A11y Rules Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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