Sambhavi Chandrashekar, D2L, Accessibility Lead

Sam is the accessibility lead at an educational technology company called D2L. She began her career as an IT professional. Her post-graduate work focused on online accessibility for people who are blind or vision impaired. She taught a master’s program in Inclusive Design at OCAD University in Toronto. Two of her students started Fable - now a prominent platform to connect to people with disabilities for user research and accessibility testing.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(orchestral music)

- Hello.

This is digital accessibility

for "People Behind the Progress".

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

And as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting

is to how others have found their way into this profession.

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

and hear about their journey.

(orchestral music)

All right.

Well, here we go with another episode

where we meet prominent accessibility practitioners

and today I am pleased

to be speaking with Sambhavi Chandrashekar.

Hello, Sam. How are you doing today?

- I'm well. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you for having me.

- Well, it's great to have you

hear to chat about the things

that have gone on in your career.

But before we do that, I'm speaking from my home office

on Bacha Island, which is near Seattle, Washington.

Where are you talking to us from today?

- Cool.

I live in Toronto, Eastern Time Zone,

three hours ahead of you.

- Well, a good place to always start is

what you're up to right now,

organization you're involved with,

and the nature of your work.

- Okay, so I'm the accessibility lead

at an education technology company called D2L corporation.

And my role

is to

make sure that our products

are accessible to put it in a very simple way,

but it's way beyond that.

Yeah, I always like to joke

that the accessibility bug stops at me

or stops with me.

- And

what's a typical day

or week like for your work in that activity?

- It's a flurry of

tasks of a variety of types.

It's not just about the product.

It's also about support.

It's about sales, marketing, legal,

everything under the umbrella,

and about culture and

everything. (chuckles)

- Well, we can dig more into the specifics of that,

but a good place that I always like to start

is where people first became aware of accessibility,

how that impacted their life in different ways,

and the journey that brought you to what you're doing today.

So, what's a good place to start for you

where you started to experience accessibility?

- Let's start at the very beginning.

Okay, the very beginning of my journey out of my country,

that was 17 years ago,

when I left India to study further, go back to school.

After 27 years in the central bank of the country

called the Reserve Bank of India,

I was a hardcore IT professional, doing IT projects,

and also doing corporate training in IT.

I had a science background, even in my studies.

I did a master's in quantum mechanics

from the Indian Institute of Technology or IIT.

And after all that, I also taught for one year

in a master's program in banking technology management.

That's when the PhD bug bit me, and I wanted to do a PhD.

And as a precursor, I did a master's

for one year in London, UK,

in UCL, University College London.

Because I believed that after 27 years,

it's good to go back to school,

gather your elements, and then

find a good spot that you can do your PhD

rather than just go there directly.

And UK was a good place

because you have one year master's.

So, my journey essentially began there.

And 17 years later, I'm here talking with you.

But

I do believe that in talking about my journey,

I have to talk about three things,

the people that I met along the way that transformed me,

the places that I went through

that afforded me all the opportunity,

and the perspectives that got changed all along the way.

And I hope that I'll be able to introduce you

to some of the people,

to talk about some of the places that I've been through

and what type of perspective changes

actually twisted and turned my journey

in accessibility to bring me where I am here today.

- Well, where would you like to start?

You've certainly done a lot of

different aspects in your career.

You've been involved with the work

through the World Wide Web Consortium,

and also with the IAAP

as a certified practitioner through that organization.

What are some of the...

Where would you like to start

chatting about your experience?

- I prefer to chat about things that are not on LinkedIn.

- All right. - That people can read about,

not even about how to do stuff,

how to do accessibility or how to...

Debating between conformance and compassion

or where the standards are.

No, no, no, none of that, none of that.

What I'm really

longing to do is to

go back in the memory lane

and then try to trace through these 17 years,

what is it that actually influenced me, inspired me,

and transformed me along the journey

to be what I am today?

And I'll frequently go back to people,

places, and perspectives, because I think,

those three are key in any journey,

not only in accessibility journey.

So, going back to UCL

where I did my master's for one year,

it was in human computer interaction.

Because having done IT for that long,

I didn't want to do a PhD in computer science.

And I was interested in psychology,

so I chose to do a master's

in human computer interaction.

And University College London,

the UCLIC is an amazing place.

And

I do remember all the

teaching.

It was the very first time for me after a long time

to learn, first of all,

and to learn in a different system altogether.

Although not too different because Britain and India,

well, we do have some connections,

but what was very different,

what started my accessibility journey in UCL

was the fact that I did my project

with students who are blind.

My project was about accessibility and usability,

where is the dividing line?

That was the project, but it was not theoretical.

I did some studies with

some students

who were blind.

And with that data,

I tried to distinguish between accessibility and usability.

With respect to those days,

it was WCAG 2.1, WCAG, sorry, 1.0 ruling,

and WCAG 2.0 was struggling to come out.

And it took a long time,

because they introduced cognitive disabilities.

They made it go beyond machine recognizable accessibility.

And so, that's why that question was very interesting.

But the reason why I took that up

was because of a colleague of mine

in the Reserve Bank of India.

His name is Harish Kotian.

He was the first blind programmer in India,

and he served the RBI in the IT department.

He moderated a huge 3,000 strong

mailing list called AccessIndia,

which is all about blindness and IT.

And he recently retired and we still are in touch.

It was him.

It was he who inspired me

to start working on this area called accessibility.

'Cause before that, I had no idea, no clue.

So, that was the starting point.

And Harish was the person who inspired me.

And UCL gave me all the opportunity to work on that.

But as soon as I joined my master's,

I had to apply for my PhD.

So, I started applying

and when I applied to University of Toronto in Canada,

I discovered the second person that influenced my life.

That is Jutta Treviranus.

Jutta is the director of an organization

called the Inclusive Design Research Centre in Toronto.

And she's also a full-time professor

at the OCAD University.

And she has been my mentor since 2005 'til today.

And anything I know about inclusive design is from Jutta.

I am ever so grateful to her.

And so,

at UFT,

I moved from UCL to UFT.

And at UFT, I took on a PhD

in

information systems,

because I was in the iSchool,

because Jutta's

unit called the Adaptive Technology Research Centre

was housed inside the iSchool.

So, I did a PhD in information

or information systems, whatever you may call it.

But actually,

it was about how people who are blind or vision impaired

assessed the credibility of information online.

Effectively, it was a study with 66 people

using screen readers.

And it was an amazing PhD, five years, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I thoroughly enjoyed the learning and all the research.

And all the research projects that I did with Jutta,

because I was

totally working with her as well

as a student research assistant, plus doing my PhD.

And soon after I got into postdoc,

because I got a fellowship,

the program is called Mitacs.

It's a Canadian funding agency.

So, I had a two-year elevate

postdoc with Mitacs.

Even there, I did a study on

handheld devices and navigation for people who are blind.

So, the research was all through about people who are blind.

And

all the academic opportunities, I really enjoy,

when I think back about the conferences,

the papers, and everything.

Plus the nonprofit projects that I have done.

Then, came- - Oh.

- [Sam] Yeah?

- You definitely were fortunate

to find your way so early on in the academic portion.

Yeah, I think, that's a time

when people first do become aware of it

and start thinking about it,

but it can be hard to find the mentors

that you were fortunate

to run into - Yeah.

- and be able to have guidance early on,

so that you can be doing such substantive work early on.

So, it sounds like you were fortunate to have those mentors,

but were you also

actively looking

for those people

early on?

Were you able to find them

or was it just kind of a serendipity

of life that had happened? - Yeah. (chuckles)

I was exactly ready with that world.

It was totally serendipitous that I found Jutta.

In fact, I finished doing the application

for the mechanical

and industrial engineering department at UFT,

because that's where the HCI PhD is.

And then, I came across her website,

and then I tore that application

and I applied to the iSchool.

And I was always an outsider in the iSchool,

because it was a library science department, bless my soul.

But I had the best of experiences there.

So, UFT gave me an amazing place to

progress

my practice of accessibility, I should say,

and strengthen it very much academically.

Very interestingly, during my PhD,

I would always say, I'll never teach,

because I had this dream about entrepreneurship.

I had created a domain

and a website called saha IT,

and I thought that's all you need to make a company.

When I finished studying, I'm gonna become an entrepreneur.

But Jutta went on to another university

called OCAD University.

It's a design university.

And she started a master's program in inclusive design.

Because I had grown with her,

embodying all her inclusive design principles,

she started the master's program

and she had me start teaching in that.

And for the next five years, I taught in that program.

That was the best time of my life, I should say,

because every cohort was as diverse as possible.

They were at least,

in a class of 20,

at least 10 people would have a disability.

And Jutta had the best infrastructure.

What is currently called is the HyFlex or hybrid flexible.

The most up to date technology, the most

well-structured UDL practices.

Without realizing they were those by name,

I actually thought for five years.

And while teaching at OCAD University

is where I met the third person

who actually changed my perspective about stuff

or about accessibility.

Because through Jutta,

I had become introduced to inclusive design.

And the fact that inclusive design

is about designing with people with disabilities

and disability's a design mismatch.

And accessibility is about removing that mismatch,

meeting the needs, and all those kinds of ideas.

But how do you practice that?

How do you actually do accessibility?

So, two of my students actually,

one of them is called Alwar and the other one is Abid.

They graduated and they started a company.

The company is called Fable Tech Labs.

And it is I think, just about the only company even now

after four years, in the world to do what they are doing,

which is offer

to the industry

a way of recruiting people with disabilities,

to do every aspect of a product design,

starting from research

to prototype testing,

to QA during development,

to triaging for support, everything.

It's as easy as just going on the website and saying,

hey, I want two people.

One using voice-over on Mac

and one using a voice-over on iPhone,

and two people using NVDA,

and one person using ZoomText, and Dragon, and name it.

And you will get to either meet them

and do your conversation and testing,

or you can set up the tests online.

And the whole process became so simple

that it's very easy to practice

doing accessibility with people

with disabilities. (clears throat)

So, the perspective change that

Alwar and Abid brought about in me is that,

to do accessibility,

you need to involve people with disabilities

from the beginning to the end.

Conformance with standards, compliance with regulations

happen on the way.

Because I hate this concept of

testing pages after pages, after pages.

I'm someone who believes in workflows.

What is the task in hand?

If your pages allow a way to go through

and click complete the task,

don't worry about the surrounding things,

even if they're not fully accessible.

The person's able to complete the task,

which is more important.

I don't mean to say that it's okay

to have inaccessible pages,

but just by spending all your energy

on testing pages completely with, I dunno,

automated tools, doesn't really serve the purpose.

You have to stop me on the way,

otherwise I will keep going on.

- All right.

Well, yeah, I don't like to interrupt,

'cause it's interesting to hear your story,

but yeah, certainly,

Fable is a very interesting progressive organization.

And that does bring up

an example of where there's the shift left mentality,

which moves us - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yep.

- beyond remediation (Sam clears throat)

and testing, and maintenance after development is completed.

And moving us toward foundational research,

having participants (Sam clears throat)

with physical challenges involved

in early testing of wire frames

and the other things that we do in our design,

in our design activities.

So, yeah, I totally agree with your thoughts

about truly really having an inclusive approach

to how we come up with solutions.

- Yeah, because inclusion actually

is about being mindful of diversity,

equity, and accessibility.

IDEA, that acronym is being used

by a number of people today.

Inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility.

Because human beings are diverse.

So, they have different needs.

So, that's diversity.

But you can't give everybody the same thing.

That's equality. But it doesn't work.

You have to give each one what they need,

so that we get equal outcomes.

It's not about providing equal resources.

It's about enabling equal outcomes, and that's equity.

And how do you do that?

You do that through accessibility.

So, the practice of accessibility,

we preach you have to include people with disabilities.

Why?

Because

A, that's very important for inclusion.

And B,

if you design for people with disabilities,

automatically, you cover

other people having constraints

that are not because of the disability,

but because of situational or contextual reasons.

You might remember Microsoft

and their famous Persona Spectrum.

But essentially, the impact of designing

with people with disabilities is much larger.

In fact, recently,

there was another perspective change that happened,

but it was when I was presenting in

a forum called the digital disability and dance.

And my presentation

was about how to teach dance inclusively.

And that's when I came across this thought

that it's not enough to say disability

is about a mismatch between the person's needs

and the environment, you go beyond that,

and look at disability as a resource,

as a resource for innovation, as a resource for creativity.

So, that's where we need to go.

That's how our perspectives need to change.

And I am ever so grateful to where I work now

for the amazingly inclusive culture that's present,

the passion of the company that aligns with my passion.

Because

the first important thing

is to work for a place that has a purpose.

And then, the second important thing

is that your purpose aligns with that purpose.

If that happens, then you are in heaven.

And being able to do, being able to practice

all that you dream about accessibility.

If some place allows you that,

then that place is really helping you transform.

- Well,

that would be a good place

to maybe dig into that a little bit.

You have such a long career

in academia and teaching,

and continue to be involved in that.

But now, you have this opportunity to, as you said,

get out and make some practical improvement.

So, what's that work been like?

What are some of the things you're passionate about

or the activities that you get involved with for that?

- Well, when you get out of nonprofit and academia,

and get into the industry,

there are certain paradigm shifts

that happen in your surroundings, not in you,

but what is valued is different.

The goals are different. The priorities are different.

So, the same kind of strategies don't work.

But if you keep remaining focused on outcomes,

everything is magic.

Even here, if your outcome is that

the end user has a good experience,

that is going to serve the purpose of the company.

And then, you are meeting some of the goals of the company.

That means you are a success in the industry.

So, keeping focus on the outcomes

is I think, key to everything.

Plus, I must consider myself,

I mean, I do consider myself privileged,

because in some organizations,

you will have this very high barrier of attitudes

and culture that you have to overcome,

which was not there in my case.

So, it was much easier

to try to practice doing well by doing good.

- Well, looking forward to the future.

Are there any certain things

that you're looking forward to working on

or another way (Sam clears throat)

of considering it?

Are there any things that you think

we as accessibility practitioners

need to be paying more attention to,

looking toward the future?

So, what your outlook

as we move forward (Sam clears throat)

from today about things.

- Okay, this was my personal story.

So, I'll also conclude on a personal note.

In North America, we are privileged.

We are in a privileged position

with respect to knowing about accessibility,

with respect to practicing accessibility,

and making an impact on those who need that assistance.

This is not the case globally.

I come from India and I know of several places

around the globe where

the knowledge about accessibility is lacking,

and lacking in the sense,

people with disabilities do not know

that they can demand and get

accessibility done.

So, what I dream of is

to reverse what I went through.

I met people who inspired me and mentored me.

So, I am in that club of Lainey Feingold

I'm sure you know the lawyer

famous for her structured negotiation.

So, she believes in this concept

called accessibility eldering.

And I am also an accessibility elder.

What I dream of is to be among the people

who inspire and mentor the next generation,

to get into organizations and transform the places,

and try to change perspectives globally

about what disability is,

what accessibility is, and how the world should be.

- Well, that's definitely

something that I think should motivate all of us.

And so, I wanna thank you for

giving us a little bit of an insight

into the people that have made your life

move in this direction of,

and the things that you're looking forward to in the future.

So, thanks for taking the time

to share your experiences with me.