Leveraging Coding Experience to Help Other Developers

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(upbeat 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 Wolinske 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

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to how others who 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.

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Well, here we are for another episode

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of this podcast video cast,

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where I talk to accessibility profession

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and today I'm pleased to be speaking with Chetan Bakhru.

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Hello Chetan and how are you today?

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- Hey, Joe, I'm doing great.

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Thanks for having me.

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- I'm here at my Seattle office, home office,

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near the Seattle headquarters of Blink.

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Where are you talking to us from?

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- I'm in Cypress, California

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in the Southern part of the State in Orange County.

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- Well, I'm not familiar with that particular town,

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where approximately is it

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with related to say Los Angeles?

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- It's just outside of Los Angeles County.

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So it's in between the cities of long Beach and Anaheim,

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maybe about 20 miles or so from LAX airport.

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- Oh, right.

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Excellent. Well, thanks for accepting to chat

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with me for a little bit today.

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So maybe we could start out with you just talking

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about what your current position is and the type of you do.

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- Sure. So I'm a Senior Accessibility Specialist

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at JPMorgan Chase and my job pretty much involves,

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serving in an advisory role, coaching

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and guiding product teams

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on how to meet accessibility requirements.

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So I work at various roles,

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like designers and developers, quality assurance, testers

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and various other folks,

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making sure that they understand,

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have the support they need, understand what's required

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and have the support they need

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to do do their job,

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make our products inclusive and accessible.

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- All right, well, we'll delve more into the details

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of what you're doing right now

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but one of the main purposes

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of this program is to help people learn

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about the different ways that accessibility practitioners,

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have decided to make this, their life's work

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or a significant portion of their life's work.

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So, why don't you just talk

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about your own experiences

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with accessibility and we can kind of,

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start wherever you want and then,

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move along those milestones

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until we get up to, back to where we are today.

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- Sure. So I actually ended up getting into it

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because when I was a kid, I faced various challenges

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in school getting accessible materials

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and being able to participate in extracurricular activities.

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And that sort of thing was a challenge

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and several opportunities that I missed because of that.

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I've been totally blind since birth.

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I have a condition called Peter's anomaly,

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which is where the front

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of the eye doesn't develop well prior to birth.

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And, so I use a white cane to travel

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and I use various assistive technologies.

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I use a white cane for traveling as well as GPS apps

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to get around.

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I use screen readers and braille displays

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on computers and mobile device, that sort of thing.

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And when I was in school,

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especially maths was a challenging subject for me.

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I had to get a lot of help from both my parents

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as well as outside tutors and that sort of thing.

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and then I wanted to go and serve in engineering field

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because when I was growing up

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that was a time when assistant technology

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really started to take off

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and the screen readers were just coming out at that time.

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People were moving from dos to windows

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and that sort of thing and it was an exciting time.

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And so I decided to go

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into software engineering just cause I loved tech.

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And I ended up not for getting my degree.

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I expected to become a developer

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but then I started to, I worked.

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My first job was at National Industries for the Blind

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in Northern Virginia,

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where I was IT help desk, best specialist.

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And then I ended up discovering

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that there were jobs in accessibility

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and I didn't know exactly what that entailed.

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And so I started to research it more

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and I started readings these standard ,

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like web content accessibility guidelines,

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worldwide web, consider streaming and that sort of thing.

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And I just someone from, at the time

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was called SSP bar group,

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but now they're called Level Access,

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someone reached out to me and said,

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"we have accessibility consulting position available

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would you be interested?"

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And, so went ahead applied for that.

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And I just ended up into working in the field like that.

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And I decided I wanted to stay in the field

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because I mean, I could be a developer

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and code for eight hours a day behind the screen

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but I wouldn't be,

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really I wanted to do something that made a difference

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and something that allowed me to help people

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in my own community, including myself.

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And be able to make a change for people.

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And so I worked for Level Access

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for seven months and then moved to, like I ended up.

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Just the opportunity at Chase landed in my lap.

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I was contacted by a recruiter

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and it was recommended by a friend.

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And so that's how I ended up where I am now.

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- Well, yeah, I mean, it's a great story

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that you have to tell why we kind of just go back

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and dig into a few of the things that you mentioned,

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I noticed that you mentioned when you were think going

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into software development

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that the the emerging assistive technologies,

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were not only helping you, but also really motivating you

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that it was kind of an exciting time.

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Maybe you could talk a little bit more

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about kind of what that experience was like

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and what kinds of things were happening

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that were opening up these new paths for you.

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- I'm sure, So, I mean, it started out with,

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me being able to do my homework independently in school.

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I mean, when I got a, I used to be able to,

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I had a back then IBM compatible

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for 86 PC with basically no sound, no speech, nothing.

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And I'd have to rely on my parents

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to make sure that whatever I was typing

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and my homework assignments was coming out right

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and that sort of thing

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and the formatting was good and it wasn't missing anything.

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But when I got my first talking computer

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in 96, that all changed

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because I was able to not only do type out

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my assignments for school properly,

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I also got a scanner which allowed me to scan

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and read printing material, which was a big big game changer

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because I didn't have to rely on

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somebody help all the time to read books,

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whether it was for school or just for leisure.

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And then that was when around 96, beginning of 97

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is when I got access to AOL they've been,

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that was my first internet provider.

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I actually started having being able

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to chat with other people, make new friends,

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research things online myself,

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learned about different subjects.

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I never thought I would be able

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to learn about so fast before.

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Screen readers started to really become mature.

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I've been using jaws for 25 years now

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and that's come a long way.

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Being able to do things like OCR images

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and read PDFs and just the internet browsing experiences

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has come a long way as well.

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And so being able to interact with complex web applications,

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I mean, all of that has become possible

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in the past 25 years

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and not something that existed before.

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- And yeah.

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Amazing amount of technologies

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that suddenly made those things possible.

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But as you then got out of the academic world

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with college you mentioned you started working

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for the national industries for the blind.

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And so, what was that experience like?

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So you, you mentioned that decided not to pursue

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software development specifically.

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So I assume there are things

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that you saw there as interesting opportunity

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for the next part in your career.

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- Yes it was something that made it a difference

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in the community.

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And so, when I learned about the positions available

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and accessibility I started thinking about it

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and as I was researching it

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and looking into it more, I figured well,

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I don't have to necessarily be a coder.

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I can have coding experience but leverage

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so that those skills too work with other developers

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and actually help them understand what they need

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to do to make their products accessible.

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I mean, when I was at NIB,

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I was pretty much a help desk specialist.

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So that was when I was getting,

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all of my IT certifications

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and basically the learning process still.

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And so that's when I started researching accessibility.

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I mean, I was doing things for them

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that were beyond my job duties and responsibilities,

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like helping employees learn how to use screen reader

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and that sort of thing when they had questions

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but accessibility wasn't my primary role all the time.

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But I mean, that position

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at NIB pretty much gave me some

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of the experience I needed

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to get in officially get into the accessibility space.

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- Well, I know from just my own experiences and colleagues

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in this area that having physical challenges,

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it is creates a lot of barriers

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to even being involved in accessibility work

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but it looks like you were able to progress,

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through several positions in accessibility

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from the earliest stages.

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Is there any particular thing

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that was going on that helped that?

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Was it your networking or just identifying new connections

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or how did it end up being that you were able

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to find so many substantive positions?

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- I think it was combination of a few things,

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the networking, having good connections

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but that came of course from attending conferences,

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things like the CSUN conference

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which is the biggest Assistive Technology Conference

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in the world, met a lot of people there.

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Working at a nonprofit like,

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National Industries for the blind.

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Obviously they had a lot of people with disabilities there.

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So I socialized with them, made some friends

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and acquaintances there.

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And so that helped me a lot.

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And then also I think my ability to,

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I had a lot of patience with people

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and I get along well with folks.

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And so I think that along

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with my ability to explain things well

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in simple terms that people can understand,

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sort of helped get into those positions.

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- I noticed you have had a lot of consulting practice work

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and what was that like?

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What were the types of things

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that you would typically be involved in

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with your clients for that part of your career?

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- So I used to, basically when I was working at NIB,

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I had no basically other clients

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that I was doing work for on the side, just on the weekends

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and that sort of thing to get some experience.

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So I basically developed some websites for them,

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HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript that sort of thing.

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And then I helped their questions

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when it came to accessibility,

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basically serving as an advisor for them.

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So that's pretty much what our work entailed.

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- And that kind of brings us up to where we are today

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with your current position at JPMorgan Chase.

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So, yeah, what's that like?

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So what's a day in the life or a week in the life

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for you as in your current position?

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- So I'm currently serving in advisory role.

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So I basically do what a consultant would do.

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I help developers, designers, content editors

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and QA understand how to make products accessible

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and make sure they have the resources

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and support they need to do.

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So, if a developer comes to me with questions about code,

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if I know the answer then I'll provide it.

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If not, then I'll look into it

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and I'll ask someone who is totally blind.

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I'll provide usability suggestions

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on how to make things better

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for specific users with specific needs.

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So something could be improved

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from a usability standpoint from a screen user,

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then I'll include that feedback as well.

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We know if it's a change has to be made to a design,

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I'll help the designer with that reviewing wire frames

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and that sort of thing

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as well as helping testers understand how to make,

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how to accurately write accessibility defects

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and that sort of thing.

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- Well, you just mentioned

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the part about design, working with designers

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on wire frames and in my experience

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that's one of the places that's still lacking

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on having an inclusive area

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for all of us to practice in,

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is the tools that you're able to use to be able

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to participate in those activities.

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What is it like kinda, what's the process

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in working with wire frames with the designers?

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- So since I can't see the wire frames,

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I basically get on a call with the designer

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and have them verbally describe what they're showing

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on their screen, help have them in detail

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describe every on the page and what its purpose is.

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And then I ask question based

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on whether I understand or don't understand.

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And based on that, based on their descriptions,

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I will provide feedback on any accessibility issues

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that I noticed.

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There are some parts of design, obviously

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that I need help with like color contrasting

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that sort of things since I can't see those,

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I would tell the designer to use the the appropriate tools

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to make sure that they basically plug the color values

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into the color contrast in line with the tool's

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and it will them if it pasS or fails.

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And then sometimes they're just thing

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like heading structure and other thing

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that sometimes, I need help with these as well

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because some designers have different ways

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of describing things, Some are good

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and some are not so good.

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And so I sometimes pair up with someone cited

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to be on the call with me

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and answer any questions that I have.

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- And how, how is it set up there in terms

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of the teams that you work with,

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do you use your expertise across different parts

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of that very large organization

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or are your skills more in like one vertical area

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or certain department or division of Chase?

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- Well, I mean we have pretty much help

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with anything digital, anything digital.

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So I'm part of the digital accessibility team.

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And so, we also only do customer facing stuff.

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So anything related to employee,

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internal employee apps,

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there's a separate team that work on those apps.

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- All right.

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And when I started, I really started working

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with accessibility about 20 some years ago.

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I hadn't had experience with it before then

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but as I got involved, it seemed like,

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a lot of very interesting

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and amazing things happened over that 20 years.

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But I also look back

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and I kind of thought we'd be farther along,

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than we are in terms of digital accessibility.

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And so, I was wondering kind of

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what your feelings are on that.

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And maybe what areas you think are ones

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that we still have to pay a lot of attention

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to moving forward for improvements.

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- I think well, obviously mobile devices

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have come a long way in the past decade,

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its very widely used. sometimes a lot more than that.

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I think some more attention needs to be made,

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given to mobile accessibility.

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I mean, the wake up 2000 standard came out in 2008

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2001 came out in 18 and yes, they,

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did improve a little bit when they came out

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with the new success criteria related to organization

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and pointer cancellation, some of those those things

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that would be beneficial to mobile users.

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But I think there needs to be more attention given

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to that area because it seems

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like they're making small changes in wake up for that.

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Not focusing on it as much as they should.

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I know they're working on their I believe

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what they calling silver the next

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basically we tag 3.0, I think it is.

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So it made it interesting to see what happens there.

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- Well Chetan, I wanna thank you

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for taking the time to meet with me

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and share your experiences.

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Been very interesting for me

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and hopefully I'll be able to meet you

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at a future CSUN event when we're actually able

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to do that in person again.

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- Yeah. Thanks for having me,

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it's has been great talking to you

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and looking forwards to meeting you in person as well.