Unlocking Potential: Accessibility in Products & Workplace with Azra Tayyebi

Imagine the world with no sight. No hearing. No mobility. It's hard to comprehend how to navigate the world then. It's a reality for more people than we imagine. It also may have been or might be yours - there as well may be situational or temporary times in your life when you need a more accessible world. 

In this episode of Quality Bits, Lina talks to an accessibility consultant Azra Tayyebi. Tune in to learn more about accessibility, its misconceptions, where we all can improve, and how we can create not only more inclusive products but society overall.

Find Azra on:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azra-tayyebi-5494b227b/

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• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@linazubyte
• X: https://twitter.com/buggylina
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linazubyte/
• Website: https://qualitybits.tech/

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Thank you for listening! ✨

Transcript

00:00:05 Lina Zubyte 

Hi everyone. Welcome to Quality Bits, a podcast about building high quality products and teams. I'm your host Lina Zubyte. In this episode, I'm talking to Azra Tayyebi. Azra is currently completely blind, and she is an accessibility consultant. In this episode we're talking about accessibility, what it is, what misconceptions we have about it, as well as our misunderstandings overall of people with disability. Azra shares lots of inspiring stories as well as makes you think. Enjoy this conversation. 

00:00:55 

Hi, Azra. Welcome to Quality Bits. I'm very glad that you could join me today. 

00:01:01 Azra Tayyebi 

Hi, thank you. Thank you for having me. 

00:01:04 Lina Zubyte 

Could you shortly introduce yourself? 

00:01:07 Azra Tayyebi 

Yeah, I’m Azra Tayyebi. I was born and raised in Iran, left Iran when I was 26. Came to Finland to do my master's degree here and then I got a job and I've been living here now for more than 10 years. Almost eleven years. I'm an accessibility consultant. I'm blind. I used to be partially sighted, but at the moment I'm totally blind. I have studied computer science, programming, software engineering and IT, but then especially last seven years I have been working on accessibility. 

00:01:48 Lina Zubyte 

How would you define accessibility? What is it? 

00:01:53 Azra Tayyebi 

Accessibility for me is the idea to think about all different user groups that use a service or a product. So the idea is that us as human beings, we naturally don't realise other people’s needs, and this is true of all of us. I'm totally blind at the moment and I don't really notice the light, especially when it's like inside the house. The light of the lamps is not big enough for me, or strong enough for me to notice them. So many times, I don't turn on the lights, I don't need them. And then if I have guests, sometimes I forget to put on lights for them because I don't remember that they need lights. So they have to ask me that - hey, can we turn on the lights here because it's dark? It's very natural for me because I don't need it to forget that others do need lights and it's the same for all of us. Somebody who is sighted doesn't need what I as a blind person need. 

00:03:04 

I might not remember what a person who is hard of hearing needs. So accessibility is about the fact that me as a designer or as a developer try to get to know others who have different needs than me. I don't like the words special needs very much because I don't think that needs need to be special or unspecial. All the needs are important and it's about getting to know other needs that are not part of our reality. And then making sure that we are addressing them as much as possible. We basically really cannot address all the needs always. That's just not possible. But it's important to address as many as we can in the products and the services that we design. 

00:04:01 Lina Zubyte 

Yeah, it's something that's really hard though, as you say, to imagine other person's reality though, because as you not understanding that some people need light, we may have similar perception because the way we use the product is the way we use it. We sometimes do not think of others. Is there some way that you would recommend others how to remember to think of others and how not to forget that there are so many different experiences? 

00:04:32 Azra Tayyebi 

Yeah. So that's why that we believe and I believe that accessibility and a person who is responsible to take care of accessibility for any products and any services, should be part of the design of that service from the very beginning. Somebody needs to be in charge of thinking about accessibility, to ask those questions. That person doesn't necessarily know all the people's needs, but that person should know that, OK, we need to think about these things. We need to ask questions. Depending on the service and the product, that might mean different things. If I'm designing a website maybe then we need to make sure that all designers and our developers have the necessary trainings? Or we are taking care of accessibility points or making sure that accessibility is taking into account in our design and all the processes? 

00:05:37 

That's itself like a big ball. So I don't go in details, but that's just the general thing. But also that might mean that OK, are we in our design elements or design processes, are we gonna ask different groups of users to come and are we gonna have like meetings with them and get to know them? We don't always have to, there are lots of things already done, lots of information already there so people don't have to go every time, go to all the users and ask every single question. You have some general information, but then after you look at those, then there are some specific questions related to your software or your product and your service and then you need to ask those questions. In general, as a society, I believe we have to also get more people with different needs involved in our everyday society. If we get them more involved in, in different places, then we also naturally know more about them and it's just harder to forget. 

00:06:48 

But also when it comes to the case of early service and product, it's always just the matter is just that accessibility is there... Especially in Europe, and at least I know in Finland, a new service or product, it's not being designed without the security being involved there, especially like if you're doing a web page, if you're doing a web application, the security is there from the beginning. Everybody is thinking about it, so accessibility should be there also. 

00:07:27 Lina Zubyte 

Yeah, more and more companies are now investing in accessibility. You could say it's because of the laws as well, because there are some laws now telling that the web should be more accessible. However, likely there are still many misconceptions about it, that companies just do it for a check mark. What are some of the main misconceptions about accessibility that you have noticed? 

00:07:54 Azra Tayyebi 

Well, when it comes to the laws, unfortunately one of the misconceptions that some groups, companies or organisations still have is that they think that if they do audit of their web page or application or software and then write a list of what is wrong in their accessibility statement then they think that we've taken care of accessibility, this is it. But that's definitely not the point of the law. That's definitely not what is going to help users. Accessibility statement is supposed to be a place for transparency to say that, OK, these are what we know wrong with our project from the accessibility point of view. 

00:08:38 

And this is our plan on how to solve this. We are working on this in this timetable. And this is how you can get in touch with us to ask for more information or help. Accessibility statement never should be the endpoint or the result that people are working for. Unfortunately, that misconception is still there. Some groups they think that like yeah accessibility is that. Still we have people thinking that ohh, accessibility is just for blind people and then you still hear very much: oh, you know, no, we don't have any blind person using our web page. So we don't need accessibility. Accessibility is not for a one group. As I said, accessibility is for everybody. You cannot really say that even the fact that like we don't have blind customers or users or some other people with disability... We definitely have. Majority of times you have and sometimes if we don't have it's because we don't let them in. For example. Yes, if we are not hiring anybody with a blindness to our organisations, then we can say that well, we don't have any employee with blindness. So we don't need to make our tools accessible. 

00:09:53 

But actually, when people with blindness do apply for work there, we then tell them that ohh you know our website or our applications are not working for you, so we cannot hire you, sorry. So it's like, of course, then we don't have them because we are not letting them in. So those are two big misconceptions that bothers me a lot. There are others like people think that accessibility make the web page ugly, or accessibility is expensive. These are all just because of wrong way of doing accessibility. Yes, if you do everything else and then realise that, oh there are these laws we have to make it accessible. So let's do just some Band-Aid solutions on this. Then the result is not going to be beautiful and it's going to be expensive because you have to do some things again. But if you have done the accessibility in time and properly, it doesn't need to be ugly or expensive at all. 

00:10:52 Lina Zubyte 

I guess it's as you said, just start it from the start - having accessibility in mind. And an interesting point here is also that it's a continuous process. It's not just that you just put the Band-Aid and you say OK, now we are accessible. But companies and products and teams, they have to think that it's a continuous conversation we have to have. We're building a new feature. What should we add here? Are we actually making this feature accessible? 

00:11:21 Azra Tayyebi 

Yes. 

00:11:22 Lina Zubyte 

How would you make this more a part of the process? 

00:11:27 Azra Tayyebi 

So, for example, part of what we do is that we have different trainings for different groups of people, like depending on their role in projects. Is it a project manager, or a salesperson? Is it a developer? A designer? So, for all of these people at roles, we have different types of trainings to help them understand that, OK, these are the things that you need to take care of in your role. For any organisation a good way, if they haven't done accessibility, it's very important to go through that change and try to make it part of their process. It looks differently for different organisations, depends on what kind of model they have and what kind of team they have, but there are certain trainings and, for example, research that has been done: that is a bit more like general ideas, but then for any specific organisations also I believe that needs to be a phase that they need to go through to make their processes include accessibility. 

00:12:33 Lina Zubyte 

Yeah, they need to learn the skill, right, in order to use it then later on as well. So as a person who's blind, how would you describe your web experience? What makes a service smooth to use and what makes it very frustrating? 

00:12:50 Azra Tayyebi 

Still, there are lots and lots of services that are just not working as a blind person. Like even this morning I needed to book an appointment for a doctor. And this certain place that I needed to pick the appointment - there was a web page that I haven't used before and I tried it. And it didn't work. So I had to call a sighted friend and ask them to go and book the appointment for me, which is frustrating because I needed to give them then access to my personal information in order to book that appointment. But then, because the web page wasn't working for me as a screen reader user, so I couldn't use it. 

00:13:32 

I'm happy that there are also private organisations who have understood the fact that it's important to be accessible because users want to use their web pages and their products more. So, I do also get sometimes positively surprised that something actually works. I would say that like compared to that, maybe what generally people think when they see me for the first time, if they don't know any blind person, they might think that like, oh, what kind of things she would be able to do? I'm actually quite able to do a lot of things. A lot of them needs a lot of patience and just be able to fight through the difficulties. So not everything is as smooth, but there's still... Technology has made a lot of things possible. I do travel alone around Europe on my own, just me and my cane. 

00:14:27 

And I do a lot of that just through technology, different apps that they have. There are also accessibility issues there and sometimes it gets very frustrating, but that would not have been possible, well, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago because the same apps weren't even existing. So the fact that those apps exist, it makes it possible for me to do such a thing. But then it's still, it's sometimes very frustrating, so, for example, there aren't maybe many blind people who would take on the challenge of travelling alone in a different country that they don't know just because you know there is a lot of frustrations and a lot of uncertainty, and I don't blame them for that. But also like I do, I mean... Well, I like challenges. 

00:15:17 Lina Zubyte 

I guess it also helps that you're very tech savvy, because even someone with full sight, they may struggle using technology and you are fine with technology, even though it's very frustrating sometimes, I bet. 

00:15:32 Azra Tayyebi 

I don't know if I would call myself tech savvy. It's more like, yeah, I do know some of the tools and technology...  The technology which is important for me, I know them. But I'm also like, for me, being able to be independent and do things on my own, it's very important. So that's partly what motivates me to fight, but I really hope that there will be fewer issues because it's a shame that people wouldn't be able to use it. I'm sure that if there is apps and products would get more accessible, it's not only better for me, it's better for everybody who's using them. 

00:16:10 Lina Zubyte 

Absolutely. And it's not only having an illness, it also could be a situational thing, right? So I could have an eye surgery, for example, and a lot of people do. And then for a few weeks I'm struggling using my computer, so I may need to use screen reader at some point in my life. And sometimes we don't think about it or I may break my arm or something and I cannot use the keyboard anymore. So there could be a lot of different shapes and forms of it, and we can make the web a much better place, a much more inclusive place if we think of everyone. 

00:16:49 Azra Tayyebi 

Exactly. 

00:16:50 Lina Zubyte 

So talking about frustrations and bugs, what is one of the worst bugs you have encountered that you can remember and you're like, oh, this one was a pain? 

00:17:02 Azra Tayyebi 

I don't know if that's the most frustrating at all, but it's very much in the top of my head because I'm again in that point that I'm planning my summer adventures. I like to do some travelling and adventuring during the summer vacations, and I've been looking into it again. The last two years, both of them, I did an Interrail trip. I enjoyed it, but the worst thing about Interrail is the use of the Interrail web page. The app also - it's quite hard to use. It's possible to use, but it's very hard to use. 

00:17:38 

And then the web page is basically impossible. When I have been using Interrail, I have had to ask a sighted person to buy me the pass. Luckily most of the train reservations if I need I can do through other pages, but then for example something like EuroStar trains, you have to do it through the Interrail page and that was impossible. So then I have to again ask a friend to do it. So it's always a lot of difficulties and then you are in the middle of another country that you don't know the language and you don't know the places and the app is bothering, it is not working. It's very stressful. So unfortunately that has been one of the worst experiences I had in relation to travelling. And as I said, I love Interrail and I love travelling around Europe by train I love trains. So it's a shame that their page is so inaccessible and what I hear from my sighted users is not unfortunately very accessible for them either. 

00:18:45 Lina Zubyte 

Yeah, exactly. Some pages you can get lost in. And  I had the similar experience recently. Because of the UI/UX I got so confused that instead of cancelling my membership I bought a yearly membership and I was charged for it and some service fee. And I was like, ah, this is terrible. And I contacted them and I said, hey, can I get the refund? And they said yeah, but this button means this. And I was like, but your UI it leads me to the different page. I expect it to go to “my plan” but no because they decided to make their UI that way likely you know to increase their conversion and earn more money, but then as a result I was like, I'm not using your service anymore. 

00:19:30 Azra Tayyebi 

Mm-hmm. Exactly. Even just in this example, like, if as much as I can, I won't use Interrail web page which is, of course, then I have to buy the pass anyway, unfortunately. But if I could, I wouldn't buy it because it's just really hard to use. 

00:19:47 Lina Zubyte 

Well, talking about something maybe more positive. Are there any websites or services that you think are doing an amazing job, some that we use on a daily basis and they're actually very accessible? 

00:20:01 Azra Tayyebi 

I have been recently quite positively surprised with different apps actually working better, like for example again, travelling is so much in my mind right now, Airbnb has been improved a lot. I remember 2020, maybe it was 2022, when I wanted to use Airbnb and it was impossible. I couldn't use it, I registered, but the app was impossible to use. But then last year in autumn again checked the app and it's been working great. So it's very obvious that they have done a lot of improvement in their UI from the accessibility point of view. And also I could see that they, for example, they had, you know, different points about the accessibility of the place, the physical accessibility, or about, for example, service animals and things like that. So it's very nice that they have those kind of options there. So I was very happily surprised by the improvement in Airbnb. 

00:21:07 Lina Zubyte 

That's nice. So talking about companies making their products more accessible, what tools and practises would you recommend? Where to start? 

00:21:20 Azra Tayyebi 

Again, it depends a lot on what kind of like product or the tools we are talking about, but I would say that something that would be generally is to make sure there is somebody who knows about accessibility, is passionate about accessibility and is in charge of managing the accessibility of the product and that means that you take care of, OK, do we have accessibility in our processes? If we don't, what do we need? Where can we get that information? Do we need trainings? If we don't, do we, you know, need somebody to test? Do we need somebody to develop? Where are our needs and what we need? But somebody who is in charge of accessibility and is keeping that flag, at least one person who's keeping that. Like depending on the size of the organisation, preferably like a team, but then at least one person who's kind of leading the accessibility and you know keeping up the flag. I would say that that would be the first step in many, many organisations, especially if they haven't done anything about accessibility. 

00:22:28 Lina Zubyte 

Is there any low hanging fruit that you think a lot of companies can do when it comes to accessibility that it's easy to do and many don't do it? 

00:22:39 Azra Tayyebi 

Depending on the roles, but then, for example, having some trainings for their different roles it's I would say quite easy. There are lots of trainings out there, either the general information or there are more specific trainings that other companies offer. I would say that that would be a very easy thing to do and that would also bring that awareness in the organisation that OK, what we are lacking. So, I'm talking more about this generally like as any organisation or any company. Of course if we talk about you know design or development then there are... You can think like in development it's very important that you use as much as possible HTML elements and try to look online. There are lots of already accessible designs. Try to use them. Search for it. Especially when it comes to coding, there are lots of good and proper examples and helps out there. 

00:23:41 

The same for design, they're all lots of good resources about what to take care of, what to keep in mind in the design, at least the basic things. But I would say that all of these things, it's not going to make a very big difference if there isn't, you know, if there is only just like a small training and then we don't follow up with it or it's just there, it's nobody's responsibility. We are not going to be able.... It's not going to get anywhere. So in order to have it move on, we need to have some organisations need to have somebody who's keeping up the flag and for some organisations that might mean hiring outside help. I have been in many projects as a consultant whom I have been then working and helping them keeping up the flag, helping them, showing them, where are things missing and helping them in any way or search for help like OK, what we need here and what we can do and, again, some organisations have their own, they hire their own person inside. Also, in several of my projects what I have done is that I've been a consultant and I have trained a team of their own people to become that accessibility team, and then when I leave then they have that knowledge there. 

00:25:08 Lina Zubyte 

I think that sounds very much in line as security or overall quality, right? That we should coach people to have the skill and then even when we leave, they are able to do it themselves then. You mentioned that sometimes one of the challenges or misconceptions that the companies have is that they also don't hire more diverse people, and then they don't build more diverse products. It's sort of like a loop. So talking about accessibility, it's not only the products or services that are accessible or should be accessible. It's also workplaces or environments we work in. How could we make work environments more accessible? 

00:25:49 Azra Tayyebi 

Oh yeah, that's a topic very, very close to my heart. We, as a society generally, we still are, I would say very behind of understanding diversity especially when it comes to disability at the workplace. To be ready to hire people with disability and to be ready to prepare the environment for them is very important. In Gofore, where I work, we have people with disability working and maybe slowly but surely, we are all of the time moving toward making Gofore a more accessible place. That means that we might need to do cultural changes. Teaching people, making people more aware of what does it mean to work as a person with the disability in a company, how can they help or what they can do? From the tool's point of view, what about the accessibility of tools? 

00:26:53  

You know, how can we make sure that all of the tools that we are using are accessible? And also physical environment, the building that we are using. So sometimes I would say that like of course it's hard for those who are the first ones, but then there needs to be somebody who can show them. You know, when I go to the office, it's very practical things. My colleagues, they actually see me and they're just like, oh, we didn't even think about, you know, this not working. And people get a very different motivation when there is an actual human being there who is not able to use the service or the product or the environment. They get very differently motivated to work for it and make it accessible compared to when it's just a law and they say that like, hey, you have to make this accessible and there isn't any, you know, real human interaction there. 

00:27:53 

So I would say just hire people, be ready to and then there are some basic things that they can already take care of. Like, many of the laws, unfortunately, don't force the organisations to make their internal application accessible, but that shouldn’t cause the organisations not to do that. It's very important you know, there are lots of organisations that the person who's blind, who is hard of hearing, who cannot use a mouse. They very well have the capacity to work in that organisation, you know. Why are not really making those tools accessible, so we can hire them? I live in a country like Finland, we need work power all the time. And then we have these people with the work power. They have a disability, yes, but they have work power. And they have talents and they have possibilities. And then we are not getting them to work. And then as a society, we have to support them. It's just like, you know, we are shooting ourselves in the leg. That's why that is very important to make those internal tools accessible. Be brave to hire people with disability and be ready to change and work and you know, find out how can we make things more accessible, our environment and products more accessible. 

00:29:20 Lina Zubyte 

Ohh it's such a nice message. I feel like it will really relate with my last question as well, but to wrap up this conversation and the topics you've touched on here, what is your one piece of advice for building high quality products and teams? 

00:29:39 Azra Tayyebi 

We, people, have to get to know each other more. We need to get familiarised with different groups with different needs with people who are different than us. The more we know, the better we can think: OK, what can we include? One of my problems in the society is that people still don't even know how to approach a person who is blind. For example, like I constantly experience people coming and approaching me in the wrong way. Immediately thinking that I'm lost instead of asking me if I need help, asking me if I'm lost or where do I want to go. If I'm walking in a, you know, shopping centre, I don't need to tell you where I'm going. If you want to help me, it's nice, you can ask do I need help. 

00:30:34 

You know, a friend of mine who is sitting on a wheelchair, was saying that, like, you know, trying to maybe just go up a hill slowly, you know, just having a leisurely time and then somebody comes and starts, like, pushing her, thinking that she needs help to go up the hill. This is like you know you can ask me if I need help and if you know, no, I don't wanna help, I just wanna go slowly here. I'm maybe going slowly because it's hard, but if I wanna do it, I wanna do it. 

00:31:07 

So just as a society, we need to know each other more. And why don't we know each other more? Because how much our media is representing people with disability or different needs to our kids, to our people? How many movies and television series and you know, social media stuff you see with a person with disability as a main person or as a person there? While it's not about disability, you know, like, OK, we make these programmes about like ohh, like, look at these blind people, no. Make TV series where there is a blind mother, you know, people see that there is a person who's blind and can be a mother. She knows how to be a mother and she can be a great mother. 

00:31:58 

Or how many games we have, when you can in games, you know, you can choose different avatars... Is there any game that you can choose to be blind? I mean, you know things that I do... There are lots of adventures, you can make a game out of that. So why are we not doing those? So as a society, we just don't have people with disability. And there are other groups, minor groups that are not as represented, or, you know, in recent years maybe they have become more represented, thankfully, but we still need to have also people with disability a lot more represented in our media, in our games and everything. 

00:32:41 Lina Zubyte 

I love that such a nice thought to end this conversation with. Thank you so much, Azra, for your time. It was a great conversation. 

00:32:49 Azra Tayyebi 

Thank you. Thank you so much. 

00:32:52 Lina Zubyte 

That's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you were as inspired as I was with this episode. If you like this episode, do not forget to subscribe, like and share it with others. Until the next time do not forget to continue caring about and building those high quality products and teams. Bye!