Table des matières
Transcript
0:17
Okay, I think we’re uh we’re we’re live. So, welcome everyone uh to today’s round
0:24
table. We are going to get started in a few minutes. I think there’s still uh
0:29
some people joining. So, while we wait just uh a little bit
0:34
of logistics, you know, we you know, the format is fairly simple. We’re going to
0:39
ask I’ll I’m the moderator. I’m Eugene Wu by the way. I’m the CEO of Vengage.
0:44
Um and if you don’t know Vengage, Vengage is a design tool that has a
0:49
focus on accessible uh accessible documents. So, we you know export
0:53
accessible PDFs. Uh and I will introduce the rest of the panel soon. Uh from a
0:58
logistical point of view, um there is a if you have any questions, you can put
1:03
it in the Q&A. There’s a Q&A button on the Zoom uh interface where you should
1:09
be able to type your questions in uh and we will try to answer them, you know, if
1:14
we will try to answer, you know, most of them on the call. If not, you know,
1:17
we’ll try to answer them after. Uh okay, I think we can get started. So
1:23
welcome everybody to uh today’s round table uh today’s round table is called
1:27
shifting left how teams can bake accessibility into everyday document
1:32
forms and in today’s uh round table we have three guests I think you know if
1:38
you’re in the accessibility field you probably know all of them so our first
1:42
guest is Neil Milikin he is a strategic uh assessment adviser and uh former head
1:51
of former global head of accessibility and digital inclusion at ATOSS. Uh Neil
1:57
has uh you know decades of experience in accessibility uh and you know and in
2:03
leadership and enterprise change. He’s also the co-founder of AXS chat which is
2:08
a very longunning chat uh podcast on uh accessibility. So welcome Neil.
2:13
Thank you. Glad to be here. Uh and next we have uh Samantha Evans.
2:18
Samantha is the uh certification certification director at IAP. Uh I’m
2:24
sure you know all of you know IAP. It’s the leading um certification body. Uh
2:31
and so she’s she leads global efforts to build accessibility maturities through
2:36
professional standards education and organizational uh strategy. Um welcome
2:42
Samantha. Hey y’all. thanks for letting us join
2:46
you all today and making time. And last but not least, we have Rob
2:50
Carr. Uh Rob Carr is the strategic assessment lead at Web AIM and former
2:55
architect of Oklahoma’s uh statewide assessment program. Uh Rob, you know, is
3:01
fairly well known as well in the access field. Uh and obviously I mean if you
3:06
don’t know what web aim is they, you know, I think they’re most known for
3:09
publishing the web million uh survey or research that looks at the top 1 million
3:16
sites in the world based on accessibility. So uh welcome Rob.
3:20
Pleasure to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad it
3:22
worked out. Yeah. Cool. So today we’re going to talk
3:25
about shifting left. And I first want to, you know, I think when I first heard
3:29
the term shifting left, like it, you know, I think invariably I think about
3:33
politics, but it’s not about politics. Uh, so what does shift left, shifting
3:39
left mean uh to you? Like Rob, maybe you can take a stab like let’s give the
3:43
audience like your definition. Uh, so I think the idea is that we we
3:47
push accessibility into the earliest phases of a project. So we try to push
3:53
accessibility upstream so that it’s not just left to the implementers or the
3:57
testers or QA folks so that we’re considering it as early as humanly
4:00
possible. I think it’s a concept that goes into document design, web design,
4:04
procurement, etc., etc. Yeah. And that that is uh it’s exactly
4:10
how I’ve said it. Um how about how about you uh Neil? in in your work with in in
4:15
ATOS in such a large organization I don’t know do you ever use the term
4:20
shift left or oh sure I mean we’re an organization
4:25
that that lived by the principle of shifting left um you know as a systems
4:30
integrator and IT services provider people are always looking to uh do stuff
4:36
earlier find more effective ways of doing things I I think the the term
4:40
comes from the old sort of project gant charts where you’re looking at your
4:44
timelines and and the end is at the right. Well, you need to be doing it at
4:48
the left because that’s at the start because you need to be thinking about
4:51
accessibility at the at the start of things in order not to be sort of just
4:56
continuously testing broken stuff. So, so, so from the accessibility context,
5:01
the shifting left is is about, you know, putting it as far into the ideation and
5:07
creation process as far into the earliest parts so that you’re not having
5:12
to do all of that rework when you when you find the stuff, and you test the
5:16
stuff. It should be right from the beginning.
5:19
Okay. Um, Sam, I’m going to ask you like, so why
5:23
why did this why does this problem still exist? And I think you know we we know
5:29
you know as Neil said that it is it’s a lot easier to address things you know at
5:34
the start what what’s the main problem with accessory now where you I would say
5:40
the vast majority of organizations are still treating it as you know like a
5:45
checklist at the end of of their of their processes
5:49
and I think it comes down to people haven’t started considering
5:52
accessibility is a core component of government governance process and
5:57
maturity. So we know things like privacy and
6:01
security and other protocol are all requirements. So we all it’s known we
6:06
understand it’s expected from the public and so the the the earmarks of good
6:11
organizational maturity and governance is that we do these things. I think
6:15
people are still learning. I’m going to say it in a positive progression kind of
6:19
a way that accessibility should be partnered in with all of those elements,
6:24
but a lot of it starts with training and learning how to use the tools that we
6:27
already have um and why it helps make us a better teammate, partner, vendor,
6:34
consultant, um and helps eliminate barriers. So, I just think people
6:39
haven’t started to understand how it improves their organization, their
6:43
teams, and their capacity yet. Once they have that aha moment, it becomes very
6:48
easy for individuals to make change happen. But strategy and practice is is
6:55
the bigger puzzle for organizations. Okay. Uh Rob, do you have anything to
7:01
add to that? Like what, you know, why does this problem still exist? You know,
7:06
why is it still it’s it has made I would say very little progress over the last,
7:11
let’s say, decade or so. I mean, I I think to kind of add to what Sam said, I
7:16
think that there’s a lot of uh a lack of accessibility being a norm,
7:21
accessibility being a part of a culture within organizations. And I tend to to
7:26
find or I guess scale accessibility barriers up to the organizational level
7:30
where it’s we don’t have the scaffolding, we don’t have the
7:33
facilitation by leadership, we don’t have active leadership establishing a
7:37
culture where accessibility is a norm. And I think from there it just kind of
7:40
ripples out to where it really it keeps accessibility from maturing at the same
7:44
rate that we’ve seen privacy security fundamentally accessibility is not often
7:50
a strict requirement. It’s something that we consider as we’ll when we get
7:54
the requirements done we’ll think about accessibility a lot of the time. So I
7:57
think it is a bigger picture organizational behavior issue as much as
8:01
as anything. Okay. You so I’m going to ask your
8:04
followup question. you use the term scaffolding and I know you had a talk
8:08
about organizational scaffolding. Can you share a little bit like I think it’s
8:11
like really practical like what do you mean by scaffolding?
8:16
I mean I think it’s it’s training. Well, I’ll kind of back up a little bit
8:18
because I think another issue that organizations face is viewing training
8:22
as the beall and endall. Um or looking at other puzzle pieces. Uh so maybe
8:27
evaluation is what they’re really focused on. come in and evaluate our
8:30
documents, evaluate our web presence, and they don’t think about the other
8:33
pieces of the puzzle and need to come together to build something that’s
8:36
sustainable. But if we look at training in isolation and think about scaffolding
8:39
around that, I talk a lot about, well, training is one thing and clearing time
8:43
to participate in training is one thing. People then need the time to actually
8:48
learn that training, to practice it, and then to put it into their practice. And
8:51
I think that when we consider shifting left and bringing new roles that aren’t
8:55
commonly thought of as contributors to accessibility into this conversation,
8:59
then the challenge is even more so because people think we need our
9:02
designers trained. We need our web people trained and they won’t think
9:05
about the people who are upstream even including any research that you’re
9:08
doing, any kind of AB testing that you’re doing and having that have an
9:12
underpinning that includes accessibility. Uh I think the problem
9:15
just magnifies as we try to shift the tasks left when it comes to uh pulling
9:21
this off in in a pragmatic way. And there’s a whole lot more to it. I do
9:24
have talk about it. I don’t want to monopolize the time, but that’s one
9:27
example where I think it’s just a matter of looking not just at individual puzzle
9:30
pieces, but the context that those drop into place and considering teams uh
9:35
existing workload, existing um deadlines that they have and not dropping, you
9:40
know, training or an evaluation on top of a team that is trying to push
9:43
something out the door because they won’t actually be able to engage it
9:46
typically. Yeah. And and I’m I we will we will get
9:50
into more details on the science of it later on because I think you know I’m a
9:55
big systems fan. I think yes training is great but at the end of the day uh you
10:00
know I think systems build habits and if you’re a fan of like atomic habit from
10:06
James Clear he talks a lot about that as well although that’s on an individual
10:09
level but if you kind of extrapolate out systems be you know like people like
10:14
individuals right you have to have these systems and that’s I think very aligned
10:17
with the scaffolding concept you you talked about um Neil I want to talk a
10:22
little bit about leadership I think at the end of the day you know without
10:25
leadership it’s very difficult to move any programs and you’ve been you know at
10:31
a very high leadership position in a fairly large organization uh and you’ve
10:36
been able to you know I mean I you know the CEO signed you know the uh valuable
10:41
500 for example uh while you were there so talk a little bit about how do you
10:46
move you know I think part of shifting left is like getting the leadership to
10:50
buy in and and as you had mentioned you know that sort of makes everything kind
10:55
of trip I know trickle down to the rest of the organization.
10:59
It does to a certain extent. I think uh if you’re in the accessibility field,
11:05
you’re in the field of diplomacy. You need to be um you know building
11:10
relationships to be able to um couch your arguments as to why people need to
11:16
do this in the language that they understand. So if you’re talking to
11:20
leadership, you need to talk in in the language of business. uh if you’re
11:23
talking to developers, you need to be talking about the pragmatic things that
11:28
they need to be doing as part of their agile development cycle. So
11:32
accessibility needs to be in the definition of done. Um so so there are
11:36
different things that you need to communicate to different parts of the
11:39
organization and um organizations are uh complex systems of human beings with uh
11:50
cultures as well as processes. So, so you do need to sort of take this
11:55
holistic view, but sometimes that can be overwhelming and that can be one of the
12:00
issues that that stops organizations from trying to implement things because
12:05
it just seems like all too much. on the positive side um to to to turn a
12:12
negative into a positive. If you look at very many companies out there, despite
12:20
us saying that privacy and security are mature, very large professional
12:25
companies have privacy breaches, they have security breaches. So even though
12:31
it’s in the mindset of the general population, stuff still doesn’t always
12:36
happen. So I think that the accessibility industry ought not to beat
12:39
itself up too much about the the level of progress. We have made progress.
12:44
There has actually when you look back been significant progress over the years
12:48
in terms of professionalization understanding of the importance of the
12:52
subject matter. But one of the areas where you end up
12:56
with a problem is that that very large organizations have constant churn. So
13:01
even if you put in place processes, you teach people, you train people, you
13:06
start creating a culture, it’s not a onceanddone thing. It needs to be
13:10
continuous because you’ve got new people coming into teams and into the
13:14
organization. So you you have to continuously communicate that and you
13:18
have to continuously re-evaluate your processes and your standard operating
13:22
procedures and so on to make sure that this stuff doesn’t break.
13:29
Well put. Uh Sam, what you know as a a certification organization, how how
13:37
does that support an organization’s sort of a
13:44
a goal towards you shifting left? So I think I can I can speak to our
13:52
certifications and one of the key tenants that we require is that
13:55
everything that is involved in our blueprints or our content outlines and
13:59
our certifications is the impact that whatever this activity is has on people
14:04
with disabilities and what happens when it’s done well not
14:09
done or done incorrectly so that there’s some impact number one
14:15
but second I think um all of I’ll talk about organizational maturity and how to
14:23
implement these whatever the pra the job tasks are the organizational
14:26
responsibilities whichever niche it’s in on how organization should consider
14:32
going beyond like Rob said beyond training beyond audits beyond
14:36
evaluations how do you implement that into your practice without it being seen
14:41
as um an additional be you know burden on teams and their capacity But that
14:47
when we do that, you’ll eventually remove the lift that happens after the
14:52
fact where you have to remediate, add new tickets, add new projects and go
14:56
back. That if we if we do it this way first, we will deliver better products
15:00
and services and be whether that’s to your
15:05
accessibility pros have to be kind of translators.
15:08
They have to learn to speak the language, the projects, and the goals of
15:11
whatever audience they’re talking to to help those teams reach their goals, to
15:16
meet their KPIs, to meet their requirements. And if you can help speak
15:20
to them in their terms, whether that’s how do I plug this into my organization
15:25
or to my team, that will help them become better champions, but also
15:30
understand how and why it matters to advance their organization. So I and
15:35
we’re talking all of these points that we’re talking about all are
15:38
complimentary to one another I think. So um but all of our programs require
15:42
people to understand the impact people but also how to build this into your
15:46
organizational structure and why. So so for an organization who’s just
15:52
starting out uh you talk about this maturity model. What would your advice
15:57
be to them like as like the first step? I guess there
16:01
would be like they would be at like stage or step zero in you.
16:06
So what I I personally try to encourage people to do is don’t be put off by not
16:11
being able to do it all and not be able to do it perfectly. Pick elements that
16:15
are achievable. What’s realistic that you can do? What are changes you can
16:19
implement now? And what are changes that you want to plan to implement and have a
16:23
step-wise process so that you can work towards that progress. Uh the biggest
16:28
fear people have is is I can’t do it so I’ve just I can’t do it all so I won’t
16:32
do any of it. Um but I think organizations and teams find really
16:38
great excitement when they’ve done something and seeing the progress
16:40
happens and then they can document it and it becomes part of policy process
16:44
and job tasks. That is like that’s the big step. That’s going from like zero to
16:49
three on a scale of 1 to five. But we just need to get to one. Move to step
16:53
one where we’ve we’ve we’ve become aware and we have a plan.
16:58
And it doesn’t have to be for everything. But find your find your find
17:02
your awareness. Create a plan and and implement that plan. Just start for some
17:07
progress that you can measure. That is exciting. It doesn’t seem as
17:12
overwhelming for teams. And they can say, “Hey, we achieved this goal.” And
17:17
then they could talk to marketing about how they can sell it and to sales to see
17:21
the revenue drivers and then talk to leadership about how this meets, you
17:26
know, other larger strategic goals. So, but it really just means start with that
17:30
first step. Be reasonable and and understand that sometimes progress is
17:35
not a straight line. Sometimes it’s ups and downs and and it’s okay. It’s okay
17:40
if it if you don’t understand to ask. The accessibility community is amazing.
17:44
I’ve worked in a lot of professions, but I’ve never seen one where literally tens
17:49
of thousands of people around the world are willing to help their colleagues
17:52
learn and do better. Yeah. And I I would second it. I’m
17:56
fairly new to the accessory world and I joined this flat group and everybody was
18:01
very definitely very helpful. Uh Rob kind of a very similar question
18:09
going back to the uh scaffolding you know example or metaphor you use like
18:14
you know I think a lot of the questions are you know same question like where
18:17
where do you start building you know this organizational scaffolding or or
18:21
whatever it takes to to get an organization to start shifting left
18:26
I I and and there’s there’s a balance Sam brought up overwhelming an
18:30
organization and there’s a balance that I have to strike with this because my
18:33
first impression question like if someone reaches out to us and says hey
18:36
can you help us put together roadmap implementation plan whatever it might be
18:40
I’ll usually say yes but let’s go through a self- assessment process and
18:43
usually it’s a guided self- assessment process looking not at anything
18:46
involving technical accessibility but the organizational behaviors
18:51
norms lack thereof and I I mentioned I referenced Sam’s not overwhelming
18:56
because that process and I’ve been through that process within a higher ed
19:00
institution in the past and I’m leading folks through it uh but I know it can be
19:05
overwhelming and it can be kind of you can be kind of downtrodden with it
19:09
because you identify a lot of gaps and especially when organizations are at
19:12
that step zero. They might not really have much in place. But what I encourage
19:16
organizations to do is to bring together a group of people who have insight into
19:20
the organization who can go through a self assessment to identify where maybe
19:26
do we have you know a unit or a department that is doing well with
19:29
accessibility. Not that we want to have them be the resident accessibility gurus
19:34
within the within the organization, but are there things that they have done
19:37
from a grassroots level that can inform work elsewhere? And how can we identify
19:43
the gaps that we have in place and then really get to the level of u you know
19:47
planning out how do we fill these things in? You know, how do we begin to address
19:51
these? What are the things that are within our reach, within our control
19:54
that we can reasonably expect to do as an organization? Um, what are the things
19:59
that are outside of our control that might be in a second tier of activities?
20:03
Uh, what are the things that are so beyond the pale because of resources,
20:07
revenue, what have you, that it’s in a third tier? It’s things that we really
20:10
want to get to, but we know in a five-year plan that’s going to be year
20:14
five before we can even really address it. Uh so that’s really where I I try to
20:18
start with organizations is let’s really think through what we have in place and
20:21
what we don’t and what we can and can’t do and begin to take what is at the end
20:26
of that self assessment a very large and overwhelming set of data and drill it
20:31
down to actionable okay we are going to move forward with these things for these
20:35
reasons informed by the business practice um but be able to um you know
20:40
manage the expectations and and flesh something out that is doable and as Sam
20:44
said sometimes times we’re going to think this is great, let’s do this, we
20:48
can do it and then you find out you really can’t and be be ready to then
20:51
pivot to something else. So it’s it’s a very organic process I feel like when
20:56
organizations are at that step zero or or one or sometimes even a step you know
21:01
50 I feel like it becomes a very fluid situation when you have a new
21:05
opportunity a new barrier whatever it might be u but I again tend to try to
21:09
paint the picture a little bit bigger and then walk people back and say okay
21:13
yes there’s a lot of information but here’s where I would suggest we get
21:16
started here are the things you identified that you can do let’s to
21:19
Sam’s point move forward with the actionable things and then figure out
21:23
how to map out making the other things actionable that aren’t currently.
21:28
Great. Very cool. Um, Neil, what if you were to go back, you know, at the the
21:33
start of your career and in AOS, kind of, you know, I don’t know if you you
21:36
can do this, but give us a sense like how, you know, what has changed, you
21:41
know, in, you know, because I think it would be great for the audience to hear
21:43
like an example in in a in a in a large organization, how how, you know,
21:48
shifting left actually is implemented and and what you know, if you can talk
21:52
about specific programs that that that you know of.
21:56
Yeah, sure. I I think I was having a discussion about this with someone else
22:01
earlier today. In in many ways everything has changed because the
22:05
technologies that people are using are very different today. Um the way that we
22:12
interact and development cycles are much much faster. We’ve gone from waterfall
22:16
to agile to devops to no ops you know. Um you know so so the speed of
22:24
development and and everything has speeded up. Um and that has caused
22:31
issues in terms of accessibility because you no longer have the the luxury of
22:37
long planning times and you know design workshops and all the rest of it because
22:41
you’ve got this continuous ship. So then it’s you have to be thinking about well
22:45
how can we get accessibility into this set of features for this sprint and
22:49
everything else. So then you’re going back to culture, right? And I think that
22:52
that in that respect, you know, the need to uh engage with an organization’s
22:58
culture hasn’t changed. Um I I think there’s been some progress on that front
23:03
and and I’ve learned a lot in my time about how to um successfully um engage
23:10
with organizational cultures. So um I think the the real learning point for me
23:16
was to not try and um push accessibility into an organizational culture but to
23:24
step back and observe what are the successful things within that
23:29
organizational culture not necessarily related to accessibility. So to take the
23:33
example of the the place that uh I I I was at last ATOSS right ATOSS has a
23:40
fantastic culture around sustainability and green IT and energy uh reduction and
23:48
so uh energy and carbon reduction and is you know highly rated globally for for
23:54
this kind of stuff. So it’s in people’s mindsets to do this stuff. It’s in their
23:59
ways of working. is in the cultural norms of the organization. And so what I
24:04
did was I observed this and this was something that people really into and
24:08
it’s like well how can we co-opt this to and and and and put an accessibility
24:13
lens on it and I I went to a talk it’s a decade ago now like the the light bulb
24:19
moment for me was a talk by Jim Tobias at the Funka conference in Stockholm
24:24
where he said oh you know inaccessibility is kind of like
24:28
pollution right and and and we developed on that because it’s like right well
24:33
that’s a negative externality we’re talking about negative externalities in
24:37
carbon reductions we can use the and co-op the same processes the same
24:42
structures the same governance right so people understand it so what we’re doing
24:46
is instead of creating a new structure we’re just putting accessibility into
24:52
into an an existing successful structure uh one that people understand one that
24:58
people have bought into and they go yeah okay if if If if exclusion’s like
25:03
pollution, well then what we need to be doing to shift left is, you know, reduce
25:08
it. So we’re we’re up with reducing exclusion. We like the the idea and now
25:14
we have a sort of conceptual framework scaffolding if you like
25:19
with we can apply to how we’re going to do this in our jobs. So it’s not big
25:24
bang, it’s a case of well we look at all of these things when we’re when you’re
25:29
looking at carbon emissions. looking at, well, you know, if we reduce the power a
25:33
little bit here, um, you know, can we turn the, you know, the the processor
25:37
down a little bit, what’s that going to have an impact on 100,000 machines?
25:41
Well, that’s going to reduce our carbon emissions. Well, you can have the same
25:44
kind of approach and mindset when you’re doing this in terms of your
25:48
accessibility programs. And I think that that’s how you you start devolving the
25:53
responsibility for microactions for accessibility across
25:59
the organization. I think that sometimes there is a danger when you say
26:03
accessibility is everybody’s responsibility is that when something is
26:08
everybody’s responsibility, it’s no one’s and no one and people go, “Well, I
26:12
thought I thought this was done. Of course, we were taking care of it, but I
26:15
thought it was someone else that was doing it.” Right? Whereas when you start
26:18
looking at it as sort of microactions and describing well what is it that
26:22
you’re doing in this part of your job that you can then contribute to
26:25
accessibility it becomes less burdensome and people start wanting to do it and it
26:30
becomes part of their normal ways of doing things.
26:33
Okay. I I really like that you when you say that I I have heard the the the
26:37
phrase, you know, SSL is everyone’s responsibility a lot and and and I think
26:43
but in practice you do need some some people some roles and and you know and
26:49
in product there’s a there’s a term called minimum viable product right like
26:52
what’s the minimum you can get away what are you know is there a minimum viable
26:57
are they minimum viable roles that are necessary for an organization to move
27:02
this to to move in this direction. Oh yeah, I mean I would say like first
27:08
to address the minimum viable product. Is it viable if it isn’t inclusive? If
27:12
people can’t use it, is it viable? Now to a certain extent um that depends on
27:17
what your market is, right? you know, um, as as Gareth Ford Williams who XP
27:23
BBC uh, used to say, when you’re discussing accessibility,
27:27
you’re always talking about who are you going to exclude because some people
27:30
will be excluded because there are always compromises in product design.
27:34
Um, so, so you have to think about that. But
27:38
then I think you’re always going to need some level of governance. And so you’re
27:42
going to need a level u a person with a level of knowledge and a level of
27:48
authority to be able to
27:55
to sometimes be the the unpopular person saying actually you
28:01
can’t ship this because you’re not done yet. Um, and so you you need you do need
28:06
to be able to have someone where that they’re empowered to be able to to do
28:12
that if you want to be successful. But they shouldn’t just be Dr. No, right? I
28:18
I actually, you know, if if your accessibility role is Dr. No, then
28:23
there’s something wrong with the way that you’re doing accessibility and
28:27
you’re probably far too too far too far to the right.
28:30
Sure. Right. So, so what you’ve got to be is
28:33
the person that says, “Look, you can do all of this exciting stuff and it’s
28:37
going to open up a world of possibilities to you.” And then
28:40
occasionally you have to sort of rein them back in because they’ve forgotten
28:44
something rather than just constantly being the the blocker.
28:49
Yeah. Does anyone else want to want to answer or you know add to this question
28:54
about like what are some of the what are the minimum roles because often
28:58
organizations either don’t budget for it they they kind of you know there’s some
29:02
lip service around accessibility but there’s no hiring actually happening or
29:07
yeah so Sam go ahead so s this is Sam Evans I think that
29:13
every team or division or unit needs to have at minimum at least one to two
29:19
people that understand how accessibility is part of what they deliver, create,
29:24
contribute, oversee, or are responsible for. So, I think that we’re going to
29:29
find a lot more people that don’t have accessibility in their title, but have
29:33
it as part of their roles and responsibilities. So, I think it really
29:35
does come across to teams, divisions, units, products, product lines, or or
29:41
services. And so if if there’s at minimum one to two people in every unit
29:46
if we’re talking about larger groups, that’s two people that could contribute
29:50
to shifting left, making sure that we aren’t skipping over things too far down
29:55
the timeline or raising questions about have we considered should we this this
30:01
might be a good time to do X Y and Z or hey if if we don’t keep doing it this
30:06
way we could change this and save time later. So having those people built in
30:11
where people understand how accessibility fits what they do in their
30:14
team, unit, vision, whatever, that I think is really going to be where
30:18
success happens larger than just saying people who have accessibility in their
30:22
title. Rob, you want to add or you mean I think
30:29
that lends itself to a thought that I’ve been ruminating on lately, which is the
30:33
accessibility unicorn role. And Sam, I think this is the exact opposite of what
30:36
you’re talking about because I feel like a lot of the roles roles
30:40
that are available right now, if you look on LinkedIn, you look on A1Y jobs,
30:44
you’ll find that they want somebody who knows basically everything about
30:49
accessibility from document to technical web to like JavaScript. Not just what
30:54
does markup need to look like in order for things to be accessible in the
30:58
browser, but how do you write the code to make that markup work? Also, you need
31:02
to know policy. Also, you need to know just like every facet of accessibility
31:07
and the salary is going to be around, you know, 85,000 US or something, right?
31:11
which u I think that Sam’s model is what we need to try to get industry to move
31:16
toward and that’s one of the challenges that I think in the accessibility space
31:19
we might face to an extent and and something I’m trying to do this year is
31:23
figure out where can we carry this message of hiring managers HR technical
31:28
leaders don’t fall into that that trap of creating one position that will know
31:34
everything about accessibility and assuming that that poor human being is
31:39
going to be there after a year number and number two can handle the work the
31:43
work of of the entire organization as opposed to where do we find ways to
31:49
integrate accessibility into the skill sets like Sam was talking about and
31:52
unfortunately I feel like at least and Sam and Neil and Eugene you all are in
31:56
the space as well I don’t know if you can sadly confirm this observation or if
32:01
it’s just some kind of bias I have in kind of scanning what’s out there but I
32:04
feel like increasingly organizations want the accessibility unicorn and I
32:10
think that’s just an unsustainable approach. So, it’s really just kind of I
32:13
think reinforcing Sam what you were talking about by describing the
32:16
antithesis of your idea which does seem to be what’s more prevalent now.
32:23
Neil, go ahead. I definitely want to come in on this
32:25
because um I am observing it in in the job adverts and in the in the market. Um
32:32
and I think that when organizations are asking for that unicorn,
32:38
it immediately tells me that they have a low level of maturity in that
32:43
organization. And we spent years building and I had the privilege to
32:47
build a a pretty large accessibility team. And so people had lots of
32:51
different roles. we had legal councils in the team um and procurement
32:57
specialists and so on. So, so the there so what we did was we uh we were looking
33:02
at things like so job families and so you have a bunch of different skills but
33:06
then you also sort of fit into the complex corporate job ro matrices and so
33:12
I think that as organizations get more mature then you see that there are
33:18
multiple roles for different types of accessibility specialists but you can’t
33:25
necessarily blame organizations for requesting a unicorn when they don’t
33:31
know what they need to look for. And I think that this is where IAP has come
33:36
in. And I, you know, I’ve been a member for a long time and and and part of the
33:42
rationale behind the certifications right from the the get-go was to give
33:46
these organizations that didn’t have accessibility, that didn’t have
33:50
knowledge, at least some kind of uh reassurance that they’re picking someone
33:56
with some kind of knowledge. I think that to a certain extent, your first
34:01
hire is always going to have to be, if not a unicorn, a Swiss Army knife.
34:05
You’re going to have to have multiple different skill sets and apply them in
34:08
different ways. And that as organizations get more mature, you can
34:12
go into these more specialist roles and start scaling out and start devolving
34:19
elements of other roles and developing elements of accessibility into other
34:24
standard roles within the company. But yes, um to be really positive, the fact
34:30
that we’re demanding unicorns means there is an increased demand from new
34:34
companies entering the market wanting to do accessibility. So let’s have the sort
34:39
of the peppy positive spin on it. Yeah. And and and to add to that, Rob, I
34:45
I also have seen seen that and also have have heard of that. Uh and you know, you
34:50
often hear of accessibility uh uh generalists, so to speak. That’s their
34:54
job title. you’re a journalist uh and they they get burned out because they’re
34:58
doing everything from, you know, remediation to, you know, uh uh planning
35:03
to testing uh and and everything. So, and and I I would bet that there’s
35:08
probably a fair amount of our audience who are these unicorns or treated or
35:13
expected to be these unicorns. So, so if you were, you know, to advise someone
35:18
who has that role like the soul one person in a in a, you know, maybe a
35:23
fairly large organization, what can they do to sort of move from a
35:29
more of a unicorn one person uh role to to more of a you know like to a role
35:33
where uh sort of what Sam kind of mentioned where where it is a little bit
35:39
more distributed. This is a question any anyone can answer
35:42
this. I think this is Sam. I’ll I’ll take a a
35:49
first pass at it. I think that the professional generalist where they are
35:53
the one person, the one go-to person, if they can build alliances with other
35:59
team members who have aha moments where they get it, they understand, and they
36:03
can build alliances and in partnerships where they share knowledge with other
36:08
people in their organization. Um, I think that’s where professional
36:11
generalists can I don’t know I don’t want to use a term evangelist but
36:17
conversions to becoming accessibility champions whether it’s formal or not
36:22
that that’s probably the only hope that the professional
36:26
the professional generalists have is to have other people who get excited about
36:30
it intrigued interested share the knowledge and then start to build even
36:33
if it’s organic a distributed model across the organization
36:38
so they’re not the only ones doing the lift.
36:41
Yes. I’ll just add this is Rob. I think that
36:44
they’re well positioned as well to illustrate to leadership the need for
36:48
either more of them or this notion of let’s let’s really start to do what Neil
36:51
was describing. Let’s look at the the role families job families that we have
36:55
and let’s start to to parse this out. So, I I do think that um I like I really
37:00
like the Swiss Army uh analogy, Neil, as opposed to the unicorn because in my
37:05
mind, the unicorn is a dramatically over stuffed position, whereas somebody who
37:08
is, as Sam said, a professional generalist or that Swiss Army knife, I
37:12
think that’s more akin to being something that is more sustainable as a
37:16
role, who can come in and has that perspective to be able to identify where
37:20
accessibility fits and articulate that to leadership. To me, so much of it is,
37:25
well, I’ll I’ll say this. You’re not going to change roles without leadership
37:29
facilitating those changes. And so, I think you need and have an opportunity
37:33
with someone who’s in that Swiss Army knife kind of role to be able to
37:36
articulate to their team lead, their director, help that leadership
37:41
articulate further up. And depending on where that generalist is is located
37:44
within the organization, maybe they have direct access to somebody who’s in the
37:48
seauite to be able to really illustrate this picture a little bit more fully and
37:53
help folks in the seauite begin to, you know, then become advocates to one
37:57
another and and and that’s where I think in a utopian sort of situation that that
38:02
that top-down approach is what’s going to help to really get a place to where
38:06
the the job roles are better defined, etc., etc. But I I see it as working
38:11
across and being most effective when somebody is in that kind of Swiss Army
38:16
professional generalist role, but they’re also positioned where they’re in
38:19
the meetings they need to be in and they have at least the ear of some in
38:23
leadership who can make some of these or facilitate some of these bigger picture
38:27
changes as well. I think that’s um a possible benefit of that role depending
38:32
where it exists in the organization. I’ve also seen those folks like tucked
38:35
into a department way over here on the on the side where they’re not really
38:40
heard and they’re not in a position to hear much themselves and that brings up
38:44
another set of issues and challenges those roles can face as well.
38:48
Okay, so we have some burned out question on the this on the unicorn
38:53
generalist. So I’m going to read them out and any you know any any one of you
38:56
can take a stab at it. Um so the first is uh I you know I would be uh that I’m
39:02
I’m reading the question or comment. I would be that unicorn in that
39:05
organization and I love it. My problem is getting everyone on board with
39:09
accessibility and the only way it has worked uh is to work on contracts with
39:16
the uh where the government requires it. So so I think you know again back to the
39:21
you know the question of that. So uh I think the second so that’s the first
39:26
question. So, how do you get everyone else on board uh if it’s not required?
39:33
Okay. I I think one of the things I’ve learned from
39:39
having a couple of legal specialists uh working for me is that there are far
39:44
greater requirements than people really appreciate. So
39:49
um we were we were operating in 70 countries and we’d identified over 400
39:54
different laws that required um accessibility either directly or
40:01
indirectly. Right? So whether that be procurement
40:05
law, non-discrimination legislation, uh you know adherence with standards,
40:12
right? Actually those requirements are there. it’s it’s finding them and
40:16
because you know a lot of the time these requirements are buried. So so there’s a
40:21
a bunch of detective work that sometimes needs to go on. Um but some of this is
40:26
out there. You can go to Lady Fineold’s website for example and find stuff about
40:31
the the the state of laws around the world. Um we created um a chat bot
40:38
internally called Reggie that people could ask questions about regulations
40:42
and what they needed to do. Um and and so the mandate for accessibility is
40:49
actually far greater. It’s just not enforced and it’s not well known. Right.
40:53
So yeah, you know, the the the laws already on
40:58
your side. It’s just that people don’t know about it. It’s not well publicized
41:02
and it’s certainly not well enforced. So I think communicating about the mandate
41:07
is is is one thing. I also think that the other thing that that that that we
41:14
don’t do enough as a profession in accessibility is show how we can deliver
41:19
profitable services because because most of the time organizations see
41:24
accessibility is the cost center. When you start becoming a profit center as
41:29
well the whole thing changes right companies like to invest in things that
41:34
are profitable. So if you can find angles where some of your work is
41:39
actually delivering margin for the organization, you’re going to carve
41:42
yourself out more budget, that means that you can maybe hire a contractor to
41:46
do some of those specialist tasks. So you’re putting away a couple of the
41:50
blades on your Swiss Army knife and, you know, only keeping the the the cork for
41:54
opening the expensive bottles of wine, which is the most important task. Um so
41:59
so I think that there are those those ways of of of incrementally
42:06
um moving away from being that that that sort of hero person because you can’t do
42:12
that forever. You will burn out and and and also once you’ve communicated about
42:17
it sometimes the only way for organizations to learn is for you to let
42:22
it break because it’s not your responsibility to fix everyone else’s
42:27
mistakes. And so sometimes you have to do that
42:30
that piece where you’re you’re saying to them, I told you that this is going to
42:34
happen. Now it’s happened and now you can actually see
42:39
that it’s cost you money. And and so so sometimes much as we don’t like as
42:45
accessibility professionals to let something ship that’s inaccessible
42:51
or that that is in breach of the contracts and everything else because we
42:55
feel responsible for it. Sometimes you have to become comfortable with letting
43:02
people own their own mistakes and that is really important in in terms of the
43:08
organization starting to understand that this is their responsibility and and and
43:13
so I think that they can take it from from there.
43:18
Oh Sam, go ahead. just going to say to follow up on that
43:22
based on some of the things in chat that I think it’s really important that if
43:25
you’re that one person um that you’ve put in writing to all the folks whose
43:30
things are going to break to let them know you’re trying to help them prevent
43:33
this from breaking and here’s ways to do this. So, I was looking at somebody who
43:37
said they’re burnt out and they’re the only it for your own sake. Find kind
43:42
ways to illustrate this in writing in an ongoing basis where it’s documented and
43:46
shared so that you can show that when the thing does break
43:51
if the fingers point that you can help share where you have handheld and
43:55
offered your opportunities for improvement before the break. So, just
44:00
just a little piece of advice. Yeah, I’m not I’m not saying wash your
44:05
hands of everything and just go I told you so. I think I think that what you
44:08
need to do is be be careful in the way that you do it. Be gracious. Uh but also
44:16
then start logging this stuff and document the cost of inaccessibility
44:22
because once you start demonstrating to the organization the cost of rework, the
44:27
cost of delays and all these kind of stuff and you can calculate this then
44:32
you can show them it’s cheaper to shift left and do it earlier
44:36
and they’ve got within their own organization. It’s not just sort of
44:41
mythical law. Yeah, and there’s actually a comment
44:46
now. Um, so I’m working on showing how what I do with accessibility is saving
44:50
company money or preventing cost for remediation. Uh, never mind the
44:55
litigation prevention. Any advice to the sea to get seuite attention, right? So I
45:01
think kind of very similar to what you guessed. I don’t know if uh you know Rob
45:05
you’ve got you know I know I’ve talked to other guests who’ve talked about sort
45:09
of documenting the quoteunquote ROI of of accessibility and how to present it
45:14
to get seuite or leadership buy in and I think there are some practical
45:19
pieces Neil spoke to the efficiency gains um I remember being at a
45:23
conference a couple of years back and somebody from a firm and I won’t name
45:27
them but it rhymes with Google was talking about how when they were doing
45:31
when they were looking at the amount of time invested in accessibility and they
45:34
were just looking at shifting into um web application design. So, a little bit
45:39
different than document workflows, but I think the logic still carries. They they
45:44
con conservatively figured that any hour that they spent uh doing some evaluation
45:49
on their design artifacts led to at a minimum a savings of 5 hours of uh
45:55
rework if they found something near to or in production. And again, they they
45:58
were pretty conservative. They said it’s probably more than that. So I think that
46:02
you’ve got a practical concern just to reiterate what Neil talked about with
46:05
efficiency of not having to go back and rework. I think that’s something you can
46:09
probably potentially track internally as well and be able to show here are actual
46:13
numbers that we discovered looking at, you know, this one project comparing it
46:17
to other project work. I think from a practical perspective, one of the things
46:20
that and I know we I feel like accessibility has a complex relationship
46:24
with privacy and security, but I’ve come to feel more so that accessibility is
46:30
privacy and security. And I think that we as a field can do a better job of
46:35
intertwining those not just in a workflow manner. Not just saying, “Okay,
46:39
here’s what’s worked with information security. What can we learn and apply
46:43
that to building an accessibility program?” But pointing out that if you
46:46
remove if you remove someone’s ability to independently input a username and a
46:51
password or financial information or personally identifiable information, you
46:56
are exposing your organization to privacy and security risks. and it’s
47:01
just innate within it. And I feel like that’s a part of a conversation that’s
47:05
just kind of beginning to emerge a little bit more in the mainstream
47:08
accessibility space, which I think is is helpful. And I hope it kind of resolves
47:12
some of the tension because there there is tension between the two. Often you’ll
47:16
find that we will say on the accessibility side that security
47:19
measures work against us and vice versa. That happens. But I think that there’s a
47:23
lot that we can work together on and we’ve started to see some emerging
47:27
models particularly I feel like in higher education in the states where
47:30
they are more uh more overtly blending security and accessibility questions
47:35
into one you know vendor questionnaire at procurement for example. So I I just
47:40
think there are a lot of practical things we can look at when it comes to
47:42
trying to illustrate to leadership the gains the the risk mitigation some of
47:46
it’s difficult to quantify but I think some of it with yes a bit of added
47:50
effort you probably can quantify at a very local level to say look if we
47:54
invest this much time here we save this much time in fixing stuff in addition to
47:58
the things that we can’t track the opportunity costs what are we not doing
48:01
while we’re fixing um what are the stressors that come in I think there’s a
48:05
lot of of uh you know kind of relatively easy metrics we can probably track to
48:09
quantify that a bit better as well as just looking at security, improved
48:13
quality, some of these other things that members of leadership might actually
48:16
find resonant. Cool. I want to switch, you know, we’ve
48:20
got about 10 minutes left. I want to switch the conversation uh to tools and
48:25
systems, right? So, I think it’s, you know, training. We we you know, we I
48:29
think everyone understands there’s always training. There is, you know, you
48:33
need uh uh policy, you need some governance. uh but but at the practical
48:37
level you also need tools like and and if you look at like uh you know Rob you
48:41
used the you know higher ed as a as an example you know there are some very big
48:45
tools like the CMS’s and the uh LMS’s and uh and the you know the tools that
48:51
make their documents uh and this is a question for everyone
48:55
not just Rob like what are some tools that you you know you don’t have to
48:59
recommend the exact thing but the types of tools or requirements of tools
49:04
what type of requirements would you need the tools to do to kind of help build
49:08
this system uh that will allow the team you know to shift left right I think a
49:14
lot you know if tools are a sort of part of the structure part of the scaffolding
49:19
that that is very important that often gets you know forgotten and you need to
49:24
spend money on tools too I think that’s the other thing that you know that that
49:28
is uh one of the things that you know if an organization is serious about it they
49:33
not only need to pay for the people they also need to pay for the tools
49:38
So Eugene, I’ll take a first pass at that. I about eight years ago was asked
49:42
to do a teach document access for a higher ed school. What we discovered was
49:48
people they could understand document accessibility, but what they first
49:51
needed to do was learn how to use the tools that are built into the systems
49:55
they have in their office suites. if people can learn how to use that
49:59
tool. So training it became bring your documents, show me what you do. Let’s
50:04
let’s see how it works in your role for your team. When you teach people how to
50:08
use the tools that they already have at hand that the company’s already paid for
50:12
for documents in particular, you can get 75% of the way towards document
50:17
remediation with what’s built in. And then if you understand how to preserve
50:21
it or save it, you can cut time, resources, revenue. So understanding the
50:26
tools that we have in house I think is probably the biggest step
50:31
service level agreements procurement for what tools you buy is a different part
50:35
of the path and I’ll let Robin Neil talk more about that stuff but
50:43
I don’t know Neil you want to like um so so sure I mean I think that um
50:49
yeah you’re not organizations are always looking to find ways to cut costs so
50:54
like to to take point teaching people how to use what they’ve got within their
51:01
their tooling uh is really important. Um you know you can create pretty
51:06
accessible documents using your mainstream uh desktop publishing tools.
51:12
Um if you know how um you can also uh within things like office turn on
51:18
accessibility notifications domainwide.
51:23
Right? So one of the things that I did was I asked our former like I asked our
51:29
our CIO to turn on the accessibility checker across the entirety of the
51:35
company domain. Right? So you can do that. That’s a setting that that the
51:38
system administrator can do. And that that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going
51:42
to suddenly, you know, start making accessible documents, but it means that
51:46
everybody gets nudged, right? And then yes, you do need people that are are
51:51
constantly working on document publishing or they’re doing specific
51:56
roles. Then they then you need to be buying them the right tools that enable
52:00
them to publish their documents um and and make and render them accessible
52:05
without having to go to the accessibility specialists all of the
52:09
time. It should be a a quick check. So um the balance there is is actually um
52:16
getting informed by procurement early enough that the team in Malaysia or um
52:25
Canada is deciding to buy some tools for the team and making sure that those
52:32
tools can actually output something accessible because
52:37
once they’ve bought it, it’s pretty much too late because they’re going to
52:42
thing and and so it’s really, you know, one of the things that’s shifted us left
52:47
has been working with procurement um and and getting those into the sort of
52:52
procurement processes as well and the evaluations of things um of all kinds of
52:57
mainstream tools to make sure that accessibility is a consideration because
53:01
once it’s bought then you’re stuck with it for years maybe,
53:05
you know, because you’re you’re not going to undo purchasing decisions
53:09
quickly. And if you’re in a large enterprise, that might mean hundreds of
53:14
thousands or even millions of documents need to be painfully manually remediated
53:20
for accessibility afterwards. So, so that’s a a really good example of where
53:24
you need to be choosing the right toolings that um can support the
53:28
workflows of the teams and meet their needs, but that also generate accessible
53:34
content. Yeah, agree 100%. And and I think to to
53:40
add to that, you know, there is a role for that, you know, accessibility
53:45
specialist unicorn, whatever you call it. I mean they they they would be and
53:50
the way I see it in in organi you know at least with the with the customers
53:53
that we work with if they come up with templates you know for example in a CMS
53:57
right that are just by default accessible and and you know the the you
54:04
know the people who are creating those pages are not just starting from scratch
54:08
which is often very difficult. they’re starting from a template that is already
54:12
95% accessible and they may just have to add some you know all text all the
54:17
headings are already all tagged properly and all that right so so there is a role
54:22
for uh the tools and for setting up a bunch of templates or design systems or
54:27
whatever you call it essentially the things that everyone else will use uh
54:32
whether it’s for a web page or for a document that uh I mean same with
54:36
documents if you create some presentation templates if people are
54:39
making presentations or you know people are writing documents some document temp
54:43
some common document templates that uh that are you know that are accessible it
54:49
just makes everyone else’s job like you know a lot easier because they don’t
54:53
have to start from scratch 100% agree we I mean we were an
54:57
organization that loved PowerPoint we love doing presentations and and so we
55:01
spent a lot of time working with our marketing and and and coms teams to
55:06
develop accessible uh presentations templates down to, you
55:11
know, um all of the icons and and so on. And what we did was we also got the
55:16
accessibility into the brand bible. So, uh again, so when you were maybe
55:22
contracting that work out and people had to follow the brand guidelines, it was
55:26
written into the branding guidelines as well. So, the creative teams that you
55:30
outsource to then have to also uh create accessible content. So that
55:35
templatization of accessibility whether that be you know in a a repo for
55:40
creating you know applications or in um in your sort of uh in your git for web
55:47
pages or whether it’s in you know in your corporate templates it’s the it’s
55:51
the same approach you know you build it in you make it easy for people. I think
55:56
that the thing that we need to be doing as as accessibility practitioners in the
56:02
space is trying to make it easy for people to do accessibility in their
56:06
jobs. Look to reduce the friction and then people will want to do it because
56:11
it’s easy. Rob, do you want to add to that or
56:18
I I have zero notes. The only point I was going to make on the on the the
56:22
tooling side of what Neil talked about where I feel like that’s one of the
56:25
biggest one of the bigger inhibitors is toolkits that organizations approve that
56:29
uh don’t facilitate accessibility. So yeah, really nothing nothing to add on
56:33
on that front and then with templatization and just you know really
56:36
narrowing narrowing the content and domain expertise people have to have to
56:41
what they need to know as opposed to expecting people to account for
56:45
everything really does reduce that that friction and that tension. So yeah, no,
56:48
no, it’s just reiteration. Okay. Yeah. And so great. And and I I
56:53
think that’s um putting in the grand a brand guide is brilliant. Yeah. I I
56:59
think you know I don’t see a lot of organizations doing that. So So that’s
57:03
that’s that’s a good that’s a I would say that’s a that’s a good tip for sure.
57:10
Yeah. we went and we we we did a an eco brand
57:15
and so we were we were doing things to reduce um energy consumption in our
57:19
brand. So we put stuff into dark mode and we did a color palette but while we
57:22
were doing the color palette we also made sure that that color palette had
57:25
all of the correct color contrast. So so there was a great example of us reducing
57:30
two sets of externalities in one exercise. And it’s those kind of
57:35
multiple wins that you can show offer up to leadership and say here’s a great
57:40
case study that you can go and you know post about that will make you look like
57:46
the the the you know the thought leader in in the space with your other CEOs. So
57:51
I think that yeah finding those little nuggets that you can offer up to to your
57:57
your your seuite also helps you sort of open doors and and more importantly
58:02
wallets and budgets for the things that you want to do later down the line.
58:08
Great. So I think we have one last question on what can we expect to see in
58:12
terms of coming accessibility regulations for organizations beginning
58:16
in April. I believe they are referring to the title two ADA title two changes
58:22
in April. Um, and they’re asking in terms of I’m asking in terms of market
58:27
and if contract work might increase for generalists. Was this knowing at all?
58:34
I think I understand from what I understand they’re asking about the
58:37
market for accessibility generalist is I hope I got that right.
58:43
Um although I’m not sure. Yeah, go ahead, Rob.
58:49
Okay. No, I was just going to say briefly. I mean, I think that
58:52
I think that some of the things that we talked about before, we’re going to
58:54
continue to see magnify where a lot of these public entities in the states
58:58
don’t have the maturity to know what they’re looking for yet. And so I think
59:02
we might see a ballooning of those kind of oversted positions. To Neil’s point
59:07
earlier though, I I do think that organizations, and this is one of the
59:10
first recommendations that I make even before a self assessment, you probably
59:14
need somebody to focus on this within your organization. It’s not something
59:17
that you can add to uh someone else’s plate and expect them to understand some
59:22
of the nuance that’s in the regulations, in technical standards, and in
59:26
organizational behavior. Um, but I I think that we’re going to see a couple
59:30
of different tracks, and I don’t think we’re going to know for sure until
59:33
April. I think a lot of entities are keeping this at arms reach until this
59:36
first deadline coming up in a few months and then I think we’ll really have a
59:39
better handle on what’s going to happen. But it’s kind of unpredictable as a lot
59:43
of things in the states are at this point in time.
59:49
Damn, were you going to say something that I’m not
59:51
I was going to say to Alice’s to the question as I think you’re going to see
59:54
probably about March the deadline is in April around March you’re going to see a
59:59
massive ground swell of so for each title 2 organization they have an ADA
1:00:05
coordinator that has to submit a plan once a year you’re going to find a bunch
1:00:08
of those people have no idea this title two deadline is looming in April and so
1:00:12
there will be a a a fear-based what do we do now how do I find
1:00:18
resources Much like we saw with European Accessibility Act with ADA in 2018, it’s
1:00:24
coming. The market will swell and there’ll be people that are looking for
1:00:28
resources. Okay, very cool. All right, we are out
1:00:32
of time. Um, I want to thank all of our panelists today. Um, uh, Sam, Rob, Neil,
1:00:39
it’s it’s it’s been great having all of you here. Um, we will drop links and
1:00:44
we’re going to send out an email with the I think the link to recording and
1:00:46
links to all of our panelists. You can find all of them on LinkedIn as well.
1:00:50
Um, I think it’s fairly easy to find. But thank you everyone uh for for
1:00:55
attending. It’s been uh it’s been a pleasure and thank you Sam, Rob, and
1:00:59
Neil. Appreciate it. Thank you.
1:01:02
Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you.
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