Empathy and Innovation in Online Retail

How do you transform a major online retailer into a beacon of accessibility? Join us as we sit down with Tzveta Dinova, the pioneering accessibility lead at ASOS, who shares her compelling journey from design and education to becoming a trailblazer in inclusive practices. Discover the story behind Sveta's transition into accessibility in 2018 and how her role has evolved within ASOS, a company dedicated to inclusion in fashion and beauty. Her unique position as the sole accessibility advocate at a major retail company presents both challenges and exceptional opportunities.

Get ready to understand the "why" behind accessibility initiatives through Tzveta's eyes. As an accessibility product owner, Sveta discusses her strategic approach to fostering a culture of accessibility within ASOS, educating her colleagues on the social model of disability. Learn from her methods of building empathy and commitment across a vast team through training sessions and live demonstrations from individuals with disabilities. Sveta underscores the importance of embedding accessibility into daily workflows, ensuring that every team member shares the responsibility.

Explore the transformative effects of accessible e-commerce platforms on customers with disabilities. Tzveta provides an insider’s perspective on measuring accessibility improvements at ASOS, from leveraging assistive technologies to collecting detailed feedback. Find out how balancing corrective actions with positive reinforcement creates a more inclusive platform and re-engages customers who previously faced accessibility challenges. This episode is a must-listen for anyone committed to understanding and advancing accessibility in a fast-paced online retail environment.

Chapters

• 0:01 ASOS Accessibility Lead Discusses Fashion Industry
• 14:07 Driving Innovation in Accessibility
• 30:38 Improving E-Commerce Accessibility and Customer Feedback
• 35:40 Progress in Accessibility Initiatives

Transcript

0:00

>> Hello and welcome to AXSChat. I am delighted that we're joined today by Tzveta Dinova, who is the accessibility lead at ASOS, which is not Atos, which is where Antonio and I work. So there's no nepotism going on here. And Sveta and I were on a panel together. I was impressed by the answers she gave, and so was really keen to get her to come and talk to us about her role and how she came to work in accessibility. So welcome, Tzveta, could you tell us about that? And also for our audience outside of the UK, give us a bit of a background as to the organization you work in.>> Thank you so much for having me. First of all, it's an absolute pleasure to be here and to talk to all of you. Um, yeah. So my my journey into accessibility was not super straightforward, which I guess is probably the case with everyone. I started off as a designer. Um, trying to design things that sort of made sense for the actual users. Uh, which, unsurprisingly, is not a very popular thing. And, uh, yeah, just kind of like spend quite a few years working in design education. Education in general. Uh, and stumbled across accessibility through my work with, um, I was basically working with a lot of students with disabilities and kind of started researching into ways that I can help them a little bit more and just support them, um, in, in their learning process. And I came across, um, the discipline of accessibility. And I was quite fascinated that there's like a whole industry built around it. And, you know, people working specifically in accessibility. And, uh, that was in 2018 that I formally started working within accessibility. Um, and yeah, I started off as a consultant at Abilitynet, Which I'm sure you're familiar with. I spend a couple of years there, and for the past five years I have been, um, doing accessibility at ASOS. I am the sole accessibility person at the whole company, which, um, is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so much. Um, but yeah, to give you a little bit of background, if you if someone hasn't heard about ASOS before, we are a global fashion and beauty retailer. Um, we have been going strong for, I believe, about 20 years now. Um, it's a pretty big company. It's a it's a very exciting place to work. Um, I think I personally like, find it incredibly inspiring, the fact that, you know, a fashion company and I know that these things have been picking up in the past few years, but that a fashion company. Um, decided to basically try and and and actively make um, it's offering inclusive in a way, way before a lot of our other competitors, which I'm quite proud of. Um, and yeah, I mean, I know that ideally, in an ideal world, everything will be inclusive and everything will be accessible, but I'm quite proud to actually work for a company that, um, was one of the first that said, hey, you know, like other industries are, are into this accessibility thing, why are we not doing it? And what is it that we actually need to do? And, you know, how do we even start? And it's been quite a journey since I've been there. It's, you know, we've we've done a lot and we still have a lot to do, of course. But, um, I am quite excited and proud about like, all the work that we've been doing and kind of the general direction that we're heading into and just trying to, um, yeah, to just make fashion and beauty accessible for everyone, which I think is like a no brainer. I agree, and yet we often forget about it.>> I remember seeing the show Devil Wears Prada a long time ago, and the the Anne Hathaway's character was making fun of fashion. It's like, oh, this is so little. But the reality is, fashion and beauty is very, very important to our identity. It's very important. I applaud you for what you're doing because, um, it's easy to not pay attention. I remember talking to we had the CEO of Tommy Hilfiger on and he had talked about he said something that I thought was so valuable in the fashion industry. We don't see major changes. In the last time, he said, there was a really disruptive change from the lens I'm using was when we started really focusing on plus sizes for fashion. 16 plus, Loss. And there's a huge market for that, certainly here in the United States. And so he was saying, we think in making sure that people with disabilities are being included is the next opportunity. So I love that you're looking at it and that you're showing leadership and innovation because your competitors will notice. So I just really want to applaud you for that because it's easy for us to say, oh, it's fashion, it's beauty. Who cares? Well, it is a very, very important thing to people all over the world, and we really applaud that your company is doing it. And also, I just wanted to address real quick before I turn it over to Antonio, the comment that you made, and that often when an organization starts, they will start with one person that does it all. We hope when they do that, they give you the authority you need to try to talk resistant people into it. But it's a very, very powerful stuff. And I just wanted to applaud you and Asos for that. But can you talk a little bit more? Has it been challenging being the only person. Do you find that they're welcoming because it is sort of new to that, that industry?>> Yeah. I mean, of course it's been challenging. I don't I don't think anything like accessibility related is ever going to be very straightforward. But, um, I think I was incredibly lucky that at the point when I joined the company, the people who had to be convinced about accessibility were already convinced, like they were already sold. I've I've never had to, um, actually go and sell it to anyone or convince anyone about this work that we have to do. It was more about actually owning the work and and just pushing it forward and making sure that, you know, things are, are happening the way that they're supposed to happen. So I definitely count myself lucky because I, I do a lot of mentorship of particularly younger, um, designers and probably like more than half the time, the things that they struggle with is, is selling accessibility in the first place, let alone doing any accessibility work or getting support or getting budget. So in that sense, I've been incredibly lucky. And, um, it has been still challenging because I think when you come into a company with like a very established, um, you know, offering where there is a website and there are mobile apps the first few years, I mean, it was just a lot of like retrofitting, you know, fixes a lot of making sure that people are trained, a lot of making sure that people understand, um, like why this is happening and, and not just the this I think this is the very important thing for me, not just, um, playing like the tick box exercise where you're just like, oh, this is something that we just need to do. No, actually understanding How the work that we do relates to people with disabilities and and actually, what is it that we're doing to help those people and just understanding a little bit more about disabilities, because I also feel like that is something that we just do not talk about enough. And I personally, before working with um, disabled students, had very little understanding about disability. So I'm just trying to basically, yeah, just support everyone. And obviously being the only person that is sometimes hard, especially in the beginning, because you can't be in two places at the same time. So you're trying to train some people so that they can hopefully support you. And, um, you know, there were definitely challenges and um, I yeah, I also think burnout in, in the accessibility profession is definitely something that we probably don't. I see a lot of people talking about it now, but when I first started, it was not it was not a very popular topic. And, um, I think had it been, had I known about it a little bit more, maybe I would have been a little bit more careful. But, um, I think maybe it was, it was still worth kind of like all the effort that I put in, because I think my team is definitely moving in the right direction, which is really, really important to me.>> Well, I would say that, you know, being one person working in accessibility in an organization is something more common that we might think. No, uh, there are many organizations that operate in this way. I remember, um, I think myself and Deborah, we met someone from a very large company in the United States in the space of social networking who said to us, oh, Antonio, you know, you are meeting 50% of the our accessibility team. It's me and it's another person in the United States. So it's it's not that unusual. Yeah. And so what I would like to know is, you know, on your day to day activities, you have mentioned training that you have done. Can you describe us the way how you somehow educate, evangelize and engage with your colleagues in order for, for for the organization to succeed in accessibility? No. You are working in for for a brand who reaches consumers, uh, out there. Things move really fast, probably. We have thousands of updates every day in terms of new products and new releases. No, you have to deal with purchases. So please describe us that, uh, because I think it's important for others to understand those dynamics.>> Definitely. Um, I think so what I mentioned before that before I joined the company, like a lot of the I think the, the decision makers were already sold on accessibility. I think I was also lucky that, um, a lot of the people that I work on a day to day basis. So a lot of engineers, designers, um, you know, product managers, they also picked up kind of accessibility quite quickly. Um, and I definitely spent the first year and a half probably just running so many, so many trainings. But as I mentioned, for me it was the important thing was not so much the technical side and like explaining audio to engineers or anything like that. It was I really just wanted them to understand why we're doing this. Um, who we're doing it for, just understanding, you know, the social model of disability, understanding all of this stuff that to me is like so fundamental. And I think I've just seen so many teams in the past just talk about accessibility and and handle accessibility as just like another technical thing, which I don't think it is. I mean, obviously there's a technical side to it, but I just really, really wanted people to understand. And, you know, we did a lot of, I think the usual stuff where, you know, a lot of trainings I run myself. Um, you know, at the time we did make sure to bring, um, actual people with disabilities in to do, to run sessions with them and, and to just show how an actual screen reader user, for example, is using the website just to show people where the problems are, where the opportunities are, and just to kind of like give them a little bit more, um, just yeah, I think just understanding because, you know, if you've never been exposed to, um, a disability, how are you? How are you going to know? I think I'm also just trying to be to have empathy for my colleagues because, you know, we all have a lot of priorities on our list, and I don't expect them to just suddenly, overnight, know everything about accessibility. But I, I tried to relay everything that I have learned and everything that I read and I hear from people and I think is important. And I think that's really helped. It's really paid off because I, I don't really have people on on my team, and my team is pretty big. Who to me seem like they're not convinced that we should be doing this work. And once I think you get to this point, it becomes so much easier because it's just trying to figure out what the technical solution of the problem is. Um, and it, you know, we just have quick calls. We try to figure out what's the best solution. We try to use our test it to make sure that it is definitely the best solution possible. And and that's when things start to actually move a little bit faster in my opinion. So I'm now at the point where I don't do as many trainings, but I still have conversations with people and obviously in a big company, you always have people who are new, um, who maybe again in, in their previous positions were not exposed to accessibility. So every once in a while I do try to, you know, do like a more formal training, but I mostly just have conversations with people and I try to explain to them a why we do this and also what our processes are, because if we stick to the right processes, I think it also streamlines things a little bit more. So I feel like my role nowadays is, um, a little bit more. Actually, a couple of people have said that to me recently, and I think it's it's an interesting comparison. It's more of like a product owner of accessibility. It's almost like accessibility is its own thing. And I the idea is not to separate it from everything else, but it's more like I just try to yeah, just, I guess, evangelize and talk to people and be like, this is why we do this. This is, you know, what the process is. If you need my support, I'm obviously here, but I would also like you to, to try and and do this yourself so that. Because that's the best way to learn, right?>> So I mean, one of the reasons I was keen to invite you was because you talked about culture change and so on before. And we've just had in the preceding week some some technical experts. And it's nice to to see the other side of the coin. It's not to say that you're not technically competent, but that the approach has been around the people. Um, and the sort of the psychology behind getting an organization to think about this stuff and how many, roughly how many people is it sort of 3500 employees you've got? That is something, something like that.>> I don't know the exact number, but I think between between 3 and 4000 people, let's say roughly. Yeah. So it is a it is a relatively big company. And um, and, and the fact that we trade online, um, we don't have physical stores also means that obviously accessibility is very important because it is online is the only way that you can get our products. And so we want to make sure that everyone obviously has access to that. So yeah.>> Yeah. No that's super. And then you said about sort of being you know like the the product owner because I mean, one of the things that we've been trying to be clear about within my own organization is that accessibility is a transversal topic. Um, it goes it cuts across everything. So everybody needs to own their own piece of it. Yeah. And we do the sort of the coordination, the cheerleading, you know, the, the education piece, the sometimes the being the nagging person, uh, piece to where people are lagging behind.>> Because the thing is one that I really like. Yeah.>> Absolutely. Yeah. And there's plenty of that in large organizations. Yeah. So and I and I hope that, you know, you'll get a couple of extra cat herders and, you know, take it to the, to the next level, because I think that the other thing that disability inclusion work does and accessibility work does is it finds a way to to innovate. And it's a driver of innovation as well. So when the organization start to recognize that you're, you're not only, um, presenting them with problems, but presenting them with solutions and perhaps innovations that they hadn't even thought about yet, that they realized that this is actually not just something that they do for the sake of it, but because it's it's giving you, you know, the organization, the cutting edge. So I think that because we're in a state at the moment where technology is changing so rapidly, the, um, the ability to do innovative stuff at the moment is multiplied. You know, um, we're playing around with AI tools now. I got, I, you know, please, many of the audience are going to start rolling their eyes because we talk about AI a lot and everybody's sick of hearing about AI, AI, AI. But, um, there have been some things that AI has delivered in the last few years that have been on my wish list for ages. As someone with dyslexia and ADHD, there weren't many assistive technologies that really helped. Not in the same way that other conditions um, had, you know, so if you're visually impaired, you have screen readers, you have magnifiers. There's tangible assistive technologies. But for cognition and memory and all of these things, um, there haven't been. Now you've got things like, um, meeting summaries and inferred, uh, inferred actions and all of these kind of things. These are amazing because they are things that you couldn't do before, um, or required, you know, no one's going to have someone just walking around with them all day taking notes. Not unless they're the CEO of a multi-billion dollar organization, but at least now I can get my meeting notes and like, maybe get some reminders set up and everything else. So. So I think that those things and the, the ability to sort of connect up these different, um, machine learning tools to create new things. And the fact that we as a disability community are seeing the benefits and really excited about it is a super opportunity for innovation that I've just spent the last week at various conferences. And I know Deborah will mock me for my my for my travel, but, um, but people were sharing all of the new things. And again, it's it's like we go through these cycles and I'm hyped at the moment in the hype cycle because we're doing some fun stuff. So it's the stuff that you're doing right now that you're, you're seeing like technology and disability inclusion as an opportunity for you to innovate.>> Definitely. I yeah, I'm I'm really glad that you brought this up because I know, as you said, like AI has been a very like popular topic recently, and I don't really understand why people are fed up with it or negative about it. I think there's still so much to do there, and I'm sure we're going to see so many more amazing things, but I think it just reminds me of when I first joined Asos. I was just so excited about the fact that obviously fashion is something that is a lot about creativity and yeah, just like self-expression and all of these things, which to me didn't necessarily fit within with accessibility in the sense that I had experienced it up until that point. Because even when you think about wcaG, like wcaG is is very much about government websites, right? It's very like it just doesn't really cover like edge cases where you've got, um, I don't know, like a, like in the simplest terms where you've got like really creative, like videos and things, I don't know, moving. I mean, it does cover like the fact that you have to be able to pause things and the fact that things shouldn't flash. But I think the more creative you get, the more you realize that actually, wcaG doesn't really cover a lot of your cases, and this is where you have to actually start being creative and starting to to try new things and and to innovate even in the simplest terms, just like, you know, trying to figure out how to make something accessible where there aren't necessarily, um, like testable criteria for, for that specific thing. And I think that was probably the thing that really, really excited me at the beginning when I first joined Asos, that I have the opportunity to actually take something that was historically probably really inaccessible, you know, um, fashion content, you know, marketing content, whether those were videos, whether those were, I don't know, like things moving around and actually try to figure out the best way to make that accessible and available to people. And I think we've done just some really, really incredible like such simple tweaks and fixes. But we've had such positive feedback from from people with disabilities that I'm really, really proud of. But it's even things like, you know, having that kind of insight when you speak to someone, um, for example, when you speak to someone blind who, you know, might want to purchase something online, and it's like they talk about the importance of going in store and and touching the fabric and, and understanding what the feeling of the fabric is, because to them that's obviously very important. And like, how do you try to translate these things? How do you try to explain that if you're just purchasing something online? You know, I think yeah, there's a lot of like space, I think for innovation within within creative fields in general. And I love trying to show people that accessibility does have a place in that. And it's not just what a lot of people think it is, which is, oh, it's limiting our creativity and it's limiting what we can do on the website. And it's like, no, actually, like if you if you start trying to innovate but actually innovate in order to make things more inclusive, really, really amazing things happen. And actually they don't even always have to be complicated solutions. Um, so yeah, there's been I think a lot of that, and I'm sure there will be even more of that in in the coming years because of AI. And I think because the whole, um, fashion industry is now a lot more aware of this ability and the accessibility. I see a lot of our competitors also doing really, really amazing work that, you know, oftentimes like it inspires what I think we should be doing, which I think is amazing because in the beginning, it kind of felt like we were just alone in a desert and, you know, nothing was really happening. Whereas now, like, it's picking up so much and it makes me really happy because I think this is how innovation happens, right? When a lot of like different companies and different teams are trying to make something. Yeah. Yes.>> And nobody can claim to be innovative or creative when you leave people behind. Right.>> That's true. But I think a lot of people don't realize that.>> And and I can, you know, Neil was mentioning about innovation and fashion and I can point you pointing him to an app that my 13 year old daughter discovered, which allows him to find the best outfits based on the stuff where you already have and gives him suggestions how we how we can diversify the way how we dress up.>> Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I mean, there's something new coming every day, and I think there's a lot of things that should make us excited and should make us positive for for the future. For the near future.>> And, and in some cases, you know, just a challenge, the notions that we have today about what accessibility is. You know, this this simple app that allows you to take pictures of your existing clothes is somehow supporting the needs of many people who might be colorblind or might have might feel stressed. So it's a it's an unusual approach and a very practical one that challenged the, the concepts that sometimes we have about what it is and what it's not.>> Yeah. And I think, I mean, one of the first things that I realized when I started working for a fashion e-commerce company was and, and also speaking to customers with disabilities was, um, e-commerce in itself is is such a blessing to some people, but it's obviously it can only be a blessing if it's accessible. Because if you know, it makes it easier for for you in general, for whatever reason, that you can only shop online or mainly shop online, but then you also have a platform that's accessible. That's incredible, isn't it? It just makes it just makes people's lives so much, um, so much more easy. And I think we saw that obviously during the pandemic when, um, a lot of e-commerce websites struggled because they realized that they actually have to be accessible because suddenly everyone was stuck at home and everyone was trying to shop online. So that was also a very interesting time. But yeah, it's I think there's just a lot of opportunity to to do a lot of amazing things.>> Um, well, first of all, I know we're pretty much done, but I would like to ask you the question of how are the customers responding? And I would be interested, and how are customers with disabilities responding, but not just from that lens. Are your customers noticing? Have you seen data that are telling you your customers appreciate it. We see your competitors are paying attention. Yeah, I love when I love when corporations do it because you do have competitors and they watch each other, so it becomes a win for our community. But I was just curious, how can you tell yet what your customers think about these efforts being made?>> Yeah. So obviously collecting quantitative data about accessibility sometimes a little bit tricky. Uh, so we try to combine that as much as we can. So like noticing, for example, the numbers of, um, people who use assistive technologies and, you know, complete, um, like our purchasing journey. Um, we have seen a growth there. However, it's obviously hard to tell whether that's just in general, in the past few years, more people have started using assistive technologies or whether it's just those specific people have come to to our apps, I would hope that it's the latter. Um, but we try to combine that with, um, just doing a lot of a lot of interviews with people with disabilities, including them in the process putting everything in front of them so that they can validate, especially the things that we are not sure about, which is, I guess, pretty much everything, because you can't necessarily put yourself in the position of, of, um, you know, people with all kinds of disabilities. So I try to do that as much as I can. I try to, um, just have these conversations and monitor the overall kind of sentiment there. There's obviously always going to be issues. I am far from thinking that we are going to reach like a point of, you know, 100% accessible. That's obviously never going to happen. The important thing is that there are no big problems, um, and that we monitor kind of what people want and what kind of change do they want? Um, you know what? What are the things that don't really work for them? Can we change those things? But I also try to because I think accessibility user testing is usually so focused on on the negative. Right. The whole point is for you to find the problems and fix them. I also try to focus on the positive. I try to get that feedback and actually understand what is the stuff that these people actually really like, and what is the stuff that really works for them that makes them happy, that makes it easier for them to shop, that makes it easier to find things, and so on and so forth. And um, I think we so far we are striking that balance between, you know, trying to have that positive feedback also obviously being open to correcting our mistakes, um, and just continuing down that path and, and trying to. Yeah, just to I guess in the first place. Also like using this as a process to attract more customers with disabilities to our apps and our website. Because I think one of the problems when you're an established company and in the past. Your platforms have not been accessible, is that people have come to the platform. They. Have checked it out. They have realized that it doesn't work for them and they never came back. And so I actually very often have conversations with people where they say, oh yeah, I, you know. Tried once, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and it didn't really work for me. And I never tried again. And. After our conversation, they actually go, you know what, I might just keep the app on my phone and I might. Try to purchase something sometime. And that is, I think, the ultimate goal for for people to. Actually be like, yeah, I'm, I'm happy to to use your platform. I'm happy to like, try again to. Me that's probably like the best um pointer that that we're going in the right direction. But yeah, this is our current process and I'm sure that's going to change over time. Um, but at the moment, I think, at least from my perspective, we we are going in the right direction. So trying to stick to that and, and just speak to as many people as we can basically and just get their input.>> It certainly sounds like it. And I think that that experience of people having a bad experience and not coming back and, you know, is a real one. And and one of the challenges of accessibility is the maintenance of good accessibility, because it's not once and done, but we're done because we've reached the end of our half hour, which is a shame because it's flown by. I need to thank Amazon and my Cleartext for keeping us on air and captioned and accessible. So thank you so much Twitter. It's been a real pleasure. We look forward to, you know, continuing the conversation online. Thanks for having me. Thank you.