Dani Devesa Derksen-Staats - Ex-Spotify
Dani Devesa Derksen-Staats, former iOS Accessibility Engineer at Spotify, The Times, The BBC and SkyScanner Joins Joe to discuss all things Mobile and iOS Accessibility.
We discuss his own experience within the field of Mobile and Digital Accessibility and general iOS Development, how all developers and engineers can make a small change to their thinking to make a huge impact, and discussing the mentality of Progress over Perfection and how we need to make mistakes to learn from them and improve.
Resource Links:
- Dani's personal Website: www.dadederk.com
- Developing Accessible iOS Apps Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Developing-Accessible-iOS-Apps-VoiceOver/dp/1484253078
- PCR Digital, Digital and Technology Recruitment: https://www.pcrdigital.com/
Joe's Social Media Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/
- Twitter: @A11yJoe
Dani's Social Media Links:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danieldevesa
- X (Formerly Twitter): @dadederk
- Medium: medium.com/@dadederk
Transcript
Welcome to the digital Accessibility podcast, hosted by me, Joe James, and
Speaker:sponsored by PCR Digital, who provide people centric recruitment. Throughout this
Speaker:series, I'll be interviewing advocates, experts and practitioners of digital
Speaker:accessibility to help raise awareness for the work that they do and discuss
Speaker:the role digital accessibility has in all of our lives. I hope that you
Speaker:find value in these discussions and are inspired to join the journey towards a
Speaker:more accessible digital world. So sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy
Speaker:the chat!
Speaker:Today I'm joined by Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats,
Speaker:Ex-Senior Accessibility iOS engineer at Spotify,
Speaker:author of "Developing Accessible iOS apps", prolific tweeter and overall accessibility
Speaker:advocate. Dani's just about to start a very exciting new venture with one of
Speaker:the world's largest tech companies. We're not actually able to disclose who has
Speaker:snapped Danny up at the time of recording, but if you follow him on
Speaker:LinkedIn or X, formerly Twitter, then you will be sure to find out!
Speaker:Dani's had an amazing career, firstly working as a research fellow on augmented reality
Speaker:tools and interactive catalogues for the University of Valencia, moving on to work
Speaker:as an iOS developer and engineer for some of the largest companies out there.
Speaker:So you've got the BBC, the Times, Skyscanner and most recently Spotify. He's
Speaker:been on a mission since global Accessibility Awareness Day '22 to tweet
Speaker:365 days of accessibility, helping to raise awareness for mobile and iOS
Speaker:accessibility. So I'm going to stop there. It's quite a long intro, but welcome
Speaker:to the podcast, Dani.
Speaker:Hey, yeah, thank you so much. I'm so happy to finally be here and
Speaker:have the chance to sit down and talk a little bit about accessibility with
Speaker:you and I really appreciate you inviting me and I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker:You're more than welcome. I'm very excited. We had a quick chat just
Speaker:before and I've let you know that you were actually my inspiration for
Speaker:getting started with this podcast back in 2022. It took some doing, but
Speaker:yeah, I saw that you started your journey on the 365 days of accessibility
Speaker:to raise awareness and I thought, well, what could I do to help? It's
Speaker:such an important field. I'd love to do my bit as well. So we've
Speaker:had seven successful episodes so far. Absolutely honoured that you're finally
Speaker:here as well, and we've got the opportunity to do this, I guess. Could
Speaker:you just tell us a bit more about your decision to start posting those
Speaker:tweets and slides since then?
Speaker:Yeah, and first, congrats for the podcast. I'm really enjoying it so far. Every
Speaker:time I hear that I've been an inspiration. It's just mind blowing. If
Speaker:it's real and it fills my heart with joy. So I really appreciate your
Speaker:kind words. And I guess that was my hope actually, when I started, but
Speaker:I did not have any expectations. So I thought that the greatest thing about
Speaker:working in accessibility is that everything you do has a great positive
Speaker:impact. But it was limited to the projects I was working on. So I
Speaker:thought that by sharing some of the things I knew or some of the
Speaker:tricks I knew, hopefully someone out there would pick it up and apply
Speaker:those things to the projects as well. And I saw that as hopefully a
Speaker:way of making a higher impact, hopefully creating this snowball effect
Speaker:that more and more people would learn about accessibility and apply those
Speaker:concepts to the projects. But it was a mix of things that inspired me
Speaker:to do this. There was global accessibility awareness day, and Jennison Asuncion,
Speaker:one of the co founders, I think presenting their foundation, said
Speaker:something like, we should go from one day of awareness to a year of
Speaker:action. So that's why I want to do like a whole year of tweets.
Speaker:But then so many people that have been advocating for Accessibility and I've
Speaker:learned so much from like Sally shepherd or Sommer Panage is one of my
Speaker:idols. I've learned so much from them. So I thought it would be very
Speaker:cool to give back a bit of what I learned from them. Or Paul
Speaker:Hudson in the iOS community is very well known for 100 days of swift,
Speaker:and I saw that that format of little chunks of information that you
Speaker:could consume daily could work really well. So I started one day, had
Speaker:like a 220 day strike, more or less. I'm very happy about it,
Speaker:but sad that I could not continue, but I'm really hoping to finish them
Speaker:one day.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. Well that's the thing. By that logic of one day of
Speaker:awareness, you're hopefully going to have created 365 years of action by
Speaker:the end of that. So it's incredible and it's such a huge undertaking because
Speaker:obviously that's not the only thing that you've had to focus on throughout the
Speaker:last couple of years. And they're so detailed, they're really great. And the
Speaker:visual that you put towards all of that as well, I think people can
Speaker:appreciate the effort that goes into that. I couldn't believe you were already
Speaker:keeping up doing it. So I think you should be very proud of what
Speaker:you've done there. And yeah, it'd be great to see that finished and maybe
Speaker:you could have a little book, a flick book of each day. 365 I
Speaker:guess you've done the author's part of things as well, so you've got your
Speaker:book out there. I haven't actually got a question based around that, but
Speaker:hopefully we can draw some inspiration from what you've written in your book
Speaker:as well. But yeah, great achievement.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:And you've also again worked with some incredible companies over the last sort of
Speaker:ten plus years, which is quite a long period of time. I'm not trying
Speaker:to age you or anything, but time has probably flown over ten years, but
Speaker:you must have seen still a huge amount of change when it comes to
Speaker:what's available in accessibility within the iOS and general mobile space through
Speaker:that time. Are there any standout improvements or could you let us know
Speaker:some of the largest improvements that you've seen over the years?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. To start with, when I started my career, I think I didn't
Speaker:even know what accessibility was. I studied a five year degree, computer
Speaker:science degree, and I was not the best of students. But I'm pretty
Speaker:sure I never heard anything about accessibility, which is very
Speaker:disappointing. And I'm happy that that's something that seems to be changing now.
Speaker:But for example, the first iPhone, and not many people know that was not
Speaker:accessible. If you think about it, it was a flat sheet glass, no keyboard,
Speaker:barely any buttons. Voiceover was not available in the first version. It took
Speaker:a couple more years for Apple to do that. There's an audio documentary
Speaker:called 36 seconds that changed everything. That I really, really recommend that tells
Speaker:that story isn't a criticism to Apple. I don't know what were the reasons
Speaker:why that happened. And we know that the story has a happy ending. So
Speaker:when the iPhone three 3GS was released, they presented the first accessibility
Speaker:settings screen with voiceover and zoom. And it really is outstanding. I think
Speaker:Apple's progression over the last few years, they kept improving and every
Speaker:single year they released a new tool, API, feature. So switch control came over,
Speaker:which is like the possibility of using the iPhone with as little as a
Speaker:single switch or button, then voice control. That feels pretty magical, like
Speaker:the first time you use it and how much you can achieve with it
Speaker:as well. Then full keyboard access, the possibility of using the phone with a
Speaker:physical keyboard as well, and a tonne of tools for developers. So now we
Speaker:have the possibility, for example to implement graphs that are represented with
Speaker:audio. So a voiceover user can hear sound that changes in pit depending on
Speaker:the X axis value and then they can identify trends, right? Are those
Speaker:values going up or down? Or up and down. So that's very cool. And
Speaker:lately, I think Apple is just being brilliant at every single year, releasing
Speaker:again features that feel like magic. So I think usually now they're presenting
Speaker:them around global Accessibility Awareness day, which is quite cool. And 2022,
Speaker:they released something called Assisted Touch for the Apple Watch. And it's
Speaker:the possibility of using the watch just with the hand where you're wearing your
Speaker:watch, so you can do things like it will show a cursor around one
Speaker:of the elements in the UI, and you can do a single pinch to
Speaker:go forward, double pinch to go backwards, fist clench to select it. So
Speaker:no more need to use your nose to see the notifications or anything if
Speaker:you're carrying a bag in the other hand or something. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker:Or they presented something where you can use your phone to detect doors, and
Speaker:it would say, do you have to push? Do you have to pull? Are
Speaker:there any signs outside of the door? So I think that's pretty cool. And
Speaker:in 2023, they presented something called personal voice, where you can do a
Speaker:few recordings of a voice, and that's meant for people that are at risk
Speaker:of losing their voice, and then it creates a synthetic voice that sounds like
Speaker:you. So in the future, if you lose your voice, you can keep using
Speaker:your voice. I think that's brilliant as well. Or
Speaker:the same feature that detects doors now, you can point at things where you
Speaker:think there's text in it, and it will read that text for you. So
Speaker:in case you cannot see it properly or something, the phone will let you
Speaker:know what you're pointing at. And now they're releasing this month the Vision Pro.
Speaker:So they had a video about it in WWDC, Apple's
Speaker:Worldwide Developers Conference, about how accessible it is. There's lots of
Speaker:challenges, right, with augmented reality and virtual reality, but I think they're
Speaker:nailing it. Not to say that they find challenges, for sure, and I'm just
Speaker:looking forward to see how they tackle them.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, so much. And that's just one company as well. They're
Speaker:releasing all of those things. And I think just to touch on that point,
Speaker:I know you've got a couple of other things to mention there, but when
Speaker:you mentioned about the personal voice, I think there was a really moving advert
Speaker:that they put out at the time as well when they were announcing that.
Speaker:And there's so many different scenarios where that could be used,
Speaker:even if you're losing your own voice. But then I'm imagining future of AI,
Speaker:and if you can implement that within a virtual avatar, and then those of
Speaker:us that unfortunately are no longer here, you would still be able to hear
Speaker:and see your loved ones. There's challenges with that in itself as well.
Speaker:And I think with data and GDPR and your own image and things, I
Speaker:think that that's another set of challenges. But, yeah, it was a really
Speaker:moving thing and so nice to see something like that being put together.
Speaker:Yeah, I really recommend watching that. It's really amazing. I think those are
Speaker:great examples when a company takes accessibility beyond compliance and they
Speaker:want really to serve the user and to think, like, what do they need
Speaker:from us? What can we do for them? And that's awesome.
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. And then wider reaching, sort of like within the industry.
Speaker:You sent me some notes, which is great. You mentioned that you're seeing
Speaker:that companies are having more accessibility champion networks and things
Speaker:like that as well?
Speaker:Yeah, I was lucky that I worked for a few startups and then I
Speaker:joined the BBC. So the BBC, I think, had probably the
Speaker:first accessibility championship network in the industry. And there was a
Speaker:great culture around accessibility. It's the first place where maybe had to get
Speaker:had some specifications about accessibility or a design had some
Speaker:annotations or something I worked on was failed by a QA because it wouldn't
Speaker:work properly with Voiceover. And it was really the first time where I started
Speaker:working, doing things more accessible and learning about accessibility. And the
Speaker:first thing I thought is, why is this not a thing everywhere? Why does
Speaker:it feel like a special thing here at the BBC? But I've been lucky
Speaker:that since then I worked for other companies where accessibility has been
Speaker:really important. I joined SkyScanner, for example, and they were
Speaker:starting a great accessibility network. Heather (Hepburn) has been doing a
Speaker:brilliant job there. It was amazing to see
Speaker:how much they accomplished with little resources, just by getting some people
Speaker:that were passionate about it together and talking about it and seeing how they
Speaker:could do more. And then I joined Spotify and the same, like when I
Speaker:joined, there was no accessibility team, but we had an accessibility guild it was
Speaker:called back then, same thing. It was just people that were at the company
Speaker:that were passionate about it and we were trying to see how we could
Speaker:make accessibility more important, or at least for our colleagues to be more
Speaker:aware of it and things like that. And you can see how they thought
Speaker:it was really important because they actually decided to create a specific team
Speaker:for being focused in accessibility. And I'm super happy. That's something that you
Speaker:kind of see more and more in the industry as well. Slack, for example,
Speaker:has an accessibility team as well. Twitter used to have an amazing one before
Speaker:someone with touch of money decided that. Yeah.
Speaker:So, yeah, but that's another story.
Speaker:I'm just wondering if I can tweet or would you call them tweets now?
Speaker:Are they called X's? What is. But, yeah, I'll skate around that one.
Speaker:Exactly. No, but I wanted to mention the Twitter example, for example, because
Speaker:they set up the bar really high to the point that not
Speaker:users with that user accessibility or assistive technologies, but every single
Speaker:user, even main media, expect now for every single
Speaker:major piece of software to have to meet those standards. And there was a
Speaker:clear example when Facebook launched threads, they were not supporting alt text
Speaker:for images. And again, no criticism.
Speaker:I've learned my lesson as well, that you don't know what was happening in
Speaker:the team, like how they were putting things. But I think the great news
Speaker:is; everyone demanded from them to implement it as soon as possible, and
Speaker:they pointed out that it was not right. So two years ago, no
Speaker:social network was allowing for users to add alt text to images. Now Twitter
Speaker:does, LinkedIn does, Threads does, Slack does. So it's amazing to see that
Speaker:we are in the right direction. It's taking a lot of effort and time,
Speaker:but we were getting there.
Speaker:Yeah, I think that it's good to see that the option is there as
Speaker:well for everyone now and the users of those types of platforms, because it's
Speaker:a strange world that we live in now. I think ten years, again, is
Speaker:a long period of time, but it goes so quickly, and now everyone has
Speaker:the world at their fingertips. You're able to create content and put it out
Speaker:there, but if the option isn't even available for you to make that accessible,
Speaker:then you're excluding such a large portion of people that may have interacted with
Speaker:your media or your content. So just by implementing that as a possibility,
Speaker:you're giving the user the opportunity to make the difference themselves as well,
Speaker:which is. Yeah, it's just brilliant to see that that's happening now. Yeah,
Speaker:exactly.
Speaker:I think captions are great examples where how maybe initially people were paying
Speaker:attention to them for deaf users or hard of hearing users, but how Gen X
Speaker:is big fan of subtitles and captions now, and how we use more and
Speaker:more often, or devices in places where it's noisy or we don't have our
Speaker:headphones and without those we can consume the content either.
Speaker:Absolutely. And unfortunately, I'm not a member of Gen X because I'm over
Speaker:30 now, but I've always just had to use captions. I think that,
Speaker:strangely, I've got relatively good hearing. However, I just find it that
Speaker:I can focus a lot better when I have the option of captions there.
Speaker:Yeah, follow along conversations. So, yeah, it's good. Brilliant. So moving on
Speaker:to the next sort of question I'd like to ask would be around within
Speaker:your roles. From what I've seen and what we've discussed, you seem to always
Speaker:have that evangelist kind of hat on, but you remain very much hands on
Speaker:in terms of the actual physical development for iOS. So do you feel
Speaker:that you can implement the most amount of positive change from that position,
Speaker:being hands on, being technical within a company, or is it just. That's the
Speaker:way it's kind of worked out?
Speaker:Yeah, it's a mix of both things. And the interesting point is to find
Speaker:the right balance, i guess. When I started working full time in
Speaker:accessibility, my first reaction was to jump and try to fix every single
Speaker:issue I found. But that's just not sustainable long term for many reasons,
Speaker:like you cannot do everything yourself, you may have to fix a piece
Speaker:of software that someone else has worked on and therefore you don't really know
Speaker:what some other people do. So they're mostly able to fix those things with your help,
Speaker:hopefully. So I find that the advocacy and educational aspect of the
Speaker:role is super important. It's extremely important. The more people you can teach
Speaker:the better. And if you can transmit your passion for it,
Speaker:for people to understand how important it is, that's the key. So I find
Speaker:pretty important to work, for example, a lot with designers because most features
Speaker:start in the design process and that's like the earlier you start the better.
Speaker:Right? But the more designers that know about accessibility, the more they are
Speaker:going to take certain considerations that are going to make it so engineers
Speaker:cannot even make it not accessible in a way, or they may be able
Speaker:to add some annotations to it as well. But I think it's also super
Speaker:important to keep being hands on as well. Stay close to the code so
Speaker:you can feel what the pain points other developers are finding to keep
Speaker:learning as well. Because as we mentioned, for example, in iOS, Apple releases new,
Speaker:new things every year. So to be able to do things yourself
Speaker:from time to time as well keeps you learning those new things.
Speaker:Yeah, I think sometimes as well, because of your role being focused in
Speaker:accessibility, there are certain problems that might be required a bit more
Speaker:specialised knowledge. Another thing is you cannot pretend that everyone is an
Speaker:expert in accessibility. What we say as well is most of the issues you
Speaker:find out there are really simple things that everyone can know and fix, but
Speaker:obviously there's some things that will require some more advanced or specialised
Speaker:solutions to it. And for those cases, I think it's very good to have
Speaker:someone with the knowledge in-house to be able to do those things.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. And that brings you back full circle, I suppose, because you can't
Speaker:be expected to do everything yourself. I think the problem is there is a
Speaker:lot of that expectation within the industry or within the community of
Speaker:accessibility, that one specialist can fix everything and that just creates a huge
Speaker:amount of burnout. It undervalues the importance of the role and I think
Speaker:then you're just spread way too thinly and then are you really going to
Speaker:be making the best positive amount of contribution that you could have done if
Speaker:you focused on smaller chunks and gained that advocacy from other people? So, yeah,
Speaker:I agree. I think that balance is great and you seem to have that
Speaker:down to quite a fine art. So, yeah, it's good to see leading by
Speaker:example, hopefully.
Speaker:100%. I was in Accessibility Toronto, a couple of years ago and I was
Speaker:starting to find that one of the common themes from most like, or lots of the
Speaker:talks was burnout in the industry precisely because of what you said, like
Speaker:little resources, a lot is expected from you. And I think, as well, because people
Speaker:working in accessibility are really passionate about it, so you really try
Speaker:to give your best. You need to see that people are on board with
Speaker:you in that journey.
Speaker:Yeah. And I think, again, what you've mentioned about staying close to the code
Speaker:so that you've got a relevant viewpoint from what a developer would see.
Speaker:So I'm trying to put together a bit of a post or a bit
Speaker:of content around the similarities between the cyber and information security sort of
Speaker:boom of a few years ago or sort of 5-10 years ago, and accessibility
Speaker:now because of the regulation change, because of the awareness that's growing.
Speaker:But back then a lot of people were seeing cyber and information security
Speaker:as this team that came in to stop you developing as a blockade. No,
Speaker:you can't continue until you do X, Y or Z, but unfortunately, I think
Speaker:there are developers, development teams or even senior stakeholders that see
Speaker:accessibility as one of those things. They want the minimum viable product, that's
Speaker:what they're going for. And everything is fast and agile. We just need something
Speaker:out there, we need a product that people are using rather than we need
Speaker:to make it available to a larger chunk of the community. So I'm really
Speaker:going to try and pin those nuances a bit better. And cyber is
Speaker:ingrained now you've got things like DevSecOps, so why can't we have
Speaker:DevAccessibilityOps?
Speaker:Yeah. I always explain the example of when I started my career as a
Speaker:software engineer, I found that we were struggling to sell the idea of automated
Speaker:testing and how the arguments we had for it are the same that we
Speaker:are having for accessibility. I find it interesting that somehow automated testing
Speaker:has become part of the culture of software engineering. It's expected for you
Speaker:to know about it. Every single job posting mentions it, every single
Speaker:interview is going to ask about it, but somehow we haven't got there with
Speaker:accessibility. What I always say as well is, as engineers, our main goal is
Speaker:to make software that works, and if it's not accessible, it's not working for
Speaker:a lot of people. So we fail to do what we were supposed to
Speaker:do.
Speaker:Absolutely. Yeah. We need to get to that end goal, at least. Brilliant.
Speaker:So when it comes to, like you say, the job specs and finding new
Speaker:people within this space, or hiring other engineers and designers or members of
Speaker:accessibility guilds or teams... In previous roles, have you had any involvement or
Speaker:do you have any advice of what you think the right person would look
Speaker:like in terms of what they've written on a CV or what they've achieved?
Speaker:Yeah, I've been involved sometimes in hiring processes, and I think
Speaker:the difficult thing to know is what you said to define really well what
Speaker:the job is going to be and what is going to be expected from
Speaker:that person. Very often you see job postings for accessibility roles that
Speaker:could be two or three different roles, and also to have the right kind
Speaker:of expectations of what people can you find. So as an example of mobile
Speaker:engineering, right. If you're finding someone that knows a lot about iOS
Speaker:development and accessibility, and that's what you need, and you can find
Speaker:someone perfect, like you hit jackpot! But a lot of times I think it's
Speaker:more real, or you can start that way and see if you can find
Speaker:someone. But I think a lot of times it's more realistic to think, would
Speaker:it work better finding someone that is a really good iOS engineer with a
Speaker:passion for accessibility, even if it's not a specialist that we can upskill,
Speaker:that we can give them room to learn about it, teach them what's
Speaker:necessary to hopefully bring that person to the level we need, or the
Speaker:other way around. Do we know someone that is an accessibility specialist and
Speaker:doesn't know much about is development that is willing to learn? Always wanted
Speaker:to know more about iOS development. We have lots of iOS developers in the
Speaker:company... Can we get that person and
Speaker:teach them what the person will need to do? The job. And I think that's
Speaker:sometimes like a better strategy probably, and something that not a lot of
Speaker:times companies consider.
Speaker:I think you're right. And another thing that I'm trying to get together as
Speaker:someone that's trying to help with the recruitment in the space is avenues of
Speaker:roles for people. So rather than it just being you're an Accessibility
Speaker:Specialist and that job description is as long as a piece of string because
Speaker:you've got every single requirement, every web accessibility bit of knowledge, even
Speaker:web development, so you're looking at HTML, CSS, Javascript, all the new modern
Speaker:frameworks and they're saying oh, but we have mobile products as well. So they
Speaker:need to know Swift, they need to know Java or Kotlin for Android. And
Speaker:again it just goes on and on. So I'm trying to say you can
Speaker:have people that focus on accessibility, that have the technical, people that have
Speaker:the strategy and the general programme and project management around that, and
Speaker:awareness, even the culture change could go into that section. So to split
Speaker:them out rather than just yeah, you're a specialist so you should be able
Speaker:to do absolutely everything. I think that's the unfortunate expectation at the
Speaker:moment. Yeah, you're right. I think a lot of that onus is on me
Speaker:now, I think, because I'm trying to be THE guy for accessibility recruitment.
Speaker:So yeah, I can always use as much help as possible. I listen to
Speaker:all the feedback from people and I think that leads on to sort of
Speaker:salaries and expectations and recompensation and things in that regard
Speaker:as well. So unfortunately when it's an unknown to people that
Speaker:are holding the purse strings or giving the budget for new areas of exploration
Speaker:within a company, they're not going to give you what you want. So it
Speaker:is tricky, but I think that the tide will turn as soon as we
Speaker:get more movement in that space. Brilliant, I guess. What's your experience
Speaker:been of the sort of job hunting and interview process throughout your
Speaker:career? Is there anything that you've done personally to ensure that you're moving
Speaker:into another accessibility focused role as an iOS developer, and engineer? Or have
Speaker:you sort of gone for iOS engineer roles with you've got a feeling that
Speaker:you could probably advocate for that and then include that as an extracurricular
Speaker:kind of thing that you do when you join?
Speaker:Yeah, it's been more like that, I think. As I mentioned, I started learning
Speaker:a lot about accessibility at the BBC and I tried to get more and
Speaker:more involved with the champions network there. And then when I moved to
Speaker:Skyscanner, one of the first things I tried to see is what is being
Speaker:done around accessibility here and then I joined the champions network that they had
Speaker:there. And I think that's the good thing as well. When you start in
Speaker:a company and you have that bit of knowledge that is not extended to
Speaker:everyone, is unfortunately still rare,
Speaker:you tend to gain more and more responsibilities and be more and more
Speaker:involved in helping to change the culture around accessibility and to help other
Speaker:teams and not just yours. And things like that are actually, I think, very
Speaker:important for career development. So in lots of big companies, you're going to
Speaker:be asked in order to progress, to have a bigger impact than just your
Speaker:team, but help other teams and do improvements that
Speaker:are cross company and not just focusing your little area of what you own.
Speaker:And when I joined Spotify, same thing I joined with no expectations. I actually
Speaker:didn't know the project I was going to start working on. They said it
Speaker:was something new and secret. So I just found out when I was going
Speaker:to start and it was the Spotify Kids app and it was a super
Speaker:fun project to be involved with and same thing. I just tried to find
Speaker:the people that were passing the door accessibility in the company and
Speaker:eventually the team was created and because of the work I had been
Speaker:doing in the guild, they thought of me as someone that could join the
Speaker:team and I'm super grateful for that. I think it was very special to
Speaker:be able to join a team that is completely focused on accessibility.
Speaker:But I think other people that, for example, can influence and something I try
Speaker:to do in the companies I worked before as well, like hiring processes. If
Speaker:you can, for example, add questions about accessibility in the pool of questions
Speaker:that you ask to candidates, I think that's brilliant. As we know, lots of
Speaker:people may not know the answer to those questions, but I think it works
Speaker:really well as a statement of it's important to us. So the person, if
Speaker:it's successful and joins the company, will think, they asked me about
Speaker:accessibility, so it's surely something important in this company. And more
Speaker:importantly, if you can influence what are the requirements in job descriptions as
Speaker:well. If you can add accessibility there, then the candidates will prepare for it
Speaker:before they get to interview. And again, it's a statement of it's important
Speaker:here. Automated testing is important, Accessibility is as important as well.
Speaker:It's brilliant. Yeah, I agree. I think the only issue with that from my
Speaker:perspective is adding anything else to job specs already. I think people are going
Speaker:to go, oh God, you want me that have that as well. But I
Speaker:guess if it's a nice to have. Or just to mention, again, it's just
Speaker:showing the dedication to growth in that field or
Speaker:offering that opportunity of something beyond the day to day job that
Speaker:you're being hired to do. And again, career progression. If you've got that
Speaker:passion and you want to grow in your career and not just keep doing
Speaker:the same thing, then this is an amazing and very rewarding avenue to take.
Speaker:So yeah, I agree. So I'm going to go on to a little bit
Speaker:more of a techie sort of side of things, which hopefully you'll enjoy. I
Speaker:was having a think about a lot of the issues that we do see
Speaker:within mobile and digital accessibility in general, and thinking they're not
Speaker:necessarily all just from an ignorance or unawareness standpoint in terms of
Speaker:excluding users. I think a lot of it is unintentional, but I think that
Speaker:sometimes it is just that we didn't have the tools or the knowledge that
Speaker:we do now, so that a lot of legacy platforms and tech or
Speaker:applications have been developed in that time period without the consideration for
Speaker:things like VoiceOver, switch controls and any of the other sort of assistive
Speaker:tech. And then because of that, it becomes 20 to 30 times more expensive
Speaker:to put it right because they're already active products that people are using.
Speaker:So I don't mean for you to solve everything right now on the podcast,
Speaker:it'd be great if you did. But do you have a vision for how
Speaker:we would overcome this issue? Or is it just we need to just scrap
Speaker:everything and start developing again with accessibility in mind? Or could we
Speaker:automate that and streamline in a more streamlined solution to ensure that we're
Speaker:getting the overhaul sort of done and those legacy apps that are still long
Speaker:standing and needed are going to be able to become more accessible.
Speaker:I think it's a super interesting project topic
Speaker:in the mobile world, especially iOS and Android. I think the best tip I
Speaker:can give anyone is use native components, if you can. So native components are
Speaker:the components for building UIs that in the case of iOS, Apple provides you.
Speaker:It could be labels, buttons, text fields, things as simple as that, but also
Speaker:colours and more complicated components like colour pickers or date pickers,
Speaker:things like that. And obviously sometimes you need something that
Speaker:didn't provide or to add functionality they don't give. But I'm saying that
Speaker:because actually the first time I remember hearing the term
Speaker:accessibility was when I was working at a really small startup called Bananity in
Speaker:Barcelona and I was the sole mobile developer doing both iOS and Android apps.
Speaker:And just to make my life easy. I decided to use native components out
Speaker:of the box, customise them as little as possible. And then one user thanked
Speaker:us in the App Store for making the app accessible. And I was like,
Speaker:what? I haven't done anything. Let me check this out. And then I found
Speaker:that, yeah, you use native components. Apple is very good at making those
Speaker:components accessible, so there's not much work you need to do. And I
Speaker:find that, as you said, bigger and older projects tend to have a lack
Speaker:of accessibility because maybe at the time they decided to implement components
Speaker:themselves because they didn't exist yet, or the ones Apple provided didn't have the
Speaker:functionality they needed. An example could be there's a component in iOS
Speaker:called collection view that is a way of drawing very complicated layouts like
Speaker:Bridge, or if you think about the Pinterest kind of layout where there's
Speaker:columns that have different heights and things like that, you could do something
Speaker:like that with a collection view, but that's a component that didn't exist. When
Speaker:iOS development started and when Apple started providing it, it was not very
Speaker:performant. So a lot of teams would decide to make those components
Speaker:themselves. The problem with that is you need to think about accessibility. And if
Speaker:you don't, then there's a problem. For example, now when Apple introduced dynamic
Speaker:type, or the possibility to increase the text size, if you didn't consider that
Speaker:for your collection view, then the layout would start to break and things like
Speaker:that. But what I like to say in this sort of projects, big projects,
Speaker:is I like the Boy Scout rule. So always leave the campground cleaner
Speaker:than you found it. And in the accessibility world, we like to say
Speaker:progress over perfection. So just when you have to do something new, or go
Speaker:and fix a bug, just have a look around and see what you can
Speaker:improve. A lot of times I hear people saying, what's the point of making
Speaker:this screen accessible if the rest of the app isn't? But you have to
Speaker:start somewhere and users will value that and it will set a precedent, it
Speaker:will set an example for everyone else. And it's just a way of starting.
Speaker:I think a few years ago, every single project in iOS was Objective-C
Speaker:and Apple introduced Swift for example, today most projects are UIKit and Apple
Speaker:introduced SwiftUI. And now teams are trying to see how they can migrate.
Speaker:And in most projects, what happened is if I have to write something new,
Speaker:I make sure it's in Swift or SwiftUI or is accessible. In this case,
Speaker:if I need to fix a bug, then maybe I change this piece of
Speaker:code to Swift or SwiftUI. So I think that's a good approach, just little
Speaker:by little, and it takes time, but you'll get there.
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. And it can be done. You've proven that. I think it's just
Speaker:the commitment, I think, as well, is the big part. But brilliant. I mean,
Speaker:you've already taught us so much in this short space of time. But the
Speaker:final question that I always ask on these episodes is, what do you believe
Speaker:is the simplest and most cost effective way that someone can implement more
Speaker:digital accessibility within their own line of work? Is there anything in
Speaker:particular? Or would you say what you've just said kind of covers a lot
Speaker:of that?
Speaker:Yeah. I'm a big fan of Ted Lasso, and there's a quote that I
Speaker:don't remember. He says a quote from someone, I don't remember who that was,
Speaker:but it is: "Be curious, not Judgemental." So I think that's the key, is to
Speaker:ask yourself questions. Most issues that you see
Speaker:are repeated over and over and they're not difficult to fix at all. You
Speaker:see missing labels, you see colour contrast issues, you see buttons that are
Speaker:too small, things like that. So if you ask yourself questions like, what
Speaker:happens if my user cannot see the screen? Or what happens if my user
Speaker:does not differentiate colours? Or what happens if my user cannot hear or
Speaker:cannot touch the screen? Then you start being in that mindset of thinking,
Speaker:how do I make this accessible? And not being judgmental, not making
Speaker:assumptions of how your users may use your app. I think,
Speaker:for example, I assume back in the day, maybe blind users don't use the
Speaker:camera app, for example. And that's far from true. It's one of the apps
Speaker:that a lot of them use the most. I think be curious there. Ask
Speaker:yourself questions and not being judgmental, not making assumptions.
Speaker:I like, again, the example of the Threads app. I think we have to
Speaker:approach accessibility with kindness as well. And I need to remind myself
Speaker:about that as well many times. They ended up implementing a text for images.
Speaker:I've been involved in many apps, for example, where the reviews in the App
Speaker:Store have been the opposite. It's been like, is there anyone working in accessibility
Speaker:in this app? And you are working in accessibility? Not just you, but a
Speaker:lot of people. But we fail as well. Sometimes things may regress.
Speaker:You do your best and, yeah, progress over perfection, I think, is
Speaker:the thing that everyone should keep in mind.
Speaker:Definitely. And I think that kindness needs to extend further, always. I think
Speaker:that you probably get a lot of people thinking, are you even doing
Speaker:anything? And you think, oh my God, there's only a certain amount of hours
Speaker:in the day. There's only a certain amount of things that I can actually
Speaker:focus on at one given time and your mental health and your work life
Speaker:balance and everything that goes behind you, the human that's trying to make
Speaker:a difference. If you're going to pile on even more pressure as a user
Speaker:that thinks nothing's being done, it's just going to make things worse. So
Speaker:I think we need that acceptance of we're trying, but it's going to take
Speaker:some time to get there, but also we need to shout out about it
Speaker:more like you're doing. So I think that it's just, look, we're aware we're
Speaker:trying to do X, Y and Z and holding our hands up. I think
Speaker:that Chris Patnoe said that when we were visiting the ADC, the Accessibility
Speaker:Discovery Centre in Google's offices in London, and he just said, look, we're
Speaker:not perfect. We are going to make mistakes and if anything, it's the best
Speaker:thing we can do because then that will highlight more issues that we need
Speaker:to focus on or do better in the future. So I think trying to
Speaker:be perfect is a pointless exercise. So I completely agree and I think that
Speaker:what you've just shared there is a profound and apt sort of way to
Speaker:bring the episode to a close Dani. So, thank you so much for joining
Speaker:me and for just all the friendship and advice that you've given to me
Speaker:over the years that we've sort of known each other online and I just
Speaker:hope that we can stay in touch. You've had a huge, huge impact and
Speaker:positive impact on so many people with your tweets, your book. A lot of
Speaker:the people that I hire for other companies have mentioned your work as
Speaker:well. So I hope that you understand how much you're giving back to the
Speaker:community. So it's just been a pleasure to get to know you over the
Speaker:years and yeah, hope that we can stay in touch moving forward as well.
Speaker:Same. Yeah, I really hope so. Thank you so much for everything. I really
Speaker:enjoyed it and I'm looking forward for more episodes of the podcast as well.
Speaker:Thank you so much. Yeah, hopefully we'll do some more group sessions or something
Speaker:as well, and you can be a part of that. But thanks for joining
Speaker:me this time and yeah, I'll see you all on the next one!
Speaker:Thankyou.
