Transcript
Younus P: So thank you so much. Celeste, for you know, joining us today at accessibility Podcast, news, podcast we are really grateful. And we would like to shoot out a few questions that you so that we understand your journey in this space, your overall in terms of tech implementation development and supporting the cause of accessibility. And it’s it’s got completely open. Forum. You can speak whatever your your mind says, and whatever you wanna share about
Younus P: anything you know that can help user experience that can help build a culture of accessibility, and that can help, you know, overall how applications can become better and better over the
Younus P: and and the future, perhaps you know. So yeah, there are, you know. You can start, you know. Yes, solicitor like, you know, already mentioned a few of them. And we would really love to know more about your background in digital accessity product design and us design. We can start from there.
Celeste Behrman: sure. So I started off when I was about 14 years old, working at a summer camp for special needs kids which led me towards a when I went to college I studied to be a special education teacher. I really thought that was where I was going to be leading to the classroom but while I was in college I began designing user interfaces, and when I left college I continued doing that because I found that I really enjoyed it.
Celeste Behrman: But it’s because I started off working with disabled users. That has led me to make sure that all of the design work that I was doing, you know, 22 years. As a user experience designer, I was making sure that I was including typically excluded groups. So disabled users socioeconomically disadvantaged users. Tech novices, that sort of thing. I studied accessibility
and accessible design as a way to improve the products that I was designing.
Celeste Behrman: and I transitioned to being an accessibility consultant a few years ago. I’ve continued to expand my knowledge of accessibility from there.
Dhara Pattani: That’s awesome sandstone. I believe back in that time it must be a really new area to explore. And
Dhara Pattani: I mean.
Celeste Behrman: were there, like, you know, many courses and trainings available? No, almost none when I first started out, in fact, even so, in fact, when I first started off
Celeste Behrman: at at the summer camp it was 1989, so that was before the Americans with Disabilities Act had even passed. So. And then when I went to college, I tried to explain like, this is this thing I’m doing? I’m I’m designing user interfaces, although it wasn’t really called that at the time. And so I would just explain it. And they would say, Oh, you wanna be a programmer? And I said, No, no, I don’t. I don’t wanna code at all. That’s not it. I do this other thing. I go. Oh, you wanna go to art school?
Celeste Behrman: also. No. So when I first started doing you know ui design and then interaction design, and that sort of thing. It W. It wasn’t really a class you could take and so as a designer, I’m
Celeste Behrman: vastly self taught I, and as an accessibility person, I’m also mostly self-taught. I find that it means being self taught means that throughout my career I’ve had to
Celeste Behrman: a bit of imposter syndrome like gosh! In a moment they’re gonna find out. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. Because I didn’t have that piece of paper that said, I’m additional
Celeste Behrman: that’s the Cpac. Comes in exactly. Well, that’s part of why I got the cpac. Because I was thinking about it from the perspective of you know I’m I’m doing this job, and I’m part of it was to remind myself I actually do know what I’m talking about when I talk about this stuff. I did training and the only real surprise for me was how much of a of a
Celeste Behrman: how much they focused on the law aspect of it. You know the different laws the world. And realizing as I was studying that it wasn’t just the Americans with Disabilities act. That there were, you know, throughout the world. Lots of different countries have different laws about accessibility, but they all come down to the core concept of everybody should get to do it. You know everybody should get to use your product? Regardless of ability.
Celeste Behrman: Do you recollect which year was that when you appeared for your Cpac. Exam. Yeah, it was just last year, in fact. I’ve I’ve been working as first off when I was designing. I was doing accessible design, and I used to joke that like, Hey, when you hire me, you get an accessibility consultant for free because I was doing the design work and also reviewing their products for accessibility and making recommendations based off of how accessible product was.
And I transitioned over to being an accessibility consultant a few years ago, and
Celeste Behrman: I found that
Celeste Behrman: a lot of times me saying it like, Hey, this is how you make it more accessible. Ii didn’t always have the kind of gravitas I needed. When I would say that people like this is what needs to happen. And and the response was, Yeah, what do you know? And so it’s shocking. How? Just simply adding that cpac to my email signature, improve the way people perceive
Celeste Behrman: as a non people accessibility person. Yes, I believe so. And has that impacted your approach to accessibility work in any way? I think it’s just given me a deeper understanding of of the work. As a designer, I started off, thinking I knew all about accessibility, and then, when I started digging in more on for for first off, when I started consulting, I realized that there’s like
Celeste Behrman: a whole aspect of accessibility. That is, it buried in the code that you don’t necessarily see in the design. It’s about how you you use semantic language and how you use aria and things like that. And so I found that my knowledge became much more technical. Now I still do not consider myself a super technical person. I’m a design nerd from way back. And so
Celeste Behrman: I have other consultants on my team who are far more technical, and they rely on my design expertise, and I often rely on their technical expertise. When you know, I’m running into a problem where it’s just not working properly. And I have, you know, exhausted my own level of technical expertise. Yes, but you know, I believe that this is a very special achievement. First of all, of course, you have studied for that. And second thing, there are like a very few like like, you know.
Dhara Pattani: very short percentage of people, I would say, in a world wide who has, who have done this. So this is definitely a like, you know, a great achievement.
Younus P: Thank you. Yeah. So
Younus P: while while you’re working so currently, you’re engaged with the organization.
Younus P: do? Do you come across people as
Younus P: a? Are you accepting all the fundamental changes that you bring onto the table in terms of design? Or is there a challenge. Is there a daily you know, part where you have to convince that this has to happen? Or is it a part of the culture that. You know, they understand this straight up.
Celeste Behrman: So II think it depends. It. It depends a lot. So the I work with lots of different teams, and some of the teams started off with an accessibility consultant when the team was first stood up. So you know the consultants on my team. We each support about 30 scrum teams, which is, you know, a a lot and so some of the scrum teams were stood up.
Celeste Behrman: knowing that they had an accessibility consultant, knowing that they were going to have to go through accessibility testing to get their you know, their product deployed, and some of the teams have been stood up for years and years, and they didn’t have an accessibility consultant. And so then, when we come along and say, Hey, this isn’t super accessible. It it. I get much more pushback that way. So
Celeste Behrman: The the culture of all of the new teams is great. You know, they’re really thinking about accessibility as part of their process. And I teach an inclusive design training course to all new designers that come in every new designer who comes in goes through my training course where I talk about accessibility and inclusivity. So thank you. Yeah. So the designers are thinking about it from the beginning. Now, too, they’re still learning. Obviously. there’s tons of them who have had no accessibility
Celeste Behrman: at all in their life until they took, you know, until they started here and until they took the inclusive design class. So
Celeste Behrman: we’re getting there. But for some of those class, some of those scrum teams that have been working and working for years. And then we come in and say, Hey, this product that you launched 2 years ago. It’s it’s broken. You have to fix it, and then there’s it can sometimes become a bit adversarial. And so we really have to work on building empathy so that they want to fix the problem so they don’t just see it. As like geez! Legal risk and compliance. Is that me? Again? You know, it’s actually like.
Celeste Behrman: no, we’re improving the user experience overall.
Dhara Pattani: So you know where you ever been in a situation where you had to clear any kind of misconception where people came in to all that. Like, you know, this is not necessary. This is very expensive, not needed, and why it has to be every. We are not catering to all the people at the same time.
Celeste Behrman: Yeah. So I think that’s a really common misconception that it’s that the
Celeste Behrman: people with disabilities are a very small audience seems to be the common misconception. I have designers all the time who tell me, like Gosh, like one or 2% of the population is blind. Why would I change the entire design for such a small group? And what I usually tell them is, maybe one or 2% of the population is fully blind, but
Celeste Behrman: according to the last census, one in 4 Americans, self-identify as disabled, that is a huge number, and
Celeste Behrman: and even that number is misleadingly small, because self identify means that there are people who have disabilities who do not identify as a person with disabilities, and therefore, you know, like, for example, my husband can’t read a screen without his glasses on, but he doesn’t consider himself disabled. And and so, as you, as your vision deteriorates as you age as you. You know.
Celeste Behrman: as people change in their lives, you may be perfectly healthy as a young person, and then there’s an injury I try to also explain to people that
Celeste Behrman: yes, permanent disabilities are the basis for accessibility. But there’s also temporary disabilities, you know. Maybe you broke your arm. And so now you have to do everything with one hand, or maybe there’s situational disabilities. I’m holding a baby, an infant who is sleeping. I can’t put the baby down. I have to do things with one hand. So when you design for people with permanent disabilities, you’re also making the experience accessible to people with
Celeste Behrman: situational and temporary disabilities as well. And I feel like really explaining that helps to build that empathy. If they’re thinking about, how would I do it. If I couldn’t use my eyes or I couldn’t use my hands. It really does change change the narrative quite a lot.
Dhara Pattani: Yes, can’t agree anymore. I mean, this is so true.
Younus P: I think even the captions that you know we use in videos. You know, the intention was for people who could not listen.
Younus P: you know. That’s that’s why the captions came in the first place, like all the apps like Zoom, for for example, Youtube. But then even we, even if we can hear it out loud and clear, we still use captions, because that helps us, you know, understand things better. So yeah, I think it’s it’s more about being empathic, being being considerate to what others needs, you know. And definitely understanding that the quantum of users is way, more than one and 2%. That is really, that’s a very helpful
Younus P: that you have given, you know. And it it really opens up eyes of people when they see the stat, you know, on the board, I’m sure. Yeah. So
Younus P: is there any specific example or a project that you are very proud of, where you know, you think that this thing changed. Maybe the user acceptance ratio, or perhaps the conversion ratio of an app or a website or anything that you’ve built. Would you like to share something on that side?
Celeste Behrman: Sure. So,
Celeste Behrman: II manage a team of consultants and we consult a lot on. We do a ton of design reviews. And so what we, as a group found was that over and over and over again we were pointing out the same kinds of things. You know, this, this hyperlink doesn’t have a secondary indicator using color alone, or or you know, things like that. And so we kept finding these same issues again and again, and we would tell the designer, you need to change this, they would say.
Celeste Behrman: Well, we just got this component from frameworks. This is how this this component is built. And so in order to make the changes you’re suggesting, I need to either start from scratch or break the component. And so I began working directly with the frameworks team and starting off with the designers and the developers and saying, Okay, these components, they’re not accessible by themselves. So every single time a designer uses that component in the work that they’re doing.
Celeste Behrman: they are incorporating inaccessibility. And so we really need to make sure that the components themselves are accessible and the first response that I got was, You know, you’re trying to boil the ocean, and you can’t do it all and it’s too big. It’s so gigantic. And so we started just one component at a time. We took a single component, and my team reviewed it, and we discussed it, and we came up with a you know, sort of unified.
Celeste Behrman: These are the things that we would think. And in the beginning I was just tossing those over to the design team like, okay, we reviewed, we reviewed accordions. Here’s what we what we decided. And I wasn’t really seeing any impact. The changes weren’t coming through that way. And so I started to have a weekly meeting with the design lead and one of the main designers who work on that group work on the framework
Celeste Behrman: components. And we would just discuss one component at a time. So first, my team would would review the component, and we’d come up with our recommendations. And then we talk with the designer. And sometimes what we found was that the designer would say, Well, you know, this comes from the top. This is.
Celeste Behrman: you know, what executives want to see. And so we would talk through. How do we make this accessible, while at the same time meeting the requirements that are being pushed from from upper management, and when we work together in that way, and really integrated ourselves into the design process.
Celeste Behrman: It may, it made every single component more accessible. And we’re not done yet. We started at the top. We just like there’s here’s an alphabetical list of all the components. And we started it accordions. And we’re working our way down. We’re on links right now we just finished links last week, which you know, link seem like such a small thing, you think. Well, gosh! You know. It’s just a hyperlink. How simple is that? Right?
Celeste Behrman: well.
Celeste Behrman: the executives don’t want it. Want links to be underlined unless they’re inside of a paragraph and say, Gosh, okay? Well, the simplest solution is the underline. And we’re told that we can’t do that. Okay, well, here’s 10 other ways. You could have a secondary indicator. So you’re not using color alone as an indication. And we spent it actually took 3 or 4 weeks of just going over links where we went over every single different scenario where something was
Celeste Behrman: clickable or tappable to discuss like, well does this meet the guidelines? Does this meet the guidelines?
Celeste Behrman: And we had to look at them as a we had to look at them in all of the different ways that they get used rather than just having one blanket statement to say, links get underlined? Links aren’t going to be underlined everywhere. Sure, in a paragraph. Okay? But what about this? What about this? What about text buttons? What about you know? And so.
Celeste Behrman: working together, we managed to come up with really good recommendations. And now that we’re sort of baked into that process from the beginning. Every time a component gets changed
Celeste Behrman: it gets discussed and reviewed with the accessibility team. Every time a component gets built it gets tested by our accessibility testers. And so that doesn’t mean that it solves every you know defect. There’s still things that happen when when the when the components get integrated into a larger product, but it vastly reduces the number of defects that we’re seeing.
Dhara Pattani: And the I can give you a particular situation.
Younus P: Yeah, I think, working at the framework level, you know.
Younus P: have you? Have you also worked with any open source, frameworks or components? Is this something open source. Or is this in house? No, this is in house.
Celeste Behrman: Yeah. While you’re talking about this, I think it is
Younus P: so essential that you know, because today, the kind of development it’s it’s all rapid application development. You know. People are not building anything ground up, you know. So
Younus P: such such a deep level of inclusivity at the time of component building, you know, if it I’ve been for open source as well, I think that’ll make things so accessible from ground up from the root level. You know, I think that is really interesting. Yeah.
Dhara Pattani: yeah, I was just going to ask. And let’s say so. Guidelines change rapidly. How do you manage that situation? For example, you are working on a project which is like kind of 2 years long, and you have started with a particular guideline, for example, 2.0 or 2.1. But that has changed. How do you manage that situation? You stick to the previous one, which where you started, or you tried to evolve and
Dhara Pattani: get that incorporated in your current work.
Celeste Behrman: Yeah. So that’s been a big one, because 2 dot 2 just came out, as as you say, and we have been working
Celeste Behrman: for, you know, several years on integrating 2 dot, one double a compliance, I mean. I always ask for triple a but you know, E, even even schools doesn’t say everything should be triple. A. It’s it’s a bit complicated, and the designers complain. But so we’re working from a double A to one
Celeste Behrman: guide, as as those are the corporate standards. Our corporate policy says that from the time that a new version of what CAD comes out, we have a year to to integrate it into our process. So that doesn’t mean that, you know, on November first of 2024, everything at the company will be 100% 2 compliant.
Celeste Behrman: What that means is that we’re not going to start filing defects against 2
Celeste Behrman: and for a year. So that gives us time to educate. I mean, I started training people about what’s new. In 2.
Celeste Behrman: A year before 2 dot 2 ever came out. We started talking about it like this is the proposed solution, and it’s not finalized, but it’s coming. So I started off just by, you know, getting getting
Celeste Behrman: people visibility into it like this is what could happen. And then, once it actually launched, we had another round of this is what did happen. This is this is the final version. And we are. The consultants are currently consulting against it. Already. So we’re saying, like, Okay, this is a requirement. According to 2, we’re not gonna file a defect against it for a year. But if you’re building it now
Celeste Behrman: you might as well fix it now. So in a year’s time we’ll we’ll be working really closely. So we’re I’m working with our testers to it. Come up with a rollout plan for how we’re gonna do it. And it starts with education and consulting
Celeste Behrman: which is what my team is working on. Now.
Dhara Pattani: that’s a very good strategy. And that gives you the opportunity to include your accessibility task according to availability and
Younus P: requirement, too. Yes, defined well in advance. So the team knows what’s coming ahead. I think, I appreciate that you set a training the team one year in advance so that they know what’s gonna come ahead.
Celeste Behrman: And there’s these other 13 guidelines that already exist. We’re adding some more. This is the new stuff. And I also have training classes on you know what was 2, one, and and explaining each of the steps, and how to integrate those into your designs and and code.
Younus P: so do you have a quarterly or a 6 monthly program within the organization to to refresh people? Or is it like pro? It’s like, just at any point in time, you know, as an invent availability.
Celeste Behrman: So we host accessibility workshops every other week. Every other Thursday we have an accessibility workshop where we choose a single topic where we dive really deep on it, and it’s open to the entire design and development work. I think
Celeste Behrman: we don’t always get. Obviously we don’t get the whole work all the time, but we let people know we can advance like, Hey, this week we’re gonna be talking about this and so I’ve presented the 2 dot 2 stuff
Celeste Behrman: 3 times, because I’m sure you know, it was a moving target like we, they kept saying, we’re gonna launch at this time, and then that time would come and go, and then they go. No, no, now it’s this date. So every time we thought it was about to launch. I gave the presentation in the workshop about let me tell you about 2, and then it kept changing kinds of things. You know, we use it also as a way to show
Celeste Behrman: what does it look like with screen readers when you’re using our app on it with a screen reader turned on? Or what does it look like when you have a Bluetooth keyboard connected to your phone and that sort of thing. We’re constantly we choose a single topic and dive deep on it every other week.
Dhara Pattani: and since you have so many years of experience, and you have seen personally
Celeste Behrman: evolving this industry over this long span. So you are the perfect person to talk about it and present about itSo you have a global team Celeste
Celeste Behrman: evolving this industry over this long span. So you are the perfect person to talk about it and present about itSo you have a global team Celeste so i that case.
What is a VPAT and Why is it Important for Accessibility?
Younus P: do you?
Younus P: yeah, do so, do you? Do you cater to all of them or the team that you sit in? So how how does the training work?
Celeste Behrman: So
Celeste Behrman: the the organization as a whole has, I think the the last number was like 5,500 scrum teams. I mean. It’s a huge organization, and my team supports about 350 of them. So there’s a ton of, you know, like back end teams. And there’s a ton of teams that don’t have a ui component at all, and so, but
Celeste Behrman: we also break it down a little bit. It is a bit siloed right? So you know, I work in this section. We work on these
Celeste Behrman: all of the teams in this org fall under our purview. And then there’s another team that handles another organ like that. And so we. We meet about quarterly with other accessibility consultants that work under the other org to make sure that we have a enterprise wide solution that we’re presenting and
Celeste Behrman: part of the 2 dot 2 release strategy is being. We started off planning for our team. Here’s how we’re gonna integrate 2 dot 2. And then we realize, oh, wait. There’s also like we have to deal with this other and this other team and everybody’s you know. What’s what do we do as a whole? And so suddenly, what started off as a meeting with 3 people became, you know, a meeting with 15 people. We have to make sure we have an enterprise wide solution for it.
Younus P: Absolutely, I think, keeping them informed helps. And it really adds a lot of value
Younus P: organization wide. Has it been a case where you’ve been a part of an audit is, do? Does audits ever happen for Ada or compliance, and have been a part of them
Younus P: anything of that time?
Younus P: So is it all over.
Celeste Behrman: My team focuses on pre-production. So we look things that are in development. We have a sister team that is a production team, and they do audits every 6 months that are automated. It’s just a you know, a scan and then every 18 months an actual, you know, human being goes through and does an end to end test on the different
Younus P: yeah, facing systems. Okay, interesting.
Younus P: Yeah. I think that is essential, you know, for you to internally understand the growth, the the improvement in the product
Younus P: you mentioned tools. What’s your take on the tools that automatically audit
Younus P: accessibility.
Celeste Behrman: So
Celeste Behrman: yeah, it feels like, AI is the big magic catchphrase right now, where everybody’s like AI is gonna solve all of our problems. And we’re not gonna have to pay humans because the computers will become our overlords or whatever what we found is with our current tools we find about, you know, 30 to 40% of the defects. So we get much
Celeste Behrman: more detailed and much more nuanced results. When a human being performs the test. The so it feels like, you know, the automated scans. It’s better than nothing.
Celeste Behrman: If catching 30% of the defects is better than catching none of the defects. So I’m happy with that but I appreciate the fact that we currently have these checks and balances in place like, yes, we run the automated scan. But before it goes, live. A human being has looked at it, and after it goes live every year and a half to 2 years, somebody takes a look at it again.
Celeste Behrman: And yeah.
Celeste Behrman: I think that eventually we we can have obviously improved scans and tools. But I think we need humans in place
Celeste Behrman: to help train the software and also to double check. The software’s getting it right.
Dhara Pattani: I appreciate it.
Younus P: That’s the principle of universal design, you know. We can always build great looking products. But are they useful or not? You know. That’s that’s what you can say. You know, that’s what a human being can definitely
Younus P: differentiate for us, you know. Otherwise, you know, machines can just do what machines have learned. That’s what I say, you know.
Younus P: so
Younus P: is there? Is that a strategy that you have, you know which.
Younus P: Let’s say, for example, there’s a guy who has a new product
Celeste Behrman: thinking of a new product.
Younus P: What kind of strategy would you advice to a startup, because with startups, you know, given even an established company versus a startup, a startup would not have the means
Younus P: to build accessible products, you know, on the onset, you know. If you see all the most of the product, you know, I’m not accessible, you know. If you look at all the new apps that come in.
Younus P: they build it as an afterthought. So what would you be your strategy or advice to startups? You know where they can include accessibility at the onset.
Celeste Behrman: Sure. Well, the first thing I say, when people say they can’t afford to do accessibility is that you can’t afford to not do accessibility. Ii really enjoy showing those like. Here’s cases where a company was sued for not being accessible, and they had to pay millions of dollars, and they still had to make it accessible. That part of the settlement was that the product would become accessible
long term. And I have worked with a ton of startups who, you know, they’re trying to be lean and mean and get things done. And
Celeste Behrman: and I think the most important thing is to think about integrating it. If you started on the day on the first day where you have a designer who understands accessibility, who is building inclusive design, an inclusively designed product. Then then
Celeste Behrman: you’re baking it in from the beginning. One of my colleagues put together, and I’m sure that this is a zillion times overused analogy, but the analogy of you’re making chocolate chip cookies, and if you you know, you make the batter and you cook it, and then it comes out and you go whoops. I forgot the chocolate chips, and just sprinkling them on top.
Celeste Behrman: is not the same as if you mix it in before you bake them. It. It changes the whole, the whole makeup of the cookie, and makes it a nicer product. And so I think it’s the same with accessibility. If you start at the beginning and you’re thinking about you know, how does this work for a screen reader user. How does this work for someone who’s navigating via keyboard? How does it work for someone who has cognitive difficulties? And
Celeste Behrman: and start from the beginning thinking about it that way. It saves a ton of money and expense and rework later on. It makes it move faster, like a lot of people say that accessibility adds this extra step.
Celeste Behrman: and I say to them, it it absolutely doesn’t. It is part of the process. The design process is absolutely pushing pixels. But it’s also about thinking about how does the user interact with it? And
Celeste Behrman: when I worked as a designer, every single project I started by saying, What’s the customer problem I’m trying to solve. So in order to do that, you have to know who your customers are. So you know, you’re you’re working on a banking app, and yes, your customer is a able bodied young professional great. But also it’s your grandma who wants to check on her savings account right? And does she have you know, arthritic hands? Does she have very low vision? Does she have cataracts? So you wanna make sure that you’re designing from the very beginning for all of your users. and a lot of your users will be disabled. So you don’t want a Band-aid solution at the end. You don’t want to sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. You want to bake them into the beginning of the process.
Dhara Pattani: Great example, solace, and you are making things very easy and simple to understand.
Celeste Behrman: and this makes definitely a much more sense that why it is important to do so from the beginning. Absolutely.
Younus P: Say, for example, your No, II the best takeaway, is, you know, get your designers know about accessibility. So now let’s say you are interviewing a designer. What are the top? 3 things that you would ask the designer with respect to accessibility.
Celeste Behrman: Umhm. Well, I think I’d start off by asking them if they think about design as an inclusive aspect? Or are they trying to solve just the business problem? Right? The business says, this is what we’re trying to fix. And the designer. Are they just simply doing as they’re told? Or are they really thinking about the customer problem? That’s the key basis, I think, to over and over again. I think about empathy as the the tool that we use to become better designers. And so I ask about that. How do you differentiate. Who? Who are your customers? Right? How do you figure that out? I think there’s a huge user research aspect to design work that a lot of designers don’t think of, and that’s not just for accessibility. But that’s just. you know who are your users.
Celeste Behrman: There’s there’s research involved whether it’s doing, performing your own research or looking at automated metrics or actually doing usability testing. That’s important to figure that out. And so I would ask those kinds of questions I would ask, what would you do in this situation where someone comes to you and says. this design is an accessible fix it and I think the most important thing for me, whenever I’m interviewing whether it’s a designer or a new accessibility consultant is how willing are you to learn. You don’t have to know everything on day one.
Celeste Behrman: Once you get into the job, I can train you, but if you are resistant to understanding and to learning, or if you don’t want to engage, or you think you’re always right. I can’t teach you that stuff. So I’m I’m happy to teach someone to become a more accessible and inclusive designer. But if you come at it, saying, Well, I know everything there is to know I’m a freaking genius. Then that’s not really very helpful to me, even if you do know everything. Now things change, and you need to keep growing so.
Dhara Pattani: Is there any particular site or resource that you follow to keep yourself updated.
Celeste Behrman: Yeah, so I have an Ia ap subscription. So I get all of those I find some really, really fascinating things coming through there. I spend a lot of time on medium. Ia lot of a lot of people are posting really interesting things on that, and I know it sounds really
Celeste Behrman: probably kind of lame. But I I’m constantly just googling like a, and not like accessibility as a whole. But like a specific issue of like, well, okay, so we have radio buttons. And and there’s an error. So how do we show that there’s an error on the group and not like you’ve selected the wrong answer. But like.
Celeste Behrman: you have to select an answer. And so II Google it. How’s everybody else doing it? How’s how’s the great way to design it so that it makes sense? Ii find a a ton of information that way, and I find things that I wouldn’t have sites I don’t necessarily follow, but that have have dive, dove, dive in deep on on a single topic. And you can really find great solutions that way. Yeah, that makes sense. And so many things are interconnected, interrelated.
Dhara Pattani: It makes more sense to have the wholesome knowledge, instead of, like, you know, just jumping into something
Celeste Behrman: like, you know, very small or anything in particular. So that will be a good strategy to expand the knowledge and get trained on this subject. Yeah.
Younus P: research always helps. You know. Yeah, research always helps
Celeste Behrman: definitely. I think, probably the the thing that I struggle with the most, but also causes me to dive as deep as possible, is because lots of people are talking about things determining whether or not. Everybody knows what they’re talking about. Right? So someone goes through and says, this is how you do it. And so you have to really read into it and say, Okay, that’s a that’s a cool idea, is it? Are they right, you know. And so So
Celeste Behrman: when I’m doing my mad Googling, and I read an article or see a solution. I then follow up by looking into the solution, to find out if that’s actually as accessible as the person who designed it thinks it is.
Younus P: Yeah, it is true, because you know not everything on the Internet is true also, you know you can. Oh, yesterday only I get got an classy example on Linkedin, where someone is showing. I would love to share that with you after the call that I can change the ui on the fly. You know. I can just type a command into AI, and the ui will change, you know. And I was like, Oh, that’s fantastic. The entire video, the entire video I kept watching 3 times, and the tester and me was like, this will not help. This is not possible, you know. Then I started looking at the Timestamps, and then you realize that this is a fabricated video. You know it’s the first command goes on Monday.
Younus Poonawala : The reply comes on Sunday, and I’m like, Oh, it took a week to do that, you know. Yeah, it’s very interesting. People people throw anything in the air. And you know, it’s very important to research to identify whether that is actually doable, whether it has the credibility to be applied to a larger scale solution, things like that. And and and today the world is in a way that you know bring in something which is already there. You know of the shell. You know. What happens is that builds a lot of kak into your product. You know. I’m sure, the kind of product that you deal with our enterprise great, so they won’t. They won’t entertain stuff like that. But when you are looking at fast paced development, I think
Celeste Behrman: those components are pre-written and are crappy, you know, for sure, and it is faster to grab something someone else already built. So is, that’s why it’s so important to do the research to make sure that when it was built it was built properly and and with accessibility in mind from the beginning. Yeah. part of design training I do is when I say, like you should use components. Because it’s all it saves all of this time for. And I always say that like it doesn’t sound very sexy.
Celeste Behrman: It feels like, you know, you’re just building something with Legos. But the first off from a design perspective the components already they’ve already figured out all of the all of the States that this component might appear in. It’s already so it’s already been designed. It’s already been built, and we’ve already checked it for accessibility. So at least. You know, if if you’re using a component that already exists, it solves a ton of problems, the key is just like I said in the beginning, if the component isn’t accessible, then you’re taking a defect, and you’re extrapolating that out throughout your product.
Dhara Pattani: I really like this idea of getting the team into habit of checking the list
Celeste Behrman: and then as a team decide what we won’t include in a particular sprint, and what can be done later. So II really love that idea. Yeah. And I think it’s important to sort your stuff based off of, you know. For a while we said, if it’s an accessibility defect, that’s high priority, no matter what. And some accessibility defects are actually like. Well, there’s a there’s a really good existing workaround, and it doesn’t really add any extra time. And so if we say, you know, accessibility is always a high priority defect.
Celeste Behrman:Then somebody looks at it and says, But what about this cool workaround that works really fine? It’s just not, you know. It’s an extra step. Then I think we lose credibility. So we have to be able to say, you know what this is a defect, but it’s low, and you can fix it in a month, and so long as you don’t let it fall off your radar you can go ahead and launch with it, because there, because it’s not actually blocking. So in the same way, you prioritize all software defects, you have to also prioritize your accessibility defects.
Dhara Pattani: It’s always good to have that roadmap ahead of you, telling what should be done when
Celeste Behrman: yeah, really helps going back in time when you had when you were
Younus P: teaching kids with special needs, you know. So what was your part over there? Were you teaching the regular curriculum? Or of course they have a separate curriculum. So
Younus P: how was the experience there. Could you share a bit about the past?
Celeste Behrman: Yeah.
Celeste Behrman: So the summer camps that I started off in was all special needs kids. And they were, severely disabled kids. So and a a lot of people with severe cognitive issues, a lot of people with severe physical disabilities. And like, I said, this was
Celeste Behrman: when I first started, it was before the Ada even existed. So yeah, there’s a staircase down to the beach, you know. So we were working with. Okay, well, we’ve got kids in wheelchairs. How do we get them down the stairs? And how do we get them back up? When I was teaching. I excuse me, when I was studying to be a teacher. I studied both handicapped learners in the regular classroom, and then also
Celeste Behrman: modifying the curriculum for a a class that is all special needs kids and when I went into II didn’t spend
Celeste Behrman: time teaching. So, to be clear. I never actually I did student teaching, but I was the whole time I was in college. I was working as a designer, and II just continued on with that when I got out of school, so but when I was doing my student teaching and going into the classrooms, it was mostly as an aid to a disabled person in a, you know, quote unquote normal classroom, which I find really frustrating. My husband’s a teacher, and we talk about this all the time of saying like, Okay.
Celeste Behrman: so you know, you’ve got these kids. And he’s like, Yes, but it’s very disruptive. I’m like, okay, but you can’t just say that the kid is disabled. So get out right? So how do you modify your curriculum to make sure that you know you’re not leaving behind the kids who are, you know.
Celeste Behrman: needing extra assistance. But you’re also not forcing your really high performing kids to to do less, to perform at a lower level. You have to modify your curriculum to make sure that you are engaging all of your students, and
Celeste Behrman: you know, I mean, I think that there’s a lot of schools of thought about teaching, of whether or not you should have a fully blended classroom, or whether or not you should separate. That’s why I think a an individualized education plan is really important for your students to say that, like, you know, this student would would do really well
Celeste Behrman: with an assistant in a in a class of that is, you know, teaching a standard curriculum, whereas this student really needs the one on one attention in a class that is designed for special needs kids.
Celeste Behrman: So III really think it. It comes down to determining
Celeste Behrman: you know, E, each person is unique. And so you have to really think about, how do you engage each individual student?
Younus P: That’s, I think. I think. did that help you to change as a person? Did you start thinking things differently from that experience?
Celeste Behrman: Absolutely. Ii think that it it started me off
Celeste Behrman: in a time in tech when I you know, when I started doing working in tech was like 1992. Excuse me, 1994, I started doing design work and what I what I found was that most of the people who work in technology don’t think about people with disabilities at all. You know, you have these like hardcore tech nerds who are like coding. And all this is so neat, and they’re not even thinking about, you know.
Celeste Behrman: any user who is not another hardcore tech nerd, right? And so absolutely and like, you say, you’re going fast and what do you need a designer for? Come on like, you know. You know, this, this guy knows how to code. And and you don’t need to design the user interface. Just let the programmer do it, and you end up with these like the wild West times. It was so
Celeste Behrman: so messy. And so when I would start off designing, and I would be working with these developers, and I would say, Well, you have to consider this, and they’d go like, well, everybody knows that.
Celeste Behrman: No, you and everybody, you know, knows that. But, like you know, II always in the beginning would say, like, Think of your grandma! How would your grandma do it? My grandma doesn’t believe in the Internet, you know. So from the very beginning, I was trying to educate people in that way. And and my first official job in tech was actually
Celeste Behrman: doing technical support for windows 98 of all things which you know, was not so I was. I was doing design work, and I was like freelancing as a as a a webmaster. Remember that title.
Celeste Behrman: I was freelancing as a webmaster, but I, my first real official job, was windows 98 support, and
Celeste Behrman: I would talk to people all day long who they didn’t know what an icon was, you would say. Right click on this icon, and they would say, like, Well, do you mean double click? Or what do you mean by icon? And I would say, see the little picture? and it looks like this and it says this and so I think that the combination of of working with special needs kids and then
Celeste Behrman: teaching people how to do basic simple things on their computer like, how do you reboot really
Celeste Behrman: instilled in me this sense of empathy, that when I’m working with these people who think that everybody knows what they know because they’re, you know, these tech guys who like these gods of tech congratulations. But that’s not the normal experience. You know, everybody else needs a little assistance in that time. Forget about accessibility consultant, but I don’t think so. Qa also existed. I mean.
Celeste Behrman: it was just designing and implementing. And yeah, yeah.
Celeste Behrman: I spent the first 10 years of my career telling people I don’t do Logos, you know. I would say I’m an I’m a user interface designer. Oh, could you do a logo for me? Could you design my business? Cards like? That’s not what I do. Even people in tech didn’t know what I did. I think I think the divide between Ui and Ux, you know, is also a big divide, but then that
Younus P: that the realization has started now about Ux rather than what it was 5 years back. But then, years back, you know.
Younus P: that’s that’s a great journey, you know. So to say, it’s a journey. II you know. I think you’re the first that I’m meeting from back in the day 92 that you.
Younus P: you know. And yeah.
Younus P: it’s it’s really an honor to speak with you, you know. Understand?
Celeste Behrman: Thank you.
Younus P: What has been done in the past and where we have come, and of course, that you add you know, not only from the design perspective, but also from the accessibility perspective, must have been really helpful to the organizations that you’re you know, working with and their benefit from it. Yep.
Celeste Behrman: it really feels like the trickle has expanded into a stream. And and I’m waiting for the waterfall, right? So not waterfall development. But you know. So in the beginning, like, how do you create an a user experience. And then how do you make sure that that ui is usable and and accessible, and little by little by little, and and now I’m even part of my inclusive design training is even talking about. Okay, we’re not just talking about accessibility and disability.
Celeste B:We’re also talking about okay, what happens if you are someone who is from a lower socio economic rank, and you can’t afford the latest and greatest iphone right like, how do you make sure you say? Oh, well, we care about the iphone experience. Well, 75% of the global users are android users. So you know, as a person in tech, you’re you’re an iphone guy and awesome. But but that’s not the global experience. That’s not everyone’s experience. And so so long as we’re thinking about the fact that how you see it is not how everybody sees. It is really like the most important thing to me.
Dhara Pattani: Well, say, it’s a list
Dhara Pattani: I we have learned so much can’t express the gratitude. But it was like knowing so many things, and especially the strategies that you are applying in your organization, making a lot of sense. and this is very, very useful for the people who are beginners into this field.
Celeste Behrman: Thank you. I really enjoy talking with both of you, to to to be thinking, to be talking about it with someone else who understands what I’m talking about, but also about how do you educate people who don’t necessarily understand, is really lovely. I’m enjoying the conversation a lot.
Younus P: Do do you also do any podcast or you know workshops online for people apart from the organization. Do you have time to do that, or
Celeste Behrman: I haven’t done it yet. It’s one of those things that I’ve been thinking about a lot when I think about my career path and where I’m going. I used to do a lot of stuff online about how to become a better designer. And now that I am a lot more integrated into accessibility. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I took over managing the team. That I’m managing. I’ve I’ve barely had time to see my kids. So I’ve had less time to think about podcasts and blogs. But it’s it’s definitely on my to do list, but it’s it’s
Celeste Behrman: it’s it’s gone a bit lower in the scale lately.
Younus P: I see that I totally understand, and
Younus P: you know we would love to hear from you again whenever you have the time you could set up, you know, if you, if you could spare, maybe in future, not not immediately. Whenever you have time, after the holiday season next year, maybe workshop with us. You know where we can have people in, and you deliver the magic that you deliver.
Celeste Behrman: Oh, I would love to. That would be lovely! That would be great.
Younus P: Alright! Thank you. Have any questions for us. You know we have been showering you with questions for the last 4, 5 min, and I don’t want to take much more of your time. You know. It’s a busy day.
Celeste Behrman: Yeah. So your website is allied, a11ytesters.com
Celeste Behrman: do? Would you say that your key focus is on teaching people how to be accessibility testers? Or is it more of is your goal more to have a a place for people who are already testers to communicate and talk and learn with each other.
Celeste Behrman: What are your goals term?
Younus P: We’re we. We have a few goals to start with like we said the last time we want to teach people how to do it right. The next thing is, we are also including people to. We are trying to bring in people who wishes to become accessibility testers, or perhaps access us Us. Designers who have the knowledge of accessibility. So that’s where we bring in courses, you know, and definitely, we are also looking at consulting with organizations, you know where we can
Younus P: help them, you know, get their products accessible, you know. So that’s these are 3 major focus areas. So we have got news rooms. We have got forums. We are building a community. So we are talking to experts just like you, you know, bring in more of them, you know. And with this collective knowledge, perhaps we can go to.
Younus P: We can go to schools, you know. Universities, you know. Give them the guidance there, because that’s where it starts. We believe very strongly that if we can reach out to universities and speak to them and teach students the basic principles, you know, and build that empathy right in their ages. You know where they are learning.
Celeste Behrman: It goes a long way, you know. Otherwise, you know, it’s it’s just a job to do. You know, it’s that’s not how this has to be taken care of, you know that’s how I feel
Celeste Behrman: I love that idea of of working with with people as they’re learning their profession. In the same way that you can’t be hack accessibility on after the product is shipped. Teaching people to do accessibility when they’ve already been developing or designing for a decade is much harder than while they’re learning to develop and design teaching them accessibility. I love that that’s wonderful.
Younus P: That’s that’s what we are working towards, you know, with your help definitely will reach there. Someday I’m happy to help, anyway, I can.
Younus P: That’s great. That’s awesome fellas.
Celeste Behrman: Thank you.
Younus P: Brett. Thank you so much. And Namaste.
Celeste Behrman: thank you.
Celeste Behrman: Bye, thanks, bye.
Navigating Accessibility in UX with Hiral Bhatt
Summary
Celeste, Dhara, and Younus discussed the importance of empathy and considerate design in accessibility. They addressed misconceptions surrounding disability design and emphasized the need for it to be incorporated in the initial product design process. Celeste shared her personal journey and experiences working with special needs kids, and how it impacted her approach to accessibility design. The team also discussed their efforts to improve accessibility in their company’s design and development processes, as well as their approach to staying updated in their field.
