Key Takeaways:
- Career in Accessibility: Sagar’s interest in accessibility was sparked during his internship at Intuit, where he encountered accessibility issues in the product's front end. After extending his internship to focus solely on accessibility, he built a career in this field and grew to lead accessibility engineering at major companies.
- AI’s Role in Accessibility: AI is transforming accessibility, making tasks like documentation and digital experience enhancements much easier. Sagar emphasizes how features like captions and AI-generated video summaries, initially created for people with disabilities, are now widely used by everyone, improving overall usability.
- Incorporating Accessibility from the Start: Sagar highlights the importance of integrating accessibility early in the design process to avoid costly adjustments later. He advocates for strong collaboration between accessibility teams and design systems teams to ensure that accessibility is seamlessly built into products from the outset.
For National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), I’m talking to thought leaders in the tech accessibility space to elevate the conversation around improving access to good jobs for all. In this conversation, I’m talking to Sagar Barbhaya, who is the Head of Global Accessibility at TikTok has held accessibility roles at some major companies including DoorDash and Intel.
Sagar, what got you started in accessibility?
I was born and raised in India, where I earned my undergrad degree in computer science. After moving to the U.S., I completed my master’s in computer science at RIT in New York. Following that, I interned at Intuit's San Diego office for seven months, which is where I was first introduced to accessibility.
During my internship, I encountered accessibility issues in our product's front end. Initially, I had a limited understanding of accessibility, but I soon learned about screen readers and how they empower people with disabilities. This sparked my interest, and I decided to spend the last month of my internship learning and fixing accessibility issues.
Around that time, I met Ted Drake, an accessibility leader, which deepened my passion for the field. I extended my internship by three months to focus solely on accessibility work. Afterward, I was offered a full-time role, and I’ve grown from an intern to head of accessibility engineering at Intuit.
Have you done anything to sort of pay it forward , as you've become a more senior leader in accessibility?
When I used to work at Intuit, I used to go back to RIT often to do a lot of recruiting. At that time, we had an intern on our team, and she's now a full-time employee on the accessibility team—Sara Margolis-Greenbaum—and she’s amazing. She came from NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf) which is a big school within RIT. They do a lot of research on gesture-based ASL and a lot of other things.
So yes, we recruited her. I was her mentor. We learned American sign language so that she can get the same experience that other interns are getting. And it was fun! I just see her and I get inspired that many people like Sara are amazing in what they do, and the disability doesn’t hinder their career.
National disability employment awareness month is all access for good jobs, for all. When you think about enabling technologies or choices that we make as engineers building systems, what are the things that have gotten better over your career?
At Intuit, I was a shared resource between the accessibility and quality engineering teams, which led us to develop our own automation library for accessibility testing around 2015-2016, before tools like Deque’s open-source library were available. One major improvement since then is the accessibility of automation tools, like Google’s accessibility scanner and AI-driven tools from companies like Evinced, which detect digital accessibility issues more efficiently.
Another significant development is Apple's focus on accessibility. For example, AirPods can double as hearing aids, allowing me to use them seamlessly without anyone knowing if they’re for assistance or just listening to music. This kind of universal design is empowering.
Additionally, AI is playing a transformative role in accessibility, providing new ways to enhance the user experience for everyone, regardless of ability. This evolution is truly a game changer for accessibility professionals.
As somebody who works in accessibility, how do you think about the changes in AI impacting you work?
AI has significantly improved my work by simplifying tasks like creating documentation for designers and engineers. What used to be time-consuming is now easier, allowing me to focus on impactful product features that benefit everyone, not just people with disabilities.
A great example is captions. Originally designed for people with hearing impairments, captions are now used by everyone—whether you're on a noisy train, watching content while someone sleeps nearby, or using translations for international videos. What was once considered an accessibility feature has become a basic necessity for all, highlighting the broader impact of inclusive design.
Captions are a great example of accessibility features that evolved and improved. What are some other examples of features that you advocate for when you're doing your work that benefits everyone?
One thing that comes to mind is AI video summary, and I recently saw that Youtube had rolled it out. It’s great because I don't have time to watch a 20-minute-long video - it creates a summary for me, and at the same time it will help people who are blind, or who are using screen readers. It’s saving our time and making us more productive to do a bunch of different things.
I want to switch gears and talk more about your career and accessibility. We talked a little bit about where things started. You’ve joined a couple of startups or earlier-stage companies as one of the early accessibility employees in these companies. What is it like entering an organization that doesn't have a lot of history around accessibility and trying to bring it in?
I love building 0 to 1 programs or features because it allows me to get everything right from the start. When I joined Intuit, Ted had already set a strong foundation for accessibility awareness. However, at DoorDash and other companies, accessibility was still unfamiliar and seen as overly complex due to a lack of awareness.
I accepted the DoorDash role because I was excited to improve accessibility for Dashers, merchants, and consumers with disabilities. In my first 30 days, I focused on understanding the product, user data, and accessibility needs. I believe the first 90 days at any new company should be about observing and laying out a long-term strategy while motivating both leadership and engineers to get excited about accessibility.
Yeah, it sounds quite a challenge. Do you have techniques that you use to get engineers excited?
Any time I can show my teams videos to highlight what customers want and how frustrating their experience can be, or feedback from platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Apple Wiz—this helps the team understand the real impact of accessibility.
One successful approach I've used is inviting customers to off-site meetings. Watching someone use assistive technology firsthand inspires the team to solve accessibility issues by seeing the challenges and successes users face.
Finally, data is key. Engineers are motivated by data, so I gather as much as possible to demonstrate why a feature is important and how it drives positive business outcomes.
What are the types of conversations that you need to do to get accessibility work prioritized and done?
I focus on customer empathy, ensuring there's a real person behind the problem we’re solving. At the same time, I analyze the market gap caused by a lack of accessibility support. This helps frame the conversation with leadership by connecting accessibility to business outcomes.
To define accessibility maturity, we use data on the market gap and metrics like ad revenue, presenting where we are and where we aim to go. Over 2-3 years, we can move from level 1 to 4 on accessibility maturity using models like those from WebM or the UK Government. This approach combines a passion for accessibility with clear business impact.
So you've been able to bring in these maturity models, tie them against these market models and some big picture movement, create buy-in at the executive or senior leadership level, and my assumption is, it provides you with resourcing to actually get stuff done. I really appreciate the way you explain that because I think that a lot of folks, when they're beginning their accessibility careers don't really understand that element of what's happening when the head of accessibility is actually needing to do.
Yeah, exactly. We also focus on accessibility in anything that we are doing—new launches for example, software or hardware—it’s important for us to also look at the requirements for accessibility for everything, because once something is launched, then it is very difficult to go back and incorporate accessibility. If accessibility is not considered then you will really have to spend a decent amount of time and money and resources to ensure its incorporated.
Some people argue that accessibility slows down innovation. What do you say to those people?
It will slow down your innovation if you don't think about it from an early point. And if you think about it right from the start of gathering requirements for making the entire product, what you ship will be better suited to bring you so many more users you would have missed if you had only done generic requirement gathering.
I love that point, because I’ve had some conversations where the opinion was, “Accessibility is more of a later stage company thing.” But what I'm hearing from you, is that actually, by incorporating accessibility from the beginning you're only going to increase your market cap. And it cuts costs in the same way that good software, architecture, might enable you to go far without having to come back and rewrite the framework and approach around accessibility.
Yeah, exactly. And this is why there is a lot of increase in the design systems space. A lot of accessibility specialists are working within the design systems team, because often it starts with making sure that the UI (user interface) components are reusable.
Because if you make your design system rock solid you don’t have to worry about having to account for upcoming accessibility acts, and wishing you would have incorporated accessibility sooner in the process.
That’s why it's very important for any head of accessibility in any company to also think about how they are collaborating with their design systems team. That is going to give you major wins, because designers and engineers will be adopting the common components. If you make that common sense with decent guidelines and guard rails, your team won’t abuse the design system and you’ll avoid accumulating tech debt.
If you were starting a new company today, what design systems would you recommend?
I would go with a materials design system, a Google design system that has been built with lots of thought. You can't go wrong with Google's material.
How has remote work impacted accessibility, especially for employees with disabilities?
I think every company should have its own way of accommodating employees if they need any sort of accommodation. I know there are a lot of Zoom meetings, and with respect to deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, this can get trickier, because people are trying to speak with video off and a hard-of-hearing employee can’t rely on lip reading in that case. And some companies don’t have the Zoom version that supports closed captioning. This is a very basic thing that every company should support, but not every company thinks about this.
Whose responsibility is accessibility?
Accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, not just the head of accessibility or a subject matter expert. We need to raise awareness about assistive technologies, and different types of disabilities (including hidden ones), and create a shared understanding across teams.
One person can ignite the excitement, but success requires collective effort. It’s important to inspire engineers, designers, stakeholders, and leaders alike. You can do this by showing the business potential, such as through market gap analysis, and highlighting upcoming legislation, especially in Europe, where accessibility laws will drive significant change in the next five years.
You've mentioned this a couple times, but could you tell me a little bit more about the upcoming accessibility in Europe?
The European Accessibility Act is going to go into effect in June 2025 and they have very clearly laid out who is mandated to make their digital services accessible. They have used WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines and EN 301 549 to create the guidelines that companies need to abide by. And as I understand it, this will be different from ADA in that it will be more focused on making sure a company is transparent about its accessibility gaps and that it is working on these gaps.
Another thing is if a customer logs any complaint, and then you have 60 days to work on those complaints, and then make sure that you remediate that issue. It’s going to be exciting! Once this act is out, Canada is also going to adopt this same act in the next 5 years. So this is one of many continents that is taking a big step forward in accessibility. And I would not be surprised if California would adopt something similar as well.