Inspiring Others to Embrace Accessibility Is the Promising Thing

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(spirited hip-hop music)

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- Hello.

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This is "Digital Accessibility:

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The People Behind the Progress."

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

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And as an accessibility professional myself,

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I find it very interesting as to how others

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have found their way into this profession.

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So let's meet one of those people right now

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and hear about their journey.

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(spirited hip-hop music continues)

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All right, well, we are ready to get going

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with another podcast episode

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with accessibility professionals.

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And today, I'm pleased to be talking with Lucy Greco.

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Hello, Lucy. How are you today?

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- Good, thanks. How about you?

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- Well, it's pouring down rain in the Seattle area

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where I'm at with my home office.

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Where are you talking to us from?

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- I'm talking to you from sunny,

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beautiful, sunny California,

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and we're sitting here at 21 degrees Celsius today.

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(Joe chuckles)

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- All right.

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Well, you definitely have a little bit of better weather

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than I do right now, but it's great to have you,

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to chat with you about your experiences with accessibility.

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But why don't we just start with you talking

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about what you're involved with right now,

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your position and the type of work that you do?

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- Sounds great.

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So I am the accessibility evangelist for UC Berkeley.

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What that means...

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It's actually electronic accessibility evangelist.

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What that means is I help people on campus try

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and find ways to make any of our digital assets

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as accessible as possible.

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Everything from websites, applications.

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We look at the photocopiers.

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We'll look at all kinds of devices

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that people might need to interact with

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and I help make recommendations

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to make those things more accessible

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for people with disabilities.

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- Well, I definitely wanna check in

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and get more details about some of the things

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that you're working on at the university.

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But one of the main objectives of this series

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is to find out how people ended up

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in the professional area of accessibility,

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where they are today.

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So maybe you could take me back

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and let me know about your own experiences,

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kind of step through things to where you are today.

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- So it's a really natural fit for me in accessibility.

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I am a extreme technology nerd.

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I love technology. I love tech in general.

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I'm an early adopter of early tech,

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of new toys and new tools.

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And I'm totally blind myself.

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So that early adopterness ends up paying off

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maybe only 5% of the time.

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So the rest of the time, I'm having to work to try

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and find accommodations, workarounds,

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and accessibility fixes.

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But technology has really been a huge asset

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to me in general.

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So when I was in junior high, I didn't have any technology.

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And I was having to do my papers

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by writing them up in Braille,

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then sitting down at a typewriter

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with a sighted person behind me to see how it was going.

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And that sighted person would tell me if I made a mistake

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and read off what I was typing

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just to make sure I was typing the right thing.

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And we had a rule that if I made three mistakes

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that were fixed with liquid paper,

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we'd have to tear it up and start the sheet over again.

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So needless to say, my papers were terribly short

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when I was in junior high,

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and it took a lot longer to write them than everyone else.

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So everybody else might get three papers

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between September and December.

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I got maybe one done,

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and it was always the most dreadful thing.

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I hated having to write something up

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for someone more than anything else.

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And then they gave me a computer.

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And it was an old Apple IIe.

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And at that time, it was even old.

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And oh, my God, it just liberate me completely.

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I went from taking three to four months to write something

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because I had to wait for the person to show up

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to help me proofread it

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to being able to do it in the same amount of time

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as everybody else.

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So where it would take me two, three months

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to do a five, 10-page paper,

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I could now do a five, 10-page paper in a month,

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like everyone else.

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So it was really exciting.

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I became addicted to that whole idea of having a computer.

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It was something that helped me do things independently

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and let me get around on my own through things

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that I always had to depend on someone else for.

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So I was the first person I knew who had a cell phone.

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I was the first person I knew who started buying robots

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to do different types of activities in my house.

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I am a complete technology hoarder and a technology nerd.

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- Well, it's interesting to hear your story about that.

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And certainly, technology has made a lot of advances

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in accessibility possible over the past 20 years or so.

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But as you were getting involved in it,

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you mentioned that you are a nerd, as you said,

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and so you had an affinity for that type of thing.

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I imagine that

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that maybe put you a little bit ahead early on

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before tools were widely accessible

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where you're able to figure things out

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and maybe that just wasn't as possible

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for others that didn't have the same technical know-how.

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- Exactly.

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So when I was in college,

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I would help all the other disabled students figure out

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how to use a computer so they could get the same advantages.

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And then I naturally fell into doing consulting work

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where I was hired to train people

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on computers for several years.

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And then naturally, I got hired by the university

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to help disabled students learn how to use computers.

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I did skills assessments for them,

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and helped them find the right technology

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for them as people with disabilities.

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And a lot of my work was helping them figure out

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how to use the tools that weren't accessible on campus.

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So a natural progression was changing to being the person

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who systemically changed those tools

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so students didn't have to have accommodations

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and remediations.

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So going from each student having to be taught

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how to accommodate themselves

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to having a tool that was accessible from the start

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was a huge change.

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And that's where I've been for the past,

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well, nine years now.

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- Well, let's go back to where you mentioned,

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in college, you were the person helping others

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to be able to use their computers and things like that.

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Was that where you first started to think

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about accessibility as being a career

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beyond just you using those tools for your own purposes?

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- I think it was more I was doing it from friend to friend,

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so I wasn't thinking of it as a career.

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But when I got offered my first contract,

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which was maybe a year or two before I graduated,

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to actually teach someone,

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that's when I realized, hey, somebody's gonna pay me

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to teach somebody how to use a computer.

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And it was a really fun contract.

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And I had a lot of...

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I really enjoyed doing it.

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Was a woman who had an acquired brain injury,

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and I was teaching her how to use Microsoft Word.

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It was a natural fit.

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- Mm-hmm.

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And so then you mentioned you

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were doing some consulting work.

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So what was the nature of that?

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Were you doing projects

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to help organizations upgrade their software?

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Or what was involved with that?

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- I was mostly working on new product reviews

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for accessibility.

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So I would be called in by a company

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who was trying to create a new call center software for,

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that they would be selling.

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So I had to review the call center software

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and make sure it worked with a screen reader,

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or I would review webpages

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to make sure that they were accessible.

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Just different things like that, that kind of consulting.

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But mostly, the kind of work I was doing

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before I started at the university was teaching,

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working with a person with one disability or another

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and getting them up and running with the computer

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and teaching them the skills they needed

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to get, be independent.

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- Well, you mentioned some of the things

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that you do at the university now,

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and you mentioned that most of the focus

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is on the electronic side of things.

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That's still a big area

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to be able to support at universities.

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So what are some of the areas

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that you have to be responsible for at the university?

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- Everything from HR applications

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to student learning systems

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to library databases and resources.

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One of my favorite projects that I've worked on

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in the past couple years was getting scanners

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in the library to replace the photocopiers

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and making sure that those scanners could be used

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by people with disabilities,

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everything from making sure that a person with a wheelchair

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could actually reach the controls on the device

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and that a blind person had a screen reader

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on the device automatically

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so that they could use it to scan documents

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so that they could read them.

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- Well, I've taught at the University of Washington

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on a part-time and a full-time basis

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at times for a long time, and so I'm familiar

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with how they do support accessibility there.

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And I know that there are a lot of issues

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with funding for adequate equipment,

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and also, just the procurement process

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for a bureaucracy can be kind of stifling.

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How have you been able to find your way

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through those minefields?

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- It's brutal.

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I mean, let's not hold back any punches here.

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It's absolutely brutal to be in an academic situation

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for a public university that has no funding.

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It's an uphill battle convincing people

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that the work needs to be done

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and the time needs to be spent,

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and most of all, the money needs to be spent.

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So I am the only person doing what I do

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in the entire University of California system.

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There's a couple of other people

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who don't have anywhere near the same skill set

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that are doing it slightly at different campuses,

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but they're not doing it full time

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and none of them have a disability.

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And frankly, it needs to have somebody with a disability

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to understand how people with disabilities work with things

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and understand the pain

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and help people find the right sweet point

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for using technology.

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- Well, it definitely sounds like there's a lot

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of obstacles in the way there.

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Are there some places where you feel you've been able

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to make some progress or some wins

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or things that you're encouraged about moving forward?

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- I love seeing people become excited about accessibility

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and kinda blossoming.

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I mean, my title is evangelist because, number one,

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the priority thing for me to do

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is to have other people become passionate

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about accessibility and think about it in their work.

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So taking somebody who's working on a website

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and bringing them to the point

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where they're the ones initiating the accessibility

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and thinking about it.

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I've been working with somebody

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who works on our phone system.

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And the guy keeps coming to me over and over again,

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going, "Does this look accessible to you?

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Does this look accessible to you?"

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And he's working on all kinds of different things

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that I would never have even dreamed of,

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like making sure that the call center phones,

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a person can actually read the caller ID on it

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and things like that.

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And it's just, it's beautiful.

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I mean, that, to me, getting somebody inspired

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to be accessible is the really promising thing.

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The funding, the budget,

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all that stuff definitely gets me down.

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- Are there any things you're working on right now

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or coming up in the future

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that you're particularly excited about

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or looking forward to working on?

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- I am doing some data mining right now

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of our automated testing tool software.

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So I'm working on looking at ways to discover

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what the things people are doing wrong the most are,

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and then coming up with trainings on how to fix that.

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So we're actually going through

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and looking at our automated accessibility testing tool

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and we're creating an application

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that kinda goes through the 4,000 websites

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that are enrolled in that tool,

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and to see what is it that everyone's doing wrong

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so that I can start creating a training regimen

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for people that covers those things

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that everyone's getting wrong.

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And I don't know, that's kind of boring,

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but it really is exciting to know

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that I'm gonna have a huge impact

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just by using a little bit of data.

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- Yeah, no, it's really great hearing about that.

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Well, one of the questions I pose or kind of a comment

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that I've done in other episodes of this series

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is just mention that I've been working

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with accessibility for about 22, 23 years now.

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And when I look back on when I first started doing that,

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if I was back at that time 20-some years ago,

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I would've thought we would've come farther

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than we have at this point.

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On the other hand, there's been an amazing amount

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of things that have changed over the past years.

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From your perspective, what does it feel like?

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Does it feel like we've moved along at a reasonable pace?

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Or are we ahead or behind?

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Or kinda where do you feel about that?

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- I think we still have a lot of education to do.

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I think we're getting closer to actually being at a point

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where we can say we've made some progress.

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But the problem is, is people will create things

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because we are a very artistic, creative...

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We think, we build, we invent.

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But if we don't teach those people

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who have those tendencies to be the builders,

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and the inventors, and the creators about disability,

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and it's not about accessibility we have to teach them,

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it's about disability we have to teach them,

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we are going to continue to stay behind that eight ball.

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I mean, I can look at my cell phone

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and find at least one unlabeled button

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in every single app I'm using.

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We're still got a long, long way to go.

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Yes, we're able to do a lot more today

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than we were 22 years ago and 35 years ago

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when I started working in this industry, most definitely.

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But in other ways,

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we're still really blocking people with disabilities.

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I mean, let's look at the whole pandemic

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that we've had to just come through.

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There are still very few databases of COVID information

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and visualizations that are inaccesible to people.

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I don't know from day to day what the numbers are

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in the United States because all the pages

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that give me that information

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have completely neglected to do that accessibly.

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There are ways to do it accessibly,

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but the people who are creating them didn't think

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about disability, and they just wanted

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to get this information up as quickly as possible.

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And now the information is out there and it's too late.

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I mean, we can't go back and fix it.

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We could, but there's no initiative or willpower to do that.

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- One of the things that I find it's kinda difficult for me

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as I try to evangelize it with some of the clients

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that are interested in designing new projects

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aren't always ready to invest in accessibility.

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And when it happens, often, it's about compliance issues.

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And I think it's not well-understood that there potentially

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is a huge return on investment

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by making our products available to everyone-

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- Exactly. - So they can participate

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in that market.

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- Exactly.

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I'm recording a review of a product today

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that actually did a really good job of accessibility,

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except the one thing that they missed was the store.

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So in the store

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where you can actually buy different components

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for the tool and upgrade your device,

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they neglected to put the names of the items in there.

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It's just a list of numbers.

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And I can't figure out what cost $19 versus what cost $250.

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And then that's a huge, huge opportunity

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that they've missed.

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I mean, world statistics say 21 million people.

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Other statistics say 50 million people.

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There is a bold fact that we use in the industry

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that one in five people will have a temporary

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or permanent disability in the next 10 years.

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That's huge.

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I mean, that's a massive number of people

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that if you don't make things accessible,

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they can't use your product and you won't get their money.

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I mean, let's look at the baby boomers that are aging.

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The more they age, the less they're able to contribute

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to the economy because we're blocking them

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from contributing by not making things accessible.

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- Well, Lucy, I really appreciate you taking the time

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to share your insights

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and your frank assessments of where things are.

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And hopefully, we can move forward.

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But I appreciate you taking the time

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to be with me on this conversation today.

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- Not a problem. I really enjoyed it.