Accessibility Matters^™ Episode 8: Joe Devon

Transcript for Interview with Joe Devon, Chair at the GAAD Foundation

Webcast interview hosted by John Griffin, Publisher of Accessibility.com, featuring Joe Devon, Chair at the GAAD Foundation. John and Joe are in separate locations and the interview was conducted over video conferencing. The speaker is on screen at any given time.

[Introductory chime accompanies 'Accessibility MattersTM' animation on screen, briefly. Music accompanies 'Accessibility Matters' on screen, briefly]

John: Hi, I'm John Griffin. I’m the publisher of accessibility.com. Thank you for joining us today for this next session of Accessibility Matters. It's being said that disability inclusion has reached a turning point or a tipping point in advancing accessibility. If that's true, then a lot of the progress belongs to the vision and achievements of our guest this morning.

10 years ago, Joe Devon founded an idea that became a movement GAAD. G-A-A-D foundation or Global Accessibility Awareness Day has become a branded symbol. Joe is yet another of the tribe of people out there that works tirelessly, and outside of the prerequisites of what they need to do to make sure that accessibility advances and why it advances, how it advances and how it matters. Good morning, Joe.

Joe: Good morning, John.

John: It's good to see you again.

Joe: Likewise.

John: So, let me ask you once again, Joe, how did you get to the ground that you're standing on now?

Joe: Gosh, it’s such a great question and brings up so many thoughts. So much of my life is really around my father. He was a legend in so many ways. I mean, I'm not talking about public legend, but just he survived Auschwitz and Dachau. He spoke 10 languages; he was as good at science as he was at the Talmud. He knew the Bible basically by heart, but knew a good chunk of the Talmud by heart. But science was at least as important to him. So, you grew up on, where you have a dinner table like that, you really learn a lot, no matter what your age. So that really formed me. And in terms of entrepreneurship, I think that that is a little bit more. It's similar to coding, you're kind of born with that in your blood, you either have that mentality of I’d rather be struggling on my own, and then just be able to look in the mirror and say, “Hey, any success or failure, you know, the blame really lies with you, of course, with luck.”

So, I would say that the entrepreneurship is really just something I can't explain it. It's just something I've always had that mentality. And then in terms of where I landed with what I'm doing mostly today, that was really my father that started it. Because seeing such a great man who suffered so much when my dad came out of the concentration camps, he was 83 pounds, was really lucky to survive, because what ironically, would happen often to survivors who escaped the camps is that if they were liberated by the American soldiers, the American soldiers provided chocolates, candy, that kind of thing. And when you're coming out of starvation, for some reason, that causes people to die, and my dad did get those chocolates and somehow survived anyway.

And I apologize for rambling. But like I said, your question is great, it really brings up the personal thoughts. And so, you look at this, and then you see your father getting older, and he was in his mid-late 80s. And he struggled with banking. And for such a brilliant man to have such a hard time to get to the bank at required using access paratransit. He started to lose his vision, he started to lose his hearing. So, he couldn't drive anymore. He couldn't bank by telephone. He had gotten fished, you know, with the bank. So, the bank at some point, sent him an email saying there was some notification, he tried to log in, but he couldn't because the bank was inaccessible. And so, it really took away his independence. So even he would have to ask my brother and me for help in just doing something as simple as banking.

And at the time, I was a web developer. And I was like, “Oh my god, like web development is the answer.” If you have some kind of disability, being able to do all these activities online, this was before Amazon Prime came. But this should have been the solution. And it wasn't and it really broke my heart. So, I wrote a little blog post on an obscure blog called MySQL talk that probably got 10 users ever proposing that we create this Global Accessibility Awareness Day to bring awareness at the time, I was really just thinking about developers to be aware of building our stuff excessively. And to my utter shock, this thing went completely viral. And now it consumes my days. And it's something that I will be doing for the last days of my life, and very likely, the foundation and the day will survive. Mine, my co-founder Jennison assumptions lives. So, it's really a life mission.

John: Wow, Joe, that story is-- I can respond with firsthand kind of understanding. I was in Berlin, I was in Munich over a weekend, one time on a business trip. So, I went out to dock out. In all my life, I've never been more unprepared for what I encountered and what I saw. And it's still even just as when you mentioned Dachau, it conjures up this this dark event. And just getting to see in the modern day what's there now, and the hopelessness and the impossibility of escaping from that or surviving, I didn't go, I haven't been Auschwitz. But you know, there's a permanent, permanent, permanent black pat on the world that will never ever really be removed and always has to be remembered.

Joe: I actually went to Dachau with my father. And wow. That was something. The first thing that struck me, you know, as I was growing up, I got to meet some folks that were in post war Germany, some Germans that were post war Germany, and they really took to heart what happened, and they understood it. And I wasn't prepared for what would happen when I went because I go with my dad, you know, who escaped it. And then I see these students who are brought over there, just clowning around laughing, joking. And that was pretty upsetting to see that they didn't take it very seriously. And then, when you walk in, we went into what was probably the common dance area, it's now turned into a museum.

And it was really mind blowing, because I grew up hearing the stories where my dad was describing that when they were taken in, what they all decided to say. And they basically said, “What's your job? And then all decided--my dad's family all decided that they would say, bricklayers. Things that could be useful to the Nazis war machine so that they wouldn't be taken, basically killed. And one of them were said that they were like an accountant or something like that. And after they, after they said it, my dad said he was like a bricklayer that you know, they all have these different stories. And one of the cousins went off script, and he said that he was an accountant. And then just as they got out of there, you know, my dad is like, “Why did you say that?” And then he said, “Oh, I thought it would be better.” And then of course, he was taken to the group that were basically brought to the gas chambers.

So, in the museum, the director there asked my dad, “Do you remember your number?” And my dad just had the last few numbers. My dad was not tattooed. But he still had a number and he remembered the last couple of numbers. And then the museum director looked it up. And I saw the documents like they wrote down exactly the story that I heard since I was growing up and hearing Dachau, they were showing the documentation of what my dad said and everything. My dad remembered everything so well. I struggle remembering our conversation before setting this up and like everything I visited my dad's old country.

All of it my dad, remember vividly. And then, as we were walking by there was this weird monument and I and my dad said, “Do you know what this is?” And I'm like “No, no I have idea.” He's like, “This is where they would hang people. And you know, just put them up for there.” And what he said was that the power of Hitler really was that in this camp, he said, you can't see now. You have this massive camp, but you had 100,000 people that were standing out there naked, and that were told for hour, “Stand up, sit down.” You know, basically, a torture of a daily roll call where you were just required to follow their every rule, and you're gonna have 100,000 people up and down. And it was these mass gatherings that really got people to--I don't know, just have this is stereo. So anyway, I know, this is not really the topic of our conversation, but since it came up.

John: Yeah, but you know, something, Joe, it defines your passion for what you do. And honestly, in the way that that gets expressed, and the energy and the emotion and what you personally put into it, as opposed to using it to make a buck. You know, that's fair. Because, you know, I saw something this morning on LinkedIn. And when I was moved to quote, the monument, the saying that's on the Iwo Jima monument. And as a marine or US Marine, I know what this means. It was Admiral Nimitz, saying, you know, in terms of Iwo Jima where uncommon valor, became common. And heroism is not substitutable. It cannot be substituted for. You either have witnessed it, or you've been involved in it, or you ignored it. Heroism gives birth to a lot of what moves this world in the right way. And so, say everything you want to say, Joe, that would be my reaction to what you're thinking.

Joe: Thank you. And thank you for being a marine.

John: Well, at times, it was a pleasure. And at times, it was not. So having done all that on the 10th anniversary of GAAD, you wrote to the community. This is so prophetic. Hopelessness is gone. Can you expand on that in terms of what you meant, as a result of a 10-year frame, guiding the foundation?

Joe: Yeah, it was super interesting when GAAD first started and I first got connected to the community. People were somehow thankful for this day. It was just wonderful meeting everybody in the community, but there was an undercurrent, an undercurrent of desperation. Where the people working on this for a long time. And there were so many amazing leaders who have achieved so much in this space. But they felt like nothing would change that it wouldn't get better that everybody talks about it. They do their performative art, but they don't actually take the action that's needed to make the digital world an accessible space.

And I would say that now that that doesn't seem to be the case. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done. But I'd say the practitioners, they feel like there's a moment right now that accessibility is having a moment and that that there is hope that things are going to get better. There's certainly still frustration, but it doesn't have that same undercurrent, where people are, like, almost regret being in this space because they feel like they're tilting at windmills. Now it feels like there's a different energy. And that's what I mean, my hopelessness is gone.

John: I think that the time is now for accessibility in 2020-2021, to begin to step up as a carrier forward of the end of the wrong things that have embraced disability for maybe that same 100 years. You also point to the challenge. You talk about the statistic that 98% of the top million homepages have at least one week CAG error, and worse, the average error rate is 50 to 60 per page. So, you see that improving?

Joe: No, I don't. I see that's gonna be a challenge those top million homepages, I think it'll be a challenge. But in terms of who is getting better, I would say that the top tech companies, which unfortunately, really have a monopoly on our time, and on our engagement. I see that they are improving considerably. And at Diamond, the company that I co-founded around the same time as GAAD, we do an annual State of accessibility report. And in there, we just do a manual analysis of the top 100 websites. And over there, you know, we've seen, I don't have the stats in front of me. And as I'm getting older, my memory isn't as good. But it was something like, the stats were a little complicated, but it was something like 40% of the top 100 sites were accessible, then there's a certain percentage that are somewhat accessible. And that really represents the top of the pie, the top tech companies and the most used websites and apps. And those are improving, let's say about 8% a year, from what we've seen so far. So, 8%, 10 years, you know, that's gonna be like almost all of it, right? So, I would say, the top tech companies are really getting it down. I don't want to say right, but much better. They're focusing on it a lot more.

Amazon has taken GAAD and really expanded it to a month internally. So, they do a Global Accessibility Awareness Month. And they're really doing a strong push internally, you know, you've got Apple that spends a week on it. Microsoft, they released this Xbox controller, can you see this? The Xbox adaptive controller on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, they are putting a strong effort and emphasis into it. All the tech companies really are the top tech companies. So, I would say that the leadership comes from the top. And the entire industry kind of follows what the top tech companies do. So, I see a lot of hope in that. We've really got them engaged. So, that's huge.

John: You talked about a three-pillar approach as a way to work through this.

Joe: Yeah, so we're a digital agency, we kind of started with really strong development chops. The founders of Diamond are really developers at heart. And so, we really got known for the development side of things. And then as we grew, we added some design and of course, accessibility. And what we've found happening, so we decided to build everything accessible by default. And that is something that is missing in the industry.

Because when you're looking at Google, Amazon, Apple, they build most of their tech in house. Tech is really their strength, their core strength. And that's where they have the developers in house. And so, you know, it's really easy for them to build anything they really want. But the fortune 500 companies that are in many other kinds of businesses, it's not their core business. So, they outsource mobile apps, websites, that kind of thing, in many cases, maybe even most cases, and so they go to a digital agency. So, what's really missing from the ecosystem are digital agencies that build accessible products by default. So, there are definitely agencies out there that if you ask them for accessibility, some of them will say they will build the product excessively, and they don't even know what it means. You speak to a salesperson, most of them will say, sure, and they might even you know, give it a best effort, but you really need to have some expertise in it.

And then you have a few agencies that have an accessibility department. So, if you ask for it, they will do it and they will do it well. But really, we need the digital agencies to build it excessively by default. And so, you know, we're gonna hit about 100 people by next quarter. And I guess it's already this quarter since it's July and I've never run into another agency of our size that really builds excessively by default. But one issue that we've come up with is because we are so well known for our development chops, and we're still building out the design side of things, we sometimes are getting projects where we're not doing the design. And so, we're handed off inaccessible designs, and there's no budget really for them to go back, we can't force the designers to go back, we can't force the company to pay for the design to go back. And all we can really do is write bug tickets that say, “Hey, these are inaccessible.” And just do our best to improve the accessibility.

And so, what we're transforming as a company, is we want to get to the stage where we won't accept business unless we really control all elements of it. And so, what I mean by three pillars is, you typically in the digital agency world either have a designing agency, which means that they're very good at the design, but not as strong on the development, or you have like a dev shop where they're very good at the development and they can do okay design. But I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I haven't seen much where both are equal. And so just to make our job even more difficult, we decided to make it three pillars, which is design, development and accessibility, as being really all first-class citizens in the building of digital products.

John: You're on record is questioning the statistics have developed disability, how far off are they? And what does that mean to the community of the accessibility industry? Are we aiming too low? You've questioned that the numbers are valid.

Joe: Well, let me put it differently. Because I don't want it to sound like an actual criticism of the work that was done, because the work that was done was incredibly difficult. It was an unbelievable Opus, the main statistics that are quoted are come from the World Health Organization and World Bank. Their report is called I think World Report on Accessibility. And it's a 325-page report. And they've gathered statistics from around the world. And the quote that really comes out of it is that, and I'll give it to you exactly, including children, over a billion people, we're about 15% of the world's population, were estimated to be living with disability.

So, when you think about that, I think some people think, oh, it's only 15%. And some people think, oh, wow, that's 15%. But first of all, let's frame that 15%. You're talking about a market larger than China. And I think when people hear 15%, they don't grasp the magnitude of that. And I think framing it as this is larger than China, that makes people realize, oh, wow, yeah, this is a market worth going after. But I don't think the 15% is really correct, because also you have from the WHO, it was called the blindness and low vision report. They say globally, at least 2.2 billion have a near or distance vision impairment. And that represents 28% of the population, not 15% of the population.

We did a manual analysis in our state of accessibility report of the top 100 Alexa websites where we did an analysis of their accessibility. And what we found in 2019, was that 29% of the websites were fully accessible, where there were no errors. 28% were somewhat accessible, which really means that with some difficulty you're able to go in, and what we really tested was login and registration. And then 43% were inaccessible. So, this is 2019, the top 100 websites, which really means the top tech companies out there. And then in 2020, the improvement was it went from 29%, fully accessible to 40%. fully accessible, the parts that were somewhat inaccessible went from 28% down to 21%. And we went from 43% inaccessible websites to 39% inaccessible, so the inaccessible websites went down by 4%. And we really saw that we're at now 40% accessible websites in the top 100. So, things are improving, it needs to improve a lot more. But we're definitely going in the right direction, especially on those top sites.

John: One last thing I want to get into a little bit. Shouldn't education be changing its teaching culture underneath all of this both in terms of seeing accessibility and building technology that--- I mean, look, let's face it, you know, accessibility is going to change based upon technology and human innovation and people. You know, so what do you see, Joe? Do you have a trifecta for that, you know, that you can talk to?

Joe: Well, there, there's a great organization, a nonprofit called Teach Access, which really tries to make the case to educational organizations, they do great work. And I think they're going to really be expanding the work that they're doing soon. And they really got that mission down. But I'm 100%, an advocate for changing especially the coding boot camps, because I guarantee you as we speak, somebody is learning in a coding boot camp, how to use non-semantic HTML when they're doing development, which really has a lot of downstream negative effects and makes it inaccessible. They're being taught for those who are technical listening, they're being taught to use Divs and spans instead of semantic elements. And that just kills all the built-in accessibility. And they're not being taught the accessibility in probably most boot camps at this point. So, I'd say the boot camps are really important to go after and the universities. They should have strong accessibility programs.

John: Okay, well, that brings us to a finish, at least for this session, Joe. I can't tell you how impressed I was with this discussion. This went miles and miles and miles across a proud history. And a history that started a long, long time ago in the last century, when you and I weren't even here. And today, or continues today in a way that defines how accessibility matters, why it matters. It's the oxygen that brings everything that people in this industry do to life. And you should be applauded, you should be commended. You're a great citizen and you're a good guy. Thank you.