Episode 16

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Published on:

15th Apr 2025

Episode 16 - Heydon Pickering, Inclusive Components

🎙️ The Digital Accessibility Podcast – Heydon Pickering

In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, we sit down with Heydon Pickering, an influential accessibility advocate, author, and inclusive design expert.

From his groundbreaking book Inclusive Components to consulting with industry giants like the BBC, Shopify, The Wellcome Trust, and Springer Nature, Heydon has been shaping the way developers and designers approach accessibility.

We explore:

  • Heydon’s journey into accessibility – how he became a leading voice in inclusive design and web accessibility.
  • The impact of Inclusive Components – how his book has influenced modern web accessibility practices.
  • Persistent accessibility challenges – why companies struggle with accessibility and practical solutions to overcome these obstacles.
  • The balance between aesthetics and accessibility – how to design beautiful yet functional user experiences.
  • Lessons from industry leaders – insights from working with major organizations on accessibility initiatives.
  • Avoiding burnout in accessibility consulting – Heydon shares his personal strategies for managing workload and staying inspired.
  • What’s next for Heydon – upcoming projects, initiatives, and his brutally honest take on the future of digital accessibility.

If you’re a developer, designer, or digital leader looking to improve your accessibility mindset and skills, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.

Follow Heydon Pickering:

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heydon-pickering-a2a22b9/
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heydonworks
  • Website: https://heydonworks.com/
  • Inclusive Components: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/printed-books/inclusive-components/

Follow Joe James:

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/
  • Twitter (X): @A11yJoe
  • Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PCRDigital
Transcript
Speaker:

Today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Heydon Pickering,

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a renowned accessibility advocate, author, editor,

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and all-round front-end development and inclusive design

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guru. Heydon has significantly contributed to the field of

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digital accessibility through his work on inclusive

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components.

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He's written courses and books that have influenced

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interface design and consulted with companies such as the

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BBC, Spotify, The Wellcome Trust,

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and Springer Nature to name a few.

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He's extremely well-renowned,

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has given many thought-provoking talks internationally over

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the years,

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has remained dedicated to creating more inclusive and

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accessible products and services.

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Heydon also has his own YouTube channel and site where he

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posts amazing,

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brutally honest videos dialing into web technologies,

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and I'm hoping for a bit more of that straight talking in

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today's episode.

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So welcome to the podcast, Heydon.

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Absolute pleasure.

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Thank you for having me.

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Yeah, and thanks for the very nice intro.

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Oh, you're more than welcome.

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Yeah, where should we start?

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Well,

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I guess I should start by just mentioning that the video

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for this, if you're watching on YouTube,

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is in black and white, and the branding will be as well,

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which I would say is a bit of a style choice of yours in a

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lot of your own content,

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Heydon.

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So would you mind, perhaps,

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quickly just sort of explaining that choice?

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Yes, of course.

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Um, it comes from,

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I suppose it comes from a place of laziness apart from

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anything else.

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I, I, like things to be pared down on.

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I liked working within, um, with, within limitations,

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I suppose.

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And just working with black and white means that there's

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any so many variables that I have to think of.

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And so that that's partly it.

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It's also that I actually find interfaces with a lot

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of colours kind of overwhelming.

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I have like a, um, uh, what do you call it?

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A, um, sensory processing to some extent, but mostly a,

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what's the term for, um, see now I can't think of it,

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which is probably related to the issue.

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Um, executive functioning.

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That's what it is.

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Yes.

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Uh, so.

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I basically, I'm easily overwhelmed.

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In front of a parking meter, I just, I just, I blip out.

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Like I can't, I just, I don't understand it.

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My wife would have to deal with it for me.

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And I, it's partly like an,

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the Jeffery's Elvin talks about this as well,

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like an interface blindness thing, I think,

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where as a designer, as an interface designer,

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I go into a different mode where I start to critique for

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the interface rather than just trying to work it out.

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So if the interface is difficult to understand,

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then I immediately go into: "Well,

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I refuse to try and understand it now because I feel

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affronted by how badly designed it is." And I don't mean to

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do that.

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And I didn't even consciously do that.

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I'm just like, well, this is wrong.

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And then I can't use it.

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And so yeah, the black and white thing is,

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is just like pairing things down,

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making things visually easier for me to understand.

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And it's just very appealing to me.

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I'm a little bit Colourblind,

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but only very slightly with greens and blues.

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And when I was a smoker,

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I'd always buy the wrong Rizzlers because you had your

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green Rizzlers and you had your blue Rizzlers.

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And yeah, I always got them mixed up.

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They just looked more or less the same to me.

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So yeah, I just like anything which is super high contrast.

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Of course, from an accessibility point of view,

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you don't want literally black and white.

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People have told me that my videos are,

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they're too high contrast.

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In some cases, you can go,

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you can get to that point where it's too high contrast.

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And it can actually, for some people,

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it looks as if the imagery is moving and not in the

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intended way.

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You'd be like a refraction thing, I think,

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where you can like the edges kind of start to, I mean,

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you can create this as a deliberate effect.

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I've got like an effects processing bit of software,

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which I use sometimes with my videos, where it's RGB shift,

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right?

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Where it's kind of like it mismatches the Colour layers.

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And you can see.

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like the red the green and the blue coming off to the side

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but I think that actually happens to people automatically

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sometimes when they look at some of my content so I am

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trying generally to kind of temper it down a bit but I

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personally really like things which are just like really

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really high definition and black and white is as high you

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know as high contrast as you can get isn't it. So yeah

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It is!

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I adore it and if anyone hasn't sort of seen your videos up

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until now then definitely implore them to go and seek them

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out and I do need to just mention a very quick point

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because when you mentioned slightly colourblind with the

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greens and blues my wife would tell you the exact same

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thing about me because I was convinced for years she had

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green eyes so in anyone well what color of her eyes I would

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always say green and she thought I'd never actually Yeah,

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never paid attention.

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So now we've settled with teal.

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Her engagement ring has a teal stone in the middle and and

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it's now my favourite colour because I can just say it's a

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greeny blue and get it right somehow.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I mean, I've had I've had conversations.

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I not so long I had a conversation with my mum,

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which was interminable we turned into this really heated

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debate about the colour of a set of curtains.

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We were in a pub and we were having a drink.

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And as we were drinking more,

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we were getting more and more, like,

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combative about the colour of this these curtains.

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And I was sort of coming at it from the standpoint of,

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well,

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I should know how colour works because I'm a designer.

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Yes, but you are colour blind a bit, aren't you?

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And I said, I don't know.

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Is it really with this kind of this kind of colour of this

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kind of shade that is a problem, though?

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I'm not colour blind with everything.

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And they just went on and on, basically.

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Yeah,

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so we have those kinds of those kinds of conversations

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sometimes.

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Amazing.

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Right.

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Well, so back to it, I guess,

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to dive in as same as most or all of our episodes.

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Love to learn a bit more about your journey,

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your background,

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and what led you to a career focused on inclusive design

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and and in turn, accessibility as well.

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Yeah.

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So I'm perhaps a little bit unusual in that.

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Well, so first of all,

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I did I didn't have a computer science background at all.

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I studied art when I was at school.

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And then when I went to university,

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I did a course called digital media.

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And this is a long time ago.

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This is 2001.

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So we had 9-11, then I went to that's what I remember 9-11,

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then I was suddenly away from home and living in,

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in halls at university.

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I was doing this, I guess,

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some people would perhaps pejoratively call it a bit.

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of a Mickey Mouse degree because it was sort of arty but it

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was also digital.

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There was very little code though is the thing and I think

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that was kind of an interesting time then you don't get

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that so much now where if you're going to learn web design

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you'd learn it as a designer so you'd be someone who came

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from an art background and that was me really and as I say

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I'm quite unusual in that I actually did a course a course

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and formally did it specifically and it was you know it's

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things like learning Dreamweaver and all the macromedia

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stuff I did a lot of flash stuff at the time and yeah and

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all of it was horribly inaccessible of course and it was

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like pulling tables around and like visually in

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Dreamweaver's visual editor you're like pulling pulling

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table cells into positions that you want them.

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And then of course,

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when you loaded that up into a real browser,

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they all moved and they were not in the place that you

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thought that they were going to be in.

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And it was yeah, it was, it was tough.

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But um, but yeah, there was there was very,

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very little code involved.

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So I remember my tutor, at one point, I was like,

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I can't get this thing to work.

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And he opened up this separate window.

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In, I guess it was Dreamweaver,

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where you could actually see the HTML code.

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And it was that was amazing to me.

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It's like, oh, he's actually gonna,

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he's actually gonna like hack it.

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He's gonna, you know, like,

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how I think it was an American senator,

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they thought you could like hack a website by going in dev

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tools or whatever, and messing with the HTML.

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I mean,

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that was me then I I knew so little about programming.

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It was so alien to me that I was like, Oh,

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this is really like crossing into different territory.

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If you're actually working with the code.

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And then when I left university, somehow or other,

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I got I got into web design.

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And it just became a question of sort of professionalism,

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like, I need to know how this stuff works underneath.

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And so I, I learned to code,

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I learned to code HTML and CSS,

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JavaScript wasn't even really on my radar, then,

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when I was when I was eventually introduced to jQuery,

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I thought jQuery was an alternative to JavaScript,

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rather than being just like some library that someone built

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with JavaScript.

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I write a lot of JavaScript now, but I'm very much a well,

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at the time, I called myself a technical designer,

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I suppose, like some sort of job title, which was to say,

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I, I am a designer, but like,

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I get some of this code stuff, you know, now,

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I think most people think of me as a developer,

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which is kind of in a way, because I'm,

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yeah, I do a lot of front-end development,

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but I think of myself as a designer first, I suppose.

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And the code is a tool for design rather than a profession

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in and of itself.

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Yeah,

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and so the accessibility element or the inclusive design

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element is,

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I guess this probably happens with quite a few people where

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you're just not really aware of it, because unfortunately,

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especially back then, going back 10 or 15 years,

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it wasn't really something that people talked about.

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It was even more so like a more of a kind of a considered

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quite wrongly as a sort of a niche thing or an optional

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extra thing.

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And it just wasn't talked about in kind of like everyday

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development or design discussions.

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And I think I remember...

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The kind of that kind of epiphany moment was when I think I

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was dealing with some library like jQuery UI if you

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remember that or something like that and they had

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responsibly with their kind of modals I think they were

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they were pushing the focus ring onto the onto the button

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when the model opened so that you could see where your

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focus was and to me that just seemed like why would you

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that looks ugly that why would you put that there that's

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that looks like an error I didn't know what it was but then

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as soon as I I worked out what that was for I thought oh

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that's really interesting so if it wasn't for that then

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there's certain people that can't use this and then once

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that door opens I suppose then you you you start thinking

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about that a lot more and you think well if if these people

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need things like this there must be other people that need

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other kind of accommodations if you want to use things and

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then that just became really interesting to me I think I

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got really interested in responsive design and because it's

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like well now you're making it work for more devices and

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therefore it looks better and it's more usable for more

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people and and also of course like cross browser design or

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cross browser implementation I suppose and and then

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accessibility was like oh there's another opportunity to do

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stuff well I just wanted to do stuff well I think a lot of

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people in my position is you want to prove that you're good

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at your job and actually it's doing a lot of things things

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in an accessible way is saying like I know this stuff

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inside out because I'm I care about these people as well

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and you know I think a lot of people frame it as kind of

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generously as like oh we must be because you like really

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care and you're like you know you care about these people

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and stuff and of course I do and I get very angry about it

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about injustices and around people being marginalized and

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things like that.

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But it's actually really more like, oh,

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this makes my job more interesting now.

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There's more for me to think about because I didn't wanna

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become like a person who administrated databases or go into

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that world like the backend world.

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I wanted to stay in front end and stay in design,

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but I wanted more to sink my teeth into it.

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And so accessibility gifted me with that, if you like.

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Yeah.

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Oh, wow.

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And it is, I guess it is that,

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it's not to call accessibility or inclusive design an add

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-on, like a lot of, but it's sort of an additional,

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I suppose, for you in terms of like,

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your role's already fulfilling,

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but it gives you that additional sort of purpose,

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I suppose, as well, more things to think about.

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Purpose is the right word, absolutely, yeah.

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I've always identified.

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rightly or wrongly, quite heavily with what I do, you know,

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like I derive a lot of a sense of self-worth and purpose

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from my work.

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And so, yeah, the idea that there would be more to that,

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there was another dimension to that made me feel like there

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was more to me I suppose, by extension.

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So, yeah, brilliant.

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And it's nice to have that sort of viewpoint on it as well,

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because I think like you've rightly mentioned,

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a lot of people, and I've probably given that title of, oh,

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you must be an empath, you know,

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you're so empathetic towards people that that's surely the

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only reason that you're in this space.

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And I guess that is probably,

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I'm projecting that on other people,

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because I like to think that I am more,

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I'm an empathetic person.

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So as soon as I see a struggle, I'm like, what can I do to,

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you know, to alleviate that?

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But, but, you know, it's a really nice,

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a nice sort of different avenue, I suppose, as well,

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to sort of bring you into that, that world.

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Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah,

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the empathy thing is an interesting one, because obviously,

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like, empathy is a good in and of itself, right?

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If you're,

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if you're not able to see yourself in someone else's shoes,

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then that's a problem.

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I mean, that's sociopathy, probably.

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You don't, like, professionally speaking,

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I think we emphasize empathy too much,

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perhaps in a professional sense, like,

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you don't have to be empathetic.

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It's just a question of doing a good job, right?

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Like, you know, that there's certain inputs and outputs,

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if certain people with certain inputs and certain outputs

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aren't getting what they need to get,

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then the product is broken.

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And so it's like, it's just literally a cold, hard,

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professional challenge.

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And I think, yeah, sometimes when it's,

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when it's framed as empathy,

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it's kind of dangerous territory as well,

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because the idea is that the idea that there are 'special

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people' like you or I, in inverted commas,

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who have this magical empathetic like talent or quality,

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it makes it easier for other people to go, oh, well,

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I don't have that,

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like, you know, I don't have that, that, like,

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it's almost like talking about it like it's telekinesis or

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something, like, I didn't have that magical power.

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And therefore, accessibility isn't for me,

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I'll leave that to those people who were, you know,

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who were born to do this because of this,

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this special thing that they have yet.

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superpower, I think it's,

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it's just really nailed on the head for me in a certain

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aspects of my role as a recruiter,

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because you can't search for empathetic people, like,

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that's not something that you're going to put on your CV,

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you're not going to go "Oh, I'm such an empath", you know,

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so actually, you know,

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if you're If you're hiring for someone that works in

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accessibility,

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then empathy shouldn't actually be on that job list.

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I know there's an awful lot of things on jobs, uh,

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job descriptions within the space that probably shouldn't

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be on there as well, asking for a bit too much.

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But I think, um, yeah, it's not one I'll be adding.

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Yeah.

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I, yeah.

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I think, um, I mean, everyone,

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if you're hiring anyone who's incapable of empathy into any

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roles, it's probably, probably doing yourself a disservice,

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aren't you?

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Absolutely.

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But yeah, it's actually in terms of recruiting or,

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or like trying to quantify what someone should have to be

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good at accessibility.

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Yeah.

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On one end of the spectrum,

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sort of very broad and kind of wishy washy ideas like that

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are not particularly helpful,

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but also I wouldn't say that it's especially helpful if

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someone like knew ARIA inside out or something like that,

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you know, like it's obviously, um,

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a useful thing to be aware of and to,

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and to know how to apply correctly,

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but you can also get so much done without it.

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And actually knowing having the wisdom to avoid using it is

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another, you know,

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I think I can imagine a recruiter saying, well, you must,

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you must know this very specific version of ARIA.

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You need to know all of the,

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all of the different attributes, all of the roles,

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all of the, you know, and it being like, well, like, yeah,

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I actually, I don't tend to use those and then go, well,

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that sounds bad.

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Cause they would think, I mean,

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I've encountered people like this,

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you probably have as well.

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If you're not using ARIA, then it's not accessible.

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Like, yeah.

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And it doesn't, you know, and it doesn't work like that.

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So, um, uh, yeah, I, I honestly,

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I'm not sure what I would be looking for.

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I think just, uh, um,

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generally just a willingness to learn and being a good

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advocate, generally, um,

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being able to actually get other people excited about,

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about making things work in that way, I guess.

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Yeah.

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It's funny you say that because one of my.

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jokes to kind of break the ice or break the tension before

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people going for interviews with some of my clients is,

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you know, if they say, Oh,

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what kind of questions are they going to ask me?

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I'll just say, well, as long as you can recite WCAG 2.2,

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you know, all of the success,

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success criteria and verbatim, then you're fine.

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Um, but yeah, no, yeah, a bit broader, um, but perfect.

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So, um, the next question is about the book inclusive, uh,

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components nearly, uh, kind of the wrong title.

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Um, it has been influential in guiding developers towards,

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uh, creating accessible web interfaces.

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So, um, I guess again,

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could you share a bit more about the inspiration behind

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that project, sort of putting pen to paper?

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I know that you are an author and technical writer.

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Um, and you're sort of, how did you envisage that, um, uh,

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envision, sorry,

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that impact on web accessibility practices in the future?

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Yeah.

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So the, so that I, I wrote, I,

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I approached and smashing magazine.

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while I'd written a few articles for Smash Amazing.

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My favourite thing to do is write, I suppose.

431

:

When it comes down to it, I really like writing.

432

:

And it's the best way to learn as well.

433

:

So a lot of the stuff I've written,

434

:

I was learning it as I was writing it.

435

:

I think some people think that when they read my books that

436

:

I'm drawing from this huge well of experience or whatever.

437

:

And whilst I do have a lot of experience in this industry,

438

:

if you can call it that,

439

:

I've been doing it for 20 odd years.

440

:

When I'm writing,

441

:

the purpose of writing is to get my own head around things.

442

:

So I got into writing, I contacted Smash Amazing,

443

:

did a few articles with them.

444

:

They were very good to me.

445

:

They have really good editors.

446

:

There was an editor called Francisco who helped me with my

447

:

first article.

448

:

Really kind of held my hand,

449

:

like this is the kind of thing we expect and walked me

450

:

through it and everything.

451

:

And then I just got really into that.

452

:

But then I got interested in the accessibility side of

453

:

things.

454

:

I thought, oh,

455

:

I think we need something which is talks about

456

:

accessibility,

457

:

but talks about accessibility in the context of kind of

458

:

more complex interfaces and applications that were emerging

459

:

at the time.

460

:

So this was around the time that we started to get things

461

:

like single page applications and people were using

462

:

JavaScript a lot more heavily and things were a lot more

463

:

interactive.

464

:

And it was like at the most basic level,

465

:

I wanted to shout from the rooftops to people who were

466

:

saying, if it's running JavaScript, it's not accessible.

467

:

Like that kind of way of seeing things.

468

:

We need to do a separate site that isn't interactive in the

469

:

same way.

470

:

It's like, no, no, no, no.

471

:

Like screen readers actually can, like,

472

:

they interact in the same way.

473

:

And you get state updates and things like that and that's

474

:

all been in the spec for a while and so I wanted to yeah

475

:

write something about that so I approached them and said

476

:

what if I do a book for you and it became this book called

477

:

'Apps for all' and it's it's really ancient now um but you

478

:

know some of it's probably still relevant but also um I've

479

:

basically re-written that book two or three times so that's

480

:

like the my first stab at it um and so I did that one first

481

:

it was quite short it was probably only 20,

482

:

000 words or something like that um and then later I did

483

:

one called 'Inclusive Design Patterns' and that was um that

484

:

was came that was more high level I suppose and so it was

485

:

looking at it was it was talking about code fairly

486

:

frequently,

487

:

but it was also about things like readability,

488

:

so things intersecting with cognitive accessibility and

489

:

that kind of stuff as well,

490

:

and just general usability and how that crosses over into

491

:

accessibility.

492

:

And I was proud of that one because that was my first book

493

:

that was actually put into hardback,

494

:

and they actually did a print run of it,

495

:

and I did all the illustrations in it as well.

496

:

And looking back, the illustrations look crazy,

497

:

like the weirdest, like,

498

:

I don't know where my head was at when I made those,

499

:

but it has like little cartoons throughout it with little

500

:

jokes about stuff,

501

:

which I decided was a good idea for some reason at the

502

:

time.

503

:

It appeals to someone like me that can't read a book

504

:

without pictures in it.

505

:

Yeah, it's got plenty of pictures in, yeah, for sure.

506

:

But then, on the back of that,

507

:

I still wanted to write more,

508

:

but I wanted to do it kind of like more as a website,

509

:

because the whole process of writing a book is very

510

:

involved, of course,

511

:

and then you get to a point where you release the book and

512

:

you realise there's loads of,

513

:

well, not loads, but there's typos,

514

:

and there's things which then go out of date and all of

515

:

that stuff.

516

:

And so just having a website where each article is like a

517

:

chapter felt like a good idea.

518

:

So that was inclusive components to begin with.

519

:

It was a blog,

520

:

but the idea was that it was kind of like building a design

521

:

system, and every chapter or every article,

522

:

every blog post would be a component in that design system.

523

:

And I started this, and I kind of announced it.

524

:

I remember I was in Toronto,

525

:

so I was hanging out with the kind of accessibility crew

526

:

there was the A11y Toronto, A11yTO, or "A11yToo",

527

:

is what I call it, I guess, conference.

528

:

So I spoke at that conference, hung out in Toronto, and,

529

:

yeah, and that's when I started that.

530

:

And everyone was really nice and really supportive about

531

:

it.

532

:

I'm really excited about it.

533

:

I think, yeah, the first chapter was about buttons.

534

:

But the idea with it was that I think, unfortunately,

535

:

a lot of the advice that people get around accessibility is

536

:

it's kind of from the point of view that there's a right or

537

:

wrong way of doing it.

538

:

And so, for example, I mean,

539

:

I have clients all the time who I have to kind of take them

540

:

to one side and explain this to, like,

541

:

the ARIA practices guidelines, APG,

542

:

it's sort of seen as gospel, like,

543

:

this is absolutely what you must do.

544

:

And even APG, I think somewhere in the,

545

:

in the in its own documentation it says like these are

546

:

these exemplify ways you can incorporate ARIA and the the

547

:

implication is that there are other ways of doing it and

548

:

also you don't have to do it like you don't have to create

549

:

the patterns that you can create different patterns or you

550

:

can create the same pattern perhaps rely less on ARIA to

551

:

achieve it etc etc um and so I wanted to do a, I

552

:

wanted this to be about my thought process rather than me

553

:

coming down from on high and saying i'm an accessibility

554

:

expert this is how you must do things just like well this

555

:

is how i think about this i'm going to say that this feels

556

:

right let's let's do it this way and just explore it in as

557

:

much detail as i could and i think in the introduction to

558

:

the book i say something along those lines about like you

559

:

will probably find better ways to create these components

560

:

this is as good as I could do at the time of writing and

561

:

then and I was thinking about it as deeply as I could and

562

:

trying to think of all of the there's always more people

563

:

and more and more like failure points that you can think of

564

:

of course and this bit i've had some really nice

565

:

conversations with people since where they've approached me

566

:

said I learned a lot from that chapter on cards or whatever

567

:

what if I did this and i'm like well yeah I think you

568

:

should like I wish I'd thought of that I would have put it

569

:

in there and yeah and then the book just came about because

570

:

uh I just thought it'd be nice to have like it all tied up

571

:

as a product um and uh there was a it was an excuse to have

572

:

like an extra chapter which is on dialogues now this

573

:

actually this chapter is quite out of date because it talks

574

:

about using the what are the the Native there's the Native

575

:

thing for creating Modals with JavaScript I've actually

576

:

forgotten what they're called now, I

577

:

haven't used one for such a long time because Dialogue is

578

:

now actually an element which is a thing which is actually

579

:

well supported.

580

:

But there's, I talk about that basically,

581

:

that's kind of like the book only chapter is about using

582

:

those methods basically.

583

:

And I'm thinking about probably rewriting some of that

584

:

stuff, bringing it up to date, I guess.

585

:

It's getting a little bit out of date now.

586

:

People still refer to it a lot, apparently, which is great.

587

:

But I'm starting to worry that there's bits in there which

588

:

could, you know,

589

:

they could be considered a bit out of date now.

590

:

So yeah, look forward to version two.

591

:

I find the time to do that.

592

:

Yeah,

593

:

I guess that's goes back to your point on the risk of putting

594

:

it in print because with a website can be updated.

595

:

Exactly and then you've not got examples of that sort of

596

:

just sitting there.

597

:

I know there's ways to find archived websites,

598

:

but when it's in print,

599

:

it's like that's I mean it's right for the time and it's I

600

:

think it's a great thing to do and and Yeah,

601

:

maybe that's a bit of a disclaimer on there.

602

:

Like remember this this was written in 2020 or 2022 or

603

:

whatever it was, but yeah,

604

:

it was You know sometime before but actually it's oh

605

:

right yeah!

606

:

It's quite it's quite an old book now.

607

:

Yeah.

608

:

Yeah, it's it's Yeah, it was sometime before the pandemic.

609

:

I would say probably 2016, 2017 Amazing.

610

:

Um, yeah,

611

:

so I do think it still stands up as as kind of an exercise

612

:

in What I like to think is that it you could read it now

613

:

and and that the specific somewhat some of it will be a

614

:

little dated but the exercise of Getting into the mindset

615

:

of thinking inclusively like how would I approach this when

616

:

I'm thinking about it?

617

:

When I'm thinking about trying to solve those kinds of

618

:

problems Then hopefully it's kind of more helpful from that

619

:

point of view So then someone would walk away and they they

620

:

would they'd learn how to approach design in that way They

621

:

do it differently because they'd have things More things

622

:

available to them like the native dialogue element and

623

:

things like that Yeah Amazing.

624

:

It's really this is really fascinating me because the much

625

:

an episode that we recorded recently was with Jonathan

626

:

Hassell and he was talking about the strategy and the

627

:

international sort of standards and From that sort of side

628

:

of things and I love that this is more on the sort of

629

:

practice It's kind of it's still got the elements of that

630

:

strategy and the way to think about things,

631

:

but it's more on the practical implementation side of

632

:

things I suppose is that where you would say that your,

633

:

That's where your background is.

634

:

That's where your your expertise sort of lies is on the

635

:

practical doing rather than the strategy and things like

636

:

that?

637

:

Yeah, I mean, a bit of both.

638

:

I mean, when I've, when design systems come into play,

639

:

it's always a bit, you know,

640

:

the strategy part is always a big part of it.

641

:

I think, I suppose you could say my strategy,

642

:

if I'm working with an organisation to try and improve

643

:

their accessibility, is to be hands-on,

644

:

but hands-on with a team of people.

645

:

So I would normally be embedded with a team,

646

:

usually a front-end team or a design systems team.

647

:

And it's really just like the thing that I think works the

648

:

best in these situations or has worked really well on a

649

:

couple of occasions is where I just work as a member of the

650

:

team for a while,

651

:

but I just happen to be that person who has a bit more

652

:

experience in accessibility.

653

:

So I'm on Slack and people will go, oh,

654

:

you know that thing we were working on?

655

:

What do you reckon about this?

656

:

accessibility aspect to it,

657

:

and then I'd be able to draw upon a bit more experience in

658

:

that,

659

:

but just generally just working with those people and then

660

:

over time hopefully just getting them excited about it

661

:

like,

662

:

oh you know like we did this thing with this component,

663

:

well turns out that some of the people in the in the

664

:

inclusive testing that we did,

665

:

they were really excited about it,

666

:

they found it much more usable, you know,

667

:

and then that kind of the ball keeps rolling then if you

668

:

zoom in, like I wrote, I don't know if you saw them,

669

:

but I wrote up some accessible design principles recently,

670

:

which I put on GitHub,

671

:

and it's just a set of like much higher level principles,

672

:

so it's not like a strategy,

673

:

how do you deal with an organisation,

674

:

how do you get them to care about accessibility thing,

675

:

and it's not like this is where you put your ARIA

676

:

attribute,

677

:

it's somewhere in the middle where it's like as a designer

678

:

and a developer, and I'm both,

679

:

and I think a lot of people involved in accessibility one

680

:

way or another are both, how do you, from a high level,

681

:

how do you approach getting the technical stuff done,

682

:

and one of the principles is around how if you just go into

683

:

an organisation

684

:

or you'll just work at an organisation as an employee,

685

:

you just take on the accessibility role yourself and you do

686

:

it in isolation,

687

:

then if you leave or you're moved on to something else,

688

:

then that work will quickly fade,

689

:

people will undo it because they won't be able to

690

:

appreciate the benefit of it,

691

:

it will just disappear or it just won't get taken any

692

:

further,

693

:

and so you do need to try and bring other people on board,

694

:

I mean it's an obvious thing to say really,

695

:

but it really is that important that you need to get people

696

:

to kind of work with you on it,

697

:

if you sort of mean, or even just like delegate, say like,

698

:

this is how I would do this.

699

:

Why didn't you go about that in this way?

700

:

See how it feels, see how you get on,

701

:

or just sort of try and empower people to,

702

:

because folks are weirdly, really nervous or...

703

:

Apprehensive?

704

:

Yeah, apprehensive about taking on accessibility,

705

:

because they're made to feel like it has to be done just

706

:

right,

707

:

otherwise you are ruining the lives of already vulnerable

708

:

people.

709

:

Which, you know, if you can be,

710

:

but you're more likely to be doing that by not caring at

711

:

all,

712

:

or by doing whatever's going on in the US at the moment,

713

:

which is to deliberately dismantle all of that stuff,

714

:

which is crazy as well.

715

:

But...

716

:

Then that's another thing that I that I put into those into

717

:

the principles is this idea that nothing's 100% accessible.

718

:

Don't be don't don't run away from from just trying to do

719

:

your best with it like the so much pressure that people

720

:

feel about like getting no I won't do it because I'm not

721

:

best suited to do this.

722

:

I think someone else who's more of an expert should do it.

723

:

No, just just do what you can.

724

:

You know, some of it do if you make it a bit better.

725

:

It's a bit better.

726

:

It doesn't nothing's 100% accessible.

727

:

It's never going to become 100% accessible.

728

:

Nothing I've ever done is 100% accessible.

729

:

It's important that folks just take a bit on and it's sad

730

:

that we have this thing where where yeah,

731

:

folks are scared to to make it their responsibility because

732

:

then they feel like they're they're holding a lot on their

733

:

shoulders by doing that.

734

:

But if everyone's doing that then no one's doing it at all.

735

:

So it feeds into a lot of the imposter.

736

:

I was gonna say syndrome,

737

:

but I guess imposter phenomenon that we see a lot within

738

:

accessibility in that community as well because it is that

739

:

element of Oh my God, I've chosen to, you know,

740

:

take this on and I really want to make things better.

741

:

But yeah, sometimes I can't actually do that.

742

:

And sometimes it's just not possible,

743

:

but your heart's in the right place and you're trying to do

744

:

but I love that as well as a strategy.

745

:

If you could call it a strategy is the embedded approach.

746

:

I think like you said,

747

:

you've got an expert within a team that can play on both

748

:

those strengths of design and development.

749

:

It's something that I've been trying to pitch to a lot of

750

:

clients and say, look,

751

:

even if you have one person in this team,

752

:

the six months to a year as a contractor,

753

:

they can work on various different projects.

754

:

But they also come equipped with this knowledge,

755

:

this additional knowledge that people in your teams may not

756

:

have right now.

757

:

And I think that that's a good way to approach it sort of

758

:

build the maturity from the inside out sort of thing rather

759

:

than just slapping a big sort of overarching strategy?

760

:

Absolutely.

761

:

I think, yeah,

762

:

it sounds like that's kind of worked for you as well then,

763

:

yeah.

764

:

Yeah, when it gets too abstract, like this,

765

:

if someone were to ask me,

766

:

we need you to change the culture in our organisation so

767

:

that accessibility is a thing.

768

:

Like,

769

:

that's a very difficult thing to do and organisations where

770

:

they haven't been able to instill any kind of culture

771

:

around that, I suspect they never will,

772

:

if you sort of mean like it's,

773

:

usually it's more a case with these larger organisations

774

:

are generally aware that it's something that needs to be

775

:

done.

776

:

They just don't quite know how to go about it.

777

:

And I think just being hands on and saying, look,

778

:

you can just...

779

:

do this, is like, is a good approach.

780

:

Yeah, just sort of leading by example, or, or just, yeah,

781

:

getting your hands dirty, basically.

782

:

Yeah.

783

:

Because usually there are people who well it's something in

784

:

my experience, anyway,

785

:

what's been really lovely is that folks are really happy

786

:

for me to be there.

787

:

Because it's like,

788

:

I have all of these questions that I want to ask about

789

:

accessibility, because I already care about it.

790

:

It's not like you're coming in and going, right,

791

:

this is what accessibility is.

792

:

Yeah, that's very merely the case, I find.

793

:

Usually it's not, it's not the developers or the designers,

794

:

which are, which are failing accessibility,

795

:

it's the organisation from a higher level that's failing at

796

:

it.

797

:

But then when you're,

798

:

when you're kind of trying to attack the organisation

799

:

itself, and trying to reform that, doesn't,

800

:

it doesn't work that way.

801

:

You have, you have to, it's like,

802

:

it has to be like a groundswell, you know?

803

:

Yeah.

804

:

Yeah, to some extent, like a grassroots type thing.

805

:

Yeah.

806

:

Brilliant.

807

:

Well,

808

:

I know I've asked many questions that I hadn't sent you

809

:

beforehand, but I'm really loving the chat.

810

:

So sorry about that.

811

:

Catching you off guard.

812

:

No, no, no, that's fine.

813

:

Amazing.

814

:

Right,

815

:

so the next question I did sort of send over was about sort

816

:

of, I guess,

817

:

the perceived tension between creating visually appealing

818

:

or beautiful designs, as some people might mention them,

819

:

and ensuring accessibility.

820

:

So do you think that there's, is there a cheat code,

821

:

I suppose,

822

:

to balancing aesthetics with functionality to achieve

823

:

designs that are both beautiful and accessible?

824

:

Or, yeah,

825

:

is there any sort of fundamentals that you can maybe share

826

:

that?

827

:

Or, yeah, I think, I think, sorry, personally,

828

:

I think that accessible is, it equals beautiful.

829

:

I think that that in from Well,

830

:

that could have been on the first thing.

831

:

Yeah, yeah, we totally agree on that.

832

:

Absolutely.

833

:

In terms of contrast,

834

:

obviously make everything you do black and white,

835

:

no exception. What I do.

836

:

But not actual black and white,

837

:

because that will make people see Colours kind of

838

:

paradoxically.

839

:

But yeah,

840

:

I think that that whole the idea of an interface being the

841

:

site of some sort of aestheticism is a really weird thing.

842

:

And I don't quite know how we got into sort of thinking of

843

:

things like that.

844

:

An interface is something to be used, right?

845

:

It has a purpose.

846

:

It's not something to be admired.

847

:

Or, or kind of, yeah, it, like,

848

:

that whole thing of where you have an argument with a with

849

:

a visual designer,

850

:

who's who really wants to do like a low contrast thing and

851

:

the classic thing is like a really really thin font like a

852

:

really delicate font um and uh it's in a very light gray

853

:

you know so it's it's barely you can barely see it um and

854

:

the thing is that doesn't look good either so the argument

855

:

is the the argument is but it needs to look good well a it

856

:

doesn't because it's an interface it needs to be usable and

857

:

that's the priority i mean i'm a utilit,

858

:

i'm like a insufferable utilitarian like i i have very

859

:

little room for aesthetics in interface design anyway but

860

:

um yeah the idea of it being the idea of that looking

861

:

better i find really weird anyway because i i just think

862

:

that kind of um hesitant kind of unconfident design if you

863

:

like that's that's what i get from it is you you don't

864

:

you're seeing these kind of like uh faded or or unassuming

865

:

sort of things it's no i want it i want it to have more

866

:

confidence i want it to be bold um like literally but

867

:

figuratively bold um and i think yeah i think it's actually

868

:

a sign of a designer who isn't that confident in their work

869

:

when they start to incorporate elements like that and so

870

:

that but it part of this the problem and i've talked about

871

:

this a lot recently it's something that preoccupies me a

872

:

lot being somebody sort of between developer and designer

873

:

is this idea where you have when you when you divide two

874

:

roles very strictly down the middle between visual designer

875

:

and then developer on the other side of the fence like you

876

:

create that binary what one of the big problems that comes

877

:

out of that that is that then the person who's doing the

878

:

visual design who is relegated or is restricted to just

879

:

making things look a certain way will invest too much time

880

:

and energy and thought into specifically how they should

881

:

look,

882

:

which actually isn't that important.

883

:

But then they'll also second-guess things.

884

:

You know what I mean?

885

:

Like the classic one is checkboxes. Yep.

886

:

They are understandable and usable,

887

:

like from a cognitive point of view,

888

:

because they are square and they will have a tick that will

889

:

appear in them if they're checked.

890

:

Right.

891

:

If you give someone a role where all they're in charge of

892

:

is how things like look like borders, Colours, shapes,

893

:

nothing to do with like how how things are written,

894

:

how things are organised, how things work.

895

:

If they're just focusing on that,

896

:

then they will get bored and they will start messing with

897

:

things and they will take that square checkbox and they

898

:

will make the corners round.

899

:

And before you know it,

900

:

you've got this weird hybrid between a checkbox and a radio

901

:

and then people don't know what they're doing.

902

:

They look at it and they don't know what they're

903

:

interacting with anymore.

904

:

And that,

905

:

but that all comes from this weird division between

906

:

development and design.

907

:

And for us design weirdly just meaning visual semblance and

908

:

nothing else.

909

:

So it's not really even the designer's fault that their

910

:

role is to,

911

:

and their way of kind of getting ahead in their career is

912

:

to compete based on aesthetics because that's the only

913

:

realm they're allowed to operate with it.

914

:

Yeah, the more I think about it,

915

:

the more angry it makes. Oops!

916

:

It's, no, no, it's fine.

917

:

I just,

918

:

I go off on one about that stuff very like frequently

919

:

anyway.

920

:

So yeah, no,

921

:

I think I've probably summarized it better than I have

922

:

before.

923

:

So it's good to have the opportunity to actually set it out

924

:

in hopefully a useful way, yeah.

925

:

Definitely, and it is interesting, isn't it?

926

:

I think,

927

:

would you say as part of the nature of certain designers or

928

:

do you think it is because of previous expectation,

929

:

like this is your role and this is what I'm used to

930

:

focusing on.

931

:

And a lot of portfolios will have mostly visual elements.

932

:

So it's like, well,

933

:

how can I present what I've created without showing you a

934

:

visual sort of,

935

:

rather than everything looking like the gov.uk website?

936

:

Because then I guess you're trying to set yourself apart

937

:

but you can still do that and not just look like gov.uk.

938

:

Brilliant website, not slating it, just saying.

939

:

Yeah, yeah, sure.

940

:

But yeah,

941

:

you could create a gov.uk type website where you take the

942

:

whole design system as it is,

943

:

but you could make it really kind of stand out and

944

:

outrageous just by saying, say like the link.

945

:

are in green and the font like the heading font is has like

946

:

rough edges or you know or you just have a different

947

:

palette like a good contrast palette but a different you

948

:

can change just a few things about the gov.uk website and

949

:

it would look entirely different right it would and it

950

:

would really set itself apart and and so yeah I did this

951

:

there's so many different combinations of Colour just

952

:

talking about colour on its own there's like a near

953

:

infinite combination combinations of colour which means

954

:

because of the way infinity works there's also a near

955

:

infinite combination combinations of accessible colour

956

:

choices so you've got a lot to work with like you know um I

957

:

mean there's a lot to be said for things being looking kind

958

:

of conventional because then they're understood but like

959

:

just swapping out a specific colour or a font or whatever

960

:

as long as the font is still legible it's immediately going

961

:

to look so different.

962

:

One of the things I care about most in web design is

963

:

typography.

964

:

You don't even need to have a body font that is

965

:

particularly unusual.

966

:

You can just go with Georgia.

967

:

If you have your heading font as something which is a bit

968

:

more outrageous or a bit more jaunty and weird,

969

:

as long as it's still legible,

970

:

then you don't even notice the body font.

971

:

A statement like that can really transform how people

972

:

perceive the site for just one font choice in one place.

973

:

It's actually so easy to make an original looking website.

974

:

But you need to make bold choices is the important thing.

975

:

Try not to fade everything out and make everything too

976

:

subtle or too small because then it starts to get

977

:

inaccessible and visually ugly at the same time.

978

:

And just irritating, I think as well.

979

:

You and I both get quite irritated, I think,

980

:

when we're seeing certain things like that and just know it

981

:

can be better.

982

:

Oh, and also, yes,

983

:

we're on the subject underline your links as well.

984

:

Like that's such a that's a that's a classic.

985

:

It's sorry, I'm going off on one again.

986

:

No, it's good.

987

:

There's a classic one where designers are taking away

988

:

something which is so important to how like hyperlinks are

989

:

literally what the what the web is for.

990

:

I mean,

991

:

we've got loads of JavaScript doing all sorts of weird

992

:

interactions and tracking us and and dobbing us into the

993

:

CIA or whatever now.

994

:

But links,

995

:

just pages linked together is the is the still the most

996

:

important part of it.

997

:

And someone made it trendy at some point a long time ago to

998

:

remove the underlines which was that was how we knew which

999

:

parts of the text were links like that's you can't really

:

00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:35,660

overstate how important that is in terms of usability and

:

00:49:35,660 --> 00:49:40,500

yet all of the bit that like the big organisation I think

:

00:49:40,500 --> 00:49:47,040

GitHub do this Amazon do like every day I see a huge well

:

00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:50,980

-known organisation's website where they they're only

:

00:49:50,980 --> 00:49:55,060

differentiating the text in it with a Colour and without

:

00:49:55,060 --> 00:49:59,460

the underline and that's that's ugly first of all because

:

00:49:59,460 --> 00:50:02,340

then it's just like well I'm just reading normal text but

:

00:50:02,340 --> 00:50:07,640

then weirdly this bit of text is in a different color it's

:

00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:11,580

it to me it makes more sense it looks nicer if the if the

:

00:50:11,580 --> 00:50:14,180

link text is in the same colors the surrounding takes but

:

00:50:14,180 --> 00:50:15,360

it has an underlying Yeah,

:

00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:18,340

but in the other way, so I mean, I don't understand,

:

00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:20,440

but then, you know, like, I like black and white.

:

00:50:20,720 --> 00:50:22,920

So yeah, I didn't.

:

00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:23,340

But that,

:

00:50:23,800 --> 00:50:25,860

that just one of those things where that just became a

:

00:50:25,860 --> 00:50:27,040

thing, people started doing it.

:

00:50:27,180 --> 00:50:27,940

And it's so bad.

:

00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,160

It's such a fundamental error in our thinking and the way

:

00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:35,460

that we the way that we present web interfaces.

:

00:50:36,220 --> 00:50:37,600

But it's just so ubiquitous.

:

00:50:38,300 --> 00:50:43,700

And yeah, I mean, I created a t shirt a long time ago,

:

00:50:43,700 --> 00:50:44,840

or I had a slide.

:

00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:46,520

In a conference talk,

:

00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:48,620

which became a t shirt that someone else created.

:

00:50:48,620 --> 00:50:50,400

And now I'm selling my own version of it.

:

00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:52,280

But it just says underline your f***ing links,

:

00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:54,180

you sociopaths on it.

:

00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,080

And it's, but it's like,

:

00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:02,560

it's one of those things where am I taking crazy pills?

:

00:51:02,740 --> 00:51:04,760

Like, why are people still doing this?

:

00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,080

It's, it's such an easy thing not to get wrong.

:

00:51:08,860 --> 00:51:09,920

But there you go.

:

00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:10,660

And it's,

:

00:51:10,660 --> 00:51:14,000

it's almost more effort to take the underline away,

:

00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:14,520

isn't it?

:

00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:17,400

Linking text, is it not?

:

00:51:17,740 --> 00:51:18,740

Does it not usually?

:

00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:20,380

Is it not an automatic thing?

:

00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:21,980

Yeah, absolutely.

:

00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:23,060

It is.

:

00:51:23,340 --> 00:51:27,200

You could do no CSS, you could just you could publish this,

:

00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:29,240

like in Times New Roman, you know,

:

00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:31,700

and then you'd have nice margins, first of all, decent,

:

00:51:32,180 --> 00:51:34,620

decent font size, good, good leading.

:

00:51:36,740 --> 00:51:39,280

And all of that, not so good measure,

:

00:51:39,700 --> 00:51:41,380

you might want to get bring that in.

:

00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:42,540

But um, but yeah,

:

00:51:42,620 --> 00:51:45,380

you get them for the user agent style sheet takes care of

:

00:51:45,380 --> 00:51:45,960

that for you,

:

00:51:46,260 --> 00:51:49,400

which is your first clue that you probably want to leave,

:

00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:51,340

you know, that they should probably be there.

:

00:51:51,340 --> 00:51:55,640

But the justification is always, oh, it's clutter.

:

00:51:56,740 --> 00:51:59,860

And they speak for users, they say, oh,

:

00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:00,980

users don't like them.

:

00:52:01,980 --> 00:52:03,280

Like, really, did you have users,

:

00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:05,320

do you have multiple users in a study say,

:

00:52:05,380 --> 00:52:08,020

I don't want to see underlines on on links,

:

00:52:08,460 --> 00:52:10,420

I don't want to be able to tell what to link and what's

:

00:52:10,420 --> 00:52:10,600

not.

:

00:52:11,260 --> 00:52:12,700

That's not useful to me.

:

00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:13,620

It's ugly.

:

00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:18,260

How many of those users were the one person that's making

:

00:52:18,260 --> 00:52:18,880

that decision?

:

00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:20,960

It's like 100% of users that were asked.

:

00:52:21,140 --> 00:52:23,540

And that's the one user that's making the decision.

:

00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:27,000

Well, that I mean, that's a big problem as well.

:

00:52:27,340 --> 00:52:29,700

Like, especially in research around accessibility.

:

00:52:30,420 --> 00:52:34,500

I did a talk about this recently called The Folly of

:

00:52:34,500 --> 00:52:35,460

Chasing Demographics.

:

00:52:36,380 --> 00:52:42,840

And it's about how it's this idea that if you speak to one

:

00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:43,780

screen reader user,

:

00:52:43,780 --> 00:52:46,080

then they somehow represent all screen reader users.

:

00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:51,940

So you only have to get one screen reader user into your

:

00:52:51,940 --> 00:52:54,000

usability study, right?

:

00:52:54,700 --> 00:52:57,100

And it's like, whatever they say goes.

:

00:52:57,720 --> 00:53:01,920

But then, believe it or not,

:

00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:04,000

they have different opinions about things and they use

:

00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:05,900

screen readers for different reasons in different

:

00:53:05,900 --> 00:53:09,420

circumstances, in different ways, at different times.

:

00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,960

But it's, it's that kind of very patronising thing of like,

:

00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:18,760

well, I spoke to a blind person and so therefore, um,

:

00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:22,780

I now understand how, you know, what blind people want, um,

:

00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:24,120

we don't do that with other users.

:

00:53:24,460 --> 00:53:27,140

We, we generate all sorts of superfluous, uh,

:

00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:28,700

personas for them that way.

:

00:53:28,780 --> 00:53:29,220

Cool.

:

00:53:29,300 --> 00:53:33,200

Well, I've got another question on your sort of work and,

:

00:53:33,240 --> 00:53:36,020

um, working with different, uh,

:

00:53:36,020 --> 00:53:38,200

incredible companies that were mentioned earlier in the,

:

00:53:38,200 --> 00:53:42,480

in the podcast and how they sort of do things differently

:

00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,400

because, uh, you know, we don't all do things the same way.

:

00:53:45,580 --> 00:53:48,160

Some industries are very different from others.

:

00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:48,600

Um,

:

00:53:49,060 --> 00:53:52,020

but you've probably had a great insight into those different

:

00:53:52,020 --> 00:53:52,580

approaches.

:

00:53:53,260 --> 00:53:55,660

Um, so I guess, could you sort of let,

:

00:53:55,680 --> 00:53:58,200

let us know of any sort of lessons that you've learned from

:

00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:01,800

how you may have had to change tact or, uh,

:

00:54:01,900 --> 00:54:05,460

shape your approach to promoting accessibility within sort

:

00:54:05,460 --> 00:54:07,280

of different organisations or industries?

:

00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:08,700

Yeah.

:

00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:13,500

So, I mean, we've, we've covered this a little bit already,

:

00:54:13,500 --> 00:54:15,800

like the kind of, you know, um,

:

00:54:16,660 --> 00:54:18,820

the best approach generally, I think is to,

:

00:54:18,940 --> 00:54:25,140

is to be like hands on being embedded and just work on what

:

00:54:25,140 --> 00:54:27,300

people are working on alongside them,

:

00:54:27,300 --> 00:54:30,400

but just be that person, uh, who's,

:

00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,580

who's on the hands for more of the accessibility related,

:

00:54:33,580 --> 00:54:38,580

uh, stuff, how different organisations compare.

:

00:54:38,780 --> 00:54:43,220

I mean, generally, I would say that it's fairly uniform.

:

00:54:44,140 --> 00:54:47,940

Um, like most organisations have the same,

:

00:54:48,260 --> 00:54:49,680

the same kinds of problems,

:

00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:53,900

especially when you get to a certain kind of scale and

:

00:54:53,900 --> 00:54:58,780

when, when organisations get to that scale, it's no longer,

:

00:54:59,060 --> 00:55:02,200

it's just a momentum issue, right?

:

00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:05,060

It's just, it's just a kind of a, uh,

:

00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:09,980

changing course or changing the way that they do things,

:

00:55:10,140 --> 00:55:11,800

changing the practice just takes more time.

:

00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:16,740

And that's, you know, that's why design systems are very,

:

00:55:16,740 --> 00:55:17,640

very difficult.

:

00:55:17,900 --> 00:55:20,020

But I suppose one thing which is very,

:

00:55:20,020 --> 00:55:23,520

very marked difference between different organisations is

:

00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:26,840

the specific technologies they use for their design

:

00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:27,420

systems.

:

00:55:27,420 --> 00:55:33,220

And so, so without naming these two organisations,

:

00:55:33,780 --> 00:55:38,160

because I probably shouldn't, but, but organisation A,

:

00:55:38,820 --> 00:55:44,860

they had a design system which was based around React and

:

00:55:44,860 --> 00:55:45,580

TypeScript.

:

00:55:46,580 --> 00:55:52,140

And organisation B had a design system which is based

:

00:55:52,140 --> 00:55:55,780

around just web standards, vanilla JavaScript.

:

00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:57,160

You know, I mean,

:

00:55:57,220 --> 00:56:00,720

reasonably like coded up into its own sort of like modules

:

00:56:00,720 --> 00:56:01,640

and things like that.

:

00:56:02,140 --> 00:56:08,640

But, but like not tied to a specific framework.

:

00:56:08,640 --> 00:56:12,060

And it is much,

:

00:56:12,060 --> 00:56:16,940

much harder for me to do my job as someone who's trying to

:

00:56:16,940 --> 00:56:24,380

kind of reform or to improve a design or design system or

:

00:56:24,380 --> 00:56:28,660

any or whatever products it might be when they're using a

:

00:56:28,660 --> 00:56:30,940

very specific, a very opinionated technology,

:

00:56:31,520 --> 00:56:34,960

especially when it has a very complex build process as

:

00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:35,240

well.

:

00:56:35,980 --> 00:56:41,800

So I'm very much a vanilla JavaScript, vanilla CSS vanilla,

:

00:56:41,840 --> 00:56:45,120

and no one says vanilla HTML, it's just HTML, but I mean,

:

00:56:45,180 --> 00:56:46,600

I suppose vanilla...

:

00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:47,480

You start saying it now.

:

00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:50,920

I'll do a t-shirt.

:

00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:53,720

I was going to say I'm imagining an ice cream cone with

:

00:56:53,720 --> 00:56:55,180

HTML coming out of it now.

:

00:56:55,560 --> 00:56:55,800

Yeah, of course.

:

00:56:56,580 --> 00:56:58,080

Yeah, standard, Job done!

:

00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:00,980

But yeah,

:

00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:05,160

I find it really frustrating working with those things,

:

00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:09,020

like they'd really to be like very over-engineered

:

00:57:09,020 --> 00:57:11,180

environments for doing anything.

:

00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:17,340

And so like one of the really frustrating things is if I'm

:

00:57:17,340 --> 00:57:20,200

working on a component which uses TypeScript,

:

00:57:23,380 --> 00:57:26,840

and I know that I need to add in this case,

:

00:57:26,900 --> 00:57:29,880

and it's not always the case, obviously, in this case,

:

00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:33,220

it would benefit from having an ARIA attribute of some form

:

00:57:33,220 --> 00:57:33,840

in it.

:

00:57:34,380 --> 00:57:39,820

Now to me, as someone who's been doing HTML for 20 years,

:

00:57:41,200 --> 00:57:43,400

an attribute is just an attribute, right?

:

00:57:43,660 --> 00:57:45,820

There's nothing computer sciencey about it.

:

00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:52,100

It's just you write it on, and in the quotation mark part,

:

00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:55,420

that's the value, but it's a string, it's always a string.

:

00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:59,280

I mean, even if it's like ARIA hidden equals true,

:

00:57:59,900 --> 00:58:03,680

that's not a boolean, that's just the word "true", right?

:

00:58:04,380 --> 00:58:07,620

I mean, it sort of is in terms of the HTML specification,

:

00:58:07,900 --> 00:58:10,440

but it doesn't need to be...

:

00:58:11,660 --> 00:58:15,420

typified in a way that JavaScript engineers seem to think

:

00:58:15,420 --> 00:58:16,560

it needs to be typified,

:

00:58:16,860 --> 00:58:23,360

which is why they build these monolithic systems for typing

:

00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:23,780

around it.

:

00:58:23,900 --> 00:58:23,980

Now,

:

00:58:24,260 --> 00:58:31,000

I can kind of appreciate wanting to use a type system like

:

00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:34,460

TypeScript or something like that for your kind of like

:

00:58:34,460 --> 00:58:38,320

your underlying JavaScript functions, modules,

:

00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:39,640

whatever they are.

:

00:58:40,300 --> 00:58:43,800

But this stuff has been brought in much more into the front

:

00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:44,740

of the front end.

:

00:58:45,580 --> 00:58:48,320

And that's a problem because it's slowing down people who

:

00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:52,200

don't specialize in that kind of computer science-y kind of

:

00:58:52,200 --> 00:58:54,760

Java-like approach to doing things.

:

00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:58,760

And so in a simple system, organisation B, I say si

:

00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:01,100

mple system,

:

00:59:01,220 --> 00:59:06,060

is still a large design system for a multi-product organisation

:

00:59:06,060 --> 00:59:06,660

.

:

00:59:07,300 --> 00:59:08,860

But because it's written in plain,

:

00:59:08,860 --> 00:59:10,680

I think it was written...

:

00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:12,660

just using handlebars as a way to compile stuff,

:

00:59:12,780 --> 00:59:16,920

but then we're adding a little bit of JavaScript on top,

:

00:59:17,820 --> 00:59:18,520

like plain JavaScript.

:

00:59:19,780 --> 00:59:23,240

I can just go in there and put an attribute.

:

00:59:24,060 --> 00:59:26,120

I can put ARIA-hidden equals true on there,

:

00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:28,680

do a PR (Pull request) and it's done.

:

00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,720

Yeah, with the TypeScript system,

:

00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:35,500

there's also like I'm breaking all sorts of tests which

:

00:59:35,500 --> 00:59:36,500

don't need to be there,

:

00:59:36,500 --> 00:59:40,420

which were pulled in from some sort of automated,

:

00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:45,240

AI-driven test suite thing or whatever.

:

00:59:46,260 --> 00:59:47,860

And then I've got to tell,

:

00:59:48,140 --> 00:59:49,500

and I don't know how to write TypeScript,

:

00:59:50,080 --> 00:59:51,540

or I didn't at the time,

:

00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:59,680

I've got to then tell it that it's this type of value

:

00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:00,260

that's needed.

:

01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:07,240

So I have to write a type definition in a separate type

:

01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:08,040

file and all.

:

01:00:08,300 --> 01:00:11,840

I mean, it's more work, first of all, but it's also,

:

01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:15,640

it's a steep learning curve that need to know those very

:

01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:20,020

opinionated, very specific ways of doing things.

:

01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:28,420

When I and everyone to some extent should be familiar with

:

01:00:28,420 --> 01:00:33,180

plain JavaScripts and plain CSS and those kinds of things.

:

01:00:33,180 --> 01:00:37,100

So I think it's a lot to expect people who ultimately,

:

01:00:37,100 --> 01:00:38,560

as we touched on earlier,

:

01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:42,620

come from a design or an art background to get into this

:

01:00:42,620 --> 01:00:48,680

very, very strict, very kind of computer science based way,

:

01:00:50,400 --> 01:00:53,240

like software engineering way of doing things.

:

01:00:53,460 --> 01:00:54,880

And it really holds stuff up.

:

01:00:55,680 --> 01:01:01,200

So in an organisation like the one which has those kinds of

:

01:01:01,200 --> 01:01:04,300

things in place, then I find myself battling them.

:

01:01:04,540 --> 01:01:07,160

And then it comes more of a conversation about you are

:

01:01:07,160 --> 01:01:09,980

alienating people who have my kind of.

:

01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:13,460

expertise, this is going to be a problem for you, you know,

:

01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:16,200

like the, the kind of people who,

:

01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,460

who are comfortable in that environment come from a

:

01:01:18,460 --> 01:01:23,900

backend, uh, kind of school of thought, and that's not,

:

01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:28,080

that's not in most cases, um, a school of thought,

:

01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:32,620

which is where, where interfaces per se,

:

01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:34,880

let alone accessible interfaces even come into the

:

01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:35,820

education or anything.

:

01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:37,220

So you're kind of,

:

01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:40,940

you're railroading yourself into this situation where you,

:

01:01:41,060 --> 01:01:44,340

you are inevitably going to be employing people who will

:

01:01:44,340 --> 01:01:48,620

not know how to do this stuff, because the environment is,

:

01:01:48,620 --> 01:01:50,180

is for a different kind of developer.

:

01:01:51,280 --> 01:01:54,960

Um, so then, yeah, so then it becomes like that's actually,

:

01:01:54,960 --> 01:01:58,380

it's not an accessibility problem as such.

:

01:01:58,580 --> 01:01:59,500

It's more of a,

:

01:01:59,880 --> 01:02:03,020

more of a hiring and culture problem in a much bigger way.

:

01:02:03,020 --> 01:02:06,740

When I worked for one organisation where I was supposed to

:

01:02:06,740 --> 01:02:10,760

be, um, I've told this story a couple of times before,

:

01:02:10,820 --> 01:02:15,460

but I was supposed to be working on the accessibility of

:

01:02:15,460 --> 01:02:17,380

the design system specifically.

:

01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,380

And instead, as it turns out,

:

01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:25,160

despite the fact that they had a very large team of

:

01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:27,740

developers and a large team of designers,

:

01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:30,060

no one knew Flexbox.

:

01:02:31,440 --> 01:02:33,300

This was an established way,

:

01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:39,400

the de facto main way to do layout at the time.

:

01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:41,880

So it wasn't that long ago.

:

01:02:43,580 --> 01:02:47,480

And no one understood how to make basic Flex-based layouts.

:

01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:49,500

So I was really struggling with their responsive design.

:

01:02:50,100 --> 01:02:51,520

So instead of working on the accessibility,

:

01:02:52,580 --> 01:02:56,580

I ended up working on just helping them build out their

:

01:02:56,580 --> 01:02:59,240

components from a layout point of view.

:

01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:03,420

And then a month into this contract,

:

01:03:04,840 --> 01:03:08,960

the higher ups who got me involved, they're like, well,

:

01:03:09,700 --> 01:03:14,040

show us where we've got in terms of accessibility,

:

01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:14,800

what are the improvements?

:

01:03:15,060 --> 01:03:15,780

And it's like, well,

:

01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:18,740

we haven't really done much because we're literally just

:

01:03:18,740 --> 01:03:21,260

struggling to get this out at all.

:

01:03:21,640 --> 01:03:22,740

Like everything I was making,

:

01:03:22,740 --> 01:03:26,860

I was making as accessible as possible as I was making it.

:

01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:31,300

I wasn't addressing accessibility specifically because they

:

01:03:31,300 --> 01:03:37,760

had such a deficit of knowledge in terms of the front end

:

01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:40,240

in general, that they were like, oh,

:

01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:43,940

this person actually knows like the front of the front end.

:

01:03:44,660 --> 01:03:46,660

We just need him for all of that.

:

01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,200

So I was split between all of these different things.

:

01:03:49,780 --> 01:03:53,140

And that's with loads of developers there and really

:

01:03:53,140 --> 01:03:56,140

talented, really intelligent people, but people who,

:

01:03:56,220 --> 01:03:56,620

as I say,

:

01:03:56,800 --> 01:04:04,340

they're not from their kind of their background isn't in

:

01:04:04,340 --> 01:04:08,660

knowing interfaces that like where this stuff actually

:

01:04:08,660 --> 01:04:08,920

meets.

:

01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:12,940

to the user is much more the underlying engineering kind of

:

01:04:12,940 --> 01:04:13,560

guts of it.

:

01:04:14,260 --> 01:04:17,380

And so much of the front end now is actually not the front

:

01:04:17,380 --> 01:04:17,720

end.

:

01:04:17,880 --> 01:04:21,600

It's the guts of the back end just shoved into the browser

:

01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:28,040

or shoved at least into the workflow of what is nominally

:

01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:28,940

front end work.

:

01:04:29,380 --> 01:04:30,300

And that's a big problem.

:

01:04:31,480 --> 01:04:32,720

But yeah, the other organisation,

:

01:04:34,580 --> 01:04:38,680

they had to fight for it because they had a very big,

:

01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,720

very influential, I suppose you could say,

:

01:04:42,420 --> 01:04:46,200

engineering team, which were much more back end oriented.

:

01:04:46,900 --> 01:04:49,740

But there was this kind of breakout group of people who

:

01:04:49,740 --> 01:04:51,320

were much more,

:

01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:56,860

who really saw the benefit in making the front end be front

:

01:04:56,860 --> 01:04:57,120

end.

:

01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:02,740

And that meant that I could just get involved and I could

:

01:05:02,740 --> 01:05:04,120

work with that stuff.

:

01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:05,960

And I could actually make things happen.

:

01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:07,840

I could actually do my job.

:

01:05:09,200 --> 01:05:12,280

Yeah, there's a slight irony there as well, I suppose,

:

01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:16,220

because I think the misconception maybe is that if you're

:

01:05:16,220 --> 01:05:18,760

implementing JavaScript frameworks like React,

:

01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:23,680

like Angular and things like that, you think, oh, well,

:

01:05:23,740 --> 01:05:25,800

it's all sort of there to be used.

:

01:05:26,020 --> 01:05:27,920

So you just sort of ingest it all and then you can sort of

:

01:05:27,920 --> 01:05:30,780

pick and choose within that framework and it'll save you

:

01:05:30,780 --> 01:05:31,100

time.

:

01:05:31,500 --> 01:05:34,400

But actually, it's come full circle to say, I mean,

:

01:05:34,540 --> 01:05:35,080

but actually,

:

01:05:35,580 --> 01:05:37,520

you're going to be spending an awful lot more time on

:

01:05:37,520 --> 01:05:40,060

trying to figure these things out to make any amendments.

:

01:05:41,060 --> 01:05:43,000

I really think it is that I think the whole,

:

01:05:43,000 --> 01:05:46,860

the whole idea of it being a time saver is almost

:

01:05:46,860 --> 01:05:49,780

gaslighting from the outset with stuff like that,

:

01:05:49,840 --> 01:05:53,600

because what does like React actually do for you?

:

01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:53,860

Well,

:

01:05:54,060 --> 01:05:57,060

what it does is it gives you the privilege of being able to

:

01:05:57,060 --> 01:05:59,540

create stuff with React isn't actually create your

:

01:05:59,540 --> 01:06:02,680

application, your application or your website for you,

:

01:06:03,040 --> 01:06:06,760

it just like enables you to do it with React and then

:

01:06:06,760 --> 01:06:07,600

you've got to learn React.

:

01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:09,840

So if you know JavaScript already,

:

01:06:10,300 --> 01:06:11,260

then you might as well do that.

:

01:06:11,460 --> 01:06:13,340

And then you're not dealing with this,

:

01:06:13,340 --> 01:06:17,920

this very specific and very complex environment.

:

01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:21,700

Because yeah, I mean, you know,

:

01:06:21,780 --> 01:06:24,720

if it's like 200 kilobytes out of the box,

:

01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:25,840

and that's just "hello world",

:

01:06:26,740 --> 01:06:29,940

then where does that leave you,

:

01:06:30,040 --> 01:06:33,060

especially when it's like literally not allowing you to do

:

01:06:33,060 --> 01:06:33,620

anything else?

:

01:06:33,620 --> 01:06:36,760

There's nothing in that React can do that JavaScript can't

:

01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:37,140

do already.

:

01:06:37,580 --> 01:06:42,160

So yeah, I didn't even find it any more ergonomic, like,

:

01:06:42,180 --> 01:06:46,740

I find it easier to read job like plain JavaScript into

:

01:06:46,740 --> 01:06:50,280

delve through like JSX and stuff like that.

:

01:06:50,360 --> 01:06:51,440

I mean, that might just be me.

:

01:06:53,340 --> 01:06:54,300

But yeah,

:

01:06:54,360 --> 01:06:58,980

I just I think the had a lot of promises and I think I

:

01:06:58,980 --> 01:07:02,140

don't know if I think a lot of them were kind of very

:

01:07:02,140 --> 01:07:02,580

hollow.

:

01:07:03,300 --> 01:07:06,200

They saw maybe it's added a bit more nuance than it's meant

:

01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:06,840

to.

:

01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:11,080

Yeah, well, certainly complex with complexity comes nuance,

:

01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:11,600

I suppose.

:

01:07:12,080 --> 01:07:13,200

Yeah, brilliant.

:

01:07:13,580 --> 01:07:15,660

Well, no, thank you for that.

:

01:07:15,820 --> 01:07:16,400

Very insightful.

:

01:07:17,160 --> 01:07:18,880

And yeah,

:

01:07:18,960 --> 01:07:24,080

I guess the final sort of question before final thoughts

:

01:07:24,080 --> 01:07:27,520

and unfortunately, the end of of this episode,

:

01:07:27,780 --> 01:07:31,840

I just wanted to sort of ask around a key topic across the

:

01:07:31,840 --> 01:07:35,400

board within accessibility is burnout and just wondering,

:

01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:35,700

you know,

:

01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:37,980

you've been working mostly as a consultant and freelancer over the years.

:

01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:40,960

So, how have you managed that?

:

01:07:41,180 --> 01:07:43,460

And then I guess maybe you slightly touched on it with the R

:

01:07:43,460 --> 01:07:44,720

eact and TypeScript.

:

01:07:45,500 --> 01:07:46,980

So mentioned previously,

:

01:07:47,240 --> 01:07:50,480

but if you want to burn out almost like within a second,

:

01:07:50,680 --> 01:07:55,280

then then then inherit a TypeScript based design system.

:

01:07:57,400 --> 01:07:58,580

Yeah, but yeah, yeah, I guess.

:

01:07:59,120 --> 01:07:59,420

Sorry.

:

01:07:59,780 --> 01:08:01,260

Yeah, no, no, you're fine.

:

01:08:01,460 --> 01:08:02,900

Now, I was just gonna jump in.

:

01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:07,920

Yeah I mean I'm definitely very susceptible to burnout like

:

01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:08,360

a lot of people.

:

01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:13,960

I think anyone who cares about their work is liable to

:

01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:18,180

burnout at times because it's really what you invest into

:

01:08:18,180 --> 01:08:20,279

your work that's what burns you out.

:

01:08:20,540 --> 01:08:24,760

Like if it was just a job to people and it rarely is with

:

01:08:24,760 --> 01:08:30,300

accessibility because it people do really care about it.

:

01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:36,680

Yeah burnout burnout is always on the horizon really.

:

01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:43,080

For me it's been difficult in the past with if I do a lot

:

01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:48,920

of auditing work then I'm always in danger of burning out.

:

01:08:49,100 --> 01:08:55,319

I do actually like doing auditing work as long as I'm not

:

01:08:55,319 --> 01:09:00,479

doing it like big blocks of it like indefinitely because it

:

01:09:00,479 --> 01:09:04,040

can really wear you down and by auditing in case anyone

:

01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:08,000

who's listening isn't aware of what I mean but I mean test

:

01:09:08,000 --> 01:09:13,500

I mean essentially testing sites against WCAG for

:

01:09:13,500 --> 01:09:16,500

accessibility shortcomings and then providing

:

01:09:16,500 --> 01:09:19,479

recommendations and I do provide detailed recommendations

:

01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:25,420

and prototypes alongside it and everyone who I've worked

:

01:09:25,420 --> 01:09:28,920

with like I worked a lot with the Paciello group back in

:

01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:33,560

the day and and others all of the all of the people who I

:

01:09:33,560 --> 01:09:37,140

really respect in accessibility if they're going to audit

:

01:09:37,140 --> 01:09:39,520

they're not just telling you where you go you've gone wrong

:

01:09:39,520 --> 01:09:43,420

they're telling you and in in great detail this is how you

:

01:09:43,420 --> 01:09:45,819

you would you should approach it better.

:

01:09:46,060 --> 01:09:48,200

I was careful not to say this is how you fix it because

:

01:09:48,200 --> 01:09:51,100

it's not as simple as that but but this is you know this is

:

01:09:51,100 --> 01:09:53,899

what we'd recommend and then provide code examples all of

:

01:09:53,899 --> 01:09:58,580

that sort of stuff but yeah doing a lot of that work it can

:

01:09:58,580 --> 01:10:07,820

get very repetitive and you know and so I like to try to

:

01:10:07,820 --> 01:10:11,900

mix that kind of work with stuff which is a bit more high-

:

01:10:11,900 --> 01:10:14,620

level inclusive design kind of work.

:

01:10:15,900 --> 01:10:21,620

So with the, it's called TPGi now, I worked with,

:

01:10:21,820 --> 01:10:23,960

I didn't work for them but I worked with them as a

:

01:10:23,960 --> 01:10:25,560

contractor some time ago,

:

01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:32,480

they were very good at balancing the auditing services with

:

01:10:32,480 --> 01:10:40,680

inclusive design and accessible UX services like Sarah

:

01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:42,840

Horton and Henny Swan in particular,

:

01:10:43,100 --> 01:10:45,220

they were really big leaders in that,

:

01:10:45,820 --> 01:10:48,900

they really kind of spearheaded that whole thing.

:

01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:51,400

It's not just about making it work,

:

01:10:52,120 --> 01:10:55,440

it's also making it usable for people of different

:

01:10:55,440 --> 01:10:56,080

abilities.

:

01:10:57,360 --> 01:10:58,200

So it was really,

:

01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:02,220

it was a real pleasure to work with them on that stuff and

:

01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:04,480

we drew up the inclusive design,

:

01:11:04,620 --> 01:11:10,140

inclusive design principles there as well.

:

01:11:12,360 --> 01:11:17,340

And so being able to do that,

:

01:11:17,500 --> 01:11:20,300

think about things that look like at a much more of a

:

01:11:20,300 --> 01:11:22,620

removed level is great.

:

01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:24,660

But I, I mean, personally, I,

:

01:11:25,620 --> 01:11:27,840

I'm interested in different aspects of the front end.

:

01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:31,220

And so kind of cleansing the pallette, if you like,

:

01:11:32,100 --> 01:11:33,320

moving away from doing,

:

01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:37,720

doing auditing work might mean doing some like visual

:

01:11:37,720 --> 01:11:39,780

design stuff, doing some animation stuff.

:

01:11:41,020 --> 01:11:41,340

Or lately,

:

01:11:41,340 --> 01:11:46,580

I've been doing a lot of work on and with the Web Audio

:

01:11:46,580 --> 01:11:47,020

API.

:

01:11:48,300 --> 01:11:49,740

So I'm a musician,

:

01:11:49,900 --> 01:11:53,580

and I've really interested in music with my videos.

:

01:11:54,460 --> 01:11:57,600

There's I do like, I actually soundtrack them all.

:

01:11:58,140 --> 01:12:00,540

I spend more time on the music than I do on the actual

:

01:12:00,540 --> 01:12:02,080

content or the animation.

:

01:12:02,980 --> 01:12:06,780

Yeah, which makes me realise that actually,

:

01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:09,300

I should be focusing more on just doing music.

:

01:12:09,800 --> 01:12:12,060

Actually, interestingly, to me,

:

01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:16,380

I've always found that show me someone who's like really

:

01:12:16,380 --> 01:12:17,500

into web accessibility.

:

01:12:17,900 --> 01:12:22,540

And there'll be someone who is either really into music,

:

01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:24,820

like heavily into music,

:

01:12:25,540 --> 01:12:28,000

or is or is heavily into music and is also a musician.

:

01:12:28,600 --> 01:12:29,900

I mean, a long time ago, I did like,

:

01:12:30,060 --> 01:12:35,660

I did this like charity accessibility album,

:

01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:37,260

where it was everyone,

:

01:12:37,840 --> 01:12:39,860

everyone who contributed a track to it was like

:

01:12:39,860 --> 01:12:43,360

compilation, was someone who worked in accessibility,

:

01:12:43,360 --> 01:12:45,800

or worked adjacent to accessibility.

:

01:12:47,620 --> 01:12:49,100

And there was some really cool tunes on there,

:

01:12:49,100 --> 01:12:52,940

like I discovered some really talented folks releasing some

:

01:12:52,940 --> 01:12:53,980

really interesting stuff.

:

01:12:57,000 --> 01:13:01,100

And yeah, Oh, I love that that's amazing.

:

01:13:01,380 --> 01:13:02,020

But I agree.

:

01:13:02,220 --> 01:13:02,980

I think I hear I see a lot.

:

01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:07,380

of creative sort of folk and a lot of musically inclined

:

01:13:07,380 --> 01:13:10,500

people within the web space as well definitely see a lot of

:

01:13:10,500 --> 01:13:10,760

that.

:

01:13:11,180 --> 01:13:15,980

Yeah in general yeah and I know I'm kind of gonna get on

:

01:13:15,980 --> 01:13:19,040

with someone if they if they care about accessibility and

:

01:13:19,040 --> 01:13:20,820

they're really into their music and it doesn't matter I

:

01:13:20,820 --> 01:13:23,340

mean I I'm into all sorts of different genres of music

:

01:13:23,340 --> 01:13:26,480

doesn't really matter what kind of music unless it's reggae

:

01:13:26,480 --> 01:13:29,360

I don't know why I just don't really like reggae it's the

:

01:13:29,360 --> 01:13:32,200

only one I didn't really get on with but I didn't judge

:

01:13:32,200 --> 01:13:35,300

people for liking it themselves I just don't listen to it.

:

01:13:35,820 --> 01:13:37,820

I'll have to send you some of the death metal tracks that I

:

01:13:37,820 --> 01:13:40,180

listen to and see how you get on with those maybe I can mix

:

01:13:40,180 --> 01:13:41,240

in some reggae with that.

:

01:13:42,520 --> 01:13:47,360

I'm perfectly familiar with I code frequently what's

:

01:13:47,360 --> 01:13:50,260

listening to Napalm Death I love I love a bit of Napalm D

:

01:13:50,260 --> 01:13:53,040

eath when I'm coding yeah did you listen to death metal

:

01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:53,320

wise?

:

01:13:53,840 --> 01:13:57,300

Oh my word I mean some black metal as well I guess

:

01:13:57,300 --> 01:13:59,540

a Dimmu Borgir and some

:

01:14:00,580 --> 01:14:02,520

symphonic Black Metal stuff going on. # Yeah,

:

01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:08,500

favorite bands I would say are Gojira and Lamb of God in

:

01:14:08,500 --> 01:14:10,320

the sort of general metal sort of space.

:

01:14:10,620 --> 01:14:12,940

But yeah, a bit of an eclectic mix.

:

01:14:13,200 --> 01:14:14,480

Favorite band is actually The Cure.

:

01:14:15,940 --> 01:14:17,780

So yeah, oh yeah, you have to see them.

:

01:14:17,860 --> 01:14:19,340

What do you think of their recent album?

:

01:14:20,180 --> 01:14:21,180

I've enjoyed it.

:

01:14:21,500 --> 01:14:23,940

Yeah, really, really, like really dark.

:

01:14:24,580 --> 01:14:25,380

And yes, brooding.

:

01:14:25,820 --> 01:14:27,000

I mean, they kind of do that anyway.

:

01:14:27,720 --> 01:14:27,760

But

:

01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:28,180

like, goes with the 'goth' side of things. a really heavy extent, I think. Yeah. And then apparently the next, the follow up to that has got the saddest song that he's ever written on it.

:

01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:39,320

So it's like, well, how much sadder can he go?

:

01:14:40,140 --> 01:14:42,520

Yeah, I think that was they were trying to just like,

:

01:14:42,520 --> 01:14:45,120

you hit all of the extremes on that one record, maybe.

:

01:14:45,460 --> 01:14:46,760

I haven't heard all of it,

:

01:14:46,800 --> 01:14:48,740

but I've heard some of it and I really enjoyed it.

:

01:14:49,200 --> 01:14:51,240

And Gojira, if you're interested,

:

01:14:51,920 --> 01:15:00,340

I'll send you a link maybe. I did a mash-up of a Gorija song with Mr.

:

01:15:00,340 --> 01:15:00,940

Bombastic.

:

01:15:02,080 --> 01:15:05,500

And it doesn't sound like it would work.

:

01:15:05,960 --> 01:15:09,560

I though I say so myself, I think it works quite well.

:

01:15:09,740 --> 01:15:10,720

I mean, it's it's weird.

:

01:15:11,500 --> 01:15:14,280

But I think it kind of works as a mashup.

:

01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:16,500

So yeah, I'll send you a link.

:

01:15:17,100 --> 01:15:18,160

I would love to hear that.

:

01:15:18,360 --> 01:15:21,440

And I'll share that with I'll probably just play in the car

:

01:15:21,440 --> 01:15:22,440

with my wife's in there.

:

01:15:22,440 --> 01:15:23,460

And she'll probably be like,

:

01:15:23,660 --> 01:15:25,820

I haven't heard THIS Gojira song because she thinks they

:

01:15:25,820 --> 01:15:26,740

all sound the same.

:

01:15:28,080 --> 01:15:30,060

So that's a bit harsh.

:

01:15:31,820 --> 01:15:33,260

But yeah, no, that's good.

:

01:15:33,420 --> 01:15:35,320

I mean, I love Yeah, we can definitely talk more music.

:

01:15:36,100 --> 01:15:37,060

Yep, love that.

:

01:15:37,900 --> 01:15:38,500

But great.

:

01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:40,620

So other than that, Heydon, any final thoughts?

:

01:15:40,740 --> 01:15:43,440

Is there anything you want to share any upcoming sort of

:

01:15:43,440 --> 01:15:47,940

events that you're going to be going to new roles maybe in

:

01:15:47,940 --> 01:15:48,920

the near future?

:

01:15:49,300 --> 01:15:50,900

No, nothing at the moment.

:

01:15:52,080 --> 01:16:00,760

But I would ask folks to check out the accessible the A

:

01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:01,760

ccessibility Principles.

:

01:16:02,000 --> 01:16:03,840

I've forgotten what I actually named it.

:

01:16:03,860 --> 01:16:07,080

Hang on, I'll have a quick look on the GitHub.

:

01:16:08,260 --> 01:16:10,960

It's quite a prosaic name.

:

01:16:11,360 --> 01:16:13,100

The Principles of Web Accessibility, yeah.

:

01:16:14,740 --> 01:16:19,080

It's been really nice, the response I've got to it.

:

01:16:20,620 --> 01:16:22,900

Yeah, so it's on my GitHub,

:

01:16:23,320 --> 01:16:25,800

and it's Principles of Web Accessibility that should come

:

01:16:25,800 --> 01:16:27,940

up when you search for it.

:

01:16:27,940 --> 01:16:31,620

It's been translated now into French and into Spanish.

:

01:16:32,460 --> 01:16:37,860

And there's Mikoto who,

:

01:16:38,440 --> 01:16:43,520

so I met Mikoto years ago in Toronto.

:

01:16:44,440 --> 01:16:46,580

So around the time that I was kicking off and included

:

01:16:46,580 --> 01:16:49,380

components, one of the warmest,

:

01:16:49,420 --> 01:16:51,320

funniest people I've ever met in my life.

:

01:16:52,340 --> 01:16:56,620

And he's written an issue up on this called Japanese

:

01:16:56,620 --> 01:16:57,060

translation.

:

01:16:57,300 --> 01:16:58,980

He says, he's got 12.

:

01:17:01,000 --> 01:17:05,000

12 colleagues working on a translation, which is like, wow,

:

01:17:05,240 --> 01:17:05,740

that's amazing.

:

01:17:06,100 --> 01:17:06,640

Oh, my word.

:

01:17:07,480 --> 01:17:08,920

And I love it when, you know,

:

01:17:09,020 --> 01:17:13,260

when stuff is stuff isn't is translated into a lot of

:

01:17:13,260 --> 01:17:13,700

languages.

:

01:17:14,320 --> 01:17:15,640

My wife's Chinese and she's off.

:

01:17:15,900 --> 01:17:17,360

She's offered to translate into Chinese.

:

01:17:17,900 --> 01:17:21,100

And I think that that'll be a bit of a bit of a flex to

:

01:17:21,100 --> 01:17:21,600

have something.

:

01:17:22,180 --> 01:17:22,360

something translated..

:

01:17:22,360 --> 01:17:26,800

very little is obviously available in Chinese in terms of

:

01:17:26,800 --> 01:17:27,800

this this kind of material.

:

01:17:27,800 --> 01:17:29,480

So I think that'd be really cool.

:

01:17:29,480 --> 01:17:34,040

Um, yeah, so so, yeah, I would say check that out.

:

01:17:34,160 --> 01:17:36,880

And I'm on I'm on Mastodon.

:

01:17:37,480 --> 01:17:38,920

I'm on the frontend.

:

01:17:38,920 --> 01:17:40,180

social server.

:

01:17:42,120 --> 01:17:43,160

And yeah,

:

01:17:43,280 --> 01:17:46,320

I'm always always up for just chatting about front end

:

01:17:46,320 --> 01:17:47,960

stuff and the accessibility stuff,

:

01:17:47,960 --> 01:17:51,920

if anyone has ever read one of my books and thought, oh,

:

01:17:51,940 --> 01:17:54,120

I don't understand this or or something like that,

:

01:17:54,540 --> 01:17:56,480

then I'm always up to talk about it,

:

01:17:56,480 --> 01:18:00,120

because a lot of the time like it makes me rethink it,

:

01:18:00,200 --> 01:18:02,720

you know, because because, as I said before,

:

01:18:02,900 --> 01:18:06,180

I don't it's not all set in stone and there's always a

:

01:18:06,180 --> 01:18:09,940

better way to do things or more complete ways to do things.

:

01:18:10,180 --> 01:18:12,920

So it's always good to be talking about that kind of stuff.

:

01:18:13,220 --> 01:18:13,960

So amazing.

:

01:18:15,100 --> 01:18:17,460

And I guess those complexities are going to keep popping

:

01:18:17,460 --> 01:18:17,700

up.

:

01:18:17,820 --> 01:18:19,160

There's always going to be something you might not have

:

01:18:19,160 --> 01:18:20,000

actually seen before.

:

01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:21,880

As much as a lot of the unfortunately,

:

01:18:22,060 --> 01:18:25,140

a lot of the issues we see across the the the the World

:

01:18:25,140 --> 01:18:28,540

Wide Web for accessibility are very similar,

:

01:18:28,700 --> 01:18:31,560

like with the WebAim million websites.

:

01:18:31,860 --> 01:18:33,960

It's always the same five issues that pop up.

:

01:18:34,360 --> 01:18:35,520

So yeah,

:

01:18:36,280 --> 01:18:38,660

I guess we can end on: Underline your [BLEEP] links you to

:

01:18:38,660 --> 01:18:39,380

sociopaths.

:

01:18:39,700 --> 01:18:39,700

Yeah.

:

01:18:40,420 --> 01:18:43,080

I mean, if that I have that my gravestone, I think.

:

01:18:43,300 --> 01:18:43,760

Yes.

:

01:18:45,060 --> 01:18:47,640

I can't believe we're still getting that wrong now.

:

01:18:47,940 --> 01:18:49,220

After all this time,

:

01:18:50,080 --> 01:18:55,240

it is so easy to not so do that one thing.

:

01:18:55,680 --> 01:18:57,920

If anything, after this, listening to this episode,

:

01:18:58,220 --> 01:18:58,960

just do that.

:

01:18:59,180 --> 01:19:00,560

Just go through and just underline them.

:

01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:01,780

I'm sorry,

:

01:19:01,960 --> 01:19:03,860

I hadn't - Don't worry about ARIA and all the complexities

:

01:19:03,860 --> 01:19:05,020

of that just underline your links!

:

01:19:06,180 --> 01:19:06,620

Yeah,

:

01:19:06,960 --> 01:19:09,600

I'm sorry I hadn't ordered a t-shirt before this episode

:

01:19:09,600 --> 01:19:12,360

because I would have worn it proudly But I'll be ordering

:

01:19:12,360 --> 01:19:12,920

one soon.

:

01:19:13,180 --> 01:19:14,300

Yeah, no obligation.

:

01:19:14,460 --> 01:19:15,280

Obviously there.

:

01:19:15,420 --> 01:19:20,020

I just thought I just think it's funny that that I get so

:

01:19:20,020 --> 01:19:23,740

worked up about it that I need to put it on a t-shirt But

:

01:19:23,740 --> 01:19:27,200

I'll link to that as well So we'll have the link to your

:

01:19:27,200 --> 01:19:29,660

your GitHub for the principles of web accessibility for

:

01:19:29,660 --> 01:19:32,700

your T-shirt And maybe if you've got anything for people to

:

01:19:32,700 --> 01:19:35,020

listen to in terms of your music as well It'd be nice to

:

01:19:35,020 --> 01:19:35,460

link to that.

:

01:19:35,700 --> 01:19:38,280

Yeah, sure Of course Awesome!

:

01:19:38,460 --> 01:19:38,880

Well,

:

01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:41,520

thank you so much Heydon really appreciate your time and

:

01:19:41,520 --> 01:19:42,300

everything you're doing.

:

01:19:42,760 --> 01:19:44,680

Likewise, I really enjoyed our chat.

:

01:19:44,760 --> 01:19:45,220

It was good

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About the Podcast

The Digital Accessibility Podcast
Interviews with Digital Accessibility Leaders
In The Digital Accessibility Podcast, Accessibility Leaders are interviewed by Joe James about the importance of digital accessibility in business and society.

Joe is a Digital Accessibility Recruiter at PCR Digital with an inquisitive mind and a passion for the space.

Tune in for key insights, personal accounts, and takeaways about the importance of digital accessibility, told by experts.

Contact: joe.james@pcrdigital.com
PCR Digital: https://www.pcrdigital.com/

About your host

Profile picture for Joe James

Joe James

Hi! I'm Joe. I'm a Technical Recruitment Consultant who's worked in a huge variety of industries. Having worked to hire specialists for one of the world leaders in digital accessibility, my own passion for and interest in the field has grown.

My aim is to chat with thought leaders and advocates within the space to raise more awareness of the field in general and help to understand what we can all be doing to ensure all areas of the web/technology are accessible to everyone.