The pros and cons of Accessibility Offices within companies. Transferrable insights from gaming #a11y. Mythbusting the perceived challenges of ensuring meaningful accessibility. Chatting with Hector Osborne Rodriguez, the front-end developing manager for Accenture, Nikki, and Sam explore his accessibility career path, and how being curious and vocal are keys to getting started in the field.

References

Transcript:

[00:00:05] Sam Proulx: Welcome to Season One of Disability Bandwidth!

[00:00:12] Nikki Nolan: A show where we talk with disability leaders each week about career, life, and technology.

[00:00:17] I’m Nikki Nolan.

[00:00:18] Sam Proulx: And I’m Sam Proulx.

[00:00:19] Nikki: Let’s get into this. To start, we would love for you to introduce yourself?

[00:00:23] Hector: Hi, I’m Hector Osborn Rodriguez. My pronouns are he/him. I’m Latino skin, so I’m kind of mixed between white and black, but I’m mostly what we call cinnamon color. wear glasses. I have a beard now because it’s winter. And that’s pretty much it. I’m Front End Developing Manager for Accenture.

[00:00:43] Nikki: Thank you so much for being here. We would love to know your story. What got you into that line of work?

[00:00:49] Hector: It’s an interesting path I will say. So I have like two versions of my life. I’m a computer engineer. The reason I studied computer engineering was to escape from my father’s life of being a doctor. So he was always away from home. I was like, no, I don’t wanna do that. So for whatever reason my first job was as a consultant. And what happened? I travel around the world. So, I didn’t choose the right career. Apparently.

[00:01:14] Sam Proulx: Yeah, the tech sector, that career where you famously get to stay at home and never work any overtime. Yes.

[00:01:19] Hector: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I chose the right one. So anyway, when they invent time travel, I will go back and let myself know that it doesn’t work that way.

[00:01:29] Sam Proulx: That’s right.

[00:01:31] Hector: So my belief was to use technology to help people, right? I have a lot of people with disabilities at home. My mom passed away recently.

[00:01:41] She had autoimmune disease all her life. I like to talk about her because she changed my life. And she’s the reason I chose this career path. Like I saw her living through Lupus. So her life was not the greatest and she missed a lot of things in her life. So when I started computer engineering, halfway through my career, I started web development and I learned what accessibility for the web was.

[00:02:05] It’s like, oh my goodness, how come I have not ever been trained on this? Cause during my career, I think it wasn’t even mentioned. There wasn’t accessibility through my entire university career, which is sad. But we’re here. I learned about it via self-driven passionate study on it. And you know, we live and breathe accessibility every day.

[00:02:26] Sam Proulx: Do you think that’s changed, the folks you see coming up and, I mean, I know we talk a lot about accessibility now and there’s I think maybe a lot more awareness, but have we started giving people the training that they ought to have, do you think?

[00:02:37]Hector: If you ask anyone that works in the accessibility field, they will say we would love more. So things are changing. The word is out there. It’s not like a mystery that accessibility is out there. I live in Toronto, Canada. So Canada is really passionate about accessibility. We have multiple laws, right?

[00:02:57] Like a ODA is ahead of the game. People wanna do it. So even for those that have never been educated, the law is forcing them to learn about accessibility. At least to know that there is a requirement.

[00:03:09] What I think we could improve is education. We don’t have an accessibility career. We don’t have an accessibility practitioner.

[00:03:18] I see that companies are now starting to have their own accessibility offices, which is fantastic. You open career websites like Lincoln, and you start seeing the Accessibility Chief Officer. So it’s something that you wanna look forward to. I wanna grow and I wanna fill that position. Why do I have to go there?

[00:03:37] I think you used to think that accessibility was only for physical spaces. Now that we have transitioned to the digital world. I think we can do better.

[00:03:46] Sam Proulx: Absolutely.

[00:03:47] Nikki Nolan: Yeah. So you run the Ally Tips account. What influenced you to start accessibility resource sharing online? I think we’re not having the proper education for people and sharing knowledge is a passion. I think everyone in this space is really open. When I started learning about accessibility, I met so many people that were open doors. You can ask them questions.

[00:04:10] Hector: Like there’s like Slack groups, Teams groups or channels. You can just go to conferences or meetups- when we go back after the pandemic. You meet the people that write the rules that write the books and, and they’re so open and the knowledge is just shared.

[00:04:25] I thought, okay. My perspective, I did design at the beginning of my career. And then I started with development. So I have that perspective that transitions between the two areas of the world. And I figure, you know what, I’m gonna share the things that I learned. And I have worked in e-commerce for the last 11 or 12 years where I think there is a gap in e-commerce being the one that typically has the most issues in accessibility.

[00:04:56] We don’t speak specifically about eCommerce or what’s happening there. Like why is an e-commerce website having issues? So the reason I started that account was to share that knowledge and yeah, here we are. I’m trying to improve it. It was a personal goal to write at least one article per month.

[00:05:16] We are on the 27th and I have not written my article yet, but I will.

[00:05:21] Sam Proulx: Hey right after this interview. No, maybe we’ll inspire you there. There you go. There you go. But I mean, there’s been a lot of discussion in the accessibility industry and the accessibility community recently around platforms. I think things really kicked off, maybe a year ago when platforms like Clubhouse and Greenroom and some of the others were starting to exist and there were no captions.

[00:05:44] And yet there was a lot of accessibility advocacy being done in these spaces. And there were accessibility groups and things like that. And I know we hear a lot of criticism of things like Twitter and Facebook and all of the social media platforms as not being as accessible and as inclusive as they should be.

[00:06:02] What do you think about the platforms where you put your stuff and the platforms where you post and the platforms where you share your learnings? Do you think it is most important for you to be in inaccessible spaces and to share all of that knowledge? Or do you try to say, well, I’m only gonna participate in spaces that are accessible to everyone and I, I don’t think there’s the right answer here. I’m just interested to hear your thoughts.

[00:06:27]Hector: It’s a great question. Some people will love me. Some people will hate me but I use those applications that are accessible for me. I will say that, right. Like the ones that I can use, I will use them. I can put myself in the spotlight saying that I remember when Clubhouse was announced and it started, you got a lot of heated debate on it.

[00:06:49] A lot of hate and a lot of love, depending on who you were talking about. I believe accessibility is also part of diversity and inclusion, right? So something that I can use, maybe the person next to me might not be using, but we shouldn’t shorten the spaces. I think it’s more about inclusion.

[00:07:05] So let’s make sure that the applications are doing better. I understand social media, like Twitter, which also gets a lot of heated debate, now has an office. Last year, I think they started their Accessibility Office and they’ve tried to do some changes. So let’s trust the system.

[00:07:21] Let’s trust the people that are working in those offices and support them. Right? Like us, we are all trying to make an inclusive world and a better world. So let’s do it together.

[00:07:31] I find that, in our space, we tend to be overly critical sometimes. So we have to like, like I tell my kids, breathe, just hold down, breathe, hold the three seconds and then speak. So that we don’t have that hate all the time out.

[00:07:45] Sam Proulx: Yeah, I think there is an argument to be made that if it wasn’t for people with disabilities on Twitter and Facebook and Clubhouse and Slack and Google and all of these other places that maybe they wouldn’t have changed. They wouldn’t have made the changes that they’re trying to make. If the community wasn’t already insisting on being there.

[00:08:02] Hector: Totally. So there is a balance of being vocal. I think it’s the good cop and the bad cop kind of situation. You need those that are really vocal, hitting, hitting, hitting all the time. You also need the softer hand to help those that are working, but I completely agree with you.

[00:08:18] Like if, if you weren’t for the community that is speaking for themselves, I think no one would have advocated for them. Right? That’s what we have now. Like the human rights laws and all of those things that came because the community spoke.

[00:08:31] Sam Proulx: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know how we segue outta that topic. It’s just something that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

[00:08:36] Hector: It’s hard.

[00:08:37] Sam Proulx: Actually, as I up my use of Clubhouse.

[00:08:39] Nikki Nolan: I guess we can segue it into this next question, which is like, what can companies do better to educate and train all employees to be inclusive and create more accessible products?

[00:08:49] Hector: That’s a good debate and a good topic to talk about to my company and companies that I work with. Typically they wanna improve in accessibility, right? My advice is always, you need people with disabilities in your offices. That’s critical, right? Like you need people. You can read all the documentation in the world, about how disability works or how a computer is used or whatever. You don’t know the ways a person needs to go around technology to be able to use it. The only time that you get to see that is if you have someone sitting next to you. It also lowers the barrier of uncomfortableness, if you had never interacted with people with disability.

[00:09:29] I find that some of my colleagues that never work with someone with PWD (epilepsy), like they don’t know how to ask. They don’t know how to talk. And if it’s just that weird moment, it’s like the first date. Or like that weird moment that you don’t know, like, should I lean forward? Do I drink first? Do I say hello? Do I give a handshake? It’s that weirdness? So having people with a disability in offices is automatically an advancement for the companies, right? Like you learn through them, they give you experiences. The second part that I recommend for companies is training. Get everyone in training, five minutes, ten minutes, two hours, three hours start somewhere. Like fifty minutes per week. Do a little piece. Of the hundred percent of employees in your company, maybe only 1%, 10% will love this and will become the application company. Right then get those groups.

[00:10:26] This is the third piece of advice. Get that group that 10%, get them together, create an accessibility champion network. Get them together, get them passionate, get them working together.

[00:10:34] Like that type of group gets super inspiring. And they’re always up to date on what’s happening in, in the law, on new technology, new platforms. Like, hey, Netflix announced this or whatever. They listen. They listened to use cases in other companies that went wrong. And then you might say, Hey, this happens to X company. So let’s not do that. That network is super, just amazing.

[00:10:58] Sam Proulx: Training and inclusion, this is where we start plugging the place that I work. No, I’m kidding. As you were sort of talking about inclusion in companies and working next to, and with people with disabilities, there was a time many hundreds of years ago when we could work in offices and COVID wasn’t a thing. But there was a time when we worked in person and we worked in offices and we worked together. Now we are moving to be online first and that is very flexible and it has made it easier in some ways to include people with disabilities.

[00:11:27] But is it perhaps, and I wanna know what you think about this, is it maybe in some ways minimizing or erasing our differences? Right? If you sit on Slack all day with someone, with a physical disability, are you necessarily gonna know? And are you gonna learn from them the same way that you might, if you were sitting physically next to them in person? Have we lost something or has it all been made up?

[00:11:50] Because now that we’re remote, we’re being more inclusive and we’re hiring more people with disabilities. So like we’re just gaining.

[00:11:55] Hector: There are pros and cons of the digital transformation that we are going through right now. I think it was pushed, it was forced, right? Like we were not ready for this. The world changed and like, hey, you cannot go to offices now. Sorry. You had to do things online in the first month of pandemic, we closed grocery stores.

[00:12:14] Like you were not able to go anywhere. And then you started online shopping, I can imagine how many people got left out because they could not do groceries. Like percent of, or they couldn’t go. So either they spend more money getting things that they should not. Or those kinds of issues just came because of the pandemic.

[00:12:33] So to answer your question, if we improve, I guess in a certain perspective we can say, yeah, you can work now, wherever you can, right? Like anywhere. Like you can be, I don’t know, in a beautiful summer beach instead of being here, looking at the snow, like I am. In a summer cool breeze, like no one knows where you are, the kind of thing you put in the background. So that changed.

[00:12:58] Sam Proulx: I can say from experience, if there is an employee in Columbia, they will send pictures and taunt the entire team with how nice that beach is over all of December speaking from experience.

[00:13:10] Hector: Yeah, so I mean, it opens that, right? It opens the opportunity for those that could not travel to the office. Let’s say, in winter. Snow, it’s limiting and it’s a blocker for many, many people. So now let’s say during the winter season you can skip that travel, that commuting, that is awful.

[00:13:29] But it also has closed the doors. Online technology that we are using today for meetings and Zoom, Teams, those kinds of things. If they’re not hosted accessibly , we are leaving some people out with the technology that we have today. So yes, we have helped some. We have blocked some. And, the thing with accessibility and inclusion is it’s so broad and so big that sometimes you try to help a group and then unfortunately, you block others. So trying to be more inclusive is one thing that is hard. Like I said earlier, just one day at a time and like fifteen minutes at a time. Like let’s try to help and include more and more people.

[00:14:10] Nikki Nolan: It’s a really interesting topic, cause I feel like I enjoy not having to commute and I also don’t have to mask as much, you know? Cause when I’m in person I have to mask and it’s emotionally taxing.

[00:14:19] Hector: Mm-hmm yeah.

[00:14:21] Nikki Nolan: Being dyslexic, having predominantly to write. Suddenly my disability is so visible to everybody, yeah.

[00:14:30] Hector: It’s up front.

[00:14:30] Sam Proulx: Something that you made me think about, that is totally unrelated to what we’re talking about. There is a group of people, who think that they are being helpful when they correct peoples grammar in a professional setting. Like in a Slack or a Zoom.

[00:14:47] Nikki Nolan: It’s ableist.

[00:14:48] Sam Proulx: We need to stop.

[00:14:49] Nikki Nolan: Yes, that is, it is classist. And it is ableist to like, to be a grammar police.

[00:14:57] Hector: But it happens in any social media or anywhere that you work on. I think it’s human nature to correct and you’re it is that nature of like, something’s going on in my life and I need to say to someone else that I’m better, so that it happens.

[00:15:11] And English is my second language. So I have certain pronunciations that can be misinterpreted, like words like pitch or like focus. Or other words, I don’t hear them. I swear to God, I don’t hear them.

[00:15:25] Nikki Nolan: It took me a second to hear it. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Hector: Right.

[00:15:27] Nikki Nolan: Learning Italian beach. Beach was one of the ones- that’s a funny one.

[00:15:32] Hector: Exactly. And that’s spoken and written. I can imagine how many issues we have, right?

[00:15:38] Sam Proulx: When we talk about accessibility and we talk about diversity and we talk about the problems and the solutions that have been caused, I don’t think we talk enough about that. I mean, you probably go to meetings that use auto captions. Where people depend on those captions. I think we’ve gotten past the point where people make fun of our colleagues’ accents.

[00:15:58] Hector: Yeah.

[00:15:58] Sam Proulx: I hope we’ve gotten past that, it doesn’t cause you problems now in an online environment like somebody needs the work and they’re just not working for you because they were all trained. Unlike people who sound like me.

[00:16:10] Hector: It happens. So I will tell you my experience with the new UI. We’re used to devices and stuff like that, but now we have voice UI. Siri, for instance,

[00:16:20] Sam Proulx: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:20] Hector: Siri wasn’t my best friend for many, many years, because I have an accent. So it wasn’t trained for my language. So I never use a voice command or I call certain financial institutions.

[00:16:32] And then the voice command was like, it needed to be voice activated. So, say what you want. I wanna open an account. Sorry. I cannot understand you. I wanna open an account. I cannot understand you. Account operator, just get me out of here, please. It’s so frustrating. It happens a lot. And on the other hand, me having my second language as my working language, there’s one thing that is a limiter for me. I cannot do math in English.

[00:17:03] Nikki Nolan: Oh.

[00:17:04] Hector: Like I cannot. Like you tell me an equation or like two plus two. That’s a simple one, but if you go a little bit deeper, numbers stop for me. I need to go back to my Spanish, see them, understand them and then go back. So it’s a limit and it’s a stopper for me and it happens quite often.

[00:17:23] So at the end of the day, like I say to my wife, I don’t wanna speak English anymore. At the end of the day, I’m just like, sorry. I’m so tired.

[00:17:32] I’m so tired at the end of the day, like my brain is just like I’m sorry. So we call that moment the mumble Hector. The mumble Hector is here between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM.

[00:17:45] We know that if it was a stressful day at work, his language is just awful.

[00:17:49] Nikki Nolan: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve met a lot of people who English is their second, third, and fourth language.

[00:17:55] Hector: Yeah.

[00:17:56] Nikki Nolan: Lots of people, I don’t think realize how taxing that is on the brain to have to context shift in different languages. You do a lot of work with accessibility, and I’m really curious, how does accessibility drive innovation?

[00:18:08] Hector: I see it in two areas, at least in my line of work. Like in the web development area. So, first let’s start with the typical one, the reactive area. So an issue is now. When data and auditing your application or your website, something is not working.

[00:18:24] So innovation is driven. Like how do we fix this? So you have to go and find out what is being used in the world. So you go, that’s the remediation part, right? Like something is broken. How do we fix this? And there are multiple ways that you can do it, right? There’s so many ways that open your mind that I never thought about this.

[00:18:42] I never thought about how to solve this. On the left hand side, where it’s like, when you start gathering either requirements or design, that’s super creative too.

[00:18:52] I’m gonna give you an example. I’m a gamer. I like gaming, like gaming platforms. So I love that area. I also love accessibility or the gaming accessibility aspect, cause I learn how controls are not accessible for everyone.

[00:19:04] So I love to see the solutions that are created by people with disabilities to be able to game. It’s just amazing. It’s super creative. Like, you know, you use a pencil to hit the button and then you hit against the screen. And again, the world that that’s, that’s just creative. The end goal is to play a game, but you have to navigate through this blocker in order for you to make it happen.

[00:19:26] I think that drives innovation, right? Like it is just seeing that. Seeing how you just like your goal is just having fun. Right? So you navigate traverses to that. So yeah, I hope that answers the question or opens more, cause I know Sam will have more questions than answers.

[00:19:40] Sam Proulx: It did. And, it’s something that I talk about and think about a lot. And I was super interested that you brought up gaming because one of the interesting things about gaming, if you break it down to its core, is that what you have to do to play a computer game is you have to get information that you are able to process.

[00:19:56] And then you have to have a way to react to that information extremely quickly. And so I wonder what we can learn. And we, as in the non gaming communities, we design our websites and our apps. I wonder if there are techniques that we can learn from gaming, because like, isn’t that what we wanna do at the office? Get large amounts of information quickly so we can process it and act quickly on it?

[00:20:18] Hector: That’s the hope, right? Like I use gaming and gaming accessibility conferences and experiences a lot. Because their findings are amazing. I think it was two or three years ago. ESOF discovered that they left captions in their games if they were on by default.

[00:20:38] Sam Proulx: Hmm.

[00:20:38] Hector: You open a game. If the closed captions were on, people didn’t go to the settings to disable them. They leave them there, whatever. If the opposite were to happen, if the game has the captions hidden. Only 47% of the people went in and enabled them.

[00:20:55] So it’s that difference. So that data I love cause like why don’t we have auto captions in our viewing screens and things like that. I just kind of drop that bullet there and that little drop of knowledge and I think we should use it.

[00:21:09] Sam Proulx: Yeah. And it’s very interesting to look at what people are doing when they’re trying to have fun.

[00:21:15] Hector: Yeah.

[00:21:15] Sam Proulx: We could make our work apps more fun, we would make, well, I don’t know that we could make filing in our quarterly reports more fun, but you know what I’m getting at?

[00:21:23] Hector: We spend more time at work sometimes than are home, right?

[00:21:28] Sam Proulx: Hmm.

[00:21:29] Hector: We’re at offices spending time with people and we don’t have to commute now, so we save that time. But we spend a lot of time with our colleagues. We create relationships with them that are there and that our relationships at home.

[00:21:41] So why shouldn’t we have fun in our working environment?

for[00:21:51] Sam Proulx: And I mean, we can just replace the commute. We can just require everyone to play Forza for, you know, about 30 minutes before they get into work.

[00:21:57] Hector: That will be amazing. Yeah.

[00:21:59] Sam Proulx: There we go.

[00:22:00] Hector: Speaking of Forza, could you talk about receiving a bit of information and slowing it down? if I’m not mistaken Forza has an option to do so.

[00:22:08] Sam Proulx: Yeah.

[00:22:09] Hector: You can slow down the game, for the time right? Like you have.

[00:22:13] Sam Proulx: Yeah.

[00:22:13] Hector: And I find that just amazing, right?

[00:22:15] Like it just, again, the thing is to game, the thing is to have fun. So why don’t we make it fun for all of us.

[00:22:22] Sam Proulx: Yeah, the work that Forza has been doing is something that I’m really interested in and following very closely. And has highlighted for me, accessibility and inclusion, sort of one of the things that we don’t talk about is like for who, because Forza has so many great accessibility options.

[00:22:37] And so many of my friends who have never been able to play this kind of game before now can. But like I can’t, because we’re not quite there.

[00:22:46] And it’s just really interesting to me that they’ve made a game that is award winning and it’s accessible and it’s revolutionary. And it is. But like there’s still people who, for whatever reason, can’t play. Which is not a criticism of Forza. They’re doing great work. It highlights to me, I guess, that we need to define the problems based better maybe.

[00:23:05] Hector: Yeah, there’s a barrier, right? Like there’s a barrier of entry that certain companies are trying to close or like to open, I would say, I don’t know what, like remove the barrier, let’s say. I think they’re getting better. They’re not there, but they’re getting better. They’re trying.

[00:23:18] And I think about setting the standards, because I think Ian Hamilton and their team created the accessibility gaming standards, which is helping other companies try to follow them. I peer at them as we know standards, shouldn’t be just a thing. Helps at least get a default background to it.

[00:23:34] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you know, gaming and things is like a whole nother season.

[00:23:39] Nikki Nolan: That’d be a fun season. Cause I literally know nothing about it.

[00:23:42] Hector: Oh, there you go.

[00:23:43] Nikki Nolan: Can you tell me about this game? I don’t know anything about this game. Tell me what it is.

[00:23:48] Hector: It’s a car driving game. I will say that. It’s like a driving game. You drive vehicles so you can choose any car in the world and just drive it to places. This one is set in Mexico, super fun, like super, super fun game.

[00:24:01] Nikki Nolan: Oh.

[00:24:02] Sam Proulx: There’s like races and competitions and stuff like that. But I mean, yeah, it’s kind of a flight simulator for cars in a very real way.

[00:24:10] Hector: It is. It is.

[00:24:11] Nikki Nolan: Yeah, maybe they can partner with Google’s AR like self describing stuff and then it can be accessible to you, Sam.

[00:24:19] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, but that’s the interesting thing, right? If they make a Forza that is fully accessible,

[00:24:26] Hector: Yeah.

[00:24:26] Sam Proulx: At the point now where the realism is such that if I can play Forza, I’m basically driving.

[00:24:31] Hector: Yeah.

[00:24:32] Sam Proulx: Put the sensors on the car.

[00:24:34] Hector: Yep. I mean, who knows? Right? Maybe one day we don’t know yet. Yeah.

[00:24:39] Sam Proulx: Before we get to our next question, let’s take a quick break to talk about our sponsor.

[00:24:43] Shane: Hi, I’m Shane the Platform Coordinator at Fable.

[00:24:46] I’m a full-time screen magnification user. And before becoming the platform coordinator, I started out as a member of our community of accessibility testers.

[00:24:55] Now I help support Fables customers as they work with us to best engage people with disabilities in every part of their research, testing and development.

[00:25:05] If you’re listening to this podcast, you probably know just how important it is to integrate the voices of people with disabilities into every aspect of your accessibility journey.

[00:25:17] Fable can help you do that.

[00:25:19] From improving your team’s accessibility training with Fable Up-skill to working directly with assistive technology users with Fable Engage. We can help you take the next step on your accessibility journey. To learn more, check out our website makeitfable.com.

[00:25:35] Sam Proulx: Now that we’ve heard from our sponsor, let’s continue the interview.

[00:25:38] Nikki Nolan: Well, let’s transition into like, what problem have you solved that you’re very proud of or that you’re incredibly proud of?

[00:25:44] Hector: I don’t know if it was a problem, but here’s a success story that I have regarding accessibility. So I was working for a government agency, and they didn’t have an accessibility office. So the project that I was in, they had no advocates for accessibility. And I brought my own little flag, you know, hey, we should care for this government.

[00:26:05] Like, I mean, let’s set an example, etc. But I got into trouble which might have impeded my career progression for one year or so because I was vocal. That’s the sad part. But the good part is that the leads of those organizations and projects that I was working in they’ve left for different companies. And many years later, now I know that they’re opening their own accessibility offices in the companies that they’re working on today. So even though we had battles and fights or whatever you wanna call them heated debates, while we were working together afterwards and still off today, they called me to ask me for suggestions and they’re opening their own accessibility offices in the companies they are in.

[00:26:48] So it was a long, long career, long years before I saw the tree give fruits. But it was, it was sweet. It was really sweet.

[00:26:56] Sam Proulx: One of the questions that I get a lot as I talk to people, about accessibility and my official title is accessibility evangelists. So it’s what I do a lot. One of the questions that I get is my organization or the organization, whoever, where they’re working isn’t interested in accessibility, isn’t doing it. How do we change things from below, right? It’s a designer or web developer asking me, how do I get the organization interested in web accessibility? And so, as someone who tried to do it and maybe wasn’t unsuccessful based on that experience, what maybe would you have done differently or do you think it was just something where like, it wasn’t the time and they weren’t ready and it wasn’t gonna happen? And no matter what I did it wouldn’t have worked?

[00:27:36] Hector: I have so many experiences. You reflect back and you think did I do the right thing? I don’t tend to dwell too much on them. I grew up as an athlete. I used to be a swimmer. And in swimming, you lose a lot. Like before you become good, like you lose a lot. And when, I mean a lot, it took me like 12, 14 years before I got good in the sport.

[00:27:58] So I think that helped me in today’s world when things happened, I just continued moving forward. Whatever the roadblock was, let’s continue. So when I review what happened there, I think the organization might have not been ready for that moment. And as we know, there is the financial goal of the institutions that also needs to be met.

[00:28:19] And sometimes accessibility is seen at one of those, well, how many people are we actually helping? Is that my goal? That’s the mentality for certain companies and it’s just sad and you bring the business case and let them know, this is not what you think it is.

[00:28:33] It’s actually opening and doing great things. But I think there has to be support from the top to the bottom for organizations to become more accessible, friendly. It also has to be pushed from the bottom up and we meet at the middle kind of thing, right? Like if no one is advocating for it, C level going down and asking for that to happen.

[00:28:55] Like, you know, great. But it’s not going to happen.

[00:28:57] Nikki Nolan: I feel like this transitions well into, like, what is your biggest frustration in your career and is it still happening?

[00:29:03] Hector: I think my frustration is, in all honesty, I wish companies that I work with either clients or companies that I work for, have their own Accessibility Office.

[00:29:14] Sam Proulx: Hmm.

[00:29:21] Hector: I wish they had it like, like a place where we have that group of people. Cause typically what I learned, not all of the companies are this way, but some of them have advocates or people that are caring for it, but it’s spread in small pieces all over the place. When I go to organizations, I see that it’s sad because you know, those people can get frustrated and eventually they could leave for better opportunities.

[00:29:39] You know that they’re trying to do the best for what they believe is the best work that they should be doing. And does disconnect between the organization goals and the personal goal of the employee.

[00:29:51] Sam Proulx: One of the criticisms that we sometimes hear about Accessibility Offices is that if you centralize accessibility in a single place, now either everything has to go through the Accessibility Office and it’s like a big blocker on everything. Or they centralize all the accessibility and sort of shove it off to the side and then just go on doing things without bothering to consult the Accessibility Office.

[00:30:16] And so there’s this desire to spread accessibility out through teams. What do you think about that? How do you respond to that? Have you seen it? How can it be avoided? That kind of thing?

[00:30:24] Hector: The office should be considered as the strategic place. The way I see it is like the Accessibility Office should be like the one thinking of what training do we need? What money, what budget do we need? What requirements do we have? Do we have a need for physical space improvement?

[00:30:40] Do we have to, I don’t know, create certain things? And that’s someone that needs to be thinking about it day to day, and then you have the operators. That’s how knowledge should be spread, not just in this office, because again, the office can be one person. And if you have an organization of 500 then it is a blocker. That person is a blocker. So the goal of this organization or the center of excellence should be what is a strategy? How are we gonna increase our maturity in this organization when it comes to accessibility? Cause the goal is everyone, or at least the majority of the people within the office should know what accessibility is.

[00:31:20] They should know how to work for it. And if they don’t know, and they’re learning, at least they should know who to go to. When you hire in a company, if you go to a quick credit like, hey, we’re super diverse, we’re inclusive and we have accessibility. And if you’re interested or you have an issue go to this person, at least you get that from the day one, like the moment you’re in the organization.

[00:31:41] So, yeah, I think in those cases, I think it might be because they’re not said properly, but who am I to judge? Cause we all, like I said earlier, we are trying to be better and help and I think we will learn, right? Like it’s just, we learn, we adapt and then we continue changing and moving forward.

[00:31:57] Sam Proulx: I think that’s true and important. And maybe it’s about measuring process, outcomes, right?

[00:32:02] Hector: Yeah.

[00:32:02] Sam Proulx: And setting targets and things like that. I hear you about the strategic element. There is so much information being spread about accessibility and about disability that is maybe not as accurate as it could be. And as we wish it was. So what myth around disability do you see that you wanna bust?

[00:32:20] Hector: An easy one. That is an easy answer that accessibility is expensive for the companies to provide, right? Like I think it’s just a win-win situation. If the services, applications, whatever you wanna call it, services that we are providing are accessible.

[00:32:35] We are not only helping others. We are also, from the financial point of view for the institution, we are helping them make money.

[00:32:45] So like I always say to my organization, please, let me help you make more money by being more accessible. If your goal is to make money here, here’s a way to make more money.

[00:32:55] In my point of view is like, let me help people, right? Let me help people to get access to this information or to this application or to these spaces. So there’s a win on win? So the myth will be that accessibility is expensive.

[00:33:12] Sam Proulx: And, hard, right? Sometimes people are so afraid of accessibility that they never do it.

[00:33:17] Hector: It’s the fear of the unknown, right? You’ve never known. Again, I’m an athlete, so I did triathlons for a while. The first time that I ever guided a blind runner was interesting. I will say, because I was not used to it. That uncomfortable first date again, like we go together, we’re gonna meet here and then, okay.

[00:33:36] What am I supposed to be guiding you through? So, that uncertainty for me made it hard. So I think my heart rate was way higher and I put more effort in that run than I have ever had because of simply being afraid. So, like you say Sam well, it’s just hard, but what made it harder was not knowing. Once you know a little bit about it, you get more comfortable, you get, oh, okay. It wasn’t, you know, I was worried about things that I shouldn’t have.

[00:34:02] Sam Proulx: I mean, if folks are listening to this podcast who haven’t quite started their journey yet, who are maybe the thing that we do when we’re, when we’re worried about a thing, and we’re just sort of like doing all kinds of research, so that we don’t actually have to do anything.

[00:34:13] I’m sure we’ve all done that. What advice would you give to those people who might be listening, who need to help them get beyond the actual start doing the thing?

[00:34:22] Hector: I always recommend this to people that work with me, be curious and be vocal. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know and ask. Don’t be afraid to ask. Contact people in the network. Do a lot of research, investigate, and read articles. Like Sam is saying, there are some of them that are not ideal. Like any news that we have today in the world, we need to filter them down. But get to know the experts in the field, ask them about things like email, social media, whatever they are really open. Asking is not a bad thing. And the worst that can happen, you ask you get no answer or you get a rejection. From one of the rejections that you might get in this community, I’m sure you will get 20 that have open doors that will help you answer those questions.

[00:35:08] Nikki Nolan: Yeah, that’s how I started getting into this is I started following people on LinkedIn and Twitter and on Instagram. Just a small span of time, I’ve learned a bunch.

[00:35:18] We’re getting kind of close to the end with our questions. There’s a question we love to ask which is what is the first piece of technology you remember using and what was it for?

[00:35:28] Hector: I think there are two examples. So I have an older brother. So I always inherited things like clothing, and technology being the other one or toys, I will say Lego. I inherited a lot of toys that were not complete. Supposed to have a vehicle, construction truck, but I didn’t have either the engine or the wheels. I got something out of its spring mechanism and I had the doors, but I didn’t have the complete element to make the car that I was supposed to make. So I think that would’ve been my first technology piece of it.

[00:36:07] Never got to build the car. I was always frustrated about it, but it was interesting.. And the second real technology that I used is in my line of work today. My dad, a doctor, had a computer, a home office and a computer. It was a screen that had only two colors, black and orange. It was orange. It was fun though. He had one of those turbo buttons. So to increase the processing speed, you press a button and it had a turbo on it. So I was a kid, right? So, there was a person helping my dad build a software and he installed a game for me.

[00:36:47] He’s like, hey, do you like games? And like, I never played a game, whatever. So he showed me how to play it. And it was a karate game. The turbo button was great. When I was attacking to press the turbo ball. He was awesome. He was fantastic. That was the first real technology usage that I had.

[00:37:06] Sam Proulx: It’s so interesting that both of those good examples really probably shaped you. Cause they both kind of involved having to use or do things in ways that are, maybe not intended or that are, that are a little bit different. Right? You don’t have all the pieces.

[00:37:18] Hector: Yeah.

[00:37:19] Sam Proulx: You cheat at the game now. I’m kidding!

[00:37:23] Hector: The cheater. Yeah, I was.

[00:37:24] Sam Proulx: I know you have the Ally Tips on Twitter where you post things and resources and I know this is an ongoing conversation and we’re all learning and networking and working together. So folks wanna continue the conversation with you, Where can they find you? What’s the best way to get in touch and to keep up with what you’re doing?

[00:37:44] Hector: So, yes, I just presented in the Ascom conference. It would’ve been like March 15th or so. I was talking about accessibility in eCommerce, basically restructuring the site, and where are some areas that we have difficulties when we speak about eCommerce accessibility. The point of view of a designer and a front end developer.

[00:38:04] I will add notes, technical notes on my website, allytips.com. Make sure to go there and I will have the slides and all the notes of the conference and technical advice there. There are two places where I’m really active. So Twitter, I’m trying to get better at it.

[00:38:20] Nikki Nolan: Hmm.

[00:38:20] Hector: it’s allytips. I couldn’t find that handle. So I have to use 11 Y a 11 Y underscore tips. So I’m really active there. And LinkedIn where I’m mostly active. So that will be my name, Hector Osborne Rodriguez- we might have to put a link somewhere so that people can go.

[00:38:41] Nikki Nolan: We will.

[00:38:42] Sam Proulx: We’ll link in the show notes.

[00:38:44] Hector: Cause it’s a really long name. Linkedin is where I’m more active and Twitter. The second space that I’m more active in.

[00:38:50] Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being here. This was a lovely conversation.

[00:38:54] Hector: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you very much. You guys are a great host.

[00:38:57] Sam Proulx: Thank you. Thanks for being here.

[00:38:59] Thanks for listening to Disability Bandwidth. If you liked this episode of Disability Bandwidth, please subscribe and share it with friends and family. Today’s episode was hosted by Sam Proulx and Nikki Nolan. Edited and produced by Nikki Nolan.

Transcripts are written by Emma Klauber. Feed music is created by Efe Akmen.

Special thanks to everyone at Fable who without their support. This show would not be possible.

You can find out more about Disability Bandwidth on Twitter, @disability_band and Instagram, @disabilitybandwidth, or on our website https://disabilitybandwidth.com/.

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