AXSChat Podcast with John Hicks, Atos Head of Accessibility & Digital Inclusion for France

John has a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh.  Since 2003 he has been working in the field of digital accessibility in France.  His particular interests are in the effects of transformations (such as accessibility) on organizations and the notions of viability and communication as stipulated by the early cyberneticists (Ashby, Beer, et al).  He has been with Atos in Paris since 2021 promoting accessibility both within the company as well as for clients, working towards compliance with the French RGAA law.   He is also a keen follower of guitar circles and samba schools.

Transcript

0:00

This is a draft transcript produced live at the event and corrected for spelling and basic errors. It is not a commercial transcript and will need to be checked if you wish to publish it. AXSCHAT John Hicks

NEIL: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted that we'll be joined by one of my colleagues today, John Hicks. Antonio is not with us; he is in Portugal at the work summit. But, John welcome.

JOHN: 0:14

Thank you, Neil.

NEIL: 0:16

For those that don't know you, please sort of introduce yourself a little bit and we'd love to know your background, obviously I know some of it, but we'd love to know how you sort of ended up working in accessibility before you ended up working for me. Commiserations on that. So, yeah, please tell us a bit about yourself?

JOHN: 0:40

Okay, thanks Neil. Thanks Debra, nice to be here. Well, I'm a British American guy who sort of moved around a lot and ended up in France about 20 years ago where I stumbled into the field of accessibility and this is in 2003, this is pretty early days, especially in terms of what is going on in France. So, that was proceeded by odd jobs, I worked for the Herald Tribune newspaper. I worked for a rather funny real estate company which could've become the Air BnB of Europe, if they had played their cards right and before that I was in Edinburgh University doing a PhD in the Centre of Cognitive Science with John Oberlander and Richard Shilcock. When I got into the accessibility field, it was with a company called Erbe Log, they are based in Lille and at that time, we were only about these 12 people, I think. My job was as a developer. We were developing testing tools. These testing tools were actually really ahead of their time. In fact, I'm very tempted to pull out my old PC and get that code because the gentlemen who created this, his name is Michel Oelle, a genius really and he was basically using expert, he was using AI stuff in 2003 to create very, very rigorous testing functions. That was work from IBM and then we had a lot of work with French Telecom. So, I went from being a Java hacker to doing more audits and then doing more customer stuff. It's been a long road and there's been a lot of stuff inside it. So, I don't know, I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes.

NEIL: 2:52

Well, we do love rabbit holes and I guess one of the sort of fascinating things for me is you know, learning about the French approach to accessibility and the cultural differences okay, we work for a French company but the larger French accessibility eco system is something that I'm sure our audience are really keen to know about because what often gets talked is the sort of British and American accessibility world. So, what are some of the things that you would consider to be different and unique in France when, in terms of the approach and then maybe we can think about how things have progressed over time as well because I think there have been quite a lot of positive movements of late.

JOHN: 3:52

Yeah, in some ways France has actually been really ahead of the game, you know. I mean, like I said I joined that company in 2003, Erbe Log and in 2005 in France, Article 47 was published. Article 47, it was the law which established that digital accessibility was important and was required by law and here we were all thinking oh, this is good. The business is going to take off. Things are going to get good. People are going to start doing this work. 2005. It wasn't actually applied, that's the term in France for when you take a law and you actually do something with it until 2009, and then of course, it's been very slow. They still have the law. It's called the RTAA now and it's connected to something, and this is why I say, they are quite ahead of their time. The law is actually connected to a rule set. So, we actually have a methodology, which is concrete. It's got 106 criteria and they, it is part of the, you know, whereas which Wikag, doesn't have that, Wikag, I mean you have got the check points the access criteria etc, but it's not the same as having a very rigorous set of criteria. So, France is very ahead. At the same time in European countries , last year, well this year actually there was of course the Summary of Accessibility and I think France along with Ireland were the two countries that didn't respond. You know, so you've all this data. It might be Portugal sorry; I don't want to accuse anyone wrongly. There is background noise from somewhere, I don't know where that's coming from.

NEIL: 6:05

It might have been me.

JOHN: 6:08

But anyway, France was one of the countries that didn't send in any statistics. So, at the same time ahead of itself and way behind the crowd. What to say. But it's an interesting situation and in terms of commercially, it's really been the domain in France of small companies. So, there is about ten medium size businesses who are doing a lot of accessibility work here.

DEBRA: 6:36

John, I find it interesting what you were saying about you know France and you know how they were doing it, as opposed to with the standards, the Wikag standards. Another thing that France did, I actually talked about it in my second book, so I just was very impressed that they did that, and I wanted to bring that up. This is about ten maybe more years ago. But France had put out, like many countries, they had said we expect you to hire people with disabilities and so they have a quota. And what was happening and if you didn't meet your goals, what you did was you had to pay money into a fund that benefited people with disabilities and there are other countries that have done that but you all had a very, I should say France, I won't give you France John, but France had a sorted of sophisticated thing, but most of the businesses were not meeting the goals. So, they were just paying the fines. They are just paying it. And then France, somebody in the government got really smart and said maybe, they would actually do this if we taught them how to do it. So, they started providing training and support to the businesses and now the number of businesses hiring people with disabilities in France is very high. So, I thought that was a really good thing France did. And I don't know because I haven't done my homework if whether or not that has continued to be a best practice. But I did point it out as a best practice because you actually do need to teach employers how to do this, at some point. I mean we can't just assume everybody knows what is going on. So, I also think that France has shown leadership, but as you said, it seems sometimes inconsistent. Like I can talk in the US, but okay.

JOHN: 8:28

Well that's... it's still in existence and most of the work I've been doing for the last 12 years has been based on that because not only was there the fine and then the decision well, we could include training, there was also a mechanism set up, okay you don't actually have to pay the fine, as long as you use the money internally for remediation of and a lot of that was training also but certainly it was also a lot of means on accessibility as they say or making things accessible. So, for example, a lot of the work I did with Erbe Log, in about 2008, '09, '10 was with France Telecom where they had blind operators on the what do you call them Plateau, in the call centres and you know, we were working on Jaw script for their, they had a lot of old applications, you know, this was a sort of, I think telephoning is that area where the past met the future in around 2005 and 2010. And they had these old roboteer, these little systems and the applications that were running these things were really clunky, they weren't Web apps, in a lot of them and we had to do a lot of Jaws scripting and that was funded by this 6%, the company was meant to have 6% employees with an official disability and if they were shy of that number they had to pay into a fund and then it was decided well, you can pay into your own fund as long as the money gets spent on remediation.

DEBRA: 10:16

Which was smart. That must have been very good for the accessibility field and France.

JOHN: 10:22

Well, it's still, like I said it was very much dominated by a few small enterprises and it was always a field that was always about to take off, you know.

DEBRA: 10:35

Oh, I know, I'll starve to death doing this work. Yeah, I agree. People just don't want to pay for social good but I'm hoping that's changing now. Yeah, unfortunately that's been an issue.

JOHN: 10:49

My point of view, that's also, all along the line has been that you know, when you're talking about an enterprise, especially if it's large, you know accessibility, it's kind of a metric of health. So, if your company is healthy, then it's sort of tools and websites and whatever else it does will be accessible, simply because it's a sign that you've had that ability, you know, you have had that kind of situation where you can actually address these things and I think that argument does help also to sell it because you say look, if your organisation was healthy it would be pretty much 100% accessible. Therefore, if you make it 100% accessible, you'll probably make it healthy. There's a little bit of a logical flaw there, but you know.

DEBRA: 11:43

But it's a fascinating statement. I've never heard anybody say this. But you're right, it is a symbol of health for these employers, it is. I know employers always want to be the employer of choice. Well, if you're healthy and you're making sure that you're including diverse workforce that's a very powerful thing.

JOHN: 12:03

Yeah, including and also spreading the message by acting, you know.

DEBRA: 12:09

And telling us what you're doing. Please don't make us guess, we will guess wrong. And we might guess in a way that's not advantageous to your brand. So, I think that's a quote.'Accessibility is a symbol of health.' So, that's a retweet able thing.

JOHN: 12:25

Well, it's not new in the sense that they have always said in the sense that you can always see the essence of a society can be seen in how the society treats people with disabilities.

DEBRA: 12:37

I agree, the most vulnerable. So John, what did you join ATOS? ATOS is a French company and I mean I know; we all want to work with Neil, but you know it seems like it was a pretty big shift for you.

NEIL: 12:55

Can I just say, careful what you wish for.

JOHN: 13:00

You know, I was approached, it was about a year ago, actually over a year ago, it took a while. It was time for me to change. I had been in the same people for about, at that point, 18 years . You know, so it was a good moment. Also, interesting for my job, because Erbe Log and they are still around and are a very strong company obviously. They were based in Lille, and I was in Paris, and I was doing a lot of the work for clients in Paris, and they are a great bunch of excellent clients actually. So, you know it wasn't an easy decision to make, especially having to talked to Neil a couple of times and I realised what a wild guy he was. I am not sure I could handle him.

DEBRA: 13:54

So true.

JOHN: 13:56

Actually, you know, like I was saying, there is something in accessibility which goes beyond obviously, it's of social benefit to a large number of people and that's already a positive. But I see it really as something that can have much greater impact in organisations and between organisations and in particular, I was very interested in this international team that Neil has been building and is still building and it's really quite really wonderful, you know, we have almost got used to it now but it is quite amazing to be on these international calls every week and with a team which is spreading from India to Cork and soon across the Atlantic to the USA, if I gather.

DEBRA: 14:48

I know, I keep applying and he won't accept my resume, it's so weird.

NEIL: 14:55

I can't think why. I think very much like having that international team and the perspectives that everyone brings, it's, there is some real diversity within the team as well so, and diversity of thought and attitudes and approaches, so that gives us a richness which I really like. Going back to France being ahead you know, I was just thinking about Minitel, I remember French had a sort of precursor to the internet. These little boxes where you could order you know; you could do lots of the sort of shopping and order tickets and do a lot of functions really early on.

JOHN: 15:50

Let me tell you, it was just shutting down as I arrived. So, I don't have any personal memories if Minitel.

NEIL: 15:56

I remember growing up and spending a summer or on a farm in Vonday and they had this little box in the corner, and it was like this curious thing, and they were able to order all of these things up in Vonday so, yeah, it was interesting. There's not a lot in Vonday. So, yeah, it was interesting, France does a lot of innovative stuff as an organisation. It was like quantum computing and so on. And I think that part of the interest, I think that attracts people to large organisations whether it be ours or you know others like us is that opportunity to sort of the diversity of things that go on. So, it's not like you're doing one thing all day long. You know, there is lots of different aspects and elements to the role.

JOHN: 16:56

Sometimes I miss doing one thing all day long actually.

NEIL: 17:02

I agree.

JOHN: 17:04

The great challenge for me and this is still the case, is it's such a big organisation and so, it's really the case where it's not just about selling accessibility or preaching accessibility to the outside, you have got to do it in both direction and I think that double directionality is quite interesting because I think that's a sort of essential, you know it's an essential human quality also. You have got to introspect, and you've also got to express, and you can't do a lot of either one at the expense of the other, you've got to always be balanced there. And I think there is a kind of interesting macrocosm available in ATOS right now.

DEBRA: 17:52

I agree, and I would go back to Neil, I'm sorry, I'm going to shift it again because I want to go back to that international team and the reason why I want to go back to that is because countries are different from each other. I know that's a new concept, but countries are different from each other and so, what I see is often accessibility professionals and disability inclusion professionals all want to do it in their country. This is how we do it in the States. You all need to behave and do it just like we do but I mean the reality is if you don't have an international team addressing these global issues, you're missing major nuances and cultural nuances. And so, I find it interesting that so many of the big multinational brands only have, if they have accessibility at all, they have a tiny little pocket of mainly westerners. So, I think we are, that's one of the reasons why I've been fascinated, watching Neil and what you're all doing because Neil is not just going and getting people that have accessibility experience, he's actually getting people that have strategy experience. I mean, you understand the bigger concept of all of these moving parts and everything that is involved with that. Like what we were saying talking about accessibility, but we can't talk about that without talking about disability inclusion employment, right? So, I agree, France is ahead in some ways and I think that's very interesting, but at the same time it feels to me like brands need to look at what ATOS is doing, Neil what you're all doing, sorry to compliment you all, I'll insult you in a few minutes, but the reality is that we cannot just decide that there is one size that fits all. And I feel like we are doing that, and, in the States, we are suing the brands and I'm glad we need to sue. If you're not going to include us, at this point when we're 33/34 years in the Americans with Disability Act, we are going to sue you. But does that create change? Does that really create change. So I'm glad that John that you are in the French community figuring this out and working with the accessibility people and now you've joined this brand and I don't know if you're just looking at France because it appears that Neil is putting people in sections, like Spanish and I don't know but are you focused on Europe? But I'm just fascinated with that part because that is what we are not doing. It isn't a one size fits all. Even though we got to follow the standards and all that stuff I'll be quiet and let you.

JOHN: 20:40

Well, it's actually, I mean, like we have the ADA in the States and then of course, in France it was 1975 where they have a law against discrimination which was fascinating and as a sort of starting point for this evolution you know and like I said with 2005, 2019, the law changes, the situation in France for a group like ATOS because ATOS is obviously via Neil and a few of the colleagues, Jim I believe and others in the UK have been working on accessibility for many years, over ten years, almost 20 from what I gather. In France, ATOS France, is sort of really just beginning to work on this subject and it's a delicate situation because in France, like I said, there is the market is full of small to medium size businesses who have been doing it for 20 years. So, they are very, very vary of big groups coming in and whatever, you know, deciding to suddenly get active on it. I think it's an interesting situation in that sense which you know, it's a challenge also because accessibility at the end of the day, is more about cooperation than competition. So, for example I am still working, I just had, not an interview, but a sort of business call yesterday with not a former colleague, but someone from another company who I used to work with, who Neil already works with a bit, you know working on different projects together. This is something which I think is very important in France, is the fraternity as they say or sorority, which it probably should be in this day and age. And along with that is a very interesting militancy as you all know, France is big on strikes. France is big on popular political expression, which I really love, and I think that's great and especially in the community, the accessibility community. So, one of the previous clients I had in my last job, we were working on, it was a mobile app for a bank and you know, there was an IOS, there was an IOS update which broke the login for people who were using screen readers and the sort of, the Twitter network, the blogs, they just went crazy. You guys didn't prepare for this. You don't know how to do anything. You're letting us down. It's very Polemic and it's very strong. So, it's kind of an interesting place to be, I find.

NEIL: 23:52

So, I do agree that often there is a large organisation, small organisation's fear that we are going to come along and eat their lunch and at the same time, you know and we wish to you know grow our capacity and you know do business in accessibility but I think there is enough room in accessibility for small consultancies and large organisations because actually some of the things that we are doing are addressing different needs. And I also think that it's really desirable and it's part of our sort of ethos to collaborate right up to the line of competition. You know, the same in the UK, there are people that we work within in certain concepts and we compete with in others and actually I think that's largely in the IT industry but to a certain extent absolutely exemplified by accessibility because if you're in this for a long time it means that you bought into the culture of wanting to include people and therefore, you know that means that you're going to maybe want to collaborate with people because we are stronger doing this together. We can move the needle forward further by collaborating wherever we can rather than competing. So, you know, we participate in things like the IAAP with people that we compete with in other areas and we sponsor sort of you know exhibitions and I've lost the word, there's my ADHD kicking in, webinars and stuff like that, you know, you possibly wouldn't find Apple sponsoring Microsoft Podcasts or an event in the same way that we do collaborate in accessibility. So, I think that there is that need for that fraternity, that sorority or whatever and I wouldn't want to undermine that in anyway. But I fully understand that small organisations, quite reasonably just look at larger ones and say, you're just going to roll us over and I think there is some responsibility on the part of the larger organisations to respect the work that these organisations are doing and to collaborate as far as we can.

DEBRA: 26:41

Yes, which is a great, great point and I am a small organisation. So, yes, I totally agree. But at the same time I'm hearing, often from the multinationals that they are nervous about working with the small players because they find and I will be honest most of these comments have been from the States, so they find that what I'm hearing is that you know, they don't think always the small providers understand the enormous, the enormity of what a large multinational corporation has to go through, just the sheer volume. I remember years ago when I had tech access, we were working with Circuit City which people might maybe remember and they had a million pages and I remember thinking a million, wow, I guess that's nothing these days, I guess that's just nothing these days. How many pages does Amazon have on the internet. So just the sheer volume of it all. But I agree 100% with what Neil was saying and what you're saying as well John, we don't need to roll over because we do have a place to play, and we do have leadership. But I do worry sometimes that some of the smaller players they don't understand the complexity, the bureaucracy even of what is going on in these large multinational corporations and now John, the Valuable 500 and you know Neil is sitting on the board, we love what they are doing but they are supposed to get 500 corporations truly including us, accessibility, disability inclusion can't do it alone, but as people look at our community and do try, the brands try to include us, I think there is a lot of moving parts that have to be considered. Let me let you talk, John.

JOHN: 28:43

I totally agree with you, Debra and for me it's one of the fascinating things about this field, well any field. I mean the field coming from a small business and going into the corporate thing and I did this before ATOS. I used to, my clients, I was working for a small company in France, but the clients were big. And I think it's a very human thing because you know, whatever you study, whatever you do, you know, you have a certain concept of how long it takes for something to happen. And so, for example, what I need to do is change a few titles on this web page. It was going to take me, it would take me five minutes if I could do it myself, if I had to ask my colleague to do it maybe it would take an hour and then I'd have to work with him and then what you don't realise is that in the context of a large corporation, we night be talking about five days or five weeks or five months because things need to be validated and this and that or you don't even know who the right person is to talk to. That's another big difference and another big thing in a company such as this one where you know you get a new kind of schooling in that, you know, some things take a long time and actually it's not always for bad reasons, there is sometimes bureaucracy, this is pointless, waste of time inefficiency. Sometimes it's for good reasons. I mean know, take a company like Airbus or whatever, you don't want to go changing designs just like that. So, that for me is something that, it's like a continuous interest and it's something that I think a lot of people who are working in the small enterprises get to understand when they are working with clients, you know who, they may take two weeks to respond to an email whereas in the SME zone, you know everything is quite quick. And then again also there are times when things are quick and urgent in ATOS, and today for example, we are working on a very big project that was just announced this morning and has to be done by this evening. So, I am looking forward to attacking that very soon. But, yeah this for me, it's something interesting about the, you know, it's like again, it's like a human condition thing, where it's like the attention that you've to put inside and outside, is also this thing some things take a long time. You can have very ambitious ideas about how quickly you're going to do X or Y and then in the context of actually getting it done, definition of done, Neil, definition of done you've often mentioned it's interesting to think, how long will it really take you to write this paper about the e learning company you're working with. It's going to take me two days, you know. Well actually it took me two weeks, probably two months, if I come to think of it.

NEIL: 31:51

Yeah, I think that some of the moving parts and the complexity of the moving parts and the enormity of the organisation adds to that sort of inertia but at the same time, one of the reasons that keeps me really engaged in wanting to work in large organisations is that, like an oil tanker that has inertia, but if you consider the accessibility people to be the tug boots, you know, it's these little things that move, start moving this enormous thing with a great deal of inertia but once that movement starts it becomes inexorable and you can't stop it. So, I think it's that, yes, you need some patience to work in these large and complex and frustrating organisations. But you can have some significant impact at scale, and I think it's the scale that excites me and keeps me engaged when you're sort of twiddling your thumbs and come on, come on, this should only be three minutes.

JOHN: 33:01

It's definitely necessary that organisations to get on board for the world to change. I think without companies ATOS size getting on board with this field the big change won't happen. So, it's totally necessary.

NEIL: 33:15

Excellent. We've reached the end of our time so thank you so much, John. I also need to thank My Clear Text for helping keep us captioned and remind people if they want to keep us on air, we have a Go Fund Me and we also have a Patreon, so, check it out. And we really look forward to you joining us on Twitter. Thank you, very much.

JOHN: 33:38

Thank you Neil. Thank you, Debra. Page| 2