Pat Kogos, U. of Chicago, Director, Digital Accessibility

Pat talks about her first work with accessibility as a college student and how she rediscovered it in her work as a writer. She describes how accessibility is supported in her current position as Director of Digital Accessibility at the University of Chicago. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(upbeat music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,

the People Behind the Progress.

I'm Joe Welinske, the creator and host of this series,

and as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting as to how others

have found their way into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now

and hear about their journey.

(upbeat music)

All right, well here we go with another one

of these interviews about accessibility practitioners

and how they found their way into this particular area.

And today I am pleased be talking with Pat Kogos.

Hello, Pat, how are you today?

- I'm good, Joe, thanks. How are you?

- Oh, I'm good. It's an incredibly rainy day

in the Seattle area where I'm working from.

Where are you talking to us from today?

- I am coming to you from Chicago,

where it is starting to be a little cool this time of year,

but it's to be expected.

Cool and clear.

- Well, I always enjoy going there

as I have my roots there and

maybe we'll get together in person at some point,

but let's talk about what you're up to.

What are you currently involved in?

- So currently I am the Director

of Digital Accessibility at the University of Chicago.

And I've been here since January of 2020.

So it's been kind of a crazy ride

because I was in the office for about five weeks

before the pandemic hit.

And then of course we all went home

for a long period of time.

So we were spinning up a new team at the time,

the Center for Digital Accessibility,

it was a brand new team.

And so that's been kind of an interesting challenge

to put all those things into place

while we're all fully remote, but it worked really well.

All the technologies, of course, are super helpful

and we took use of all those

and lots of other tools too, for our team to stay engaged.

And so it's really been great, actually, a really nice time,

a really important time to be in this field.

- What's the mission

for the Center for Digital Accessibility?

- So our mission is to create equal access

to all of our digital assets, for all people, all users.

So we have, I think, a lot of work to do,

as all large organizations do.

So we're training people

about the digital accessibility principles

and the impact upon users.

And we're helping everyone to understand

how to create digital assets and how to maintain them.

So there's, you know, a lot to be done, of course.

- And does this cover the full breadth of the university?

- Yes, it does, yeah.

So we are the main digital accessibility team

for the entire university, but we have,

it's a distributed responsibility, though,

because everyone who has a website

is responsible for their own website.

But helping people to understand

how to make their own website more accessible

is an important piece of the whole journey.

So it's engaging users from across campus

and that part of it's been really great and interesting.

There's a lot of very committed people.

Everyone's very invested in diversity,

equity and inclusion here.

So we're coming from a very strong point there.

- Well, I wanna talk more about in detail

about the things that you're doing with the center,

but maybe we can go back in time a little bit first.

I always like to learn how people found their way

to where they are today in accessibility.

So are there any, certain milestones,

things that happened in your career

that started to point you toward specializing in this area?

- Yeah, so if you don't mind, if I go back really far,

I can kinda give the whole path.

So when I was in college,

I was in a sorority called Delta Gamma,

and our mission, our philanthropic mission,

was sight conservation and aid to people who are blind,

so Service for Sight, primarily.

So that was something that was just introduced to me

at a young age.

I had not done any work in that field

prior to being in college, but learned a lot about it then.

And then as an alumnus of the group,

participated in a lot of activities around that.

So, vision screening children at a young age

for, you know, to see if they have any early signs

of vision impairments.

And then we would refer them, of course,

to trained doctors who would follow up.

But you can do some interesting screenings

at a young age with people who are trained

in just a very simple way to catch early signs.

So I did that.

And then continued to sort of go along that path.

There is a center in St. Louis called

the Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments,

and I became very involved with that organization as well.

We were raising funds to create a new building

and make it fully accessible

for all the children and their families,

and also create an accessible playground.

There were lots of components to that.

So it just continued to be part of my avocation in life

was this Service for Sight aspect of things.

So,

- Let me just dig into that a little bit more.

You know, going back,

you mentioned Delta Gamma was where things started out.

I did some community service in college

but I also feel like I was half a knucklehead at the time.

But it sounds like, you know

enough things were done there that really, you know,

kind of got you motivated to continue there.

So like, what was that experience like?

And then how did you make the jump

to doing it after college?

- Yeah, so what we would do at the time,

and I'm sure things have evolved over time,

but we had fundraising events and whatnot

to raise money for Service for Sight.

We also had some of our students

who were in our sorority who were, for instance,

reading newspapers.

At the time you would read the newspapers on the radio,

there's a blind radio station in New Orleans,

which is where I went to college.

I went to Loyola University in New Orleans.

At the time they had a blind radio station,

which I'm not sure if it's still in existence or not.

So some of the members of our group

would read for the blind radio station.

We also could type in books

which would be converted into braille.

So there were a number of ways we could participate in that.

But yeah, it's not as robust as your experience

as an adult outside of college, because, as you said,

in college we have lots of distractions.

And so I did become more active

after I graduated and became an alumnus.

- And then as you started working with

those organizations after college,

then kinda what was the next step in the path after that?

- So some of what I did at the Delta Gamma center

just helped inform me about the various barriers

for people who have disabilities,

including people who have visual impairments.

So that was just really a learning time for me.

I learned a lot.

I think, you know, I could be helpful in some ways,

but they were also super helpful to me

just to help understand.

And the kids are fantastic.

The center supports all kids.

Their main mission is birth through age three,

but then they continue to support them

in social groups after that,

because that's one of the challenges for that group

is to have a social peer group

that's a comfortable place for them to be.

So anyway, I learned a lot about them,

learned how wonderful and brilliant they all are,

and how we could support them

by just removing barriers, physically, for instance,

as I talked about with the playground,

and then as I got older and realized

that there were also digital barriers,

it was a real life-changer for me.

I didn't know that. And I was in IT. (chuckles)

So I felt like, I couldn't believe

I had spent the first let's say 15 years of my career in IT,

and also running this parallel part of my life,

which was service to people

in the visually impaired community.

And I never knew that there was an intersection.

So when I, at one point in my IT career,

I didn't know like what I wanted to do next in IT.

I was just looking for another path.

So I went back to school and got a master's in writing.

And then I went to,

I was hired by Washington University in St. Louis

to be a publications editor.

So a completely different thing for me.

Left IT, per se, to do some editing,

but I ended up editing an online periodical

that then I was introduced

to this aspect of digital accessibility.

And I was just blown away. (laughing)

Again, as I said, I had no idea.

And I was, it was a light bulb.

So I just dug into it and I just wanted to learn more.

I became very energized by it.

I wanted to be able to make a change,

you know, make some difference in that field.

So I just kept asking at Wash U

questions about digital accessibility

to anybody who I thought could give me answers.

And then eventually, they said,

"Hey, will you run our user group?"

"Will you co-chair our user group for web accessibility?"

And I was thrilled to do so.

So then I continued to dig in even more because, of course,

when someone asks you to co-chair something like that,

the first thing I say is,

"Do I really have the skills for this?"

"Am I gonna be able to give in a meaningful way to this?"

"Or am I just gonna go show up?"

So I really continued to dig in

and just learn as much as I could.

I went to WebAIM, to their training in Logan, Utah,

which is, first of all, a beautiful setting,

second of all, they're a fantastic organization.

And did my accessibility,

my initial accessibility formalized training out there.

So that was great for me

to have that sort of formal approach to it.

Because, again,

I had just been digging into it myself for so long.

That it was,

- Well, that's a common inflection point and experience

for people as they get into accessibility.

A lot of times, it comes to a time

when you're doing work and you're made aware of it.

And then suddenly you're trying to identify resources

and you're looking for

people that can help you move forward.

But accessibility is like, there's so many parts to it,

with digital accessibility,

there's just so many things, potentially,

that you can learn

that I think it often overwhelms people

like at the start as well,

you know, "How can I ever deal with this?"

And when we lock into just, all right,

I'm gonna work on this part, and then that part,

I think it's a lot easier.

But it's great that you were able to, you know,

get involved in some formal training early on.

I think that's, you know,

something that can benefit everyone

that's just starting to get into it.

- Yeah, I think you're so right, Joe.

it's very intimidating for people.

When they first hear about it and first learn about it

there's an overwhelming amount of information out there.

And I'm always learning.

I feel like I'm always still learning something new.

So just coming to terms with that,

that they'll never be a point when I'll know everything,

which is great for someone

who loves to be a lifelong learner, as I do.

And also it's okay for everyone to come into this

and just get started.

Because no one,

I wouldn't say no one,

but most people never know everything about it.

It's really a vast field.

- And so then continuing to move along,

what was the next area you ended up getting involved with?

- Yeah, so after I did my formal training at WebAIM,

and continued to do the user group at Wash U,

I started looking for an opportunity

where it was a part of my job at Wash U,

but I really wanted it to be all of my job. (chuckles)

So I just felt very driven to move

into digital accessibility as a job position,

you know, as a role.

So I just started looking.

The University of Chicago is, of course,

a fantastic university.

They were at the time looking for someone

to create this role at the university,

Director of Digital Accessibility,

and to help start up the new organization,

the Center for Digital Accessibility.

It was a great challenge.

And I'm very pleased

that they felt I was up to the challenge.

- Well, I do teaching at the University of Washington.

And so, you know, we do get,

we do get information about accessibility

and with the Canvas learning system,

it flags slides and documents and things

that may not be accessible,

but I think,

but I'm a person who's familiar with accessibility

in a lot of detail, so sometimes I wonder,

you know, how well educational institutions

are able to really, you know, get that information into,

to the instructors and the curriculum,

so that in fact, it really ends up

being part of the classroom materials.

- Yeah, so that's actually something

that the University of Chicago thought of

when they were creating this CDA, our team,

is that they placed us

within the academic technology solutions team,

in IT services, in central IT,

so that our academic technology solutions team

has our instructional designers in it.

We already spent a lot of time

working with instructors, doing workshops

on a variety of learning with technology subjects.

So it was a perfect touch point.

So we have someone on the academic technology team

who's the lead, go-between,

between our team and the instructors,

so that we can have a good access point for that,

because that is really important.

And it's challenging.

There's lots and lots of university content.

There are lots of websites, lots of PDFs,

lots of information, as you said,

we use Canvas for our LMS.

So there are various touch points

where we have to make a difference in all of them.

So just getting people educated across campus

is a big thing,

so that everyone can start to understand

what accessibility means

and what it looks like in a digital space.

We spend a lot of time in that area.

- And so, you know,

as you work through things at the center today,

are there any particular projects

that are taking up your a lot of your time,

or, you know, or on the other way of looking at it,

kinda what's a day in the life

and the types of things involved in building your program?

- One of the things that was just big for all of us

is that the university created

a digital accessibility policy

and communicated it out early this year.

It was January of 2021.

They had intended on doing it last year,

is my understanding, but the pandemic, of course,

threw everyone's plans for a loop.

So it was communicated out the beginning of this year.

And then we've really spent a lot of time, as I said,

trying to help everyone understand

what does it mean to be accessible.

So there are guidelines to follow, of course.

But really what you wanna make sure you're understanding

is the impact upon the user,

because it's really all about

embracing people with disabilities

and not putting barriers in their way.

So, you know, just the educational piece of it, as I said,

is really huge for us right now.

We're also working on having some enterprise applications

available to help people with these things,

accessibility checkers and whatnot.

So there's lots to be done, of course,

and we're just attacking it, you know,

at all levels, our procurement of accessible products,

just making sure that what we're

procuring is the most accessible product in the space.

And that's also extremely challenging,

hoping that vendors really will address that

in their products because sometimes

it's extremely challenging to find something that's

very accessible in the vended product world.

- Yeah, that was something I wanted to ask you about,

just generally the process involved there,

certainly, you know, if the products that the university

is purchasing, you know, aren't accessible,

obviously that, that creates a huge problem.

And there are, of course,

requirements about that in terms of purchasing,

but what's the actual process like

when you're investigating things, I imagine it can

it can be hard to vet certain products

and get the right answers, and then really know

whether that's gonna work in a practical manner

once things are instituted for the students.

- Yeah, it is very challenging.

And we have some processes in place at the university

where we, you know, hoping to get the most accessible thing.

But as I've said, I'm really hoping that vendors

will turn their attention to this

because everyone who's procuring the product

shouldn't be all having to test this vended product.

The vendors really can make the most impact here

because some vendors have a really large presence,

not just in the higher ed world,

but, you know, across other domains as well.

And if the vendors make their product accessible

that would be a lot less work for us.

But yeah, we have processes in place

to hopefully choose the most accessible products we can.

- And as we finish up here, are there any things,

you know, looking to the future,

any plans that you have for the center,

that the university has,

of, you know, maybe where certain goals they wanna achieve

in like five years or ten years?

I know universities tend to have a lot of,

have to have a lot of long term plans for things.

- Yeah, so we are looking at our capability maturity model

of where we are as an organization right now

with digital accessibility and planning.

First of all we're gonna assess

where we are in the model this year.

And then hopefully from that

have some strategic plan that comes out of that.

But yeah, we definitely have five-year goals out there.

One of the things I'd really like to do

is broaden the ability for my team, which is a small team,

we have four people, is use, you know, employ somehow

people with disabilities to involve in our testing.

Right now we, as a team, are testing

using screen readers, using keyboard-only,

using automated tools,

but we would really like to find

a good way to utilize these people

who use screen readers in a native way.

So that will be definitely one of the things

we'll be addressing probably in the next year.

And I would really welcome that.

I think having some input

from users with disabilities would be fantastic.

- Well, that's great.

And it was great to have this conversation with you, Pat.

Thanks for taking the time

to share your journey in accessibility,

and hopefully things will ease up with the pandemic

and you're able to get back into

that rather impressive urban campus that you have there.

- Thank you.

Yep, looking forward to the return to campus.

People are learning back there right now,

and our team will be migrating back there soon, yeah.

- All right. Great. Thanks so much, Pat, bye-bye!