Dedicating the Time and Resources Throughout the Enterprise

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(compelling string music)

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- Hello, 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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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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(compelling music)

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All right, we are back with another episode

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where I get to visit with accessibility professionals.

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And today, I am pleased to be speaking

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with Natalie Patrice Tucker.

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Hello, Natalie, how are you today?

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- I'm so great.

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Thank you for having me.

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- Well, I'm happy to have you here

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for this podcast episode.

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It's great to have you involved.

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Where are you talking to us from?

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- I live in Atlanta, Georgia.

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- All right, well, I'm across the country

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in my home office near Seattle, Washington.

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- Oh, oh, that's so great.

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I love Seattle.

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It's so gorgeous, especially right now.

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- I've enjoyed my visits to the Atlanta area as well.

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- (laughs) I'm new.

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I just moved here a few months ago.

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I was in the Bay.

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- Oh, all right, so big, big change for you as well.

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- (laughs) Yeah.

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- Well, a good place to start is always

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what we're up to currently.

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Why don't you tell us a little bit about

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your current position and what that involves?

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- Absolutely.

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So right now, I serve as senior accessibility lead

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at Spotify, and that means

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that I support digital accessibility

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across our platforms and products from the Spotify app

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that everybody knows and loves to Anchor and Soundtrap

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and all kinds of fun things.

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- Well, I wanna hear more about the specifics

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of what you have going on at Spotify, but you like usual

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with this interview, what I like to do is kind of go

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back in time and find out the journey

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that brought everyone to what they're doing today.

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So, maybe you could go back and let me know

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how this has fit into your life and your work,

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and we can kind of move back up to where we are today.

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- Absolutely.

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So, (laughs) I tend to tell folks I've been doing this

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since the beginning of the dawn of time,

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but what happened was that I got my heart broken.

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This was in the early like 1998, 1997.

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And I decided that I was going to...

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I was recuperating at home in Lynchburg, Virginia,

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and decided that really what my life was for

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was I wanted to save the world.

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And so I just made a plan to move to Washington DC

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to work in nonprofits, because the DC Metro area

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is the nonprofit capital of the world.

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And so I just didn't know exactly where I would land,

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but I figured I would find a way to make a difference.

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Well, eventually I became a political organizer,

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working to enact a living wage law in Montgomery County,

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and it was amazing,

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but it was also heartbreaking, backbreaking work.

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But the tiny little organization that I worked with,

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there were basically seven of us,

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and this tiny little Access database

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was like the heart of this organization,

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but it was a total mess,

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and really nobody had the chops to really use it

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to its best ability.

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And I was like, okay, well,

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this is how I can make a difference.

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So, long story short of it is that

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I taught myself some SQL and revolutionized this database.

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And then I decided

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that I was gonna support nonprofits on technology.

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And along the way, some of the nonprofits

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that I was working for

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I was working for smaller nonprofits

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that had consistencies in developing countries

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like the Washington office on Africa

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or the 50 Years is Enough campaign.

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We had people with slower internet connections

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or maybe older browsers and older devices.

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So we really had to be concerned about things

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like performance and accessibility

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and interoperability and all kinds of things

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that at the time,

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the internet was kind of the wild, wild West.

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And there were just all kinds of things happening

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like Flash and one by one pixel GIFs.

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It was horrifying.

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So those tiny nonprofits asked me to build them websites.

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And not knowing how I was like, okay, I'll do this.

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I taught myself to do that

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and got really, really, excited about the standards.

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And at the time, there was this new standard,

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the WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

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And then there was also like this huge push

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around using the standards to build the web

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and what that would make possible.

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And I was just like, oh, this is where it's at.

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And eventually, the federal government,

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this was in early 2000, went looking for folks

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who had a background in developing

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against the WCAG guidelines.

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And so I went into the the federal government.

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I worked at like the IRS and HHS and built websites

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and newsletters for them.

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And it was awesome, but I wasn't really excited

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about working in the government.

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It didn't thrill me. (laughs)

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And I felt like I wasn't learning.

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And so I reached out to this wonderful, wonderful gentleman.

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His name is Tom Babinski.

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He had a accessibility to consultancy in Northern Virginia.

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He's a brilliant, brilliant man.

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I think he's at IBM now,

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but I was just like, "Basically, I love what you're doing,

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"and I wanna make sure that I can continue to do this work.

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"I would love to work with you."

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And eventually I started work with him,

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and then I built my own consultancy.

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And about that time,

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the standards were in the process of being updated

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to WCAG 2.0, which was a sea change.

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And the standards were harmonizing all over the world.

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And eventually and slowly was surely, (laughs)

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the United States legal framework really started

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to enforce digital accessibility to such a way

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where it was really I was doing a sort of a niche

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kind of a thing and really working hard

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to be able to do it.

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I got the opportunity to work

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with bigger and bigger organizations

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and more and more engineering teams.

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And that's sort of the long version of how I got (laughs)

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to where I am today.

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- I mean, you cover a lot of things there,

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but I mean I like to go back and you checked

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in with a couple of those places,

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because part of this is, is helping people understand

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how they can get involved and understanding the challenges.

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And so you mentioned, first of all,

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getting involved in doing that initial work

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on your own in those early web development times

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after WCAG came out, and that's also after the section 508.

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had just come out a few years before that.

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So like, at that time, I imagine,

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you had to pretty much scramble to find the resources

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and to educate yourself in accessible web development.

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- Absolutely.

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Then as now,

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the internet is just an incredible, incredible resource.

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And so part of how I sort of got my feet wet

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and learned was like actually reading

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every word of the standards

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and looking up the people (laughs)

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who were authors of the standards

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and kind of low key stock in them a little bit.

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And then somewhere along there, LinkedIn came along

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and I started to reach out to folks.

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But even before that, like getting a mentor,

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having Tom Babinski and the mentors I've had

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along the way to be able to...

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I am not a native screen reader user,

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and I found it deeply, deeply perplexing.

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And while I was in incredibly excited

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about the technical pieces,

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I was just like really befuddled

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about how screen readers worked

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and what was expected behavior.

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And in the early days, I was doing a lot of testing

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and a lot of really deep hands on work

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like trying to build delightful experiences.

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So, it was always kind of a sticking point to me

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that I wasn't a native assistive technology user,

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and I wanted to get a little bit better with that.

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And that's why I reached out to Tom.

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He's a blind man technologist,

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and he really just was really encouraging.

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And so, I think all along

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and following the folks that I did, their work,

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I had the like opportunity to connect

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with Jim Thrasher who's since passed,

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but this was a long time ago, just enough to say,

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your work has really made a difference for me

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and thank you so much.

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And he was incredibly incredibly gracious.

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And it was things like that along the way where I was like,

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am I doing this?

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What am I doing?

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Am I doing this right?

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That really made a difference

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- Well, yeah, I'm glad you bring up the mentorship aspect,

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because that is so critical to us,

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finding our way in this area, where for the most part,

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you can't find it in formal education.

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We have to find it through our collegial friendships

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and colleagues at work. - Absolutely.

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You mentioned you became involved with government agencies.

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What were some of the challenges that you experienced there?

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You wanted to move away from that,

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but were there any certain things

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that were particular blockers for you

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in what you wanted to do?

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- I think it was really the pace

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of the way decisions were made

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and new technologies were adopted or considered.

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Like you can see that even

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in the 10 years it took for the Access board

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to adopt WCAG 2.0 after it was initially released

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as a standard, or just sort of harmonize on the that

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as a digital accessibility standard.

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So, I just found it, personally, very frustrating.

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We weren't allowed to use certain browsers.

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We weren't allowed to download,

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and VDA was just sort of getting started.

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I wanted to use that,

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'cause it was a more accessible solution

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and all kinds of things,

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financially accessible solution.

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I think also a little the hierarchy.

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I really got gungho.

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I was really on this mission to create a web

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that worked for everyone.

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And I thought it could happen,

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that that was the way that it could happen,

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but the pace and hierarchy made me go,

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maybe there's another way.

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- Well, going on to be an accessibility consultant

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and more or less working for yourself,

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that's definitely the other side of the spectrum

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where suddenly you're you're able to get involved

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with a lot of projects that are very interesting to you,

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but also a lot of organizations, even today,

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still aren't ready to invest in accessibility.

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And so that can be a challenge,

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but how was it as you started doing consulting work?

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- Well, so initially a lot of my consulting work came

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from like I was a subcontractor.

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Like someone would have a contract with the government

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or have a contract that required accessibility,

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and then hiring me to work with them

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or the engineering teams that were building,

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whatever it was.

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And so, it was hard,

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because I wanted a career in accessibility

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but they were gigs, if you will.

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It was sort of a hodgepodge of piecing together gigs

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while also trying to make sure

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that I stayed on top of what was happening.

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Like all of my training and development budget

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was 100% on me.

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All of my travel and education, conference budget

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was 100% on me for quite some time,

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and that made it difficult.

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In the early days, it was like a dream

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to be able to go to CSUN,

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which is the accessibility conference that happens

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in San Diego once a year.

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it's the oldest sort of conference of its kind.

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I mean, I would read the talk backs

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and watch the proceedings that I could from afar

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and really wanted to go,

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but it was just financially inaccessible

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to me for a long time.

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And going was really actually a big catalyst.

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It allowed me to see, oh, I can do this.

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And I am doing this.

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I have been doing this,

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and, oh my gosh, like lots of people wanna know

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what I already know.

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Like I'm always looking for ways

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to make opportunities to have like networking

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and have folks learn from each other

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more and more available.

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- Yeah, well, bringing up the conferences,

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that's another excellent way to get involved.

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You mentioned that the cost of it,

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which is difficult for people

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that are maybe just getting involved in the practice

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that aren't supported by their (indistinct).

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- That was the case years ago.

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But nowadays, especially with COVID,

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thank God in a way for this global pandemic

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making digital accessibility more accessible.

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So we have virtual conferences recently

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that have just been top notch and top tier.

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like for example,

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from the Accessibility Toronto Conference.

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There's so many more options

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for like meetups and small conferences

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or regional conferences

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than there were back even when I started.

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- Sure, and we're able to bring in people

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that maybe weren't able to get to Anaheim or San Diego

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for travel purposes, and as we move forward,

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I imagine we're still gonna have Zoom or whatever media

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as a major component of our events from now on.

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- Hopefully.

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- And yeah, so you were talking about your work

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with accessibility consulting,

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and then where did you go from there?

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How'd you get to where your positioned now?

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- That's a great question.

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Let me think about this a bit,

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because there was some time that it looked crazy

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like it looked like it might not be the smartest idea

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for me to be pursuing this career,

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because there was a lot of uncertainty.

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If folks would hire me, I would do what I'd come to do

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and say, oh and now we can move on to usability.

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And we can actually do automated testing,

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and let's do all the things.

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And they would be like, no, we're done with that.

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I'd be like, well, I'm still an accessibility person,

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so I'm gonna keep doing this. (laughs)

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And so would have to sort of find my way

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to the next opportunity to make a difference.

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That was a big chunk of the beginning.

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And then when the WCAG 2.0 guidelines came out and the ADA

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was being fully enforced

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and like just a number of changes culturally

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just brought digital accessibility

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to the forefront where I would...

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Because I had at that point been doing this work

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for about 10 years, it was a lot easier,

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or it sort of became I had a pick of the litter

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in a particular kinda way.

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There are more opportunities to do exciting things

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than there were.

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There was of me.

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And that's also says a lot to our community too,

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because in the beginning, (laughs)

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I had a joke with a colleague

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that in the beginning we could all count each other

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to (indistinct). (laughs)

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like we're the Spartans or something,

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the early 500 people.

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I don't know, there were probably more of us,

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but it just felt very...

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Like I was surprised when I met

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the first other person of color who was I doing this work.

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It was a technical person doing this work, for example.

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There are more roles available.

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There are more opportunities to begin

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inside of this work than there were, which is very exciting.

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- Well, what's a day in the life or a week in the life

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for you now as an accessibility professional at Spotify?

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- Oh, yeah, so, I lead our efforts to ensure

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that we're building delightful products

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across our offerings.

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And, ugh, I have a lot of meetings.

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I have a lot of meetings.

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I meet with individual engineers on questions they may have.

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I meet with members of my team

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around how the program is doing.

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So, Spotify had accessibility

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and been doing a lot of accessibility work

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before I came on in April,

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but decided that they really wanted dedicate their time

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and resources to ensure

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that it's taken care of throughout the enterprise,

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which is why I came on board.

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I've been doing a lot of foundational work,

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making sure that we have the right people on my team

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or making sure that we're connected to the right partners

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in the different business units,

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looking at the landscape

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and negotiating with vendors for support,

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that sort of thing.

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So I have a lot of meetings, (laughs)

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I have a lot a lot of meetings.

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- Sounds like you're really busy.

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Are there any projects

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that you are particularly passionate about right now,

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or looking into the future,

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are there any places that you think you want to get to?

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- We are doing such exciting work,

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and I'm really thrilled about where things are going

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for the entire ecosystem of our products,

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not just in terms of accessibility,

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but usability in general.

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I'm hoping that we'll have some pretty exciting things

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to share out around December 3rd,

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which is International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

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And other than that, I will keep it mum. (laughs)

Speaker: 00:23:21

- All right, well, that's fine.

Speaker: 00:23:23

But yeah, I imagine you must feel a certain amount of weight

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and responsibility being involved with a product

Speaker: 00:23:31

in a company that's so widely used

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throughout the world

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and sort of a mainstream consumer product

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that almost everybody is familiar with,

Speaker: 00:23:41

even if they don't work with it.

Speaker: 00:23:44

So does that put a little extra stress on you

Speaker: 00:23:47

or did I just by mentioning it? (laughs)

Speaker: 00:23:50

- (laughs) Well, you know, I myself am a Spotify user

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and have been since the very, very beginning.

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And so I understand the vehement love for the product

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and what's possible.

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And so when people come up to me

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with praise and with criticism, I'm so excited to hear it.

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And I'm so thrilled to be a part of making this thing great.

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That has been so great for me.

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- Well, Natalie, it's been a pleasure

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to speak with you today.

Speaker: 00:24:26

Thank you so much for sharing your journey

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to get where you are today, and hopefully I'll maybe see you

Speaker: 00:24:35

at a CSUN event in the future.

Speaker: 00:24:37

- Absolutely, absolutely.