Episode 10
Push the Conversation at Every Level of the Development Process
Andrew Hayward, Twitter, Accessibility Engineer
Andrew Hayward talks about discovering accessibility in his early years as a web developer. He describes his path that weaved through Mozilla and most recently found him helping to set up an emerging accessibility team at Twitter.
Mentioned in this episode:
Info about Accessibility at Blink
Transcript
(upbeat 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 as to how others
Speaker: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:(upbeat music)
Speaker:All right, well here we go with another visit
Speaker:with an accessibility practitioner,
Speaker:and today I am please to be talking to Andrew Hayward.
Speaker:Hello, Andrew, how are you?
Speaker:- I'm fine, how are you Joe?
Speaker:- I'm really good.
Speaker:I'm talking from home office in the Seattle area
Speaker:on Vashon Island.
Speaker:Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:- I am joining you from an armchair in my living room
Speaker:in Southeast London, in the UK.
Speaker:It's a little bit later for me than it is for you,
Speaker:but appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
Speaker:- Well, I appreciate you sharing in this as well.
Speaker:And so, you know, we'll talk about,
Speaker:you know, a lot of things about,
Speaker:you know, what you're involved with with accessibility,
Speaker:but I mean, just to start out,
Speaker:what's your current situation?
Speaker:What type of work are you doing?
Speaker:- So currently I am an accessibility engineer at Twitter,
Speaker:a company you may have heard of.
Speaker:Twitter is on the early beginnings of its sort of
Speaker:disability and accessibility journey.
Speaker:We have founded a product accessibility team
Speaker:about a year ago now,
Speaker:which yeah, I was sort of part of getting that set up
Speaker:and yeah, it's just been a really sort of big year for us
Speaker:getting that going.
Speaker:And yeah, the team has just sort of grown
Speaker:from one person a year ago
Speaker:to now best part of 10 people at this point.
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:- Oh, well, that's great to hear about the growth in that.
Speaker:And you know, this podcast is all about
Speaker:hearing about people's journeys
Speaker:that led them into accessibility work.
Speaker:So, you know, why don't you just pick a spot,
Speaker:you know, go back in time,
Speaker:maybe pick out some of the,
Speaker:you know, maybe one of the first milestone
Speaker:that started you on the road
Speaker:that got you to where you are today.
Speaker:- Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker:I mean, I think we talk a lot about
Speaker:accessibility practitioners and yet
Speaker:from a professional perspective,
Speaker:that is sort of very few and far between.
Speaker:You know, technically in my 15ish year career at this point,
Speaker:I have been a professional accessibility engineer
Speaker:for one of those.
Speaker:You know, the others I've just been in web development,
Speaker:software engineering.
Speaker:And it's almost just sort of been there
Speaker:as an underlying constant.
Speaker:You know, when I first started getting into web development,
Speaker:the web standards movement was a really big thing,
Speaker:certainly in the world I was part of.
Speaker:Accessibility was just something we did,
Speaker:it wasn't, you know, sort of a specialty.
Speaker:It wasn't, you know, a profession
Speaker:that people really went into,
Speaker:it was just part of doing the right thing.
Speaker:You know, you have a good design,
Speaker:you have good UX, and you have good accessibility.
Speaker:And that was just how I sort of grew up
Speaker:building for the web,
Speaker:and that's kind of stuck with me ever since.
Speaker:Yes, I mean it's something I tried to do all along.
Speaker:It wasn't until I started working for Mozilla
Speaker:quite some time ago now,
Speaker:where I really started thinking about
Speaker:sort of the, the intersection
Speaker:of humanity and the internet, you know,
Speaker:sort of all the things I've been doing before that
Speaker:they were, you know, mostly web based.
Speaker:There's a bit of desktops software along the way,
Speaker:but mostly web based stuff.
Speaker:And yeah, it wasn't really until I got to Mozilla
Speaker:that it was actually thinking about the people
Speaker:using these things so.
Speaker:- Let just stop there and dig into that a little bit.
Speaker:So you mentioned you had the web development background
Speaker:and that you've been,
Speaker:you know, aware of that.
Speaker:So did it just start out with,
Speaker:you know, learning things online
Speaker:or just hearing from others about the accessibility aspect
Speaker:of your development?
Speaker:- Yes, I mean, I suppose this was
Speaker:kind of turn to the century really,
Speaker:you know, coming into the 21st century.
Speaker:And yeah, it was just sort of,
Speaker:it was a really small core community of,
Speaker:you know, of web interested people.
Speaker:I don't say web developers,
Speaker:'cause it was a good mixture of people,
Speaker:still is really,
Speaker:but it was just a sort of a group of people
Speaker:who you could kind of know a lot of them,
Speaker:and it was just a lot of conversational stuff
Speaker:and people wrote blog posts as people used to do,
Speaker:and it's all you know, micro blogging these days
Speaker:and things like that.
Speaker:But yeah, people wrote full on articles on their websites
Speaker:about different things they'd been doing,
Speaker:just exploring how things work.
Speaker:And now obviously the web of 20 years ago
Speaker:was a very different landscape to what it is today,
Speaker:both in terms of what we've got available to us
Speaker:as developers,
Speaker:but also the people using it.
Speaker:You know, sort of the people on the internet 20 years ago
Speaker:in many respects had the same problem,
Speaker:but it just wasn't as sort of as widely used I suppose.
Speaker:It was very early days for sort of really thinking about
Speaker:what it meant to build an accessible experience.
Speaker:You know, obviously Tim Berners Lee,
Speaker:his whole, you know,
Speaker:the web is for everyone, it should be accessible.
Speaker:I think to begin with,
Speaker:it kind of felt like that's just how it was.
Speaker:And I don't wanna sort of be the old man
Speaker:shaking his fist at the clouds,
Speaker:but it feels like we as a community
Speaker:sort of missed a turn somewhere along the way,
Speaker:and we pursued developer happiness over user happiness,
Speaker:which is, yeah, it's a little upsetting
Speaker:because, you know, we built all these tools
Speaker:that allow us to notionally build these great experiences
Speaker:and yet we forget what it means to build,
Speaker:you know, properly inclusive and accessible web.
Speaker:- Well, you have been involved in it essentially from,
Speaker:you know, the start of the four wise
Speaker:got integration of accessibility.
Speaker:Because the worldwide web consortium
Speaker:had its initial web accessibility initiative
Speaker:start around 1998,
Speaker:and that was, you know,
Speaker:my first exposure to it.
Speaker:And so then as you, you know,
Speaker:then you mentioned a little later on
Speaker:it was at Mozilla where you really got more involved.
Speaker:So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker:- Yeah, so at Mozilla,
Speaker:so I was working on a few different projects.
Speaker:I sort of came on board just as a general web developer
Speaker:sort of working on a few sort of just
Speaker:profile portfolio type sites
Speaker:that Mozilla was working on.
Speaker:But then over time,
Speaker:sort of went into specific projects.
Speaker:And it was really sort of Mozilla's aim
Speaker:is to sort of think about how people use the internet
Speaker:and how we can use the internet
Speaker:for the good of that audience.
Speaker:And so, and as I said,
Speaker:while I was trying to build accessible experiences
Speaker:to the best of my, you know, ability at the time,
Speaker:I wasn't really thinking about people,
Speaker:I was just sort of thinking about accessibility.
Speaker:And that sort of like,
Speaker:it sounds a bit,
Speaker:a bit of a silly split,
Speaker:but you know, sort of the academics side of accessibility,
Speaker:it's all well and good,
Speaker:but until you start actually applying it to people,
Speaker:it doesn't really mean very much, you know,
Speaker:you can read the specs all day,
Speaker:but until you get it in front of people
Speaker:and actually say like,
Speaker:"Does this work for you?"
Speaker:Then you'll never really gonna know.
Speaker:So yeah, sort of working at Mozilla and thinking like,
Speaker:oh, you know, even though the work I was doing
Speaker:wasn't accessibility related,
Speaker:it made me just think much more about the people
Speaker:that we were building for
Speaker:and not the things we were building.
Speaker:And I think that was sort of like
Speaker:a turning point really of just sort of
Speaker:moving from sort of thinking about it technically
Speaker:to thinking about it from a,
Speaker:you know, a human point of view so.
Speaker:- Well yeah, I mean, I think that it sounds like
Speaker:it was very progressive,
Speaker:user-centered design approach overall,
Speaker:and so that benefits everyone
Speaker:who participates with the project,
Speaker:and although it sounds like you were involved
Speaker:in the technical aspects of it initially,
Speaker:you know, ultimately, you know, we rely on that to be,
Speaker:you know, for a assistive devices
Speaker:to be able you work effectively.
Speaker:So that part of it is definitely good that you were,
Speaker:you know, investing the time there.
Speaker:In the work that you did at Mozilla,
Speaker:did it move itself into like any official projects
Speaker:where accessibility was specifically addressed
Speaker:in your time there?
Speaker:- Not specifically, no.
Speaker:I mean, I worked with some great teams
Speaker:who were really sort of forward thinking
Speaker:about this kind of stuff.
Speaker:You know, our designers and our product managers
Speaker:and our, you know, researchers,
Speaker:they were all sort of on board with saying,
Speaker:yeah okay, this is all of our responsibility.
Speaker:You know, if we wanna build products
Speaker:that are fully inclusive,
Speaker:then we have to think about these things
Speaker:all the way through that whole process.
Speaker:So no, I mean there was no specific
Speaker:sort of accessibility related things.
Speaker:I mean, as I said at the beginning,
Speaker:it's only really in the last year
Speaker:that it's been my official job title
Speaker:in, you know, 15 plus years of doing this professionally.
Speaker:So yeah, it's interesting that to me,
Speaker:I don't think it needs to be a job title
Speaker:for it to be something that you think about.
Speaker:You know, I think it's good to have professionals
Speaker:thinking about it all the time,
Speaker:that, you know, we can go to that can be
Speaker:sort of subject matter experts I suppose,
Speaker:the phrase that's going around these days.
Speaker:But ultimately, you don't have to be an expert.
Speaker:You don't even have to be like educated in it.
Speaker:I think you just have to,
Speaker:the baseline is you have to have an awareness
Speaker:that there are people who have different access needs
Speaker:and you need to be able to push that conversation
Speaker:at every step of, you know,
Speaker:the development process
Speaker:and just challenging people to think about that, you know.
Speaker:That's where the experts come in
Speaker:to be able to answer those questions,
Speaker:but ultimately if you have people on development teams
Speaker:who are saying,
Speaker:"Hey, what about this scenario?"
Speaker:You might not be able to come up with solution,
Speaker:but having a team just stop and think about it is,
Speaker:yeah, it's a huge step,
Speaker:and unfortunately most teams don't take that step,
Speaker:like you know, today so.
Speaker:- Let's dig into your experience with that,
Speaker:you know, working with it and that situation of,
Speaker:did you build your own library of code solutions
Speaker:and things like that?
Speaker:How did you kind of manage accessibility
Speaker:in that time period?
Speaker:- So I mean, I suppose this was all at a time
Speaker:when things like jQuery were just coming about
Speaker:and stuff like that.
Speaker:So a lot of the web still is to a degree
Speaker:built on the back of a frameworks like that.
Speaker:Fortunately, a lot of the more modern
Speaker:web frameworks at least
Speaker:do take into consideration accessibility to a degree.
Speaker:So I suppose all along,
Speaker:I've always found it a bit easier,
Speaker:certainly when working on sort of
Speaker:bespoke portfolio type sites
Speaker:to just build them in their own way
Speaker:in a way that works for that experience.
Speaker:I think sometimes it's easy to forget
Speaker:that just because the library you're using
Speaker:might offer accessible components,
Speaker:you can't just shove a bunch of components in a box
Speaker:and hope that the contents of their box
Speaker:are accessible too.
Speaker:Accessibility doesn't work like that.
Speaker:So I've always just sort of taken each project on its own.
Speaker:Sometimes, you know,
Speaker:particularly as I've sort of got further along
Speaker:and worked at larger places
Speaker:and they've had sort of design systems in place,
Speaker:working to make sure that design system is accessible
Speaker:is obviously a key part of that.
Speaker:But ultimately, you know,
Speaker:you just have to be able to think about
Speaker:the whole experience too.
Speaker:And for a smaller portfolio project,
Speaker:the sorts of things I was working on
Speaker:10 something years ago,
Speaker:for me at least it,
Speaker:was easier just to approach it from like a baseline anyway,
Speaker:and just okay, what does this project need?
Speaker:And most of the time it doesn't need a big framework.
Speaker:You know, there are some things
Speaker:that are sort of used regularly, you know,
Speaker:grid layouts and things like that,
Speaker:which are fortunately much easier to do today
Speaker:than they were 10 years ago.
Speaker:But for the most part it,
Speaker:it's just sort of knowing the concepts rather than
Speaker:having repeatable, reusable code
Speaker:and just sort of knowing what sorts of traps
Speaker:are gonna be in place,
Speaker:the things to look out for.
Speaker:And so it's as much experience as anything else.
Speaker:Unfortunately, I mean I'd like to be able to say
Speaker:that we could just give a fresh developer,
Speaker:"You know, here's a framework,
Speaker:"it'll do everything for you."
Speaker:But it it's never gonna work like that
Speaker:because the experience of an individual user,
Speaker:it doesn't come down to frameworks
Speaker:and doesn't come down to,
Speaker:you know, design systems.
Speaker:It is a matter of
Speaker:how do we make sure that this whole experience workflow
Speaker:works for as many at people as possible?
Speaker:Because, I mean,
Speaker:you can't say this is an accessible experience
Speaker:because different users have different access needs.
Speaker:And the chances of covering all of them are slim anyway,
Speaker:let alone trying to do it with a
Speaker:one size fits all framework, so.
Speaker:- And so as you moved on from Mozilla,
Speaker:what were some of the next kind of highlights
Speaker:that you had
Speaker:which got you to where you at today
Speaker:at your current organization?
Speaker:- So after Mozilla I moved to Etsy,
Speaker:the online retail.
Speaker:And that was a bit of an eye opener
Speaker:because I just sort of naturally assumed
Speaker:that in the corporate world,
Speaker:these things were thought about
Speaker:because of the legal precedent if nothing else.
Speaker:You know it's one thing working for a small startup
Speaker:or a sort of a more user focused environment like Mozilla.
Speaker:But I just assumed that like a larger corporate entity,
Speaker:like Etsy, would've just sort of had it done and sorted.
Speaker:So when I went there,
Speaker:and that was a, as I said, a bit of an eye opener
Speaker:because I started looking at the Etsy code base
Speaker:and I started looking at the website
Speaker:and it was a bit of a mess,
Speaker:certainly from a screen reader perspective.
Speaker:Nobody was really thinking about it,
Speaker:and I did a sort of a lunch and learn type talk I guess,
Speaker:not long after I started.
Speaker:And all it really took
Speaker:was to play a recording of a screen reader
Speaker:trying to read out the Etsy homepage
Speaker:and people just sort of sit up and be silent
Speaker:and just be like, what is this?
Speaker:You know, first of all,
Speaker:because they'd never really experienced
Speaker:a screen reader reading a website,
Speaker:but secondly, it's like,
Speaker:this makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker:And out of that, Etsy did start an accessibility team
Speaker:which was good to see,
Speaker:that wasn't what I did.
Speaker:I carried on working on the projects I was doing,
Speaker:but it was more just
Speaker:recognizing that everyone has the ability
Speaker:to make some change.
Speaker:You know, if they are willing to just sort of step up
Speaker:and say something, you know,
Speaker:you don't have to be some high level executive in a company
Speaker:to get people to notice.
Speaker:So it's not really something I've ever really thought about
Speaker:until more recently,
Speaker:that advocacy doesn't mean, you know,
Speaker:sort of standing on a box and shouting.
Speaker:It just means seeing a problem and talking about it,
Speaker:you know, you can do that quietly,
Speaker:you can do that loudly,
Speaker:you can do it in whatever way suits you.
Speaker:So just sort of making people aware of a problem
Speaker:in a way that works and makes sense to them
Speaker:is a really powerful sort of step to take.
Speaker:And I've been asked a few times in the last few years,
Speaker:it's like, oh, you know,
Speaker:how do you do all of this stuff?
Speaker:And it's like, oh I don't like it.
Speaker:It really is just a matter of like,
Speaker:well, it's important to me
Speaker:and I feel like it should be important to you too
Speaker:so I'm gonna talk to you about it.
Speaker:And it's as simple as that really.
Speaker:So yeah, to answer your question,
Speaker:moving on to Etsy was that sort of like, yeah,
Speaker:not even in sort of corporate America,
Speaker:is this really a thing that's thought about.
Speaker:And I suppose that was just sort of
Speaker:a little bit of naivety there,
Speaker:probably just sort of expecting that
Speaker:even though it might not be great,
Speaker:there would still be this understanding
Speaker:that it was a thing that was needed.
Speaker:- Yeah, I think your experience there isn't unusual.
Speaker:I mean, we both mentioned how long
Speaker:we've been thinking about this
Speaker:and you know, looking back on 20 years,
Speaker:I thought a lot more would've happened in the last 20 years.
Speaker:On the other hand,
Speaker:I'm excited by the things that have happened, you know,
Speaker:and where it has been embraced.
Speaker:And so I think your example there at Etsy just, you know,
Speaker:shows how your own passion and interest
Speaker:at a grassroots level can, you know,
Speaker:move things forward.
Speaker:And so what was the next step after that?
Speaker:- Next step after that.
Speaker:- Or wherever you wanna take it to,
Speaker:if you wanna bring it up to where you're today.
Speaker:- Sure, so yeah, I'm happy to jump forward to Twitter.
Speaker:So yeah, I started at Twitter about three years ago
Speaker:and I think just sort of having had the experiences
Speaker:at Mozilla and Etsy of just recognizing that
Speaker:there's nothing wrong with talking about stuff
Speaker:and just sort of being yourself
Speaker:and expressing what's important to you,
Speaker:just carried on doing that.
Speaker:It just sort of became part of
Speaker:being a more senior engineer
Speaker:was just to telling the team almost,
Speaker:it's like, okay, this is good,
Speaker:but we haven't thought about this.
Speaker:It's always frustrating when you see accessibility
Speaker:sort of get written up as work tickets
Speaker:and put in a separate box.
Speaker:It's like, well no, like the thing you're working on
Speaker:isn't finished until it's also accessible.
Speaker:I can understand that, you know,
Speaker:we do things and sometimes we miss things out
Speaker:and we have to file a bug or whatever,
Speaker:and it gets fixed.
Speaker:But trying to encourage this idea
Speaker:that a thing that you're working on
Speaker:also has to consider accessibility, you know,
Speaker:you can't just say, "Oh well, I'll get back to that."
Speaker:Because people don't,
Speaker:whatever it is,
Speaker:often, you know, people like you might add a to do item,
Speaker:but very rarely do we really get around
Speaker:to doing a lot of these things
Speaker:and accessibility in particular.
Speaker:I think because people view it as this sort of
Speaker:alien challenge almost,
Speaker:it's like, "Well I dunno anything about that,
Speaker:"so I'm just gonna put it over there
Speaker:"and maybe think about it later."
Speaker:And, you know, as I said,
Speaker:you don't have to have the solution to it,
Speaker:you just have to be able to think about it.
Speaker:And it can be hard,
Speaker:and certainly at bigger places where there's no
Speaker:sort of conversation happening.
Speaker:But ultimately just most importantly,
Speaker:being aware that there are these problems, I think,
Speaker:and that's what I've tried to encourage at Twitter
Speaker:is just to sort of think about
Speaker:the fact that these problems exist
Speaker:and just to have an awareness.
Speaker:So, you know, two and a half years ago now
Speaker:we started a sort of just
Speaker:an individual champions network, I suppose.
Speaker:It was very informal.
Speaker:I say, we, a group of like-minded employees
Speaker:all came together and just sort of like,
Speaker:yeah, we need to sort of push this conversation out a bit.
Speaker:You know, it's all well and good
Speaker:having two or three people here and there
Speaker:just having these conversations,
Speaker:but we need to be able to work out
Speaker:how to push that conversation out
Speaker:from outside this small group.
Speaker:So, you know, we set up this informal
Speaker:accessibility champions network,
Speaker:and we just sort of,
Speaker:we got some recognition for it.
Speaker:Yes, which was good,
Speaker:I think, you know, in many way
Speaker:that's much more important than having a formal team.
Speaker:If you have sufficient numbers of people with that awareness
Speaker:and telling that conversation,
Speaker:then, you know, the formal team can follow from there.
Speaker:You know, they can then become
Speaker:the people who you might go to with questions.
Speaker:But if you rely on a formal team
Speaker:and don't have that network,
Speaker:then first of all, they get massively overwhelmed.
Speaker:Like there's no way that they can do all the work
Speaker:that needs to be done.
Speaker:But secondly, they will always be playing catch up
Speaker:You know, there will always be things going out
Speaker:that they are then having to go back and fix.
Speaker:You know, accessibility needs to be thought about
Speaker:from the beginning,
Speaker:it needs to be part of that whole process.
Speaker:And so if you've got people
Speaker:who are willing to just have that conversation,
Speaker:then ideally, you know,
Speaker:the designs that come through,
Speaker:the product ideas that come through,
Speaker:the engineering output,
Speaker:you've got accessibility baked in.
Speaker:And that sort of core team,
Speaker:their responsibility really only has to be
Speaker:answering questions and doesn't have to be about
Speaker:fixing problems or, you know,
Speaker:coming in and helping a team out.
Speaker:So, yeah, I mean that's sort of where we are today.
Speaker:We've got that balance of sort of the champion network,
Speaker:which we've managed to formalize now,
Speaker:that's in a properly recognized sort of group
Speaker:that people are given dedicated time for
Speaker:and we also have the core team that is working on
Speaker:some of our own sort of product features
Speaker:where we see that things are missing.
Speaker:But also mostly just sort of being a
Speaker:sort of a pool for answering questions,
Speaker:helping people out,
Speaker:because these questions are coming through
Speaker:and that's what we wanna see.
Speaker:You know, we wanna see all these questions that people have,
Speaker:and we can sort of share them.
Speaker:And a lot of actually we're at a point now
Speaker:where we're able to,
Speaker:the first point of call for these questions
Speaker:is to go to the champions network.
Speaker:People don't even come to us,
Speaker:they just ask each other.
Speaker:And it's only really when it's a problem
Speaker:that people haven't seen before
Speaker:that they have to come to us.
Speaker:So it's hugely beneficial for us 'cause you know,
Speaker:people aren't just relying on us to fix all the problems.
Speaker:This isn't to say you know,
Speaker:we don't have a long way to go.
Speaker:We're very much in the early days,
Speaker:sort of baby steps at this point.
Speaker:But you know, things have massively improved
Speaker:in the last year, year and a half.
Speaker:Which is yeah, just that really is just a,
Speaker:you know, the effect of a group of people coming together
Speaker:and saying we wanna see some change
Speaker:and we're gonna just keep talking
Speaker:until that change happens.
Speaker:- So it sounds like
Speaker:you mentioned that the champions,
Speaker:it sounds like there's kind of two levels
Speaker:that you have support going across the organization
Speaker:from you and your accessibility colleagues,
Speaker:but then are people then also assigned
Speaker:to individual projects within the organization
Speaker:that they pay attention to?
Speaker:- Yeah, sometimes.
Speaker:You know, definitely some of our higher profile projects
Speaker:we will sort of dedicate a lot of our time to.
Speaker:If they need some help getting things out the door,
Speaker:then it just makes sense
Speaker:to put one of the accessibility team on that project
Speaker:just to help guide them through
Speaker:and make sure those conversations are happening
Speaker:rather than having to sort of wait for things
Speaker:to filter through to us.
Speaker:Because you know, obviously higher profile features
Speaker:on a site like Twitter,
Speaker:they can quite quickly,
Speaker:if we put them out in an inaccessible way,
Speaker:then the publicity around that isn't great.
Speaker:So even just from a team perspective,
Speaker:we wanna see these high profile features going out
Speaker:being accessible from day one.
Speaker:So that's our motivation.
Speaker:But yeah, it's a mixture.
Speaker:Some of it is just
Speaker:working on new features to existing things
Speaker:that we think are missing.
Speaker:You know, because unfortunately
Speaker:when product conversations happen without accessibility
Speaker:being taken into account,
Speaker:People and teams miss certain aspects.
Speaker:And yeah, that's not to point fingers at people,
Speaker:it's just a lack of awareness
Speaker:and lack of that conversation,
Speaker:which is why it's so important.
Speaker:So some of it, we are just having to go back
Speaker:and fill in gaps
Speaker:that ideally wouldn't have been there in the first place,
Speaker:but it's the old,
Speaker:it's easier to put out an accessible thing
Speaker:than it is to go back and put accessibility into it.
Speaker:And we are now having to spend quite a lot of time
Speaker:just re-engineering bits and pieces
Speaker:that were never considered
Speaker:with some part of accessibility in mind.
Speaker:- Yeah.
Speaker:- But it's you know, it's fruitful work,
Speaker:like it's frustrating,
Speaker:but it's good to be able to have that time
Speaker:and dedicated space to be able to say,
Speaker:okay, what is missing from this product feature
Speaker:and how can we fix it?
Speaker:- Yeah, well that's all part of the process.
Speaker:You don't always, you know, know what you don't know.
Speaker:And then as you identify things related to accessibility,
Speaker:you can build it into the business processes earlier on
Speaker:so that it comes through research, design
Speaker:to a specification,
Speaker:and makes it easier
Speaker:so that you don't have a lot of remediation at the end.
Speaker:- Yeah.
Speaker:- Well, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me
Speaker:and talk about your experiences,
Speaker:and good luck with what appears to be a growing attention
Speaker:to accessibility at your company.
Speaker:And, you know, maybe we'll meet up at some point
Speaker:in the physical world.
Speaker:- Yeah, that'd be great, no yeah.
Speaker:Team's coming along,
Speaker:we're getting there.
Speaker:And as I said, we've been around for about a year now.
Speaker:It really kicked off at the beginning of '21,
Speaker:you know, 2022 hopefully lots of time and space
Speaker:to really just sort of push forward
Speaker:and kick on with that growth.
Speaker:So yeah, it's going well.
Speaker:- All right, great.
Speaker:Well, thank you very much, Andrew.
