E72 – Interview with Jen Luker – Part 1

Jen Luker tells us, among other things, that with thoroughness comes confusion - if you're trying to learn all of WCAG and ARIA at once, you'll get overwhelmed 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 71. 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. This week I’m speaking to Jen Luker. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Jen. Jen:    I’m glad to be here. Nic:    I like to start the show by letting guests introduce themselves. In an elevator-style pitch introduction, whose Jen Luker? Jen:    Who is Jen Luker? Jen Luker is an engineering manager with Formidable who specializes in accessibility auditing and just making the web better in general. So, I am an avid knitter. I like to say that I knit and then I’m a programmer. Other than that just a nerd like all the rest. Nic:    I like, like all the rest. Yeah. I’d like at some point during the show to talk a little bit about your talks that tie the relationship between knitting and coding. Jen:    Yes! Nic:    I think that could be interesting, however, to get warmed up a little bit… tell us one thing that most people would not know about you. Jen:    I’m a pretty open book so trying to find something people don’t know about me… I am a huge Space nerd. I was the president of the Students for the Exploration Development of Space, in College. Nic:    Cool. Very cool. What’s your favorite fact about Space? Jen:    There’s more minerals, and they’re easier to get to in asteroids on Earth or in the Moon. So if we were to ever get to the point where we are actually mining those asteroids, we could dramatically reduce things like pollution on Earth and still have the materials we need. Nic:    That’s a nice bit of trivia. But let’s circle back to the main topic of conversation which is web accessibility. It seems like every person I speak to for the podcast has a slightly different variation on that definition. How would you define web accessibility? Jen:    Web accessibility for me is the ability for everyone to use the web. It doesn’t even have to be similar fashions, it just needs to be that they’re capable of using it and developing their own identity and resources and what-not. And them being able to also interact with it in a way that’s meaningful to both the companies and to the users. Nic:    Yeah, that’s good. I like the concept you proposed that it’s about not everybody uses the web in the same ways. How do you describe different ways to use the web for people that could be striking for maybe some of my listeners that are less used to those different ways? Jen:    So, have you ever gone to a website and you are trying to navigate around, but it’s in a foreign language? That makes it very difficult to be able to utilize the website in said way. So sometimes the website ends up being used in conjunction with, like, Google translator or something to that effect. So being able to overlay different types of assistive technology is to be able to utilize the web. Whether it be a translator or a screen reader it really does make a difference. Being able to change the color scheme in order to accommodate for any sort of visual issues they might have, or maybe it’s a cognitive issue, where bright colors cause them issues, so they end up dulling every