Speaking Up and Speaking Out: Tactical Communication in Accessibility

CAM: Advocacy can take many, many, many forms. And right now, I'm talking to a lot of advocates, who are feeling burnout. I'm talking to a lot of advocates who are getting frustrated by not being listened to. And that's frustrating for me too.

And I'm trying to think of... What can I do about that? I've been in this industry for nine years now. I've been speaking on accessibility for nine years.

I'll talk about that a little bit later on. And the level of frustration... We're in a boom right now. Companies are finally starting to care about accessibility.

I'm having to go and twist people's arms less than I ever have been before. You know, my hands don't hurt as much after a day of convincing and forcing people to listen anymore. But I still have peers and colleagues who are feeling that. So hopefully you're gonna get something out of this.

And I'm gonna get started on a little bit different path here right now. Back in 1945, do you know what the biggest problem that the US Air Force was facing at the time? There were too many plane crashes. Thomas, just give me a thumbs up -- or sorry, a thumbs down if you don't see what's on screen here.

Just shoot me a quick message privately. I'm assuming it's working right now. In 1945, the US Air Force had this really big problem. On screen, I've gone an image of an airplane.

In a field, looks kind of the worse for wear. It's smoking, on fire, in the middle of this field here. Pilots couldn't control their airplanes. And the US Air Force didn't know why.

Because they had used data, real data, to determine that the average person could fly their airplanes. Right? They built these cockpits with unmovable chairs and no straps on their flight suits, and their helmets were just these leather things, like a hat. But this was the average, right?

They said that if we build airplanes according to the average male body, we can have a functional airplane. Kind of sounds like... How we build technology. Right?

Hm. So at the Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, they went and remeasured all the men at the base. 3,000 men. And they tested them for arm length and chest size and leg length and grip and head size and all this kind of stuff.

There were ten metrics. And it was amazing. Because someone said... Let's retest the men and see how many men are average across all these ten metrics.

And you know what they found? Was that... Zero. Not a single man was quote-unquote "average".

At the top of that bell curve, across all ten metrics. And if they reduced that down to only three metrics, less than 5% of men were "average". They had actually built airplanes for nobody. Again, kind of like how we build technology today.

Right? On screen, I've got an image of foot pedals, inside the cockpit, facing down. You can see they're adjustable now. They can move back and forwards.

And at the very bottom of the screen, there's a linchpin, where you can lift the stick upwards and downwards. This was the next iteration of airplanes that were designed and built based on adaptability. There was a flurry of work to be done. To rebuild technology, rebuild tools and military equipment, based on adaptability.

Flight suits that had straps on them, seats that could go back and forward? What's that? And the amazing thing was that pilot performance soared. Adaptability versus average.

And the study of ergonomics was born. I've got a big question mark here. Because I want to talk about how I started this conversation a little bit. I told a story at the beginning of this conversation.

When talking about accessibility, I now shy away from even bringing up things like regulatory issues or guidelines. Or compliance or lawsuits. Because I feel like sometimes I forget or I used to think that this industry was about statistics. And it's not.

It's about people. Right? It's about people with lived experiences of disabilities and it's about people without lived experiences of disabilities. And I realized that the people listening to me talking about disability, they want to know the human connection.

They want to relay it to their current experiences and someone else's experience. What's the line between those two? They want to know about stories and they want to connect that way. That's why I start off like this.

It doesn't matter if I'm speaking to executives at an organization or a QA team. I tell them they're all cockpit experts. Any time travelers listening right now, go back and time and you can fix it a little bit earlier. It's not stats or guidelines or any of that stuff.

It's not saying that 1.1.1 can be fixed. Or all the tools. People don't care about that. We need to make accessibility relevant to the people listening to our message as well.

And sometimes that means talking about business goals and processes and things like that. Which maybe we don't understand that well. And sometimes it's about turning off a monitor and allowing someone in the QA environment to just figure out how to use their application. Using a screen reader without any visual context.

Because what we need right now... Are champions and advocates. We need them right, right now. We need specialists and consultants and developers.

And QA testers and business leads. More than ever. Who need to know about accessibility. And I can prove it.

Some of you have probably already seen this. On screen, I've got a snippet of the Wall Street Journal. This is an image from last year. I've highlighted certain parts of this.

Which is: More companies are looking to hire accessibility specialists. This is written back in July of 2021. And the number of job listings with accessibility in their title grew by 70% in one year. And when I heard this for the first time, I was like...

Yes! It's finally happening! This is finally the reality. This was just before A11yTO.

Happens every year. #a11yto. And companies are finally starting to care. At least at a big level.

These companies are hiring specialists and consultants more than ever before. Great. But then why do I still hear to this day my peers in the industry getting frustrated over things like getting burned out or being shot down when they speak up or feeling like they're not being listened to? I've got an unfortunate truth to say.

I agree. That is the reality. It happens to me too. I speak up with ideas and they say no, there's no time, there's no money, there's no budget for that at all.

Okay. And I came from being a developer. Not sales. I didn't do any presentations.

In fact, leadership when I was a developer was like... Please, Cam. Don't speak up. I can be a bit chatty.

Maybe you haven't noticed. They said Cam, demo days are not for you to talk about the product. Demo days are for the client to understand what's going on and how far they've gone into this process. And I never had to convince clients to do anything.

In fact, the sale was already done. So our role, even my leads role, the lead architect, the lead engineer, his role wasn't to convince the client to do anything. If the client wanted to remove accessibility validation and verification from their contract, they said it was not their role to care about that. That didn't exactly sit well with me.

That's what we were taught. Right? Just say yes, yes to the client. Because the client knows best.

And here we are now, as advocates and specialists, and we are expected to sell accessibility. To sell advocacy and to convince people to care. Okay. I don't know New York that well.

But I do know on screen I've got an image of the Avengers. I think... I don't know which movie this was. I think this was the first movie.

This is Park Avenue. And East 40th Street. Okay? Got my kudos in there for New York City.

I don't need to know that you are passionate about this industry. You're here right now. You're listening to this message. This is valuable to you.

How did you get into this industry? Normally this is where I would do some audience interaction, but Zoom bombers kind of destroyed that for us. That's okay. Did you have a mentor?

Did you have a guide? Or were you like me and you were thrown the WCAG and they said... You know, go figure this out, Cam. I don't know of any industry out there...

Can you imagine if an electrician was told... Here's a screwdriver. Just go poke around in that electrical box on day one. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

But that's what we're expected to do. Even in sales, if you were part of the sales Department of your organization, you would be taught sales technique, meeting etiquette, verticals and presentation styles and body language. But we don't get that. We read guidelines.

We learned about lived experiences. And we're told to figure out the tools. Like screen readers. Like Dragon Natural Speak.

Like overlays. No, hold on. Scratch that out. And then we uninstall them.

Right? Lighthouse and color contrast analyzer. But those are very much the how of accessibility. Where is the interpersonal skills, the communication, and the persuasion and selling and coaching?

These are skills that we need to learn as well. How to be engaging. How to convince people. These are the important things.

And I guarantee, you've probably done a lunch and learn for your organization, for your team, or something like that. As a knowledge transfer. Beyond these technical skills. This is where we're gonna start.

This is what we're gonna talk about today. Speaking up and speaking out. Calibrated communication for professional advocates. Because what I want as an outcome to this conversation is a new way that you can approach accessibility.

Maybe a change of mindset a little bit. When you next need to speak to your boss or your leader or your stakeholder or your client or your team, I believe that we can do better. And I know you don't need to be in sales. Because you're already empathetic.

You're already ahead of the game. Because you know how to relate to people by putting yourself in their shoes. So this is a conversation about success and forward thinking. It's a conversation about...

It's the right thing to do. And I think we all know that. And this is also about you. And it's how good you are, and how you can pivot just slightly and go from good to great.

It's about hands on techniques, empathy building, and speaking about speaking skills and the difficult topic of inclusion to a resistant crowd. Because it's all about people. Right? I remember once I was working for a consulting organization, and all I had available to me for one of my clients was these skills.

She was a project manager. She was assigned the accessibility project. I delivered a report of 3,000 accessibility issues. And I was not allowed to talk to the developers.

I was like... How am I gonna communicate this stuff? I gotta talk tech. I gotta talk that.

But that was not allowed. She did not want -- the organization did not want me to be on the phone with the developers. I had to go through her. So I had to coach her on mindset.

I had to coach her on the importance of accessibility. And how to communicate that successfully to her team. The result: She succeeded. All 3,000 issues or whatever it was -- was eliminated off their list.

And now they have an accessible financial FI website. And she's since left that job, and now she helps new immigrants, refugees, and people with disabilities find new jobs in tech, particularly around SalesForce. Because this is our job. Creating more advocates, so we don't have to do so much work.

So the first thing we're gonna talk about is that it's not about you. So on screen, I've got an image. I've got a captain of the ship here. She's at the top.

I've got six characters underneath. Right? So we've got five other pirates or characters of seamen. And there's also you.

Who is an astronaut, of course. Just like me. We're all unicorns and astronauts. And you're gonna convince the boss why a carousel is crappy and should be removed from the designs.

Right? We've probably all been there. But these were business requirements. But we know that it doesn't work well, and we're gonna try to figure out how to talk to her about that in a way that's meaningful to her.

So her name is Cassie. And she is a design lead. All right. So this is usually where I would get into a little bit more interaction from the audience.

Unfortunately once again we don't have that available to us. But what could possibly be some of the professional responsibilities of Cassie? She's probably caring about the KPIs, of what she needs to do. She does hiring.

And by the way, all these responses are from previous meetups like this. Exactly like this. She needs to do some mentorship, maybe some strategy planning, budget allocation, possibly, if she has any kind of manager part of her role. She needs to collaborate with tech and product teams and QA sometimes.

Maybe even up higher in the business. But that's not all. What about some of her personal responsibilities? Because that's important too.

Maybe she's a mom. Maybe she's got some family issues. Maybe she commutes to work and it's like an hour and a half to get to work in Toronto traffic or New York traffic. Right?

Possibly. Maybe she's a volunteer. Maybe she's buying a house and the stress of buying a house in today's market is weighing on her mind. And she's got insomnia, perhaps.

Now, I've done... Pulled out this slide. Probably at about 15 to 20 different conversations now. And never, not once, has anyone ever answered: Responsibility...

Accessibility. As part of her professional responsibilities. That's amazing. Here we are, talking about accessibility.

Yet Cassie doesn't even have accessibility as part of her professional responsibilities. Well, where does it go? And then we're here saying... You're not listening to me and you don't care about accessibility.

When she has other equally important responsibilities as part of her tasks. And then she brushes us off and says... Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Sure.

Accessibility, yeah, whatever. That's important. And that hurts. I've pitched accessibility to sales departments and developers.

I've actually worked for... Tried to create a center of excellence at an organization, and the entire department was shut down after months and months of work. We put everything in place. We were ready to start the team.

And they said... Actually, we're just gonna pull the funding from this, because we think a recession is around the corner. And I take that personally. And I get frustrated with that and I say...

Why aren't you taking action now? To I want to change your perspective just a little bit here. We have something called the curse of knowledge. Right?

I know I do. When I walk in, I forget that I have a cognitive bias towards accessibility. Because I wasn't always an accessibility champion or an accessibility expert or an accessibility advocate. At some point, I learned about it.

And I started to change my perspective on it. And I started to think that accessibility equals important. And now I accept that it's the right thing to do, because of that perspective. I can give another example.

I do a lot of woodworking and gardening. If I came in here and started to talk about monsteras and dovetail joints, maybe I'll lose a lot of people in this conversation. They'll say... What is this guy going on, talking about?

So if we need to convince someone that it's the right thing to do, we need to realize that our baseline is not necessarily theirs either. I'm Cam. I'm a professional speaker on disability inclusion. I'm not Cam a developer who sometimes talks about alt text.

You know. That may be their story. Accessibility is our identity, and we need to teach people to make it part of theirs as well. Because I have a theory.

On screen, I've got an image of an arrow that's going from left to right and it says engagement journey at the top. And I'll be talking about this in a moment. There's labels at certain points of that arrow that say ignorance, pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion. I've got a friend whose daughter has childhood arthritis.

I didn't know kids could get arthritis. She now walks with a little bit of a limp because there wasn't enough blood flow in one of her knees to move to the rest of her leg and therefore one of her legs is shorter than the next. It's almost not noticeable. So let's go through what somebody maybe at the park who is just seeing this little girl for the first time might be thinking in their level of understanding of what's going on with her.

If she's in the ignorance... If someone is in the ignorance category, they're gonna say... Ugh. That child has a limp.

That's the parents' fault. They're not letting her run around outside. That's the problem. Maybe she's been eating too much sugar.

Then they move to the pity stage. Poor kid. She'll never get better. How about sympathy?

My cousin used to have a limp. But he outgrew it. But when we move on to true empathy and compassion, start to change our mindset a little bit, we say stuff like... Thank you for sharing.

When he admitted to me that his daughter had arthritis, that was the response. And finally when you get to true compassion, which I'm sure we each would do with our best friends, we would say... That's really big news. And I'm really thankful that you told me about it.

And by the way, if ever you need a baby-sitter for her, I'll still watch her. And in this room, you probably sit around here in accessibility. On the right hand side, I've got the space astronaut with a box around empathy and compassion. But your boss, your client, and your team may sit on the left over here.

In that pity or sympathy stage. Right? Maybe they've never even met somebody with a disability. Maybe they don't even know what that is.

Thinking about your progress, your journey, maybe you have a family member with needs, accessibility needs. Maybe you just got into it like myself. You found an interest and a deep understanding that there's a need here, and it's equity that's important. Where did you start?

Where are you now and how did you get all that knowledge? I'll tell you a story, actually. I've got a friend who is blind. And when I was working at a large international technology firm with three letters -- I won't say which one it is -- a lot of A type consultant personalities there.

And he walked up to my friend for the first time and said: Hey, Joel. My name is... You know, Bill. Nice to meet you.

And he stuck his hand out. And as you know, with A type personalities, there's kind of that staredown. Right? Like who is gonna flinch first.

He had his hand extended out. And my friend, who was blind, didn't even know there was a hand in front of him. This was the first time that my boss had met -- truly met someone who was blind. That was the first time I had truly met someone who is behind as well.

I will admit that I ran away from that situation. I turned tail, I ran, I loaded up YouTube, and I typed in "how to introduce yourself to a blind person". I didn't know any better. That handshake never came and it was an awkward situation for my boss and my friend.

And we don't know how to act in these situations, because nobody really tells us. I grew up and my mom had never told me about how to talk to people with disabilities. HR departments had never talked about: This is what people with disabilities are. And our educators and our teachers in schools don't really approach the subject.

It's not part of our regular curriculum. And by the way, if ever you've never met someone who is blind, just state what you're doing. Hi, John. Hi, Joe.

I think that's what I said. Hi, Joe. I'm Cam. Can I shake your hand?

And that's all you need to do. So I would like to reinforce here... Baby steps. You already have empathy.

And you should use it on your managers or your peers or your clients. Because maybe it takes ten times for you to convince them to care. And that's tough. We have to start really, really small, because we don't know where their baseline is.

And to move them up to where we are in sympathy and empathy is going to take time and energy. Because it's not about us. It's about them and their journey. But it is our job to help convince them and move them along this path and this journey towards accessibility and disability inclusion.

And acknowledge that. And our job is to persuade and convince. So how do we actually change somebody's perspective? Part two of the presentation here.

I've got view and some cool-looking sunglasses on the screen. So view. When I need to have an important conversation, I try to use these methods to remind myself that once again: Who is the audience and what are they talking about? Because if I need to change somebody, I need to first learn to listen before I can speak.

Not the other way around. I used to jump right to solutioning and I know a lot of people still do. Saying... This is what you need!

Right away. Imagine if a doctor walked up to you and without asking a question wrote a prescription and threw some pills at you. It doesn't make sense. So I call these the four aspects of calibrated communication.

So the V stands for voice. I stands for inquiries. E stands for engagement. And W stands for words.

And I'm gonna be using accessibility examples here. But it doesn't only apply to accessibility. I like to use this in many aspects of my life when I need to have a serious conversation. When I need to have an important conversation.

Maybe I'm bringing on some new technology or something like that. If I need to talk about VueJS or bring in an implementation strategy, I need to think about these aspects too. Because if you'll keep this in mind, you'll have an easier way. So let's start with voice.

On screen, I just have a mic with the word voice on it. And it's really about being heard. It's not just the voice that you project out of your mouth either. It's whenever you have a message that you need to send and it's the communication tool you actually use.

So how do you deliver a proper message to be heard? I like to think of the marketer's rule, the rule of seven. Because it takes on average seven times before somebody will actually take action, like buying a product. And I'm telling you, I'm not better than a marketer.

I can hardly get my 7-year-old to go to bed on time. Caden, will you go to bed? Caden, will you go to bed? Seven times before you send them to bed.

Why do we assume that adults are any different? Care about accessibility. Care about accessibility! So let's think about different ways that we can maybe send that message.

Try and deliver it in a different way or use a different communication system. Let's think about Cassie for a second here. Who says: You know, we don't have time for accessibility right now. It's not in the road map.

I don't care. Okay. Fine. Fine.

I can go talk to a developer. I can go talk to a QA tester. I can go talk to somebody else on her team. She never said I wasn't supposed to.

Talk about that in a second too. And I can go tell them: Are you struggling with accessibility? They say... Oh yeah.

You know, the client keeps whispering. Whenever we show demo days, they keep asking about accessibility and Cassie keeps saying it's gonna happen later on. Oh, okay. Great.

That's really great to hear. Maybe I can help you out with that. Maybe I can go to Cassie and say: I heard from your team that you're really struggling with this. Is there anything I can do to help?

We'll put that in the backlog, release the product first, and care about accessibility later. We've heard that one before. Maybe I can say: Tell you what? How about we address the backlog, I'll take an hour of your time, look at some of the accessibility issues in the backlog.

Have a lunch and learn, do a quick triage. That sounds good. If we're giving some of our free time, it's hard for business owners to say no to a lunch and learn. That's free knowledge to them.

They love that kind of stuff. In this story, I probably addressed accessibility with that lead, with Cassie, about five times. But I wasn't heard until the very last time. I'll even try different methods to try and communicate this as well.

Email. I'll send YouTube videos. Podcasts. Lunch and learns, I mentioned.

One pagers. Things like that. Because a no isn't a no for always. It's a no for now.

That's a little sales technique. I really think it's about a persistent and effective way to get your message across. Bringing up useful stories is also a really good one too. I challenge you to try.

If you've never tried to book a one on one meeting with your boss to talk about accessibility, you know, if it's always in kind of an in-passing thing, or in a larger forum, or vice versa, if you've only had one on one conversations, and you're invited to these scrum meetings or triage sessions, if you brought up accessibility, you might feel like you're putting a target on your back. But... These are different ways that you can maybe be heard.

Be omnipresent. Be everywhere. And be politely annoying. Is what I like to say.

So try to challenge yourself three times this week. If you're getting resistance with your lead, with your client, with your boss, with your team, try and think of a few different ways that you can maybe approach accessibility that's not always just... Doom and gloom or talking about lawsuits. Talk about that too.

Up next are the inquiries that you would have to make. This is really about the receiver and learning more about them and asking them questions. When was the last time that you cared about somebody who didn't care about you first? Right?

This is how humans work. I ask about you. I learn about you. I give you a little bit about me.

And then you learn about me. Right? This is an exchange that normally happens. And we need to learn to care about the person that we're talking to.

What do they care about in business? What's important to them? How do you make accessibility relevant to that audience? They're gonna tell you: If you just ask them more questions.

Open-ended questions. Ask about what's going on at home. Ask about what's happening at work. What goals they may have.

Someone's perspective will change if you just ask them more questions. I like to ask open-ended who what when where how questions. Right? When was the last time we looked at the accessibility backlog?

What are the plans we use for the next release? What are your concerns about this big audit that we just received? What are some of our team goals? When can I host a lunch and learn?

Whose time can I borrow to talk to them a little bit about accessibility? To create a co-champion? Is it okay? Who really owns accessibility in this project?

And that last one is a really important one. Because sometimes your lead, your boss, they don't own their decisions. Sometimes there's other hierarchies above them. And if you don't know your boss's boss and are trying to put accessibility on their plate, you're gonna have a harder time.

Just a tip. Keep these questions open-ended. Encourage conversation. Be interested in that part, what they're gonna tell you as well.

Because if you've met resistance from a team, what are some of those open-ended questions that you can ask? Number three. Your engagement. How connected and plugged in are you with that organization?

And what they care about? Now, of course, you've learned a little bit about what they care about through those questions. Our distractions are at an all-time high. I'm sure lots of us right now are checking emails, or LinkedIn, or on your phone or something like that.

And that's cool. That's okay. But we do it all the time. I do it in meetings.

I do it when I'm speaking with friends on the phone. Don't you fold laundry when you're speaking with friends on the phone? Yeah. Multitasking.

Doesn't work. Big secret. What's the big picture for the people you're speaking to? Do you know their business goals?

Where do you fit in their business goals? I'll give you a hint. If you've been hired to do something about accessibility, you already have permission to be asking some of these questions. Are you aligned with their vision?

Do you empathize with them? Do you know who those real stakeholders are? Maybe there are some other pressures that you don't know about. I like to think of this...

Back when I was working at that same large tech firm, they talked to me about... When there was a security flaw that was discovered in one of their applications that they built. I went and asked the senior director of the organization. I said: Hey, did you hear about the security flaw?

Like, what do you care about? He says: Cam, when you're at my level, you don't concern yourself with those small things. You have team members to handle that for you. He was trying to pitch a solution for problems that his client, the people I worked for, didn't even know they had.

Right? He's looking five years ahead at what technology is coming out and things like that. If you don't know those are the business priorities, then how can you possibly assume... Try to wrap and tie accessibility into that?

You need to weave it into that five-year plan. How do you align with their goals? I like to think of this. The rule of three is really simple in my mind.

Three days, three months, three years. Three days can maybe be at the end of a sprint. Can we squeak in one of these accessibility tickets? It's not hard to fix a label.

Right, boss? Maybe we can throw in one of those. What about a project, at the end of three months. Releases go out without accessibility fixes all the time.

Releases also go out with other bugs in them too. Because sometimes there are stakeholders which are beholden to shareholders, which otherwise you don't have a job. So how do we start to weave in, in the long-term goals, our accessibility requirements, into their goals? And finally, maybe what are the three-year goals?

End of the whole release. Maybe we'll see the end of 2.x guidelines for the WCAG. I don't know. Maybe we'll see the WCAG 3.0 come out.

I don't know. Three years is a long time. But maybe they're facing other deadlines that you don't know about until you're truly plugged in. Consulting firms try to keep very lean.

So the earlier we can have these conversations, the better off we're gonna be. We have to be honest about that. Finally, we'll talk about words and the clarity around that. Because how do these messages actually get delivered to these stakeholders or these bosses or clients?

By being simple and clear, we can really increase audience retention to what we're doing. The biggest turnoff that any human can have is loss of control or loss of power. And I'll tell you, a lot of stakeholders and bosses, they've got to the position they're at, and they don't want to feel stupid. They don't want to lose control.

They don't want to feel like an idiot. Right? But when we give them a complex problem without a solution, they don't know where to start. They get lost in that too.

So how do we change that? If a problem is really complex, we need to simplify it. By the way, there's a great book out there called Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. I get mad street cred from my UI and UX friends when I talk about it.

I usually try to whip it out but I don't have it here. There's a lesson in there about talking with clarity and simplicity in everything that we do -- makes it more approachable and easier to communicate. Right? What if that decision maker, what if that person, your boss, your client, your lead, your team, needs to talk to other people?

Maybe your boss really cares about this. Maybe you've told him all the right things you need to say. Yeah. Let's bring accessibility into this.

This is great. If they don't know the right words to communicate to their leadership and put it on their entire project plan, which may span multiple years, then it's gonna get lost. Right? I'll show you an example.

Non-text content. Success criteria 1.1.1, WCAG 2.1 level, AA. I'm gonna tell you, to a VP of development, they have no idea what this means. No idea.

How do we simplify it? This is alternative text for graphics in the accessibility guidelines. Ah. Now we all of a sudden have started to change that tone.

I like to simplify it even more, though, because I want to relate this to a business reason. And I call 1.1.1: It's required text on images that improves SEO. And they love that. I'm getting companies convinced -- they say transcriptions for podcasts are a gold mine.

They say it's perfect for SEO. It's so good. Wow. Go figure.

Business reasons. Tie it all in together. In fact, I usually don't even bring up the accessibility guidelines anymore. WCAG, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know -- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

It's our holy bible. For any accessibility professionals. I'll maybe bring up the POUR principles, perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Maybe, if I need to.

Because remember, your audience may speak to a decision maker. If they don't understand, then they get lost. I have a clock on screen. Because what I've heard as feedback after I tell people that is they say: Wow, Cam.

This is a lot of time. I don't have time for that. We need this change immediately. I've been banging my head against the wall for months.

I'm gonna give you a hint. Accessibility is not a race. Diversity, inclusion and equity is not a race. We are changing company culture.

We are coaches. And we are leaders and we are teaching entire organizations to be better. It's just like diet or exercise or saving money. Our only tool is time.

And how do we use that time effectively? So I like to say patience and persistence equals progress. We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. That's from Matthew Kelly in the Long View.

Let's put this all together. Up on screen, I've got the number 10,982. Maybe you know what this number is. Maybe you've used it in one of your presentations before.

This is the Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits from 2020. There were 10,982 lawsuits filed in America in 2020 for the ADA. That equals 30 lawsuits a day. Why do we use this number in our presentations when we talk to leads?

I know for me... I used to bring up -- in Canada, we have the accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities act. And I used to tell the business leads: You're gonna get fined for $10,000 a day. You, yes, you, as a CEO of an organization that doesn't care about accessibility, you're going to get fined.

And I don't know what I wanted out of that. Was it to shock people? Was it to threaten people? Because that's how some people used to come back and say...

Cam, were you threatening us? Are you going to tell on us? If we don't do accessibility? In fact, I had a client once come up and ask me...

Cam, how many businesses in the United States are covered by the ADA? I had to look it up. Did you know that there are 32,500,000 businesses covered by the ADA in the United States? 30 lawsuits a day...

We're looking at something like... 2,900 years to sue everybody. Lawsuits are not the solution. I don't lead with lawsuits anymore.

I don't think it's effective. Another statistic that we use quite often. Over 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. Probably this is the most common stat in our industry.

I don't like just throwing blind stats to people like this. They are difficult to understand. 1 billion people is 3 times the population of the United States. The number is just too big.

It's just too massive for people to understand. They look at me like a deer in the headlights. Maybe we can deliver this message a little bit better. Let's go back to Cassie for a second here.

This is Cassie. With all of her responsibilities. Right? Professional responsibilities.

KPIs. Hiring. Mentorship and strategy planning and budget allocation and collaboration. She's got her personal responsibilities of being a mom and family issues and long commute time, volunteering, buying a house, insomnia.

Hoo boy. So let's use everything that we've learned so far to maybe make this more applicable to her, by using our voice. What I would do is after learning a little bit about her, I would say: Hey, here's a fun video about accessibility. If you've got kids, you're a mom...

First off, my kid loves watching videos of other kids who are amputees. Who have developed Lego prosthetics. He thinks it is just the coolest thing on the planet. Very, very cool.

Maybe I would send her a podcast around accessibility. I don't know. Something like that. Inquiries.

When was the last time that our team truly learned about accessibility personas, and can I walk them through that? Other inquiries. What are our team targets this quarter? What do you think the team struggles with around accessibility?

When was the last time that our team learned about accessibility personas? What about the engagement? Hey, last time at the all hands call from our CEO, he talked a lot about DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Did you know that accessibility fits perfectly within that? People with disabilities are at the true intersection of all inclusive and diverse peoples. Maybe we should have a conversation around that. Or hey...

Last time you posted some neat stuff around the bank... Around diversity and inclusion month or something like that. How do we start to tie what we already know about the organization from their pillars of success? That they're already communicating outwards?

Maybe they've changed their logo to have a flag. Right? Change the flag. Diversity and inclusion month.

Maybe we can tie that into that too. Hey, you're already publicly posting this. Let's pick up our socks. And finally, the words.

I liked to talk to Cassie or anyone who is in a lead role. Really tie in those words of goals or collaboration or simple or easy or approachable or clear. Those words really -- business leads loved hearing about that stuff. So now using that statistic that I talked about already...

Over 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. And that carousel that we've been working on or that we have on this page... Doesn't work for any of us. Because if we can get Cassie to start asking the right questions, maybe Cassie will put accessibility onto her resume.

And if she's done that, then we've created another champion. And she'll go on to talk about accessibility with her team, and she'll go on to start educating other people or care about or even at the minimum, maybe she won't be as hesitant or as resistant the next time you talk to her about accessibility. And you would have helped to create a new champion. Finally I just have a couple last thoughts here.

The DEI space, diversity, equity, and inclusion, is hard. Very hard. I talked at the very beginning of this conversation... It's burnout central.

Because we give and we give and we give... And we give and we know it's important. And I've been broken many times in this industry. I've spoken to leads.

You know, I've had my entire... The rug pulled out from underneath me as well. And I know you have too. And if you haven't experienced that yet, that's amazing, first off.

It may happen. And I've talked about accessibility for months. And then that person that I was speaking to, who cared and who got buy-in -- he moved on to a different role and I had a new person come into the role and I had to start at square one again. But...

Silver lining. I've now talked to more organizations than ever before about disability inclusion. And I've been speaking on this, like I said, for about nine years now. And I've spoken to more people from more organizations with less resistance than ever before.

We need to learn to revel in this coaching and creating champions mindset. Because when we do that, we just start to realize that... Oh, hey, I just haven't said enough of the right things to get this person to care. And a lot of our job, when the new person comes in, is gonna be to sit them down for 30 minutes and say...

Hey! I know you're a junior QA, but by the way, we care about accessibility here. Let's talk about it for 30 minutes. Let's show you how to use a screen reader.

And that happens at the beginning. Not three months in. Not six months in, when they're all comfortable and jaded and stuff like that. That conversation happens at the beginning.

I used the same talk and talked about it at global accessibility awareness day. Because these are the important conversations to have. How do you not get burned out and how do you not feel stuck? Because you owe it to yourself to figure out some of these interpersonal skills and use them on doing better communication.

Just before I wrap up here, I have a quick, quick ask. This talk is spurred by feedback that I receive from people like you, people in this industry. If you go to http://camb.pw/challenges, Thomas, I don't know if I can put this in the chat... I'll try putting it in the chat and see what happens from it.

It's all good if not, though. I take feedback here, because I want to learn just two things. I want to know what is the most frustrating thing about advocacy and what is the most frustrating thing about changing company culture. Just two questions.

I'm not buying anything or stuff like that. It's all good. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks, Thomas, thanks, Cam, for having me on the show today.

I really appreciate it. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I try to post daily accessibility tips, advocacy tips, communication skill tips, things like that. I would love to talk to you if you ever have a question and want to reach out.

I'm super open. I may talk your ear off, but that's just me. I'm thankful for participating today.

THOMAS: Thank you so much, Cam. That's awesome. I really appreciate that. You should all reach out to Cam and follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

He's got always lots of interesting stuff coming out. Like, every day. Like these talks that we had here today. So again, thanks so much.

I wanted to kick off with maybe a first comment from someone in the chat. From your topic today. She said that -- Adrian Gray said it's not about you, but can benefit you too -- is the name of a lunch and learn topic title that she submitted.

CAM: Absolutely love it. Say it again?

THOMAS: It's not about you, but it can benefit you too.

CAM: I love it. It's not about you, but it can benefit you. That's so cool. That's a great one.

THOMAS: And I wanted to ask... What did you think about using actual customer feedback from social media or people looking for... Maybe even support tickets, or just information that people with disabilities may have reported to the company? That get overlooked?

CAM: Yeah. That's a really good question. Because I have two minds of it. We need to be careful about using data to show why this is important.

Right? Because any business lead will say... We received 10,000 tickets a month. And you're saying that three of them have accessibility concerns?

Statistically, that doesn't make sense. Right? So that is an argument that we need to be in front of and aware of. Right?

It's the same thing in personas. If we say... 3% of people with autism are not able to do this. But the vast majority are...

Well, then, someone could just say... Well, how many people have autism who are using our banking website? Well, then, why would we create a savings plan for them, right? It's a slippery slope.

But a lot of feedback can go a long way. So it depends who I'm speaking to or speaking with. Right? Back to the VIEW method...

If I understand that somebody is going to be moved by that, if I understand that somebody cares about feedback, maybe not the VP level, so would I bring it up to the VPs? You know, they're caring about their entire client database. A million. Two million.

Three million people. Maybe they don't care. But maybe the QA lead does. Because they're responsible.

It's part of their targets to care about customer feedback. I'm gonna highlight it to them. Because I know through conversing with them and having a conversation... Well, what do you care about?

I'm in charge of making sure that there's zero feedback. I'm gonna lean in really hard. Almost any time I need to convince this team member to care about accessibility, I'm gonna say... Hey, I just pulled out this other one.

Let's break this down together. It doesn't have to be a shame and blame exercise. We can make this fun. Hey, this person commented that they're not able to...

I don't know. Use light and dark mode with the keyboard. Let's figure out together how to do that. Let's research that together.

Let's pull in John the dev and Ashram QA and let's pull up Tiffany, designer. Let's brainstorm this together and make it a fun exercise. Absolutely I would use it, but I would use it... Just making sure I'm aware of what situation I'm in.

THOMAS: Great, thank you. Got a question here from Willie. How does one reach out to a company to improve their accessibility protocols, maturation, externally? They don't currently have any experts on board and need help.

CAM: Ooh. This is a great question. Where is Meryl, okay? Hold on.

Meryl has a great comment about this. She talks about it. We have to go in with understanding and compassion. Because we don't know what's going on internally.

Right? Maybe their devs are working 12-hour days and they're overloaded and they just don't care about that. I'll tell you how I approach companies. This is a single story.

I'm not saying it's gonna work for everybody. But I'll try to... I'll share this story here. So it was with Calendly.

Big shoutout to them by the way. They are so responsive in their feedback, in their customer stuff, like that. Kudos to them. Don't mind giving them a shoutout.

I reached out to them and said: Hey, your date picker doesn't work keyboard only. What would happen is they would have... For anyone who is a developer, they would have something in an overflow, a couple of screens of calendar in an overflow, so when you would tab, it would go along Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then skip to the calendar on the right because they had a grid extended offscreen.

Maybe that conception makes sense. A single table that just extended many times. I told them about it. And I said...

Hey, this is a problem. This is why. Here is the solution how to fix it. And if you need any more help, don't be shy about reaching out to me again.

What did I do there? I talked about the solution. I talked about the problem. I talked about the solution.

I'll always talk about who it affects, and I'll offer myself as a guinea pig to test out afterwards. The two or three companies that I've approached like that, they're more than willing to work with me, because like I said, I think there's a general awareness that there's never been before about... Hey, accessibility is a thing. They may not understand it's an important thing, a required thing, but they may understand it's a thing that people are talking about now.

I think anyone in this industry has started to realize that. So that's how I would approach it. A problem, who it affects, and offer the solution. And offer your help later on.

Even if it's just a test. And I got a free month out of it, too. They're just happy to get that too. So...

That's it.

THOMAS: Great. We're gonna take one last question here, from Morgan. And this is... Education required in the accessibility field feels daunting.

Learning the WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines bible. How do we approach the content with a more easily digestible approach, so we can better learn and then teach it?

CAM: Yeah. That's a really great question. We are hyperfocused on the WCAG, like I said, like it's our bible. I don't talk about the WCAG anymore.

It's just not a thing. If I'm going into developments, I'm not gonna convince anyone to do the right thing. By learning the accessibility guidelines. In fact, a pro tip for anyone who is listening right now.

You're gonna get a lot more buy-in if you just call them the accessibility guidelines. If someone says you mean the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? You say yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. You're gonna get a lot more buy-in if you call it the accessibility guidelines and that's it.

If we say WCAG, WCAG, WCAG, people don't get that. So protip. Learning the WCAG is probably the most daunting thing about it. Sometimes it's part of our job description, which I kind of disagree with.

It depends if I'm a developer.. If I'm a consultant, eh, maybe. But when was the last time as a consultant I need to point to 4.1.2? It's not a thing.

I don't need to do it. I have other professionals to help me out with that. I find it much easier to learn about things like lived experiences. When I can learn to communicate something like...

Did you know that not everyone who is blind has no sight? When I can start to say that with confidence, when I can start to say... Hey, my friend who has a hearing impairment, this is what his lived experience is. This is how he would really enjoy to listen to this podcast.

Or interact with this. Or... You know, my friend who is a quadriplegic, who uses Dragon Naturally Speaking, the labels on the buttons are really important. Because when he needs to use them, he needs to speak the label "play", so that he can listen to that, like that video and stuff like that.

Learning to communicate those skills is going to be way more important than learning... You know, all the guidelines. If you have to, though, go pull up a checklist. There's a lot of checklists out there for the guidelines.

Go start to pick that apart. I used to always get asked: Hey, can you boil the accessibility guidelines down to like a simple checklist that our devs can use? And when I start to hear that, now I'm like... Uh-oh.

It's a learning opportunity. We can now talk about things like... Hey, by the way, a checklist of the WCAG sucks, because a developer is not gonna sit there and say... 1.1.1.

Well, I'm doing a button. So this isn't relevant. Okay. 1.2.1.

Audio description. They're gonna go so far down the list until they finally get to the bottom where they're like... Okay. This is a label that's an issue.

It's not relevant. You're gonna have more success just to be able to talk about technology and usability properly than you are learning to hardcore WCAG. If you do, though, start with the checklist, start with the POUR principles. It's a conversational topic that you can have a much better and easier aptitude to kind of get through.

THOMAS: That's great. Yeah. I really liked your story earlier on the... The story about the manager meeting the person who is blind and sticking out the hand and having to go Google...

How do I interact with a person who is blind? I think that's really... Just getting people... Asking those kinds of questions to people, and then getting people to think about that, if they don't have coworkers -- that's a really interesting way to get people engaged, thinking...

CAM: Absolutely. And I do it with just anything. Another friend of mine, I was handing him coffee. Right?

Hey, coffee. Right hand. Something so simple. Something...

Just stating of where I'm handing coffee is... Or saying that I'm walking away from the conversation. That's a big one in an office setting. Right?

If someone who is blind or low vision is sitting down, they don't know when you've left the conversation. Because I once heard him say... Hey, John? John was no longer there.

John had left to go to the washroom and didn't state it. These little tips, these little things that we can do to just improve everybody's lives, lived experiences, my lived experience and his lived experience -- these are just real stories that you can really start to plug into, if you just learn about lived experiences, I think.

CAMERON: Yeah. I'm actually gonna plug Fable here. Because they do usability research and testing and training with customers. With live participants.

And it's awesome. It's a really great way to get tapped in, and yes, they're a sponsor. I've worked with them. I can attest to how impactful it is just in general to work with customers with disabilities and people with disabilities.

So echoing Cam, your observation about... Observation, lived experience, connecting with your customers... 100%.

CAM: Yeah. It's really the way to go. It's really the way to go. I know we're out of time...

Thomas, sorry... We have one more? Good. Just so you know...

If anyone wants to ask, just shoot away on LinkedIn. Just message me. All good with that. Any time.

Go ahead, Thomas.

THOMAS: Okay. So we'll take this as the last one for tonight. We'll take one more. Danielle.

Any tips for advocating for accessibility within your organization if you're not an expert? It's something I would like my team members to think about. But I don't necessarily have all the answers.

CAM: Advocating when you're not the expert is how everybody starts. Everybody starts there. Right? I was just a developer who was assigned to a big backlog of 3,000 accessibility issues.

I was a nobody. I didn't know anything about it. I was just a guy. You become it over time.

Learn something small and specific. Become an expert at something really tiny. Just become like the carousel person who knows how to make accessible carousels. Or date pickers.

Date pickers suck. Date pickers suck in terms of... They're so hard to make accessible. You have to rewrite tables and all this stuff.

It's so difficult. Become an expert in that. It's really hard, but then you'll be the date picker person. You'll become an expert at that.

Learn how to do wire frames. Designers love it when you... I've got to say. The more I get plugged into the design world, I'm from the developer world, where everyone is like...

Shush-shush. I'm just gonna go work on my project, and compare it to designers who are always in these design review sessions and things like that. If we start to collaborate with the designers, by the way, that's a great way to shift left. Hint-hint.

That's the right way to go. Anyways... I'm not sure, Danielle, what your role is in your organization. But you don't need to be the expert.

You don't need to be... To have accessibility in your title. You can start really small. Hey.

Designer. Can I review your wire frames? I would love to. By the way, putting labels on those headings is gonna make it a lot easier for developers to work their stuff.

Oh, man, all of a sudden you've saved $x, and by the way, you can start to communicate that back to your leadership. Right? Every heading that was saved in time, that you can rewrite properly, without having to think about it, you can then bring back and say... Excuse me.

This much development time was saved. And they know the dollar figures attached to that too. And that's a huge thumbs up to the business. They would say...

Wow. Accessibility... My accessibility person saved us this much time. It's tangible.

It's realistic to them. So... You don't need to be an expert. You can start really small.

Start with those baby steps. Start finding something that you're interested in and just start talking about that.