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State employees share successful tips you need to know
6/15/2022 3:00:52 PM
By Jennie Delisi, Accessibility Analyst, Office of Accessibility
In our last installment, our interviewees shared changes that sparked their digital accessibility advocacy transformations. They also revealed small steps with big impact.
Thank you to this month’s article contributors:
We work in a community. There are opportunities for advocating in all different types of work. And, once you have seen an advocacy opportunity within your community, you can take action, like these examples that our contributors shared with us.
Aguilar found she could improve accessibility by focusing on “usability - trying to make things more usable for customers. We want to have a better user experience.” Many forms required people to complete them by hand, instead of electronically. She knew this created a barrier for some people. “Can we make this fillable, will it be a better user experience? It's just at the forefront of my mind now to have that be an option." Both the question - the spark to change the process, and the skills to make forms fillable became a more common part of her work. "So now it's a little less daunting to try to create those forms.”
Aguilar took her interest in usability and fillable forms as a spark to learn more. “I attended training for forms. You know, if you don't do something really often sometimes you lose that skill. But thankfully there's a lot of resources and tip sheets that I could refer to so that really helped a lot.” She recommends to “continue training and learning because accessibility changes all the time. Something we didn’t think was possible 6 months or a year ago is possible now. The software changes and we have new tools. Keep looking for ways to improve it and make it better.”
Reinhart has a history of including accessibility “as a requirement, up front. My first job out of college was working for the Oklahoma Assistive Technology Center. I did computer assessments for people with disabilities.” While he wanted to include accessibility early, "I've been in roles where it's an afterthought" for the organization. Working for the state of Minnesota provides him the opportunity to advocate in a different way. “The fact that it is a priority for the state is helpful. It’s great for us.” Mike shared that he references the importance the state places on accessibility when discussing accessibility requirements with vendors. This importance and visibility changes the communications he can do, and improves outcomes.
Reinhart’s list of accessibility requirements had great importance at the start of the pandemic. “When COVID started a big challenge was that vendors of collaboration tools began rolling things out at lightning speed. It was easy for them to leave accessibility as something that they would come back to. And that created a lot of challenges. My approach became: I would have to do more work (to highlight its importance), and with the assistance of others. To push harder on the vendors for accessibility. To make sure that we got what we needed.”
Another aspect of changes to Reinhart's advocacy has been to better understand the other group’s processes. In his work, this has focused on vendors. He shared that especially when they feel the pressure to release new versions quickly “They need the customer feedback. This helps them add it to the product road map, including for new features."
Reinhart created a new process for himself and those working with him. "The first thing we determine: is this a new feature request or is it an issue or an accessibility bug that needs to be fixed. That sends us down a couple of different paths. Generally we work with vendor representatives directly. They can help guide me on how best to approach resolving a particular issue within their company. My job is to help ensure they understand that the state of Minnesota is very committed to accessibility. And that we have requirements for their application."
Key to Reinhart's work is knowing when another approach may work for those greyer areas. Sometimes the accessibility standard and contract language doesn't clearly identify something needed. "Another option for certain types of issues is a vendor’s community feedback channel. People can upload ideas for product improvement. They can upvote a particular feature request. When you get a lot of numbers there, that says to the vendor 'Hey, this is a feature that people want.' It gets their attention."
And, like other aspects of accessibility, people are the key to culture change. Reinhart shared that "We've also done a lot of work to understand the hierarchy around accessibility in some vendor companies. Who's who in the organization. As we develop those relationships we try and bump the accessibility issues to higher levels of the organization."
In last month's article, Sawyer shared how joining up with others supported her advocacy development. One example: when she joined her agency’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion group (DEI), “we added an A for accessibility. People don't understand that people with accessibility needs must be included. That was why I joined the group. I now have people working with me to try to bring in accessibility as part of the word inclusion. And that's been huge because I now have other people.” Once she joined the group she began to share why she joined. “They're like, ‘Oh, I never thought of that.’” She shared that this was a big catalyst for change. And her timing was helpful, with everything going digital when the pandemic began.
Others we spoke with found that including accessibility early in the project had ripple effects. Reinhart shared that “Having accessibility in mind at the beginning is critical. It's where we get into:
If you have to go back and fix it later, it's way harder than just doing it up front. It's just so much easier. It can help your decision making and your choices. And you'll wind up with better products and services as a result. I think we are getting much, much better as an organization at this, but we still have work to do.”
Shafizadeh agreed. “For a project, please make sure before even selecting a vendor, or selecting a system, a tool, or approach - make sure that you account for accessibility. You review the accessibility. It should be part of the very early evaluation of the vendor of the system and then making a decision on what vendor or what system to move forward with.”
Involving more people as you develop your advocacy skills is key, according to Priem. As accessibility became more a part of the culture at the partner agency he supports, more people invited him into conversations. “It definitely brings me into areas which I may not even be aware of. A project manager could be spinning up a new project and I may not be part of it. Because accessibility is now part of their inventory or tool set they say, ‘Oh yeah, we need to bring in the accessibility coordinator.’ (Then when) operational folks come together and put together a plan, when it becomes a project, this is the path we have to take. One of the (project plan) sections is accessibility, we have that in there. Something embedded into the process. And that was really brought about by Ty (Chief Business Technology Officer Tyrone Spratt).”
Priem shared the importance of having an executive that champions accessibility. "(Tyrone Spratt) was instrumental in getting more people talking about accessibility. Especially providing an audience because that brings in everybody that may not even be aware of it. Now they have an opportunity to see what exactly that means for a whole project. People may not be involved, but they might be (later), so they can see how it fits into the bigger picture.”
If you are going to sustain a change, other influences must support your change. This support often comes from people in different roles. “I needed buy-in from people other than me and my supervisor,” shared Sawyer. One group that has supported these changes are the new employees. She continued, “They are coming in very enthusiastic, and I love that enthusiasm! A lot of them are taking care of their parents and their aunts and uncles, who have disabilities. They're seeing their parents declining. They really understand the need.” Aguilar shares additional advice: “Make connections with people who know more than you. I don't pretend to know everything about accessibility and I know who I can count on. I know who the experts are and I go to them when I have an issue. Also there's more than one way to do something and sometimes it's just good to get advice from other people. If you have a group of people you can go to and say ‘Would you design this in this way’ or ‘what would be a better way of doing this?’ Or ‘I have this error and I know I can fix it this way, but is that the best way to do this?’ It's a good thing to have a network.”
Reinhart shared that at the beginning of the pandemic, with everyone suddenly needing to learn to use conferencing tools, and all the changes – he needed lots of people. One group: the project team that supported the effort. He saw improving accessibility advocacy and knowledge in the project manager (John Theiler), and with the quality assurance professionals (Experito Muyanja - also known as XP, and Kim Anderson). He also shared that the state would not have been as successful in shifting to remote work “without the help of the digital accessibility coordinators. I just remember when the pandemic started people were helping with all kinds of things, like captioning, and some of the basic stuff. It would have been impossible to get what we needed done for our customers without the help of a lot of people.”
Shafizadeh included another important group: “having the management’s understanding and support both from the IT and the business side. If I didn't have the support system I would have not been able to make changes in the accessibility of projects and incorporating accessibility. I'm really proud to be part of a team and an organization that understands the importance of accessibility and is determined to make changes.”
The pandemic quickly showed everyone business needed to happen in new ways. It was key for promoting awareness of accessibility at agencies, reaching new people. For many, this also meant developing new skills, new ways of communicating. When asked what she learned from this situation, Sawyer shared, “I think the biggest one is, mostly, not being afraid to send out a Teams meeting invite to say ‘Hey let's talk about this.’ Don’t be afraid to reach out and give guidance. Get people to understand that you're there to help them and to help them succeed. Help them understand why.”
Aguilar’s group also used Teams to connect with employees, and host drop-in sessions. Their goal was to help agency employees learn more about accessibility. Aguilar sent “reminders and told people in different meetings about it. We've gotten a lot of good feedback. Even if you don't have a question and you just go to that drop-in session, and listen and watch what people are demonstrating, what they need help with…You pick up some skills that way. That is one way that we've tried to reach people and provide additional assistance.”
As she gained skills in the new communication methods, Sawyer started a Microsoft Team for employees at her agency to learn more about accessibility. “I've put a lot of training up and just yesterday somebody went ‘oh my gosh. I took this training and it was fabulous!’” Tamara finds webinars that are useful, then posts links for the group. “So there's some successes. Just having all these things for people to be able to easily find. I've gone into much more of a guidance role. It used to be people would just send me documents and say ‘here make it accessible.’ Now they say ‘What else do I need to do?’ I think that's really cool to see!”
Sawyer has also adjusted her approach. She now focuses on “Fast things, not a four-hour long webinar to slog through. Everything has to be in small bites because we're so busy, especially with all the stuff for COVID added to everybody's job duties.”
Priem has also changed how he introduces the training concept. Especially for IT teams, he suggests they start by doing “10 hours of training. Pick out different courses and just get the basics. Once you get the basics then you start seeing things differently. And you can start to apply it.”
I asked each of the interviewees to share advice for managers and supervisors. They generously shared thoughts for supporting a variety of roles.
Sawyer advises that supervisors “give your employee the support that they need. Understand that they may feel that they are working within a silo, especially if they're the only accessibility person at your agency. Give them the time to do their job. Have an understanding of what their job is” and how their accessibility duties translate into tasks and projects. And “make sure that they get what they need for training because that's a huge one.” As part of training Sawyer included:
Priem shares that it is important to remember “it isn't just one person that does accessibility. It's everybody's job. I think it needs to be addressed that it's a team effort. And it needs to be brought in early so a supervisor needs to know to get on accessibility right away (as a part of projects). Don't wait until after something's built.”
When asked about key elements of the changes she has seen, Sawyer shares that for some of it, “it’s been a long slow process. I think as an organization, we have evolved. It's persistence and just never giving up.”
Would you like to learn more about the accessibility work being done by Minnesota IT Services and the State of Minnesota? Once a month we will bring you more tips, articles, and ways to learn more about digital accessibility.
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