Episode 9
Getting Everyone to Understand That They Play a Role
Julie Romanowski, State Farm, Senior Digital Accessibility Specialist
Starting out as a web developer, Julie is now supports a wide range of accessibility activities with State Farm. She takes about the efforts to help executive leadership understand the need for a digital accessibility team. Her team provides training and individual teams work on accessibility for their own roles. That include a focus on communication documents and video media.
Mentioned in this episode:
Info about Accessibility at Blink
Transcript
(dramatic cello music)
Speaker:- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,
Speaker:The People Behind the Progress.
Speaker:I'm Joe Welinske, the creator and host of this series,
Speaker:and as an accessibility professional myself,
Speaker:I find it very interesting
Speaker:as to how others have found their way into this profession.
Speaker:So let's meet one of those people right now
Speaker:and hear about their journey.
Speaker:All right, well, here we go.
Speaker:Starting on another episode
Speaker:where I get to talk with an accessibility practitioner.
Speaker:And today I'm speaking with Julie Romanowski.
Speaker:Hello, Julie, how are you doing today?
Speaker:- Oh, I'm well, thank you.
Speaker:How are you doing Joe?
Speaker:- Oh, I'm pretty good.
Speaker:It's pouring rain outside
Speaker:of my home office in Vashon Island
Speaker:which is near Blink's headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker:Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:- I am in central Illinois, a little town called Mahomet.
Speaker:It's not too far from Champaign Urbana
Speaker:where the University of Illinois is located.
Speaker:- I've been to Mahomet
Speaker:'cause I went to the University of Illinois
Speaker:in Champaign Urbana. - Oh, did you?
Speaker:- Yeah.
Speaker:So yeah, definitely familiar with that.
Speaker:Yeah, so long time ago,
Speaker:but actually I was just there recently
Speaker:so still fun to be able to reconnect with that.
Speaker:Well, it's great to be able
Speaker:to have this chance to chat with you about your work.
Speaker:One of the best places to start
Speaker:would be if you just kind of describe
Speaker:what you're up to right now,
Speaker:what your job consists of,
Speaker:and then we can kind of go back in time after that.
Speaker:- Okay, currently
Speaker:I am the senior digital accessibility specialist
Speaker:at State Farm.
Speaker:Have a team of about 12 State Farm employees
Speaker:and about 10 contract employees who help us with testing.
Speaker:I am in charge of the accessibility training
Speaker:for the entire enterprise.
Speaker:I act as a kind of a mentor/supervisor for my team members.
Speaker:I help train them and then I work to train
Speaker:as many of people as we can at State Farm.
Speaker:I also work in the assistive technology field
Speaker:where I help our associates who have disabilities,
Speaker:help them with getting either assistive technology
Speaker:or setting up their work station or work areas,
Speaker:desks, things like that.
Speaker:My specialty for assistive technology
Speaker:is for vision disabilities and cognitive disabilities.
Speaker:- Well, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate
Speaker:and I'd like to check in with you
Speaker:about some more of the details on that,
Speaker:but one of the things I like to do with this series
Speaker:is you look the journey that people have taken
Speaker:as they find their way into the accessibility profession.
Speaker:So maybe kind of go back in time and what was,
Speaker:where did accessibility first kinda enter into your life?
Speaker:- Yeah, all right.
Speaker:Many, many years ago, I can't even remember the year,
Speaker:but I was a lead for a Java,
Speaker:we called it Java enablement team.
Speaker:We were helping projects get their Java applications set up,
Speaker:their environments, things like that.
Speaker:I have been a Java developer for many, many, many years so.
Speaker:But we had this framework that was used by the enterprise
Speaker:and some people who have disabilities at State Farm
Speaker:had reached out to our team saying,
Speaker:there are issues, we can't do certain things, we can't,
Speaker:maybe some fields, form fields didn't work as expected
Speaker:or other things.
Speaker:So we have had this assistive technology
Speaker:services and support team at State Farm for the past,
Speaker:I believe 26 years, it may have been a little longer.
Speaker:And I went to that team and was just talking to them
Speaker:and asking them if they could work with us
Speaker:and help us to first identify what the issues are
Speaker:and then to fix the problems.
Speaker:And one of the team members was actually a blind employee.
Speaker:He no longer works for State Farm,
Speaker:he went to work for another company,
Speaker:but he was one who helped me quite a bit
Speaker:and helped my team to address issues
Speaker:so that the framework that was being used
Speaker:by the entire enterprise
Speaker:would not be preventing people with disabilities
Speaker:from using it.
Speaker:And after I did that,
Speaker:another person on the assistive technology team
Speaker:decided to go to another team
Speaker:and he recommended that they asked me if I was interested
Speaker:because they didn't really have anyone
Speaker:with a development background
Speaker:and they thought it would be good
Speaker:to bring someone in who had the development background.
Speaker:And I may not have known much
Speaker:about accessibility at the time,
Speaker:but I was a quick learner
Speaker:and I was already starting to understand
Speaker:some of the things that they needed,
Speaker:the knowledge they needed to have to do their jobs.
Speaker:So they asked me and I jumped at the chance.
Speaker:I was interested in learning something new
Speaker:and I really got to know the guys on the team
Speaker:and we became good friends.
Speaker:So I thought this would be great.
Speaker:And started working with them focusing on,
Speaker:two of us were focusing on the digital content at State Farm
Speaker:and testing for accessibility
Speaker:and working with the project teams to fix issues.
Speaker:The other two were specifically focused on
Speaker:our associates with disabilities and helping them.
Speaker:However, all of the funding went to assistive technologies.
Speaker:So for the digital accessibility side of things,
Speaker:we had no funding at all.
Speaker:And we were trying to get this started,
Speaker:get it where people would understand
Speaker:why digital content needed to be made accessible,
Speaker:they would be on board with it,
Speaker:they would be willing and able
Speaker:to fix any accessibility issues with their content.
Speaker:But without funding, it's hard to get things done so,
Speaker:so I'm rather I guess persistent
Speaker:or some people all me bullheaded so, but I would-
Speaker:- If I could just jump in there for a sec.
Speaker:- [Julie] Yeah.
Speaker:- I think it's kind of important to highlight or underline
Speaker:that the work that you're doing was for,
Speaker:supporting internal needs of State Farm employees.
Speaker:A lot of us in the accessibility profession
Speaker:do a lot of work on the customer side
Speaker:with the making sure that people are able
Speaker:to process webpages and applications with assistive devices,
Speaker:yet, then in so many organizations,
Speaker:there's not the infrastructure in place
Speaker:for everyone across the spectrum to adequately participate
Speaker:as employees in the organization.
Speaker:So it sounds like State Farm
Speaker:was really progressive about that.
Speaker:You mentioned I think 26 years it had been going on.
Speaker:- Well, they were progressive about that.
Speaker:However, they didn't quite understand
Speaker:that we could provide associates with disabilities
Speaker:the best most state of the art
Speaker:assistive technology available,
Speaker:but if the web application or webpage or something like that
Speaker:has not been designed with accessibility in mind,
Speaker:it's not going to make any difference at all.
Speaker:So that was something it took a while
Speaker:to get executive leadership to understand.
Speaker:And as I mentioned, I'm rather bullheaded and I'm not shy.
Speaker:So I had no issue with tracking leadership down
Speaker:and giving them my two minute elevator speech
Speaker:about why we needed a digital accessibility team.
Speaker:- Well as with so many things,
Speaker:getting the buy in from the C-suite
Speaker:has a lot to do with how we move forward.
Speaker:So what was the next chapter
Speaker:as you developed your career with accessibility?
Speaker:- Finally, I mean, it takes a lot of work
Speaker:and a lot of fighting
Speaker:to finally get executive leadership to listen.
Speaker:And I was fortunate enough
Speaker:that they actually thought
Speaker:we were already doing these things
Speaker:and they didn't realize how bad
Speaker:the accessibility was of our digital content,
Speaker:but I got leadership on board
Speaker:and they assigned various directors to work with my team
Speaker:to start building a digital accessibility team.
Speaker:And the first thing we did was,
Speaker:if you're familiar with Ontario
Speaker:when they had the accessibility,
Speaker:they passed the Accessibility
Speaker:for Ontarians with Disabilities Act,
Speaker:first thing we did where we were able to bring
Speaker:an accessibility vendor in
Speaker:to test our State Farm Canada site.
Speaker:And as expected, there were so many issues
Speaker:which really got leadership's attention
Speaker:and they saw that in the thinking the,
Speaker:wow, we have all these problems, we could end up,
Speaker:the litigation, the fines, things like that,
Speaker:that really got their attention.
Speaker:So we were able to get more funding for
Speaker:to start a project that then worked
Speaker:with the different areas at State Farm
Speaker:who were responsible for the State Farm Canada content
Speaker:so that we could at least get it up to
Speaker:the web content accessibility guidelines,
Speaker:WCAG 2.0 Level A requirement at the time.
Speaker:And that I think Ontario and AOTA
Speaker:were probably the the main reason
Speaker:why we were able to start
Speaker:our new digital accessibility team
Speaker:and we were able to get the funding we needed.
Speaker:But after that,
Speaker:because for so long, it was just leadership was thinking,
Speaker:oh, we don't wanna get sued.
Speaker:What do we need to do?
Speaker:And at the time it was like,
Speaker:what do we need to do to get by?
Speaker:And that can be very frustrating
Speaker:because just doing enough to get by
Speaker:is still really leaving out
Speaker:a whole bunch of people with disabilities.
Speaker:- You mentioned,
Speaker:then you had this digital accessibility team,
Speaker:so can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker:I mean, different organizations
Speaker:have accessibility set up in different ways.
Speaker:Some are broadly across the enterprise,
Speaker:others are people within departments and divisions
Speaker:that are passionate about it
Speaker:and kind of make it happen in their area.
Speaker:How does it work at State Farm?
Speaker:- We're kind of a hub and spoke organization.
Speaker:We have our main core accessibility team, the experts,
Speaker:and we have been working for several years
Speaker:to train all of the different areas,
Speaker:all the different departments, teams throughout State Farm
Speaker:to learn how to address accessibility
Speaker:for whatever their product is that they support.
Speaker:So we've created,
Speaker:helped develop little kind of mini accessibility teams
Speaker:throughout the enterprise,
Speaker:and we provide a lot of help, information, things like that.
Speaker:But now, we expect these teams
Speaker:to take a greater role now in accessibility.
Speaker:So they're doing pretty good.
Speaker:There's some that are a little further advanced than others
Speaker:that have built up their accessibility teams
Speaker:and have met like WCAG 2.0 AA requirements.
Speaker:There are others that are still trying
Speaker:to fix level A requirements.
Speaker:We don't have any
Speaker:that aren't doing anything for accessibility.
Speaker:All of them understand that this is what we need to do.
Speaker:And State Farm actually made it a enterprise standard
Speaker:that our products must meet,
Speaker:right now, we are focused on meeting WCAG 2.0 AA,
Speaker:and then starting next year, we will be focused
Speaker:on WCAG 2.1 AA.
Speaker:- And then within individual product groups
Speaker:or project groups, is it the project manager
Speaker:or the product manager responsible for making sure
Speaker:that everything is in place for accessibility
Speaker:or are individuals responsible
Speaker:for making sure that they understand their role
Speaker:in the accessibility process?
Speaker:- Yeah, the product or project manager,
Speaker:they're responsible for making sure
Speaker:just overall accessibility is being addressed
Speaker:and providing the information
Speaker:that their team members may need,
Speaker:which they would come to us and we could help with training,
Speaker:guiding them on providing suggestions on coding,
Speaker:things like that.
Speaker:But the project manager would handle it overall.
Speaker:And then the individuals like the design team
Speaker:would be focused on accessible design.
Speaker:Content creators would be focused on making sure
Speaker:that the content is accessible, developers, the code,
Speaker:testers, all that, they're all involved.
Speaker:And recently, it's been the past year now
Speaker:where we're not just focused on,
Speaker:when I hear a lot of accessibility people talking,
Speaker:they're focused on like webpages, web applications,
Speaker:mobile maybe,
Speaker:so many of 'em aren't really focused on the,
Speaker:for us, the huge amount of communications
Speaker:that are all electronic documents,
Speaker:emails, Word documents, PowerPoints, spreadsheets,
Speaker:PDFs, all that stuff.
Speaker:There's so much of that.
Speaker:They're not focused on that.
Speaker:They're not focused on accessible video.
Speaker:So that's something in the past couple of years
Speaker:we've really gotten the enterprise to understand
Speaker:this is important and we do have,
Speaker:gotten to the point I think
Speaker:where everyone understands that they play a role.
Speaker:So if you're just creating a word document to share,
Speaker:you're creating an executive report to share,
Speaker:you have a role in accessibility.
Speaker:If you're someone else that is planning a webinar,
Speaker:something like that, you have a role as well.
Speaker:And it seems to be working good.
Speaker:- Something you were just talking about,
Speaker:this part of correspondence,
Speaker:and then I'm thinking about my own interaction
Speaker:with insurance companies and,
Speaker:I'm moving my content to the insurance provider
Speaker:as much as they're sending me information.
Speaker:I never really thought about
Speaker:like from your customers sending information
Speaker:into your system,
Speaker:I imagine that probably a lot of that isn't accessible.
Speaker:And so is that something that comes into the analysis
Speaker:of how to be able to deal with the things that are incoming?
Speaker:- Yeah, we're trying to figure that out.
Speaker:We really can't control how they share the information.
Speaker:Sometimes I know I have received PDF documents
Speaker:that a customer sent to an agent or agent staff
Speaker:and we have several agents and staff members
Speaker:who have vision disabilities.
Speaker:There are some who are legally blind,
Speaker:there are others who have light sensitivity issues,
Speaker:others who maybe, one man, macular degeneration
Speaker:so he's not able to see certain things,
Speaker:and they'll use, most of them use a screen reader.
Speaker:Most of them use what,
Speaker:if you're aware of is zoom text.
Speaker:We have ZoomText and JAWS,
Speaker:and they'll use ZoomText
Speaker:because unless they're legally blinded or can't see it all,
Speaker:they won't be using JAWS,
Speaker:but we need to make sure
Speaker:that the they can get the information
Speaker:from the customer document using ZoomText.
Speaker:And there are times when they can send the information
Speaker:to me or one of my team members
Speaker:and we can do some quick fixes and then send it back
Speaker:and then they're able to get all the information.
Speaker:There are other times
Speaker:where there's just really nothing you can do,
Speaker:there is no way you can make it accessible,
Speaker:and then we would have to talk with the agent
Speaker:or whoever it is, and provide the information
Speaker:and help them understand a little more
Speaker:of what the customer's sharing.
Speaker:- Well, with all of your many years
Speaker:specializing in this area,
Speaker:you've probably seen a lot of,
Speaker:well you've certainly seen a lot of technology developments
Speaker:over the years and the evolution
Speaker:of the web accessibility initiative information,
Speaker:but kind of as you look back or look forward,
Speaker:are there areas that you think maybe haven't moved
Speaker:as quickly as you you thought they would've years ago?
Speaker:Are there any certain areas that are,
Speaker:like particular initiatives that State Farm is looking
Speaker:at trying to accomplish moving into the future?
Speaker:- Well, one of ours is that it's so slow,
Speaker:but when you've got huge systems,
Speaker:it takes a long time to get things addressed,
Speaker:but we have something that our claims people use
Speaker:and the developers have made great strides
Speaker:where the vast majority of it is accessible.
Speaker:There are still legacy portions that they're working on.
Speaker:There's still some other areas that they're working on
Speaker:when you're talking about this program for
Speaker:like the claim specialists.
Speaker:And there may be,
Speaker:like I think there are at least 150 applications
Speaker:that are used for that.
Speaker:And it takes a long time
Speaker:to be able to fix the issues in there,
Speaker:especially when a lot of 'em
Speaker:hadn't been updated for so long,
Speaker:it requires a complete overhaul.
Speaker:And that is something that,
Speaker:I tell our folks
Speaker:and when I talk to others in the accessibility community
Speaker:is you can't expect everything to happen overnight.
Speaker:You may think it's easy,
Speaker:but there can be so many factors
Speaker:that make it so it is not an easy fix.
Speaker:Something for example, would be color contrast.
Speaker:People would think, oh yeah,
Speaker:you just go in and make a change and it's fixed,
Speaker:but when you're talking like financial documentation,
Speaker:certain insurance documentation, things like that,
Speaker:visual changes like that for like color contrast
Speaker:has to be approved
Speaker:by either the insurance board of the state
Speaker:or other government agencies.
Speaker:That takes a long time.
Speaker:There are other things that maybe the legacy application
Speaker:was developed in such a way that to make those,
Speaker:what people would think are simple changes
Speaker:would mean to just start over and rebuild it.
Speaker:- Well, in all the time that you've been doing this work,
Speaker:I'm sure you've had to lean into a lot of resources
Speaker:to educate yourself and your team and others.
Speaker:What are some of the things that you you do today to
Speaker:help others learn about accessibility
Speaker:and how it fits in with what they do?
Speaker:Are there onboarding programs or kind of how is it set up
Speaker:at your organization?
Speaker:- Onboarding, I know they were going to add some things.
Speaker:I haven't seen recently how it's been updated,
Speaker:but we do have training.
Speaker:There are some simple accessibility information
Speaker:within like developer training when they first start.
Speaker:We have a whole lot of training available
Speaker:that we've been providing as webinars online.
Speaker:We're able to reach a whole lot of people that way.
Speaker:We used to try bringing in vendors to do the training,
Speaker:but it was very expensive and you could only reach
Speaker:maybe 25, 30 people at a time for this.
Speaker:Doing it online, we're able to reach
Speaker:200, 300 people per session.
Speaker:We get a lot of people joining that way.
Speaker:We've created training modules,
Speaker:I've created a lot of 'em just as PowerPoint
Speaker:but have added detailed speaker notes and other things
Speaker:so that I can just pass these over
Speaker:to these accessibility teams in each area
Speaker:and they can use those and basically read the script
Speaker:and help train their people that way.
Speaker:We have video on demand that people can use.
Speaker:We have, let me think, all the other things.
Speaker:We haven't gotten to the point yet where
Speaker:just some kind of high level accessibility knowledge
Speaker:would be required like other compliance training
Speaker:but that is one thing I'm working towards,
Speaker:where people would at least have a general understanding
Speaker:of disabilities, people with disabilities
Speaker:and the importance of accessibility.
Speaker:- Well, it certainly sounds like
Speaker:you have a robust accessibility team
Speaker:and activities going on where you work
Speaker:so that's great to hear.
Speaker:I want to thank you for taking the time
Speaker:to share your journey into the profession
Speaker:and help inspire others to get involved as well.
Speaker:- Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Joe.
Speaker:- All right, thanks a lot.
Speaker:Bye bye, Julie.
