Creating Carrots for Accessibility and Not Just Sticks

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(upbeat orchestral music)

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- Hello.

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This is Digital Accessibility:

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The People Behind the Progress.

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I'm Joe Welinske, the creator and host of this series.

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And as an accessibility professional myself,

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I find it very interesting as to how others

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have found their way into this profession.

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So let's meet one of those people right now

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and hear about their journey.

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(upbeat orchestral music)

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- All right. Well, here we are

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with another episode of this podcast

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where I have the great opportunity

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to talk to accessibility practitioners.

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And today I am pleased to be chatting

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with Rachael Bradley Montgomery.

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Hello, Rachael. How are you today?

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- Hello. I'm well.

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How are you today?

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- Everything's going pretty good.

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It's pretty nice day here in my home office area

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in Vashon, Washington,

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which is near Blink's Seattle headquarters.

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Where are you talking to me from?

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- I am talking to you from just outside Leesburg, Virginia,

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which is near Washington,

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and it is a rainy, rainy day here.

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- Well, I appreciate you taking the time

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to chat with me

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about your experience in accessibility

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and probably the best place to start

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is if you could tell us a little bit about

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your current position and what you're involved with today?

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- Sure. So I am very fortunate to be doing

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a couple different things in accessibility today.

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I am a co-chair

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of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.

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So that is the group that helps set the standards for WCAG.

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I am in a library,

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at the Library of Congress,

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I am a digital accessibility specialist.

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And I am also the director of a charity

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called Accessible Community.

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And all three are just a fantastic balance

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of getting to work in different areas

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and with different sized organizations

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across the accessibility field.

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- Well, it's okay.

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So right off the bat,

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it looks like you're pretty busy

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with a lot of things that you're involved with,

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but on the library of Congress part,

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I mean, I think most people are familiar

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with what that part of the government is about,

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but maybe talk a little bit about

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what your position consists of at the Library of Congress?

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- Sure. And so I can't speak officially for them right now,

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but for my position, it's really around

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helping create accessible experiences for employees

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and for patrons at the Library.

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It's very similar to kind of comparable positions

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in organizations anywhere where you're working to try

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to improve the accessibility of applications, of content,

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of all of that digital experience of kiosks

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to make sure that experience really is good for people

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with all sorts of different types of disabilities.

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- Well, we can come back and talk about

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more of the current things that you're working on,

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but one of the things I like to do in this series

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is explore the paths that people found

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that take them to what they're doing in accessibility.

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So where does it start out for you?

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Are there any certain milestones

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that started to put you on that path?

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- I have a funny story

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in that I started really young

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in kinda disability education and accessibility.

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I started actually in middle school

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with a local puppeteering troop

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that would go around and teach about disability

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at different schools in our area.

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And I did that for probably six or seven years.

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It was a fantastic opportunity at the time.

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It was really pre the digital age.

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And so it was one of the greatest ways of

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connecting with kids in particular

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and teaching about people who were different

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and just that different abilities didn't mean,

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it wasn't scary,

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it wasn't something that they had to worry about.

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It was something they really could treat as normal.

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And it was such a foundational education.

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To be able to participate,

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you had to pick

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a couple different areas of disability studies

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and really master them,

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you do research and then keep up with everything

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because you had to be able to answer questions on all of it.

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And so that really started a passion.

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I kind of moved away from it for a little bit,

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but then really got into usability engineering

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and working in libraries

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and then ended up right back kind of in the same space,

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working in the usability space,

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which overlapped a lot with accessibility.

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So that's how I got started.

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From there I really kind of mixed.

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And it was kind of like...

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I worked at The MITRE Corporation for a number of years

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and got that opportunity to do usability,

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but then kind of touch in accessibility

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and then it kind of changed over time.

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So I started early on with a lot of usability work

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and a little bit of accessibility work

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and then kept going until I was doing

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a lot of accessibility work and less usability work,

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which is really where I am now.

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- And so, it sounds like what you're saying is that your

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educational foundation was library science,

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that was an area that you studied and decided to pursue?

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- It was. Actually my bachelor's

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was in art history and historic preservation.

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And we can talk about (laughs) how that ties in,

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'cause it does really, really well.

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But then when I went back from my master's degree,

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I went in information science at University of Illinois

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and got to study with some fantastic people there,

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both in emerging technology and in usability

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and particularly in information systems.

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And then transitioned while working,

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to go to University of Maryland

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and got to study with Jennifer Price and Ben Schneiderman

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among other fantastic professors in both fields.

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So I was really, really fortunate

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to have some amazing people who were inspiring

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and exciting to work with throughout that education.

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- Yeah. That's great.

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Yeah. I had the opportunity to meet

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Ben Schneiderman a long time ago

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and that was a great conversation.

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Also, I went to the University of Illinois.

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So I have a connection there,

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but was it when you were

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doing your art history or master's program

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that you discovered the opportunities to volunteer

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with the program that you mentioned

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with, what was it? Puppet...

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- With the puppeteering? That was actually,

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I did that all through high school and earlier.

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I kind of stepped away from it when I went to college

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'cause I went away to college

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and couldn't continue doing it.

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In college,

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I was doing a little less

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of the accessibility and usability work

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until I kind of came back in.

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Where I was kind of getting involved in that

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was really around the historic preservation area

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because I was studying

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how do you take buildings and update them

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and still really retain the historic essence of them

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and convey that in a neighborhood,

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but at the same time, accessibility of physical spaces

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was a really big part of that

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because if you're gonna update a building,

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you have to think about all the ADA applications to it.

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And really, a lot of the studies were around,

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"Okay, if you take a community

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"and you're helping to revitalize it,

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"how do you think about all the pieces

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"you need to put together?"

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And that ended up forming a foundation

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of a lot of what I do now with the charity I run

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where it's thinking about,

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how do you think about disability inclusion

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from a community point of view?

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And so, I think one of the things I've learned

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in looking back over the arc of my career

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is that each little piece,

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even though it doesn't sometimes seem relevant,

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long term, it really becomes critical and foundational

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and you end up leaning on it

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in a way you didn't quite expect to.

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- And so then as you moved forward,

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what was kind of the next stage

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that aligned with your accessibility interests?

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- Yeah. So I guess after my bachelor's degree,

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it was really around going to Illinois,

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Champaign-Urbana High School

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and studying technology and how to engage in technology.

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I had worked at Emory University's library down in Atlanta

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and I was working in technology space there

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and really got interested in how do you create

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a library user experience that was good for every patron,

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which is what led me to go to University of Illinois

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and really study that in more depth.

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And so getting to really understand user studies

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and how you think about technology in new ways,

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it was exciting and kind of fun time to learn.

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And then I was able to take that back to my job at MITRE

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after I had moved to that

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and really start working in that area

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in greater detail and depth.

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- And then did that work,

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did that offer you the opportunity for some type of training

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or knowledge acquisition about accessibility?

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Or how did you come around

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to filling out your,

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what you knew about it?

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- Yeah. That's a great question.

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So I'd studied accessibility some in my master's program,

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but not at the depth.

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I really needed to be fantastic at it,

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like to really grow.

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And so I love your question,

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just in that I feel like

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we get a kind of base knowledge of accessibility,

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but until you're really hands-on day in and day out,

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it's hard to know,

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it's hard to really feel confident about it.

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And even when I went to teaching,

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I had done a decent amount of it,

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but again, gaining that confidence to teach,

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that's really where I feel like

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my background and the depth of my background

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became really extensive.

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Because in teaching accessibility

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and teaching usability together,

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and then very particularly teaching accessibility,

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people start asking questions.

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And when you get a huge diversity of questions,

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you have to learn how to answer.

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You end up building your expertise, a great deal.

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So that's part of it.

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I had also, I got an opportunity to go study

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at the accessibility program at Utah WebAIM.

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It was interesting.

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I had been really working in depth in it for a while,

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but just the ability to go

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and talk with people who had been doing it for a longer time

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and get that comparison

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and just double check that I actually understand

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some of the subtleties that I wasn't sure about,

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in some ways,

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and I'm finding this in a mentoring program I run too,

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it's like you get started,

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you learn a certain amount,

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and then you kind of get to a point

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where the ability to check in with someone senior

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and double check yourself,

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gives you the confidence to kind of continue to learn.

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And I think some of that is just because accessibility

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is a field with such a huge depth of knowledge to it.

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And there's so many specialties and subtleties to it.

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Again, that ability to connect with other professionals,

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I would say is really when I feel like I went from,

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"Yes, I do accessibility."

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To, "Yes, I really know accessibility

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"and I feel very, very confident in it."

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So it was that.

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Then conferences,

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especially when I was learning,

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I think conferences were a huge way of learning

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beyond just trying to follow the specs

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or read what people were publishing about it.

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And so that was another great opportunity.

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- And you were just

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doing some work at the recent CSUN conference.

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I saw you there you were working on the escape room.

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Was it that you designed that activity with a colleague?

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- Yeah. So one of my principles is that,

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especially in teaching accessibility,

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the more hands-on and the more fun you can make it,

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more you can cover

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all the different ways of learning the better.

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And so the Accessible Escape Room came out about

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because Matt Ater and I were having lunch one day

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and we're co-teaching

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and he said,

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"Wow, this weekend I spent $20 to sit and take a nap

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"while my daughter and her friends did an escape room

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because none of it was accessible."

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And I was like, "Wow, we should make

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"an accessible escape room."

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(laughs)

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And we joked about that probably for a year

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where we'd go back and forth

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and whenever we'd see each other we'd go,

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"Wow, are we gonna make the Accessible Escape Room?"

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"I dunno."

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And after a year it was like,

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"You know, we've been talking about this for a while.

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"We should just go ahead and do it."

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So it's very much a labor of love.

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It's done by Vispero and Accessible Community

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and The MITRE Corporation.

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We went to a local escape room,

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it's called Escape Room LoCo and said,

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"Hey, we really wanna do this.

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"Can you help us?"

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And they walked us through how to do it.

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And then we built it and we rolled it out and COVID hit.

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(laughs)

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And so it wasn't quite the CSUN rollout

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we were hoping for that year.

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We have a virtual version of the first one

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and the physical one

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that'll be going to different conferences.

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But I have so enjoyed that activity

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because it is a chance to think about accessibility

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on so many levels when we're creating it,

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but then the joy of watching

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people learn accessibility through that,

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or people who have never had a chance to do an escape room,

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get to do an escape room because it's accessible,

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It's just fantastic.

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It's one of my favorite activities to do every year.

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- Well, yeah, there are a lot of other things

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I wanted to ask you about.

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So you've had the opportunity,

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you work with advocacy organizations.

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You've also worked with

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the W3C in continuing to grow

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our recommendations and best practices in that area.

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And then you've done a lot of work in the government.

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And so, those are a lot of different things,

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a lot of work going on there. (Rachael laughing)

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Is there any one that, you know,

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that, you know, you feel particularly,

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you know, has moved things forward?

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Are there some areas that you've enjoyed more,

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maybe some other things less so?

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You know, what's it been like

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working in all those different areas?

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- Yeah. I am so fortunate

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in the diversity I've been able to achieve in my career.

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Like, it's just been a fabulous

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chance to work in a lot of places.

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If I had to pick, I think I would talk about

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how honored and how fantastically educational

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the opportunity to work on,

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and then eventually co-facilitate

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the COGA Task Force was in the W3C.

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So I did that for, I think two years,

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before I moved on to co-chair

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the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.

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And it is an amazing group of people tackling,

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I think one of the harder challenges in accessibility.

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The cognitive space is really,

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it's hard to make measurable and repeatable

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and get into standards.

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And so, while WCAG provides support

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for cognitive disabilities,

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it is not at the depth of other disability areas.

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And so, they had already created a great deal of content

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for a document that came out,

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I guess, about a year ago now

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called, "Making Content Usable

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for People With Cognitive and Learning Disabilities."

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And the process of getting that document to publication.

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And again, just working with

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such an amazingly talented group of people on that topic

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was a really neat experience.

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Standards work is definitely not for everybody.

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It is a very detailed (laughs)

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and very nitpicky in some ways work,

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but I think that document

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really provides a foundation

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for cognitive accessibility and what we can do.

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And with my background in usability and accessibility,

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the cognitive space kind of fits in between the two

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really, really well.

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And so I think that was probably

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one of the neatest experiences I've had to date.

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- Well, I enjoyed my work

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quite a while back with the Worldwide Web Consortium.

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I enjoyed it and found it very interesting.

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I think from the outside

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people may think kind of things happen slowly

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and to an extent that they do,

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but also, I'm not sure people understand

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what an amazing collaboration you have between,

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not just corporate interest, but the academic, government,

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different nation states around the world, NGOs,

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advocacy organizations of all types,

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and you look at all the things that the W3C has put out

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with their recommendations and essentially

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the modern web in a way has been built around

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those things that have been established.

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And the WCAG is certainly one important part of that.

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- Yeah.

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I think you're right.

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I think there is a bit of a black box

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into what standards work looks like.

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And I agree with you that that balance between industry

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and individual disabilities and academia and government,

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it really is an interesting conversation that goes on

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to make sure that everyone's needs are met

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to the best ability possible

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when you put out a standard.

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And again, that process is neat to look at,

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if you have kind of

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the desire to go through this (laughs) dangerous process.

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- Well, kind of, I think,

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does that bring us more or less up to date

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with what you're currently involved in?

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- If you don't mind,

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I'll talk a little about Accessible Community

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just because-- - Oh, yeah. Definitely.

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- I think that's been at least a personal passion.

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I worked in big organizations

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and government for a number of years, as you mentioned.

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And then, gosh, I guess it's about five years now.

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Everything with COVID time has started to feel a little off,

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but I came down with chemical sensitivity.

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So I hadn't had a disability myself.

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I'd been working in the space,

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but was not myself disabled.

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And chemical sensitivity is a really,

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it's an odd disability.

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In that, COVID actually helped me a great deal.

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I'm working from home.

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I'm not exposed to chemicals.

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If I'm not exposed to chemicals, I'm not sick.

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But if I get near somebody who has perfume

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or I get in an elevator (laughs) with somebody unexpectedly,

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or I walk into a bathroom that's been cleaned,

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I can be sick for a number of days

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and not really able to work.

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And it kind of changed my life.

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Really, I'd been looking a lot at the digital space.

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And when that happened,

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all of a sudden I couldn't go shopping anymore.

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I can't shop for clothes

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'cause almost every dressing room,

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at least women's dressing room,

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has scented products in it.

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So I just shift all of my kind of consumer behaviors

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to function and work.

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And it made me realize

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just how much of our community isn't accessible.

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And it's kind of one of those things I knew,

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but didn't know at a personal and deep level.

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And it also really made me realize that

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a lot of the accessibility work is going on

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with the really big organizations,

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not the small ones.

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And the ones I needed to interact with

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are the mom and pop shops, the restaurants,

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the clothing stores in my neighborhood,

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the churches, I want to go to.

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Whatever those small organizations are,

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my kids clubs, my PTO, right?

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And there's just not a lot of support for that.

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And the end result of talking with a lot of people

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was to found this particular charity,

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which the goal is to figure out ways

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that we can build bridges to help communities,

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not necessarily the big organizations,

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but the small organizations and communities

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that can't afford the work.

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And so, it's very much,

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again, labor of love.

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It's something that happens at the pace it happens,

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but we just put out a tool

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that really will facilitate crowdsourcing,

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accessibility reviews,

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or long term, will let people share their experiences.

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Like, when I go to a store,

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my kids go in first and come out,

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"Yeah, mom. You can go in/you can't."

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To be able to share that

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or to be able to learn from somebody else

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who has chemical sensitivity,

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which store I can go in

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where I'm going to be successful

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before I spend the time driving there,

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that's huge for me.

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And that's not something that digital accessibility

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will help me with one bit,

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other than this crowdsourcing approach,

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but talking with a number of other people with disabilities,

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that ability to share information,

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that bridge has not really been built yet.

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And so, trying to provide that,

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and at the same time,

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we've stood up a mentoring program.

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So people who are stuck in

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that quasi place that I've learned about accessibility,

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but I don't really feel confident in my knowledge,

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or I haven't gotten a lot of hands-on experience,

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can go help one of these organizations that can't afford it.

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At the same time, they're getting work with,

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getting an opportunity to work with someone more senior.

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And so it creates a win, win, win.

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And I love win, win, win situations.

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And so, just trying to set up as many of those as possible

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and facilitate that

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has absolutely become my mission going forward.

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- And is the work that you're doing there something that

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others can can learn about?

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If we add a link to the show notes,

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is that something that's open for others

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to get involved with?

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- It absolutely is.

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We take volunteers.

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We have the mentoring program

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if people want to sign up to learn,

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but we would love as much help as anyone wants to.

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It is completely volunteer organization.

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So we are reliant on people

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and we would love people to join us.

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- All right. Well, yeah. Excellent.

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And, you know, let's see,

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tying into one of the things that you mentioned.

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Well, I think you might have a similar experience with me

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where, you know, I've been involved in this area

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for about 20 some years.

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And when I look at kind of where we are with things,

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in some ways it's kind of amazing

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looking at how technology has transformed things.

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And even now I feel like the accessibility profession

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is growing with more and more people getting involved.

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You know, If I think back 20 years ago,

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I still remember thinking we would've been farther along

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by now and there's always more that you can do,

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but I was just kind of wondering

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what your ideas were in that,

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if there are some areas

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that you wish we could have made more progress

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or ones that you're particularly interested in pursuing,

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in addition to the community activity you mentioned?

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- I do think,

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and this drives

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some of what we're doing with Accessible Community as well,

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I do think creating carrots for accessibility

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and not just sticks.

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I think, somehow finding

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good ways to have people be able to market accessibility

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and know the value of being able to reach out

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to the disability community.

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When I go talk with small organizations,

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that is the number one thing I hear,

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they're like, "We're happy to do the accessibility work,

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"but how do we actually tell people we've done it?"

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So finding that sweet spot of marketing,

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I think is a big driver

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that our community has to figure out.

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But yeah, like you,

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I would like to be further along.

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I feel like there's this amazing

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dichotomy between extreme innovation in coming up with

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assistive technology of different types,

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but then maybe not as much innovation

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and how do we use technology

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that isn't quite so exciting,

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or how do we fund people in thinking about technology

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that isn't so exciting

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to really help improve accessibility as a whole.

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So that funding and that focus on

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what feels a little more every day

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but could make a big difference,

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I feel like that's something

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that we haven't quite figured out.

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Another pattern I've really seen is

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you get some commitment to accessibility

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and you start to make a lot of momentum

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And then it almost feels like

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it's tied to certain individuals

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and then things kind of ebb and flow

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based on how individuals move in and out of organizations

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and figuring out ways to better systematically

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fix accessibility in the mindset of organizations.

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And some places are very successful with that

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and some people aren't,

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but really having good strategy around that,

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I think is the other big area I'd love to see.

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- Well, I enjoyed all of your great comments

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and your perspectives from all the time

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that you've been involved in that.

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So Rachael, thank you very much

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for taking this time to share that with us.

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And hopefully I'll see you again soon at another event.

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- Thank you. I really look forward to seeing you again.

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And thank you for the opportunity to talk with you.

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- Thank you. Bye-bye.