Accessibility by design | #11 Dean Birkett

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Summary

Dean Birkett and Tim Damen discuss the role of consultancy and how to empower internal teams through training. Real-world examples illustrate the impact of accessibility on individuals, while the discussion also explores the future of accessibility technology, the maturity levels within organizations, and the influence of AI. The conversation concludes with inspiring messages for accessibility advocates, highlighting the ongoing journey towards inclusive design.

Accessibility by design is crucial. - Dean Birkett

Chapters

About Dean Birkett

Dean is an IAAP CPACC certified Accessible Design Consultant, Speaker, Advocate, and Trainer. With over 15 years of experience in digital accessibility, Dean has worked with a diverse range of clients, from small businesses to large enterprises, helping them create inclusive digital experiences. He is passionate about empowering teams through training and improving the culture of accessibility within organizations.

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Conformance does not equal experience. - Dean Birkett

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Transcript

[00:00:01] [Music] Hello and welcome at Focus Trap, a

[00:00:07] digital accessibility podcast. My name is Tim Damen and I'm joined today by Dean Burkett a accessibility consultant

[00:00:15] working currently for KLM, Skyscan and Marktplaats. Welcome Dean. Thank you very much. Thanks for having

[00:00:21] me. Yeah. Yeah. So glad you you can join us here. I think we have a lot of things to talk about. Um let's dive right into it.

[00:00:29] Um my first question is always something around how did you get into accessibility? What got you motivated to

[00:00:36] to improve accessibility in the online space? Um yeah curious. Sure. So that's

[00:00:43] a big question to start with. Yeah. Um yeah. So I think my my journey probably started in around about 2010.

[00:00:50] Um I took some weird and wonderful career tangents and ultimately I was had a job title of web master

[00:00:57] which was an interesting one at the time. Um and I think with uh with that job title you move into different

[00:01:03] directions. Some people move into web design, some people move into web development and myself I moved into user

[00:01:10] experience design and um at the time I was working for a EU funded organization

[00:01:16] working in the galleries, libraries, archives and museum sector and um yeah we um

[00:01:25] I think being being having the opportunity of being a a UXer in in that kind of space gives you lots of

[00:01:31] flexibility to evolve and move into different directions. And so I was doing UX for about two

[00:01:37] years and then a uh there was a workshop from Derek Featherstone who at the time

[00:01:43] was at Level Access and I I believe he he moved to Salesforce. Um

[00:01:48] and the workshop was entitled accessibility for UX designers. And so for myself, you know, I was a newish UX

[00:01:55] designer and um accessibility I I'd heard of but I didn't really know a great deal about. So, I thought maybe

[00:02:02] it's an opportunity to to learn more about what accessibility is and who it's for. And um I I look at that moment as

[00:02:10] being like one of these like career transitions. It was kind of, you know, before the workshop and after the

[00:02:15] workshop, the way that I designed things and thought about things just just transformed.

[00:02:21] Um yeah, and there's there's lots of things that I I learned that I think I still put into practice today in my own

[00:02:27] workshops and and things that I I speak about. all from that that one uh that first step into accessibility

[00:02:34] this uh this course you took uh or this session you joined. So that's great.

[00:02:40] Yeah, absolutely. And you know I think it's it's a powerful statement as well for you know the impact that these kind of workshops can have. That's also part

[00:02:47] of the reason I'm doing the podcast also to reach people who

[00:02:53] know little about accessibility or little to none and inspire them to to get to know more

[00:03:00] about the topic. Yeah, absolutely. I I think you know in this space the more people speaking about it the the better. Yeah.

[00:03:06] And it's great to get you know different voices as well from different perspectives and you know different

[00:03:13] fields. Yeah, definitely. I also don't speak a lot well in the podcast not a lot of UX

[00:03:23] special specialtity into UX design yet. So that's also uh that's also nice to to

[00:03:29] speak from yeah more from the engineering side. So engineering uh to

[00:03:34] to UX I think I mean UX has got an important part to play of course. I mean there was

[00:03:41] a there was a study um many moons ago I think from DQ

[00:03:46] where they uncovered that most accessibility defects they found were actually originated in design. Mhm. And

[00:03:52] so part of the things that I do nowadays is is you know I try to get across the point that accessibility defects can be

[00:03:58] created you know through that throughout the whole software development life cycle whether it's in concept whether

[00:04:03] it's in design handover development. Yeah. Copy copywriting even. Yeah.

[00:04:09] Everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I think as an

[00:04:17] engineer you're you're almost at the end of like so so uh of course you get a

[00:04:22] design delivered by the UX designer could be but also then you implement it and you and as an engineer you're close

[00:04:29] to the end of the the cycle so you also you can as an engineer you can also act

[00:04:35] like a gatekeeper to uh if you notice some things okay maybe this is not the

[00:04:40] right way or this is not then you can then you are at the end and you Yeah, make adjustments or talk to people uh

[00:04:47] who need to be involved here. So that that's so that's also that that I like about uh about the role as a front end

[00:04:55] developer in this. Uh but how's this p perspective from like a UX uh design? Uh

[00:05:02] yeah, I think I think I mean from from the UX side of things, it's um we got to tackle

[00:05:07] problems earlier. Um because you know for design for development sorry um a

[00:05:14] lot of things are almost retroactive fixes like a bug has been introduced and

[00:05:20] it's up to development to retroactively fix that bug if they um uh didn't play a part in actually

[00:05:27] creating the bug in the first place. Of course there's lots of lots of knowledge gaps where we couldn't obviously discuss.

[00:05:33] Uh but I think from UX it's kind of um recognizing what you can do in in design. So the concept the initial

[00:05:39] concept has to include people with disabilities um you know that the the whole

[00:05:44] experience needs to be centered around the disabled experience of course and disabled voices and so part of your user

[00:05:50] research should include people with disabilities even even at an early stage with with your research and concepting

[00:05:57] and then in the design phase there are certain things that you you know really basic things that you should be checking

[00:06:03] for. I'm wearing this shirt here, which is kind of like low contrast text on a on a gray to make a point.

[00:06:10] Um, and I think, you know, I think that's one of the basic things that designers need to be checking. And

[00:06:16] some don't, but yeah, some don't. I think a lot of them don't because I think color

[00:06:22] contrast is the most uh most prominent accessibility uh default, I think.

[00:06:27] Yeah. and and you know, you can always point the finger at the designer, but obviously there's there's so many steps

[00:06:33] throughout the way there where that should have been prevented. So, if there was a contrast uh issue,

[00:06:40] that would have been flagged. It could have been flagged in Figma or or whatever tool you used to stock.

[00:06:46] Yeah. To check the contrast, they hand over to the developer. The developer should have they've got the

[00:06:52] tools to be able to point these out. Um and they're linting and and so forth.

[00:06:57] Um, and then obviously when you you go live then you're going to be flagged for

[00:07:03] pretty much immediately because they're the easiest ones to actually find. Yeah, definitely. These are also the

[00:07:09] first ones I point out normally. Yeah, but in design as well I mean that you know you're looking at things like

[00:07:14] uh touch target sizes which are things that you know designers should should have a impact on. They should be

[00:07:20] designing their touch targets to be tapable. Um as you mentioned about content as well I think the the content

[00:07:26] writers need to be involved in the discussion at this early stage as well. Yeah. And then one of the things that I find

[00:07:33] often can cause problems is the whole handover experience where a design could be handed over to

[00:07:40] say you know here is this pretty pretty design now developer go and build it. There's so many things which are missing

[00:07:46] in the handover. Yeah. like the interaction, the the hidden meaning behind content, what you

[00:07:52] want to communicate to assistive technology. Yeah. Um and so I think that's the kind of

[00:07:57] thing that that helps to introduce bugs and if we can tighten up that connection then I think that helps.

[00:08:02] Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. What what are what are some so this is some important

[00:08:09] part about the only the hento for us also work involved in an earlier stage in the

[00:08:16] UX design that can prevent uh the these things from ending up um

[00:08:22] maybe communicated wrongly with the win with the engineering team. I think there's work in every single

[00:08:28] step to be honest. So, you know, UX designers are very much um overwhelmed

[00:08:33] with having to deliver certain things within a a certain uh time frame. Um and um you know, I think it's on

[00:08:41] project management, sorry, project managers to be able to facilitate the need to create this time so that UX

[00:08:48] designers have time to actually do things properly at the start. uh because you know if you if you're generating

[00:08:54] this time at the start then it prevents retroactively fix fixing problems further down the path. I think there's a

[00:09:02] there's a really old study from IBM Science Institute where they found that

[00:09:08] um you know a bug which is introduced into the wild is 100 times more costly to fix than it is at an early stage. And

[00:09:16] so by generating time earlier on then obviously you you're actually end up saving money for the the organization

[00:09:22] and saving time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's also what a lot of companies are now uh

[00:09:30] working on trying to catch up with the EA are also discovering because of course they have a lot of legacy they

[00:09:36] have a lot of current state applications which generally speaking have still a

[00:09:42] lot of accessibility problems in them. moving back and uh yeah trying to

[00:09:49] remediate them all uh as as some kind of project I think is yeah it's a lot of

[00:09:54] it's a lot of work first you need to find them you need to discuss it then you need yeah make up the right

[00:10:02] direction and uh maybe discuss with your UX design oh this color is not good or

[00:10:07] we have this other problem engineering comes comes into play afterwards

[00:10:14] so quite some steps to take to uh absolutely to get there. I think it's all about your processes

[00:10:19] and you know improving your processes. There's you know if you look at like the digital accessibility maturity models

[00:10:25] you know level access I mentioned already but you know ability nail the W3C you know you could use those to to

[00:10:32] get a grasp of where you are in in a certain area of of your your business. So you could use that model to see where

[00:10:38] you are in your design or development and find out you know what your maturity level is and then you can see what

[00:10:43] opportunities there are to actually improve that further down the line. Procurement and hiring you it's really really expands

[00:10:50] beyond digital accessibility as I'm sure you know. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

[00:10:55] Definitely. And uh what what so you you've mentioned

[00:11:00] already like linting or plugins or other kinds of other tools that will help you

[00:11:07] catch accessibility bugs earlier?

[00:11:13] What is your what's your opinion about um automating? Uh

[00:11:19] yeah, I mean automated at the moment you can I think it's 20 to 40% of defects that you

[00:11:24] can you can uncover. Um it requires from my experience it requires effort as well to actually set up to make sure that you are collect

[00:11:32] discovering as many bugs as possible. Uh because it seems to be certainly from my experience it seems to be very easy to

[00:11:39] detect bugs which are uh are often flags. Um so for me if I'm doing some

[00:11:45] some kind of like um auditing uh I would generally start with a an automated test

[00:11:51] just to get a little bit of an understanding as to what kind of issues to be looking out for. Uh but then I

[00:11:58] would move straight on to onto manual testing. So I would do keyboard testing and then I would move on to that I do a

[00:12:05] cognitive walk through. Um and then I would uh move on to screen reader testing. Um well that's u voice over and

[00:12:13] and Safari or NVDA and Chrome. Mhm. Um I don't have many US clients and I

[00:12:20] think Jaws is predominantly US focused and very expensive. So so I put most of my efforts on those

[00:12:26] those two setups and then obviously if we're moving on to um onto mobile then

[00:12:32] the mobile platforms well talk back and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's and

[00:12:39] um so how how many how many audits do you you

[00:12:44] need do you generally do on like a monthly basis? Um it depends. I mean it's part of what

[00:12:51] I do. Yeah. It depends on the client's needs. Are these like like smaller audits or um

[00:12:57] larger ones? Uh a bit of both to be honest. I mean there's there's no real real answer to

[00:13:03] that one because um you know what I do now is um is that you know I provide

[00:13:09] consultancy to various clients on and I think ultimately it's about um improving

[00:13:16] accessibility within their organizations and whatever that means and so that could be something like working within

[00:13:22] the the design system uh working with the designers um looking at Figma see

[00:13:28] what they're creating to have a bit of feedback back um on that to make sure that the um accessibility considerations

[00:13:36] are considered in design and if so to make sure the handover experience to development is is communicated

[00:13:41] correctly. It could also be in documentation if a sky scanner have done a lot of work

[00:13:47] on the backpack design system. Um so there's lots of um introductions to

[00:13:53] various roles in the organization as to what accessibility is and then on a component level what you need to know to

[00:14:00] make this component work uh in the most accessible way.

[00:14:06] Um yeah so I think and for other organizations you know it could be doing

[00:14:12] auditing it could be a case of hey we need to know where we are with accessibility right now. mentioned the

[00:14:18] EAA and you know lots of companies are appearing and saying we need a little bit of help and I think you know

[00:14:25] starting with an audit is probably a good idea just to get a little bit of a benchmark as to where you are

[00:14:32] but my goal really is to help them realize that an audit is only part of

[00:14:38] the answer you don't want to do an audit and then a year later get another audit and repeat repeat repeat because that's

[00:14:45] not helpful. Yeah. And so the way that I approach auditing is that I um I really work with

[00:14:51] the teams to help highlight what the problems are, who the problem is is

[00:14:57] actually impacting, why it's a problem. Um and you know ways in which you can

[00:15:03] solve that problem. Um what I don't do is I don't say uh here is a a developer

[00:15:10] issue, this is the code that's causing the problem. Here is the fix because that's not helpful. Mhm. What I find certainly in the past

[00:15:18] um with those kind of audits is that developers will just input that code and then go away and think about something

[00:15:24] else. Um and accessibility really is about for me it's about making myself um

[00:15:31] less needed um and more about empowering the internal teams to be able to find

[00:15:37] problems, find ways to resolve them and work things out themselves.

[00:15:42] Yeah. Yeah. So it's about building knowledge within the organization and empowering the people that yeah are

[00:15:50] doing the on a day on a daily basis are building on building stuff. Um

[00:15:56] um so how important do you think training is also uh

[00:16:04] hugely important? And I think you know base level understanding of what we're talking about first of all is helpful uh

[00:16:10] because um many many accessibility talks are they come from two angles I would

[00:16:17] say um like internal talks I mean the discussions it's very much either legal

[00:16:23] focused you know what do we need to do to be compliant um or it's very much a case of developer

[00:16:29] focus which is what wagg violations are we trying to get rid of and uh you So

[00:16:35] this is is part of the discussion of course but it's not you know ultimately we need to center the experience about

[00:16:41] around people with disabilities. Um and I think you know taking a step backwards I mentioned that I was working

[00:16:48] for for Europeana which was the start of my accessibility journey I would say.

[00:16:54] And um one of the early projects that I I worked on there where I I came at things through an accessibility lens was

[00:17:01] a project called the 1914 1918 project. Um and this was for uh predominantly for

[00:17:09] people to tell stories about the first world war and to share um their physical uh

[00:17:16] objects to be digitized and shared for people to to actually access.

[00:17:23] And fairly early on, I went to one of these workshops where they was collecting the these these items. And I

[00:17:29] I saw that I would say 95% of the people at these workshops were very elderly.

[00:17:35] And so I I was able to see people with um trying to use a digital device. Maybe

[00:17:41] their their their knowledge at the time about about technology was was a little bit lessened than what it is now. it's

[00:17:48] um you know they would have issues with uh fine motor control. Uh maybe there's a little bit of tremors when they're

[00:17:54] using a mouse. Maybe they're you know raising their glasses to look at text and you know these kind of things. And

[00:18:01] so for me coming fresh from this accessibility training to be able to see

[00:18:08] thinking about accessibility affects everybody ultimately. It's not just around people with disabilities, even

[00:18:13] though it should always be centered around people with disabilities, but what we do actually benefits a wide

[00:18:20] range of people. Um and so you know I used that kind of like kind of like knowledge from that uh workshop and the

[00:18:28] and the the um um the events that I went to and and what we were able to do is I

[00:18:34] was able to say hey you know we've got these these personas that we're using um

[00:18:41] which which I I I stole from a a web a web for everyone I think it was very old

[00:18:46] book so I'm not sure how outdated that is now um but what it did was it helped

[00:18:52] frame the discussion these findings that I was able to present in the workshop uh sorry in in these these events and you

[00:18:58] know I was able to bump up contrast size I was able to bump up the the text size

[00:19:03] um which at the time you in 2012 2013 I

[00:19:09] think it was standard for 16 sorry 14 pixels to be body copy

[00:19:14] so there was lots of like impact that we we could do that that's you know during that it's it's interesting Yeah. So what

[00:19:21] I what I um personally really like about the UX part on accessibility is that you

[00:19:28] the opportunity you have there to do also UX research. Yeah. And that's yeah

[00:19:33] something I'm I'm not capable of doing but also do not have the time of doing.

[00:19:38] It's not in my my range of focus. uh uh really but um

[00:19:45] you you I think you you have a lot of experience with doing this research right the and um at the ABN where I work

[00:19:54] um um there's also UX research conducted on

[00:19:59] a on a regular basis with different variety of different groups um from uh from time to time could be um maybe uh

[00:20:08] people having trouble reading stuff or low vision or different groups and then

[00:20:14] this re research is conducted research reports created and then it's

[00:20:20] communicated into the organization and then I have the feeling it stops a little bit so

[00:20:26] there are the no processes are being shaped

[00:20:33] um as far as I can see um um so so from

[00:20:38] the report to like um adjusting ways of working.

[00:20:45] Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't see what do you maybe have some Yeah. What what is your experience with this and how

[00:20:51] there's so many missed opportunities there? Uh because you know these um if

[00:20:56] you're seeing somebody that's using a product and they're they're not able to use a product or running into difficulties, that is an amazing snippet

[00:21:04] video that you can share internally to get people to be aware of the problems.

[00:21:09] Um and um you know I I was really blessed in in some aspects because of the fact that I was able to firsthand

[00:21:16] perform research and to see the impact that design and development can have and

[00:21:22] um you know there's there's perhaps two stories which I think are are pretty impactful uh that that that resonate

[00:21:28] with me and they were from um when I worked at Assistive Wear who are a a

[00:21:34] company based in in Amsterdam that build apps for for non-verbal people. Mhm.

[00:21:39] And uh when you when you think of digital accessibility, your head immediately goes to people with motor

[00:21:45] impairments, people with vision impairments, maybe people with hearing impairments, and you know, the cognitive

[00:21:50] space is a little bit um not as uh as as out there. They've got task forces for

[00:21:56] Koga, for instance, but it's still a little bit early days. Uh but, you know, people with um with speech difficulties

[00:22:03] are kind of like not covered in this this kind of space. And so one of the um one of the research things that I did, I

[00:22:09] I went to a um I went to a cafe in Melbourne in Australia and uh I met with

[00:22:16] somebody who used one of the apps that I work on. Uh

[00:22:21] and it's uh all worked on and it's a a language app where you would tap on

[00:22:27] various buttons and um you would hear a computerized voice which would say something for you. And when I went for a

[00:22:34] for a coffee, I met with the the mother of this this person with um um um with a

[00:22:41] very rare illness who was unable to verbally communicate and her herself.

[00:22:46] And the server came to the table and and you know asked what we would like to have uh to drink. So I had a long black

[00:22:53] uh the the mom I think had a flat white and then it went to the daughter and she used the app to tap in these buttons and

[00:23:00] order this drink which was this amazing concoction which had sprinkles and marshmallows and all sorts. And I think

[00:23:07] you know for me sitting there knowing that I worked on the design of this app and seeing the impact that it had not

[00:23:13] only on the individual but the parents, the family, the friends, the server

[00:23:18] and you know I think they that you know what we do is is often you know missed when you know as a front-end developer

[00:23:26] you're you're um trying not to create accessibility defects but you're not seeing the impact that you're having

[00:23:32] by doing that. And I think another story which which is um one which will always

[00:23:38] always stick with me is that again with this app there is a way to um create a

[00:23:43] message and you can send that message to somebody else using messages or WhatsApp or whatever. And um one of my former

[00:23:52] colleagues is a a speech language pathologist and she was working with this this young child who was um at the

[00:23:58] early stages of learning how to to use this app and um she used the app to type

[00:24:05] in I love you mom and send that as a text message to her mother who was at work and it's like those kind of moments

[00:24:13] are super impactful and um you know being able to to recognize that what we

[00:24:20] do in accessibility is not about work. It's not about EAA. It's not about these

[00:24:26] violations. It's it's about people. Yeah. It's always about people. So, you know, it's always about censoring the

[00:24:31] conversations on people as best as you can. Yeah. Yeah. now about enabling them to

[00:24:36] to do the stuff that uh that you and me are also doing uh online or via

[00:24:42] technology enabling them to send text messages or order something uh in a

[00:24:47] restaurant and there's there's there's an unlimited

[00:24:52] amount of opportunities I think also currently out there right uh like this

[00:24:58] app or um other uh I see the most the

[00:25:03] those beautiful uh ideas I I see coming by on LinkedIn with also um

[00:25:12] uh terms of automation as well but also uh different apps uh that can recognize

[00:25:19] sign language or or uh stuff like that. I think um there's a

[00:25:27] yeah there there's a big way we can help. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think I think

[00:25:34] the key thing though is that always center it around people with disabilities. So, a lot of these sign

[00:25:39] language AI things um are probably created by white able-bodied cis hetro,

[00:25:48] you know, this default human as as we we're led to believe. Whereas, you know,

[00:25:54] it's always you if you if you're working in accessibility, it's people with disabilities that should be leading and we should be assisting.

[00:26:01] And you know when you when you mentioned about the research thing if you if you have you know stories or snippets or

[00:26:07] things you should always bring those you should hear firsthand from people and so

[00:26:13] that's how you you can help with um you know helping your teams to understand what accessibility is why it's important

[00:26:19] and why we're doing it. Yeah. And then you know as as accessibility grows within your organizations

[00:26:24] it's uh again you know it's about employment uh hire people with disabilities um it brings a personal uh

[00:26:34] personal thing to the to the to to the problem. It's it's kind of like you know we're not solving uh problems for this

[00:26:40] in this person that we don't see firsthand. You know I I had the the ability to to work with people with

[00:26:46] disabilities and to to see firsthand. Yeah. But you know if you have um a person that's working in HR that is

[00:26:53] blind then you are solving problems for this person that you work with it bring

[00:26:58] makes it more personable and and you know one of my clients for instance I I work with um another

[00:27:05] accessibility consultant and he's blind and um we work together on the design

[00:27:10] system and I think that's awesome. you know, the fact that we've got a a blind person working on a design system,

[00:27:17] it brings into into question, okay, so what is design? Yeah. Because people think of design very much as as a visual language and and design

[00:27:24] is way beyond a visual language. I think by by recognizing that fact is, you know, helps the organizations to to

[00:27:30] move on their journey. Yeah, definitely. And about this journey, so you've worked with a lot of

[00:27:37] big companies, uh, a lot of different ones as well, different sectors. um some maybe are more mature than

[00:27:44] others in terms of accessibility. What are some things you recognize um from an

[00:27:51] company that is really mature versus a company that's maybe just starting out? Uh having dedicated people working on

[00:27:59] the team is is very helpful. Um one of the people that I well sorry one of the the companies that I I support at the

[00:28:05] moment is Skyscanner. They have a dedicated accessibility lead, Heather, uh, who is awesome, and a, um, a an

[00:28:14] engineer lead as well, Ge. And, you know, they're both people that that, uh,

[00:28:20] know the importance of accessibility and, uh, help others in the organization

[00:28:25] recognize it. And so from that, you know, they're able to internally create a champions network where uh other

[00:28:32] people are um involved in that in understanding um what impact their roles have and how they can they can help and

[00:28:38] it just balloons you know that that knowledge is not um it's not just within one person or you know one advocate. It

[00:28:46] becomes a big big wider thing. But to get there, you definitely need um you

[00:28:52] know, you can try and do a bottom up approach, but realistically, you know, it's got to be coming from management to

[00:28:57] say this important. Yeah. Um and that that is really really helpful. Uh because, you know, it helps generate

[00:29:03] budget, it helps generate um awareness um and that will ultimately you know end

[00:29:11] end up with your maturity level increasing. Yeah. Yeah. So we have permanent permanent people assigned um senior

[00:29:18] management uh assigned to accessibility um um for for budget and capacity and

[00:29:27] stuff like that. Um um and I think from Yeah. Yeah. And then

[00:29:34] throughout through this this champion network, you you um you can find some some some people

[00:29:41] that also uh also want to work on accessibility and uh um that you can

[00:29:46] inspire and together coming together and working together discussing problems and solving them and um yeah that's also um

[00:29:55] something I recognize uh within my own organization. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you know there's

[00:30:01] there's uh companies out there like Intuitit, Ted Drake who I think pretty much came up with this uh this model and

[00:30:08] you know Mark Leola at eBay. Um and you know you can see the impact of the the

[00:30:13] maturity of these organizations you know and they you know the benchmark

[00:30:18] um and I think what's really nice as well with Skyscanner. from my own personal perspective is, you know, I I

[00:30:24] would attend an accessibility event and I would hear somebody outside of the sector talking about Skyscanner as being

[00:30:30] a an organization to look up to. Um, and I think that's that, you know, that's really good to to recognize as

[00:30:37] well that, you know, by doing this you you reach not only a wider an audience, but people

[00:30:43] recognize what what you're actually doing as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Sure. And um

[00:30:51] but so so Skyscanner has been prioritizing accessibility for a longer time than already

[00:30:58] way for how many years you've been with them? So I' I've been supporting Skyscanner for around about three years. Um and I

[00:31:06] think Heather's probably been in the lead position for four or five years. Um

[00:31:11] and yeah, you can you can see over time, you know, what's how that's evolved and the the conversations that we have are

[00:31:17] different as well and the problems that we're trying to solve are different. Uh

[00:31:22] so for many organizations who are very early in their journey, you know, conversations may talk about color

[00:31:29] contrast, they may talk about these fairly lowhanging fruits. They may talk about, okay, how do we make this an

[00:31:36] improved experience for visually impaired screen reader users? Yeah. You know, more mature organizations,

[00:31:43] we're thinking about things like how do we um include this include people with vestibular disorders into this?

[00:31:50] Mhm. How do we make sure that the the um the button that we're we have created

[00:31:56] works not only for visually impaired screen reader users but also includes people who use voice as their inputs. So

[00:32:04] there's lots of different discussions that you have where the maturity level is a little bit higher than you know

[00:32:09] less mature organizations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um

[00:32:16] there's this thing called accessibility by design. If so, if you would start like a new new project or a new um

[00:32:26] completely redo something um you have the opportunity to uh do accessibility

[00:32:32] from the start. Um what are some Yeah. What are some things

[00:32:38] what are some processes you think are good to to incorporate into your development life cycle

[00:32:45] um to to reach something like accessible by design? Uh

[00:32:50] yeah, I think you know one of the things that I would try and focus on is is the fact that we talk about inclusion a lot

[00:32:57] in what we do and maybe I'm a little bit combative but I think there's an opportunity to talk about exclusion. Um,

[00:33:04] and it kind of like changes the perspective of people when you actually use that word. And so if you're in a

[00:33:09] kickoff meeting for a new uh a new project or a new feature or whatever, you know, rub your hands. It's like who

[00:33:16] are we going to exclude today? It, you know, changes the dynamic of the room. But it also, you know, changes the

[00:33:22] conversation a little bit because we don't want to exclude people. You know, our company doesn't exclude people yet

[00:33:27] we do unwillingly. And so so if you can think about things like um kind of like

[00:33:33] the almost the opposite of what you're trying to do, then it can help to actually ensure that that doesn't

[00:33:38] happen. So that's that's one thing. The other thing that um I think is really important as well is the start is again

[00:33:45] and I may be repeating myself a little bit here, but it's also recognizing the fact that it's why we're doing it. It's

[00:33:52] not for legal. it's not for, you know, all these these these purposes that we tend to focus on. Um, is is because we

[00:33:59] want to make something work for people with disabilities. Um, and uh, and so I

[00:34:04] think, you know, framing the discussions early on is kind of like a key thing to help you move forward a little bit

[00:34:10] easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. include

[00:34:15] including including and testing with people with disabilities uh I think is

[00:34:21] something you've mentioned a couple of times and I think it's also very important to do u with in my

[00:34:27] organizations we have two main accessibility testers they both have a visual impairment so they use uh they

[00:34:35] are really advanced using the screen reader and baya controls and uh and that's so so really eye opening to see

[00:34:43] that um from well well just working together with them and testing um so um

[00:34:52] yeah they are just colleagues of mine and so this is really uh yeah they are they really accessible to me as well

[00:34:58] that which is which is really nice but also sometimes it's harder to to to find

[00:35:04] people from outside of the organization to to test uh the product with. How how

[00:35:11] how is how would you handle something uh like connecting with the right

[00:35:16] people? Um how do you do this? Yeah, I mean it depends on budget of course. Um

[00:35:22] there are agencies out there that it's their main main goal to to recruit you know people like Fable for instance in

[00:35:29] in Canada. Um you know it went ahead next to no budget

[00:35:35] or low budget. you kind of like do as much kind of gorilla testing as you can and you find methods to um to try and uh

[00:35:44] recruit people with disabilities to to take part in the tests. Uh so at

[00:35:49] assistiveware for instance one of the things that I did was all sorry one of the things that they did before I arrived was that they had uh two

[00:35:56] Facebook groups uh for people that use the app and for also for people like um

[00:36:02] professionals. Um and so I would just send a message. just like, "Hey, there's something I want to talk about. Is there anybody

[00:36:08] willing to to help me with this?" So, that was something that I would do. Um, I noticed um somebody uh posted on

[00:36:17] LinkedIn from an organization I don't work for, but what they did was they they just put a put out a call to say,

[00:36:23] "Hey, we're we're trying to improve our experience with this. Is anybody willing to help us?" Mhm.

[00:36:28] And so, these are fairly, you know, accessible ways to to attempt to to recruit people, of course. Um and then

[00:36:36] you know if you've got the budget that like I say there are there are organizations out there that can certainly help help you spend that

[00:36:42] budget. Yeah. Yeah definitely. Also from what I see within our organization how we

[00:36:47] connect um also with our our users we have a lot of users in in the

[00:36:52] Netherlands. So uh we try to connect with them and um

[00:36:58] most of the time they they are willing to to help out. Absolutely. You know, I find this as well. You know, ultimately

[00:37:05] we're I look at everything as like we're all on the same team trying to achieve an objective. Um, and I think, you know,

[00:37:11] it's a good objective to try and achieve. Um, so yeah, any kind of like ways to to reach people, um, to include

[00:37:18] people in the discussions and ideally work with you on on solving these problems is is, you know, the way

[00:37:24] forward. I think I think it's something that eventually well hopefully businesses will start to

[00:37:30] recognize that fact. you know, it's great that you've got two internal people um who are able to support you

[00:37:37] and they're supporting you with, you know, the nonvisual experience, which is

[00:37:42] which is great. They're also expert users, as you mentioned. Um but, you know, it's recognizing the fact that

[00:37:49] everything is is, you know, intersectional. There are visually impaired screen reader users who don't

[00:37:54] really know how to use a screen reader. There are people who are cited who use a screen reader. So there are lots and

[00:38:00] lots of different kind of like people that we need to be talking to to ensure that we're considering the needs of

[00:38:05] others. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

[00:38:10] Looking into the to the future maybe a little bit. What what are some do you

[00:38:16] see some some notable trends maybe in the accessibility space today or that you would think are um

[00:38:24] are maybe a good trend or something that could help um solve some some problems

[00:38:33] um notable and worrying I think are are kind of aligned at the moment. So

[00:38:38] there's a lot of uh there's a big shift to AI which is going to solve everything apparently. Um and the reality is that

[00:38:46] um with where we are at the moment it's more problematic than than anything

[00:38:52] else. Um you know I don't know if you've used any kind of like language models to

[00:38:58] to check code and you may get some kind of like feedback which looks semi-accessible and then you realize

[00:39:04] that it's not accessible at all. Um and I think that that kind of stuff is happening in in the space. Um lots of

[00:39:11] companies are claiming to improve automated accessibility testing because of AI. Um these are these are high you

[00:39:19] know these are noble claims and you know it's great when we get there but we're not going to get there tomorrow. uh if

[00:39:25] we ever get there, which I don't think we will, but um to me it's really nice if because some

[00:39:31] some of the these companies do this or advertise with it because then can I can spot out the the the ones that are not

[00:39:38] serious to me. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and you know, I'm not going to do any any name calling here, but it's also it also gives you an

[00:39:46] idea of where the motivations lie as well. you know, is it about um is it

[00:39:52] really about making products as accessible as possible or is it really about how many dollars are you going to

[00:39:59] bring into the organization which sadly is um you know is is something that

[00:40:04] needs to be raised within within the accessibility community. Um there are some players in the in the in the in the

[00:40:10] space who have shifted maybe more to the side that we don't really want them to shift to.

[00:40:15] Mhm. Yeah. So with AI, you're more

[00:40:21] leaning ne negatively currently on it. No, I I think you know it's I think

[00:40:26] cautiously optimistic rather than negatively, but at the moment we are not

[00:40:31] there and we're not going to be there tomorrow. And so I think AI can be useful to um to

[00:40:39] support accessibility efforts but not lead accessibility efforts. Um I think AI could could provide value in certain

[00:40:46] areas certainly like for um um as long as you recognize the the um

[00:40:55] the blind spots which you have um um that you have. So for instance um if you

[00:41:03] are looking at uh using AI for uh alternative text

[00:41:09] u then make sure that the alternative text that you are getting out of it is is actually good alternative text and

[00:41:15] it's not just something that AI has decided upon. Yeah. Yeah. It but it is some in some in

[00:41:22] some ways it also can also speed up um some processes. So for coming up with

[00:41:30] all text for example, you still need to check it of course very very very much

[00:41:35] so but it could speed you up a little bit. Same with for example

[00:41:41] um um it's got the name um

[00:41:49] same with all other processes that can be semi-automated with AI and then you

[00:41:55] of course you need to you check it thoroughly and then yeah it could could

[00:42:00] could speed up your your your processes a little bit. One of the nice features or uses of AI I've seen lately was uh

[00:42:08] from a colleague within my organization. He he is uh blind um but he's backend

[00:42:16] engineer. So he works um on the back end of the aumble um in uh on on with Java.

[00:42:24] I guess he was showing me his his way of working and how he've set up his Scoded

[00:42:31] editor and how he's using the different tools. and he was actually utilizing the

[00:42:36] uh the GitHub copilot um uh in his editor quite quite a lot because

[00:42:41] uh he got some nice prompts uh ready to go to tell him oh uh uh this file um

[00:42:51] explain me what's happening in this file or something like that's what something was he was

[00:42:57] uh to to me it looked very simple but to to him the the information that he got out

[00:43:03] of It was very useful for him and really improved his way of working. So that was

[00:43:09] I thought that was really nice. Yeah. Yeah. I I think you've just got to have that knowledge to understand what what

[00:43:14] you are seeing. And so you know if you pump it pump in some information you pump in a prompt

[00:43:20] and you get something back. It's not a copy and paste kind of thing. You have to understand what is what is being

[00:43:26] presented here. And at the moment with uh from from what what I'm seeing is a lot of things that that come out of

[00:43:32] these uh these um language models are are very much um they could be

[00:43:39] accessibly accessibleish. They may look as though they're accessible but without recognizing what

[00:43:45] defects they could be introducing is uh I mean I'm sure you saw the the uproar

[00:43:50] about um Figma sites with with you know the code that they were they were pumping out. some some

[00:43:57] some nice divs. Uh yeah, lots of lots of divs and lots of bar area which wasn't needed and you

[00:44:03] know all of these things that were that you know if you don't know anything about about that side of things or if

[00:44:08] you or if you do but don't think about accessibility don't consider it then you're just polluting the the web

[00:44:14] even further than it already is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. call it sometimes the big inflation of uh of of

[00:44:22] elements HTML elements also due to now front end frameworks it's very easy to

[00:44:30] just go big on creating a lot of a lot of HTML a lot of uh code rapidly just uh

[00:44:39] bloating the uh the web with uh lots of different things yeah which mostly are

[00:44:44] not accessible u yeah he also of of course have the site on AI

[00:44:51] uh that it's trained on a lot of uh stolen data. Yeah, absolutely. I mean there's lots of

[00:44:57] lots of things where you have to be very very aware and also uh it's kind of like

[00:45:04] what isn't that what sorry what is the data that is you've collected what are the bar what are the things that you have not considered as part of that data

[00:45:11] and so it's you know going beyond accessibility you know you think about um

[00:45:18] this I can't even remember the name now um but there are you know AI specialists

[00:45:24] which are um uh people of color who um have basically um said that you know the

[00:45:31] training data that you're getting is excluding myself and so you know who else are you excluding with that with

[00:45:37] that training data? People with disabilities will be excluded for sure but you know there there's there's a

[00:45:42] wide range of people that will be will be um kind of like not uh not involved

[00:45:48] in that discussion or not involved in that data where where you know they need to be involved in it. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

[00:45:58] All right, I think we are uh we're about to about

[00:46:03] to wrap up. Some of the last things I always ask to to my guests uh are

[00:46:09] um share some some uh some last inspiring message to to folks out there.

[00:46:16] just uh um some fellow accessibility uh um people working on UX maybe

[00:46:23] engineering as well or some some other part uh sometimes can be very hard to work on accessibility especially if I

[00:46:30] looked at myself if you try to do inspire or reach out to a lot of different teams at the same time try to

[00:46:36] help them um in various different ways can be can be daunting also because the

[00:46:42] progress might seem slow a little bit Um yeah, what would you say to the to these people?

[00:46:48] Um you know it's baby steps, you know, any change that you're doing as long as it's a change is is is a positive change

[00:46:55] in the right direction. So even if you are um a designer that's working on a on

[00:47:02] a product and you tweak your button to make sure that is a little bit bigger or

[00:47:08] contrast changes, you know, that's that's an impact. You're going to have a positive impact on on somebody. you may

[00:47:14] not be recognizing that because you don't have the the um the user research to to to back that up, but you are

[00:47:19] making that impact. Um and I think the other thing that I I probably would really highlight and I think this comes

[00:47:25] from the UX background is the fact that it is about the experience. So in

[00:47:30] accessibility we often say we are being accessible but being accessible is is

[00:47:36] often shorthand for compliant. We are workhead compliance and being accessible is not work compliant. And so they, you

[00:47:44] know, recognizing that uh conformance is does not equal experience is probably uh

[00:47:49] something else that's that's really useful. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Last question. So how now now that I think

[00:47:58] about it. So how uh accessible is not linked to VK?

[00:48:03] Um, of course, how how

[00:48:08] but being accessible, is it something you can achieve at all or is there

[00:48:14] always something to do or how far away from being accessible? Uh, like uh on a

[00:48:20] high maturity level I would say away from WA for example.

[00:48:25] Um, how how long of a path you think there is to to improve

[00:48:33] Do you see ve as a as a b baseline and where you these are the the default

[00:48:39] basic things you need to do and then a lot of user research. Absolutely. I mean I mean wag as its

[00:48:45] purposes and it's you know I'm glad that it's there but it's also it's it's part of the you know what we're trying to do.

[00:48:51] Yeah, I think you if you look at the um uh accessible design, if you look at uh

[00:48:57] universal design, you know, the thinking about that is to make things work for as many people as

[00:49:04] possible. It's not building for everybody because it's not possible to build for everybody. But if you can

[00:49:10] recognize um what people you are excluding and um uh if they are

[00:49:16] excluded, then what can you do to try and remove those barriers? I think those are those are really key things to to to

[00:49:22] aim to achieve. Thanks again. Thanks for joining us. Uh

[00:49:28] if people want to find you online, where where can they find you? Uh pretty much LinkedIn, I guess, is the

[00:49:34] is the easiest place to find me. Um and then yeah, the accessibility Slack channel, which uh most of the

[00:49:40] accessibility community will already be a member of. I'm usually in those places. All right, great. Thank you so much. Uh

[00:49:47] thanks for all the insights and a great conversation. And to listeners out there, if you like

[00:49:52] what we do, uh please consider uh liking, subscribing, whatever, following us and to keep up to date with the

[00:49:59] latest episodes. And uh hope to see you next time as well. Right. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Takeaways

• Digital accessibility is essential for creating inclusive experiences.
• Accessibility reflects thoughtfulness in design and engineering.
• Everyone should be able to access online services.
• Advocacy for accessibility can stem from personal experiences.
• Small steps can lead to significant improvements in accessibility.
• Legislation like the European Accessibility Act is driving change.
• Certification in accessibility validates knowledge and skills.
• Monitoring accessibility is crucial for ongoing compliance.
• Education on accessibility should start early in tech training.
• Accessibility is not just a checkbox; it's a fundamental requirement.