E76 – Interview with Amy Carney – Part 1

Amy Carney tells us that accessibility "comes down to a design perspective. We’re designing to include people, specifically people with disabilities. And that is based on enabling people with disabilities to access content and web applications online." 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 76. 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 Amy Carney. Amy, thanks for joining me in this conversation about web accessibility. How are you? Amy:    I’m good. Nic:    Good. I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a couple of sentences… who is Amy Carney? Amy:    Well, I’m definitely more than one thing as Daniel Tiger would say, my son’s show. I’m a web designer and developer. I’m also an Alaskan and Kansan. Mum, wife and middle child. And, not necessarily all in that order. Nic:    That’s a few hats to wear. That’s cool. Let’s get started by telling us one thing that most people would not know about you. Amy:    Unless you went to school with me most people wouldn’t know that from 4th to 11th grade I was a drummer for our school band. So, I do just a variety of bass drums, snare drums, cymbals… kind of whatever triangle. So, yeah, that was really fun. The marching band was probably my favorite bu highschool. Nic:    And do you still play music? Amy:    No. Probably not since I moved to Juno. I did fantasize that I would continue on after I was an adult and even dragged my drum set around with me up to Alaska, but they’re just sitting in boxes in the last city I was in. So they never made it to Juno with me. They’re still in our cabin in Stewart. So, no. I haven’t played for a long time. I still end up tapping out beats sometimes when I’m listening to music but that’s about it. Nic:    Professional hazard. We’re talking about accessibility today. How would you define web accessibility? Amy:    I think that for me it definitely comes down to a design perspective. We’re designing to include people, specifically people with disabilities. And that is based on enabling people with disabilities to access content and web applications online. Nic:    That’s interesting because I’ve never heard that aspect of accessibility that it comes down to a design perspective. I’d love you to elaborate a little bit more on that because it’s a take that isn’t talked about very often. Amy:    I think part of it comes from me. I do a lot more design work. I still do a lot of code which is what I enjoy but it’s a lot of HTML and CSS and as I’ve been doing this for about 5 years professionally… when you’re building something you have to be able to keep the user in mind and decide how they’re interacting with your page, and that has so many different components whether it’s the base HTML structure that’s underneath and how things are spaced out, how the reading flow would go even just for a visual person.  And just user experience I guess. Which user experience is built with design and recently I’ve been reading Web for Everyone by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. I don’t know if I pronounced that right… Nic:    Yeah Amy:    … and so, and they really put a lot into that which is actually really refreshing to read because they draw a lot from not just WCAG but universal design which is design and just w