Episode 10
The Learning with Accessibility Never Ends
Ross Mullen, CANAXESS, Director
Ross Mullen talks about his extensive experience in working with standards organizations for accessibility. He spent many years working with accessibility for government agencies. Now, Ross has his own consulting practice.
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 Welinsky, the creator and host of this series,
Speaker:and as an accessibility professional myself,
Speaker:I find it very interesting
Speaker:as to how others have found their way
Speaker: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
Speaker:with another episode where I have the opportunity
Speaker:to speak with another accessibility practitioner.
Speaker:Today, I'm speaking with Ross Mullen.
Speaker:Hello, Ross, how are you doing today?
Speaker:- Hi there, how are you going, Joe?
Speaker:How's things?
Speaker:- Everything's going really well.
Speaker:I am located right now in my home office
Speaker:on Vashon Island, which is a true island
Speaker:with no bridges
Speaker:near Blink's Seattle, Washington headquarters.
Speaker:Where are you talking to us from today?
Speaker:- I'm from Canberra, Australia,
Speaker:so, if one's unfamiliar,
Speaker:it's about 320 kilometers of southwest of the Sydney,
Speaker:slipped back in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker:so, Fremont just surrounded by bush.
Speaker:So, we have no beach, no sea,
Speaker:but we have a lot of beautiful countryside around here.
Speaker:- And I have been there.
Speaker:I went to a conference there one time
Speaker:and got to see the interesting architecture
Speaker:that was developed.
Speaker:I believe your city was a design capital city for Australia.
Speaker:Isn't that or originally how it was set up?
Speaker:- It was, yes.
Speaker:Yeah, and one of your fellow residents won the competition,
Speaker:Walter Burley Griffin,
Speaker:so, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly,
Speaker:it was the early 20th century.
Speaker:There was a competition
Speaker:for designing the federal capital here.
Speaker:A camera was chosen, and the Griffins designed it all
Speaker:without ever having visited here,
Speaker:so, our largest lake
Speaker:is Lake Burley Griffin, named after Walter,
Speaker:so, there's a lot of interesting background history
Speaker:of how this American Couple laid the foundations
Speaker:for what is Canberra now.
Speaker:- Well, it's good to have you join here.
Speaker:I appreciate it.
Speaker:We were able to get the time zones to work out,
Speaker:but a good place to start
Speaker:is talk a little bit about yourself
Speaker:in the work that you're doing right now,
Speaker:and then we can explore how you got there.
Speaker:- Lovely, well, I work
Speaker:under my company name at the moment, CANAXESS.
Speaker:We've been working in web accessibility now
Speaker:for about 12 years plus.
Speaker:At the moment, I'm working
Speaker:with a large Australian supermarket,
Speaker:helping them meet accessibility guidelines
Speaker:increasing the user experience.
Speaker:Before that, I was working in a government,
Speaker:so, previously my role was
Speaker:that I'm a background developer, a backend.
Speaker:I moved into front end,
Speaker:and then, over time,
Speaker:I moved into a dedicated web accessibility roles,
Speaker:so, originally my background
Speaker:was very much focused on compliance,
Speaker:but more, and more, and more I was reading more
Speaker:into work accessibility and understanding the nuances more,
Speaker:so more and more now I find
Speaker:when I have any questions related
Speaker:to web accessibility, it's more that it depends,
Speaker:it's that it's recognizing more
Speaker:of the nuances in accessibility,
Speaker:so, that's where I am the moment.
Speaker:We're working with a large supermarket
Speaker:and they've done ever so well meeting all
Speaker:of their accessibility obligations,
Speaker:but they're at a point now
Speaker:of wanting to radically improve the use experience,
Speaker:so, once you've met all
Speaker:your minimum accessibility guidelines
Speaker:and compliance aspects,
Speaker:then it's recognizing that we can do much, much more,
Speaker:and that's what's really interesting me at the moment,
Speaker:the sort of, "What next in accessibility?"
Speaker:- Well, as we were talking a little bit
Speaker:before we started the recording.
Speaker:We were talking a little bit about the differences
Speaker:between the importance of compliance
Speaker:for companies getting involved
Speaker:in accessibility versus return on investment,
Speaker:versus it being a socially progressive thing to do,
Speaker:and so, you had some thoughts about
Speaker:how things were in Australia.
Speaker:I think that would be of interest
Speaker:to people that aren't in it, that area,
Speaker:in terms of how importance the compliance aspect
Speaker:is for companies coming to you to work on things
Speaker:versus other reasons
Speaker:that they might wanna get involved with it.
Speaker:- Very much so, yeah.
Speaker:One of my early roles was within the government,
Speaker:and even 15 years ago, there was this recognition
Speaker:that due to the disability laws here,
Speaker:we would need to make all
Speaker:of our government digital services accessible,
Speaker:so, it was very much focused on compliance,
Speaker:but then, also, there were pockets of innovation,
Speaker:individual for teams,
Speaker:so, this is our minimum, but let's do more than that,
Speaker:and for several years that was how it was moving
Speaker:along pockets of individual expertise,
Speaker:driving accessibility, but not necessarily making
Speaker:a massive impact, but doing enough
Speaker:to try and make a government to digital services accessible,
Speaker:and then, with the work with the UK government,
Speaker:a similar agency over here
Speaker:was created, the Digital Transformation Agency,
Speaker:and so, they brought over a lot of their expertise
Speaker:with what they had accomplished in the UK government.
Speaker:One of the things was introducing
Speaker:a digital service standard.
Speaker:This was basically a guideline
Speaker:or a blueprint of how to make the government,
Speaker:the services which served the needs of the user,
Speaker:so, moving away from that compliance aspect
Speaker:into making it truly user-centric,
Speaker:so, this document had several criteria
Speaker:for how to improve a government online,
Speaker:the online services.
Speaker:One of those points was accessibility.
Speaker:It was this, individual items are called out,
Speaker:and that was really, I guess,
Speaker:the catalyst within a government,
Speaker:which moved us from only doing a bare minimum
Speaker:to recognizing what can we do better,
Speaker:and that's when we could really see those innovations
Speaker:in accessibility more, and more, and more,
Speaker:and then, based on the back of that work,
Speaker:there was the creation of the design system,
Speaker:which had a lot of those accessibility principles baked in,
Speaker:and so, the bold aim with this, the design system,
Speaker:was there any federal and state or government agency
Speaker:could deploy a website quickly
Speaker:which had all of those core fundamentals,
Speaker:so, all of those, accessibility,
Speaker:the principles baked in,
Speaker:and then under re-pinning that,
Speaker:it was this documentation
Speaker:of how to do more, and more, and more,
Speaker:so that's been one of the main motivators
Speaker:in the government space in recent years.
Speaker:The digital transformation agencies bold aims of doing more
Speaker:where, rather than just making up
Speaker:a digital digital service
Speaker:and having users fit in to working with it,
Speaker:was recognizing what can we do better?
Speaker:And that's where we really saw renovations in accessibility,
Speaker:so bigger and better things
Speaker:where one of the main things was that consistency,
Speaker:so, if you had a design system
Speaker:whilst government websites using it would work consistently.
Speaker:It was baking in a lot of that accessibility,
Speaker:so, before that, it was very much accessibility
Speaker:was open to a different levels of interpretation,
Speaker:so, one team in one department might think you
Speaker:would achieve accessibility in this way.
Speaker:Another team would say, "No, this is the right way,"
Speaker:so, with the DTA's approach,
Speaker:it was focusing all of our collective accessibility efforts
Speaker:into, what's the best way?
Speaker:Let's do things one way and the right way,
Speaker:and it's been very, very well adopted,
Speaker:but as I'm sure you experience a government's change,
Speaker:and so, over time that a passion
Speaker:for accessibility is often there,
Speaker:but it's a bit more fragmented,
Speaker:and that's what we are noticing again,
Speaker:so, as governments change, as elections happen,
Speaker:the focus of where and how digital services ought
Speaker:to be made is wandering a bit at times,
Speaker:so, from my experience,
Speaker:there's always better ways to do things
Speaker:and there's, lots of individuals within a government
Speaker:are contributing to improving accessibility,
Speaker:but from where it was five years ago to now,
Speaker:we are noticing it drop off again.
Speaker:- Well, let's find a little bit more out
Speaker:about your background.
Speaker:Most of us come into accessibility
Speaker:in a lot of different ways, a lot of different paths
Speaker:of both our lived life and opportunities
Speaker:in our work life,
Speaker:and where did it start for you
Speaker:where accessibility was something
Speaker:that you recognized as important and valuable,
Speaker:and then, how did you decide
Speaker:that would also be something you'd wanna do
Speaker:or become involved in as a profession?
Speaker:- Yeah, my background in accessibility began
Speaker:where I had recently joined a new team within government,
Speaker:so my background is that of a backend developer,
Speaker:so, writing .NET and C#.
Speaker:One of the expectations of this new team
Speaker:was that they were making
Speaker:a brand new digital service,
Speaker:and as part of that,
Speaker:it needed to be accessible.
Speaker:As I joined the team,
Speaker:I recognized no one really wanted to read through a WCAG.
Speaker:At most, optimistic, it's a very dry document
Speaker:with lots of contradictory information,
Speaker:so, I found, well, as I'm new,
Speaker:I would read it, and I would extract out
Speaker:things which we as a team would need to do,
Speaker:and so, either many, many months of reading it
Speaker:and familiarizing myself with it more, and more, and more,
Speaker:I recognized I was enjoying it
Speaker:where I could understand that my work
Speaker:as a backend developer could really,
Speaker:significantly improve the end user's experience
Speaker:if we understood accessibility more,
Speaker:and I was pulling out
Speaker:those themes, things which made sense,
Speaker:and more, and more, and more,
Speaker:I was becoming more familiar,
Speaker:and as is always the case,
Speaker:anyone who is showing a depthness,
Speaker:understanding everything is someone labeled the expert.
Speaker:Well, I never viewed myself as that.
Speaker:I was just reading more, and more, and more,
Speaker:and then understanding it more,
Speaker:and then through my initial work,
Speaker:in my initial work in accessibility,
Speaker:I recognized I was liking it more.
Speaker:I could understand it more,
Speaker:I could drill down deeper and further,
Speaker:so, as my background of a software engineer,
Speaker:I was always wanting to really understand concepts more
Speaker:than just the superficial level,
Speaker:and I found with accessibility,
Speaker:it was something which was hooking me more and more,
Speaker:so that I moved to other teams
Speaker:where, ultimately, I moved
Speaker:into a dedicated web accessibility role.
Speaker:Our regular work was auditing government applications
Speaker:and working closely with a colleague.
Speaker:We were a very good combination of moving past
Speaker:that level of compliance,
Speaker:things which are the minimum level
Speaker:to making recommendations
Speaker:of how to radically improve
Speaker:a user's experience regardless of their disabilities,
Speaker:and then I found working in accessibility,
Speaker:I would be exposed to the work
Speaker:of other agencies and other companies,
Speaker:and I found there was a real,
Speaker:not necessarily lacking of expertise,
Speaker:but through my engineers background,
Speaker:I was recognizing that the information being provided
Speaker:isn't necessarily helpful,
Speaker:so, I identified that I was doing better work
Speaker:than many of the incumbents,
Speaker:and thought, well, I think there's a gap
Speaker:in the market for another company,
Speaker:and that's when I took the step
Speaker:and launched CANAXESS,
Speaker:because I recognized,
Speaker:while all of the incumbent's work
Speaker:was very, very good,
Speaker:I felt I could do it better,
Speaker:and I could just use another angle,
Speaker:so, ultimately, I feel accessibility
Speaker:is that a technical discipline at times
Speaker:where understanding how things work in HTML in code
Speaker:within JavaScript can really affect the end user experience
Speaker:if they're using assisted technology,
Speaker:so, I guess my grounding
Speaker:in software development made me appreciate more
Speaker:that how things which are written
Speaker:can vastly affect the end user's experience
Speaker:if they're using assisted technology,
Speaker:and through that, I launched my own company,
Speaker:and it's been a wonderful journey.
Speaker:I've met lots of interesting individuals,
Speaker:worked with lots of different people,
Speaker:and then recognize more
Speaker:that the learning with accessibility never ends,
Speaker:so, I always initially had this optimistic point
Speaker:of, once I reached year X,
Speaker:I would know about accessibility
Speaker:and I'd be that knowledgeable individual,
Speaker:but I found the more I learn
Speaker:and the more I understand,
Speaker:the more I feel that I don't know enough,
Speaker:and that's driven me more and more,
Speaker:and more to consume more blogs to reach out to more people,
Speaker:and, overwhelmingly, just look past my own biases
Speaker:of, I think this is absolutely right,
Speaker:I would do it this way,
Speaker:but to recognize more
Speaker:that, with accessibility, it's the test,
Speaker:the testing, again, testing it in multiple browsers,
Speaker:in multiple assisted technology tools,
Speaker:recognizing that just because something works
Speaker:in one browser, in one screen reader,
Speaker:that might not, necessarily,
Speaker:be right for everyone's experience,
Speaker:and I feel that, over time,
Speaker:that uncertainty now has made me a bit more humble
Speaker:with recognizing that my experience is just one voice.
Speaker:It's recognizing many others have an equally valid voice,
Speaker:and take all that on board as much as I can.
Speaker:- Well, you've had a lot of experience
Speaker:in working with government agencies,
Speaker:so, you had all of those experiences,
Speaker:and then you've had your experiences working
Speaker:as a consultant.
Speaker:As you kind of look at where accessibility is today,
Speaker:is there one area where you think maybe
Speaker:the accessibility community needs to put in more effort,
Speaker:maybe an area that you think is particularly important
Speaker:for us to be aware of looking forward?
Speaker:Is there any certain place that maybe you're most excited
Speaker:about developments that are coming along?
Speaker:So, just if you have an idea
Speaker:about maybe one of those future items.
Speaker:- One of my major, major pet peeves,
Speaker:and I found there's a real appetite
Speaker:for understanding accessibility
Speaker:in this area is with complex UI controls,
Speaker:so, when you are making up a complex digital service,
Speaker:there might be lots of interactivity there,
Speaker:so, the teams would leverage the third party tools,
Speaker:which have dialogue boxes, and dropdowns,
Speaker:and auto suggest a control,
Speaker:so, rather than a team having to build that,
Speaker:they just use an existing component library.
Speaker:Now these vendors may make bold accessibility claims
Speaker:of, "We are 100% accessible to WCAG 2.2, 2.1,
Speaker:we've got AA, we have VPAT,
Speaker:we write about accessibility regularly,
Speaker:and that often makes software teams building
Speaker:a digital services complacent,
Speaker:where, if a vendor has made these bold accessibility claims,
Speaker:there's all this evidence indicating
Speaker:that they value accessibility,
Speaker:and they built it well,
Speaker:and then these software teams adopt it,
Speaker:because part of the procurement process
Speaker:is making sure that the tool which you are using
Speaker:is fit for a purpose,
Speaker:but then, one of the most challenging times
Speaker:was several years ago with a large government application
Speaker:where they followed all of that material,
Speaker:this accompanying out
Speaker:a written blog post mentioning about accessibility,
Speaker:and this team had readily adopted everything,
Speaker:so, every single screen had UI controls from this vendor.
Speaker:What we then found
Speaker:is when we were auditing it towards the end,
Speaker:just that final tick
Speaker:of, is this application accessible
Speaker:and ready for the general public?
Speaker:What we noticed was every single workflow
Speaker:was flawed where we had a testing
Speaker:with people with vision impairments,
Speaker:and they weren't able to get past the first screen,
Speaker:and that was really disappointing,
Speaker:because at that point the application had been written
Speaker:and there was many, many months
Speaker:and significant amounts of resources
Speaker:would have to be dedicated to fix it,
Speaker:so, in many ways,
Speaker:that experience of my past has jaded me a little
Speaker:with recognizing what a vendor says
Speaker:isn't necessarily correct,
Speaker:where I wouldn't say they're lying,
Speaker:but there's being a little bit optimistic
Speaker:with their claims
Speaker:where we as accessibility individuals need
Speaker:to treat cautiously any bold claim
Speaker:of accessibility compliance
Speaker:where we can recognize all of a vendor's efforts
Speaker:with writing blog posts,
Speaker:having a dedicated accessibility issue tracking,
Speaker:and even making claims about it all look promising,
Speaker:but unless we do our due diligence
Speaker:of confirming that,
Speaker:it's ultimately meaningless,
Speaker:where, yes, we can tackle that information on board,
Speaker:but, ultimately, we and other software teams,
Speaker:and other individuals
Speaker:who are commissioning large projects need
Speaker:to really hold to account the companies
Speaker:who have made bold claims about accessibility,
Speaker:because often they might not be entirely accurate,
Speaker:and, I guess, that us as a community as well,
Speaker:it needs to move away at times of this...
Speaker:How best can I say it?
Speaker:It's recognizing that accessibility
Speaker:is often with some voices treated
Speaker:as a theoretical exercise
Speaker:that the best approach is to use native HML elements
Speaker:where they're possible, which is valid,
Speaker:but then it's recognizing
Speaker:that other teams also have as equal input,
Speaker:so, we, I guess, need to do a better
Speaker:where accessibility is vitally important
Speaker:but as part of delivering a project
Speaker:and the digital services,
Speaker:we also need to recognize at times
Speaker:that sometimes we need to make the compromises
Speaker:where one approach is might be the best approach,
Speaker:but we also need to understand
Speaker:that sometimes that best approach isn't workable
Speaker:and we might need to use the tool set
Speaker:which is inaccessible,
Speaker:so, rather than being that loud voice,
Speaker:which is making dismissive remarks
Speaker:about the accessory efforts of a vendor,
Speaker:we need to say this is working,
Speaker:but you could do this, this, and this,
Speaker:so, I guess, us as an accessibility,
Speaker:your community as a whole,
Speaker:adopting an approach of humility more
Speaker:where I don't necessarily think anyone
Speaker:is going out of the way to deliberately make
Speaker:a service inaccessible or poor for a blind user.
Speaker:I think more it's the expectations
Speaker:are much more increased now with the soccer teams.
Speaker:There's less resourcing, and less time,
Speaker:and so, often people make poor judgment calls,
Speaker:which mean that the end user experience is effective,
Speaker:so, overwhelmingly, it's recognizing
Speaker:that it's not often a black and white approach.
Speaker:It's recognizing those new nuances
Speaker:and having to compromise,
Speaker:and often lose the battle, but win a greater war,
Speaker:so, if our aim is to make things accessible,
Speaker:we often have to recognize
Speaker:that we might have to allow compromises
Speaker:with images which have poor descriptions or controls,
Speaker:which have poor accessibility,
Speaker:but if there's a roadmap of remedying it,
Speaker:then that's a good compromise.
Speaker:- Thanks for that case study example.
Speaker:That was very helpful to get that
Speaker:and to get your insights on that,
Speaker:and I wanna thank you for participating in this, Ross.
Speaker:I appreciate you taking the time
Speaker:to be with me today,
Speaker:and hopefully we can meet
Speaker:in person sometime at a physical event,
Speaker:maybe either on this side, or on your side,
Speaker:but it was good to chat with you.
Speaker:- I hope so too, Joe.
Speaker:Thanks so much, and really good to talk
Speaker:with another accessibility professional.
Speaker:Thank you. - All right, thanks a lot.
Speaker:Bye-bye.
