Joe Devon tells us that lot of accessibility is knowing the culture and different communities that view it differently.
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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.