Accessibility Leadership | #9 Anuradha Kumari

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Summary

In this conversation, Tim Damen and Anuradha Kumari discuss the importance of accessibility in web development, sharing their personal journeys and insights on fostering an inclusive culture within organizations. They emphasize the need for awareness, education, and collaboration among teams to ensure that accessibility is prioritized in all aspects of product development. The discussion also highlights the significance of user testing, feedback, and the role of leadership in advocating for accessibility. Anuradha shares her experiences in engaging stakeholders and the importance of integrating accessibility into the development process, while Tim emphasizes the need for tools and resources to support these efforts. Together, they envision a future where accessibility is a standard practice in the industry, not just a compliance requirement.

We need to keep improving and not just check boxes. - Anuradha Kumari

Chapters

About Anuradha Kumari

Anuradha Kumari is a Senior Frontend Developer with over 11 years of experience in web development. As a passionate accessibility advocate, she is dedicated to making the web more inclusive and accessible for everyone.

Anuradha specializes in creating responsive, accessible, and performant websites using a variety of modern technologies including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React JS, Next JS, Vue JS, and Nuxt JS. Her technical expertise is complemented by her leadership skills, having led teams of frontend developers as a technology lead.

As a committed accessibility advocate, Anuradha actively shares her knowledge and experiences through conference presentations, community meetups, technical articles, and open-source educational websites focused on web accessibility awareness. She has participated as a mentor in several prestigious programs, including the Road to GDE program, WDA Europe, and WDA India.

Follow her on:

• LinkedIn
• Website)

We need to create for users, not just for business. - Anuradha Kumari

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Transcript

TD: Hello and welcome at Focustrap. My name is Tim Dahme and today I'm joined by Anuradha Kumari, Senior Frontend Developer at VodafoneZiggo Welcome, Anuradha.

AK: Thank you, Tim. I'm really happy to be here, so thanks for the invite.

TD: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I feel like you're a very special guest, so you're more than welcome, of course. Yeah, we are going to talk about accessibility, digital accessibility topic. I think where you have a lot of expertise in. So that's nice. I'm looking forward to all of the discussions and topics we will discuss. To start off with, what does digital accessibility mean to you?

AK: So like there are lots of definitions, but the one I really prefer is like simple and sweet. So it is making resources and services usable by everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. Yes.

TD: Yes. That's great. Yeah. The internet is very awesome and very useful. Why not share it with everyone? Yeah, exactly.

AK: And it is for everyone. So when I guess web was created, right? The first ever website that was accessible. So like web was meant for everyone. Somehow we messed it up. So it's our job to make it better again.

TD: Yeah, definitely. Great. Yeah. And what was your journey like in accessibility? I'm sure you maybe started off as an engineer and then started more focusing into accessibility.

AK: Yeah, that's actually interesting journey because I do understand when people have not heard about accessibility because in college I never knew about accessibility. Then when I started, I have developed like I'm ashamed of that, but I have coded front end code like for lots of years, at least four or five years without knowing accessibility. You know, and, but one day, and that's where I think the events are really important. I feel that events are really important because when you hear about it, then that's the time when you become curious. So there is something called global accessibility awareness day.

AK: It is practiced every year and I'm really thankful like to people who created it because that was when I heard about accessibility because there were GAD and I was new to Twitter and all and I'm looking at all these global accessibility awareness events and I'm like, okay, what is it? And then I was like, I just signed up for one free event. And that was a very like a one-on-one of accessibility. And that just, you know, like that had so much impact on me because I was like, Oh my God, like I have been doing I have been doing development wrong my entire career till now.

AK: And that's so bad because I just felt very bad. I felt so guilty. And then I started exploring more and more. And then I started talking with my teammates and asking them that did they know about accessibility because I felt so ignorant, you know, because When you know about it, you feel this is so basic. How did I don't know about it? And then, uh, people either didn't know, or even when they knew they were more like, uh, yeah, it is for blind people. Right. And like things like that. So that's when I was like, okay, let me, uh, I will read.

AK: And then I was like, um, and that's how my actually speaking, um, started like outside, like I used to speak in my company and events, but I never spoke outside. And I think after I learned accessibility, that's when it triggered me. I found a meetup near my place and I told them that I have a topic about accessibility. Would you be okay to host me? They were very happy. And then we had a talk. And then again, my talk was very basic, 101 talk. And then I was also scared because what if everyone knew and I make a fool of myself.

AK: And I went there and I gave a talk and I saw so many people like their mixed expressions. Someone were surprised. Someone was saying, okay, yeah, that should be there. Why it's not there. Then I talked to them afterwards and they were like, no, that's very important. Like we didn't know this much. We just know like people who knew they also know just the basic that, okay, I just for blind people and all, we don't need to think much. Like, you know, that there was a segregation. that people who knew also, they didn't know that we have to work for it.

AK: Uh, so that gave me the boost and I was like, okay. Uh, that means that more work needs to be done and more and more people need to know. Yeah. And their feedback was the same. I'm going to go back and look up more. So I realized that people need to know and then they can take it from there. But the first, first step is awareness. If you don't know about anything, you will never act on it.

TD: There are a few things. I want to, I want to, I want to make a reaction on. So, because, so you said, okay, I feel, I feel ignorance, right? About not building accessible web applications in your case. But is it, are you really to blame here? Because you, you did your studies, right? You did an education. You passed probably, right? So you started out as an engineer. front end. But Jane, you didn't know anything about accessibility. Is it your fault at first?

AK: So, it's not more about the fault or blame, yeah, but like I think, yeah, but the responsibility. Where does the responsibility lie? I think that it's both. First of all, and that's the huge lack. The biggest lack is that the educational organizations, the educational platforms, or all the trainings they provide for three months before people get placed for companies. They need to have accessibility in part of curriculum, right? And it's not just about digital accessibility, it's about accessibility in general as well, because we need to be mindful. of different kinds of requirements that people can have and we need to be mindful.

AK: So curriculum is like biggest thing. The curriculum really needs to put accessibility in there. And then as a developer, a little bit responsibility is on me because also on me, like definitely, because if I'm reading, I always read about semantic HTML, but I never questioned why semantic HTML and all. So at that point, because I'm very curious, like I like to question things. I don't take things like if you tell me why I need to know why I have to do it. So on that point, I blamed myself that why I didn't was I Not more curious, but another big part which I feel is part of the gap is when you don't know disabled people around you, you know, like you grow up with certain kind of bias.

AK: A bias as in not like that you are biased toward people, but because if you have never interacted with or never seen, let's say a blind person or any people of disability, uh, how they are interacting with web or what are the challenges they are facing. If I don't know, I will never think about it. So that's why it's very important for us also to be around people and also to learn like, uh, that's something.

TD: Yeah. This day you were talking about the global accessibility awareness day, right? This is. Because they reach you via this day and also they show what is it like to live with a disability. So I think these days are indeed really important because this is a day where you can experience or get to know about something you didn't know before.

AK: That's very important. Like that event plus conferences, I think the conferences where people keep talking about accessibility because that is really important, like you speak about accessibility, I and many other people. That's very important. So I think most of the front-end conferences, like we were just talking about, it's really nice that more and more conferences should have accessibility as a topic as well, because many people turn up there and they can learn and go from there.

TD: Definitely. I do think the I do think the EU Accessibility Act is helping in there because it becomes mandatory. So you will see it in more also education. I think education is also picking up accessibility more and more. And I know front end studies that are now that have as a curriculum as well and spend a lot of time on it. So I do think we are heading in the right direction, but yeah.

AK: Yeah, that's pretty good. Like, um, I just like, I just feel a little sad that we needed a law to focus a lot on it. But anyways, like whatever helps us, right? Like, um, so I'm really happy that we have this law now. And I, like you said, I also see this positive change more and people more and more people are. asking about accessibility, training on accessibility, trying to make products and services accessible and curriculums and all, they are adopting it. So that's a positive change. And it's really like kudos that we have been able to do that.

AK: Like that's pretty good.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, it could be like a kickstart, right? Or like, okay, becomes mandatory. Then you start to look into it. Oh, this is pretty important, right? This is something we value as a company already. Why aren't we spending more? That's also the case for ABN, I would say, because we want to be an open bank. We want to be a bank for everyone. That's in like our founding documents or like the statements we use today as well. We want to be a bank for everyone. So it aligns with a lot of with a lot of the things that companies already try to do nowadays.

TD: So that's also, I think, why I think it can stick in the long run. But of course, we need to stay advocating for this.

AK: Yeah. I like how you said that that's just a kickstart because of course that is like, yeah. EA is not the end goal. Like European accessibility act is the start, right? Like that's where things start. So once it gets effective into the summer, that's when the things will start to turn up even more. So I think a good approach wouldn't be that we go and check box all the things, make it accessible and forget about it. But the right course of action would be how to put it into a streamline. How do I say it?

AK: Accessibility should be like a core. Whenever you are going forward, the development, decision making and all, that should be at the core going forward. It's a way of... It's a way. It's not the end goal. It's the way of doing things, I would say. Inclusion is the way of going forward.

TD: This is the way, yeah. Definitely. I like to compare, I talked about this a lot already in the podcast, but I like to compare accessibility to security, for example, because in banking, security is very important. A lot of big companies, of course, it's very important. But also in terms like, okay, we have. security performance, you have these like these SEO things that are important for web application and like the core things you are trying to take care of on a day to day basis. Accessibility needs to be in there as well. It's like. To me right now, it's so bizarre that for example, when I do something that's really insecure in my web application, I install a package that's not secure, my pipeline breaks.

TD: Right? The monitor will turn red. security processes within the bank, they picked up on something that I was doing that was insecure. But this is not the case for accessibility. I'm able to push as many inaccessible features to production if I want to. I'm not saying to automate all of the accessibility, try to automate everything, but there need to be processes in place throughout the organization. that make it really hard for me as an engineer or a designer or a copywriter or a tester to do things that are inaccessible.

AK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because the thing with accessibility is you can't automate everything. Your automated test can pass and still you can be pushing inaccessible code. But of course they are a start. I like those tools which are in place, right? Like you can have the axe tools, which you can put it in your CI CD pipeline. Also, I like the linter like axe linter. It's just like we have so many extensions in any. code ID that we are using, right? Uh, I, I just use Axe linter and it helps me because it just gives you a squiggly nine.

AK: Uh, okay. It's not, it's not stopping me from pushing my code, but when you see it, your attention goes there. I did something wrong there. Again, it's not for everything, but it's for something. And I'm happy that I can eliminate at least the things that. Some tool can help me with, but it's more than that, right? Like, uh, it's, it's the tool automatic tool can tell you that, Hey, the alt tag is mandatory. Like you did not put all in your image, but it's not going to tell us that do we need all there or not.

AK: So that's their responsibility to understand that we are putting the right alt. Or if it's presentational, you, we have to set it to empty string so that still it's accessible. Uh, but that's our responsibility. So yeah, the, uh, it's, it's both, I think combination of both. So yeah, Eileen, uh, for security also, uh, like you said for performance. So there are questions when you, let's say you implement a new feature or. you try to bring a new approach then people ask you the questions is it performant enough so that should be the like way of working for accessibility also okay is it also accessible or um yeah so like okay someone implemented a hover state What about keyboard users?

AK: Like, how is that getting, that's going to work? So those things we need to question and it needs to be there at every stage, I think. So there is more to it.

TD: Definitely, definitely. So at your current employer, for the phones you go, how is accessibility priority for you? Yeah.

AK: Yes. So definitely it's a big priority for us. So we have an accessibility guild in place and actually that was in place even before I joined the company. So they have been doing work for quite some time and I really hear very interesting stories from them. So that I really like. And so, so the way we work is like we also have External audits. So we work with another company, accessibility.nl, who does provide audits and all the official audits and everything. And I think we had few audits before also, and maybe we are due for another audit, but I'm not sure of the timeline.

TD: Do they do an audit on a regular basis?

AK: Uh, there are some plans on which they go because just doing audits also wouldn't make sense. You have to fix it and all. But, uh, what I like is everyone is on board. Like they really worked a lot. Uh, the members of accessibility guild, uh, when I joined now I'm member, but the most of the work, which was done by them to, uh, get the leadership on boarded, get the stakeholders on boarded. Like I think a lot of work was done by them because I understand that this is a challenge in any company that you work with.

AK: Uh, and that's very impressive because we have training for everyone. Like, uh, we have training for different roles, let's say. So as a developer, we had our trainings from developer perspective. We have also had trainings for editors. We also had trainings for designers. And everyone is on board like and we have a we have a chat open where we have a weekly question and answer hour as well where people and I see more and more people turning up and asking like, okay, I'm implementing this feature and I think how can I make it more accessible or am I doing something wrong.

AK: And other, like some editors will come up that this is not an accessible color and all. How can I make it accessible where the work needs to be done and all, and product owners and all discussing about features. So that's, that's pretty nice. Even I go there with my questions sometimes because I have ideas and I'm like, I need to run by because I need to understand what other people think about it and what's the right approach to take.

AK: Yeah.

AK: So that's pretty good. And when I see the enthusiasm, so that's one biggest thing, you know, like while creating any strategy for accessibility, which I feel collaboration is needed. One person cannot strategize and one person, just one person or two person cannot work on accessibility. It needs to be for every role, every person needs to understand its importance because there are different ways in which the work comes in. It's not just that the developers are going to code it, right? When requirement comes from our stakeholders or what we are trying to do. It starts from there, even from before, uh, in the, in the way we are trying to make a new feature, like what are we trying to solve for our users and how can we solve for all different kinds of users to when designing the annotations are very important, right?

AK: Yeah. Yeah.

TD: This is discussed during like planning, planning meetings within your team, for example, or is this more like, so, so the things that you're discussing right now, they're really, I think. More in like the designing phase of things, right?

AK: Not only design, at multiple phases, but yeah, like for me, I always try to take an opinion from UX. Because UX opinion is very important and they know more is what I feel always that they definitely know more. So for us, because actually I'm in B2B, so business to business. So like business to business is not a priority right now, but still I like that my product owner, he's like, okay, but we go with it because I am in the team and I focus on accessibility. So when we are discussing, at our level, I can tell you like when we are discussing like a new feature or like, okay, this is the thing we implement or some changes in a component, we always see about what about accessibility?

AK: How are we going to implement it? Like how are not implement? It's not a new feature. Like how are you still making it that it's accessible? But also in code reviews, when you are doing code reviews, more and more people are curious and they will ask, okay, how does this work? Or if there's hover, how does it work on like focus and all? Are we taking care of that? Is the color contrast good? But with color and all, that's like more or less needed on ours. role because there is branding and there's design so we have brands and design and but that's a very nice story which I really like to say because I was in the meetup last week I think in my company we had a meetup for accessibility and somebody asked us like how do you get your stakeholders and leadership really invested in accessibility they need to know So, uh, it happened

AK: before I joined the company, but I was, it was so simple and I felt so good to hear the story. So I like to say this. So, uh, our brand like in Zigo is orange, right?

AK: The color is orange.

AK: And we have links where it's orange and white. That's not accessible. The contrast is not good. So I think what they did is that they just took some of the people like I think from marketing or someone I don't know because I don't know the intricates of the story but overall like the theme. So they took them out like of office and they just showed them on mobile like can you see? Yeah and then they were like yeah that's not You can't read it properly, right? Like it can be so simple as that. So that's what I always think.

AK: Like that's what I also feel is a right strategy. And I have seen these stories from multiple people. I've heard the stories and the best way to make people onboard on accessibility is to create a use case. And it doesn't have to be very complex. This was a such a simple use case. And then they understood, okay, no, we need to do something with this. And then we changed it. Like we changed the color, we changed how it should happen. So the branding still remains same, but they had discussions and all, and they tweaked it so that the contrast is good.

AK: So like our links now are not orange they are black and in black you can have orange I think that's I forgot but like one of in dark mode or something I think it's better so that's kept but the ones which were not really they were like okay no accessibility comes first so that's how we go and how can we ensure so like the branding, the designing team and all, they work together so that the branding is there, plus it's also accessible. So I really like this collaboration. So I think one word, collaboration. Everyone has to collaborate and understand.

TD: Oh, that's so good. Yeah.

AK: It's so nice, right? That you show them and they're like, yeah, that's right. That's the problem.

TD: We need to fix it.

AK: Show them the problem and then they'll know.

TD: Yeah. But in terms of like getting Yeah. Higher management on board. Are there like other strategies you say worked for you or you think are like a good strategy?

AK: So I think use case is important, but also like if you can put out some numbers, numbers are important, right? So this I saw recently. Okay. So I don't know if that's internal information or something, but it's about, it's not internal information, but it's in our chat. One of the. numbers. So I think in Netherlands, if you see 8% or something is the number of let's say deaf, like the auditory disability. So they did some survey where how many people are using subtitles, let's say on the TV and all. And so 8% people have auditory issues.

AK: So it should be eight maybe. Like if you assume that only disabled people are using the features, but it was way more, way more than that. So I remember the number, but I'm not just saying because I really don't know. I think it should be a normal information, but still I will just choose to skip the number, but the number was way more than the eight percent. And then people were talking about it. Like why? So some people said, yeah, because like I don't have a auditory disability, let's say, but sometimes there is noise around or I'm doing something else or something.

AK: So I just put the subtitles on as well. And as me personally, I always like to watch over subtitles. Uh, because it just makes me understand more. So it's, it's just like the number like these that they are not just like they are for everyone. So when we, uh, when we create things from inclusion in mind, like when we create for users and not just for business, you know, when we create like for users, then I think when we keep everything in mind, then it really helps everyone, everyone else. So the numbers like these surveys and all, they really help the leadership because I know that management thinks more in numbers or in business.

TD: Yeah. And in numbers, do you also show them maybe some missed profits?

AK: I think you can always make a use case out of it. If the things are not accessible, there is always missed opportunity. And I don't think that the missed opportunity only comes from the disabled users. It also comes from users like, let's say me, even if I don't have, I do have like, because I have specs, so I think, but if I don't have any major, visual disability, but, or something still, if I see a website or a product or business that is not accessible, I will try not to use it. So the missed opportunity doesn't come only from the affected users.

AK: It also comes from the users who overall think that if this business is not inclusive, should we even like use them or should we even like, maybe that's not a good place. So.

TD: And also from a lot of times what we're just discussing right now is a lot of people want to use accessible features from time to time. For example, you have a good example with the curb cut. The corporate effect is quite known, but also subtitles. I also turn them on all the time. For example, watching movies, but also I think very nice when you just watch small videos without any volume because they'll follow what's going on. So a lot of people like to use accessibility features because sometimes it just helps them out in a certain situation.

AK: It does. It does. Uh, it, it, it's really helpful. Like, uh, let's say, for example, I think there is also this, um, thing about cognition, right? That a text needs to be simple. Of course that's important. It doesn't only help people who have, um, uh, issues like, uh, who, who have trouble. It's, it's for everyone. If, if something is written in a simple way, it helps everyone. It really helps everyone. So it's, it's for everyone. Yeah.

TD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, personally, one of my struggles, I have dyslexia. One of the things that I feel that is hard to read for me is the Weka success criteria.

AK: Like they say, right? That the accessibility documentation is not that accessible.

TD: Yeah, yeah. Not to me, at least.

AK: It's hard to understand, you know, really. It's like you need a professional to make you understand.

AK: Uh, so those are really, because those are like kind of, you can say business terms or something. It's hard for me as well to understand. I have to really sit and like read a lot to understand. And that's where other websites come in picture. Like I really like web aim.

AK: I like DQ and, uh, that's why I always say about, uh, the DQ acts deaf tool, uh, because, uh, You know, like the best way to learn about accessibility is to see what is the error and learn about it. And you go from there.

AK: If you run the.

AK: that page, like run the page in the DevTools or whatever the term is, then the errors will come that these are the errors and you click on the link. I want to read more about it. They gave such a nice overview that what is the issue and why it might impact users, what are the different ways. So it's, it's a more simple written in a more simpler words, I would say. And that's really important.

TD: And also that's where a lot of accessibility content creators come in because from time to time I read a very nice article. I'm going to give a shout out to someone right now because I just read this great article about the focus ring. I'm doing some research on the focus ring. Someone named Sarah.

AK: I love her, she's amazing.

TD: It's such a huge article, but also described in a way which I understand it. It's really accessible to me as someone with dyslexia to just go over it. The content is just so good and I just really all of my answers answered because I was reading, okay, adjacent, background color which okay which side is it and I was oh and I was reading this article and I was like oh my answers are quite this is so great so this is also awesome because yeah this is how you how you can how you can spread the spreading word yeah yeah obviously because that's how we learn even I have learned from internet people Sarah there's Marcy Sutton manual

AK: Yeah, I think if I have to understand model dialogues and all, I always go to his articles and videos.

TD: Yeah, I think these are also good people to follow because they take it really seriously and you can trust, okay, they provide content which is correct and which sometimes it's, of course, you don't, you're not certain that something is. But yeah, no, that's great. So it's, it's very nice to hear that you, you guys are running the accessibility guild and that there's really this open discussion about accessibility and things are, things are going that way. Are there like more things you would say are really helping this, this accessibility efforts for, for, for you, for the teams around you?

TD: Um, yeah.

AK: I think like this is very important, uh, is really caring about your user. That is very important. So like you can learn a lot of things, but until and unless you really care about your users, you are just going to take some boxes and that's not going to help in the long run. I think that's where I do see the difference here, at least with my team and the people who are in kill and all. Everyone cares, you know, everyone cares. Like we want to make things accessible for users. Yes, there is law, but it's more than that because we want to make it and we want to keep on improving.

AK: At least that's the, that's the notion that I get when I work with people, when I see the MRI reviews, even by other people, it's just amazing. Like, you know, uh, I just feel good to be surrounded by people who all care about accessibility, you know, Because in the past I have been in places where I am caring about accessibility. I'm talking about it here. And that's one of the biggest reasons why I've joined this company. And I have told them like, okay, this is one of the biggest reasons because I like to be around like-minded people because then you know that those are your people and like.

AK: Everyone really cares about it. And I really like how, how people approach it. So like, and I learned from others, like, okay. I like to be in places where I learn from people like here. I'm not an expert. I'm just a normal developer and I'm learning a lot from because there's many things. Accessibility is not just about buttons and diffs and all right. It's a lot when you are in a complex scenario, how are you going to approach it?

AK: Yeah.

AK: How are you finding the solution? It's just beautiful. So I think that's very important. So like that care, that empathy, you know, the empathy needs to be there. So that's the biggest thing I would say anywhere. Like you need to be passionate and you need to really care about the things if you want to make it long-term and not just a short-term law checkbox thing.

TD: So yeah.

AK: What do you think?

TD: Well, I think training for me is up there, getting everyone training, which I think is one of the first thing I would do, get some proper training in for everyone, all of different roles, engineers, designers, everyone. But also some more, some deep dive trainings, I think after that. for the people that, well, I would say most of the people, but you always have some people who are trying to do a little bit more.

AK: Yeah, so like champions and all.

TD: Yeah, and you give these champions programs. They can bring some success as well.

AK: Other people can come to them if they have questions.

TD: You make like someone in the team responsible for accessibility, which is good. So I would say training, but also that's like the first thing I'll do, but getting it into like processes, getting it into your development lifecycle is what will get you to higher maturity in the end. So things like I was saying in the beginning, okay, why is it that my pipeline breaks when I push something that's insecure and not when I push something that's inaccessible? We can do something with automation. Then, I would also say monitoring on it, getting some good data resources within the companies.

TD: Also some automation comes into play there, but we also monitor on like accessibility stories in the backlogs of all the teams. You have more like these kinds of sources you can get data out of which you can monitor on, which is nice. But I personally like that we, that we are doing quite well is testing with people, um, with our end users and also users with disabilities. So, um, and learning, getting, trying to learn of course, um, but also some advice, get some, getting some advices to, to the rest of the company. And this I would say is more the harder part because You can be, there are like rounds of interviews, always, always hosted with our end users.

TD: And then we get some learnings out of it and a big report is made. And, but getting, you know, getting the word out and changing the way of working is, is a little bit hard after that. I'm not sure if you have any experience with that.

AK: I personally don't know about it, but this is something like the oldest strategy to said. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that, right? Like trainings, super important for everyone. And then deep training, keep in proc, hiring people with disabilities. Very important. You need to have like, like they say nothing about us without us. So we all need to be included in the process, but about, um, The service, right? Like interviews with end users. That's very, very important because we can think a lot about how we are making a value in user slide, but unless we get a feedback, we really don't know.

AK: I don't know much about this in our company front. but I'm pretty sure that they would be doing it. Uh, it's just that I'm not aware of it, uh, totally. Uh, but because that's very important user feedback, uh, we also have, and that's really important point that you said that, um, we also have, um, uh, people, um, uh, who, who really give us feedback on this. And that's very important. And one important thing, which I always suggest to everyone is to really understand how disabled people are using the web. And not just think because I have seen scenarios where people think that, okay, they use tab to go through everything.

AK: They put tab index zero on headings and all and everywhere because they think that tab is the only way in which the disability users use the web. So that's not the only way. So there are certain use cases on YouTube as well. And also if you go to the W3 website for accessibility, there you have multiple links where you can see how they are using the web. So that I always suggest to the people and I also personally do it to see that how they really use it and what are the things I need to keep in my mind and where the things I need to improve.

TD: Yeah, definitely. That's for me, it's also up there. And what we also, one of the initiatives of the guild is also manually testing applications. Because we do get like companies that do the third party like other thing for us. But they have Yeah, of course, when you do a proper WKGEM audit, you need to have like a big sample size. And that didn't quite work for us because what we do with the guild, we and narrow it down to one application. So one application is developed by one team so you can communicate with them and just give them a more broader picture of how good they're doing in terms of accessibility within their own application.

TD: And with the larger audit with like 25 different pages, which could be like 25 different It could be like 25 different applications for us. Not everyone feels, of course, you get a few problems in this application, a few problems in this application, and then it gets distributed to all of the teams. Nobody feels like they have the full picture of everything that's going wrong in their application. So what we are doing with the guild is like testing one application at a time and giving them a full report on how they are doing in their application.

TD: Yeah.

AK: That could be a good approach.

TD: Yeah.

AK: Yeah. I do because I don't know about this aspect because, but I will, I'm going to ask this question this week because that's a, if we are doing it, then that's amazing, but that could be something we can take into account because yeah. That's definitely good. We definitely have a lot of audit reports and everything. And then we create tickets out of it. I see. And people working on it and then also getting feedback on it, that if it's working or not. And we want to see that in next audit, did we do good? Because recently one of our editors, he gave a presentation in marketing because, uh, One of the pages became like, I think, in after one of the tests, it became, you say, they say green or something, you know, like it became really good, like accessibility issues were solved and it was really good.

AK: So that was a big achievement for us to celebrate that, okay, people are doing it. Uh, that was pretty nice. I think it was really nice. So, but what you are saying, that's, that's actually good because yeah, there are approaches, but how do you handle the result of it? That's also equally important. You can get all the data, but if that data just remains as data, that's not going to help. We need to turn into important information, right? Like which we can act upon. So. That's yeah. Do you have like design system or something because okay, then it can also be tackled in a design system form because if the issues are getting like, if I have a button, if I have a model, if I have a nav, if those things get accessible, then they, Go to all the applications.

AK: If all the applications are using it, that that's also, I think that that's also where design system really shines. Then you will really see the importance. Yes, it's atoms, molecules, organism. Okay. Whatever. But it really helps to propagate the one change and everywhere in the page, everything is working good now.

TD: So design system is really, really important. I feel like, but it's also not like the. If you have a very accessible design system, it's also not your application won't be accessible by default. You should also need to use it in an accessible way. That's important as well. But having like a very nice accessible

AK: design system really helps yeah yeah of course like it's the way we use it that's also important that's where documentation comes in so if you have a design system a good documentation how to use it but of course it's like you said it's in multiple stages it's not just that you create components and make it accessible and that's done no how you implement it then if something is wrong it needs to be Like it can be catched in your review stays. If not, maybe we have something in a pipeline. Cypress test and all we can have Cypress test and that can help too.

AK: And then of course testing like testing. So we, we need to be like now we are definitely putting accessibility, like whenever we create the stories, we are putting accessibility as success criteria. So not successful until it is accessible because that's how we should approach. and testers that's like I think there's a lot of responsibility on them like yeah like it's everyone's responsibility and testers are like the gatekeepers so testers also like I do have the feeling that they have a hard time with accessibility

TD: For me, it was easier to get into because I may have been like a front end developer for more than 10 years now. And then eventually, okay, you kind of get what they're saying when you're reading the WCAG, for example, or you kind of get what everyone is saying when you read stuff about it online. But for Tester, this is not particularly your day to day work. Uh, you and you are not working daily on the, on the front end, of course. So I think it's harder to get into for testers, but it's fair. Yeah.

TD: If you have a good. Tester who can also test on accessibility. That's great. Yeah.

AK: Yeah, I think that's where like the tailored training comes into picture. Like everyone has different point of view. So like everyone has a different way of testing into accessibility. But yes, having a good tester is really, really important. Like training the testers, like nobody gets good by themselves. So training is really important.

TD: Yes. I'm also speaking to a lot of people in the accessibility space currently. I also spoke to a few people who said, okay, WCAG is of course really important, but it's also not everything because you can still, yeah, of course, if you really want to, you can still make something that's inaccessible when following WCAG. What is your feeling with this? Should you do more than just WCAG? Should you implement WCAG and then look ahead, maybe in terms of like user research or Yeah.

AK: Yeah. It's like, um, wake up is of course, like it's like set off. It's a guideline, right? Like it gives us guideline that if there is a control like this or something, this is how it should be done, but it doesn't tell you when to implement what, right? Like it can't dictate that. So that's where, of course, the, our decision making comes into picture. Like I said, like a very simple example, we can tell you that all that there has to be all. Yeah. And that what, but it's on us to decide if it's going to be presentational or not.

AK: And what's the information and how much information should you put, which can be very different for different things. Right. So those things is on us. So I also am not a big fan of just checking the checklist and like saying that, okay, my work is done. It's more about how the experience is of the product or the service to the user. The experience is more important. For example, there are some rules which are maybe less significant than other rules, right? So like there are rules where heading should be in order. Sometimes H4, H5, even if that's a mismatch, maybe that's forgivable.

AK: But what is not forgivable is the button needs to work as button, the anchor needs to really work as anchor. These things are really not forgivable, like very, very important. And that's where also user research comes into picture because you need to know what users want or what makes them better. So recently, one link was shared and I really like that link because that is about user research. And I was just reading through the research where even in the forms, there was some research, not many people data points, like maybe 30 people or something. So it's like Netherlands research, some research, like some official, I will have to look up the link later.

AK: But what I really liked is about forms, like they just put different kind of testing, I think different variants and saw what user found more easy to to go through. And that is also something which actually we also do like A-B testing. We do a lot of A-B testing and we try to also put the accessibility things there to understand that what is making users, you know, getting better even for the forms. I definitely remember we had something about the forms where we wanted to really decide that how do we want these forms to be for the users because the forms look different on web and on mobile.

AK: You have less space. You have less space to do things. So how do you want to do things? How do you want to present the information? So there was a big discussion and all and there were different variants created and I think tests were done. Uh, and the same thing in this user research I saw, and then the users, like they preferred if, uh, uh, for every field, you give them some information on how to feel and like short questions. Just give me short questions and it's better for me to feel what is your issue?

TD: Yeah, this was what I was trying to get at because this is more than just WCAG. This is following WCAG, but then also doing this extra step of like A-B testing. Okay, what works for the user? What is understandable? How can we help them in such a way that it's even a better user experience for everyone.

AK: Because they are the guidelines. Okay, they are written set of rules. Yes, that's there. But we have to do more than that. Not only that, they are again just the starting line. Like that is the bare minimum, I would say. Bare minimum, but you have to do more, like how you make the experience better.

TD: Yeah, definitely. And also there are of course a lot of weekly rules. Not in Weka, because they have some trouble like defining them or they have some trouble translating them in such a way that it's easily implementable. I know, I know a few people in the, in the way they say groups, they tell about it's okay. We have a lot of rules which we, which are almost implementable or almost made it into WCAG, but you can just not get, get the text right. Or we can just not, just there. So there are more things of course we could, yeah, well, that tells me, okay, there are more things we can do than just WCAG.

TD: Yeah, that's not everything. Yeah, that's, it's not everything, but. What I will also say, okay, but we got is really something I can hold there to me. And it's just something I can fall back on and read about. although it's not very accessible to me, but it's something you can discuss together. It's actually a very nice starting point. The basics of what you can do to make your application on a basic level accessible and get it to some point of like, okay, this is acceptable. And then of course you should always try to do better.

TD: Yeah.

AK: Yeah. Like you said, the base is the baseline. Like, okay, that's a strong baseline because it provides us a very strong grounds where we can stand and we can do more over that.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Great. Maybe looking into the feature, some of the, One of the last questions, maybe looking into the future, what are some of your goals? What are some of your wishes maybe? In terms of accessibility, it doesn't have to be, of course. Yeah, curiously, no.

AK: Yeah. Uh, so one of my biggest wish is because this law is coming. Uh, the one thing which I hope doesn't happen is like we were discussing before as well, that people don't take it that is the law. So we have to do it. And after that we forget about it, you know, it has to be the start, not the end. Uh, so my wish is that from now on, because more and more people are getting aware, more and more people are taking action, learning, the curriculums are including accessibility. So that only expands, that doesn't stop after some time.

AK: So let's say after a year, it shouldn't stop. It should only get better from there. And I hope like my best case scenario is where It's not, it's not a topic where people still don't know about or don't care about, or it's after a year or two, let's say, because the law is there now. So maybe that's not the topic anymore where we still have to. get the stakeholders and leadership on board it. So it should be at a position that the leadership stakeholders, everyone are aware and they are also advocating and they are also like they can say from the start that that's the goal.

AK: Yeah. When you start a product, the goal would be to make it inclusive, to make it for everyone. And not like right now in most of the companies like we are doing because we are trying to make things accessible, which were, or some things were not working before. The goal would be all the new things that are being made that are accessible by default. And it shouldn't be something that you need to invest later into to make it again accessible. So that's my biggest thing, you know, where it becomes just a normal topic.

TD: Yeah, just normalize. Okay, this is something we just do on a day to day basis.

AK: And as important as performance and security and SEO.

TD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, great. Yeah, just for the people who want to follow you or connect with you, where can people find you online?

AK: LinkedIn. I am on X also, but I don't use it anymore. So it's like that. So I will just say LinkedIn. So Anuradha1515 on LinkedIn. So yeah, you can always get connected with me and ask if you have any questions or anything, that's totally fine.

TD: That's very nice. All right. Thank you so much for joining and taking your time to come onto the podcast. And of course, to the listeners, if you like what we do, consider supporting us by giving a like or subscribe or whatever you can do on your audio stream or YouTube, whatever. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining and hope to speak to you again very soon.

AK: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

TD: It's alright. It's a wrap.

AK: Okay.

Takeaways

• Accessibility is a priority for organizations and should be integrated into all processes.
• Awareness and education are crucial for fostering a culture of accessibility.
• Collaboration among team members is essential for effective accessibility strategies.
• User testing and feedback are vital for understanding user needs and improving accessibility.
• Leadership engagement is necessary to advocate for accessibility initiatives.
• Accessibility should be a core part of decision-making in product development.
• Tools and resources can aid in identifying and addressing accessibility issues.
• Empathy and care for users are fundamental to creating accessible products.
• Compliance with accessibility guidelines is just the starting point; user experience is paramount.
• Continuous improvement in accessibility practices is necessary for long-term success.