The Journey to Inclusive Design | #5 Emma Dawson

Transcript of the podcast

Video version of the podcast is available on YouTube.

Summary

In this conversation, Tim Damen and Emma Dawson explore the significance of digital accessibility, Emma's journey from teaching to web development, and the growing importance of accessibility in the tech industry. They discuss the upcoming European Accessibility Act, strategies for embedding accessibility into organizations, and the role of education and advocacy in creating inclusive digital experiences. Emma shares insights on the challenges and opportunities in the field, emphasizing the need for a long-term commitment to accessibility.

"Accessibility is a long-term project." - Emma Dawson

Chapters

About Emma Dawson

Emma is a frontend developer and accessibility specialist working for Axess Lab in Sweden. Her day to day work includes supporting banks and e-commerce companies around the Nordics and Europe with code remediation, auditing and accessibility education. She loves talking about accessibility with anyone who will listen!

Follow her on:

• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

"Progress is better than perfection." - Emma Dawson

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Transcript

TD: Hello and welcome at Focus Trap. My name is Tim Dahme and I'm joined today by Emma Dawson. Welcome.

ED: Thank you very much.

TD: I hope you are doing fine. We meet online this time. We are located very, very differently. You're calling in from Sweden, Stockholm. I'm here in Amsterdam. I'm so glad that you can join and are willing to do the podcast. And I want to start with the questions to you. What does digital accessibility mean to you?

ED: So yeah, that's a great first question, very broad first question. I think for me, digital accessibility means like that everyone should be able to use the digital products. So like, if I want to go in and do something online, I I don't want to be confused or feel anxious trying to do it and be scared if I'm doing the right thing. This is maybe a lot of don'ts, but I don't want my older family members to go in and be tricked into doing things because they don't understand what they're trying to do. I want my relatives and my friends and I also have colleagues that have various disabilities.

ED: I want them all to be able to have the same experience that I do. online, I don't want it to take someone like 15, 20 minutes to do something that takes me one, because they have a disability and it's so much harder for them. I want everyone to have a good, easy experience where, you know, their privacy is respected, their security is respected. And so I guess that's what accessibility kind of means to me.

TD: Yeah, they're generally speaking, their ability to participate in online as well, as much as we can do as well. No, that's great. I think, yeah, in today's day and age, when most of the services we use online, of course, it's very, yeah, I think it's very important to shine a light on making our services as accessible as possible. And indeed, once we get older also with one of the people around us that are older as well are starting We are living in a more aging society, right? So it's also becoming more important to think about accessibility, think about, all right, how am I going to use this when I get older or people surrounding me?

ED: Exactly. Yeah. I see how like my grandma struggles. uh, today with like even using a cash machine because she has arthritis in her fingers and she's scared that she's not going to be able to like grab the card fast enough to take it out. And it's all these things like, boy, is that going to happen to us when we're older? How can we like make it better for ourselves in a selfish way as well as for like all our family members and friends and that kind of thing.

TD: It's a little bit selfish, but More often than not, that's when we actually get triggered to do something around it, when something happens close to us. So yeah, and your journey into accessibility, how did this get started? Is it something you've been interested in for a longer time? Is it something new for you?

ED: Um, so I actually, um, haven't been in web development and accessibility that long, like a few years, um, before I became a web developer, I was a teacher. And, um, obviously as a teacher, we meet children every day with various different educational needs. So I've taught children with, uh, visual impairments, hearing impairments, like physical ability impairments, like sitting in wheelchairs or using crutches and that kind of thing. So it's always been top of mind in my previous occupation. And then I decided a few years ago that I had enough of teaching, so decided to become a web developer instead.

ED: And I hadn't really thought at the time that those kind of things would be relevant to being a developer. But I was actually really lucky that my first internship as part of my studies was at a consultancy company called Access Lab, which is where I now work as well, but I've had a gap in between. But I did my first internship at Access Lab and they are an accessibility focused consultancy company and kind of Yeah, I just opened up my eyes to, oh, this is also a thing in web development. It's not just a thing in education.

ED: And from there, that just sparked a massive interest and I couldn't let it go. And I just kind of, yeah, tried to learn more and more and more about it because it feels like something that's important to me. So that's kind of where I got started.

TD: You skipped until you said, oh, and I just decided to get into web development. What did trigger you to get into web development from being a teacher? It's quite a gap, I would say.

ED: Yeah. So I was always quite techy when I was working as a teacher as well. So they started bringing in like computer science into the curriculum and nobody else wanted to do it. except I thought it was really fun and exciting. So I ended up being the one that taught that to all the kids. And then after a while I was like, this is actually something that maybe I would like to pursue as more of a career. When I was getting to the end of wanting to be a teacher, I was feeling a bit burnt out with that.

ED: And I was like, what else can I do? And I was like, but I do really love doing the coding and that kind of thing. And I stumbled across a free like one week course where it's like make your own website, did that and that was it. I was kind of hooked after that. So then I applied to do a, in Sweden you can do like short courses, which is a two year practical course where you learn a lot of information in a short time and do an internship as well to come out into a new occupation.

ED: So yeah, that was kind of my way into web development.

TD: Oh yeah, this reminds me of when I used to live in Denmark for periods of time in Copenhagen. And just what you now describe these programs to also during when you already have a career for maybe a long time. example, like you did as a teacher, there's still the possibility to start and explore something new and something else. I think that was also really viable when I was in Denmark. I did see that more around me than when I'm now here back in the Netherlands. It's more like, all right, you picked this job and you just do it for the rest of your life.

TD: Yeah, basically, that's more normalized right here. But I really like this approach of continuously learning and maybe also reflecting back, okay, is this still something? Yeah, well, that's great. And of course, great. I think the web development is awesome. Getting into accessibility is even cooler, I would say. But yeah, nice background story. And also, so you used to be a teacher teaching children with disabilities. Is that right?

ED: Well, it was in like a normal school, but like children with disabilities are integrated into the classroom. So everyone is included.

TD: It's also part of the reason why you started. getting more into accessibility because this is something that you noticed, recognized probably. Yeah. That's cool. And now you are dedicating much of your time also advocating for accessibility. You are also speaking about accessibility a lot, right? On the conference.

ED: Yeah, this year I'm going to be speaking at two conferences so far. So one in Italy in April and one in the web. We are developers World Congress in Berlin in July. So I'm looking forward to those and then probably doing a few online talks and things as well throughout the year, we'll see.

TD: That's awesome. That's awesome. Is it something you've been doing for a longer time now or is it something new for you?

ED: So yeah, I haven't done much talking. I presented at my first tech meetup last year in Sweden. We have an accessibility meetup called T12T, which is the Swedish version of A11Y, which is the shortening for accessibility. Um, so, uh, I presented for the first time there last year and then thought I would try my hand at applying for a few bigger conferences this year and see what happens. So I'm excited to go there and talk about how you can make your websites more accessible.

TD: Right, right. At the, at the, these, these topics accessibility. They're not as big yet, I would say. I've been to a few conferences where the topic's not really discussed in too big detail, but I think we're getting there. There's more attention now for accessibility, maybe also due to the European Accessibility Act might be one of the reasons. But good, nice that you also started speaking, maybe that's something more natural, it becomes more natural when you also been a teacher maybe.

ED: Yeah, I think that, that wants to do it as well as like, I have so many years of standing in front of a class and sharing information that I don't just want to sit behind a screen all the time and, and code. I also want to go out there and kind of share my knowledge with other people.

TD: Yeah, great. Very nice. We just entered 2020-25. The best wishes still to you for this year. Same. A little bit about this year, of course, this is the year that the European Accessibility Act will come into play. As someone that has a career in accessibility, are there some notable industry developments that you see and that you maybe would like to see continuing in 2025.

ED: Um, yeah, I mean, I guess it's definitely noticeable that companies are suddenly realizing that this law is coming in, uh, in June, 2025. Um, like the amount of companies contacting our company for help and support and that kind of thing is just skyrocketing at the moment. Um, so it's great that more and more people are, even if they're being forced by a law that they're actually realizing that this is something that needs to be done and that it's necessary. My hope is that this kind of is just the kickstart to getting people to focus more on accessibility.

ED: So like this year is going to be a lot about compliance and how to conform to the new criteria and all that kind of thing. But I really, really hope that in the future that it won't stop at the baseline of checking off all of the WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guideline criteria and the extra things that are in the European standard, but that it will go further and spur people on to actually Focus on users and user experience, because I feel like that's what a lot of accessibility is. At the end of the day, it's, you know, it's having a good user experience for everybody.

ED: So yeah.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. That's maybe something that, yeah, well, hopefully it will be done more, of course, testing with users and also disabled users and users of your product. Really important. What I do see now indeed is a little bit of stress, a little bit of movement of all right companies making moves or looking to improve their accessibility also due to the law coming up. I would say, but like you said, this could be a kickstart of something as sparking something that will hopefully stick. And yeah, what I see around me now that we're still, still a lot of organizations are seeing it more as a checklist, which hopefully will change in the future.

TD: Of course, when you are in a situation where you need to do things quickly and understandable that you go for this strategy, but Hopefully we'll stay at a baseline indeed, like you said, and then making some good steps, good extra steps. I would say leveling up the maturity level as something that companies after that can focus on. I hope getting in the getting the processes in place to create accessible features and keep developing accessible features. Not only going back and seeing, okay, what have we done right now? Let's check it. Let's test it. Let's fix problems, but also looking forward.

TD: Okay, we need to We need to, in the future, don't make these same mistakes again, but actually create features that are accessible by default. That is something that I hope for. Are there some other things that you see online maybe or other trends, accessibility trends?

ED: I mean, There's a big question at the moment about dark mode, which is quite interesting. I think that's always a good conversation. Whether it's going to be included in the European accessibility act or not is a big kind of question mark at the moment. Some people interpret that it will be, some people interpret that it won't be. I think it's a great thing to include anyway. It's one of those, even if it's not included, why not just do it? Like go above and beyond and add it. Okay. It might take some. effort to do it and it's not the easiest thing maybe to implement in a very, very large website.

ED: Go above and beyond and add things like dark mode. I'm really also quite curious about that for banks, they have this plain language element to their requirements as well. And I know at the moment it's kind of very sketchy what that actually means. It says that banks need to not be higher than a B2 level in the European Common Framework. But what that actually means in reality is kind of uncertain right now. But I think it'll be really interesting to see how that develops and how that can then be used to help like cognitive load for a lot of people that don't understand the very technical language and how to make things easier for people generally across your website.

ED: So that's interesting as well.

TD: A big advocate for the plain language. I'm dyslectic myself, so it would be great help for me as well. There's a bit of personal gain there, but Now I'm a big advocate for plain language, clear language as well. Short understandable sentences. It's really nice that this is also included as part of the European Act because my Still, there are some parts in the wake of guidelines that I miss about improvements for dyslexic people, which is a really big group actually. There are some AAA guidelines or criteria, but most of the time these are not focused on and I hope maybe sometime in the future they could change to AA?

ED: Definitely, yeah. I'd love to see also I know they're not necessarily included because it's harder to measure but things for helping people with cognitive disabilities and learning disabilities as well and things like other issues such as anxiety and even like we touched on earlier, things for older people as well. I think there's so many more things we could do and it's just a shame that we can't, they're not necessarily included because they're not measurable. Yeah.

TD: Yeah, indeed. Well, hopefully we will get there. Companies are a little bit in stress right now for the European Accessibility Act. And something I think we both notice. Sitting together now, we have some experience in accessibility, I would say. Maybe we can help these organizations by defining a little bit of an accessibility strategy. Or what are some of the first things that an organization, okay, we are new in accessibility, would like to make our first steps, first good steps. What would you say would be a nice strategy?

ED: Yeah, so obviously it's going to depend depending on the size of the company and like if you've got the leadership on board or if it's a grassroots thing. But I think one of the major, major things that's that I see as really important is that it doesn't just get left to one small group of people or even that it's not just one or two passionate people that it falls on their shoulders and if they leave then everything's gone. It has to be a group effort even if not everybody in the group is going to be like a specialist, like they have to be supportive that something that needs to be done and I'd like to see, I think it's important for working across teams, so it can't just be left to the designers and it can't just be left to the developers.

ED: It needs to be the designers and the developers working together to make a common language about this. I know where I'm working at the moment. talked a lot about how can we make, like we are working on design annotations for accessibility and how can we make it so that it's not too technical so that the designers understand it, but that it's actually then translates into technical enough for the developers to implement it in the correct way. And so it's a lot about communication, building it in right from the start and Yeah, basically it can't be something that if one or two people leave that everything just falls apart.

ED: It needs to be something that everyone knows about and is invested in making better. I don't know, that's maybe a little bit too high level. Um, but yeah, I know we've, we've also worked with some companies to, to like create, uh, like accessibility champions where you have one person in every team that even if they're not a specialist, um, you know, they're, they're the one that's lifting it up at every stand up. How do we think about the accessibility in this? Or do we have accessibility included in our definition of DAL? Um, that kind of thing.

ED: What can we, I think it's also can be a good thing to bring in certain like tools into the development life cycle. Um, but they're not the be all and end all, but they, you know, some things in your like access in your pipelines can probably, uh, pick up the basics. Um, but they don't pick up everything, but yeah, team effort, I would say.

TD: Definitely. A lot of good points here. I always say automation is part of the solution. It's not the solution. It's part of the solution. I always say also automate as much as possible, but don't expect too much of it. Manual testing is always required. I think it always will. Of course, we are building stuff Filming stuff by humans for other humans. So mainly checking, testing with users always should be in your process as well. Started out saying, all right, start maybe with getting some approvals by higher management or someone in higher management. whose job it is or maybe is in the end responsible for a successful accessibility program.

TD: How important is this, do you think?

ED: I mean, you can have a grassroots kind of process where it starts off with a few small passionate people, but if you want it to be sustainable, you have to get leadership buy-in at some point. And obviously I think with the new accessibility law that's coming in, it gives you that extra kind of push that, well, this is something we have to do. So we've, and you've got that in your, in your backpack to kind of to pull out and be like, we have to do this. You know, it's important. We need to have a strategy.

ED: We need to have a long-term plan. It's not just something that we fix once and then it's done. It's something that we need to do forever and start off early. So yeah, I think buy-in from leadership is definitely important.

TD: Yeah. be it for the budgets, be it for the priority as well, to be able to work on it. For example, yeah, I think also, I think really important that you have someone up there who cares about it, one, and also maybe is in the end responsible for getting any good accessibility problem. What also hit me a little bit was you say, okay, not one, two or three people are only actively pushing for accessibility to be picked up. Hit me a little bit. This is maybe me and my fellow accessibility allies here at the bank where I work for.

TD: I think sometimes processes are moving little bit slower it's always always the case a little bit slower than you would like to but the direction is good but still it's it's important to stay advocating for it I think yeah yeah all right I think we have we just came up with it with a good baseline, good starting points for the early accessibility strategy. And also I think organizations are now maybe on a maturity level of level one, level two, maybe starting out, taking it more seriously, but taking it really to the next level. What do you think is something that's required for these companies to want to take the next?

ED: Um, yeah, again, I guess it depends on the size of the company and that kind of thing. But, um, at the moment, I think people are just starting out to see that accessibility is something that's needed. Um, next steps will be like embedding the accessibility at every level and making sure that the processes for making things accessible are long-term processes that it doesn't necessarily rely on. We just get an audit now before the law comes into effect, we fix everything now and then we just forget about it. It's important that, and that's whether you decide that your strategy is, I don't know, we're going to audit once a year and fix everything that comes up in the audit or actually we're going to embed these processes before we even have to do audit remediation, that it's something that happens in, we review the designs and have, you know, someone that has an accessibility hat on and

ED: thinks, okay, is this accessible before we even pass these designs onto the next stage? And we educate all of our designers and developers in the correct ways to design accessibly and how to build accessible components in HTML. If you're using React, how to build them in React. There's so many people that I've been working with recently that don't even have a basic grasp of the hierarchy of heading levels in HTML because they've never needed it. HTML is a thing you kind of learn in two weeks and then you move on. And so there's so many people that have such a basic level of HTML understanding that's like go back and relearn a lot of things and why it's important.

ED: And so I can definitely see that education is like definitely a step that a lot of people need to take. And then embedding this into the daily process and finding ways to check before it moves on to the next stage that it is accessible.

TD: Yeah. I think two things that you just said, I think are really nice. I want to start with the HTML one. I think that the problem with, well, not the problem with HTML, but I think HTML is very forgiving where you are free to do whatever you want and you still can get results by doing the not the correct semantic things, I would say. And that's, a little bit different when you are getting into more JavaScript, of course, and when you get a lot of errors, when you are not coding in the right way, and you just get stopped by a non-working application.

TD: And it's not the case with HTML. There are a lot of things, of course, you need to close your tags, but that's basically it. So I think education there is really important and spreading the word, okay, maybe, a look, there's more than just diff on HTML. But how important would you say is a good design before it's going to development in terms of security?

ED: Yeah, I think there's a lot of things in the design stage that you can pick up, like color contrast needs to be good right from the beginning. Have you made the components, try to make them do too many things. You know, there's, yeah, have you thought about like what happens when when an error occurs or when something is successful. Like if you submit a form, what happens when it successfully goes through? What happens when an error occurs? You know, all the happy paths and not so happy paths. And there's so many things that when you just get a flat kind of image of a webpage, I find like all the interactions are missing and That's the important thing, especially for say screen reader users, that they need to know that something's happened on the page when they don't get the visual feedback.

ED: So yeah, there's a lot in the design stage that can be then fed onto the developer that's got to implement it. So yeah, I would definitely say this. Yeah, definitely.

TD: And once also something is implemented in the non-correct way. to say it nicely. It's always, that's what I see right now. So happening a lot. So I'm auditing some piece of an application somewhere and I get speaking about the results with the team. And they always come up with, oh, yeah, I need to discuss this with my designers. I don't think they will like this change. Yeah, I'm not sure. We have to check. And I always think, yeah, or this happens when something checkbox doesn't have a label. Input doesn't have a label or something is clickable, which shouldn't be clickable or something like that.

TD: And then, yeah, it's always harder to go one step back. If you have to discuss something, then if you, for example, can directly fix it into the code, without needing to discuss it that much. It's a little bit of a time saver. Let's see this happening. All right. And yeah, we touched the European Accessibility Act already a little bit. So you said, okay, you guys at AccessLab, you do see more attention, maybe more requests also coming in. Yeah. What do you think the impacts will be of the legislation?

ED: One would hope that the impact is that websites are accessible after the 28th of June. Whether that's going to be the case is I think we can look back because like five years ago we had the same kind of laws come in for I've forgotten the word now, but for like public sector services. So like a lot of public sector services are already supposed to be accessible. I mean, we've seen just here in Sweden that some of our municipality websites have started being fined because even five years on, they're not accessible. I think the majority of sites have had certain things that they've kind of found very difficult to implement.

ED: So I imagine that although websites will definitely get more accessible, I feel that the majority of websites will still not completely reach up to the standards of everything in WCAG 2.2 and the extra things that are in the EN standard. Um, but yeah, definitely progress is better than perfection, as some people say. So I think that's, it's definitely, it will get better, but it's going to take a while.

TD: Yeah. It's my feeling too. I'm also more in favor of taking smaller steps consistently than doing the big chunks of work. But it can feel like this more like a project. Oh, this is the accessibility project. And then tend to let loose a little bit after that and staying consistent I think is more important. Yeah. And from what you can see, do you think the companies will be ready by the deadline and what do you think will happen after that? Because I've heard some different stories about maybe enforcing something, fines. I've heard also other wild stories of taking parts of applications offline or should be taken offline.

TD: What do you think will happen?

ED: Yeah, so I think if we go to the first part of the question, will websites be ready by June? I think they're probably being over-optimistic. Even, I mean, we have several clients that we started their accessibility journey like last year or the year before. The client that I'm working with at the moment, we've been working with them for a year already because they know that this is coming. They are very optimistic that we are going to be finished by June 2025. I'm not so sure that that's going to be the case. And it is also like getting them to understand that you're not just finished with accessibility.

ED: You're never going to be finished. It's a long term project. So, but even if you're not going to be like meeting the WCAG criteria by June, you still need to start somewhere. Start now. As you said before, make small consistent steps towards it. And then if you do get like an audit by the government and you're not ready, at least you can show them that you have a plan and you're doing something. In terms of what happens then, I know that in Sweden we have an agency that's gearing up to start auditing websites and releasing how they are planning to do that.

ED: in Sweden for the previous, the web accessibility directive that came out for the public services a few years ago. They have find a few websites now, so they've been auditing and that kind of thing and giving them like, I think they get like a 10 month or so kind of grace period where it's like, here's the results. you're not accessible, here's what you need to do. Some companies have then turned around and said, oh, but we're planning a complete rehaul in 2026. We're going to spend 10 million on that. So what's the point in us making this accessible if we're then going to do that?

ED: So yeah, it depends. And yeah, I've seen that in Ireland, for example, they're saying that some people can go to prison. That may be, I feel that's a bit harsh. Like I wouldn't want to be the one taking responsibility for that. Um, but I definitely think like fines or taking certain applications offline until they're, they are accessible is, it seems like a reasonable kind of, I don't want to say punishment, but you're not the first one who told me.

TD: Ireland is taking people to prison for not being accessible. This is, to be honest, I think it's really important, but prison is a step too far, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. They're quite serious there. But Ireland is EU, but they implemented their own laws then. just like all the other countries, but they're just really strict.

ED: Yeah. I mean, I guess it's down to every country for themselves to decide how, like what the punishment is or like how they implement. Obviously it's a harmonized law. So everyone has to have a minimum standard, but then I don't know enough about how they decide that.

TD: No, no, but the learning about how Sweden does these things for now they're government related websites and web applications. How's the finding working? Because then it's government finding government.

ED: That's a good point. I haven't actually, I haven't thought about that before.

TD: Yeah, because that's the reason why they are not finding. We also in the Netherlands, we have a law that's making it required for government agencies or government related agencies to be accessible as well for four to five years now, if I'm correct. But they didn't, didn't find any, any, anyone yet because yeah, then governments finding governments. Yeah. They're just kindly asking, Oh, please do something.

ED: Hmm. I mean, that's probably how it will end up. I mean, I don't think there's anything that is necessarily saying that they have to pay the fine. I don't feel like I know enough about how it works, but I have seen like some information that they don't necessarily have to pay, but you know, they get a fine and I don't know how it works, but yeah, that's definitely an interesting point that you bring up.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Obviously, there are also so many loopholes that you can go to ask government and then you can say, indeed, okay, we are now working on something else. And they say, okay, yeah. Yeah. Or, oh no, we requested this audit and then it's scheduled 10 weeks. All that's all the oddities, these things you get around, around certain rules. All right. And. With AccessLab, is it that you guys take over the full process for a company of being accessible? Or is it more that you advise certain teams that are responsible for fixing accessibility problems within an organization?

TD: How does that work?

ED: Yeah, so we actually have lots of different kind of projects that we help. We help companies basically with what they feel that they need when it comes to accessibility. So we have some companies that approach us and want like audits to know where they need to fix it themselves. That's probably our main thing at the moment. We also have companies that approach us and want strategy work and helping them implement it more long-term and embed it in the culture. The company that I'm working with at the moment, we started off with the auditing, but then they also wanted a team to help them actually do the remediation.

ED: We've gone in as a team of six web developers and six app developers. actively working with their design system team and their designers to implement this because there is just so much to do that they felt that they needed help, like specialists help to do this and not just leave it to their teams. At the same time, they are then helping their teams to put together educations so that their designers and developers can take over in the long-term. But yeah, we're there helping them to actually do the remediation at the moment.

TD: That's great. Yeah. And also good that they already notice, okay, okay, this is not going to be the permanent fix for us. We also need to get in some education and there will be a moment where we will need to stand on our own feet, so to say. That's great. I think really. Really good client, yeah, so to say. Really smart. All right, okay, that's interesting to learn. So it's something of everything that you guys can do, other thing. Is it something that you would say, okay, this is the preferred way to do it? This story is, I think, I would advise a free company to take this route.

TD: Maybe if you see there's too much work, maybe indeed get some consultants in and then, but also think about, okay, what's going to happen after this when they leave or when this company will not be involved.

ED: Yeah, definitely. Definitely important to, I think, like we said earlier, like a lot of companies right now are like, oh, we need an audit to know what's wrong. And then I think they will realize that, oh, we need actually to think about education and strategy longer term. So we'll start doing more of that. We're doing a lot of strategy and education already, but. And then, yeah, some companies will also be like, oh, we need help with extra developers to come in and support us so that we actually make this in time. But I think long-term it will be like strategy and how you can embed it long-term.

TD: Interesting. Yeah, interesting. It's very interesting to me to find out that this is a little bit, so I can compare it to solve my own situations. and see where certain companies are going with. I think that's interesting to me. Going for the long-term, the more sustainable fix, more sustainable strategy is the better option here because then your accessibility won't go away that quickly, luckily. So, yeah, you will have to get there somehow. And personally, I don't think doing only audits and then fixing after the audits and then is the way to go. It's not something that I would advise to anyone to go with.

TD: All right, great. Thank you so much for the conversation, Emma. It's been great to have you on.

ED: Yeah, thank you.

TD: What are some of the key takeaways, last key takeaways that you want to express to the users to listen to?

ED: Yeah, I guess definitely start now with accessibility if you haven't already, but it is a long-term project. You need to do it forever. What would I say? I'm going blanked out. Yeah, just, yeah, think about like how you're going to, if you're just starting, start with low hanging fruit. Maybe get an audit if you feel that you need help and start from there. If you're already on your accessibility journey, start thinking about like next steps and how you're going to embed it long-term and make accessibility something that kind of goes throughout the whole organization.

TD: Great. This is perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much, Emma. Where can people find you online?

ED: I'm on most of the social medias and my name is at Emma Dawson Dev on, I think all of them. So yeah, you can find me anywhere.

TD: Be on the lookout for the conference talks. If you want to see Emma speaking. Coming up, the two conferences in Germany and Italy will be great ones. Thanks to all the listeners for listening and watching. If you would like what we do, please consider subscribing, rating or leaving a comment to let us know if you would like this episode. We'll see you next time as well. Thank you, Emma. I hope to have you on another time as well. And then, yeah, let's wrap it up for now.

ED: Thank you.

Takeaways

• Digital accessibility means everyone should be able to use digital products.
• Accessibility is crucial for user experience and inclusivity.
• Emma transitioned from teaching to web development, focusing on accessibility.
• Advocacy for accessibility is essential in tech communities.
• The European Accessibility Act is driving companies to prioritize accessibility.
• Organizations need a long-term strategy for accessibility compliance.
• Education and awareness are key to improving accessibility practices.
• Accessibility should be embedded in all stages of development.
• Collaboration between teams is vital for effective accessibility solutions.
• Progress in accessibility is ongoing and requires consistent effort.