Matthew Luken, U.S. Bank, Vice President - Digital Accessibility

Matthew talks about his work teaching and building the accessibility team at US Bank. He describes his career in aviation which brought him into system engineering and then into web design and user experience. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(exciting 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 found their way

into this profession.

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

and hear about their journey.

Well, hello, let's get started with this interview

and for this one,

I am pleased to be joined by Matthew Luken,

hello Matthew, how are you doing today?

- Good, how are you?

- Everything's going pretty well.

And it's a nice summer day in the area where I am,

which is a home office in Vashon Island, Washington,

near the Blink Seattle headquarters.

Where are you talking to us from?

- Today, from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

- Well, I really appreciate you taking the time

to chat with me a little bit.

And you know,

this series is all about meeting people that are doing a lot

of work to move accessibility forward in their work,

and in the communities.

So I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you,

but before we get started,

why don't you just talk a little bit about, you know,

what you're up to today?

- So today we are up to a whole bunch

of different aspects of maturity model,

where we are, you know,

growing the team and hiring.

So there's a lot of educating our new team members,

making sure they understand the process,

that we're doing it consistently,

but also trying to figure out

and educating people across different spectrums,

whether it be students in college settings,

or whether it's within the place that I currently work.

You know, trying to get people to understand

the intersectionality between what we need to do,

what we should be doing,

how we can bring it to life.

But most importantly,

how it is an iterative process.

You can't get from zero to a hundred percent in a moment,

but rather what is the best way to get there

as quickly as you can.

And some days we spend time holding people's hands

because they feel like something's gonna

go into production that's not as good as it should be.

That's okay, right.

That's what backlogs are for, but also maybe, you know,

trying to get people to understand how do you strategically

engage a product during a conversation to take three steps

instead of trying to do it in six steps,

or trying to take too much

and trying to do it in two steps.

So a lot of our day, every day is educating, mentoring,

helping people understand.

And most importantly, coaching.

- I appreciate you using that iteration term.

I use that a lot myself, you know,

as new people come into the accessibility area,

a lot of times they get overwhelmed because there is

a lot of information if you just Googled that.

And, then, or suddenly looked at the Wik hag,

and it's like, wow, where do I even start?

And, you know, I like to tell people,

that you just start wherever you can start

and build on that,

and you've already made progress just by whatever your

starting point is.

- Exactly, and, you know, I teach college, too.

And one of the things that I tell people is that, you know,

whether it's user experience or accessibility specifically,

or both, is that, you know,

everyone is used to this methodology growing up,

that you take the reverse pyramid approach, right?

We teach you a simple thing, like maybe addition,

then you learn subtraction,

then multiplication and division, right.

You build upon it and you need the skills

from the previous thing.

So we get so conditioned to learning that way.

And then when you come into accessibility, it's like, okay,

we are building a pyramid,

but we're not gonna have a strong foundation

because there's too much going on.

So you have to understand contextually

that we're gonna add pieces here,

and then pieces there and a little piece here,

and maybe it's in the middle of the pyramid,

and maybe it's near the top.

And then eventually it fills in.

And so now our understanding over time takes the shape

of that pyramid, right?

And because it's so spotty, it becomes very, very difficult.

And when we think about user experience in general,

and trying to understand that, there is no path, right?

There's so many different ways to get into UX.

You can have different types of backgrounds and education

and change professions,

but all of it stems from passion and empathy,

and understanding the user's experience,

whether they are able bodied, disabled,

whether they're blind, whether they're sighted,

it doesn't matter.

It's about understanding how to build that experience.

And now when we start thinking about those different pieces

and how they fill in that shape, and I'm,

it's easier to understand that I am feeling overwhelmed

and it makes sense why I'm feeling overwhelmed,

because it's little bits and pieces,

and it eventually starts to come out of the mist

and we start to see it and we start to understand it.

But then we have to apply the empathy

because the people we're working with

are going through the exact same problem.

They have little pieces of information,

and now we have to help get their vision clear so they can

see the same thing we're seeing.

So it's hugely important for people to understand

that it takes a while, right?

It's a journey.

It's not a one and done type of thing.

- And the journey is, the theme of this series

is finding out those starting points

and the building blocks that get us

to where we're at.

So maybe why don't we move back, you know,

back in time to wherever you think is,

is a good spot and maybe, you know,

talk about some highlights from your career

that maybe started to, you know,

move you into the things that you do today.

- Sure, so I, you know,

all my background and education post high school

was around aviation.

And so as I learned computer science in general

with aviation applications and then worked into my career,

it was always aviation based and worked for the FAA,

and went and worked for Northwest Airlines,

which was then acquired by Delta Airlines.

All of that was my background,

but because I was always inquisitive and always challenging

and trying to tinker with things,

like how can we optimize something?

And at the time of course this was called, you know,

like system engineering and performance enhancement,

and many, many other names.

It eventually became to be understood as user experience.

So as we started looking at as a company and, you know,

the age of the personal computer and the internet,

we started looking at well,

how can we take these really manual processes,

and how can we apply digital to them and make them simpler?

But then what we started to see was people were getting

confused by the way we designed it.

So how can we make it simpler for people with English

as a second language, for example?

Because the airline operated around the world.

So how do we start thinking about the user there

and the simplification of adding automation

to be able to skip steps

and pull data where possible and pre-fill in fields

and then on, and on, and on.

And then eventually moving beyond the airlines,

just into pure digital.

And so I started becoming a user experience designer,

started teaching college, doing it at the same time.

So a second gig, course glutton for punishment,

started a third gig to start my own web firm.

And we did that for a very specific reason,

which was what we found in college was

that in digital, in web development, in web design,

that students get a degree in it.

But what you need to get in the door is millions

of other things that are not taught to you in school.

So how do we help get students really ready

and make their education valuable?

They have to go way above and beyond the textbook

and way beyond just what we're teaching them

from a degree curriculum.

So we set up a web firm that basically is an apprenticeship.

You know, come work with us.

We'll take a model where we'll sell a cheaper price point

to smaller businesses that want websites

with the understanding that we're educating students.

So it takes a little bit longer, right?

But we'll guarantee its quality.

And they benefit because they're helping people learn

and we're helping them learn,

and they can use it in their portfolio.

And over our career,

we had over 65 different people in the Minneapolis area

take us up on that and learn how to run this.

And then as I continue on in my career,

ended up working for over 275 different brands,

trying to come in and optimize their teams,

or bring them to a different places of operating

from a user experience perspective or a digital team

or shop perspective.

And eventually all of a sudden there was an opportunity

where it was thrust upon me to run an accessibility,

dedicated accessibility team, so quickly morphing to, okay,

what do I need to know that's slightly different

about just pure accessibility than user experience

and how do we educate designers?

To be inclusive designers and not wait 'till you get

a defect in development.

Like what can we do to influence the design so

that it is more accessible going into development,

which will lessen the burden on the developer,

but also lessen than the defects going into production.

And that's what we're currently doing.

- And just going back to your experience

in the aeronautical industry,

did, had that been where you

had accessibility exposure at that time?

'Cause I'm kind of interested.

- Actually, I did. - In how that worked.

In that industry.

You know, it's one that I'm not familiar with that well.

- Yeah, so Northwest Airlines was one of

the first airlines to actually have

a self service kiosk concept.

And I was actually on that project.

And so as you think about not only have

the digital interface, but you also have

the physical piece to it.

So we see with, with kiosks is, you know,

we start thinking about kiosks,

we're starting to come about for self-service at

the same time that the internet and web

is starting to become proficient.

People started having their own personal computers.

So we start seeing this concept that people can do things

for themselves like ordering products and, you know,

interacting in a digital way.

So there was a fear of introducing this kiosk,

would people actually use it, right?

They're so used to going to an agent,

would they actually go and want to be self-serviced?

And go touch this device to do this and check in

and potentially do their bags or change the sheets

or whatever, you know,

how much can we introduce to it?

And do we do that?

And then we started thinking about

like software development design,

and service design and MVP products.

Like if we introduced just the check-in,

is it robust enough that they'd use it or do we need to do

other things in it?

And how much is too much, right.

If we invested too much effort into putting all these bells

and whistles into it, right?

Where's that sweet balance?

So what we launched was the ability to check in,

the ability to change your seat,

your ability to maybe request a wheelchair,

and launched with that.

And then now what we see is so much more, right,

20 years later,

we're seeing customers can now check in,

print a boarding pass, print a bag tag,

attach it to their own bag and drop it on the conveyor belt.

No one would have believed the consumer would actually want

to do this and prefer to do it than having someone else do

it for them.

So all of this, you know,

starts thinking about accessibility and thinking about how

do we have cognitive load and how do we deal with English as

a second language?

And what can we communicate through icons and imagery

versus actual text and words?

So it's not too heavy.

So we started having to think about all of those things

as digital started to grow.

And then we just see that naturally transitioned

into what we know today.

- Well, I know over a lot of the things

in the airline industry,

there's things that are regulated,

things have to be done in a certain way,

is the work that you were doing with accessibility

with Northwest at the time,

was that kind of homegrown things you were doing for,

you know, specifically for your customers?

Or did you have peers and colleagues,

in that industry that were sharing ideas

about how to move forward?

- Both, really both.

And you know, Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines

at the time were very employee centered.

So we worked with employees that had different abilities

and disabilities as part of our mechanism.

And mostly because it was a cost effective way to do so.

Rather than trying to bring in external customers,

pay them for their time.

We had employees that we're already paying

and who wanted to help.

So we were starting to leverage that passion and compassion

that we had generated within our own company to help us move

the needle and move it to the direction that we needed to.

- And for the things that you're involved in now,

are there any new passion projects that you're able to talk

about or things, you know,

that you're hoping to see happen in your area moving

in the future?

- So my current passion project is, you know,

from a college perspective,

I am still teaching college,

that's something like 15 years at this point.

And it's really around, you know,

how can you learn about user experience or accessibility

and get into the work environment

and in a way that is not breaking the bank?

That something that industry will accept.

So the concept of certificates and boot camps

and all these other things are in the marketplace.

And they probably will continue to be in the marketplace.

There is no true degree,

undergraduate degree in user experience,

there are graduate degrees,

but really it's masking the name.

They're really like human factors degrees

or psychology degrees that have a label

of user experience behind them.

So trying to figure out the best way to do that

and how do we get people into industry?

There's a huge shortage in many fields, you know, nursing,

medical, pilots, user experience is just one more of them.

As we think about how we need to shift in morph

and fix all of these digital products

that we have made in the past,

into something that is keeping current with technology,

with different abilities, we need more and more people.

So how can we bring people from other disciplines

or other backgrounds and get them into the digital space

and can they do it in such a way that

it's cost-effective, it's quick,

it's timely, industry will bring them on board,

but also embedded in accessibility.

How can they do it well, inclusively,

and not have to go and invest company money

to go fix it later when we realize it's not right.

So I'm very passionate about how can we educate

the next community because it's very community-based,

and what we do.

- Well, yeah, I'm not sure how things are organized,

you know, where you're working now,

but in different organizations,

some larger organizations,

you have a broader accessibility support group

that helps, you know,

establish it in different departments and divisions.

And then a lot of other organizations

it's just because a particular department or division

has an evangelist,

you know, makes it happen for what they're doing.

I was just wondering, you know, kind of in your experience,

what experiences you've had in that, and, you know,

what you think is kind of the best way for organizations

to move forward?

- Well, I've seen lots of iterations

and lots of different models,

but what I try to stress to people is that they

need to really, really understand

that where things start and where they move to

and end up is something that will happen.

If they think that, you know,

putting accessibility in one particular department or team,

and that it's gonna remain there forever,

that doesn't make sense, right.

User experience and accessibility go hand in hand.

So in some time, in some cases,

it makes sense to put it within design.

And there's also the facet of the build, right.

So do you put it in development?

Do you move it in IT?

Do you have a company that has consumer facing products

as well as employees?

Do you put it in DEI or do you put it in the HR department?

The answer's always going to be,

it's going to depend and it's always going to change.

And this is what leaders need to understand,

is it will change.

So don't get hung up on where you start, or where it goes,

but rather understanding that it needs

to organically go where it needs to go,

which is not something US-based companies are very adapt at.

They don't understand true homogeneous

or organizationally agnostic working teams.

They think about everything as funding,

and where something sits within a chart,

and accessibility is not something that sits in a chart.

Everybody does it.

Everybody needs to do it.

Everybody has to do it all the time.

So with that, it's a true enterprise solution.

So where do you put that?

There's no where to,

because there's no true enterprise organizations across

that type of structure.

So it has to be something different

and thought about as different.

- Yeah, I appreciate your sentiments in that area.

I mean, in my own work, you know,

one of the things that's a philosophy item for me is

to not be the gatekeeper, not be the,

I'm there as a mentor,

as a resource, as an evangelist to move things forward,

hopefully as a leader, as you were talking about.

But whenever things start to suddenly,

on a project start to be only funneled through me,

I, that's where I always want to have a conversation

and identify where everybody can bring it

into their own practice.

- Yeah, just like the organizational problem.

There's also the carrot and stick philosophy.

Some companies, they have audit and compliance and risk

and legal and things like that.

The stick team.

And then they have the carrot team,

the team that is trying to control people to do things.

So HR and managers of people and things like that.

Accessibility is both those things.

You have to be the carrot and the stick at the same time.

So a little bit of shorting their box.

It's like, it's all and it's nothing.

So how do you think about that?

And it's very difficult to explain to leaders like my job

morphs every moment of every day,

and often within the same conversation,

because sometimes I have to be the hard nose to say, no,

at the same time,

I have to cajole them to do the right thing.

I have to be a passion driver and convince people

to be passionate about something that they don't want to.

And then I've got to tame

the expectations of the people that want

to be overly passionate.

And it's like, okay, how do we,

how do we bring this into, in the middle?

So, yeah, it's a very, very interesting profession to be in.

- Well, I appreciate you taking a few minutes

to chat with us about your experiences

and your ideas about things.

And hopefully we'll be able to meet up when things start

to come out of the pandemic at a conference

or something like that.

- My pleasure.

- All right, thanks a lot, Matthew, bye-bye.