E53 – Interview with Nic Steenhout – Part 1

In a role reversal, for the first episode of the second year of the show - I'm the one being interviewed :) Léonie Watson was kind enough to chat with me. It was fun to be on the other side of things :) Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at: Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/ Transcript Nic:    Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 53. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. So, this week the roles are reversed. I’m the guest. Yeah. I took the suggestion that the second year of the podcast I should be the one answering the questions I usually ask. So, I asked Léonie Watson to interview me, and she graciously accepted. Hi Léonie Léonie:    Hi Nic. It’s great and thank you for the invitation to be the one who gets to reverse the roles on you. Nic:    Well, thank you for accepting. I think it’s going to be fun. So, well, here I am. I’m anxiously awaiting your grilling. So, shall we do it? Léonie:     Let’s do it. And let’s make it easy. How about you just introduce yourself to the listeners. Nic:    Right, so for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Nic. I’m doing web accessibility and I’ve been involved in one way or another with accessibility since the mid-1990’s. I have a background as a disability rights activist. So, before doing web accessibility I was doing physical structure accessibility and accessibility services. Mostly in the United States and New Zealand and so now I work for Knowbility as a web accessibility specialist. I do a lot of public speaking about, strangely enough, accessibility and consulting, training … that kind of stuff. Léonie:    Great and you’re very well known to our community and it’s good for those who may not know you to have a little bit of your background. But, I’m going to kick off with the first question and actually ask you … Can you tell us something about yourself that perhaps none of us out there listening to this podcast will know? Nic:    Oh, none of you? Oh, that’s … See, I could tell you that I’m actually a chef by trade. It’s what I started my life as when I left school. But some of you may know that, so, that’s not ‘none of you’. Well, there you go. I actually spent about four years of my life in West Africa. Léonie:    Wow Nic:    I was born in Greece and I’m from a Belgium father and a French Canadian mother so I’m a bit of a Heinz 57 mix. Léonie:    That’s great and really interesting to find that out. Particularly that you started off life as a chef. I think there’s a lot of people in our industry who started off in one career and then found their way into accessibility. Through many different routes. What was it that got you into the web and accessibility? Nic:    Well I became a wheelchair user in my mid 20’s and I was lucky enough to be spending some time in Chicago and I didn’t have anything to do with myself while I was waiting for my Green card to come through and I decided to volunteer in a centre for dependant living. A non-profit operated for and by people with disabilities. Non-residential. So I became involved there and very soon after I started volunteering there I was able to start working there and I had a colleague- one colleague, Horatio, he was blind and one day he walked into my office, he was really livid. He said, “Nic, you’re dealing with the web, right?” and I said, “Yeah”. He says, “So, why is it I go on a webpage and my screen reader