Joanne Lastort, Booz Allen Hamilton, Digital Accessibility Specialist

Joanne talks about her first career as a professional pastry chef. The loss of use one of her hands moved her to working in IT. Her desire to still be a keyboard user brought her into accessibility testing at the IRS and the FCC. Now she is part of the Section 508 team at Booz Allen Hamilton at the Department of Labor.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(bouncy music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility

The People Behind The Progress.

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

And as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting

as to how others who found their way into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now

and hear about their journey.

(bouncy music)

All right, well, we're ready for another podcast

where I get to talk with an accessibility practitioner.

And today I am please to be speaking with Joanne Lastort.

Hello, Joanne.

How are you today?

- I am terrific.

Thank you.

- Well, I'm talking from my home office on Vasa island

which is near Blink's headquarters in Seattle.

Where are you talking to us from?

- All the way on the other side of the country.

I live in Takoma Park

which is right outside of Washington, DC.

I am in my corner office as well,

and I look out onto a state park.

So I'm enjoying all the leaves changing colors right now.

- Very nice.

And so is that on in Maryland then?

- Yes, on the Maryland side.

- Well, it's great to be able to have this chance

to chat with you,

and a good place so always to start is just for you

to briefly introduce where you're working at,

what types of things you're involved with today.

- I work for Booz Allen Hamilton.

Which is a huge company and worldwide.

I currently am working on a contract

for the Department of Labor.

We set up their section 508 program office.

There are a big agency,

and within the agency there are multiple smaller ones

like OSHA.

Most people know there's one for veterans, women's bureau,

multiple things.

Compliance for contractors, to the government

they have to follow their rules.

So there's about 26 smaller agencies.

So it's a big job being the program office for all of them.

- Booz Allen Hamilton certainly is a really large consulting

and contracting organization.

Is your work as an accessibility specialist,

is that represented within Booz Allen Hamilton?

Or is that something that you specifically got involved in

for the Department of Labor project work?

- I'm part of the Booz island section 5018.

It's fairly small.

We don't do a lot of work inside the company.

We mostly work with federal agencies

like the veterans administration,

HHS, which is Health and Human Services.

Those are the primary agencies that we work with.

We've done a little bit of work with the CDC,

since COVID not as much

with accessibility with them yet though.

- All right.

Well, we can dig in a little bit more

to what things you're involved with today.

But one of the things,

main purposes of this is to follow of people's journeys

that brought them to working in accessibility today.

And so we could do that here as well.

So why don't you just kind of take me back in time

and where would you like to kind of start your story

of where accessibility was something that you began

thinking about?

- I'm gonna go even further back to my first career.

I studied in Paris, classical French cooking

and I majored in pastry.

I came back and worked as a professional pastry chef

for many years in Washington, DC.

And then I had an accident that ended my career.

I lost about 20% of the use of my right hand

and I'm right-handed.

So I spent about a year as a one-handed person.

So I had a little bit of an experience

as someone with a disability.

And I was lucky enough that I met my husband, who is in IT.

And he got me into that.

And it's actually more similar to cooking

than you might think,

in that as a pastry chef everything is very detailed,

has to be exactly the right amount,

the right temperature, in the right order,

which is a lot like development when you're coding.

And I was doing that for a long time

and was sort of feeling

like I wasn't really making a big difference in the world.

And then I discovered accessibility.

I discovered Jim Thatcher's website

and immediately was interested

not only in obviously helping people,

which I could certainly relate to

not having a job for a year.

That it's very important at least in American society

to have a job sort of helps people to find themselves.

And also that it's a challenge to your creativity.

You have to be able to imagine how other people

are going to experience the world.

And it's a challenge to make sure

that you're including everyone

and thinking about all those different ways

that people can be experiencing the world.

So it dissatisfies me at all levels (chuckles).

- Well, you know, before you discovered

the kind of the practice or profession of accessibility,

you know, after you'd had your accident,

what type of like resources were available

to you at the time, just to be able to cope with

what must have been a very significant

and difficult adjustment.

- There wasn't anything.

This was back in...

And gosh I'm dating myself now.

Back in 88.

So there wasn't really even a lot of IT around

at least not on a personal computer sort of level.

And there really wasn't much I could find

for a one handed person to do.

I couldn't teach cooking 'cause I couldn't demonstrate it.

And it was devastating,

and for the longest time didn't know what to do.

So I got unemployment and disability

and did a lot of physical therapy,

so that I could sort of you use the mouse,

but I'm primarily a keyboard user.

So I still have a disability.

Yeah.

- And so then how did things change for you

in lived life and work life

as accessibility started to become

a little bit more available?

- Well, it was very helpful

once things like voice command software,

like Dragon NaturallySpeaking came out.

I use that if I'm gonna be doing a lot of typing,

'cause again I still only have 80%

of the use of my right hand.

So typing isn't really easy as well.

So the more I explored the different options

the more I was getting more and more excited.

And then I was realizing,

okay, well, there's more even than voice command

you have text to speech,

and now you have voice command like Alexa.

So you don't even have to use any sort of interface

other than your voice.

So things are really they're coming along

and it's getting very exciting.

One of my side projects is with XR access

which is a nonprofit that is working with AR and VR

and XR essentially,

trying to make sure that the standards for it

are gonna be inclusive.

Especially 'cause it's so visual right now.

But it can encompass all of your senses.

You we've Haptics coming,

and obviously there's audio as well.

And it's a really, really interesting group of people

to be working with, to be trying to influence it.

So what happened with the internet

doesn't happen with virtual reality as well.

'Cause the internet just like opened up the whole world

but then if it's not accessible, it doesn't help.

- Well, as you discovered accessibility

and started to become building the IT part of your career,

what was that stage like,

how did you start finding your way

into specializing in accessibility activities?

- I was very pushy (laughs).

'Cause I knew about it

and then when companies thought I was working for...

I'd been a consultant my entire career.

You know, I'd start saying,

well, does this work only with the keyboard?

Because since I'm primarily a keyboard user

it was easy for me to start harassing people

about making things more accessible with the keyboard.

And then I was lucky enough to get a job for the IRS

again as a consultant and the person who hired me

said she did it because I used to be a pastry chef.

Because they're so detail oriented.

So it was interesting how the past influenced the future.

And I got a lot of experience with testing at the IRS

and also with the standards themselves

figuring out which ones were applicable for each contract.

Because all the procurement contracts

had to go through the department there.

And then you had to make sure

that the right language is in there.

And so I got really into the standards

before they were refreshed.

And then I went on from there to the FCC

did a lot more testing for them.

And then finally wound up at Booz Allen Hamilton,

and the Department of Labor.

- Well, I mean just looking at the things with the IRS,

I mean, there you have constituency of customers

or citizens or however you refer to that.

That is everyone.

It's about the widest demographic that it could possibly be.

And so that must have really provided a lot of weight

to the work that you needed to do for that support.

- Yeah.

It was fascinating.

Really was.

I didn't get to deal with the public directly,

but everything I did influenced that.

Because obviously they have to buy

as to conform if software is possible,

and they have to make sure

that all of their applications are accessible.

I was there when they rolled out the ACA,

and it was a 508 disaster (chuckles).

So I was working next to some consultants

that were trying desperately to fix that program.

And yeah, if they'd only started in the beginning

with accessibility (chuckles).

- Is that always the case,

and so in your time working with the government,

have you found that there's been any like move

to like shift left to getting accessibility involved

in research and design before all acute code is executed?

- Slowly but surely.

The government does not move quickly

but they have established the US web design

which actually the, what's it...

The 20th century idea act.

Requires government agencies that are building new software

to use and it's accessible,

and has all the components and everything you could need.

So they're working their way there.

The most progress I think I've made

in my career is at Department of Labor.

When I started,

there was no section 508 program office at all.

And each small agency like I mentioned

sort of had their own way of doing or not doing it at all.

So there was no cohesive guidance

and it was right after the refresh had been made legal

in that, okay, they've passed it.

And then you have a year in which to start conforming to it.

So it was 2018.

So it had come due,

that people would have to start conforming to it.

And so of course,

none of the agencies were even caught up to that.

They were still using the old standards,

and we've come a very long way (chuckles).

- Well, something like the Department of Labor

is probably one of the biggest departments in the world.

If you wanna use the term department.

I imagine there's so many different things going on.

Does the work that you do,

do you serve broadly across different activities

or divisions within that.

Or like do you do consulting within,

or are you tied to specific activities?

- Oh, we're just growing.

We formally created the department

or stood up the department,

June of last year.

And we're a small team.

But what we decided to do as far as doing in stages,

start with training and awareness.

If people don't know about it,

they're not even gonna start with it

much less worry about it even at the end.

So our main focus has been training and outreach.

So first we decided to work on documentation.

Because everybody produces documents, and lots of them.

So once we had established a central office

and central guidance for all the agencies to follow

then we started in developing training

and then a document accessibility program.

Which takes a person from nothing

to actually being able to remediate a PDF.

And that includes

learning about how to use color accessibly.

If you can't see color at all, or if you are color blind,

to how to write alt text.

So going from nothing

all the way to full blown being able to create

an accessible document.

And we were lucky enough to get buy in from the secretary.

So yeah, once you have that, then you're good.

'Cause otherwise people are like, I don't feel like it.

- Yeah.

And I know in a lot of organizations, government,

and otherwise that the content publishing system

that might be in place a lot of times ends up,

you know, limiting the opportunities for accessibility.

How did that work in your experience,

at the Department of Labor.

- They don't particularly have one.

Again, a lot of things are sort of diffused.

One agency has this, another one has that.

But they all use Microsoft Office and they all have Acrobat.

So we started at the very beginning, and you'd be surprised

how many people don't even really know how to use Word.

So you're not only teaching them

how to make it accessible in Word,

you're teaching them how to use Word.

Which was not where I figured I would be starting.

So I've had to become an expert in Word and PowerPoint,

and Captivate and Excel,

and all that just on top of doing accessibility.

One thing-

- I imagine that had to do with making sure

there's use of headings and things like that.

So it would carry through into the PDFs.

- Yes.

So styles and tables.

The hardest part is actually figuring out

what is going to motivate someone,

and it's different for everyone.

So I've come up with a lot of different approaches

starting with analogies.

And this again will go back to my pastry chef beginnings.

I describe accessibility as the baking powder.

So you can certainly make blueberry muffins.

And if you forget to put the blueberries in,

you can kind of throw them in at the end

and mix them a little.

But you can't do that with baking powder.

You can't add that at the end.

And if it's not in there, it's not gonna work.

And that resonates actually with a lot of people,

and clicks with them enough that they remember,

oh, okay we have to do accessibility at the beginning.

We can't just sprinkle it on at the end.

And that's really the key.

Because you don't want to be doing remediation.

That's rework.

If you do it right the first time you have a quality product

it works for everybody.

Therefore it works.

And doing it at the end is just not gonna work.

Even if you can make it work,

it's not gonna be pretty, it's gonna be expensive.

It's gonna meet all those myths,

that there are about accessibility that it's hard to do,

and it's expensive and it's ugly.

It's like not if you do it in the beginning.

- Would you set up templates,

or were they open to having templates,

or did they do that within individual offices

or is ever everybody pretty much just had to do the training

and take care of their own little corner of the work.

- We're trying to empower everyone to do their own.

We don't really have enough people

to remediate everyone's documents for them

and they need to be able to do them on their own.

So it's been mostly that.

And we've just started expanding out

into the development arena, and the design arena.

Again, because we're such a small group of people

who just went with documents first

to (indistinct) for the book.

- I imagine it's a big effort

just to get people to understand

that the changes really need to be made

in that source document before it goes to PDF,

as opposed to trying to fix it later on.

- Definitely.

Once you've get to PDF

that format is pretty much locked down.

So I love analogies.

My description to people is, okay, your Word document

or PowerPoint, or whatever, is like a clay sculpture.

The PDF is gonna be the bronze version (chuckles).

So if you have to fix something

you're gonna have to be melting part of that bronze statue

to fix it.

And that's a lot more difficult.

- Well, so you've been working in that area for a while,

are there any certain initiatives you have going on,

or things that you're passionate about,

or looking forward to for improvements

as you continue on in that area?

- I'm mostly looking forward to the VR and the AR.

That's gonna be challenging and exciting.

And the most interesting part to me,

is that it's gonna start bringing in the physical world.

Because you're gonna have to make sure

you're designing things

where people don't have to turn their heads, or be standing,

or have two hands necessarily for those controllers.

And you know, maybe they have to be able to do it

to be seated.

So there's a lot of intersection that's gonna be happening,

but I think is gonna be fascinating.

- Well, you know, being in a government organization

like you are,

are you able to leverage any activities going on

in any of the other parts of the government departments?

Are there any kind of cross departmental resources,

or do you just have to make your own

network connections to share ideas and things.

- The GSA has the section 508, that gov website.

And while the access board is the one that's responsible

for creating the standards

or as they did incorporating

the web content accessibility guidelines

which are international.

The GSA is responsible for helping people

actually implement them.

So that's a great resource for a lot of different areas,

specifically government.

So they have a procurement section,

they have a development section, a training section,

testing and everything.

So it's a really good resource.

However,

each agency of course likes their own spin on things.

So it's a good base resource,

but I found I've had to tailor

a lot of the messaging specifically for Department of Labor.

- Like, you know, at the very start of our discussion

you were talking about how much audio input

was able to change things for you,

improve your work life a bit.

You know, it's expanded so much just in the past few years

of what's available.

What are your thoughts about that moving forward,

separate from the VR and AR space.

Do you see where it's going to continue

to have more opportunities for improvement

or do you think that the tool set is pretty much optimized

for what mobility impairment would need right now.

- I know that, unfortunately Dragon NaturallySpeaking

is not supporting the product as much as they have

and Freedom Scientific which makes JAWS,

which is a screen reader,

has started incorporating voice commands there

which I think is very interesting.

Just sort of like Alexa.

So someone who's using a screen reader can say open up file

and it will open.

So I like the combination of those two world coming up.

And I think the whole remote work situation

is really gonna open some doors for people.

Because now your disability is invisible.

You know, if you're in a wheelchair, no one's gonna see

they may not know if you're using a screen reader,

or a screen magnifier and you don't have to leave your house

and deal with all that.

So I'm really, really hopeful

that the remote work will open up a lot of doors for people.

'Cause it is hard trying to get a job with a disability.

I mean, some people will just look at you

and assume you don't know what you're doing,

or, you know...

So you get rid of some of that upfront stigma.

- Right.

Yeah, it was really fascinating insight.

I'd never really thought about that.

Obviously, you know, the world has changed

in the past 18 months in how much we were doing remote work.

And I'd never even thought about just the idea

that the zooming and remote work has that potential

to remove that stigma as you mentioned.

- Yeah.

So I'm very, very hopeful about that.

People tend to think disability equals inability

and that is totally opposite.

Most people with a disability are innovators.

They have to be, just to do day-to-day things.

They have to figure out a way to do it.

And that's so valuable to have exposure to people

who do things differently.

You know, it's very important that we get that.

- It's been great to chat with you

and hear about your experiences in this area.

So I really appreciate you sharing all of that

and hopefully we can meet up in the real world at some time.