The Digital Accessibility Podcast – Ben Ogilvie

In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, Joe James is joined by Ben Ogilvie, Head of Accessibility at ArcTouch. With a background in software engineering and a career spanning both in-house and agency roles, Ben shares his thoughtful, systems-driven approach to scaling accessibility in complex digital environments.

Now leading accessibility at ArcTouch, a global design and development agency, Ben supports teams and clients in embedding inclusive design practices across product lifecycles.

We discuss:

• Transitioning from engineering to accessibility: How Ben’s development background helped him spot systemic accessibility issues early on and shaped his pragmatic approach.
• What makes accessibility sustainable: From patterns and tooling to strategy and documentation, Ben shares the foundational elements that make accessibility scalable.
• The role of agencies in accessibility maturity: How ArcTouch collaborates with clients to raise internal capability and shift accessibility left.
• Balancing perfection with progress: The importance of enabling teams, prioritising pragmatism, and avoiding "all-or-nothing" thinking in accessibility.
• Advice for aspiring accessibility leaders: How to gain traction, work across functions, and stay grounded in the work that matters.

Whether you’re part of an in-house team or a digital agency, this episode offers clear thinking and grounded strategies for scaling accessibility with purpose and clarity.

Follow Ben Ogilvie:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benogilvie/

Follow Joe James:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/

Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/A11yJoe

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PCRDigital

Visit PCR Digital:

https://www.pcrdigital.com/

Welcome back to the Digital Accessibility Podcast.

If you're looking to learn more about the field of

accessibility, how to implement it within your role

or your company, or to get advice on where to start or

see how others have navigated complex issues that you may

find along the way, then you're in the right place.

I'm honored to be able to share these insightful

chats with thought leaders, advocates, and practitioners

of digital accessibility throughout this podcast,

and I hope you'll find it a useful resource.

As always, thank you so much for listening, and I

hope you enjoy the chat.

Today I'm really excited to be joined by someone who's

been doing incredible work in the digital accessibility

space for many years.

Ben Ogilvie, Head of Accessibility at ArcTouch.

Ben's journey into this space is both deeply personal and

professionally inspiring, and I think our listeners

are going to get a lot out of this conversation.

Ben now leads the accessibility efforts

at ArcTouch a mobile and connected experience

studio that's grown massively since he joined.

He started out as a product manager and is now Head

of Accessibility for a company-wide commitment

to accessible design.

So welcome to the podcast, Ben.

Thanks so much, Joe.

Really excited to be here.

And, a part of the, the storied history of,

of incredible guests on your podcast so far.

I really appreciate being included.

Well, I'm still gobsmacked, awestruck, and yeah,

incredibly honored and thank, thank you so

much for being here.

So, yeah, I guess we'll get started.

As with every other episode, it's always nice for our

listeners to sort of get a bit of a feel for your background.

So what first got you into accessibility, Ben?

Yeah.

I, as, as many of us, in the space do have, have a

pretty personal path in, I. In the early aughts, I

started working for Apple, as a, as a Mac genius at the

time at the retail stores

and then over time progressed into, a retail

operations IT support role.

But in 2009, I was working in California.

My father was training for a bicycling race

for his 60th birthday.

And he's always kind of been, you know, Superman, captain

of all the sports teams, all of that, very athletic.

But as he was training for this race, he came around, a

corner in the neighborhood where I grew up, and

collided with a delivery truck and became quadriplegic.

And I flew home from California to Texas, to

retrofit his computer so that he could keep his

job and was able to do so, but it was way harder

than it should have been.

And I kind of thought, okay, what do people

do if they don't have a computer nerd in the family?

Something that's already life altering shouldn't also have

to be career ending, but it nearly was for him and he was

able to keep his job for, a number of years after that

using everything primarily by voice.

Um.

And, with a bit of interaction with a stylus

on his hand, that he, he's able to control a bit.

But that was kind of my being thrown into the

deep end of learning about software accessibility and

kind of seeing the, the gaps in ways that things

are not built for, a large portion of the population.

And so I stayed at Apple for a few more years after that,

but still on the operations and and support side.

And I decided I wanted to be closer to building product.

And, at that time I came over to ArcTouch,

which, had started in at the same time in 2009.

I joined at the beginning of 2013.

We were about 25 or 30 people at the time, and, came

in as a product manager.

I was kind of doing stealth accessibility on the sides.

As long as, clients didn't ask questions about timeline

or budget, I tried to see what we could sneak in to

make things a little bit better as I continued to

build the skillset myself.

And that was kind of my start, in, in the space.

Incredible.

I've, I've actually quite, I think in previous discussions

you've mentioned stealth accessibility before, and

I think I've coined that phrase a few times recently

in conversations myself, because I dunno if I want to

give the, give the game up.

But, obviously as a recruiter, people are asking

for front end engineers or product or, or, um.

Project managers or program managers and my conversations

with candidates, regardless of the role, and if a requirement

is accessibility, I'm always talking about the topic.

So I feel that I'm doing my bit by being a bit stealthy

and being like, well, if you've got some knowledge

and accessibility, you're gonna be making better

products, in my opinion.

and I think that that's sort of.

How it's, so I guess people are gonna start looking out

for that now in my candidates.

But, yeah.

Another thing I loved, the way that you phrased something

just then was, where you said making products

that are better or that couldn't be used by a large

portion of the population.

I think language is really important in the accessibility

space and it's quite tricky as a now podcast

host, but just generally having conversations that

we use the right language.

And I think that that's such a nicer way to, to express.

Who this actually affects.

We're always on the conversation of, people

that have impairments or with disability, live

with disabilities or conditions temporary,

could be or long term.

but I think just describing that as we are, we are,

we are here for the user regardless, you know?

I think that's a really nice way to phrase it.

Yeah.

And it's, it's one of those things that.

I have lots of conversations with clients, who are at

various stages of their kind of own awareness and, and

progress along the journey.

And a lot of times those first conversations are just

about widening the lens and, and understanding the, the

impact of, accessibility on just good product design

in general, and specifically on how to reach, what is it?

Turns out the, the largest.

And most historically underserved, population

in the world, globally.

So, yeah, absolutely.

and that's the thing.

So on that topic of stealth accessibility, so

that was before it became your full-time role.

So did anything change in particular at ArcTouch that

made you push for that?

Or how did you sort of manage to get that title

and that sort of buy-in?

that sort of million dollar question, I suppose.

Yeah, the, the second inflection point for me

was also deeply personal.

I had continued to kind of do that work, on the

side for, for a handful of years, from when I joined.

But in 2009, my wife and I had our first son and, uh

we learned, within 24 hours after he was born, that he'd

actually, lost oxygen in utero, for a period of time,

which had resulted in, some neurological differences,

including epilepsy.

And we spent the first, chunk of time in, in the ICU and

once things had stabilized, and I came back to work,

I talked to my management.

And said, Hey, I, I can't be doing this kind of as

a side gig anymore this is the work that I'll be

doing in some capacity for the rest of my life.

but I don't know if there's space for me to do that here.

And they effectively said, we'll make space.

And they pulled me off of all my other projects and gave me

the time and the room, to, to build a program and a team

and an approach to how do we do those same work we've

always done for our clients, but from an accessibility

first perspective.

And, the company was founded from the beginning

on the concept of building lovable products

and they had originally defined that the, the

pillars of what makes a product lovable is that

it is both useful but also delightfully designed and

we've now added a third pillar to that, which is useful,

delightful, and accessible.

and we've gotten to do that work, thankfully with, with

some incredible brands and, and clients and partners,

and, and kind of introduce that concept to their,

their work streams as well.

That's absolutely incredible.

And I guess, uh.

It's, yeah, it definitely speaks to the, the

field of accessibility.

You know, like you say, that personal experience.

And I think that at times I've struggled with imposter

phenomenon or imposter syndrome where, you know,

you think do I belong?

But everyone belongs, you know,

but it makes it that much more meaningful for

you as a practitioner in that space, as well.

'cause like you rightly identified, this is good.

This is your life.

You know, you have a son.

You also already stepped into that and gave your

time and effort and built the knowledge to ensure

that your, your father could still work as well

so it's, it's sort of bred into you, you know?

and I would say that.

It's not uncommon to hear people that have had that

similar type of journey into accessibility, but I do think

that there's obviously still space and you've probably

seen this yourself, of people that have just got an innate

amount of empathy and, and would just love to make

the world a better, more accessible place as well.

So, yeah.

But yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And one thing I've found is, to your point a number of

people in the space do have the personal connection,

but many others have kind of stumbled their way

into it in one capacity or another for various reasons.

and, and then once it's one of those things that once you see

it, you can't unsee it, right?

Yeah.

But one thing that I've found, and, a friend of

mine, said at one point, not everyone has had that

light bulb moment yet.

But when you're having these conversations with,

you know, clients, vendors, partners, whoever, if they

are, if they haven't had their moment yet, one of the most

impactful things you can do is let them borrow yours.

And so storytelling is such an important part of doing

this work, kind of sharing either personal stories

or as you get into testing with, with users and, and

really seeing the impact.

Letting people have that moment, that personal

connection, to understand why this is something

that's not just compliance, but it really is building

things that work better

and also future proofing products and all those

benefits as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

That innovation piece and it's, it kind.

It's very similar to sort of reach, it probably

shouldn't be because like we're saying it should be

in at the start, right?

But I guess that research is so important and that develop

that r and d side of things.

So companies with a good research and development

facility or team, or commitment, I'd find it

really interesting, strange and probably infuriating

if they didn't have an element of accessibility

in their research and development, but Right.

You know, hopefully we'll start to see more

and more of that, as the, the years go by.

But, awesome.

So ArcTouch has had that massive growth as well.

You mentioned there were sort of 20 people when you

first joined in, 2009.

and it's been, we're about 300.

About 300 now.

Wow.

Oh my God.

So, yeah.

Huge, huge growth.

and I, I, I'd like to think that that's purely because

of all the work you've done in accessibility.

I, I, I wish I could take that credit.

I, I, I can't.

But we've gotten to work with incredible clients

and, you know, continue to, to grow, a pace with them.

Brilliant.

and there was an acquisition in 2016 by WPP, so I know that

that may have had, something to do with it, but, um.

Has there been a key role that accessibility has played in

that growth story and, and how sort of, have you had

to manage that internally rather than just the products

you're building, I guess?

Yeah.

you know, we, when we made accessibility kind of a,

a core, component of the work that we do was kind of

in parallel with, with the beginning of the pandemic.

you know, 'cause I, I came, my son was born in 2019 and then

I came back and, and shortly after that the pandemic hit.

And so there's lots of, variables that

that came into play

across agencies and across all kinds of companies, both

in scaling up and scaling down, and, you know, all

of those, those, waves of that rollercoaster.

So, you know, it's hard to track what influenced

what, but certainly that acquisition in, in, 2016

was, was a big benefit to us.

You know, since the, since ArcTouch was founded in 2009,

we've, we've really gotten to work from the beginning with

incredible brands kind of punching above our

weight, and getting to do, do good work with, with

incredible global companies.

But joining WPP absolutely accelerated that.

you know, we, we get brought in as mobile specialists,

as product specialists, and now as accessibility experts

in, you know, some of the

largest global clients that WPP has, and have gotten to

do really exciting, work in bringing accessibility as

a foundational component to some of those clients that,

you know, you would, you would hope would have a robust

program already in place, but in some cases just the

operational inertia of some of those large companies,

just doesn't, hasn't

permitted that to, to flourish.

And so we, we get to come in and say, Hey, let's

tackle this on this project.

And then when, when people start to see how that has

been successful on that, on that project, we get to

start having conversations with other teams within

the organization, those organizations, and

as part of WPP, we also get to collaborate with our

sister agencies, show them the approach that we've built

up to accessibility, first product thinking, and then

that's continued to drive further collaborations as more

of the WPP network learns of that expertise and, so it's

kind of this virtuous cycle.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And it just, I guess it's probably opening

more doors than it's closing for you as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because, and it's I think we're starting to see a

lot more in the, in, in Europe or in the uk, at

least with our clients.

So a very familiar territory.

You know, we're now a company of, of six people, um mm-hmm.

But we work with, you know, huge global brands

and, feel very fortunate and it's hard to measure

the impact as a recruiter because unless we are, you

know, constantly in contact with, with the managers.

But I, I like to think we're doing a good job

at helping teams grow with, of that expertise.

But that's great to see that you can really partner

with, historically, I guess people that might, you might

have seen as competitors, or companies you may have

seen as competitors, but now actually working together,

sharing that knowledge.

And I think that that's a huge, huge aspect of the

accessibility space anyway.

Is that free and open transfer of how, how

about trying this out?

'cause you know that the end goal is, is a

better internet a better experience for, for everyone?

Yeah, absolutely.

Amazing.

And that kind of brings me on quite nicely actually

to this next question.

Dunno how I managed to do that you have done fantastic

work over, over the, the course of your career

and someone that has popped up, during that time is,

is Joe Devon and The GAAD Foundation, in particular.

So, or G-A-A-D I should probably say, just to help me

out with the captions later.

But, can you tell us a bit more about the, um.

That the GAAD Foundation and, and what it's doing

to help within the broadest world of accessibility.

Yeah, so global accessibility awareness day.

A a lot of people at this point don't know it 'cause

it's such a global phenomenon, but that, that's recognized

by huge companies the largest companies all around the

world, but it started, with a blog post that Joe Devon

made as he was watching his own father struggle with

banking as he aged and lost his eyesight and, and hearing

and, and other things.

And Joe, just out of frustration as a posted on

a MySQL database development blog you know, kind of this,

he calls it a backwater, blog that probably only had 10

people that really frequented it regularly at the time.

And he just said, accessibility has to go

mainstream for developers now and there's, there's

a whole story about how that became, this grew

into this major thing.

Jennison Asuncion, the other co-founder of of

GAAD saw that blog post.

He and Joe didn't know each other, but he reached

out and said, let's do it.

Let's make it happen.

And they created the first GAAD, and it's been an

incredible run since then.

You know, it, it was massive from its first year, 10 years

after that first GAAD, they created the GAAD Foundation

and the goal is really to shift the culture of software

development and disrupt, disrupt that culture and in

inject accessibility as a core principle and a foundation

of kind of the, the culture of software development and

I reached out to Joe a number of years ago and said, Hey,

I'm, I'm trying to build this culture within an agency and

we've got some, some things that are inherent to agency

life that are different than

product companies or different than, organizations

that have, you know, multi-year, single product

suite types of roadmaps.

So I, I'd like to pick your brain about how, how

I might approach that.

Starting from that initial outreach.

we, we formed a friendship and Joe and Jenison said, you know

we don't have other, we don't see a ton of other people that

are in kind of the position from an agency perspective

that, that you all are as ArcTouch, that are really

pushing for accessibility.

and, and after a while they invited me to join the,

the board of directors of the, the GAAD Foundation.

So we've really gotten to do some, some exciting

stuff there's, you know, folks can learn more about

what the foundation does if they go to GAAD.foundation,

but there's a number of different aspects to it.

One of them that we got to work with, with Joe

on was putting together our state of mobile app

accessibility report.

He had a number of years before that worked on a state

of accessibility report that covered primarily web to

start and then started to shift to mobile into 2021

but that was the last year they put out that report.

So I know we, we will, we'll talk more about the, the

report later, but that was one of those areas where,

there's so much in the world of digital products that

exist, that are touched by agencies and if we can

drive that culture shift to where agencies are pushing

their clients to make things accessible as opposed to

just maybe including it in the, the contract as a, you

know, compliance checkbox sort of exercise and really

driving towards best practices and, and introducing those

across their suite of

client work that will really make a dent in so many aspects

of what exists in software and interface across all

industries globally and so we really see that as one of

the, the points of leverage that, that we're working

with, with, as part of the GAAD foundation to try to add

that not just into primarily software companies and, and

global brands, but also the agencies that partner with

them and find those ways to kind of make those outsize

ripples throughout the the culture of development.

Perfect.

It sounds incredible.

I mean, it's something that we've been talking about at

PCR Digital as well about how, how can we do more obviously

this podcast was, was born out of that, trying to raise the

awareness, but there's only so much you can do as an external

recruitment agency when you are introducing people

that's why the stealthy side of they don't know it yet,

but this person's gonna be great for their accessibility,

but then actually trying to have that conversation

and push for it and, and advocate for it with decision

makers, it's, it's quite hard to get that face time.

But I suppose yeah, as an agency or if we've got larger

pieces of work, then we could make that the gold standard.

You know?

That's, that's what we have to work with and making

it industry standard.

And that's, that's one of the other things I've, I've found

as part of WPP is that there are pockets of people who

care deeply, and are doing this work day in, day out

and pushing for it within the agency, within those agencies,

but it's very siloed.

And so we've been working on identifying those, those kind

of individual contributors or leaders within that global

organization and try to kind of de-silo that and have more

conversations about how do we share best practices, how do

we collaborate and, and kind of level up the approach as a

standard across agency work, and then communicate that out

to clients and help them shift their own internal cultures

by leading, by example there

and that's how we kind of see that flywheel of growth,

and, and expertise growing.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And I guess when you leave behind, a trail of, of that

knowledge, I guess, do you as an agency provide any kind

of like training or like e-learning and things that you

can just, they can have or?

Yeah, so we've, we've definitely built up our

own internal training and processes over the years.

Because one of the things that we find is that, especially

in the majority of our work, is about well over half of

our work is native mobile and accessibility in native mobile

is a pretty niche still still a fairly niche expertise.

It's growing, certainly.

But one thing that we've found is while we've been

able to hire, a handful of, of really great practitioners

who have that experience, we've learned that really we

do need to work on equipping our, our new hires as they

come in to, to start growing that expertise internally

because there's just not

enough of it in the places where we hire, to,

to expect that we can hire that, that senior

expertise off, you know, off the street as it were.

So we've definitely built up internal programs around

ensuring we have a foundation of baseline training for

all roles and make sure everybody understands what

their, what, what's expected of them at a baseline.

And then as people raise their hands and say,

I'd like to know more.

Then we have the ability to dive deeper with them and, and

support them in that growth.

But, certainly we, one of the most important things

we've done is, is build out that expectation of kind of

a baseline level of awareness and knowledge as people come

in the door, that we can help them kind of both set, set

that level, but also plant the seed of, this is an, an area

where you can invest and grow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, I think that's brilliant.

Planting the seed is, is excellent because they

might not know, they might not realize it when it's

happening, but that could be such an invaluable piece of

training that they receive.

Yeah.

You know, to, to grow their career and to, you

know, huge, huge ways.

So, um.

No, that's great.

And I know that some companies like, Heather Hepburn

mentioned on, on our mm-hmm.

We did an episode for GAAD and she mentioned about

the induction that they do.

So it's, it's a similar sort of scenario, but just making

sure people are aware as well.

So it's, getting it as early on as possible

is, is brilliant

and I guess on that hiring perspective, um.

Would you say that that's how it's starting to embed

within your team's cultures and, and or the culture

in general at ArcTouch?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, like I said, we've, we've been fortunate to

have people who have come to ArcTouch now because

they see that it's something that we treat as a first

class citizen, and that we, you know, I've, I've

had a number of our people come in the door and say,

Hey, the fact that you all have a person in your role

as a head of accessibility is not something I see

a lot of other places.

You know, a lot of our team is in Brazil because when

ArcTouch was founded, the first engineer that was hired

was from Brazil, but living in San Francisco at the time and,

moved back to Brazil and have just continued to hire there

as we've grown over the years.

But a lot of our, a lot of our team has said we came

to ArcTouch because we saw that that was something you

really cared about now, which is really a, a great

thing, but also plenty of folks come to us without

that kind of knowledge, and so we've, we've gotten to

start to build that culture of awareness and expectation

and that they can then take to conversations when they're

working with their clients, and say, you know, we've got

just a little bit of knowledge.

Let's have an initial conversation

about it and then.

A little while later, those clients will

come back and say, Hey, you talked about this.

Can you tell us more about how you approach that?

Which has been a, a great way to kind of see those, that

knowledge and awareness grow.

So, Ben, you recently shared with me, the state of

mobile app accessibility or SOMA report, before

its public release.

So I was very, very, uh delighted.

I did give it a read through, but I didn't give you feedback

because I'm a horrible person.

I was just caught up with so much else,

but, really appreciated that sort of insight,

but could you walk, me and the, the listeners through

some of the most important findings from that report

and why it's gonna matter to product teams today?

Yeah.

You know, we, we work with a lot of clients specifically

on their mobile apps and one of the most common

questions is how are we kind of compared to... where,

where's the industry overall on accessibility and how

are we doing by comparison?

And we started to kind of look for industry baseline data and

it really, didn't exist, and or at least wasn't current.

I mentioned earlier, Joe and his state of accessibility

report where in the last year that that report

came out, they started to focus on mobile.

But there really wasn't much kind of, that

was broadly available.

On the web side, there's the web a million, which

comes out every year.

There's, there's other data that exists out there

for, for people to kind of benchmark web accessibility.

But it, we really didn't find anything for mobile,

so we decided, okay, I guess we need to, we need

to do this ourselves and, because we had a sense

that, you know, mobile, mobile accessibility is

you know, in some ways further ahead because of

the closed ecosystems on iOS and Android and the work

that Apple and Google do to provide developers with tools

to build things accessibly.

But they have to choose to do it and they have to know how

to do it and on the other hand mobile accessibility is

a bit further behind, because it's not open source code

you know, there aren't, there isn't as much support out

there to, to improve things and, and monitor things.

So, we looked to start providing some kind of

bench benchmark or baseline data and contribute it to

that global conversation to say, okay, where are we?

So we at least know where we can go next.

So what we did, in this first version of the report is we

looked at 50 different apps on iOS and Android across,

five different industries.

We looked at food and delivery payments, fitness,

shopping and streaming.

and we looked at kind of the core user journeys in each

of those industries, that existed in all of those apps.

And what we found was that 72% of those user journeys

were likely to produce a poor or failing experience for

assistive technology users at some step in the user journey.

And an app is really only as good as its point

of highest frustration.

So you know when, when nearly three out of

four of those produce.

What we rated as poor or failing, you know, those

apps are likely losing users, likely losing

business, causing, causing brand harm, all those things.

And you know, when we looked at the the different

industries, we found that streaming, streaming media

apps ranked the best.

But even the best, that was still 60 out of 100 on

the, the kind of normalized scale that we, we rated.

So still a lot of ground to cover.

And, and on the other side of the spectr we found

that shopping apps and, and e-commerce apps rated

the worst, with, kind of across the industry,

an average score of 42 out of 100, which really was.

Kind of baffling to us because that industry in

particular has the most directly to gain, arguably

from building products that work for everyone who

wants to buy from them.

Yeah.

And they're just leaving money on the table.

so you know, the.

Between those two extremes, of, of testing the other

three industries, we, we saw a lot of common patterns

of kind of baseline stuff that is not that hard to

get right, and then you get into more complex things.

But there's a lot of baseline stuff that,

developers and product teams could be doing better.

But we think it's a lack of awareness, lack of

training and skillset, and a lack of consistency.

one thing that we found was it seemed as though

where we could tell some attention had been paid.

It was kind of piecemeal because you would have

one screen in the user journey that did well,

and then the next step completely fell flat.

And then the step after that was doing okay again.

And it was clear that, you know, or from what we could

tell, teams might be doing a sprint here for accessibility,

bug fixing, and a sprint later for bug fixing or that

those two screens had been audited before, so they were

done, but the one in the middle hadn't been audited yet

and so there, it was not part of the kind of definition of

done to make it accessible from the beginning and that

it was kind of this break fix cycle, and that there

was that culture shift that needed to happen, you

know, and why it matters, obviously there's the EAA

that's just come into force.

there's lots of statistics around the business case

and the addressable market, but one of the things that

we wanted to make sure we included in the report beyond

just the, the statistics was, the human impact, the

real, like why it matters on a, on a personal and

individual user scale.

so that was one of the things that we did was in addition

to our internal testing, we also made sure to get feedback

from users with disabilities,

working with our, our partner Fable to bring that

kind of human perspective to the impact of that,

that, lack of accessibility in those user journeys.

And and so for each industry, we have kind of a, a

section on that insight in and allowing, like I

said earlier, allowing the readers of the report who

maybe don't have that, that firsthand experience to

borrow their story a bit and understand a little bit more

why it matters beyond the compliance and, and even the,

the business case as well.

And one of the things we didn't want to do was

just make it, you know, a WIC HAG focused report.

We really looked at that, that entire end to end user journey

and, and how consistently or not, different assisted

technologies were supported

and hopefully, you know, we've had lots of great

conversations since then the report, has been really well

received and you know, it's, it has sparked some, some

good conversations with brands and teams and, both

individual practitioners who have said, this is the

data I needed to go make a case to my management to, to

do something differently, which has been

really great to hear.

Amazing.

Yeah, and I think it's, it's sort of arming people

then with that data.

I mean, there's so many, so many business decisions that

are purely based on data these days, aren't they?

I mean, yeah.

So if you don't have that to back you up sometimes, and a

lot of people will see with CAG as guidelines, and then

when you are challenged on.

By decision makers, or senior stakeholders within companies.

Why, well, why do I need to do that?

It's like, oh, well these guidelines.

It's like, okay, but it's a guide.

So it's a nice to have, you know, and it's so easy to

use that as that language.

But yeah.

That's amazing.

So it's incredible you've put that work together,

like done that work to put that together.

Yeah and one of the other kind of aspects of the,

the work that's being done is, you know, the

W in WAC stands for web.

Right.

and so for native mobile teams in particular, it's

been a, a challenge to really understand how, how does WCAG

apply to native mobile so that's another aspect of, of

kind of work that we're doing.

We've got a, a member of our team who's on the, WCCC

mobile accessibility task force to help provide that.

Um.

That translation of how does WCAG apply to native mobile?

Because a lot of teams have been for, for years now,

kind of having to do that work internally and it's

led to, inefficiency and inconsistency across kind of

interpretations and approaches

so that's, that's another aspect of, of work

that we're, excited to be contributing to is

that mobile accessibility task force to help.

Provide some, some clarity from the WCCC

level, into that.

So teams can get, get to work doing the work rather than

kind of, bike shedding, about how to interpret

WCAG success criteria.

Yeah.

Perfect.

So do you think that that might end up in a MCAG?

mobile content?

It, it may, you know, there's been

conversations around that.

Right now it's working under the.

the WCAG to ICT, approach and kind of, adapting from

there because that's kind of, there's an existing kind

of knowledge cascade and, and process that exists to

inherit from, whereas if, if a separate MCAG thing were

to be adopted, none of the legislation points to that.

Right?

Yeah.

None of the legislation.

Says anything other than, well, most legislation

either adopts or points to WCAG as a standard.

Yeah.

And so, you know, the, the team wanted to make sure that,

that they were aligned and could kind of flow down from

that because if you're looking at what do I need to do from

a compliance standpoint well the regulations say this

so we wanted to make sure that that, or the team wanted to

make sure that that was kind of, uh clear and transparent.

Yeah, perfect.

And that's a much better way to say it, MCAG rather than

me trying to put in medicine.

Oh, maybe a McDonald's.

no.

anyway,

perfect well thank you so much for, I mean, that's,

that's incredible and it's definitely gonna be so usable.

You know, we've, we've started to read through

it and we are having great conversations off the back of

the work that you've done so thank you, on that report.

Just to sort of help raise that awareness as well.

So I definitely implore people to seek that out, utilize

it and use it in their conversations around, the

state of mobile accessibility.

I think it's something that, as you say, I mean, it's, it's

a space that as a recruiter I've worked in for coming

up to eight years and, for certain clients, in the iOS

space anyway for accessibility and it's, it's incredible

how little is still known.

I guess there's, there's elements of stuff not

being open source or, or shared publicly with,

certain applications on the mobile side

however, there is still growing knowledge in that

space and I think this is a really good step

towards, broader knowledge on mobile accessibility.

So yeah.

Thank you so much.

That's the hook on behalf of everyone else.

Yeah.

awesome.

And so finally, if you could give one piece of

advice to companies other than reading, the report,

that are just starting to invest in accessibility, what

would you say that would be?

Yeah, you know, it's probably not groundbreaking to anybody

in, in the space or, or who has been doing the work for

a while, but start small.

It accessibility is such a, a deep, kind of, deep

and broad topic that it can feel paralyzing

and, and overwhelming and starting small and

thinking about, okay, what can I do this sprint?

What can I make better in my product requirements?

Just just for this one feature?

Yeah.

And just start to build on that, is, is really the.

The first piece and the second one that's, that's really

critical is do all you can to try to get feedback from

real users at, at some point wherever you are, get feedback

bring someone in, compensate them for their time.

but, but get real user feedback because that is, I

think, the biggest return on investment you can make, to

help make the case or, help.

Leadership, understand the, the need beyond just saying,

look at the guidelines, or, or this is, you know, a

regulation that's required, really humanize it.

And then the, the last piece I'd say is early on

we found great partners to support us as we started

to learn the, the process and the journey and kind of

build out our, our program.

And now we get to be those partners for, for our clients.

Find the right partners, you know, so that you're

not having to go it alone,

because so many, so many folks in this space start

and feel like they're the one person shouting into the void.

and find finding real users that can help tell the

story and, and partners who can help support the,

the growth, and accelerate you to the next step.

is is huge.

Yeah.

Oh, all very valid and amazing points to be made.

And I think it's, that's a, a huge part is the

knowing you're not alone in this space.

I remember the first time I heard of Global Accessibility

Awareness Day, and I was like, there's a day.

I was like, well, every day is global accessibility day.

But um.

I was like, oh my God.

Like, and this is global.

Like there's, and as soon as I went into even just

one of the events and saw that there were like 50 to

a hundred people attending this, this webinar on, on

accessibility, I was like

okay.

It's, it's pretty good.

It's getting there.

There's gonna be more awareness and this is great.

And it's, I think that a lot of burnout comes from

feeling you are alone, feeling like everything's on

your shoulders and you have to do a hundred percent.

But there's so many conversations I've had

where people have said, look, I think it was

Mamuna actually, who's at, StepStone Group here

in the uk and she, she said

every step forward is a step forward.

Absolutely.

So celebrate the small wins, like you've said, start small.

It's something you are making progress and it's

accessibility is incremental.

It's not gonna be done a hundred percent you know,

nothing is perfect in this world, but yeah, every

little bit you can do helps.

So, yeah.

And, and, and the, then the last, the last thing you

said, other than reading the report, but I will just plug

if anybody is interested in reading the report.

they can grab it.

It's free, ArcTouch.com/somaa, or you

can just go to ArcTouch.com and, and find it, from there.

That's incredible.

Thank you so much.

I'll make sure that's absolutely

linked as well below.

So if anyone's watching on YouTube or there

should be links in the description as well.

So hopefully make it as easily accessible to anyone that

would, would like to find it.

Do my little bit there.

But perfect.

Ben, thank you so, so much for joining me for not just today.

We've had some great conversations.

Uh.

Over the couple of years and just looking forward to to

getting to know you better and, and staying in touch.

So thank you so much and, yeah, I guess, thanks

everyone for listening.

Joe, it's been great to be on.

I really appreciate it.