone, because that's not always an option for people. Nic: Yeah, the other thing I've come across with a lot of people who are deaf that were either born, or deafened really young, is that for many of them English is not a first language. Beth: Yeah. Nic: Sign language is in the syntax and grammar of sign language. It's so different to English that basically complex text might be difficult to understand. So that's another aspect of hearing impairments that has an impact. Make sure you use plain English, or plain language, depending on the language you create your sites on. Beth: Absolutely. I met someone at the CSUN conference in 2016, who was born deaf and became friends with him. It was very eye opening to learn how to have a phone call with your deaf friend, and speaking to a woman on the phone when you know that your friend is a male is just a little unusual, but it's interesting and I think all of these experiences that I've had, I think they really just widened my horizons into other people's lives and what other people deal with on a daily basis. Nic: Yeah. What do you think the number one reason most people fail to success with web accessibility? Beth: I think they just give up. I think they make compromises and they think that, "Well we'll just pick and choose which of the WCAG principles are success criteria that we want to apply," and not really understanding that if you don't hit all of those, if you don't reach 100% with WCAG, you're not doing it right. Sometimes even if you do hit all the success criteria, it doesn't mean that your website is accessible. You really need to still test it. Just checking a box is not the same as understanding and testing, and testing with people with disabilities. I think they just either give up, or they think it's too hard, or "We'll just do some of it," and you really can't do that. Nic: Accessibility certainly is not a checklist. Beth: No. Nic: Contrary to some popular belief, yeah. Beth: I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to make a checklist and I just send them the link to WCAG because I mean, really, how would you make a checklist of that? These are all of the success criteria- Nic: Yeah. Beth: And if I want to make a checklist, I would just be copying and pasting that. Nic: At the same time though, I think a lot of people, and me included, come to think of accessibility beyond WCAG, so we're juggling this "Well we have to comply to these things," but at the same time it really should be on the starting point because as you say, you can have a site that complies with WCAG and have the interaction be really horrible. Beth: Absolutely. I think putting your product into context, so if you know that you're designing a product that's going to be used on a mobile device, and it's going to be used in the field, you're going to want more contrast than 4.5:1, you know what I mean? At my last job we made a web app and we made it in black and white, no other colors, because it was something that was going to be used on the field, and when you're outside in the sun, even if you have a 4.5:1 contrast, you're not going to be able to see it. Nic: Yeah. Beth: So I think applying context to things. I know also from going to CSUN that McDonald's puts, I believe, seven to one contrast on their menus that they have up above the registers because they know that people are standing far back and you don't know what the lighting is going to be at any given time of day. So they went above and beyond with their color contrast because of the situation. Nic: What do you think the challenges for our field, for the field of web accessibility, is moving forward from, from this day on? Beth: You know, it's sad to say but I think it's really getting everyone to have empathy for everyone, and not just the people who are like themselves. That's been my greatest challenge is how do you get people to have empathy for others when they might not initially? I think once everyone has empathy, I don't think that you'll have websites that are made without accessibility in mind because it won't even be a question of making it accessibility, it will just be how people design and code. Nic: How do you get people to have empathy then? Beth: I think that introducing them to someone with a disability and seeing those certain individuals as real people. Maybe they have never met anyone whose blind or in a wheelchair. I think introducing them to these people and having them just have a conversation about what their life is like. We had someone who was a little person on the Board at United. There was an accessibility panel, and she was explaining how when they moved the button for the light from the armrest to overhead, she could no longer reach it. Just hearing real world examples of the pain points that design decisions have in their lives, I think that helps and I have also led classes and experiments where I let people ... or I should I make people, but I let people experience a screen reader, or experience keyboard-only navigation. Beth: It's really fun for a short while and then you see their frustration. They realize that whatever website they're on is not accessible and they literally can't accomplish their task. They start to understand. They can just walk away and go back to using the computer the way that they normally do, but a lot of people can't. So giving them the opportunity to kind of walk a mile in someone else's shoes, I think that helps. Nic: Yeah. What profession other than UX and accessibility would you like to attempt? Beth: You know, I started out as a photo editor- Nic: Oh yeah? Beth: Yeah, so I am really good at Photoshop and making pictures of moments that never happened. I always thought it would be great to work in film and to be someone that does the editing in film. I don't even know how it's done, but I imagine it's something similar to Photoshop, but frame by frame doing the Photoshop work to make these special effects happen in film. I always thought that would be fun. Nic: Yeah. Your answer is very interesting to me because most people end up answering something that I can tie in one way or another to web accessibility and yours is completely different and I love that. I love that because ... I don't know, I can't quite verbalize it, but I think it's great to have interest in things other than your day to day passion. I know for many of us, and it sounds like you as well, accessibility is not just a day job. It's a passion. But it's great to hear you have other things that interest you than that. So thank you for sharing. Beth: Yeah. Nic: Who inspires you, Beth? Beth: I think my two little boys inspire me. They have such creative minds and they haven't been told yet that whatever idea they have won't work. They haven't been crushed down by the naysayers, so they'll come up with these crazy ideas and it's just so amazing because there are no limits in their mind. They can take some toilet paper tubes, and they're going to make a robot. To them, this thing is actually to move, and it's going to do things, even though there's nothing to it other than cardboard and tape. Nic: Yeah. Beth: They think that somehow this is going to become a mechanical being and I think it's so inspiring as an artist and a creative person, they just blow me away the things that they come up with. Even in their video games, my eight year old plays Minecraft. The things that he does in that game are just amazing. He's basically learning to code in this video game, and he's eight. I just can't believe it. I think back to what was I doing when I was eight, and he is creating machines that will build a house when he pushes a button. It will self-build a house. I'm so amazed by them. I think children are always inspiring. Nic: How do we reach out to kids to build that empathy you were talking about earlier, because maybe that's where we really need to get to them. Beth: Absolutely. You know, I don't see, I guess, a lot of children other than my own, so I don't know about other kids, but I see so much empathy in my own children when I explain something to them and you see their facial expressions change. You see them automatically putting themselves into that person's shoes and thinking, "Well that means that they can't do this, so how did they do this?" And they really want to know, how would somebody get up the stairs if they're in a wheelchair. So I explain, there's a lot of different ways, maybe there's a ramp, maybe they have to have a lift, maybe they use the elevator. Beth: But you see the wheels turning and you see them thinking about what problems they might have if they were in that situation because they realize they couldn't do a lot of the things that they do now, and it's very sweet. They have a lot of questions, and they're not afraid to ask whereas I think a lot of adults are afraid to ask if they see someone who is blind at a train station and kind of stuck in a corner, they just stare instead of going up and asking, "Can I help you to find where you're going?" I guess they just don't know what to say. I feel like children, all of the questions they have in their head, they just come out because there's no filter. Nic: Yeah, yeah. To bring this to a close, Beth, what's the one thing you'd like people to remember about accessibility? Beth: I would like people to remember that using technology is a right. I think that there should not be any limits on who gets to use these products and websites. Technology should just work for everyone. If they don't know how to make that happen, just open up a search engine and start learning. Nic: Yeah. I like that, remembering that technology is a right. I think that's a wonderful way to end up this conversation. Beth, thank you very much for being a willing guest to answer my questions, and I'm hoping to meet you at a conference or somewhere else at some point in the future. Beth: Well thank you so much. I had fun. Nic: Thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all of the shows at https://a11yrules.com. And a quick reminder, you can get yourself some neat accessibility rules swag at a11y.store. Catch you next time.

E66 – Interview with Beth Raduenzel – Part 1 Nov 29, 2018

Beth is an accessibility specialist and a UX interaction designer. She was part of an award winning team at United. She compares acceptance of the need for accessibility as the 5 stages of grief. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. This is episode 66. I'm Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week, I'm speaking to Beth Raduenzel. Thanks for joining me, Beth, for this conversation around web accessibility. How are you? Beth: I'm great. How are you? Nic: I'm doing good. I'm doing good from gray and rainy Pacific Northwest today, so it's good. I hear you had a bit of snow in your end in Chicago. Is that right? Beth: Yeah. It's snowing right now. It's beautiful. It looks like I'm inside of a snow globe. Nic: Oh, that's cool. Beth: It's- Nic: Yeah. Beth: ... so great to be home and looking out the window. Nic: It's fantastic place to be at. First snow is always quite fun. Beth, I like to let guests introduce themselves. In a brief introduction, who's Beth Raduenzel? Beth: I am an accessibility specialist, and I am a UX interaction designer. I started with visual design, and I moved into web design, and I moved into user experience, and I found that accessibility was really something that I could grab ahold of, because you're not only helping people to have a better web experience as far as accessibility is concerned. In some cases, you're actually allowing people to have a web experience, so it feels really good to have a job where I can help people. Nic: Yeah. That's good. Beth, to get started, tell me one thing that most people would not know about you. Beth: Okay. I think most people would not know that I have attention deficit disorder. It's something that I did not personally find out until I was in my 30s. Once I realized this, I feel like a lot more things made sense in my life, but even after learning, it's something that I kept very close and I didn't want anyone to know, because I was afraid that it would affect how I was perceived, so- Nic: Did it? Beth: It hasn't now. I just started telling people, actually, a couple years ago when I got into a position at a company where I felt that they were very open-minded, and inclusive, and non-judgmental. I felt like I could come out with that, and it wouldn't be held against me. When I tell people, I usually also add that having ADD, it's not all bad, actually, because the way that my brain works is different than the way that other people's brains work, and so I'm oftentimes able to come up with solutions that most people wouldn't have thought of, because I can make these really odd connections between things that you wouldn't normally associate. Nic: Have you found that having ADD has caused barriers for you on the web? Beth: Yeah. It has, actually. There is one website that I absolutely will not use. It's Bing.com, be- Nic: Oh, yeah. Beth: When it came out, I thought, "Well, I'll give it a try," and they have this background with these really interesting pictures, and I'll see the pictures, I go to this website because I want to look something up. It's like a Google, if people don't know what it is, and you go there, and you want to search for something, and I get so distracted by these images. The one time that I can recall, I went there to search for something, and there was an image of people sitting in a natural hot spring in the snow with monkeys. Immediately, I thought, "Where is this? I want to go there. I would like to sit in a hot tub with monkeys." I had to research this, and after about an hour, I realized I had no idea what I had been searching for, but I was planning a trip to Japan. Nic: Right. Yeah. I can see that being an issue. Thank you. We're talking about web accessibility today. How would you define that? Beth: Web accessibility today. I think web accessibility today is just ensuring that the largest number of people possible have the right and the ability to use the internet. I think most people take it for granted. It's on our phones. It's on our watches now, and for a lot of people, apps that most people use on a daily basis are not accessible, so all of these little things that help people through their day that would be extremely helpful for other people, they're not able to use that. I think that's a shame, really, in today, in 2018. Everyone should have access to the web and to apps and programs that would help them. Nic: Yeah. It's a difficulty that I've always found puzzling, that website owners or app developers don't actually want to reach out to this 20% of people with disabilities. I mean, one-fifth of a potential target market seems to me not insignificant. Yeah. Beth: Right, and I think if you look at websites that are accessible, you're not only increasing that 20%, you're increasing your traffic by the amount of friends and family that those people have, too. If you make your product accessible and people know about it, you're going to ... It's going to build, the word of this is going to spread, and I think you're going to get a lot more publicity, probably, than you would initially think that you would. Nic: I actually believe in that, but let me play devil's advocate and ask you, how do you know this snowball effect exists? Beth: I guess I'm basing this on my work at United Airlines. As you know, the airlines are under mandate to have their websites and airport kiosks accessible, and when family members and friends who fly with someone who is disabled, they see how much pain these people go through at the airports and trying to book tickets. I think when they know that there's an airline that goes above and beyond trying to make their services accessible, those friends and family members are going to frequent that airline more because they know that that's the airline that cares about their friend or their family member who has a disability. Nic: Yeah. I believe that. I also, in my experience, as a wheelchair user, I know that if I go to a restaurant, it needs to be an accessible restaurant, and if I go to a restaurant, I don't go to a restaurant alone, so if I go out to dinner with friends, it's not just my business the restaurant is getting. It's my friend's business as well that night, so yeah. Beth: Absolutely. Nic: You said you have been working with United, but you're currently between jobs. Is that correct? Beth: Yes. Nic: Yeah. Nic: I normally ask people, "Where does your role fall within the work of web accessibility," so where would you like your next role to fall within the work of web accessibility? Beth: I would love to get into a company that really cares about accessibility from the top down. I think that having accessibility be part of a company's structure, I think it really makes a difference, because you don't have to argue with people about making things accessible. When everyone in the company understands accessibility and understands the need for it, it just makes my life easier, because I don't ever stop pushing for accessibility, but when I hit a wall, it just becomes kind of a fight that it takes a lot of energy out of you. You know what I mean? Always- Nic: Yeah. Beth: Always trying to push for something that you know is right, and even when people believe in it, it's sometimes hard to incorporate. Nic: How do you get around that when you hit that brick wall, that resistance with teammates or leadership? How do you get around that? Beth: I usually try to be understanding that if you don't understand web accessibility, it's very overwhelming to begin with. There's so much that they don't know. I try to break it down and just hit the low-hanging fruit, so if they say, "Well, we don't have any blind people using our product, because of ... " Let me just say it's a application for pilots, and you wouldn't have a blind pilot. You still want to have other types of accessibility. Now in this example, low vision would not be the case, or colorblindness, because pilots can't be colorblind, but for other applications, you're going to have, if you have a male-dominated industry, you're going to have one in twelve of those men be colorblind, so trying to hit color contrast for low-vision users, for people with aging eyes, and trying to hit, not using color only as a means of communicating information. Then also allowing them to resize the type and just have it keyboard-accessible, I feel, are the easiest ways to kind of get people to dip their toes into accessibility. Then you have people that come out of the woodwork and say, "Yeah, I can't always read this, and I have to enlarge the text on my phone," or, "When I see designs with the light gray text, I just can't see it," and all of a sudden, you get people, even young people, that say, "Yeah, I have a problem seeing this," or, "I'm colorblind." I've had a lot of people disclose invisible disabilities to me, like dyslexia, because they feel comfortable to admit that, "Yeah, this is a problem for me." Nic: Yeah. It's amazing, the number of people that you work with or spend time with every day that do have disabilities that you're not aware of, so it's kind of nice that you've created an environment around yourself where people feel comfortable enough to open up and disclose those kind of things. Beth: Yeah. It's really nice. I just, you get to feel so much closer to people. You don't always get that closeness at a job, but when you get to know people and understand them as who they are and not just as the worker that they are, it's really nice. Nic: Yeah. How did you become aware of web accessibility and how important it was? What got you started? Beth: Well, it's a long story, but when I was in high school, I had a boss. My very first job was working at a little coffee and spice shop, and my boss had cerebral palsy. It was very hard for most people to understand him, because it affected his speech, but after a couple weeks of working with him daily, I had no problem of understanding him, but I could see kind of the ... What do you call it? I could see the discrimination, and as a 15-year-old, it was so painful to watch, because people would come into the store, and it was a small shop in a small town, and they would say, "Can I speak to the owner?" I'd say, "Yes. This is the owner, and his name is Chris," and introduce him. He would say, "Hi, can I help you," or, "How can I help you," and they would just look back at me and say, "Is there someone else I can talk to?" It was like unbelievable. I mean, right in front of him. It just, it was so hurtful. Knowing that, and then getting into user experience, I had a job where I was designing behavioral mental health programs for vets returning with PTSD, getting to see how much that it was helping people that were so depressed and in these shells that they couldn't leave their home. We were bringing this behavior modification program to them online, and getting to see how much this was helping people, it really made me want to get away from marketing and just do things to help people instead of trying to sell people things. I think that was kind of the start, and then when I learned about web accessibility, it was like I couldn't stop learning about it, because I was like, "There's so many people that you can help," and I thought it was- Nic: Go down that rabbit hole and never come up, right? Beth: Yeah, and the learning how to use, like learning how to use VoiceOver and other screen reader programs, I was just amazed, because I think a lot of people aren't aware of a screen reader at all. They just assume that if you can't see, then you can't use a computer, and that's so wrong, but learning how it works is just amazing, and seeing people use it for the first time was, it just blew my mind, because they have it so fast that it doesn't even sound like words, but they can fully understand it, and it's just, it's like this talent, and it's beautiful. Nic: Yeah. It's quite a skillset, too, to develop to be able to listen to a screen reader as fast as some folks have it. I vividly remember a demonstration by Sina Bahram, and it was amazing. That was ... I had not really interacted with proficient screen reader users until then, and it was quite eye-opening, if you've run into- Beth: Yeah- Nic: ... into them. Beth: ... I think it's one of those things where you just, you remember that first time that you saw it, and it's just, I think it's life-changing. I remember we had a woman named Pat Pound. She was part of our accessibility panel at United, and she came in, and she showed us how she uses her iPhone. I was just blown away. I couldn't believe how much she was doing, and then I couldn't believe, at the time, how inaccessible that the app was. That was like, it kind of lit a fire in me to make that work for her. Nic: Yeah. Has your view of accessibility changed over the years since you came down that path? Beth: I don't think my view of it has changed, but I think my attitude towards other people not being as into it as I am has changed. I kind of ... I jokingly call myself the accessibility enforcer on Twitter, because that was me at United, and at my last job, just anything that anyone said, if I could see a problem with accessibility, I'm going to call it out, and I'm going to say, "This is not accessible. We need to change this." It's funny how people go through kind of the five stages of grief when they first learn about accessibility. There's the denial and the anger of they don't want to have to do this, because they've been doing their job a certain way their whole life, and now they have to change it. Then there's the bargaining of, "Well, can't we just do it this way?" Then they seem to get depressed when they realize that I'm not going to let this go, and then there's finally the acceptance. Seeing people go through that and come on board and seeing other people jump up and say, "This isn't accessible," is just so awesome for me, seeing the person who was like the thorn in my side a year ago becoming my ally is so great. Nic: Yeah. It's good to build champions, and for every champion you build, you know that's going to have a ripple effect. Beth: Yes, it does. Nic: What barriers did you face when you were looking at learning and implementing accessibility, apart from attitudinal barriers, which we've mentioned a few times? Did you find anything that was blocking you? Beth: I'm thinking. At first, I didn't know there was web, there was standard, there was ... Like keyboard navigability was something new to me, and I didn't realize there was standard key commands, so just being able to make something work with the keyboard doesn't necessarily mean that it's working properly with the keyboard. That was something where I think I spun my wheels a little bit, making something work and then realizing those keys are already assigned to other jobs, and having to start over. At first, I was on a PC, and I was not aware of what the standard screen readers were, so I just kind of started looking on my own, and I found one. I guess it was really off the wall. Nobody had heard of it, so I had been using something that I guess was not very well used, but that was okay. It's good, I think, to just do your own research and kind of learn what's out there, and then learn from the experts of what else is out there, and then you can see the difference and you can see how much better it is. Nic: Learning about non-standard approaches allowed you to better deal with the standards. Is that what you're saying? Beth: I think it gave me, yeah, a better appreciation, because people's first reaction to having to use, I'm just going to say, a screen reader, is, "Oh, my gosh. This is so hard. This must be awful to have to use this every day," but when you use something that's really awful, and then go to something that's more widely accepted as kind of the standard, you see how much better it is, and you can appreciate everything that that software has done to make the best out of the situation. Nic: That's a good point. I like that. Never really considered it like that, but thank you. Beth: You're welcome. Nic: Beth, what's your favorite word? Beth: My favorite word? Nic: Yeah. Beth: Oh, boy. I don't know if I have a favorite word. I read a word years ago, and it used the word "gossamer," and I had to look it up, and I thought that that was a really cool word, and I guess, since it's been about 10 years since I've read that book, and it sticks in my head, maybe I would go with that. Nic: Yeah. That's fair. See, I don't have a favorite word. I think my favorite word, if you were to ask me from one time to another, it would be different, so I like that there's something that stuck with you for a decade. That's cool, and it is a great word. Beth: Yeah. I like learning new words, and words that are really descriptive, that explain so much about ... You can visualize from the one word, because it's so descriptive, and I think a while back, I read ... What is that book called? Jane ... Is it called Jane Austen? Yeah, and it's a really old book, over 100 years I believe, and the language that they used back then is so beautiful. I had to look up every third or fourth word, because there were so many words that I had never heard before, or had heard but I didn't quite understand. After learning all of these definitions, it's just amazing how much more well-spoken people were back then with less education. They might go to school only until eighth grade, but they had so much more control of the English language than I think we do now, because now everyone is into shortening words and giving abbreviations to everything. I think you lose a lot of the descriptiveness of words when you do that. Nic: Isn't that part of the evolution of language, though? Beth: I guess it is. I think, yeah, everything is going faster, and everybody wants to be more efficient, and more efficient, even, in their speaking, but I think there's a difference in the quality. If you look at modern art and you look at Renaissance art, the level of detail is missing in the modern art, and it can be beautiful, but it's beautiful in its simplicity. I think I like the more complicated detail. Nic: But simplicity is not always easy, though, is it? Beth: No. Definitely not. Not, and probably from a designer ... No. It's not. When someone says, "We need to make this easier," that is great, and I understand it, but making it happen can be quite challenging sometimes. Nic: Yeah. Beth, I understand you won a fairly significant award in terms of accessibility recently. Was that your greatest achievement in terms of accessibility, or was there something else? Beth: Well, I think there should be an asterisk behind that. I personally ... Are you speaking of the Access Award? Nic: Yeah. Beth: I personally did not win the Access Award. My work at United, as part of a very small team working on making United accessible, United won the award, but I like to take part of the credit for that. Nic: Fair enough. Yeah. My apology for confusing the details- Beth: That's okay. Nic: ... there. Beth: That's okay, but it was amazing, and I think ... I kind of mentioned earlier that I'm the accessibility enforcer, and everyone I've worked with, there comes a point when they say, "Beth, you need to pick your battles." Because I'm so, I guess, I lean towards that perfectionist-type personality, I tend to pick everything, and so when I was working on united.com, I just, I don't like to let things slip through the cracks, so I feel like we really went above and beyond in not just making their website accessible, but making it a good experience for everyone. I think that the American Foundation for the Blind saw that, and it stood out to them as we didn't just do the minimum to get by. We tried to really make this a great experience. Nic: Yeah. I like that, because so many people I talk to, it's, "What's the minimum amount of work I need to do to comply?" I end up telling them, "You're missing the point. WCAG Level A is not a target. It's a minimum." Beth: Yes. Absolutely. Nic: Yeah. Beth, I think we're going to wrap it up for this week. Thank you so much for your thought and conversation. I really enjoyed this, and hopefully you have a great week, and we talk again soon. Beth: All right. Thank you so much. Nic: Thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all of the shows at https://a11yrules.com. A quick reminder, you can get yourself some neat Accessibility Rules branded swag at https://a11y.store. Catch you next time.

E65 – Interview with Marcy Sutton – Part 2 Nov 23, 2018

Marcy tells us that her greatest frustration is that for all of the energy that we put into this all the time it feels like we’re stagnant in terms of accessibility actually getting done. And that it’s hard not to get derailed by that. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 65. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week I’m continuing my conversation with Marcy Sutton. If you have not listened to last weeks episode it was really fantastic. Marcy was telling us a few things that I think are quite important, including the importance of listening to the developer's needs. It’s not just about the needs of people with disabilities but in order to serve those needs, we need to make sure developers needs are met. So that was wonderful. Welcome back, Marcy. Marcy: Thanks for having me. Nic: Yeah... We finished last week talking about… your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility and you were talking about the impact you’re having on people that go forth and start implementing accessibility. What would be the flip side to that? What’s your greatest frustration? Marcy: I would say my greatest frustration is that for all of the energy that we put into this all the time it feels like we’re stagnant in terms of accessibility actually getting done. And it’s hard not to get derailed by that. I have a blog called accessibility wins, for example, that I haven’t found a good example in ages. And part of that is I think that I took some time off and just needed to step away but also it’s hard not to get distracted by...somebody will be like, “check out this site” and I go look at it and I run Axe on it and it’s full of accessibility problems that even Axe is finding. The low hanging fruit stuff that’s supposed to be easy. And so I think my greatest challenge is overcoming that and just trying to keep the positive, upbeat, forward momentum going knowing that you put 100% into that and we’re moving the needle at such a slow rate. And sometimes we go backward. And, yeah, take WordPress for example. I look at the way that projects go sometimes and it’s very… I’d say that the reality of it… we can just be happy and try to put a positive spin on things but when you really look deeply at the reality of it people with disabilities have barriers on the web all the time. So it’s hard not to feel like, I’m doing all of this for what? I mean, I know why. It’s because it gets me out of bed in the morning to move that needle even that tiniest little bit. But when you kind of look, a more pessimistic view of it is that it’s going pretty slowly. Nic: Yeah. So how do you keep the positive spin? How do you stay enthusiastic about the work when you’re meeting those moments of frustration? Marcy: I just try to think about something else. Like, go take my mind off of it. Go ride my bicycle or go take my dog outside or… just try and get some other energy so when I come back to it I’m refreshed. I look at what other people do in the industry like blog posts that people write that they’re excited about and just try to get jazzed again about new technologies. ‘Cos there’s always new technologies and there's always accessibility expertise needed. And that seems to electrify me. So. I’m usually reading about something new and I kind of… all of the frustrations sort of just melt away because I’m excited about doing research on some shiny new technology knowing that what you write about it or what you share about it might impact somebody who is reading about that in the future. So I think that we all can contribute our expertise and passion to these new technologies and new design trends and all that kind of stuff. There’s always something new and I think that kind of helps offset the like, stagnant challenges that we are always going to have I think. Nic: Yeah. Earlier you spoke about working with Angular a little bit I think you’re doing some work with React right now...and we’re talking about there’s always the shiny new thing coming out. How do we ensure that these frameworks, which sometimes it seems like it’s more about knowing the framework than having basic development skills… How do we make sure these frameworks allow for building accessible interfaces and accessible sites? Marcy: Well I think one of the best ways is to make sure their documentation doesn’t have anti-patterns and bad examples in it. So, you know find either filing issues in GitHub against those documentation pieces or pole requests would be even better. I think some frame-work orgs are better and more responsive about emerging that suff than others. The React teams been really great about that. They have a pretty awesome doc on accessibility whereas with the Angular team… I’ll try not to get started with that. So, I think it can be challenging if the the framework just isn't, like, open to actually doing the work of merging that documentation. Like, in that case...phew, yeah. I’ve really gone around and around and around with that. So, maybe picking a framework that is a bit more responsive to it unless you know, you just really want to pick up that torch and get Angular to care about accessibility that would be awesome. We would all be very fortunate for that. I did that once and then Angular 2 happened and, yeah, it’s in the state it’s in now. Which is a real shame. It was just a little too difficult for me to live throughout that once and then see it repeat and just go, “we didn’t learn anything”. So there's the docs strategy. I think having examples of where it’s working right is a great strategy no matter what technology you’re using. If you have an example of, you know, even just one tiny piece or like a demo application or something. That’s a good thing to put your energy towards. And then share it. I go back forth with social media and personas and sort of the ego that’s wrapped up in that and where I really can kind of get my own ego out of the way and see it’s value is in sharing information that will help people solve problems later. Like that I think is a worthy reason to get your name out there. Because you can help make a difference. And so I think that creating materials people can benefit from is totally a worthy goal. And every... You know, we all are passionate about different things so if we apply our collective expertise and put those examples out there, you know when then actually trying to offset the lack of accessibility in areas. ‘Cos it’s really easy to gripe about it, it’s better to put up an example that people can learn from. Nic: Do you think there's conventional wisdom about accessibility like the one thing that everybody knows about it? Marcy: Hmm that’s a good question. Well, I would say no because everybody doesn’t know about accessibility. Like, I guess there's misconceptions, like, that accessibility is about blind people. Which it is in some ways but it’s so much more than that too. So, I’ve been surprised at the number of encounters I’ve had where someone’s like, “I didn’t even know that was a thing” and I guess that’s where I started too. I didn’t know accessibility was a thing. So, that’s where I’ve said a few times… seeing people recognize the power and impact that they can have just once they learn about accessibility … yeah, I don’t think everybody knows about it up front so it’s hard to say there’s any collective wisdom. Nic: Yeah, that’s been my thinking as well but sometimes it seems like everybody knows about alt attribute. But they don’t. And sometimes you think well, everybody knows about keyboard accessibility but looking at the sites that I’ve been auditing for the last 15 years not everybody knows about these things. So, I ‘m pretty much with you that there is no conventional wisdom. There’s probably more myths than common understandings. Marcy: I think so, yeah. So, it feels… it feels a little repetitive to always have to say, “you don’t need to put tab index on everything coz screen readers can navigate without it” There's all of these examples where I end up having to repeat thing just because I’ve seen them come up again and again. So, yeah I think it bears repeating and trying to...like, even if I’ve said it the tenth time it might be the first time someones hearing it so. I’d love to move away from Alt Attributes but that one is so common, and form labels too. Nic: Yeah Marcy: Form labels is like...ugh, come on. So easy. Easy to fix. Nic: What do you think the number one reason is for people to, failing to succeed in implementing web accessibility? Marcy: I think they just don’t know. Like, a lot of times I don’t think it’s like a “I know and I don’t care” I think there’s a little bit of that but a lot of times I think it’s just a lack of awareness. So that’s where being that friendly voice to go “Hey it’s really easy to add these form labels” but it’s as I’ve said, we’ve put 100% of our energy towards this and we’re only moving the needle that little tiny bit. So that...yeah, you just have to keep reminding, keep showing people, keep making tools that highlight these problems like, you know, using an extension that can highlight your accessibility fails. Like making it easier for people to uncover those problems on their own I think is a good way to move forward but people are...yeah. There's always going to be new folks in the industry and I think we just have an awareness problem. Nic: Yeah. You’re echoing the same conversations I’ve had with several people including Sina Bahram who really phrased it nicely when he said: “we don’t have an accessibility problem we have an awareness problem”. Marcy: Yeah. Exactly. Nic: Yeah Marcy: So as much as I would like to maybe calm down public speaking and just do my own thing it does a service to people with disabilities to be out there in mainstream conference audiences telling them that they can do it. So it’s… I’ve kept going with it because these opportunities keep coming up and it is fun to go and show people how they can make an impact. I think we are always going to have a need for that, so… as much as I would like to slow that stuff down in the future it’s still moving that needle a little bit each time and it does make a difference. Nic: Does the amount of travel you do impact on you personally? In other words is being a… such an outspoken advocate take a toll on you, your personal life and your enthusiasm? Marcy: It has at times. I think it’s more than just that. Like, for example in the last six months I got married and I think I was taking on a little too much leading up to that so I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to kind of roll that back a little bit and cut down the amount of travel. I have some friends that travel so much more than me and I can’t even imagine how they do it. So, yeah. Definitely. I know I need to take care of myself or else things start to go off the rails ‘coz you can only advocate when you feel good. Like you have...like, why should people listen to me if I’m down in the dumps or something. I’ve tried to be very honest with my coworker's and my manager that this is too much. Like I’ve learned that ten talks a year is the most that I want to do and that means saying no to a lot of other things. Nic: Yeah, I did 23 talks between September 2017 and June 2018 and that really kicked my ass. Marcy: Yeah. Ooof. Nic: So I slowed down quite a bit since then, yeah. Marcy: It’s like it starts being detrimental too. You definitely can’ keep going with that forever. Yeah. I’ve got a few scheduled for next year that I’m really excited about but I’m already having to say no to things. Nic: I think I saw a Tweet come through that you’re going to be speaking at An Event Apart? Marcy: Yes. Nic: That is so exciting Marcy: Pigs have flown. I never ever thought that would happen, so I’m pretty floored over that one.Yeah. That’s such a huge deal to me. I’ve been doing public speaking for four or five years now and that was one...that was the elusive one or two that I was like, “that would be cool but…” like, I think I even wrote about getting into speaking. I have a blog post on my site called Writing winning abstracts and part of it is about when you’re getting into speaking having realistic expectations about where you might go speak and I’m like, “everyone's going to go speak at An Event Apart ‘cos I wasn’t in that category when I wrote it and then that ended up happening. So, yeah, I’m really honored by that and try to do right by the people with disabilities that I advocate for so I’m pretty excited that the talk that I’m doing there I’m debuting it at CSUN in front of my, you know, favorite folks in the world I absolutely love that going to be in person with people in the accessibility industry every year so to get to share that talk with them first I think gives me an opportunity to get realistic feedback from the people it would affect the most. Nic: What was your greatest eye-opening moment in working with people with disabilities in terms of accessibility? You know, was there a user testing session that you saw that really marked you? Or…? Marcy: Yeah, I would say it’s been more like feedback from people with disabilities. Either product feedback or I remember there being a blog post from, I think it was Simply Accessible, on the user experience testing they’d done around tab switchers and how, like, it totally went against the conventional pattern that we’d all been advocating for and those sorts of pieces of feedback are definitely the most intriguing because sometimes you have to really check your own assumptions and your own conventions and ask is this the best user experience? And so that’s why often I’m always saying, “make sure you test with real users with disabilities” because we think we know best and often times we don’t. So, yeah, my own sort of like...opinions about what works best for users I think being realistic about web accessibility means sometimes checking that privilege and asking real users not relying on your own expertise. Nic: Yeah. What do you think the greatest challenge is for our field moving forward in the next five or ten years? Marcy: I think trying to move that needle more than a trickle. Trying to have a bigger impact. I think we have to hit it from many different angles including with education. Part of me is tempted to go get a teaching job or something but...selfishly I would rather work on developing user interfaces but we have so many different angles that were missing the opportunity to talk about accessibility and I think where people are learning, in boot camps and universities those are all, or at least very few of those actually cover web accessibility . So I think we can try and fill those gaps by, go do a talk at your local boot camp. Code Fellows has asked me to come down there a few times. Writing tutorials and creating content that people who are just getting started can use. I think what's frustrating is that we’ve all been at this for years and so you’ll get somebody come in whose like, “this is what we need” and “I’m going to create Javascript accessibility courses” and it’s like, “those exist already”. We’ve all done it and like, maybe point to those first. So I think there's a tendency to want to reinvent the wheel when a lot of really smart people have spent time and energy creating a lot of content so I think it’s worth looking at what’s out there first and maybe point people in that direction. But, with new technologies and new ways of developing I think there’s definitely opportunities to create new content and try to hook people that way. Nic: Yeah. So put yourself in an ideal world where we’ve solved the accessibility problem and you don’t have to do this anymore. What profession other than accessibility would you like to do? Marcy: Gosh, well if money were no object I’d probably go be like some sort of outdoor recreation counselor, professional athlete or something just because that’s how I regain a lot of my energy. But we’re not in that real world, ah, not in that ideal world. Where technology is one of the few professions where you can earn a decent amount of living to live. With income inequality and rising housing costs, I feel extremely lucky that I pivoted into web development from photography which, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but newspapers are not employing photographers anymore. Nic: Yeah I did notice. They’re not employing [unintelligible 20:09] either, so… Marcy: Yeah. So I try to balance all of that. Doing good in an industry that pays very well is very satisfying so I just try to keep a positive look on it and just appreciate what I have because in the grand scheme of things feeling pretty fortunate. Nic: Yeah Marcy: And to be able to actually make a difference in peoples lives, like, some of the stories that have stuck with me the longest are the ones from Laney Feingold book Structured negotiation which she talks about a blind person having to give away their ATM PIN and getting defrauded. I just read another story about that the other day. About a blind woman and her boyfriend at Walmart who got defrauded at the checkout counter. Those experiences that I hear about are...like, you can make such an impact if you’re working on a web application where it could be the difference between somebody wit ha disability having independence and security. So I think there's a lot wrapped up in that that it’s cool, it’s challenging I think there’s lots of opportunities where we can actually make peoples lives better so that’s a very worthwhile endeavor. Nic: Marcy lets finish on one last thought. One last question for you. What is the one thing people should remember about web accessibility? Marcy: I would say the best advice that I can give is just to take it day by day and do what you can and that means, like, I don’t know...having realistic expectations wit what you can actually accomplish in a sprint or in a, before a deadline. And just do the best you can and recognize that it might not ever be perfect but if you can chip away at it each sprint or each whatever block of time that you get. Everything that you do for accessibility is so appreciated. It’s like, no more forgetting Alt Text or Form Labels. You can do the easy stuff and make a big impact. Nic: Yeah...yeah. Marcy, thank you for your time. Thank you for your thoughts and great conversation. Marcy: Thanks so much for having me Nic. I really appreciate getting to come and chat with you finally. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E64 – Interview with Marcy Sutton – Part 1 Nov 15, 2018

Marcy tells us that it's important for folks in the accessibility community to listen to developers' needs. She also states that we ought to be more positive, and to stop making people feel bad about accessibility! Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 64. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week I’m speaking to Marcy Sutton. Hey, Marcy thanks for joining me in this conversation about web accessibility. Marcy: Hey, thanks so much for having me. Nic: I like to let guests introduce themselves so in a brief introduction, who is Marcy Sutton? Marcy: I am a web developer from Washington State. I work at Deque Systems which is an accessibility company. I work on their services team as a developer advocate spreading the word about accessibility testing primarily to mainstream developers so my passion is trying to get people who are in a position to make a difference start to do the work of actually making web accessibility more common and more awesome. So, yeah, that’s what I do. Nic: Yeah. How does one become a developer advocate rather than just developer? Marcy: It… for me, it sort of just happened naturally as I got into public speaking. So, I found that there was a huge market for… I mean, there’s so many conferences out there and lots of opportunities to go and talk to the public about any issue that you care about or any technique that you care to talk about. So, over the years I guess I did an okay job that I started getting invited to things and people seemed to want to hear more from me. So gradually I’ve...over the years made it more and more my job and eventually, at DQ I had an opportunity to step into this role as a developer advocate where I’m really trying to do a bit of listening so it’s like inward and outward. So I’m trying to tell people how to make web accessibility happen but also listening to what their needs are and trying to create demos and conference talks that answer common questions and really help people do their jobs better. Nic: I like that. That it’s not just about what people with disabilities need but it’s also about the needs of developers out there. Marcy: Yeah sort of like being a bridge between. You know. Trying to remind developers that, like, they might have a disability or… you know. It’s like it can affect all of us at any time and… I don’t know if I directly answered your question about becoming a… going from being a developer to a developer advocate. For me, I don’t think I would be a developer advocate if it weren’t for accessibility. Because I was, you know, a generic web developer just doing the job, doing the best I could and once I learned about accessibility everything changed. So, I think for my particular story. Like, I am an advocate because I care about people with disabilities and I really… if it were solved I would have moved on to something else- Nic: Yeah Marcy: - But we know that it’s not. Nic: Yeah, we do know it’s not solved. Not by a long shot. I’d like to explore that a little bit more in a little bit but before going there… tell us something that most people would not know about you. Marcy: Gosh. I think lately… I’ve always been pretty outgoing so I probably share a lot of things because I wear my heart on my sleeve all the time but I’d say… I don’t know. Maybe because I present such an optimistic outlook and try to always make the best of it. Something people might not know about me is the hard times. Where I’m really having to dig deep to try and keep that positive spin and it’s not always easy. Nic: Yeah. Would you say that in our field of accessibility sometimes there's a lot of frustration and that makes it more difficult to keep a positive outlook? Marcy: Absolutely, yeah. And when I first got into it I felt like a lot of the established accessibility voices were really wagging their finger and really making people feel bad and there's still an element of that but I get it now, Like, when I started I was like, “why is everyone so negative?” and tried to introduce a different perspective. And now that I’ve been working in the field for… I think six or seven years in accessibility specifically I totally understand the frustration now. Nic: Yeah… yeah. Marcy: So… yeah. It’s not always easy. Nic: No it’s not. We’re talking about web accessibility and there's many ways to define that. After six or seven years in the field, how would you define web accessibility? Marcy: To me it’s all about… I mean it’s really starting with inclusive design to try and create websites and digital products that work for more people including people with disabilities. I think when I got into it I came as a developer and it was sort of like… fix it. Fic it after the fact and after years and years of seeing that really not working I’ve been listening to the folks that say, “shift left and make your design more inclusive and try to make it everybody's responsibility.” Because developers can't do it all. Sometimes you’re battling a set of designs that just have accessibility anti patterns built into them, or designed into them. So, I’ve… yeah, to me it’s a holistic practice that involves more than just individual team members. So try to make it... At least I'm trying to make it approachable and really put that positive spin on it even though it is hard and deflating at times but… But because that's how you bring people on. maybe you don't highlight the painful points right away but try to highlight the quick wins and the ways that people can stop making progress just by chipping away at it. But I think long-term success for any accessibility initiative It needs to involve your whole team. Nic: How do you as a developer advocate manage to reach out to... to everyone that's involved from the designers to the Developers, your primary targets and QA teams and leadership… How... how do you get the message out there beyond the primary audience for your message so everybody can really work together? Marcy: I think... I mean whenever I do a talk it like... most often I'm at mainstream web developer conferences but I try to... like, for whoever's listening to those talks I try to provide little nuggets of information and tips and things that they could take back to work. And sometimes that means giving them talking points to try and talk to leadership or how to work more collaboratively with your QA team. So I think there's opportunities even when you're talking to developers to try and put a bug in their ear or you know, an idea in their mind of how to collaborate data because it's not just technical challenges, we have social challenges at work of trying to convince people to get on board with accessibility so... I tried to Flippin those little tips that aren't straight technical things. and sometimes it's outside of a conference someone will just reach out on Twitter or in person at a meetup or something and they'll be like “ how do I convince our CFO to care about accessibility?” it's like “ oh well you can start talking about baby boomers and how they have a lot of disposable income and you're missing out on sales” depending on who you're trying target with your message you can kind of highlights a different strategy for accessibility success. Nic: So coming back to becoming aware of with accessibility and its importance how did that happen for you? here you were one day just a developer doing his thing and suddenly you became aware of web accessibility and... how did that happen for you? Marcy: For me, I was working at an agency just doing whatever they assigned me to and at some point, I became assigned on to the Target account. So Target the US retailer who had been sued for accessibility and I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what Headings were, I didn’t know Symantec mark up that well… it’s… that’s a whole other story which I think you’ve… I saw one of your previous guests which you talked about accessibility education being very important. Yeah, I didn’t learn that and a lot of people don't. But when I was put on Target everything that I made I was being held accountable for its accessibility and I was pretty new to it but I remember working with team members at Target and them kind of leading me through testing what I had worked on and I was just so into it. I loved the challenges, I loved working with Steve [Saucon?10:11] he worked at Target, he ended up working at DQ for awhile so became co-workers later on which is such a small world. But, for me, it was learning about the impact that I could have on people with disabilities. And that just totally rocked my world. It’s like, this is so cool ‘coz a lot of this stuff that we’re building at agencies… sometimes it’s just fluff work. It’s like a marketing site that lives for three months and then it gets taken down and it’s like… I don’t know… you don’t have a whole lot of pride in it, maybe for that three months it’s like some project for XBox and it’s super cool but you don’t have that lasting… it’s not a product that lives on that you can point to and be like, “I built that” and so being in agency work… that higher purpose ended up completely changing my career and, yeah, I’ve never been able to turn that part of my brain off ever since I learned about it. Nic: Once seen you can’t un-see it, right? Marcy: Definitely and I made more friends with disabilities and it just really made the work much more significant to me and the cool thing since then is seeing all the lightbulbs go on with other people. Like, I would be like, “Oh I remember when I met them at a conference or whatever and now they’re the next champion” and that just… it continues to make my world go round and I think that’s been one of the more fulfilling… not only helping people with disabilities but seeing other people catch on, has been really awesome. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed over the last six, seven, eight years that you’ve been doing this work? Marcy: I think honestly I started off pretty optimistic. That kind of comes in waves. Like, I talked earlier about it being really difficult sometimes because it isn’t perfect and I think… I think I knew it was… it needed attention. The reason I thought accessibility needed my help was that it wasn’t solved. I think I went through a period of maybe being too optimistic where I felt like we could solve a lot of it with development and then I went over the hump and realized, “Oh it is a bigger challenge than just developers can solve”. Going back to learning more about inclusive design and feeling like we all have roles to play in making it better. But I think, yeah, it’s an ongoing challenge. I’ve heard of some accessibility jokes like, “Its job security” for accessibility to not be working. Honestly, I wish that I could move on to other areas but accessibility needs all of us. We all need to keep reaching out to new developers. Every single project that everyone launches, all day every day, we all need to be reminding people about it. So, I think it’s going to be a lifelong thing at this point just because we’re shipping new products and new websites all the time. And a lot of them aren't;t accessible. Nic: I have joked a few times that one of my long-term goals is to do such a good job that I put myself out of a job. Marcy: I think we’d all be fine with that. Nic: I just don’t think it’s going to happen- [unintelligible 13:48] Marcy: No I don’t either. Nic: -- and you touched on it a little bit earlier. This concept of needing accessibility to be front and center with all the education about web building out there whether it’s formal classes or just tutorials or boot camps or whatever it is. They need to have accessibility front and center because until that happens I don’t think we stand a chance of managing this goal of putting ourselves out of a job. Marcy: Another angle that’s coming to mind for me is…”yes we need to educate our peers and our colleagues in the industry but I think even just general user expectations. a lot of people I know don't quite realize what that missing when it comes to keyboard support for example. not being able to Tab through a webpage and do everything you need to do... I think if more people realize that they should be able to do that maybe that's taking product feedback to sites that they use like, “ hey I can't do this without a mouse”. So that's been interesting, not only advocating within our industry but with friends and family Shaking their eyes open, figuratively. to what they should be expecting from all these online services that they use all the time. so I think that ’s maybe another way that we can... I don't know, by making accessibility front and center it helps really everyone. Including education our users and our customers. Nic: You're talking about uses giving feedback to site owners... how do you feel about pushing responsibility on people with disabilities that come to a site and they can't use it to actually give feedback? Marcy: Quickly I agree but I think the direction you're going with this, is that its sort of an unfair burden. I meant even in general, like, beyond people with disabilities. Just everyone… if... people with... I mean, across the board being able to know that accessibility features would help. it's like we don't even know what we don't know as consumers. I just wish it was more of a norm so people would demand it without having to have a disability to realize it. Not sure if I'm articulating that perfectly. I guess I just wish that it was more common to the point where we could be debating more detailed things instead of just missing the basic of basics. Nic: yeah the basic, like ...you know… 25 years after I started with accessibility I'm still telling people about alt attribute. Marcy: --alt text-- Nic: -- it’s just.. Yeah, where’s the brick wall so I can bang my head against it sometimes. Marcy: Yeah Nic: Did you find any barriers when you were learning about accessibility? And if you did, how did you get over that? Marcy: I’d say the barriers when I got started were that the tooling for debugging was not very good. Developer tools alone were new ten years ago. That wasn’t even a thing ten years ago. So, I would say the lack of tools when I got into it was sort of a barrier. The way I got around it was by talking to people and just asking them. Talking to Targets QA team with blind folks on it, “Hey, does this work for you?” and I think that in a way is another barrier. If you aren’t connected to people or they don’t have time to give you feedback… we were in a client, partner situation so it was… we had time allocated for that. But if I hadn’t had that feedback on my work early I think it wouldv’e been much more difficult to become as passionate about it. So I think the tooling’s gotten a lot better and that’s opening the doorway for a lot of people who might not necessarily know about accessibility or care about it until these fancy developer tools come along and then they’re like, “ooh I can treat this like a technical challenge” and then they get hooked on it and they start going, “oh its more than just technical” and that can snowball into creating new accessibility champions. So, its been nice to see that happen and continue to happen. Nic: talking of tools, you’re quite involved with the... DQ’s automatic testing tool called Axe. Tell us a little bit about that work and where you think it’s making a difference. Marcy: Yeah, so… I work on the Axe team. I was on the actual product team for a while and now I’m...I’ve transitioned into this role of developer advocate so I do work with the product still. It is an open source and free tool. We have enterprise stuff that's built on top of that so I’m kind of wearing many hats currently. But the reason I went to work at DQ was because I was using Axe every day and I still use it in my work to run an audit on a webpage, try and get an accessibility health check for the things that can be automated because we can’t actually automate all of accessibility testing but we can really catch those things like alt text or empty buttons or… A lot of low hanging fruit, so to speak, for accessibility can be detected automatically so I thought it would be cool to go work on that. And two and a half years later… I’m still working on it but in a slightly different fashion. Yeah, it’s been really challenging and cool getting to work on that full time was awesome. I think where it’s challenging is the limits of what we can even do in a web browser. It’s really challenging, it’s sort of maddening sometimes...like, “why can’t we do that” and it’s usually because ‘reasons’. Nic: Yeah. I hate those reasons. Marcy: Yeah so you have to try and message to people like, “you still have to tab through the web page and see if you can operate it and reach everything with a keyboard alone”. So I try to talk about the other steps that you need to take to actually test a web page for accessibility so that you don’t think that a browser extension is going to do it all for you because they just can’t. Nic: Yeah Marcy: So using a variety of tools, of which there are very many. And it’s so much better than it used to be. Nic: I remember the first accessibility checker that was out there Bobby. It was quite painful at times but it helped getting those low hanging fruits for a lot of things and I’m seeing the evolution of tools like Axe or Tenon or you know… yeah. Those two are really the big ones there's Site Improve out there… I still think that, as you say, it’s good for low hanging fruits for trying to avoid the tedium of trying to double check all the ID’s on a page and that kind of stuff. But there's-- Marcy: --looking for miss spelled attributes with your own cognition… Nic: -- yes!-- Marcy: -- can be really hard. Nic: Yeah. Day to day what do you do with accessibility so you’re doing obviously a lot of accessibility but you mentioned you are doing audits. Do you do a lot of that? Do you do development? How does a day shape for you outside of doing public speaking at conferences? Marcy: Well its recently changed. I used to be 50% product engineering and 50% evangelism which included public speaking, doing writing and now I have transitioned onto our services team so it’s still a jumble of a bunch of different things. I'm supporting our technical writing folks with their documentation. Supporting the product team to make sure that when somebody on Slack or on Twitter is having an issue or having a question that it’s getting to the right people. I do... still do some writing and I’m going to be doing some public speaking next year but this week since I came back from sabbatical I’ve been doing research for my talks next year. Nic: Oh yeah? Marcy: Yeah.. learning about CSS Grid. That's my current topic. And so I’m taking these new shiny, cutting-edge CSS techniques and applying my accessibility lens on that and I’m in my research phase right now which is… go read about it. Jot down anything that stands out to me, something I need to look at further and then go inspect it and see if it does what we expected. For example, there was a while where you put display list, or sorry, display table cell on a list it would change the role of that list. Which is not what you want. Super unexpected. So, I’m looking at Grid. I verify it at least in the browsers. It’s not supported everywhere but display grid does not change the role of an element so that’s good news. And sometimes it’s just going and double checking that it doesn’t do some problem that I’ve seen before. And they got it right, it works fine. But nobody else seems to be depending on what I’m researching sometimes no ones looking at that. It’ll all, I guess by… this talk I’ll be doing at CSUN which is coming up in March. So by then I will have done more research and compile a whole talks worth of interesting accessibility tidbits. Nic: Right. Marcy: I’m sort of in a building phase right now which is a really nice place to be because I have some leeway to do research and experimentation to try and be looking forward. Because in product roles you’re always working on the next bug and always trying to get a release out the door and there’s no room for experimentation. So that’s been pretty awesome. Nic: That can be frustrating. I’m glad you have some time up your sleeve to be able to do that fun stuff. Let’s finish this episode on a positive note and… tell us, what do you think your greatest achievement is in web accessibility? Marcy: Oh man. The one that comes to mind is what I already mentioned. Seeing the accessibility champions. Seeing those lightbulbs go on and then knowing that it’s a ripple effect. So every person that you reach… seeing how they’re impacting their own projects and then creating other accessibility champions. I think that’s probably the most tangible way that I’ve observed seeing that impact because at some point I switched from being a web developer who builds interfaces to… then I went on to the angular team and I was working at the framework level. And then I went to the tools area. So, I haven’t built a website that users with disabilities would be interacting with, to actually impact their lives. Like, it’s harder for… much harder for me to measure that level of impact on users with disabilities. So the impact that I can see is the people who were mainstream developers who are now working 100% in accessibility. Like, they’ve heard about it from me. Nic: Yeah, that’s got to be a nice feeling. Marcy: It’s really cool to see how passionate people are and so that's...yeah. It’s pretty cool looking back on it and there’s much smaller...like, you think of every article you write or every podcast you record is reaching somebody. Even if it’s just tiny little pieces of each thing. I mean that adds up to be such a big impact and honestly, I don’t know how long I’m going to keep doing that. I really want to get back into building user interfaces. Because I miss that very dearly. So I think my public speaking arc… I like it, but I would like to turn this direction around and eventually get back into building interfaces. It’s been cool to watch...I would like to get back into having a more direct impact on users with disabilities by building accessible interfaces. So, that’s where I’d like to go. Nic: Returning to more doing rather than teaching. Marcy: Yeah exactly. So, yeah. The users of what I’ve been developing have been web developers. Which is great. I’ve really enjoyed it but, yeah, maybe the things will change. We will see. Nic: Well, Marcy, thank you for taking the time to talk with me this week and we will catch up next week. Marcy: Thank you so much. Nic: Thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E63 – Interview with Eric Bailey – Part 2 Nov 08, 2018

Eric tells us accessibility shouldn't be just technical curiosity. It's about people. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules podcast. This is Episode 63. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey! This show is for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript head out to https://a11yrules.com Nic: Welcome back everyone. In this episode I’m continuing my conversation with Eric Bailey. Last week was really quite good: we spoke about ways to reduce client hostility, which involved relationship building. We spoke about implementing accessibility by stealth, because it really should be part of your skillset, and do check out the episode if you haven’t already. Eric, welcome back. Eric: And what my favorite word was…(laughing) Nic: Yes? What was your favorite word? Eric: “Cromulent”, which is down on paper forever now. (laughing) Nic: Right, well, going from “cromulent”, building on that, Eric, let’s start the show with something really positive. What is your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Eric: My greatest achievement? Oof…I helped maintain the A11y Project started by Dave Rupert many years ago to create a centralized repository of accessibility information. It was one of those things where I did a little bit of work and got some attention and was “called to the big leagues”, I guess. I was asked to become a maintainer and while I want to sink a lot more time into it, I do think it’s a great resource in that it just sits there and points to other great resources. So, being able to ensure that that stays alive, I’m very happy to be able to contribute to it. Nic: I think one of the problems accessibility has is that the information is so fragmented, all over the place, and the work of the accessibility project is so important because it centralizes a lot of that information. It reminds me in some ways of Yahoo!, way, way before Yahoo! was a Yahoo! we’ve known (inaudible), it was quite instrumental, I think, in making things happen. I view the accessibility project that way. Eric: Thank you. Hopefully, we never turn into the Yahoo! where good ideas go to die (laughing). Nic: Maybe you’ll become the Yahoo! that makes you a billionaire. Eric: Yeah… Nic: If that happens, please don’t forget me. Eric: Oh no, not totally (laughing). I’m still bitter about Yahoo! Pipes getting killed. I used that service. I think the fragmentation is a very interesting thing because technology moves so fast and front-end even faster, and sometimes this information is solid information but just for even that six-month window when it was relevant and then it may turn into an anti pattern. And that’s very… Last episode I spoke about getting increasingly more unsure of if what I am saying and hearing is correct and accurate, and that’s part of it, can I trust this source? Has it been battle-tested and put through the full range of every screenreader and browser combination that’s supported? I’m going to get a little depressing for a second here but I’ve seen more than my fair share of “accessible” out-of-the-box solutions that vaguely work in VoiceOver but that completely fall apart with NVDA or JAWS. Nic: Or are just that, “focus styles, what’s that?” Eric: That’s my pet project… (laughing) Nic: I came across a site the other day that really amazed me. They went and defined the focus style, no, they went and defined the background color on the link to be the exact same color as the focus style on the default browser outline. So, you could not actually see the default browser… Eric: Oh, that’s perfect! (laughing) Wow! Nic: I think that took some doing, to do that… Eric: Yeah, there’s some situations where I’m not even mad, I’m just curious, like, what happened here? Nic: Sometimes you go beyond anger and you just have to shake your head and laugh. Eric: Yeah. Nic: So, we’re talking a little bit about frustration. What would you say your greatest frustration is? Is it focus styles, or, what’s the frustration on web accessibility? Eric: I’m going to stick with focus styles because I recently spoke about it. That’s kind of like another big picture concern/learning phase you go through when dealing with accessibility is the web is more than just mice and trackpads and keyboards, and also accessibility is more than just making it work on a screenreader. The talk was kinda trying to demonstrate that and say there’s a reason that this property exists and its because browsers were made by some very smart people and its a specific acknowledgement that the web is more than just this and its silly to think of them as ugly because of your perceived aesthetic values. It’s a very practical and pragmatic thing that people use. Nic: How do you resolve the conflict between aesthetic values of developers or designers and the necessity to have accessibility built in? That seems to be something that comes into conflict reasonably often. Eric: Hmmm… It’s easy to get on your high-horse and say, oh, this is all in the service of utility but I usually frame it, like I’ll try to frame it in terms of “don’t you want everybody to use your product or your service?” It’s basically like saying, “No, I don’t want your money, no thank you”. Like, “I wish to not have the most money, or the most customers.” That’s… sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. (laughing) Nic: Do you that there’s something that everybody knows about web accessibility, conventional wisdom, if you want? Eric: I don’t think so. I’ve run into so many, well, not even so many, just of the people that I know I don’t think there’s been one common thread like I think since people are created stereotyping I think a lot of people go to a person in a wheelchair or a blind individual but I think that’s more the culture being kind of bad and not necessarily because they specifically researched it. Nic: Do you think maybe people with disabilities have dug themselves into a pit with this? Wheelchair users are very good at screaming when there’s no access into buildings and folks who are blind have been very vocal about the lack of accessibility for them on the web. Twenty years later when we are thinking web accessibility, we're thinking mostly about people who are blind, and when we're thinking building accessibility, mostly we're thinking about wheelchair access. But obviously as we've been talking about, there's much more to it than that. Eric: Now, these are voices that need to be heard and and these complaints are very valid. I don't even know if complaints is the right word. I think it's also in making yourself in volunteering your personal life and your time and your effort and resources to bringing these things to the public discussion, I think you are expanding the ability of somebody to become aware of those issues. For you especially, I appreciate you discussing some of these things on Twitter because I know you're sacrificing some of your privacy. Opening up the internet, and the world, to a little slice of your life. I appreciate it. I'm always very interested to learn things that I may not have known before. And then there's kind of a snowball effect on that. Nic: Thanks for that. Eric: Thank you. Nic: Can you think of one reason for which people fail to succeed at implementing accessibility? Eric: Deadlines... Nic: Deadlines? How so? Eric: The whole move fast and break things, thing. It's pretty pervasive in the current development culture. It's great for great for being first to market but it's also great wracking up technical debt. Part of that technical debt is accessibility. It compounds and compounds. My go to example is Snapchat. It's falling apart right now because its user-experience is completely incomprehensible (laughing) There's your cognitive concern right there. It fails at all the POUR criteria basically. And then Instagram came and ate their lunch because they label their buttons. That kind of thing. Nic: You're talking about deadlines and technical debt and all that. The one example which is for me very applicable right now is Guttenberg and WordPress. They basically said "look we're not actually going to an accessibility audit of Guttenberg because if we do that we will not be able to meet our release timeline". That just bewilders me. i don't understand this. Eric: It makes me very mad, honestly. Because isn't WordPress running 30% of sites on the internet? Nic: Yes Eric: That is one fact that is incredible. On top of that it did have this understanding in the industry as being a very comparatively... a more positive experience if you are using assistive technology to navigate and to kind of just... I don't want to say "snub your nose at it", because I know there's some very passionate people kind of helping to move it along. But the way they've been approaching it has left a really bad taste in my mouth. Again, kind of in episode 1 when we were saying "I don't want to bring down the hammer, but this all could have been fixed with planning and not just racing to get something arbitrary out of the door". Nic: And probably as well some buy-in from leadership. Because there's great people working on accessibility but they are hamstrung I think. Eric: Yeah. That quote of "do an audit and write a blog post about it" left a very bad taste in my mouth. It seems incredibly dismissive. As if this wasn't actual people being affected. It's more of a technical curiosity to be observed and then move on. Nic: Technical curiosity. I like that expression. Thank you. How do you avoid that kind of failure between deadlines and technical curiosity rather than... How do we avoid failure with that? Eric: I don't know. I mean... Shifting left is great. Making these concerns known earlier. But I think to your point, you need organizational buy-in. Because if it's not a priority, there will be this ripple effect of it not being... You model the behavior you wish to see. If you're not discussing accessibility, it will propagate to the project managers who won't throw it in the backlog, and won't add it to the acceptance criteria or write it into the QA test. I guess... You don't want to be in a position where you're just patching holes after holes. It's just unsustainable Nic: Yeah. Last episode you mentioned building relationships as a way to reduce client hostility towards accessibility. I think that this building relationship would be very appropriate here in terms of getting leadership buy-in. But at the same time there's sustainability issue that you mentioned. You can't spend all of your time building relationships with all the people out there. Eric: (laughing). There's only so many hours in the day. Nic: That's right. Eric: That's a really good point about sustainability. Because an audit is a snapshot. Websites are not static. I'm sure if you've done audits, you've been in the position where checking things.. You log in half an hour later and it's changed because somebody implemented a feature. It's a snapshot of a thing in time that isn't just reflective of the reality of what this thing is. I don't know. (laughing) It bugs me. Nic: Yeah.. What would you say the greatest challenge is for the field of accessibility moving forward? Eric: I think the atmosphere is better. The inclusive design movement is in vogue for now, and that's great. Empathy in design is a bit of a buzzword. I like that it's being considered and quantified. I think honestly the biggest concern I have is single page applications, and how they throw out a lot of what you get for free with other ways of building websites, for better or for worse. You know you can make them accessible, but there's this weird disconnect I feel between what the documentation says you can do versus what's actually done.I think developer education is a problem there where the market incentivises people who know buzzwords. And not necessarily what those buzzwords means and do. Nic: Yeah. I've recently looked at a single page application that had code that looked more or less like <a role="button" tabindex="0"> Eric: (laughing) Yep Nic: And I came back to it and I still couldn't believe what I was reading and I think this concept of you have a lot of easy accessibility wins when you're using semantic HTML the way it was intended to be used. Then you go and you start trying to reinvent the wheel with divs and ARIA and you never get quite there. you always have conflict somewhere. Eric: That's another kind of... They're related to a certain extent. Like the over-reliance on ARIA. It's sort of like compliance via shotgun blast. Like... I'm going to slap as much ARIA as I can onto this and hope it works. And then you get into these situations where you have... you know... You have your role shifted tabindexed button that does nothing (laughing) And I don't know what's happening here. I probably don't want to hear the answer Nic: I don't know what's happening either. And I wish we had the answers. Who inspires you Eric? Eric: Oh... Many people. Yourself. Cordelia, Heydon Pickering, Carie Fisher, Scott Vinkle, Scott O'Hara, (incomprehensible), I'm blanking more because I've been put on the spot. But I don't know. Twitter is a burning trash fire of a social media service, but I have my nice bubble of thoughtful people that I've made for myself. It's nice in this day and age that you can have these relationships that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to have had if you weren't physically near them or working with them. It's always nice to see them in person if we're at the same conference. Or even if we're just exchanging some tweets. Or reading stuff. Nic: If you were to not be a designer, what profession other than the one you're doing would you like to attempt? Eric: Ohh. That's a good one. Probably a sociologist. Nic: Sociologist? Eric: Yeah. So very poor. I love reading about just all the diversity and all the interesting things that people do and say. It's fascinating stuff and I can't get enough of it. Nic: What strikes me is that in many ways that ties in to design and making things work for people with disabilities. It's about diversity. It's about people. Eric: Yeah. Can I quote you on that? Nic: Absolutely! Eric: Great. Nic: You'll even have it on black on white when the transcript comes out. Eric: Yeah, just copy/paste! Nic: There you go. Please attribute, attribute, attribute. Eric: Of course. I don't know. Design is weird. because it feels like the industry went through a transformation about 5 or 6 years ago where it was "your job is to make pretty things in Photoshop" and then kinda switched into "your job is to be armchair psychologists, and also make pretty things". It's been a very interesting career. I'm pretty lucky to have been able to have been in it for as long as I have. Nic: I hope you keep doing what you're doing because you are making an impact. I routinely forget that I know something, do a Google and "oh, there's an article by Eric Bailey on CSS Tricks", and I think "oh yeah, I knew that" Eric: (laughing) Nic: It's good to have that out there. Eric: I would say if anybody who's listening is interested, yourself as well, Chris Koyer is a great person, very friendly. Writing for him is a lot of fun. If that's something you're interested in, like... I was terrified the first article I submitted because I grew up reading it and like "oh my god I get to take my shot at it". And he's just very friendly and accomodating and his staff is as well. I know he's always looking for good information. Especially in that intersection of accessibility and front end and CSS. If it's something you're interested in, i so totally recommend giving it a shot. Nic: I will keep that in mind. Although lately my creative juices are all going towards the podcast Eric: (laughing) Podcasting takes a lot of work. Nic: It does. But it's also rewarding. i started this, on my god, a year and a half ago now. I didn't know then that I'd get so much out of it now. It's really been great. Anyway... Back to you because this episode is about you. I would like to wrap it up by asking you what's the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Eric: Sure. It's a wholistic concern. It's more than just a developer in a chair, or a designer at a white board. I think it's something you can integrate into every aspect of digital design. If that's something that you can kind of start thinking about and active measures to include. Nic: cool. Eric, thank you so much. I've loved talking with you about accessibility. We've interacted on social media and Slack but having this discussion was really dynamite. So thank you. Eric: Thank you. I love the podcast and I'm so happy to be able to contribute to it. Nic: Excellent. Well, Eric, I'll catch you around. Eric: Thank you. Nic: Everyone out there thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it. If you do please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all of the shows at https://a11yrules.com. And a quick reminder that you can get yourself some neat A11y Rules branded swag at https://a11y.store. Catch you next time.

E62 – Interview with Eric Bailey – Part 1 Oct 29, 2018

Eric tells us, among other things, that relationship building is a good way to get passed the hostility some people have towards accessibility. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. You're listening to episode 62. I'm Nic Steenhout, and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Nic: This week, I'm speaking to Eric Bailey. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Eric. How are ya? Eric: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Nic: Thank you. Hey, as you've been listening to the show, you know by now that I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, who's Eric Bailey? Eric: Yeah, wow. You think I would have prepared for that. So, I'm a designer, working at a agency called Thoughtbot in Boston, Massachusetts. I write articles for mostly CSS-Tricks and Smashing Magazine now, a couple other places on semantics and accessibility and usability and kind of the intersection of all three and the muddy space that is all those things converging. Nic: Yeah. That sounds like it keeps you busy and out of mischief for most of your waking time. Eric: Yeah, yeah. I ... My partner is currently in grad school, so I've had some time to kind of, you know, fritter away with writing and sitting on the couch and watching too much Netflix. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Hey, to get warmed up, tell me something that, one thing that most people would not know about you. Eric: Oh, sure. So, I spent a year doing disaster relief in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, through- Nic: Oh, wow. Eric: Yeah. It was through a program called the AmeriCorps, which is a domestic Peace Corps. And so, I lived out of tents for a year, and yeah, it was an incredible experience. Nic: That would have been a difficult time I would think, but also quite enriching and rewarding. Wouldn't it? Eric: Yeah, yeah. I think you said that very well. It was very intense, but made a lot of ... Met a lot of incredible people. Made a lot of incredible friends. Definitely felt all the feelings. So, yeah, but I'm very happy to have been able to have done it. Nic: How has that impacted on your experience as a developer? Eric: Sure. I like things that work, and I like things that are robust and like, probably not the best term, but like battle tested. You know, the web, if you do it wrong, is a very flimsy medium, and it's also one of the most actively hostile development environments you will ever work with. So, because of that, I like things that will hold up under stress or duress- Nic: Yeah. Eric: ... or less than optimal situations. Nic: So, obviously the main topic of the show is web accessibility, and every people I speak with, speak to, seems to have a slightly different definition of accessibility. So, how would you define that? Eric: Sure. I think accessibility is good design, and good design is accessible. And I know that's kind of like a tautology, but it's ... It kind of gets into the whole inclusive design mindset, where you should be proactively considering these things, as opposed to fixing them in post. So, it's, you know, in my mind it's a holistic practice, that kind of affects every aspect of what we do as app and web makers. I don't know. It's strange to me to kind of like keep it in this little box off to the side. Nic: Why do you think we keep it in a box off to the side? Eric: Yeah. Education. It's, you know ... So, if you're learning about web design and web development ... I'm gonna keep using this as a go-to example because it's what I like to do, but it affects all of digital design. You know, if you go to a traditional CS (Computer Science) school, there are so many different little things to focus on that you can kind of go down this rabbit hole on learning about. In a traditional CS education, for most places, accessibility is not a priority. And this is kind of a pet issue that I don't know what to do about because, you know, if you go to an engineering school, you definitely learn how to make a building not collapse, or how to work with the capabilities of the materials that you'll be using. Same for architecture. You know, I think there's a lot of comparisons you can make between building things and building websites. Nic: Yeah. Eric: So, it just, it bothers me because we've effectively taken one of the stools, one of the legs off the stool and kind of just thrown it away. And because of that, I think there's far less chances of people kind of uncovering accessibility in a positive way. And then, you know, learning the ins and outs of how to do it. Usually, a lot of people I talk to become aware of it after a lawsuit has happened or the threat of a lawsuit, and that can really kind of skew your perception as a developer. You may be a decent person. I think most people are generally good people, but if you come into it from a sense of punitive, it can really color your experience. Nic: Yeah. I've been struggling with that, you know, making accessibility, not just positive but fun, and flip it away from, you know, if you don't make it accessible, you'll get slapped with a lawsuit. But at the same time, it seems that it's the only thing that actually get a reaction from people. Eric: Yeah. Nic: How do we get that, resolve that, you know, dichotomy between on one hand we want to have people come to it in a positive way, but on the other hand, the only thing that actually seems to make a difference is a lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit. Eric: Yeah. I wish I had the answer. Yeah. I've talked about this with others, and you know, there is a pragmatic element to it. There is definitely the kumbaya inclusion, you know. I don't mean to sound dismissive here, but there comes a time where it is time to bring down the hammer. And that is because, you know, by definition of the practice, you are, you know, you're removing people's ability to accomplish things. And as the world gets more digital, it becomes so much more important with every passing day. And so, you know, I don't think we should remove the possibility of a threat, I just, I wish ... You know, I wish it ... I guess not even wish, it's just like being cognizant of the nuclear option and kind of what you can do before it gets to that. You know, like Lainey Feingold's Structured Negotiation is a really interesting thing to read about, and I'm not going to paraphrase that 'cause I will butcher it. Nic: Yeah. I like Lainey. I like her approach. I think it's very effective. Yeah. So, Eric, let's get back to you for a second. You define yourself as a designer, doing a lot of UI/UX work. Day to day, what does that look like from an accessibility perspective? How do you implement that? Eric: Yeah, that's a great question. So, we recently, on our internal Slack, had a conversation. There was a coworker who was very interested in coming to be more proficient in accessibility, and she kind of had the same question, like how do you do it? And to be completely honest, I normally will sneak it in, which is to say like most other coding and design practices, I'm not explicitly telling the client that I'm doing it because that's just part of the skillset. So, the client says, "Make me a website about dogs." I don't bore them to death with the details of, you know, my eight-point design grid and sketch and my modular component library. I just do it, and hopefully I solve the problem that needs solving. Eric: And so, when it comes time to practice accessibility there, so like making sure that that component library has, you know, good color contrast baked in. You know, making sure that the copy writing is at a decent reading level. If it comes time to take it to development, starting with good semantic markup. But, you know, it's ... Sneaking is kind of the bad way to say it 'cause it has this negative connotation, but it's just I make it, I try to make it a non-issue, just 'cause it just ... That's what you get when you get my service. Nic: Yeah. See, I like that because I often get asked, particularly at conferences, you know, "How do you ... How do you, as a design studio get clients to pay for accessibility?" And I said, "Well, you don't charge them. It's just ... It should be rolled into the service because, you know, you don't charge clients extra for a secure website." Well, I hope you wouldn't. You wouldn't be charging people extra for accessibility either. It should be part and parcel of that, and I think this stealth accessibility is perhaps an important way to do it for people that have clients or people that are in roles where they are part of a larger team that actually works on websites. They should just do it. Because, as you said, it should be part of your skill set. Eric: Yeah, yeah. I'm actually optimistic. Net ... I, you know, when interviewing potential candidates and like ... I design systems a lot, and I like to read other people's design systems 'cause I'm a giant nerd, but I see more and more kind of mentioning of these kinds of things, and, you know, it's one of those ... There's always going to be room for improvement, and there's always going to be little gotchas and ahas to be cognizant of. But I'm not seeing it more and more listed as an interest or concern on resumes or in design systems or in rating guidelines and stuff like that. And maybe that's 'cause I've self-selected my own little filter bubble, but I, you know, aside from some specific technology concerns, it does seem like accessibility is finally getting a seat at the table. Nic: Yeah, well I hope you're right. I really hope you're right. So, how did you become aware of web accessibility and its importance? Eric: Sure. Nic: What was a trigger for you to say, "Aha, this is important."? Eric: Yeah, so this is kind of a, this is ... If you don't mind me kind of monologuing for a bit. Nic: Go for it. Eric: Yeah, I ... There was a couple ... There was a lot of kind of conspiring things, but I don't think there was one, single event. It seems kind of on the long arm of my career I've been pushed towards this. My mother was an occupational therapist, so I would always kind of help her demo out her assistive tech, and you know, we'd talk about her job. So, I was kind of made aware of some of these concerns at an early age. I was a big nerd, so I really liked learning how to write html, and with that kind of came learning about semantics, which is a lost art, unfortunately. Eric: And then, I had a job at a nonprofit, and it was a wonderful organization that helped compile health and human services information. And part of that required making html kind of documents to deliver for findings, and that required Section 508 compliance. And through Section 508, I learned about the WCAG, WCAG or however you want to pronounce it, and it was like, "Oh, okay. So, it turns out that there are rules for making really good design then." You know, by my definition of design that anybody can use, as opposed to something that's like looks pretty. Nic: Yeah. Eric: So, I was like, "Okay, this is really interesting, so what else can I learn about it?" And you know, it kind of snowballed from there, but the thing that I always get when I get asked this question that really kind of honestly irritates me is that like to be interested in this, I must have some sort of disability condition or some sort of traumatic event that like is your super hero moment of being forged in the fires of awareness. But, you know, I'm ... I have glasses, and I get migraines, and I suffer from some depression. But, you know, I'm relatively able-bodied and fortunate for that, and I think it's just being a decent person kind of to just be interested in this stuff. Nic: Yeah. I have noticed that a lot of people that are interested in accessibility have other first-hand experience of disability, or have close, personal family or friends with disabilities. But, I'm always really glad to hear when people that don't have this really close tie actually have an interest in and believe in the importance of accessibility. Eric: Yes, well that's very reassuring to hear. Thank you. Nic: So, I'm glad to hear that you come from that- Eric: Cause another thing that I worry about is representation and while I personally enjoy writing about this stuff and kind of, you know, being active- Nic: Are you there? Eric: ... on social networks and tweeting and all that, I want to make sure that I'm not speaking for people and making sure that representation is equitable. Nic: What is [crosstalk 00:16:21]. Eric: So, it's something that really always kind of bothers me, or just kind of sticks in the back of my mind. Nic: How people with disabilities are often the impetus on making designers and developers interested in accessibility. And I was saying that I was glad you came to it without having that first-hand experience because we need more people that are interested in accessibility that don't necessarily come to it from a first-hand experience. Eric: Yeah, and ... Yeah, that's really good to hear because one thing I do kind of worry about or am concerned about is in writing these things and saying these things, making sure that I'm not co-opting representation and I'm also speaking from ... You know, if I'm speaking from an authoritative place, making sure that it is well and true and, you know, not stealing the spotlight from somebody else, who could be sharing their experiences. Nic: A long time ago, when I was doing more direct disability rights stuff, I went to a conference, the National Council on Independent Living Conference, and there were a lot of people with disabilities that just would not interact with people that were able-bodied or at least looked able-bodied, because you can't always tell someone has a disability just by looking. And I was annoyed at the dismissal of allies of people with disabilities just because they don't have a disability. I remain firm that, you know, I believe in this nothing about us without us, so people with disabilities need to be involved in web accessibility, but we also need all the allies we can get. And, you know, having read lots of your articles, especially on CSS-Tricks, I think your approach is really dynamite, so please keep doing what you've been doing. Eric: Thank you very much, yeah. I ... That's really nice to hear. Wow. Yeah. That's kind of the other, like my other, I guess, master plan, like I'm some superhero or something, is getting the conversation out of traditional accessibility channels if I can. Nic: Yeah. Eric: And, you know, I get some ... I've spoken with some people where it's like, "Oh, you should own your content. Make sure it's on your site. Make sure you're, you know, you have complete and total authority over things that you do." And I completely agree for many things, but you know, it's kind of secretly my hope that for each one of these things I kind of put out there into the ether, maybe there's that moment for somebody else where they just kind of stumble across it. Nic: Yeah. Eric: You know, that's a little vain, but I gotta have something. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Hey, you've been doing this for what, about 10 years, more or less, 15 years? Eric: Yeah, 10. I ... I'm old. Nic: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we're all old and getting older. But do you think your view of accessibility changed since you started doing this? Eric: Yes. Nic: How? Eric: I'm less dogmatic, and I am more convinced that I know absolutely nothing, by which I mean I think there's kind of a phase people go through, where they're like, "Oh yes, semantic HTML directly equals perfect accessibility, so how dare you not use this tag in this one way because this is how platonically these things work." And, you know, in my kind of continued exploration of the space, like any other technology, there's bugs, there's gotchas, there's like interop problems, and, you know, the most semantically pure solution may ultimately not be the best usable solution, and then you start to get into this whole argument of push/pull of like well do you honor the spec at the expense of usability? Nic: Yeah. Eric: Or, do you make these concessions for people and then therefore create a living standard that doesn't actually exist on paper? And then, you know, flash forward five hours later and you're just crying in the shower 'cause nothing is true. Nic: Yeah. Yeah. Have you faced barriers? Or, are you now facing barriers when it comes time to implementing accessibility? Eric: Yes. In a consulting role, I often times will encounter ... And it runs the gamut from people that are just, you know, not aware, to people that are actively hostile to the thinking. And, oops sorry. I got a ... Screen saver came on. Apologies. So, you know, it's one of things ... Big picture, I think most people are good or want to do good, and I think this is, you know, you get more flies with honey than vinegar. So,- Nic: Yep. Eric: ... I try to explain where I'm coming from, but you know, kind of ... Sometimes, there's that situation where somebody would be like, "No. Our brand is orange," and orange is probably the worst color for contrast. You know, it's frustrating to kind of marry the client's objectives versus doing the right thing. Nic: Yeah. Eric: Yeah. Nic: What's one trick that you've found effective getting past the hostility of a client? Eric: For me, it's building a relationship with them. So, it kind of ... Again, just kind of sneaking it through, and then if they comment about it, I'll happily talk to them about it. Nic: Right. Eric: And you get that lovely aha moment of, you know, it's ... They view it as like, "Well, I'm getting the best of this, and I may not have known that this was a thing that existed before. But now I know that it's this but better." Nic: Yeah. Eric: And you know, if you ask me directly, like if it's in the project's acceptance criteria, I will talk your ear off all day, but- Nic: Yeah. So, relationship building as a way to get past client hostility towards accessibility, I think that's an important way to look at it. Thank you. Eric: Yeah. My other trick is CICD tools that ... So, instead of one person minding all the accessibility, like a robot on the server yells at you. We had a client that needed accessible work, and we found that the developers were disabling their linters locally, and so, you know, talking about bringing down the hammer, we're like, "Okay, well if you're gonna do that, our move is to put that on the server," and you know. Nic: Yeah. That's actually quite sweet. Just disable your linters. No problem. Yeah. No problemo, mas problemas. What's your favorite word? Eric: My favorite word? Nic: Uh-huh. Eric: Oh boy. What's popping in right now is cromulent, 'cause I watched a lot of The Simpsons growing up. Nic: Okay. Eric: It's not a real word. Nic: No, but it works. It's part of The Simpsons, so it's ... I mean, it's ... Cultural heritage is important. Eric: Yeah. What's your favorite word? Nic: Right now, it's sunny. Eric: Sunny. Nic: Sunny, yeah. Sunny outlooks, sunny emotions, sunny everything right now would be it. But of course, ask me that same question in 15 minutes. It may change. Eric: I'm setting my timer. Nic: Yeah. Let's not, but pretend we did, right? Nic: All right, Eric, thank you so much for your time. Today has been wonderful. Let's wrap this up for this week, and we'll chat again next week. Eric: Oh, Nic, thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure. Nic: Thank you. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this and all of the shows at https://a11yrules.com. And a quick reminder, you can get yourself some neat Accessibility Rules branded swag at https://A11y.store. Catch you next time.

E61 – Interview with Alex Brenon Oct 18, 2018

Alex is a developer who has experienced the difference between baking in accessibility from the start compared to trying to retrofit accessibility into an existing project - which leads to a lot of trial and error and wasted time. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 61. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. This week I’m speaking with Alex Brenon. Thanks for joining me to this conversation around web accessibility Alex. How are you? Alex: I’m good, how are you? Nic: I’m doing very good. Ah, look Alex. I like to let guests introduce themselves so in a brief elevator style introduction. Who's Alex Brenon? Alex: Okay. Yeah, so I’m a relatively recent graduate of Smith College. And since then I’ve been working in blended learning and digital humanities. Which is basically just the intersection between technology and learning and teaching and research. And last year I was given some time and resources to explore whatever facets of technology or career development I was interested in and I chose accessibility and that’s how I got started. Nic: Right. How did you come to pick accessibility? What was the impetus on selecting that particular topic? Alex: I think I’ve always been interested in accessibility. I’m also interested in education and through that making knowledge accessible. In more in the sense of open access so it had been something that I didn’t know anything really at all about but had always kind of thought about. Nic: Right. So how do you weave that into your job day in, day out? What … how do you implement accessibility? What’s your tasks with that? Alex: Well, it’s really interesting for me because last year I was designing new parts of a Drupal website and got to kind of just bake accessibility into that. Whereas this year I am also designing a new Wordpress site but also working with existing ones and so this year it’s much more about trying to figure out how to get accessibility retrofitted or see how we can change things to kind of focus on that. Nic: How do you go about that retrofitting accessibility into an existing site? Alex: It definitely helps that I have done development from scratch before and I’m given all the leeway I want to kind of run with it. But basically, it’s just a lot of trial and error. Honestly just trying to see how to change things that won’t break everything else… Nic: Yeah Alex: ...but make certain parts more accessible. Nic: So you say you’ve been given leeway… how is leadership in the organization you work at supporting you in… specifically giving you leeway? You know, are they saying, “Just go to it” or are they giving specific supports or… What kind of shape and color does that take in your specific job? Alex: So, my department is just my supervisor and I. Nic: Okay Alex: But he’s very supportive of both giving me time and being very open to when I say “we can’t really move forward with this because it’s not going to be accessible” and saying alright,” let’s step back. How can we make this better? “. So, he’s showing.. My supervisor is showing that he’s also committed and interested in making things accessible. Nic: Alex, tell me something that most people would not know about you. Alex: Hmmm… I guess I have done a lot of acting in musicals. Both throughout all of Highschool and then into College. So that's been a pretty big part of my life. Like, outside of work. Nic: Cool. Do you see some similarities between doing musicals and working in development and specifically working with accessibility? Alex: Um… I will say learning to think on my feet has kind of been something that’s come from all sides of my experience. Both development and acting. And so that’s kind of feed off each other of trying to work little pieces of things into different ways and make them better. Nic: Yeah. Yeah, I think it all ties in at some point to… to be able to… you know, pick experiences in one area and apply them to others. So, you say you are a recent graduate you've been diving into accessibility for about a year. What kind of barriers are you finding on your way to learn more about accessibility and develop your skills and develop your skills and make sure things are more accessible on the web? Are you finding barriers? Or…? Alex: Overall I've actually had a relatively easy time I would say, compared to... I think, some other peoples experiences. Partially because at my… at the job I was working at last year, we were in the process of finding a new accessibility guide, I guess, for people who worked both in my department and beyond and so I got to take… try out a lot of different courses. Nic: Right Alex: So, that worked out really great because I... at that point I knew quite a bit about accessibility but those courses allowed me to really… kind of, delve deeper. But outside of that, I’d say the only main barrier is it’s...there’s not a tonne of things for people who aren’t developers. So, I am but some of the things I’m working with are much more design-oriented when I look toward accessibility it’s things in design, sometimes, less than development. And so when I ‘m looking at those there’s not always as much on the devel… on the design side. Nic: What resources would you like to see on the web specifically towards design? You know, what kind of issues have you come across that you can't find the answers about? Alex: Well, one thing I really like is there's a couple of accessibility pattern libraries and I think making more of those or actually just adding more documentation is...would be very helpful and just kind of documentation in general aimed at beginners that’s not behind some kind of paywall but your organization has to give you access to. Nic: Yeah. Those pattern libraries are quite fantastic and, yeah, we probably… we as a community should look at growing those. So you’ve been on this journey for about a year… a year and a half more or less. What was the biggest surprise you had when you learned more about accessibility? Alex: I think… I guess there’ve kind of been a couple of things and one is… I guess is… it’s interesting to remember how many people need accessible technologies because that… certain parts of that haven’t been part of my experience or part of the experience of people who I ‘m close friends with. And so being exposed to user stories has been fantastic. And helps me remember why I’m doing... Like why I’m fighting for these things. But also I would just say the fact that making things more accessible makes it easier for everyone. Which I knew definitely in content and I had kind of worked a little bit with that since College but really implementing that and seeing how incredible much easier accessible websites are to access for everyone else as well as just general accessibility things. Nic: Yeah, I think that’s… that’s an aspect a lot of people don’t really think about until they start thinking about it. Is that accessibility does benefit everyone and it… I think it’s a selling feature of accessibility that, you know when you’re trying to convince leadership… obviously, you don’t have that issue in your current employment but often when we’re trying to sell accessibility, finding this “It benefits everyone” seems to have a great impact. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to say, “Hey, you know what… there’s maybe 20% maybe 25% of people with disabilities out there that really need this” and it’s amusing that leadership will worry about that 3% of people that are using IE11 still but they’re not worried about the 20% of people that can't get to the site because they have a disability. So… yeah. Alex: Oh I know, when I was developing last year we were going back to IE9 for some things to make sure that everything worked. Nic: Yeah Alex: So, yeah definitely… I guess, allowances are made for a lot of different things but not always accessibility. Nic: You’re a new kid on the block so your perspective is fresh… What do you think the biggest problem the field of accessibility has right now? Alex: I think… I would say probably buy-in from upper levels. I think it’s still being seen as… like you said, just this really small amount of people who… why does it matter? But I hope that that will start changing and I think that as it becomes easier to make things accessible that will change a little bit so it’s not… you’re not asking for, you know, a huge part of the project to go towards… specifically accessibility it’s just making everything in general accessible. Nic: Yeah. Build it as, you know, it’s not an afterthought. It’s part and parcel of what you do. Alex: Exactly. Nic: Is that where you’d like the field of accessibility to be in five years? Or in ten years? Or is there something else that you’re having hopes for, for our field? Alex: I would really just hope that it becomes more mainstream. And that people who are even outside of tech are aware of accessibility and in their daily lives kind of can notice when things are accessible because it’s… if we as a society can get there then life would be much easier for… well, everyone. Nic: Yeah, yeah...yeah. Hey Alex, I know you have not been doing this for very long but is there something you’ve achieved accessibility related that makes you really proud? Alex: I would say… I can’t think of anything specific but I am proud of the fact that although this is relatively new to me I’ve been really pushing hard to make sure that things we are making are accessible. And I’m definitely reminded of it now when I’m retrofitting that I am very glad that when we were designing the first site that it was… I was kind of baking that in as it started as opposed to making someone come by a couple of years later and realize they have to change things. Nic: Yeah. So, you mentioned earlier you’ve been using Drupal and now you’re working with some Wordpress sites… What’s your experience with making these two platform.. Sites on these two platforms accessible? Are you finding one is better than the other? Or they’re pretty much equal with different idiosyncracies or … tell us a little bit more about that experience. Alex: I would definitely… I think it’s a bit hard for me to compare them since I have only been doing Wordpress for a relatively short amount of time compared to Drupal. But overall I would say they’re… they each have their own idiosyncrasies. In my basic searches, I found Drupal themes are more likely to have accessibility-ready features whereas Wordpress there's just less options which has just been this past week I’ve been searching for themes for our new site. And a lot of Wordpress themes, if they're not tagged with accessibility-ready they often just haven’t thought about it at all. Nic: Yeah Alex: Which kind of makes it harder to start with. So yeah, both of them… they’re both heading in better directions, for sure. And… Nic: What’s the one thing you’d like people to remember about accessibility? Alex: I guess hoe relatively easy it is to make some really small changes that make everything better. So there are some really basic accessibility things that when you change them the overall user experience is so much better and it’s not just… it’s not some huge thing that it’s all or nothing. Your site is either completely accessible or it’s not at all but making those little changes is how you get started to making it better, Nic: Yeah, I like that. Give us a couple of examples of small changes that developers can implement, like, today to make it accessible. Alex: So a couple of things are just like, adding skip links so in your navigation you're going to be able to get around better. Also… so, my top two pet peeves are... One: links that only say click here or something similar because that’s just really unhelpful. So adding more link text so saying something about “read more about our programmes” or something like that. And then also images that don’t have alt text are really… it’s so easy to just add some type of alt text and you can really get great alt text going and that’s when things really kick up to the next level of accessibility. But just adding some type of alt text to let users know what they.. What they would be… what’s going on and that page which also benefits if people are using, lets, say outdated Internet Explorer or a device that has really low internet capabilities then they will also be able to learn about the image that is appearing there if you have the alt text. Nic: Yeah. Yeah, I think these are great examples. I’d also like to refine the idea of alt text that it’s super important for informative images but perhaps decorative images are better served with empty alt attribute I think. Alex: Yeah. Well, that and also right giving it an empty alt text will help if the rest of the site is correctly described then it’s obvious those images are not giving any meaning. Nic: Yeah context is everything. Alex, thank you for your time Thanks for being a willing participant of the accessibility rules podcast and I… I really wish you well in your journey into accessibility because you sound like you have passion and it’s great. Maybe you’ll get to a point where… you know, you’re the new guard coming behind us. So thank you for that. Alex: Thank you. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

E60 – Interview with Adrienne McDonnell Oct 05, 2018

Adrienne McDonnell is a front end developer at Elsevier. She says that knowing how to navigate a site with the keyboard is a fundational skill that all developers should know. She also reflects on the fact that all the accessibility specifications are very dense and can be overwhelming for people new to accessibility. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 60. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. Nic: So today I’m speaking with Adrienne McDonnell and I think she’s quite new to the field of accessibility so it’s exciting to have the perspective of someone who hasn’t been doing this for quite a long time. Adrienne thanks for joining us. Adrienne: Yeah, absolutely. Nic: Right. I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, can you tell us in a brief introduction… who's, Adrienne McDonnell? Adrienne: Sure. Hi everyone, I’m Adrienne. I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I’m a self-taught developer right now I’m working as a software engineer at Elsevier. I started out with front-end design… or development, excuse me and that was… just about three years ago. So, I’m relatively new in my career as a developer as a whole. And started teaching myself about accessibility a year and a half ago. Nic: Right. Okay, so to get warmed up a little bit tell us something that most people would not know about you. Adrienne: Let's see… well outside of web development I also am an artist so I… right now I’m focussing on tapestry weaving and bead weaving. Nic: Tapestry and Bead… that’s amazing. I love fiber arts. I started playing a little bit with… needle felting of wool and obviously it’s not quite as fine work as tapestry but it’s quite a bit of fun. So you said you're working at Elsevier what kind of accessibility do you manage to put in your work there? Adrienne: Well, I… so I started this position just this past March, and I was brought on right after they had done an accessibility audit on the product that I work on. Nic: Okay. Adrienne: Which was great timing for me because I became the main developer that was working on fixing the defects that had been found within the audit. Nic: Right Adrienne: So that… that has been a focus of, you know, the last seven months or so that I’ve been working here and… which has been great for me to kind of become the accessibility advocate for our team and just, you know, also just to get a deeper learning for myself. Nic: Yeah. So… what put you onto accessibility? I mean was it just that you were in place and they had just finished an audit and they say, “Hey. Tag, you’re it” or did you have an interest in that before? How did it happen? Adrienne: Well, I… I did have an interest in it before. You know, in my first position as a front-end developer… I… I didn’t have… any knowledge of accessibility or developing for accessibility and as a self-taught developer it was not something that ever came up, you know, in kind of, guides to learning front-end development. And so when I got into that first position and realized that there was this whole very important piece of development that I didn’t know… I was kind of horrified that that wasn’t part of, you know, the foundational learning that people like me are getting when you’re teaching yourself. And, you know, often in the agency world accessibility requirements would come… you know that would be kind of tacked on to the end of a project and we would be scrambling to make sure that we hit, you know, all the right check marks. And it just… I mean I suppose for me it’s just, it was so clear how important this was. And frustrating that it wasn’t being given a higher priority and so that was kind of my initial spark to teach myself so that it could just become part of my normal workflow instead of something I was squeezing in at the end. Nic: I think that’s one of the issues that most of the self-taught developers encounter is the fact that most of the places that you go to learn coding… regardless of which language or flavor of a framework ... they just don’t talk about accessibility and they don’t have examples that have accessible code. Adrienne: Yes, exactly. Nic: What kind of barriers… yeah. What kind of barriers, apart from the fact the information wasn’t just there in what you were coming across… What kind of barriers did you find? What did you do to actually teach yourself accessibility considering that you hadn’t encountered it and now suddenly you were faced with fixing all these issues? Adrienne: I think that the… the biggest barrier for me… you know, when I was teaching myself front-end development there were so many resources and it was very easy to be guided on a path. And for accessibility, it didn’t feel that way. There were, you know, the actual specifications that I could go and see but they felt so dense. And, so specific that as a new learner it could very quickly feel overwhelming. And there wasn’t kind of a… “Here’s…” you know, “here’s a fun game of [hide? 06:53] way to learn about accessibility “or “Heres… here’s where to start” you know. Like, here's a nice, you know, a little bit that you can chew off. And get that down and then go from there. And so what I ended up doing, it was really just based on whatever product I was doing. You know, if there was a form involved then that's kind of what I focussed on. Or, you know, for every website we build we had some kind of main navigation that needed to be keyboard accessible so that became one of kind of the first components that I, you know, figured out that patterns for. So it really just started becoming this piecemeal as needed rather than “Here are the foundations and here’s how to build on them”. Nic: Right. From what I hear you’re thinking of accessibility as being something that must be in your toolbox and your set of skills as a developer. Just like you have to know HTML and Javascript. Have you found that your colleagues or other developers have that kind of understanding of accessibility or is it something that as someone who's brought into the importance of it did you have to fight a little bit and advocate about that? Adrienne: I… I mean, I'm happy to say that my team here really does recognize the value of it. And it has become a large priority within our sphere to, you know, get the audits done and continually make our products better. So that… that I’ve been very happy with. You know, if it were up to me I think we would all take some time off and do some training so that everyone's kind of on the same page… we have the same baseline of skills and knowledge about it. But that will probably not happen, but I’m… you know, I’m satisfied being the person who's always raising their hand and saying, “and accessibility “you know, [crosstalk 09:16] accessibility you have to think about those requirements. And, you know, we are always doing code reviews for each other so I hope that just through that I’m getting people to think about it more. Nic: Yeah being the squeaky wheel that keeps mentioning accessibility I think will um… is often the only way to remind people about the importance of making things work for people with disabilities. Adrienne: Yes Nic: What was the thing that most surprised you in learning about accessibility? You know, an item that you thought, “Oh! Well I never thought about that and that’s quite surprising” or maybe code or solution or the way people with disabilities work. Adrienne: I mean, I think… I think there were a lot of surprises just in that as someone who doesn’t use any assistive technology, I was just totally clueless about it. You know, I had never heard of a screen reader before starting to read about accessibility and… so I think part of the surprise for me was just… like ... not knowing and then as soon as I read about these types of assistive technology it was like, “Oh. Duh” this is… of course, this makes so much sense. Or even navigating with the keyboard. I mean it’s so simple. I mean, it’s so foundational and it makes so much sense but I just had never thought about it and I guess that was the biggest surprise and one of the biggest lessons for me right at the beginning. Nic: Right. Yeah, it’s often how sometimes the smallest things that are so important but you don’t really think about it until you start doing it. Like keyboard navigation, so… yeah… Adrienne: Yeah. And in a way… Nic: … What… Adrienne: ... you know, it’s great that giving other people those very foundational insights can be a huge shift in mindset. And so… that is exciting to me. Just kind of bringing that to my coworkers. You know, giving them a short… you know, showing them what a screen reader is like and what it actually sounds like to use one and how that would impact the way they’re developing. Nic: What is your colleague’s reaction when you show them how a screen reader work and how they should modify their code and their work? Adrienne: I think that it’s been excitement. You know, that… it’s… there are simple fixes and it just is a matter of being able to actually test what you’re doing so that you’re… you know, making sure that the changes you’re doing are actually having the result that you’re expecting. Nic: Yeah Adrienne: So I think that… yeah… giving people this knowledge, it’s generally exciting. Like these are all people who want to be doing… you know, creating the best product for the most people that they can. And they’re all people who love to learn new things so… Nic: Yeah. Adrienne: They’re the right audience. Nic: Yeah… yeah, that’s cool. Where would you like the field of accessibility going in the next five or ten years? Adrienne: I think… I mean, I think the biggest thing ... for me, given my past experiences, I would just love for it to be more mainstream. I would love for, you know, the front-end development foundational programmes… you know, if it’s Udacity or Treehouse or any of those, just to have accessibility as a part of what they’re teaching. That it would just be a requirement for being a confident, you know, web developer to have… you know, to be making accessible websites. I think that’s the biggest thing for me. Nic: Yeah. I would tend to agree with that but let me ask you the question I’ve been asking myself for a long time… How do we make that happen? How do we make accessibility mainstream so everybody gets to a point where it’s just part and parcel of their skillset? Adrienne: That is a big question. I, you know… I don’t know. I mean I mean I think that having people continue to write about it is huge. I know here in Philadelphia Mikey Ilagan who is also apart of, you know, the Slack group where you and I met, he did kind of a series of articles about accessibility through Technical Philly and I found that to be so powerful just to see the topic of accessibility over and over again over a month through this very popular newsletter and so I think that’s part of it. Just continuing to talk about it and kind of forcing the issue of like, this is… no, this is important and we all need to be thinking about it. As far as getting it, you know, on some of those larger platforms that is obviously a tougher one. It’s not quite as local but hopefully if we just...I don’t know. We tweeted them? Nic: Yeah Adrienne: I’m not sure, you know, exactly what would kind of move the needle there. Nic: Yeah. Hey Adrienne, if you were to leave people with one thing they should remember about accessibility what would it be? Adrienne: Hmm Nic: Yeah, the one thing Adrienne: The one thing...I think that whether or not you use assistive technology, it’s up to all of us to make accessible websites and products and that… yeah, we all have a responsibility to create the best products that we can. That the most people can use. Nic: Yeah. It is up to all of us. And it takes all of us to get there. Adrienne: Yeah. Nic: Yeah. Adrienne, thank you so much for your willingness to submit yourself to my questions. I had a lot of fun and you’re the first new accessibility developer I have on my podcast and I think it’s a fantastic perspective to be able to share that. So for about a year, I’ve spoken to people that have been doing this for ten, fifteen, twenty years and you get this perspective but I think it’s important to hear about the people that are going to replace us when we grow old and feeble and we retire, so thank you for that. Much appreciated. Adrienne: Well thank you so much. It was great talking to you. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at https://a11y.store Catch you next time!

2018 International Podcast Day Special Sep 30, 2018

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules podcast. I'm Nic Steenhout and this is a special episode for the 2018 International podcast day. I normally talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. But today, I find it important to talk about podcast accessibility. There are a lot of podcasts out there. Some do a great job at providing accessibility and making sure that everyone can access their content. But most podcasts don't offer basic accessibility. While we celebrate podcasting, let's make sure we open our shows to as many people as possible. After all, what's the point of podcasting if we're cutting off a portion of our potential audience outright? Of course, this episode isn't a technical how-to make your podcast and podcast website accessible, but here are a few pointers: If you're podcasting, or thinking about podcasting, you really ought to consider the accessibility of your podcast - both the show itself, but also the website that supports your show. I'm really just giving a few ideas here, but you can get more information about it on the site podcast-accessibility.com. The primary means of making your podcast accessible is to provide transcripts for the show. Ok, so transcripts can be expensive. But they are also an important investment, and not just from the an accessibility perspective. There are a lot of advantages to providing transcripts. Transcripts obviously benefits people with disabilities that can't access the audio. First, transcripts are good for search engine optimization - They'll bring more people to your site through search engines. The NPR show "This American Life" transcribed their 500+ episodes and they saw a traffic increase of between 3% and 6%. That's not insignificant. Transcripts also benefit your colleagues who aren't in a position to listen to an entire show, or those who read faster than they can listen to the show, even if they speed it up to twice the speed. They're also good for people who aren't native speakers of your show's language. Having a transcript makes it easier to understand, and sometimes translate. And transcripts benefit you! You end up with a text version of your episodes, which you can index and search and refer to later on. The best way to provide a transcript is by displaying it, in text/HTML, right on the episode's page. Don't put it on a separate page. Don't load it as a PDF or other downloadable format. Make it easy for people, and search engines, to find the content and associate it with your episode. Do mention on the show that there are transcripts available. It does make a difference! I won't name which services to use for getting transcriptions done. But I can tell you that for quality human transcription, you can find services (for English) around US$1/minute of audio. If you're aiming at machine transcription, you can get as low as US$0.10/minute of audio, but the accuracy suffers greatly. Then again, as a deaf friend of mine once said "I'd rather a relatively inaccurate transcript than no transcript at all". As for your podcast's website, the more accessible it is, the more people are going to be able to access your show. The site for this podcast, at a11yrules.com, has been coded to meet WCAG 2.1 level AA. While it would be great if you aimed for that level of accessibility, you don't need to. Here are some points to consider when looking at your site's accessibility: 1 - Can you navigate through the entire site using only the keyboard? This involves not only being able to go from one interactive element to the next, but also being able to see the focus on these elements. 2 - Are all interactive elements (buttons and links, primarily) triggerable with they keyboard? 3 - Do all images have alt attributes? Decorative images need empty alt, and informative images need clear, concise and descriptive alt text. 4 - Do all your form fields have labels that are associated programmatically? This will allow screen readers to know what is the purpose of each field. 5 - Can you resize the text up to 200% and still be able to read the text without horizontal scroll or text being chopped up? 6 - Do you have enough contrast between your foreground and background colors? This will benefit people with low vision, but also anyone looking at your site from their mobile phone, particularly if they are outside in full sun! What do you think? Have you implemented accessibility on your podcast and podcast website? Did you find it difficult? What barriers did you encounter? What do you wish you'd known before you got started? Let me know! Do reach out to me if you need help with improving your podcast or website's accessibility.

E59 – Interview with John Tubbs Sep 27, 2018

John Tubbs is an educator working for about thirty years in the area of high tech, digital education, online learning. He discusses accessibility and accomodations for students with disabilities - a topic we don't hear enough about. He points out that his team is working towards universal accessible documents that can later be customized, rather than wait students to request accommodations and then scramble to make it happen. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 59. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So today I’m speaking with John Tubbs. John, thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility. John: My pleasure. Nic: So, as you may know by now I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, whose John Tubbs? John: Well, John Tubbs is an educator working for about thirty years in the area of high tech, digital education, online learning. It has a variety of names depending on what area you’re talking from but I did start pre-internet so I have some different insights than the people who are working more in today. I’m at the University of Illinois for the last twenty years. Working first in the agriculture school for fourteen years. Then I worked in central IT in the online learning unit there. And then for the last years, I’ve been in the Gies College of Business and where we have been a big focus on large MOOC programmes that lead into graduate degree programmes. And those two degree programmes are MBA programme and our MSA. Masters of Science and Accountancy. Nic: Right John: Both of those are collaborations with Coursera for part of the course and then the high engagement part, the high touch part is done on a different platform here on campus. Nic: Right. So that seems to be keeping you busy. Twenty years at the University of Illinois. Has there been a lot of change to how things are done? Obviously going from pre-internet, pre-high tech to today. What kind of massive changes have you seen? John: Well if we want to look specifically at, sort of, accessibility topics within that … in 1987 there was no such thing, really as software that was accessible, for the most part. Or was there an internet or any communication short of very crude BBS systems. Bulletin board systems. But going back there, there's a funny story. The first thing that exposed me to dealing with assistive technology. I was at a CESA office. That’s Cooperative Ed Service Agency and those are dotted all around Wisconsin where I was working at that point. And this dairy farmer came up and he was blind. And he came up and said, “I’m going to demonstrate today how I do my books”. And he was working on an Apple 2e running VisiCalc. The first spreadsheet to run on personal computers. And he had the orange speech synthesis card in that Apple 2e and he ran down his numbers for his dairy operation and he said, “Tell me what month you want to hear final statistics on and final sales on” and he let that orange speech synthesizer run and I could not and nor could anyone else in the room understand a darn thing it was saying. And yet with the tap of an arrow key, he landed exactly on November of 1986 and told us exactly what he sold that month. And my jaw was on the floor. I was amazed. And that stuck with me for the next thirty years or so, of, wow, there are things that we can do when it comes to accessibility. So I’ve carried that through all the way and as the ability to provide accessible content online has expanded, both the technical capabilities but also the needs. I’ve tried to follow suit as well as I could through the years. And that starts back in Illinois. I was one of the first people on campus to do a lot of streaming media. So, in the places where we could provide accessible video productions, live streaming or whatever. We did what we could. I was doing a lot of work early on with SMIL. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. And that was sort of a hybrid of captioning, motion … time display of images along with an audio track. And so that provided us some options and I worked for a couple of sessions with John Gunderson here from our Illinois campus whose a... Nic: Oh yeah? John: … a disability rockstar. And he was, again, one of those people that kind of gave me a nudge saying, “Hey, you’ve got the right tools. Now take them further”. And so that’s... Was a big push. About nineteen years ago and then as of late, as we’ve grown into, really what I think of as a campus level YouTube using the [kelterer? 05:04] platform we’ve been working extensively on getting our captioning working and that. One of the shortfalls that we don’t like to see is that we don’t have description in there and that is a big part of what we do. And so that’s led me down the path of the last two years of pursuing audio description and more specifically extended audio description based on content we have to really deliver to these online graduate degree programmes. And things that have some, often rather technical diagrams and information. Nic: Yeah. I’d like to talk a little bit more about that but before going much into depth about the technical aspect. I’d love for you to tell us something that most people would not know about you. John: Something that most people would not know about me? Hmm. Well likely that would be that along with doing my work in education I’ve also been a professional bassist for more years than that even than education. I still play three or four times a month around the area. But that was part of the studio side that got me into all of this. Which is, I spent a lot of time making records and such in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. And that exposed me to the recording aspect of the … what we do with online media. And so that gave me, again, a different little insight into this. Anything else that’s unique… I love to ride bikes. I’ve got a kid who loves to Ballet dance. And I have a lovely wife who is an English Professor here on campus. Nic: That’s a … that’s a good rounded approach to life. Having good family. Having music and culture and then working in tech at University. So, John every people I speak to seems to have a variation on the definition of web accessibility. How would you define that? John: Since I work in an instructional environment the need to provide equal access to instruction materials is the crucial part. What am I going to be able to provide with my team with the platforms that we have to work within. Sometimes we don’t get to choose those platforms. What can we do to make the students success equal across the board for anybody abled or disabled? Where do we have to adapt? What do we have to adapt? Methods we have to use. The intersection of the technologies that may help or hinder. The development of these assistive technologies or alternative content. The interesting part about where I’ve been going in the past couple of years because I said I was in MOOCs. The Massive Open Online Courses, we have over half a million learners. In our MOOCs at Illinois right now through the Coursera platform. And because of that, we don’t have any idea who those learners are. We don’t know what they bring to the table for any assistive needs or any alternative format needs. So we have to provide things that are … I don’t want to say generic but I think the better term is truly universal design. We don’t have the ability or the knowledge of how to make a specific accommodation. And that makes it … there’s some difficulty to that but at the same time, we’ve sort of looked at that as an advantage because it forces us to make universal content that we know will work in as many places as possible. So, unlike, I guess what has been traditionally done in the higher education environment which is a student comes in with a letter of accommodation and we provide what we need to provide to make that student successful. Now we don’t get that letter of accommodation from, probably fifty thousand learners in our MOOC’s that have some sort of disability. So we have to rely upon good universal content as well as the good qualities of that learner to be able to consume that content. So they have to bring their own skills, their own needs, their own methods to the table. Nic: Yeah. That would be a challenge to ensure that but I think that’s probably, ultimately the only approach. It’s not sustainable to make arrangements for one student at a time when we’re starting to look at scaling to five hundred thousand users at large, that as you say, maybe fifty thousand have accessibility needs. I think developing a course that is universally accessible is probably a better answer. John: Well the thing that’s interesting about what we do… we talk about that fifty thousand learner audience that we’re likely having to serve, but at the same time we take that same learning materials back in and we use them in our undergraduate environments. Where we do have that known. One student in this particular class has a need. Well, if have universal content, when we do have to target the application of that content as we provide it… if we start from universal to really put it into that unique need is much easier than starting from scratch. So, we look as sort of an ability to go from a broad audience to a more narrow audience as quickly and as easily as possible. A perfect example was we have a course in marketing that just launched, we are in our fourth week of classes here for the regular semester for our on-campus undergraduate student’s and in week three, at the end of week three, we received a letter of accommodation about captioning. And so we are all of a sudden two and a half weeks at least behind the eight ball in terms of delivering caption videos and everything like that. This is a situation where it’s not coming … it’s not an adaptation of any of our MOOC programmes so we were starting from zero but we have the mechanisms in place that we can move very quickly and we had captions available within forty-eight hours for that student. Once we knew that we needed to have that. So, it’s nice to be prepared. It’s nice to have the universal documents sort of, you know, on the shelf that we can pull down and adapt but also like everybody else we have to have some ‘just in time’ strategies in place and that's one of the things we make sure we do have. Nic: Yeah. One of the things that I encountered when I was working in higher ed was that students with disabilities … some students with disabilities would come in and expect to have all the accommodations there before they even had to request it and that was a bit of a headache sometimes because if you don’t know that somebody needs something specific that is not really necessarily covered with universal accessibility, universal design of coursework it can be a bit of a problem. Do you find that by and large student’s expect to have things accessible for their own particular needs or are they generally pretty good at talking to you about saying, “Hey this is what I need how can we make it happen?”. John: Well the tricky part about that, of course, and how that actually legally things happen... the letter for accommodation from that individual student comes to our disability resource unit on campus. That then goes through the person whose advocating for that student on campus. That letter then goes to the instructor. Legally I can’t see that letter. So I have to work with that instructor to get them sort of translating the need from the student. Sometimes, now I will be honest, it sneaks through what specifically they have, what they need. We don’t necessarily know the students name but we get a lot of information which is extremely helpful. In a practical way. The reality is the instructor is not a disability person. He or She has no real knowledge or skills in this area. We hope to give them those knowledge and skills but we are the folks, with our team putting those things together. So the difference in terms of the student having that expectation of ‘it’s got to be for me, its got to be for me’ I have to say, and I can’t put any real qualitative data on this but over time in my twenty years here at Illinois, I’ve seen that change though. And I think a change probably for the practical pragmatic good. And that the students today, given the type of technology that they have with them. Their phones, their tablets, their whatever. Their assistive devices are not so darn specialised and unique anymore. You know? A tablet, a mobile phone, do so much that would've been a backpack full of specialised fancy touch boards, speech synthesizers, whatever it might've been. That would’ve been very unique. Very finicky and require very custom content built for them. Now universal design has a much better chance of meeting the student’s needs right out of the gate rather than a lot of adaptation. So that’s really powerful. I mean, I look back in… I was working in a K12 district in 1991 and I was the technology coordinator, computer coordinator, whatever they wanted to call me… sometimes I thought of myself as the digital janitor. But in doing all of that, I walked into a special ed classroom one day and the instructor is in there and she says, “I can’t get my speech synthesizer to work”. And it was, you know, a big touch board with a speech synthesizer attached to it so you could tap on something for communication. Well, this was a cryptic system to get set up on the back end. On an Apple 2gs at the time. So running off floppy discs, all of this. And hours of calls to support and stuff. And we would get it running and then it would fall apart again. It was such a fragile piece of technology. And now, you know, that would be a touch thing on an iPad and it would be an app you bought at the app store and it would be done. So, this is the great part of the evolution that I’ve personally seen. [unintelligible 15:49] let’s me rely upon more on the universally designed stuff rather than uniquely designed stuff. Nic: John, you strike me as someone who will do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and provide access to students with disabilities because well, bottom line is they need access to education. What would you comment in terms of the impact in terms of the legalities on the legal requirement to accessibility as opposed to doing the right thing? John: Well doing the right thing is definitely what I like to think of as proactive. It’s building into the workflow, into your instructional materials build that you're just doing the right thing from the get-go. Right from the time that you get content from an instructor that it starts being tailored for a Mooc for a learning management system that's on your local campus. Is it for digital materials that are going to go out such as handouts and videos and all that kind of stuff. You start with those workflows right then. That’s the right thing. But when you do have a student who comes in and has very very specific needs and are strongly advocating for getting those needs met then you do get more into the concern of legal if we don’t hit those exact needs we do have some potential legal liability in that situation. And that requires, as it always has, a significant amount of attention to that one particular case. And I think we will always have those situation arise. But, again, I think… like I just mentioned about the transition to less specialised assistive technologies whereas there are assistive technologies built into consumer good. iPads, iPhones, Android phones etc laptops. We have a better chance and that hardcore legal problem of providing the access for a particular use case starts to diminish a little bit. None the less you have to have… you know, be ready to handle a legal situation like this and deal with the proper documentation of the efforts that you’ve been working on so you know what’s going on, having audits of your materials so you can say, “We’ve done what we could and we have had other people vet our materials. We know that they’re good. We know that they’re hitting wcag 2.1 AA, we tried to go for AAA for a lot of our stuff especially descriptive video” and those sorts of things. So we get all those things documented and that's the only way then if that difficult situation arises where you do have some legal questions, concerns, challenges. You as a content creator can put forth the evidence I guess to give it a better word, to say, “yeah, we are doing the right thing”. Once that’s out there you discuss what the right thing and this request are and how you can intersect that so everybody can be successful. Nic: Yeah. Yeah I like that approach. There’s a lot about lawsuits that that are happening over and over and over in our community right now and most of the people in the accessibility community aren’t too happy about that. But I think your approach would probably save a lot of people from being sued. You do the right thing and you document that and you just...you’re ready to roll with the punches and make modifications if you need to. John: Right. It’s like you say, two fold. It’s having core materials that can adapt quickly to a very targeted situation rather than starting from scratch and having the things behind you that can support what you’re doing. And I’ll be frank. It doesn’t come free. You know? To get a properly laid out and quality audit does require money to throw at that process but we audit so many other things in higher education whether it be building safety or we audit our curriculum to make sure it meets accreditation standards to provide degrees. So the idea of an audit in higher ed is not new. This is just a different kind of audit that we have to account for in our cost of doing business as a higher education institution. And I’m extremely grateful to our college. The Gies college of business for stepping up and providing the support for my group to do that sort of auditing. It’s been very crucial in our success going forward. I unfortunately to have to say not every unit on our campus and I would say it’s probably true on many many campuses if not all campuses… there are have-not’s in terms of units and colleges and such that probably couldn’t financially do the kind of things we are doing but hopefully our example of what we are doing and we team up with our local DRS - Disability and Resource and Services unit, again, John Gunderson is one of the lead people there that I’ve always worked with. That we can spread that need, that message, that urgency to other units on campus. And so I feel fortunate to be sort of in a lead role as a college to help spread this across the rest of our campus. To show that it can be done. Nic: But, John, ultimately isn’t it cheaper to spend the money on an audit than spend the money on a lawsuit? John: Uh, hopefully. Yes. The better you’re audited the better you have true documentation that you’re doing the right thing… hopefully, yes that does avoid lawsuits. I guess I couldn’t say a hundred percent that we’ll always avoid a lawsuit but you can make sure that you as a content provider can quantify that you have done the right stuff. And that, again, so you can come to a good agreement as to what might subtely be changes that we need to do. But if it’s passed the guidelines. If it’s being verified. If it’s being used successfully by other users you have to look on that individual persons means of consuming the content and maybe come through and maybe give them some new strategies. I can never dictate one...what somebody else is going to do to consume the content that our group creates but I can certainly be as helpful as possible to try and assist. Nic: Yeah. What kind of barriers did you face or are you currently facing in terms of implementing accessibility and how are you getting over them? John: Well, the biggest barrier, and especially when we look at what we are doing with the MOOCs… currently we have around sixty MOOCs on the Coursera platform and those are usually four to eight module type courses. So in a sense think of them as a half a semester to a...well, quarter a semester to a half a semester worth of content. So, that’s a lot of content out there. And, by no means are we done with all sixty but we… to eliminate the barriers we try to make a sensible workflow out of what we do. And we pick up things like captioning in one stage of our production. We pick up the description of our charts, graphs, other visual kind of content in another part of our process. So we are constantly merging things coming from a variety of places. We rely upon automatic sync as an outside vendor to provide some of our captions and some of our description work that...One when we just can’t get to it. So there’s a barrier of time. How we overcome the barrier of time is we have to outsource things and certain moments in our production cycle because we just have too much at that time to get through with our existing staff. So, time… we have straight labour issues. Moving through that amount of content and we have… we’re about ready to wrap up a search for a new ADA compliance lead in our unit that will be taking the ownership of managing our work right now. We have been sharing the leadership between myself and Jinhee Choo whose an instructional designer but has a very strong interest and working knowledge in accessible documents. So, we’re expanding our human side to reduce barriers and we also have just an amazing stable of grad students that we use. I think we probably have seven or eight grad students that work very consistently on adapting our materials into HTML formats. Everything we try to do is HTML we don’t go to proprietary formats like PDF, Word etc We take all our documents to HTML so they’re ultimately flexible so these… this crew of seven / eight grad students are working on these things constantly whether that be adapting the slides, from a live session course. So, you know, live teaching synchronous or from our asynchronous content on demand content. They’re adapting the individual documents. The readings, the handouts, that sort of thing. Adapting and arranging our transcripts in a way. So, I don’t think we have insurmountable barriers at this point but it’s a matter again of providing the right resources to jump over those barriers. But, again, I think we have a pretty consistent workflow so it’s easier for us to deal with barriers and deal with maybe crunch times and meeting the demand. So, it’s putting the right things in place. In the old days the barriers would be just, who can do the captioning. Anybody can do it whether it be an outsource vendor or something. I’ve been working with automatic sync and other outside vendors for fifteen years so I know that that’s just something I have in my budget ready to go in case I need to use it. And send it down and get it captioned by them if we can’t do it internally with our, you know, either the unit I’m personally in or our disability resource unit on campus. Other barriers, again, from a technical standpoint are getting better and better. From a technical standpoint I don’t see too many barriers right now with the exception of the learning management systems. And this is not to gripe or complain but Coursera still has difficulty with accessibility with the platform itself. Getting in, navigating, moving through a lesson, moving through module to module. That sort of thing. It’s a new platform. They’re, like any new platform they’re having some growing pains. And we are working extensively with them. We have team of four people on our campus that meet weekly to discuss platform concerns and identify those to Coursera and they have a GitHub repository and a priority sheet that’s working on undoing those things. So it’s always progress it’s never going to be perfection at any moment. So the Learning Management System is probably the biggest hoop and unfortunately it’s not something that’s not directly under the control of my team. It is something we have to rely upon from an outside party. So there’s that whole sort of relationship that we have to maintain. Nic: Would you say that’s your greatest frustration in terms of accessibility and if not what would it be? John: The greatest frustration? Hmmm. I guess the greatest frustration is meeting the need of an individual's expectations. That just is probably the most difficult thing to do when you’re out there and you’re doing all the right things and yet it never quite seems enough. And that’s an unfortunate thing. I’m not meaning anybody with a disability at this moment because we are all disabled and abled at different times in our life. I can’t identify with the situation that other people might be facing and that are going through my content. I try to be as empathetic as possible and understand the needs but if someone's been running up into a brick wall for the last ten years of trying to get a degree I can fully understand the frustrations that they might be facing. And we are here to make success. But at the same time there is a reality that we are facing. And so when we don’t have a sort of an equal give and take between us as content creators and a learner as a content consumer that has to be a solid relationship when it is a one to one kind of thing. So that’s very difficult. It can just take communications and really, partnership. And it has to be realized that it is a partnership. Universal design is not really a partnership in the sense that we just make something that meets the standards and we put it out there for anybody to use. Like I said, the MOOCs, we get fifty thousand disabled users most likely. I’m never going to know who they are. I’m never going to have that partnership. So I just have to know as a programme that we are providing the best we can as an anonymous partner so to speak. We are doing due diligence. But when we have that known targeted accommodation that’s where it’s tough. And if we don’t have that give and take, don’t have that relationship, it can be a very touchy situation. Nic: So, we spoke about a bit of frustrating things… on a more positive spin, what’s your greatest achievement do you think in terms of web accessibility? John: I think that the greatest achievement that I’ve had is developing a way to discuss accessibility, to look at accessibility as not a bolt on but a core part of what we do and then getting the administrative body to buy into that. And that’s what I have right now at the Gies College of business. I mean it’s… Nic: That’s massive. John: It truly is. Because, I think, as you see, even in our local disability resource unit on campus there are campus wide support but they don’t get the buy in… the true buy in, administratively. From either central campus or individual units that might be having to engage their services. They just are always never resourced enough. And I’d have to say I have an amazing blessing to have that at this point. Whether that’s outside services of audits and captioning description kind of services and products we’re purchasing and using. To know that the internal tea, we have working specifically on disability in our individual Gies College of Business, probably ten people at this point. Nic: Right John: And that’s pretty awesome. And they’re not a hundred percent 1.0 full time employees but they’re all people that are having some sort of contribution to it. Brining it in and making it a core part of how we operate is probably the biggest achievement I guess I would have to say that I have seen. If I said one individual project I think that would be short-sighted. So for me right now it’s all about the process and the workflow. If there’s one thing in terms of more of a tangible thing would be the HTML extended transcript document kind of thing that we have evolved over the last year and a half. Thinking of what can be a universally designed piece of content that we can put out to a MOOC scale audience. That fifty thousand unknown accommodations. And that is a ….I wouldn’t say trial and error but it was a mixing and blending and knowing what we can keep, what we don’t need to keep. Fine tuning it to eliminate redundancies based on, if I come in as a visually disabled user versus I come in as a audible … audibly disabled user versus a physically disabled user. What are we putting in that extended transcript document which what we try to do is be as most inclusive of ways that consume our content in terms of looking at a video, hearing a video, reading through the support content of a video, putting that in one easy deliverable. It’s as you know, as you build universal content on the web you sometimes have to break rules. The normal rules of what you would learn in accessibility 101 may not apply itself. ‘Coz I’m right now on accessibility 701. In terms of the way, the how, the content that we’re building is going to. So working with others to get that input. To get that audit saying, “Hey this works but it’s a little clumsy for this group”. Nic: Yeah John: Those are the things that I think are fascinating. I think we are getting significantly closer with this format. I’m jazzed because we’re going to be very shortly releasing our first run of these extended transcript type documents as .epubs. Nic: Nice John: And this will easily aid in the delivery of a single document into the MOOC audience where they can download, get all the extended transcripts. Get versions of the video inside of a single document. Rather than a website that has to be sifted or sorted and downloaded as a zip archive etc. Just that single deliverable will be very, very, very efficient. Easier for us in the end run to support. Easier for the learner to download and consume again in their own way. And frankly, I’m preaching to the choir here but a beautifully universally created set of materials helps everybody. And we are an MBA programme. We have business people that are taking our programme and they’re flying four days a week. They’re up in a plane, but they’ve got to go to class. They’ve got to use the materials. If we can give that in a single downloadable epub rather than having to have them always relient on being in learning management system. That’s a huge win. For everybody. Nic: Yeah. Definitely John: And that's an ask we get all the time. From our students. It’s that, “Well, I want to do this in the plane” or “I want to do this in my hotel room with a crappy wifi connection”. Wherever. “I want to listen to this while I’m driving”. These are the things that having universal content allows us to support. Nic: Yeah. Hey to wrap this up. John. What would you say is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? John: The one thing I would say about accessibility is it never ends. We… every time you move forward you’re going to have a new audience potentially to deliver to. You’re going to have a new technology that you might need to throw into your mixer to figure out - are we best supporting delivery to that sort of technology? And know that my user base is always going to be changing out there. We’re going to have more places to deliver, through different channels, different ages… all of that. It’s a never ending process and I try to...or I would say as a suggestion, try to back up. All of your process, all of your workflow and all of your document strategy. To be as open and reroutable as possible. When I was working with some digital textbook stuff a few years ago, a project called EText Illinois. Which is a fully accessible digital textbook platform where we adapted textbooks from publishers as well as locally grown textbooks. Beautiful accessible interface and the NFB loved the interface in terms of its support for blind students as well as any...every other disability. But I learned there and I thought it kind of came up with this term, it’s not necessarily original but, the uber format. What is my uber format that I can at the end of the day put on the shelf and know tomorrow if somebody screams at me “I need a PDF” I can deliver that PDF without jumping through any hoops. So very strategic workflow and document strategies is crucial in my mind. Nic: Mmm. Yeah I think I couldn’t agree more with that. John, thank you so much for your wisdom and sharing your experiences in higher ed. I have not had anyone on the show talking about this quite important aspect of accessibility. So this was really wonderful for me and I think that our audience is going to enjoy it as well. John: Well I’m happy always to share. And again, I don’t even have really any disability, accessibility training per se from a degree standpoint. All I’m sharing right now is experience and survival, I guess you could say, over the years. But I think that’s probably the case for all of us. Whether we’re truly PHDs in disability studies or someone who's just a educator concerned with content creation. It’s, you know, keep our head above water and keep moving forward. Nic: Very good. John. Thank you and I’ll catch you around I’m sure. John: I will be at Accessing Higher Ground in November. Stop by and say hi. Nic: Cheers John: Alright, take care. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E58 – Interview with Jen Simmons – Part 2 Sep 20, 2018

Jen says that many of the needs for accessibility aren't that hard to accommodate by developers and designers! I couldn't agree more. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 58. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. In this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Jen Simmons. Last show was really awesome. I loved our conversation and talking about developers responsibility to educate themselves in accessibility and the concept of disabilities. If you haven’t listened to the show yet I Really recommend it because Jen really prompted thinking in a wonderful way. So, Jen, thank you and welcome back. So, Jen, we were talking about achievements and, lets flip that around. What’s your greatest frustration about accessibility? Jen: My greatest frustration about accessibility … It is the thing we were talking about last episode of sometimes the attitudes that developers can have. Where people just don’t care and they can put their own selfish-- I mean, I think it’s selfish-- put their own opinions or their own perspectives or their own idea about what’s needed ahead of what millions of people actually need. And I just don’t understand that. It makes me furious. Nic: Wow Jen: I think I actually lost a job over it once. And I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how people can be so self-centred, so selfish to just not care. It is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And like you said, last episode, everybody at some point is going to die. Some people will die very quickly and with a lot of surprise. So those folks perhaps will never become disabled but like the rest of us. If anything you want to become old and you will slowly lose different kind-- your body will change. Things will change for you. Nic: How do we change that? I guess it’s difficult to have ideas about that when it’s so hard to fathom why people are so selfish. But, how do we change that? Jen: Yeah, I don’t know. I try to do it by simply showing people what they need to do to make their sites accessible. And working it into everything else I’m teaching. I’m teaching CSS Grid and I’m like, ‘Okay, here’s things you need to know about how to write semantic HTML as you’re using CSS Grid”. Because that’s how-- to me, that’s the way to approach a project. Like, “Oh, you want to sit down and figure out your layout. Well, first you have to have something to layout. Well, when you do that your markup is important. The way you do your markup is going to affect the ability that you have to do your layout. So let's look at the markup and consider what’s the best way to do the markup and while we’re doing that we are just going to naturally make accessible markup. I don’t add ARIA rules in those tutorials but I add all sorts of other kinds of things and consider what else is going on with the markup. But the also just think that in life will teach people. I think as all of us get older you get less arrogant and you become more wise and you meet a wider variety of people and you meet folks with disabilities and you work with them as colleagues and you realize, “Oh, shit”-- Oh sorry if I… Nic: You can say anything you want. Jen: I don’t know if I can say that on your Podcast but-- “Oh no!”. But … yeah. I shouldn’t have been doing-- I shouldn’t have been thinking that way. I didn’t realise I was, oh gosh I don’t want to be like a certain US politician right now and blowing off an entire community of people I care about. Nic: What do you think is the conventional wisdom about accessibility? the one thing that everybody knows about? Jen: I don’t know what-- I don’t know, I don’t know. But I think the things people-- I think when you ask that I-- instead my brain jumps to what are the [crosstalk]-- Nic: That’s fine Jen: -- misconceptions about accessibility. I think that people … yeah, I think people that-- I went to a meeting. I was asked to go and have a meeting in a very famous, very important central tech company that makes lots of software for people who are creative to use. And the team said, “Oh, we’re going to use this such and such Javascript framework” and I had-- I’d been learning about it at the time and I immediately thought- accessibility concerns. So I asked them, “What are you doing for accessibility?” Because I expected them to come back and say, “Oh we are doing this, we are using the such and such addon and we’re modifying it in this particular way” because this framework at the time was known for being atrocious for accessibility. So I said, “Well, what are you doing?”, you know? “What are you going to …”. I thought they were going to teach me something in that moment and instead, they said, “Blind people don’t use our software”. Nic: Yes. Jen: And I was just so dumbfounded I almost didn’t even know how to react. Because here I am in this professional situation, I can’t just jump up and strangle the guy. I have to actually be supportive and say something that’s useful to help nudge them. And I was just like … there’s so many things wrong with that statement. First of all, accessibility is not only about people who are completely blind-- Nic: Yeah Jen: It is partly about that but it’s also about people who are partially sighted and partially blind. It’s also about people who are-- Nic: Yeah Jen: --who have a wide variety of different kinds of needs. And second of all, I bet you there are people who are 100% blind who would use your software if it were accessible. Nic: Yeah Jen: Your assumption that your product line is something that people who are blind would not be interested in is completely wrong. Nic: Yeah Jen: And of course they weren’t-- these were not people who were making business decisions or strategic decisions about the future of the company or the target markets or where they were going ...these were developers who made a decision to just blow it off and not care. Nic: Yeah Jen: And I-- So, one of the misconceptions … I think the misconceptions are not quite understanding how-- what it means to talk about people with disabilities. I mean, all the kinds of variations of disabilities that people might have. Or all the variations of needs that people might have. Or how a lot of the needs a developer or designer can accommodate are not that hard to accommodate. There are some simple things that can be done to make sites usable by far bigger groups of people. I also think that people think that people with disabilities just aren’t important, they don’t care. There’s like, this tiny market. There’s this old idea that there are people who are severely disabled and they're off in some home in the corner and not part of society and there’s hardly any of them and who cares and they’re not online because they’re not that bright ... and it’s just like the most horrible, stereotypical stupid idea of what it means to be a person with a disability. And I don’t know. I guess people need more … they just need a chance to grow up and live a life in a bigger world where there are plenty of people with disabilities running around having all sorts of awesome careers, contributing just like everybody else in society. Like that old idea is some nightmare out of the 60’s or something. Nic: Yeah Jen: And creating software that doesn’t work makes it worse. And I think anybody that makes a product and puts it out in the public has a moral obligation to do a good job with that. In all sorts of different ways. Nic: I think doing a ... yeah, doing a good job. Making it work for everyone is important and I wish accessibility became part of the definition of done. In a lot more projects. Jen: Yeah. There are people so obsessed with Internet Explorer it’s like there are way more people who have some kind of mild to moderate need that you’re not meeting when it comes to making it work for a person with a disability-- Nic: Yeah Jen: Than there are people using Internet Explorer. Nic: Yeah, how many people use Internet Explorer is less than a percent, right? Jen: Well there’s millions of people using Internet Explorer. It’s not like that’s not something to be considered, Definitely, it does need to be considered but there are more people with disabilities than there are people using Internet Explorer, so, like, are we talking about money? Are we talking about numbers? Every metric that might make you worry about Internet Explorer should make you worry about people with disabilities. At least two or three times as much. Nic: Yeah. What do you think is the number one reason most people fail to succeed with implementing accessibility? Jen: I think it’s ignorance and knowing how to. And I have to say this is a thing where actually I sometimes get really frustrated with folks in the disability community who are advocating for the web. Or maybe I should say in the web accessibility community because I do think that there’s-- like, I’ve been to meetings, I went to TPAC which is the … so there's this working group that defines new CSS and there's an HTML working group and there’s other working groups and TPAC is kind of the working conference where all the working groups get together. Who invent all the new web stuff. And there's a … I don’t know the name of it. I want to say a disability working group but that’s probably not the name of it. There’s like a accessibility working group? Or … Nic: Well, there’s several working groups. There’s mostly the people working on WCAG and ARIA as the WAI people. Web Accessibility Initiative. There’s several working groups. Jen: Yeah, And so there was a group of folks that came over from the accessibility working groups to the CSS working group to kind of talk to us because of course, new CSS needs to be accessible. And one of the things that was frustrating was it was almost like the folks in the disa-- accessibility working groups were … it’s almost like they thought that the number one problem. Like the number one hindrance to things being accessible is desire to make them accessible. So that the solution that was needed was to educate the CSS working group on the importance of accessibility. And, that was very frustrating to me because I was-- it was almost insulting. It’s like this we care and we are experts on this. And there’s a complexity here we can talk about and you could help us and we could all get together and we could figure out this complexity together. But you’re not even willing to have a complicated conversation because you’re so convinced that the basic conversation is the conversation that’s needed. And that was frustrating to me. So I definitely, and you and I have talked about it in this podcast … there are definitely people who don’t care, who aren’t motivated, who are ignorant, who are bias, who are prejudiced. Just straight up horrible thinking. They’re stuck in a horrible way of thinking. But, there are many, many, many, many people who care very, very deeply. And perhaps very personally. It may be very personal to them, or maybe it isn’t personal to them but they still care … who just don’t know how to make a website accessible. Nic: Yeah Jen: And it’s not a simple thing and it’s not an on, off thing. It’s not like one thing that needs to be done. There are hundreds and hundreds of things that can be done. And you don’t have to do them all. You could just do one, or you could just do 12, or you could just do 100 and that’s going to help tremendously. But of course there are many, many, many other’s, I don’t know if accessibility is ever finished. I’m not sure that a site … Is any site ever finished? Nic: No Jen: Does any site ever have no bugs? Nic: No Jen: So, It’s making it accessible or inclusive for as many people as possible is part of that. Where you kind of never get really as far as you want to. You never really get it “right”. You can only just make it better. But they’re huge wins right off the bat. Any technical project there’s huge technical wins right off the bat so if your HTML is working and your Javascript doesn’t have a bug and your Javascript doesn’t block the downloading of the HTML then you have a web page. There’s a series of things that make a website run and so there’s a series of things that can make a website accessible. And I think that there is-- I think that we need more information in the world. I think we need more teaching in the world about the things that could be done. Nic: Yeah Jen: I think a lot of web developers have never heard of WCAG, I think there’s lots of people that don’t realise right off the bat how much-- how far that we get down the road of being accessible if they could just use a button or a link instead of a span and use a semantic HTML and … I don’t know. Think about source order and, oh, you’re 80% there already, you haven’t even done anything special and you’re already 80%. So, that's what I-- It’s like--it’s just information, information. And I wish that more folks in the accessibility communities would write that information. Especially some of the stuff that is more masterful, it is more complex, that is in-depth debates or information about how to use ARIA rules and why and when. In-depth information about the experience of using a screen reader. In-depth information about how to get tabbing working on a out of the box computer so that you can test, everybody can test tabbing on their own computer. Nic: Playing devil's advocate I think that many people in the disability community and in the web accessibility community would say that all that information is out there. But I think that the problem is it’s all fragmented. It’s a little bit here a little bit there and finding that information is difficult. Jen: Yeah, and I now work pretty much full time as a teacher and I could say, “All of the information about CSS Grid is out there, all you need is just to read the spec, but if I really want people to understand CSS Grid then there’s a whole art to-- Nic: Yeah Jen: --breaking it down and explaining it bit by bit and knowing how hard it is to take time in a day to learn something. And me being away to say, “Okay I can-- I’m going-- I know what you’re struggling with most. I’m going to start there and fix that for you by teaching you this one thing. I’m going to take all this complexity and I’m going to make it as simple as possible and give that to you”. And I’m not saying that people with disabilities have the job of teaching the world how to make accessible websites. I do not believe that. It’s more like people who want to teach accessibility … well, there’s a lot that could be done-- Nic: Yeah Jen: --to teach it. Because there’s-- I don’t know if the quality of the teaching is as high as the quality of the teaching around. CSS for example. Nic: Do you think that’s the greatest challenge for the field of accessibility going forward? Or is there something else that we’re facing that maybe we don’t know about? Jen: I don’t know what the greatest challenge is going forward. I mean, yeah, teaching people things so that they-- it becomes easier and easier is one. I think there is this battle happening right now on the web where there's a group of people that see the web the way that we’ve been seeing it for many years which is, you deliver an HTML page and maybe it’s got CSS and maybe some Javascript and it runs in a browser and it can do all kinds of things and those things might be some sort of reading experience, it might be some sort of video watching experience, it might be some sort of interactive experience that could get labeled as an app but in any case that’s what you’re doing. You’re delivering this layered experience. HTML, CSS and Javascript. And then there's this other world of people who have showed up in the last, especially the last five years. I think a lot of them came over from Flash Actionscript and I think a lot of them have come over from Java and there’s a lot of computer science oriented people. People with CS degrees perhaps who think of programming, they think of writing code for the web as engineering. I’m not a front-end developer, I’m not a developer, I’m an engineer. Nic: Yeah Jen: Who see the web as a simple delivery mechanism for an application. For a package of software. And they want that package of software to work the way that other packages of software works which is, “Oh, I’m making an android app it requires Android 6.4 and higher” Or “I’m creating an iOS app”, “I’m creating a Macintosh app. My Macintosh app only works on OS 10 point whatever number and higher. It doesn’t work on system seven. It doesn’t work on Mac OS 10.1”. And so they sort of say, “Of course you-- it requires chrome, it requires having this level of browser support. It requires having this kind of input device or this kind of output device. So if you don’t have a mouse and you can’t see the screen then whatever”. It’s the same thing as having an old phone, or an old Mac. A Mac SE can’t run Photoshop 16, so, whatever, like that’s not a problem. But it’s like, no, that’s not what-- So there’s this, I don’t know. It seems like there’s this collision of philosophy and that’s where you start getting people who don’t want to write HTML, CSS and Javascript. They want to open up a Javascript framework and use it the way that they would use other application software writing frameworks, like, whatever … XCode or whatever and they want to like … there’s only one way to write the software, there’s only one way the software will run and then they’re done with it. Nic: Yeah Jen: It’s like, but, yeah. That’s not what the web is. The whole point of the web is that it’s-- it works on every computer, every browser, every device, every input device, every output device simultaneously. Every speed of network connection simultaneously … Nic: Best viewed in Netscape, right? Jen: Yeah, and I think it’s a challenge. I think it’s a challenge for the web as a whole. It worries me about the health of the web that there are just so many people who feel like, if it runs on my machine it runs. And it’s done. If it works with my setup, on my computer then it works for everybody. It’s done. And the first victims to that kind of thinking are anybody who is using their computer differently than that dude in the chair and that’s a problem. That’s a problem. Nic: Yeah. It’s a big problem. Jen, you’ve done a few things. You were talking last week about working in Art and Theatre and doing some work in non-profit and now you’re doing geeky stuff. Is there a profession other than what you’ve done that you’d like to try your hand at if you weren’t doing what you’re doing. Jen: Yeah, that is funny to admit this on a podcast but if I suddenly could do any career and not be in the web I would like to make a television show. And I think about it. I think about, could I write a script for a tv show? Could I make it happen? And there’s part of me that thinks that’s crazy. Like, everybody has a tv show in their back pocket. And, like, you know, nobody gets a chance to do it and you’re too old for one and you’re not going to be one of those people. But then part of me thinks, well maybe I should really be taking steps in that direction and just see what happens, maybe. Nic: So you’d like to get involved with script writing? Or producing? Or what part of making a tv show? Because it takes a big team for making shows. Jen: And it’s not that I want to work in Film and Television. I decided a long time ago I wasn’t that-- the culture of that world wasn’t going to be a good match for me. But-- and also I missed the window. I chose to do theatre when I could’ve-- should’ve chosen to do film. And then I was too old. But it’s more that I have ideas for a show and I’d love to see that show exist. And probably my role in that would be to write it. To write a show. And then collaborate with people that have the experience that I never got. Directing and running a show. And I’d want it-- I mean, ideally, I’d be-- I’d have some say so I wouldn’t just be the scriptwriter. But I would be one of the executive producers or something, or something … But, yeah it's less about wishing I was in film and television and more about wanting to see certain stories and having-- there’s certain stories that have been refusing to be quiet and they’re inside of me for 20 years. I think actually now more than ever those … those- that perspective would be viable and helpful to the culture of the whole … But I’m not unaware of what an insane-- like, climbing Mount Everest that would be to try and do that. Which is why I haven’t really tried. Nic: Yeah, fair enough. Hey, last question and then I let you go. What’s the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Jen: I think that the web would be so much better if everybody could just know that it’s the right thing to do and it’s not that hard. Nic: Yeah Jen: You can take steps to learn a little bit at a time. A little bit at a time. How to make websites more accessible. And It's just super important. Like, it matters. Nic: Yeah… yeah. It matters to people with disabilities now, people with functional impairments and it matters to the coder who might actually find themselves when they’re in their late 40’s early 50’s, they have to squint a bit and lean into the monitor to be able to read the website they created a few years ago. Jen: Yeah. It’s interesting to me. I know so many web developers who have disabilities. Who are very well known. And yet I don’t think those people know they’re disabled in one way or another. And it’s sort of not important. Like, it’s kind of not. In many times we don’t know a whole lot about each others personal lives anyway but, like, a lot of the folks that I had on my show years ago, The Web Ahead, probably a third of the people who were guests on that show have one kind of disability or another. We never talked about them on the show because it wasn’t really the point of the show but the-- it’s just so common and I think people don’t understand … I mean, not everybody with a disability needs any kind of accommodation to use a computer but plenty of folks did and it was just kind of, part of their life. Like, “Oh yeah, I use this thing and not that thing” and “I use the computer this way and not that way”. Nic: Jen, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and having some quite thought-provoking ideas that I hope people listening will take notice of. That it’s their job to stop being ignorant about things that they don’t know about. Jen: Yeah, and I do think it’s very possible. Anybody listening, probably everybody listening who makes a website or codes it or design it or whatever, wishes they knew a little bit more. And I do think we can. We can all just go and learn a little bit more. Nic: Yeah. Wonderful. Jen, thank you very much and I’ll catch you on the twitters. Jen: See you there. Nic: Cheers, thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E57 – Interview with Jen Simmons – Part 1 Sep 13, 2018

I love what Jen had to say about accessibility! She said, among other things: "accessibility is about the recognition that every human isn’t identical to every other human." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 57. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking to Jen Simmons. Hey, thanks for joining me join. See, I fluffed that up. I will start again. Alright, so, this week I’m speaking to Jen Simmons. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around Web Accessibility, Jen. Jen: Hello. Thanks for having me. Nic: Well, thank you for coming on. I know you’re doing quite a few things. Jen, I like to let guests introduce themselves, so in a brief elevator style introduction … Who is Jen Simmons? Jen: So these days I work as a designer and developer advocate for Mozilla which is a company that makes the Firefox browser. And that means I get to travel around, present at conferences. Talk to people, find out what people are struggling with. Keep my eye on the pulse, or my finger on the pulse of the industry. People making websites and then report all that back to Mozilla and tell them, “Hey, this is what people are really going to need. This is what’s coming up next”. So we can be sure to create the right developer tools that are needed, or create the right-- put CSS … I focus specifically on CSS. And making a browser, making Firefox. It’s like making any piece of software. There’s a zillion features we want to add and a bazillion bugs we want ... need to fix-- Nic: Yeah Jen: --And a limited number of engineers, I help shape what is it that we are going to be focussing on. Just … I help, I chim in and advocate for designers and developers as those decisions are being made. Nic: Yeah. Firefox is not a small project that a couple of people are working on in their spare time. I started using Firefox when it was still 0.2 or something like that. Way, way back when. And I really loved it. I was devastated when there was this issue and I think it was 58, 59 that wasn’t working very much with screen readers anymore. Jen: Yeah, and I don’t know the details so this is sort of a hand-wavy explanation I should probably go find out the real information so I can say this accurately but I think … my guess about what happened is that the company was pushing so hard to make these massive technical changes to the browser itself under the hood for Firefox 57 that there were a lot of people pulled off a lot of projects and just put on this one effort. Get Firefox Quantum out the door. Get Firefox [crosstalk 03:24] out the door. And so anything that wasn’t- I mean, we broke a lot of stuff. We changed the way the plugins- addons work-- Nic: Yeah Jen: --web extensions … I mean we replaced the entire CSS parsing and rendering engine, right? So there was such huge amounts of technical DAT being paid off ... things had been built in the browser really in the Netscape days or like back in Firefox zero point whatever days, that we changed. And so my guess, and it’s just a guess. This is not official information. My guess is that there were just changes that got made that meant that it broke for screen readers. It broke for accessibility. And somewhere someone just said, “look we are going to fix that ASAP but we are going to also ship 57. Nic: Yeah Jen: And so- and there were people inside the company who were like, “this is not okay” and very, really made sure that as soon as possible, with 58, 59, 60, 61 we get back to where we were because being a browser that is best of class and supporting anybody who is using an assistive device is very important to the mission of Mozilla. So it’s not that Mozilla’s mission changed. Or that our commitment to accessibility changed. It was just this blip that was needed. Maybe needed, maybe you can debate whether it was right or wrong but it was a blip that happened in order to really make these massive changes to the browser to improve the speed and improve [crosstalk 04:45] overall. Nic: Mozilla certainly, what’s the word I’m looking for … demonstrated the commitment to accessibility when they implemented the accessibility tree view and web inspector. That’s a massive improvement for those of us that do accessibility day in day out to just nut out what an issue can be. Jen: Yeah, so that new accessibility tree inspector-- really it’s probably more like a viewer-- is the first of a series of ideas and plans that are in place to do better and better around providing accessibility. Like, providing developer tools for folks who care about accessibility. And so that accessibility tree as I understand it is pretty nerdy and pretty much for people who know a tonne about accessibility but it’s a bit of an API that will then support more user friendly normal developers who don’t really know much about accessibility friendly type tools that can be built on top of that tree in the future. So it’s a beginning. Nic: It’s a powerful tool Powerful tool. But yeah you do need to know a little bit about accessibility before you start looking at it. Jen: Yeah, so I mean some ways we’ve promoted it and some ways we haven’t promoted it as much because it’s maybe not a tool that like someone who’s just getting started with understanding accessibility will be able to kind of-- I mean, what I would like to see when I’m advocating for is that we have tools that are sort of in the middle of everybody’s flow and are very easy to use in that kind of, can’t help yourself but notice that, “Oh your color contrast is bad or that your keyboard navigation isn’t working or that your separated source order and DOM order, visual order, too much in your layout that you’re making and so that’s going to be an accessibility problem. Like those kinds of things could be surfaced and right in line with all the other tools. So, hopefully, we will get to do some of those other things to … yeah. But there's still many, so many kinds of tools we could be making. Nic: Hey Jen, tell us something that most people would not know about you. Jen: Well I, like many people who were building websites in the 90’s am self-taught. I think most people who made websites at the beginning you had to be self-taught because what else were you going to be. But I at the time was working in the arts. Working as an artist, working as a designer theatre designer, doing lighting design, set design, sound projection … I sort of started in set, moved to lighting and then later got really, really into projection design. And also producing a lot of events and making all the graphic design for all of those events. Thousands of postcards and poster, bumper stickers and t-shirts. So I come from that kind of background. The arts and thinking about design and creation. The creation of work from the perspective of an artist so, sometimes I forget that that’s not how everybody else goes at it. But it deeply influences what I do now, even if all I’m doing now is working on websites-- or actually these days I don’t even work on websites much anymore. I work on web browsers. Nic: How and why did you make that switch? Jen: Money. I mean, honestly, it wasn’t as much-- because if you-- it’s like I could explain my career and say, “Well, I worked in this industry and then I also worked in this industry and this industry” and it sounds like I’ve had … really, I’ve had four, five careers but many of them are concurrent. So I was teaching at a University while I was simultaneously making films. And shortly before that, I was teaching High School aged students, outside the school system while making theatre and before that, I was making theatre while I was working as an arts administrator and that meant I was also the IT department, the webmaster, the accounting department and the graphic design department. Because we are this tiny non-profit and so I did all of those things at the same time. Nic: Yeah, I had a similar background. I started as a chef by trade and then I worked in non-profit for a disability-related organization and I was juggling non-profit and being the tech guy and playing with HTML and, you know, “Het my cup holder isn’t working on my computer. How do I fix this?” kind of thing. So I like to hear people that have, obviously not the same but similar kind of journey to accessibility, to the web, to design. Jen: And that’s one of the things that I miss or I worry about or I wonder about with so many projects, multi-million dollar projects these days and they have big teams and once you have a big team it makes sense to break out a whole bunch of different jobs and so, one person might focus on one thing and then they work on another multi-million dollar project and they’re the person focussing on that thing again. So you have this whole career where you’re specialising and you're working on just this one particular little piece of a bigger picture. And it changes the … I don’t know. There’s something about that. There’s something about those of us that know how to, like, “Oh, someone around here has to learn something about getting an audit because we are big enough now that we are required by law to have an annual audit so I guess I’ll go look that up. I guess I’ll go figure that out”. Nic: Yeah Jen: Oh we need, we need, let’s switch from using a modem to using a network so how, oh an [apple talk?10:37] network how do I learn to make a [apple talk?10:39] network when there's nothing on the internet because the internet doesn’t exist yet. Like that ability to make things up and that ability to be scrappy and to learn things as you go. Sometimes I see people today feel a little bit like, “Well, I didn’t learn it in school so now I’m applying for this job and am I going to get in trouble or am I lying if I make it sound like I could figure this out. And it’s like, but that’s the whole … being able to figure stuff out is everything. That’s awesome. If you can jump in and not know what you're doing and figure it out as you go that’s like a really great skill to have. Nic: Yeah, the researching skills and [crosstalk 11:16]. I don’t think Jen: [crosstalk 11:17]-- skills, you know. Nic: Yeah, a lot of newbies maybe don’t realize how much experience programmers, developers, designers-- how much time is spent looking and searching for answers. I saw a tweet the other day that someone who is a Javascript developer … he said, “I was having problems solving this issue and then I went and I googled it and suddenly I found this article I wrote five years ago and it’s the very same solution”. So it’s funny how that goes. Jen: I did the exact same thing. I put out a bunch of tweets about … and I really believe this, that if you're writing code the majority of what you’re doing is writing code that doesn’t work. And looking up what’s-- searching on the internet to figure out what to do and being able to figure out why it doesn’t work. Because the moment it actually does work, you’re done. And you’re off to the next thing. Right? If the code works there’s nothing … you’re not going to sit there and look at it for three hours. You-- the whole point is that you write code, it doesn’t work, you figure out why it doesn’t work. It still doesn’t work, you figure out why it still doesn’t work. It still doesn’t work, you figure out why … like the third thing that’s wrong with it and you keep doing that until you’ve figured it out. And I do think that, yeah there's something about newbies it feels like they feel like they're doing something wrong. Or like, “Oh it doesn’t work. It should’ve worked the moment I put the code on the page” it’s like not really. It’s not actually what-- computer science is all about debugging and about being really good at debugging. Nic: Yeah Jen: Yeah and I couldn’t-- I was playing around and I was vaguely remembering that somewhere in CSS there was a particular way that you could have an outline of the edge of a letter but I had no idea how to do it. And in my head, I thought, “Gosh, I’ve been meaning to learn this and I’ve never learned it. I should finally look this up” and so I searched on an internet search engine and boom an article that I wrote like 18 months ago. On my own blog. Nic: Yeah … yeah. Jen: And there was an example that I had demoed. Like a demo I had built and an example of code and I just copied the code right out of it and pieced it into my new one, and it was like, “Oh I guess I did do this once before”. Nic: How would you define Web Accessibility? Jen: To me, accessibility is about the recognition that every human isn’t identical to every other human. That-- like sometimes I think about it this way … if-- we have this idea of their being parallel universes, right? This quantum physics pop culture version where “oh there's parallel universes and things are slightly different” so let's imagine a parallel universe where humans have four arms and four hands instead of two and in that world if you were the one person with two hands instead of having four hands … it would be really weird because everything about that world will have been designed assuming that humans have four hands. So the way kitchens are set up, the way computers work, the way that everything is set up. It’s like, people have four hands and there you are a person with two hands. And that's not the only way to see disability but it’s one way to see disability. That there's just far more variation in human beings than what “normal” defines. And so this idea that, well, you’re supposed to use two hands on your keyboard, you’re supposed to use a mouse, you’re supposed to be able to see the whole screen … that’s like, assuming that everybody has four hands in this parallel universe. And, why? Like there’s no … there’s no reason for that and so to me, making websites considering accessibility is about understanding that not everybody has two hands. Many people just have one. Not everybody can use a keyboard, not everybody can use a mouse. Like, not everybody's bodies are made the same way and that’s just considering-- I’m just talking about physical things. But of course, accessibility is much more than a physical variation on a human body. Nic: Yeah Jen: But to me, it really is about-- this other thing, in the 20th century especially there was this urge in human culture to define the right way to be. Really it’s the last 500 years. It’s colonialism, it’s racism it’s like-- this size head, this circumference head is the proper size and this other person has a different sized head and they’re therefore inferior. Like there were whole wars were waged on these ideas of superior and inferior kinds of people. And I feel like as software developers today we don’t have to build with those kinds of ideas. That there's inferior and superior kinds of people. We can resist that. Whatever it is in humanity. And we can say, “No. I’m making something for a crowd. For millions of people, thousands of people and I’m going to consider the crowd. I’m not just going to consider myself. Or my friends. Or what I’m used to or what I like”. Nic: How do we get past these prejudices that we don’t even realize we have? That have been ingrained from very early childhood. One of the statistics that has really hit me quite badly is in 2008 there was this survey done that showed that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than disable. And that’s a very profound perception of disability. How do we change that perception? That thinking in people who are coding and developing without even realizing they have these kinds of feelings that impacts and colors the way they do things. Jen: Yeah, I think it is about awareness and about educating yourself and I think there's somewhere where we have to make a decision to care and to educate ourselves because there's a good chance that the world you grew up in didn’t give you a lot of information about the larger world and … If anything the internet makes it more possible than ever to get to know people outside of your immediate neighbourhood. Get to know people in other countries, get to know people and their experiences all across a wide variety of the world and use the internet to do that. And then I think it’s about awareness. I think it’s about noticing your own-- and being willing to notice your own stupidity. Like, I catch myself thinking stupid things inside my head and no one knows I’ve thought them, I haven’t acted on them yet. But they jump into my head and over the last three years, honestly, 2016 … I’ve noticed far uglier ideas jumping into my head. About people with disabilities, about people based on their race, about people based on their ethnicity, their nationality, their religion. Like these are not idea’s that belong to me, I don’t believe them, but they jump into my head. And I could easily start to believe them and attach myself to them and think they’re apart of me and think that they’re something that's important. And I think that we, I mean all of us have grown up with all kinds of bias, racism and everything else. And sexism and I think it’s about being okay with admitting to yourself, “Gosh I really am doing this. There, look, I did it again. I interrupted another woman in a meeting as a guy” or “I thought this stupid thing as a person being stupid” and then interrupting it and saying, “Well I want to do better. Next time I’m going to try to catch myself before I do the thing and I’m going to change”. And I think with disability, for those of us that have the opportunity to make websites or make other kinds of products or software or whatever it is you’re making … to think about, “Yeah, I don’t know anything about keyboard navigation. I keep hearing about it but I haven’t actually taken the time to learn about it. So let me take some time to really go figure out. I have this weakness, everybody talks about it. I act like I know something about it but actually, I don’t know how to make a-- I hit tab on my keyboard and it doesn’t do anything. What do I need to go learn and just chip away bit by bit by bit, on our ignorance or on our … I think some ugly ideas. Ugly ideas are contagious and right now there’s some very ugly idea’s going around about people with disabilities and I’m thinking that … I think those ideas can be contagious, and we just kind of end up with this attitude, “Well, we’ll do it later”, “Oh we don’t really have time for that”, “Oh, we don’t have any blind people using our software” … it’s like, “Stop. Stop.” Be willing to be the person to take a stand at work and be willing to be the person who admits inside yourself that secretly maybe you’re not where you wish you were, and you’re going to be okay with that. Because being okay with that is the first step to changing that. Nic: I really like this idea that you’re suggesting that the onus is on the individual to go out and educate themselves rather than waiting for people to raise their awareness for them. So we all have to take some responsibility to improve ourselves. Jen: Yeah, I think that maybe it goes back to that idea of being scrappy and being, “Hey I need to learn accounting and I don’t really want to but somebody around here needs to know something about it so I’m going to step up and do something about it. Like, we all should be learning constantly. Our medium, the web, is such a baby still at 25, 30 years old that there’s so much changing, we have to keep up. And understanding some of the choices. And also I think sometimes it makes it easier because there are so many options and so many choices and if you just immediately eliminate everything that’s not accessibility then you narrow down the field and then you can pick one … you pick a framework or something. Just don’t pick a framework that’s inaccessible. Get yourself a framework that is accessible that values accessibility. You actually-- it’s easier because you don’t have to worry about shopping around for all of them. You just shop around for the ones that are going to work accessibly. Make your job easier because you’re not adding a bunch of technical DAT right off the bat. You’re not going to be fighting your tool the whole time. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed in the last 10 years or 15 years? Jen: It’s definitely matured in that I’ve learned and learned and learned many things I didn’t know before. I think that my idea of a disability has changed a lot. Nic: How? Jen: Because these days I see it as such a blurry gradient where I think-- So, I live in the United States and there's government programs for people with disabilities to get financial assistance so there's a way in which I think people... “Are you disabled? Are you not disabled? Well have you signed up for that-- does the government consider you a disabled person?” or “Has a doctor diagnosed you with something official?”, “Do you have an official label?” But, I think that there are many people with disabilities who are not in a government programme or officially registered. Or whatever, I’m making this up but whatever it is … they’ve not been diagnosed with something. Perhaps they’re going to doctors desperately trying to get diagnosed and no one is figuring out what is going on, But there’s just so many … myself, I don’t consider myself a person with a disability but there are days when I consider myself a person with a disability. And there are days when I avail myself of the kinds of things that are available to people with disabilities. There are days when I get on an airplane and they're like, “Oh, anyone needs extra time?” and I’m like, “Me!”. I have travelled with a massive migraine. It’s awful and I am in those situations where I have a migraine, I’m disabled. I can’t figure out the world, I can’t move through things well. And I think that any of us who-- I don’t know, maybe in your 20’s you’re like, “Yay, look at me, I’m awesome” but at some point in your life, you don’t feel awesome. You are ill. You are injured or something. So, I don’t know. It’s like the 20 something bro whose being a pain in the ass about his code and refusing to hear in his code review that he’s made his stuff inaccessible. It’s like, just wait until you break an arm and you need to use a tab instead of a mouse. Just wait. Nic: It’s funny you mention that because there’s a this expression in the disability community that everybody is only temporarily able-bodied because at some point in their life something is going to happen and even me, as a wheelchair user I know about accessibility of course, but a couple of years ago I actually managed to end up with both my thumbs broken at the same time. And, yeah, the learning curve was steep. It was temporary but you have these things and had to adapt and it’s always a massive learning experience. I think that perhaps for a lot of people it’s not necessarily about having a condition as much as facing disabling situations. It’s not because I use a wheelchair that I have a disability. It’s because there’s a flight of steps I can’t go up. What’s your greatest achievement in terms of accessibility Jen? Jen: I hope that I’m able in the work that I’m doing as I teach people about CSS and HTML to make it easier-- to make it not so scary, to make people realise … I mean, it’s interesting thinking about what does it mean to have a disability or not. I think of this big gradient. Well, what does it mean to have an accessible website or not. I think of this big gradient. There’s always a little bit of something that any of us can do to make our sites more … I mean, it is about inclusivity but I think it goes beyond inclusivity to specifically something that’s going to work with people who have specific needs. And I hope I’m able to show people, “Hey, if you just use semantic HTML instead of using Divs and Spans for everything. You’re going to get halfway there”. And that’s not hard at all. Like, you could learn HTML in two days. Come on. You don’t be … like, don’t be like that. The way some people are. Complaining about it, really being selfish. I think sometimes people are really very selfish in that they don’t want to bother or something. Perhaps it’s just scary to them? I don’t know. So, I don’t know. Nic: I tweeted a couple of days ago about ...basically a rant that that don’t use a Div, use a button. And I had a couple of people that got back to me and said, “Hey, is Semantic web still a thing?”. Jen: Yes. It is! Nic: And, it most definitely is and when I encounter these kinds of things I just want to bang my head against a wall but of course, that’s not very productive so we go back to building awareness and education. Jen: Yeah, I-- it’s just ignorance and arrogance. It’s this awful mix of ignorance and arrogance. And I think it usually goes with a high dose of that nerd version of being a sexist bro. Of just like, “I’m so cool and important and I know what I’m doing and I don’t have to learn anything and like…” But, no, actually, what’s happened is you’re using a framework. The framework is set up to use Divs spans. And you’ve no idea what to do about that. You literally have no idea and that feeling makes you very scared. And you feel very vulnerable. And you feel like you might be really stupid or something. And you’re not stupid. You just haven’t had a chance to do it yet. And it’s not a personal defect on your part. It’s just that this is something that’s super important and you should try to learn something about. Have some humility and be willing to grow and change and go find out how you might be able to use this framework and make it semantic and change what you’re doing. Or maybe it’s not even a framework. Maybe you’re just writing some little thing and you’re just taking the shortcut and you don’t have to take that shortcut you can actually do higher quality … I remember when people really took pride in the craftsmanship of their work and I-- to me, that’s the opposite of that kind of arrogant bro thing. It’s like, being willing to just make something look really beautiful that someone who's built a table … underneath the table, the part that nobody actually really looks at is also really beautiful and the joints. Where the legs attach to the top are gorgeous, just for the sake of being gorgeous. And that kind of pride in code. That kind of pride in … and of course, you can’t make it perfect because you’ve got to ship and there's always something wrong with it, right. So there’s-- it’s another gradient but like, at some point you can stand back and say, “I’m really proud of that code. I did a good job with that code” and part of that is using semantic HTML and elements that are going to work under any condition. Nic: Yeah. Jen, thank you so much for joining me about … with this podcast and talking about accessibility and the web and peoples skills and all that. It’s been great and we’ll catch you next week. Jen: Thanks for having me. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility rules branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E56 – Interview with Becky Gibson – Part 2 Sep 12, 2018

Becky talks about accessibility needing to be in the curriculum for all computer science courses - and I couldn't agree more! Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

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Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 56. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So in this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Becky Gibson. Last show was really awesome. We spoke about Lotus. We spoke about IBM and the formation of WCAG 2.0 and ARIA. So all kinds of really great stuff. Do check it out if you haven’t already. Becky, welcome back. Becky: Yeah. Thanks, Nic. This is great. Nic: Yeah, so are you ready for more grilling? Becky: Sure. Why not. Nic: Why not. Alright, so we ended up last week on a fairly positive note talking about your greatest achievement and that was your involvement with ARIA and making the Dojo toolkit accessible. If we were to veer toward maybe, not negative but not so positive thing … What would you say your greatest frustration is in terms of Web Accessibility? Becky: I think it’s attitude of people. I guess part of it too is that we don’t make people aware of it. We don’t educate students, right? It’s like you learn so many things when you go to school and you learn a different programming language, why is accessibility not built into the curriculum? And I know that Teach Access is trying to work somewhat toward that, the group. But I just find that frustrating that people have no idea about it. I mean you still-- like I mentioned in the last time … I was never going to stand up and tell people about Alt text on images and labels on form elements but when I look at websites I feel that I still have to because it-- people don’t know that. They still-- it’s not common knowledge which, when you’re in the industry is-- it’s like, those are so simple. That’s the simple stuff, you know? Just keep it simple stupid, do the easy stuff. So ... Nic: Yeah Becky: I mean I keep having in my mind I want to write a book. Well, yeah unless I dedicate myself into that. And then you’ve got to get someone to read it. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help bring accessibility education into Colleges and Universities. And it is a pretty daunting task, but, it’s something that I’ll keep working on in my subconscious. Nic: It is something that’s mission critical. You’re not the first person to bring that point and every time I talk about that I can’t help thinking, this was a battle that I was having in the 90’s with architecture schools. But architects are going through four, five years of training and they get an average four-hour tuition on building accessibility. And we’re facing the same thing with Computer Science nowadays is that people come out of that and they don’t even know it exists, so there's not even that flicker of awareness that maybe curiosity is going to push them to read up on it. Becky: Right. Nic: Yeah. So how do we fix that? Becky: Well, I don’t know. I’ve talked to some of the people at WebAim, just because they're fighting this battle as well. And it’s like how-- you have to get it into-- it has to be part of the curriculum. It has to be authorised. There’s rules. I’m like, “Oh crap, it’s never going to …” But I guess we have to start somewhere and then I know some of the surveys teach Access as there’s no textbooks and I started thinking about that. But I’m like … Okay, but do you have one textbook that covers Java and PHP and HTML. Or do you try to go to each of the textbook authors and try to get them to add chapters about it? And offer to help them? I spent so-- in some of that I think that’s what we have to do we have to try to do what we can to get it into the curriculum. And I’m still waving my hands because I’ve really just started thinking a little bit more seriously about this but definitely-- and even going into the schools. When I-- I was always very good. IBM volunteered for engineers weak in different things. So whenever I would go to the school I would tell them what I did. I’m like, “Oh, ask the kids”. Usually middle school. “How does a blind person use a computer?” I mean, that’s the one they can most identify because it’s visual. And you know, some of them will know and some of them won’t and they’ll, you know, I try to get them into the conversation at least being aware and thinking about it. Nic: Yeah. It’s one of these things that is so important and sometimes it feels like we have to do nearly one on one awareness building with the powers that be. With the gatekeeper in terms of curriculum and all that. Becky: And that’s why I think technology … again I go back to you when we spoke last time. The whole thing about technology, because some of these-- at least the children are expecting things to work. They expect to be able to talk to the computer, or Alexa or-- and have it work. And so if it doesn’t-- and unfortunately that doesn’t always connect to accessibility … but it at least makes them aware of the different interfaces into technology. Nic: Yeah. Yeah, because voice input is really growing in terms of methodology to interact with a computer. Right? Becky: Yeah. A long time ago we didn’t think we would ever be at this state. Everybody was always, “Oh in a few more years, in a few more years…”, well, finally a few more years is-- we are reaching that. That we can-- I’m not a big fan of talking to the computer. I don’t use Siri as much as I probably could but I see the benefit of it and I see… and I’m not quite sure I want to have a device listening to me talk to myself in my home. But I can see the value of that and once we get over those sort of privacy hurdles I think those of us that are older have more issues with that than some of the younger folks. Nic: Yeah. How does privacy relate to accessibility? Becky: You know, that’s a good one. That’s one of the things that I’m part of the personalisation taskforce at the W3C and that’s one of the issues. If you knew a person … people often don’t want to self identify as having a disability when they’re on the web so they’re reluctant to say, “I’m using a screen reader” in fact there isn’t even a way-- a convoluted way to even figure out if someone is and people don’t often want to admit that or they don’t want to admit they have-- they want larger text because … okay, I can relate to those. I’m a 50 plus-year-old person in computers and everyone around me is-- can be my children. They don’t get why my screen might have larger font size. They will in 20 years or so... So, you don’t often want to admit those things. So that’s sort of where privacy comes in is letting people keep their information to themselves but yet providing the tools that make it easier for them to interact with your application. Nic: Yeah. One of the topics that invariably comes up at conferences, when I go speak at conferences, is this concept from developers that, “Why can’t I get metrics about which type of disability comes to my website?” or “How come I can’t-- I can detect the browser, I can detect geolocation … all this information. Why can’t I have access to their disability status? Because I want to serve them something that’s going to be more useful”. And I bring up this issue. Privacy. And maybe we don’t want to advertise on the web everywhere that we have a disability. Maybe it’s the only place anywhere that we can actually not be first perceived as somebody who has a disability. And I think that privacy is really important. At the same time if we had access to be able to determine, “Hey this person is using NVDA and Firefox, maybe we will be able to tweak the website for them better”. What do you think of that dichotomy between the two needs? Becky: Yeah I think about that sometimes. Especially with personalisation. I’m like, “Well, why would you care if somebody knows that you don’t want to use numbers?” Or whatever. And a part of me says that and the other part of me says, “No, I can see why you don’t want to reveal too much about yourself”. So much about ourselves is on the internet if we care to share it, via Facebook or any other social media site. But to me it’s like, if you start building for one person, one type of disability then how-- you’re potentially not going to help someone else. Right? Nic: Yeah. Becky: So you can’t say, “Oh, okay, so this percentage are using Firefox and NVDA so I’m going to make sure I only test with Firefox and NVDA. As far as screen readers go”. So I think that’s the problem I think it needs to be more-- it lets it-- you want it to be universal and by focussing on certain traits it’s not universal anymore. Nic: Yeah. I think that that’s-- from the developers perspective I think that that’s one of the things to remember and people are people and they want to keep some kind of level of privacy. Becky: Right. And one day you might use NVDA, the next you might say, “Oh, I switched to a Mac and I’m on voice over”. Nic: Yeah. Becky: Not that it’s that easy to go between them. I know as a tester I can’t remember all those different commands going between all three but I know many people that use them that can… use all three proficiently. Nic: Yeah, do you think there’s conventional wisdom about accessibility? One thing that everybody knows about it? Becky: If you say web accessibility, I think people are more aware that blind people now can use the web. I think if you refer to accessibility in general people immediately think of someone in a wheelchair. So it sort of is-- unfortunately we have those kinds of silos with accessibility that immediately come to mind. I think the next generation is a little bit more aware of cognitive or, should I say neurological … I wouldn't call them disabilities but challenges because there does seem to be more children with autism or on the autism spectrum that are in schools and there’s different ways of learning, different ways of being than perhaps you and I-- me anyway, saw when we were growing up. Nic: Yeah. What would you say the number one reason is that most people fail to succeed with implementing accessibility? Becky: Time. They don’t understand it in the beginning. They don’t start from the beginning. And it’s one of those things that-- and it’s not always thought of as a feature but it’s thought of as that last bug that, “Oh, that’s not going to affect as many people. So we can leave that out”. And unfortunately, accessibility goes in as bugs, not always-- People that are really into it now and I think this whole inclusive design has helped bring the design community in but it’s still something that people think of as an add-on. And not as integrated. And when they think of it as an add-on it’s a thing you can chop off. Because it was added on, you can chop it off. I think that’s the biggest problem. Nic: Yeah. It’s interesting because a while back I was talking with Josh Simmons on the podcast and he actually said that-- I’m actually trying to find the quote right now, but he said that accessibility was a bug. That it should be seen as a bug … hold on I’m just going to pause recording for a second and try to find that exact quote. Yeah, so, Josh Simmon in my talk with him in way early episode six of the podcast he said, “Accessibility is not a feature. Lack of accessibility is a bug.” And that really struck me as something that was quite insightful but at the same time, what you’re saying about a bug and something to be handled at the end also makes sense. How would you reconcile both points of view? Becky: I think a lot will depend on your background. So I came from a more corporate environment where shipping on time was paramount. You will ship and big brother, or whoever … If it’s a large company you might not have as much influence and in that case, that’s where I felt it was. It was like, “Okay, we have to ship and we need to get this product out in the market.So, therefore, those are bugs and they can be addressed later”. And I think maybe-- I mean, some of that is from startups do the same thing. So when I worked on acquisitions at IBM we were looking at a lot of startups. They don’t even think about it because they need to get a product to market. So I think it depends on your perspective, because I think if it comes in as a feature and it’s thought of as a feature that serves everyone … and again that’s getting back to potentially marginalizing it for people with disabilities but if you do it as a feature to give everyone access at all times I think you get more buy-in from developers and management. Nic: Yeah. So it really depends on how you view and handle bugs and your own ecosystems to be able to asses that difference. Becky: Right. Nic: Yeah. What’s the greatest challenge for the field of Web Accessibility moving forward, in the next five years, ten years? Becky: I think it’s education. I think it’s keeping up with technology. I think voice is going to become much, much larger. And that’s still going to be a challenge. Dealing with different accents, different languages. Getting-- and then the more visual. The fact that we are going to video more. I would just as soon read something because I’m a fast reader, than look at a video. I skip the videos often. But, potentially if I could speed them up and have the captions go faster it would be the same to me. I think audio description is going to become more important as we go to video. Again, for the eyes off, whether it be because you’re low vision or because you’re doing something else and you’re multitasking, which I think we do too much of. But that’s not going to go away anytime soon. Nic: Yeah. Becky: And I guess I don’t know. Five years-- I was never-- I was in the emerging technologies group but U was the one that would figure out how things worked now and figure out workarounds. I wasn’t a visionary. I knew that about myself. Nic: Fair enough. If you had a-- If you weren’t working in accessibility in technology, what profession would you like to have? Becky: I think about that sometimes. Especially after I was looking for a job after leaving IBM, not of my own choice. And I used to think when I was a kid I wanted to be an author. And part of me still says-- I did go take a class to get certification in technical communications because I’m like, “Oh, I could write” but then everything’s a lot of work. And it’s like, “Okay, maybe that would be like work to me and I don’t want it to be”. And then I used to think I wanted to be a photographer but now everybody in the world's a photographer … So, I don’t know. I guess I would do something in some kind of training field. Maybe volunteering more or something like that. I don’t have a good answer because I struggle with that because you read all these things that’s like, “What would you do if you could do anything” and I’m like, “I don’t really know”. Nic: Yeah, too many varied interests. Becky: Right Nic: Yeah. Last question. What is the one thing people should remember about accessibility? Becky: That it is such a huge enabler for so many people and that making sure that the world and the web is accessible to all is just what opens up the possibility and lets everyone-- and really enable … I’ve used that word about seven times but, it really does enable people to-- releases them to be able to do more. If you can do your own grocery shopping, if you can buy your own presents, you don’t need someone to drive you to a store or to help you calculate what the totals going to be. It says it right there on the website. This is how much money it is. I’m trying to keep it away from blind because that’s the obvious focus when we think of the web because it’s so visual. But if you can’t drive now you can have things delivered to your door. Whether you can’t drive for a mobility reason or a vision reason or you have Meniere's or whatever it is that keeps you from being able to drive. It opens up that-- you can work now. You don’t have to go to an office every day. You can stay in your home where maybe you need to take a break every hour because you have a back problem. So to me, that’s the biggest thing is that it really enables everyone to participate more. And maybe we can get internet voting at some point, although that’s a whole-- we could talk about that forever. Longer that privacy, security, around all that. Nic: Yeah Becky: I just see it as… since we’ve incorporated the web into our world, then let's use it for the right things. Nic: Wonderfull. Becky, thank you. You’ve been great. I’ve loved having this conversation with you and getting to know you a little bit better. Becky: This has been fun. Thank you. I feel like you get me talking about myself and you can’t shut me up. Especially when you live alone. Nic: Well, you do have cats, right? Becky: That’s right. They’re good listeners luckily. Nic: Alright, Becky. Thank you so much-- Becky: Okay. Nic: --and I’ll catch you on the rebound. Becky: Alright. Thanks, Nic. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E55 – Interview with Becky Gibson – Part 1 Aug 30, 2018

In this episode, Becky talks to us about how changes in technology has changed her perception of accessibility. She also tells us how she came to be so passionate about accessibility! Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

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Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. You’re listening to episode 55. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So this week I’m speaking to Becky Gibson. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility Becky. Becky: Oh, thanks. I’m thrilled to be here. Nic: Cool. Hey, I like to let guests introduce themselves. So in a brief introduction, who is Becky Gibson? Becky: Let’s see. Who am I? I am a 55 plus-year-old woman. I live alone with two cats. I haven’t always been alone. And I guess I kind of am a computer geek although less so than I started. I started life with Lotus if people remember that, as a customer support representative and then I moved on to become a programmer. I actually worked on the print subsystem on 1, 2, 3. I’m proud of that. Yes, and then I went on to work on Lotus Notes, which some people will hate me for because a lot of people don’t particularly like Lotus Notes. But it was innovative for its time. And then I eventually got into accessibility about 13, 14 years ago working with Rich Schwerdtfeger, he was starting a new group in emerging technologies and I really enjoyed that because it gave me-- it felt like there was more than just business, right, Nic: Yeah Becky: It was okay when I worked on 1, 2, 3, when it was small and people were using it to record their book production for cows but then it got into business and that’s not what I was about so it gave me more of a reason-- it put excitement back in. and I got to do a lot of open source work with that so, yeah. And let's see, what do I do for fun … I’m a-- I figure skate. Not something I would recommend taking up in your 40’s but I enjoy it. And I like doing outdoorsy kind of stuff and I’m addicted to reading as well-- Nic: Well, there are worse addictions to that. To have than reading so, yeah. So I was going to ask you, tell me one thing most people don’t know about you but you gave us a few, from Lotus to figure skating and reading. So, is there anything else you think that our listener might be interested in knowing that you haven’t told us about? Becky: Well, I came into computers sort of backwards. I mean, I was always very much a science related, math type person. But back in the late 70’s when I graduated from High School nobody really suggested that I might be interested in computer science or civil engineering, which would’ve been a fit for me. I went to school and my degree is in Natural Resource Management and I have a minor in soil science and an option in land use planning. But, when I graduated from school there weren’t many jobs in that, unlike today. So, I had taken a computer programming course. I had taken Fortran with punch cards. And I loved it. And so, my woman who was to become my sister in law said, “Oh you should learn to program in Cobol and you could work in the computer industry”. Well, I did take a Cobol class and said, “Ew” and I did eventually get into computers … through Lotus. And I got my Masters in Computer Science, but, yeah. Nic: Right. So, just to show all roads lead to accessibility eventually, right? Becky: That’s right. Nic: So we’re talking about web accessibility today, primarily. And there’s a lot of definitions of that term. How would you define Web Accessibility? Becky: I define it as the ability of anyone to be able to access resources on the web anywhere at any time. So I think that broadens a little, from just saying that it has to be somebody with a disability. I think it takes into what we in the industry refer to as situational disabilities. You know, when you’re in your car, when you’ve broken your arm. So inclusion is a hot word these days but it definitely is including everybody. Nic: There seems to be a movement that, anyway, I’ve been aware of in the last five, six, seven months that some accessibility advocates are getting angry that we’re trying to sell accessibility as something that has side benefits for all kinds of people. Including those that only have situational impairments. How would you answer that kind of critic considering your definition of accessibility, which is quite wide and encompassing? Becky: Well, I think-- and I think it’s an unfortunate situation that you have to make people empathetic. And one way of doing that is addressing their concerns that-- making them aware. And making them aware is ok, listen if you want to listen to your phone in the car then, yeah. That’s-- and this is how you do it. And you may have to put in some extra work. And this is-- and I can try to stress how important it is for people with disabilities. Again, that’s talking to the person that has the situational disability. I can see where the people with a disability might say you’re marginalizing me by making it something that affects everybody. And in some cases that’s true but it also-- I think it broadens the-- it provides … I don’t want to say empathy because I don’t want people to come about it because they feel sorry for people with disabilities but I think it makes them recognize it more. Nic: Yeah. It’s a position that I understand but I don’t share, that is the fact that we should not sell accessible as- it’s good for everyone. Personally, I think, it’s good for everyone, and that’s how I present it. And it’s something I’ve been using for a very long time. When I was doing physical environments accessibility a lot I pointed out to people, a curb cut is good for a wheelchair user but it’s good for a mom with a pram, it’s good for a delivery guy with a heavy dolly, it’s good for kids on skateboards, it’s good for a lot of people so that’s always been in the back of my mind that it’s more about encompassing society as a whole rather than in a way ghetto'ising people with disabilities. Becky: Right. And I think, yeah, it makes people have-- understand the issue more and I think you have to understand an issue to really care about it. And I hesitate to bring this up because I don’t like to play the widow game, but I am a widow and until you have something like that, so devastating happen to you, it’s really hard to understand what it’s like for someone. The changes that they go through and it doesn’t have to be a spouse, or whatever, but just a loss like that-- Nic: Yeah Becky: --or just a life-changing event and you … you’re just like, “wow, I didn’t get it” and I think just trying to make more people aware of that just helps in their understanding as people go through their day to day lives. Like, you know, crap. I may break down crying at some point and I’m sorry but I’ve just got to go through it and you’ve got to accept it and let me go through it. Or whatever that may be, that’s what … and I think just raising awareness I think is just so important. Nic: Yeah. where does your role fall within the work of web accessibility? Becky: Now? Or later? Nic: Yes Becky: So now I’m working with Knowbility and I’m thrilled with that. I met Sharron right when I started in this industry and she’s been one of my biggest fans nice, which is a wonderful thing. But-- and so, a part of I think my work is-- I work on trying to-- part of my job at knowbility is to help work on training, And I think that … that’s again, that’s making people more aware, helping them to understand. Giving them the tools that they need. And that’s some of what my past has done too as far as my work on ARIA or WCAG. Nic: Hold on, your voice is breaking up from the recording. Becky: Oh. Sorry. Do you want me to go back? Nic: Yeah, if you could. Because, yeah. That’s much better. Becky: Okay. So-- Nic: So, I was asking you-- Becky: What I do Nic: Where does your role fall within the work of Web Accessibility. Becky: Right. So I was saying I’m thrilled to be working at Knowbility now. And my primary goal there is to help work on training and again I think that helps me go toward my mission of educating people more and helping to give them the tools that they need to address Web Accessibility and to become more aware. And I’ve done sort of that in the past as well with some of the other work that I’ve done when I was still at IBM. Nic: How did you become aware of web Accessibility and its importance? What kind of gelled everything together? Was it meeting Sharron or was it something else? Becky: No it was before that. So, I was looking for a new job within IBM. I was just fed up with the work I was doing. And before that, I had worked on a project building Java server pages. So we were adding Java Server support to Lotus Notes. At the time it was still called Lotus. And I was tasked with helping to figure out what we needed for tags, build this library and then build the examples. And part of the IBM at the time-- and this was in the early 2000’s-- said our-- anything that has a unit or interface has to be accessible to people with disabilities. So I had to learn about that. Because Java server pages were web-based, right, you’re building a web page-- Nic: Yeah Becky: --and that’s where I met Rich Schwerdtfeger who was at IBM, who became the Chief Accessibility Officer for IBM Software Group. And he was joining the emerging technologies team to set up a group specifically working on accessibility and taking accessibility further than just compliance. And so when that group started he invited me to join that. And that’s how I got into working on accessibility full time. Nic: That’s really neat. Did you ... get barriers in your way when you were trying to learn about accessibility and how to implement it and trying to find that information? Becky: I definitely got tired of hearing that you need to put Alt text on images. So when I would go to do training sessions or, you know, “labels on forms, you need alt text on images”, and some of that basic stuff. And I swore to myself that I would never keep telling people that and I still do to this day. And I apologize when I do it. I said, “I know a lot of you have heard this but I still see those mistakes-- same mistakes being made over and over again” so I do include that when I talk to people. But yeah, I found it hard to find out the more difficult stuff. Like how do you do this? And at the time, I mean, there was still ... WCAG was still in effect and you weren’t-- you were supposed to run without Javascript. So that made it a little bit different. And that’s why-- one of the reasons why I was put on the web content accessibility guidelines 2.0 working group, was to show people that you could make accessible Javascript. Nic: Right. Yeah, and as we know now, it’s really-- we can even use Javascript to make things more accessible. Becky: That’s right. Nic: Yeah… Has your view of accessibility changed over the last 10, 15 years? Becky: I don’t-- I guess I think about it more with the idea of mobile. Certainly, it has changed. It has brought about more of that understanding of it’s more … I get the situational stuff now. Right. Before I didn’t necessarily think about that. You didn’t have a phone in your-- you didn’t have a computer in your pocket that you might want to use when it’s bright outside or when it-- so I think that has made me broaden my idea of accessibility and broaden the fact that there are situational uses. Also the fact of how much more it can do for people with disabilities so people that need to work from home can do that and if the internet and the web tools are accessible then that helps people gain more access to work. And so I think I’ve become more aware of what accessibility can do and the benefits it has and I think that's because of the technology change. Nic: So the change in technology made you more aware of the extent of the importance of accessibility? Becky: Yeah, maybe not more aware of but just ...yeah maybe I guess so. More conscious. More understanding how much it can impact-- the impact it can have. The increasing impact. Nic: Right. That’s interesting the-- as you know I speak to a lot of people for this podcast and I ask that question and you’re the first person to really bring that aspect of it so I like that. Becky: Oh good. I’m glad I can be unique in some way. Nic: Oh, Becky. I know you. You are unique alright. Becky: Yeah probably too much sometimes. Nic: So you mentioned you were part of the working group that gifted us WCAG 2.0. Tell me a little bit more about that work. How did you get involved with the working group? What led to us getting this set of guidelines that was round as is for 10 years before we even got another layer with 2.1. Becky: So, I mean, again with Schwedtfeger who was very active in the WC3 with IBM. IBM was very active and I was at IBM most of my-- pretty much all of my career except for a very few years at the beginning. I started at Lotus, went to IBM and so he was very much-- he-- Rich was very much the father of ARIA. Accessible Rich Internet Applications. And he and Aaron Ramunthel sort of worked together bringing that forward. So in order to be able to use ARIA you certainly had to be able to use Javascript. And so he said, “Becky. You know Javascript and so we need people on the WCAG working group who understand Javascript and can explain the techniques and examples and explain to people that it isn’t this awful, evil thing. That it can be made accessible.” And so that’s sort of how I got put there. And it was a learning curve but I had good help. Andy who was from IBM was on the group. So she helped me along to get settled in. They found out I could take notes really well so I ended up being scribe way too often. And it was interesting. It was sort of my first experience with some of these large groups and of course, WCAG is very large … is a big group. And there's a lot of diverse opinions. But I think we really did try to take into account everyone's-- you know, we let everyone speak. There are a few people that might disagree with that but we tried to let everyone speak if they were reasonable. And you know, John Slatin was on the group and he was amazing and the perspectives he brought and the editing skills and just the patience. So ... and that’s where I focussed. I mean I focussed mainly on the guidelines and techniques that were around. Javascript will say, “Yes, we can do this” and it isn’t as terribly evil. Nic: Yeah. Is there something you wish had been included in WCAG 2.0 that they didn’t? Becky: Hmm, I don’t know. I actually left the group before it actually. I didn’t get to see it all the way through finalization which was a little bit frustrating, but … I guess one of the things that barely made it into 2.1 is some of the color contrast things because I think those are easy ways to make things accessible and the fact that it’s only text and not icons and some of those things, but … no, I don’t have a good answer for that so I should probably stop rambling. Nic: and that’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. In terms of color contrast one of my frustrations is these companies that are saying, “Well, you know, my brand guidelines” and I want to say. “Yeah well your branding is fine but if you have white text against a light orange … maybe that’s your brand but man your brand sucks”. So, yeah I was glad to see some of the color contrast come in through 2.1 but I wanted more strict man, more strict. Becky: Right Nic: Yeah. What’s your favorite word? Becky: Oh I didn’t think about that one. Nic: Haha! I like to throw a curveball once in a while. Becky: Enthusiasm. That’ll be my favourite word today. Nic: Enthusiasm. Why? Becky: just because it has potential. It is like there’s so much hidden potential in that word. You rush into something … sometimes you'll make a mistake, sometimes you'll run in to and discover something that you never thought that you would discover. Just because you went in with sort of an open mind. Enthusiastic, just jump right in. Nic: Yeah. Let’s finish this segment for this week with a positive question. Positive vibration. What’s your greatest achievement in terms of Web Accessibility? Becky: I think my work on ARIA and the Dojo toolkit was probably one of my greatest achievements. Hopefully, I will have more. I have-- in another year or two I’ll have another, bigger one, to say. But, that was really hard, we had people-- I mean, in the beginning, we started as dynamic HTML accessibility. People were like, “No, you’re ruining things. You’ve got to get rid of Javascript”. In the beginning a lot of people-- there were a lot of people that really were against it. And there still are people that are against it. And I see that. It is somewhat of a Band-Aid but it was a necessary one. But, you know, we also realised we had to prove it would work. So IBM wanted a toolkit that was accessible so they funded myself and other colleagues to work on making the Dojo open source toolkit accessible. And Dojo sort of not as popular as it was back then. Times have changed. But at the time it was the first Javascript toolkit that had a fully accessible widget set. Nic: Wow Becky: And so that, to me, that was an accomplish-- that’s how I met Sharron because that’s what I was-- Sharron Rush at Knowbility. That’s when I was talking about dynamic HTML accessibility at CSUN where it had a name. And so I was really honoured to be able to work on that. And I remember how interesting it was when I heard other people talking about ARIA. I was like, wow it really is a thing now. It’s not just the three of us, Aaron, Rich and I that are talking about it. It’s really a thing, it's really happening. And so I think that for me was the biggest thing. Nic: Well I think it’s certainly a big achievement that has had a big impact on people. Still has an impact on people. I mean, I speak about ARIA all the time. Hey, who came up with the first rule of ARIA. You know, don’t use ARIA if you can help it? Becky: I’m not sure it was us. It was funny that one of the times that I heard somebody talk about ARIA they were talking about how people would just put it in and expect the things to just work. And I was like, “What do you mean. You’ve got to put in all the Javascript behind it” and, so that’s not really answering your question, but, that’s when I started hearing that too. The first rule of ARIA is don’t use it. I won’t say that we didn’t think that. It was like, look if you need-- if you’re making a select, use a select. You don’t have to make a fancy one. If you’re using a button, use a button. I mean, I still tell people that. And you look at some of the toolkits and it’s like, “oh you want a button. You use this anchor link and then you stick a role on it”. And I’m like, “Why” but yeah. So I don’t know where that-- who came up with that. But I’m not sure it was the three of us. We might, we probably said it but not that cleverly. Nic: Right. Yeah fair enough. Hey, Becky. Thank you for this great conversation. Let’s wrap it up and reconvene next week. Becky: Okay, that sounds great. Nic: Alright Becky: Thank you Nic: Thank you. Folks out there, thank you for listening and don’t miss part two which will be made available next week. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E54 – Interview with Nic Steenhout – Part 2 Aug 23, 2018

"It’s a frustration of mine that too often when somebody asks me a question about accessibility, the only answer I can really give if I want to be succinct is, “It depends”." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript The second part of my chat with Léonie, in which she interviews me! "It’s a frustration of mine that too often when somebody asks me a question about accessibility, the only answer I can really give if I want to be succinct is, “It depends”." Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 54. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with Web Accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So this week we are continuing my conversation with Léonie but in this episode as per last week, it’s not me interviewing Léonie. It’s her interviewing me and asking me questions that I normally ask other people. So, Hey Léonie, thanks for last week and thanks for coming back and I’m entirely yours to interrogate. Léonie: Thanks Nic, it’s good to be back. I’m going to dive in with a pretty serious question now, I think. What are the biggest barriers you’ve experienced in trying to make the web more accessible over the years? Nic: It’s this idea that many developers have that you can’t tack on accessibility after the fact. I was invited to be on the Joomla CSS core team when they first started after they fought for Mambo and they asked me on board specifically because I had been making a pain of myself on the Mambo forums always talking about accessibility, and they said, “Hey, Nic. Why don’t you join and we can make it accessible.” And, I lasted about a year because I ended up refactoring all the code to make it accessible and at the end, they said, “Well, maybe we’ll keep it as a third party plugin”. And that was soul destroying. Now, I haven’t looked at Joomla! in nearly 10 years so I don’t know where they're at. I don’t know if they’ve changed their approach to accessibility but that really was symptomatic of what I find a lot of. And I mention Joomla! because it’s part of my experience. Not because I want to pick on them. The folks involved now are not the same that were involved then. But, we find a lot of that. It’s like, we’re designing this website and at the end, we are going to run quality assurance and test for accessibility. Well, no. You can’t do that. You know, you complain accessibility is expensive and yes, of course it is. Because it takes a lot to refactor code and go in and fix things. It’s like if you were building a house, right? You build it with a narrow door and two front steps in the entrance. It’s going to be very expensive to put in a ramp and widen the door. But if you had put it a level entrance and a wide door to start with your extra costs would have been negligible. I think it’s the same thing on the web. Léonie: I tend to agree. What I find really interesting about that mindset, when I encounter it, is that usually, it’s teams that would not apply the same logic to any other part of their development. If they were talking about-- last week privacy, security, the technical debt that people can accumulate through the life cycle of a project is enormous, and most good developers and development teams will go out of their way to avoid collecting technical dat. But for some reason with accessibility, somebody somewhere goes, “it’s fine” Nic: Yeah, it is fine. No problem. We’ll just, you know, third party plugin after the fact. So, I think that’s probably my biggest frustration in terms of accessibility. There’s a lot of little things that I find annoying, but, this attitude that accessibility can be thought of after the fact, and perhaps in a way it annoys me so much not only because it doesn’t work very well but also because it reflects the attitude of some that people with disabilities don’t really count --It’s ok, we can care about them after the fact. We don’t need to include them-- and, sorry, we just want to be part of things. Léonie: Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned last week there were some great reasons for independence and freedom of thought and action. Being able to do stuff online if you have a disability. Nic: Yeah Léonie: Yeah, it’s incredibly important. I’m going to have to ask though, tell me about some of the other little things that irritate you. Nic: It’s a frustration of mine that too often when somebody asks me a question about accessibility the only answer I can really give if I want to be succinct is, “It depends”. It’s having to keep in mind that depending on the context and the situation the answer about what is accessible and what is less accessible varies and changes. And I am annoyed on the behalf of the people that ask me a question when I have to open up with, “It depends”. Of course, you go in and give more information and you can expand on that and give different solutions but people are wanting black or white and too often we have to give them grey. Léonie: Do you think that people want more black or white when it comes to accessibility because they recognize the importance of what they're trying to do? I mean all answers in technology seem to start with, “It depends” but accessibility is maybe something that needs a little more clarity. Nic: I think that they want black or white because it’s something that's completely beyond their experience. Their lived experience. They don't know very much at all and that’s normal to not be aware of the experience of a screen reader user or someone who needs high contrast or someone that uses only a keyboard or any of these variations. It’s normal not to be aware of these experiences because you don’t know anyone that has a disability, you can only build that understanding from theoretical knowledge. So, when you don’t know and even if you want to, you know, you’re there and you want to do the right thing you just don’t know how and you're afraid of messing up. So having a single straight, single, applicable answer is a lot better for people than giving different scenarios. Léonie: And how much of this do you think we still need to fix in terms of educating young designers, developed, UXers... Nic: Ooh I so wish accessibility was an integral part of every curriculum out there. One of my frustration 20 years ago was that architects in a four year degree would get maybe four, six hours worth of accessibility tuition and I look at computer science degrees or multimedia design degrees and all that and I don’t even know that they get that much about accessibility and I think that is-- it’s one of the basic skill set that developers or designers must have and unless it’s taught in school, unless it’s covered in all these myriads of tutorials online, I think we are still going to end up with people that don’t have the knowledge, don’t have the skills. Léonie: Yeah, I agree. And I know Knowbility is involved in Teach Access-- Nic: Yes Léonie: --which is something the Paciello Group is also involved in. Can you suggest whether you think that’s the right sort of approach? Nic: I think teach access is definitely a very solid approach. The problem with it is it doesn’t have enough of a reach yet. It’s not known well enough yet, It hasn’t had the impact that it should have and that's not blaming or making fault with the program itself or the people involved in it. I mean they’re doing a brilliant job but there’s only so much that can be done to be able to reach all the different programs out there. All the nooks and crannies and you know, reach in the States obviously but in Canada and everywhere. India even. We have so many developers coming out of India nowadays that we need to make sure things are reaching out that way as well. Léonie: Absolutely. It does seem like a good approach though, trying to get this into the curricula. Of course [crosstalk] schools. Nic: It’s got to be in the curricula. Absolutely. Léonie: Yeah, I think so. So, looking back, a question now. What's the best thing, or the thing you look back on with the most affection that you’ve accomplished in your time working in accessibility? What are you most proud of? Nic: I can’t think of a single thing that’s, you know, “oh wow, I’m so proud of this”. I haven’t written a book about accessibility and I think there’s a lot of great books out there but it’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind. But  I, you know, I don’t have any single event like that but I think what I’m most proud of is the general accumulation of all the advocacy and the education that I’ve managed to do and get people to perceive accessibility as something being valuable and worth doing and that they actually go in and do. Over the years, over 20 years I don’t know how many dozens or even hundreds of people I’ve been able to influence but I think that that’s to me what I’m most proud of … is getting people to understand just how important accessibility is and that they can do it too. Léonie: I think that that’s a real accomplishment to be proud of. You know if I look back maybe five or six years accessibility was still something that was very much within the accessibility community but now you look at most international conferences for the web … there’s an accessibility feature there. We’ve got all sorts of publications, Smashing magazine, Net magazine, talking and writing about accessibility. Nic: In 2014 I was invited to speak at OSCON conference in- I think it was in Portland then, and they had all these themed tables. So they had software architecture table and they had design table and they had security table but they didn’t have an accessibility table and I said, “Hey”, you know, “you really should have an accessibility range table” and they said, “Oh, yeah, yeah we should” and the following day they had handwritten a sign and suddenly there was an accessibility table. And this year I was invited to speak at O’Reilly Fluent and low and behold there was actually planned ahead of time, and accessibility themed table at lunchtime. Léonie: Excellent Nic: So I’m seeing these kinds of things that are seeping in. I speak at a fairly large number of open source conferences and it’s actually quite rewarding to see that more and more when they list the topics of the things they want to have people pitch talks about, accessibility is more and more one of them, so it’s great. Léonie: And do you get a sense that people who create products, whether they’re designers, UXers, interaction people, developers, really want to get accessibility right but sometimes they're under pressure by perhaps their project managers, their budget, their timelines … to cut some of the corners. Nic: Yeah … it is an issue and I speak to a lot of developers that come to me at conferences particularly that say, “Hey Nic, I want to make this happen but I don’t have the money” or I have project managers that say, “Well it wasn’t part of the brief. The client doesn’t want to pay extra for accessibility” and what I tell these people is, “Do it guerilla accessibility. Do it under the hood. Do it despite what your client wants” and I often say, “Well do you charge extra to your client to have a secure site? Or performing site” and they say, “no” … “So why charge extra to your client for an accessible site? Just make it as part and parcel of your services. And it’s not going to take very long for clients to realize, “Hey! you know, if I go to this design firm they are actually going to give me something that’s going to protect me from liability from accessibility lawsuits so I’m going to pick them”. And if you’re the lone developer that doesn’t have the support necessary to make it happen … well if you include it in what you do you have the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done what you could and chances are the way you’ve written stuff it’s going to make it to final release and you’re going to have made a difference. Léonie: Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about the web as it is today … what do you consider to be your biggest frustration in accessibility terms? Nic: It’s funny, I knew this question was coming and I can’t really put my finger on one greatest frustration. Definitely what we spoke about already. A little bit is the fact that accessibility is often thought about at the last minute. There’s ... I guess a question of attitudes that I find frustrating. It’s this idea that, “Well, we don’t have anybody with disabilities coming to our website so why should we make it accessible” ... that kind of mindset I find very frustrating. But it’s also at the same time very fun and very rewarding to be able to make people who think like that suddenly realize, “Oh well, actually maybe nobody with disabilities comes to our website because it’s not accessible” or “Maybe I don’t know how many people with disabilities actually come to my website”. So, yeah. I think attitudes is probably the most frustrating thing for me. Léonie: In what sense? Nic: In that sense that accessibility isn’t important. People with disabilities aren’t important. We won’t put priority on accessibility … that kind of mindset is frustrating. Léonie: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Do you think it’s changing? I seem to spend less time these years explaining to people that as a blind person I can and do use technology than I used to perhaps 10 or 20 years ago. Has that changed from your point of view? Nic: Yeah I think people are becoming more aware of things like that. But then you’ll also … not also, but you still get people that question. But a mate of mine who was blind, back in Savannah, GA got really frustrated because people asked him, “So, who picks your clothes in the morning?” and he was really frustrated. And I get really frustrated when I go do grocery shopping and people say, “Oh wow. It’s so good that you’re doing grocery shopping”. And I’m thinking, well it’s not because I’m in a wheelchair that I stop needing to eat. And then people are really surprised that I get in a car and drive and I have a mobility assistance dog and people think he’s a guide dog and I’ve been told, “Whoa whoa whoa, you can’t get behind the wheel of a car. You can’t drive, you’re blind”. Yeah, it’s hilarious when you think about it but when it happens it’s just annoying. So yeah people are getting more aware but you still have pockets here and there of things that you think it should be the ABC and you realize that, no, even as basic as it is you’re still having to educate people. Léonie: I think it’s one of those difficult things isn’t it. People don't know what they don’t know so I’ll try to be patient if I think that’s the case. Nic: Yes Léonie: It’s when you get the deliberately silly questions that I tend to run out of patience. But, you know. Nic: It’s also when you’ve been asked a silly question once on your shopping trip … yeah alright. But when it’s the 12th or 13th or 15th time unfortunately sometimes my patience wears short. I’m never rude with people but sometimes I get a little bit more curt. Léonie: Yeah. And that’s fair enough. That’s just human nature isn’t it. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Léonie: So, back on accessibility, again. Is there something, if you could think of one piece of information that you think is … received wisdom in the industry about accessibility. What would you choose? Nic: I don’t think … I think the question has two different answers depending on context. If we’re talking about within the Web Accessibility community or if we’re talking about general knowledge of anybody that is in web development I think that the answers would be different. I think within the accessibility community itself the message that I see more and more and more is really about including accessibility from the start of any project. And this concept that it’s about everybody. From the general context, I think the general wisdom is that accessibility is difficult. Now I don’t think they're right. I don’t think accessibility is difficult but I think that's the perception out there that is universal. That it’s difficult and it’s expensive. And we have to change that attitude because it’s neither difficult nor expensive if you do it right. Léonie: Yeah I think you’re right. And do you think that that attitude is … any reason … the reason that people often fail with accessibility? Or something else a more common cause? Nic: I think people fail to implement Web Accessibility because they’re afraid of not doing it right. And they prefer to not do anything rather than implement a few things that might make a difference. I think people are not even trying because they’re thinking, “Well, I can’t make that website work for a person that’s blind, deaf and paralyzed from the neck down. You know, immediately jump to the edge case when in fact we could get maybe the little hanging fruits. We may be able to get 60 or 70 or even 80 percent with accessibility with a minimum effort. So, yeah I think people are afraid of doing the wrong thing and just don’t do it. Léonie: I think you’re absolutely right. Perfect sometimes the enemy of good as they say. Nic: Yes. Léonie: So, I don’t think we have too much longer now. So a question. Looking forward now. What do you think the greatest challenge we face as a profession, a community will be? Nic: Adapting to new technologies. We’re having more and more different inputs. So, you know, we have Alexa and Siri and voice input and I think that as a community, people working in Web Accessibility has to get used to working in different ways. And we have to adapt our mindset to that. We have to look at how artificial intelligence can actually help with accessibility and how we’re going to have to pivot to keep doing the work we want to do and improve accessibility for everyone. Keeping in mind these new technologies. Léonie: Do you think there’s-- you mentioned AI-- Do you think there's a tendency, perhaps in the industry at large but certainly with accessibility, that we’re rushing towards AI as a solution to all our problems in accessibility? Nic: Maybe. I personally like to think of AI as one more possible tool in the toolbox of making things work. But I think there’s also a lot of risk to give up our responsibility to accessibility entirely unto AI. Or it’s not ready for prime time and it might never be. In a way, Google captions-- not Google captions, YouTube captions, on the web, automated captions is an early form of AI and they’ve been doing these automated captions for 10 years or so and still more craptions than captions. So maybe it will get better with time but I don’t think we should be relying entirely on that. But at the same time, we shouldn’t just ignore this new technology because it’s not ready yet. We have to do the work to get it ready. It’s a bit of both I think. Léonie: And I think with accessibility it’s interesting. You know, artificial intelligence is certainly intelligent by the standards of the technology and being artificial but it’s a long way between artificially intelligent and artificially human. And accessibility is so much about being human. Nic: Yeah, it’s about people. Accessibility is definitely about people. Yeah. Léonie: It is. Okay. One very quick curveball question now. What’s your favourite word? Nic: Bugger Léonie: Excellent. That is possibly the best answer to that question. Nic: I-- My favourite word varies from day to day but I really quite like the word bugger. It’s-- I know it is perceived very differently depending on where you are. And my listeners in the U.S might have a wildly different reaction, but I learned that word when I lived in New Zealand for 10 years and it’s used as a swear word, as an exclamation, as a-- oh, it’s just great and .. yeah. Léonie: Very much like it is in British English-- Nic: Yes Léonie: --so I approve wholeheartedly. A last question then just because I do think we need to wrap up now. If you could leave everybody with one thought or one piece of advice about accessibility, what would that be? Nic: Accessibility is about people. Accessibility is about the people that use your website, your apps. Accessibility is about the people that designs your websites and apps and code it and it’s also about you. Maybe not the you of today but maybe the future you or people you know. So, it’s really … it’s a technical challenge to reach human solutions. Léonie: Yeah. that’s actually a great thought to leave people with. Thank you Nic and thank you very much for letting me come in and ask you all these questions. Nic: Thank you for being candid and asking me these questions and making them your own. So I had a lot of fun to be in the seat of the person being interviewed. So thank you so much. Léonie: You’re welcome. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at a11y.store Catch you next time!

E53 – Interview with Nic Steenhout – Part 1 Aug 16, 2018

In a role reversal, for the first episode of the second year of the show - I'm the one being interviewed :) Léonie Watson was kind enough to chat with me. It was fun to be on the other side of things :) Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 53. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So, this week the roles are reversed. I’m the guest. Yeah. I took the suggestion that the second year of the podcast I should be the one answering the questions I usually ask. So, I asked Léonie Watson to interview me, and she graciously accepted. Hi Léonie Léonie: Hi Nic. It’s great and thank you for the invitation to be the one who gets to reverse the roles on you. Nic: Well, thank you for accepting. I think it’s going to be fun. So, well, here I am. I’m anxiously awaiting your grilling. So, shall we do it? Léonie: Let’s do it. And let’s make it easy. How about you just introduce yourself to the listeners. Nic: Right, so for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Nic. I’m doing web accessibility and I’ve been involved in one way or another with accessibility since the mid-1990’s. I have a background as a disability rights activist. So, before doing web accessibility I was doing physical structure accessibility and accessibility services. Mostly in the United States and New Zealand and so now I work for Knowbility as a web accessibility specialist. I do a lot of public speaking about, strangely enough, accessibility and consulting, training … that kind of stuff. Léonie: Great and you’re very well known to our community and it’s good for those who may not know you to have a little bit of your background. But, I’m going to kick off with the first question and actually ask you … Can you tell us something about yourself that perhaps none of us out there listening to this podcast will know? Nic: Oh, none of you? Oh, that’s … See, I could tell you that I’m actually a chef by trade. It’s what I started my life as when I left school. But some of you may know that, so, that’s not ‘none of you’. Well, there you go. I actually spent about four years of my life in West Africa. Léonie: Wow Nic: I was born in Greece and I’m from a Belgium father and a French Canadian mother so I’m a bit of a Heinz 57 mix. Léonie: That’s great and really interesting to find that out. Particularly that you started off life as a chef. I think there’s a lot of people in our industry who started off in one career and then found their way into accessibility. Through many different routes. What was it that got you into the web and accessibility? Nic: Well I became a wheelchair user in my mid 20’s and I was lucky enough to be spending some time in Chicago and I didn’t have anything to do with myself while I was waiting for my Green card to come through and I decided to volunteer in a centre for dependant living. A non-profit operated for and by people with disabilities. Non-residential. So I became involved there and very soon after I started volunteering there I was able to start working there and I had a colleague- one colleague, Horatio, he was blind and one day he walked into my office, he was really livid. He said, “Nic, you’re dealing with the web, right?” and I said, “Yeah”. He says, “So, why is it I go on a webpage and my screen reader says, “Image, image, image, image, image, image, image, image, image, image” So, I looked at the webpage and this was the time when we didn’t really have CSS to design anything and the designer thought it was a great idea to create designs in Photoshop and slice the menu, that has a very nice font and use that for the menu. So it was totally unusable. So that was my first kind of aha moment about web accessibility. I had been playing with HTML for awhile but I had been doing a lot of physical buildings, built environment accessibility audits. A couple of weeks later I had a consumer come to me and she said, “Nic, I love the web but I’m having such a hard time because I have ADHD and all the different font sizes, colors, flashing things-- I mean, at the time the marquis tag was still in use, which it should've been criminal but- she was really struggling. So we sat together and basically we created a user style sheet. A little bit of a CSS Reset kind of thing for her to basically reset everything to manageable sizes and colors that weren’t distracting to her. And the last bit, so it kind of like happened in three events in the space of about a month. My deaf services coordinator at the time came into the office and asked me to help her setting up her printer because the instructions with her printer came on a video on a CD Rom. And of course, there were no captions for the CD, so that really was like I, you know pushed into the deep end of the cold water pool to say, “Hey! You care about accessibility but you haven't really thought about web accessibility and 20 something-- 25 years later, here I am. Léonie: And of course, the accessibility and digital on the web, people were thinking about it but it certainly wasn’t a commonplace thing if you’re talking mid 90’s, it took another four or five years before we got the first set of web content accessibility guidelines Nic: Yeah Léonie: Was it something you thought you could change, influence, improve? Is that what appealed to you? Nic: I think what appealed to me was really this feeling that for me accessibility is important. I like to have everybody be able to participate and access. Whether it’s access to information, entertainment, services, whichever and I really care about that as a whole and I thought that there was so much to be done because on the web really there's no reason to have barriers so I was thinking, well, it’s difficult for me to go to the grocery store and it’s difficult for Horatio to go to the grocery store but if Peapod is online, a grocery shopping service is online, why can’t we make it accessibility so it's actually easier for everybody to do that. So it wasn’t so much in terms of changing the world, but trying to pass a message a little bit at a time. Doing-- being an evangelist … advocate about accessibility. Léonie: And do you think the message is getting out there? Is it working? Nic: Sometimes it feels like it’s one step forward and two steps back. It’s been two decades that we are advocating and we are saying, “look, you’ve got to deal with the alt attribute on the images. You have got to do something about that.” And I would’ve hoped-- if I placed myself back 20 years I would’ve hoped that this was not a message that we would still have to put through. I would have hoped that a senior VP of user experience would actually understand how a screen reader handles images. How resizing text is important. How color contrast-- and I’m sorry if your branding is so poor that it’s got not contrast but it’s not just about people with low vision, it’s about you on your phone outside in full sun. All these things, I would’ve thought we would’ve been further along and been able to actually focus on really complex, juicy accessibility issues like tabbed interface or what not. Léonie: Yeah I think that’s right. I remember in the earlier days of my experience accessibility we had great hopes that as the population aged as those of us who were younger then moved into more senior positions within companies and as we aged there would be more natural understanding of some of the challenges out there and I think that’s happening to a certain extent but-- What do you think? Nic: It is happening, there's been a flurry of lawsuits in the United States in the last 18 months or so and I’m not particularly fond of making change through lawsuits but sometimes it’s what raises awareness of the issues, you know, people saying, “Oh, well, so and so is getting sued. Maybe I’m going to get sued, I need to have a look”. But more and more I actually interact with clients that obviously they’re interested in making sure they don’t have any liability but they approach it more and more from a corporate social responsibility approach. They want to do the right thing and they want to do the right thing right. Which to me is always refreshing when that happens. To go beyond the standards, beyond the guideline and make sure things are actually working for clients, visitors, people actually using their apps or systems. Léonie: And that's when it moves from being something that has to be done into something that's done because you want your product to be the best that it can be. Nic: Yeah Léonie: People put time and money into choosing the best fabrics, or the right materials .. you know, the right platforms and technologies for all sorts of things. I really think, and I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s where accessibility needs to be. It’s part of making a really damn good product. Nic: Yeah. It certainly is. For a long time people were not really conscious about the need for security and obviously there's more and more consciousness about security. Performance is a massive aspect about developing apps and websites and I think that we have to have accessibility considered in the same way as security and performance, right from the start of the project and just weave it in so tightly that it’s just part of what we do. Léonie: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. So, in your introduction at the start, you mentioned that you spent some time as an accessibility activist. Nic: Yeah Léonie: What sort of thing does that involve? What did it involve? Nic: Oh, well, this was mid-1990’s. In the United States, there was a lot of issues with people with disabilities being forced in nursing homes rather than living in their own homes just because they could not afford modifications of the apartment for accessibility or they couldn’t afford a personal care attendant when they needed it, or, any number of reasons. So we had at the time, something like 21% of people living in nursing homes were below the age of 40 just because they had a disability-- Léonie: Wow Nic: -And, yeah, it’s mind-boggling. And of course, people were just really, what’s the word I’m looking for … they were in the dumps about that. Obviously. So we were working to establish programs to deinstitutionalize people. So make sure that those people that wanted to go back and live in the community could. So make sure that the money that was assigned to them did not go straight to the nursing home but was given to them to handle and manage how they want. So instead of costing, maybe $100,000 to keep someone in a nursing home, they could be spending maybe $35- $40,000 for them to live in their own homes in the community with the same level of support. So, a lot of that advocacy involved talking to legislatures … which was more advocacy than lobbying it was really doing education and once the legislatures met with us then we were able to explain the issues, but often also the legislatures would not want to meet us and then we would do protests. And so we would gather in front of their buildings, call the press and make the message heard. So that was one kind of advocacy. I’ve had some real fun participating in actions organized by adapt, a disability rights group in the US and then-- it’s very powerful when you’re one of 3,4, 500 people with disabilities all protesting. It’s a very empowering feeling to know that-- yeah, that’s that. And of course, there’s more mild things like doing training, doing presentations to whether it’s a hospital or city council about what accessibility is and why it’s important and how they can do small things to impact greatly some people. Léonie: And it must be great to look back on the more active activism-- that is if I can phrase it that way, With a sense of accomplishment because things have changed. How do you see your role now within accessibility? Nic: I’m certainly a lot more tamed than I was in my younger, foolisher days. I, you know, there’s still space for a bit more in your face activism but I’m approaching things in the more-- in a less confrontational manner, nowadays. I think that you approach people first with the assumption that if they’re not implementing accessibility it’s not because they don’t want to but that they just don’t know about it. They’re lacking that awareness of things. And from there you take steps to educate and then you start tightening the screws when nothing changes. Maybe you’ve seen that on Twitter but I’ve been on a campaign to try to make Patreon accessible, it is horrible from an accessibility perspective and it’s the only platform of it’s kind. I actually have my podcast on Patreon and it really hurts me that it’s not accessible to a lot of people that are in interested in the podcast and can’t participate in one way or another so, I've been working with them ,or trying to work with them, for more than a year now and the more I try to get them to change things the less they respond so I’m ready to see some stronger activity than, “Hey, you should do this because it’s the right thing and it’s not that difficult” so, yeah, I think today I approach things less confrontationally and more in the spirit of education and working together. Léonie: Yeah, makes sense. I think it’s also about choosing the right approach for the moment, isn’t it? Nic: Yeah. Yeah, yeah it definitely is the right approach for the moment and the approach can change over time with the circumstances and the context. Léonie: I remembered being asked to-- about this, years ago and actually saying the one thing that will drive me to my lawyer is not necessarily finding that something’s inaccessible in the first place-- Nic: Yeah Léonie: -- but it’s the getting the wrong reaction when I report the problem. Nic: That’s exactly right. Yes. Léonie: Yes, absolutely. So, clearly, you’ve had a great career in accessibility taking you through many different roles. What do you think you would have done in life if you hadn’t have fallen into accessibility? Would you have carried on as a chef or chosen a different path do you think? Nic: I very likely would’ve remained as a chef. It’s interesting because looking backwards I think professional cooking is a sport for young people who work extremely long hours in a stressful environment. You work evenings, you work weekends, you work all the holidays and it’s a very physically and mentally tough career. It doesn’t pay very much unless you become really top of your game and you’re a celebrity chef just about. But it’s so rewarding. It allows you to express your creative interests. It’s just really cool and I still cook but it’s not the same to cook at home for two or maybe five, six, seven people and know that you are going be feeding 200 people in an hour. It’s not the same thing, and I really love that. So, chances I would still be cooking nowadays, yeah. Léonie: It sounds like we can probably draw some parallels between the two careers. I think there's a lot about accessibility that’s rewarding, incredibly difficult, time-consuming … Nic: Yeah, yeah. I-- you know one of the things that I joke about once in a while is that being a chef taught me about an agile mindset before agile was a thing in computers because it’s being able to pivot and plan and all these things. So, in many ways cooking taught me transferable skills that I’m actually using today. Léonie: that makes sense actually. It’s actually a lot to do with, as you say, pivoting, thinking on your feet. But also the importance of planning, timing and balances and ratios … all of those kinds of things. Nic: Yeah and letting your teams actually decide how they’re going to get to where they need to get. Léonie: Oh, that's a good point. That’s probably a whole talk and a blog post if not a podcast in there somewhere. Nic: It might be, yeah, it might be. Léonie: So, do you now, at your point in your career and your life … what does web accessibility mean to you at the moment? Nic: It means building systems that are usable without frustration for everybody. Regardless of their level of ability. So it’s really about making sure that obviously people with disabilities, all disabilities are able to use a site or an app but it’s also about inclusion and making sure that everybody has the same access. I don’t care if somebody is, has a cognitive disability and needs language that’s easier to understand or maybe pictograms or if somebody is a speaker of a language so English is their third language and they actually are benefiting from simpler language or pictograms … those two for me are just about as important as one another. Obviously, accessibility is primarily to make sure that people with disabilities can access content but I think that we can’t just focus on that because the impact of what we do goes well beyond the 20 percent or so of people with disabilities that are in our society. Léonie: Yeah, absolutely. And-- Do you think that part of that is because the word accessible has been around for a long long time but of course, in the past couple of decades it’s become more strictly defined as making something available to someone with a disability and we have legal definitions for those things. Do you think there's a need for us to return to the more expansive definition of the word accessible that does include people who have disabilities but also, as you say, people with language difficulties, people who are busy in sunlight and can’t see the screen properly … all of those things? Nic: I think we have to look at the context again. In a legal context, I think it’s very important to define that accessibility is for people with disabilities. Whether we’re in a litigious society like the United States or different societies, whether it’s the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Canada. Regardless of where you are you have to have that legal definition because let’s face it. We are still in a world context where a lot of things don't happen unless it’s mandated by a legislation. But when we’re talking, education, evangelizing about accessibility I think it’s really important to address the side benefits of making things accessible for people with disabilities. If only for the organization’s leadership that actually realize suddenly, “Hey, if I make this accessible for people with disabilities I’m making life easier for everybody else and chances are clients are going to pick us because it’s easier to use than our competitor.” Léonie: Has your own, sort of, definition of accessibility changed over the years do you think? Nic: Not really. It’s long been about his concept that we want to make things work for everyone. I vividly remember going to talk to a city council in Illinois one day and I said, “Look, yes the American with Disabilities Act says you have to put in curb cuts, and curb cuts are not just about people using wheelchairs. They’re also about parents pushing prams. They’re about the delivery guy with the heavy dolly that he needs to get on to the sidewalk. They’re about kids on skateboards, they’re about a whole variety of people that go beyond just people with disabilities”. And I think that understanding has just kept on flowing for me. From those days to web accessibility today. Léonie: Makes sense Nic: Hey, sorry, it’s about half an hour in should we wrap up for this week and resume next week? Léonie: That sounds good for me. Nic: Alright, well. Folks, thanks for listening to me answer the questions and Léonie thank you for asking me those questions and let’s resume that next week. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at a11y.store. Catch you next time!

E52 – Interview with Eric Meyer – Part 2 Aug 09, 2018

Eric says that accessibility "is a foundational principle of the web. Like literally the web is built on accessibility. The original specs don’t necessarily call it that, but that’s an organizing principle of the web. And to try to ignore it or overcome it is a lot like trying to paddle upstream". Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 52. Oh my! 52 weeks of podcasting about accessibility. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you are interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you.  To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com.  In this episode, I’m continuing my conversation with Eric Meyer. Last show was really awesome, we talked a lot about where we’ve been and maybe today we are going to talk a little bit more about where we are going. Hi Eric, thanks for joining me again. Eric: Hello! Thanks for having me back. Nic: Yeah, So- We were talking last week about-- your views of accessibility that haven't really changed in about forming new people and we were talking a little bit about achievement in terms of web accessibility. So let's flip that question and go down the path of … What have you done that you regret most in terms of web accessibility in your career? Eric: Focus {outline: 0} in the first CSS reset. It’s far and away the biggest one. Nic: I have to say that I routinely end up swearing at you in my own head when I do accessibility audits. And I see that and I go back to clients and they say, “Oh but but but Eric Meyer did that”. So yeah- Eric: Did you show them the comment that I had in here [unintelligible 02:05] coz, right, so-- For those who aren’t familiar with the history, I’ll just very quickly sketch it. So I wrote this thing called a CSS Reset. The idea of which was to have all browsers be on a level playing field. By removing margins and font sizing and all that stuff. And the idea was that people would take that reset and then tune it to their own, what I think-- what I call Reboot. So normalized .css is actually an example of a reboot style sheet Nic: Yeah Eric: That’s a modified reset, right. So that instead of just, ”Let's make all the text look the same, like literally all the same size and weight and everything. Normalize is a reboot in that it says ok let's make things look nice. Basic but nice. And it has font faces and sizes and a background colour for the body. That’s not-- that’s what I thought people would do and it’s what I encouraged them to do with the reset was adapted but people would just take it and slap it in wholesale and then override things. So, anyway. There's a point in that original reset where I said-- so I’ve forgotten exactly, but a:link, a:visited, sorry a:focus {outline:0}, or outline: none. Now there’s a comment right next to it that says, “Remember to set a focus” Set a focus style. But what I was thinking was, well I’m clearing the decks and this needs to-- I need to clear the decks here too and then I’ll just remind people to create an outline that fits in with the design they’re creating. Well, people didn’t. Nic: People rarely read the manual, right? They just-- Eric: Yeah, yeah. And I made naive assumptions about how it would get used and a part of it is that the CSS- the original Rest got pasted into the top of the default Wordpress theme. And it’s persisted for, I don’t-- I’m not sure if they’ve updated to the newer reset since then but it persisted for years. Like, literally 2011 or 2010 or whatever the first-- I think 2010 was the first one. And it was just right there. And it actually is a literal paste because it has the URL of the page on my web so I still get emailed to this day on about a monthly basis saying, “Your theme doesn’t work can you help me fix it?” and it’s a theme I’ve never heard of and it’s just because whoever developed the theme saw this in the default Wordpress theme and just kept doing it. Anyway, so in CSS Reset version two, which is a few years old now I set an explicit focus. But I feel badly myself everytime I see it in a style sheet so you’re absolutely warranted in swearing at me. I just-- Nic: Yeah, yeah but it’s mostly tongue in cheek. It’s-- I think that the idea of the CSS reset was brilliant and my-- I guess my moment of enlightenment about accessibility came in three phases, The first time was a colleague who was a screen reader user who was-- he came to me and he said “Nic why is it that my screen reader get’s on this page and it says image image image image image image image?” And it was at a time when we had no other ways than using a Photoshop slice of nice looking fonts for menu items so this page was using all images and no alt for the menu and the last part of that enlightenment for me was when a friend of mine with quite severe ADHD could actually not function on the web because of all the different font sizes and colours and I basically wrote for her a-- which was a user style sheet that she was able to reset her own stuff. Eric: Nice Nic: So when I saw your thing I thought, “Oh yeah”, I wasn’t too far off because Eric Meyer is doing something like that so that really worked, It’s just one of those unfortunate things that people did not read the comment that you have to fix it before you release it to the wild, so-- Eric: Yeah, and if I had developed that after I developed a design for real life maybe I would’ve caught it. Well, co-wrote, excuse me I didn’t write design for real life by myself. But maybe I would've thought through all of those scenarios and thought to myself, “ Given what I know of programmers how many of them are going to read the comments”. But I just, I didn't-- Nic: Yeah, It’s the thing that when we are young we don’t know what we are doing and when we are a bit older we have more wisdom but we can’t go back and fix our mistakes from youth.  What would you say your greatest frustration is in terms of web accessibility? Eric: Well, okay, besides the thing we just talked about. Because it does frustrate me that I can’t send an email that ever used the reset and just say “look, fix this”.  But anyway, that’s what I get for not using a license I guess. My biggest frustration in terms of web accessibility, I think it’s still that-- I think it’s the lack of a proper document outline. I know we had the document outline algorithm and then it just-- it failed. And so I guess taking half a step back my biggest frustration is Heading levels. Which the document outline algorithm was supposed to fix. And because I-- when I’m creating content-- like at the beginning of this year I just redesigned my web and I live streamed the whole thing, well almost the entire thing. And there's a whole section where I’m-- I’m just talking aloud to myself about what am I supposed to do about Heading levels? Because on some pages the name of the site should be an h1, but not many. On most of them, something else should be the h1 and then on a blog-- on a specific blog post page, like on the individual permalink page for a blog post, the post title should be the h1. But then on the home page where I summar-- like I have the most recent ones, those should be h2’s and what am I supposed to do here? And it just it gets-- I Mean, I came up with solutions that mostly involve wrapping the post in a PHP function that I pass a parameter saying you should do this or you should do this and it spits out the title as either an h1 or an h2 depending. But then what do I do with the headings inside of the post, if I have subheadings. Like, I almost never write subheadings in my posts specifically because of this because if I make them h3’s on some pages it’s going to go from an h1 to an h3 with no intervening h2 and what the hell am I supposed to do about that;. So that frustrates me immensely, And it frustrates me more that there was a solution and it died. I think. Nic: It is quite frustrating and I have to say that this heading levels proper document outline is one of the issues that I encounter a lot doing accessibility audits and I have to explain to people that we have two thirds of screen reader users actually rely on headings not only to understand the structure of a page but to navigate the page itself. So, then we have skipped heading levels or it just doesn't make sense and suddenly we have visitors trying to understand, well,"Am I missing something? Or is it an error on the site? Or what is it? What’s the problem? Why am I not seeing what I am expecting to see?” So I fully understand your frustration on that front there.  What do you think the number one reason is for people to fail at implementing accessibility for people with disabilities? Eric: Well I think the number one reason is just not having any experience either personally or indirectly. They haven't run their site through a screen reader, they haven't had a friend who came to them and said, “why am I only hearing image image image image image”. Whatever that reason, they haven't had those kinds of things. I think-- I feel like, let me put it that way, It’s not I think, I feel like that comes back to a lack of teaching that sort of thing in University courses. I'm sure there's some University courses that covers this beautifully but I feel like a lot of courses, including boot camps those sorts of things, they don't-- they're not talking about this. From the perspective of, “Hey the web is supposed to be maximally accessible”. Like if you're not thinking of this first you're not doing your job right. That's not what they're doing.  The vocational class that I ended up teaching, I talked about last week briefly, that’s why I took the approach that I did, it sort of came out of all of this. But I think most courses are “Here’s a webpage, here are the tags you need. h1 through h6 are heading levels. Let’s move on”. And not take a minute to talk about, “Hey, this is how these are used and this is why they’re important”. You can pitch it for people’s self-interest by saying, “Google cares about the heading levels”. Whether or not that's actually true at the moment I’m never sure because Google keeps changing. You can do that, but when you get down to it really the thing you want to keep stressing is, maximally accessible to the maximum number of people. And that’s not-- I feel like that’s not stressed in this training because we keep coming and, if it were, then we wouldn't keep seeing people saying, “ Here I deployed a one-page site using 16 frameworks and no HTML and it’s awesome”. Right? Because they would've taken a different approach to figuring out how to do that.  I think that-- I mean, I think that’s the reason. And for those of you out there who are doing your training and pressing the proper use of these things on your students. Salute, like, 21 cannon salute to you, but, you’re very outnumbered and it probably frustrates the people like that too. Nic: When I was doing physical building accessibility way back when, one of the things that had really surprised me was that folks who are studying architecture are given about four-hour tuition about accessibility over their four-year course. And I think perhaps a lot of computer science degrees these days are doing the equivalent. This teach access which is trying to change things but overall I think that the amount of tuition in formal computer science degrees is really limited. And we do have boot camps here and there and introduction web design that stuff that mentions it but I think you’re right. We need to take the time to actually explain to people what it is and why it's important, Eric: Yeah and you know, these days if it’s not on Youtube the kids probably won’t see it. Nic: That's a little silly! Eric: It is a little bit but I also have kids. And to flip it around Jen Simmons has gotten enormous traction with her Layout Land series when it comes to layout. She talks about accessibility. And it’s certainly woven into everything Jen does because Jen gets it. I've been talking with her over the year and she's just like ...it’s amazing how many people are seeing this. It’s really made a huge difference. She's reaching more people via YouTube than she ever has via MDN or any other written source. So, you know, maybe there needs to be that, you know, The Wacky Web Accessibility channel or something.  I’m sorry that sounds like I’m making fun of Jen’s channel which I’m totally not. I’m just sort of thinking of the-- Nic: Absolutely Eric: “Let’s do a ‘Let’s Play’ of accessibility!” Because that's what kids watch. Nic: Well, it’s like we need gimmicks now to get-- to catch people's attention. Eric: I know, we get oursel-- we get it into, like, [indecipherable 16:20] stuff on news sites. Nic: What do you think the greatest challenge is for the field of accessibility moving forward? In five years, 10 years ... Eric: I think it’s still going to be education. It’s going to be the same challenge it’s been since the web started. It’s education, communication. Passing this on, like getting it out to the most people. That’s always been the challenge. I mean, I’ve seen this as a conference speaker and organizer that the accessibility talk usually suffers a ratings penalty from the audience. It’s a very, very rare accessibility speaker that can overcome that. On a five-point scale it’s probably at least a half a point and possibly a full point knocked off what the rating otherwise should be. Just because of the topic, and you know, people-- I think probably correctly, for the most part, people are afraid they’re not doing it right. And then they don’t want to be reminded. And there can be exceptions. I’ve seen fantastic accessibility presentations. But I saw a fantastic accessibility presentation- oh god it’s been almost 10 years ago now that Derek Featherstone did, where he did a cold open. And it’s not the accessibility component, it’s just the way that he did his talk. He literally started in medias res, he started in the middle of a scenario. Nic: Yeah Eric: It was amazing. I still think of that talk and I still think of the chills I got when I understood what he was doing and saying and like, what the situation he was describing was. I literally got goosebumps up and down my arms. As I got it. And I think of that actually, sometimes I’ve done my own talk sort of in that way and it’s always effective. And it was a fantastic talk. It had so much in it. And I got to see the ratings later and they were-- it was just-- there’s no way the ratings should have been that low. Not that he scored terribly. It’s just-- I was like, there’s no way that this is correct. This suffered the accessibility penalty. And you know, as conference organizers, unless you’re doing a literal accessibility conference .. then that’s a whole different thing. Nic: Yeah, well that’s quite different. I was lucky enough to actually do a couple of keynotes for PHP, you know, Sunshine PHP in Florida and Midwest PHP. So I did the closing keynote at Midwest in Minneapolis this year- Eric: Nice Nic: -and it really was really well received but I think that some conferences are starting to actually see more and more people talking about accessibility in a way that’s not so much, “Oh, you’re doing it wrong” but on more of a … “Let’s go forward together and let’s make it happen properly”. Eric: Yeah certainly, yeah Nic: And I think that perhaps that's going away. But certainly I get what you’re saying about people-- if it’s accessibility people are hesitant. They don’t just-- won’t show up to a stream, or- Eric: Yeah, a little bit defensive. Subconsciously so … I think. Sometimes. Nic: Yeah Eric: And yeah, I mean, absolutely the, “You’re doing it wrong and you suck and this is why” is not going to fly. But even the, “Here’s how to make this better” … I think-- you might be right that there’s a shift happening there. I think to some extent the term inclusive design seems to be picking up some currency. I know it's been around for a while. But it seems to be more of a thing at the moment. And hopefully permanently but people are more interested in inclusive design which, can mean being cognizant cultural differences. And it can mean that sort of thing. But it can also mean just what we would think of as regular old accessibility, where you can say things like, “Hey when you make your text small, then you’re increasingly aging user population- where if we are lucky we are all aging- are going to have more and more problems with that so don’t make your text super tiny”. Bear in mind that we are all temporarily abled as-- Nic: Yeah Eric: -I can’t remember who I heard say that the first time but I’ve heard that before. Those of us who are lucky enough to be fully abled are only temporarily so … Nic: Yeah Eric: Just to think about that. So being like, being able to sort of put accessibility under this larger umbrella of inclusivity, it does seem to be paying off somewhat for accessibility in terms of greater acceptance and not having sort of that prickly defensive reaction from the audience, “Oh an accessibility talk. I’m going to hear how I’m a terrible person and I slam the door in the faces of people who need my help”. Right? It’s, instead its .. I think maybe it’s becoming more of a, “I don’t know what I don’t know. Hopefully, this talk will tell me”. Nic: Yeah. It’s one of actually I don’t know what I don't know. The-- one opening I use a lot in my presentations is I have a photo of myself and my wheelchair wearing my wraparound sunglasses with my mobility assistance dog beside me. And I tell the story about how one day I was going down the sidewalk and there was two ladies on the patio-- outside patio, and one said to the other, “Oh my god isn’t it sad. He’s blind and in a wheelchair”. I kind of stopped and turned around and say, “yeah yeah but, I’m not deaf”. I used to have to help me people realize by telling this anecdote most people don’t know that not all service dogs are guide dogs. And it’s ok not to know and you have to go down a journey of discovery about a whole world that you don’t know but once you go down that path then you can never forget it so it’s ok to start from a point of view where you don’t realise things. But never stop learning, Eric: Yep, never stop learning, that’s pretty much the "zeroeth" rule of our industry. If you’re going to do it right never stop learning. Nic: Yeah. Eric, I have one last question for you. Well, I have several more but we only have a limited amount of time. What would you say the one thing people should remember about web accessibility? Eric: It is a foundational principle of the web. Like literally the web is built on accessibility. The original specs don’t necessarily call it that, but that’s an organizing principle of the web. And to try to ignore it or overcome it is a lot like trying to paddle upstream. Or worse, you know to use a tool in a way that it wasn’t intended. It’s like trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer. Or as- in this case, trying to use your screwdriver as a miter saw. You know you-- I hesitate to say things like, “You're doing it wrong” but, you know, if you get in a car and you see R and assume that means really fast and therefore never take it out of reverse. You know you’re kind of doing it wrong. It’s a fascinating way to go about things. But not really recommended. Right? And so … along with access to information is an organizing principle and that’s what accessibility is and so to-- like I say, to try to ignore it to overcome it is you’re literally trying to work against the grain of the medium. You know? It’s not a good idea, you’re going to have a bad time. And more to the point, your users are going to have a bad time. That’s really the problem. Jeremy Keith says, “anytime someone has to be inconvenienced, if its the user or it’s me … it’s my job to make it me”. I’m paraphrasing Jeremy, he says it much more elegantly and in a much posher accent than I possess. Everything sounds smarter in British. Excuse me, Scottish British. Anyway, it’s the inconvenience needs to go on the developer. That’s the job. That's what we are here for, is to make it easier for the people who use our stuff. And accessibility is a fundamental part of that. You may as well try to make web pages without HTML elements as far as I’m concerned. Nic: Wonderful. Eric, I really appreciate your time, your thoughts and the discussion. I had fun. Eric: I had a great time too. Thank you so much. Nic: So thank you, folks, out there. Thanks for listening and we will wrap this up for now. Thank you. Everyone out there, thank you for listening to the show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you do, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at a11ystore. Catch you next time!

E51 – Interview with Eric Meyer – Part 1 Aug 02, 2018

Eric talks about accessibility, of course, and semantics, and frameworks, and more! The web prioritises ubiquity over consistency and a lot of these-- there have been a lot of attempts to prioritise consistency over ubiquity. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at:

Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog
Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio
Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/

Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. This is episode 51. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another, with web accessibility. If you are interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. Hello everyone, so this week I am speaking with Eric Meyer. Eric, thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility. Eric: Thanks for having me. Nic: I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief introduction, who is Eric Meyer? Eric: I’m a-- I mean, this is a difficult question to answer sometimes. When I meet people out in the world and they say “What do you do?”, I always struggle for an answer, but, I guess the best answer is that I’m a technical Author and explainer. I’ve written a number of books about CSS, co-founded web design and development, sort of, education conference with Jeffrey Zeldman. When I say education conference, I mean that we-- our goal is to have people come away from every talk with something that they’ve learned and something they can put to use-- Nic: Right Eric: --Doesn’t necessarily mean exactly higher ed, although we have higher ed people come. I have a family, live in Cleveland, Ohio. I really like it here, even when it is hot and humid. And, I don’t know, I guess I’m someone who has been working on the web for a really long time, still finds it fascinating, compelling, something worth advancing. Even with all the downsides And someone who hopes I can continue contributing to that conversation. Nic: Well you certainly have contributed your fair share over the years and I want to thank you for that, and I’m sure that pretty much all my listeners will be very thankful for all your work. Eric: Well, I mean, I hope it was useful. That was really always the goal was to either-- well it was to be useful in one way or the other. Either to help people understand something they didn’t understand before or give them a thing that is useful to them. And, you know, I’ve had my stumbles along the way, we might talk about that later, but, yeah. Yeah. Nic: To get warmed up a little bit, tell us something that most people would not know about you. Eric: Well, Something that most people would not know about me? My first job was working at a McDonalds in, just outside of Mansfield, Ohio. Which is where I grew-- I grew up in that area. I grew up actually in and just south of Lexington, Ohio which is south of Mansfield, Ohio. Most people will not have heard of any of those but I-- when I was hired, for my first seven months, I worked the fry station because it was a busy enough, and demanding enough McDonalds that you started out on the fry station and then if you proved that you were capable of working and learning you might get promoted to the grill. And then if you were really good, you might get promoted to cashier. And if you were really, really good you might get promoted to working the drive-through. I never made the drive-through, I did-- by the time I was done with my two and a half years of work there, I did manage to land some time on the cash register. But-- Nic: We do have something in common, that we have both worked in food service before. And although I didn’t actually work at McDonald's I took the option of going for the apprenticeship and became a chef and all that-- Eric: Oh wow. Nic: -- good stuff, but I have a few friends that were with me in cooking school that said that McDonald's didn’t really teach them to cook but it taught them organization, it taught them being able to think on their feet and all these things. Do you think you have transportable skills that you learned from McDonald's that you’re still using today? Eric: I think what I took away most from McDonald's, I mean, not to contradict your friends, I agree that learning to think on your feet and also being able to worth within a system without switching your brain off, are things I learned. But I think what I took away from it most was an appreciation for what people in the service industry do and, this-- the many constraints that they work under often. And that also, that gives me a perspective on, sometimes people talk about web design and web development as a service industry and I always sort of itch at that a little because I think to myself, no, I’ve worked in service, this is not that. We do provide services, but to conflate that with what is generally thought of as the service industry I think sometimes does a disservice because we have a lot-- generally, have a lot more flexibility. I mean, I’m sure everyone's had a client where they tell you exactly what to do and if you try to be creative they snarl at you about who's paying your [laughter] salary and then you just do it, right. And then you try to get away from that client as quickly as possible. But most of the time it’s, you know, at McDonald's management was not interested in me asking, “when we say we are making a hamburger, what problem are we really trying to solve?” [laughter]. There’s no room for that. There’s just, “We need six hamburgers right now”, or 12 or 24 or whatever, it’s not like, I worked in a McDonald's where sometimes it was busy enough that it was not unusual to hear a call for 96 hamburgers on the grill. Nic: Ouch Eric: Yeah, because four tour buses would pull up, and it would just be like, “We’ve got four hamburgers ready to go. Put 96 down”. And we would, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, right. And everyone scrambles. You start out slow and you learn to be fast, and, anyway. Nic: I guess it’s better busy than bored. Eric: Yeah, and the other thing I think I took away from it was teamwork. Nic: Yeah Eric: The ability to work in a team, even when some members of the team might be less than pleased with you Right? [laughter]. Nic: Yeah Eric: I remember when I was early on the grill, you know, when I got moved to the grill and I was sort of early in that process. I was slow. Right, I mean, I didn’t really know where everything was. I had this thing where it was like, you have to put the ketchup and the mustard exactly in the middle of the bun or else it’s not right. And, yeah, you learn quickly how to do that faster and maybe-- you know, communicate with other members of the team. If the guys who is literally on the grill, cooking the 96 hamburger patties is getting close to them being done and he needs dressed buns to put them on, he’s going to let you know and you communicate back if you’re ready or not. So-- Nic: Yeah, yeah, yeah Eric: That whole teamwork thing definitely came out of there, and I’m sure you learn that as a chef as well. Nic: Yeah, teamwork. Absolutely. Well, the main point of this general conversation today is talking about web accessibility and for some reason every time I talk to somebody else for the podcast I hear a variation on the definition. I’d love to hear- How would you define web accessibility, Eric? Eric: I define it as getting the most information available to the most number of people, the greatest number of people. So, if that means, making it so that screen readers are happier with your content so that people who use screen readers can get all of your content. That's web accessibility. If it means not relying on Javascript as much as possible so that as much of what you’re trying to get to people comes through. Even if they don’t have Javascript, that's accessibility. Keeping your bandwidth consumption low so that people in low bandwidth situations, that’s accessibility. The web was fundamentally designed to be accessible, in as many contexts as possible. So, that how I design web accessibility, it’s just, can the person who is trying to get your stuff, get it? If they can, it's accessible and if they can’t then it's not. Nic: Yeah. Bottom line, that’s what it is about. It’s about people being able to access the content you’re putting out. So, you’re not doing accessibility day in, day out like some of us do, you know, we are accessibility wonks and that’s what we do. What would you say your role is in the greater scheme of web accessibility? Eric: I think it’s advocating for the principles that I just talked about. I just recently, unexpectedly found myself doing a three day web development training class, and so I thought it was going to be three days but each day would be 30 minutes and I got there and they said, “So, three days, right?” and I was like, “Yeah, three days of talks”, and they said, “Yeah, three full days” and I said, “Oh, okay” [laughter]. This was a volunteer situation so I didn’t have to renegotiate what I-- there was no rate. Nic: Right, right Eric: Like there was no contract to renegotiate. And I was happy to do it, but I was-- what I stressed from the outset was, the web is designed to be- I didn’t use the words accessible but designed to be as robust as possible and if you’re going to do this-- because I was talking to who were effectively high school vocational students. So if you’re going to do this for a career, this is what you need to know [laughter]. Along with that, what people might think of as the more traditional accessibility bits, if I-- in fact I was acting with a website just yesterday that’s basically completely unusable on my iPhone SE because content is overlapping. And I’m trying to complete a form to schedule an appointment and there's this red banner across the top telling me that this is where I should schedule my appointment and I can’t because that banner is covering up the stuff and I can’t , I kept trying to pull the page down so that I could let go and tap before it snapped back up on me Nic: [laughter] Eric: Right? So basically I’m going to call them later today and I’m going to say, “Oh, by the way, your web form, your online scheduling thing that I tried to use because that’s what you recommend, completely unusable and you need to fix it”. Nic: Yeah Eric: So, those sorts of things. And just in general if I see an online-- in the general online conversation somebody says “bah accessibility” or widespread access those are edge cases to point out how they’re not. Nic: Yeah Eric: I don’t see a lot of that I have to say, but they might-- that’s probably just a function of where-- who I’ve followed and who follows me and the sort of places I look. I’m not-- I have to admit, I’m not out there looking for opinions to contradict. I’m not searching for people seeing accessibility as pointless in order to correct them. It’s just if it comes in front of me I’ll speak up Nic: Well there's enough cats to heard as it is without actually going looking for trouble Eric: [laughing] Yeah Nic: How did you become aware of the importance of accessibility? Because it’s probably not something that as you started building the web, building your approach to CSS and all that. It’s probably not something that immediately jumped out at you. Eric: Actually to some degree I think it did immediately jump out at me. I started out on the web when I was working for Case Western Reserve University, which is a private university in Cleveland. It’s actually the University I graduated from and then I immediately went to work for them in an attempt to earn back all the tuition money I had given them [laughter]. Which worked. I had to hang around longer than four years to make that happen, but it worked. It was 1993 when my coworker and longtime friend, Jim Nauer showed me a early beta of Mosaic, and I got really psyched by it and started, like, “how do I do this?” and he said, “well, here’s a link to HTML 2.0 specification. That's what we’ve got.” I said, “great!” [laughter] So anyway, I quickly got really into it, became the first dedicated campus webmaster, back when we called ourselves that. Nic: Yeah, I remember those days. Eric: Right? And at the time there was no presentational control from the author's point of view. So when I started out, literally the closest we got to presentational control was H1’s were usually big and B was usually bold-- or strong, sorry. Nic: B at the time, I don’t think we had strong at the time. Eric: Oh yeah you might be right. Well whatever you write, that’s usually bold and the pre-formatted usually looked like-- we said at the time it looked like a TTY. I guess sometimes people still say that. So there wasn’t that sense of control and it was more-- all you could was structure stuff. You could structure things semantically, or you could try to subvert the semantic nature of the mark up in order to try to create a presentational effect, but, browsers didn’t have consistent presentational effects and in fact mosaic at the time had these preferences where, as the user, you could say what H1’s looked like and what H2’s looked like, and what H3’s looked like. You could set the font face, size and colour. So most people, once they found that preference, made H1’s tiny and H6’s huge. They inverted the size. And you would go surfing around the web and be like, “oh look at the tiny H1, that’s hilarious haha”. Because there wasn’t a lot to do in those days, and then you would quickly revert it because that was terrible. So there was that aspect of things where everything was semantic, there wasn’t really an option of this is what I want this to look like and therefore it will, the only thing you could do was just make a big image and load that. And at the time with the internet speeds we had, like, 640 by 480 gif because we didn't’ even have jpeg support at that point, would take a minute or two to load and some people did that because there weren't many websites. The other thing was working on a college campus, and especially at one like Case where they have a strong Sciences component. The engineering department, the math department, the computer science department and so on, physics department. There were these professors who knew more about computers than I did. Probably had their own IRIX workstation, and they had some bespoke compiled version of some browser I’ve never heard of and if I put up a webpage and they couldn’t read it, i would hear about it. There was a guy in the math department particularly, I’m not going to name names but, there was a professor in the math department who had this-- I don’t even remember what the browser was anymore but it was like, you know, it wasn’t even Viola or Cello or one of the obscure ones that people know about. I don’t think-- whatever he was running, I don’t think it has a Wikipedia article. And I would hear from him, because we would put up the course catalogue. It was one of our first big projects and there was some weirdness to it. He could read it, but it looked a little weird. And I would hear about it. And that really sort of reinforced the-- it’s a big wide campus, with a lot of different user agents, a lot of different people coming and they would want to be able to get this information and that’s what I’m here for. So that was sort of, hammered into me early, just by experience. Nic: Do you think that those of us that are so ancient that we remember HTML 2, that we really were forced to focus on the semantics of the page and then understand these things like page structures and all that. Do you think we have an advantage over newbie coders now that don’t have that and they just kind of go out and create stuff without necessarily either understanding or caring about the importance of semantics? Eric: I guess it depends on what you mean by an advantage, because they have the advantage of not worrying about those sorts of things so they can break things faster [laughter]-- Nic: Right Eric: --But also deploy something faster. But I think those of us who have been around awhile have the advantage of understanding the nature of the web and therefore a way that might be a little bit slower but doesn’t break things quite as often. Because the web was fundamentally designed to be accessible and to be, in a sense it was designed to be fundamentally responsible, although that's-- that might be stretching things a little bit but it was definitely, I mean, it was fundamentally designed to be accessible. I’ve said in other context but the web prioritises ubiquity over consistency and a lot of these-- there have been a lot of attempts to prioritise consistency over ubiquity. Flash was one of the first major examples of that. If you had the Flash plugin, great, you got a consistent experience but if you didn’t or couldn’t have the Flash plugin you got nothing. That’s consistency over ubiquity. The web on the other hand is basically designed as, ”I don’t care if you're a text mode browser on a feature phone, you should be able to read this content.” And a lot of the frameworks these days, and by these days I mean the last five to however many years it’s been that frameworks-- especially Javascript frameworks have gotten huge, tended toward more the consistency side. Sometimes developer consistency side but still, we’ve seen websites that are literal magazine websites where if you dont have javascript for whatever reason, you get nothing. And, it makes no sense. I get it if you’re writing a video game on the web there’s going to ve Javascript and whatever code, web assembly I guess now. And it’s not going to be a complete experience, like, of course, but [laughter] that’s not what most of these frameworks are for they’re for “How can we rapidly push out content in modules” and a lot of the time I find myself looking at pages that because I happen to be on a train that went into a tunnel and half the Javascript didn’t load. I get nothing. I might sometimes if I’m particularly fortunate, get a snarky message telling me to upgrade from my ancient web browser [laughter], even though I’m on Firefox or the latest version of Safari mobile or whatever. Other times I just get a blank page. And that’s how it is, to me it’s frustrating both as a user because I wanted to read the article or see the product or whatever. But it’s also frustrating me as someone who deeply cares about doing this right because I look at that and I think, okay “this happened to me in-- I don’t know, New York City on the subway because the signal’s not great down here but what happens to somebody in rural China who-- or rural Ohio for that matter where the bandwidth is terrible because nobody has run fiber to the cornfields of western Ohio. And I don’t say that pejoratively, I live-- Nic: That’s what it is Eric: --I’ve lived in rural Ohio, in fact my sister lives in a house where the only reason she has fiber is that she happens to live near the house of somebody who was very important to an ISP and needed to be able to work from home. And so the literally ran fibre to that house and then were able to branch off of that. But there, half a mile or a mile away from her house, there are houses that are just as rural and they have copper and they are lucky if they get 1MB per second download. Nic: Yeah, we have been looking for a house to purchase near Ottawa. Capital city of Canada and you go about 20 to 25 minutes away from downtown Ottawa and you’re lucky if you can get 5MBs down. And they charge you an arm and a leg for that and they call it high speed internet access. And it’s like, yeah Eric: Yeah. Nic: We have, I think, as designers, developers, we have to stop thinking in terms of “Hey, it works fine on my computer with Megabyte internet access, 36 inch screen no problem”. While we are not representative of all users I don’t think. Eric: Yeah, I’m sure you remember back in the day the ‘This page, Best Feed’ on Internet Explorer or ‘This page [crosstalk] Netscape Navigator. A lot of times our development process is This Page Best Feed on my computer [laughter]. Right? Nic: Yes Eric: [laughter] I Mean, that’s what a lot of us do. And another example, I was just-- I recently got to experience the joys of satellite internet. And their download speed wasn’t terrible but when you’re doing satellite internet the speed of light affects your ping time for your packets. Your packet response time is bound by the speed of light. And there's a-- you’re looking at at least 500ms ping times, just to get the signal up to the satellite and back down. Nevermind the rest of the, you know, getting whatever the ping time is from the satellite station on the other end of your connection. You’d be going on and getting stuff and then coming back and processing it and then sending it back up. So you’re often talking about one, two, three second ping time, on packets. A lot of the web doesn't work very well in that scenario. Even wikipedia was occasionally difficult. It was pretty good, so I tried to stick to Wikipedia. A lot of the Web was not great. Nic: Has your view of accessibility changed since you've started thinking about that? Eric: No, I think it’s all part and parcel of the way I’ve always looked at it. It’s the-- make this as performing-- make this site as performing as possible. Make everything as small as possible. Make it as semantic as possible. Don’t depend on massive frameworks for libraries if you can possibly avoid it. Squeeze everything down as far as you can. [inaudible] HTTPS to HTTP2, is it HTTP2 or HTTPS2? Whichever one it is that opens a connection and that can stuff everything down without having to have a seperate server call for every asset you try to load. Like that will help some but in satellite situations maybe not as much, I mean it will help but probably not as much as we would like to think. Because the server still has to, like, “Here’s all your stuff”, but a few seconds from now I hope you get it [laughter]. And I also wonder-- I don’t really know the technical details. A little bit of me is a little bit afraid of “what happens if a packet gets dropped, where it drops half of your content and half of your Javascript, in this stream. Hopefully there are ways to-- there are things in the protocol to prevent that. And you’ll probably have 16 people telling you that I have no idea what i’m talking about And I readily acknowledge that, I have no idea what I’m talking about, like, after 30 or 40 years of working with computers, you start to have this sort of intuitive sense of “Hey, what are ways this could break”. Nic: Yeah Eric: You’re probably like that too, I would think Nic: Yeah, and sometimes it’s like, the more I know the less I feel like I know. And it’s just a weird thing. Before wrapping it up for this week's show, Eric, I would like to ask you, What do you think your greatest achievement is in terms of web accessibility. Eric: [whistling] My greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Wow. That’s a big question. I can think of one of my biggest failures, but I guess we can talk about that next week. My biggest achievement? I would say, [pause] for me personally it’s the HTML tutorials that I write-- that I wrote when I was still at Case Western Reserve University, so I wrote these introduction to HTML tutorials that were just, the first two were about HTML 2.0. The first one was basically HTML 2.0, the second one was mostly forms but also some other stuff that I hadn’t covered in the first one and the third one was about the differences in HTML 3.2. But it was written in what I like to think of as an engaging voice, similar to the voice which I write with today. And the end of each chapter had four based quizzes where they were multiple choice. I wasn’t about to do natural language processing. But it would be thing like, “ The HR element-- The H in HR stands for”, and then there would be three possibilities. One of them is the correct one and it had these other things but that goes without access-- what I was trying to do there was make the web accessible to people who wanted to put things online. And so by teaching-- this is what these elements mean, you don’t get to control what things look like and if you hear examples and here’s how easy it is to put things online. That was, I think, probably my biggest contribution. Also because I wrote them in 1995 and 1996, there weren't many other tutorials online and so they actually reached a lot of people. Nic: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things, your teaching material has been around and had the opportunity of forming a, I would say a whole generation of developers and designers and from that perspective that’s really important. Eric: I was glad to be-- I mean, very lucky, very fortunate and very glad to be part of that first wave of teachers and educators and advocates who-- I didn’t form a generation alone, there were a whole bunch of us. Molly Holzchlag, Jeffrey Zeldman and Jeff Yeen and, other people who I will be embarrassed to not have named later. But who all sort of had the same ethic and the same idea of-- Oh John Ulsop, I’m sorry John [laughing] another one. Together we sort of helped the next wave, because that’s how we had learned, the very first wave, the first people on the web. Including Sir Tim, before he was Sir-- were helping out, they were on mailing lists, so they would answer questions and there were Usernet groups where people with experience and expertise would answer questions and wwe would sort of figure it out. We learned from them so it was sort of incumbent on us to pass on what we had figured out and what we had learned from them to the next set of people. Nic: Pass it forward I think is such an important concept. Eric: Absolutely Nic: Eric, thank you so much for joining me. We are going to wrap it for this week and we will reconvene next week. Eric: Sounds awesome. Thank you sir. Nic: Everyone out there, thank you for listening to hte show, I hope you enjoyed it and if you d, please do tell your friends about it. You can get the transcript for this, and all other shows at https://a11yrules.com and a quick reminder, you can get yourselves some neat accessibility branded swag at https://a11y.store. Catch you next time!

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