E75 – Interview with Alli Berry – Part 2

Alli says that getting the right people in the same room at the start of a project is very difficult and can impede accessibility. 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 75. 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 continuing my conversation with Alli Berry. Hi Alli, welcome back. Alli:    Hi, thanks. Good to be back. Nic:    Last week we talked about a lot of really interesting stuff and for those of you out there who have not heard the episode, I really invite you to check it out, because we spoke about the importance of language, the relationship between search engine optimization and accessibility and a few other interesting things. So, yeah, check it out. So, this week what are we talking about? Well, we are talking about accessibility again. We finished last week talking about how you managed to get one of your third-party vendors to understand the importance of making their content accessible by providing text or alternative text rather than putting all the content in images, so that was really positive but let's explore the dark side a little bit more. Alli, what's your greatest frustration in terms of web accessibility? Alli:    I think, a lot of times it’s getting the right people in the room for the beginning of a project. I’m thinking about a site rebuild or some larger… building a new website from scratch type project. A lot of times what happens is you bring in a design agency and they do these amazing designs but they’re not necessarily approaching things beyond the visual, right? And there’s a lot that needs to go into a website to make it work for people. So, thinking about both from an SEO perspective as well as a web accessibility perspective is this site actually going to work how we need it to, is the information going to be in HTML, is it going to be… it’s amazing what agencies can come up with in terms of where they want to put information. And so I think that a lot of times it really comes down to having the right people in the conversation early into a project instead of being, like “Hey, we’re launching a site tomorrow do you want to just check it over and make sure it’s going to be good for search” or, “is it going to be good for users.” And then, of course, you’re going to find large things that need fixing and suddenly you have a fire when you absolutely didn’t need to. Nic:    It’s better to be proactive than reactive, isn’t it? Alli:    Definitely. Well, and just to think about everything from the start. That’s going to make your agency partner more effective too if they understand everything… all of your requests and needs for capability. Nic:    How do we make that happen? How do we help stakeholders understand the importance of bringing everybody in at the start of a project, from designers to developers to everybody and think about accessibility from the get-go? Alli:    That’s a good question. I feel like if I had the answer to that I… I feel like it happens so often. SEO’s like to joke with each other too about being brought into a project at the very end of it. I think… I honestly… I think it’s on everybody to be more assertive. You need to know that the project is happening first of all but to ask more questions of your stakeholders and to find out what they’re planning, how you