Episode 1
To Ensure That Accessibility Is Not Forgotton and Is Incorporated as Early as Possible
Mary Jo Mueller, IBM, Worldwide Accessibility Standards Program Manager
Mary Jo talks about her long career with accessibility at IBM. She talks about the challenges in supporting digital accessibility in a large, global organization.
Mentioned in this episode:
Info about Accessibility at Blink
Transcript
(dramatic 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:All right, well, let's get started with another episode
Speaker:where I get the opportunity to talk
Speaker:with an accessibility practitioner.
Speaker:And today I am talking with Mary Jo Mueller.
Speaker:How are you today, Mary Jo?
Speaker:- I'm really well, thank you.
Speaker:- Well, I'm at my home office on Vashon Island,
Speaker:which is near Seattle, which is where
Speaker:Blink's headquarters office is.
Speaker:Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:- I'm on the opposite end of the country from you.
Speaker:I'm in Satellite Beach, Florida over near NASA.
Speaker:- All right, well, yeah, NASA's one of our clients,
Speaker:so I have the opportunity to
Speaker:work with them quite a bit,
Speaker:but it's great to have you as part of
Speaker:this program and looking forward to hearing about
Speaker:your work with accessibility,
Speaker:but always a good place to start is
Speaker:if you could just describe what things
Speaker:you're currently involved with.
Speaker:- Well, currently I work for,
Speaker:actually my entire career, I've been at IBM.
Speaker:I am the Accessibility Standards Program Manager
Speaker:and kind of what that means is
Speaker:I lead the worldwide team working on
Speaker:accessibility standards,
Speaker:and I also work on accessibility policy around the world
Speaker:so just kind of coordinating those efforts
Speaker:and making sure that
Speaker:we have an influence over standards in policy worldwide.
Speaker:- And so, you mentioned worldwide, so,
Speaker:so your position is one where you're communicating
Speaker:with all the different
Speaker:parts of IBM, different departments, divisions, and so on?
Speaker:- Yeah, we communicate with different,
Speaker:yeah, IBM's a global company (laughs),
Speaker:so the group that I'm in is the accessibility team,
Speaker:IBM Accessibility,
Speaker:and we do provide all the guidance.
Speaker:We basically distill all of the standards information
Speaker:and the policy information and distill it into guidance
Speaker:that we give to IBM developers,
Speaker:management, everybody around the world,
Speaker:on how to make IBM products accessible,
Speaker:how to report that they're accessible and so on.
Speaker:- Well, I want to, you know, get in a little bit more detail
Speaker:about your work, but we also like to find out, you know,
Speaker:kind of what the journey was
Speaker:for people as they found their way into accessibility, so
Speaker:maybe if you could think back, what were some of
Speaker:the earliest things that you found that either prepared you
Speaker:for accessibility or where you became aware of it?
Speaker:- Well, my journey into accessibility was actually
Speaker:rather serendipitous.
Speaker:I
Speaker:had my first child and went on a leave of absence
Speaker:for a year, and then when I came back, my manager had moved.
Speaker:I used to be working in, like, communications subsystems.
Speaker:I worked on AS/400 and,
Speaker:you know, I'm electrical engineer by education, so
Speaker:I was working in a completely different area,
Speaker:but when I came back
Speaker:to IBM working full time,
Speaker:my manager had moved to the accessibility team.
Speaker:And so I was plunged into this accessibility team.
Speaker:I had awareness of disabilities
Speaker:and people with disabilities,
Speaker:'cause my dad had had a stroke when I was in high school,
Speaker:and he was left disabled and unable to work.
Speaker:And so I had an awareness and a background and, you know,
Speaker:feelings about that.
Speaker:And so when I wound (laughs) up in this team,
Speaker:it was like, aha, you could actually do technology work
Speaker:for people with disabilities.
Speaker:I was like, wow, this is awesome, and so,
Speaker:I worked initially on products for,
Speaker:SpeechViewer, which was a product
Speaker:for speech therapists to help
Speaker:their patients learn how to pronounce phonemes more clearly
Speaker:and be understood better when they're speaking,
Speaker:and so that was my first plunge into that.
Speaker:So there was a lot of learning to do and,
Speaker:but I was kind of excited to do it because I felt like
Speaker:it was making a difference.
Speaker:- [Joe] Well, it sounds like, though,
Speaker:you, at least, there was some infrastructure there,
Speaker:people already working on this where you were brought
Speaker:into a place where you had some peers
Speaker:to be able to lean on to get going.
Speaker:- Yeah, there was a lot of, there was a,
Speaker:an established group.
Speaker:It was called, in IBM, it was called Special Needs Systems
Speaker:at the time, but it, you know, it eventually became
Speaker:IBM Accessibility,
Speaker:which is the current name of the organization.
Speaker:And yes, there were people that were already established
Speaker:in that field, and there was actually,
Speaker:IBM was making various products
Speaker:for people with disabilities.
Speaker:And so, they had a lot of knowledge to impart on me,
Speaker:and that was really helpful.
Speaker:- [Joe] And then you said you had to do a lot of learning.
Speaker:And so, was that just investigating,
Speaker:you know, what resources available
Speaker:through the community or had
Speaker:your company built up a library of things to work on
Speaker:or how did your education in that area move forward?
Speaker:- At that point, that, I mean, this was
Speaker:really kind of early on.
Speaker:This was before,
Speaker:before Section 508.
Speaker:- Mm, okay. - This was before, I mean,
Speaker:this was, I've been in my career a long, long time.
Speaker:So yeah, there was none of that kind of thing.
Speaker:It was more of, this is a,
Speaker:like a philanthropic effort for IBM.
Speaker:We wanna make a difference for people with disabilities.
Speaker:What are the disabilities?
Speaker:What can we do?
Speaker:Is there any assistive technology we can help with?
Speaker:And this was back in the days when,
Speaker:you know, Jim Thatcher was working on the first, you know,
Speaker:screen readers and all that kind of thing.
Speaker:I don't know if you're familiar with him,
Speaker:but I worked with him at some point,
Speaker:and he was a great mentor for me.
Speaker:He was a great, fun person to be around, and
Speaker:I eventually wound up working on screen readers myself.
Speaker:I worked on the screen reader for OS/2
Speaker:with Jim and Rick Schwerdtfeger, and some other names that
Speaker:a lot of people who've been in accessibility a while
Speaker:know all these names, I got to work with them.
Speaker:It was a really a privilege.
Speaker:I learned a lot,
Speaker:and it was a great environment for learning.
Speaker:Not like, not saying that today
Speaker:isn't also a good learning environment (laughs), but
Speaker:coming on board with zero knowledge of, you know,
Speaker:making technology accessible,
Speaker:it was a great place to get started, and I got to learn
Speaker:a lot about user needs.
Speaker:We ran beta programs with the users and
Speaker:got to get direct user feedback and
Speaker:hear their user needs and hear the struggles
Speaker:that they had with their technologies, so
Speaker:for me, I think that was one of the best lessons
Speaker:that I learned was working with people with disabilities
Speaker:and learning from them and understanding
Speaker:where they're coming from and the things that
Speaker:they're trying to do and where they're meeting roadblocks
Speaker:and then trying to come up with solutions for that.
Speaker:- [Joe] Well, with IBM being such a large organization
Speaker:and so influential, at that time, then,
Speaker:were you,
Speaker:was IBM involved in helping to
Speaker:contribute to the standards that were being developed
Speaker:by the World Wide Web Consortium, and
Speaker:that type of thing? - Yeah, so I mean, in that
Speaker:really early time, there was no standards yet
Speaker:because there was no 508, there, I mean, there,
Speaker:the web, when I first started working accessibility,
Speaker:the web wasn't even a thing. (laughs)
Speaker:Like, it was in its infancy,
Speaker:if so, and then as my career progressed,
Speaker:yes, the web started coming into play.
Speaker:Some of my peers,
Speaker:I wasn't directly working on standards at the time,
Speaker:but there were some of my peers like Jim and
Speaker:Phil and others who were working on standards.
Speaker:And then I had a break in my career.
Speaker:So that was kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker:I had my second child, and I left.
Speaker:I left work for nine years,
Speaker:and then I came back.
Speaker:So when I came back, I was hired back into accessibility,
Speaker:and it was because of my
Speaker:already prior knowledge, and, you know,
Speaker:they didn't have to bring me up to speed
Speaker:on what is accessibility and what does that mean,
Speaker:and what does that mean for users,
Speaker:and what does that mean for IBM?
Speaker:I already kind of was already there.
Speaker:So it was a very easy in for me to get right back into
Speaker:the accessibility field, which was awesome
Speaker:because technology had completely marched on.
Speaker:You know, the programming was completely different.
Speaker:I was totally not familiar with, you know,
Speaker:all of the, beyond HTML, plain HTML, I wasn't,
Speaker:I wasn't familiar with any of the programming
Speaker:of web technologies.
Speaker:So I thought I was gonna have a difficult time
Speaker:getting back into work
Speaker:after being gone for nine years,
Speaker:but it actually turned out it wasn't that difficult.
Speaker:- [Joe] And so, sometimes when there's a gap like that,
Speaker:we find that things have changed a lot.
Speaker:And then in other areas we think
Speaker:doesn't seem like anything moved forward at all (laughs).
Speaker:(Mary Jo laughs) Well, I think a lot of us find
Speaker:that it's been a theme that's come up a lot in this program.
Speaker:How was it for you? - You know,
Speaker:that is very, very true.
Speaker:So, I was not used to working remote with a lot of people.
Speaker:That had changed a lot,
Speaker:and I wasn't used to that.
Speaker:I was used to being with the in-person group
Speaker:because at the time I had left,
Speaker:we were all co-located in the same spot.
Speaker:And so, you know, you need to talk to so-and-so
Speaker:about whatever, walk down the hall,
Speaker:have a conversation, get it over with.
Speaker:It was a little bit of an adjustment (laughs)
Speaker:for me to work with a team that was coast to coast
Speaker:and that kind of thing, and not face to face.
Speaker:And it was a little bit of an adjustment there.
Speaker:Of course, the technology had changed and, you know,
Speaker:standards were actually a thing.
Speaker:When I joined,
Speaker:WCAG was working on WCAG 2.0.
Speaker:You know, W3C?
Speaker:And, you know, 508 obviously was there,
Speaker:and the 508 refresh was getting underway.
Speaker:So, (laughs) so I got involved in those things
Speaker:because, you know, I still have my knowledge about
Speaker:people with disabilities and their user needs,
Speaker:and I could still contribute to all of that.
Speaker:And so I just kind of jumped in
Speaker:and started working on that and,
Speaker:and
Speaker:wrote a white paper with a couple other people,
Speaker:and it was a really good
Speaker:way to get back into the working world.
Speaker:And I'm, (laughs) I'm really glad I had
Speaker:my accessibility background because it really was helpful
Speaker:to me getting back into things.
Speaker:I did find that there was a lot of
Speaker:problems that seemed to repeat themselves
Speaker:in the technologies (laughs) and
Speaker:the web content was no different,
Speaker:and it just seemed like,
Speaker:you know, you take two steps forward and one step back
Speaker:when you wind up with new technologies.
Speaker:It's like, oh yeah, accessibility.
Speaker:We forgot about that kind of thing.
Speaker:And, and it's like, well, how can you forget about that?
Speaker:We've known about that for years, so (laughs)
Speaker:in those regards, it seemed
Speaker:some things didn't change as much as I had hoped,
Speaker:but there's still a community out there
Speaker:of accessibility experts who care very much,
Speaker:you know, people with disabilities who care very much.
Speaker:And this is all like a partnership
Speaker:that we have to continue
Speaker:to ensure that accessibility is not forgotten.
Speaker:That is, it is incorporated as early as possible
Speaker:because redesign is way (laughs) too costly.
Speaker:- [Joe] Well, I wanna talk about your community involvement
Speaker:before we're finished, but just
Speaker:continuing on, kind of from where we are here,
Speaker:what are the types of things that,
Speaker:how are things done within your organization to educate
Speaker:people about accessibility and what their role is in that?
Speaker:It sounds like you do a lot of work,
Speaker:you know, across the organization.
Speaker:How does that end up
Speaker:propagating or
Speaker:happening within individual divisions, departments,
Speaker:and so on?
Speaker:- Well, you know, IBM, being a large organization,
Speaker:we're somewhat process driven, so that kinda helps
Speaker:because we created accessibility processes
Speaker:and education and then we have, you know,
Speaker:web content and tooling that we've created
Speaker:to help the organization to learn,
Speaker:you know, consume, learn, do, and test, right?
Speaker:So those
Speaker:are all important aspects of
Speaker:completing accessibility process.
Speaker:We have created a website
Speaker:that does a lot of the, kind of role based
Speaker:or where you are in your process-based accessibility
Speaker:that kinda gives you ideas on
Speaker:what you should be doing at what stage of your project.
Speaker:And we get a lot of user feedback from IBMers
Speaker:of what they need, what they don't understand,
Speaker:and we try to, you know, have that feedback loop also
Speaker:with the consumers of what we do our tooling
Speaker:and try to keep up with the standards changes as well,
Speaker:I mean, so everything kinda rolls in,
Speaker:and we just keep iterating on both the processes,
Speaker:the tooling, the guidance, all that,
Speaker:just to keep it all current,
Speaker:you know, and also we have to be able to report
Speaker:how well we're doing
Speaker:in our product accessibility conformance reports.
Speaker:So we use the VPAT.
Speaker:We're involved in industry associations
Speaker:that helped develop the VPAT (laughs),
Speaker:and that's how you found out about me with IAAP
Speaker:presentation that I did with Michelle Van Duzer, and
Speaker:we were involved in the development of the VPAT,
Speaker:so we can report
Speaker:accessibility and how well our products are meeting
Speaker:those standards and requirements from,
Speaker:to whoever's looking to purchase IBM products.
Speaker:- [Joe] Well, let's talk about that a little bit
Speaker:as you brought that up.
Speaker:So the International Association
Speaker:of Accessibility Professionals,
Speaker:a great organization with lots of resources to help people.
Speaker:I'm a member of that as well, and,
Speaker:they have
Speaker:webinars that they provide as well as
Speaker:other resources, and one of those is,
Speaker:was one that you mentioned I'd attended
Speaker:that you were involved with with the VPAT.
Speaker:Why don't you talk a little bit, you know,
Speaker:specifically about the VPAT?
Speaker:I don't think we've covered that in this episode series.
Speaker:If you'd give a brief description
Speaker:- Okay. - of that and, yeah,
Speaker:some people might be interested in what that's all about.
Speaker:- [Mary Jo] Okay, so VPAT, let's talk about
Speaker:the acronym itself first (laughs),
Speaker:because we tend to use a lot of acronyms,
Speaker:and then people don't know what that means.
Speaker:So a VPAT is a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template,
Speaker:and it's a template that contains
Speaker:the requirements for accessibility.
Speaker:Currently, it has three standards,
Speaker:worldwide standards, that are used:
Speaker:WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Speaker:It has
Speaker:508,
Speaker:the revised 508
Speaker:standards
Speaker:as well as the European EN 301 549,
Speaker:which is used in several different
Speaker:regulations in Europe, the European Union,
Speaker:as well as beyond, because other countries, like Australia,
Speaker:are adopting it, and Canada, are adopting the EN 301 549.
Speaker:So those are all accessibility standards.
Speaker:And the VPAT
Speaker:contains all those requirements just as a list,
Speaker:just, it doesn't have all the details
Speaker:that are in the standards, but as a list
Speaker:so that you can report how well you meet
Speaker:each of those requirements and give explanations.
Speaker:If you don't meet something, if it's just, you know,
Speaker:you forgot alt text on, you know,
Speaker:a certain screen, but it's not gonna affect users
Speaker:because it's not, you know, an image that is
Speaker:really all that meaningful,
Speaker:that kind of thing, you can report all of that,
Speaker:and then people who buy your products,
Speaker:you can provide them with that information,
Speaker:and then they can make informed decisions
Speaker:when they're purchasing products.
Speaker:- One of the common things that
Speaker:software organizations seem to always be looking for is
Speaker:they're always looking for certification or something
Speaker:that has the blue ribbon that this is
Speaker:quote unquote, officially approved.
Speaker:That's really not what,
Speaker:you know, VPAT's all about.
Speaker:- Mm-hm. - What, maybe talk about
Speaker:kind of, you know, that difference there
Speaker:where we really don't have, there's not an,
Speaker:a certification
Speaker:authority that-- - Yeah, there is no
Speaker:certification authority, yeah.
Speaker:The VPAT is really meant for self-report,
Speaker:for products to self-report their accessibility, right?
Speaker:So that, you know, you have to, hopefully (laughs)
Speaker:hopefully, they are doing all of the things
Speaker:that they should be doing that leads up to this report.
Speaker:I mean, you have to test.
Speaker:You have to develop and test
Speaker:to the accessibility standards,
Speaker:and then you can reliably report on that.
Speaker:You can't just go and say,
Speaker:check, check, check, check, check.
Speaker:You know, I meet all these requirements,
Speaker:and you have nothing to back it.
Speaker:- Mm-hm. - That is not a good scenario
Speaker:because then you're not being very truthful
Speaker:about the accessibility status of your product,
Speaker:and it's not giving your buyers any information
Speaker:that's helpful to them to compare products.
Speaker:- Yeah. - As well, it becomes,
Speaker:it can become part of the legal documentation on a bid.
Speaker:So you really do wanna be truthful
Speaker:because you can be held liable for what's in there.
Speaker:So you wanna make sure that
Speaker:it's up to date and
Speaker:correct as much as possible. - And then on the positive
Speaker:side, it is very helpful to an organization
Speaker:because it represents that accessibility is
Speaker:something that you're being proactive about.
Speaker:- Exactly. - And I think it's important
Speaker:for a lot of organizations to understand that,
Speaker:that lawsuits and and legal actions tend to occur
Speaker:in the areas where there's just been,
Speaker:you know, let it be lax. - No action. (laughs)
Speaker:No action, yeah. - Yeah, you have no action,
Speaker:and just the, you know, doing this, you know,
Speaker:shows that you've been proactive about it.
Speaker:- Yeah, and that you're actually trying.
Speaker:It's really hard to be 100%, you know,
Speaker:accessible in 100%
Speaker:of everything, but as long as you're truthful about that
Speaker:and are still striving to improve
Speaker:release after release and,
Speaker:you know, prove that you care, you address user concerns,
Speaker:that kind of thing, kinda shows
Speaker:that you care and that you're willing to,
Speaker:you know, work towards a more accessible world.
Speaker:- [Joe] Yeah, well, I'll include some links to the
Speaker:IAAP training related to that
Speaker:in the show notes for this.
Speaker:Getting back to the types of things that
Speaker:you're involved with at IBM, are,
Speaker:you know, are there any particular initiatives
Speaker:that you're excited about now
Speaker:or are there things looking forward
Speaker:that you're, you think might become part of
Speaker:the activities at IBM moving into the future?
Speaker:- Let me think about that for a second.
Speaker:I think that
Speaker:I'm,
Speaker:to,
Speaker:from my view, I'm looking forward
Speaker:to
Speaker:new technologies.
Speaker:They do kinda have their own challenges for accessibility.
Speaker:You know, when you talk about virtual worlds
Speaker:and virtual reality, and this and that,
Speaker:I am excited about
Speaker:where that could go 'cause actually it could also open up
Speaker:some new opportunities.
Speaker:And though I'm not directly involved in that,
Speaker:I don't think IBM currently has any
Speaker:VR
Speaker:AR type
Speaker:of
Speaker:products at this point
Speaker:that
Speaker:still there's, there is some
Speaker:interesting things going on with data visualization
Speaker:and that's something that IBM does a lot, and
Speaker:I'm really interested to see where things go
Speaker:in making that accessible.
Speaker:There's a lot of challenges with that as well, and
Speaker:but, you know, personally for our team,
Speaker:because we are involved in standards and policy,
Speaker:we're always on the lookout for what's happening worldwide,
Speaker:picking up standards,
Speaker:what are they doing new regulations?
Speaker:Because the United Nations'
Speaker:Convention on the Rights of Persons
Speaker:with Disabilities is getting,
Speaker:it has been ratified by a lot of countries,
Speaker:and that means that they're going to be putting in place
Speaker:regulations for accessibility
Speaker:and that includes accessible technology.
Speaker:And so part of what I do (laughs) is just make sure that
Speaker:the standards that they require
Speaker:and the things that they require
Speaker:can allow for a global market (laughs).
Speaker:You want them to harmonize between countries
Speaker:- Mm-hm. - and not have unique
Speaker:accessibility requirements per country
Speaker:because then you'll lose your economy of scale
Speaker:and you'd have to produce a specific product
Speaker:for a specific country because they've modified
Speaker:the regulations so much in the standards.
Speaker:New Horizons for people with cognitive disabilities,
Speaker:I think that's very interesting as well.
Speaker:The next generation of
Speaker:the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,
Speaker:you know, or,
Speaker:so version three
Speaker:of WCAG, which is being worked on,
Speaker:we're hoping to include more
Speaker:requirements for, that address
Speaker:people with cognitive disabilities and improve upon
Speaker:the usability of the standard itself
Speaker:and the understandability of the standard itself.
Speaker:So I think that's,
Speaker:you know, for a standards person, that's pretty interesting.
Speaker:I don't know if it's interesting to everybody, but (laughs).
Speaker:- [Joe] It's definitely interesting to me
Speaker:because I've worked with people who have had
Speaker:traumatic brain injury accidents
Speaker:- Yes. - and things like that, and
Speaker:it's probably the area of accessibility that I think
Speaker:organizations have worked on the least relative to,
Speaker:you know, other types of physical challenges.
Speaker:And it, I think a lot of it is because it's really hard.
Speaker:- [Mary Jo] It is hard and different users' needs
Speaker:are, can be different and conflicting.
Speaker:And so coming up with a standard
Speaker:that can address everybody is very challenging.
Speaker:But as somebody who's of an engineering mind,
Speaker:you know, challenges are kind of fun. (laughs)
Speaker:- [Joe] Well, I, Mary Jo, I wanted to thank you
Speaker:for taking the time here to talk a little bit
Speaker:about your background and share your thoughts
Speaker:about today and the future.
Speaker:And hopefully, we'll get together at a,
Speaker:an in-person conference sometime again soon.
Speaker:- Yeah, and I don't know if you've looked at it,
Speaker:but IBM does have resources and a website that,
Speaker:that can help people learn about accessibility
Speaker:and web accessibility
Speaker:as well as free tooling available, so
Speaker:check it out. - Yeah, I'll make sure
Speaker:I get the proper link from you.
Speaker:- Okay. - And we'll include that
Speaker:in the show notes here as well.
Speaker:So thank you very much. - Excellent.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:- Hey, we did it. - Yay. (laughs)
Speaker:- Great, let me turn the-- - That wasn't so,
