The Digital Accessibility Podcast – David Sloan

In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, Joe is joined by David Sloan, Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi/Vispero, and one of the most respected voices in inclusive design and digital accessibility research.

With decades of experience across academia, consultancy, and industry, David shares his perspective on the evolution of accessibility; from its early roots in user research to its growing importance within business strategy and product design.

We discuss:

• A lifetime in accessibility: David’s journey from academia at the University of Dundee to joining TPGi in the U.S., and what continues to inspire his work in digital inclusion.
• Research and real-world impact: How evidence-based approaches and user research can drive better accessibility outcomes, and why empathy alone simply isn’t enough.
• Accessibility maturity: The practical stages organisations go through on their accessibility journey, and how leadership and accountability shape lasting progress.
• Inclusive design culture: The role of education, mentoring, and community in building accessibility capability across teams and industries.
• The future of accessibility: How emerging technologies like AI and automation could support, or hinder, accessibility, and where the human touch remains vital.

David also reflects on the ongoing need for cross-industry collaboration and openness, highlighting how knowledge-sharing within the accessibility community can create a lasting culture of inclusion.

Follow David Sloan:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sloandr/

Follow Joe James:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/

Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/A11yJoe

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PCRDigital

Visit PCR Digital:

https://www.pcrdigital.com/

Welcome back to the Digital Accessibility Podcast.

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

accessibility, how to implement it within your role

or your company, or to get advice on where to start or

see how others have navigated complex issues that you may

find along the way, then you're in the right place.

I'm honored to be able to share these insightful

chats with thought leaders, advocates, and practitioners

of digital accessibility throughout this podcast,

and I hope you'll find it a useful resource.

As always, thank you so much for listening, and I

hope you enjoy the chat.

Today's guest is someone whose name will be

familiar to many in the accessibility community.

I'm joined by David Sloan, chief Accessibility Officer

at Vispero or TPGI, and experienced accessibility,

inclusive design and UX researcher consultant.

Educator and speaker who's worked on both sides

of the Atlantic since moving to the US in 2023.

David's work has spanned user research with older

and disabled people, evaluating digital products

for accessibility and usability, advising on

pragmatic remediation and helping organizations

design and implement accessibility strategies.

So he brings a wealth of experience in inclusive.

ux, organizational accessibility, maturity,

legislation, standards and technical best practice.

so we're gonna talk about David's journey, the

evolving landscape of accessibility consultancy.

The rise of automation sounds like the rise

of the, the robots.

Job market trends and what's next for teams like our

companies like TPGI and Vispro and the year ahead.

So, welcome to the podcast, David, and but apologies

for such a long intro, but you've just done so much.

Yeah.

25 plus years.

No, thank you, Joe, for having me on.

It's, great to be here and it's just great.

The fact that we have accessibility podcasts and

you know, an audience that wants to listen to people

talk about accessibility.

When I started out, the idea of that happening was just,

I just couldn't imagine it.

So it's, it's great to see how far this whole industry and

advocacy movement has come.

Yeah.

Well, the Honor is all mine, David.

'cause it's, it's just an absolute pleasure

to get to speak to you and to do this as well.

I think, like you say, to have.

The audience and the backing of my, my employer to, to do

something like this is great.

And there's so many out there as well, which is good.

So hopefully it's a, a relevant resource for many.

but thank you for contributing.

Oh, my pleasure.

so we'll start, at the beginning, very

good place to start.

Someone once said, to your journey and entry

into accessibility.

So what originally led you to specialize in accessibility

and inclusive ux?

and then I guess second part of that question is,

is your journey to becoming Chief Accessibility Officer,

which is, an amazing title.

We're starting to see a bit more of.

Yeah, so I guess like a lot of people, I didn't

plan to do this job when I certainly was at high school.

you know, I, I went to university in Glasgow to

study topographic science.

I was fascinated by maps as a kid.

So that was all I wanted to do is like,

get paid to draw maps.

So I, I, I did that.

I got a job with, Big publisher and worked

on a team creating, atlases of the world.

So the, the, at that time, the work was all about

transforming, sort of very traditional, printing, you

know, man, your traditional ways of, of creating maps

into digitized version.

So creating a big geographical information system and then

outputting sheet maps or pages of an atlas or whatever.

So I was, I joined them just as they were in this huge

technical transformation.

So I kind of ended up doing a lot, you know, having to

get more familiar with tech more quickly than I expected.

And this was all sort of mid nineties, so pre Google maps,

and I imagine everything's completely changed now.

Anyway, after a few years I thought, okay, I, I, I need

to get more scaled up in tech.

So I quit that job and went back to university, and.

I decided to go to Dundee University to the School

of Computing there to do a master's, and it turned

out when I got there that the School of Computing

was just this huge research center in accessibility for

older and disabled people.

So most of the professors and lecturers and researchers were

doing something related to accessibility, which is really

unusual rather than just one or two people in the corner.

Most of the, the school were doing accessibility

in some form or the other, you know, whether

it was sort of usability focus or more exploring

alternative and augmentative communication for non-speaking

people, older adults.

There was just so many different topics, and it

meant that the way that they taught accessibility was

kind of spread throughout all the, the teaching curricula.

Whether you were doing a undergrad in computing

or masters, as I did.

It was just there.

and it was not something I'd ever thought about before,

but just the way that the, the, the, the staff there

talked about accessibility, it just really engaged with me.

So instead of doing that class for one year and then

going back into industry.

I ended up staying there for 14 years.

I did a PhD did, but teaching, we set up a little

internal accessibility consultancy, and this was

like back at the beginning of the two thousands.

So WC one had just been published and I thought

everyone knew it and everyone should was following it.

So we, we started doing accessibility audits.

So, and the way we'd write them was kind of.

I dunno.

We were, we were, we, we had very high expectations

that people just knew what they were doing and

had just made mistakes.

So it took us a while to adjust communication.

You know, you don't, you don't help people get better

by kind of yelling at them or sort, you know, just sort

of assuming that they've, they're, they're, they're

incompetent or whatever.

So, you know, we, we, we decided to.

Evolve our, our, our communication style to, to

be more sympathetic to the fact that not a lot of people

knew about accessibility, even though lots of people at

Dundee were talking about it.

So, learned a lot of lessons and, you know, it was, it

was really a great place to build a, a broad awareness

and a big focus on people.

You know, one of the Dundee philosophies was that.

A lot of the research was done with people with disabilities

rather than academics and the ivory tower coming up with

problems and then kind of foisting solutions on users.

There was much more partnerships.

So we built a, as part of the, the, the campus

development, we built this new building, the School

of Computing that had a, a drop-in center for older

adults that that would.

So people who retired would come and learn about

accessibility in a very, or, or learn about tech in a very

kind of friendly environment.

and the researchers would talk to 'em and sort of

build up relationships.

And then the people would, you know, they could just

come and learn how to use PowerPoint or whatever, have

a cup of tea with others.

And there's the opportunity to take part in research

projects or, or, or even help with teaching.

So it was, it was just a really nice way of,

of partnering with, with, with people.

So that's, that kinda spirit has always lived in me.

and it's kind of.

Poignant that we're talking about this.

'cause one of my old bosses, Peter Gregor,

died just the other week.

and you know, it's just, I've been reflecting a lot

on Peter's influence, on my career as an accessibility

professional and, and the whole kind of Dundee,

approach to doing things.

So it's, you know, they were saying and doing

things 25 years ago that are still seen as kind of.

Progressive even today.

So I'm very grateful for having had the chance there.

So, yeah, so yeah, that went, that went for, like

I say, 14 years or so.

During that time we started doing some subcontract

work for TPG as they were called back then.

And when I decided on a career change, I, Called

Mike Palo and Charlie Pike and said, Hey, I'm, I'm

thinking of moving into doing, sort of going, going

independent consultant.

And they said, oh, would you consider working for us?

I went, wow.

Wow.

Yes, absolutely.

So, so, yeah, that, that was when that kind of chapter

turned our, or turned to a new chapter and, started

as a, a consultant.

So amazing.

Yeah.

And strength to strength.

And very Sorry, just to touch on that, very sorry to hear

about the loss of your, your former colleague and, and

inspiration I suppose as well.

Yeah, yeah.

But someone that's gonna be living on through the way that

you do things, and a lot of people are doing things in

the accessibility world, so it's absolutely and and beyond

because a lot of graduates from done these undergrad

and postgrad programs.

We'd go into other, you know, be software

engineers, developers, product managers, but they

had that accessibility.

Training throughout, throughout

everything they did.

So they were kind of almost gorilla accessibility

specialists, even though they were, yeah.

So they often ended up starting up accessibility

programs, even though they'd been hired to do

different jobs just because it was something they

knew about and they knew needed to be considered

right from the start.

So yeah, it's quite a legacy.

Amazing.

And that's, it is something that's always a struggle point

in the recruitment or sourcing of people with those skills,

because a lot of times.

It is a side of desk thing.

It's something that people pick up additionally to

what they're doing, whether that's in a technical role

or more strategic type role.

even, you know, more so in design or design

systems and things as well.

So it's one of those where.

It's, it's probably because of the lack of modules

and university in those courses that speak about,

inclusion and accessibility.

I think that's starting to change a bit more, but it's

nice to hear that it was already happening so much

at Dundee and a shame that it didn't sort of catch on

across the whole of the UK or global, you know, globally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's funny, there was a. A, a, a blog post just a couple

of weeks ago by somebody from opia, Australian

Digital Accessibility, consultancy who, who are

doing some fantastic work.

And, you know, I was talking about, you know, this is one

of their, their newer hires who had finished a degree

in, in it and they didn't.

Learn about accessibility at all.

And it was, it, it was a chance for me to kind

of reflect on the Dundee approach and, you know, we,

we didn't, we, we certainly talked about it a lot and

we'd, we'd present, here's ways, ways to educate

people in accessibility.

Spread it throughout the curricul but it does require a

lot of teaching staff to know enough about accessibility and

how it applies to their topic.

For, for that to be successful, you could have

a couple of passionate, knowledgeable, instructors

and accessibility.

But if it's only them and their, their colleagues

or, you know, I teach software engineering.

I've got nothing to do with accessibility.

I dunno about that.

I think you do.

But, but you, it's making that persuasion and, having people

with other top, you know, that teach other subjects.

Sort of follow those principles of accessibilities

when they're presenting examples of, of things

to you during teaching or assignments or marking.

You know, when, when students submit assignments, and it's

for a completely different topic, but if that, if, if

they're not getting marked down because they've built a

coded inaccessible application to, for a completely

different module than.

That becomes a problem because the, the accessibility

advice taught in one course isn't reinforced elsewhere.

So I think that kind of trying to spread that

knowledge around is still, has still been a challenge.

We've got, we've got some passionate specialists,

but it's, it's getting that across everyone who teaches.

And that's, yeah, that's still a challenge.

Hugely.

And I think it's one of those where, like you

said, quite poignantly there as well, that.

Some people might not realize how much they

already do know, or how much they're already doing that

is helping with inclusive tech or accessibility.

but it's that awareness.

I guess That's why we have platforms like this

as well to, to raise that awareness and.

Yeah, you might not realize some, some, some of the

small incremental things that you do day to day are

helping so many people Yeah.

Celebrate those wins.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

great.

Well, something, a bit of a step change, I suppose

for the next question.

It's, something that's in huge conversation recently.

I did watch an episode of, of Your Own, Podcast

recently where you're talking about AI and,

automation and AI is rife.

I think we're seeing an awful lot of it,

around accessibility testing and auditing

as well, in particular.

it feels that there's a lot of popups.

I think since the EAA announcement as well,

there's a lot of people that are being able to sort

of, capitalize on that.

New found awareness or, or raising that awareness and,

oh, we can fix this, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I, I don't wanna say that there's lots of snake oil out

there, 'cause that's not the intention, I hope, but it is,

you know, it's the presumption that it can be fixed very

easily with, with an AI or a chat bot or something.

So, I wanted to know from your perspective,

are we at risk of using.

Tools like that, or automation or AI prematurely.

And by doing so, blocking the real progress in

accessibility, because as you've said there, even

from the inception of your sort of career and, and, and

time in this space, it was about the people, the lived

experience as well being around that and creating

that confidence from real user interaction research.

Mm-hmm.

And the lived experience.

Yeah, it's a, it's a complex topic with a lot of answers

and I could probably speak for half an hour just

answering this one question, so I'll try and kind of

break down the, the answer into different topics.

I think one thing to start off with is accessibility.

Professionals love automation.

When it helps us do our work faster and more

effectively, cuts down in errors, it, it can be.

Something that, that, that makes results more consistent

across different teams.

So automation in general is something that, you know,

a lot of people really embrace and that, you

know, I think of my former coworker, Ian Lloyd Loy and

his accessibility tools.

Resource.

You know, he's always finding ways to write scripts, to, to

automate some aspect of, of, of the auditing process, even

if it's kind of organizing screenshots into, sort of a

standard naming convention so that they're easy to find and

easy to pull into a report.

You know, little things like that.

So the idea that some people have kind of put

forward is that there's this kind of conflict between

accessibility professionals who want to preserve this.

Craft this manual craft versus tools that can do things

quicker and to, to scale.

You know, I think there's, there's a kind of false,

a false conflict that's been created there.

you know, we all want to see.

Tools that can automate the process of making

accessibility easier and faster and more efficient.

It's when tools over promise or create more work than we

had before that that, that there becomes a big problem.

And, and yeah, I think that there is a concern

that if automation, whether it's, you know.

AI per testing or, or chat bots that kind of

give you advice on how to code an app a, a

component, appropriately.

This idea that, and, and teams won't need to know

anything about accessibility to build applications.

Is that a good thing?

I'm not sure it is.

I really don't know that that's a good thing.

It feels a kind of ableist view of.

What the role of technology in society, you don't

have to know about the diversity of the humans

that you're building for.

That's a, that's a challenging message.

I mean, I get that the, the, the scaling, you

know, there's so many, especially from a

remediation perspective.

There's so much content out there that has

accessibility issues.

But again, we're kind of thinking about, you know, what

do we, what does it mean to be acessible or inaccessible?

Is it, can people use stuff or does it.

Pass a bunch of automated tests and there's, there's

definitely difference there.

So, you know, even the way that, that, that, that surveys

are reported, like the web aim survey, you know, they, they

don't see it themselves, but others will, will say it, that

96% of the web is inaccessible to disabled people.

You know, that's, that it, it's kind of.

Taking some data and presenting it in, in a, in

a, in a way that means that we have a bigger problem

than maybe we actually have, or the problem looks

different to what we have.

So the, the answer of automation then sounds

more compelling than it, than it might be.

So, so yeah, I think we, I definitely see,

you know, any tool that can make my job faster

and, and more efficient.

Bring it on.

I'm, I'm all for it.

and, you know, if that's AI part, then, then great.

You know, we'll, we'll put the, the financial

and, environmental concerns of AI to one site.

You know, that regardless of how you're using ai, those

are always gonna be issues.

But when it comes to addressing accessibility,

as long as the tool doesn't perpetuate the biases

that already exist, that accessibility professionals

are in a job to, to address.

Then we're good.

But if it's kind of perpetuating that, or if,

and it's a real concern here, that there's more work for

accessibility professionals to test and remediate AI slop.

Then have we actually moved forward?

so that's, that's the big question for me.

And for a consultancy like ours, it's interesting to

see whether, you know, we're gonna, our, the nature of

our work will change as we are auditing and, more

content and code that's been generated largely

through, through AI tools.

So, so yeah, I feel like we're in a, it's a bit of

a tsunami, like the wave is coming towards us and we're,

you know, we're bracing ourselves for what it means.

Yeah, definitely.

And we had a very quick brief chat just before

the episode about the ARC toolkit, and I guess that

is there, there's an element of, I think you, you, you

mentioned that being, a TPG.

browser extension, wasn't it?

The, the, it's like assisted testing or assisted auditing.

Yeah.

So you kind of learn as you're doing, rather than

it doing everything for you.

It still requires someone to sort of go through and

understand what it is, and it, it gives you sort

of that advice, I think that type of automation

where it's, it's also then instilling more knowledge

in, into professionals or into people that are

maybe not quite there yet.

Mm-hmm.

It's got such potential, isn't it, to, to

increase that and, and.

It's like becoming a moderator rather than an auditor.

I suppose you are moderating what's being spat out and

making sure that it's correct and not completely biased.

Yeah, I've always felt that anything that gets you gets

you started and gets you a long way down the road is

better than something that doesn't help you at all.

And I think of, Automated captioning.

And, you know, the, the way that we've got, we've, we've

certainly come a long way there and one of the biggest.

Leaps for me is that the process of generating text

and, and having timestamps that synchronize it with,

when, when those words were spoken, that's automated.

That's great.

You don't have to do that manually.

There was back in the day where you'd have

to type the text and.

And then press, press generate a timestamp and it was all

manual before you in order to create the caption file.

Now you don't have to do that.

Your job is to edit away mistakes, and, and,

and things, and that's.

It, it seems like, a lot of people prefer editing

something that exists to improve it than start, than

creating it from scratch.

So the more we can head that direction, the better.

And like you say, the, the guided accessibility testing

an automated tool that leaves you with, here's some things

you need to do, as long as it doesn't kind of say.

You pass, all the automated checks are passed.

Here's some manual checks, and it's kind of, oh, well, I

don't need to worry about them because the tool's passed.

If, if the tool can sort of say you haven't finished the

work yet, you've half of it's done, but the other half the

manual checks, you have to verify that you've done them,

then, you know, it's, there's a little bit of gamification.

There.

Doesn't, doesn't anything that doesn't make it

seem like the job's done when the, the automated.

Rules are all passed.

Yeah.

You've still got some more work to do and I dunno

if there's any more sort of, I, I know that more

rudimental or rudimentary, sorry, versions of those

types of tools were spitting out quite a lot of false.

Positives on, contra contravening the, the

macca success criterion.

But I think that's improving as tech is getting better,

and that's always good.

But like you say, it's the content of what

it's spitting out.

So it's not just, I mean, I've had it, and my, my wife

was telling me that she had a, a former colleague that

she would write up contracts, she works in hr, she, she

would write up a contract, she'd send it to someone to

review, and they would go, they'd send it back and say.

There's a mistake.

It's a 42 page contract, not told her what it is.

And she's has to scroll through all of that to refine

that mistake rather than just hit a back space where

there was one too many.

and just say, that's fine.

It's like, it, it, it needs to be helpful, doesn't it?

It, it can't just be like, this is black and white.

This is right and wrong.

It's so much more complex than that.

So it's, yeah.

People much more smart than me, probably more

on your level would be able to figure that out.

Yeah.

I think that the point of false, minimizing false

positives is important given that accessibility still has

this reputation of being this costly mixing stuff near the,

just before product launch.

I mean, we, we've been trying for years to promote

this shift left, strategy where we distribute

accessibility throughout the.

Product development lifecycle, but we still,

there's still this reputation that it's a, it's an

exercise in remediation.

It costs money, it slows things down.

so false positives just add to that.

If you're, you're telling me to fix this thing,

but it doesn't actually, it isn't actually an

accessibility issue.

You know, that's, that's not good for advocating

accessibility internally.

So, so anything that can, can minimize that for sure.

But, yeah, at the same time.

False negatives are, are also a problem.

You know, if you're, if it's not telling you stuff that

you should be knowing about, then that's a problem too.

Definitely.

Absolutely.

I mean, so that, but kind of the automation

then brings me on quite, nicely to the next part.

And obviously it's very, um.

Relevant to, to my role in, in sourcing people

and, and jobs for people.

the job market pressures and hearing a lot about loan

accessibility specialists.

And I guess a nice thing, that we've discovered from,

from your background was that you seems to have had

people around you from the start that are passionate

about this, that know about this space and it's probably

assisted you in your.

Journey, I hope, that you've had people there and it's

such a giving community.

'cause as much as there's obviously competition between

consultancies, between individual teams and companies

within tech, you don't see as much sharing as you do

in the accessibility space.

but still with that.

it can be quite lonely.

There's, there's the, the loan accessibility specialist

problem where mm-hmm.

A global company may have one person and they've got the

job of five people and they don't, because there's not

the awareness of how much that takes to get things going

both on the design, on the.

Development or implementation of, of

new, sort of technologies.

then the remediation and testing, the strategy in

general, the advocacy, the evangelism, you know,

it, the list goes on.

And, and that's on one job spec most times.

So, we're also seeing a lot of companies that have built

wonderful teams and then.

You can't avoid it.

It happens to every sort of team, but it's, it

feels more personal when, when people are let go in.

In the accessibility space, probably 'cause

I'm so close to it.

but what would be your take on that dynamic and

how can organizations move away from that one

person accessibility team?

And build something that's a bit more sustainable in

terms like, 'cause I know that we talk a a lot about

champions and, and networks of people within companies,

but I dunno how much that's supporting if it is just the

one person that's responsible.

Yeah, it's, it's a really good question.

And you know, I guess when I, you know, one

thing to note is just my privilege of having had the

opportunity to work in an accessibility consultancy for.

But, you know, 13 years or so now, and working in an

accessibility consultancy, the one thing that you, you

know, is that the work that you're doing for clients,

they've asked you for it, they're paying you to do it.

So there is an aspect of we want you to do this for us,

and then when you deliver the work and the client.

You may, may, you may, ideally you'll hear from him again.

but you might not, but then you'll be moving

on to other work.

So there's slightly less of a kind of personal stake

in, in, whether your work has a positive impact.

I mean, obviously we want it to be, but it's a, it's

a little bit different.

So my, you know, I, I, I think that.

It is one good thing about consultancy, that, that we

get to do that, that, but at the same time, it's a

challenge that you don't have that kind of, you don't see

things through, you're kind of moving on to another project.

You don't know if the team remediated the audit.

Did they really, was that remediation advice useful

or, or was that strategic guidance we provided helpful?

So, you know, ideal, you know, when we have

long-term relationships that we, we get to know

that, but otherwise not.

but I think, you know, I've, I've been thinking a lot

about the, the, the whole.

Challenge of, the, the sort of single

accessibility specialist.

And it's always been there where somebody has a lot

of responsibility and it's maybe in part they've

taken it on because they've been interested in, but

they have no authority to make decisions or to get

other people to do things.

and then it, it becomes.

It's almost like it's up to the, the individual to

figure out what success looks like for them.

and you know, one thing that I've learned a lot over my

career is, you know, my, if I can judge my success as being

committed to other people's success, if I can help other

people be successful, then I've been successful too.

So if somebody that I'm trying to persuade

to do something, um.

And they're, I'm having difficulty.

Well, what, what does success look like to them?

How can I help make sure that accessibility efforts

support that, figure out that, and then when they are

successful, then I, I will, I will sort of bask in that.

So it's a, it's a sort of subtle mindset, figuring out

how you, you lift others.

and I know that that can be challenging when you

feel like you're a single.

Team member and, and you, you have very little influence.

but just, you know, looking at adjusting what, what success

looks like for you, so that you don't have this kind of

huge passion that you've gotta fix everything and

then it doesn't happen.

And then, you know, you, you feel like you've

failed and you, you dunno where to go next.

So I think.

Sort of just looking at what, what, what success

looks like for you as an accessibility professional.

What changes are realistic to make?

What baby steps can you encourage your organization

to take and, and, and celebrate those changes?

You know, we all, we all know, and sometimes we're

our own worst enemies in terms of, we know how far

we could go and, It's just like the audit reports

that that's 150 pages long.

Here are all the fixes you need to make.

And people are like, I don't know what to do, so I'm just

gonna put it on the side and carry on with other things.

We, we can, we can be, so focused on trying to get

as close to perfection or completeness as possible,

that we stop people making any progress at all.

And there's, you know, there's a reason we don't want to have

people experience barriers.

We want teams to.

Remove all accessibility barriers and make everyone,

use, be able to use the product regardless

of, of disability.

But, but yeah, sometimes it's like picking your battles

and picking, identifying what your successes are and, and

really celebrating them and don't beat yourself up if,

if, if something didn't go as far as as you wanted it to.

Yeah, I think it's the, something that's becoming

a bit of an age old, age old adage, which is the

progress over perfection.

As long as we are taking some steps forward,

then it's, it's progress and it's really, it is.

I think that one of the.

The main frustrations that underlies everything

for accessibility is that the web was built to

create more ease, right?

It was meant to be this tool to help everyone

have access to things.

Mm-hmm.

And links and new documents and things like that.

So it's like, how do, how has it come this far?

But I guess because there's been so much

progress, in other ways.

It's just created those barriers naturally, or is

it because the design is for the people that were

creating or designing?

products and services weren't from the start, weren't really

start thinking about everyone.

Yeah.

It's, it, it, it's interesting my wave give a talk at the

Weam conference last month.

She looked back at Tim Burner's, Lee's early

proposal for the web.

and he talked about how it was a sort of a way where data

could be shared regardless of its format and that you

could write data, you know, so it was a, it was a read

and write rev wet web.

Hi.

His idea.

and, and it was kind of regardless of how

you accessed, what kind of computer you used.

You, you could share information, you could

write it, and someone else could read it.

and, and, and he was trying to address a technical

problem, which then naturally extended to, to people that,

that people have different needs and capabilities.

so accessibility was something that was talked about back in

the early day, but then, you know, it's, I guess, is that.

The web was just this huge space of innovation, pretty

unregulated, compared to the, the physical world.

So people were doing all sorts of things and this,

you know, figuring out how to make money from it.

So you, it, it's, it's great opportunity as this place

where you could innovate and do what you wanted.

And if you, if your idea.

Other people kind of took on board, then you'd do well.

Mm-hmm.

There weren't so many constraints and, and so we

were building this digital environment that really

compared to the physical environment and building

codes and, and and, and all that kind of stuff,

where it's much more.

Slightly controlled as to what you can build, especially if

it's some a, a public space, a, a place where other people

can, can spend time in.

that kind of freedom to innovate in the tech world was

also something that created a new, new products, new

ways of building things that didn't really think about,

you know, people other than those that were inventing

those, those new ways of doing things and, yeah.

And that's the, yeah, I guess it's that

oversight, I suppose.

And it's just something that happens

everywhere, doesn't it?

But it's, yeah, it's nice that there's a, a dedicated

part of the world that is, you know, trying to put

that right, which is great.

And then, I guess.

taking us onto the next, sort of topic which was elevating

organizational maturity.

And I suppose you were touching on this

earlier, and I probably shouldn't have added that

extra question, sorry.

where you said as an accessibility consultancy,

there's, there's almost limited at times dependent

on, on client relationship and how long that's, that's

sort of, continuing, but um.

Limited ability for them to really utilize you as a, as

a, an external team that's continuing with that support.

You know, you're delivering what you've

been asked to deliver and then it's up to them.

But is there an element of, of injecting that organizational

maturity from a consultancy side, from the outside in?

Yeah.

We are always thinking of, of, of ways that we

can do that effectively.

You know, like a lot of accessibility consultancies,

often our first relationship with a, a customer is they

discovered accessibility.

Maybe they got sued or maybe a, a customer of theirs.

They're building a, a, an application that they want

to sell to a third party.

And the third party said, is it accessible now?

we don't know.

so.

People come to us and ask for an audit.

Tell us, tell us where, how we're doing right now

and what we need to fix.

And sometimes it's a very sort of pragmatic, we realize

that we've got, we've probably got a lot of work to do.

We just need to know how much, and in other cases,

it's you know, test our site and then just verify

that it's accessible.

And, you know, it's a little bit more, well, I'm not sure

it's gonna be as accessible as maybe you think it is.

So, so yeah, that, that, that relationship starts, tell

people where they are just now and what, where they,

what needs to happen to get them to where they want to be.

which is kind of the question of org of, of organizational

accessibility, maturity.

You know, we start specifically with

a product and.

Then, you know, an audit will tell them

what's wrong with it.

But the audit also generates data that helps you figure

out why did that, why did that issue crop up?

Is that in a component that you reuse in other

products that you build?

Is that because you, engage the media producer that.

It doesn't give you captions.

So you're, you're failing all those scs

around accessible media.

So it, the audit is always an opportunity to start looking

at processes and figuring out why, where did that, where did

that error, issue come in?

and, and, and why?

And, and how could we, how could we solve that?

So having that conversation can start to help, or

not everybody's ready for that conversation, but.

Organizations that are, can start thinking

about, okay, next step.

We don't want to pay for another audit and the time

to fix the issues and the resulting, opportunity cost

of, you know, doing, doing the remediation work instead

of doing something else.

let's figure out how we, how we improve our maturity.

and, and, and yeah, it, there's definitely a. A good

structured conversation to be had to figure out how

do we, how do we at least stop this particular set

of accessibility issues occurring in the future?

And it might be engage with a different vendor,

or it might be, you know, there might be some other,

strategic adjustments.

So I think that when we, anyone who delivers an audit.

To a third party has an opportunity to talk to

'em about what the audit tells them about their

processes and, and, and practices and what, what

adjustments could be made.

And I love, you know, the fact that the W three C'S

accessibility maturity model is kind of pretty much

ready as a, a formal note.

I think it's a, a, a wonderful resource for all of us, which

might seem like a little bit abstract away from.

Accessibility, the accessible websites and apps, but they're

the top of the pyramid.

And if all you care about is like the top of that,

that tower and the base, the broad base of the

organization that's building those apps is built on weak

foundations than sustaining that accessibility is gonna

be much, much more difficult.

So maturity models help you think about all the different

parts of an organization.

Including how many employees with disabilities do you

have and what opportunity?

Do they have for progressing through the organization?

And how do you grow the proportion of people

with disabilities?

The more that the more people with disabilities

in an organization, the more accessibility is vis

visible, and the more lived experience you have to

contribute to new ideas and better ways of doing things.

So all of that helps.

Build that platform.

and the audit's a great way to start this conversation.

So that's something that we think a lot about.

And, you know, I, I think that accessibility maturity

is a really exciting tool to help everyone figure out

where they could go and, and, and embed accessibility

and to everything they do.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's really interesting as well.

'cause obviously I speak to people that work

in any variety of ways within accessibility and

especially on the audit side and something that,

when you were talking about particular components maybe

being a problem and then that will have a snowball

effect, I suppose, if they're using that elsewhere

within their products and services or sites, or apps.

And then I just thought sometimes an audit.

If that's all someone wants, it's kind of just like

scratching the surface.

It's just kind of like, well, how deep do you

want us to dig because you may need to start over.

Mm-hmm.

and I guess that's the thing.

It's like some people don't wanna rip that bandaid

off and go, well, we need to actually face that we.

Problems here and it's that burying the head in the sand.

And is that a huge problem still, or do you think that

with more regulation companies are realizing, well there's no

time like the present because it's only gonna get worse the

more we are using certain, methodologies to Yeah.

I suspect it's probably at those companies that.

Will realize they need to change, you know, whether

it's accessibility or some other maturity evolution,

they know they're gonna have to do the work.

So there's a, there'll be a tipping point that says,

we, well, let's start now.

And then there's ones that are always going to be just

putting, sticking plasters on, on, on processes.

And then when that plaster rips, let's

put another one on.

And, and it's just this constant sort of.

Just doing enough to, to, to, to stay above

a, a bare minimum.

I think that the European Accessibility Act might have

some influence in the, the way that it puts responsibilities

on service providers and product manufacturers to

document efforts to build and maintain accessibility,

you know, start.

Whereas in the past, we've.

Kind of legislation and standards are sort of

limited to, well, how accessible is the thing.

Now we're looking at process and practice and evidence

of measuring whether the product's usable by

people with disabilities.

that's, that's something that, at least for some

organizations who see that as an opportunity to improve

how they build things and maintain things over time.

That kind of documentation and that user involvement.

You know, there's, there's definitely an opportunity

there that, you know, if, if, if, if your motivator is to

be able to continue to sell products and provide services

to the eu, you know, maybe that's the, that's the thing

that we need, that, that can, in new legislation,

even in the US companies over here that are operating

in the European Union are realizing that this is not.

Just another WCA compliance kind of thing.

It's, it's, it's more than that.

Yeah.

It's a lot bigger, isn't it?

Um.

But yeah, I, I guess I, I've, I've asked more

questions than I should have, so apologies for that.

But, one final thing that, I did wanna ask you was, TP G's

focus and industry direction, I guess sper as well.

so looking ahead for the next 12 months, are there any

specific areas that, that you'll be focusing on most?

any trends or technologies or industry shifts that.

Are gonna shift the way or shape the way consultancies

are gonna continue to support organizations?

Yeah.

good question again, like thinking sort of broadly.

So just that 1 0 1 TPG is the accessibility services arm

of ro, which also provides assistive technology, software

and hardware like Jaws and Fusion and Zoom text.

So, you know, broadly speaking, you know, we've got.

Sort angles of, well, how can we make our, our assistive

technology products better in today's technology?

And obviously, again, going back to ai, how do we use

AI to make our assistive technology more powerful,

more, more flexible?

so there's a lot of work there.

And, and that will continue.

And then, from the accessibility consultancy side

of things, yeah, there are.

Again, we talked earlier about what impact will

AI code generation tools, you know, the no code

vibe, coding, tools.

What impact will that have on our business in

terms of the amount of the amount of inaccessible.

Content out there are the type of accessibility

barriers that are, that are there and how easy it is

for them to discover them and provide remediation.

You know, that's, there are some concerns there

about how a, an AI tool sort of responds to prompts

to building, accessible.

It just kind of chucks every area attribute it

can think of, into, into the code that that'll do,

that looks accessible.

so yeah, there might be.

We're certainly very aware of, of what that means,

for, for our, our auditing.

And then obviously from a maturity and strategy

perspective, how, how can organizations make best use

of, of AI tools to avoid, you know, to help them in

their accessibility efforts rather than make things worse.

So, so that's, a thing, in the us the.

Title two of the Americans with Disabilities Act,

the rule on web Content and mobile accessibility.

The first deadline for that for public entities at state

and local government level.

That that will come into play next April in 2026.

And then for the other covered organizations set

a year later, there's also a, a related requirement

for healthcare providers.

They're publicly funded.

He healthcare, program providers.

So there are, there are legal demands for at least WCAG

2.1 level AA conformance.

That's that, that means a lot of, a lot of public

organizations are asking for accessibility support.

And then vendors that, people who provide tools and

technologies that are used by those, public entities are

also thinking, Hey, you know, this is a market opportunity

or a concern if we don't.

Convince our customers or reassure our customers that,

that we'll help them meet their legal obligations.

And that's a challenge.

So, you know, just keeping, keeping monitoring those legal

trends, obviously, you know, keeping an eye in the, the

political situation in, in, in the, in the US to, you know,

as, as, as federal enforcement might sort of relax the,

the, the increase of, um.

Private lawsuits in increases.

So it's not like there's no enforcement, it

just comes from private lawsuits instead of um.

Department of Justice or, or, or other federal agencies.

So, you know, somebody who's spent most of my life

in Scotland moving over to the US kind of learning

about the political nuances and what changes, what

won't change has, has, has been interesting for me.

So, yeah.

So yeah, there's, there's definitely a lot going

on and, you know, like, aside, this kind of broader

question of will AI change how we interact with content?

And services and will the browser go away and we'll

just be using chatbots to book our holidays and,

and, and, and do whatever.

You know, that's that, that also has broader questions

for what is, what is accessibility consultancy

and support look like?

So there's so much to pay attention to and sometimes

it's hard to figure out where to prioritize efforts.

I think it's.

Tech's always been very quick to change.

It's always been hard to keep up, I think, for developers

of any specific framework of any programming language.

Is it hot?

Is it not?

You know, and it's, it's just exponentially increasing.

I think that gap is, is widening and it's

hard to stay abreast of everything, I suppose.

So yeah, having that move to.

To the land of, the us where you've got all of

the additional learning to do on the, the, the

legislation side of things as well, I think is, is huge.

Mm-hmm.

I know that you've obviously been involved with US

based companies mm-hmm.

And, and supporting them in the past anyway.

But yeah, to be there and to be living it as well, on that

side of the pond, I'm sure it's a huge, huge undertaking.

So yeah.

I wish you all the best of luck and hopefully.

Doesn't change too much in 12 months.

But yeah, never say never.

Yeah.

No, there's a lot of holding things loosely, and you make

a really good point that, you know, when you work in

tech, you used to change and you're used to hype and

the next big thing and how it will irrevocably change

what, what's gone before.

And yeah, some things change and then some

things never real, never materialize the way they are.

So, you know, that kind of hype.

Bursting and then what?

What happens next?

We are, we are used to it, and there will always

be work for people who know about accessibility

and who care about.

Building tech that can be usable by people

regardless of of disability.

So, I'm definitely hopeful that I'm confident that

there's, there's lots of work still to do.

I guess an advice point on that for

anyone listening, is.

It is, I guess, always focusing on the

fundamentals, isn't it?

Because you can have all sorts of layers on top.

It could look any kind of way, it could be built in

any sort of way, but it's the fundamental underlying,

I guess that's what the guidelines are for as well,

is to sort of just give you an idea of if you're

focusing on this, regardless of how you've built it,

that's gonna give you, you know, a usable product.

Yep, yep.

Understanding the different.

User needs, the people with disabilities have.

and, you know, regardless of what the tech is that, that

somebody's interacting with or for what purpose or how

it's built, that can occur.

How, how does, how does somebody with a disability

interact with tech?

What assistive technology do they have available that you

don't have to worry about, or at least you don't, you

don't have to replicate?

Um.

Why, you know, what are the constraints that

you're working under?

There are certain foundational concepts that

will always hold true.

And, and, and learning those first, or even if you started

by, you know, building accessible React applications,

then go back and find out why you're doing that so

that you can then transfer your accessibility knowledge

to, to somewhere else.

and, and that makes you more flexible.

And again, back to.

To the point I made earlier, more able to help

others be successful that you're working with and.

That's, that's, that's I think what we all want to do.

So, yeah, absolutely.

I just felt it was getting a little bit scary there

with like, oh, this change and it's never gonna be

the same, but actually it's the fundamentals.

We'll just try and I don't want to scare anyone.

No.

Awesome.

so great.

So thank you so much David.

and I guess just before we wrap up, is there

anything sort of that you are personally.

Excited about in the accessibility world or

new projects or any talks or events or anything

coming up, that you'd like to discuss or share?

Yeah, it's a, a good question and there's

a lot that excites me.

I think probably the, the biggest thing that excites

me is just how many people work in our field now.

You know, there was a time like 10, 15 years ago where

it's almost felt like you could name everyone in

accessibility, which was.

Nice because it was a community that, that, that

this was very supportive and, and, and helped each other.

but now the fact that there are people writing and

talking and seeing really good things and discovering

stuff and challenging assumptions, And I've

never heard of them before.

And that's great.

I think, I think it's terrific.

So there, the fact that we are, we have some, we still

have some well-known names, but there's so many people

just doing good work, just quietly getting on, doing

their best to make progress.

I think that's, I think it's fantastic and I, you

know, I just pay tribute to everyone who's just working

in accessibility and trying to make positive progress.

Thank you for, for, for all that you do and I'm

sure that Thanks will come straight back to you as well.

David, you've had such huge commitment.

To the space.

You've done so many incredible things over the years, so

thank you so much though.

Not just for that, but for sharing your insights

today and spending your time with me.

And, I guess I'll let you get back to your day

'cause it's, it's not, it's just a start for you.

So apologies, you gonna have to have the rest

of your working day now.

Yep.

Well maybe start, start with some lunch.

But thank you Joe and thank you for.

Organizing the podcast.

That's a, you know, these kind of conversations

just give accessibility, a level of humanity, and

we're just, we're just regular people just talking

about trying to do stuff.

So thank you for inviting me on.

It's been great fun.

Absolutely been a pleasure.

Thank you so much, David.