In this episode, Joe James is joined by Paul Van Workum, App Accessibility Expert and Co-Founder of Abra and Appt.

This episode discusses:

How Paul Van Workum entered the accessibility space, and what prompted him to create accessibility training platforms for developers and clients.

• The costs and difficulties associated with making applications accessible, and where to find resources that can help applications to be in line with WCAG guidelines.
• Training platforms that can help developers to learn about accessibility in applications.
• The most simple and cost-effective ways to implement digital accessibility in the workplace.

The whole episode also touches on wider perceptions of disability and digital accessibility and discusses the impact that investing and developing applications in this way can have.

Links and Resources:

Paul Van Workum (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulvanworkum

Joe James (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/

PCR Digital Recruitment (Website): https://www.pcrdigital.com/

Abra (Website): https://abra.nl/

Appt (Website): https://appt.org/en

This podcast is sponsored by PCR Digital, digital and technology recruitment specialists.

Hi and welcome to the Digital Accessibility Podcast. With me, your host,

Joe James. Throughout this series, I will be interviewing professionals who work

within the space to share their expertise, journeys and general thoughts on the key

issues facing the industry today. My aim is to provide an in-depth look

into the world of digital accessibility and the impact it has on the

lives of anyone who interacts with digital technology. Our goal is to bridge the

skills gap in the current market and inspire others to join the movement

towards a more accessible digital market. So whether you're a seasoned professional

or just starting out, I hope that this platform will provide you with

valuable insights and

practical advice from experts and advocates in

this industry.

Today, on this episode of the Digital Accessibility podcast, I am absolutely

honoured to be joined by Paul Van Workum, co-owner and accessibility

advisor of Abra. Abra builds software and provides advice to people to help make

digital accessibility understandable. Paul is also one of the managers of

the Appt Foundation, which we'll hear more about later, I hope. He's been working

within the accessibility field for the last four years and prior to that

has been an entrepreneur in the technology development space for over ten years. He's

making a huge and truly positive impact on the European web and mobile

accessibility market and is hoping to increase this impact globally. I hope that

that introduction is accurate, Paul, but forgive me if I've missed anything at

all.

Yes, sounds good. So I don't have to introduce myself anymore?

Yeah, well, I was going to say if there is anything I've missed, then

fire away. But I guess my first official question would be about your

background or how you first came across accessibility. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. First, thanks for having me on this podcast. Yeah, it's nice that you

invited me and I think it's really cool to share our story that we

have and about the cool projects that we are doing and to realise our

goals to make the apps, all apps accessible. First, we did it in the

Netherlands, but more and more we're moving abroad. So this is really cool

podcast to share the story that we've been going through. Yeah. My name is

Paul Van Workum. I see myself as entrepreneur, like, I'm living in the

Netherlands and I'm a dad of three and in the last twelve years I've

been developing myself, created a few companies, did some really interesting

projects, I can say. And basically it started with the apps. I started like

seven years ago. Together with my wife. We were going to build apps. We

have a team in Ukraine that does the development and we did the project

management and basically I got introduced to someone and that was

the starting point, but the starting point in the accessibility world.

I think we come to that later, right?

Yeah, I'm sure we will, hopefully. But that's brilliant. So like you said you've

been in that sort of technological space, development space, for quite some time

now, which is excellent. So you've probably seen things from both ends.

For me, digital accessibility is something that I stumbled upon because of

my work as a recruitment consultant working with companies. That was the

request, so they asked for people with experience in that space. However,

my impression is that accessibility is something that can be stumbled upon by

able-bodied people, because I feel that unless you have your personal experience

in needing assistive technology or some assistance with digital accessibility,

it's kind of just something that's there that's not really spoken about. But I

don't know. Is that your experience? Is it something that's stumbled upon or

otherwise?

Yeah, for me, I was developing apps, of course. And for me, meeting Jan Jaap de Groot

was a starting point. It was in 2020, just before COVID and he's a

real expert in actually building those apps for people at that time, mainly people

that are blind, so that the screen reader is working and that experience is

now way more broad. But in the beginning, it was, like, focused on screen

reader users and yeah, basically on the app told me that there would be

some legislation. So I told him that's interesting. And like, entrepreneurial as

I am, I asked him, like, okay, just send me some information and we

will look at it, and I'll check it out, and it's always interesting to

get some new insights. But basically he told that there was no information

available. So legislation for all governments and all commercial companies,

but there's no information and no solutions. We knew that there was going

to be quite a big need, but there was still no solution. Basically, at

that time, just before COVID we started it as basically a hobby project, like

writing down articles, like investigating and basically starting our

knowledge platform at that time. And yeah, that hobby project

became a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger and

basically, like, the platform now expanded to having a lot of information

about the different kinds of assistive technologies and how many people are using

those, about the standards and how to interpret them, but also on how to

fix errors. We have about 300 code examples at the moment. So, yeah, if

you want to make an app accessible, just check appt.org, and it's 100% for

free, and that's the way we want to

work, like, share a lot of things for free. And there's always companies

that will hire us to do, let's say, paid advice or something like

that. Sure, yeah. Basically, in the beginning, it was like kind of a

business opportunity for me. So big opportunity. If the bigger companies, the

bigger app builders need something and they don't know how, then of course

it's a business opportunity. But, yeah, we try to make it like so

that we have a lot of impact as well. So we want to create

win-win situations for the user, for the companies and also for ourselves so

that we can also continue the things that we're doing. But yeah, what I

see is that we created a reporting app and we got like around 400

reports from real users and I was the one following up those reports to

the companies.

Right.

So meeting all those people and seeing their problems that you can't put the

heating higher because your app is not working or that you have a washing

machine and it has an update and then you can't control it anymore. Really

things that we are not able to understand but basically really important

things that it influenced their ability to communicate, to communicate with

their government. Like really important things that are not working and not, not

working because they are not skilled, but not working because it's not working. So

that there's a door that is closed and it's not closed because the user

did something wrong, but because the app builder did something wrong. And that's

like for the business opportunities it's interesting. But I really feel that we

have a big responsibility now as well to make the choices that we

can make the apps more accessible. So it became our mission really to do

that.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, like you mentioned there from the

reports that you were getting through the reporting tool that you'd created, some of

those things you probably wouldn't have thought of in your own personal life

because I think technology affects people in so many different ways. But that's

fascinating and admirable that you decided to do something about it. But I

like that you've mentioned it was a business opportunity and that's the world

we live in, right. We have to have a return on investment. We have

to be able to do things that we can make sustainable but it's now

become more of a mission or feel like it's a personal duty to make

things accessible.

What we saw is that in the beginning we had an hourly rate internally

that was too low and we were able to do all those big projects

ourselves, but we were not able to scale up because if we would hire

other people, no one wanted to work for the same tariff and we were

building our company. So for us it was like building the reporting app,

building the platform, building. We did quite some paid

blocks with subsidies from some funds like the Bartimeus funds and SIDN funds in

the Netherlands. And also the government from the Netherlands really helped us. For

example, those code examples were paid by the Dutch government. Wow. So they paid

us and we worked for low tariffs. But in the end we have 300

code examples that we offer for free. But of course, this is for the

user, is great for app building companies, it's great for the government, it's great.

But we created those companies. So if there's questions like who will be asked?

So it's also, for us in the end, good. But I think the approach

that we have is that we want to have impact. And if we have

impact, then the business opportunity comes from that and it's not the

other way around.

No, absolutely. And I completely agree with that. I think that's admirable. I

think that's how more things should be in the world, but excellent. And that's

really great. And like you said, you identified the issue of there not being

really any documentation or any advice really out there or examples. So

it's great that you've put that in place. But I feel that, as with

every technical field, there's somewhat of a skill shortage. So you met Jan Jaap,

and he's been able to help you with the development side of things. And

my job as a recruiter is to help find more people with those types

of skills for other companies. So do you have an idea or do you

have any advice on how we might be able to keep up with that

demand? I know that you've created a very good solution there with training and

advice, but do you have any advice on how to attract that kind of

talent or training in that space?

I can share some numbers. Great accessibility when implemented well, so

that if you have the structure there, the processes and knowledge and then to

make your app accessible, it costs around 10% to 15% extra.

Wow. Okay.

If you don't have those processes in place and you have to start from

scratch, it will cost you even more. But basically that means that if you

have a development team of 100 developers, for example, in the Netherlands, the

bigger banks and the media companies and insurance companies, they have that kind

of teams, you need around 15 extra people, basically to

be able to develop the same functionality, but then in an accessible way if

implemented well. And most companies don't have that in place yet. So this

is really a big challenge. It's not possible, basically, that we have 15%

extra developers. I don't know how it is in the rest of the world,

but in the Netherlands, it's like already a big shortage now without the need

of developing in an accessible way. But what we try to do there is

we want to make accessibility easier and more fun.

So if you have to fix an issue and you can look at appt.org and you

can find it right away, then of course it helps with lowering the amount.

And if that happens, of course, if more companies and more developers can

easily find solutions and easily find the knowledge, then more steps are made in

accessibility work. But there's a shortage, so it's always a balance, and

it's not possible to do everything. So if you make it easier to do

it, then that's where you can have a big impact, basically. We had the

platform appt.org, and I think it's interesting platform, but still we were

giving a lot of training to companies. So we give the kind of kickoff

training, it's like to learn the basics. It's normally 2 hours, and I think

we gave it for a few thousand people already and it's nice, but we

thought like, okay, what if we can record that? And in the end it

turned out that if you record it, I don't give that many examples, so

it can be within half an hour. So if you now go to academy.abra.nl

you can find the free training of half an hour. I think

you followed it yesterday. Yesterday. So it just recently launched. And if you

follow it after half an hour, you know the basics and you know also

where to find the other stuff you need on appt.org if you want to

explore more and that kind of thing, I believe that a lot

of developers will get the awareness on how important this is, but also find

the tools and the information they need to be able to do it themselves.

So that's as a company that gives advice to companies how to do this,

maybe not smart, but what we see is that in the Netherlands at least

because we do those things, that also the bigger banks and insurance companies

and media companies that like for a relatively small company, we have quite a

market cap because we are really efficient, because we know we

created the content, so we know where it is. And I only have to

send you to the right URL and then you know how to fix things

or how to find the knowledge that you need. That's I think what we

want to achieve that we make the accessibility easier and a bit more fun.

Yeah, amazing. And you're making digital accessibility more accessible or the

implementation of accessibility accessible.

Yeah, I always tell the story about we had like a book,

we developed it. We will now, this coming months, develop it, translate it

to English and also print it again. But what we always say is that

on Friday afternoon at 03:00, if you then think like, okay, let's have 2

hours of accessibility. If you then go to the WCAG guidelines, then five minutes

later you're drinking beer and celebrating the weekend instead of reading the book.

And to get the first insight, because WCAG is really great to go to

the last 10%, but to make a first step, it's really elaborate, really

complicated, and we try to make it a bit more easier. And sometimes it's

what we do is not in the book. It's a simplification meaning that

you lose context. And that indeed, it's not like it could

be that you oversimplicate. But the problem with accessibility is that

developers don't know where to start. And if you solve that in the next

steps, it will become better.

Absolutely. And I completely agree I feel that it's one of those things that

how on earth can you if it's something you've not come across before,

you've not really discussed, and you have maybe someone's reported an accessibility

issue with an application or a website and the only documentation you have is

this extremely verbose, elaborate documentation called WCAG and of course

it's all numbered and if you know what you're looking for, you can find

solutions, but if you don't know what you're looking for, then you'd be just

as lost. But that's great. It brings me on to my next question as

well, because I've discussed previously with a lot of people about the

difference between the documentation that's available for web or website

accessibility and mobile application accessibility. Because WCAG, you've got

sort of the ISOs or the Equality Acts and things that primarily focus on

website or web accessibility. But there isn't really much in the UK market

or I believe in the global market that has really sort of

drilled down into the mobile side of things. So applications and I believe

that's what yourself, Abra and Appt have sort of done, but maybe you

can share some more info on that side of things.

Yes, the governments and also, I think in future, the commercial

companies look at the EN standard, at least in Europe, and in the EN

standard, it's referred to the WCAG Guidelines and it's the best we

have now. And it's not ideal because some interpretation is not

yeah, it's an app, it's a different kind of thing, but it's the best we

have and you can interpret it quite well. And also if you follow the

guidelines and you have to be able to perceive things, you have to be

able to operate things and you have to be able to understand things. And

then, yeah, you have certain criteria where you look at and if you

read that and you think, okay, we have users that are using this app,

and we have kind of a guideline saying you should be able to see,

to perceive everything. Then for deaf people, audio is quite challenging. So

there should be an alternative for visually impaired. Like if you're blind,

you need to have the screen reader read everything for you. So if you

see something that is important, it should be read. It's not that complicated, but

there's a lot of people, different kind of people with different kind of I

don't see I always want to avoid saying disabled people or people with a

disability. I always say I want to say people dependent on their screen

reader and people dependent on keyboard or people dependent on larger font size by

doing that, basically, if you implement a larger font size and the screen reader

and that it works, then those people don't have a disability because they can

fully participate. And that's the thing that the guideline is not ideal, but

the goal is that users can participate. Also from the guideline the goal is

that there's some kind of black and white checklist, say, okay, if I do

this, then users can participate equally. And I think WCAG is a great

first step. But what I see, I

followed up 400 of those reports. It's quite a cool reporting app we

created because basically we had a form on our site where you can just

put some information. And then I got an email stating, like, a user has

an issue somewhere. I was always asking them, which app, what kind of hardware

and what kind of software are you using? And then before I knew the

issue, there was eight emails already. Further and really

challenging, what we did is we created an app. You can just make a

profile really easily, like, I think four or five steps. Then you make a

new report, and at the time you make the report, you just type something

like, yeah, I was going to our news app, and in the tabs in

the bottom, they don't have labels. So it's for me hard to navigate. Okay,

great. But then for a developer, it's quite complicated because

I can see those steps. Like, what's wrong with it? Like screen reader, I

don't know what it is. What are you talking about? So there's a lot

of problems that users don't understand the developer and the developer doesn't

understand users. And what we try to do is that if the user presses

send, we ask basically the app to reach out. Which hardware, which software?

Is he using dark mode is he using the screen reader? What font sizes

is he using? So we get those information, including the text feedback,

and then we ask the user, I know you're using the screen reader, but

we have a really cool instruction video. And you can make a screen recording of

you navigating to that tab bar and by showing the video. And the tab

bar states, like in the news app stating like, tab one, tab two, tab

three, tab four. So, yes, a guy I'm blind it's, read out, but it

doesn't have a label, so I'm not able to understand it. And then we

say, okay, great. We add our solution. I say, okay, labels to tabs that's

appt.ly / 4.1.2. So also a solution. And then you have a report that

is done like one issue, you can fix it. So that's something that we

do in our foundation. So we have an app foundation. It's the free

knowledge and the reporting app. But also on our business side, it's called Abra.

We have the Academy, it's also for free. But basically we want to make

some more like iOS and Android developer trainings. And that will

be paid in order to have also that we can maintain

all those knowledge. But the cool thing is, if you have one report that

you can follow up, really good. If I ask a user to go to

a certain app and ask 14 questions and I ask maybe five groups of

people depending on a keyboard or screen reader. Or then I have 15

people, 15 reports. It's like 200 something like tickets with videos. And

then you have a really extensive user research. We did a few of those

and that input it's for companies that are already, let's say,

almost comply to the WCAG guidelines. And then you still see that there's a

lot of low-hanging fruit, basically on improving the app.

And it has nothing to do with WCAG, it has to do something with

user experience. So it's like it has certain steps in that as well.

And are you sort of using the WCAG guidelines as a guideline and then

mirroring that to what the similar sort of solution may be in an iOS

or an Android application? Are you using that as the foundation or is it

completely an entirely different.

Now, the WCAG guideline, it's not dependent on technology, so

you can interpret it quite well for apps,

what I see is that, what we do is basically we do audits, like

full research and then really test apps to the full WCAG guidelines.

That's one. And two, there's the usability testing with users. I think those two

are you should do both if you want to make your user happy. Because

only with user testing, I think it's not the best first step because first

you should make your app technically equal, equally, that there's labels and

that the larger font size and landscape mode that's working, that the contrast is

good. First you need to do that. And if you do that well and

then ask users for feedback, then you get feedback that is valuable because if

you ask users feedback, then they're able to give feedback if your app is

really bad. But as a professional, I can give the feedback way more faster

and also give solutions right away. Then user research

is quite expensive compared to a professional just making a video of the

app and giving comments while testing the app. So, yeah, what we see is

that it's not one solution for all the companies, but

the first step should be making your app usable and complying to the guidelines

as much as possible and then also ask users to make the last step

and that the usability is becoming better.

Definitely. Perfect. Okay, brilliant. Thank you. And I think so there

was another question, I think that we've already approached, which is fine. So I'll

just move on to one of the last probably the final question for this

podcast, which I'm hoping to do in every episode, is what do you believe

is the simplest, most cost-effective and convenient way that someone could

implement more digital accessibility in their own workplace? So that's anyone at

any level, I suppose. So it's quite difficult question, I suppose, but do you

have any nuggets of advice for people?

Yeah, in our reporting app, we got quite a lot of

reports, and about 50% of them is that there's no labels, right?

It's really easy to fix. So if you say we're at the starting point

of accessibility, we didn't look at the accessibility yet. Okay, put on a screen

reader. It's not that complicated. Go from left to right, top to bottom to

the screen. If you have any missing labels, add them. This is really simple.

It will take you a few hours, probably, but then the screen reader at

least reads out what you visually see. And then, of course, things can be

complicated and it can be, let's say, mixed up and difficult, but at least

you hear what's under the button that you're going to press. And that's one.

Secondly, maybe I regret saying this later, but

what we do when we start with advising companies is that I put I

take my phone, put large font size on, put the screen reader on,

and just make a screen recording and then go from left to right, top

to bottom, through the screen, and say, yeah, this is a button. It's a

back button. It should have the name back because otherwise it will just

announce Button. Or this is a title. Oh, you should mark it as a

title. It's 1.3.1. Oh, by the way, this is, I don't know, tab

bar. It should have a name. It's missing now. And it should say that

it's the first out of four tabs. Okay, great. Thanks for listening. It

takes me maybe five minutes. That's how we do consultancy. Just really, like, test

the screen in five minutes, give them ten points that they should fix and

they can be working. Maybe it's nice. I don't know how many people will

watch this so that maybe I will regret it, but if you want to

make the first step, just send me an email or email Joe. Maybe

that's better. Accessibility is really difficult

because it's like 50 points from the WCAG guidelines. It's so many things that

can go wrong, but to make a first big step, just it's not that

easy. And I don't do this to make sales afterwards because all

solutions are appt.org. You can do it yourself. It's even a training at academy.abra

that's also for free. So all the steps, you can do it yourself,

you can do it for free. So, yeah, there's no excuse not to do

any inaccessible apps anymore.

That's it. And I think there's no excuse, at least for the like you

say, the first step and adding labels, I think that's a great thing that

we can sort of take away from this. It's a fundamental thing. It's

something that will make life better for a huge amount of people. Like you

said, 50% of the reports on your own sort of foundation mentioned labels.

So it's a small thing that can make a huge difference. So thank you.

That's great bit of advice. So I guess finally, just if you'd like to

share any more information you have. I know. You've mentioned Abra and the Appt

Foundation. I'll be sharing the links alongside this podcast. But if you've got

any sort of websites that you'd like to sort of mention or anything else

that you'd like people to sort of go and follow after listening this, fire

away.

Yeah, I think the most important we already mentioned, maybe it's nice to

mention that on the platform appt.org that there are some beginner guides on how

to start and how to start testing. Those two are really you can

start with everything and then you are drinking beer five minutes past three.

It's best to make a first step that is, let's say, easy and fun

and you see that it improves. That you then take it layer by layer

by layer, that you make steps in a certain direction. That the first step

should be small, easy, and you should see results really fast. And that's

something that we would like to trigger.

Brilliant. Perfect. Excellent. Great stuff. So, like I said, I'll share

links and things as well and let people know how to get in touch

with you if they want to ask you any questions or hopefully send you

some business, some business your way to help them increase their accessibility,

which would be great. And I'd like to just finish with a quote that

actually touches on something you said earlier in the episode, and that is

when a flower does not bloom, you fix the environment, you don't fix the

flower. And that's something that you mentioned earlier, that if you take away

those barriers or those doors or those blockers, then that person that's using it

no longer has a disability because it's actually the environment that's disabling

people or the application that's disabling people rather than their own sort of

abilities. So thank you so much again for all of your knowledge, everything that

you're doing in the space, it's admirable and yeah, really appreciate your time

again. Thank you, Paul.

You're welcome. Bye bye. See each other soon.