Key Takeaways
- Stark is evolving from a suite of accessibility tools to an end-to-end platform for managing accessibility across organizations
- AI and software solutions are transforming accessibility from consultancy-based to integrated, proactive approaches
- Accessibility initiatives show significant ROI through cost savings, faster shipping, and expanded market reach
- The future of accessibility involves empowering all team members and integrating it as a core quality requirement
Today I’m talking to Cat Noone, CEO and Co-Founder at Stark, the platform for software teams to proactively and continuously manage accessibility end-to-end. We’re discussing National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which is happening all October.
Cat, you've had an interesting journey. Could you tell me a little bit about your accessibility journey and how you got started in this space?
Thanks for having me on, and maybe some important level setting: yes, I am CEO, but I'm a designer by training. If I dovetail into anything like very product-related and very product-led founder, I nerd out on that.
My first touchpoint with accessibility wasn’t in the tech industry. It was back when I worked for the New York City Board of Education and the Hellen Keller School for the Deaf and Blind.
It was an education and it gave me this front-row seat into what a spectrum of disabilities and disorders looked like, the system built around those disorders, and whether or not these individuals could access what they needed.
After that, I jumped into the world of tech. Fast forward, I was working on a health tech project and, you know, realized there was no way for me to ensure that the design itself of the software was accessible. I asked myself, “What do I do in this particular instance?” Because all of the solutions that existed were either consultancies as a service or single-point solutions that often started at the end of the dev cycle.
So myself and my co-founder said let's just build a solution and we did. Admittedly my knowledge of accessibility or at least digital accessibility was so small at that point. In building what we could call this version negative 500 it opened up and expanded our knowledge base more than I ever would have expected. So that's how I got into it.
Talk about the founding of Stark - what was a jumping-off point for that project?
We utilized our extensive network of designers and engineers, because we are designers and engineers, to really understand what this looked like for them and whether not they had experienced this and how they were solving it, if they were solving it at all.
There were just like really young designers and engineers and then also older individuals that were in the tech industry for a really long time that have just been like going at this problem.
From there, you know, we eventually shared this janky version out to the world, and it completely snowballed, and it continued to and we ignored it for a while. We were just like, oh, this is cool, what's going on here though?
After quite some time, we said this is worth paying attention to…this is clearly a big problem to solve, which is where we'd like to get our talons in.
We realized this is not just a decent size problem—this is a massive problem where a really solid solution could have tremendous impact, not just for the people who are building software, but for the end users who are currently unable to actually access the world's latest innovation and capitalize on it, just like anyone else.
We felt we landed on something where solving this would be as impactful as solving a curb cut or an elevator or autopilot in a car. The world runs on software now, and the inability to access that means the inability to access business building and healthcare and financial services and education.
So we said, okay, this is not a small challenge. Let's, let's dig in.
From there we continued to build out these different features and we worked with a number of folks in the tech industry to poke and prod and figure out what's going on.
Eventually we slapped a pricing page on it to get someone to swipe a card and open up a wider conversation and see if there was even an appetite beyond just user love, which is first and foremost important. And it did. So we said, alright, let’s see if we can raise some funding for this, and we did, and that was a lot of fun.
When you were raising funding for this, did you feel the market understood what you were doing?
Not at all. It was very clear we were on to something because these individual contributors in the organization were like, “We've wanted this for so long. This software so beautiful.” But from from a capital allocator perspective, it was just not a thing. It was not a conversation that was happening at a board level yet. Because of that, it wasn't a part of how the currency was moving or how it would halt it from moving.
Because of that we really struggled to also articulate the ROI of it. Our early investors very much so took a big bet. Of course, we used market data as much as it was there and competitive analysis of the whole nine yards - these very basic things that you do when you go out and fundraise.
I think it was a mix of that information that we had, which you make a bet. There's a gamble that you take as a fundraiser. But I think a lot of that bet was focused on how much user love we had. We had massive adoption. We still do. There were so many people using the product and we built a product that solved a problem in a space that hadn't had that problem. It was a very specific problem for designers, especially at time where designers were largely ignored too. Designers just didn’t have a seat at the table.
When we went out a couple of years later to raise our next round, it was a completely different conversation. It was wonderful. It was wonderful to no longer have to justify or have to explain what accessibility was or is. Completely different dynamic.
It just goes to show, tech is very much a forcing function for global change.
As you had to talk to venture capitalists about raising money for accessibility, how do you talk about total dressable market? How do you look at market sizes and how do you convey to those capitalists about the opportunity that you're helping them reach?
Keep in mind Stark started in design, and design was a wedge into the accessibility space, accessibility was a wedge into a wider field of testing and QA and compliance. So for us we make it clear that we believe that all companies that engage with customers using digital technologies will need an accessibility solution in order to provide a quality experience for end users. Because what's good for customers is good for shareholder value, but it’s also important in mitigating legal risk stemming from non-compliance, which is a very real thing.
There's a wider conversation in there about compliance being the floor, you needing to build a really beautiful accessible product. But part of that conversation in organizations anchors this to compliance.
And because we believe that, it gives us the conviction about the multi-billion-dollar TAM that's here. How we think about that is that accessibility compliance is, or rather, accessibility compliance in testing is a major driver of the projected growth in the software testing and QA space, as well as the software company's market.
So we used design as a wedge into accessibility because there was no solution, despite over 50% of accessibility issues originating in the phase of the software development cycle. And from there, we expanded into this end-to-end platform that touches the entire product, what we call EPD (engineers, product, design).
That's this foundational solution to monitor and manage accessibility testing and compliance across the entire company. Market size-wise, in 2023, the market for software testing in QA was around 38 billion. It’s projected to grow to $90 billion by 2030. And compliance management software market is projected to grow to $75 million by 2031.
And so with the latest international regulation requiring all digital software products and visual content to be default accessible, software accessibility becomes this non-negotiable quality requirement, as well as a compliance risk factor for companies regardless of size. The only way companies will be able to keep up with this new demand is to invest in scalable end-to-end accessibility solutions that provide integrated automated testing, remediation, as well as monitoring across all parts of the company.
Market size-wize, that's how we look at it. But the realisty is every software company regardless of size has to be compliant. Every company is trying to squeeze efficiencies across their balance sheet.
How do you think about ROI of specific accessibility initiatives? Specifically accessibility teams advocates that see the gaps and want to get more done, but are having trouble articulating the discussion upward.
This kind of goes into what we've seen makes the most successful accessibility team, along with what we've seen makes the most successful team to ensure accessibility is at the forefront. And I think this may catch me some heat the way Brian Chesky caught heat for his product manager talk, but I think it needs to be said because it's important for accessibility teams - they have so much power.
Software eradicates the need for the traditional accessibility team. In order to really concretize themselves in organizations, the change needs to be made where—which we're actively working with our customers on because those accessibility teams are our champions and they have the ability to do damage in the best way for the organization—right now, traditional accessibility teams are essentially these in-house consultants in a lot of the companies we've seen. These in-house consultants that scan reports and hand them over to engineers to action on.
But especially with AI, any and all software will make that go away eventually. The most successful organizations we've seen have two parts to it: one - a dedicated accessibility team, which essentially PM the process for accessibility work that gets done, and help the designers and engineers be held accountable for accessibility success. They also work on a lot of manual work that needs to be done because not everything can or should be automated. And they utilize software that exists for accessibility like Stark to help them become 10x more effective at their job by doing things like monitoring and communicating progress of the projects and making sure certain KPIs are hit like these certain metrics in order to drive accessibility excellence forward in the product.
So I think the that's where we have seen and we do believe accessibility teams need to move toward or at least a traditional ones. A ton of our customers have already done that, and the products themselves and ROI of accessibility in the organization is super high.
So when I think about what what the ideal makeup of an accessibility team is, well, the ideal makeup of an accessibility team is the same makeup as like a security team, right?
It's important to have these individuals that are hyper specialized in ensuring that certain, these certain parameters get met. But the platonic ideal is that designers, engineers, managers, anyone touching the software that gets shipped, are aware, empowered, up-skilled in order to do this work and very much so help and understand what the accessibility teams are looking for or need to achieve in order for them to ship a really quality product.
What does major ROI look like?
One example - a lot of the companies that we respect in the space that we'd consider competitors are very much consultancy as a service, so they won't be able to see or experience or garner the same results for a spectrum of reasons.
But with software, you really get to understand that entire you get to understand the entire lifecycle. And because of that, you get to really understand what resource allocation and hours saved look like, and these different parameters that we use to determine ROI.
So one of our customers, it's a design team of about 40 individuals, in just year one with Stark saved $7M in annualized cost savings. It is millions saved for them, just year one. And that accounts for the time it takes to on ramp and I really get into the flow and upscale their team, change management processes are happening in the organization, right? A lot happens for a company year one.
And a lot happens in general for companies. Now, you know, in first like adopting practices that embed accessibility into the wider organization, is something that they pay attention to at a board level. But you know, that was just one company, another company in the auto industry saved $13M in annualized cost savings.
So the way you look at it. it is like efficiency and time saved or like the primary like return?
Right, because every company is trying to squeeze efficiencies across their entire balance sheet. Stark, with accessibility in general, and the work Stark does, gets the opportunity to not just sell against their revenue, but also sell against cost.
And in an organization, that's what you're looking for. You're looking to see, are you able to capitalize on more customers? Does your market expand in adopting accessible software and in turn assuring the product is accessible? Are you going to lose money?
And the reality is they see by adopting this, they're not only shipping faster—they're shipping 10x faster with Stark, by the way—because they're shifting faster and more efficiently, your time is attached to a monetary amount. And with that, you have happy customers. You have more happy customers because of it.
And so I think overall, the one thing, know, we tried to press is that, you know, accessibility isn't at odds with beauty. Accessibility doesn't slow processes down, right? Leadership and change management in companies slows shipping down.
But also part of that has to do with the fact that for a very long time, up until recently, there was no way for these organizations to even understand how to measure scalable business impact for accessibility. We just put out a template at Stark talking about how this is a non-negotiable quality requirement, and it's a catalyst for innovation and user satisfaction and business growth.
And in order to do that, you need to focus on three key areas: driving proactive improvements, scaling effectively, and boosting business performance.
And with that, we have these five accessibility metrics that you should utilize in order to do that:
- percentage of employees trained in accessibility
- percent of projects with end-to-end accessibility criteria
- revenue attributable to accessible products
- user satisfaction from users with disabilities, and
- percentage of compliant products in the portfolio.
So when you have, when you give them what they need to actually drive efficiencies inside in order to ensure their products benefit outside, you see how things start to really move because there is a dollar attached to that.
What’s the ideal place for accessibility teams to sit within the org?
So we've seen a bunch of different things. Take Microsoft, for instance, Jenny-Lee Fleury, Chief Accessibility Officer reports up to CFO, if I recall correctly, which makes sense, finance and legal work heavily together, like this a sensible chain and I personally think she should be on the overall board as Chief Accessibility Officer but that's a conversation for another time.
But I think if this is a non-negotiable quality like we believe, and we believe that all software should be accessible, I think it makes sense for the accessibility teams to sit with the software teams.
That's the work that's being done. I do think that there are multiple ways that that can report up, and it does make sense to report up also to its own accessibility office, which then works in tandem with finance and legal and what have you, which is why I like when you see these verticals in organizations like Microsoft or Salesforce that have their own office of accessibility or chief of accessibility.
But I look at the companies that are doing it most successfully, the individuals are sitting with the software teams. In the same way that, again, accessibility is a proxy for user experience. Designers, the work that they do, is also reporting up to CFO in some form. They report to a VP or a director who reports to the chief, and that chief works with other chiefs. I don't think accessibility is any different.
When we talk about AI, what do you think the impact of AI will be on accessibility teams?
AI is a B2B technology in the same way that cloud compute is a B2B technology that benefits the B2C experiences that company serves. For accessibility teams, it will do the same. It will ensure that the software that they utilize, which has AI baked in, will help those teams by enabling them to get more done faster, smarter, more efficiently.
I think it's the same with the products that they built. The only difference between AI-driven and non-AI-driven products or AI-supported teams is that AI-driven products ensure the end users' experiences augmented, assisted, or accelerated based on whatever they're looking to achieve. Accessibility teams and software teams in general, all benefit from the same thing.
I think it's incredibly mind-blowing what AI is enabling us to do, but it's a technology at the end of the day, it's just another technology.
Same roles. Better hammer.
Yes, And I think what's important to remember is that this goes into something that we're talking about internally—much like other spaces in the tech industry, we're witnessing this pivotal shift in how companies approach accessibility. One that moves away from traditional consultancies and towards software first solutions. And that's a fundamental change in how organizations actually achieve sustainable accessibility. The old way of thinking, it was really important for its time. In the same way that before cars horses did the job. It worked for its time.
Now we're at this tension point where we're shifting into software as a solution, which reduces this manual burden, it enhances efficiencies, it helps companies upskill their product teams, not just outsource the problem.
In that regard, we move away from these like manual processes and sticker sheets and relying on consultant services, which take a long time to get feedback and like a spreadsheet or needing to share your IP…to accessibility teams, software teams in general, really having the power that sits with them.
They are the knowledge workers, the accessibility teams. They have years of knowledge baked into them, which they haven't been able to bring forward because the technology didn't enable it. The company itself didn't have the knowledge base or have it on the docket at a board level to enable that.
And now all of that is in place, and so this new tech and with the software that has it baked in put them in a really powerful position to really invoke organizational-wide change.
What do you expect the benefit of this future to be on the disabled community?
Well, it's not a matter of assuming it happens. We've already seen that in motion, from the upstarts to the startups that are actually thriving-they’re venture funded, well capitalized, Stark is one of them.
The benefit to the end users, meaning the customers of the organizations—and I'm mindful to call that out because I think it's important to recognize that in the organizations, there are also disabled individuals that benefit from this—is that they get to access the world's latest innovation. Billions of individuals finally get to have what I consider these personalized, customizable, experiences that really provide them with what they need to solve that problem that they seek.
It's what we call adjustable interfaces. It makes personalization or customization easier than ever before, which is an absolute value add. A good example is Twitter having an increased contrast mode on mobile. It means ensuring people get access to education and can effectively order, for example, medication on a recurring basis.
People aren’t left out from games. This fundamental pillar to children and adults - there’s so much they can get access to at a much faster clip, which is really good because there's no more delay or there's no reason for there to be a delay anymore. I think the more that happens the more it becomes a default, which also brings the cost down, which is a net positive as well.
This follows the same playbook as privacy and security. At one point all of these social media platforms couldn't care whether or not your information was being spread all over the internet but now it's a default where they have to ensure everything is private and secure. You're not paying an upcharge for it. I remember during the first onset of the pandemic you had these video chats that were charging for accessibility features, which is like, “You're going to charge me or your inefficiency to account for the fact that I'm also a customer?! You're telling me I have to pay more because I'm disabled?!”
That doesn't happen anymore and I think that's a massive net positive for billions of individuals.
What other design innovations have you come across that you're excited about?
I think there are a number of chronic illnesses that really negatively impact individuals, which products like the Apple Watch really help monitor proactively now.
There's Apple Watch and Whoop and tons of things. They're all accounted for and the ability to proactively manage that, and with that is pain management, which is major.
The other thing that we, that we've left off the docket, which we unfortunately don't talk a lot about is mental health - mental disabilities and disorders, which are being accounted for and treated with software in a variety of different ways.
And then you have the “basic” closed captions and subtitles, which are everywhere now. On every social media platform and you're just sitting there like thank goodness these are a default. It was so fantastic to see this article that came out that talked about how more individuals than ever are using subtitles and closed captions and what have you and it just goes to show that it extends much further than individuals with disabilities.
It quite literally, accessibility benefits all and anyone. So for me, those are big ones.
Also, something we didn't talk about, which I think we need to - have you ever rideen in a Waymo? Autonomous driving. Once we nail that, how fantastic is that? So I think those are a few for me.
Waymo for example, in particular, I don't feel like we talked about that enough. Even just access to Uber's or Lyft's or other ride-sharing or easy mobile cab calls would be huge.
And they're not easy. What I really love about the Waymo, and them eventually considering in a spectrum of different ways what accessibility riding looks like, because that's a spectrum too, is it removes the shame component that often exists in this exchange of even needing to order or call an Uber or Lyft or whatever the case may be. Will you be declined as a wheelchair user? If you have a service dog, will you be declined from that?
So like, there's so many different things where you just there's many sometimes society or, you know, different areas around the world haven't quite socially caught up with the conversation, even though software will get there quicker.
Because of it, you still have these very human experiences. I think when we take like a Waymo, for instance, you realize how tech just completely enables a disabled individual to independently, delightfully and successfully access this area of the world or this software technology that they wouldn't have been able to before, and not feel like they're existing in a society that disables them.
That is such a powerful statement. And I think it'll also sort of shows sort of, you know, optimistic future for technology, being able to jump past a bunch of cultural norms that folks have had to live with forever if we just get the design right on the new tools.
Yeah, technology at this point is a vehicle for societal change in many ways.
Some people have said that building accessible slows down innovation. What do you say to these people?
That's bulls**t. You can't look at the numbers and say it slows down innovation when technology is absolutely accelerating the process at which we ship. S** software slows down shipping. Yes, it does. It becomes a roadblock. But really quality software accelerates. It informs, accelerates, it assists
It shouldn’t even be a conversation anymore around whether or not it does. A few years ago, there was this conversation around, “oh, accessibility makes it ugly.” That conversation's gone now. We've already figured out it's not at odds with beauty.
Now this is the next one. We figured out the data is there to support that it doesn't slow down shipping - your inefficient processes slowed down your shipping.
In your experience, what are the key factors that motivate companies to invest in beyond legal compliance?
Money and brand perception. Let me say, a couple of things here. One is that I think it can't be all of about the transactional conversation needs to be about the transformational conversation. Those two need to exist. They're two sides at the same point. We need to beat the drum of how this is impacting the end user and there's some companies, obviously, that exists. so many companies that exist.
Some of them won't care, right? Like they're very currency-driven. Those are the same ones that just don't even believe in ensuring anything legal is tackled from accessibility to security privacy the whole nine
But the majority are very clear that this is important for their end users and are accounting for that. At the same time, it's important to remember that these organizations care about their brand perception. That's important. That impacts the money.
At the same time they recognize that this opens up a market for them. This gives them access to more money. It saves them from losing money. And then of course first and foremost the understanding,I think you watch anything about you know Jeff Bezos and he says this a million times, “We fundamentally care that the customer is happy because what's good for the customer is good for the shareholder.”
And I think a lot of companies that you speak with in that we speak with fundamentally believe that There's a you know a waterfall effect that comes from that, you know in terms of priorities So I think those those are really why They care and now of course with you know legal regulation coming down the pipe, you're seeing an ‘oh s**t’ scramble but that's not because they just over the course of three months suddenly started caring about disabled people.
These organizations, I can tell you firsthand, have been using Stark for a substantial amount of years and have put disability as a high priority, but you have to remember that what we call these elephant companies - it's not easy to move an elephant. There's a number of factors, human factors and organizational culture factors involved in how they leverage new technology to innovate, how they respond when they see disruption coming, and also how new technology affects the processes or internal operations that come into play and whether not are lot of inward and outward that happens.
And when there's a delay, then you get an OSHA scramble, and a lot of them are doing that now.
I think there was a lot of rhetoric that you said, like these companies don't care. You know, they can't stand disabled people, they shaft disabled people, like there's so many people in these organizations that have been like clawing to have accessibility prioritized for so long, but it takes time to move in elephant, right, these are government-sized companies.
That's how I view it, and I think that plays a massive role in why we're so optimistic about the space and in turn what this means for disabled individuals.
Are there critical conversations that you've seen these organizations have that make a big difference in moving accessibility forward?
I'd say the macro trends that we've seen play a big role in that is gen AI driven generation of software and visual content is exploding, and adding to the accessibility debt and realizing that if they don't stop retrofitting, it's going to get extremely expensive. So let's start doing things efficiently.
The other is the regulatory requirements on a global scale, they're tightening worldwide.
And the other is that the companies with them needing to batten down the hatches and the economy being in the overall flux that it's been, these companies are really in need for process/cost efficiencies, and we're seeing that across industries.
So when you take that like multi-prong outlook, that trio is enough to drive anything.
I also think in general, we've seen a lot of organizations have really prioritized equity and inclusion and because of that, they have these really fantastic organizations come in and talk about these lived experiences and talk about how they can internally shape or reshape the organization to account for that. And that alone is a waterfall effect.
So you have organizations like, I don't know if you're familiar with Tilting the Lens. They are inclusion, accessibility and inclusion, consultancy. And they get into the room and they bring visibility to inaccessibility. They work with disabled people and everything from like people in culture in an organization to reimagining or reinvisioning different places and spaces to ensure they’re still creative and innovative, but also accessible.
So, that is a forcing function on the transformational side to really support what they're seeing or need to be looking at on the transactional side.
What’s the short version of what you’re most excited about for the future of accessibility?
At this point I've said it like a million times in different ways throughout this conversation, which is the “end results.”
Let let me rewind, because this is really exciting for me. If/when Stark is successful, we not only provide organizations with the software to ensure their software is accessible to disabled people, but as a ripple from that, disabled people get to access the world's latest innovation, AND in turn, get to become core contributors to society. In becoming core contributors to society, they help contribute to the GDP. And from there, get seen, right?
Like the environment disables the individual, and if we're to believe that's the case, then we need to get accessibility on the docket as moving the currency. And so for me, that's exciting.
The fact is humans move slow. But if technology can accelerate this process, and in a relatively small window of time, we can lift billions of individuals onto the world's latest innovation and have that effect. To me that would be great.
Even if we make a dent in that, because I don't know whether or not we in the time period that we have will solve it. I think it takes not just us, but a group of individuals and organizations to do this. But even if we make a dent in that, I think would be phenomenal.