Disrupt the Culture of Digital Product and Technology Development to Include Accessibility

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(dramatic 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

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as to how others 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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All right, well, here we go with another interview

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as I talk to accessibility practitioners

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from all around the world,

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and today, I'm please be talking with Jennison Asuncion.

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Hello, Jennison, how are you today?

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- Hey, there, Joe.

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I'm doing well, and thank you for the invitation.

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- Well, I'm talking from my home office

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on Vashon Island in Washington,

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which is near Blink's Seattle headquarters in Seattle.

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And where are you talking to us from?

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- I am Zooming in from Sunnyvale, California,

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closest large city is San Jose.

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I'm about 35, 40 miles south of San Francisco,

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right in the heart of Silicon Valley.

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- Well, I think the one time I had an opportunity

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to meet you was in San Francisco

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with the Bay Area Accessibility Meetup group-

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- Absolutely.

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- was at Blink's offices there in San Francisco.

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- Absolutely, it seems like forever because of the pandemic.

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Everything seems to have,

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there was pre-pandemic and now.

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But yeah, absolutely, it's been a while.

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But like I said, I'm really happy

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that you asked me onto your podcast.

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- Yeah, well, so much has changed.

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And yeah, I wanna talk

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about the meetup group that you're involved with,

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and also the Global Accessibility Initiative Day.

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But why don't we just start with you kinda talking

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about your day-to-day work?

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You know, what types of things are you involved with now?

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- Sure, so I am a head

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of accessibility engineering evangelism at LinkedIn.

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And in my day-to-day, one of my primary responsibilities

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is I own training and education

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for all of our product engineers

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across web, iOS, and Android.

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So we'd offer monthly training,

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I have an Accessibility Champions Program

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that I run for our engineers.

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So that's one piece of it.

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The other piece is day-to-day on-call support.

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So I have someone who works for me,

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who actually does all the training,

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and then also takes care of questions that come

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through our Slack channels.

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And we also have daily office hours

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for not only our engineers, but also for our designers.

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They can come in and show mocks or early builds

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and have them taken a look at for a spot check

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to see if there are any egregious block

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or critical accessibility items.

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So that's part of my job.

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The other, another piece of my job,

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it involves being the interpreter,

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if you will, for all things, WCAG 2.1.

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So if questions come up as to like,

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which guideline might pertain to a particular UI,

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or what guideline

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or guidelines have been broken based

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on either feedback we've gotten externally

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or some internal testing that's happened.

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I'm also part

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of the accessibility leadership team at LinkedIn.

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So we spend a lot of time just thinking about like,

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what are the best processes to put in place?

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How do we up our game around test automation?

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And honestly, a lot of it is just, how do we scale?

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At a company like LinkedIn, we move fast,

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so we need to figure out different ways

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to scale accessibility.

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And then another big piece of my work has to do

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with external representation within industry.

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So I represent LinkedIn

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within an organization called Teach Access

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among other affiliations that I hold representing LinkedIn.

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Doing things like this, podcasts,

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talk about the work that I'm doing,

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talk about the work we're doing at LinkedIn,

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conferences, that kinda thing.

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And then also working

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with the different disability communities,

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and staying in touch with them,

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and filtering in feedback back

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into the mothership, if you will.

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So a lot of interesting and different things

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to keep me outta trouble.

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- All right, well, you just really made me tired

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just listening to you. (Jennison laughing)

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(indistinct) that you have going on.

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That's a really extensive list.

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And well, I made few mental notes,

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and I wanna come back and touch

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on a couple of points more specifically.

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But one of the things I like to do

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with these conversations is to go back in time

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and, you know, each person has their own lived life,

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work life experiences where accessibility

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has become something important to them,

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and ultimately, decided to be part of our career.

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So, yeah, why don't you just take me back

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and tell me a little bit- - Sure.

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- about your journey.

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- Sure, so just more for context

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and information for viewers and listeners,

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so I'm completely blind.

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I lost my vision when I was about two years old.

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The thing was, back in the day, I mean,

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my first screen readers were really like family members,

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my sister and my cousins who would read stuff

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as I was building games since like,

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games and things back, way back in the day

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of Commodore 64s

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and tape recorders

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and tape discs and all those things.

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And then, I was fortunate because I was growing up

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as the technology was evolving.

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So technology for me, it was just,

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it all felt natural to me.

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It didn't feel different or anything.

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I mean, I was going to regular schools, quote, unquote,

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like, at schools with seeing kids since I was a kid.

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So, as computer and technology was just evolving,

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I was fortunately being served that up.

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And again, for context,

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I was born and raised back in Montreal.

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I think, though, fast forward

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to where I first got the itch

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of accessibility as a career.

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I attended a program by the Canadian National Institute

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for the Blind that brought together 24 blind

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and visually impaired youth

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from across Canada together over four weeks

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to get exposed to different assistive technologies

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or adaptive technologies,

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and basically, get exposure to it

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amongst other things that the program offered.

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But it was at that program that I was,

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because I had already been exposed

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to screen readers and things by that point,

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but I was witnessing people from,

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mainly from smaller communities in Canada,

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many for the first time getting access

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to screen reader, to a braille,

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refreshable braille displays,

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and screen enlargement software.

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And it was amazing.

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There was something there, something magical.

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Not to trivialize it, but it was like, just to step back

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and witness some of these folks

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who had never used a screen reader before,

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and now had access.

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And it was very impactful.

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You know, some of these kids,

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this was a very big experience

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for them, first time.

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And, you know, for some of them,

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it was fairly emotional, and things like that.

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And I just said, wow, that's amazing

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if technology can do that.

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Now, I came back and I knew

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that technology was gonna be something,

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I wanted to do something that had to do with technology,

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and hopefully, maybe working

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with people with disabilities somehow.

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Now, my issue was my math

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was not the strongest.

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And so, in order to do computer science,

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you really have to be strong in math.

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However, I buffed myself off math-wise

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and took two kicks at the can in computer science,

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one at the community college level

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and then one again at university.

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So apparently, I don't learn well the first time.

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But that didn't work out.

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But at the same time, I was also began to work

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for an organization called the Adaptech Research Network.

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And that was a research team comprised

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of actual researchers, folks with different disabilities.

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And what we were doing was conducting grant-funded studies,

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looking into how college and university students

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with different disabilities and impairments

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in Canada use technology and how impactful that is.

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And then eventually, we would look

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at just campus accessibility from a digital perspective.

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And so, and that was all part-time.

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I was going to school.

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I got a master's degree in educational technology,

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but I was doing this to kind of basically pay for my,

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pay for my partying, if you will, while I was in school.

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But through that whole time,

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you know, I was learning all

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about how different folks with different disabilities

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or impairments are using technology,

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what the pain points were, et cetera, et cetera.

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And it was just, again, it was just a job

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and something interesting to do off to the side.

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I would then graduate from grad school

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and then head off to do some other stuff.

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I was working in e-learning and did e-learning development

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and then project management.

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But then in 2006, I decided to quit my job

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and figure out what I wanted to really do.

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I think, truthfully, I was burned out a little bit

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after being a project manager for about 5 1/2 years,

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and I wanted to see what else was out there.

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And it was at that point in 2006, in the summertime,

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friends of mine were saying to me,

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well, why don't you consider doing accessibility?

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I mean, you're already doing stuff in it.

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Like, why don't you just do it?

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And you know, for me, I had to think about that

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because I was like, well,

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it just seemed too easy for me to do,

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to slip into something like that because I was blind,

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and I didn't wanna be pigeonholed or anything.

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But then I looked back at the fact

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that I had had a really good opportunity

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to do some other things beforehand,

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project management and e-learning development.

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I'm like, I think it's time now to do something

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where I think will have the most impact.

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So again, my problem was I didn't have any background

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in QA or anything like that.

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So when I started applying

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for accessibility roles back in Toronto,

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it was tough because when I was interviewed,

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they'd be like, talk to me about your QA, this and that.

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And I was like, you know, I don't have any of this.

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And I certainly didn't have a coding background.

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Although, in my stints in computer science,

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I did learn programming and stuff,

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but it wasn't web, it was more mainframe stuff.

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And so, I was like, okay, maybe this isn't gonna work out.

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But, by hook or by crook, my resume ended up

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at the desk of the manager of the IT Accessibility Team

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at Canada's largest bank, which is Royal Bank of Canada,

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and he called me in for an interview,

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which I thought was only gonna be like an hour,

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turned out to be about a two hour conversation.

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I missed a haircut, but we really had a great conversation,

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and he gave me my first chance.

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His name was Richard Aubrey, and he gave me my first chance,

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and he invited me to join the team.

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And I spent from December, 2006

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to, what was it, October of 2013 over

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at the Royal Bank of Canada.

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And that's where I really cut my teeth

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and learned everything.

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I learned, you know, I got exposed

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to the world of web development

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and spent a lot of time with web developers,

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spent a lot of time with UX and designers

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at all lines of business within the bank,

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sitting with them

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and getting comfortable talking more technically,

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as well as just understanding

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the code enough to be able to explain

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in a technical and a succinct way the types

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of behaviors that were expected.

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And then sitting with UX and design folks,

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and they would describe to me what the interaction was,

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and then I would probe them on what they were doing

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for color contrast and what they were doing

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for keyboard interactions, things like that.

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And during that time, I also built out

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the accessibility procurement accessibility program.

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But a lot of that time was spent consulting.

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With my team that I was on, we saw over 200 projects a year.

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And so, there was a lot of different types of web stuff.

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And even because it's a bank, we have older technologies,

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so there were green screen things.

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And then, as I was getting to the end of my tenure at RBC,

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they were just starting to dig into iOS.

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So I got that early exposure.

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So that was really me going to school in accessibility,

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and really getting thrown in,

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and not only learning the technical pieces,

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but also the important,

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I was able to apply the people skills

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that I learned as a project manager.

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I will always say that the work

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I did beforehand did not go to waste

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because all of those skills, negotiation skills,

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relationship skills, difficult conversations,

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all of those things that I learned

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as a project manager have stood me well throughout.

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I mean, those are the things

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that they don't teach you in accessibility 101,

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are those soft skills that are really so critical

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if you're gonna be having conversations.

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'Cause you can't just like, beat your hand on the table

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and say, make this accessible.

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You have to step in.

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You have to understand the positions

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that different people have,

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why there might be some resistance,

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and figure out ways to work with, not force,

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people to make things accessible.

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So I'll finish my story

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by saying that in 2013,

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I was, yeah. - But before you go on,

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let me jump in,

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'cause you've already covered a whole lotta stuff,

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and I- (Jennison laughing)

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- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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- I've been having questions from the start here.

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So let me- - Go for it.

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Go for it. - just go back a little bit.

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- [Jennison] Yeah.

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- You know, one of the things that I think is interesting,

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where you talked about how you got

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into the project management phase for, I think you said,

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five years- - Yeah, mm-hmm.

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- six years, something like that.

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For a person like yourself who's blind from a young age,

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often it's difficult to get

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into positions where you're doing that kind of work,

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just because tools and processes

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in many organizations aren't set up to be able

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to participate fully, collaborate fully.

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And so, I think it's great that you were able

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to have that experience,

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but maybe you could talk a little bit about that,

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because I think that for a lot of people,

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you know, who come

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into a professional world being blind,

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it's extremely difficult to get into those situations.

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- Yeah, no, absolutely.

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In terms of project management,

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so I had gotten exposed to doing that in my work

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with the Adaptech Research Network.

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I project managed all

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of the early research that we conducted.

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And so, I got to learn Excel very quickly.

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In terms of using, Excel was the program I used

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to do project management.

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Microsoft Project back then wasn't where it is today.

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Although, I did end up starting to use project management

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toward the end of my tenure as an actual project manager.

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But so, I'd already had some of that exposure

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and skillset that I had built up

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while I was going to school.

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So when I became a project manager,

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when they built that role out and I did it,

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it was kind of like old hat.

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And the running joke I have about project management

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is a lot of it is about herding cats,

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because you're basically making sure everyone is on time,

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you know, with their deliverables, and things like that.

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And my job was to track those things.

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So it was a little bit of a hassling job,

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hassling people, haranguing people,

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finding out where they were,

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and for me to unblock them if they were blocked,

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and to identify risks or issues that might pop up,

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that might impact the project plans, and things like that.

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But a lot of it, I was able to do successfully using Excel

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and like, Microsoft Word for my own notes

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and stuff in project meetings.

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So it wasn't that I was using

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any higher tech software

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or anything like that because I was the one,

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I was managing the folks who were the ones

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who were the brains behind the work that had to get done.

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So, yeah, and like I said,

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what that did teach me, though, as a project manager,

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was those things like managing a project,

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and what are some of the things that weigh

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on timelines and things like that.

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So when I, now, in my current role,

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I have a better appreciation

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for when I'm sitting down with a project manager going,

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so you're gonna have to add accessibility

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into your timelines and such.

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I tell them, like, I know

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that this might be a challenge in the beginning

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because I've been a project manager,

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so I know what that's like.

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So you would get this automatic kinship when I'm talking

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with current project managers to say,

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I've been there, done that,

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let's work together to figure out how to make this work.

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- Well, and it sounds like, then,

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all that experience really worked well coming

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into the bank situation

Speaker: 00:19:12

because QA testing tends to be one

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of the first places people start working,

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just especially with having, you know,

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being blind from an early age like you were.

Speaker: 00:19:30

And that's kind of a natural place to start.

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But it sounds like you jumped right

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into doing a lot of program building,

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and that type of thing.

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- Yes, I was very fortunate that I was, you know,

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and all credit to my managers (clears throat)

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who, (clears throat) excuse me,

Speaker: 00:19:48

who clearly saw past the fact

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that I had a disability

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and treated me like everyone else

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and gave me the opportunity

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to get exposed to stuff like project management.

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And I didn't even know then

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that that would end up coming in handy later.

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And to your point around coming into accessibility,

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I did not, you know, I did not start off doing QA testing.

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I ended up getting thrown right into things,

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and starting to work directly with projects

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and doing more consulting work.

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And like I said, talking more to the designers

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and to the developers and stuff right away.

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Now, did that mean I didn't do my share of checking?

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You know, did people not ask me, hey,

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can you just check the accessibility of this or that?

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No, absolutely, I still did some of that.

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But more of my job was more

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on the consulting side of the house and that,

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when I moved into accessibility.

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- Well, then, kinda that brings us,

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so then, does that bring us next

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to your work with LinkedIn?

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Is that your next? - Sure, yeah.

Speaker: 00:20:59

Yeah, absolutely, so here I was,

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I was trucking along at RBC, minding my own business.

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And in 2012, I had the opportunity

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to travel to San Francisco on my way

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to the CSUN Conference in LA.

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And I had reached out to LinkedIn

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because I had been a big LinkedIn user starting in 2006.

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And it was more just emailing them to say,

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hey, you know, I'm a user,

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and if you folks would be interested

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in seeing how someone who uses

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a screen reader uses LinkedIn, I'd be happy to stop by.

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I'm gonna be in the Bay Area.

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I had no agenda

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or no eye on ever going to work at LinkedIn.

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I was being kept very happy at the bank.

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This was strictly just to do this stuff.

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I had already had the experience

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of going to other companies in the Toronto area

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to do what I call the accessibility talk,

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so this wasn't new to me.

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But I had been, like I said,

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I'd been a LinkedIn user since 2006.

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And I had actually had a situation

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where I had flagged an accessibility issue to them,

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and they were really fast at contacting me

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and finding a workaround.

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This was back in 2011 or 2012 as well.

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So I had already started a relationship with them.

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But anyway, so I went and visited,

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did an hour, walked through LinkedIn,

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and people asked questions and all that kinda stuff.

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And I went home, didn't think anything of it.

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I ended up going for a subsequent visit again

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when I was back in California and then went home.

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But then in 2013, I got a message on,

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actually, on my birthday,

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over Facebook of all things.

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And my manager, the person who'd become my manager,

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asked me if I would consider coming to LinkedIn

Speaker: 00:22:58

to help formalize their accessibility work.

Speaker: 00:23:02

So I was like, wow,

Speaker: 00:23:06

this is a bit nuts.

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I mean, I don't have a degree in engineering,

Speaker: 00:23:11

and here I am, potentially headed off to Silicon Valley.

Speaker: 00:23:15

And fast forward

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to November, 2013,

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and so, I started on November 11th.

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So I started my, I celebrated my eighth anniversary

Speaker: 00:23:28

with LinkedIn a couple weeks ago.

Speaker: 00:23:31

And yeah, I came to work at LinkedIn,

Speaker: 00:23:34

and I started off as a program manager.

Speaker: 00:23:38

I then became an engineering manager when I built

Speaker: 00:23:43

and was the first manager

Speaker: 00:23:45

of the Accessibility Engineering team.

Speaker: 00:23:47

I did that for three years.

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And then I switched over to my current role,

Speaker: 00:23:52

which is head of accessibility engineering evangelism.

Speaker: 00:23:55

So those are the Cliff Notes.

Speaker: 00:23:57

- All right, well. (Jennison laughing)

Speaker: 00:23:59

Oh, that's definitely a great resume of experience.

Speaker: 00:24:04

I wanna talk about your community building work

Speaker: 00:24:07

because you're definitely deeply involved in that.

Speaker: 00:24:12

I had already mentioned the Bay Area Accessibility group,

Speaker: 00:24:17

which, by the way, whereas a lotta groups, well,

Speaker: 00:24:20

in the olden days when we were doing physical meetings,

Speaker: 00:24:24

would tend to be, you know, relatively local.

Speaker: 00:24:26

But in the online time, you've been able

Speaker: 00:24:30

to do a lot of events that are cast pretty widely.

Speaker: 00:24:34

And then there's Global Accessibility Day,

Speaker: 00:24:39

which is just a wonderful event.

Speaker: 00:24:40

Maybe talk about- - Sure.

Speaker: 00:24:42

- talk about that day, how that originated,

Speaker: 00:24:46

and what people can expect from that.

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I know we, as Blink, participated-

Speaker: 00:24:51

- [Jennison] Yes.

Speaker: 00:24:52

- [Joe] in that this year as well.

Speaker: 00:24:53

- Yeah, so I'll talk about GAAD,

Speaker: 00:24:57

Global Accessibility Awareness Day,

Speaker: 00:24:59

just by way of background.

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So outside of my work that I was doing at RBC,

Speaker: 00:25:04

we're talking like 2011,

Speaker: 00:25:08

eh, 2010 to 2012, okay?

Speaker: 00:25:12

We'll put some timelines around that.

Speaker: 00:25:14

I was, in that period of time,

Speaker: 00:25:16

I was looking for ways to make the practice

Speaker: 00:25:21

of digital accessibility something that was approachable

Speaker: 00:25:24

or accessible to your everyday designer or developer.

Speaker: 00:25:29

I was fascinated about finding ways

Speaker: 00:25:31

to make that more interesting

Speaker: 00:25:33

and something that people would get excited

Speaker: 00:25:35

about and wanted to learn about.

Speaker: 00:25:37

So in 2009, I ended up attending something

Speaker: 00:25:40

called Accessibility Camp DC.

Speaker: 00:25:43

And it was an amazing event.

Speaker: 00:25:45

It was on a Saturday.

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And it was like, a bunch

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of people who didn't know each other,

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got together at this library and we formed like,

Speaker: 00:25:55

we basically built a schedule around accessibility topics,

Speaker: 00:25:58

and there were sessions.

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It was pretty chaotic in the beginning,

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but it became fairly organized.

Speaker: 00:26:03

This whole BarCamp movement apparently was a thing.

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I had just never been clued into it.

Speaker: 00:26:08

But at the end of that day,

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I was like, wow, this is amazing.

Speaker: 00:26:12

I need to bring something like this to Toronto.

Speaker: 00:26:14

So in 2010, I ended up hooking up

Speaker: 00:26:19

with a bunch of folks in Boston,

Speaker: 00:26:20

and we ran something similar in the Boston area,

Speaker: 00:26:23

Boston Accessibility Camp.

Speaker: 00:26:25

And then in 2011, I ran one of these in Toronto.

Speaker: 00:26:29

And thanks to the folks at OCAD University

Speaker: 00:26:32

and Jutta Treviranus and her team,

Speaker: 00:26:35

I was able to do that in Toronto.

Speaker: 00:26:37

It wasn't as chaotic as the one in DC.

Speaker: 00:26:40

I mean, people had to sign up,

Speaker: 00:26:41

and we put topics ahead of time and things,

Speaker: 00:26:45

but I was able to still fill a room of like, 200 people.

Speaker: 00:26:50

And we had different sessions

Speaker: 00:26:51

and different breakouts and fed them pizza,

Speaker: 00:26:55

and people were just excited

Speaker: 00:26:56

in learning about accessibility.

Speaker: 00:26:58

So I continued to run Accessibility Camp

Speaker: 00:27:01

for the rest of the time I was in Toronto.

Speaker: 00:27:04

But then, 2012,

Speaker: 00:27:10

oh, excuse me, 2011,

Speaker: 00:27:13

it was like, November of 2011,

Speaker: 00:27:16

I was uncharacteristically at home on a Saturday evening,

Speaker: 00:27:19

and I was trolling Twitter, as one does,

Speaker: 00:27:23

and I came upon this, well, I would learn later,

Speaker: 00:27:27

it was an automatically generated tweet.

Speaker: 00:27:29

And it said something like,

Speaker: 00:27:32

new blog post by Joe Devon,

Speaker: 00:27:36

accessibility must go mainstream now.

Speaker: 00:27:39

And I was like, whoa, what is this?

Speaker: 00:27:41

And so I activated the link and went to this blog post.

Speaker: 00:27:45

And I read this blog post

Speaker: 00:27:46

by someone who I didn't know named Joe Devon,

Speaker: 00:27:49

who is this web developer in Los Angeles,

Speaker: 00:27:52

who basically was ranting.

Speaker: 00:27:54

And he was talking about how, you know,

Speaker: 00:27:57

developers know nothing about accessibility.

Speaker: 00:28:00

They don't know what a screen reader is.

Speaker: 00:28:02

And ultimately, there needs to be, we need to have a day,

Speaker: 00:28:07

some sort of global day where people learn

Speaker: 00:28:09

about screen readers and accessibility.

Speaker: 00:28:13

And I went, wow, this is perfect.

Speaker: 00:28:15

Like, this is totally along the lines

Speaker: 00:28:19

of what I was interested in doing anyway.

Speaker: 00:28:21

So I posted to his blog,

Speaker: 00:28:25

and the rest is kinda history

Speaker: 00:28:28

because we then met by phone.

Speaker: 00:28:31

And I have to say that Joe and I are the two people

Speaker: 00:28:34

who shouldn't not have been involved

Speaker: 00:28:37

in building something like this,

Speaker: 00:28:38

'cause we were both overly committed as it was.

Speaker: 00:28:41

Joe was heavily invested in his network, in startups,

Speaker: 00:28:46

and things out in the Silicon Beach

Speaker: 00:28:49

or the Santa Monica area.

Speaker: 00:28:51

And I was busy.

Speaker: 00:28:53

I had my Adaptech Research Network work that I was doing.

Speaker: 00:28:56

I had my day job at the bank.

Speaker: 00:28:58

I was running Accessibility Camp.

Speaker: 00:29:01

I had started up a meetup in Toronto by 20,

Speaker: 00:29:04

when did we start, in 2012.

Speaker: 00:29:06

So I was fairly busy too,

Speaker: 00:29:08

but we decided that this was something interesting

Speaker: 00:29:10

to try at least.

Speaker: 00:29:13

And so we said, okay, let's choose a day.

Speaker: 00:29:15

So May 9th, okay.

Speaker: 00:29:18

And then let's just each of us contact our contacts

Speaker: 00:29:21

and see what we could do.

Speaker: 00:29:23

And so, in 2012, we launched GAAD,

Speaker: 00:29:28

or Global Accessibility Awareness Day,

Speaker: 00:29:30

simply based on us individually contacting people

Speaker: 00:29:33

in different cities and saying,

Speaker: 00:29:34

hey, would you be willing to do this?

Speaker: 00:29:37

We also posted things to social media,

Speaker: 00:29:39

which was still fairly early like,

Speaker: 00:29:41

in the day, social media was.

Speaker: 00:29:43

But we still did it, and there we started,

Speaker: 00:29:46

and GAAD started, Australia, India.

Speaker: 00:29:49

We had stuff in Wales, in the US,

Speaker: 00:29:53

and I know I'm missing countries,

Speaker: 00:29:55

but those are some of the big ones.

Speaker: 00:29:57

Canada, of course, I ran our first event,

Speaker: 00:29:59

which was the launch event

Speaker: 00:30:01

for the a11y Toronto Accessibility

Speaker: 00:30:06

and Inclusive Design Meetup group.

Speaker: 00:30:09

So yeah, so that's how it all started,

Speaker: 00:30:12

just from a tweet that I responded to and a blog post.

Speaker: 00:30:18

And then Joe and I just ran with it,

Speaker: 00:30:20

and here we are. (laughs)

Speaker: 00:30:22

- Yeah, and yeah, just for people

Speaker: 00:30:25

that may not be familiar with Global Days,

Speaker: 00:30:28

there are a lot of disciplines

Speaker: 00:30:30

within the tech industry that have had

Speaker: 00:30:32

to pick one day a year

Speaker: 00:30:35

to celebrate that particular practice,

Speaker: 00:30:38

and so, you kinda set that one up for this event.

Speaker: 00:30:42

And it then creates an opportunity

Speaker: 00:30:46

for people to start,

Speaker: 00:30:50

they host their own events-

Speaker: 00:30:51

- Absolutely, absolutely. - around the world.

Speaker: 00:30:53

So the point is it's more

Speaker: 00:30:55

or less decentralized the ideas

Speaker: 00:30:57

for people all around the world

Speaker: 00:30:59

to get involved, host their own events.

Speaker: 00:31:01

And then you provide a portal that kind of gives

Speaker: 00:31:05

the overall agenda of what's available,

Speaker: 00:31:08

going on in accessibility. - Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker: 00:31:10

So if folks go to globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org,

Speaker: 00:31:14

right now, we're accepting events for next year.

Speaker: 00:31:18

And Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Speaker: 00:31:19

from our early days where we just chose a random date,

Speaker: 00:31:22

we have now standardized on the third Thursday

Speaker: 00:31:26

of May is when GAAD happens.

Speaker: 00:31:29

And if I could just real quick,

Speaker: 00:31:31

this year was our 10th running of GAAD.

Speaker: 00:31:34

Can't believe it.

Speaker: 00:31:35

But the one thing that Joe and I did

Speaker: 00:31:38

is we launched this year the GAAD Foundation,

Speaker: 00:31:42

which basically brings year-round energy

Speaker: 00:31:46

to what GAAD started.

Speaker: 00:31:48

And the mission of the GAAD Foundation is

Speaker: 00:31:52

to disrupt the culture

Speaker: 00:31:56

of digital product and technology development

Speaker: 00:32:00

to include accessibility as a core requirement.

Speaker: 00:32:03

And that's a bit of a mouthful,

Speaker: 00:32:05

but essentially, you know,

Speaker: 00:32:06

we're tired of people saying like, oh, yeah,

Speaker: 00:32:09

of course, we're thinking about accessibility.

Speaker: 00:32:11

And then yeah, we're gonna add accessibility.

Speaker: 00:32:14

And we are gonna disrupt the culture to make sure

Speaker: 00:32:18

that accessibility becomes that first-class citizen

Speaker: 00:32:21

alongside things like security and privacy.

Speaker: 00:32:24

And it just becomes an everyday piece

Speaker: 00:32:28

of how people develop digital products and technology.

Speaker: 00:32:31

Is it gonna happen overnight?

Speaker: 00:32:32

Absolutely not, we're very aware of it,

Speaker: 00:32:35

but we're gonna use the momentum of GAAD

Speaker: 00:32:37

and all of the connections

Speaker: 00:32:39

and things that we've made over the years through that.

Speaker: 00:32:42

But we're gonna really be focused

Speaker: 00:32:44

on reaching out to the larger community

Speaker: 00:32:48

outside of the accessibility community

Speaker: 00:32:51

and the community of people with disabilities.

Speaker: 00:32:54

If we're gonna make this work,

Speaker: 00:32:55

we need your average everyday Joe

Speaker: 00:32:58

or Joanne designer, developer, product manager

Speaker: 00:33:04

to be exposed to and to be thinking about accessibility.

Speaker: 00:33:08

So if you go to GAAD,

Speaker: 00:33:11

G-A-A-D, .foundation, that's our website.

Speaker: 00:33:15

And you can read about the different programs

Speaker: 00:33:17

that we have underneath there

Speaker: 00:33:18

that we're gonna be launching

Speaker: 00:33:19

over the next couple of years that are gonna get us

Speaker: 00:33:22

to that place where the everyday designer,

Speaker: 00:33:26

developer, program manager, product manager,

Speaker: 00:33:30

startup person, everyone will be exposed

Speaker: 00:33:34

in such a big way to digital access and inclusion.

Speaker: 00:33:39

- Well, I'll make sure that we also include the links

Speaker: 00:33:42

in the show notes so that people

Speaker: 00:33:44

have that available. - Thank you.

Speaker: 00:33:46

- They'll be able to just click on that

Speaker: 00:33:47

and be able to get that.

Speaker: 00:33:48

And, Jennison, I wanna thank you for taking the time

Speaker: 00:33:53

to just give us all this detail about your lived life,

Speaker: 00:33:58

your work life, and community building life,

Speaker: 00:34:01

and look forward to meeting you again

Speaker: 00:34:04

in person when we can get back to that once again.

Speaker: 00:34:08

- Absolutely, thank you so much.

Speaker: 00:34:10

And for those listening

Speaker: 00:34:13

or watching that wanna follow me on Twitter,

Speaker: 00:34:16

you can follow me @Jennison, J-E-N-N-I-S-O-N.

Speaker: 00:34:21

And I also tweet accessibility jobs

Speaker: 00:34:24

'cause there's a lot more happening.

Speaker: 00:34:26

But I tweet using @a11yjobs.

Speaker: 00:34:31

And I also tweet events on digital accessibility

Speaker: 00:34:34

using @a11yevents on Twitter.

Speaker: 00:34:38

So that's just some more stuff I do

Speaker: 00:34:40

to help people learn about what's happening out there.

Speaker: 00:34:44

And you can always find me, of course, on LinkedIn.

Speaker: 00:34:47

Happy to connect, happy to talk more.

Speaker: 00:34:50

- All right, thanks a lot, Jennison.

Speaker: 00:34:51

Bye-bye. - Thanks, Joe, thank you.