Jennifer Smith, Visa, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Accessibility

Jen Smith has worked with accessibility at J.P Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and now at Visa as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Accessibility. She talks about the importance of working with colleagues at different experience levels and backgrounds. She also describes the need in accessibility for better ways to present data.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

- All right, well here we go.

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Where I get another chance to speak

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with another accessibility practitioner,

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and today I'm pleased to be speaking

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with Jen Smith. Hello, Jen, how are you?

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- I'm doing great, Joe. How are you?

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- I'm good. I am in my

home office on Bhan Island,

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which is near blinks

headquarters office in Seattle.

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Where are you talking to us from?

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- I am also in Seattle.

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Near, near you, Joe

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and I used to formally live on Baan, so

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I am not too far away from

where you currently are.

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- Well, I, it, it, it

is good to see you again

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and yeah, I have known you from, from

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some past activities, so

it's good to have this chance

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to talk about your professional work since

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the last time we met up.

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But, you know, a good place

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to start would be if you could

just tell us a little bit

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about what you're currently involved with.

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- Yeah, I currently work at Visa.

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I'm a director there

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and my title is Director

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of Strategic Initiatives in Accessibility.

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We're housed in the design

part of the organization,

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which I truly love.

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And day to day what that means is I get

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to operationalize

accessibility for our products

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when they're working with clients.

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A lot of our banking clients

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and our banking clients

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who take accessibility very seriously

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and want these products

to be accessible yesterday

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and their, and our products are maybe kind

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of like had their own roadmap,

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but maybe the roadmap was a

little bit longer than our

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clients might've liked

to have heard about.

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And maybe they were transitioning

from what CAG 2.0 to 2.1

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and had a little bit, you

know, some bumps in the road.

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And so my team

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and I of accessibility

practitioners get in there

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and help them understand where

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to focus their efforts and energy.

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Operationally, we work

with developers, designers,

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leaders, PMs, you name it,

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we've got the expertise across the board

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to help them understand

where to focus their energy

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and efforts to make the most

momentum the most quickly

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to get from point A to point

B across the finish line.

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So it's a really, really fun job to think

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through organizational

change and accessibility,

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and not always just the

compliance end of the spectrum,

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but really think through

what's the best for our like

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B2B business business customers,

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but also what's impacting

them, their customers,

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their B2C customers on the other side.

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- Well you're, you're in

one of those companies

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where I think just about

everyone is familiar with it

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most probably as something

that that, you know, we've act

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actively worked with on a consumer basis.

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But maybe you could talk a

little bit more, you know, beyond

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what I might know is, is

somebody using a, a credit card

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and like what are the

accessibility touch points

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that you get into, you know,

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throughout your organization? Yeah,

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- It really, I, I think

you can run the gamut

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because I think of people

think of Visa, you know,

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our brand is pretty ubiquitous

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and they think of us on their credit card,

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but they don't realize

how many applications

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that we truly build for our clients

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across the board as far as

payments and tokenization

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and different things that enable payments

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to happen behind the scenes.

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And not only physical cards,

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but just anything that makes

digital payments happen

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and how much we think

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through not only like actual

the payment space in general

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cards, but just

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like happen across end-to-end merchants.

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If you're running a business,

if you're making a payment,

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anything in that space

Visa can be involved in

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and how much, when we

are talking like we have,

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we wanna make payments

happen where the best way

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to be paid ev for everyone everywhere.

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And so we have those

that everyone in there

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and we truly mean it.

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So it's, it's one of those

things that it's really fun to be

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involved in that and think through all

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of those different facets

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and being in the design end of the company

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where we get to talk about

that user experience part of

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this, the, the process and

not just the compliance

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and the legal end of the spectrum

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and always like risk is

definitely a part of it,

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but not always just be the stick end

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of the accessibility risk spectrum,

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but also the user experience

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and of, of the conversation

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that we often get roped into when we're

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talking about accessibility.

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- Yeah, well it's very

interesting to, you know, get some

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of the background

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and the depth that many of

us probably aren't aware of.

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Well, one of the things I like

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to do in this program

is find out how people

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found their way into working

on this kind of thing.

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So what was it for you where, you know,

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accessibility was something

you first learned about

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and then I know you've been

working on it for a while now.

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How did you get into it professionally?

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- Yeah, the first, the first job I had

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where it was a formal part

of my job, I was in, I worked

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for an agency in the state of Oklahoma

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and we were in the education industry.

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It was a guarantor for higher education

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and we took care of student loans.

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And so we had to be

section 5 0 8 compliant.

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I had zero tools, zero budget, zero people

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to train me, and I had

a foundation in HTML,

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I had a journalism

degree, I was the designer

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and I was using Dream Waiver.

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So this is back in the two thousands.

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And I just had like a checklist

from the federal government

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and a heart full of good intentions.

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And I was doing, following the checklist

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and working my way through

it and reading blogs

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and information full of, I think

all of these industry names

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that we know, we all know so well,

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whether it's hate on

Pickering or Carl Groves

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or you know, oh my gosh, of

course now that I'm, I'm,

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you know, lady fine

gold, I mean, you know,

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whether it's technical

expertise, design expertise,

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developer expertise,

like all of these people

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who are willing to share

what they had been through,

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what they tried, what

worked and what didn't work

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and just publicly share it online.

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You would just go and you would

just soak it up as a sponge

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and like, okay, let me try this.

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Let me see what works, what doesn't work,

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and you would just try it

out and hope for the best

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and then try again and iterate.

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And it was that progress over perfection

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like my friend Meryl Evans

likes to say and just see

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and learn and grow and learn and grow.

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And thankfully back then things

weren't quite as complicated

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as they're now with all of

the frameworks that we have.

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And you would just try and experiment.

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And also before then I had seen the power

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of digital technology

in the lives of people

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with disabilities

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and knew that it could

be something that created

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equality and access for people

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and agency for people

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with disabilities when

they were often shut

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out from conversations.

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And for me that was important in a job

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and why I wanted to have

that be not a facet of a job,

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but once I got hooked into

doing it as part of my job,

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why I wanted it to be a sole feature

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of my job in my career moving

forward, I had had a neighbor

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who was blind when I was in college.

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I had, when I first graduated

with my journalism degree,

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I worked for an NPR affiliate

radio station in Oklahoma.

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And we had a volunteer who had an injury

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and he had a disability,

a lifelong disability.

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And I'd seen with his injury again, how

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access and how disability

like had changed his life

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and how he was treated,

whether he had agency

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to do things on his own

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and how people treated him

in the real world without

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that agency and what a

difference that made.

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And I wanted to be part of the change

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and part of giving people

more of that agency.

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So once I got that taste at

that state agency, I'm like,

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this, this is for me, what makes my job

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of working on these ones and zeros

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and building these websites

different than, you know,

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designing another brochure

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and publishing this Dreamweaver

page over and over and over.

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And I feel like having

the HTML background,

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the journalism background

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and being able to translate

from technical to design

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and to people who didn't

understand the technical,

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you know, there's those parallels

that you have about like,

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why does information

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and relationships matter from

the back end to the front end?

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I could explain that to people

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and they, they could kind of

understand why it mattered

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and why we needed to do that.

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And it was, it was infectious to me.

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So that's where I got started.

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And then I always wanted it to be part

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of my job moving forward and I was more

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or less able to, to kind of make

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that happen from the two thousands to now.

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- And you, yeah, you've

definitely moved along

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and worked for, you know,

several organizations

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specifically in the accessibility area.

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Were there any, you know, differences

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or unique challenges as you moved along?

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Were the, was it like stepping stones

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or building blocks to where you are

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or were they just different

types of experiences?

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- Yeah, they all had different experiences

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because I worked at a state

agency, which was, you, you have

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to be small and scrappy

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because you have, like I

said, no budget, no money,

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you're on your own, you are an island,

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so you are relying on the

people who are publishing their,

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their resources online

and hoping for the best

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and just trying to experiment.

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And then at

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after that, I went to, I went

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to a for-profit company

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who didn't really care

about accessibility, but,

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but it, it, it was still,

it was still something

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that I wanted to carry through.

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And then I didn't last long there

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because they did our ideals

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and our values just didn't match.

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So I, I petered along as

long as I could to kind

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of make a living and then find another job

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where it's eventually a

contractor for working

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for the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention.

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And again, that's a place

where it really matters.

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And it was still a facet

of my job where again,

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I'm translating for people

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where bringing developers

together with communicators

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and front end people who are, you know,

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creating social media posts.

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And then social media became a thing

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and people are trying to

understand like, well,

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how do I make these social

media posts accessible,

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whether it's video or posting pictures.

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And again, the same tenants

held true on social media

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that held true online.

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So then it's again,

translating this information

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and then we were making a

whole lot of PDFs, so I became

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fluent in making tagging PDFs

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and understanding that, which

again, had the same tenets

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of accessibility that we had on the web.

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So again, translating that information

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and communicating the, the

funding foundational fundamentals

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to people about why it's important,

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we've got the same structures

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and the same hierarchical,

hierarchical things that we have

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to communicate to people.

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So how do we, you know,

get these fundamentals

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of communication across, why

is it important to have this be

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flexible and give people agency to have

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to make their own decisions

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and navigate the way they want

to with assisted technology?

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And we don't need to hold hands and,

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and create ableist decisions just

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because somebody has a disability.

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So again, providing this

information to people,

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but just in a wider spectrum

for the federal government.

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After that, then I got my

first opportunity to then go

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to JP Morgan Chase, where

it's finally part of my job.

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It was officially the

only thing I got to do.

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And then I was embedded

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as a subject matter expert

within a scrum team.

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So day in and day out, I'm

working with designers,

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developers, scrum team

managers, leaders, writers,

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everything where we're fixing

bugs, we're shipping product,

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we're, you know, in a

tight release deadline and,

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and shipping to, and,

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and then worrying about like

the bottom line at this point.

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And it then it became a different language

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and it wasn't necessarily

about like always about

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the greater good at that point,

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and it didn't matter about money.

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And then we're talking about

more about WCAG as opposed

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to section 5 0 8.

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So you kind of learn a

bit of different language

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and in between there I had gotten

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certification not from IAAP,

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but a certification called

Professional Certi certification

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of web accessibility from the

University of South Australia.

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So I know that's different

from the vast, vast majority

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of people in the United States.

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I found that really rewarding

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because for me, you join

a cohort of colleagues,

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you do online courses, you read,

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and then at the end

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of the course you're really

understanding the users,

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you're understanding w cg

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and you have a project that you engage in

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with your cohorts that you have to turn in

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and you have to have graded

at the end of the course.

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And you have a teacher

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and a professor, Scott Holier

that was really wonderful

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and taught you the importance

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of the end user in all of this.

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So I found that really rewarding

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and for me it's the learning stuck

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with me a lot more deeply than,

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and in, in my learning style in how I,

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how I like really dig into content.

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So I found that rewarding

in my jump from working

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with government to really working with

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the for-profit sector

and the banking world.

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And again, still being able to translate

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in the banking world, the end

user when we're still trying

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to turn out bugs and

talk about the end user,

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but not lose that when we're

focusing on the bottom line.

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And when I worked at JP Morgan

Chase, I not only worked

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with scrum teams and I had I think four

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or five scrum teams that

I worked with there,

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but I also worked with

the design system kind

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of writing like, how

does this component work?

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What are we expecting?

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What are the keystrokes that we're using?

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How is it expected to sound

when we're talking about

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assistive technologies that are engaging

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with this like a screen reader,

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how robust do we need to make this?

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Because I think a lot

of us who have worked

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with design systems understand

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our intentions aren't

always how the developers

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and designers will take these

components and implement them

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and then use them in their designs.

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So we need to really make them more robust

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so people can't misuse them.

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So being really clear and

setting clear expectations

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and boundaries when we're

creating these design systems.

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After JP Morgan Chase, I

had the opportunity to go

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to Microsoft, and from there man,

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I worked with a boatload of

different products at Microsoft.

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I started in a group called AI

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and R, which was covered

everything from the research

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research organization to binging and maps

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and oh my gosh, I'm gonna

forget so many products

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that were in there, something

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that is long since gone called Cortana,

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which was like their

version of Siri, their

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chatbots, all kinds of things

like there that really again,

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expanded the breadth of

applying accessibility to a lot

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of different things that

I hadn't tried before.

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But once again, the

fundamentals hold true.

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What is this thing? What are we doing?

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How are we communicating

the fundamentals to people

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to give them agency to

operate this in the way

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that holds true, that they can understand

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what they're trying to accomplish here

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and how they can navigate

this independently

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and within Microsoft.

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Then I got another opportunity to move

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to a group within there that was

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even more broad than that,

where I worked on everything

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from the Windows 10

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and 11 operating system to like their,

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their, some of their like mobile devices,

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like surface kind of mobile

devices and then teams

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and SharePoint and OneDrive,

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and then kind of working

with the colleagues

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to sometimes support some of

the office experiences there.

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So really, really huge

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and again, like all kinds of wild things

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that would come up that you

get to talk about and support

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and think through, like

how are we building these

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to support like millions

of people worldwide

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to make them really accessible

and empowering for people.

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It really, when I think through it,

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this little girl from

Oklahoma that like it,

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it blows my mind to think through

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the things, the products I've supported,

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the people I've worked

with, the opportunities

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that I've had to like

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make an impact on something

that is so meaningful to me

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and that I hope is, is just

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creating more opportunities for

other people in the world to

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cr create their own impact

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once they have tools that work for them.

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- Well, I it's, it's great

to hear about your pro

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progression of experiences.

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I think it's helpful

for people to, you know,

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hear about the challenges

and the opportunities and,

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and in your case it, it

really does seem like

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there was a nice series of building blocks

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that kept moving you forward, bringing you

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to where you are today.

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And I think that, you know, a lot

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of people first get into accessibility,

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it's a little bit hard seeing

how you can become part

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of the profession and,

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and then also hearing about your

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professional CER certification.

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I think that'd be interesting

to people as well. Yeah.

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End up, you know, just,

you know, looking kind

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of back at your career up through now

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and into the future, are there

any areas that you've seen

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that you feel like there's been really

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interesting, amazing developments

or on the other side?

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Or are there some things where you think

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our profession is still, you

know, there areas we need

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to pay more attention to

or get more support for?

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- I think some of the most

interesting developments are

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how much more open we are to

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including more and more people.

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The, the door when I first

got in, it seemed like

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it was a field of experts

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and I never thought that

I would be an expert.

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I never thought that I would

be good enough to be in this.

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But I think one thing

that has excited me is how

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more open it has become

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to all kinds of expertise in the field

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and more welcoming it has become.

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Because I do think we need all

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of those creative solutions in the space.

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We need more people in

the pool, if you will,

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to really solve all of these

complex things coming at us.

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Because a lot of times some

of the most creative solutions

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that we get are from new

people coming into the field

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and not us old fogies where

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we've seen this same

problem a bazillion times

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and we're thinking about it

the same way we've always

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thought about it, it's

new people working with us

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or it's new people that have

often don't know the rules,

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don't know the way they

have to think about it,

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that help us, that ask us a question

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that make us think about it in a new way

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or come at it completely

out of the blue to come

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with a creative solution.

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And so that for me is one of

the most exciting things where

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it's no longer this like narrow field

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of like sometimes it was experts trying

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to out expert one another online.

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It's just a breath of fresh air to me,

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whether it's like a younger generation

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or just cohorts

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that are really excited about

making a change in this.

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And for me that's part of

the thing that even with

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the people being scared about chat GPT

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or AI that's coming into, into the,

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into the tech industry

right now, those are things,

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the ingenuity and the

creativity of human expression

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and community that cannot be

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replicated by AI right now.

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- Well, kinda looking

forward, are there any things

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that you're particularly passionate

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or excited about either

coming up in your organization

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or things that you see, you

know, generally happening

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in the accessibility profession?

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- I really am passionate about

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accessibility of charts and graphs.

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I know that sounds really wonky,

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but there's so much data out there

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and I really think whether

you're talking about learning

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disabilities or disabilities

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where we're using things

like screen readers

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or like draft naturally speaking

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or anything like that,

making such large amounts

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of data accessible.

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And even like if I, I'm

coming to new sets of data

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where I don't understand what

you're trying to communicate

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to me with these large data sets

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and these really complex numbers.

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How do we make this data more accessible?

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People are using data

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to misrepresent things in large ways.

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And so how do we make, give people more

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better ways to communicate and

use this data in clearer ways

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and, and not in a way that's like,

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here's this graph now

go look at this table

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and parse this data.

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You've got dysgraphia,

you've got dyslexia,

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you're using a screen reader.

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Go read this table. Or you're new to this,

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go read this table or try

to understand what all

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of these acronyms are.

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And I think that is one

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of the biggest things on the

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frontier that we need to tackle.

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And that is the most exciting.

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And I see a lot of people researching

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and trying fun things from

sonification to all kinds

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of different, different

ideas that can be, they, some

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of it's can be prediction

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and could use some AI in promising ways,

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but can use creativity of the human spirit

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and community in other ways

That will be really promising

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- That that's definitely,

it's a topic area that I,

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I think deserves a lot, a lot of attention

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and that's what I'm interested in as well.

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It's been a, a great pleasure

to be able to chat with you

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specifically for this program,

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so I appreciate you taking

the time to do that,

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and hopefully we can

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get together again in the

real world sometime soon. I

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- Hope so too, Joe. It's been a pleasure.

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- All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

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All right, bye-Bye bye.