Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020 Special

Joe Devon

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

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

E097 – Interview with Joe Devon – Part 2

E096 – Interview with Joe Devon – Part 1

Devon Persing

E095 – Interview with Devon Persing – Part 2

E094 – Interview with Devon Persing – Part 1

Tony Coelho

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

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

E093 – Interview with Tony Coelho – Part 2

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

E092 – Interview with Tony Coelho – Part 1

Emily Lewis

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

E090 – Interview with Emily Lewis – Part 1

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

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

E091- Interview with Emily Lewis – Part 2

Amberley Romo

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

E089 – Interview with Amberley Romo – Part 2

A11y Rules Podcast

E088 – Interview with Amberley Romo – Part 1

Chris DeMars

E70 – Interview with Chris DeMars – Part 1

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

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

E71 – Interview with Chris DeMars – Part 2

Christopher Schmitt

E086 – Interview with Christopher Schmitt – Part 1

Damien Senger

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

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

E081 – Interview with Damien Senger – Part 2

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

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

E083 – Interview with Stephanie Walter – Part 2

E082 – Interview with Stephanie Walter – Part 1

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2019 Special Episode

Jessica Ivins

E084 – Interview with Jessica Ivins – Part 1

Alli Berry

E74 – Interview with Alli Berry – Part 1

E69 – Interview with Ire Aderinokun – Part 2

Amy Carney

E76 – Interview with Amy Carney – Part 1

Liz Jackson

E078 – Interview with Liz Jackson – Part 1

E085 – Interview with Jessica Ivins – Part 2

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

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

E75 – Interview with Alli Berry – Part 2

Beth Raduenzel

E66 – Interview with Beth Raduenzel – Part 1

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

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

E67 – Interview with Beth Raduenzel – Part 2

Marcy Sutton

E64 – Interview with Marcy Sutton – Part 1

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

E65 – Interview with Marcy Sutton – Part 2

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