Miriam Nabinger, independent, Accessibility Specialist

Miriam Nabinger began her work career at IBM where she first became aware of accessibility. She decided to study accessibility and make that the focus of her work. That led to her starting her own accessibility consulting practice. She talks about the current status of accessibility in Austria and the need to create more awareness.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(compelling music)

- Hello, this is "Digital Accessibility:

The People Behind the Progress."

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

and as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting as to how others have found

their way into this profession, so let's meet one

of those people right now and hear about their journey.

(compelling music)

Well, hello, here we are again.

I'm Joe Welinske with an episode where I have

the opportunity to speak with an accessibility practitioner,

and today I'm pleased to be speaking with Miriam Nabinger.

Hello, Miriam, How are you today?

- Hello, I'm doing well.

How do you do?

- Good, well, it's early for me in my day on Vashon Island

which is near Blink's Seattle headquarters.

Where are you talking to us from?

- I'm based in Vienna, Austria,

so a bit like later in the day today.

- Yeah, all right, well, it's a lovely city.

I've been there and had a good time I think on two visits

to Vienna, so hopefully we get back again sometime.

- That'd be lovely.

(overlapping speech)

- It's good to have you here on the program.

We do like to meet people from all around the world,

and so it's good to be able to visit

with an accessibility practitioner from Vienna.

So probably the best place to start is if you could tell us

a little bit about yourself

and the work that you're doing right now.

- Sure, so right now I've been a freelancer

for the last two years.

I mainly worked in UX design,

but also on the side as an accessibility specialist

and as consultant for companies, and right now,

I'm trying to make a full-time business out of this.

And my mission is actually to empower companies,

but also actually the designers, developers,

program managers, testers on how to implement

and create more accessible products,

and I want to teach them this.

So right now I'm just building the community.

I'm trying to get in touch with a lot of people,

learn a lot of new things.

I've done it for a few companies already,

and it's just something that I really enjoy.

I want to teach people what I love

and what creates the passion in me,

and this is one of the things.

- Well, I'm gonna wanna ask you a little bit more

about your current accessibility work,

but one thing that would be interesting to know

if you have some information is what accessibility is

like for business in your part of the world.

Are there any things that are specific

or unique to Austria or that area of Europe

that you feel might be different in culture or requirements

from other parts of the world that you've noticed?

- I think Austria as a country in terms of like,

accessibility and also like, LGBT for example,

we're a bit behind sometimes, because I know that

we do have many accessible public spaces

and also digital spaces, but it's just on the,

personally I think it's on the lower end of the spectrum.

Like, it's not actively communicated,

and there is not any awareness in any other business

than public, which is, I think it's a shame.

I know it's similar in other countries as well

that it's just not as broad of a topic

except if it's in public,

but I wish it would be more active here,

because the awareness is not there, to be honest.

They just know they need to do it

for public and for governmental things,

but anything else is just kind of guessing,

and I wish we would do more for that.

- Well, it sounds like it'll both be more opportunities

for you to do that work,

but also a lot of hard work to help make people more aware.

- Yeah, like creating the first step

of awareness is I think the hardest step for me now.

- Yep, well, you know, I go,

still go through that all the time.

So one of the things I do is work with our clients

to help them understand the importance

of investing in accessibility, and it's still, you know,

a lot of education to, you know get to make that part

of the budget and make people understand

that there's a good business case for it

in addition to other factors.

Well, I do wanna know a little bit about how you found

your way to accessibility.

We try to make this program a model for others

to see how they can fit into this profession.

So where did it start for you

where you first became aware of accessibility

and then decided that was where you wanted to do your work?

- It's actually like, it was more like I fell

into it more or less, like it was an accident,

or like a coincidence actually, because I've worked

at IBM for four and a half years,

like, close to five actually, and during my time

as a designer there, we had an introduction

to accessibility training from one of their teams.

They flew in someone from Washington DC,

and they gave us like, an introduction to accessibility.

And back then it was like, I haven't seen it before,

and it was so interesting to me.

First I was very impressed,

and it opened my eyes to a lot of things,

because I later noticed that there are so many overlaps

between usability and accessibility.

And right now I strongly believe that accessibility is

at the core of usability, it won't work otherwise,

and so I had this class, learned a lot from it,

and a year after, they asked me if I would be willing

or interested in creating an internal learning

for our cross-functional team, and I did that,

and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever done,

because it was for me so exciting,

and I just loved sharing this importantness

with other people and teaching them how to do it.

And then I figured, okay, this is actually what I wanna do.

And in the years following, I tried to implement a lot

of these things into my daily product cycle

and the product design cycle I do.

And now I really wanna get the word out and teach

other people who might not be that aware of it yet,

especially like, for example, the developers,

they don't learn it in school,

and I wish someone would be there

to actually tell them how do you do it

so that it's like a long time investment for them.

- Well, so it sounds like you, it was nice

that you were able to be at IBM where you had

that initial person come in to talk about that,

but then after that there's a lot involved

in learning about accessibility, and finding out

how to to do all the various things that are involved,

so how did that work out?

Did you lean on resources within IBM

to be able to to build it up in your projects?

Or how did you build up your own career now

or your own knowledge about it?

- Well, what I did primarily at the beginning,

I studied the IBM accessibility checklist a lot,

because I do believe that they have great resources there,

and it gave me everything I needed to get started,

and have like, actual examples I could actually use

to tell other people like, "Hey, this is how it works."

And I studied the guidelines a lot,

also did the Google course, and just,

it was a lot of learning by doing.

And I tried to teach myself, okay,

how do I use the screen reader?

How do I actually test, and what are the possibilities?

So there was a lot of research on my part involved,

and it was a lot of learning by doing,

and then also asking other people as well

as like, people who actually work in the sector,

as well as disabled people, and asking them

about their experiences, if there's something I can learn.

And even now I'm like, I learn something new every day,

because it's just something I'm not used to.

- And then after that, was that when you began

your own work right from the position?

- Yes.

- Well, I mean that's, I started working

for myself early on in my career,

and I remember it was a lot of work,

and it was kind of scary to be doing that.

I know it's more common today for people early

in their career to you just decide to do their own thing,

but how has that adjustment been going from, you know,

a very large prominent organization

with a regular paycheck to doing this type of work

where it's really up to you to find your own way?

- It was a journey, (chuckles)

because I quit my job the beginning

of the pandemic more or less,

and I was like, okay, I guess this is how I do it.

It was a big change, but I had to pick up,

I'm very grateful that I had a lot of knowledge

and awareness from my time at IBM,

but I was also very grateful of discovering

so many new things about myself

and also about how I actually want to work,

and where I want to put my focus on next.

It was a big change, (chuckles)

and it's still something that I need to get used to,

but it's like, I think it built my character,

but it was not that easy, but I wouldn't miss it now.

- And so, you know, with the projects that you've worked on

on your own, what is, you know, like, a typical project

like, or what's a typical week

in your work life for this type work?

- That really depends on how many different clients I have,

like, how many different areas I work with.

The latest one was like, a Swedish startup.

They came to me because they said they wanted to change,

improve the accessibility of their design system,

and also about the website,

because they had like, a new rebranding,

but they're not happy with the rebranding.

So we took the time to actually sit down like, "Hey, okay,

what's actually the problem, and where do you want my help?"

And it was, I made an audit for them in terms of like,

what's the CURE accessibility of their product.

Then they came to me like, "Hey, can you actually

also teach us the basics and also like what we can do?"

So there also like a learning involved for them,

for their whole design team in this case,

and also for the developers here.

I gave like an introduction to accessibility

and also to certain custom role segments,

and I gave them a list of resources, recommendations.

And in the few months afterwards,

we went through the implementation together,

and we discussed,

I was always there if they needed any questions.

So I gave them like a roadmap on how they can improve

and what they should take care of,

and I helped them in achieving this.

- And from what you've learned from your practice so far,

what are the areas that you've found to be

the most challenging to be able to help your clients?

- I think it probably culture, because it's,

they know if they have a check place, what to do,

but personally is more like a mindset change

and having the right culture in the company

that's beginning, that's both accessibility

and inclusion, and I had a hard time discussing that

with them and them getting to accept it, actually,

because they already have their culture,

and then they need to change it, so that was a bit tricky,

and I still believe that's a tricky part,

because mindset change doesn't happen overnight.

- Well, in the time that you've been involved

in accessibility, do you see any patterns of things that,

you know, you're looking forward to in the future?

Do you see certain areas that need more work

from the accessibility profession than others?

Or are there certain things that you're excited

to be working on in the future

that you're just starting to get involved with?

- Personally, I think that the area

of e-commerce is a bit lacking when it comes

to accessibility, because there are,

that's the area where I think we can do way more,

and not just like, in public space, but like,

any e-commerce sector, because there's just not a lot of,

it's mostly prefixed templates,

but there is like, issues in templates already,

so there would be change needed there.

And I'm looking forward to getting

into the current movement where accessibility is

with the change of the European directive,

there's like a new movement right now

with people being even more aware of the necessity,

and I'm kind of happy about joining this movement

and being there to support other companies here.

- And so as you do that, are there other groups

or communities in your area

that it's possible to get involved with?

Or are you gonna be going to conferences

and things now that the pandemic is over?

- Yes, I would love to, and I already signed up for a few.

Right now I'm networking in Vienna here.

That's both with creatives but also developers,

so I'm joining the network here and see what can be done,

or if just anything I can do to help,

and I hope I can join more conferences soon,

so hopefully in person.

But the best accessibility conferences are normally abroad,

(chuckles) so I might have to travel for that.

- Well, I went to my first conference

since the pandemic started with CSUN back in March,

and it was fun to be out among people again.

So maybe we'll meet up at a future event,

but I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

It was really interesting to hear how you've started out

on your own individual business exploration

of accessibility, and so, you know,

good luck with everything that you're working on.

- Thank you very much.