What are the benefits of accessible design and how many people does it really benefit?
Join us for a chat with accessibility manager Allison Ravenhall about what accessible tech means to those who use it and the struggles she faces in getting its importance recognised.
Listen in as we touch on the technological strides made for the disabled community during COVID, the negatives of return to office mandates, the value of inclusive user testing and how designers can do better by considering and catering for EVERY user.
Episode notes and transcriptions are available here.
Find out more at designtherapy.com.au
What are the benefits of accessible design and how many people does it really benefit?
Join us for a chat with accessibility manager Allison Ravenhall about what accessible tech means to those who use it and the struggles she faces in getting its importance recognised.
Listen in as we touch on the technological strides made for the disabled community during COVID, the negatives of return to office mandates, the value of inclusive user testing and how designers can do better by considering and catering for EVERY user.
Episode notes and transcriptions are available here.
Find out more at designtherapy.com.au
Hey, I'm Justin.
Steven Hsieh:Hey, I'm Steve.
Justin Hall:Welcome to Design Therapy. Every month we're gonna be interviewing our friends in the design community, and they'll share a personal story with us and how it influenced their career in tech. Hey, Steve, welcome back on the podcast. How's it feel taking a break from parental leave to talk to some adults?
Steven Hsieh:To be honest, Justin, I've almost completely forgotten about you.. Uh, it's been two, it's been about two weeks off work.
Justin Hall:Oh. How could you, how could you?!
Steven Hsieh:Uh, work is work? It feels like a lifetime ago, but I have to say it is nice to speak to another adult. And I know it's been a bit longer break between our record episodes, but I committed to you. I said, even though I'm on parental leave, I'd commit to this thing and we're gonna get through our first season and we're on track.
Justin Hall:Listen, when our legions of fans contact me and say, where's the next episode? Where's the next episode? I blame your kids like they're my go-to scapegoats.
Steven Hsieh:Well, yeah, if I, if I sound like I'm goo goo gaga-ing for this episode, I'll also blame my kids cuz I don't get a lot of practice these days, to, to talk eloquently.
Justin Hall:Kids are the root of the problem. Did you ever talk eloquently? I don't know Steve.
Steven Hsieh:Well, speaking of problems, uh, we're gonna talk about another problem today. We've, we've actually had the luxury of talking to a lot of UX designers, UI designers. We had a engineer come on board, and today we're gonna bring another subject matter expert from our chapter.
Justin Hall:So today we have Alison Ravenhall with us, who is an accessibility manager at CommBank. Alison, how's it going?
Allison Ravenhall:Good, thanks Justin. Nice to be here.
Justin Hall:Excited to have you on. So can you actually explain for the people at home who maybe don't really understand what an Accessibility Manager does, what do you do?
Allison Ravenhall:What do I do? What don't I do? I work in digital accessibility. Just want to. To get that out there in case people think I'm going around inspecting buildings to make sure that there's ramps around the place. That's not me. What I do is work with website and app teams to make sure that the things that they're building are accessible and usable by as many people as possible, including people with disabilities. Obviously, that doesn't tell you what I do when I get to the office each day, but I'll be chatting to designers. They'll be showing me their fantastic workups of screens and flows, we'll work together and I'll point out features that could be challenging. You know, make sure that they're aware of aspects of their design that could, you know, impact someone negatively. It could be. Color contrast. It could be their use of white space, it could be element alignment, the way that they're embedding text in images, making sure that there's good labels on everything, all sorts of things. Then, you know, I work with the developers to make sure that they're coding things to good quality. They're using correct semantic markup. They're using all of the right tags, they're applying all of the right labels and you know, setting focus and those sorts of things. And then when something's been built, I'll, I'll grab a copy of it and I'll, uh, I'll do some hands-on testing. So I'll run some assistive technologies like a screen reader or a speech interface, or I'll turn up the text to really, really big and see what breaks. And, um, by the end, I hope, you know, we've, we've got a, a half decent website or app for, for people to, to use.
Steven Hsieh:Why do you care about this so much? What's, what's been your history leading up to this point? Yeah. Why does this make you? Wake up in the morning, get you outta bed.
Justin Hall:Does it,
Steven Hsieh:Does it, does it? Justin Hall: Does it get you outta bed?. Allison Ravenhall: You know what? It actually, it really does actually get me outta bed in the morning. It is a passion job for me. I've been working in it for about 20 years now, which dates me a bit. I've done some time as a developer. I've done some time in usability in ux. I've done some time in tech writing, and they're all interesting and they're all important. But when I stumbled into accessibility, I really sort of found a bit of a reason. It's so important because without a focus on accessibility, we're excluding people from participating and we're excluding people from being able to live and work and enjoy with autonomy And, and it's really interesting right? Digital hasn't been around for all that long. When you look at the time of say, humanity, let's just, let's just put it that way. And up until up until recently, I feel like if you are disabled or you've got accessibility issues, society as a whole has been pretty happy to kind of ignore them. Just say, well, that's, that's too bad. Yet nowadays it's completely shifted. Do you have a reason for that?
Allison Ravenhall:I don't know that it's completely shifted yet. I'd, I'd certainly say it's a work in progress, but there is definite movement and there is definite progress in, in the access space, and I feel like it's come about from better visibility, better advocacy. People are more able to get out and have their voices heard, whether it's in person. You know, virtually over, over the internet, there's more support available for people, um, you know, from a legal sense, from an advocacy sense. And people are using those channels to have their voices heard and to, you know, have their needs met. And so I'm just part of that process. I guess
Justin Hall:Speaking about the way things have changed, you've mentioned previously Alison, that there was a big digital transformation during Covid that kind of enabled the disabled community to participate in the, the wider community without actually leaving their homes.
Allison Ravenhall:Yes.
Justin Hall:Like did you have more insight on that? That was crazy to me. I, I cuz I never thought of it that way. Obviously we were, everyone's so focused on feeling restrained, whereas for this community that was, you know, almost freeing.
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah, absolutely. So, Justin, you and I are podcasting from Melbourne today, where during, during the, the height of Covid times, uh, we were locked down by our government. We, we spent a lot of time in our houses. By ourselves or you know, with our family groups. And that was it. And yes, a lot of people suffered some serious mental health impacts from being locked down. You know, not having that ability to go out and socialize and all the rest of it, but the amount of opportunities that sprang up in the virtual world. As a result of this physical, uh, limitation were huge. Meetups started happening online. People started to gather online tools that enabled gathering online, you know, were developed and improved and working remotely became normalized rather than a, an exception. And so all of these things brought together meant that here was a bunch of people who previously could not, or chose not to participate in the wider community because of issues in the physical space. They now had all of these tools and capabilities to join in the virtual space, and they could work remotely. They could chat about their interests remotely. They could game remotely. So that aspect of covid, all of the movement forward in, in those sorts of virtual spaces and tools was a real game changer in a lot of, um, marginalized communities.
Justin Hall:So hearing a lot of the, the positives for this community during covid and a hot topic at the moment is return to office and return to office mandates and. You know, I, I'm assuming it was quite empowering for, for disabled people that a lot of work moved to remote. So I guess, what's the reaction been from the community around return to office mandates?
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah, look, some, some offices and and management are mandating a return to the office. As you know, government restrictions are being relaxed and frankly, a lot of the vibe that I see around social media and stuff in the disability community is that this is a step backwards. They feel like all of the, the movement to remote work and the enablement of remote work was a huge step forward. And their, you know, the expectation, it's, they're taking it away from us, and the door that has been opened is now closing again. There doesn't appear to be, oftentimes, there doesn't appear to be a really good justification for the mandated return to work because technology-wise, we know it can work. Delivery of work-wise, we've seen it work. It just seems to be that some bosses are worried about paying rents on empty office buildings. They don't think that culture can be built other than in person. And yeah, a lot of people are, are going, the opportunities that I've had over the last couple of years are, are going away and it's a real shame. It's a, it's a real shame.
Steven Hsieh:It's all about finding a balance. I think ultimately, I, I guess to my personal experiences that there are things that ultimately will be always easier done in person. Above just, you know, the water cooler conversations and those micro interactions that similarly seem to be really difficult between teams chat, cuz you're just going back to back meetings and then when you're on, you're just talking about work.
Allison Ravenhall:But the assumption, sorry to break in Steve, but the As
Justin Hall:Shut him down. Shut him down.
Allison Ravenhall:the, the assumption that you're bringing to that is that there's a choice in the matter, um,
Steven Hsieh:Right.
Allison Ravenhall:That people have a choice to come to the office or not. If someone is immunocompromised. Where, you know, stepping out into the general public puts them at greater risk of contracting any sort of thing that would attack their immune system. It doesn't become a choice. It becomes a, I need to stay at home for the sake of my health. Mm-hmm. So culture be damned and better ways be damned. This is my only way. It sort of gets me fired up when people sort of frame accessibility as a bit of a choice and we should do this best way, and it's sort of like, yeah, sometimes it's, it's not even an option.
Steven Hsieh:How were these people supported before the pandemic hit? Because I'm assuming, and I totally, I, I'm, I've been working remotely since before covid, so I'm a huge advocate.
Allison Ravenhall:Same
Steven Hsieh:Of working and hybrid working. What was the support before all of. Let's say an evolution happened for people who are, say immunocompromised and they still had to go to work. It was like just expected that we were, had to go into the office.
Allison Ravenhall:Well, it's translated to fewer opportunities. You know, if you're immunocompromised, you can't really take a chance on that, and so you would just have to naturally, you know, look at job opportunities, look at the conditions. If it's office work, it's just an automatic, no, I can't apply. So the, the number of opportunities is just microscopic. And then, you know, when Covid happened and all of the jobs are being advertised remote, then all of a sudden, hey, we've got a more, more opportunity. And you know, it's, it's situations like these which contribute to people with disabilities being overrepresented in statistics for unemployed and underemployed because you know, the, the support and the accommodations just aren't there a lot of the time.
Steven Hsieh:So what do we think this is? Do you think it's a marketing issue? Is it a issue around empathy? What will it take for accessibility to become normalized to a point where it's just part of day to day instead of like this, well have you considered, or Hey, we need to do this extra work, or can we prioritize this work?
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And look, I totally look forward to the day when my job doesn't exist. I would love nothing better than than to put myself out of a job because all of the accessibility accommodations. Everything is just built into what everyone else does, but you know, we're, we're not there yet. And I think a lot of the, the situation comes about because I see it time and again, people don't know what they don't know, and it's very hard to know the scope and the magnitude of the different lived experiences of people with disability. Unless you have someone in your, in your family circle or in your friend's circle who has disability, it can be very hard to even know that certain things exist and to know what sort of accommodations or working conditions will, you know, work for different people. And of course, everyone's different. Just saying someone is blind doesn't mean that there's a certain set of accommodations that work for all blind people. A lot of what I do, a lot of my job is actually education, telling people there's other ways. Not everyone uses a mouse when they're in front of a, a computer. Some people can't see the screen as well as you can when you're sitting in front of a computer. So yeah, a lot of what I do is just shine a light, um, on different lived experiences, different accommodations, and sort of just build up people's knowledge, broaden their horizon in terms of what do you need to do? How are different people gonna experience the things that you are designing and building and how do we make it meaningful and useful to everyone?
Justin Hall:So you've spoken a bit about educating
Allison Ravenhall:Yes.
Justin Hall:Teams on, on usability.
Allison Ravenhall:Yes.
Justin Hall:And I think you've touched on empathy throughout talking, cuz I feel like that's what, you know, a lot of accessibility. It, it tries to appeal to people's emotions or empathy in order to maybe motivate them to design or create more accessible experiences rather than maybe it being a part of, I don't know, second nature or definition of done. Uh, how do you feel about, I don't know, motivating people to really consider accessibility? I know there's empathy labs, which, you know, you've shared, you have a strong opinion on, but how can we do better to really embed this thinking?
Allison Ravenhall:Um, well, in inaccessibility circles we talk about the carrot and the stick, and we talk about different people having different motivations and it can come down to the type of person they are. It can talk, it can come down to the role that they're playing with respect to the website or the app that's being built. You know, there can be all sorts of things coming into play. My, my favorite one is to appeal to people's best nature. We're building things for human beings. Let's make sure that as many human beings as possible can participate, not just the default experience human being or the human being that happens to be just like you. Appealing to people's better nature is sort of my, my first protocol. You could call it a little bit of a guilt trip, , you know, it's so like, come on. Like why are you, you know, why are you excluding your grandma with that tiny, tiny text. Or that really light gray type. Mm-hmm. Grandma's not gonna be able to read that. So
Steven Hsieh:Guilt is a powerful motivator
Allison Ravenhall:It is.
Steven Hsieh:Unless we're sociopathic, then that's a bit harder.
Allison Ravenhall:And yeah. And you know, in invoking, grandma is always, is always a good one. But then look, you know, some people are like, oh, we don't have time for that, or, you know, we don't have the money or whatever. And they're just, you know, on a tunnel vision, they're just seeing the, the deadline and the bottom. And they're not sort of people focused. And for those people you do have to pivot a little bit and potentially talk about ramifications. If you don't pause for a second and consider accessibility, so you sort of can hit them with the legal stick. Here in Australia we have the Disability Discrimination Act where you know, everyone providing goods or services in Australia is provided to make a reasonable effort to make it accessible. Or, you know, depending on the industry that you're working in, some industries have a minimum standard with respect to accessibility that industry participants are expected to meet. So there are precedents like companies who have, have been sued because they, they haven't done the right thing by the community.
Steven Hsieh:So I guess you've talked about like some of these more effective ways, or that you'd like to go. Getting, creating awareness. And sometimes if it, if you have to come at people with a legal stick, then you know, so be it. Yeah. Uh, Justin mention this last resort,. Justin mentioned this empathy lab, where the idea, I think is to like mimic the lived experiences of disabled people and. I personally haven't attended one of these workshops, but things like, I think one experience I've had was, you know, where they, one of those silent dinners, where you, where you cover your eyes or you're going to completely dark room into try and taste it. So I think it's similar to that where you're trying to,
Justin Hall:is it, is it, is it Steve?
Steven Hsieh:No, I guess it's not, but I'm guessing it's trying to force, like using a gimmicky way. A lived experience. What are your thoughts on that?
Allison Ravenhall:You took the word right outta my mouth. I think empathy exercises are a gimmick. The intention is good. So, you know, we, we won't take points off there, but ultimately, me as a sighted person putting on a blindfold for, you know, five, 10 minutes, half an hour, and being totally disconcerted does not in any way, shape or form provide me with the lived experience of someone who is blind or has low vision. It's, that's insulting in making me feel awkward because I've got a blindfold on and I've, you know, lost, lost the use of my eyes, which I'm very used to using. You're centering me in the exercise, the, the able-bodied person. You're not centering the experience. The, the people that we are trying to work with and the people that we're trying to build for. I'd much, much rather talk to and work with people who have that lived experience of blindness and low vision and, and, you know, all the other myriad conditions and appreciate what their understanding is of what they need as a bl, as a sighted person with a blindfold on doesn't equate at all. So, yeah, I, I often describe empathy exercises as cheat theater. There was someone that, that talked about empathy exercises, uh, on Twitter, I think, and they did it way more eloquently than I'm doing here. But the, the gist of the thing was, You don't need me to steal your wallet in order for you to understand the importance of security. You just know that security is important and you, you do it out of the box. Why should you need to participate in an empathy exercise in order to appreciate that accessibility is a thing that you need to do? That's, that's where I get to with empathy exercises if people feel the need in order. Quote unquote, connect then, then go for your life, but not my bag.
Justin Hall:So have you conducted testing or focus groups with people with disabilities, and have you, have you learned from that? Has that been success?
Steven Hsieh:Is there a moment in time that it just, you connected with, say, something you've observed, then you're like, This is why I get so mad., . Allison Ravenhall: I do get mad. Yeah. Um, Passionate. Passionate is the right word. Passionate.
Allison Ravenhall:Passionate. Yes. I have facilitated usability testing with, with people with disabilities, and every single time, every single session, I come out with insights. I come out with myths, busted. There was one time where I helped, uh, a web team build a, a calendar component. We were, we were trying for delivery bookings calendar and on paper. According to the accessibility standard that we use, it was perfect. It did everything. It was well labeled. The focus was managed. Great feedback, great screen reader experience. It was just the bomb, and I was so proud of it, and I was so, so happy, and I'm like, let's take this to usability testing. And it absolutely sank like a stone. It was embarrassing. Yeah. People got in there and they were so confused and they were like, I don't understand what this label means, and I don't know where I am on the calendar and have I picked a thing or not? And like they were, they was doubting themselves and second guessing themselves. Getting things wrong and apologizing, which is the worst. Like it's not their fault. And I'm, uh, you know, meanwhile I'm in the corner just dying because I'm like, this is perfect, but you can, it, it just illustrated so beautifully that you can build something that's accessible on paper and you can check all the boxes on all the checklists that you like, but until you put it in front of a person, you really, truly don't know whether it's going to work and whether it's actually truly accessible.
Steven Hsieh:I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here and I'd love for you to challenge me. Alison
Allison Ravenhall:Challenge accepted.
Steven Hsieh:So, so what you just mentioned there, right? Usability testing for accessibility. Yep. If I were to put on my project manager hat, I'd say that's effort. That's something that, uh, takes, takes a lot of time. We need special tools, extra time to do it. Maybe the learnings we take creates a whole heap of other new story points and epics that we just don't have the time for. Because it works for 80% of, uh, able people that I know my, my mom could use it, my friends could use it. Why do we need to put effort into this and why do my team members, why should I carve out time for my team member to focus on?
Justin Hall:Before Alison answers. For those people who don't know, we, we can see each other on camera, and the Contortion Act that Alison's face was doing.
Steven Hsieh:I'm calling all the right triggers
Justin Hall:During Steve's devil's advocacy was, um, yeah, it was
Steven Hsieh:Because, cuz this is the problem, right? Like this is a problem where I see time and time again, work like this gets deprioritised because I think this is the, this is, this is the calculation that's happening in, in, in, in my head. It's like cost versus impact. And if impact means not 80% of people, then its priority shouldn't be as high.
Allison Ravenhall:Oh my God. I am judging you so hard right now., . Justin Hall: Get him, get him. Sick'em Rex! Um, yeah, look, yeah, . Uh, yeah. Unfortunately this is a situation that's come up time and time again. I'm actually very familiar with it and it disappoints me and upsets me and angers me. Every single time, I do not know how people can just ignore people like this. It's, it's inhumane. Like I know that's, that's hyperbole, but it's inhumane to just turn your back on 20% of the population potentially. Like that's, excuse the French, it's fucking rude. There is worth in doing the work. There's a, there's a movement in the UK and it's called the Purple Pound. Obviously the pound is what they spend over there, and it's, it's a calculation of how much money is wrapped up in the families and wider circles of people with disability, and it's a staggering amount in the billions of pounds, the money that's available to spend. Oftentimes these families and these people depend on accessible experiences in order to gain access and spend. And one of the advocates linked to the purple Pound has a really great line in that her body is disabled, but her money is not. If we're talking about money, we're talking about bottom line. You are talking about missing out on potentially a 20% cut of your market. That's huge. If you just put it in terms of bottom line and you said, look, we, we've got a customer segment and we're just gonna chop 20% off straight up as a business manager. That, that sounds ridiculous. The other aspect of accessibility is it's not a bolt on, it is a, a legal requirement. If you don't do it now, it ought to catch up with you and you will have to do it at some point. And I'll tell you what, doing it early, catching the issues during design. Building with accessibility in mind, doing the development work, the coding with accessibility principles is a damn site cheaper than retrofitting accessibility after the fact. If you just forge ahead, you might find some massive gaping holes in your experiences later, which caused you to have to tear down half the platform. To rebuild it all again, and that doesn't seem to me like good business sense. The graph of cost to fix accessibility issues is just like any sort of functional issue over the timeline of a website experience. It's exponential. The earlier you get it, the better value it's going to be. It's hard to see that value when you're sitting at the start of a project and you've got a deadline looming. But I'll tell you what, take, take the long view. Take the big picture, take a step back. There's too many wins to ignore by just handballing it to your future self down the track. Future you is gonna thank you if you do it properly., Steven Hsieh: I feel like I've I'll, I'll continue on the... cuz one of the things you talked about, which I really love is. When we talk about accessibility or quite often we just loop it with people with disabilities and, but that's actually not the case, is it? Because as a, as a parent of two very young boys, I find myself more often than not only having one hand to do stuff . Cause the other hand is busy trying to get my son to stop attacking his younger brother or holding them as, as they're needy. Talk a little bit about that myth and maybe why it should be busted, that accessibility only for people with disability. Well, may I, may I also venture Steve, that while you are wrangling two young boys, that. You may also be slightly cognitively impaired because
Steven Hsieh:Yes, I, I do feel quite stupid on most days these days, and I blame the boys., . Allison Ravenhall: Well, it, cognitive load in early parenting. The sleep deprivation wears at your brain, the noise, you know, the ability to concentrate on, on intense tasks while there's a lot of noise going. That's an impact. So what we're describing here is what we call situational disability, where your surrounds and the things that you're interacting with can impact on your ability to function. Whether it's, uh, mobility, like your arm being tied up, hanging onto a kid or your brain because you are sleep deprived or you are heart of hearing because you can't hear what someone's saying on the phone cuz your kid is split screaming into your ear. There's a lot of situational disability that comes and goes over the course of a day. And there'll be subtle features within your web and app app experiences, which enable you to push through and keep functioning. So larger tap targets on your phone enable you to operate that phone with confidence one-handed, good contrast makes sure that even if you're outside at the park with the boys, you can still read what's going on on your phone because the contrast is good. There's situational disability there. And then we also have temporary disability where someone may have an illness or an injury or a temporary condition, which may knock them down for, you know, a day or a week or months or even a couple of years, but ultimately they recover. But during that experience of, say, a broken leg or an ear infection, or things like that. You have need of accommodations. You might be popped into a wheelchair for a little while, and suddenly all you see is stairs. The idea that accessibility is for a niche market or for a certain tiny little subset of people, It's a really outdated kind of attitude because I like to remind people, like I get asked all the time, you know, how many people actually do this or how many people operate this way or whatever. Like it's a numbers game and I'm like, we all get old at the end of the day. We all get old, hopefully all going well.
Justin Hall:Hopefully not. Steven Hsieh: It's not in Justin's plan. No, thanks. Hard pass. Hard pass.
Allison Ravenhall:We, we all age and as we age, things deteriorate naturally. Um, it's just part of the aging process. As much as Justin would like to dodge it, it's just a thing. And yeah, your eyesight fades and your hearing starts getting a bit wonky and stuff happens. So sometimes I appeal to people to design and build for future. Because even if they don't need it now, they'll need it one day.
Steven Hsieh:I mean, I think you've touched on a really, really great point here because one of the unfortunate things of us aging is also that our parents age. Um, and my dad is suffering from a, uh, degenerative brain disease. So about four or five years back, he started falling over and there was a trip overseas when, uh, he was on the train and he was getting off the train and he just stacked it, like had a massive gash on his head. And at that point in time, we just thought he was being clumsy, you know? But then over time his speech started slurring, his movements started becoming more, say, less controlled. And then we realized something was wrong. And so, What they couldn't diagnose so far, cuz it's been our four years, is that they, they, the cash, you can't diagnose something like this. It's just, it's in the Parkinsonian family. But since then obviously he's now having trouble speaking so it's a real difficult for him swallowing. So eating is now become difficult. He's now in a wheelchair cuz he can't walk and he's not mobile. And I'm so thankful that we live in a country where we have a lot of support. For, uh, disabled people comparatively and relatively to say, say Asia. Uh, a lot of parts of Asia anyway. He's on N D I S. He's, you know, he's got people coming over to help him, uh, say, create different parts of the house to make sure that he could still live, uh, as much of a able bodied life as he can and, and, and a self serviceable life. Um, Even though my mom's like his full-time carer with these additional healthcare carers, there is still so much I've still now and, and it's only because my dad's now like this, that I start to see so much gaps in the community. Whether it's, you know, the lack of disabled parking or lack of a access when they're out and about that doesn't cater for someone like him. And one of the things that really hit home for me was because he had trouble say tapping on devices. I finally got exposure to some of what Apple does on their iOS devices to accommodate people who struggle to accurately touch their screen and to, to, to, you know, and, and tap on screens. And I was like, That's something that I would've never even thought was important because I myself could not empathize with that until I saw how important it was for my dad. And these days, you know, he's watching YouTube a lot and he's on his screen a lot just listening cuz there's not much else he can do. And so even those little tiny tweaks meant the world for him. It allowed him to still be able to have a, I think like a, well, it's not a fulfilling life, but have a good standard of living that allows him to get about his day. So getting old, I feel like is, is definitely something we can't avoid. But it's also these, I think it's hard, it's sad for me that it wasn't until I saw my dad in that situation that I felt I could truly empathize with how important some of these features are. And I think that's the challenge I think we all face when it comes to. I guess like a, when we talk about an empathy gap, but yeah. What I wanted to ask was when we talk about what's next, you know we're starting to see this amazing technology being helped to support people like my dad, and obviously you talked about beyond people with disability. What are some of the stuff that for you is really exciting that you see? And obviously mandatory working from home is not one of those things that, uh, you're excited about.
Allison Ravenhall:You're right. There are a lot of developments coming up that, that are really good, and a lot of them are happening in the entertainment space, which I really think is a good development because accessibility shouldn't just be about the nuts and bolts of life, right? It shouldn't just. Oh, I'm able to log into my account and do my banking, or I can log into my grocery store and order my shopping. Like that's, that's the basics, right? You've gotta get past the basics and into entertainment and enjoyment and community. And there's some really great groups working in the areas of gaming. So there's been a lot of chat recently about mainstream games. Building in many more accessibility features so that more people can game. It can be as simple as things like captions all the way through to having an arachnophobia mode. So for people who are definitely scared of, of spiders, they can actually turn on arachnophobia mode and the spiders are replaced with something scary, but not phobia triggering, triggering scary, but then there's some really cool ideas in the virtual reality and augmented reality spaces. So again, it's about this idea of, you know, potentially for people with limited mobility who have limited chances to either leave the house or travel extensively or things like that, they're now starting to get access to these VR experiences, which enable them. Get out and about and be in places that they never would've otherwise had the opportunity to, to see, which I think is awesome. And the idea of augmented reality for when we are out and about, and even, you know, for localized applications in our own homes, enabling people to identify things, to find their way to get things done. Yeah, they're, they're really cool spaces to, to keep an eye on. Yeah,
Justin Hall:I mean, that sounds super exciting. I guess I'm wondering at the moment, uh, for digital, we refer to, I guess, WCAG as kind of the accessibility Bible. And with these emerging technologies, this is all foreign new space. And I guess my question would be how can we be inclusive or is there work being done to kind of ensure that the foundations of these spaces are for everyone?
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah, so for, for those that aren't aware, WCAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is an international standard published by the W3C, the arbitrators of the internet, if you like, and they basically contain a set of criteria. Which I assess a website against. Like I said, it's a starting point, test with people because it doesn't go all the way. But yeah, as you say, Justin, this is a web guideline. I do adapt it for use with mobile apps, but even mobile apps don't have their own standard. Yeah, I've been making it up. No, not really.
Justin Hall:Yeah. Exposed.
Allison Ravenhall:Um, so there's, so there's a couple of movements in this space. Obviously the W3C have their own AR and VR are working groups who are working to pull together some equivalent guidance for their, for their work. The big movement, and this is, this is the unfortunate thing, it's a slow moving boat, but we're currently sitting at WCAG version 2.1. 2.2 is due to be published perhaps in the next six months. WCAG 3 so that's a major iteration is on the board and being worked upon, but it's a longer term plan and they're changing the acronym. It's not going to be web anymore. It's going to be the W3C accessibility guidelines. So, Yeah, it's a terrible jamming.
Steven Hsieh:I still look, I, I honestly think part of this problem is just you need Justin on your marketing team for accessibility.
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah, I know, right?
Steven Hsieh:Because acronyms like WCAG and, you know, yeah's W3C accessibility guidelines just doesn't sell the dream.
Allison Ravenhall:Oh, totally, totally. That is one of the, the issues with accessibility, like trying to read the standard. I'd recommend it, uh, for people who have insomnia, like it's boring as. And written in legalese. But the next iteration of these guidelines is meant to be technology agnostic. So it's not about web anymore, it's not just about mobile, it's about tech, digital experiences. It's going big. That's sort of the long-term plan. In the meantime, you're right, there is no one rule to rule them all kind of thing. So the next best thing is work with people. Test with people. The, you know, a, a person will be very quick to tell you what does and doesn't work for them. Research is key to doing accessibility experience as well. I keep coming back to it and I can't avoid it cuz it's just the cornerstone of doing everything well. Like, I like to think, I know a little bit about accessibility and I, you know, I know that standard really, really well. But like I said, I built something and it sucked. So, yeah,
Justin Hall:You've referred to, I guess, the importance of, well, one, having, having guidelines, but also the inclusion of research or inclusive research. Specifically for designers, what do we need to do better? How can we educate ourselves or...
Allison Ravenhall:I've definitely found that inviting designers to observe usability testing with people with disabilities is a game changer. Watching someone struggle to find the button that you've right aligned on the page. Because they're using magnification and they're only seeing a tiny little portion of the page, and they're scrolling around all over the place, and you are just like, go, right. Go over there, and they just totally miss it. That's a powerful lesson for you. People often, like designers, don't often appreciate the negative impact of a toast or a snack bar or a disappearing feedback message until they see someone who can't see the whole screen. And they totally missed the message come and go. They don't always appreciate if someone has to tab through every single element on the screen because they're using a keyboard. They become a lot more mindful about how many elements they're putting on the screen and how many key presses someone has to take to actually get from the top to the bottom of the page. And they might start thinking about, can we make this shorter or can we use a, an expanding panel? You can use like visual filters to show people, designers what, you know, a screen's gonna look like under different colorblindness simulation examples. And they're like, oh, now I can't see that thing, or Now I can't tell the difference between the red failure and the green success markers. So yeah, it's about designers learning more about people's different experiences of their designs. Don't assume that everyone's using that great big, bright screen that you are. And that they can't see it as well. They might not be hanging onto the mouse or the track pad that you are using. They might be speaking to their screen in order to operate it. They might not be physically interacting at all. Just have an open mind to different ways would be the, the biggest takeaway that I would have for a designer. There are so many different ways that people interact with their, with their devices and with their websites and with their apps, so, Know that there are different ways. Explore them. Like, um, like Steve mentioned, the the Apple settings, you know, for his dad on the phone. Go and have a little dive into the accessibility menu of your iPhone and your Android device. There's so many little settings that you can play with in there. And while you are just playing, other people are relying on on those settings. So if you have a look at them and you sort of go, wow, this is how it impacts. And then you take that back to your design and go, Hey, how is this gonna work with the screen reader? How is this gonna work with speech? I'm not gonna have a massively long label because it's really hard for a speech user to say a massively long sentence. I'm gonna use a nice short phrase. You know, just lots of little bits. I think I've learned accessibility by just picking up bits along the way. It's, you can't really brain dump it, Steven Hsieh: So I feel like there's Number one, I think, I feel like Apple's probably leading the pack, right? Like, not all of us are gonna be trillion dollar companies, but the fact that they call their, uh, design system like human interface system, I do think that when we start talking about accessibility and designing for accessibility, we should really be talking by the sounds of it more about designing for as many humans as possible, designing for humans. Full stop. And maybe I still feel like there's a bit of like a marketing gap that, that we need to somehow get across the line. The second part was a question for you, Allison. Now you say that you. You don't know or can't truly empathize, but you would do a heck of a lot better than Justin or I cuz we don't talk to as many people who are, um, disabled or have actually is disabled the right word? I don't know anymore. What's the right term? Uh, yeah. Yeah. You can say disabled people, you can. People with disabilities, you could say people with lived experience of disability, they're, they're all valid. Disabled is not, okay. Disabled is not a, a bad word. There's euphemisms, like people try and dance around the word disability. No, just. Just say it. No. Okay. It's fine.
Steven Hsieh:So I guess for people with disabilities and from your experience working with 'em, what do you think is like the one thing they want to tell us as the owners of experiences that they have to, to use?
Allison Ravenhall:Can I be brutally honest?
Justin Hall:Yes.. Allison Ravenhall: I, I think, would just say, do better. You know, it's, it's, yeah, it's a bit harsh, but it goes back to what I was saying about wishing that my job was defunct. Building accessibility should be the baseline. It should be where we start, and that's not currently the case. You know, accessibility is sort of bolted in or added on, or, you know, it's, it's got its own ticket or whatever. There's companies out there that don't know and don't do, so I, I think celebrate what you've done, but do better. There's so much scope to do better. I think that's a perfect message to end the podcast on. Uh, do better.
Steven Hsieh:I feel, I feel sufficiently guilty. Justin. Justin Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Same. Sufficiently guilty.
Allison Ravenhall:Yeah. So, yeah, sorry. It's not like uplifting and head padding and you know, birds tweeting and stuff like that, but that's the reality.
Steven Hsieh:Well, Justin and I, we love talking to passionate people. And Alison, you certainly are one of those and thank you for bringing so much advocacy for, uh, you know, really important members of our society and community, which often get left behind when they shouldn't be. So thank you.
Allison Ravenhall:Been great talking to you both. Thanks for having me.