E62 – Interview with Eric Bailey – Part 1

Eric tells us, among other things, that relationship building is a good way to get passed the hostility some people have towards accessibility. Transcript Nic: Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. You're listening to episode 62. 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. Nic: This week, I'm speaking to Eric Bailey. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Eric. How are ya? Eric: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Nic: Thank you. Hey, as you've been listening to the show, you know by now that I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief intro, who's Eric Bailey? Eric: Yeah, wow. You think I would have prepared for that. So, I'm a designer, working at a agency called Thoughtbot in Boston, Massachusetts. I write articles for mostly CSS-Tricks and Smashing Magazine now, a couple other places on semantics and accessibility and usability and kind of the intersection of all three and the muddy space that is all those things converging. Nic: Yeah. That sounds like it keeps you busy and out of mischief for most of your waking time. Eric: Yeah, yeah. I ... My partner is currently in grad school, so I've had some time to kind of, you know, fritter away with writing and sitting on the couch and watching too much Netflix. Nic: Yeah, yeah. Hey, to get warmed up, tell me something that, one thing that most people would not know about you. Eric: Oh, sure. So, I spent a year doing disaster relief in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, through- Nic: Oh, wow. Eric: Yeah. It was through a program called the AmeriCorps, which is a domestic Peace Corps. And so, I lived out of tents for a year, and yeah, it was an incredible experience. Nic: That would have been a difficult time I would think, but also quite enriching and rewarding. Wouldn't it? Eric: Yeah, yeah. I think you said that very well. It was very intense, but made a lot of ... Met a lot of incredible people. Made a lot of incredible friends. Definitely felt all the feelings. So, yeah, but I'm very happy to have been able to have done it. Nic: How has that impacted on your experience as a developer? Eric: Sure. I like things that work, and I like things that are robust and like, probably not the best term, but like battle tested. You know, the web, if you do it wrong, is a very flimsy medium, and it's also one of the most actively hostile development environments you will ever work with. So, because of that, I like things that will hold up under stress or duress- Nic: Yeah. Eric: ... or less than optimal situations. Nic: So, obviously the main topic of the show is web accessibility, and every people I speak with, speak to, seems to have a slightly different definition of accessibility. So, how would you define that? Eric: Sure. I think accessibility is good design, and good design is accessible. And I know that's kind of like a tautology, but it's ... It kind of gets into the whole inclusive design mindset, where you should be proactively considering these things, as opposed to fixing them in post. So, it's, you know, in my mind it's a holistic practice, that kind of affects every aspect of what we do as app and web makers. I don't know. It's strange to me to kind of like keep it in this little box off to the side. Nic: Why do you think we keep it in a box off to the side? Eric: Yeah. Education. It's, you know ... So, if you're learning about web design and web development ... I'm gonna keep using this as a go-to example because it's what I like to do, but it affects all of digital design. You know, if you go to a traditional CS (Computer Science) school, there are so many different little things to focus on that you can kind of go down this rabbit hole on learning about. In a trad