Key Takeaways
- Accessibility is a driver of innovation, extending market reach and improving user experiences for all
- Building relationships and mapping organizational structures is crucial for implementing accessibility programs
- Storytelling combined with business case framing is effective for influencing executives on accessibility initiatives
- There's a need to upskill HR and accommodations professionals on assistive technologies and accessibility
Today I’m talking with my friend Kelsey Hall to spread the good word for National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Kelsey is head of accessibility for ADP.
Kelsey, can you tell me about your accessibility journey?
It's been a journey. When I say that I got started on this wild journey, I started off as a musical theater major. So it's been quite a shift. But I’ll start by saying disability has been a part of my life. I have disabilities myself and I was raised by two parents with disabilities, so it’s deeply ingrained, literally in my DNA.
I started my career as a speech pathologist and a teacher of the deaf, and that gave me a really interesting perspective on a wide array of different disabilities that really broadened my experiences and insights. And I knew pretty soon after working in the speech pathology world that this was so much bigger from an assistive tech standpoint, accessible communication. So I've worked in early intervention with families, I've worked in K-12 schools, I've worked in subacute rehabilitation on brain injury units, community transition - so across the lifespan, higher education, and the corporate sector. And even internationally, which has been really, really helpful.
In all of those experiences, what it came down to was, it's great to have access to assistive tech and insights and the younger population, but those young kids grow up to be adults and they want to work, they want to be in the community, they want to be engaged. And where it tends to fall down is when they leave those schools and move into the community in those spaces. And that's where I realized that accessibility, it's just a critical piece. There's this divide between school and the public sector and then everything else.
So it's been quite a journey, but it's helped me see firsthand the implications for accessible design, and accessible development, just from knowing so many incredible people and awesome people that I’ve had a chance to work and learn from.
So you were working as a head of IT at accessibility at an assistive technology center and then you made the jump to corporate. Was this part of this thing that you just mentioned a second ago?
Yes, the idea was growing in my brain as I was working for everything where I'm sitting in K12 watching my students struggle with these experiences with without assistive tech. So I went and got a degree in assistive tech, learned a lot about that, started building a center in the K12 school district I was in at the time, and broader with consulting that I did.
But then it became really crystal clear that it's cool that they have access to this tech, but the tech only works as far as it can work if we don't build spaces and tools and technologies that work with it. So it became this idea of, if K12 isn't really the answer for this, who's building these things? Where can we go for this?
That took me to higher education and higher education is where I thought maybe this is where we impact the change and the future generation of developers, designers. I think that's true to some degree. I think there's a lot of challenges in that space with how those organizations work and how they're structured and set up that doesn't really make it as seamless.
So then I was like, well, what impacts culture? And a lot of corporations ultimately impact the culture that we live in today. So I was like, well, if higher ed isn't the place where I can get to the heart of certain things, well, maybe corporate America is. So it's been a journey, but it's kind of given me a lot of unique perspectives.
Yeah, that's super interesting because when we talk about national disability employment awareness month, which has a messaging around access to good jobs for all, I feel like Kelsey, you have this interesting journey where you've gone through early childhood education, up to higher education, into corporate America, and followed maybe that metaphorical student from kindergarten into the workforce. So it's a really interesting perspective you bring.
I've been thinking a lot about it lately too. So as a side tangent: in the speech pathology world, we have a big conference called ASHA, the American Speech Language Hearing Association conference, and I decided to speak there this year, it happens in December. And the whole focus was on my perspective looking back at the criticality of understanding the lifespan of a human. What they need here is not what they need here, what they need here, you know, as they continue to grow and change and shift.
I don't think we think about all of that regularly. The person in front of you trying to access a space was another person many years ago trying to just get access to tools to access the space and they'll continue to change.
So you went from higher ed into corporate America. What are the key aspects of building accessibility programs in large organizations that you've picked up?
Every organization is so different. I love building programs from scratch. That's something that I really like to lean into. I like it because it's a huge problem to be solved. It's complex. I really like thinking about organizations as systems - living, breathing ecosystems.
My goal in entering any type of system, no matter what size organization, if it's public, if it's private, it's this idea of showing up and you're really just trying to create a map. It's actually fascinating how many different types of organizations don't really have the broad sweeping understanding of their own organization, and I feel like accessibility is a unique position in that you have to enter and start to map that out.
The first thing that I think of in building a program is, what is the system I'm entering? How is it set up? What are all the key players? What are the different organizations and departments? How much do they interact? Who kind of owns what area? And you know, what are they like?
There's the social emotional side of this too. How do those systems function? Are they functioning well? Do they seem to be fragmented? Because all of that will ultimately impact how you integrate accessibility into a system because it really shouldn't be its own. Our whole goal is to come in, help clean up spaces that are fragmented to make things more seamless and integrate into that experience so we're baking accessibility in.
So my favorite is building the program, starting from zero and jumping to two.
Definitely the ecosystem is the number one, like you can't get anything done without that. And then two its really relationships, like the next piece is identifying your stakeholders. Who are all the critical people? Aggregate them and document.
I always tell my teams everywhere, documentation is everything. It's like existing as though you're going to win the lottery and leave tomorrow. You would want to make sure, if that were to happen, anyone could enter the organization and step right in and be like, okay, this is where it's at, let's keep going, right? Instead of having to start all over again. So that's how I also run my teams is this idea of document, document, document.
Because of the cross-functional nature of many accessibility leaders, you're gaining exposure across the entire corporation, and these are some of hardest challenges to take on. They also seem like they would prepare you well to jump into other problem-solving as well, which is really interesting because you imagine accessibility as a career being a ladder into senior leadership.
I will say, I feel like when people will tell me, you know, oh, accessibility is such a cool career, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it is. I mean, I wish this didn't have to exist, to be quite honest. I wish this wasn't such a niche area that needed such attention because it would be better if we could just build products with accessibility from the get-go.
I keep telling people, yeah, of course we want you to focus on accessibility, et cetera. But I'm really interested in seeing people focus where they are and building accessibility as a non-negotiable as a part of the role they're in. I feel like that's significantly more impactful at this juncture. I want loads of developers, loads of designers. I want people who will climb the ladder as an executive in marketing, whoever, to carry this with them as an expertise as part of the role they're in to make impactful change at a leadership level because that's where we need support across every organization and to really understand the implications for that.
So yeah, we need accessibility folks. We do need that to happen. But we also don't necessarily need everyone to jump ship. We just need them to dive in.
I’ve heard the saying, “It's better for a lot of people to know a little bit about accessibility than for one person know it all.” And I think that's what we all strive to do inside of our organizations. So speaking of NDEAM, how do we encourage people with disabilities to find meaningful work and succeed in the workplace?
There are so many aspects of work that I think need attention in terms of ensuring that the processes that are in place in whatever organization that they're available to people with disabilities. And I think that's a piece that's missing right now is that so many organizations and so many places are on this journey, but they haven't quite figured it out. And I would love to lean in and see how appropriate accommodations and supports—how the whole accommodations world can shift to be quite honest. Because that's where the empowerment happens in some ways.
Yes I would love for seamless integration of all tools and technologies like radical personalization if you will. I think that with some aspects of AI we're probably getting there. I think there's other concerns that pop up related to that. But in order to radically personalize experiences we also need to make sure that we understand the diverse experiences that people have.
When I'm looking at things like higher ed, when I was working in that space, a lot of the concerns I had were how are we accommodating appropriately for faculty, for staff, for students and how are we assessing those and making sure that they're valid accommodations, that they're reliable, that they're safe—those things are things that I think about a lot. I would love to see more focus on upskilling and training HR professionals or any accommodations related professional, and to really understanding the landscape of technology: assistive technology, adaptive tools and technologies.
Because also I think about how not every person with a disability knows exactly what they need. They may become disabled later in life. They may still be out there trying to figure out the transition from school to the workforce and the supports are wildly different. The tools may be wildly different depending on what you're doing, what your role is. So I think there's a gap there in terms of ensuring that the tools can be provided and the training is available and that goes for everybody in a lot of ways. But I see this missing in the accommodation space and I see it missing in this idea of universal design and how we can ensure that people show up to a space and can choose what works for them.
I think if we lean into that area, it provides some good support for people to not only get employed, but stay meaningfully employed, which is just as important.
I heard education around HR professionals. I heard this focus on accommodation. I've heard accommodation reframed as productivity and I think that we all want to create a work environment where people are bringing the most productive selves to work that impacts the bottom line and impacts what we're trying to do with our organizations. So I think when people think about that holistically, it makes more progress.
It’s so interesting thinking about it in terms of productivity, too, though, like, and even how we measure what that means by a role.
But I do think that there's a gap there. Especially as I think people entering the workforce, new professionals. We need to really upscale people better. We need to help individuals advocate for their needs better, but also we really need to have professionals supporting the workforce who understand accessibility and disability and assistive tech.
As we talk about productivity, what unique challenges are there in supporting people with executive dysfunction in the workplace?
I think that there's a lot of focus on specific disability types sometimes in the disability community when it comes to work, but I think also there's been a focus on neurodiversity and neurodivergence recently.
When I was working as a speech pathologist, I focused a lot on working with students around executive functioning skills and how to find systems that work for them, to hold themselves accountable, to advocate for themselves. I think this kind of goes in line with what we just talking about, too: making sure that when people are entering the workforce they have what they need, they've been trained, they've been supported on what's out there, what things they can ask for, ways to be able to identify what works for them. Things like time management and organization. Not every tool works for everyone. Once you've met one person with a disability, you've met one person with a disability.
It leans more into the neurodiversity conversation, but how can we find those tools as a manager, and support individuals on your team who are asking for certain things or asking for that support and identify ways that work for them to be more effective and efficient in the roles that they're in.
But I just don't want to forget about that population, because I think it can be so misconstrued when that support isn't there and I think that can be really dangerous. So, right tools, right training, :mwah: chef's kiss.
And it starts with the awareness that this is something you should be thinking about because we are all a very diverse set of people. We all need different things in order to be productive.
From a manager's side, and working with your different teams and everything - so many organizations use certain products and tools. There's so much that's built right into your devices, your laptops, your phones, and just finding out through curiosity, base level curiosity as a manager, asking your team or a colleague you're working with, what tools work best for you, what type of device user are you, sharing insights for that.
There’s been a heavy focus on certain populations of disability and in support, and I find there's still less focus and support on the neurodiversity side, but there's so much out there.
As someone who works with a lot of small businesses, the software that you build is used by small, medium, large, giant enterprises, how can small and mid-sized businesses contribute to the accessibility movement?
So many ways. When we talk accessibility, it's not just even digital, but also physical experiences, service experiences, all of that. There's a big opportunity in that space.
I even think about my community where I live. I used to sit on the commission for disability in my town. And a lot of the conversations we would have would mostly be about the businesses local to our area and I live in a very old part of the country and so much our infrastructure is set up in a certain way. So even from the physical side, how in communities where mostly small and like kind of those mid-sized businesses exist - how can we surround those communities and start to make bigger impact and talk with our local communities and politicians and what have you to make it known that this is an issue. Small businesses are just really unique in that way.
And when I think about communities, there are a lot of organizations in towns like chambers of commerce that get information out. I worked a lot with our chamber of commerce to try to have those conversations about how can we get information about accessibility out to these small businesses. I honestly think it's an information gap. So many people just don't know about the implications of the website they're building, or the services they're offering, or the space that they've decided to set up their business in.
There’s such a focus on large organizations, which is right and important, but, day to day people are out in their communities, navigating restaurants or other spaces, trying to read their menus, all sorts of things and how can we leverage community resources to teach and make small businesses aware that this is an opportunity for them. And it's also a community endeavor.
So it's not just for big corporations, it's so important at the local level. And anyone who's listening here too, that's important for your local employment. To create inclusive, accessible small businesses in your town means more people have access to be employed there too not just to patron that space, but to work there.
What I've heard is by hiring folks with disabilities, that's the simplest technique to make your entire business more accessible. We live in a world where many folks have not interacted with someone who is neurodiverse or blind or vision impaired or hard of hearing on a regular basis. What we're hoping for is a world that is a little bit more normalized.
I agree, because it isn't an exception. But I always think about it this way. When I was working in higher ed, we would sometimes talk to companies and they'd be like, oh, well, you're the first person to ask us about accessibility. And I just remember being like, I know that's not true, but also, people don't use products or go to places where they can't use them or buy anything. You’re not going to buy something you can’t use.
It’s just the reframing too. No one might be entering your business who is a wheel chair user, but that’s because you have a flight of stairs and they can’t get into your business. It’s logic. Of course people can't buy or engage with something that they can't use.
So you worked in speech pathology for a while. How can assistive technology adapt to people with speech and voice disabilities?
When I was working with students, a variety of ages from mostly three to five, all the way up to 21, we worked first with a lot of technologies, augmentative communication devices for people who weren't using verbal speech or who were supplementing verbal speech. And that's really interesting technology. There's a lot of opportunity there as well.
But I was also working with students who had what would be called, “voice disorders” or what the medical term might be dysarthria, so their verbal speech wasn't as understandable to everyone. So I think about a lot of technologies, like speech to text, or if you're thinking restaurant technologies that are now transitioning to voice ordering systems and what the impact will be for people with voice disabilities, navigating those experiences that are highly focused on leveraging AI.
I think we need a lot more data and a lot more voice and speech samples to help make that a really positive experience. There are a few different organizations who are working on projects that really are leading in that space that are focusing on taking voice and speech samples from a population that has a wide array of how they speak to try to build a model that's more inclusive.
That’s really important because there are many people that I've worked with previously who try to use technologies like speech to text or computer control technologies using voice control on the phone as well, most of our phones have that built in. And it's really hard because we haven’t accounted for a variety of speech patterns.
So that's something I'm looking forward to kind of watching these companies progress and make those changes and start including a wide array of people. But the impact is also when you think about maybe a disability or a disease like ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). There are a lot of people I've known working in this space who have wanted to collect their speech samples over time to create their own voice for an augmentative device. They can sometimes lose their speech pretty quickly.
There's so much technology out there to be able to leverage, and I just want to make sure that people have access to that because it's so important, whether it's to create their own voice or whether it's to just be able to navigate the world regardless of what their voice sounds like.
How do you think about the impact of generative AI on accessibility?
I was at the M-Enabling Conference and Jutta Treviranus had made a comment like AI could be the best or in some cases the worst situation for people with disabilities. Part of that is because there's so much opportunity, like we're just talking about with voice models and speech models, and so much more productivity.
But there's also significant implications if the breadth of the data models don't include insights from the disability community. So I think because disabled people's experiences are often so sidelined, it really means that the data holistically that's available out there in the world, it's really missing key learnings from the disability community.
And until we start embedding that and making that more natural, it's going to make it hard to reach a wide array of audiences. So I really agreed with that sentiment from M-Enabling - this idea that it can be really, really, really powerful and empowering, and it has so many positive implications, but we have to be really mindful and ethical in how we approach all of the models.
Some of the things that I'm excited about, to kind of lean in there a little bit, is this idea of radical personalization. This isn't new to the disability community. Maybe to the community of people without disabilities, the idea of radically personalizing a digital experience feels really wild. But I think it's something that the disability community has been asking for a while. Like I want to be able to enter a space and have it accept me and welcome me.
I think that would be dynamically changing based on users' needs or preference. And I think that AI has the possibility to do that, again with the right models in place and the right information.
Leaning into that neuro-diversity side and kind of that idea of radical personalization, having access to support individuals with mental health disabilities or neuro-diversity when they enter a space to make sure that it's safe and welcoming.
I'm also really interested in things like neuro-prosthetics or some of the technology that's happening around neuro-stimulation. So I'm curious to watch that space. I think there's a lot to be learned and I don't know as much about it. But, with anything “both and” - it's both interesting and I'm like, what's going on over there? So I think there's a lot to watch for.
What are your favorite tools in assistive technology?
I use a lot of assistive tech myself and I feel like this is such an uninteresting answer in so many ways because so many of the tools that I use are so pragmatic and so practical for me to just exist.
For example, I am a user of dark mode. I am a user of stop motion, like being able to close out animation. I am a user of zoom magnification technology. I do need brighter, larger, tracking items for my mouse - it’s hard for me to track things on a screen. I really benefit from a lot of things that aren’t flashy or unique, but they're so important to my daily functioning.
I also make use of a lot of executive functioning tools myself for time management and things. I would say the thing that I really use without fail for better or for worse is if you are communicating with me via text or even maybe via email, I am probably messaging you using speech-to-text, and I'm sorry. So it always says at the end, iPhone, I mistake, I apologize, because accuracy might not be 100%. Not really a super exciting answer there.
I'm going to push you a little bit more on the executive function side, because I think all of us probably would benefit from more tooling on executive function. And in the past, you also mentioned neuroprosthetics, and I think there's probably a lot of different ways of looking at that statement. Let's talk about executive function.
Let's talk about executive function. There are a lot of tools for this. A lot of note-taking tools are really incredible. Some are built right into whatever device you might be using. Not every organization uses the same suite of tools, but I guarantee if you are using a Microsoft or a Google, you have tools that you have access to.
So I always like to look at what's available first. If you're out there and you're like, I need to find something, lean in and see what's there based on your organization.
For folks who are sitting through meetings all day, like myself, one of the things that I find really, really helpful is not so much taking notes word for word like we all have that if you've gone to college or you know any type of class or anything you have this inclination to just write everything down. You're never probably going to go back and reread all of that and record and rewatch all of that because we already have so much limited time in a day as it is.
However what is really helpful for a lot of people to retain information is right when the meeting ends, just find your best tool whether it's sticky notes or writing it down or digitally or send an email to yourself whatever works and whatever's available in the most seamless way - just explain what the purpose of that meeting was and what happened. Just like take two lines no more than that. I found that to be super impactful for myself or others I've worked with to just retain the outcome of that call and if there was no outcome then start asking yourself is this an effective meeting.
But that's one piece. Other things where it's more like structured would be…so it's this idea of there's an official name for it. I don't use the official one and I can't remember the name of it right now but it's kind of like these four focus blocks and you're really starting to conceptualize:
- what is I must do now
- what's something I can do late a little later this week
- what's something that maybe is a couple of weeks out and
- what's something I might never do or need to delegate
And allowing yourself to brain dump and organize and do this at a regular cadence so that you're always kind of focused on what you need to do but understanding that not everything is a now problem because if it's a now problem then none of it really matters at that point, or too much of it matters, or it's time to have a conversation about more support. But those types of tools and those buckets are really helpful.
And the last thing I'll mention is no matter what calendar you're using, I'm a fan of time blocking. There's this idea of multitasking that most people can't do well. Some people can. Brains are all different. But a lot of people struggle with that, and it is really important to be able to time block and understand that idea of the passing of time, which is a challenge for a lot of people. But to be able to time block focus periods for specific things and give yourself grace for that, but also allow for transition time between them.
So I'm a huge fan of time blocking and color coding for myself so I can also track how much time am I spending on XYZ and how much time did I anticipate I'd spend on it. Because that's really the key ability to start tracking - my perception of time is perhaps not reality. So all of these things are more information that help you to flex accordingly.
So how does accessibility affect innovation?
I really have to lean into the idea that accessibility is a driver of innovation. And I say that not because I'm like a Jutta Treviranus ‘stan’ or something, but I really love the work that Jutta has been doing and has done over her very long and wide career accessibility and user-focused design.
A few years back, I attended a session where she really just put it out there. She really leaned into this idea of the 80-20 principle - the thing that business really leans on how they build products or how they make decisions. And she was like, I'm going to unpack that. And if you happen to read her article on The Virtuous Tornado, she really looks at what is the history of the 80-20 principle. How was this conceptualized and does it make sense today. She really tears that apart little bit and I think it's brilliant because it shows the misapplication in many ways that people have applied this principle to business by saying we should focus on the 80% of need. But innovation happens in the 20%. If we're always creating and designing for the same thing, is that innovation or the same set of people?
Then I start thinking about things text messaging - where did that come out of? The deaf community? Audiobooks, where did that come out of? The blind community. All of these inventions or things that people use every single day changes this idea of the 80% being the most important and really leaning into what she calls the 20% as the vital few, the ones that drive innovation. That push us to think outside the box because they have to, right?
The world's not built for them.
And the other piece to this that I think so important is she talks a lot about the bell curve and how people are so much more dynamic than a representation of a bell curve. And so she conceptualizes it as the starburst. And why that's so cool is because visually, when you think of a starburst, and you have the dense center and all of these pieces extending from the center, getting a little bit less dense. The reality is that when you start thinking about an end user who's using your product, although they might fit in the 80% for some things, humans are dynamic. Some of the things they're going to sit in the 20%.
You start mapping a user and their journey, and you realize they're a star and they're not just like densely centered thing. And they're not an exact replica or copy of the little tiny dot next to them, they're dynamic.
It's a fascinating read, but it really speaks to my perspective and how I think about disability accessibility and just the human condition being alive. It leans into it being a driver of innovation. It promotes diversity.
One challenge that many folks face in the accessibility community/industry is getting access to resources. How do you make the business case for accessibility and get resources?
Oh, it's going to be so different at every organization. It really is. Mostly because every organization might be coming to the table with a different perspective. You might be there as an accessibility resource for different reasons, whether it's competitive advantage, whether it's legal reasons. So I think it's hard to give a blanket this is how you do it.
It's really important to understand your landscape, why you're there, who you're speaking to, how they perceive accessibility. Every organization I've entered, it's been a different case for leadership and what they understand about accessibility. Many think, oh, it's just bug fixes, right? So we need to throw resources at reactive bug fixes. But I think if you're in the accessibility space, you understand that that's maybe part of what you're having to do, but it's so not where you want to exist forever. It doesn't really help in that regard.
So there's a lot of coaching that has to happen. And that can be really challenging, depending on what your particular organization is like and how your leadership is structured, but I find there is a mental misalignment about what accessibility even is. So there's a lot of work to be done there.
I also think if you're really struggling, leaning into the W3C's business case is a great place to start because it gives you four tangible things to build information from. So the W3C's business case looks at accessibility as an innovation driver, accessibility as a market extender, accessibility as a legal risk mitigator, and accessibility as a brand enhancer.
If you can use that as a framework, you can start to figure out how your organization is built, who you need to talk to. If you want to start gathering client insights or customer insights, that can help you lean into things like how it could extend your market reach, how it can enhance your brand and your brand loyalty.
It’s going to be different everywhere, but those four pieces, if you take them one by one and dive deep, talk to people at your organization, gather insights from your clients, from the disability community - it's going to really help you flesh it out. And it's really hard to ignore when you have the data in front of you, but you need the data, and the framework is the support for that.
When you are creating influence, is there one of those that you go to the most? That you find is the most effective influence technique?
When you talk about driving innovation, I think organizations of all sectors, all sizes are always constantly considering bottom line or thinking about economies of scale. How can they extend a market reach? How do they grow their influence? Grow that reach?
So when you think about innovation, what an opportunity. And so, I know I have always led with a lot of you Jutta’s work. It is really helpful to build stories and to start telling the disability story and the accessibility story for leaders of all levelsin a way that they understood.
I actually got my MBA specifically in HR and Change Management because I wanted to understand what people with MBAs were learning in school. I think I walked away with a very different perspective on what I see out in the world for an MBA and how people operate and all of that. But I did really walk away with an understanding of economies of scale, which is such a critical part to successful business in the current landscape that we have today globally, in North America, etc.
I leverage a lot of those insights combined with how do you start reaching spaces that you didn't know existed, because that's a part of important growth. And also leaning into the idea that it's kind of facing your own existence in some ways. The experience of disability is going to impact us all, if it hasn't already. I think those things combined, innovation, market reach, and really leaning into storytelling and what executives hear and think about and have learned from their MBAs has been very helpful for me.
Combining storytelling, that's very relevant to whatever organization you're in at the time. If you have insights from your sales teams or from your client base - finding ways to bring that in to tell those stories is so impactful because it's right from the people using your tools or your clients or what have you depending on what sector you're in. It doesn't really matter whether you're in higher ed and you're working students—those are your clients. So how do you get their stories told? As part of you know their voices their insights and combining that with all of it really helps.
When you are operating in these really large organizations how do you convince other people to bring all the stories over to you?
That's through that relationship building. Relationship building, asking lots and lots of questions. The base level of wonder that you have to have when you enter any organization of any size - it's like I'm entering this with no idea of what's going on here and I have a lot of questions because I want to learn, I understand how people think, what drives them, what motivates them,
Also just to really understand who has access to what insights is really important. Because ultimately that's where you get those stories told. You have an organization that has client-think tank type things, that's an opportunity for you to embed yourself to start asking questions and learning more. And it's just so different depending on where you are, the size of your organization, and where your reach extends. But I can't stress the importance of building relationships with key stakeholders enough to get access to those insights.
What that immediately brought to mind was knowing who has the stories or who might have the stories, but knowing where those stories need to be told to have the biggest impact. You need to figure out those two things together to make that work well.
It's totally true. That's where when you first are entering a space and you're building that program. There is nothing more important from my perspective than the map, like mapping out how this whole system works and who the key drivers are. That's your entry point into building your ground swell of support of finding who your allies are, and the flip side of that, finding out the sticky widgets and things, right? And who do you have to pull along for this journey? It helps you to really get your positioning down.
Also, the goal of accessibility is not to make things difficult. It's actually quite the opposite. And the same is true of integrating into a system. We want this to be as seamless as possible.
It will disrupt people's work initially. And that's OK, but it's helping them not fall off the cliff into thinking that it's going to be difficult forever. No, this is this is a part of change management. It's a part of thinking about something different and new and how can you encourage them about this as an opportunity and bring them along. I do think that most people when they really start to understand, they do get the implications for that. And it does become very real to them.
So you've made a lot of impact throughout your career, working across all these different levels. Do you have any individual examples that you come back to to kind of reenergize yourself of the impact you're making?
There's a lot. I think about the students that I've worked with all the time and students meaning K-12, or those I worked alongside in higher ed. Because the idea that those kids that I worked with who were five, six, seven, eight, they're now in their 20s, at least, which is wild to think about, but those kids became adults.
And I hope the work that I'm doing and the work that so many others are so hard at work to do is impacting them positively, but they're always on my mind. When someone's asking me a question about XYZ, like, “why do I have to make this drag and drop functionality work for a switch user? (totally making this up)” But what immediately comes to mind is the many switch control users I've had the pleasure to work with over my career because I immediately can see the impact in real time in my brain. It's a bummer when things don't work, when they should.
I think that is something that having those wide array of experiences is something that will never leave me because I can truly put them on play in my brain because the impact is so significant.
I also think there are people out there that I've had the opportunity to work with - people who were interns for me when I was working in higher education - people who are doing incredible things now and being able to see that there are some really incredible people out here who are ready to take the reins when I inevitably am retiring or walking away from more full-time working this way or like watching all of my peers doing similar things like really building up the next generation. It's so important to me and I'm so proud of the work that they're doing out there because we need them. So that's really, really incredible as well.
And just the reach for teams, I think about, I've had the pleasure of building many teams now in different sectors and incredible people I've been able to work alongside doing this work. Many of them have gone on to do work elsewhere and to build their own teams or upskill their own teams. And that impact is so cascading and it's incredible to see. So that gives me some amount of peace and relief in some ways.
We have so much further to go, and I think there's a lot to unpack about even just like this professional space and what we're doing here and how we treat each other and how we treat ourselves. It gives me peace to know that people are coming up through the ranks to really do the work.