Charlie Turrell, BBC, Change Manager - Accessibility Champions Network

Charlie onboards product development staff about accessibility and evangelizes it throughout the BBC. Starting as a personal assistant in many sections of the BBC, she found her way into user experience and then to guiding the internal accessibility champions network.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

- 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 found

their way into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now,

and hear about their journey.

- Alright, well we are back for another episode

in this podcast where I get the opportunity

to talk with some very interesting

accessibility practitioners,

and today I am speaking with Charlie Terrell.

Hello, Charlie. How are you?

- Hi, I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

- Well, it's great to be able to chat with you.

It for me is early in the morning,

fairly nice day on Vashon island,

which is near Blink's headquarters office

in Seattle, Washington.

Where are you talking to us from?

- So I'm in Salford, in Manchester, in the UK,

and it's a bit overcast, which is general for the UK,

and I'm actually in the BBC offices in MediaCity.

So there's three of us here and that's why we film like

BBC sport and the breakfast show and things like that.

So, yeah, that's where, that's where I'm coming from.

- Alright. Well, Manchester is a great city.

I visited there a couple of times and enjoyed it very much.

Thanks for being part of this.

You mentioned being at the BBC today.

So a good place to start.

If you could just talk about the types of things

that you're currently involved with.

- Yeah. Fab. So I am the accessibility champions manager.

So I look after a network of people that try and

put accessibility at the forefront of

everything that they do.

Generally they're made up of designers and developers,

but we also have a couple in the legal team,

a couple in the diversity and inclusion area

and some journalists and things too.

So generally what I do is I onboard those people,

I get them involved in accessibility in all manner of

different ways, whether it comes to social,

whether it's doing some training,

whether it's just getting to know each other,

out doing some problem solving.

And generally that takes up a big part of my day.

Other areas is, is kind of bit of strategy work,

we look at the training and see

if we can develop some things.

We do bits of socials.

So kind of bringing in external people,

anything new that we think might be exciting,

getting people involved in some meetups.

And on the other side of it kind of going to senior leaders

and making sure that we're ahead of everything when

it comes to what's new in accessibility and,

and the projects that are coming our way and making sure

that we're as prepared as possible to kind of help people

with whatever it is that they need to do in regards to

that kind of strategy.

- Well, I mean, I'm certainly aware of your organization.

I'm not exactly aware of like how large it is,

but it sounds like from what you've been talking about,

that you're involved in kind of an overarching accessibility

support across the organization, is that the case?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So as the BBC we've got about,

I think it's about 35,000 people at work,

and that is from the last time I remember someone else

telling me that and we're in various different locations.

I generally look after anything that is

digital and public facing.

So anything that we put out there in BBC iPlayer

sounds, news, weather, anything like that,

any of the products that we have generally,

anything that goes out for the public,

we wanna make sure that it's as accessible as possible,

making sure that everyone can access that content.

So the Champions Network has been, kind of been

quite flexible, but it's kind of sat around the 250 mark.

Those Champions are literally everywhere.

And I think that it's good for us,

especially that I'm in a very small team in the

user experience and design area,

And whereas there's only three of us currently,

there's me and there's Becky who does a lot of the training,

and then there's Jamie Knight who people might recognize the

name of, that he does a lot of our,

he's our subject matter expert.

He's the brains of the evolve of our team.

So because we're so small,

it makes it quite difficult for us to be across everything

and know what's coming, so having these Champions,

it just almost means that we've got this extra large team

of people, so they can kind of go, "hey, you know,

we're working on something,

we need a little bit of help here,"

or, "oh, did you know, this is something

that's really cool that we've created.

We can celebrate it and tell the rest of the BBC."

So generally, you know, even though we're quite small

in our little corner of the world,

it means that we actually have this massive reach everywhere

to try and kind of make all our output

as accessible as possible.

- Well, I, I definitely wanna come back

and to talk about the Champions

a bit more and get more info about that.

but one of the things I like to do with this podcast is

find out how people first

found their way into accessibility,

because it tends to be something that we don't necessarily

for at least most of us right now

study in our foundation courses at university and things.

And so let's find out how you found your way into it.

What, what, where did it first,

where did you first become aware of it?

- Well, do you know what, it's mad you say that actually,

because I think a lot of people,

when I have conversations of how they got into

accessibility, it's always by accident.

And that was kind of what happened for me as well.

So I first came to the BBC, I'd done lots of different jobs.

I'd kind of flittered around from finance to insurance,

to working with young people, a youth center,

couldn't quite figure out where I fit.

And I was at the youth center for quite a while and I loved

the morals there and the fact that we were doing things in a

underprivileged area, and I thought, you know,

we're making a difference in the community,

but the reach just wasn't far enough for me.

So I remember looking at a post at the BBC for a PA role.

And on the, on the back of the post

was all these kind of morals.

And the, the, the kind of we,

the BBC holds itself to quite a high standard.

And we want to make sure that everything is equal,

and kind of equal rights for people,

and it was very like, yeah,

I could understand being in an organization where the reach

is massive and we're all trying to do the right thing.

So I applied for that role.

I was a PA for a while,

I ended up being a PA for six or seven different people

across the organization,

really got to understand how each area has

a massively different culture. You know,

everybody saw things from a completely different view,

but they were doing it in different ways.

And I, I could kind of see, oh,

where would I like to kind of move around to?

The area that I had the most interactions with

was user experience and design.

And it was a guy called Colin,

who I was PA'ing for at the time,

and under him was the heads of design.

And one of them was Gareth Ford Williams who people know

generally is quite, you know,

is quite well known in the accessibility industry.

Absolute character, we got on straight away,

and the more, he was so passionate about accessibility

about explaining what it is that he does

and why it's so important.

I just couldn't get enough.

I was listening to all these different things,

all these different stories that he had,

the fact that he had such drive and he made it so much fun,

you know, all, all these different ways

that he was doing things and the, the passion behind it,

kind of is infectious almost.

He said that, you know, that we've got a Champions Network,

I immediately wanted to get involved in that. And I said,

how can I be a champion? You know,

is it anything that I can do in my emails that make things

more accessible? You know, with PDFs

were a bit of a sore spot. Can I get involved in that?

And actually, I love the culture and I love people,

I really do, like anything that will make people's lives

easier, if I can help in any way, I absolutely will.

And I also don't really care about like a hierarchy.

I will talk to anybody regardless of

where they are in the BBC with the same amount of

respect, which I think people should do in general.

Spoke to him, and he said, "actually, you know,

we've gonna be a position available for somebody to look

after the Champion's Network 'cause

the person that's doing that is moving on."

And I thought, yeah, absolutely,

I, that is, that is perfect for me,

went for the interviews and I've never been so excited for a

role before, obviously was successful, and started to

take over and learn about, you know,

how that, the network was really structured and

how people could get involved.

And I just had this world of knowledge that I had never been

exposed to before about the lenses that we use

in accessibility and that excitement just grew and grew,

and I got to know more people across the business,

worked with an incredible team of some of the most

knowledgeable people I've ever met.

And, the other side of it was,

it was such a neurodiverse team that I felt

so much more comfortable.

I have ADHD and I didn't realize that I was

masking a lot of, you know, different ways,

and I was kind of trying to cope with this

very structured way of doing things,

and I got to be in this environment where my needs

were taken to in consideration,

we openly spoke about what we would need and want

and we could all work in whatever way suited us.

I started to work with Jamie,

I never worked with somebody like Jamie before,

and I got to understand all his nuances and the ways that

we liked to interact, and it was so honest and wonderful,

and I think that ignited my love of accessibility,

and I think it's just continued from there.

The more I've got into it,

the more that I've spoken to people and met other people

equally as passionate,

I just don't think that feeling ever goes away.

- Yeah, well I, thanks for sharing

part about your own physical challenges

that you kind of got greater awareness of through your work.

You know, when you come into accessibility,

one of the things we do have is

a huge body of knowledge available about it,

but that can also be overwhelming for people

that just start to come into that area.

So how did you start to process that?

Obviously as your role, you're helping others

to find that information,

but what was your experience in, in feeling like you,

you knew what was going on?

- I, I think at the very beginning I did feel incredibly

overwhelmed and I was like, you know, with accessibility,

it's constantly changing and there's new things

that are happening all the time.

People are designing new things and creating new things

and I really didn't know where

to start with my learning.

There's no kind of set process, is there?

you don't do a level and, you know,

accessibility is just knowledge

and you experience things and learn as you go.

So I took that overwhelmed feeling and used that

for the new Champions that were coming in,

so instead of trying to pretend that I had it all together

and I knew about different things,

I used that and kind of said, you know,

you're joining this Accessibility Champions Network,

I'm learning, and this is how I felt

when I first took over,

and I presume that's how you would feel,

so let's do that together, let's do bits of learning

together and get involved.

And I think knowing that I scaled back our onboarding,

used to be quite complicated,

and I think it worked really well for

the person that was running it in the past,

but I didn't have that technical knowledge

that that person did, so I felt a little bit

out of my depth.

So instead I focused on the individual and said,

"So what is it that motivates you?

Why you want to become a Champion?

You know, how do you like to learn?

Is there any different ways that I can adapt the training

and the sessions that work for you?

You know, do you want to be working where we do it together?

Do you want to be able to go away

and read some different things?

Are there any needs that you have

that we need to kind of adjust for?"

And that became a much more calm way of learning the,

least, kind of less pressure I think,

to be able to do that.

Also one of the biggest things that I would say to anybody,

if you are coming into this community,

make as many friends as you possibly can.

There are people all over the globe

that have wonderful skills, that have a bunch of knowledge.

And I can tell you now they will share everything with you.

There's no gatekeeping I feel in accessibility.

I think everybody just wants to make sure

that they are sharing their knowledge.

So Gareth, you know, he, he knows everybody

and it was wonderful.

So he introduced me to a few different people

and said, "go, go and speak to them,

just go and ask them a load of questions

and you don't have to know anything.

There's no silly questions, just go and find out.

There's no judgment here."

And so I went out there and started to make

new friends and new people.

And from that, some people were telling me

loads of different things that they do with their Champions

that really work for them.

And I just said, "alright, I'll give it a go."

And so we have a mentality with the Champions

and in our team of everything's an experiment,

you know, it's just, it's, we're gonna try it,

if it doesn't work, we'll learn from it,

and if it does, that's wonderful.

So I think kind of scaling back the pressure

and knowing that you won't know everything

and admitting that actually breeds this kind of

really comfortable learning environment

for people to get involved in because don't feel like

they have to dive straight into the deep end.

We can do it bit by bit, and can we do it together.

- A number of times you've talked about

the Champions that you work with.

Why don't you give us a little bit more of

a introduction to what that's about.

There are other organizations that have

used that term in different ways.

How does it work at the BBC?

If I wanted to be a Champion,

what would I have to learn and be responsible for,

and how, how am I helping move things forward?

- Yeah, absolutely. So with being in the Champions Network,

what we say right at the very beginning,

is, a Champion is just somebody that puts their hand up

in a sprint or in a meeting

or whenever someone's talking about

designing or building something and just say, "no,

have we thought about accessibility?

Here are some resources to help us."

So you, that is the bare minimum,

the minimum kind of requirement to be a Champion.

And if that's all you ever do,

and you find it difficult to kind of

have time to learn or anything like that,

it's just knowing where to find the answer.

So that's it, that is to start up Champions.

If you want to build your knowledge,

we have tons of ways to do that.

So if you were to come to me and say, you know,

I'm really interested in being a Champion,

we'd say, "right, wonderful. So let's have

an onboarding chat," that is 20 minutes.

If it wants to get longer and people get into it

and wanna chat, that's wonderful, but there's no pressure.

I introduce myself and kind of my little bit of history

and what I do, I give a, a brief kind of

structure of the network,

which is quite fluid realistically.

And then they talk to me about what they already know,

what they would like to learn,

I give them a few topics that they

might not have thought about before,

and then the ways and styles that they like to learn,

so I can at least know that, you know,

if you're interested in workshops

and this is a, kind of the way that they like to do things,

they'll be the first people I tell them about a new workshop

And then we literally stop and kind of go, right,

let's reflect on what we've already done.

That's a good first step, we don't wanna overwhelm you,

let's have another conversation in X amount of weeks.

So after that, I send them links

to a couple of resources and then a couple of fun videos

where we talk about user experience

or a day in the life of somebody, or, you know,

kind of just giving them that little bit of

a toe in the water of the

accessibility community as a whole.

And so doing it in these little tiny stages over a period of

time helps keep the momentum up for that person.

It doesn't feel overwhelming.

So the resources that we have,

we have the mobile accessibility guidelines, the mag,

we have the gel type documents that we use internally.

And we have a huge page, which is actually

available to the public for loads of

kind of resources for accessibility.

So it's anything from understanding the lenses that we use

when it comes to accessibility right down to the

step by step, how to kind of use a screen reader,

or you know, how to do a lot of the technical stuff

that I don't really understand, you know,

these kind of how-to documents,

and they're all there readily available for people.

And I think having that, like relationship

with that person over a period of time,

just getting to know them a little bit,

introducing them to other Champions.

We have a Slack channel and a Microsoft Teams channel

where people can just either post about events.

They can post about some

really cool things that they've done.

Or a lot of it is just questions of,

"I'm building this thing,

I need to know how to use the correct something or other,"

and everyone starts to have a discussion about it,

and we find the correct way of doing it.

Even if you're not posting the questions,

they're there for you just to be able to go, oh,

learn by doing, other people are doing,

you can see the kind of conversation that they're having.

You've learned something today, you know,

that could just be a part of your training.

We also have introduction to accessibility training,

so we do that for a lot of designers to kind of make sure

that we understand that it's barriers and environment

rather than the medical model of, of disability,

which is kind of, we, we tend to err away from that.

We talk about everybody's, you know, no one's disabled,

until you start building something that disables

that person, you know, so it's about your environment.

It's, it's really kind of, it,

it's a great way of looking at it to make sure

that you're including everybody in that discussion.

We talk a lot, we use a lot of examples, actually,

like, you know, if you're, if you're creating something

and it might not be, you know,

it can be you're environment that,

that makes it difficult to use that thing.

So if you're on a mobile phone, you know,

but you also have a child in one arm or you're on the tube

and you've got your, your hand

to make sure you're not rocking,

or your environment is quite rocking,

you need to be able to use whatever it is on your phone,

even though you only got the one hand currently using it.

So we talk a lot about different ways of doing things.

So all of that kind of immerses you

into this wonderful accessibility world.

We start talking, introducing them to other people

that are external, who are absolutely incredible

when it comes to doing talks,

or even just opening up some discussions on Twitter

and you know, on LinkedIn is great as well.

So it's kind of having all these various options

for you to just start your journey

and go at it in whatever pace that you would like,

and also introducing you to people that have got

the same level of culture and kind of a mentality as well.

And it kind of makes you feel like actually, yeah,

if I don't know something, I've got somebody right there

that I can go and ask a question,

or I can find it, you know, somewhere else.

So even as a Champion,

you can either continue with that learning,

or you can just get involved in the community area of it

and start just talking to people.

It's absolutely up to you, however you want to do with that,

but it's making sure you're just part of it, you know,

making sure you're just bringing it up

whenever we're creating something,

make everybody talk about it.

It's not something we add on at the end.

We talk about it at the beginning,

we build it into everything that we do.

We want to make sure this is inclusive and everybody gets

most out of whatever it is that you are doing.

- Well, it's, it's great to hear about

the large repository of knowledge

that you have available of all the training pieces

that you have available to everybody.

And with that, I'm sure that's always growing.

One of the things about accessibility is

it's pretty impossible to have it be covering everything

and we're always moving forward,

doing better or adding information.

And so I assume that's the same there.

Are there any certain areas of the onboarding

which you've found may be more difficult

than other parts for the Champions that you work with,

or, you know, are there certain areas where you,

you know, you wanna work to be able to improve services?

- Absolutely. Yeah. I think for me,

I notice my lack of technical knowledge sometimes when

you've got somebody that is quite tech focused,

which is why I do honestly believe

that if you've got a team of people,

you need to have somebody there that is a technical person,

who is kind of a developer who has done that kind of thing,

because I think some people really want to get into that

nitty gritty, to having debates about things,

and I don't feel like I can always fulfill that.

And I think sometimes, you know,

you get a bit of imposter syndrome,

I think everybody gets that at the best of times,

but being able to have that group of people together

that can all do it and work,

that is when you know that you've got

a good team as well. So I think that that part of it,

I find quite difficult sometimes.

I think as well, you know, I,

I try and change the network a little bit just to kind of,

you have to be flexible depending what position the,

the business is taken a little bit.

So I think for a while we discussed about

having levels of Champions or we had, you know,

levels of learning, but having that open discussion

with the rest of the Champions and then kind of going, yeah,

but that's not really how accessibility works for us,

or, you know, there's no such thing as

almost like levels of a screen reader.

You know, you learn about things,

you learn how to interact with things,

and then you talk to users and you just learn,

don't you? You just continue to grow or by doing,

there's no actual kind of,

you can do a university course in it.

And so I think getting the mindset right for that

and knowing how to get people to be

continuing to learn the next thing, rather than

it, you know, and having a little bit of

structure around it can sometimes be quite difficult,

but that's something that I'm

currently working on at the minute,

instead of doing levels, I'm doing almost like a

journey for people, you know, so they can kind of come in

and they do a bit of onboarding,

and then they join the Slack channel

and they join other channels,

and they get on the D list for emails,

they get the newsletters,

and then you meet another Champion, and then you read the

mobile accessibility guidelines

and there's this little kind of route

that they can take that feels more like you developing

into a community rather than

kind of accessibility knowledge levels.

So it took me a little while to kind of understand how that

works as well, and to kind of trial out different things.

But I will say that, you know,

there's been a couple of events that I've done,

some have gone really well, so I'm having, you know (laughs)

and I'm quite, I'm quite honest about the fact that

sometimes I've thought a structure will work

and then it just didn't,

and all you can do from that is go,

"Oh, I'll learn from it. I'll do something different.

I'll find out why it didn't work," and you know,

why Champ-, get Champions involved

and get them to tell you why it didn't work.

I'm quite happy to have as much criticism as possible now,

but that took a little while to get used to, you know,

so I think they're the things that I find difficult

in the role, but I think keeping an open mind

and kind of going, it's not about me specifically,

it's about making sure that we're teaching people as much as

we can and we're getting them, you know,

involved and happy about it. It's not a reflection on me.

It's just to, it's just my job to make sure that

I'm kind of included as many people as possible really.

- And you mentioned at the very start 35,000 employees,

so definitely a large organization.

Are there any certain job categories that you're responsible

in working with or is it for, or do the Champions help out,

you know, across the wide variety of activities

people are involved with at the BBC?

- It's a bit hit and miss, actually,

I think the people that I tend to interact with quite a lot

are anybody that works in product, so yeah,

you know, the, the, the kind of the product leaders,

a lot of the designers that in UX and D,

so the user experience and design area,

they're my two kind of main focuses I would say.

And I think that's because

they're at the forefront of all of our output.

The rest of the business, it's very different.

You know, my kind of presentations will really change

depending on who it is that I'm speaking to.

You know, I've got one on Wednesday,

and I'm talking to the diversity and inclusion group

that is on the other side of kind of the business, really.

It's something that I don't actually

interact with that much,

but their lenses are a little bit off

when it comes to disability.

They're thinking of it purely from a medical model.

And we just want to kind of go, actually,

can we make sure that we're all on the same baseline level?

Let's like, make sure we're all in the same head space.

You don't have to learn a load of stuff,

but let's kind of think about it all singing from

the same hymn sheet at the very beginning.

And so I get to interact with these kind of

different, smaller groups of people,

which is great because I learn something from them

as well, you know, the presentation I might do

might need tweaking a little bit,

so I get to be able to understand my audience

a little bit better.

I think the area that I find difficult is

we have a world service, we have BBC Studios,

and because they're not a public,

so we're the licensed fee payers and they actually, I mean,

we don't have any adverts or anything like that,

whereas they're more kind of commercial entity,

it can be a little bit difficult because we have

policies and guidelines in the charter,

which is really good for us actually,

'cause we've got a really kind of, something to reference.

We don't like to use it,

but we've got something to reference to kind of go,

"We do have to do this thing. It's a legal requirement,"

but it is a little bit different for that area,

so sometimes I have to kind of go along the,

well, this is worthwhile from a,

also a financial point of view,

not having to redesign, not getting sued,

you know, all these different things.

That's not really the lens that I like to use

and the one that I have to take,

but in a very high pressed environment,

sometimes you really do have to be flexible and adjust,

you know, your, what's the word? Your argument slightly,

you know? And I think sometimes senior leadership,

because they're not directly involved

in the creating of the products,

they kind of think that, "oh, it's accessibility,

somebody else will do it."

And sometimes you kind of have to go, actually, you know,

if you are using the right language,

your staff and the people that are working with you

are using the right language, we're all thinking about it.

You're just really gonna avoid any kind of slipups.

So that's something that, you know,

my team have been working on doing

a little bit of a, a PR almost,

go into different areas and kind of making sure

everyone's got the right, the right mindset.

So I think as a, as a larger business,

that's always gonna happen.

And I think that in the matter of any business,

getting senior leadership buy-in is always difficult,

especially if you're wanting to start a Champions Network,

but being able to kind of go, well for us,

we went from all these kind of complaints and redesigns

and time-wasting things by doing audits

and actually getting to a point where

everyone talks about accessibility constantly,

and we're not having to do that kind of problem.

You know, there is a real business case for that.

And if everybody's interested in starting up

Champs Networks, you know, there's a,

I run a Champions of Accessibility Network

external to the BBC, and you can find us on LinkedIn,

it's under Camp, and it's great

because it means all these different groups

of people that have either started a Champs Network

or run a Champs Network in these businesses.

And believe me, the models are vastly different to mine,

you know, ours works for us quite specifically,

but some people working in finance,

and some people working in, in eCommerce

and various different areas,

and they have to structure theirs around the needs

of their business as well.

So there is different ways of doing things.

And I think looking into that and always being

willing to change is something that

I need to constantly remind myself of as well.

- Well, Charlie, it's been very informative to hear about

how the BBC is doing things and the Champions Network

and also your own, your personal introduction

and growth in this area, so thank you very much

for contributing your ideas.

- No, thank you, honestly it's been lovely,

and, as you can tell, I love talking about

anything accessibility, it's great,

and the more people we can reach and talk about it

and kind of get everyone on the same mindset is wonderful,

so thank you so much for having me, I've really enjoyed it.

- Alright, well hopefully if maybe

we'll get back to Manchester, we can

- Absolutely!

- Meet for a coffee or a pint or something

- Absolutely. You are always welcome.

- Alright, thanks a lot, bye-bye.