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Accessibility! One word that means so much to so many. The backbone of our podcast! What do you think of when you hear this word?
Hello again everyone!
I am Jolene MacDonald from Accessibrand, and I’d like to welcome you to the second season and the 6th episode of our podcast “Why Access Matters”.
Since June 2022, “Why Access Matters” proudly and happily brings you thoughts and talks about accessibility every last Friday of each month, and we invite you to listen to our first season on your favourite podcast platform. All of our episodes are standalone talks, but each of our guests brings their own valuable, unique perspectives and thoughts to the topic, concept and necessity that is accessibility, and we encourage you to listen to all of them!
Now that you’ve thought about what accessibility means to you, let us also ask: what is neurodiversity to you, and does it have any link or connection to accessibility for you?
[Music]
To better understand how important it is to break down barriers and also to address the intersection with neurodiversity, I talked to Aditya (Adi) Bikkani, the CEO & Founder of AdvancedBytez, a company with the mission “to ensure all users of the web are included while using your products and services.” In this conversation, he spoke as a service provider in the accessibility industry as well as a Neurodivergent person to address many key points about identifying our barriers and how to move toward a more accessible world.
[Music]
Why Access Matters: A podcast by Accessibrand (thoughts and talks about accessibility)
Jolene MacDonald:
Hi, I’m Jolene MacDonald, the host of Why Access Matters. And we’re back with Season 2 of the sixth episode of our podcast, and today we’re talking with Adi Bikkani to hear his thoughts and experiences about accessibility. Welcome!
Adi Bikkani:
Hey, thanks, Jolene. Great to be here.
Jolene MacDonald:
So, I first like to ask how would you like to introduce yourself?
Adi Bikkani:
I’m an accessibility consultant in Toronto, and I am a CEO of a[n] accessibility QA company, as well, a founder of [an] accessibility agency that I have where we make automated tools for accessibility.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s awesome; thanks for sharing that. Do you wanna share the name of your company as well? We can add it in the podcast link below.
Adi Bikkani:
Yes, yes. It’s AdvancedBytez.com. It’s the website, Advanced[bytes] with a Z
Jolene MacDonald:
We’ll make sure to share that. So that was our first question. It’s leading us to that. How have you brought your lived experience to your work? We know that it’s been on sort of two different scales. First, with your company and what you’re doing with that work in the accessibility industry and then talking about what you often talk about, I know, on social media, your neurodiversity. How does this scale and tell us about each aspect of that sort of combination.
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, so I’ll begin talking about accessibility -a bit of it- because that’s what I do on the day-to-day. And like I mentioned in the intro, we’re a core accessibility QA company for documents and web. And what we do there is, what we don’t work as in-house QA teams do, through a focus on certain projects to fit bugs or test code, we come in as independent third parties to test for accessibility to sort of fit, fill the gap in-case the in-house teams don’t have bandwidth. But the way things are going now, we’re slowly seeing a shift into providing independent QA services as well. So, when we talk about QA or quality assurance in accessibility, right, we make sure that a software product is as usable as possible for people with disabilities. And we use WCAG or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines success criteria tests to ensure digital products like websites, software, and mobile apps provide the best user experience possible. I, I’m using the term software very loosely here to describe both web and mobile applications, but we cover documents as well.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s great, thanks for sharing that. I know we’ve partnered together on a few different projects and your team’s been really amazing to work with. Tell us a little bit about your personal experience with - you talk about neurodiversity, so if you could share that, that would be great.
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, absolutely. So why I talk about neurodiversity so much is, I had an adult diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia and that sort of opened my eyes in terms of how I use technology or what I struggled with. So, I wanna make sure that I use my lived experience to talk about it as much as possible to raise awareness. And when we talk about neurodiversity, it is very, very important to hear from people with lived experiences just because it’s a term that people are not familiar with and it- it’s because it’s invisible disabilities and because of that they may shy away from it. But there’s so many different forms of it as well that are not visible. So, the main reason why I talk about it so much is to educate people and raise awareness about the disabilities that we can’t see.
Jolene MacDonald:
I think that’s one of the hardest things. I also have two invisible disabilities. Sometimes you can see it, it depends on the day ‘cause I have chronic pain and fatigue and things like that. But I was also diagnosed much later in life with ADHD, actually pretty much in the last couple years. And it’s- you always had sort of a stereotype in your mind about that. My son actually was diagnosed, so pretty much that’s how I found out I had it. He has combined ADHD ‘cause they’ve sort of changed how that is diagnosed, and borderline OCD, and I think it’s super important for people to really understand the challenges in that and not, and really not look at it as detriment because I think it’s a very high percentage of entrepreneurs, especially that have ADHD and we have special gifts because of that.
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, totally. I fit right into that category and what I have [is ] the combined type of ADHD too.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I think it’s always important for us to talk about our personal journeys, and I think that’s what makes us more passionate about the learning path into accessibility. Which kind of leads us into our third question, why is accessibility essential for our society? And it’s not just for people with disability, and you can say, specifically related to technology in your case.
Adi Bikkani:
Great question. So, when I get asked this question, I always defer to curb-cut effects. It’s a great example of what we thought of as inclusive design, where curb-cuts were originally added to streets to accommodate those in wheelchairs. But it can be helpful to so many different people.
Jolene MacDonald:
Mm-hmm
Adi Bikkani:
A person with - pushing their baby stroller can easily get onto the sidewalk with those cuts in there, a biker can get onto the sidewalk to lock their bikes up there instead of having to pop a wheelie on there.
Jolene MacDonald:
Yeah, definitely. I’m sure there’s a lot less problems in the municipalities with accidents because of curb cut.
Adi Bikkani:
Right? Absolutely. And there’s just many more examples, like seniors may have difficulties stepping up using a walker but yeah, the point is curb-cuts, while originally designed to help those in wheelchairs, [have] come to benefit many. So, when we talk about [it] from a web accessibility perspective or technology as you may refer to that, most of the accessibility features, will also have curb-cut effects on websites when you add – when you design and build with accessibility. So, an example of that could be say a text description, or an alt text or an image for somebody who’s blind and it makes it possible also for search engines to index the image and make it more searchable. Text alternatives to images can even help somebody with a slow internet connection if they can turn their images off or if the image breaks for any reason and still be able to get the same information. And, you know, maybe even for someone who’s on a cell phone, they can access the same information as a typical visual browser as well. So virtually every feature that you can put into place in web content will improve access and usability for everyone.
Jolene MacDonald:
Absolutely. I think that’s what a lot of people forget is that accessibility is not just for people with disabilities. When you make changes and you integrate universal design and inclusive design, it just makes it accessible and inclusive and equitable for everybody. It’s not just about the fact that someone might have a wheelchair, like you said, for people with strollers and we’ve talked about, one of our team members talks about an outdoor restaurant using paper that’s glossy on a menu. You shouldn’t use that ‘cause the sun is going to reflect it and that person may not have a disability, but you’re experiencing that through that disability lens. So, when people start opening in their minds to that, my hope is that people integrate accessibility as more than what they think it is. It’s super important and a lot of people forget about, it’s not just websites, it’s documents, it’s emails, it’s newsletters, it’s all of those things. So, thanks for sharing that. I guess that kind of really leads us into our fourth question is what’s your message to people who don’t know about accessibility and that are afraid of it? Because we talk to a lot of people and they get very uptight about it or they’re concerned and I know a lot of that probably has to do with fear of, you know, lawsuits, but what would be your message to people who don’t know about accessibility and might be concerned about it?
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, they - I think people are afraid of accessibility because they don’t know it and they don’t understand disability. That’s the biggest problem why people are afraid of it in my opinion. And it really begins with how people are uncomfortable when talking about a disability. So, they prefer to avoid the conversation and where < That’s a good point.> Yeah. So, where this sort of defers, I think, from other minority demographics is that people don’t know how to contextualize disability. So, they don’t want to cause offense and they don’t say anything or they don’t talk about it and therefore nothing happens. It’s a vicious cycle.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s interesting that you say that ‘cause I often have had those conversations even in my old business when I was trying to start integrating accessibility into design. It wasn’t through Accessibrand and it was always an add-on, but it wasn’t teaching anyone to understand the importance of accessibility. So, they just ignored it, it was like, well we can’t afford that so we’re just not going to do anything rather than even taking the baby steps. Is that something that you recommend to clients? Just start with one thing because that’s what we try and talk about is really making sure that you educate them and get them to start with the little steps and you’re not going to do it all in a day. It’s not all going to happen tomorrow.
Adi Bikkani:
Absolutely. And I think the first step is trying to understand the basic range of disabilities. Without that as a base, you’ll never know what sort of related barriers can be found in maybe say digital content. So, if anybody was to start take those first baby steps, it really would be to understand the types of disabilities. And we know that not all people with disabilities and encounter barriers in digital content and those types of disabilities may have different barriers and it’s not all the same. Somebody in a wheelchair maybe, right? They may not encounter anything that stops ’em from using digital content,
Jolene MacDonald:
I think those are really great points. I feel it’s difficult to get people to understand about disability especially, I didn’t know about disability really until my youngest daughter was born, who I talk about a lot. She has dwarfism and then, little did I know that I would end up facing the issues that I did. But we always talk about too, about everybody in their lives are going to experience disability at some point: you could be in a car accident and be temporarily injured, whether it’s in a cast or crutches or wheelchair. You could have an eye injury and you can go temporarily blind for a short amount of time. I actually had that happen in my early twenties and didn’t even think about it at the time but it totally changed even how I was, I was in school at the time, I couldn’t see the ruler properly for graphic design. That was a real issue back then. But I think it’s just so important to give those examples to people and have them try and live in our shoes, so to speak, for any kind of scenarios, just to get them to start integrating it. So that’s a really great point. So, I appreciate that insight. Referring to our other question about technology, do you think there’s any chance of machines to take the place of humans and making things accessible? That’s a big topic.
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, it is. It’s a very broad topic and I’m going to try and be as unbiased because my business makes automated solutions for accessibility. But I wanna take as neutral of an approach as possible. But to answer this question first, we wanna understand the state of automation inaccessibility in 2023. So, as we know, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the basis of many accessibility laws. So, while the WCAG provides guidance for achieving accessibility, many businesses have limited resources, which is why we see them defer audits on their digital content or product. But automated tests are an in-inexpensive way to find these issues and find ways to address it. So that’s the current state. Now the problem is that most automated tools aren’t as intelligent as we want them to be or any machine learning for that fact. They can’t perceive certain types of content and rely on the rule sets that sort of run them from the backend. So, when you have issues that are outside of these rule sets, you can have issues that are completely missed out or what we call false positives where they identify issues that actually don’t impact accessibility.
A classic example here is we’ll use alt text again because that’s easy for anybody who’s listening. Automated tests and machine learning can determine whether there’s alt text present or not on a website, but they can’t judge if it’s actually useful. For example, if you have an image of an orange, but it contains the alternative text as Apple, it’s not going to fail it as a violation, it will pass because all it does is checks to see if that tag’s been filled or not. So, it’s not going to report as an issue, but, you know, the incorrect alt text code obviously impacts the end user. So, I would say that tools have substantially improved over the past few years and they’re still going to, but they still have their limitations.
Jolene MacDonald:
Mm-hmm. That’s why I think we talk a lot about if you’re going to use automation, and that’s why we provide user auditing more than anything is that people with disabilities are actually testing the products. Like, you know, start with the automated checks, but you’re mentioning that great example about it’s a picture of an orange, but the alt text says in the apple. At this point you’re saying machine learning doesn’t acknowledge that it’s not been created to be smart enough to check that that’s wrong. And that’s why I think it’s also important to bring people with real experience and lived disability experience to come in and check that. Because often we’re challenged with quotes I think even to say, “Oh yeah, well we’ve got this automated thing, it checks everything.” I’m like, yeah, but it actually still doesn’t replace a real person in what their experience is. I think the combination of the two is probably the most powerful and it’s great to be able to provide jobs as well, right?
Adi Bikkani:
Yeah, that was actually my next point. And we follow a combination of hybrid methodology, which is using automation and human intervention, right?
Jolene MacDonald:
Yeah.
Adi Bikkani:
Sure, machine learning will make auditing easier over time, but it’s not there yet.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s great. I’m wondering, do you think it’ll ever take over for people? I mean, look, if you look at technology, but I mean I hope it doesn’t in many ways, but at the same time, I think all of us in the same industry, we wish we didn’t have to do this as a job because then people would automatically be integrating it and everything would be accessible to everyone. But…
Adi Bikkani:
Never say never.
Jolene MacDonald:
Adi Bikkani:
This…What I would say is I’m not trying to take away from any of the work activists are currently doing, but I do feel there’s a lot of shame that goes on when we blame people for not following accessibility. And I think that’s not the right way to approach spreading awareness about accessibility. Nobody’s intentionally being exclusive, it’s just that they don’t know any better. So instead of shaming our audience for not using alt text or not making their website or content accessible, I think we need to raise awareness by education and talking about lived experiences, stories. That is what makes the biggest user impact. And I would really say we need to change the way we are spreading our message in this industry.
Jolene MacDonald:
I think that was really great advice because so often it’s like with anything in digital world, everyone’s a keyboard warrior, they’re quick to make judgments, but at the end of the day when you are shaming someone or putting them on the spot and making them feel bad about it, it’s not productive for them to make positive change, which is what accessibility really is. I mean, we’ve come a long, long way with activist rights for people with disabilities, both in the US and in Canada and beyond, but the fact that you go out just ripping someone apart, even for us as accessibility- I won’t call myself expert ‘cause we’re all learning - accessibility activists, accessibility professionals, whatever you wanna call us, we’re all still learning and just technology things change every day. We could be doing something one way today and two months from now. It’s completely a different way to do it.
So, I think it’s important for us all to work together, number one and number two, be very positive and encouraging of people and say, “Hey, you’ve done a great job on this, you know, here’s - maybe you could do this next time.” Rather than say, “Oh yeah, well you say you’re doing this and you haven’t even done this and this.” It’s, it’s really not productive. And I think we live in a world full of so much negativity, especially in the last few years, is that the more we can be kind and helpful and work together, the more we’re going to have that positive silver lining. That’s my hope anyways.
Adi Bikkani:
I agree with you. I’m always learning as well. That’s because I want to be aware of the things I don’t know. And accessibility is a vast subject, not just screen readers and alt text. I could only talk to web accessibility because that’s what I know.
But I don’t know built environments, you’re talking about kiosks or those automated doors the right amount of gap for a wheelchair between aisles and stuff. I don’t know. But I want to learn.
Jolene MacDonald:
Yeah, definitely. I, we’ve encountered a few different situations over the years and even, like I’ve said, we are not perfect, but we are in a learning environment and we also want to provide opportunities for people with flexible work that have disabilities. So, we’re teaching them and I’ve had a couple of very negative emails come and say, “Well, you do this” or “You didn’t do that.” And I’m like, okay, that’s great, but let’s learn from this and think about what kind of opportunities that we’re providing and how you can learn from that. So, I think just trying to keep an open mind to it. And I often say the same thing is, people say, “How do I get started?” I said, just start talking to people, start listening to the disability community. But that’s amazing advice. Adi, thank you for sharing all of your insight! Is there anything else you’d like to share at all?
Adi Bikkani:
Something I wanted to mention, I wanna work in, my dream job is to work in neurodiversity inclusion to get companies and teams to understand about neurodiversity and how to provide accommodations for those with cognitive differences. I’m not there yet, but hopefully I’d like to go there. At this point, I don’t do anything in my daily day-to-day with working with accessibility, QA and neurodiversity, but I eventually want to get there. So, if anybody wants to talk about neurodiversity, I’m always game.
Jolene MacDonald:
That’s amazing. I’m hopeful that people will reach out to you. I know there’s a big push for the neurodivergent community and integrating and people understanding it and how to accommodate it rather than just judge and not take those chances even with employers or employees. So, thanks for sharing that. But we’re really excited to have you in the first episode of season two. So, thank you so much Adi for your time and if anyone would like to get in touch with him, we’ll make sure to put his details in our podcast transcript. Thanks again, Adi.
Adi Bikkani:
Thank you for having me. Jolene.
[End of the interview]
Why Access Matters: A podcast by Accessibrand (thoughts and talks about accessibility)
Hello again everyone!
I am Jolene from Accessibrand, and I want to thank you for listening to the 6th episode of “Why Access Matters”.
You just heard a conversation that I had with Aditya Bikkani, the CEO & Founder of AdvancedBytez.
Please take a moment to reflect and focus on some parts of what he said and answer some questions for yourself:
He told us: “Why I talk about neurodiversity so much is, I had an adult diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia, and it opened my eyes in terms of how I use technology or what I struggled with. So, I want to make sure I use my lived experience to talk about it as much as possible to raise awareness.”
Can you remember someone else that has the same or similar struggles? Have they ever expressed feeling judged because of their struggles? Have you ever had to accommodate someone because of a disability or neurodivergence? If yes, please share your story with us!
He also told us, “When we talk about QA or quality assurance in accessibility, we ensure that a software product is as usable as possible for people with disabilities. And we use WCAG or web content accessibility guidelines, and success criteria test to ensure digital products like websites, software, and mobile apps provide the best us experience possible.”
Have you ever considered having an accessible website and/or product with the help and feedback of accessibility experts with disabilities? If you need such services, we at Accessibrand are more than happy to help with partnerships with different great companies, including AdvancedBytez (where Aditya is providing services). So please get in touch with us!
And the last, he talked about shaming is not a good way to make the world more Accessible! What do you think about this? Is it a great point? Do you have any experience in this regard? We really appreciate your feedback and lived experiences. Please share them with us!
[Music]
Send us your thoughts, ideas, and any feedback you have to our email, to Jolene [at] Accessibrand.com, or in the comments at our Apple Podcast page and Castbox, or under our posts on social media; we love when people connect there, and you can find those in the description box of our episodes.
[Music]
Well, we’ve reached the end!
I am Jolene MacDonald from Accessibrand. Thanks for your patience and time in listening to me, my colleagues and our special guest, Aditya Bikkani, in our first episode of the 2nd season of “Why Access Matters,” and the 6th episode to date.
The next episode will follow every last Friday of each month, but until then, please:
Please consider checking out our website if you need any accessibility services and would like to utilize the valuable lived experience and expertise of persons with disabilities. You can visit our website at: www.accessibrand.com.
Why Access Matters: A podcast by Accessibrand (thoughts and talks about accessibility)