Empowering Innovation Through Accessibility: A Conversation with Malin Hammarberg

Ever wondered how accessibility can boost rather than restrict innovation? Join us for an illuminating conversation with Malin Hammarberg, a dedicated UX designer and accessibility specialist at the Funka Foundation. Malin’s journey began with a project on "design for all" and has since evolved into a passionate commitment to inclusivity. Together, we explore how integrating accessibility from the outset can lead to more creative and user-friendly designs, challenging the misconceptions that often surround this essential practice.

We also tackle the long-standing challenges of web accessibility, especially for people with disabilities. Malin shares her frustrations with the repetitive nature of advocacy in this space and underscores the importance of early education for fostering a culture of inclusion. We discuss the critical need to embed accessibility into every phase of the design and development process, rather than relying on generative AI as a quick fix. The conversation draws parallels with the growing acceptance of cybersecurity, advocating for a similar proactive attitude toward accessibility.

In our final discussion, we look at the future of web accessibility, focusing on the continuous improvements necessary for keeping up with evolving standards. Malin highlights the role of AI-driven solutions and the hurdles companies face when integrating these into legacy systems. We emphasize the significance of user testing in uncovering design flaws and celebrate the rewarding nature of conducting training sessions that lead to those magical "aha" moments. Join us as we navigate the complexities and excitement of staying updated in this rapidly changing field and reflect on the ever-evolving journey of creating accessible digital experiences.

Chapters

• 0:02 Innovative Accessibility and User Experience
• 13:15 Challenges in Achieving Web Accessibility
• 23:39 Continuous Improvements in Web Accessibility
• 30:33 User Testing and Training in UX

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to Access Chat. I'm delighted that we're joined today by Marlon Hamader from the Funke Foundation. I first really had conversations with Marlon a long time ago, but revisited those at the IAAP event in March in Paris, and Marlon was talking about access to democracy and the inaccessibility of political websites, which I thought was really, really interesting. But that's only one of the things that she does. So, martin, please tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Funka Foundation.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Yeah, I work as a UX designer and accessibility specialist.

Speaker 2: 0:45

I sometimes call myself expert, but I don't really like that word because it feels like there's always more to learn about accessibility, so I kind of like to keep the tone down a bit.

Speaker 2: 0:57

But anyway, I started working with accessibility like I think it's 12 years ago now. Started working with accessibility like I think it's 12 years ago now. I fell across it because a company asked me to do something that was called design for all and I was like what is this? And started reading about it and the more I read, the more it kind of everything just fell into place. So I it was kind of love at first sight, whatever, whatever you want to call it. So after that I've almost entirely worked with customers that really want to create products that are inclusive. It's one of my favorite things to do. I'm coming from the ICT sector, so I worked a lot with different customers, mostly public sector, to help them reach out to all the citizens in the cities or in the communities, and met Susanna a long time ago and that's why I came over this year to Funka Foundation.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Okay, Just for a bit of context, for our guest Susanna is Susanna Loren, who founded Funka Foundation and worked for a very long time in the accessibility industry and has been a guest on the show multiple times. She now also does work with the IAAP organizing IAAP Europe.

Speaker 2: 2:28

She does so much things. It's crazy Her speed.

Speaker 3: 2:35

And her leadership. Her leadership in Europe has been amazing. Her leadership that we've seen in the United States. She has done so much for our industry around the world. I think a lot of people don't realize how much she has been involved, how big of an impact she's had.

Speaker 1: 2:54

But the show's not about her. Oh yes, you fell in love with accessibility at the first website. One of the things that I frequently encounter with designers is the fear that accessibility will force them to do something ugly. Yeah, that's stupid.

Speaker 2: 3:21

I know that's not the case.

Speaker 1: 3:22

I want something that's beautiful and functional and that accessibility and the constraints can actually really be a trigger for creativity. But for sure you know there is this fear. How do you deal with that kind of when you're working?

Speaker 2: 3:47

I think everything with accessibility is kind of it's sometimes it's very tiresome because you keep repeating yourself and saying the same thing over and, over and over again and you think, shouldn't this just kind of take in soon? And I think one problem is that we it's still kind of not present in the educations. So when we get there I think more people will understand what accessibility is, because now it's something the big, scary thing that makes you do black and white web pages very sadly.

Speaker 3: 4:20

Dummy them down, dummy them down, dummy, dummy damn, they dummy them down.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, but I keep saying, if you do, if you have because it's true, when you have like borders or frames or whatever to go, if you have a space you need to be creative in, it's much easier to be very creative in that space instead of flexing and being all over the place and not understanding it. Really, I worked I think it was like four years ago I worked with this guy who said he was so great at everything, great at accessibility and everything and he kept saying I can't think about contrast now I need to be creative. And I said but I will just throw it out because now it's bad contrast. So you probably should look at them because I want, I don't understand what you're doing. And he kept saying that it was limiting his creative side and that the end user would probably not find it like, um, enjoyable because it wasn't beautiful. And I'm like yours, you're so off.

Speaker 2: 5:24

People enjoy things they see and understand, not things that are flishy-flashy and jumps. It's easy to take that approach and I think it's easier when they've been in the occupation for a long time and never come across accessibility before, and those are the ones that's hardest to turn. The young people are really happy and get like, yeah, this, I like, I will do this.

Speaker 3: 5:47

But right and I think if when you do it right, you're more innovative, a more creative design yeah, exactly yeah. So if you are thinking that this work is making allowing your work not to be innovative, you're not doing it right, because by being accessible, that is the most innovative, creative thing you can do, and even if the customers or the users don't understand why they're having such a good experience, all they care about is they know that they are having a good experience. On that, go ahead, mia.

Speaker 2: 6:23

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that accessibility is some kind of extra thing you can add in the end, instead of understanding that it's just a part of the process. And when you get to that place, it's not like it doesn't affect you. You just know that you use good contrast. It doesn't affect you. You just know that you use good contrast, enough space on the touchscreen to touch the button or whatever it is, but before it's this big scary cloud, I think that you need to do afterwards I don't think anyone wants to be inaccessible, I guess, or exclude users.

Speaker 2: 7:04

I just think they don't understand the harm they do when they do some of the choices.

Speaker 3: 7:12

Oh, good point. I totally agree with what you're saying and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind exploring a little bit about who the company is, because I don't think everybody's heard of Funka Foundation I'm not sure if everybody has, and I remember when Susanna was telling me about it she said that you're also working on a lot of research, which I appreciated, because I don't think there's enough good research being done here. But do you mind just telling the audience a little bit about what the organization does?

Speaker 2: 7:44

Yeah, it's a not-for-profit company. Our mission is to support users of all abilities, but making sure that accessibility is something that's always included. We do loads of trainings, and always included. We do loads of trainings and talk at events and stuff, but beyond that we also have our research. So right now we're working together. For instance, I'm involved in two research projects with Norway One where we're exploring how cookie banners affect accessibility and what's hard and what users the end user experience problems with. And the other research is about service and the automatic service tools that are out there that everyone uses. But there are good ones and there are bad ones, and we have chosen like four. I think it is that we test together with end users to explain how they work, but that one is a bit from the meta kind of way, so we want to add in the end a supportive kind of document how you as an author can create accessible service with the tools that are out there today. So yeah, research.

Speaker 3: 9:14

When you say tools, do you mind? And then I'll give it over to Neil and Antonio. But I think the word tools is confusing to people. And now I'm in the United States and so whenever I start hearing the tools, often people are talking about the accessibility overlays which we're doing some pretty significant fighting about here in the States. I know it's happening all over the world, but I assume you obviously are not talking about that.

Speaker 2: 9:43

But just to make sure our audience doesn't know no survey tools like Google Forms or Microsoft Forms or TrueType or whatever they are called. I can't remember the names. I'm horrible with the names of things. But that's what you're talking about really the tools for the websites, not yeah, the tools that authors use the authoring tools to create service for the end user. And yeah, we all say that they are inaccessible, but we don't support authors how they can use them to create accessible content use them to create accessible content.

Speaker 1: 10:33

I find survey tools to be something that we have to use when we're working on data, but actually survey design, as well as the sort of technical aspects of making sure that surveys are accessible for screen readers and keyboard users, there's a huge amount of thought that needs to go into the design of the questions and the flow of surveys if you're to get successful completion and all of this kind of stuff. A lot of the time, you know, when I'm taking surveys, I'm sort of sat there scratching my head, going what is it they wish to really get from me, because the questions are quite often ambiguous.

Speaker 2: 11:16

Yeah, and that's one of the things. We will test it from a cognitive perspective as well, because we think that's one of the groups that aren't lifted that much when we talk about accessibility. So I work together with this girl named Sara Kjellstrand that's so into accessibility and the perspective of cognition and she has, like, worked with it and done so much research on it. It's so interesting, extremely educating man and work together with her.

Speaker 3: 11:51

Yeah, meylin, I what? I sorry I said your name wrong. But but one thing that you said that I think is interesting only because I would think I remember when Antonio Neil and I were going to do this access chat, we're like, oh, this we'll run out of things to talk about before we know it. Well, we're 10 years in and so far we haven't run out of things to talk about. But you said something earlier that I just wanted to explore a little bit, in that you were saying that we've been working so hard for so long to make sure that things are accessible that we're considering accessibility in our digital designs.

Speaker 3: 12:33

I remember you made me think of something Francis West, the former chief accessibility officer, had said to us as a community before, in that accessibility is like privacy and security. It is as you said, it's part of the design, right? And you would never dream, I hope, of designing a website that didn't have privacy blended into it or security blended into it. Accessibility is the same way. It is not an afterthought, and if you wait until after you've designed it to do it, you're just totally missing the point of what we're trying to do here, of what we're trying to do here. And so one thing that does, I guess, just because technology changes so much.

Speaker 3: 13:15

But it does feel like we are continuing to say the same things that we've been saying for 20 years and it's like I don't understand why they don't understand this. Human beings need to use your technology. You want us to use your technology. We say often in our field that you're leaving out billions of people. Well, okay, whatever, you're not completely maybe leaving us out, but you certainly cannot expect us to use the services you provide and don't try to upsell us or anything like that, because we can barely use your basic stuff because it's so inaccessible. So I just wonder why we are still having these same conversations and I'm so glad you're there to have these conversations but I just sometimes wonder why we're not getting through to the I think it's too little focus on it in schools actually, and I think it should start earlier.

Speaker 2: 14:10

I've been I've been starting to think this should probably be some part of before you choose at the university.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Before that, we should talk about disabilities and what, what makes us different, and different isn't bad just how we are as human beings. So I think somewhere we need to like we have done with so many other subjects, like inclusion when we talk about race, and inclusion when we talk about gender, but when it comes to inclusion we talk about disabilities. It's actually not that much they say about it in school, and I think that's where we kind of need to change. But that's I hope it will come to and then but I think it needs to go down in the ages, everybody had heard it sometime, even if they don't will not work with it. I think it's a good chance to understand that we are different human beings and we need to understand that that's okay, kind of so we, because then I I think it will be easier when we start talking about okay, but what should we do to make it work for all of us? I don't know, it's maybe too much to hope from the education system that it will put it in in mid-school or before.

Speaker 4: 15:36

We can't, but hope. Antonio, did you have a question? No, I just hope you can hear me. Well, I think you know, in some education schools in different parts of the world, children with disabilities are completely separate from from the others. You know, uh, in my daughter's education system when, in portugal, there are kids with disabilities in our class. So kids are aware of the needs of the others, so they are more. They know that. You know, someone in their class needs a different type of attention, they need to do a different type of test from time to time and the teacher needs to talk to them with a different level of attention.

Speaker 4: 16:13

So I think it's something that we need to build as we grow as a society is not to create a divide between us and them, or them and us. I think that's sometimes what causes some of the issues that we see. Oh, someone with disabilities. Oh, will they ever go to our website? How do they access the web? I think there are some cultural elements that we tend to create a divide, and I think this divide is good for where we are today, where the large majority of the websites are not accessible. So I think that's probably one of the ways.

Speaker 4: 16:56

How I see it Because I have organized hackathons in the past focused on accessibility, and we have developers joining the hackathons and then when they realize, oh all right, I was doing this all wrong, I need to fix it when they realize the negative impact of what they're doing, they realize that they have to fix it immediately. I think we need to keep doing what we do on Access Chat, pushing it over and over, and believe that this is a continuous type of work. And, of course, if you embed this in government, if you have services in government like usually the Scandinavian governments are well known for it where there's some support from the top, I think that makes things easier, also in Canada. But I think it's part of a cultural change that we need to keep pushing. Many years today, cybersecurity is something that is pretty much in the way that we accept. Ten years ago, people would see cybersecurity as a kind of a dark art done by hackers or someone that nobody would see.

Speaker 2: 18:16

I once heard someone saying like, when we started doing responsive web, people kept pushing for mobile first, just to make people think that we need to make uh, which actually is something that's really good for accessibility. But, um, I think it's the same with accessibility it needs to be like the accessibility first, but I don't think accessibility is a thing of its own. So it's hard to say, because I think it just should be there in the process all the way, not something you do in the beginning and then try to revisit it in the end and I think, yeah, somehow we have gotten in a place where loads of ux designers and designers and developers thinks it's a thing you just add somewhere in the process and then you're done. Uh, instead of understanding that, like, every time I'm doing an input field, I need to do these steps, like these are part of my toolkit, I do, I need to do this, and when we get there, I think we actually will have a more accessible web.

Speaker 2: 19:23

But then you read those sad like comments uh, from how you exercise. I won't say his name, but that says that everything we have failed, everything will resolve with. Um, what did it say? It will solve with generative ai and I think like this is so sad because this will not make any good difference. The only thing it will do is make people think it's still a separate thing.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Somehow you can add and if we look at what comes out with AI at the moment, it's very imperfect. I've been playing around a lot with AI recently trying to get it to do more complex stuff than just producing texts and pictures, and it hallucinates. It doesn't do what you tell it to do. It insists that it has it's. It's really interesting. It's like a naughty child.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Yeah, my husband tried to do a picture. It was really funny and he said I want it. And on the picture I wanted to say congratulations. It was a big party and stuff. And every time he got the picture out from AI it spelled congratulations, wrong Every time. And he was like why I'm writing the word here, just put it in there into the image thing.

Speaker 3: 20:57

One time I was doing one, I was doing the billion strong and it kept spelling it wrong, and so I kept saying, no, you spelled it wrong and I was doing it real fast so it would do it. I was saying, no, you spelled it wrong and it would come back. No, you spelled it, you spelled it wrong. We went back and forth and finally it said you need to wait a few minutes because I've given you too many um pictures in a amount of time and I pay for it. And I said no, you can't do that because you're doing them wrong. You cannot limit me because you did them wrong. Do it right.

Speaker 3: 21:29

I'm like fighting with you.

Speaker 4: 21:32

No, companies like NVIDIA and some advertising agencies are working on that to fix it, because they understand if they're able to fix that they can do things at a certain scale. But those options are not available for what we call today commercial AI, the one that me and you can use in our phones. But it's something that is being fixed. Probably it will be fixed. It won't take much longer, but it will be fixed probably over the next 12 months.

Speaker 2: 22:05

What I've been reflecting about AI is that if it looks at web pages online and try to figure out how to create the perfect web page, what is it like? 98% of the web page are not accessible, so that would kind of there's so much shit in, so how will it know what? The two percent? That's a good, will you know but.

Speaker 1: 22:29

But this is this is true, because if you feed rubbish into, you get rubbish out, but at the same time, what you can build into the model, but the guardrails and the rules you know because you could you could actually build those constraints in you. It's very easy to upload you know the standards into an ai model and say these are the things that need you need to comply with. And here are you know the um examples of conformant code. You know that you could reference do not, do not deviate from something that is conformant, and the people that own those AI models could put that in the background. So you don't have to ask and tell the AI that you're acting as an accessibility developer, conforming with content accessibility guidelines 2.2. It should just do that by default. That should be the responsibility of the Googles and the Microsofts and the open AIs to do that, because it could really make a difference.

Speaker 4: 23:39

I think there are opportunities to develop solutions specifically for accessibility. You know, customize it to solve certain specific projects through AI agents, but that's not the type of work that the companies are going to do it. You need another layer of companies that decide to invest and go into that direction.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Yeah, I think we will see improvements in the future, but I don't think we at this time should put our hopes into it. We still need to do kind of the legwork to make our kind of products and services.

Speaker 2: 24:26

We always are going to need people, like you always, but just building in the basics of it, it couldn't hurt you know, I actually tried to ask ChatGPT for if it could give me a list of all the VK requirements, the Level A and Level AA. It failed like four times in a row and then I went like okay and I'll have to ask mine you are.

Speaker 4: 24:54

You are annoying me I've been talking, uh, particularly um uh with, uh, small business.

Speaker 4: 25:06

You know, I'm talking with friends who manage websites in Portugal, others who manage websites for small business in Ireland, and what they tell me is many organizations who have a presence of web in terms of mid-sized organizations who are responsible for many of the websites that we have, for example, in Europe many of these websites are still based in old technology. So when they go and they realize, oh, how can we fix some of the basics of accessibility, they start to realize that they need to move everything to a new type of infrastructure. They need to do a major upgrade in order to make things accessible. They need to do a major upgrade in order to make things accessible, because what is there sometimes has 10, in some cases, 15 or 20 years old, and that becomes a challenge because it requires a kind of an investment that sometimes these companies don't understand that is needed and sometimes they don't know how to figure out how to make it happen. Yeah, sadly, this is true, even if they have a five-year-old web page.

Speaker 2: 26:10

Sometimes they don't know how to figure out how to make it happen. Yeah, sadly, this is true, even if they have a five-year-old web page and they haven't done it accessible from the start.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Yeah, but I mean we do have a growing culture of DevOps, which then became DevSecOps, and really what I'm advocating for is DevSecXOps, because accessibility needs to be in that same continuous cycle, like you were mentioning before. So I'm busy trying to get this into people's heads. So it's not like you have, because most of these websites now and a lot of technology products, they're no longer. We make a product, we stop, we maybe do a revision, then we build a new one. They're just continuations, and so it's a continuous rollout of upgrades. So you know nothing's fixed in time.

Speaker 1: 27:07

So, ok, I understand the infrastructure behind it might be COBOL, certainly if it's the banking industry, and you know most of the COBOL developers that haven't retired yet are now making an absolute fortune because they're so precious to the banking industry. But a lot of the front end development work is continuous. They're always shipping new versions. But a lot of the front-end development work is continuous. They're always shipping new versions. So you know you can have accessibility in every single sprint and you can make stuff more accessible and you can at least take the opportunity to not make it worse every time you roll out an upgrade.

Speaker 2: 27:44

Yeah, or forget about it and add it in the backlog instead.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Oh yeah, well, if it's in the backlog, it never happens, right, the backlog. You know, the post-go-life fixes are legendary, you know.

Speaker 3: 27:59

Yeah, Doug was one of those COBOL programmers. He has passed away, but he was one of those expert COBOL programmers.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Yeah, he'd be able to make a fortune now because all of the banks' operations run. Oh yeah, and no one gets taught it at school anymore.

Speaker 3: 28:17

The computer that he ran. He managed a computer for AT&T in Jacksonville, florida. It was three city blocks and I bet you my phone has so much more. I mean it's amazing how far we've come.

Speaker 3: 28:37

So we can play a little bit with words and say that those Cobalt developers are the original digital natives. Right, right, right. My dad was an original. I miss him. So we've got a good legacy, and now we have, you know, people like you doing it. So we've got a good legacy, and now we have, you know, people like you doing it. And I love also the point that you said that I'm putting these words in your mouth, but that you don't want to call yourself an expert, because you know there's always so much more that we're learning, because, as technology is shifting, accessibility is shifting too. I thought that was another really powerful point that you made.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Yeah, yeah, I don't think you can ever learn everything about accessibility because there are so many different disabilities and so many different combinations of disabilities. So I think every time I do user testing I learn something new. I think every time I do like user testing I learn something new. I try to. And God, when you go back and look at your project sometimes and go like, oh, why did I do that? I think it's refreshing when you see that you kind of always can improve and do a bit better every time. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:43

But I think that you know you clearly. You know further along the Dunning-Kruger curve in the fact that you recognize that you don't know everything. I think that this is something that comes but also is a real benefit, and the joy of working in accessibility is there is so much to learn, there's so much great variety that it's never really apart from the having to repeat the same things about alt text, it's never really that boring. There's always something new that can maintain our interest. So, before we close, what's the thing that's interesting? You right now, that's really sort of got you excited.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Excited. I'm always excited about user testing because I think that's one of the most beneficial things we do as UX designers and you kind of it's very humbling to see someone work and you can and see how much trouble something can add to a design, and I think it's yeah, it's always one of my heart things when I work. I also actually really, really love doing trainings, because I love when I see just one that listening, that gets an aha moment or I didn't know this, I need to start doing this. That's one of the things I really, really love. But, to be completely honest, I'm a bit tired of AI because there's so much talk about it like the savior of it all, so I keep going like, oh, I don't know if I want to do this. Everybody is talking about AI all the time, but, yeah, I'm always the one that kind of goes a bit on the side path to see what happens there.

Speaker 1: 31:50

Instead, I think I think that those are the interesting journeys.

Speaker 2: 31:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:57

The diversions always take you to the great places, so thank you very much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure talking with you. We really look forward to continuing discussions. Pleasure talking with you. We really look forward to continuing discussions. So it just remains for me to say thank you to my clear text for keeping us captioned, and to Amazon for supporting us and keeping us on air.

Speaker 2: 32:18

Thank you, Marlene Bye.