From Design to Code: Achieving True Inclusion

Ever wondered how to make your digital products truly inclusive? Join us on AXSChat as we feature Erik Kroes, an independent accessibility consultant with a compelling transition from photography and industrial design to spearheading accessibility initiatives at IKEA and ING. Erik brings his love for structure and efficiency to the forefront, sharing invaluable insights on overcoming the hurdles of embedding accessibility into large, complex organizations. From technical coding reviews to design considerations like dark mode, Erik's strategic thinking and practical solutions are not to be missed.

We also dig deep into the often-overlooked intricacies of QR code accessibility and the broader challenge of achieving true inclusiveness across vast corporate landscapes. Erik emphasizes the need for knowledgeable consultants from the get-go to avoid legal pitfalls and ensure substantive progress. We shed light on the critical importance of effective internal and external communication, advocating for a focused approach to accessibility criteria. By prioritizing quality over quantity, organizations can foster a genuinely inclusive culture. Tune in to learn how a strategic, thoughtful approach to accessibility can transform your business.

Chapters

• 0:01 Accessibility Consulting in Private Sector
• 12:08 QR Code Accessibility Considerations
• 19:46 Navigating Accessibility Communication Challenges

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:01

Hello and welcome to AXSChat. I'm delighted that we're joined today by Erik Kroes, who I last caught up with when we were at the IAAP conference in Paris this spring. Erik, it's great to have you with us, so tell us a little bit about your background and your work as an independent accessibility consultant.

Erik Kroes: 0:31

Yeah, I always question where I need to start with that because I think, like most people, in accessibility. I didn't start in accessibility, which I like because it gives a diversity to all the voices that we have and all the opinions that we have. My background is actually in photography, and before that in industrial design even, but somewhere along the road I ended up at ING, which is, at least in the Netherlands, quite a large bank. I used to work there on the accessibility team.

Erik Kroes: 1:01

I noticed that there were some issues with the design system that people pointed out. Quite often they said, hey, what we make is really good, but there are some issues with the design system and could you do something about that? So I dove into the world of design systems there and became a product owner, being the missing link sometimes between design and engineering and management. I enjoyed that a lot and I applied that same experience at several companies and organizations. So from ING I went to IKEA, but I've also worked at Nomensa, an agency in the UK, and these days I'm a freelance consultant working for several large companies and doing things with design systems, doing consulting more on the technical side but also strategy vision side. I just like being in the middle of it all and there's so much to be in the middle of, so, yeah, lots of fun.

Neil Milliken: 1:58

Excellent, and before we came on air, you were saying that you particularly like working with private sector organizations, and we often think of accessibility as being done a lot by the public sector and governments and so on. What is it about private sector that interests you particularly, that wants you to get your sleeves rolled up and dive right in?

Erik Kroes: 2:27

I like to see myself as a practical person, so I like to see things moving along, and my image of public organizations is that often things don't move as quickly as I would like them to. Also, I really appreciate structure and, in theory, a lot of organizations that are private have their stuff in order, and if they don't, at least they have the wish to be in order and I can help them out with that. So that's what I try to do, yeah.

Neil Milliken: 2:58

Debra, it looks like you had a question.

Debra Ruh: 3:01

Well, first of all, welcome to the program. We love meeting accessibility consultants from different parts of the world, so I think, really I'm glad that we still have a lot of people coming into the industry and it's the thing that we're working with these large, gigantic corporations like IKEA you mentioned. You also mentioned ING. Well, ING, I know, has a very big presence here in the United States. So does IKEA, so those are global companies.

Debra Ruh: 3:36

But I think that what a lot of people that want to work with these gigantic brands don't understand is truly the complexity of these organizations. I know you know Neil's running this gigantic program for Atos, but all of the moving parts make it so daunting. It really really does, because I've worked with those gigantic brands and so I was thinking, as you were talking about it, why, why would you want to go in there? Because we all sometimes think, oh look, we have 500 corporations that joined the Valuable 500. Oh good, Let me just send a little note to their CEO and tell them well, it doesn't really work that way. These are complex, complex and, like you said, they're all in order, yeah, okay, or they want to be in order, but why take on something so gigantic and daunting? Eric.

Erik Kroes: 4:32

Yeah, why should I? It's not the smartest thing? Maybe is it, I know.

Debra Ruh: 4:38

We've all done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What should you?

Erik Kroes: 4:41

I think I have this natural tendency to not just go the easy path, so I think that's where it starts. But I like structure. I guess that's something that I really value and if it's not there, I help build it. So, when it comes to design systems, I really like that because it's such a logical way to tackle accessibility, so I think that really helps it sometimes. So I think that really helps it sometimes.

Erik Kroes: 5:09

I also think there's this eternal challenge always in accessibility, that you never have the people that you want to do the thing that you want to do. So there's always less capacity than you want and you have to be strategic about things. And I like that challenge and you get to learn about organizations that way that you think, hey, this is the most effective way to tackle accessibility. Like, let's nab it at this point, or let's see this sort of funnel where everything goes to. Maybe we can add value there. I like that.

Erik Kroes: 5:35

I like the challenge of being as efficient as possible, but also the practical side of it, and I also like the broadness of it all, because I can sit with an engineer and say, hey, let's look at your code and see what we can improve. Um, only this week I I've sat with somebody and went through an html validator to see, hey, what kind of html comes out of this website and and what can we do about it, how can we improve it, um, but I've also talked this week with somebody about dark mode and how does that apply to accessibility and what's the value of that? And at the same time I can be talking roadmaps and I like that whole combination of knowing all those things and being part of all those things and being able to add value in all those fields. Yeah, it sparks joy. I guess that's the nice way to say it, right.

Neil Milliken: 6:27

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's. It sparks joy. I guess that's the the nice way to say it. Right, yeah, absolutely I. I love the, uh, the variety that we have in the work that we do, like I can go from technical meetings to, you know, business planning to um design and conceptualization.

Erik Kroes: 6:43

That you know you don't get bored working in accessibility, frustrated maybe but not yeah, and at the same time, I sometimes like the abstraction as well. Um, not just thinking about compliance and following WCAG, but um, just a few weeks ago, I was writing about qr codes, like how to shape, shape QR codes in the best way that people with disabilities can use them as well. I couldn't find a lot about it, like in official guidelines or ruling or anything, but just, you know, abstracting it and thinking about it on another level. I do think I was able to say some valuable stuff about it and I like that, and I think that's the practical side of things.

Antonio Santos: 7:28

So, Erik, you mentioned that you work as an independent consultant. You have worked for companies who move in different markets and different areas. The European Accessibility Act is around the corner. From the engagement that you are having, what are your thoughts? Are companies aware that the Accessibility Act is coming, or do they say oh it's coming, we have time, or maybe this is not for us? How do you see the developments at the moment?

Erik Kroes: 8:08

I always find it tough to answer those kind of questions because I'm only one person, so it's only my experience that I can talk about. But I do try to get as much impressions of other people as well and how they are experiencing things right now. For example, I'm also connected to the Dutch accessibility meetup, so I always like hearing what's happening and what's going on in the field and I do get the impression that this is a lively topic and I do hear people saying, hey, there's not a lot of capacity right now. We're all fully booked. Companies get, I hope a little bit stressed as the day draws near, I mean June 2025. That's like three quarters left or something.

Erik Kroes: 8:50

Um, time goes by really, really fast. By the time you have a contract and you have things organized, that you actually have a consultant that helps you along, well, we're probably one quarter away already from that. I, I don't know. Time goes so fast. So only this week, like I got several recruiters bothering me for a company that said, hey, we need somebody, we could use some help. And I don't want to be one of those recruiters right now, because I think they're having a very tough time finding people and I think that's also part of the challenge. I'm looking forward to finding ways to help multiple companies and find something that helps. How do you say it? Find some sort of structured approach that can help not just one large organization but multiple. I think that would be really useful.

Neil Milliken: 9:35

Yeah, I mean it's interesting I'm getting contacted, even though UK is outside of the EU, and I'm going to cry few tears over it.

Neil Milliken: 9:47

So I heard yeah, yeah yeah, we're still impacted by the regulations because of our need to trade with our neighbours, and so it's having an impact even in the UK, and I'm seeing a lot of recruiters tapping me up. What's interesting is, you know, I think, as you say, they're kind of desperate. They're looking for anyone with any kind of experience. They don't really know what it is they're looking for or the levels of seniority.

Erik Kroes: 10:27

So I'm you know Anybody, anybody, yeah for any rate also sadly.

Neil Milliken: 10:30

Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, and I think that that's, you know, one of the reasons that I engaged with iwap, uh, originally, because I think that there is a need for professional bodies and professionalization, and and for organizations that are suddenly waking up to the fact that they need to do something, that they need to be able to have at least some indication that the person is competent, um.

Neil Milliken: 10:55

But I'm also really interested in the fact that you're saying, yeah, I want to solve stuff for me, not just for one organization, and I think that that's where engagement with professional bodies or standard setting bodies or organizations that create best practice or examples is, you know, really important. It's important to to me that we don't just keep our work in silos, and one of the things I like about accessibility is that there is, compared to many industries, a lot of collaboration and sharing. Do you know? So the work that you did just now on QR codes sounds really interesting to me. Is that sort of something that you might share? What were the things that you had to do to make qr codes more usable for people with disabilities? Because I mean, I use a qr code on the back of my phone instead of a business card and they're great, but people still have problems focusing and and and stuff to get it picked up with the camera what were the things you were learning?

Erik Kroes: 12:02

Um, well, I dove a little bit in the spec and I learned a few things. I look forward to sharing them. By the way, that's a good idea, for example, that a lot of organizations use really large URLs when creating a QR code, which actually makes the code more complex, which makes it harder to scan, which is one of those things that people probably don't consider when they create it. But the shorter your code is, or the shorter your URL is, the easier the code is, the easier it is to scan. And then it doesn't matter if you use the newest iPhone or you grab a potato from your pocket and try to scan it. It's probably going to work with any kind of scanning technology.

Erik Kroes: 12:43

And those are the considerations that make me think, yeah, when I talk to a company, I can give them advice and say, hey, this is the easiest way to scan a qr code. Um, you can add your own brand colors, you can add your little logo in the middle, but that will make it harder to scan, and my ultimate goal is to make it as easy as possible so everybody can actually scan it. And, um, yeah, that's, uh, that's what I try to do eric.

Debra Ruh: 13:12

Uh, you made me think of something only because all of us have been in the accessibility field a long time. Um, and so I. I know I have been in the accessibility field a long time. But what's interesting is people think they understand what it's going to take for a large multinational corporation to become accessible, and I find, working with these large brands for so many years, it is so much more complex and nuanced than people realize, and I also, as somebody that's all of us, I'm sure really care about the community of people with disabilities as well.

Debra Ruh: 13:52

But getting it right is so important to our community. It's so important to our community, so it always worries me because I get the recruiters calling me too. But it worries me when there's a desperation and they're just trying to put anybody in there, because there are also a lot of ways to fail. There's a lot of ways to fail. There's a lot of ways for good intentions to make things worse for you, and so I just thought maybe we could talk just for a moment about why it is so critical to hire somebody as a consultant or as an employee that really understands the nuances of this.

Debra Ruh: 14:31

But how do we know who to pick? Because right now, some people say all you have to do is throw an overlay on and we're done, yay, okay, good. Some people say, oh, all you have to do is use my little maturity model, no, use my equality index model. So it is such still a complicated topic and I was just wondering if you could maybe give your potential customers, you know, a little advice on how. How do I even know where to begin?

Erik Kroes: 15:03

Uh, so I feel like there's two questions. Right, how do you pick somebody and where do you start? Um, yeah, how do you buy anything or a service or a product, like? It could be word of mouth, it could be reviews, it could be a good search engine optimization, I don't know. There's so many ways to end up with somebody social media.

Debra Ruh: 15:22

Social media maybe you think that you like the posts that they do um, yeah and with with ai. Now, oh boy, I can do some really good posts, whether or not I know what I'm talking about or not, just saying.

Erik Kroes: 15:35

You can make a lot of posts, at least that's for sure, yeah Right right.

Debra Ruh: 15:40

So it really and this is something that we've really struggled with in the United States Buyer beware, Because what's happened? Our brands have made bad decisions about their vendors and they have gotten sued, and I can give you many, many examples of that. We have a class action lawsuit happening with an accessibility brand in the United States as we speak. So, the buyer beware has become even more critical, and now these companies are jumping around and trying to make good decisions and I feel sort of bad for them.

Erik Kroes: 16:12

So I think, as Neil said, within the field of accessibility, there's this tendency to share a lot, which I really appreciate and really aligns well with what I like to do. So I like to write about things and if I dive into something I like to do, so I like to write about things, and if I dive into something, I like to share it with other people. And that way I hope there are a lot of developers and designers that say, hey, Eric actually knows what he's talking about. I hope so at least. If not, please let me know what I can improve. But I think that's the thing, right, Show that you know what you're talking about. And then if there's a company that says, hey, Erik knows something about QR and we're going to implement QR, let's see if we can help each other out and create the best experience possible.

Erik Kroes: 16:58

I think that's, at least for me, always the end goal. So that's what I really like and where to get started. Yeah, that's a small and a big question at the same time. I think with onboarding is a nice answer to that. My experience, at least with large companies, is it's not easy changing minds, but it is much easier to start from the beginning when people are on board to say here, we do things in an accessible way. So you start with the right mindset right away.

Debra Ruh: 17:34

I agree, Erik. I will tell you something. That's something that a lot of brands, once again, have gotten in trouble over the years here in the United States, and I was speaking to one I'll say who it is, because I thought it was a really good point they made. I was talking to Capital One years ago and I was saying well, you need to look at this from where your greatest risks are. Because, once again, I live in the United States we litigate and, by the way, we're proud to litigate. We're going to litigate more. We're going to litigate more.

Debra Ruh: 18:06

I didn't used to be on that side, but I'm getting really tired of these brands ignoring us. So, anyway. So I always said to them you know, what you want to focus on is you want to make sure you look at where your big risk areas are, like onboarding Cause I agree with you with that, eric. But they said something that I just thought was really brilliant. They said you know, deborah, we feel like we're a team with our employees. We know how to get along with our employees. We have given our employees a lot of ways to come and tell us what the problems are.

Debra Ruh: 18:37

So we do know that onboarding can be an issue, but we're more concerned. We want to start it first and this is a long time ago with the customers, because we want to make sure the customers know we want to help them and they said so. We are making it a priority with onboarding, but we feel we have a good relationship with our employees and we feel we can. They will help guide us forward with the employee resource groups we've done and with some of the other internal activities. I just thought it was a really good point at the time so I just wanted to bring it up now. I still think you I totally agree with what you're saying, but I just thought that was an interesting perspective that they brought to me.

Erik Kroes: 19:19

So it's it. Maybe it shows also a bit that my experience is with companies, because they're also often focused on on employees and not on the customer. But that's a good point that you need to focus on the whole journey and see where your touch points are and find out what's the experience like for our customers and try to map it some way, which can be very challenging.

Debra Ruh: 19:40

Which once again continues to show what Erik said and what we've all been saying on Access Chat. You have to understand what you're doing here, because there's a lot of ways to get this wrong. There's a lot of ways to fail. There's a lot of ways in certain countries, like maybe in Europe now and in the United States, where it can be a really big embarrassment getting it wrong. It's much bigger than just litigation. It can really hurt your brand getting this wrong, and so that's why it's so important to bring in the right teams. It really is.

Erik Kroes: 20:11

And it's also such a challenge because so many organizations focus on compliance, and compliance means that you get these like 50 criteria and you want to comply with all of them and you want to check each and every one of them, which is great if you want to check off compliance, but if you want to do 50 things, focusing on 50 things means you're focusing on nothing.

Erik Kroes: 20:34

Maybe I'd rather have you focus on I don't know 10 success criteria and do them. Well, then do 50 of them and do a lot of them sloppy and maybe create an even more damaging experience, um, but that that's often the challenge as well that a lot of them sloppy and maybe create an even more damaging experience, um, but that that's often the challenge as well, that a lot of large organizations they focus on compliance and that shapes the efforts and that shapes, uh, the road and the path toward accessibility. And it makes it very binary, like do I comply, yes or no? That's the question, right, and I often think, if you do something for accessibility, you're already doing more than all those people who don't do anything. So please start with something and it doesn't have to be everything at the same time no, I think something that organizations do internally and externally is to communicate.

Antonio Santos: 21:25

So you communicate with your employees, so you communicate with your employees and you communicate with your customers. So if you are really taking all this seriously, I think the way how you communicate needs to be a starting point, because it's an entry for how a consumer or a customer engages with you, and, even if you don't have certain things right, you are able to have a channel where customers can communicate in an accessible way with you, and the same applies with your own employees. If you have accessible communications, it's easier for them to provide you feedback in relation to what they need. So I think communication is, in my view, a very important point and is not one that is very it's highly complex. It's something that there's plenty of information, and I think it will. It will be hard to achieve if you put some focus on it.

Erik Kroes: 22:25

Yeah, and it's also part where large organizations often clash, I think, because communication within large organizations they try to structure these kind of things right.

Erik Kroes: 22:35

You've got these call centers going through certain motions and everything is documented and it has to go a certain way which makes them sort of inhuman and they don't have a soft side anymore and it's actually very complicated to have an actual conversation with somebody at a company. So, yeah, that's something that certainly can be improved. And it's also part that I really like about European accessibility act that they say, hey, when you communicate, don't lean on one channel, make sure that you don't just offer a telephone line, don't offer just a chat, even if you talk to a real person in the first place, a chat is already questionable often enough. But, author, offer multiple ways and I think for a lot of accessible people, of accessibility people, it feels like such a logical step to say, of course you want to communicate in multiple ways. But for companies they can be really an eye-opener because they want to streamline things and and tackle things in one spot and uh, yeah, that that doesn't always uh, combine you look like you're talking.

Neil Milliken: 23:39

Yeah, yeah, exactly you look like it yeah, you'd think I'd know how to do it by now. Right, maybe there's multiple ways of communication. I can wave my hands around a lot. Look like I'm drowning. I think the other thing that when it comes to those sort of multiple lines of communication, actually quite often they're owned by different bits of the business. So what you think you know to the outside consumer looks like one entity is actually a whole you know jigsaw puzzle of different sub-entities within that and loads of extra complexity. Oh, you're the chat box guy. Oh well, and you know there's a different department for the service desk, so the phone calls get rooted over there. Oh, and if you want to get to a human, get the two of them talking.

Erik Kroes: 24:36

And oh well, that's part of the challenge. Often right, like I do, mostly digital. But just talking to one developer or one development team is not going to fix a whole company, because it stretches over so many disciplines and it's customer support and documentation and, of course, the website is included. But there's so much more and you somehow need to create an overview of all those channels and, ideally, find somebody responsible for all those channels as well.

Neil Milliken: 25:04

Yeah, yeah, ideally find somebody responsible for all those channels as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think you know it's being able to understand that complexity and map everything that then hopefully brings about a decent result. So I think that a lot of my work nowadays is just really about navigating the complexity and the relationships and that communication. So, yeah, my technical skills are busy, you know, atrophying daily as I spend my time in meetings, but they, you know, hopefully you know the team that I have working for me is still technical, but but it's.

Erik Kroes: 25:46

The good part is that these days, all meetings have become a technical challenge, right. So that's uh, keeping you on your toes.

Neil Milliken: 25:52

I just proved it right, because I was unable to so um. So I do think that the the communication piece and the understanding and having the sort of mental maps and mental models of complexity and knowing how to deal with that is a real skill in itself. And this was something that, when we were trying to design apprenticeships for accessibility, we weren't just building in teaching about accessibility you know, assistive technology and WCAG and the standards and all of this but we were also teaching people about stakeholder management, how to present, how to communicate, and I think that it's those kind of things. That sometimes is where sometimes projects fail because we don't know how to communicate. We may be technically excellent, but we don't know how to communicate that in the language of the stakeholders within the organization to then get the buy-in.

Erik Kroes: 27:08

I think that's extremely challenging to try and get people motivated. I think that's extremely challenging to try and get people motivated and if I would work in a large organization and I could pick between a person who has lots of experience with accessibility or a person who has experience with change management.

Antonio Santos: 27:29

It could be that I would pick the second of the day when a consumer a customer is reaching out to you. They don't care about the complexity. It's your problem, not my problem.

Neil Milliken: 27:42

If someone wants to achieve a result, I'd agree on the other hand, people that are in the industry or advocates maybe should have had some of the experience of being on both sides of the fence and understand that complexity before pointing the finger and demanding that things be fixed in the blink of an eye. That things be fixed in the blink of an eye, and I agree with you, eric, in terms of bringing on change managers. I think that I mean I have a couple of people in my team, in my organisation, that are more in the space of change management and understanding requirements and complexity than technical accessibility specialists, and they work with the than technical accessibility specialists and they work with the more technical accessibility specialists to oil the wheels of progress and help them turn. So, yeah, I think that if you have the luxury of having multiple people in the team, you don't build a homogenous team. You build one that has those different ranges of skills because you need to meet different needs within a large organization.

Erik Kroes: 29:07

So many angles to tackle yeah.

Neil Milliken: 29:10

Yeah. So, as we're coming to the end of our sort of half hour, is there any one piece of advice or knowledge that you would give to someone that's listening to us today and that was interested in getting into accessibility? You know, what would you, what would you tell them to think about or to go and do to get kick-started?

Erik Kroes: 29:43

Yeah, that's a good question because, um well, we just talked a little bit about motivation and I have my own thoughts about motivation and maybe to motivate somebody to get into accessibility whether they're a new person or they're already in a company and maybe trying to pick up the subject my view of motivation is that there are basically three ways that people can be motivated to work on accessibility, and I think at least most people that be motivated to work on accessibility and I think at least most people that work in the field of accessibility, they have a, an intrinsic motivation. Uh, they think it's ethical to do something about accessibility. I mean, um, not including people doesn't sound like a very ethical option. Um, so I'd rather spend my time and energy on including people. Um, so that's uh, definitely a driver. And, um, I think in business you often also see an extrinsic motivation that say, hey, but we want the market share to be bigger, we want our customer ratings to be more positive, we're afraid of the legal aspect, like. There are so many external factors that can help motivate people and I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just another way to be motivated and that's also very interesting, like if you're in a conversation with somebody. Maybe sometimes it's useful to think hey, you have different stakes here, you have a different reason to be motivated, what's driving you is something else than what's driving me, but that's okay, we can still have a conversation about it.

Erik Kroes: 31:16

And I think there's a third one that I don't hear a lot, which is also partially intrinsic, is that I think a lot of people also just want to master the subject of accessibility. So if I talk to a developer or a designer personally, I think you cannot claim to be a great developer or designer if you cannot create an inclusive experience. So I think a lot of people are also driven to master the skill of accessibility and being aware of those three angles. I think that helps me a lot. It helps me in conversations with clients. It helps me in conversations with clients. It helps me in conversations with with the practitioners, the people actually building things, the people writing things, just in trainings, like.

Erik Kroes: 32:00

There are so many situations where I think, oh, so if this is your motivation, then maybe let's talk about this angle, or maybe you value this issue more than another and in the end, I don't care what your motivation is, I care about the end result. So I also don't care about compliance. If that gets you moving, great, I just hear that you're moving and that's good news, right?

Neil Milliken: 32:24

Absolutely. Let's get the wheels turning. Thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure chatting with you. Need to also thank our friends and sponsors, Amazon and MyClearText, for keeping us on air and accessible, so look forward to continuing the conversations on social media and well. Thank you once again.

Erik Kroes: 32:49

Thanks for having me here, and it's hard of me to shut up then to keep talking, so I think we'll be just fine, thank you.