- [Grace] Hello, and welcome to Ask the Expert.
Today I'm joined by Tony Kornmeier,
Lead Product Developer from Deque.
Tony, thanks for joining today.
- [Tony] Hi Grace, thanks for having me.
- [Grace] So I'd like to start off
by asking a little bit more about your background
and how you got into the accessibility field
in the first place.
- [Tony] Well, my background kind of comes
from an opportunity that I had five or six years ago
when I was looking for a job.
And I kinda got presented the opportunity
to work at Deque.
And I didn't really know a lot about accessibility
at that time.
I've been maybe adjacent to it
with other things that I've done in the past.
And actually, it's funny,
cause I thought I knew about accessibility
in the little bit of knowledge that I had.
Through that opportunity
it was an intriguing prospect for me
because I'm a parent of children that have disabilities,
and it's near and dear subject to me and my family.
When I was met with the opportunity
I found it very intriguing.
I was like, hey, this seems like a really good fit for me.
So I began working at Deque
and I was just blown away
by how much I didn't know about accessibility
and just how deep of a subject it is.
And the more I kind of like dug in
and really started to embrace the subject matter.
So I didn't know 50% of let's say the web.
There's this whole other side of me
where when you're talking about accessibility
and applying it to some of your different things
that you do as a developer,
it's incredibly deep subject matter
and very specific type of topics
and knowledge set that you have to have.
Working for Deque and having access to all the experts
and different folks that work here
that I've met through the community,
it's just been a great journey for me
and it's really fulfilling
to feel like I contribute to that space.
- [Grace] Absolutely, and I think it's so true
of how deep and how broad
the subject matter goes in accessibility.
It's certainly a subject area
that really keeps you on your toes
and it really helps you continue to learn
as long as you're dealing with that subject matter.
It's quite expansive.
So since I've joined Deque
and I think you mentioned to me
that you've been at Deque for at least five years now,
you've held a couple of different positions
before now as a Lead Product Developer.
So what can you kind of tell us
about the projects that you're involved in right now?
- [Tony] So the project I'm working on right now
and we've kind of built new team
around reporting and dashboarding,
we're focused on pulling together
a bunch of report type data from the different products,
so we can report on things
and they have like a nice kind of cohesive view
of what's going on.
Get like a nice picture of accessibility
in your organization.
Yeah, we're excited about it.
I think it's gonna be a really good addition
to the already deep product suite that we have.
- [Grace] Absolutely, so going back for just a moment,
Tony, you mentioned how,
before you started at this position at Deque,
you had some experience with accessibility
that you were kind of adjacent to it,
but it wasn't until you really got into the subject matter
that you realized how deep the accessibility field goes.
So knowing that, what advice would you give
to somebody starting out in accessibility
who might've been in a similar position as you?
- [Tony] Yeah, that's a good question.
When you're just starting out
and you kind of start understanding
how deep the subject goes.
Some of the easiest things that you can do
that can start really kind of connecting the dots
from a developer standpoint
is utilize those ask extension.
Pull it down, run this tool on your application code
that you're currently developing
and kind of start seeing
where those different accessibility issues live
and what they are.
The nice thing about some of the tools
that we have at Deque it gives you a bunch of information
about what that issue is, why it's problematic.
So just like from a starting out point of view,
you go from maybe learning what types of issues there are,
different techniques that you could use to fix those issues
and kind of understand like cause and effect
to make those scenario
like where if I create a bit of code
that is missing some different attributes
or develop in a way that it's not accessible for folks.
I think like as you start out,
you can start building that knowledge
and kind of understand what makes code accessible.
There's other really great resources out there
that people can use,
like our Deque University site has a ton of great info
in different classes,
and you can go through different subjects
and understand some of those topics at a much deeper level.
There's a lot of information out there.
And then looking at the weight, pay guidelines,
there's free resources in which you can go and look at
some different, very pointed guidelines
around how certain controls or components
are supposed to behave.
And those are great resources
especially if you just start now.
- [Grace] So even with a myriad of resources out there,
it can still be challenging
to get all of your developers and team onboard
with practicing accessibility,
especially if it's new and they've never done it before.
Accessibility to many people
when they're not familiar with it
can absolutely feel daunting.
So in your experience,
what have you found to be a good motivator
for developers to get involved in accessibility?
- [Tony] I think the first motivator
that I would talk about
is like one it's the right thing to do.
There's so many people.
The accessibility space
talks about us being equal across the board
and everybody essentially being able to access
the same type of resources,
and have the same type of digital quality
that we talk about a lot at Deque.
So for that, having empathy for your users,
understanding how code that's not accessible impacts people,
I think is one of the first things.
One of the things that we see a lot,
it's unfortunate is that like shipping a code too
can also lead to lawsuits for your company
and liabilities that exists out there.
So that's one of the big motivators that we've seen.
But the other one that I would say
for developers specifically,
it's just that when you are shipping good code
that is accessible, it's kind of like mastering your craft.
There's certain techniques that you work on
in your different coding languages
that you're writing good, concise code
that works really well,
but it's not completely done
unless you've got accessibility.
You've taken that into consideration, testing for it,
and now you're just making sure
that your application is able to be used by everybody.
I think as a motivator, wanting to ship good code
and be more of a complete developer
is really good motivation.
- [Grace] And I think the impact on the end user
and using empathy as you've described,
is a fantastic way to start getting in that head space
of wanting to practice accessibility.
And shifting gears a little bit from that,
you've talked about in the past
what accessibility overlays are,
and how JavaScript overlays are different
than the kinds of toolbar overlays that you often see.
Can you describe again
what the differences between those two
and why you think organizations should avoid
the toolbar kind of accessibility overlay?
- [Tony] Yeah, absolutely.
I've got a blog post out there
speaking specifically about this topic.
One of the things that we find
with the toolbar site overlays
is that they're incredibly limited
with some of the different types of issues
that they can fix.
They've got very canned functionality.
So you might only get your color contrast,
a couple of different things like focus indicators
and those as a solution are very limited
to the scope of some of the other things
that could be happening on your website.
So to kind of consider that
as one of the tools that you would employ on site,
or maybe the only tool that you're employing on the site,
there's such a big gap there
from what portal solution would be,
like where you got pretty close
to a hundred percent coverage across the board,
like on some of these issues,
and the toolbar type solutions just don't really get it.
And to contrast it with our Amaze product at Deque,
which I've worked a lot with.
As I first started out here at Deque
that was one of my first projects that I was involved with.
And the difference that Amaze has,
like when you compare it to those toolbars,
is that our overlays are completely customizable.
They interact with the way that your site works.
And we can fix things like keyboard interactions
and different listeners that you might have
on different pages like buttons that aren't really buttons,
like a toolbar would not be able to fix
without some kind of custom programming
or something like that.
So I would say Amaze overall is a much better fit
to a more complete type of a solution.
And the biggest plus there
is that Deque developers don't need access
to the source code.
This is an overlay, it's built kind of like an isolation
and it just kind of interacts with the way that the site is
as it's rendered.
So a lot of pluses with that
I mean, obviously I'm very biased
because I've got a lot of experience in that space,
but when you look at the results
and look at some of these other solutions
that are out there,
wholly believe that what we have here is a better solution.
- [Grace] Yeah, absolutely,
I think a big point that I'm hearing there
is by utilizing those simple fix overlays
is that you really are leaving out a lot of issues.
I mean, that you're covering a certain amount
which is a step forward and making your site accessible,
but it still leaves a big gap
in what a user would be experiencing on the site
where the accessibility issues fixed in a more complete way.
So looking back on your career as a developer,
what is it about accessibility that you wish you'd known
or what was the big takeaway that you've gained
from your time in the accessibility world?
- [Tony] That's a good Question.
So what I wish I would have known
is just that there is so much more.
And I mean, honestly looking back, given the times,
I've been a developer now for about 15 years
and as the subject matter, when I first started out,
it was something that I didn't really know existed
for the most part.
I think like in the last five plus years,
I think it's gone,
it's definitely a gained a lot more like notoriety.
You see it popping up like in some of these tools
that you use, like it's on Chrome
and part of the main stream of discussion,
like for the most part.
So I think like one,
I just wish I would've known more about it.
When I was first starting out at work
what some of the different resources were
that I could go and teach myself more
about some of those different techniques
and what it really meant to program something
that was accessible.
As I've gotten into that I've learned more about it,
now for me it's more just like spreading the word
and making people more aware,
putting content out there
for folks to understand the things that I've learned
over the course of my career as a developer
that's very specialized in this space now.
So overall, I think now that it's gotten a lot more exposure
and people are more aware of it.
I think it's great
because the more aware you are of it as a subject
and (indistinct) through the dev tools and things like that,
you're just gonna pick it up,
you're just gonna kinda absorb it as you go.
So now I think folks that are starting out now
have a big advantage in a way that this type of information
is just right there at your fingertips,
and you don't really gotta dig too far
or look for it too specifically
to find the information that you need
and develop the code that is gonna be beneficial for people.
- [Grace] Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a great point
that you've seen accessibility grow
from being kind of a fringe subject matter
to now much more mainstream.
And certainly the more prevalent something is
the more visible it is,
the easier it can be for people to adopt
and start practicing it.
- [Tony] Yeah, it's true.
And I mean, it's about time
that folks are really giving it the attention
that it deserves.
I think it's a great time to be in accessibility,
just in general.
- [Grace] It's really encouraging to see.
So Tony, last question for you here.
You've worked with many organizations over the years,
helping them to manage their accessibility development work.
What's a common issue or theme
that you see crop up across organizations,
and what advice would you give them?
That is what is something that you wish organizations knew
when it came to managing and practicing accessibility?
- [Tony] Well, when it comes to organizations
and their journey with accessibility,
there's a lot of kind of different categories
that they fall into.
And a lot of the type of companies
that we start working with and engaging with
are early on in their accessibility journey.
So the maturity levels low, typically what we look to see,
on the advice that we here
is to try to bake it into their process.
So in the development process
we've got this thing that we say all the time
about shifting left
and trying to get accessibility testing
built into day to day development activities.
So ultimately like what that means
is give your developers the ability
to test for accessibility,
like give them the tools,
make sure that those tools are getting baked
into your automated tests.
But the more that you can do that
and bake that type of process into your development process,
what tends to happen is it starts finding issues.
And this is also something
that then gets built into your process.
So you start creating accessibility issues,
just like you knew above that you may found
and you've got this component
that doesn't quite work all right.
But at the same time,
you've got the ability to identify
that there's accessibility issues with that same component.
So if you can start flushing out those issues sooner
and start putting that information
in the hands of your developers,
what tends to happen is those issues get fixed sooner
in the process,
and it's largely beneficial to the whole organization.
And any time that you can fix those issues sooner
in the process it costs way less
as you take it through the life cycle of an application
that you are..
You've got this like short feedback loop
that your developers focused on these accessibility issues.
And it's great to flush that out
and create a really strong process that is repeatable.
And as you bring new developers on
this is just part of what it is now to do development
at your organization.
So seeing that a lot
and being in a bunch of different places,
where we've started to create these types of programs
with people, I think it just comes back down
to tooling and processes,
and building real good habits
and trying to make that as repeatable as you possibly can.
- [Grace] And I can imagine it's really rewarding
to see accessibility programs taken from such a young stage
to one that's functioning at full force
with tools and processes, and good habits, as you mentioned,
- [Tony] It is really great.
And it's key to kind of see after a couple of years
going back and talking to folks
and just see how the landscape has changed,
and the way that they talk about accessibility,
it's like in a different way.
- [Grace] Well, Tony, thank you so much for chatting today.
I really appreciate your insights and your perspectives
on development and the accessibility field as a whole.
I really appreciate it.
- [Tony] Thanks Grace.