AXSChat Podcast with Oksana Chuchunkova, advocate for employment for people with disabilities, accessibility and blindness awareness

Oksana Chuchunkova is an advocate for employment for people with disabilities, accessibility and blindness awareness. She has served asthe had of the PR department of the business center for blind and visually impaired persons and an employment program coordinator at DPO Perspektiva in Moscow. She’s the accessibility expert at one of the largest Banks in the country. Together with a team, she helps to adapt online and offline banking services for visually impaired clients as well as for clients with different disabilities.

Transcript

0:01

AXSCHAT Oksana Chuchunkova

NEIL: 0:02

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted that we are joined today by Oksana Chuchunkova, who works for a global bank and has been also working alongside Debra Rue as part of Billion Strong and has been engaged with our friends at Zero Project. So, Oksana, it's great to have you with us. I'd love to hear about the work that you're doing, from our point of view, at Axschat, it's really important that we feature the work and the voices of people around the globe. So, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be working in the field of accessibility?

OKSANA: 0:43

Hello everyone. Neil, thank you for your invitation and it's a big honour for me to be here. Actually, to be short, actually I'm working for the bank right now and I started to work as the Accessibility Expert. So, I came to the bank and we started to build the accessibility from the very, very beginning at the bank because they had nothing connected to the accessibility. But they had a really ambitious goal to take the first play in a special competition between banks but is made by created and launched by the usability lab, this is the organisation and it's called the comfort and accessibility of mobile apps and internet banks. So, to make a long story short. We got the second place, but not the first, but anyway it was a big, big work of me and my colleagues. We worked on the mobile application for IS and Android and also we worked for the internet bank, we were testing making some analytics. We taught actually developers and all the personnel at the bank how to make the accessibility. We told them about screen readers. We told them how it all functions and also, we made the interview and we proved to the top management that we shouldn't create a special website for persons with vision impairment because persons with vision impairment could use the same website as others. There was a big work for offline purposes for offices, for banking services. But, now actually the process is done, so, for instance, now I am working for training and development department and I am one of the responsibility persons for teaching designers using actually how to make products accessible because, the first step to the accessibility is in design and talking about my job, actually my career path, I've been working for the disability employment organisation as the employment coordinator and, this organisation was founded by the American citizen and we communicated a lot with American, with international partners and actually, I worked with the accessibility there as well. Because, I tested some websites for instance like on the side of the business advisory board on disability. The side of the Film Festival that runs every two years. So, it was a work actually related to the accessibility. But now, I am mostly immersed in the accessibility issue.

ANTONIO: 4:13

So, business in your experience, I would like to know from you, what you believe to be, the main things, when you are engaging with senior executives; what do you believe people need to do have them engaged on the topics of accessibility. What works and what doesn't work?

OKSANA: 4:43

Pressure doesn't work for sure. If you just come to the company and you just say we want to do the accessibility. They'll say it costs money because the accessibility costs money because person and resources but developers and designers, don't have enough resources, don't you agree with that? The second thing that doesn't work is when the process, actually to convince top managers, if you come and say, blind clients use the product and we should do that for them. It doesn't work. We should provide analytics. We should provide numbers. Numbers and facts and figures, this is all. And, talking about what works and maybe it could be a surprise or something that you couldn't expect but in my opinion and in my practice, if top manager connected somehow the persons with disabilities, for instance, if he knew someone before or if she saw someone who is using like, walks with the white cane. For instance, I'll tell you a story. Our top manager, actually his mother worked on a special factory for blind persons and he communicated with blind persons when he was a child. So, it had the kind of print in his soul. But sure, it's lyrics but the practical part is that the Central Bank made a regulation that every bank should have products that are accessible. Otherwise, banks will get penalties and all that stuff. Okay. Did they actually was I clear, if not just tell me and I'll clarify.

NEIL: 6:55

So, I think it's interesting to see someone that's sort of business cultural differences around sort of the desire for, you know the facts and figures. I think that sometimes that process works, you know, when you can provide demographic information and profitability information but a lot of the time the lack of data is you know, we get into a chicken and egg cycle where we don't have data about users and you can't use the product and therefore you can't validate the fact that you would make more money by doing the accessibility. So, everybody has some kind of connection to people with disabilities in some aspect of their lives whether that be parents, cousins, their neighbour. How do you, in the conversations, dig into uncovering what it is that makes that connection to the individual that you're trying to persuade?

OKSANA: 8:12

Well, it doesn't work with anyone. Actually, not everyone has a connection with persons with disabilities. I was talking about our top manager. But I'll tell you one thing. For instance, our designers are developers, they became more attendance to persons with disability needs. One we just started working for the bank we made the kind of interactive lecture. We didn't want to make a lecture about persons with disabilities, about us, like, I'll tell you we have a team and there are three of us in the team. Actually, now we work a bit separately, I'm working mostly on developing and learning and training and my colleagues work on technical issues like attempting the like, the show and when the product is going to be released or not and now, what is very important, that if the product doesn't have the accessibility, it cannot go to release. So, because we have the kind of DOR, definition of readiness and the accessibility is actually legally declared in this document. So, the product with feature cannot be released without the accessibility. So, when we started working, we had an assignment to make a lecture about ourselves how we live, what we do and how we spend our time, how we work, with our screen readers, etc. etc. And we decided not to make it boring. We decided to make an interactive and funny lecture. Like stand-up actors the kind of, because we talked the computers, how we use it before and how we use it now and then we gave colleagues links to our Facebook accounts and Instagram accounts and colleagues subscribed. So, they started to learn from us, some of the colleagues, not everyone, but some of them. And then we made a meet up series, where we told about screen reader using and actually you know, we spent, we did a lot of work engaging with colleagues and implementing this culture in the bank. So, for instance, our testers, our test products, using screen readers. If they have some problems they come to us from me or to my colleagues and we help them with screen reader settings and where to go, how to do, where to move etc, etc. So, we, I would say, we dig it one by one, little by little but it works and now, I can be proud that we are, one of the best companies here in the country, honestly.

ANTONIO: 11:23

So, did that approach help it with developers and other people in the organisation wanting to learn more about accessibility and I would presume, yes. So, if I'm presuming yes. What have you done after to meet their expectations of learning?

OKSANA: 11:47

We continued teaching, as I mentioned before, we started a course for designers. It consists of two parts. It's called Inclusion in Design, part one and part two. And it's a theoretical part and a practical part. So, there is a lecture and the designer is talking about the accessibility from designer's point of view because she has a presentation in front of her eyes and she says, okay, look at the example on the right. It's a good example and look to the example at the left. It's a bad example. And then, you know, for instance I have my part of lecture. I tell about accessibility principles, like you know, that POUR like perceivable, operable and understandable etc. And, I tell about the inclusive design in general because designers would be able, we give the main idea that if they make the product accessible for blind persons as the most vulnerable category, the product, mainly would be accessible for others as well. For all those people who have some problems with their sight. For persons with mental health as well. If they, for instance use easy to read and all that stuff. So, we teach and teach and teach and we are here. We always say we are here, just come to us. Ask us. Don't be shy. Don't be scared because otherwise unfortunately you will have to fix bugs and it could be much more easier to get something, you know to get the knowledge at the start from the start, but not when the product is going to be released and etc, etc.

ANTONIO: 13:57

Do you think that the organisation also sees here an opportunity for sales and marketing and engage with grow, in terms of custom base?

OKSANA: 14:09

Absolutely, if you are talking about the client's amount. I will tell you that more blind or more visually impaired persons, started to use our bank application because as you know, it's possible to see how many enters, how many persons entered, you know logged on into the application because, it's possible with, android users, but not unfortunately with internet bank users but anyway we see the increase and it means that we are on the you know, we are on our way and top management knows how we work and what we do and I'll tell you a simple thing, if there wouldn't be the increasing of amount of clients, we would be fired I think or this problem could be cut off because the situation is hard and the first thing that is going to cut off is social part like corporate social responsibility. But we are not a part of corporate social responsibility. Although people say we should do that because of a social, no way it's not a charity. It's business.

NEIL: 15:43

I agree, it's definitely business and it definitely shouldn't be thought of charitable. I was interested in the fact that you have these mandatory gated parts of your processes, which I think is fantastic because they are needed. When you are working with developers, when you're saying come to us or whatever, do you also have accessibility classified in your bug tracking tools?

OKSANA: 16:16

Actually, I didn't quite understand, what you're talking about but I'll try to explain.

NEIL: 16:24

Sorry, let me explains a bit first. So, you have already designed what the accessibility criteria should be for the product. If they don't meet that criteria or if people report an accessibility issue, do they get logged in bug tracking tools like GIRA or something.

OKSANA: 16:48

Yes, that's what I was going to say, yes. So, I got it right. We have actually we use GIRA. And maybe there will be another tool. But I'm not sure when it's going to happen etc. etc. But anyway, we had four classes of bugs. Like, blocker, medium, high and low, like that. Blocker is blocker. You know, high and we have the definition what is high and what is medium and what is low and actually when we tested, when we made full testing, full testing of the feature or the application, itself like smoke testing or regress testing, we for instance, we are right okay there is no role for this button. This bug is the kind of medium because actually the person could know what it is. Like, if it's you like open the account or something like that. If there is, if the screen reader doesn't say button, so, the person would tap twice anyway but it's not comfortable. It's not correct because every element should have its own role and should be labelled. And so, we are always actually we class classified you know, bugs, and for sometimes developers say, okay, we have too much work to do. Maybe we could fix it in another sprint or you know, in two weeks or whatever. We say no, excuse me. This is like a high priority bug. So, please, please, please just find the time and please make it work as soon as possible. And I that know now, as I've said I'm mostly teaching and training and I'm mostly working. I'm not working in technical part right now but sometimes it's quite hard to push colleagues sometimes because developers are different. They have different personalities. They have different actually, yes, they do know that they should fix the accessibility but sometimes they want to you know, postpone if possible. But, my colleagues try to push them hard and actually it works. My point is that not every person could be a pushy person. I'm not that one.

NEIL: 19:46

No. Fair enough. I think that we all want accessibility not to stay in the backlog and we don't always want to be the bad cop always coming in saying you have broken this. Do this. And I think that that there is a chap called John Folio, who has been in the accessibility for a very long time, who says he wants to be the fireman and not the cop because he wants to be rescuing, you know the developer cats and putting out fires and actually he went further with the analogy because actually most of the time, the firemen aren't using their ladders to rescue cats from trees or pick people out of buildings they are doing preventative work.

OKSANA: 20:42

Absolutely.

NEIL: 20:44

So, they are teaching people how not to cause problems in the future and I think that's a really --

OKSANA: 20:51

This is what I'm doing right now, actually teaching designers how to not cause problems in the future but I would prefer to be the one that admires the people for doing the things.

NEIL: 21:07

Yes. Absolutely. So, I think that finding balance and we had Charlie Triplett on the other day who was doing some really interesting work. He'd written a serious of definitions for developers. So, what they could expect because often you know, I look at some of the specs that are written for products and sprints and so on. And the specs are pretty vague and so, and then when you put in the requirement for accessibility it just must conform with standard X or Y. And what Charlie had recognised was that he needed to be a lot more prescriptive about how a particular should behave. What the expected behaviour? What would you expect to see from a button or a switch or a, you know, a date input etc. So, that the developers weren't having to second guess or take the time to do the research because it's presented to them clearly in the requirements and I think that again, it's a case of shifting left in the process, not only does it save time but it sets the expectations so that you, you don't end up upsetting people unnecessarily because I think that when you first start with accessibility, you don't make a lot of friends because it's always too late in the process. You're always the person that's going in there saying, this is broken that's broken. You can't do this and you can't do that. I'm not allowing you to Go Live and everybody hates you. So, shifting left, I mean, is good for everyone. It's good for us as accessibility people because we become less you know antagonistic and it's good for businesses because it's cheaper and it's good for developers because they understand what's required of them earlier. Could we go further.

OKSANA: 23:32

I'll tell you how it was in our bank.

NEIL: 23:34

Yes?

OKSANA: 23:35

We had a lot of resources. So, there was a lot of resources given to us. There were, the whole team of developers that worked for instance, we had a problem, I remember, you know when you opened banking app, typically you see tabs you know, like four or five tabs that are you know on the downside when you look at your mobile phone but these tabs were not stopped. They were like somewhere in the ear and it was hard for blind screen reader user to catch them, to find like main tab or history tab and then the whole team of developers started to think how to make it. How to stamp them out and then when it started we would start raising our hands to say, yeah, it's victory. Well, it was the first part of the victory, we had a lot of other things to do. Unfortunately, now, the problem with resources. We have problems with resources, there is not too many developers for the platform because every team has resources, have developers, but if you have some general issues, for instance, about IOS, it's hard to find developers, but anyway, there is a process, there are guidelines. We made, actually we created millions of guidelines. Millions of pages, I would say, several pages of guidelines and now my colleagues are editing guidelines again because everything is changing and sometimes there is a miscommunication, there is a misunderstanding, sometimes. But anyway, it's moving the process is moving and my idea is very important and I always say, during every conference, whenever I have a chance to present somewhere at the conference, at the like at the Podcast or whatever, each company has to actually has to, actually has to have persons with disabilities as staff, outsourcing doesn't work, because, persons are inside, you know, they could come to my Telegram. They could send me an email. They could call me on the phone at least and they could ask us if everything you know works fine or not fine with every little question they could, you know, every little question they could address us. And we have a big chat. It's called accessibility and everyone could send a message you know, could text there and ask a question. So, the communication is developed well enough. But imagine if there is an outsourcing. So, what we have, persons made testing, persons gave report. They made something, you know, they fixed some bugs or whatever. But then for instance the update and what. So, everything is broken again or at least not everything is fixed. So, this is very important.

NEIL: 26:57

Yes. Go on, Antonio.

ANTONIO: 27:01

Oksana, following that, how do you believe we can bring more people to the profession? How can we have more people working accessibility, or creating for them to change careers or learn more?

OKSANA: 27:16

It's a very, very interesting question. Thank you for that because, I had a chance to answer this question because a lot of people are interested. I'll tell you and my, actually I am absolutely sincere with you here, there is nothing that I leave behind and I'll tell you about difficulties as well. There are problems surely. Well, I'll tell you about myself and then because I started being a person testing the accessibility and writing reports. But I am not that technically, so it's the kind of routine work. So, every work is routine but this work needs to you know, you always you should have to be technically educated surely and you have to sit down to push buttons and to write like everything what you see and what you need to fix, what they need to fix and I was making a good rating but then I felt that it's hard for me to work in accessibility field to be a technician for a long, long time because I'm a person who likes writing, likes presenting, who could be structured, who could make plans editing guidelines and all that stuff. But anyway, persons who want to be the accessibility, actually the accessibility engineers or accessibility testers, they should have a kind of set of knowledge. Such as surely they should be proficient computer users, screen reader users, advanced users, not just beginners. They should have a skill to analyse, to analyse everything that is going on. They should be ready to dig in that topic and surely, if that person lives not in English speaking country, English should be a language that persons should learn. It's very important because other systems work in English. There are lots of terms and all that stuff. And well, I wanted to add something else. I lost my thread. Okay.

NEIL: 29:57

So, yes.

OKSANA: 30:00

I answered your question.

NEIL: 30:01

Talking about losing your thread, as someone with ADHD, I lose my thread all the time, so don't worry. We are pretty much at the end of our half hour. I know that you do a lot more. You have been engaged with Zero Project and so on and you know, and long may that continue. I think that the sort of international perspectives are super important. It's been great hearing about the work that you do. I'm sure that people will enjoy engaging with you on Tuesday on Twitter. So, really thank you Oksana, it's been a real pleasure having you today work.

OKSANA: 30:41

Thank you so much and I just wanted to add that I participated in a Zero Project Conference in 2022. Unfortunately, it was online. I couldn't go there because of some restrictions regarding the pandemic. But, I was telling about our work here at the bank for the whole world with Scotia bank and with some other, I think with ING bank. Yes, we were panellists and it was a good experience. And thank you so much. And I hope we'll be able to continue. And well, let's build the accessible world together.

NEIL: 31:24

Thank you.

OKSANA: 31:26

Bye, bye.

NEIL: 31:27

Bye, bye.