Andy: , good afternoon and welcome back to Unfinished Business, the podcast about making a living on the web and in creative services. I'm your host today, Andy Clark, and joining me is him
Rich: Hello, I'm Richard.
Andy: and we have a guest.
Léonie: Hello,
Rich: Oh, please.
Léonie: Nice to meet you.
Andy: Now I've, I've just gotta say before we, before we get cracking. Well, two, two things. first of all, if I appear to be hot and bothered, it's because it's 38 degrees down here in the south of France. it has been over 40 for the last few days, so I am. Sweating like a booger. that's the first thing.
Second thing I will resist. Unlike last episode, I will resist attempting to speak French because, I think as listeners know, we record this thing in D script and when. I started off doing my, dirty old man French introduction, last episode. D Script was convinced then that everything I said had to be translated into French,
So, I'm gonna avoid speaking French, but, as d script includes a, a transcription service, I dunno how good it is, but I'm sure it's better than nothing. we'll be putting a transcript of this and future episodes on the website, so, yeah, little bit of housekeeping.
yeah. Hi Leoni. thanks for spending a bit of time with us today, and also, well, there's two other things that I need to thank you for. one is indirectly, maybe directly, certainly indirectly, you are responsible for my career post 20 2001.
Léonie: I remember you,
Andy: so the story for anybody that doesn't know is that back in the early two thousands, I think it was like 2001, I'd been making websites for a few years and, I'd even started a business, you know, we started stuffing Nonsense in 98 and I did the usual stuff. You know, I started off in Dreamweaver, in.
Front page and then got all professional, got all professional. Anyway, I got an email. It was a, an invitation from Macromedia, remember them Rich back in the day? Macromedia. And, it was, they were hosting a, a series of workshops down in London and.
One of those workshops was on, supposedly on usability, and I thought, you know, that'll be good. So I went down and turns out, I dunno what had happened. Maybe the other speaker had pulled out or something. But it turned out not to be, a workshop on usability, but it was on accessibility, which I knew bugger all about.
It was hosted by a Cardiff based company called No Mensa, who I think OMI knows very well. And so I did this thing where I thought, well, you know, I don't see what's so special about their website. Looks pretty much like all the others. So I went home and I did what I always did. I viewed source on the website, and I copied it.
And I pasted it into Dreamweaver and I sat there with my mouth open. I did not know what the hell I was looking at because the first site that I'd seen that was using CSS for layout. And of course when I did the past copied a bit of source code, it would come back up in the Dreamweaver window with, the table view and all the layout and the fonts and stuff.
this is what made me sit there for hours and hours and hours a night just learning what this CSS thing was all about.
Because I couldn't code, I didn't, I didn't know what A-X-H-T-M-L was or, or anything else. I was a Dreamweaver warrior. so yeah, so thank you for that. I dunno, how in, were you there on that day?
Léonie: no I wasn't. I suspect it would've been Alistair Campbell who was responsible for the website at that time.
Andy: Yes.
Léonie: early 2002, I think it was.
Andy: Okay. the other thing I would like to thank you for is giving a job to a load of old men. Which you now do at your current business, which I'm sure we'll talk about. So, Ian Lloyd, who is an old mate of ours, Jez Lemon, who is a name I haven't heard for a very long time.
And Patrick Lauer, who actually took the photographs for the cover of my first book where I was a right. Posey looking bastard. Thank you for keeping old men off the street because without them, they'd be lurking around bus shelters with, bottles of whiskey in a paper bag.
Léonie: You
Rich: Yeah,
Léonie: I couldn't possibly comment.
Andy: go on.
Rich: so le as, Andy has alluded to, you've I mean, a career in accessibility since what, 2002? 2003, which is, yeah. A long time to, to specialize in that. culminating, I guess, as it stands in being a director of, technological, which yeah, we'd love to talk about, a little bit more. do you want to set some context about your career and accessibility? I guess, a fairly pivotal life event maybe led you into that direction. Is it fair to say,
Léonie: no, actually at all.
the timing suggests that it might, well. Been, but, not that directly. so I'd worked as a web designer in the mid, late nineties, for one of the first ISPs in the uk. lost my sight over the year from the very end of 99 through the end of 2000. Quit working, figured out how to use a computer again and then got bored, which has generally always been my worst enemy. joined a mailing list for people who use the screen reader I use. And there was this email from this person called Alistair Campbell,
Rich: Okay.
Léonie: said, yeah, we've, we've just built our first website for a customer. they didn't have any budget for accessibility, but if anybody's got any time, you know, we'd really appreciate some just general feedback. And I remember thinking, well, I used to be a web designer and I'm definitely a screen reader now, so yeah, why not? So. Emailed him, and that was where I, I up with Ensa, started contracting for them. And then Alistair presented me with this horrible document called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Bloody wonder, I stayed put long enough to have a career in accessibility after taking one look at those. But that's where the kind of the bug set in. and just got, yeah, this idea that. Wow. We can do so much better with the stuff that we're building and, and, oh wow, that doesn't work. So how do we pull it apart and put it back together again in a way that does work better for more people? So, it wasn't, I suddenly kind of lost my sight and went on a, we've gotta fix this. It was kind of accidental. But I'm very glad. And yeah, that's how I got into it all.
Rich: Oh Wow. And, are you a co-founder?
Léonie: I am.
Rich: Excellent.
Léonie: I was the first one to pop up visibly, but there are actually four of us, myself, Swan Ian Pcy, Steve Faulkner, so yeah.
Rich: just thinking back to when we started Clear left 20 years ago and we had other design agencies to, to look at from the point of view of, oh, look, there's a viable company. Maybe we can create a viable company that does something similar, but maybe better. Did you have, I mean, it didn't start technological that long ago, but it feels like there is still not many people who specialize in the way that, that you do.
What brought you to start a company is like, what was your motivation there?
Léonie: So, yeah. we've worked for other companies in this space and we've seen some stuff that works really well and we've seen an awful lot of stuff that doesn't, and we think we can do it differently. So yeah, that's probably true for a lot of people who start up companies, isn't it?
you've got experiences you think you can do it better or differently or quickly, whatever it may be, We just thought we wanted to do something that was a bit different. A lot of the, accessibility companies as in the ones that specialize, around the world, they do an awful lot of auditing. they come in, they check staff, they report back, you failed this, you've passed that. And that's always gonna be an important part of accessibility. 'cause we've got laws that require organizations to kind of go through those motions. But it always struck us as being An end of life kind of a thing if, you're waiting to the end of whatever to find out if your product conforms it's way too late.
So, we wanted to concentrate more on consultancy, getting in amongst teams and organizations and helping them arrive at the end point in better shape than waiting to the end to find out it had all gone wrong.
Rich: Helping people get it right first time around without having to wait and try and retrospectively fix stuff,
Léonie: Okay.
Rich: what did it feel like when you hired your first employee?
Léonie: absolutely bloody terrifying. And it doesn't get any better. That's the thing. We've got our, will be 17 of us as of Monday.
Rich: Hmm.
Léonie: it literally doesn't get any better. we, every time we think, We're gonna bring one more person into the team. It's like, oh God, is this the right decision or is it gonna be sustainable? really gonna be able to keep the work coming in. And so far at
Rich: yeah.
Léonie: But yeah, that decision doesn't seem to get any less terrifying.
Andy: Well, at least the old men are kind of like partly drawing their pensions as well, so you know.
Léonie: it
Andy: It's not that much of a commitment.
Léonie: fairness to them, thanks to the fact that we had a lot of people who wanted to come and work with us, who had so many years experience such solid credentials, that what we're doing now for the first time is, sending the elevator back down a little bit. So we're in a position now where we can bring people into the company who've got little or no experience, spend a lot more of our time training them up. Getting them into the right habits, good habits, doing things in the right ways. And yeah, we wouldn't have been able to do that if it hadn't have been for all those kind of really experienced people who came and joined us and help us kind of get established. So yeah, we had the financial
Andy: you can say old layer. it's fine.
Léonie: I'm not that much
Andy: It's.
Léonie: I'm gonna keep my mouth totally shut on that score In fact, I
Rich: Yeah, well
Léonie: older than some of them,
Rich: Well, there's contemporaries of mine, so, I'm definitely in the old bracket. But it is really rewarding bringing on people who haven't got much experience but have bundles of enthusiasm and knowledge and just need that experience of what it's like to be working with clients and, other people.
it's a great blend when you have. All of that experience, people who know exactly what they're doing, and they know stuff inside out, but still love it. then being able to bring in that blend of youth as well is brilliant.
Léonie: really
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: Yep.
Rich: Yeah. we're about the same size People care and we care about the people we work with. So any new person who comes in, you think, well, their family relies on me.
I know who their wife is, I know how many kids they've got and what their names are, and it's like something goes wrong.
Léonie: Yeah,
Rich: comes really, really personal and Yeah. And I never, you never lose that. No.
Léonie: no.
Rich: or fortunately.
Léonie: I was gonna
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: you could look at it either way
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: time we make the decision,
Rich: I think it's for the best. So I was watching, your talk that you gave at the latest, pixel Pioneers, which is brilliant.
Andy: I love that.
Rich: you'll find it on YouTube Pixel Pioneers. it was really good. I loved in particular your, 'cause it was kind of around the, AI and how it actually can be useful, particularly from your point of view. but I really love the introduction where you caveated the whole thing. It's like, I know how evil this is. Well, not evil, but you know, the copyright theft, all of that stuff, all the problematic impact on the environment. How to get those caveats out the way. 'cause they're all true. And yet here's this thing that is actually genuinely in certain ways. I found that fascinating.
Léonie: It is. and that was a sort of follow up talk to one I gave at the FF comp, for Remy the end of last year, which kind of looked at that same sort of idea, but a little bit more in the abstract. And I started it off in the same way because I hate the fact. I'm in this position where my principles and my integrity are yelling at me not to use these things for all the, stated reasons, but the disabled person in me is just going, but bloody hell, this is insanely useful. it's so hard to convey how nice it is to be able to just go and rummage through old pictures. And get a sense of detail and depth of information out of them. That was never really possible. Even with the most patient, spouse or partner or friend who's willing to sit there and go through every single photograph and be interrogated mercilessly about all the details. It's not the same because this thing can just sit there and you can keep asking it questions and keep asking it questions and it won't tire and you won't feel like you are presuming on its time. and now they're in wearables. I've got a pair of glasses that I can. Walk around in and read me this.
Tell me about that. What's that I'm looking at? it, the phrase game changer gets used far too readily, but it's really hard to undersell quite what a difference generative AI is making to people with disabilities, I think, and I hate being in
Andy: you mentioned the meta RayBan glasses in that talk. how are those things?
Léonie: They were really useful. I been my Facebook account years ago precisely because I didn't want to share any more inform with them. but you know, the glasses are in, in incredible. They're not perfect. Of course, nothing about ai is it hallucinates all over the shop. As long as you know that, you know, it can make a judgment call and, and. you know, there's just little things. I was in Tokyo in January walking to, dinner one evening with the rest of the people I was there for meetings with. I never really stopped to take photographs of something.
So just there and asked my glasses to tell me what I was looking at. It said the Tokyo Tower all lit up in pink and blue light
Rich: Hello.
Léonie: like,
Andy: Wow.
Léonie: And it's just like, yeah. So it not only knew what I was looking at, and where image description stuff before that, you know, I've got apps on my phone have done for years, would've just said, you know, there's a tool skyscraper building and it's, it's got colored lights on it because of the more generative AI capability. It's able to tell me actually what building, which building I'm looking at. Not just a description of a building. so there's a lot of contextual information that comes through that. Typically hasn't been available even with the AI driven image description capability. But yeah, reading menus in restaurants, again, it's not perfect.
It misses out stuff and I still need to borrow people to kind of fill in the gaps and things, but I'd just forgotten how nice it was to sit in a restaurant with a menu in front of you go Right. The options
Andy: That's,
Léonie: such a nice,
Andy: that is amazing.
Léonie: Yeah. And I said, I don't wanna convey the idea that these things are perfect 'cause they really aren't, but. It's just such a massive step in a direction that takes me back 25 years to when I could see what I was up to. I just, yeah. Reliving some of that
Andy: Liberating.
Léonie: I was sitting somewhere recently, I can't remember what was now. I was bored. I was waiting for someone, so I just said to my glasses, just, yeah, look and tell me what you can see. Discovered there was a billboard on the wall on the opposite side. I would've been totally oblivious to that up until this point,
Rich: Wow, that's really it. Oh yeah. That's, really interesting to know one of the other things kind of related that you were talking about was, agen and it, do you know what the. state of the art is with those at the moment, is that still a little bit pie in the sky?
Léonie: No, not really. so I just, posted something end of last week, about this, again, from the point of view of a disabled person, but also an accessibility specialist. So there's a website, e-commerce platform called In Search, which they just launched, Angen Shopping Assistant, basically. this platform, pulls in, products from, half a million websites. But you can use it just as a single unified shopping experience. And it was designed to be accessible so you can, you know, and it pulls in products from Marks and Sparks and Amazon and Next, all the usual suspects, this thing now means you can type or use speech. Just say, right, I'm looking for a black jumper. I want one with a V-neck. Okay. Remove all the ones not in the sale. Tell me more about this. and what it'll do is, As well as picking up the text information on the website. it'll also look at the images and start pulling information out of them automatically, which at the moment is something I've gotta go and do manually, images on the page to find out what's actually in them to get a real sense of what the product looks like. And it starts to do that automatically. then you're like, yeah, okay, I think I'll have one of those size, whatever, add it to my basket. Thank you very much. And the only thing it won't do for quite obvious security reasons is complete your checkout, make the payment for you.
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: So at that point, I haven't touched my keyboard. I haven't been anywhere near umpteen different sites. I really haven't had to do much of anything in the way of effort whatsoever. I think there are some real examples and I am absolutely sure we're gonna start seeing of them, but the implications for that, both for me personally and as a professional, are really quite interesting and scary all at once.
Rich: it sounds like one of those, accessibility tools, let's say that fits into the category of it could help anyone and everyone. you think about the old classic of the ramped pavements. and for wheelchair users perhaps, but anyone with a pram or on a scooter even is like suddenly, oh, it's much easier to get up and down the curbs.
Léonie: Yeah.
Rich: you know, this is a far more advanced version of that,
Léonie: is.
Rich: or could be.
Léonie: it could absolutely, and I think you're right.
Rich: I.
Léonie: it's the sort of thing that lots of people are gonna find a lot more useful than other ways of doing things. I mean, you know, there's a reason there are 14 million echo devices in this country. let's face it, they're not very much more than glorified timers, but. We keep buying them and we keep using them for timers 'cause it's just a hell of a lot easier than setting the timer on the oven or on your watch or on your phone.
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: that whole idea of just removing a few steps from whatever it is anyone wants to do is really compelling.
'cause at the end of the day, humans will do pretty much anything for an easy life.
Rich: Hmm. Well, speaking of something, which I don't think is an easy life, I noticed you're the chair of the W three C board of directors. I had no idea
Léonie: Yes.
Rich: how did that come about and what does that involve?
Léonie: I think, so not many people appreciated that until, late in 2022 or very start of 2023, three C didn't actually exist as a legal entity in its own right. It was an agreement between four. academic institutions, one in Japan, one in China, one in America, one in France. But over the past few years, there was a big effort to actually turn it into a nonprofit organization. So that came into, legal being on the 1st of January, 2023. And that of course, meant it needed a board. The board has, amongst other directors, seven, that are elected by. The W three C membership.
So I got elected to the first board and then reelected autumn last year. And yes, for my sins, they, nominated me chair, appointed me chair,
Andy: Oh, congratulations.
Léonie: Yeah, it's interesting. I've long been a, a, you know, a participant in the W three C community in one form or another,
Andy: I.
Léonie: and I think it's an amazing organization and when you now look around and realize quite how much of the world depends on the things that are created with W three C standards and spec. Yeah, it kind of always makes me take a bit of a step back. We've got people from different countries, different cultures, very, different companies, you know, from company with 16, soon to be 17 people through to Google, apple, Microsoft, Intel, real extremes of size, shape, sector, so trying to find consensus based and. Collaborative ways to work with so many different people in the room is always an interesting challenge, but when you get there, you know, you've got a really good decision, which is, what makes it worthwhile, I think.
Rich: Yeah, I was privileged to be in one of the CSS working group face-to-face meetings, in Berlin a few years ago. Just as an observer and got to say a little bit on my sort of area for typography at the time, but seeing how that room of 50 people were making decisions amongst themselves and how actually efficient it was.
Partly because I think a lot of the thinking had been done already and this idea of, passing resolutions and sort of thought. We resolved to make this change. anyone who disagrees say, now, okay, resolved and moving on to the next one. but there was those points of tension and discussion where actually someone did disagree the handful of people who were working on that part of the specification were then discussing it very respectfully, and so on. but it was really interesting to see that at work and it goes to something, I think what you were saying there, Laney, about the different representatives of organizations with perhaps different goals but still really pulling in the same direction ultimately.
Léonie: yeah,
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: yeah, the individuals who represent all the different companies, are all there because of a common goal, which is open web standards. when you've got that, even when you fundamentally disagree on how you should get there or what you should do, you keep talking and more or less, most of the time you get there, sometimes, of course, there are problems that don't get resolved, but. Yeah, that's okay
Andy: From a commercial point of view, there probably isn't. A developer or a development company or an agency or a big corporate client or whoever it is that's producing a product or a website that is not using W three C standards these days. You know, everybody's using CSS, I'm sure. We don't all validate markup very often anymore, but you know, we're all writing HTML and hopefully decent JavaScript.
But how many of those developers or organizations or agencies or whatever would say that they follow accessibility guidelines or standards because you can't make a website without CS. S. You actually probably can't anymore without making a website, without CSS. but you can make a website, which even with CSS and HTML and decent JavaScript is completely inaccessible.
So why have we gone so far in one direction but not gone as far in the other.
Léonie: I think part of the problem now, it's the JavaScript framework era that we've been in for the past 10 years or so, not because of the things in and of themselves. I think performance and ridiculous amounts of script to download all the time is not a good outcome.
but the original idea of more rapid iteration and quicker production, I think, were things that were worthwhile to pursue. the problem is that it abstracted a lot of things away from. Developers. So the accessibility of, react to whatever isn't now really the responsibility of the developer so much as the people who are maintaining the code base of the framework. sadly, they don't tend to think about it. some do, some don't. Some do to some degree. if we could fix everything at source with those frameworks, the ripple effect would be extraordinary.
Andy: me a little bit of what the Web standards project did with their Macromedia task. We back to Macromedia again. their Macromedia task force, Rachel, Andrew, and Drew McClellan back in the day, trying to get web standards built properly into Macromedia because, you know, millions of people were making websites with it.
Rich: the same job needs to be done with Figma
Léonie: absolutely.
Rich: sites and so on.
Léonie: we do training a lot of the time and, I've lost counter the number of times we talk to a developer, who now doesn't even really know how to write just vanilla JavaScript, nevermind HTML, or anything because it's all just, it's just pack it up, packaged up into API calls, or, framework, methods or whatever it may be.
and so you present 'em with a really kind of simple example to try and illustrate a point and. It just doesn't mean anything. 'cause yeah, there just isn't that, that kind of, mentioned view source, your hand, I don't believe you can do that anymore. I just genuinely think we've abstracted everything so far away that Yeah.
the basic arithmetic, of good semantic development. Not quite lost, but it's certainly not something that I think most developers have at their disposal anymore, which is a sad thing I think.
Andy: I mean, you mentioned earlier on about tetra logical, well you mentioned about other accessibility specialist companies that really focused on audits. and I got the impression that you are not, is it more about the training and awareness and skill raising?
Léonie: So, I mean, we do audit certainly. I don't think you could be in our part of the business without doing that. but yeah, training and consultancy are the, the other two areas and, and they probably balance each other out fairly equally across what we do. Things roundabouts in any given year of course.
And when, the thing about the sort of consultancy, especially when you really want to get into the idea of sustainable accessibility for organizations. Is, you've gotta have built up trust with the company. Nobody marches in and says, right, we're gonna hire you out of the blue for five years to help us sort out our organization.
You know, you start with a small project. It might be an audit, might be a bit of training. You know, you find out if you like working with each other. one thing leads to another. So it sort of fits together quite well. But we try not to, exclusively do audits for sure.
Rich: Yeah. It feels like, with an audit, it's all like we do access, expert. design reviews sometimes, quite a lot actually. and they're fine. Like going through a site with a fine tooth comb and looking at it from the user's point of view and so on and so forth.
and you get to the end of it and it's like, well, here's all the ways that you can improve it, without actually providing a solution. and you're just itching to be able to like, please, can you pay us now to actually fix this for you?
Léonie: Yeah. And that's one of the nice things about the sort of consultancy projects. We've got, one long partnership running at the moment from a large tech company whose name would be known. they came to us because they've actually got a fairly good handle on accessibility, but they've got a lot of UI patterns on their website. they wanted to come and work with a company that, yeah, we've got this stuff that nobody's ever tried to make accessible before and we kind of need some help. And that's kind of our ideal sort of project because helping people get the basics right, like all attributes and table, markup
But actually when somebody comes to you with this gnarly kind of. Massively complicated visual thing and going, right. How do we make that keyboard accessible, screen reader accessible, everybody accessible, oh, and usable and yeah, that's kind of our,
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: place really. 'cause to be able to stretch your creative muscles a little bit of the time too.
Andy: Well, I suppose that design systems Are a godsend for you then? 'cause that's, that is kind of fixing things that source
Léonie: Yeah.
Andy: for a lot of organizations.
Léonie: absolutely. and we do a lot of work with that, both just kind of checking the components themselves, but doing a lot of the documentation work around it. Because obviously a component doesn't exist in isolation it's out there in production.
You can change these things, but if you do. Don't forget about X, Y, or Z. you do, don't touch that. 'cause you'll break accessibility. So yeah, getting those two things right, if an organization can do that is amazing.
they'll save so much time, energy, and aggravation later on.
Rich: Yeah, that makes sense. So we are using, d script at the moment to record this podcast, how have you found it? Just out of interest?
Léonie: joining this call was fine. It was really easy. the reason I sound surprised about that was, because I'd used the
Rich: I.
Léonie: two years ago. So I did a lot of talking about things like CSS speech and kind of conversational interfaces going back a few years now. and when it started to become possible to clone your voice, using AI synthetic speech and stuff, I used a script to do it 'cause they were one of the first to make an affordable option available. that interface was just, quite frankly, hell on earth. Sorry if I'm offending anybody, but as a screen reader user, I genuinely couldn't use it on my own. So actually when Andy said, yeah, we're using to script, how's that?
Andy: oh.
Léonie: Thought this was great. Actually, I've gotta say it was a really nice, simple and, I argued with it a lot less than I do teams, for example.
Rich: Oh yes. Well, yeah. I think being cited doesn't help you an awful lot using teams either.
Léonie: It was just, yes, equality in usability.
Rich: Yeah.
Andy: I remember,
Rich: Mm-hmm.
Andy: rich, you might remember, I think he was a mate of yours back in the day, Jeffrey Veen.
Rich: Oh, yes.
Andy: wrote a blog post called, I Don't Care About Accessibility.
Rich: Hmm.
Léonie: rings
Andy: his point was, he actually really did care about accessibility, but he didn't care about it as a separate thing.
He cared about it in the overall mix of the skills and the craft that you needed to be building a website or a product, I suppose we call them these days, professionally. So. You know, if you didn't consider accessibility, it wasn't a professional product, you hadn't done your craft properly. I think we are still a very long way away
Léonie: Mm-hmm.
Andy: from that.
do you want to do yourself out of a job?
Léonie: Absolutely. you know, there is a beach and a pina colada somewhere in my future. it is never gonna happen. I remember when I first started doing accessibility and, you know, thinking, in a few years time, all the people who are like CEOs of companies, they'll probably be on their fifties and their sixties and their eyesight will be starting to fade, and suddenly they'll all get this idea about accessibility being important 'cause it'll be relevant to them 25 years later, I still
Rich: yeah,
Léonie: Clearly something's not working.
Rich: I've been doing websites since the late nineties. And, we do our very best to do that kind of accessibility that Andy was talking about, introduce it into our whole way of thinking.
It's not a thing we try, make sure we get right at the end. and. like, well, why isn't anyone, well, not lots of people do it, but why doesn't everyone do this? It's like, come on. It's like the industry, all these bits of the industry have been talking about this for so long. It's like, why is this not just considered, is how you act professionally. and anyone who doesn't do this is unprofessional
Léonie: I
Rich: and I don't understand that.
Léonie: I think it has changed. I think the problem space has moved slightly. we've still got a huge problem with that. absolutely. Everybody top to bottom should be thinking in terms of, if you haven't done this accessibly, you haven't done it properly. I think a bigger part of the problem now is that we're not equipping people to do it in the right places. one of the biggest kind of turning points, I think is when we started to see accessibility being woven into. mainstream conferences, UX conferences, dev conferences, whatever. back when I first started talking at conferences and things, it was always accessibility, people at accessibility conferences, talking about accessibility things. and at some point, I don't know, 10, maybe 15 years ago that really started to change and now it's pretty rare, that you don't find at least one accessibility focus talk on a single track conference. But even better, you'll find that people who aren't talking about accessibility will more often than not reference it in some way, shape, or form, just in passing in something they do or say. I think that kind of visibility has helped a lot of people go, oh, actually, yeah, this is about doing it properly, about doing it right, and I wanna do that. The problem is they came through college, they came through university, they left school. Not having been equipped with the skills to be able to do that
Rich: Yeah.
Léonie: And so the rest of us, and this is why I'm not gonna be on that beach drinking pina coladas, is 'cause we're just gonna keep fighting a rear guard action until we start shucking people out of school or wherever, you know, the skills to do all this. Then they get thrown into a job, then they get told to hit a deadline. Then somebody comes along and says, right, but you're gonna have to learn how to do everything again properly this time. I don't genuinely dunno how we fixed that one. I wish we could.
Andy: I haven't done many conferences over the last few years, I remember going to before COVID there was a lady doing an accessibility course and I know that everything that's old is new again or whatever the saying is. But this talk was, was pretty much focused on out text.
And imp and that is important. but I, I was left kind of thinking, wow, I thought that we dealt with this already. it was something that was In your pixel pioneers talk, which I thought was really interesting and I'm gonna actually try this, is actually using generative AI to make image descriptions.
I had never thought of using it like that.
Léonie: yes, it comes with all the usual cautions.
Andy: Yes, of course.
Léonie: it can really help get you over the blank page thing for sure. I, gave a couple of examples where you ask it to describe the same image for yeast in different contexts, and it doesn't surprisingly good if entertaining job of it. so yeah. Yeah. it helps, absolutely. you're right, still talking about text descriptions, but there's a reason I don't think to this day, I recall a single website audit go by without. That being called up as an issue. it irritates me a bit when people say, it's like the most simple thing you can do on, building a website 20 years ago.
Yeah. That, that was arguably the case. And then I remember actually when I was still at Menta, I think it was, with the team for one of the Procter and Gamble brands. I forget which one now. And we pointed out that their images on whatever this product was, didn't have text descriptions. Please go away and do something about that. By the time their content agency had said, well, it wasn't in our contract, so we're not gonna help. The graphic marketing agency said, well, it's not in our contract. We're not gonna help. The developers all took one looking at it and go, we don't do words, we just do code. Lawyers got involved. Contracts got renegotiated years later, hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees and all the rest of it. Somebody actually started putting text descriptions on the webpage, and that's the point I remember thinking actually, yeah, don't ever. It don't ever be flippant about what's easy for some company or, or, you know, scenario or not, but the truth is, we shouldn't be getting stuff like that wrong, you know, these days.
and that does bring me back to the sort of use of the generative AI for image descriptions. Yes, people should be doing it for me on the website that they're responsible for, but waiting for that for 25 years and it still isn't happening, so I'm getting old and grumpy.
Rich: it's been interesting and pointed out by a few people on, both Mastodon and Blue Sky. When you upload an image as part of a post, you have a very obvious prompt there to include a. Al text, then it says why as well for people who can't see the image essentially. And that prompt is there all the time.
And it's just a little extra hint. I know I would've posted images and I've just completely forgotten to go dig around in the interface to try and find where to add in some old text and it's right there in front of you. And I think it's just a subtle thing that's helpful. I dunno how many people do that, but I think probably more do than, would've done otherwise if they hadn't made that little tweak.
Léonie: more and more people are helping. Absolutely.
but it makes a world of difference.
Rich: Yeah.
Andy: So just sort of circling back to the business side of it, where are your clients coming from? how do you create work?
Léonie: sounds terrible, really, but they just come and find us, which was a lovely surprise when we got going. We weren't expecting it. I mentioned I was the first person to sort of visibly, Get technological running. And then Ian Pcy was the next one to pop up with the four of us who had the plan. he and I genuinely thought for the first, couple of years we'd be living on baked beans and, friends and family generosity. almost from the get go people came to us and said, oh, you're doing this. Could you help with? And so far at least, that hasn't stopped. what's really nice about it and. Terrible because it's bragging with this, but it's such a nice thing, is the companies we've worked with are out there doing it for us. we've got several customers we work with now who came to us, either because somebody moved from one of our customers to them and said, right now you need to go and work with this lot.
Any recommendations?
Andy: That was exactly our topic.
Rich: it is really rewarding when you see that happening, isn't it? but for a start it's the easiest sale. We're doing such a good job that people are taking us with them, and it's great.
Léonie: is,
Rich: but then also I think technological, you do a really good job of,
educating the industry through the blog post, through really good talks at conferences. we had Craig from.
Léonie: Mm-hmm.
Rich: technological speaker at UX London earlier in the year
Léonie: Mm-hmm.
Rich: a brilliant talk there. So it is all of that stuff. we do sorts of similar things and the motivation is just to get out there and educate. But we do know that it is a way publicity as well and that does work. it doesn't mean it has to be soulless content provision. It can be
Léonie: no,
Rich: genuinely meant.
Léonie: absolutely. just because it does get you out there and make you visible doesn't mean to say it isn't helpful and informative and educational at the same time. The two aren't mutually exclusive,
Rich: Exactly.
Léonie: the old school kind of marketing has never been. It's we've even remotely entertained and, know, it just, yeah, we, yeah, like every, every company we get emails from, you know, generation companies and things. good grief now. think of anything worse. you know, and, and don't get me wrong, we're in a very, very fortunate position that we don't need to be thinking of ways to, to kind of generate leads. But that whole idea of, of that kind of cold call Yeah. Outta the blue marketing just, just gives us. horrors, quite frankly. So, you know, if writing useful content helps some people and encourages others to come and give us a, a call or a message, yeah. That, that fits right with us.
Andy: Well, not that you need it, but it's generally there for providing authority. you become the leading authority in that particular. Area or sector which can never hurt.
Léonie: No, absolutely. And you know, I think for all of us, who've written books, blogs, conference talks, that's how it works. you spend time, you say something, people recognize that there's something you said was useful or write, and so the next time they trust you and keep building that trust with the people who read or come and listen or watch.
And yeah, going back to the AI thing, as we're increasingly existing in a world of. AI generated slop and fake news, knowing that you can actually trust the words and writings of a person or an organization is, it's never been more important, I think, in a lot of respect.
Rich: Well, I think that's a really good place to maybe stop. It's been an absolutely fantastic conversation. I really appreciate your time. Le
Léonie: I love the name of the podcast as well because unfinished business is, that's
Andy: we have unfinished business. Well, listen, thanks for taking the time to sit and chat with us today. that was fascinating. Hopefully we can, have a chat again soon,
Léonie: I'd love it.
Andy: so we will see you on the next episode.
What a remarkable woman.
Rich: Yes, indeed.
Andy: She
Rich: so glad
Andy: is,
Rich: join us.
Andy: she is just an absolute inspiration. I mean, not just because of, overcoming a disability but her enthusiasm and just. Constant energy for things is just so inspirational.
Rich: Really good. And an amazing speaker as well. I was, I'd forgotten how good she was actually, 'cause it had been a while since I'd seen one of her talks and I was so glad I looked at that. Pixel Pioneers one, that the point we were talking about
Andy: Mm-hmm.
Rich: Yeah, really inspirational. and so knowledgeable as well.
I'm really glad for her that, technological is working out as a business venture. I think it's important that companies like that exist and do well and provide jobs for the old boys.
Andy: Well, you know, I know that I was joking about that Pat Patrick Lauer's gonna be all grumpy
Rich: Do you
Andy: Sent me rude messages,
Rich: He is
Andy: send me rude messages. But, but actually to be honest, it is nice that there is, you know, that that experience has found a place. whereas, if you are a late fifties, nearly sixties, kind of person in our industry, I suppose.
It gets a lot more difficult if you are, in fact, I know that it gets a lot more difficult when you are, needing a job or applying for things or whatever. but no amount of training, or teaching is gonna give you that level of experience that those old fellas have got.
Rich: Yes. I think when we talk about hiring and having experienced people here, you have to have the knowledge, but I think it's experience of different people, different situations with clients and so on,
learning how to handle those situations, whatever they might be. working a room to some degree in a workshop or whatever it might be. for most people, that just takes time and experience to be, competent at, that aspect of the job.
Andy: This idea about bringing in new people, though, you know, younger people. You know, pairing a younger person with a Loie or a Patrick Lauer is going to give that person Such a breadth of knowledge, but you know, a real start.
I think that's something that, you know, they're doing over at Tech Technological, Very interesting.
Rich: Yeah. And when you're in a company small like that, there isn't really, there's no particularly obvious ladder. If you're in a big company, then you go from, junior to midway to senior to lead to principal, you know, you have that, ladder set out for you.
But when you're in a smaller company. you stay mostly for the people that you're working with and the work that you are doing itself. when you have someone junior coming in, that can add another aspect to your job. it just means that, you get to work at a different level with someone else.
and if they're coming in and they're. Enthusiastic, but kind of green as it were then Yeah. that opportunity to start molding them how you think they should be as a quality designer or accessibility consultant or whatever it is,
Andy: Mm.
Rich: can be really, really rewarding.
Ladder thing when you've got stuff like that, which can in some ways supplement it in a different kind of a way.
Andy: I'm glad that you got her on. I thought that was a very inspiring conversation.
Rich: Well we need to, get out there and find some new guests as well.
Andy: Oh, they'll be lining up, mate. They'll be listening to this and they'll be saying, why haven't they invited me yet?
Rich: Well, let's hope so.