Ross Mullen, CANAXESS, Director

Ross Mullen talks about his extensive experience in working with standards organizations for accessibility. He spent many years working with accessibility for government agencies. Now, Ross has his own consulting practice.

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(upbeat music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,

the people behind the progress.

I'm Joe Welinsky, the creator and host of this series,

and as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting

as to how others have found their way

into this profession,

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

and hear about their journey.

(upbeat music)

- All right, well, here we go

with another episode where I have the opportunity

to speak with another accessibility practitioner.

Today, I'm speaking with Ross Mullen.

Hello, Ross, how are you doing today?

- Hi there, how are you going, Joe?

How's things?

- Everything's going really well.

I am located right now in my home office

on Vashon Island, which is a true island

with no bridges

near Blink's Seattle, Washington headquarters.

Where are you talking to us from today?

- I'm from Canberra, Australia,

so, if one's unfamiliar,

it's about 320 kilometers of southwest of the Sydney,

slipped back in the middle of nowhere,

so, Fremont just surrounded by bush.

So, we have no beach, no sea,

but we have a lot of beautiful countryside around here.

- And I have been there.

I went to a conference there one time

and got to see the interesting architecture

that was developed.

I believe your city was a design capital city for Australia.

Isn't that or originally how it was set up?

- It was, yes.

Yeah, and one of your fellow residents won the competition,

Walter Burley Griffin,

so, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly,

it was the early 20th century.

There was a competition

for designing the federal capital here.

A camera was chosen, and the Griffins designed it all

without ever having visited here,

so, our largest lake

is Lake Burley Griffin, named after Walter,

so, there's a lot of interesting background history

of how this American Couple laid the foundations

for what is Canberra now.

- Well, it's good to have you join here.

I appreciate it.

We were able to get the time zones to work out,

but a good place to start

is talk a little bit about yourself

in the work that you're doing right now,

and then we can explore how you got there.

- Lovely, well, I work

under my company name at the moment, CANAXESS.

We've been working in web accessibility now

for about 12 years plus.

At the moment, I'm working

with a large Australian supermarket,

helping them meet accessibility guidelines

increasing the user experience.

Before that, I was working in a government,

so, previously my role was

that I'm a background developer, a backend.

I moved into front end,

and then, over time,

I moved into a dedicated web accessibility roles,

so, originally my background

was very much focused on compliance,

but more, and more, and more I was reading more

into work accessibility and understanding the nuances more,

so more and more now I find

when I have any questions related

to web accessibility, it's more that it depends,

it's that it's recognizing more

of the nuances in accessibility,

so, that's where I am the moment.

We're working with a large supermarket

and they've done ever so well meeting all

of their accessibility obligations,

but they're at a point now

of wanting to radically improve the use experience,

so, once you've met all

your minimum accessibility guidelines

and compliance aspects,

then it's recognizing that we can do much, much more,

and that's what's really interesting me at the moment,

the sort of, "What next in accessibility?"

- Well, as we were talking a little bit

before we started the recording.

We were talking a little bit about the differences

between the importance of compliance

for companies getting involved

in accessibility versus return on investment,

versus it being a socially progressive thing to do,

and so, you had some thoughts about

how things were in Australia.

I think that would be of interest

to people that aren't in it, that area,

in terms of how importance the compliance aspect

is for companies coming to you to work on things

versus other reasons

that they might wanna get involved with it.

- Very much so, yeah.

One of my early roles was within the government,

and even 15 years ago, there was this recognition

that due to the disability laws here,

we would need to make all

of our government digital services accessible,

so, it was very much focused on compliance,

but then, also, there were pockets of innovation,

individual for teams,

so, this is our minimum, but let's do more than that,

and for several years that was how it was moving

along pockets of individual expertise,

driving accessibility, but not necessarily making

a massive impact, but doing enough

to try and make a government to digital services accessible,

and then, with the work with the UK government,

a similar agency over here

was created, the Digital Transformation Agency,

and so, they brought over a lot of their expertise

with what they had accomplished in the UK government.

One of the things was introducing

a digital service standard.

This was basically a guideline

or a blueprint of how to make the government,

the services which served the needs of the user,

so, moving away from that compliance aspect

into making it truly user-centric,

so, this document had several criteria

for how to improve a government online,

the online services.

One of those points was accessibility.

It was this, individual items are called out,

and that was really, I guess,

the catalyst within a government,

which moved us from only doing a bare minimum

to recognizing what can we do better,

and that's when we could really see those innovations

in accessibility more, and more, and more,

and then, based on the back of that work,

there was the creation of the design system,

which had a lot of those accessibility principles baked in,

and so, the bold aim with this, the design system,

was there any federal and state or government agency

could deploy a website quickly

which had all of those core fundamentals,

so, all of those, accessibility,

the principles baked in,

and then under re-pinning that,

it was this documentation

of how to do more, and more, and more,

so that's been one of the main motivators

in the government space in recent years.

The digital transformation agencies bold aims of doing more

where, rather than just making up

a digital digital service

and having users fit in to working with it,

was recognizing what can we do better?

And that's where we really saw renovations in accessibility,

so bigger and better things

where one of the main things was that consistency,

so, if you had a design system

whilst government websites using it would work consistently.

It was baking in a lot of that accessibility,

so, before that, it was very much accessibility

was open to a different levels of interpretation,

so, one team in one department might think you

would achieve accessibility in this way.

Another team would say, "No, this is the right way,"

so, with the DTA's approach,

it was focusing all of our collective accessibility efforts

into, what's the best way?

Let's do things one way and the right way,

and it's been very, very well adopted,

but as I'm sure you experience a government's change,

and so, over time that a passion

for accessibility is often there,

but it's a bit more fragmented,

and that's what we are noticing again,

so, as governments change, as elections happen,

the focus of where and how digital services ought

to be made is wandering a bit at times,

so, from my experience,

there's always better ways to do things

and there's, lots of individuals within a government

are contributing to improving accessibility,

but from where it was five years ago to now,

we are noticing it drop off again.

- Well, let's find a little bit more out

about your background.

Most of us come into accessibility

in a lot of different ways, a lot of different paths

of both our lived life and opportunities

in our work life,

and where did it start for you

where accessibility was something

that you recognized as important and valuable,

and then, how did you decide

that would also be something you'd wanna do

or become involved in as a profession?

- Yeah, my background in accessibility began

where I had recently joined a new team within government,

so my background is that of a backend developer,

so, writing .NET and C#.

One of the expectations of this new team

was that they were making

a brand new digital service,

and as part of that,

it needed to be accessible.

As I joined the team,

I recognized no one really wanted to read through a WCAG.

At most, optimistic, it's a very dry document

with lots of contradictory information,

so, I found, well, as I'm new,

I would read it, and I would extract out

things which we as a team would need to do,

and so, either many, many months of reading it

and familiarizing myself with it more, and more, and more,

I recognized I was enjoying it

where I could understand that my work

as a backend developer could really,

significantly improve the end user's experience

if we understood accessibility more,

and I was pulling out

those themes, things which made sense,

and more, and more, and more,

I was becoming more familiar,

and as is always the case,

anyone who is showing a depthness,

understanding everything is someone labeled the expert.

Well, I never viewed myself as that.

I was just reading more, and more, and more,

and then understanding it more,

and then through my initial work,

in my initial work in accessibility,

I recognized I was liking it more.

I could understand it more,

I could drill down deeper and further,

so, as my background of a software engineer,

I was always wanting to really understand concepts more

than just the superficial level,

and I found with accessibility,

it was something which was hooking me more and more,

so that I moved to other teams

where, ultimately, I moved

into a dedicated web accessibility role.

Our regular work was auditing government applications

and working closely with a colleague.

We were a very good combination of moving past

that level of compliance,

things which are the minimum level

to making recommendations

of how to radically improve

a user's experience regardless of their disabilities,

and then I found working in accessibility,

I would be exposed to the work

of other agencies and other companies,

and I found there was a real,

not necessarily lacking of expertise,

but through my engineers background,

I was recognizing that the information being provided

isn't necessarily helpful,

so, I identified that I was doing better work

than many of the incumbents,

and thought, well, I think there's a gap

in the market for another company,

and that's when I took the step

and launched CANAXESS,

because I recognized,

while all of the incumbent's work

was very, very good,

I felt I could do it better,

and I could just use another angle,

so, ultimately, I feel accessibility

is that a technical discipline at times

where understanding how things work in HTML in code

within JavaScript can really affect the end user experience

if they're using assisted technology,

so, I guess my grounding

in software development made me appreciate more

that how things which are written

can vastly affect the end user's experience

if they're using assisted technology,

and through that, I launched my own company,

and it's been a wonderful journey.

I've met lots of interesting individuals,

worked with lots of different people,

and then recognize more

that the learning with accessibility never ends,

so, I always initially had this optimistic point

of, once I reached year X,

I would know about accessibility

and I'd be that knowledgeable individual,

but I found the more I learn

and the more I understand,

the more I feel that I don't know enough,

and that's driven me more and more,

and more to consume more blogs to reach out to more people,

and, overwhelmingly, just look past my own biases

of, I think this is absolutely right,

I would do it this way,

but to recognize more

that, with accessibility, it's the test,

the testing, again, testing it in multiple browsers,

in multiple assisted technology tools,

recognizing that just because something works

in one browser, in one screen reader,

that might not, necessarily,

be right for everyone's experience,

and I feel that, over time,

that uncertainty now has made me a bit more humble

with recognizing that my experience is just one voice.

It's recognizing many others have an equally valid voice,

and take all that on board as much as I can.

- Well, you've had a lot of experience

in working with government agencies,

so, you had all of those experiences,

and then you've had your experiences working

as a consultant.

As you kind of look at where accessibility is today,

is there one area where you think maybe

the accessibility community needs to put in more effort,

maybe an area that you think is particularly important

for us to be aware of looking forward?

Is there any certain place that maybe you're most excited

about developments that are coming along?

So, just if you have an idea

about maybe one of those future items.

- One of my major, major pet peeves,

and I found there's a real appetite

for understanding accessibility

in this area is with complex UI controls,

so, when you are making up a complex digital service,

there might be lots of interactivity there,

so, the teams would leverage the third party tools,

which have dialogue boxes, and dropdowns,

and auto suggest a control,

so, rather than a team having to build that,

they just use an existing component library.

Now these vendors may make bold accessibility claims

of, "We are 100% accessible to WCAG 2.2, 2.1,

we've got AA, we have VPAT,

we write about accessibility regularly,

and that often makes software teams building

a digital services complacent,

where, if a vendor has made these bold accessibility claims,

there's all this evidence indicating

that they value accessibility,

and they built it well,

and then these software teams adopt it,

because part of the procurement process

is making sure that the tool which you are using

is fit for a purpose,

but then, one of the most challenging times

was several years ago with a large government application

where they followed all of that material,

this accompanying out

a written blog post mentioning about accessibility,

and this team had readily adopted everything,

so, every single screen had UI controls from this vendor.

What we then found

is when we were auditing it towards the end,

just that final tick

of, is this application accessible

and ready for the general public?

What we noticed was every single workflow

was flawed where we had a testing

with people with vision impairments,

and they weren't able to get past the first screen,

and that was really disappointing,

because at that point the application had been written

and there was many, many months

and significant amounts of resources

would have to be dedicated to fix it,

so, in many ways,

that experience of my past has jaded me a little

with recognizing what a vendor says

isn't necessarily correct,

where I wouldn't say they're lying,

but there's being a little bit optimistic

with their claims

where we as accessibility individuals need

to treat cautiously any bold claim

of accessibility compliance

where we can recognize all of a vendor's efforts

with writing blog posts,

having a dedicated accessibility issue tracking,

and even making claims about it all look promising,

but unless we do our due diligence

of confirming that,

it's ultimately meaningless,

where, yes, we can tackle that information on board,

but, ultimately, we and other software teams,

and other individuals

who are commissioning large projects need

to really hold to account the companies

who have made bold claims about accessibility,

because often they might not be entirely accurate,

and, I guess, that us as a community as well,

it needs to move away at times of this...

How best can I say it?

It's recognizing that accessibility

is often with some voices treated

as a theoretical exercise

that the best approach is to use native HML elements

where they're possible, which is valid,

but then it's recognizing

that other teams also have as equal input,

so, we, I guess, need to do a better

where accessibility is vitally important

but as part of delivering a project

and the digital services,

we also need to recognize at times

that sometimes we need to make the compromises

where one approach is might be the best approach,

but we also need to understand

that sometimes that best approach isn't workable

and we might need to use the tool set

which is inaccessible,

so, rather than being that loud voice,

which is making dismissive remarks

about the accessory efforts of a vendor,

we need to say this is working,

but you could do this, this, and this,

so, I guess, us as an accessibility,

your community as a whole,

adopting an approach of humility more

where I don't necessarily think anyone

is going out of the way to deliberately make

a service inaccessible or poor for a blind user.

I think more it's the expectations

are much more increased now with the soccer teams.

There's less resourcing, and less time,

and so, often people make poor judgment calls,

which mean that the end user experience is effective,

so, overwhelmingly, it's recognizing

that it's not often a black and white approach.

It's recognizing those new nuances

and having to compromise,

and often lose the battle, but win a greater war,

so, if our aim is to make things accessible,

we often have to recognize

that we might have to allow compromises

with images which have poor descriptions or controls,

which have poor accessibility,

but if there's a roadmap of remedying it,

then that's a good compromise.

- Thanks for that case study example.

That was very helpful to get that

and to get your insights on that,

and I wanna thank you for participating in this, Ross.

I appreciate you taking the time

to be with me today,

and hopefully we can meet

in person sometime at a physical event,

maybe either on this side, or on your side,

but it was good to chat with you.

- I hope so too, Joe.

Thanks so much, and really good to talk

with another accessibility professional.

Thank you. - All right, thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.