How To Build Accessibility Into Business Systems

AI is rewriting job descriptions, regulators are getting sharper, and accessibility teams are being asked to prove value faster than ever. So we put Neil Milliken in the spotlight to talk about his leap from leading global accessibility at Atos to founding Thrival Holdings, a boutique consultancy built around one simple idea: help organisations create the conditions where people thrive, not just survive. 

We dig into how AI in accessibility is changing the work without replacing the need for specialists. Neil breaks down why the future looks less like one-person “expert bottlenecks” and more like scalable accessibility governance: embedding accessibility knowledge into design and engineering workflows, using tools responsibly, and backing it all with regression testing so quality does not drift as models and codebases evolve. We also talk candidly about what happens to collaboration when companies downsize and people feel they must protect individual value. 

Then we zoom out to the policy and business side: the European Accessibility Act, real enforcement signals like French rulings that challenge misleading “percentage accessible” scores, and why compliance timelines rarely flip like a switch. We connect accessibility to ESG and sustainability by treating exclusion like pollution, a framing that helps leaders understand negative externalities, the curb cut effect, and the ROI of inclusive design across procurement, risk management, and reporting. 

If you care about digital accessibility, WCAG, disability inclusion, and building programs that last through AI and regulatory change, this conversation will give you language and strategy you can use immediately. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review with the one metric you think would finally make accessibility non-negotiable.

Transcript

Debra Ruh (00:00)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to AXSChat Today I'm the host. It might have been 12 years since Neil bothered to let me be the host, but today I get to be the host. Just kidding. I'm joined here with Antonio and Neil, and we're gonna actually put Neil on the hot seat today. So Antonio and I are gonna interview Neil. there's been a lot of changes in Neil's life over the last few months.

And so he is going to tell us about it. We're going to ask him all kind of questions to find out more about it as well. So Neil, welcome to the program. Antonio and I are glad you're here. Can you tell us who you are and a little bit about what you do?

Neil Milliken (00:34)
Sure.

Yeah,

absolutely, I'm Neil Merkin and I'm the former Global Head of Accessibility from Atos and actually the CEO and founder of Thrival Holdings, which is a boutique consultancy focused on the intersection of accessibility and ESG and people inclusion. So, I'm excited to be here to talk about Thrival because...

And the name is really the key to what we're doing is in the name. We want to help create organizations where people thrive. goes beyond, it's sort of the opposite of survival. It's the sort of, instead of being at the bottom rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we want to take people up so that, and organizations up that hierarchy of needs so that they're really...

Debra Ruh (01:08)
Mm-hmm.

Neil Milliken (01:28)
maximising what they're getting out of life and getting out of work.

Debra Ruh (01:32)
And I one thing that I I'm noticing as so much change happens in our community, and people shifting and corporations mm taking away, you know, jobs and stuff, i it it seems to me that it is an advantage right now almost to be a consultant, especially if you're a consultant that has a lot of experience working with these large corporate corporate giants. It seems like

A lot of people can talk about what they've done and what they know, but there aren't a lot of people that have actually done what you've done, Neil, in such a big, gigantic global company. So it seems like it there's advantages to thrival holdings right now.

Neil Milliken (02:13)
So I think I mean firstly I'm enjoying life as my own boss being able to take my own decisions. Yes, I you know, I have a pedigree if you want to call it that in that I have a track record that is demonstrable in the space and I've worked with some really good people. It was really great to see the work that we've

done at Atos be recognised in the Forbes accessibility 200 list. Of course they couldn't put my name against it because I'm no longer there. So they put the CEO's name. But it's still great to see that work recognised. So we have, and someone I'm working with have a track record in this space. So I think that that's good. But at the same time, there is this anxiety in large organisations.

and they're all going through flux and change and AI is disrupting the jobs market. So there are new jobs being created, but it's also disrupting the old jobs. And some organizations are using that change to also downsize, right-size, whatever you want to call it. And so actually, to a certain extent, being able to

have a portfolio of people that you work with gives you some insurance against those kind of things happening. So I think that that's kind of, it makes it both exciting. Yes, you've still got to be dependent on yourself, but it does make it quite exciting. And I like working with lots of people, as you know, I'm quite social. So the variety is good.

Debra Ruh (03:41)
Antonio, I know you had a question.

Antonio Vieira Santos (03:42)
So,

so in talking about anxiety in past chats, we have guests that talk with us and we realize that many people at companies are not talking with each other as they used to do. Collaboration is going down. Engagement is at its lowest. You mentioned about new jobs on AIs. Companies are still figuring out.

What those jobs are going to look like. They don't even know how to identify the specs of the jobs. No, there was a big, really a massive survey from my Deco group that makes the case that most CEOs don't know much about AI. And those who know about AI, those executives who know about AI, they believe that they know more than actually what their workforce rates them in terms of knowledge.

Neil Milliken (04:11)
Thank you.

Antonio Vieira Santos (04:30)
So considering all these challenges and you are trying to make organizations better, what is your pitch when you find someone that is actually in trouble?

Neil Milliken (04:41)
I think that's a good question. Firstly, I would say that the AI overconfidence is not unique amongst senior managers. I think they're overconfident and rated less positively by their workforce on lots of topics. mean, there was another survey about neurodiversity at work recently where the most confident people

the people that were most confident that their organization was neuro-inclusive were the top male managers. They were the most confident that they were neuro-inclusive. And you get down to their neuro-divergent employees on the shop floor, and they were the least confident that the organization was neuro-inclusive. And I think you can go into an organization, I've gone into a couple now in the last few months, I've been...

doing this for myself, and the people that are doing the work on the ground have, to a large extent, a better understanding of how this stuff is applicable in their jobs. What is interesting is watching the sort of, in the maker space, right, in the sort of product space, the product managers,

thinking, now I can use AI. I don't need a coder. The coder's going, well, I don't need a product manager. And the project manager's going, well, I don't need either of you. And so what you may end up with, and I was reading a nice book about this the other day, is people becoming makers, right? And so I think that that's interesting, but I think it's really early days, and you still need rigor, right? And I think that one of the things that

CEOs don't do is really understand and have enough rigor in the questioning of some of this stuff. I think that how do we sell the capabilities? You have to sell it based upon the fact that you've done this stuff before, you know, and give credible examples of how you've applied AI, machine learning to actual business processes to make it work because there's an awful lot of pilots.

and a lot of the stuff doesn't get beyond the pilot. And so I think it's that. But at the same time, I'm on a learning curve too because it's so rapid, and I no longer have a support network of people doing this on my behalf, so I'm having to do it for myself. I'm having to do all of the research, the ideation and the...

the application myself for some of the things I'm Obviously, working in the larger organizations and advising, then I'm not doing it for myself, but it's a mixture of both. So I think you have to sell it on, to a certain extent, record. Obviously, with it being such a new technology, no one's track record is going to be massively long because it's changed so rapidly.

Debra Ruh (07:29)
Neil, I I I really have two questions which probably are unfair, but the you know, one thing I would like because I'm gonna make some assumptions about what your company offers. And I probably shouldn't make the assumptions. I should we should let you talk to us about what type of consulting and services you offer. But at the same time, I'm curious about that, but I'm also curious about

Neil Milliken (07:40)
Okay.

Debra Ruh (07:53)
What do you think is going to happen with the accessibility industry? I mean, we all there's a bunch of us that got together and sort of created this accessibility industry in the early 2000s. And we've had some successes. We haven't had as many successes, I think, as a community as we hope. I know there was somebody that I won't mention on air that made the mistake of saying AI was gonna, you know, solve the accessibility problem in, you know, nine months. And of course that was a while back and

It hasn't been solved. I I continue to say often is we know how to make everything accessible. We know how. We know how to do it. But we still don't do it. And I think there's a lot of reasons why we don't do it. But I am curious not only what services that you your organization offers, but also what's your thoughts about where we're going with accessibility.

Neil Milliken (08:44)
So,

whilst I don't think that AI is going to do away with accessibility specialists any time soon, I think that what an accessibility specialist does is going to change significantly and is already changing significantly. So, you've got AI tools that are really getting better at helping produce

accessible code, helping to support people that don't know about accessibility very well. Organizations like DQ and Level Access and Vince do all have MCP servers that can plug into the coding platforms of other organizations so that you can start embedding accessibility knowledge into the workflows.

and you're not relying on individuals as bottlenecks. And then the accessibility role shifts to how do you design and maintain these systems? How do you verify that these systems are consistent and reliable? Because that's the other thing is that if you're not doing regression testing,

you know, as the AI models change, you have a risk that they start going off piste and that what they're doing becomes less and less reliable over time. So, really, what you're doing is trying to get accessibility built into a scalable infrastructure, and I think that that's an area where I have some good experience and Thrive all this building stuff into the

business governance and the infrastructure. So it's a mixture of technology and process and sort of management methodology and that communications piece to help sort of that adoption within senior management, help that understanding and that whole sort of, so that's how it fits within. And really explaining about the ROI and the business benefits so that it's not just seen as a

cost centre because I think that one of the problems of accessibility in corporate life is that it's as purely a cost and not as a benefit. mean, people do recognise societal benefits, but they take a kind of charitable view of it, right? And it's not, it's good business, but you've got to be able to demonstrate that and that or compliance as you put in the chat. I think yes, and we help with compliance beyond just

the WCAG stuff, right, because there a lot of people that are already doing accessibility testing against WCAG and EN301549, and frankly, they're going to do a better job of it than me, or Ricardo Garcia Bahamundet, who is working with me as well. Yes, we can do it, but that's not where we really add value. Other people can do that, and we'll work with partners on things like that.

because where we add value is at the strategy layer and at the sort of embedding into the business as usual processes, into procurement, into risk management, into, you know, sustainability processes, because actually, you know, a really big thing that we did at us was really talk about treating exclusion like pollution and mapping everything to sustainability and explaining that.

when you make a product or a service and you exclude someone, there is an economic cost to that exclusion that's not borne by the producer of that product or service, but it's borne by either the individual or society. And that is a negative externality. so that's the same kind of thing as carbon emissions, same economic concept. So you can apply those frameworks. And then...

Obviously, if you design for everybody, you get that curb cut effect. That's a positive externality. And that brings about additional revenue for an organization or greater customer satisfaction, which in turn has that impact on the bottom line. it's actually finding ways and metrics and ways to report that so that it surfaces that within a business. Because a lot of the time,

the accessibility community are doing fantastic advocacy work. care deeply about, you know, including people. They care deeply about technical quality. But the business messaging is off.

Antonio Vieira Santos (13:02)
So we are basically a year ago, the European Accessibility Act was being enforced. We see that there a few cases around in European courts, particularly in France, some supermarkets and some fines being imposed. But one year after, did anything really change it?

or we are just older and everything stays more or less the same.

Neil Milliken (13:30)
Yeah, I do think things have changed. I think that they have changed significantly in terms of some of the large organisations that I'm talking to. They've taken it seriously. They are doing more accessibility work. They have put in place, it was the catalyst for bumping it up the corporate agenda.

and it was a lever. I don't think what we're seeing, and I was never under the illusion that this was going to be like a light switch moment. Even things like GDPR, even though there was a big hoo-ha about it, actually the embedding of that into the standard processes of organizations took years, right? And if you look at

was the regulators' views, and most of the regulators, they don't want to use the stick all of the time. The first thing they want to do is encourage people to start moving forward. I mean, the French is interesting because their regulators have taken a view which kind of runs contrary to the way that they approached accessibility before because they're under RGAA.

they always had a sort of percentage of accessibility assessment. So, whilst you would sort of use the same points that you would in terms of testing stuff for, against content accessibility guidelines, in the end, you'd end up with a sort of aggregate score. And what the rulings against the supermarkets that you alluded to have said is actually an aggregate score of 71%. It's not enough.

because you're 29 % at least inaccessible, and therefore, if 29 % inaccessible, you're actually pretty much guaranteeing that you're wholly inaccessible because over a quarter of the experiences probably along the way mean that you're to be blocking people. So, that's kind of going to cause a small revolution in France. I'm not sure if anyone's going to be guillotined, but I think that there are profound effects. It's just that this stuff does move slowly.

And also the EAA is not the only piece of legislation that requires accessibility in Europe, the European AI Act does. There's another 11 or 12 pieces of European legislation that all have an element of disability inclusion and accessibility in that legislation. So, there are multiple drivers here, but it's slow.

And then you have the pushback through things like the European omnibus legislation, which was designed to try and simplify things for business, and business was like, we're too tied up with regulation. So you've seen that recently come through with the omnibus stuff.

Antonio Vieira Santos (16:14)
you

Debra Ruh (16:16)
Okay, I just have a quick comment to make and I'm gonna turn it back over to Antonio. just speaking from a different perspective, I agree with everything you said, Neil, but just speaking from an American perspective, I am just so grateful that Europe did what they did because it the timing was coincidental, but you know, Europe really taking accessibility seriously, getting EDF involved, just all the stuff that's done has been such a blessing balancing what's happened in the United States.

Antonio Vieira Santos (16:17)
you

you

Debra Ruh (16:44)
Because when the United States and others, you know, did the attack on the DEI and the woke, accessibility unfortunately got into that mix. And people in accessibility positions were changing their titles and getting laid off. And and so I, as an American and a global citizen, I'm just really, really glad that we see leadership in Europe, especially at a time when things are just so intense here in the United States. And since so many of our

Corporations are global. You know, we impact others. And so from my perspective, I am so, so grateful as an individual that cares about inclusion that Europe has stepped up and is really leading on it. Are they perfect? No. Are we seeing all everything yet? No. Like you said, Neil, there's a whole bunch of other laws also, but I am just so glad Europe stood up at this time. It is such a blessing to.

The humans on the planet, I believe.

Neil Milliken (17:39)
I also want to recognize Canada, because Canada is doing amazing work on accessibility, right? And, you know, in fact, in some ways, outstripping Europe in terms of the work that it's doing, because they're covering all sorts of areas. They're thinking about, they've got a very wide remit. It's well beyond technology. They're looking at service. They're looking at AI. They're looking at...

Debra Ruh (17:45)
yes, I must agree. Yes. Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

Neil Milliken (18:06)
all sorts of how they can include people. So kudos to Stephanie and the Canadian accessibility government infrastructure because they really are, and they're creating standards and so on. they're doing it, Australia's doing stuff, and then of course, actually, you're seeing the adoption and creation of standards and legislation.

Debra Ruh (18:24)
Right.

Neil Milliken (18:35)
India, that's been strengthened, you're seeing it in Africa as well, so it's not just Europe.

Debra Ruh (18:41)
Yeah.

Antonio Vieira Santos (18:42)
No,

one of the problems that we have in Europe is, in European Union, we have 27 countries. And in Canada, it's easier at certain level. something that we miss in Europe, at the economic level, we have something that we call the Eurogroup. It's basically all the ministers of finance, they all come together.

and in a more agile way that are able to solve problems in the sector of finance. So just a few weeks ago, I was engaged with the European political party to create, to propose to the European Commission and to the European Parliament, the creation of a tech group that emulates the Eurogroup. So the idea is all the ministers of technology in Europe,

they come together on a monthly basis to discuss tech. So instead of things going into subcommittees and committees, all the ministers are able to discuss cyber security and technology topics. Something that if that ever happens is able to make the decision making more agile than currently is. And the example.

of the process that took for the European Accessibility Act to go through and the length of it proves that something like this is pretty much needed because in the end we are in this situation now, we supervising the act.

Neil Milliken (20:03)
It's true. And also, as think Susanna Lauren pointed out when she was on talking about it, the difference between the EAA and GDPR is that the EAA was an act, and that then needs to be transposed into local legislation, whereas GDPR was a piece of regulation and was all-encompassing and therefore harmonized. And so, that again makes it...

easier to enforce because you've got a singular interpretation. So, yes, I think there's...

I'm a fan of regulation when it's done well, but getting it right is tricky, and getting the balance right is tricky too, because having been on the other side of the regulation when I was working with Atos, and we were doing the reporting for CSRD, that's the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, there's lots of standards.

that you have to report on, and all of these different things have metrics, and it's enormously complex. And then you have to, it's a cottage industry within these large corporations to gather the data, to decide on what you're reporting on, to write the report. for example, know, ATOS's universal registry document, which is the financial document, and the...

So it's dual reporting. you have the financials and the non-financials all in one document. It's over 500 pages long. Writing something like that every year takes a lot of effort. So you can understand to a certain extent why businesses have been pushing Europe to make compliance easier. But at the same time,

Debra Ruh (21:32)
We're young.

Neil Milliken (21:44)
within communities like the disability community, we have to be very careful that businesses' calls for simplification don't mean that we get cut out again, because that's a real risk, that as simplification comes along, and omnibus, which is just pushing everything into one quick, you know

revision of regulation. It's kind of shortcuts those checks and balances.

Antonio Vieira Santos (22:14)
I

think the situation gets worse is we have the omnibus now, but all this legislation was created under a different mindset. So maybe going forward, if we start thinking differently, with having simplification in mind, maybe we can reach something interesting.

Neil Milliken (22:24)
Yes.

Antonio Vieira Santos (22:35)
for both parts, but now, but what we are getting is we are getting from a very complex process. And now we want to simplify the complex process when that was not the thought that was behind all this, you know?

Neil Milliken (22:48)
No, and I think what I'm mindful of is, yes, we need to simplify, but we can't lose the values behind it and the intent behind that, which was around social cohesion, social protection, caring about people's privacy and their rights and so on. Because quite often what happens when you have a bonfire of regulation is that

that those protections get taken away along with the complexity. And yes, for sure, you know, we need to be able to design stuff better and more flexibly because we're in a very fast-moving world right now. But we can't. part of what I'm trying to do through the work that I'm doing with Thrival is help organizations find that balance.

and to be able to build management systems and reporting systems and ways of doing business that are not over burdensome on the business, that still are inclusive and enabling and serve the community.

Debra Ruh (23:49)
Yes, and and we know that you have the experience to do it. I I often see so many people jumping in going, I can teach you what to do. There's so many moving parts as we've just talked about here, but I know that we've come to the end of our time. But Neil, will you please let our audience know what your website is and how they could contact you? and I of course you can it he's very easy to find on social media, but still.

Let the customers know. And I also want to say also thank you, thank you to Amazon for supporting our show. We are so grateful and we really, really appreciate them. And as Neil says often, please remember to like the episode, comment, share it with others. You help us get it out. But let me turn the floor back over to Neil. So Neil, you can let people know how do they find you? How can they interact with you? Can I make one more comment since I have the floor? I just want to make one more comment than Antonio thought me.

Neil Milliken (24:38)
Okay.

Go on.

Debra Ruh (24:44)
thought that that reminded me of. He was making a comment early on about he's not seeing a lot of collaboration in the corporations. And I'm also seeing that. I'm seeing the confusion and everything. But one thing I am seeing a lot, and I would think you are going to see this as well, Neil, is that the smaller organizations have figured out that we all have to get together and collaborate more to be able to fit these needs, these needs. So

I'm seeing so much collaboration from the work I'm doing. Collaboration globally in ways I've never seen it. So it's happening in the entrepreneurial in those levels. Yeah.

Neil Milliken (25:20)
I think that's true. I

think that's true. So firstly, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm just Neil Merkin. You can find Thrival at Thrival.info. That's T-H-R-I-V-A-L dot info. And you can get in touch there. And yes, you're right. I mean, I'm working with lots of other small businesses and we're all collaborating. I think that...

the differences in some of the large organizations that have reductions in force and so on is that people aren't collaborating because they want to hold on to the value because they're afraid that if they are not individually seen as valuable, then they're next in the firing line. And so that causes people to withdraw from collaborative work. And I think that actually done well, you can.

show that everybody has a piece of the value when you collaborate, but it's a different mindset. And again, I mean, that's part of the way that I'm wired. I like to work collaboratively. So hopefully we can bring that collaboration back. Thank you for allowing me to talk about my favorite topic, which is me. And yes, do like and subscribe to AXSChat. We need you to keep us going.

Debra Ruh (26:26)
Yeah.

Antonio Vieira Santos (26:33)
and we need

to show appreciation to Amazon for supporting us.

Neil Milliken (26:39)
Absolutely.

Debra Ruh (26:39)
Absolutely. We we love

Amazon for supporting us. We really do. So yes. All right. Well, thank you to everybody. We really are grateful. We're 12 years into this. And we really need to feature Antonio pretty soon. We've talked about what I'm doing. We've talked about Neil. we're gonna make Antonio come on and tell us what he's doing as he's still living in what Ireland and Portugal. So anyway, thank you to our audience. Thank you, Neil. Good luck with this new mission and

Neil Milliken (27:08)
Thank you.

Debra Ruh (27:08)
Tonyo, see you guys later.

Antonio Vieira Santos (27:10)
Bye bye.