Craig Abbott Design Lead / Accessibility Specialist At Elastic
A new episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast featuring Craig Abbott, former Head of Accessibility at DWP and Design Lead at Elastic. We discuss his own experience within the field of Accessibility. Experiencing burn-out and what he may have done differently, imposter syndrome when working with guidelines rather than regulations and provides general insight and advice when thinking about hiring the right people and the general recruitment process within Digital Accessibility.
Resource Links:
- Elastic: https://www.elastic.co/
- PCR Digital, Digital and Technology Recruitment: https://www.pcrdigital.com/
Joe's Social Media Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/
- Twitter: @A11yJoe
Craig's Social Media Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbott567/
- Twitter: @Abbott567
- Instagram: @Abbott567
Transcript
Hi, and welcome to the Digital Accessibility Podcast.
Speaker:With me, your host, Joe James. Throughout this series, I will be
Speaker:interviewing professionals who work within the space to share their expertise,
Speaker:journeys and general thoughts on the key issues facing the industry today.
Speaker:My aim is to provide an indepth look into the world of digital
Speaker:accessibility and the impact it has on the lives of anyone who interacts with
Speaker:digital technology. Our goal is to bridge the skills
Speaker:gap in the current market and inspire others to join the movement towards a
Speaker:more accessible digital world. So whether you're a seasoned professional
Speaker:or just starting out, I hope that this platform will provide you with
Speaker:valuable insights and practical advice from experts and advocates in this
Speaker:extremely important community.
Speaker:Today.
Speaker:I'm joined by Craig Abbott, previous head of accessibility at the Department for
Speaker:Work and Pensions and now Senior Designer working with Elastic.
Speaker:Elastic help organisations, their employees and customers scale mountains of
Speaker:data with their powerful analytics and visualisation tools.
Speaker:Craig had a fruitful career starting out in design and development, moving into
Speaker:accessibility leadership and going full circle into the Senior Designer role again to
Speaker:ensure accessibility is considered at all stages of the software development
Speaker:lifecycle. So, Craig, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker:Hi. Thanks for having me.
Speaker:Really looking forward to it. I think just before we start, I
Speaker:should point out it's hay fever season, so I'm going to be rubbing my
Speaker:eyes a lot and there's probably going to be a cat will appear at
Speaker:some point, so I'm going to apologise.
Speaker:For that. Just on the point of the allergies.
Speaker:So I've actually got two cats as well, and I've always been allergic to
Speaker:cats, but my fiance said she couldn't live in a house without cats, so
Speaker:we compromised and got some cats. But, yeah, all good.
Speaker:But, yes, I guess we'll dive in. I hope the intro was fairly accurate.
Speaker:I know that you've recently moved roles, but I guess first question, what was
Speaker:the motivation for that move?
Speaker:Yeah, so I left DWP at the end of 2022.
Speaker:I've been at Elastic for about.
Speaker:Six months now, which seems like it's flew over really quickly, to be honest.
Speaker:But, yeah, six months, the intro. Yeah, fairly accurate.
Speaker:I mean, Elastic are predominantly a search company.
Speaker:They've been known for search for the last, sort of ten years.
Speaker:Elasticsearch is used on all sorts of stuff because it can search massive data
Speaker:sets, kind of in real time, but they are working on a security product,
Speaker:so that's what I work on. We're looking at being able to search
Speaker:through massive amounts of data to kind of find cybersecurity threats and that
Speaker:kind of thing. So they've only been in the search
Speaker:sort of arena for the last few years.
Speaker:The product is still quite new, but.
Speaker:Yeah, that's what I'm working on. I think the main motivator for leaving
Speaker:DWP in my last role as head of Accessibility, I think, if I'm totally
Speaker:honest, it was just the stress. Like everyone that I know that's working in the
Speaker:accessibility industry is burned out. I had worked for government for seven
Speaker:years. I was the head of accessibility for
Speaker:almost three, and it just got to
Speaker:the point where I felt like it was the right time to move on.
Speaker:I feel like I did a lot of good work there, but it got
Speaker:to the point where I think the
Speaker:organisation was starting to impact me more
Speaker:than I felt like I could impact
Speaker:the organisation, if that makes sense. So, yeah, I think it just felt
Speaker:like the right time. It felt like somebody else needed to
Speaker:come in and take over and have a renewed energy because I was just
Speaker:really tired.
Speaker:Yeah and that's it, the right time to move on, sort of thing.
Speaker:You've done some amazing work there. I know you did make a huge
Speaker:impact. I know you have, because I've spoken
Speaker:to a lot of people that are aware of the work you've done.
Speaker:But yeah, I know we spoke previously, before the show, about who's replaced you,
Speaker:and it's someone that you've worked with and it's nice to sort of I
Speaker:guess you've moved on and opened up that space for someone to come in.
Speaker:Yeah. So Nikki Berry took on the role
Speaker:after I left, and I was really pleased to see Nikki go into that
Speaker:role. She's great.
Speaker:She worked well, we worked together for about a year before I left, so
Speaker:we originally hired her as Senior Accessibility Specialist, and then when I
Speaker:left, she sort of stepped into my role.
Speaker:But, yeah, I was really pleased to see Nikki get that.
Speaker:She's great. I'd probably left a lot sooner if.
Speaker:It wasn't for Nikki, to be honest.
Speaker:Well, that's really good. And it's nice to know that it
Speaker:feels like you've not just done all of that work and they just walked
Speaker:away from it. I feel like, you'll know that, Nikki
Speaker:will sort of look after what you've sort of put in place. Yeah. Amazing.
Speaker:So, I mean, seven years, wow. Working within the public sector, I think
Speaker:when you're pushing for change and you're really trying to sort of maybe bring
Speaker:people up to date, that's enough to sort of make anyone go a bit
Speaker:mad. I think it goes so slowly.
Speaker:So how did you manage it? And you mentioned burnout, so you
Speaker:obviously did experience that and that sort of frustration throughout your years
Speaker:there.
Speaker:Yeah. Think, in all honesty, I was just
Speaker:in a perpetual state of burnout over the three years that I was in
Speaker:that role. I think there was a definite bell curve
Speaker:of impact, so to speak.
Speaker:There was a lot of impact in a short amount of time, and then
Speaker:I kind of peaked and I think towards sort of the last year or
Speaker:so that kind of fell off. The impact definitely slowed down over
Speaker:time. I think a lot of that is
Speaker:probably my own doing.
Speaker:I put myself out there a lot.
Speaker:I'd kind of offered as much support as I could.
Speaker:I was doing talks, workshops, we ran accessibility clinics.
Speaker:I guess I felt the more that I showed that I was approachable, the
Speaker:more stuff that I could help get over the line, the more things would
Speaker:be accessible. But I guess it was probably a
Speaker:bit naive in hindsight, because what actually happened was I just kind of
Speaker:got crushed under the pressure. I mean, at one point I was
Speaker:one person in an organisation of about 100,000 people, and everyone suddenly
Speaker:thought that I had all the answers. So all the quick calls and, "Can
Speaker:you just quickly have a look at this?"
Speaker:And "Can we just quickly loop you into this thing that we're doing?"
Speaker:Like, it all adds up. And I never wanted people to feel
Speaker:like they didn't feel supported. I didn't want people to sort of
Speaker:use it as an excuse and say, well, we reached out to the head
Speaker:of role and we got no response or whatever.
Speaker:So I kind of get pulled into calls and Cc'd into hundreds of emails
Speaker:and sent documents and websites to review. And of course, it was always marked
Speaker:as urgent because everyone leaves accessibility at the last minute.
Speaker:So, yeah, I was pretty much just on back-to-back calls for my
Speaker:entire working day. And then in the evenings, I was
Speaker:having to do all of the actions off the back of those calls and
Speaker:got to the point where I was pretty much averaging about 60 or 70
Speaker:hours a week, which just isn't sustainable for everyone, for anyone, really.
Speaker:So, yeah, I guess to answer your question, I'm not sure that I did
Speaker:deal with the frustrations. I think I just kept going until
Speaker:I couldn't anymore. So, yeah, I definitely don't recommend
Speaker:people, do it the way that I did it.
Speaker:It's hard to really sort of put my finger on it, but I think
Speaker:it's when you've got that title, it almost added an additional amount of
Speaker:pressure. There's already pressure involved because
Speaker:you're the face of it within the organisation.
Speaker:You're the Head of Accessibility, so you're the go to guy.
Speaker:And you see that in the UK especially, I feel people I speak to
Speaker:across the board, they are pretty much employing one person and then don't have
Speaker:the budget or don't have the ability to grow their team out, to then
Speaker:delegate that work, and then there will be more support.
Speaker:So I guess it's just unfortunately, I feel that's the way that it's done
Speaker:quite broadly across different sectors as well.
Speaker:Yeah, I think I definitely took a lot of responsibility for stuff that
Speaker:wasn't my responsibility. I kind of had this idea that
Speaker:it would reflect badly on me as the head of accessibility, if a service
Speaker:was out in the wild and it wasn't accessible.
Speaker:So I guess in some cases, nobody else was really taking responsibility for
Speaker:stuff. So I felt like I had to.
Speaker:But you can't be responsible for everything in an organisation that large.
Speaker:Again, in hindsight. No, exactly. And then within that, just to lump
Speaker:this on top as well, because we're on the subject of that sort of
Speaker:burnout, mental health and struggling through the role, we've spoken about
Speaker:Impostor syndrome, me personally on the show before, but also just within the
Speaker:accessibility profession. And did you get a sense of
Speaker:that, because you had that head of role?
Speaker:Yeah, Impostor syndrome all the time. Impostor Syndrome
Speaker:is something I've talked about in the past.
Speaker:My, I'm good friends with Gavin Elliott, who has toured the country, given talks on
Speaker:Impostor syndrome.
Speaker:It's really common, I think, in a.
Speaker:Lot of digital roles. I think in accessibility, it was amplified
Speaker:because it was so new, I think, in the department.
Speaker:And it was something that, I was
Speaker:a designer that sort of looked at accessibility.
Speaker:I took it on in my spare time, but I was very much a
Speaker:designer and I did talks on it.
Speaker:And I did a whole bunch of stuff in my spare time to kind
Speaker:of drive that agenda forward. I mean, suddenly I'd found myself in
Speaker:this role where suddenly I was now responsible for all this stuff.
Speaker:So I did kind of feel out of my depth quite a bit, I think
Speaker:and I think a lot of the
Speaker:burnout we just spoke of can probably be attributed to that impostor syndrome.
Speaker:The fact that I always took on too much.
Speaker:I think, as my role developed, what
Speaker:became apparent was my responsibility was very much a strategic role.
Speaker:It was form a strategy, educate, try and change the culture of the
Speaker:organisation, hire the right people in to do that stuff.
Speaker:And if I did all of that stuff, then compliance, I guess, should
Speaker:have taken care of itself. But that's really slow.
Speaker:So I guess I was doing all of that stuff.
Speaker:But then on an evening, I was still kind of rolling my sleeves up
Speaker:and doing accessibility audits and testing things with screen readers and writing
Speaker:documentation and those sorts of things, because I guess I was worried if
Speaker:there wasn't a noticeable improvement with me in that role.
Speaker:Then I'd look incompetent,
Speaker:or they wouldn't see the value in the role,
Speaker:or they wouldn't see the value and accessibility.
Speaker:So I guess there was this real.
Speaker:Sense of urgency from me to try and prove the value of this, which,
Speaker:when you've got that weight on your shoulders, the impostor does kind of perk
Speaker:up and start saying some things.
Speaker:I think another thing which is probably worth mentioning is like, the Web Content.
Speaker:Accessibility Guidelines or "Wacag" or WCAG or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker:captions.
Speaker:Later, by the way, Craig. So thank you.
Speaker:Spelling it out like that is going to be great for the captions.
Speaker:Thank you for that.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, people call it all sorts.
Speaker:I always call it "Wacag" and then some people don't know what I'm talking
Speaker:about. WCAG, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker:it is great. That is the takeaway point.
Speaker:I fully believe in the guidelines and what they're for, but there are a
Speaker:lot of grey areas in that. You can think something's a fail, somebody
Speaker:else can disagree, and you have this back and forth and sometimes there's kind
Speaker:of no right answer. A really good, I guess, real world
Speaker:example is DWP had this service called 'Tell us Your patient is Terminally Ill',
Speaker:I think it was called, but it allowed doctors to fast track patients
Speaker:through the benefit system. So if you were terminally ill, obviously
Speaker:every second matters and you get access to financial support quicker.
Speaker:The form itself that they had to.
Speaker:Fill in was called a DS 1500. I think it's called an SR 1
Speaker:form now, but it was called a DS 1500 at the time.
Speaker:Don't ask me what the acronyms mean, I've got no idea, which probably
Speaker:highlights the problem. But, yeah, what happened with that
Speaker:situation I guess to bring it back to
Speaker:accessibility, the doctors knew this form as a DS 1500 and the NHS
Speaker:called it a DS 1500 and the DWP staff called it a DS 1500.
Speaker:But unless you had direct experience of a DS 1500, this is going to
Speaker:be great for your captions later, it's going to be picking up all sorts.
Speaker:But, yeah, it just didn't make any
Speaker:sense unless you were in that industry. So, of course I did a work
Speaker:WCAG review or an audit. I had zero kind of context as
Speaker:that and I pulled it up because links and headings just said DS 1500.
Speaker:And I said it didn't describe topic or purpose and there was a lot
Speaker:of pushback. They were saying, well, actually, in our
Speaker:research it shows that when we tried to change the name and say something
Speaker:else like your patient is terminally ill form or something, people just didn't
Speaker:understand what it was. They were looking for a DS 1500.
Speaker:And, you know, that's that's perfectly valid.
Speaker:Perfectly valid, I suppose, but I didn't have that context.
Speaker:So of course people were saying, well, you failed this and it's not a
Speaker:fail. And there's all of these sorts, so
Speaker:you can find yourself in situations, I guess, where you doubt yourself, you think
Speaker:you know WCAG, you think you know accessibility, and you just don't
Speaker:always have the context.
Speaker:And WCAG, by its very definition.
Speaker:Is just guidelines and somehow it's become a legal standard and there's no right
Speaker:or wrong answer sometimes and it can really be quite tricky.
Speaker:That also, I think, affects impostor syndrome is when people are telling you
Speaker:you're wrong and you can't really prove you're right.
Speaker:But, yeah, for the record, I still think DS 1500 is a stupid, inaccessible
Speaker:name for a form, but here we are.
Speaker:I think everyone that listens to this will be in agreement with you, maybe not some doctors
Speaker:that listen in, who knows! So from that perspective
Speaker:is it that that was an internally used sort of acronym or code for
Speaker:that particular form? Or would that be members of the
Speaker:public that would have to ask for
Speaker:that form to. So members of the public didn't touch it.
Speaker:It was a form which the doctor filled in and then that came into
Speaker:government and then kind of fast tracked through by being attached to somebody's
Speaker:sort of benefit claim. So it was industry language and
Speaker:thankfully, the public didn't have to kind of deal with it.
Speaker:But, yeah, it wasn't DWP specific. The NHS also kind of used that
Speaker:term, but, yeah, I'd like to have seen them try to use different language
Speaker:and phase it out and eventually get the form to be called something which
Speaker:did make sense, but that wasn't really in my remit, that wasn't what I
Speaker:was there to do and whether it could be done or
Speaker:not, I don't know, because people kind
Speaker:of get set in their ways of what they call things.
Speaker:It's the whole change management side of it as well, isn't it?
Speaker:And it's just sort of the awareness, because I can think of a number
Speaker:of reasons why you would need to have that as clear, simple language.
Speaker:There's many doctors out there that have their own potential cognitive needs, but
Speaker:also, if it's a new doctor, the NHS is struggling to get staff.
Speaker:So you've got someone in that's not worked within that, they don't know the
Speaker:acronyms, they're going to think, well, what do I search for?
Speaker:And if they won't know that acronym? But, yeah, I'm in full support
Speaker:of the change of the name of that silly document.
Speaker:And it's so important as well, it's just to think that it's for someone
Speaker:that's terminally ill, it's crazy. And unfortunately, I mean, it's not really
Speaker:something that I've spoken about too much, but my fiancée was diagnosed with leukaemia
Speaker:in November last year and we've had to go through that whole rigmarole of
Speaker:the insurance documents, but also working through the NHS, who have been fantastic,
Speaker:by the way. So I just want to put that
Speaker:out there as well, that we've been really fortunate with our journey through
Speaker:dealing with that, but being someone in that position, you don't want to hear
Speaker:about things behind the scenes that may impact you financially, physically impacts
Speaker:on treatment and stuff. So it just shows you just how
Speaker:important it's not just the audio and visual side of accessibility, there's
Speaker:things such as that headers, names of documents and the storage.
Speaker:But, yeah, I digress, but thank you for trying your best to get it
Speaker:changed. But then sorry to go back onto
Speaker:the Impostor syndrome side of that and circle it back round.
Speaker:It's really interesting that you say that, because obviously, if you've only got
Speaker:guidelines to refer back to and there's no sort of set standard like, this
Speaker:is exactly the reason I'm trying to make this change is X.
Speaker:You can't argue with that, but you can argue with guidelines because they
Speaker:just think it's an opinion.
Speaker:Yeah, I think with that's always been a frustration, I think with things like
Speaker:accessibility audits and whatnot.
Speaker:There's this sort of idea that you can check something and it's
Speaker:a binary answer, like you can look at it and go, yep, that meets
Speaker:the criteria. That doesn't.
Speaker:But a lot of it's human readable things, it's like, do your links make
Speaker:sense? Do your headings make sense?
Speaker:The things that are binary, you can definitely look at some of those things.
Speaker:Like, is your HTML semantic? Are you using a header level
Speaker:two when you should be using a header level three, or something like
Speaker:that? But for a lot of the human.
Speaker:Readable stuff, it does become a grey
Speaker:area and two people can audit the same website and decide one can pass
Speaker:it, one can fail. It just depending on what their context
Speaker:is of the service. So I think the fact that they
Speaker:are guidelines, like, I'm not even sure.
Speaker:If W3C who wrote WCAG
Speaker:ever intended it to be written into legislation, which I think does sometimes
Speaker:complicate things.
Speaker:But I think, yeah, it's definitely
Speaker:better to have it in there.
Speaker:I'd rather people pushed back and had a valid reason for pushing back than
Speaker:to just accept everything. I think that's a really good example
Speaker:of accessibility maturity. I think that was one of the
Speaker:ways that I was trying to measure some of the stuff.
Speaker:So we had some objectives and some key results, and one of the things
Speaker:that I was looking for was constructive sort of pushback.
Speaker:A lot of the time, if I said something failed in audit, everyone
Speaker:just went, okay, tell me how to fix it.
Speaker:But if somebody's saying, actually, we don't think that it is a failure,
Speaker:and here's the reasons why, that shows a level of progression where they now
Speaker:start to understand. They're now starting to look at the
Speaker:guidelines themselves, and they're starting to assess their service against
Speaker:the guidelines. And they've come to a different conclusion
Speaker:than me because they've perhaps got more context.
Speaker:So it's not always a bad thing, I think, when people push back.
Speaker:But I think in the early days, if somebody pushed back and said, we
Speaker:don't think it's a fail imposter syndrome.
Speaker:Or whatnot, I'd just like panic.
Speaker:Yeah, but it's an interesting so last week, actually, I was speaking to Kevin
Speaker:White of the W3C. So we're going to be going PCR
Speaker:Digital are going to be attending Accessibility
Speaker:Scotland, which is another thing that he curates.
Speaker:And well, we're going to be sponsoring it as well, which is another great
Speaker:thing to announce on the podcast! but he was actually saying, it's really
Speaker:interesting mentioning W3C anyway, because obviously he's had a hand in
Speaker:developing and continuously developing those guidelines because I don't think
Speaker:there's ever going to be a full stop.
Speaker:Like, the web is always changing digital, the types of platforms that we use.
Speaker:But he said the fundamentals of a lot of what he's done as a
Speaker:consultant is actually re-teaching people how to use Word, which is like
Speaker:the headings like you were just mentioning.
Speaker:And it's amazing how, as a recruiter, I'm looking for people with all of
Speaker:these different skills, knowledge of the WCAG guidelines of different Section 508
Speaker:or all the other sort of regulations globally, as well as HTML coding
Speaker:experience. Design experience.
Speaker:User centred or human centred design. But actually it's the ability to put
Speaker:yourself in other people's shoes and see things through.
Speaker:Or have that empathy, I think, as well.
Speaker:So there's always going to be those blurred lines, but I'm rambling, so..
Speaker:But I guess, as I've mentioned, being a recruiter, and I think I probably
Speaker:actually approached you initially to work with you when you're at the DWP,
Speaker:or possibly to poach you for a different role...
Speaker:But something I'd really be interested to understand from your perspective, because
Speaker:obviously you were hiring people to join your team, like you said.
Speaker:Has there been like a key skill or something that you would look for
Speaker:within someone's profile through the sort of interview process, when you're getting
Speaker:to know candidates a bit better? I'd love to know if there's a
Speaker:hidden gem. Is there one thing that you're like
Speaker:yep, that identifies a great candidate?
Speaker:No pressure. Haha
Speaker:It's a really good question. I think,
Speaker:the hesitancy comes from the
Speaker:fact that when you were saying that...
Speaker:My brain went "resilience" and before, I
Speaker:guess that's not something that I've personally looked for in a candidate, but
Speaker:it's something that I hear a lot. They want a resilient person.
Speaker:I'm not going to use that as my answer.
Speaker:I don't want to say that that's something we should be looking for.
Speaker:I mean, right now, you do need to be super resilient to work in
Speaker:accessibility. Like, I was resilient for a while
Speaker:and then I just got crushed by the machine, so to speak, and I
Speaker:guess I hate that we have to be resilient.
Speaker:Why do we live in a world where that's celebrated?
Speaker:Your resistance to being crushed day in, day out isn't something that organisations
Speaker:should be looking for in a candidate.
Speaker:We should be looking for how we
Speaker:change the world around us so that people don't need to be resilient in
Speaker:order to do a good job.
Speaker:So that was the word that came
Speaker:to mind, but I don't want to use that as my answer.
Speaker:I think I just kind of sidetracked and went on a bit of a
Speaker:rant there. I think, in all honesty, like passion and
Speaker:enthusiasm is probably the thing that I think makes a great candidate, especially
Speaker:in accessibility, because so few people are enthusiastic about it at all.
Speaker:Accessibility is often just kind of seen as a technical requirement or a checkbox
Speaker:exercise, it's like a skill to acquire, like HTML or CSS or whatever.
Speaker:But when you find somebody who really cares about accessibility and what it
Speaker:represents and the people that are behind it, then I think that's something you
Speaker:need to grab a hold of. Because a lot of people can learn
Speaker:the technical skills, but not everybody can learn how to believe in a
Speaker:cause with every fibre of their being, so to speak.
Speaker:And I think that's what's going to change the culture of an organisation or
Speaker:society as a whole. It's not being able to recite
Speaker:WCAG 2.1 word for word. It's having that passion and that
Speaker:enthusiasm to keep going at something which is really difficult, but is
Speaker:fundamentally important for a lot of people.
Speaker:Yeah, that's really encouraging to hear you say that, because the work that
Speaker:I do, speaking to so many people that have potentially had experience
Speaker:within accessibility, in a role that actually utilises those skills and that
Speaker:knowledge and that passion, or those that haven't had the opportunity yet but
Speaker:potentially can recite WCAG 2.1 because they're that passionate, they've gone.
Speaker:Oh, I want to know it word for word.
Speaker:But it's reassuring that I speak to so many people, more so now,
Speaker:like this year onwards, that have got a genuine passion, but they're just
Speaker:looking for a ways in. And I love to see that counterbalance,
Speaker:because it's usually been, we don't know anyone with these skills or this
Speaker:experience because they haven't had the opportunity elsewhere, because it isn't
Speaker:funded within an organisation. The company isn't spending the money on
Speaker:Accessibility because they see it as, "oh, it's just a nice to have", but
Speaker:now I'm starting to see an uptick in the people that are interested have
Speaker:gone out of their way. They're spending their own personal time
Speaker:on learning a bit more about accessibility.
Speaker:I think it's that empathy and that mindset as well, isn't it?
Speaker:I think you need to sort of actually care, I was about to swear, but you
Speaker:need to just care about it and think about other people, rather than, oh,
Speaker:I can develop a platform, I'm going to develop it, so it works for
Speaker:me. But you're just discounting so many
Speaker:people. So, yeah, that's great, I'll keep doing
Speaker:what I'm doing, keep looking for people with passion and keep the conversation
Speaker:flowing. Haha! But, yeah, so it is such a
Speaker:large topic and I mentioned earlier, it's not just the sort of audio and
Speaker:visual side of things and like, can you read this on a web page
Speaker:or can you enlarge this text? There's so many different areas to cover
Speaker:and consider. So, like the compliance, awareness,
Speaker:raising awareness. So, like something like this podcast or
Speaker:the learning and development, putting in eLearning within your company
Speaker:implementation, development, design, it's just never ending.
Speaker:So the question there is one. I promise! Do you feel that working in the
Speaker:accessibility space feels you've got that pressure to wear you're like the YMCA video
Speaker:you've got to wear so many different hats and different costumes.
Speaker:So complex and dedicated accessibility teams within companies
Speaker:just aren't commonplace in the UK market. There is just like it's you.
Speaker:You've got to wear so many different hats and cover all areas.
Speaker:Yeah, I didn't know where you were going with that question for a second.
Speaker:I was like, am I a cowboy?
Speaker:I think, in short, yes. I think what I have observed
Speaker:is that accessibility is normally just it's another
Speaker:hat that somebody else wears a lot of the time.
Speaker:It's a secondary scale attached to other role.
Speaker:So you might be a Front End Developer, you might be a QA tester,
Speaker:and you might know a bit about accessibility.
Speaker:So you end up putting accessibility hat on in your team and sort of
Speaker:trying to make sure that you do all of this stuff.
Speaker:But it's always a secondary hat. The one that you wear most of
Speaker:the time is your day job. Developer hat or QA hat or
Speaker:whatever it might be, and then you kind of have to pick the accessibility
Speaker:stuff up as well, because there's so few roles that are accessibility specific.
Speaker:But I think when it comes to
Speaker:Accessibility specific roles as well, like Accessibility as a specialism is still an
Speaker:emerging, An emerging practise.
Speaker:People don't realise how hard it is and they don't know what they need
Speaker:in their organisation. They don't know what accessibility asset
Speaker:specialism looks like in their organisation, because it might be
Speaker:different in different organisations. There's just kind of this
Speaker:blanket approach of, we need somebody for accessibility.
Speaker:They look at everything that entails and they get sign off to hire one
Speaker:person. So they put all of that stuff
Speaker:in the job role. And then even as an accessibility
Speaker:specialist, you're not specialising in one area, you're specialising in
Speaker:accessibility, which is as broad as any other sort of discipline out there.
Speaker:So I guess not all accessibility specialists are the same.
Speaker:Some are super technical on the web side of things.
Speaker:Some, as you mentioned earlier, spend more time fixing documents and PowerPoint
Speaker:presentations and those sorts of things. Completely different skill sets.
Speaker:Some accessibility specialists will tell you how high a grab rail needs
Speaker:to be, or how steep the ramp in your building is allowed to legally
Speaker:be to be compliant. They might not do anything with web
Speaker:accessibility, but again, they're still an accessibility specialist.
Speaker:It's just in a different area of the industry, so they're kind of expecting
Speaker:one person to do all of this stuff.
Speaker:You're expected to know. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Aure, WCAG 2.1
Speaker:legislation. The Equality Act.
Speaker:Public Sector Body Accessibility Regulations.
Speaker:Then you might need to know European legislation, like a EN 301 549, which is
Speaker:hilariously inaccessibly named, by the way, or you mentioned earlier, Section
Speaker:508, like US regulations. You don't even work in the US,
Speaker:but you might have to know the legislation for.
Speaker:That, because that can just go in the job role as well.
Speaker:Screen readers, voice controllers, screen magnifiers, some I've seen where you've
Speaker:got to know how to use Braille readers, you've got to know how to
Speaker:perform audits for the web, perform audits for mobile, which again, is completely
Speaker:different. Manage stakeholders, manage up, manage
Speaker:down, train new starters, write documentation, do procurement, do
Speaker:strategy, do recruitment, and yeah, the list goes on.
Speaker:And I guess the other thing that's
Speaker:super frustrating about this is they'll put all that stuff in the job
Speaker:advert and then they expect someone to do it for the salary
Speaker:that's only half that of a front end developer.
Speaker:There's very little value placed on accessibility specialists.
Speaker:Most of the roles that we see go out are that of what is
Speaker:normally a junior developer. So you've got an accessibility specialist
Speaker:who has to check front end developer code and tell them why it's broken
Speaker:and tell them how to fix it, and the developers getting paid twice the
Speaker:salary. It's just crazy.
Speaker:There's a lot of organisations that just don't seem to see the value in
Speaker:what people do, and they ask for the world and give very little in
Speaker:return. And I think that needs to change.
Speaker:But yeah, I think to circle back.
Speaker:To the question, I think sorry again for going off on a bit of
Speaker:a rant, but I think, at least for a while, anyone who works in
Speaker:accessibility, or in a role that's closely attached to accessibility will be wearing
Speaker:multiple hats until accessibility matures as a practise.
Speaker:Absolutely. I think you're bang on and I
Speaker:mean, I was on some hiring, it's a huge tech giant that I work
Speaker:for, can't say the name for legal reasons, it's within our contracts, and I
Speaker:help them to hire mobile accessibility specialists.
Speaker:And at times throughout the interview or the pre-screening, when I'm talking to
Speaker:candidates about the role, there are times where people will say, why would I
Speaker:do this as passionate as I am about accessibility?
Speaker:Why would I drop my daily rate or my salary by that much when
Speaker:it, on paper, looks like a Glorified QA role?
Speaker:When I'm used to being hands on with coding?
Speaker:24/7. And if I'm not, then I'll lose
Speaker:those skills, because and I've spent ten years gaining those skills.
Speaker:So it's it's a constant battle. But I think, like you say, I
Speaker:don't think we can put a blanket title on things like that.
Speaker:I think that's where I struggle when I've got job specs for every single
Speaker:different type of company that might be hiring accessibility people, it has to be
Speaker:accessibility / the role. And it's annoying that it is that,
Speaker:but I think it's better to do that so that you've got things, people
Speaker:that are covering in those specialist areas rather than just there's this one
Speaker:blanket person. Yeah, I guess in a head off
Speaker:kind of role, maybe you can say you've got the oversight because you've
Speaker:dipped your toe in all of those, but you're more the overseer rather than
Speaker:everything's going to get pushed to you.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure. I think, in time, and this is
Speaker:based on nothing but a hunch in kind of my own experience, so I
Speaker:might be completely wrong, but I think in time accessibility specialist, although
Speaker:it's an emergent practise, I think it'll probably diverge.
Speaker:I think it'll split like, we used to have webmasters, and then that split
Speaker:into various roles, and even we had UX designers and now we have interaction,
Speaker:service, content, we've got all these different types of things.
Speaker:I imagine at some point, accessibility, I'd
Speaker:like to see it get to the point where accessibility you could
Speaker:specialise in different things. You could be a document accessibility
Speaker:specialist, you could be a web accessibility specialist, you could be
Speaker:somebody that is a policy accessibility specialist.
Speaker:I think it's it isn't it isn't a role in itself.
Speaker:I think it is sorry, it is a role in itself, but I think
Speaker:it's not a blanket specialism in itself.
Speaker:I think there's various other elements to
Speaker:it and you can't specialise in them all because there's just too much.
Speaker:It's like trying to be an entire digital team on your own just isn't
Speaker:really feasible.
Speaker:I was going to liken it to saying that you're a developer and then
Speaker:you actually mostly use sort of JavaScript or JavaScript frameworks and people are
Speaker:saying, oh, here's a net job, go and do that.
Speaker:Well, actually, the syntax is completely different, but actually you get polyglot
Speaker:developers, so that's not even a fair comparison.
Speaker:It's actually, like you say, a whole digital team in one person.
Speaker:I mean, if you're compensated for the price of a full digital, maybe you.
Speaker:Give it a go. Exactly.
Speaker:I think if you specialise in if you're doing the job of three or
Speaker:four people, why aren't you getting paid to do it?
Speaker:I suppose?
Speaker:Yeah, no, exactly. But I guess that's also where my
Speaker:job comes in as a recruiter, because I'll get the spec, I'll understand it
Speaker:from the hiring manager, I'll make sure I know exactly what area of accessibility
Speaker:this person might need to be focusing on.
Speaker:It's hard because, like you say, usually we've got the budget for one person but
Speaker:"I want them to do everything" i try and make it very clear
Speaker:that that's just not going to happen. You're going to get people that are
Speaker:more leaning towards one sort of area of the space, and then it's my
Speaker:job to pick out, oh, they work mostly in PDF accessibility rather than
Speaker:web. So it's hard because I've been told
Speaker:I'm the only person in the UK market focusing on accessibility
Speaker:recruitment. Maybe that's a silly thing for me
Speaker:to do, but I'm hoping to make a change there as well.
Speaker:Can you put the salaries on the job roles?
Speaker:That really bugs me when you view a job role and then it doesn't
Speaker:tell you the salary just as competitive. Is that a thing?
Speaker:Am I allowed to ask you that?
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. We get requests from certain clients to
Speaker:say we don't want to put because internally it may be seen, you know,
Speaker:internally, we know that our other developers know they use PCR digital to
Speaker:hire, and if I'm not mentioning who the client is, they can probably work
Speaker:it out by the layout of the job spec or what they're describing
Speaker:they need. And that's usually to protect and make
Speaker:sure there's not like a precedent set or people are aware of other people's
Speaker:salaries when they join that team. So that's the only sort of viable
Speaker:reason I've sort of potentially agreed in the past to not put a salary
Speaker:on. If it's a contract role, the daily
Speaker:rate or a range of daily rates is always there, depending on the
Speaker:seniority. But, yeah, I'm completely with you.
Speaker:I think it makes the job more accessible because then you're just like,
Speaker:Well, I wouldn't apply if I knew it was 20 grand less than I'm
Speaker:used to earning.
Speaker:Well, I think with accessibility as well, because the job role is so bloated,
Speaker:you're like, this must be like 150 grand a year for what they're asking
Speaker:here, and then you're like, well, should I apply?
Speaker:And then it turns out it's £32k. So you wouldn't have been applying in
Speaker:the first place with yourself.
Speaker:Exactly, yeah, no, completely fair to ask. And I'll make sure that that's what
Speaker:I do in moving forward. So if there's any future clients that
Speaker:are listening to this, then we're going to have to put the
Speaker:the salaries on the job specs, if you're working with us.
Speaker:There you go, commitment! So, in that sort of realm of
Speaker:things, how has your experience been in job hunting and the sort of interview
Speaker:process? Was there anything in particular that you
Speaker:think might help make that process, the interview process, more accessible for
Speaker:those that may have additional needs or any form of sort of disability or
Speaker:anything?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker:Again. Difficult, I think.
Speaker:I think for me personally, I guess for transparency, I mean, I talk about.
Speaker:This regular anyway, so it's not probably.
Speaker:That big of a secret, but I guess for transparency, like, I'm
Speaker:diagnosed with ADHD and there's also a really good chance that I'm autistic.
Speaker:I'm not kind of pursuing a diagnosis for autism, but it's pretty evident that
Speaker:I have a lot of the traits.
Speaker:So I find interviews a bit of a nightmare on many levels.
Speaker:I think a lot of the interviews that I've done in the past few.
Speaker:Years have been in government and there's.
Speaker:A very rigid process. There's a very almost a gamification to
Speaker:the way that it's done.
Speaker:Like, there's a set, a certain set of behaviours, and the behaviours are all
Speaker:documented in a book somewhere and there's a certain set of skills and you're
Speaker:kind of told what behaviours you're going to be mapped against and then you
Speaker:can try and figure out how to shoehorn all of your examples to fit
Speaker:the behaviours. And the whole thing is a little
Speaker:bit strange, but I guess in more
Speaker:recent interviews, obviously, I've only been in this role for six months,
Speaker:so I was kind of doing some interviews at the back end of last
Speaker:year and I do get really anxious around the uncertainty, I think.
Speaker:I think that's the biggest thing for me.
Speaker:I'm fine with bad news, I'm fine with good news.
Speaker:The uncertainty is what kind of kills me.
Speaker:And I think recruitment processes are super opaque.
Speaker:Like job adverts are huge, they're difficult to process.
Speaker:The recruiter always wants to have a chat, but doesn't necessarily set an
Speaker:agenda or tell you what to expect from that chat.
Speaker:Not saying you do that by any way, I'm not bashing recruiters, but
Speaker:there's a lot of, oh, you just want to have a chat and I'm
Speaker:like, yeah, what about, like the job? But what are you going to ask
Speaker:me? So that is, I guess, a bit
Speaker:nerve wracking and sometimes now there's like three or four interviews and you
Speaker:have interviews with different people at different stages.
Speaker:You might have an interview with a recruiter.
Speaker:Then I was going for design roles. So you'd have an interview with a
Speaker:designer or two and then you'd have an interview with somebody else.
Speaker:And I guess it's not always clear
Speaker:what the differences are either
Speaker:so I assume when I'm talking to
Speaker:the designer, I'm going to be talking about design work, I'm going to be
Speaker:asked about things that I do as a designer work, sort of way I
Speaker:work and that sort of thing. But what about the other three interviews?
Speaker:If I've got to have an interview with somebody from HR or whatever, what
Speaker:are they going to ask me? What do I need prepare for that?
Speaker:It's not always clear. So I mentioned Nikki Berry before, when
Speaker:me and Nikki did some recruitment at the back end of 2022.
Speaker:We were doing some recruitment for two accessibility specialists.
Speaker:And one of the things which we worked really hard to remove was some
Speaker:of that uncertainty. So one of the things which worked
Speaker:really well was sending the questions out ahead of time.
Speaker:Because it's civil service, we were met with quite a bit of resistance.
Speaker:People didn't want me to send the questions, they were the exact questions
Speaker:we were going to be. It wasn't like, oh, you'll be asked
Speaker:about these things, it was like, we will ask you verbatim these questions.
Speaker:And people in the department seemed convinced that if people had the
Speaker:questions, they'd somehow cheat the interview, like they'd somehow fabricate
Speaker:entire examples to meet them sort of questions, which in reality wasn't true,
Speaker:but we ended up doing it in the end.
Speaker:But there was a bit of a compromise where they said, okay, well you
Speaker:can send them out ahead of time
Speaker:but they have to be time boxed.
Speaker:So we ended up sending them out an hour before.
Speaker:So every candidate one hour, they were told ahead of time that's when they'd
Speaker:received the questions, so they knew to look in their inbox an hour before
Speaker:the interview. And we dispatched them questions 1 hour
Speaker:before, which gave them time, I guess
Speaker:just to read over the questions and know what to expect.
Speaker:But it wasn't so much time that
Speaker:they could overthink it and prepare really scripted answers
Speaker:and we did find that people were much more relaxed.
Speaker:There was a noticeable change in the first half of an interview.
Speaker:Normally the first half is quite difficult
Speaker:and then people settle into it and they get better
Speaker:towards the end of the interview. We found that people were much more
Speaker:relaxed coming in. They gave a better account of themselves
Speaker:off the bat just because they knew what we were going to ask, there
Speaker:was no surprises. And I think they had time to
Speaker:kind of work out which examples they were going to use for each question.
Speaker:And it just became a much more rather than putting them on the spot
Speaker:and getting them to pull examples off the top of their head, it was
Speaker:just that everything flowed a bit easier and they were more relaxed and they
Speaker:gave better answers and it worked a lot better for us.
Speaker:So I think another thing sorry, I'll
Speaker:wrap this up in a second, but I think something else has just came
Speaker:to my mind, which is one of the things I don't think that people
Speaker:take into account all of the time is when you're hiring accessibility
Speaker:specialists, often the people that apply for them roles are people that rely
Speaker:on things being accessible. Like in a world where accessibility
Speaker:maturity is low, the experts that are out there are often the people who
Speaker:had to learn it out of necessity rather than because it's a career that's
Speaker:going to be fruitful, so to speak. So when you are doing interviews and
Speaker:you get people applying for roles, a lot of the people who apply actually
Speaker:rely on that accessible, they rely on things being accessible.
Speaker:So making the interview process as inclusive
Speaker:as possible and making as many adjustments that you can to accommodate those people
Speaker:in their role is in the best interest of everyone.
Speaker:If you've got a rigid interview process, people like me, I guess, who have
Speaker:ADHD or autism or whatever might not give a good account of themselves because
Speaker:of that uncertainty and you're going to end up in a situation where you're
Speaker:just hiring people who again, don't necessarily rely on accessibility to do
Speaker:those accessibility roles. And that lack of diversity means that
Speaker:you're probably not going to get to the right outcome.
Speaker:So I think making everything as inclusive as possible means you are more likely.
Speaker:To get people you're more likely to.
Speaker:Get the people into those roles who
Speaker:you want. Definitely, and have that experience as well.
Speaker:Like you said, I think including people with lived experience within the
Speaker:accessibility process is a necessity. And then I've had people that have
Speaker:come to me, hiring managers that have said, oh, we might have a need
Speaker:for some UX researchers with lived experience.
Speaker:Can you do that rather than find us the specialists?
Speaker:And I'm like, but why aren't your specialists, why don't some of your
Speaker:specialists or some of your team have that lived experience?
Speaker:Because then it's ingrained in your processes.
Speaker:But yeah, so just a bit of a I just want to make sure
Speaker:that people are aware that I do make sure that if I can get
Speaker:the interview questions, I send them out. I always ask for reasonable accommodations
Speaker:before interviews are even scheduled. If anyone needs any sort of adjustments
Speaker:made, then I'll make sure that's the case even when it comes to sort
Speaker:of the podcast. So it's nice that I managed to
Speaker:send you a few questions, outlined what we'd be talking about, and then you
Speaker:come back with your answers. I hope it helps you.
Speaker:But it also really helps me to sort of keep that going because this
Speaker:is a new thing still for me, and it just helps me to keep
Speaker:that conversation flowing. I know we had a chat for
Speaker:over an hour, like last year, I think it was, but it might have
Speaker:been the beginning of this year, losing track of time because I talk so
Speaker:much! And it flows. So maybe I should just start calling
Speaker:people and having a chat and recording.
Speaker:Yeah, but set an agenda first! No, I think there was a point
Speaker:there that you made, though, around lived experience.
Speaker:And I think something else which is useful.
Speaker:Maybe useful is the wrong word, but something else which is I guess,
Speaker:interesting.
Speaker:Is when you hire people with lived experience into those roles.
Speaker:When you hire people as accessibility specialists.
Speaker:Who have to live and breath it every day.
Speaker:It also helps when you're trying to convince people that things need to be
Speaker:accessible. So one of the things that I've
Speaker:seen is Nikki, for example, who took over as head of accessibility [DWP].
Speaker:Nikki is a wheelchair user, and when Niki sits opposite somebody and argues for
Speaker:accessibility and they're saying they don't see the point in doing it,
Speaker:they're arguing with somebody who it directly impacts.
Speaker:And that becomes a much more difficult conversation to have than when you're sat
Speaker:there with somebody like me, who doesn't necessarily look like I have any
Speaker:impairments on the surface. People just go, oh, we don't have
Speaker:any users like that, we don't see the point in this
Speaker:and sometimes when Nikki sat opposite in the chair, it becomes a much more
Speaker:difficult thing to wriggle out of. I hope Nikki doesn't mind me saying
Speaker:that, but I have seen it firsthand, where people have sort of not especially
Speaker:over MS Teams and things people don't always see the chair and
Speaker:they're arguing, they don't see the point in it
Speaker:and Nikki handles it very well, but
Speaker:they're essentially saying, we don't care about fixing this for you, so to
Speaker:speak.
Speaker:Definitely, but even not necessarily to sort of just throw it in people's
Speaker:faces. I know that's not the invention, but
Speaker:it's also the awareness. They may not be aware and it
Speaker:could just be blissful ignorance where they just think, oh no, surely not,
Speaker:no one's going to be using this service.
Speaker:But it's an instant bit of awareness that actually, no, not just your users,
Speaker:but your employees need things to be accessible.
Speaker:We hear that a lot. I mean, the amount of times I
Speaker:heard all where we don't have any users with accessibility needs.
Speaker:And it's this sort of self fulfilling
Speaker:prophecy where people have products that aren't
Speaker:accessible and then they hire people in to use them
Speaker:and one of the specifications, I guess, is you've got to be able to
Speaker:use a system, so if somebody uses a screen reader or voice control and
Speaker:it doesn't work, then they can't be hired into that role because they can't
Speaker:do it because the service isn't accessible.
Speaker:And then you end up in this perpetual state of, oh, well, we don't
Speaker:have any accessible any users that require accessibility and say, yeah, because you
Speaker:can't hire them. You created an ableist environment where
Speaker:these people physically can't come in and do the role, and then you're using
Speaker:that to validate the fact that you don't need to do accessibility because you
Speaker:don't have any users that have accessibility needs.
Speaker:So there's this weird paradigm where people justify to themselves with this
Speaker:circle of something other than a swear word that I can't think of...
Speaker:Yes, I think we're following and I think it's an unfortunate thing to happen.
Speaker:It's like a catch 22 though, isn't it's?
Speaker:Just sort of, oh, no, we don't need that, but I need that.
Speaker:Okay, well, can you come in and fix it?
Speaker:But if I can't access it, then how can I actually even start to
Speaker:think about how to begin? Yeah, man, we could talk for days.
Speaker:I'm going to just skip forward to the sort of final thoughts, if that's
Speaker:okay, Craig?
Speaker:So I guess if you're happy to sort of take this time to just
Speaker:share something of importance to you at the moment, either within sort of personal
Speaker:life or accessibility. I mean, obviously theme of the podcast,
Speaker:but feel free to share if you're putting together anything yourself.
Speaker:Yeah, I think something that is of real importance to me at the moment
Speaker:is I think trying to push for accessibility beyond compliance.
Speaker:I think somehow compliance has become this end goal.
Speaker:It's become this, people achieve compliance and pat themselves on the back and
Speaker:say that they're awesome because everything's accessible, when actually
Speaker:compliance is probably just the bare minimum.
Speaker:That should be the first step to whatever it is that you're trying to
Speaker:do. I've seen a lot of compliance sites
Speaker:which just aren't usable. They're full of jargon and animations and
Speaker:parallax effects and bad content and all sorts of things, but they pass an
Speaker:audit because the audit is only looking for [WCAG] AA and a lot of these
Speaker:things fit into the [WCAG] AAA criteria.
Speaker:So I'm doing a lot of talks.
Speaker:At the moment, but I say a lot of talks.
Speaker:I've done like three, I think, but I'd like to do more, I guess
Speaker:now that I'm not working 70 hours weeks, I'd like to do more talks
Speaker:and things. But at the moment I've been doing
Speaker:some talks on designing for Neurodiversity and I guess that's because people like
Speaker:me get ignored when people just focus on compliance.
Speaker:But I'm kind of hoping that it can change the way that
Speaker:people think about it because accessibility wasn't thought of at all and
Speaker:it's definitely getting better now. People know they need to be compliant,
Speaker:but what I don't want is people just going, oh, we need to be
Speaker:compliant, the end. So I think I want to get
Speaker:people thinking, okay, well, once you're compliant, then what more can you do
Speaker:to make sure it works for everybody? Rather than just saying we passed an
Speaker:audit, we're great, let's sort of be done, I think.
Speaker:W3C. It's worth probably mentioning that they
Speaker:are planning to address they've noticed that WCAG 2.1, in the way that
Speaker:it's currently being used, doesn't do.
Speaker:A lot to cater for people with.
Speaker:Cognitive issues or Neurodiversity and those sorts sorts of things.
Speaker:They are looking to address that in.
Speaker:WCAG 3.0, but that's probably like a decade away.
Speaker:So in the short term it's like an interim measure.
Speaker:They're working on this thing called CoGA, or the Cognitive Accessibility Guidelines,
Speaker:which is like a set of eight design principles which help cover off
Speaker:some of the stuff that is being missed by WCAG double A compliance.
Speaker:So I'd like to get more people thinking about that.
Speaker:I think if you go and look up the Cognitive Accessibility Guidelines,
Speaker:read through those, they're just good design.
Speaker:Like you'll read it and you'll go, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker:None of this is a surprise, but I think they're good to just remind
Speaker:people of things so it's get it to be compliant.
Speaker:Work with CoGA, I think it'll make.
Speaker:Things a lot better for a lot of people rather than just pass it
Speaker:and order it. I've been planning on writing a book,
Speaker:so maybe now is the time and I'll just dump all of this stuff
Speaker:into there.
Speaker:Well, once I've done the transcript, I'll
Speaker:send it to you and you might have half a book ready! With the
Speaker:amount that we talk! Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker:I just want to flip slightly back as well when you talk because obviously
Speaker:you're talking about cognitive accessibility.
Speaker:There are obviously different principles to making sure that you're accessible.
Speaker:Not compliant, but accessible. And it's so easy to just sort
Speaker:of think of the standard sort of impairments that people may have, the
Speaker:audio, the visual. And when you've got people with lived
Speaker:experience, I think just to sort of not protect, but see it from the
Speaker:employer's point of view as well. If you get people with one form
Speaker:of lived experience, so say someone that's blind, that is a web developer... There's
Speaker:amazing web developers out there that either have visual impairments or are
Speaker:registered blind. They've got the lived experience of
Speaker:interacting with web content with THAT impairment, but they don't [may not] have the
Speaker:cognitive side of things. So I kind of understand why you
Speaker:might not it won't encompass everything. As much as you can get people
Speaker:with some lived experience in certain areas, it won't cover all areas of
Speaker:impairment as well. But, yeah, I would absolutely love to
Speaker:see more on the cognitive side of things.
Speaker:I think there is, like you say, there's more being done, I'm seeing more
Speaker:and more stuff out there. Maybe it's you, maybe I just keep
Speaker:seeing you post about it is always a good
Speaker:thing, but cool. So, I mean, we've rambled on, it's
Speaker:been amazing chat, but I think to save people getting bored of my voice,
Speaker:not yours, because you've got an amazing accent.
Speaker:Probably mine and my stupid accent, but no lovely accent.
Speaker:Well, I mean, that's quite rude, isn't it?
Speaker:I'm saying that you've got an accent, but maybe I've got an accent to
Speaker:you. So I'd like to finish each episode
Speaker:with a quote that sort of inspires listeners and just assure them that it's
Speaker:not all doom and gloom. I know we've spoken about impostor
Speaker:syndrome, about burnout, about wearing too many hats like the one you've got
Speaker:on now. Have you got any quotes that you've
Speaker:come across?
Speaker:Yeah, I'm not sure that it will assure everybody that it's not all doom
Speaker:and gloom, but one of my favourite quotes to inspire people over the years
Speaker:has been I heard it from Molly Watt originally.
Speaker:Molly was doing a talk at Camp Digital in Manchester several years ago,
Speaker:and she used this quote, which was, one in five people in the UK
Speaker:have a disability. It's the same number of people who
Speaker:have brown eyes. Imagine saying, Sorry, you can't use our
Speaker:product because your eyes are the wrong colour.
Speaker:Because I think that's essentially what you're saying when you make things
Speaker:inaccessible. The quote was originally about blue eyes
Speaker:but since that talk, the UK's eye
Speaker:demographic has changed weirdly. So brown eyes is now at 22%,
Speaker:which is roughly one in five. So I've had to modify the original
Speaker:quote. But it still works.
Speaker:I think when you say it like that, nobody would turn around and say,
Speaker:you're not using our service because your eyes are blue or brown or whatever,
Speaker:but that's essentially what we're doing when.
Speaker:We make things not accessible.
Speaker:The be all, end all is; if you're not making your products accessible
Speaker:to everyone or even attempting to do so, you're discriminating.
Speaker:It is discrimination.
Speaker:You need to make sure that you're developing and designing with everyone in
Speaker:mind and not excluding people, even if they have brown eyes.
Speaker:Yeah, there's no grey areas. You either discriminate or you don't.
Speaker:You either
Speaker:do the work you don't. Exactly, perfect.
Speaker:Well, I look forward to, hopefully continuing the conversation, moving
Speaker:forward, staying in touch with you. Thank you so much for spending this
Speaker:last hour with me and chatting about accessibility and hopefully it's going to
Speaker:raise some more awareness out there.
Speaker:If you've got any links or anything
Speaker:like that, if you've got any social media that you want to share, then
Speaker:we can say it now, but I'll also add links and stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm just @Abbott567 on pretty much everything, but Twitter is
Speaker:where I mainly talk about work. If you look up me on Instagram,
Speaker:you'll just find a lot of wildlife photos because I like to go out
Speaker:and take pictures of animals. So, yeah, if you look me up
Speaker:on Instagram, there's going to be nothing about accessibility, but there will be a
Speaker:bunch of pictures of animals, which are alt text up.
Speaker:I was just about to ask. Make sure you've got that alt text.
Speaker:There's always alt text on them.
Speaker:Amazing. Thank you so much, Craig.
Speaker:And, yeah, I look forward to staying in touch, moving forward.
Speaker:No worries. Thanks for having me.
Speaker:Cheers, dude.
