In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, we sit down with Jonathan Hassell, CEO and Founder of Hassell Inclusion. With a career spanning the BBC, ISO standards, and digital accessibility consultancy, Jonathan shares valuable insights on how businesses can successfully integrate accessibility into their strategies, products, and cultures.

We explore:

✅ Jonathan’s journey in accessibility – from shaping BBC’s accessibility standards to leading Hassell Inclusion.

✅ Why accessibility standards matter – unpacking BS 8878, WCAG, and ISO standards, and how businesses can leverage them.

✅ The biggest challenges companies face in making accessibility a business priority—and how to overcome them.

✅ How to measure accessibility success – key performance indicators, governance models, and industry best practices.

✅ Common mistakes in accessibility strategies and why embedding accessibility early saves time and resources.

✅ The future of digital inclusion – upcoming shifts in AI, regulations, and leadership mindsets.

💡 If you're looking for practical strategies to embed accessibility into your company or want to understand the business case for digital inclusion, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.

🔗 Resource Links:

🔹 PCR Digital – Digital & Technology Recruitment

🔹 Hassell Inclusion – Digital Accessibility Consultancy

🔹 BS 8878 & ISO Accessibility Standards Overview

🔹 European Accessibility Act (EAA)

📢 Follow Jonathan Hassell:

🔹 LinkedIn: Jonathan Hassell

🔹 Twitter (X): @HassellInclusive

📢 Follow Joe James:

🔹 LinkedIn: Joe James

🔹 Twitter (X): @A11yJoe

🎧 Subscribe & listen now on your favorite podcast platform!

Welcome back to the Digital Accessibility podcast.

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If you're looking to learn more about the field of

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accessibility,

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how to implement it within your role or company,

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or to get advice on where to start or see how others have

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navigated complex issues that you may find along the way,

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then you're in the right place.

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I'm honoured to be able to share these insightful chats

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with thought leaders,

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advocates and practitioners of digital accessibility

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throughout this session.

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Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the chat.

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Today I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by Professor

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Jonathan Hassell,

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a leader in digital accessibility space and founder of

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Hassell Inclusion.

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Jonathan's had a rich career that spans working as an

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editor for the BBC for the Standards and Guidelines,

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heading up their usability and accessibility all the way to

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creating the BS 8878 standard,

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now known as the ISO 30071 and working as a visiting

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professor at London Metropolitan University and

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continuously influencing countless organisations to make

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their digital services more inclusive.

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Jonathan's a true pioneer in my eyes,

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so welcome to the podcast, Jonathan.

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It's great to be with you, Joe.

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Sorry, it took us so long to get this sorted,

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but glad to be with you.

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I really appreciate your time.

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So yeah, thank you so much on my part as well.

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I guess to start the same with every other episode,

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we always love to hear about your personal journey into the

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realm of accessibility.

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So what first drew you into the field and how did that path

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sort of lead to you founding your own consultancy in

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Hassell Inclusion?

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Yeah, so it's been like 25 years.

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So I will compress it.

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It all started for me around the turn of the century.

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So two things happened at the same time.

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I was recruited into the BBC to be that.

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editor of standards and guidelines that you mentioned

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there,

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voted the least sexy job title in the BBC at the time.

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And at the same time, my nephew Carl was born.

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He's the reason I do what I do.

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He was born with spina bifida.

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So we I had a personal link to disability and at the BBC

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within the first few weeks,

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one of the things I was asked to do was to look to see if I

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could lead efforts at the BBC in getting good at how to

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make sure that all of the viewers in, you know,

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who had been watching with captions and things like that,

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you know,

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the history had a real sort of history of making sure that

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people with a disability were getting, if you like,

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good value for their license fee.

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My job was to try and extend that into the digital world

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that we were kind of spending, you know,

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most of our time in,

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in what was then BBC future media and then turned into kind

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of new media, or it was the other way around.

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Gosh, I don't know.

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It was a long time ago.

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You know, it's the world we, you know,

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we've been living in for a very long time now.

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And it was really my job to try and work out what good look

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like, really.

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You know, the BBC is a huge organisation, also works

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with a large number of production companies.

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So the number of organisations who are creating digital

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stuff for us was huge.

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And it was my job to try and work out amongst all of the

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different teams.

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Yeah, what, you know, what were we doing that was good?

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What did it look like?

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How did we kind of capture it, codify it,

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share it so that other teams in the BBC were able to do the

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same thing?

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And one aspect of that was, was accessibility.

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So that's how I got started.

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Wow.

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Oh, wow.

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Yeah.

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And it was and it was loads of fun.

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You know, I mean, the BBC, you know,

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I haven't been there for years,

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but certainly at the time it was, you know,

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we were just coming out of the bubble bursting,

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if you remember back that far.

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And, you know, the internet bubble,

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all of those initial sort of companies that were created

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and then something went wrong and all of those companies

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sort of like, you know, cease to be.

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And a lot of those people who had a huge vision for what

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the what the internet could could bring the country,

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what the, you know, what websites could do,

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found themselves at the BBC.

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It was an amazing place, you know,

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people like Tom Loosemore, who, um,

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who started government UK, you know,

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he was one of my colleagues there, um, you know, uh,

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loads of people, you know,

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in the initial bits and podcasting, you know, we had a,

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we had a, um, a,

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a new media studio downstairs where people were doing stuff

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that wasn't broadcast TV, but also wasn't radio.

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It was kind of something a bit different.

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Um, so it was, um, it was the brave new world and, uh,

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it was a great place.

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It was my job to try and make sure, um,

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that everybody could come with us into that brave new

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world.

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Um, you know, if they, um, uh, whatever it was,

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whether it was a disability or a lack of a fast internet

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connection, um, that, um, if we were doing good things, um,

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uh, you know, people could, could go with us.

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Um, so I did that for, for a while.

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Um, my first role in accessibility, um, uh,

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was a few years later on something called BBC Jam, it was,

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um, uh,

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still one of the most interesting things I've ever done in

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my life.

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Um, um,

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it was 150 million pounds worth of public money to try and

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help kids learn via playing computer games on, uh,

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over the internet.

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Uh, so we have you to blame then.

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So yeah, I mean, so, but I mean, I mean, for example,

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I'm doing a, another podcast, uh,

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tomorrow in the education space.

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Um, and, um,

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because we were so far ahead of the whole world, you know,

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it was kind of like lots of kids didn't think they liked

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learning because they didn't like school and it was our job

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to kind of say,

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if we can help you understand how physics could help you

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escape from a desert Island, if you were marooned on it.

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And that was the game that you were playing and you were

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learning these physics skills to actually sort of like

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science, the hell out of it as it were, uh, as,

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as what was said in the Martian, uh,

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that came out after we were there at first, um, and, um,

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so yeah, we were trying to help kids, um, you know,

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five to, um, you know, to our level kind of really, uh,

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learn a little GCSE.

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You can tell how old I am.

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Um, and, um, so it was, and I had the most amazing job.

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My job was to try and make games accessible.

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Um, and that had not really been even considered very much.

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There was a few people on the planet who understood what I

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was talking about.

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And I had literally to get on planes to go and sort of like

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doorstop them at conferences and all sorts of places all

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over the world to try and work out how we took, um,

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what a generation of teachers, uh,

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so special education needs teachers have been doing one-on

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-one with kids, um, and.

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and make that kind of like digitised and gamified for how

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we could make all of this work.

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So we did some of the first signing avatars in the world.

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We got Benjamin Zephaniah to give us his entire output for

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the year,

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all focused on the ability of blind kids to be able to use

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his poetry to learn Braille.

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You know,

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we did some amazing things and then it all kind of had a

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bit of a political handbrake turn.

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And I then arrived back in other parts of the BBC and I ran

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accessibility and usability on things like the iPlayer.

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So what a huge amount of awards for.

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uh, for doing, um, you know, what,

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what was necessary to make sure that, that product was,

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was able to work for everybody.

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You know, it was the early days of video on demand.

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People had not done captions, audio description,

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those sorts of things.

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We were the first in those in the world, um, started,

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you know, I had a big team.

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We were helping to do accessibility across all of the BBC.

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We had about 400 websites at one point and about kind of

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like three or four different, um, apps.

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I had a team of about 15 and sort of like loads of

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suppliers.

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Um,

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and it was my job to try and work out how to get this stuff

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done in a strategic way.

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Um, and that was, that was, um, what I did.

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That's what ended up me leaving the BBC.

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I wrote all of that stuff down in the British standard

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BS 8878, that you kind of mentioned.

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Um, and so I kind of realised that my job was done really,

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you know, we were, you know, the BBC were the best, uh,

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you know,

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we were winning absolutely every single award when it came

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to accessibility,

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we started off as a lovely thing and ended up being a bit

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of a problem because it was kind of like,

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if we're winning every year,

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then other people aren't coming with us.

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So, um, so that was the point where I started thinking,

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I need to broaden this out, it can't be that my, you know,

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my success is that I've made the BBC accessible,

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my success needs to be beyond that.

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So that was the point where I started thinking, Hmm, yeah,

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how do we do this beyond, uh,

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and that I feel like was the first, um,

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nugget of hassle inclusion.

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Um, as I might hear.

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Amazing.

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And what an organisation as well, because of the,

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the amount of difference between like within the BBC,

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it's not just the one, you know,

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it's not just broadcasted channels is like you mentioned,

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and even into the education and game sides of things,

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and then I'm thinking back to my own, I'll say,

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GCSE, not O Level.

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Of course,

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I think about to that time when I was studying and there was

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sort of the BBC Bitesize things and that was gamified and

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I'm just thinking, oh, okay, brilliant.

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Like there was all these sort of chunks of information and

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it, yeah, it's all, and that's just, you know,

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accessible for everyone.

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Like you say,

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it's not just focusing on people with disabilities, but,

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um, no amazing insight into your sort of, yeah,

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I think it was,

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it was an amazing place because it was probably the one

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place where you could see all of that.

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You know, we had everything from the news, which was okay,

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we would love this to be accessible,

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but it needs to happen right now.

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I mean, literally, you know,

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so if you want to kind of like, if, if the,

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the captioning isn't fast enough to, um,

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for us to get this out to, to everybody right now,

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it can't wait.

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So it was kind of thing challenges like that to education,

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which was, it's not just enough to be understandable.

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It needs to be.

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you know,

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fully understandable in terms of enabling people to learn.

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You know, this is not a website that gives you information.

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This is a website that helps you learn.

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That's a that's a higher level all the way through to,

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you know, the yeah, you know, the early days of streaming,

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you know, stuff that was really, really interesting.

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Like some that we I remember the some of our radio stations

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were some of the initial sort of pushbacks on WCAG.

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You know,

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there was something in WCAG version one that I think a lot

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of us really mourn because it was right.

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And unfortunately, they got it wrong.

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But there was something in there about plain English.

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You know, your website needed to be in plain English.

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And we had like, you know, I think it was called One Extra.

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It was the black sort of urban radio kind of station on the

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on the BBC.

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And, you know, if I understood it,

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it meant it wasn't like for its audience.

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You know,

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it's an audience where people who weren't me and for me to

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come along and say that needs to be in plain English rather

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than that needs to be in the language that is being used

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with that particular audience would have just been utterly

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facile.

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So we had to go back to WCAG to say, actually,

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it's a bit bigger than just like plain English and,

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you know, because we also have the, you know, the,

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you know, services in every language in the world.

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So and unfortunately,

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their reaction was to kind of bury it in AAA.

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And we're still trying to kind of bring it back ever since.

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But yeah, I mean,

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these these were the sorts of opportunities that were

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there.

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It was it was a great place to be.

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It probably still is.

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I'm sure.

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Oh, amazing.

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I'm sure they're still doing very.

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good work at BBC, definitely.

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And it's great to hear what you managed to achieve in your

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time there as well.

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And I guess that would bring me on to the second question,

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which is about, well, you've, you've,

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you're now sort of doing that growth part and going out to

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people beyond the BBC and starting your own consultancy.

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And I mean, it could be seen as a very bold move.

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But I guess what inspired,

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we've probably had a little bit of that in your story from

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the BBC.

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But what,

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what was the inspiration for starting hassle inclusion?

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And how has it sort of evolved to address those ever

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changing needs?

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I guess you're even talking about things at the BBC those

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years ago that there was there were already so many

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different needs.

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But yes, in today's world,

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how have you had to sort of change and evolve as your own

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consultancy?

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Sure.

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So I mean, number one,

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starting your own business is something that you should

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think, like, multiple times on before you do it,

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it's not necessarily the easiest thing.

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Certainly,

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as somebody who'd kind of like worked in public sector for

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for 10 years, you know,

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I I wasn't necessarily kind of set up to understand how

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businesses work.

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So it was quite a learning curve.

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But I am for me.

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And, you know,

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this is just who I am as a person and who we are as hassle

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inclusion.

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Our mission is really, really quite simple,

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which is to to have the biggest impact that we can have for

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accessibility.

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And so that's for people with disabilities on behalf of

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people who are aging, you know, as well.

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I was in a situation where I felt that the BBC was had

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given me so many gifts over the years.

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I mean, it was it was amazing.

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You know,

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I got to spend more money on user testing with people with

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disabilities than I've I've ever experienced in any

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other organisation that we've worked with since because we

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needed to get it right.

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And we did it the right way.

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And it wasn't about WCAG.

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It was about does WCAG give us enough to actually give

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people the service they expect if they have a disability.

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And you can only really understand that if you talk to

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somebody with a disability.

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So I gained so much from it.

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But but yeah, we just saw a lack of commitment,

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a lack of understanding,

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a lack of capability in pretty much every organisation out

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there that wasn't the BBC.

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You know, a few of the banks were doing some good stuff.

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Some of the retailers, you know,

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I'd work with them on my committee at BSI so I could see

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that things were kind of happening in various places.

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And really towards the end of my time at the BBC when I was

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working on BS8878 and trying to kind of put down a kind of

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blueprint for how organisations could do the sort of stuff

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that we'd done at the BBC to get good, you know.

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It just became kind of obvious that the blueprint wasn't

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enough, that people needed expert help to make it happen.

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And, you know,

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if all of the people stayed in the organisations that they

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were working in, like the BBC or the banks or whatever,

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then who was helping the other organisations?

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And so, yeah, that was the thing, you know,

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I wanted to stop winning awards.

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It became, you know, towards the end of my time at the BBC,

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I was kind of like...

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I don't want to put us in for awards this year.

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This is how I have been able to get recognition for all of

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the great work of my team more funding internally because

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everyone's going, well,

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if you give stuff to the accessibility team,

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they do amazing things with it and they make the BBC look

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good.

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So, yeah, you know,

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so that was one of the things that I did to try and make

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sure that we were always considered a key part of what the

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BBC did.

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But, yeah, you know, my ambition was to not win, you know,

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the next Beamer and the rest of it,

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because if we were winning it,

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what on earth was happening out there in the rest of the

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world?

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So, so, yeah,

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that was that was the whole point of kind of setting up

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hassle inclusion was to say,

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we've got a British standard now.

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It's it's available.

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It's, you know, it's codified.

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You know, it's a good blueprint for people to get there.

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I'd written a book about it because the standard itself you

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had to pay for, which was not something I agreed with.

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But that's the way the British Standards Institute kind of

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work.

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You know, I would have, you know,

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I didn't make a single penny off it.

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And I tried to kind of, if you like,

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undercut the price of the standard by working right.

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British standards kind of press their books to make it kind

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of cheaper and and fundamentally more more easy to

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understand what we've been doing.

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But yeah, organisation

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s kind of needed experts to come in and help them start

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getting good at this in a kind of systemic way.

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And that was the that was the kind of the genesis of hassle

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inclusion, which initially was just me.

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And then I kind of picked up people along the way.

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And and we took that British standard to, you know,

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to international.

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And if you want to know how to say it, because, oh, yeah,

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I had I had to work on this with my marketing people.

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I must admit, when when they were, you know,

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so standards are never like, you know,

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like sensible numbers, you know,

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they're completely they're completely odd.

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The way we say it is three double seven one.

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part one.

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So it is supposed to be the first part of that standard.

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I don't know if they've done the rest of them.

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But we kind of figured that if we put 007 in the middle

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there,

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people would remember that bit maybe just a little bit

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more.

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You don't need to remember the number.

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All you really need to know is to understand they feel like

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what he does and why it's helpful.

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And that has been pretty much my sort of my masterwork as

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it were.

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That's the spine of my career in accessibility is to take

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it from something that was just a kind of like a technical

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thing to be something which is more of a managerial thing.

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So organisations can say, yeah,

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how much is it going to cost us?

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How much of this should we be doing?

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Where does it fit in the organisation?

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So all of these different things that I'm sure we can kind

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of talk through.

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That's the stuff that really kind of makes the impact.

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In reality, technical standards are useful.

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But the standards that really matter are the ones that

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actually get stuff kind of like embedded in organisation

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s. So I spent a huge amount of my family's money,

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if I'm honest, sort of like on planes and things,

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getting that standard done.

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No one pays you to do this sort of stuff.

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We finally signed it off in Japan.

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And so this was, if you like,

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my family's investment in how to help the world get better

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at this.

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And the reason why it's so useful is because there are

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other ISO standards out there, 9001.

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That's quality 27001.

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That's information security.

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There are so many kind of standards with a one at the end.

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And so what that allows allows organisations to do is to

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kind of go, okay, we understand ISO, you know,

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we understand that this is something that we should do as a

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company to prove that we are, you know,

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worth working with really, you know,

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if it's a digital agency or a big kind of sort of,

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you know, company that does civil engineering or whatever,

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these are the things that allow us to kind of say,

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we are good at this area, you know,

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quality or infotech or whatever.

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I helped create the version of that for accessibility and

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that gave it a certain legitimacy, you know,

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for years and years, you know, you know,

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everybody in the accessibility community has been saying,

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you know, we wanted thought about like,

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you would do kind of like privacy or security or any of

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those sorts of things.

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The work that we did to make that ISO standard there was

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doing exactly that,

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was effectively saying accessibility isn't a weird thing,

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you know, it's not an odd thing.

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Weirdly, the accessibility world doesn't seem to get that.

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So the accessibility world thinks that the important

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standards organisation of the W3C,

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because they were the people who created WCAG.

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The rest of the world think the big standards organisation

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is ISO.

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So that's the, you know, for example,

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the international standard on usability is the definition

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of usability,

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the international standard on security and all the rest of

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them.

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So it was quite interesting in that it's always felt like

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because of the web and because of great work that was done,

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you know, creating WCAG version one, version two,

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people expected the important standards to come out of W3C

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when in reality the place they should come to actually give

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accessibility that legitimacy as an important part of a

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digital thing that you do,

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it actually had to come from ISO.

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I still don't think a lot of the accessibility world kind

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of get that.

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They kind of go like,

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why would ISO do an accessibility standard?

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It's almost the other way around, if you like.

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Okay, that's, I mean,

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so that brings me into that next part, the next question,

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which is the sort of difference between that and you've

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explained it beautifully there about the sort of like,

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again,

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the WCAG and web accessibility guidelines and the difference

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between the ISO.

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And I guess from my perspective and from people that I've

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spoken to, because a lot of the, well,

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we're a tech recruitment agency,

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so we're always looking at it from a technical angle,

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but I suppose The key fundamental separation or the

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difference is that the WCAG is purely sort of web-focused

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and it's based upon what can and can't be sort of

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implemented and using the poor principles, so perceivable,

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operable.

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Is it understandable and robust?

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Robust, yeah.

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Okay.

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Test passed.

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And then when it comes to the ISO, like you say,

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it's the more, it's giving it legitimacy across the board.

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It's an internationally recognized sort of way to implement

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rather than sort of pointing out key elements maybe of,

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or features of a site that need to be adjusted slightly

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maybe.

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I mean, I don't know if that's...

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Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

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I mean,

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the way I would normally describe it is it's a solution to

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a different problem.

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And from my perspective,

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it's a much more important problem.

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So, if WCAG helps you make a website accessible...

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ISO helps you make an organisation accessible and the

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process for that organisation uses to create digital

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products will procure them accessible.

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So WCAG is really, really good,

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especially if you're doing a website.

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But the people who want to use WCAG are people who are

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developers, designers, content authors and testers,

535

you know,

536

of digital products is the term that we normally use.

537

The ISO standard is the standard for the business analysts,

538

the product managers, the project managers,

539

the test managers of those things.

540

You know,

541

there are loads of different ways of testing the accessibility

542

of a website.

543

Most of them are a complete waste of your money,

544

if I'm honest,

545

because people just don't understand the opportunities,

546

the variety of ways of doing things out there,

547

and they don't understand the strategy that says, look,

548

you know,

549

how do I get accessibility into my product development the

550

way I would something else like,

551

you know, security or the rest?

552

And part of that is, yes,

553

it's nice to have a checklist of technical things that

554

you've got right.

555

But that doesn't tell you, you know, of the, you know,

556

at least kind of like 10 or 12 ways of testing whether

557

you've got things right.

558

Which of those test sort of possibilities are right for

559

your organisation and the product you're creating?

560

It doesn't tell you the really important stuff from my

561

perspective,

562

like if you've got a product manager who wants the product

563

to be accessible and they've got a team of people who are

564

going to be creating it,

565

what should they ask those people to understand whether or

566

not they know how to do this?

567

You know, or even if they do know how to do this,

568

what is it going to mean for the for the for the length of

569

time that it's going to take?

570

And so therefore the resources, you know,

571

if you look in the kind of like the, you know,

572

the real world,

573

if you ever look at kind of like a digital project and

574

being reported in a newspaper,

575

it is always the newspaper saying this particular sort of

576

is normally a government type thing is three years sort of

577

like late and it is cost five times as much as they said in

578

the first time.

579

Yeah, that's the reality of product development.

580

So in there,

581

what does WCAG tell you about how much more expensive that

582

product is going to is going to be?

583

make it accessible.

584

It could be that the reason it's late is because someone

585

came along and went, yeah, accessibility.

586

It can't go live until it's WCAG compliant.

587

How much is that actually going to cost that project?

588

WCAG might tell you a single thing about it.

589

How good are those people in your team at accessibility?

590

It won't tell you a single thing about that.

591

So the whole idea of the ISO standard is to actually put

592

you in the place where you can say, look, there are really,

593

really stupid ways of doing accessibility.

594

Overlays being the most obvious one.

595

Don't do it.

596

But an overlay is potentially something that you should

597

consider as one of the options for accessibility.

598

People in the accessibility world hate them.

599

People outside the accessibility world who are being

600

threatened with some sort of legal thing and just need to

601

get accessibility, the box ticked,

602

they kind of sound like a really great idea to them.

603

Well, hold on a second.

604

I don't need to be good at this at all.

605

We've already got our product.

606

It's absolutely awful.

607

It doesn't matter how good bad it is.

608

If I put this line of JavaScript on it and give some money

609

to these people, all of my problems go away.

610

Who wouldn't want to buy that?

611

Yeah.

612

Love a bit of snake oil.

613

Absolutely.

614

Yeah.

615

The problem is it just doesn't work.

616

But you have to kind of look at what we're doing in

617

accessibility and to say, well, is that working?

618

Is spending all of your money testing your product for

619

accessibility before you put it live and finding out that

620

the team who created this thing have no idea about

621

accessibility and you probably should have asked them at

622

the start of the project rather than the end of the

623

project.

624

and then gone, oh, it'll be fine.

625

We'll just test it at the end.

626

None of these things are good product management

627

principles.

628

And so a lot of what the ISO is about is to say,

629

let's take all of that stuff that actually makes

630

accessibility practical, that makes it affordable,

631

that makes it achievable,

632

and does all of that stuff in an ongoing way,

633

because most products do not just you don't create it,

634

you do versions every couple of weeks or a couple of months

635

or whatever.

636

And then how do you do that for different types of

637

products?

638

Some products are for customers.

639

Some products are for your internal teams.

640

Do people know in the accessibility community what the

641

difference between those two different audiences should do

642

to how you actually set up a project to deliver

643

accessibility in a kind of sensible way.

644

These were the sort of questions that we were talking about

645

when we were putting together the international standards.

646

And that's the thing,

647

that's why I'm so kind of passionate about it because it

648

actually makes accessibility possible.

649

Because if you do it the way that most organisations have

650

done in the past, at least, in a very piecemeal way,

651

it is not achievable.

652

And the answer is not overlays.

653

The answer is to actually think about this in a sensible

654

way that you would think about if you were actually looking

655

at security or privacy or all the rest of them.

656

That's why it has to be an ISO standard because that is the

657

thing that enables organisations to say, oh yeah,

658

there was actually a process that we need to put in place

659

here to make this happen.

660

It's really, really interesting.

661

And it's something, I mean, like I say,

662

I've always been more,

663

I was speaking to people about the WCAG all the time.

664

So it's like, it's great to actually hear it from you,

665

one of the authors of the ISO standard to say,

666

this is what it's for.

667

And from that,

668

all that keeps going around in my head is that WCAG's

669

great, but it's maybe a bit too late.

670

Or it's just, it's used too late.

671

Or it's not thought about and it's not really the,

672

and where they're guidelines.

673

This is where a lot of the struggles happen in that

674

technical world is it's hard to get by in because people

675

are sort of just like, yeah, but it's just a guideline.

676

Like, I don't actually have to do this sort of thing.

677

But three words that you mentioned as well.

678

So obviously there's the level AAA or AAA standard for

679

WCAG, but you mentioned affordable,

680

achievable and actionable.

681

So maybe you've got your own three A's for the ISO.

682

Well, yeah, I mean, we've gone through, you know,

683

to try and communicate why accessibility is actually worth

684

doing.

685

You know, we've gone through all sorts of things.

686

I've got I've got the five E's that that was the first

687

version of my book.

688

We then we can kind of move things on a little from there.

689

But the key thing really is that it's so important,

690

you know,

691

there is nothing wrong with WCAG other than it's not.

692

The only set of accessibility standards is right for some

693

people.

694

Those people happen to be developers,

695

designers and content authors and people who do testing.

696

It's not enough for them.

697

You know, it's it's woefully inadequate, for example,

698

when it comes to the news,

699

the needs of people who are neurodivergent.

700

But you have to look at it and say it's for those people.

701

But for those people to actually be given the time to focus

702

on accessibility in their jobs,

703

some other people who are kind of more important in

704

an organisation need to get bought in.

705

And if you tell them about WCAG, it is not going to be,

706

you know, it's like, yeah, you know,

707

I'm going to tell people,

708

I'm going to tell the CEO of our organisation about why are

709

we?

710

It's like, who the hell cares?

711

What he cares about is, so this accessibility thing,

712

is this good news or bad news for my businesses bottom line

713

this year?

714

You know, and if I do this thing,

715

who's going to benefit out there?

716

Can we make a good PR story of that?

717

You know,

718

does it mean that we get rid of some sort of like legal or

719

regulatory risk?

720

Yeah, that's great.

721

It's just about a website, right?

722

Yeah, we don't do websites, you know, in our company.

723

So, you know,

724

I remember our phone started bringing off the hook a few

725

years ago because the government asked.

726

So through the Crown Commercial Services who do the what

727

they call the well,

728

if you want to work for the government for the next five

729

years,

730

there is you have to kind of like prove that you're a

731

marketing company who have the right skills and the right

732

values in place and the right processes in place so that

733

you can deliver what the government needs all the way

734

through.

735

And you're not having to ask, you know, you're doing that,

736

you're doing that, you're doing that.

737

This is a good company.

738

Yes, we're going to work with them as a government.

739

And the Crown Commercial Services said, OK, all of these,

740

you know,

741

you don't get to be a marketing company if you don't do ISO

742

30071 part one.

743

If you're not compliant with that, we're not touching it.

744

I don't know where they found it from.

745

They didn't chat with us at all about it before they asked.

746

I was really, really glad that they asked,

747

but I would have wanted a conversation to have kind of

748

maybe reset their expectations,

749

because what they were doing were effectively going to

750

loads of marketing companies that don't do websites.

751

And they were jumping through from those organisations

752

going, well accessibility doesn't apply to us,

753

we just do video, we just do social media,

754

we just do PDFs or whatever.

755

And they were saying, yeah,

756

all of that stuff needs to be accessible,

757

here is ISO 30071 part one, go for it.

758

And these organisations were terrifying,

759

because they didn't do web,

760

so therefore WCAG wasn't something that they were at all

761

knowledgeable about at all.

762

And they needed to go from zero to 100 within a couple of

763

like months.

764

Now that wasn't possible.

765

None of those organisations could do that.

766

But what the government was asking for is a really sensible

767

thing.

768

The problem was was that they didn't know how difficult

769

that was.

770

And those marketing organisations were like, help,

771

you know, who can who can help us with this thing?

772

You wrote it, Jonathan.

773

You know, what do we do?

774

So, you know, so a lot of what we've been doing, you know,

775

over time is to try and help organisations with those sort

776

of circumstances where they've got somebody requiring them

777

to do this accessibility thing.

778

So how would they do that in an efficient way?

779

But also, if they manage that, you know, if they do it,

780

what are they going to get out of it?

781

You know, in that case,

782

they're going to get being able to work with the

783

government.

784

But if I'm a bank and I get good at accessibility,

785

how do I win?

786

You know, we all know how to avoid losing, you know,

787

if you don't do WCAG, you know, you'll get, you know,

788

on and you're in various different parts of Europe on the

789

28th of June this year.

790

You know,

791

25 countries have got people who will be coming after you

792

if you're in banking or travel or e-books or streaming or

793

you're doing stuff with an e-shop.

794

So organisations are going, oh, golly, OK,

795

we've got to do this thing because it's a risk.

796

You know, if we don't do it,

797

somebody is going to hit us with a financial stick.

798

So they're going to fine us if you're in an island.

799

Allegedly,

800

they might actually put somebody on your board in prison

801

for a year and a half.

802

I really hope they don't do that.

803

I think that would be slightly counterproductive.

804

But the key thing here is this.

805

If these are the reasons why organisations kind of like

806

start getting into accessibility,

807

they need to understand that there is an upside.

808

It's really quite interesting in that if you think about

809

accessibility in comparison to those other ISO standards,

810

things like security,

811

I don't think security buys you more customers.

812

I think a lack of security makes your customers all go

813

somewhere else,

814

but actually if I go from a bank that is insecure to a bank

815

that is massively secure,

816

I don't think that is a win for our bank in terms of the

817

bottom line.

818

That costs loads of money and we will continue to be able

819

to be a bank and we won't have a run on the money that is

820

in there,

821

but I don't necessarily think it actually wins us more

822

customers.

823

This is what we have in accessibility.

824

If 20% of the population who have a disability can't use

825

your product and you sell stuff, they can't buy from you.

826

If you sort that out, they now can.

827

The 20% of the population who are older actually have all

828

of the money.

829

You know, the baby boomers, you know,

830

they're the people who've got the dosh swilling around.

831

We did the research.

832

And if they can't buy from your website,

833

they'll just kind of like go to somewhere else that they

834

can.

835

So if you get this stuff right, you win.

836

Yeah, and it's, I mean, yeah.

837

You know, that's what we've got.

838

We've got, you know, accessibility is complicated.

839

Accessibility, you know, requires people to do some work.

840

But fundamentally, if you get it right,

841

you get return on investment.

842

This is what we deliver to our clients all of the time is

843

it's not enough for us to make them accessible.

844

We're there to make them successful businesses.

845

Because accessibility is part of the route to actually

846

being a successful business defined by however they

847

consider it.

848

You know, shareholder value,

849

whether it's minimizing the cost of customer service,

850

any of these sorts of things,

851

accessibility actually makes you win.

852

That's what we're here to try and do.

853

And, but, okay, it doesn't really kind of, you know,

854

tell you it's that's for the people who make the stuff

855

happen.

856

You actually need the people at the top to understand why

857

this stuff is worth happening,

858

how to do it in an effective way so that it becomes part of

859

what you do.

860

And the best organisations are the ones that have actually

861

got it.

862

this.

863

A lot of them work with us.

864

Some of them don't.

865

But a lot of the big organisations,

866

they're not doing accessibility because they want to be

867

nice.

868

They're doing accessibility because this is what actually

869

powers their businesses alongside all sorts of other

870

things.

871

We're not asking for charity for people with disabilities

872

here.

873

We're saying that people with disabilities are their

874

customer base as well as everyone else.

875

They are literally wasting money if they don't understand

876

accessibility.

877

It's huge.

878

It's the reputational risk, the legitimacy of a company,

879

the market share.

880

It's all of those things, all those terms.

881

Like you said,

882

there is a real problem in the accessibility space where it

883

seems as if it's something that should be a charitable

884

cause.

885

But when you put it in the way that you've mentioned,

886

There's so much potential for real return on investment and

887

for it to actually be a benefit to the companies as well as

888

everyone that should already have access to these services

889

as well.

890

So let's not get away from that point that it should

891

already be done.

892

Things should be, but the reality is they're not.

893

So it's great that you've got this in place to help.

894

The reason why this particular conversation is so important

895

to be having in February 2025 is that there are four

896

different categories of reason,

897

of benefits for accessibility.

898

One is legal, one is ethical.

899

I'll come back to that in a second.

900

One is financial and the other one is kind of innovation.

901

Okay, so the ethical one, that is at debate at the moment.

902

All of those organisations out there like Meta and lots of

903

other ones are prompted by staff happening in the States.

904

Let's try and keep the politics out of it.

905

But they're effectively saying we cannot afford diversity,

906

equity and inclusion.

907

I would argue that when it comes to at least the group of

908

people who have a disability,

909

we cannot afford not to do this.

910

Companies who are selling to those people cannot afford to

911

not do accessibility, inclusive design,

912

call it what you want because they're not gonna be able to,

913

they are literally saying to kind of 20%,

914

40% of their potential customer base,

915

we don't wanna sell to you.

916

That's just stupid in 2025.

917

But also just getting in touch political for a second.

918

One of the key aims of our current government here in the

919

UK is to get a lot of people who aren't in work back into

920

work.

921

A lot of people who aren't in work have disabilities.

922

Say, for example,

923

you wave a magic wand and everybody suddenly has the skills

924

to be able to do the right jobs that are there that

925

actually probably aren't there in industry anyway.

926

But if we just create the jobs, pop people into them,

927

they're going to need to use digital tools to be able to do

928

those jobs.

929

So if those tools aren't actually accessible,

930

if they don't work for them as people who have a

931

disability,

932

then it's the lack of tools that will stop people from

933

being able to be in jobs.

934

So they will not be able to do the job.

935

And so therefore they will just need to go back to being on

936

benefits.

937

Can you see from that perspective as a country we cannot

938

afford financially for accessibility to not be something

939

which is a fundamental part of every single digital tool

940

that we use every single day at the work?

941

Irrespective of the key point that I think we both want to

942

make,

943

which is how dare we as a society lock people with disabilities

944

out of employment?

945

Employment gives you loads of other things,

946

not just a pay packet.

947

If growth is the thing that we're trying to get at the

948

moment,

949

you get growth from people who are actually doing something

950

they're passionate about, are able to do.

951

We cannot afford as a country to be getting these sorts of

952

things wrong.

953

It's just bizarre at the moment that organisation

954

s are going, oh, should we not do so much accessibility?

955

Because DEI is wrong or something.

956

If you do that, we are going backwards,

957

not just as a planet that we would want to be citizens of

958

from an ethical perspective,

959

but we are literally saying our gross domestic product of

960

every country is going to go down because we are locking

961

loads of people who could be incredibly valuable to society

962

out of being able to be part of society.

963

That's just stupid.

964

That's one of those things that we're trying to get across

965

at the moment,

966

because there was a lot of stupid going around in fields at

967

the moment.

968

you know, it's really, really important that, you know,

969

accessibility isn't just a nice thing you do,

970

it's actually something that has the potential to help

971

everybody, not just people with a disability,

972

not just people who are older,

973

absolutely everybody on the entire planet needs us to be

974

really good at accessibility and not to be kind of wasting

975

time, effort, or money, getting things kind of, you know,

976

done in inefficient ways.

977

That's why we do what we do at Hassell Inclusion.

978

Amazing.

979

No, I really appreciate that.

980

And I've just realised as you were going through that,

981

I was like, oh, I've actually missed a question on here.

982

So I'm not going to,

983

because I don't want to take too much more of your time up,

984

Jonathan, I know you're extremely busy now.

985

But actually that question that we missed,

986

let's just take a little bit of time on it,

987

because there is stuff in there as to, so if I've just,

988

said why accessibility is so important,

989

it then becomes really important for people who are

990

interested in accessibility to know how they can be

991

effective.

992

That's what that question is all about.

993

So go for it.

994

Definitely,

995

I mean so it's it well I mean naturally as a recruiter in

996

the space so very familiar with finding and hiring skilled

997

accessibility specialists but it is a very small pool of

998

people as you've alluded to as well but what do you think

999

are the key qualities that we do need to be looking for

00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,220

when recruiting people in this space but also there's

00:49:36,220 --> 00:49:40,140

always the question of certification as well and could you

00:49:40,140 --> 00:49:43,400

let us know if there's anything in terms of ISO that is

00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:46,220

certification and what Hassell's doing to support that as

00:49:46,220 --> 00:49:46,340

well?

00:49:46,740 --> 00:49:50,580

Sure yeah so I mean probably the first thing is that I you

00:49:50,580 --> 00:49:54,160

know this used to be a very even smaller pool you know when

00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:56,860

I was where you know when I was at the BBC doing this in

00:49:56,860 --> 00:50:01,000

00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:04,820

everybody here in the UK in the US who was working in

00:50:04,820 --> 00:50:09,100

accessibility you know and so it is awesome where we've got

00:50:09,100 --> 00:50:14,520

to and just so we get it so I don't know if you would agree

00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:17,720

with this but so I've been tracking the number of people

00:50:17,720 --> 00:50:21,180

who have the word accessibility in their job title on

00:50:21,180 --> 00:50:26,020

LinkedIn for my trends webinars over the past at least six

00:50:26,020 --> 00:50:29,760

years we were pretty much the only part of the digital

00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:34,160

industry last year that got bigger there was 11,

00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:38,380

000 people with accessibility in their job title in January

00:50:38,380 --> 00:50:40,480

00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:48,140

00:50:48,140 --> 00:50:55,040

and I can see that every single day of the week digital is

00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:57,920

going through a really hard time at the moment you know

00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,680

most digital agencies there are so many of them out there

00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:04,240

none of them are look that different from the other ones,

00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:06,580

they're all trying to differentiate themselves from each

00:51:06,580 --> 00:51:06,900

other.

00:51:07,940 --> 00:51:09,980

They're all having a really, really hard time,

00:51:10,140 --> 00:51:13,620

and that's really sort of problematic for the digital

00:51:13,620 --> 00:51:14,840

industry as a whole.

00:51:15,180 --> 00:51:15,980

If you like,

00:51:16,100 --> 00:51:18,440

we've got too many people doing the wrong sort of things

00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:21,600

and too many agencies, and it's troubling.

00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:27,440

For an agency to actually kind of differentiate themselves,

00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:30,000

accessibility is a really good way of doing it,

00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,480

and actually to the point where we've had quite a number of

00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:36,740

digital agencies who've maybe got like one person on staff

00:51:36,740 --> 00:51:39,360

who knows something about accessibility.

00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:43,020

They're now kind of like setting themselves up as kind of

00:51:43,020 --> 00:51:45,540

like, yeah, we can do your audits and all the rest of it.

00:51:45,740 --> 00:51:48,060

So we're not a digital agency,

00:51:48,220 --> 00:51:49,520

we're an accessibility company.

00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:51,180

It's kind of like, no, really,

00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,240

you're just a digital agency with one person who's been

00:51:54,240 --> 00:51:57,600

doing accessibility for like the last year.

00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,140

So there is some really kind of interesting things kind of

00:52:02,140 --> 00:52:06,440

happening in terms of everybody is trying to kind of jump

00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:08,960

into the accessibility thing, mostly because of the EAA.

00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:15,740

My perspective is this, that's okay,

00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:24,260

but if you really want to have an impact and you have

00:52:24,260 --> 00:52:29,960

thought that to be an accessibility person you have to be,

00:52:31,460 --> 00:52:36,180

you have to know all about HTML and CSS and JavaScript and

00:52:36,180 --> 00:52:38,580

ARIA and all the rest of it because that's where the

00:52:38,580 --> 00:52:40,160

accessibility jobs are.

00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:46,800

There are a lot fewer jobs in that sort of space than they

00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:48,000

used to be.

00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,840

If you thought that accessibility was all about audits,

00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:55,600

here's the kind of like the news flash,

00:52:56,050 --> 00:52:58,800

AI is coming along to steal your lunch.

00:53:00,700 --> 00:53:04,780

00:53:05,220 --> 00:53:07,620

you should be thinking, yeah,

00:53:08,020 --> 00:53:09,920

where should I be kind of spending my time?

00:53:10,100 --> 00:53:11,800

And if you are thinking, aha, yeah,

00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:13,380

I can do accessibility audits,

00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,500

that's the sort of thing that we already have automated

00:53:16,500 --> 00:53:18,760

tools that are getting better and better and better.

00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:20,060

And hopefully at some point,

00:53:20,580 --> 00:53:23,500

maybe you won't need to be doing accessibility audits.

00:53:23,500 --> 00:53:24,440

Certainly in all this year,

00:53:24,580 --> 00:53:27,780

we're still up to about kind of like 30% of WCAG that can

00:53:27,780 --> 00:53:30,000

be done by an automated tool,

00:53:30,060 --> 00:53:32,220

but hopefully AI will improve that.

00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:35,180

What it can't do is to understand people who have a

00:53:35,180 --> 00:53:35,520

disability.

00:53:37,540 --> 00:53:41,180

00:53:41,180 --> 00:53:43,780

if you are looking to be in accessibility,

00:53:44,300 --> 00:53:45,740

is actually kind of empathy,

00:53:46,340 --> 00:53:49,060

having spent time around people with disabilities,

00:53:49,180 --> 00:53:52,980

so you can actually understand why this stuff in WCAG is

00:53:52,980 --> 00:53:53,400

there.

00:53:54,900 --> 00:53:57,400

What I'm seeing out there at the moment is lots of people

00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:58,980

who like throwing kind of like...

00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:03,540

Baseball bats around and using WCAG as the baseball bats to

00:54:03,540 --> 00:54:06,800

hit companies with to say you're crap here crap here crap

00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:07,540

here Crap here.

00:54:07,540 --> 00:54:11,560

They don't know The impact of that stuff on people with

00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,420

disabilities They don't know which of the bits in WCAG that

00:54:14,420 --> 00:54:17,540

really matter and the stuff that actually really matters

00:54:17,540 --> 00:54:20,240

that isn't in WCAG When it comes to people with

00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:20,800

disabilities,

00:54:20,820 --> 00:54:25,280

they they literally just hot off that kind of like from

00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,980

University going I've learned some stuff on WCAG I'm going

00:54:28,980 --> 00:54:33,180

to kind of use this as a mechanism to hit people with and I

00:54:33,180 --> 00:54:37,520

wish they'd stop if I'm honest Because it's not helpful You

00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:41,400

know It's it's useful for people to be able to have an

00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,300

audit done But audits are done by people who actually

00:54:44,300 --> 00:54:47,880

understand what this stuff really means in terms of the

00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,780

impact on people with disabilities But I think from our

00:54:51,780 --> 00:54:56,940

point of view if you really really want to be effective in

00:54:56,940 --> 00:55:01,380

accessibility You have to be thinking about,

00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:01,800

well,

00:55:01,980 --> 00:55:09,620

probably the first thing is actually respect for designers,

00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:11,200

developers, and content authors.

00:55:12,020 --> 00:55:15,940

So a lot of people kind of do accessibility audits and go,

00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:18,140

you've got this wrong here, you've got this wrong here,

00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:20,340

your colors are wrong, and all of that.

00:55:20,500 --> 00:55:21,940

They know nothing about color theory.

00:55:22,260 --> 00:55:24,920

They have no idea that the color red is actually really

00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:25,920

great for branding.

00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:28,160

It brings people to it.

00:55:28,460 --> 00:55:29,920

It's great for calls to action.

00:55:30,340 --> 00:55:32,420

They might know that actually a lot of people who are

00:55:32,420 --> 00:55:34,200

autistic don't like the color red.

00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,120

So therefore we should just, what, like ban the colour red?

00:55:37,240 --> 00:55:39,360

That's the sort of thing that happens out there.

00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:43,020

So the first thing is nobody wants your accessibility

00:55:43,020 --> 00:55:47,660

advice in a product team if you don't understand what the

00:55:47,660 --> 00:55:49,760

product team does and respect it.

00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:51,460

That's the first thing.

00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:58,000

So you need to actually respect your colleagues around you

00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:01,440

and not be using the kind of accessibility baseball bat in

00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:02,160

the wrong way.

00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:05,080

If you like to be a good consultant,

00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:08,280

you need to be a good kind of collaborator.

00:56:10,140 --> 00:56:13,960

And then ideally what you would want to do is to actually

00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:18,800

start going more strategic and to say actually the reason

00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:22,680

why most of those developers and content authors and people

00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:26,520

aren't doing accessibility isn't because they don't care,

00:56:26,860 --> 00:56:30,480

isn't because there's no training materials out there for

00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:31,280

them to do it.

00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:34,740

It's because their boss doesn't think that it's worth

00:56:34,740 --> 00:56:35,020

doing.

00:56:35,740 --> 00:56:38,860

So if you really want to be sort of effective when it comes

00:56:38,860 --> 00:56:42,000

to accessibility, you're speaking to the wrong people.

00:56:44,460 --> 00:56:47,940

You need to be speaking to people at the top.

00:56:48,300 --> 00:56:49,580

So a lot of what we do,

00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:51,520

this is where we spend all of our time.

00:56:51,660 --> 00:56:54,760

It's why everybody comes to us and says, gosh,

00:56:55,340 --> 00:56:56,500

you're not like the other companies.

00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:58,980

You do accessibility in a completely different way.

00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:03,920

You know, we do accessibility based on so, you know,

00:57:04,020 --> 00:57:08,380

you might want to kind of like But it's sales and not like

00:57:08,380 --> 00:57:13,480

us selling to clients Accessibility is all about selling

00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:15,240

You you know,

00:57:15,240 --> 00:57:18,600

you need to sell yourself as an expert to the team so that

00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:21,340

they Go well, okay.

00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:25,080

Yes this this order that was done, you know,

00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:28,760

you're telling us we've got all of these things wrong Um,

00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:30,240

are you sure?

00:57:31,220 --> 00:57:34,480

Cuz like this is gonna be a hell of a lot of work to do if

00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:34,920

you're not,

00:57:34,940 --> 00:57:37,640

you know when did you start doing this auditing thing,

00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:38,760

you know,

00:57:38,820 --> 00:57:43,140

so a lot of the The people who are setting themselves up to

00:57:43,140 --> 00:57:46,480

do audits who don't really know what they're doing are

00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:50,280

actually causing a lot of Trouble because they do the audit

00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:51,540

they get paid for it.

00:57:51,540 --> 00:57:56,280

Not very much because they're not very good But the people

00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:59,960

don't actually fix things You know,

00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:05,800

so it's really important to have credibility and to

00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:09,240

actually be able to talk to people like you understand what

00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:09,880

they're doing.

00:58:10,700 --> 00:58:11,120

You know,

00:58:11,380 --> 00:58:15,520

the amount of times I read audit reports that say your

00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:16,760

color contrast is wrong.

00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:18,580

Don't worry,

00:58:19,020 --> 00:58:22,700

you can fix it by going from this hex value of the color to

00:58:22,700 --> 00:58:23,500

this hex value.

00:58:23,500 --> 00:58:25,960

And I'm like, OK,

00:58:26,140 --> 00:58:29,880

go and take that to the brand part of that organisation and

00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:33,200

see if they buy that and see if they don't just kick you

00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:38,220

out of the building as somebody who's totally naive about

00:58:38,220 --> 00:58:40,500

what branding is and how it matters.

00:58:41,160 --> 00:58:46,200

So you have to kind of understand the world you're living

00:58:46,200 --> 00:58:46,440

in.

00:58:46,740 --> 00:58:50,500

Everybody has some inclusion, you know,

00:58:50,620 --> 00:58:54,920

is loved by our clients because we understand what they do.

00:58:55,760 --> 00:58:58,280

So when we say, look, I'm sorry,

00:58:58,520 --> 00:59:00,000

you had a real problem over here,

00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:02,920

we're able to tell them how long it's going to take it to

00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:04,660

take it, you know, them to fix that.

00:59:04,660 --> 00:59:07,820

And we also know that they are probably going to be

00:59:07,820 --> 00:59:10,740

massively stressed because they were supposed to be

00:59:10,740 --> 00:59:12,180

spending that time on something else.

00:59:12,540 --> 00:59:15,500

And so somebody is making the decision to say we're doing

00:59:15,500 --> 00:59:16,760

this rather than that.

00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:19,640

And potentially that might cost them their job if they get

00:59:19,640 --> 00:59:19,980

it wrong.

00:59:21,340 --> 00:59:24,400

So you have to be a helpful kind of person.

00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:31,400

I think the other thing is that if you really want to get

00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:32,400

stuff sorted out,

00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:35,980

you have to understand if you like how to sell things to

00:59:35,980 --> 00:59:38,160

various different levels of the business,

00:59:38,820 --> 00:59:42,640

because if somebody comes back to you and says, yeah,

00:59:42,700 --> 00:59:45,440

I'd love to fix all of that stuff in that order you did for

00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:45,780

us.

00:59:45,780 --> 00:59:47,640

But actually, we've got no time.

00:59:48,140 --> 00:59:52,800

What they're basically saying is somebody needs to get me

00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:54,140

time for this to happen.

00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:54,900

Yeah.

00:59:55,740 --> 00:59:56,440

And it's not me.

00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:57,880

I don't know how to do that.

00:59:58,000 --> 00:59:59,680

as a little developer or whatever.

01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:02,640

So can you, the accessibility person,

01:00:02,740 --> 01:00:05,600

go and get me the time to do the thing?

01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:06,200

Otherwise,

01:00:06,220 --> 01:00:10,240

all of the money that we spent on that audit report is kind

01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:11,620

of pointless, really.

01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:13,440

Just wasted, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:00:13,820 --> 01:00:15,720

So this is the sort of stuff.

01:00:16,260 --> 01:00:18,280

So, you know, I've been training,

01:00:19,460 --> 01:00:22,720

I haven't done it for a few years, but one of the things,

01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:24,380

we work with lots of different universities,

01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:30,140

City University on their MSc program for Inclusive Design.

01:00:30,500 --> 01:00:32,740

I'm the guy who kind of comes in and says, look,

01:00:32,860 --> 01:00:35,400

you could learn about how to do your testing of things,

01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:38,280

or you could learn about politics in organisation

01:00:38,280 --> 01:00:41,800

s. You know, how to get money, how to get buy-in,

01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:44,280

how to get time, how to understand politics,

01:00:44,660 --> 01:00:46,040

how to understand accountability,

01:00:46,640 --> 01:00:49,400

how to bring together consortiums of people with

01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:52,380

an organisation to actually kind of get this stuff right.

01:00:52,380 --> 01:00:53,060

You know,

01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:56,820

if you don't know what your organisation does to make

01:00:56,820 --> 01:00:57,180

money.

01:00:58,000 --> 01:00:58,300

you know,

01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:02,260

literally to make money on the bottom line to pay people,

01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,360

you won't be able to do accessibility because you won't

01:01:05,360 --> 01:01:09,100

know how to link between the thing that you want to happen

01:01:09,100 --> 01:01:12,040

and the thing the business needs to happen.

01:01:13,940 --> 01:01:16,320

You know, how to access funding,

01:01:16,460 --> 01:01:20,380

how to provide good news stories back to people who are

01:01:20,380 --> 01:01:24,620

actually giving you the time and money to actually make

01:01:24,620 --> 01:01:25,740

accessibility happen.

01:01:25,740 --> 01:01:28,600

You know, if you don't go back to them to say,

01:01:28,900 --> 01:01:33,040

because of you employing me in my job,

01:01:34,180 --> 01:01:35,960

these good things have happened,

01:01:36,460 --> 01:01:39,500

you will probably not have a job next year because they'll

01:01:39,500 --> 01:01:40,400

go, yeah,

01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:42,620

but why are we doing accessibility in the first place,

01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:43,180

you know?

01:01:43,620 --> 01:01:47,680

So everybody needs to be a kind of salesperson for what

01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:48,280

they do.

01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:49,720

So from my perspective,

01:01:50,160 --> 01:01:52,800

the people in accessibility that really matter,

01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:57,240

that have the biggest impact are, for one of a better word,

01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:57,920

the managers.

01:01:58,220 --> 01:02:02,940

They're the people who actually kind of get money and

01:02:02,940 --> 01:02:06,760

budget within the organisation to enable accessibility to

01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:07,120

happen.

01:02:07,420 --> 01:02:10,300

The people doing the technical stuff are completely

01:02:10,300 --> 01:02:11,260

beholden to them.

01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:17,360

If those people who are actually delivering the environment

01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:20,320

where accessibility can happen don't do their jobs,

01:02:20,640 --> 01:02:25,160

then the technical people will just not be recruiters.

01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:28,160

If they are, they won't have the time to do it.

01:02:28,340 --> 01:02:30,220

The number of people that we speak to in organisation

01:02:30,220 --> 01:02:32,400

s that say, oh, yeah,

01:02:32,500 --> 01:02:34,720

I do accessibility off the side of my desk.

01:02:34,860 --> 01:02:35,400

It's not my job.

01:02:36,560 --> 01:02:37,820

And that is the problem.

01:02:39,040 --> 01:02:42,860

If we're in this to actually have the right impact on the

01:02:42,860 --> 01:02:43,240

world,

01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:50,200

we have to be thinking about how to get the investment into

01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:52,360

accessibility in all of the companies.

01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:55,500

That buy-in is the most important thing,

01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:57,980

and it needs to be continued.

01:02:58,000 --> 01:02:59,360

So, therefore,

01:02:59,660 --> 01:03:04,760

you need to keep on reporting back to the person who gave

01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:05,580

you that money.

01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:07,760

This is the great things we've done from it,

01:03:07,860 --> 01:03:10,400

to come back to that stuff about awards.

01:03:10,660 --> 01:03:12,640

That's why I did all of that at the BBC.

01:03:15,180 --> 01:03:19,960

It was my job to make sure that accessibility was

01:03:19,960 --> 01:03:24,060

considered a sensible thing for the BBC to do and something

01:03:24,060 --> 01:03:28,100

for it to do more of that was really important for the

01:03:28,100 --> 01:03:31,940

organisation and that we were doing a great job so,

01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,160

therefore, we could be trusted with more money to do more.

01:03:36,120 --> 01:03:37,740

You know, that, from our perspective,

01:03:37,740 --> 01:03:39,220

is always the key thing.

01:03:39,800 --> 01:03:43,260

But to answer your question about sort of certifications

01:03:43,260 --> 01:03:44,580

and things like that.

01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:47,240

Um,

01:03:47,500 --> 01:03:50,780

so I was there in the room when the I double AP was created,

01:03:50,780 --> 01:03:55,700

um, let's see some, uh, in San Diego about sort of like,

01:03:55,700 --> 01:03:57,800

Oh gosh, 15, so years ago now.

01:03:58,040 --> 01:04:01,540

Um, I love it as an organisation trying to do good things.

01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:02,320

Um,

01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:05,720

I do think their certifications are better than nothing.

01:04:06,140 --> 01:04:06,580

Um,

01:04:06,580 --> 01:04:10,700

but I do think that they have missed what is actually important,

01:04:10,700 --> 01:04:13,980

you know, the, um, uh, you know, cause for me,

01:04:13,980 --> 01:04:16,200

what's important is just what I've been talking about.

01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:21,680

You know, um, and, um, so, uh, you know,

01:04:22,260 --> 01:04:26,660

and really when it comes down to it, um,

01:04:26,900 --> 01:04:29,760

I have met so many people who've got I double AP

01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:35,120

certifications who don't know how businesses work so that

01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,120

they, they're not able to be a good consultant or, or,

01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:39,000

or good colleague.

01:04:39,580 --> 01:04:44,160

Um, but they still don't know enough about how to, uh,

01:04:44,300 --> 01:04:47,240

also get it where, you know, done right in a product,

01:04:47,660 --> 01:04:48,920

you know, there are,

01:04:48,920 --> 01:04:52,220

there are lots of completely different things that you need

01:04:52,220 --> 01:04:56,340

to know if you are different roles and you know,

01:04:56,380 --> 01:04:57,520

the I double AP stuff,