Artwork for podcast Digital Accessibility
To Ensure That Accessibility Is Not Forgotton and Is Incorporated as Early as Possible
Episode 114th August 2022 • Digital Accessibility • Joe Welinske
00:00:00 00:29:39

Share Episode

Shownotes

Mary Jo Mueller, IBM, Worldwide Accessibility Standards Program Manager

Mary Jo talks about her long career with accessibility at IBM. She talks about the challenges in supporting digital accessibility in a large, global organization. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

Transcripts

Speaker:

(dramatic upbeat music)

Speaker:

- Hello, this is "Digital Accessibility:

Speaker:

"The People Behind the Progress."

Speaker:

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

Speaker:

and as an accessibility professional myself,

Speaker:

I find it very interesting as to how others

Speaker:

have found their way into this profession.

Speaker:

So let's meet one of those people right now

Speaker:

and hear about their journey.

Speaker:

All right, well, let's get started with another episode

Speaker:

where I get the opportunity to talk

Speaker:

with an accessibility practitioner.

Speaker:

And today I am talking with Mary Jo Mueller.

Speaker:

How are you today, Mary Jo?

Speaker:

- I'm really well, thank you.

Speaker:

- Well, I'm at my home office on Vashon Island,

Speaker:

which is near Seattle, which is where

Speaker:

Blink's headquarters office is.

Speaker:

Where are you talking to us from?

Speaker:

- I'm on the opposite end of the country from you.

Speaker:

I'm in Satellite Beach, Florida over near NASA.

Speaker:

- All right, well, yeah, NASA's one of our clients,

Speaker:

so I have the opportunity to

Speaker:

work with them quite a bit,

Speaker:

but it's great to have you as part of

Speaker:

this program and looking forward to hearing about

Speaker:

your work with accessibility,

Speaker:

but always a good place to start is

Speaker:

if you could just describe what things

Speaker:

you're currently involved with.

Speaker:

- Well, currently I work for,

Speaker:

actually my entire career, I've been at IBM.

Speaker:

I am the Accessibility Standards Program Manager

Speaker:

and kind of what that means is

Speaker:

I lead the worldwide team working on

Speaker:

accessibility standards,

Speaker:

and I also work on accessibility policy around the world

Speaker:

so just kind of coordinating those efforts

Speaker:

and making sure that

Speaker:

we have an influence over standards in policy worldwide.

Speaker:

- And so, you mentioned worldwide, so,

Speaker:

so your position is one where you're communicating

Speaker:

with all the different

Speaker:

parts of IBM, different departments, divisions, and so on?

Speaker:

- Yeah, we communicate with different,

Speaker:

yeah, IBM's a global company (laughs),

Speaker:

so the group that I'm in is the accessibility team,

Speaker:

IBM Accessibility,

Speaker:

and we do provide all the guidance.

Speaker:

We basically distill all of the standards information

Speaker:

and the policy information and distill it into guidance

Speaker:

that we give to IBM developers,

Speaker:

management, everybody around the world,

Speaker:

on how to make IBM products accessible,

Speaker:

how to report that they're accessible and so on.

Speaker:

- Well, I want to, you know, get in a little bit more detail

Speaker:

about your work, but we also like to find out, you know,

Speaker:

kind of what the journey was

Speaker:

for people as they found their way into accessibility, so

Speaker:

maybe if you could think back, what were some of

Speaker:

the earliest things that you found that either prepared you

Speaker:

for accessibility or where you became aware of it?

Speaker:

- Well, my journey into accessibility was actually

Speaker:

rather serendipitous.

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

had my first child and went on a leave of absence

Speaker:

for a year, and then when I came back, my manager had moved.

Speaker:

I used to be working in, like, communications subsystems.

Speaker:

I worked on AS/400 and,

Speaker:

you know, I'm electrical engineer by education, so

Speaker:

I was working in a completely different area,

Speaker:

but when I came back

Speaker:

to IBM working full time,

Speaker:

my manager had moved to the accessibility team.

Speaker:

And so I was plunged into this accessibility team.

Speaker:

I had awareness of disabilities

Speaker:

and people with disabilities,

Speaker:

'cause my dad had had a stroke when I was in high school,

Speaker:

and he was left disabled and unable to work.

Speaker:

And so I had an awareness and a background and, you know,

Speaker:

feelings about that.

Speaker:

And so when I wound (laughs) up in this team,

Speaker:

it was like, aha, you could actually do technology work

Speaker:

for people with disabilities.

Speaker:

I was like, wow, this is awesome, and so,

Speaker:

I worked initially on products for,

Speaker:

SpeechViewer, which was a product

Speaker:

for speech therapists to help

Speaker:

their patients learn how to pronounce phonemes more clearly

Speaker:

and be understood better when they're speaking,

Speaker:

and so that was my first plunge into that.

Speaker:

So there was a lot of learning to do and,

Speaker:

but I was kind of excited to do it because I felt like

Speaker:

it was making a difference.

Speaker:

- [Joe] Well, it sounds like, though,

Speaker:

you, at least, there was some infrastructure there,

Speaker:

people already working on this where you were brought

Speaker:

into a place where you had some peers

Speaker:

to be able to lean on to get going.

Speaker:

- Yeah, there was a lot of, there was a,

Speaker:

an established group.

Speaker:

It was called, in IBM, it was called Special Needs Systems

Speaker:

at the time, but it, you know, it eventually became

Speaker:

IBM Accessibility,

Speaker:

which is the current name of the organization.

Speaker:

And yes, there were people that were already established

Speaker:

in that field, and there was actually,

Speaker:

IBM was making various products

Speaker:

for people with disabilities.

Speaker:

And so, they had a lot of knowledge to impart on me,

Speaker:

and that was really helpful.

Speaker:

- [Joe] And then you said you had to do a lot of learning.

Speaker:

And so, was that just investigating,

Speaker:

you know, what resources available

Speaker:

through the community or had

Speaker:

your company built up a library of things to work on

Speaker:

or how did your education in that area move forward?

Speaker:

- At that point, that, I mean, this was

Speaker:

really kind of early on.

Speaker:

This was before,

Speaker:

before Section 508.

Speaker:

- Mm, okay. - This was before, I mean,

Speaker:

this was, I've been in my career a long, long time.

Speaker:

So yeah, there was none of that kind of thing.

Speaker:

It was more of, this is a,

Speaker:

like a philanthropic effort for IBM.

Speaker:

We wanna make a difference for people with disabilities.

Speaker:

What are the disabilities?

Speaker:

What can we do?

Speaker:

Is there any assistive technology we can help with?

Speaker:

And this was back in the days when,

Speaker:

you know, Jim Thatcher was working on the first, you know,

Speaker:

screen readers and all that kind of thing.

Speaker:

I don't know if you're familiar with him,

Speaker:

but I worked with him at some point,

Speaker:

and he was a great mentor for me.

Speaker:

He was a great, fun person to be around, and

Speaker:

I eventually wound up working on screen readers myself.

Speaker:

I worked on the screen reader for OS/2

Speaker:

with Jim and Rick Schwerdtfeger, and some other names that

Speaker:

a lot of people who've been in accessibility a while

Speaker:

know all these names, I got to work with them.

Speaker:

It was a really a privilege.

Speaker:

I learned a lot,

Speaker:

and it was a great environment for learning.

Speaker:

Not like, not saying that today

Speaker:

isn't also a good learning environment (laughs), but

Speaker:

coming on board with zero knowledge of, you know,

Speaker:

making technology accessible,

Speaker:

it was a great place to get started, and I got to learn

Speaker:

a lot about user needs.

Speaker:

We ran beta programs with the users and

Speaker:

got to get direct user feedback and

Speaker:

hear their user needs and hear the struggles

Speaker:

that they had with their technologies, so

Speaker:

for me, I think that was one of the best lessons

Speaker:

that I learned was working with people with disabilities

Speaker:

and learning from them and understanding

Speaker:

where they're coming from and the things that

Speaker:

they're trying to do and where they're meeting roadblocks

Speaker:

and then trying to come up with solutions for that.

Speaker:

- [Joe] Well, with IBM being such a large organization

Speaker:

and so influential, at that time, then,

Speaker:

were you,

Speaker:

was IBM involved in helping to

Speaker:

contribute to the standards that were being developed

Speaker:

by the World Wide Web Consortium, and

Speaker:

that type of thing? - Yeah, so I mean, in that

Speaker:

really early time, there was no standards yet

Speaker:

because there was no 508, there, I mean, there,

Speaker:

the web, when I first started working accessibility,

Speaker:

the web wasn't even a thing. (laughs)

Speaker:

Like, it was in its infancy,

Speaker:

if so, and then as my career progressed,

Speaker:

yes, the web started coming into play.

Speaker:

Some of my peers,

Speaker:

I wasn't directly working on standards at the time,

Speaker:

but there were some of my peers like Jim and

Speaker:

Phil and others who were working on standards.

Speaker:

And then I had a break in my career.

Speaker:

So that was kind of an interesting thing.

Speaker:

I had my second child, and I left.

Speaker:

I left work for nine years,

Speaker:

and then I came back.

Speaker:

So when I came back, I was hired back into accessibility,

Speaker:

and it was because of my

Speaker:

already prior knowledge, and, you know,

Speaker:

they didn't have to bring me up to speed

Speaker:

on what is accessibility and what does that mean,

Speaker:

and what does that mean for users,

Speaker:

and what does that mean for IBM?

Speaker:

I already kind of was already there.

Speaker:

So it was a very easy in for me to get right back into

Speaker:

the accessibility field, which was awesome

Speaker:

because technology had completely marched on.

Speaker:

You know, the programming was completely different.

Speaker:

I was totally not familiar with, you know,

Speaker:

all of the, beyond HTML, plain HTML, I wasn't,

Speaker:

I wasn't familiar with any of the programming

Speaker:

of web technologies.

Speaker:

So I thought I was gonna have a difficult time

Speaker:

getting back into work

Speaker:

after being gone for nine years,

Speaker:

but it actually turned out it wasn't that difficult.

Speaker:

- [Joe] And so, sometimes when there's a gap like that,

Speaker:

we find that things have changed a lot.

Speaker:

And then in other areas we think

Speaker:

doesn't seem like anything moved forward at all (laughs).

Speaker:

(Mary Jo laughs) Well, I think a lot of us find

Speaker:

that it's been a theme that's come up a lot in this program.

Speaker:

How was it for you? - You know,

Speaker:

that is very, very true.

Speaker:

So, I was not used to working remote with a lot of people.

Speaker:

That had changed a lot,

Speaker:

and I wasn't used to that.

Speaker:

I was used to being with the in-person group

Speaker:

because at the time I had left,

Speaker:

we were all co-located in the same spot.

Speaker:

And so, you know, you need to talk to so-and-so

Speaker:

about whatever, walk down the hall,

Speaker:

have a conversation, get it over with.

Speaker:

It was a little bit of an adjustment (laughs)

Speaker:

for me to work with a team that was coast to coast

Speaker:

and that kind of thing, and not face to face.

Speaker:

And it was a little bit of an adjustment there.

Speaker:

Of course, the technology had changed and, you know,

Speaker:

standards were actually a thing.

Speaker:

When I joined,

Speaker:

WCAG was working on WCAG 2.0.

Speaker:

You know, W3C?

Speaker:

And, you know, 508 obviously was there,

Speaker:

and the 508 refresh was getting underway.

Speaker:

So, (laughs) so I got involved in those things

Speaker:

because, you know, I still have my knowledge about

Speaker:

people with disabilities and their user needs,

Speaker:

and I could still contribute to all of that.

Speaker:

And so I just kind of jumped in

Speaker:

and started working on that and,

Speaker:

and

Speaker:

wrote a white paper with a couple other people,

Speaker:

and it was a really good

Speaker:

way to get back into the working world.

Speaker:

And I'm, (laughs) I'm really glad I had

Speaker:

my accessibility background because it really was helpful

Speaker:

to me getting back into things.

Speaker:

I did find that there was a lot of

Speaker:

problems that seemed to repeat themselves

Speaker:

in the technologies (laughs) and

Speaker:

the web content was no different,

Speaker:

and it just seemed like,

Speaker:

you know, you take two steps forward and one step back

Speaker:

when you wind up with new technologies.

Speaker:

It's like, oh yeah, accessibility.

Speaker:

We forgot about that kind of thing.

Speaker:

And, and it's like, well, how can you forget about that?

Speaker:

We've known about that for years, so (laughs)

Speaker:

in those regards, it seemed

Speaker:

some things didn't change as much as I had hoped,

Speaker:

but there's still a community out there

Speaker:

of accessibility experts who care very much,

Speaker:

you know, people with disabilities who care very much.

Speaker:

And this is all like a partnership

Speaker:

that we have to continue

Speaker:

to ensure that accessibility is not forgotten.

Speaker:

That is, it is incorporated as early as possible

Speaker:

because redesign is way (laughs) too costly.

Speaker:

- [Joe] Well, I wanna talk about your community involvement

Speaker:

before we're finished, but just

Speaker:

continuing on, kind of from where we are here,

Speaker:

what are the types of things that,

Speaker:

how are things done within your organization to educate

Speaker:

people about accessibility and what their role is in that?

Speaker:

It sounds like you do a lot of work,

Speaker:

you know, across the organization.

Speaker:

How does that end up

Speaker:

propagating or

Speaker:

happening within individual divisions, departments,

Speaker:

and so on?

Speaker:

- Well, you know, IBM, being a large organization,

Speaker:

we're somewhat process driven, so that kinda helps

Speaker:

because we created accessibility processes

Speaker:

and education and then we have, you know,

Speaker:

web content and tooling that we've created

Speaker:

to help the organization to learn,

Speaker:

you know, consume, learn, do, and test, right?

Speaker:

So those

Speaker:

are all important aspects of

Speaker:

completing accessibility process.

Speaker:

We have created a website

Speaker:

that does a lot of the, kind of role based

Speaker:

or where you are in your process-based accessibility

Speaker:

that kinda gives you ideas on

Speaker:

what you should be doing at what stage of your project.

Speaker:

And we get a lot of user feedback from IBMers

Speaker:

of what they need, what they don't understand,

Speaker:

and we try to, you know, have that feedback loop also

Speaker:

with the consumers of what we do our tooling

Speaker:

and try to keep up with the standards changes as well,

Speaker:

I mean, so everything kinda rolls in,

Speaker:

and we just keep iterating on both the processes,

Speaker:

the tooling, the guidance, all that,

Speaker:

just to keep it all current,

Speaker:

you know, and also we have to be able to report

Speaker:

how well we're doing

Speaker:

in our product accessibility conformance reports.

Speaker:

So we use the VPAT.

Speaker:

We're involved in industry associations

Speaker:

that helped develop the VPAT (laughs),

Speaker:

and that's how you found out about me with IAAP

Speaker:

presentation that I did with Michelle Van Duzer, and

Speaker:

we were involved in the development of the VPAT,

Speaker:

so we can report

Speaker:

accessibility and how well our products are meeting

Speaker:

those standards and requirements from,

Speaker:

to whoever's looking to purchase IBM products.

Speaker:

- [Joe] Well, let's talk about that a little bit

Speaker:

as you brought that up.

Speaker:

So the International Association

Speaker:

of Accessibility Professionals,

Speaker:

a great organization with lots of resources to help people.

Speaker:

I'm a member of that as well, and,

Speaker:

they have

Speaker:

webinars that they provide as well as

Speaker:

other resources, and one of those is,

Speaker:

was one that you mentioned I'd attended

Speaker:

that you were involved with with the VPAT.

Speaker:

Why don't you talk a little bit, you know,

Speaker:

specifically about the VPAT?

Speaker:

I don't think we've covered that in this episode series.

Speaker:

If you'd give a brief description

Speaker:

- Okay. - of that and, yeah,

Speaker:

some people might be interested in what that's all about.

Speaker:

- [Mary Jo] Okay, so VPAT, let's talk about

Speaker:

the acronym itself first (laughs),

Speaker:

because we tend to use a lot of acronyms,

Speaker:

and then people don't know what that means.

Speaker:

So a VPAT is a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template,

Speaker:

and it's a template that contains

Speaker:

the requirements for accessibility.

Speaker:

Currently, it has three standards,

Speaker:

worldwide standards, that are used:

Speaker:

WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Speaker:

It has

Speaker:

508,

Speaker:

the revised 508

Speaker:

standards

Speaker:

as well as the European EN 301 549,

Speaker:

which is used in several different

Speaker:

regulations in Europe, the European Union,

Speaker:

as well as beyond, because other countries, like Australia,

Speaker:

are adopting it, and Canada, are adopting the EN 301 549.

Speaker:

So those are all accessibility standards.

Speaker:

And the VPAT

Speaker:

contains all those requirements just as a list,

Speaker:

just, it doesn't have all the details

Speaker:

that are in the standards, but as a list

Speaker:

so that you can report how well you meet

Speaker:

each of those requirements and give explanations.

Speaker:

If you don't meet something, if it's just, you know,

Speaker:

you forgot alt text on, you know,

Speaker:

a certain screen, but it's not gonna affect users

Speaker:

because it's not, you know, an image that is

Speaker:

really all that meaningful,

Speaker:

that kind of thing, you can report all of that,

Speaker:

and then people who buy your products,

Speaker:

you can provide them with that information,

Speaker:

and then they can make informed decisions

Speaker:

when they're purchasing products.

Speaker:

- One of the common things that

Speaker:

software organizations seem to always be looking for is

Speaker:

they're always looking for certification or something

Speaker:

that has the blue ribbon that this is

Speaker:

quote unquote, officially approved.

Speaker:

That's really not what,

Speaker:

you know, VPAT's all about.

Speaker:

- Mm-hm. - What, maybe talk about

Speaker:

kind of, you know, that difference there

Speaker:

where we really don't have, there's not an,

Speaker:

a certification

Speaker:

authority that-- - Yeah, there is no

Speaker:

certification authority, yeah.

Speaker:

The VPAT is really meant for self-report,

Speaker:

for products to self-report their accessibility, right?

Speaker:

So that, you know, you have to, hopefully (laughs)

Speaker:

hopefully, they are doing all of the things

Speaker:

that they should be doing that leads up to this report.

Speaker:

I mean, you have to test.

Speaker:

You have to develop and test

Speaker:

to the accessibility standards,

Speaker:

and then you can reliably report on that.

Speaker:

You can't just go and say,

Speaker:

check, check, check, check, check.

Speaker:

You know, I meet all these requirements,

Speaker:

and you have nothing to back it.

Speaker:

- Mm-hm. - That is not a good scenario

Speaker:

because then you're not being very truthful

Speaker:

about the accessibility status of your product,

Speaker:

and it's not giving your buyers any information

Speaker:

that's helpful to them to compare products.

Speaker:

- Yeah. - As well, it becomes,

Speaker:

it can become part of the legal documentation on a bid.

Speaker:

So you really do wanna be truthful

Speaker:

because you can be held liable for what's in there.

Speaker:

So you wanna make sure that

Speaker:

it's up to date and

Speaker:

correct as much as possible. - And then on the positive

Speaker:

side, it is very helpful to an organization

Speaker:

because it represents that accessibility is

Speaker:

something that you're being proactive about.

Speaker:

- Exactly. - And I think it's important

Speaker:

for a lot of organizations to understand that,

Speaker:

that lawsuits and and legal actions tend to occur

Speaker:

in the areas where there's just been,

Speaker:

you know, let it be lax. - No action. (laughs)

Speaker:

No action, yeah. - Yeah, you have no action,

Speaker:

and just the, you know, doing this, you know,

Speaker:

shows that you've been proactive about it.

Speaker:

- Yeah, and that you're actually trying.

Speaker:

It's really hard to be 100%, you know,

Speaker:

accessible in 100%

Speaker:

of everything, but as long as you're truthful about that

Speaker:

and are still striving to improve

Speaker:

release after release and,

Speaker:

you know, prove that you care, you address user concerns,

Speaker:

that kind of thing, kinda shows

Speaker:

that you care and that you're willing to,

Speaker:

you know, work towards a more accessible world.

Speaker:

- [Joe] Yeah, well, I'll include some links to the

Speaker:

IAAP training related to that

Speaker:

in the show notes for this.

Speaker:

Getting back to the types of things that

Speaker:

you're involved with at IBM, are,

Speaker:

you know, are there any particular initiatives

Speaker:

that you're excited about now

Speaker:

or are there things looking forward

Speaker:

that you're, you think might become part of

Speaker:

the activities at IBM moving into the future?

Speaker:

- Let me think about that for a second.

Speaker:

I think that

Speaker:

I'm,

Speaker:

to,

Speaker:

from my view, I'm looking forward

Speaker:

to

Speaker:

new technologies.

Speaker:

They do kinda have their own challenges for accessibility.

Speaker:

You know, when you talk about virtual worlds

Speaker:

and virtual reality, and this and that,

Speaker:

I am excited about

Speaker:

where that could go 'cause actually it could also open up

Speaker:

some new opportunities.

Speaker:

And though I'm not directly involved in that,

Speaker:

I don't think IBM currently has any

Speaker:

VR

Speaker:

AR type

Speaker:

of

Speaker:

products at this point

Speaker:

that

Speaker:

still there's, there is some

Speaker:

interesting things going on with data visualization

Speaker:

and that's something that IBM does a lot, and

Speaker:

I'm really interested to see where things go

Speaker:

in making that accessible.

Speaker:

There's a lot of challenges with that as well, and

Speaker:

but, you know, personally for our team,

Speaker:

because we are involved in standards and policy,

Speaker:

we're always on the lookout for what's happening worldwide,

Speaker:

picking up standards,

Speaker:

what are they doing new regulations?

Speaker:

Because the United Nations'

Speaker:

Convention on the Rights of Persons

Speaker:

with Disabilities is getting,

Speaker:

it has been ratified by a lot of countries,

Speaker:

and that means that they're going to be putting in place

Speaker:

regulations for accessibility

Speaker:

and that includes accessible technology.

Speaker:

And so part of what I do (laughs) is just make sure that

Speaker:

the standards that they require

Speaker:

and the things that they require

Speaker:

can allow for a global market (laughs).

Speaker:

You want them to harmonize between countries

Speaker:

- Mm-hm. - and not have unique

Speaker:

accessibility requirements per country

Speaker:

because then you'll lose your economy of scale

Speaker:

and you'd have to produce a specific product

Speaker:

for a specific country because they've modified

Speaker:

the regulations so much in the standards.

Speaker:

New Horizons for people with cognitive disabilities,

Speaker:

I think that's very interesting as well.

Speaker:

The next generation of

Speaker:

the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines,

Speaker:

you know, or,

Speaker:

so version three

Speaker:

of WCAG, which is being worked on,

Speaker:

we're hoping to include more

Speaker:

requirements for, that address

Speaker:

people with cognitive disabilities and improve upon

Speaker:

the usability of the standard itself

Speaker:

and the understandability of the standard itself.

Speaker:

So I think that's,

Speaker:

you know, for a standards person, that's pretty interesting.

Speaker:

I don't know if it's interesting to everybody, but (laughs).

Speaker:

- [Joe] It's definitely interesting to me

Speaker:

because I've worked with people who have had

Speaker:

traumatic brain injury accidents

Speaker:

- Yes. - and things like that, and

Speaker:

it's probably the area of accessibility that I think

Speaker:

organizations have worked on the least relative to,

Speaker:

you know, other types of physical challenges.

Speaker:

And it, I think a lot of it is because it's really hard.

Speaker:

- [Mary Jo] It is hard and different users' needs

Speaker:

are, can be different and conflicting.

Speaker:

And so coming up with a standard

Speaker:

that can address everybody is very challenging.

Speaker:

But as somebody who's of an engineering mind,

Speaker:

you know, challenges are kind of fun. (laughs)

Speaker:

- [Joe] Well, I, Mary Jo, I wanted to thank you

Speaker:

for taking the time here to talk a little bit

Speaker:

about your background and share your thoughts

Speaker:

about today and the future.

Speaker:

And hopefully, we'll get together at a,

Speaker:

an in-person conference sometime again soon.

Speaker:

- Yeah, and I don't know if you've looked at it,

Speaker:

but IBM does have resources and a website that,

Speaker:

that can help people learn about accessibility

Speaker:

and web accessibility

Speaker:

as well as free tooling available, so

Speaker:

check it out. - Yeah, I'll make sure

Speaker:

I get the proper link from you.

Speaker:

- Okay. - And we'll include that

Speaker:

in the show notes here as well.

Speaker:

So thank you very much. - Excellent.

Speaker:

Thanks.

Speaker:

- Hey, we did it. - Yay. (laughs)

Speaker:

- Great, let me turn the-- - That wasn't so,

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube