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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Compliance Is the Floor; Inclusion Is the Strategy with Hilary Stephenson
"Accessibility isn’t a niche feature set; it’s the operating system of a fair and profitable digital world."
On this week’s episode of The FODcast, James sits down with Hilary Stephenson, Managing Director at Nexer Digital, to unpack how inclusive design drives growth, reduces risk, and builds trust across every customer journey.
In our chat, we cover a whole host of things, including:
- The European Accessibility Act - what’s in scope, what deadlines matter, and why compliance is only the floor, not the ceiling
- The biggest friction points in retail journeys - and how to turn them into wins through clear content, contrast, and keyboard-friendly design
- What government digital services get right: co-design, testing with assistive tech, and radical transparency
- How inclusive design and immersive commerce can coexist, and why heavy scripts, pop-ups, and “dark patterns” are just bad UX
- The practical sequence to start today: set a baseline, “fix the six,” publish an honest accessibility statement, and keep testing
With more than 25 years in content, UX and inclusive service design, Hilary brings the experience of someone who’s helped make accessibility business-critical for leading brands and public sector organisations alike.
Tune in, enjoy, and let us know your thoughts!
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Hello and welcome to season seven of the Fodcast. The podcast focused on the future of digital commerce hosted by Simply Commerce. Season seven promises to continue to bring you some of the industry's brightest minds across the globe as we unpick the sector and where it's heading. From war stories to strategy and technology deep dives to future trends, we cover it all as we continue our journey to have one of the most popular podcasts in commerce. Before we start, if you enjoy our content, please do hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on, like and share on socials. Hello and welcome back to the podcast, The Future of All Things Digital Commerce. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome Hillary Stevenson, Managing Director for Nexta Digital. Welcome, Hilary.
SPEAKER_01:Hi James, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for coming on the show. So today we are going to be talking about the importance of raising the bar in accessibility. Now, being completely honest, I'd never really thought about accessibility, and I'm sure I'm not alone. When Hillary and I first spoke, we discussed some really interesting areas around accessibility, who's doing it well, what we can learn, and a hell of a lot more. And today we're going to talk about these in a lot more detail. Before we start, Hillary, do you want to give the audience a little bit of an intro into your background and to Next Digital?
SPEAKER_01:I can do, yeah. So yeah, I'm Hilary. I'm the managing director and founder of Nexa Digital. We are part of a larger Swedish um IT consulting company, but I obviously lead the Nexa Digital team in the UK. We've been doing that for about 18 years, so we've been around the block a few times. Um yeah, our main focus is, you know, we're an agency, so we build and design products and services, um, and we do that uh with a very sharp focus on digital inclusion and social impact kind of shapes where we where we choose to do our work.
SPEAKER_00:And it's such an important area as well. I'm really looking forward to to deep diving into this one today. Thank you. Um so let's let's start things off um just really quickly with talking about what does a good uh accessible customer experience look like?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I would say anything that removes barriers for people, anything that allows people to interact with an app or a website or any kind of transactional service in the way that they need to, you know, that it works for how they have configured their device or their phone. So anything that removes blockers from people having the same experience as the majority of users, which is where we typically focus design. Um, but yeah, it means it sometimes it it leaves people behind, it cuts people out.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And what what what's a um what is the most uh accessible experience that you've had personally, Hillary?
SPEAKER_01:Oh gosh, I think about this. So I mean I don't like shopping. I mean, it's a great way to start asking about about retail. But you know, anything that, you know, I'm often pushed for time, I've got two kids, they often need things urgently. So anything that helps me browse, buy and track seamlessly is wonderful, you know, and I would like that to be the experience for everybody. Highlight at the weekend, I renewed my passport. That is a really good service, it's not a shopping service, but it's a really good example of how you can complete the full journey. Really good calms, really good follow-up, you know exactly where you are in the process, and it's just made easy for you. So, you know, I think we're probably gonna go and talk a little bit about how kind of government services have influenced accessibility, but yeah, the passport renewal services is a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, do you know what it's not often uh where the government lead the way in something, right? Normally you find it's uh a few years behind, but actually, as you said, we're gonna be talking about that in a bit more detail later on. Um but but there's been a bit of change in the uh in the world of accessibility, hasn't there, in the last couple of years? So so so what's changed and and why are we talking about this now?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I mean the changes in shopping, but also some of the legislation around digital services. So um acts, the the most recent one is the European Accessibility Act, uh came into force in June 2025. Um, it was trialled and trailed before that, so people had plenty of time to prepare. Um, but it's really kind of shaken up attitudes in the industry because people now have a you know a real compliance driver. I think, I think in the industry more broadly, there's more awareness of accessibility. I mean, it was really good that you said you didn't know about it, but we've had some good conversations already, right? And you can see that it, you know, it just makes ultimate business sense as well as it being a kind of moral obligation. Um there's the new act that came in in June. Prior to that, there was web accessibility directives, there is a public sector um body's accessibility regulation rules, PS Bar. So over the last five years, the sort of legal standards have been creeping in. Um lawsuits have gone up in the US, the ADA, um Americans with Disabilities Act, has seen a rise in litigation. So I think it's just becoming a bit more front and center. I also think we've got a heightened experience and expectation around digital since the pandemic. Um, people just expect to do a lot more online. Um, so you know, why would we leave people out of that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I'm looking at myself in particular. I think there's just uh and I'm I'm I'm sure I'm not alone, maybe I am, but uh, there's just a naivety, I think, as well. That uh um there are many out there. I think you've got some some stats around this, around the amount of um the online users that have a form of of the disability. But we have this naivety where everyone just has the same experience regardless. Um I I I this is possibly going to sound quite bad, but I've not gone on a website before and wondered how someone else would use this website that has a disability. And I wonder if I'm alone in that thought process or if actually that is something that is uh front and centre when it comes to decision making within retail.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean I don't I don't think it's a malicious act to to kind of deliberately design things to to exclude people. It is, as you say, people just don't know. Um, it's not always part of all education when people are coming into the sector. I think if you look at something like retail and commerce, you've got a lot of startups, fast-paced organization, you've got teams, you know, churning churning resources all the time. So, you know, the the level of awareness maybe just isn't there in some sectors. You've also got in retail, you know, very date-driven, very kind of seasonal campaign driven. You've got the kind of golden quarter of dates that everybody's rushing towards, and sometimes accessibility maybe just gets a little bit pushed down the list of list of priorities for no bad reasons. It's just people maybe don't realize what what they're doing by cutting people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and that's it. It's one of those areas where if you don't realize you're doing it, then you're never gonna know. I mean, you obviously have these conversations on a regular basis, Hillary. So when you're speaking to uh to customers, how how often are you having to promote accessibility to them versus how many of them are coming to you that have accessibility at the forefront anyway?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean it I mean we bang the drum a lot, I think, and there are many of us out there. I mean, it's got quite a the strong grassroots community um vibe to it. Um I would say we we tend to go with kind of the business reasons and the moral reasons rather than the compliance drivers. So, you know, you you you touched on stats, you'll know this already because you're you're in the sector, but with something like 62 million e-commerce users in the UK this year. Um, and that's not just new shoppers, that's just spending growth as well. You know, there's a lot of people buying online. I think the UK's um largest in Europe, top three globally in terms of the e-commerce market. So it's a big business driver to do this. Um, people with disabilities, there's a wonderful organization um called Purple. They run uh something called the Purple Pound, and um there's also a date annually in November called Purple Tuesday, which highlights the missed opportunity, it highlights the money that people are losing. Now, I don't always think that it should all be about businesses missing out. I think people should go with the kind of moral reasons for doing it, but from a pure marketing perspective, it just makes total sense. They've they've estimated that it's something like 274 billion a year that UK disabled people and their families could spend and do spend. Um so you know, don't underestimate allies and families and friends in this. If they know people have had a bad experience, they will click elsewhere. And that cost of clicking away is is not insignificant.
SPEAKER_00:274 billion, and that's certainly not insignificant.
SPEAKER_01:And you roll it up and you know, firing numbers at you. And this is just what we can count, right? Because hidden disabilities is is is an important thing. You know, people's confidence in disclosing their disability is you know, it's their right. So, you know, we're not entirely sure how many people we're we're talking about in terms of who who could be reached or who are who are being locked out, but globally it's$13 trillion in terms of spending spending power. It's not it's not a small number. Um yeah, and those people are spending, it's not that they can't spend everywhere, but they're choosing why they can spend based on whether or not things work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's um is a that's a huge figure, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Massive, yeah. I had to triple check it for you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so that is an accurate figure as well. Triple checked, verified your name.
SPEAKER_01:As we can count, I mean, even you know, that one of the the downsides of people being kind of overlooked as a group is you we maybe haven't got the the true statistics. And we did some quite a lot of work across the UK and the Nordics because we're part of a Nordic brand and we we deliver accessibility work in Sweden as well. They count it differently in different countries based on age, based on condition, based on consent. So it's actually quite hard to get a true number. I would I would pretty much guarantee that it's it's more than that, that there are more more than 20% of the global population have some form of disability or neurodivergent need.
SPEAKER_00:Um yeah, and that's it but there's a there's a good chance it would be higher. Like you said, there's a lot of people that are um reluctant to um talk about the fact they they have disabilities and what have you for one reason or another. So actually getting an accurate, a very accurate figure is going to be extremely hard, but you you can almost guarantee it would be higher than the number that you've uh you mentioned.
SPEAKER_01:And the other thing is if you exclude people from your service, you're actually actually erasing them from the data. So, like if you're not capturing data on that that disabled shopping experience, they're not included in the numbers anyway, right? So you don't actually know who you're leaving out because they've not been able to get past goal. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So a huge um huge topic to discuss, but also a lot of opportunity for uh not just retail, but for any consumer facing business that that sells products or services online to um increase their customer base and their audience, but also in turn increase their revenue as well, which we know is a hot topic for businesses right now. Margins are razor thin, spend uh custom customer spending is is slightly lower than many would like. So the last thing we want to be doing is dismissing a portion of the uh the country um that has uh would say 274 billion uh pounds spending potential behind it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's not just kind of the revenue. I mean, that's you you're quite right. There's there's huge business imperatives for doing it, but brand reputation, you know, referrals, people coming back. Yeah, you know, if the situation is such for disabled people that they have to pick and choose where they shop, they're gonna return if they have a good experience and they're gonna tell other people. Um, and they're definitely not gonna go back to places where they've had a negative experience because you know that's harm. So reputation and people being aware that your brand takes this seriously is is a really important thing as well.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely, definitely. But so we're gonna come on to talking about retail uh in a little bit more detail, sort of where some gaps are and what can be done uh to make some really simple improvements to have a better experience. Before we do that, we touched upon earlier how uh government digital services are currently setting the bar. You spoke about the your experience reunion your passport. I had an equally very positive experience at the end of last year. For me, it was the same when I did my driving license. And and actually, um, anything I do with the government, whether it be for childcare assistance or whatever it might be, is generally a fairly smooth process and very easy. Why is that?
SPEAKER_01:Number of reasons. So I'm I've kind of showing my age a little bit, but I can remember the kind of early days of everything going online, and there was a lot of standards around, and there was a lot of good uh organizations out of there doing it well. So local government used to be really strong on accessibility. There were awards um dished out to people who were who were doing really well in the sector. Um, I think things started to tail off a little bit um when everybody rushed to mobile apps. So I think that you know, the the founding principles of the internet and the the web standards project, everything was set up for success for disabled people. That there's a really good framework there, but I think as soon as we started to kind of play around with native mobile apps, marketing took over and things sort of kind of tailed off a little bit. But the government and certainly central government kept kept going. You know, there's been a huge investment, government digital services, the gov.uk team, they have maintained that focus over the years. You know, they have the added advantage of really good cross-sector teams working on this. So, you know, the really good community working across government departments who share their knowledge, design patterns, you know, they can build a design pattern so that most government website experiences look and feel the same. Maybe, maybe in the back end there's still some kind of legacy systems and data creeping in, but on the whole, the immediate experience of a government service is the same, whether it's tax, whether it's passport, um, as you say, visas, anything, anything like that, driving licenses. Um, so they have the the ability to reuse things that have been tried and tested with people. They've also set their own standards. So they have government service assessments. So the government service standard requires that things need to be tested with disabled people and need to be audited before they can pass into a live service. Um, they work with assistive technologies as part of their process, they employ disabled people as part of you know their teams. So they're just further ahead. They care about this. You know, we run an event every year called Camp Digital. It has a huge amount of support from people from government teams, and they really do care and know about inclusive design and accessibility. So I would I just think they're further ahead. Um it's just it's just the the way we are in terms of learning from them, the retail sector, we do see some kind of some positive signs. I think there's some myths in retail around accessibility. So people think maybe you can't have an engaging, interactive, and accessible experience all in the one site. That that's not true. Um, obviously, commerce and retail sites tend to be very creatively led because you've got brand images, you've got product images, you've got video, you've got models, you've got everything in the mix, and that kind of tends to lead the design approach rather than putting the foundations in place for accessibility from the start.
SPEAKER_00:You said something there, government just cares. I mean, it wasn't those exact words, but that's ultimately what you said. Do you do you feel as though decision makers in retail don't care, or it's just not a priority for them? I mean, ultimately, it's very hard to have a one-size-fits-all approach, isn't it? And I guess the government has the luxury of it doesn't matter how fancy their website is, you're going on that website because you have to do a specific task. You cannot renew your passport with anyone else other than the government. So it doesn't matter how standard that website is, you need to go on it and do it and go from A to B as quickly as possible. Whereas you go on a fashion retail brand's website, for example, as you touched on, there's a big focus on the look, the feel, how quickly they can get the product into the basket and complete the checkout. And actually, they're probably just going to uh look at okay, who's our primary target audience that spends the most money with us and how can we um how can we maximise opportunity with them, knowing that they're never gonna hit the whole country.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's exactly that. I mean, marketing works on segmentation, right? If we know that one in five people in in the UK have a disability, um and we also know, well, it's about 20%, and we also know that one in five people are digitally excluded. Marketeers are gonna focus on the four out of five who aren't. Yeah. They're gonna focus on them on where the majority is, and they're gonna design around the needs of the majority. We try and flip the argument the other way and say if you work with disabled people, you involve them, you employ them, you create opportunities for them to be part of the process, that enriches your design, you're gonna get a much more uh a much more varied uh insight into how people are interacting with your products, and that's gonna help the majority by default. Yeah, if you get it right around more complex, more varied, richer needs, you're gonna have a chance of hitting everybody with your solution. And and by everybody, you know, we're all aging, we all have kind of situational impairment. We might break a hand, break a leg, break a hand, break a wrist, break a leg, um, wear glasses, you know, we're we're all kind of working with things that have been born out of accessibility without us even realizing it. Pinch and zoom, voice, assistance, transcripts, captions, they've all come out of the accessibility movement and they all help the majority anyway. So if you design around all of those things, you're gonna hit the whole market and you're not gonna exclude disabled people along the way. Just kind of makes sense to me, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just really quickly then, how easy is it to design around all of those areas that's just just been discussed?
SPEAKER_01:You've got to be open-minded to do it, you've got to have disabled people in the process. You know, we have disabled people in our team. Um it's only gonna make the products and services that you develop are only gonna be better if your team is representative of the wider audience that's gonna use them, right? So you've got to get people involved in the process. We know factually that it costs more to fix accessibility once something has been built and launched than it does to involve and invest in it at the start. Um, I mean, that's that's just statistically true in terms of projects and budgets. So you leave it to the end, you've got to unravel a load of stuff and and patch things up, and quite often that doesn't happen. Yeah, but if you make bake it in at the start, you're gonna have a better chance. So, you know, research, usability testing, co-design, prototype testing, really working with people in the early stages before any lines of code are written to make sure that you know where you're going. Design systems, as I mentioned, you know, working and reusing things that you know have been tested with people before. Um realising that maybe it isn't always done, you can't just do it and tick it off. It's you know, you're never going to make anything accessible for everybody. Um, it's just not not the case. So invest in it like you do with security, with sustainability, with DevOps, you know, make sure it's part of part of the process.
SPEAKER_00:So yes, whenever you're adding something to the process, there's going to be the uh various considerations like time and cost that factor into it. Broadly speaking, if some if a business was to come to you and they wanted to have accessibility at the heart of everything that they did, what percentage increase are they likely to have to consider in terms of time and cost on top of the original conversation?
SPEAKER_01:That is a really interesting question and not one that I have ever quantified. Um, but maybe that's maybe that's something we could. But I what I would say is it's less about the time at the start, it's more about the cost or the risk if you haven't done it. So we do know what people are being fined. We do know what they're paying as a kind of sticking plaster at the end to kind of patch things up. Um if you involve people in the start, I would imagine the costs are actually quite low. Because you're doing this before you're doing any technical architecture, before you're doing any real coding or building live services, you're doing this when you're looking at um design, brand, colour contrast, the choice of images, like all of those things, they're not costly. You just need to get them right at the start. Um, you've got to have a good plan around your content. That's gonna help everybody and every user anyway. So why wouldn't you do it? So I think then you're looking at training, you know, but I believe all developers should know how to code things in an accessible way. Uh so I think that's non-negotiable anyway. Um, we work with quite a lot of UK Northwest institutions, educational establishments, where some of them are really good and you know, and they're in they're embedding this skill in young talent coming into the industry, but there are many more who no idea, I think, don't even feature on their radar. So there's some stuff to do to to educate people early so they come into the industry already with you know a passion and an awareness that means you don't have that training cost on top.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's certainly an interesting thing to consider because I think more often than not, when it comes to decision making across businesses, there's a very much a focus on how can we get this delivered as quickly as possible. And then it's like, Joe, what let's get it delivered and then let's let's patch things up afterwards. Yeah, I think that's a that's an issue that a lot of businesses face. Um, and as you touched upon, often it's more costly um than actually thinking about it from the front. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I get it, you know, I run a business, we just deliver projects all the time. Everybody's looking to be lean and agile and you know, deliver those projects early and well and to the satisfaction of our customers. But I think you've really got to focus on the costs of not doing this, you know, that that missed market, as we said, the risk of fines, uh brand reputation, you're not really furthering the industry if you're not bringing this in into the process. So, you know, you're not really working in an innovative way, I don't think, if you're not bringing in new ways of doing things for more people. Um, and and and actually, this is where, you know, I said earlier, it's not it's not malicious, but I think if people knowingly make the choice to discard accessibility from their backlogs to decide that it's not important, then you know, I think I think they probably deserve what's coming to them in terms of loss at loss of market share and compliance risk. I think, you know, it it's the ones who aren't aware and the ones who would do better if if they could are the ones that you know we want to we want to encourage a bit of a culture shift in.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so we've touched upon fines a couple of times. Um obviously there is there have been uh some more laws that have been passed in the last few years, and most recently the European Accessibility Act, which we spoke about right at the start. Let's let's quickly talk about this specifically because this is um this was passed this year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's been it it's been in train for a number of years. I think it went live in June this year, uh June 2025. So um it's it's aiming to pull together all of the different standards and laws that have been running in the different European member states. Um it builds on WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines. It does apply if you're outside of the EU. That was the first thing a number of people did was oh, well, we're in the UK and it doesn't matter because we're not in the EU anymore. But it re refers to anybody who is supplying to the EU. So if you were selling to or shipping to, or you have logistic partners who are delivering for you in the EU, then you're in you're in scope for this. Um we always we always try and say that like and I didn't come up with this and I can never attribute it to the right person, but compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. Yeah. So if you only look at this from a what's the minimum I need to do so I don't get fined, that's not really where we need people to be at. There's a huge opportunity to build brilliant and product brilliant products and services. Um it's quite broad in scope, so it looks at computers, the operating systems that underpin them, it's looking at smartphones, um telecommunications, communication designs, uh devices, um TV and broadcast. It's looking at kiosks, um, card machines, any kind of um screens that you need to interact with in order to pay, banking, yeah, website, mobile, commerce. It's quite it's quite broad.
SPEAKER_00:Very broad, yeah, very broad. If I'm I'm listening to that now and I'm thinking, okay, where do where do I start? Because that's massive. That's pretty much every touch point you have with a customer.
SPEAKER_01:Tickets, um, e-readers, it's even looking at things like emergency services and telephony around that. So it it's not something that you can really escape, but nor should you. You know, we could see this as a game changer in the industry. So the downside of that is because it is broad, it's become a little open to interpretation. Um there's some exemptions in there. So if it from 2025, from June 2025, if you're developing new products and services that fit in the categories that I just listed, they have to be compliant. For products that existed before that deadline, you've got up to 2030 to make them compliant. Now, if you're upgrading them, if you're updating your hardware or you're changing your devices, you need to do it then. But you've got another five years to make sure that you kind of fall within the scope. Um, small companies, like really tiny companies, micro businesses, if you've got fewer than 10 employees or you're a startup, if that's it, you're exempt.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:People will use something called disproportionate burden. It's been um a thing that has been used in accessibility and in the under the Equality Act, where they can argue the case that the cost of making the changes in their business outweigh the benefits or the financial gains that people would make from being able to use their product or service. So it allows them to argue that it's not worth it because nobody's going to gain more than it's going to cost us. So they tend to put in things like workarounds. Um it's it's it's a way to duck it.
SPEAKER_00:It's a big gray area, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, it is. And I and and there's also some some confusion still around who is ultimately responsible. So if where things tend to break is I could have a brilliant shopping experience on a wonderful accessible website, but then the shipping might be done by a third party for that product. So the logistics trapping tracking app might be done by another third party. I might get the product and decide I don't like it. The returns might be done by another third party. The mut the after sales call team might be outsourced. There are multiple points where stuff can fail in a in a full customer journey, and it's a little tricky to work out who is ultimately responsible for that service fail. I think if you look at e-commerce sites within the scope, I think it's from uh the purpose of kind of from the point of purchasing to um transacting, and then you know, you've bought your product. But what happens in all of those stages that that follow? You know, disabled people might not be able to get physically to a store, to an in-post store, to return a product within a window before that window closes and you know they run the risk of having to keep the product. Like things like that are creeping in that's making people wonder well, where where and who, where does the responsibility lie for that?
SPEAKER_00:And surely that would sit with the the the retail brand that has only offered that one option of return, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because you go to them and you've spent your money with them and they are ultimately offering the service. So it's beyond the product, it's the whole kind of service experience, and I think that's where people are more likely to come unstuck, and where you might see a little bit of finger pointing around, well, we were right, you know, everything worked on our website, it it was them. So it's gonna be interesting, but the the you know, the law hasn't been tested, it only went live really in June. Um, I believe complaints have been lodged, though. I think some people have started to to use the act, and it the other complexity is because it's across Europe, it's the individual member states, their own legal systems that kick in and take on the lawsuit. Yeah. So they do the cases. So fines will vary and the process will vary depending on where you lodge your complaint.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, it'll be interesting to see how they develop then over the next uh few months, maybe longer. I can't imagine it's going to be a straightforward process when it comes to logging a complaint and then the the process that follows afterwards. But I guess if we do see a few relatively hefty fines, and it will certainly be an area that I think a lot of businesses will look into with a bit more urgency.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think they get a they get a kind of first stage fine and then we come at you again. And then they'll it is that kind of brand reputation thing alongside it, as I said earlier, that you know, if people know that you're under the scrutiny because you're cutting people from your service, like are they gonna you know morally choose to shop? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see, it'd be interesting to see how how fast it happens.
SPEAKER_00:It will, and it's it's one thing when I sit here thinking about it now. It's it's probably a tough one because it yes, there's a lot of steps that companies can take um to become more accessible. But it probably is very hard to include everyone. There's so many disabilities out there. Um, and also we're making assumptions that everyone with a certain disability sees and acts in a similar way. There could be two people with the same disability that approach the situation in a different way, as such, they have a different experience, which then makes as a let's take a retail brand trying to make their website accessible for everybody very, very tough. So it is a bit of a minefield, right?
SPEAKER_01:It is, but I think what we're talking about is a kind of sea change in cultural attitude towards it. So if you can demonstrate that you're trying, you can show and be transparent around what you have done. The government digital services, one of one of the things that they have under their PS Bar regulations, they have this thing called an accessibility statement. So if you go into a government website, you will be able to click on a link that says accessibility statement and it will tell you exactly what they've done, what they've still got planned, where they know that the site fails, what you might do as a workaround, and who to contact if if you need more help. So I'm kind of paraphrasing what one looks like. But I would love all sites to have something like that. You know, if we can if we can open up the conversation and they can say it's going to work for you in these circumstances, but unfortunately, if you have these particular needs or this is how you need to interact with us, you might have to do these things instead. Let's just, you know, admit that it's hard to get it right in every situation, but at least show willing, at least show where where you're trying trying to help. I mean, I'd love I'd love the private sector to take up that accessibility statement and just be a bit more open with what they're doing. Because you're right. I mean, I have a wonderful colleague, a really good friend, Molly, she won't mind me sharing this because she's a big advocate for accessibility. Um, she has Usher syndrome, which means um she's deafblind, she's registered um as both. So she fits neither category of blind or deaf, and she spans both at the same time. So she completely subverts the whole model of well, if you're blind, you're a screen reader user, and this is how you interact with a website. She doesn't because she has five degrees of vision left, so she uses pinch and zoom just like I do. Um, so it there are shades of grey everywhere. You've got to involve people in the process to understand those. If you just put them in boxes and just do a checklist approach to accessibility, it's probably not going to fare that well. And as I say, that's kind of compliance driven rather than how can I go out and really understand my audience and and how they're how they're interacting with the service.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So I'm going to put you on the spot here. If you had to give an estimate of the amount of companies that box tick this versus the amount of ones that generally care about this, what percentage would you say?
SPEAKER_01:Um I would say for the demand that we get when people make inquiries about accessibility, the vast majority of them are to audit a thing that's already been built. So I couldn't put a number on it. I would say most people come to us when they've already built a thing and they want to do the rubber stamping of an audit.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Now that's all right because at least it's a step, it's an action.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I would much prefer more inquiries around training, co-design, prototype testing, you know, working with people when they're buying a product, you know, commissioning, procurement, working with it at that stage so that what comes in to an organization or a brand is tested early and is assessed early rather than as a kind of can you just tell me we haven't failed? Um approach. So yeah, I think and when and even the government digital services, even though they they insist on audits and testing, they still allow people, you know, to get quite far down the line. Um, and there's different maturity levels in all teams around when to test and how to do the testing and when to involve people. So yeah, I can't put a number on that, James, but um I would say it's skewed towards trying to fix things at the end rather than get it right at the start.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, okay. And I guess that's an uh going back down to an educational thing, right? And actually, we can educate more people around the importance behind it and the fact that actually uh making these changes at the start of the process is going to be far more beneficial for you and for your customers of uh no matter who they are, yeah. Then actually that's the best way to move forward rather than doing 80% of whatever it is that you're doing, and then just say, Can you give your stamp of approval? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and people who do that and then take the risk of the fines. It's you know, it's like why would you want to why would you want to be that human? I think, you know, it's a really work. We've not really talked about that aspect of it, but you know, we all live in and around a world that has disabled people, friends, family, colleagues, people in school, like why don't we we want to heighten, we want to raise that awareness, don't we? Um it why would we not? So it is really rewarding when you can understand perspectives that are different from your own, and you can kind of park your own privilege and say, actually, I want to I want to help and I want to understand and I want to let them help make this thing better.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay, and then just to be clear, the accessibility acts, that's not just aligned to retail, right? It's a line to every industry. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So it's um, I mean, the public sector was already ahead, as I said anyway, but it's looking at transport, travel, retail, commerce, um, accommodation, hospitality, you know, anywhere where you can have those kind of interactions, websites, buy tickets, collect tickets, um, attend a thing, it's it's all of that as well. And just just on that physical accessibility has been a little further ahead because of things like the Equality Act and um the ADA in the US, they sort of led with physical access first. So can you get into a place? Um, are you made welcome? Are the staff trained? Do you know can they cater to your needs? Does the hotel room suit you know what adaptations that you need to to in order in order to stay there? So I think online is playing catch up a little bit with that. Um, and I'm seeing that in retail as well. So yeah, I think when you look at in-store experiences, they're a little further ahead, maybe online. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, things like shopping hours, quiet shopping hours, uh, for people who might uh benefit from that. So neurodiversity and autism, ADHD, people who would prefer to be in a store at a quieter time without music and lights, temperature changes. So um quite a lot of the big supermarket changes uh chains have have done that. Um adaptive clothing, Primark and Asda have just launched their adaptive clothing ranges with um really good inclusive labelling. And by adaptive clothing, I'm talking about people with um mobility issues, people who might be wheelchair users, people who might wear stomas, like they've they've thought about that. They're using disabled models, real people showing how they can kind of you know shop just like everybody else and and enjoy these ranges. Um yeah, we're seeing we've seen quite a lot of that. I mean, you'll you probably know about the sunflower lanyard that that people can wear. So when people are traveling or going to events, they wear a sunflower lanyard, it indicates to service staff, customer experience teams that that that they've got hidden disabilities and they might need some assistance, um, or they might be happy to be approached to discuss if they've got physical access needs. So we're finding that a lot of that is happening in physical environments.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so just quickly, I wasn't aware of the uh sunflower lanyard, so that's really interesting. And then I guess that leads me on to uh a big question then. So the the the point you you mentioned at the start there was um the in-store certain shopping hours for people with certain disabilities until uh the first time we spoke to I had never heard of that before. The now the sunflower lanyards. Now um, granted, I guess it these uh these wouldn't apply to me. I don't need to wear that lanyard, and also I don't need to shop at a certain time. But how can we educate more the wider public on these things? Because there is probably a lot that happens that that no one is aware of. And to me, there's a big gap there. We should all be aware of uh initiatives that companies are undertaking to improve their um to improve their experience across their customer base.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think this is where kind of accessibility and inclusion needs to be a bit more mainstream than than it is. So I know at Tesco Asda, Little, they all have and have had for a number of years quiet shopping hours. Um I said some of the other brands, Primark Asda, they've got their their um adaptive clothing ranges. Um Sainsbury's big employer um employment opportunity provider for disabled people. So, you know, we'll we'll have disabled people working in store. Um, just to kind of show diversity in in real life a bit more. Now, like, yeah, you're quite right. Some people, if if it doesn't impact your life, why would you know? You know, why would would you have to care about this? But but you're never far away from it. Yourself and I I don't always like the whole, well, you know, I could I could break my leg and then I'm disabled because I'm not. That does not in any way kind of emulate the the the lifelong struggle of a disabled person. It gives you an indication of how hard it is to get around, you know. So Microsoft have been quite good at talking about that kind of situational impairment that we might all have an injury, an illness. We're all aging, that's a fact of life. And as we age, our interaction with technology will change. Like, you know, it's a myth that all older users can't use mobile or can't use technology. That you know, that's rubbish. Many of them were founders of that technology. Likewise, it's a myth that all young people are digital natives because you know a lot of people are excluded for financial affordability, poverty, um, you know, confidence reasons. But it is a fact that as we age, our interaction with technology will change. You'll up your font size on your phone. Yeah, you'll use pinch and zoom on captions, you'll use um captions when you know you're on a train, um, you don't want to have any kind of background noise, it might just be easy to watch the TV at night with with subtitles on so that you know you can read as well as hear. So we're all getting there, we're all going to be using some of these features of accessibility without realizing where they came from. So we really need to talk about that a bit more. As I said earlier, most of those things that we do with and for disabled people and that they do for us in the design process will benefit you, you know, as a given, they will they will make things better for the majority.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's certainly something I think we should be discussing more. Like you said, I'm not sure, I'm not sure why it's not being discussed more, but I um I like to think the majority of humans out there want to do good and they do care and they want to help. Um, so I mean, firstly, it's great that there are these initiatives that are happening that many of us probably aren't aware of, but uh I do think it needs to be discussed more. Uh, the more things are discussed, the more collaboration there is, and uh ultimately the the further they then improve.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and some of it's quite simple as well. And we we sometimes worry about it being this big bad cost or this big bad legal risk. Some of it's just like common sense. So things like colour contrast, being able to read um something easy because the contrast has been made, um it's been set to the right kind of accessibility level so that you know text over images, you can read them. Um alt, alt text on images, that's quite common now. Five, six years ago it wasn't. You couldn't do that on all social media platforms. But now if you post an image on Blue Sky um or the bad place, I'll call it, but if you if you post an image, you know, it has an alt text option where you can add a descriptor of what you've posted. Um that's become a lot more commonplace. And that means somebody who is interacting with your content as a screen reader user can tell what that image is conveying. Yeah. So those aren't expensive things to do. They're they're they're enabled by default. You know, most um products now, Microsoft products, as I say, you can you can switch on um accessibility checkers on Word, on PowerPoint, on Excel to make things that you're sharing and sending by email, whatever. You can you can do this now. It's it's not an added cost, it's more of an awareness. It's it just needs a little bit more thought in some cases.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So we've a lot of the conversations have been focused around retail, and I guess that's where the uh our audience predominantly is so so rightly so. We've touched upon a bit about online and a bit about in store. Um if we just drill down in a couple of key areas that we can we can take away some real actionable insights here. So, where would you say if you look on online on a general uh B2C e-commerce website within retail, what are the like the top two, where are the top two areas where there's gaps, which which companies can address relatively quickly and easily and cost effectively?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so big thing on commerce sites, on brand sites, people with a product catalogue will be things like I've just mentioned. So colour contrast, video captions, um missing alt text on images, so that people can get a good description of that content if their mode of interaction isn't visual. So if they can't see a thing, we need to come up with smart ways of describing that thing so that they can also become a customer. That isn't hard, it's in all modern content management systems, um, product information management systems, it all allows you to put in those other descriptions. You know, it might be an audio description, video should have captions, you know. Google does that for you, you know, by default does it quite well now. Again, it didn't 10 years ago, but it's pretty good now. There's all kinds of AI tools out there that are enabling those transcripts to be accurate and fast and to change languages. So those kind of things could be done on every homepage. Um, forms tend to be where people fail. So where you actually go to input some information, imagine if you can't do that by typing, you're a you know, you need to do that by voice. Um, or imagine if you can't see, you need to do it by keyboard only. Those forms tend not to work for people, and and and that's an easy one to embed in the most junior developer. You know, if you show them how to do it once, they'll be able to do it again. You you build that into your design library, that's fine. I mean, we saw some examples in health. We do a bit of work in the health sector where GPs were recommending post-COVID that you use a particular app to book appointments and do online consultations. People with screen readers couldn't even put their first name in the form because it didn't work, it hadn't been tested. Um private sector app sold into the healthcare industry, and you see those kind of form-based problems in in commerce and on on websites. Aftercare, really important. So if something does break, you know, that's human. How easy is it for people to get to you? And you'll you'll know from experience how hard is it? Like terms and conditions are really, really small. Um and long. If you don't want to be contacted, it can be quite hard to return a thing or cancel a payment, can't it? Because that's not where the money flows. So those kind of things are usually kind of degradated, uh degraded in the design. So you you know, prioritize that kind of content if there's a way the people need help that isn't enabled by your website, make it easy for them to get to you. Um, again, it's not a cost, it's just it's just a human act. Um, yeah, that those kind of things are fairly easy. I think don't put a lot of getting a bit more technical now, but a lot of heavy front-end loading into your mobile experience places a bit of pain on on some users, depending on how they've configured their their mobile devices to work with sites. So really heavy kind of JavaScript stuff, stuff that costs data, stuff that makes it hard for people to get right at what they need to see. Pop-ups, a nightmare, you know, get pop-ups out of the way on all news sites and all shopping. Um, so that people, if they are zooming in, it's not crowded for them, they're not going to inadvertently click on something that they shouldn't. Bad design practices or manipulative design practices where people try and upsell or load more things into your basket, which we we all fall foul of. You know, that was like the kind of UX stuff that we don't want to see, where people are or putting pressure on you to buy more or to pay more quickly. That's worse for disabled people. You know, that's gonna put an added level of stress on them. They might miss things in the small print, they might miss things that are grayed out deliberately because the brand doesn't want you to see it. So if we can just eradicate all of those sharp practices, that's gonna help us all, but it's gonna have an even more larger benefit for disabled users.
SPEAKER_00:I'll tell you what, I had an experience of that recently actually, of booking flights with uh one of the one of the main low-cost airlines. And obviously, it's really, really easy to book the seat, but then there must have been at least five or six uh pages that popped up asking me if I was sure I didn't want any luggage extra, and uh then paying for the seat and then picking where I wanted to sit. Then again, it came up about the baggage and the sizes. And I'm like, look, I'm good, I don't need I don't need this. But it even I found that stressful and and complicated.
SPEAKER_01:Spending is stressful these days, yeah? Committing to a big family purchase is is expensive. If you've got cognitive condition, that means you're already under kind of cognitive load when you go to that site and then they load all that in. There's no way to get it out of the way, no, no way to turn it off, or there's a clock ticking, you know, a counter telling you that your price is gonna go. People will make mistakes. It's designed for us to do that. And then you've got the added issue of if they have got it wrong, who do they talk to? Chatbots aren't always accessible. More and more they're automated these days, so you can't have a kind of human-style interaction. I actually know a lot of uh dyslexic users who prefer chatbots when they're built well, but the kind of version that just gives you standard answers, they're just they're just stressful. And then if you lose a bag and you know you you're visually impaired, where you know what happens? The number of friends that I have who are wheelchair users who lose their wheelchairs, baggage handling loses their wheelchairs. That I'm not going to name any brands, but it's really common. The number of people who book trains and book assistants, and the assistants doesn't turn up because they're off sick, and there was only one person scheduled to turn up with a ramp, it breaks in multiple points, and you know, that's that's awful for people. People get stranded.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, losing a wheelchair is possibly one of the worst scenarios that can happen for someone that requires a wheelchair to get it.
SPEAKER_01:But honestly, the anecdotes that get shared, it's not just lost wheelchairs, a lot of damage to wheelchairs or you know, willful kind of callousness with something that is you know a very, very important part of people's lives.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, we've seen how suitcases get chucked about and prams. Um, you you would kind of assume that wouldn't happen with a wheelchair, but maybe that's an assumption that I shouldn't be making, right? You know, you know what they say about it.
SPEAKER_01:So it's hard because of the lack of investment in general, then obviously that's mirrored in customer service teams and assistance teams. So again, my friend Molly, she's going to kill me for keeping mentioning her, but she's wonderful. She she has a repeated problem that she'll book assistance and they'll turn up for a with a wheelchair. She doesn't need a wheelchair, she's deafblind. But the the go-to response is get Molly a wheelchair. Um, I mean, on the flip side, I have another colleague, and he won't mind me sharing this. He he is deaf, he wears hearing aids, and he was trying to get the train to our office the other day, and he inadvertently got on the wrong train because it was a crowded platform and it was busy and he didn't pick up the noise of the announcement, or train times got slightly out of sync, as they do, and he got on the wrong train, and it was the fast train to London, so it's the one that doesn't stop, yeah. That would have been disastrous. He's got a he's got a disabled person's rail card, but he was obviously stressed and he was worried about not coming to work and he was sending messages to us all. But the train manager, absolutely wonderful, wrote out a full um diary event for his colleague who was getting up the next up and made sure that he got the next train back up free of charge without any kind of disruption. So when people have an awareness and people care and they know what the process is, you can have really positive experiences. Overwhelmingly, if you Google disabled people, shopping, travelling, transport experiences, you'll read a lot of anecdotes where things just go wrong.
SPEAKER_00:It's nice to hear a positive story as we knew the end of the episode. So it's uh it's always good to hear.
SPEAKER_01:I should probably name check them. I did mention we are doing some research right now called The Hidden Journey, and it looks at exactly this kind of thing, and I will make sure that we put the positive examples in there because we want to win over hearts and minds, right? We want to engage that kind of transparency and culture shift in in the industry.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely, and it's uh it's it's really important we don't just talk about the negative the negative experiences as well, because yes, there's plenty of them. Um sure there's far more than uh we can even imagine, but actually, there is an awful lot of positive experiences as well, and we've got to talk about them, we've got to shout about them because positivity breeds positivity.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, it's what people learn from, yeah. So, all of those examples that I've I've shared around you know the brands that are doing this well in the physical space, the organizations that do respond to to challenges, the grassroots community that cares about this stuff, there's loads of people that you can learn from.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And it's about and it's about raising the bar. The more we talk about it, the higher the bar gets set, the standards increase, and actually, as a brand or business, you have to then move that move that level and then increase it and increase it and increase it. So, okay, right, before we wrap things up then, um if you were advising a retail uh retail brand C-suite tomorrow, what is the one thing that you would suggest they do first when it comes to accessibility?
SPEAKER_01:I I would ironically, even what I said before about fixing things after I would do some kind of baseline assessment. I would be honest with yourself about where you're up to. That includes talking to your teams, it includes looking at what's already out there, it includes looking at your customer feedback, it includes looking at whether you've you've had complaints of this nature before and just doing a really honest where am I up to? Because everybody is at different stages and you might find you better than some, and that might give you the confidence to push to the next level. The the there is a thing around the simple things, you know. If you can just educate your teams in the simple things, we have this thing called fix the six, it's the six most common issues. None of them are expensive. So if you just do some education around, if you just do these things, you'll see an improvement in the accessibility without you know doing the bigger things around employing people, changing processes, and you know, really getting it right. People are at different stages, so you know, show them, show them what good looks like at the next level, let them know where they are, and then kind of help them on their way.
SPEAKER_00:The fix the six you just mentioned, is that something that's uh like unique to Nexa Digital?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, it's a global, it's a global thing called WebAim. They do an annual report. Um, and the annual report looks at the top, uh can't remember, whatever the the top most used websites are, it's like 50 websites, and it ranks them according to how many errors they have on their homepage and the number of websites from major brands that you know you you'd be shocked. But it basically says, and these are the six most common issues, and that's the six that we talk about. We've kind of lifted those six most common issues to do this fix the six awareness.
SPEAKER_00:I'm wondering if that's something that we can uh we can promote alongside the podcast when we release it.
SPEAKER_01:You've been very kind to let me ramble on about all of this. I'd be very happy if you could share anything, but there's some good stats from many other organizations that I'll send over your way as well.
SPEAKER_00:That'd be really cool. It's obviously one thing to talk about it, but and obviously the podcast uh this recording particular has been very eye-opening for me and hope I imagine for for many others as well. And if there's sort of collateral that we can share alongside it for uh those that are interested and how they can fix those issues or address and fix those issues, then I'm um it's it's only going to benefit them, right? So I think that could be really cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I mean it's been wonderful that you've given us a bit of a platform to to talk about some of our own work, but obviously what I'm trying to do is talk about the kind of wider community that are pushing this. So yeah, really, really, really appreciate it actually. It's not it's not a common ask. It's you know, people tend not to talk about this stuff because they're frightened about getting sued.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, well, it's uh for me, I found it really interesting. As I said at the start, it's an area that I've been very naive to, and I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm sure I'm not alone. Um, so it's it's really uh beneficial and interesting to talk about a different topic on the podcast, one that is super relevant to the space in which we all work in and possibly overlooked. I think what's really clear is that there are a lot of um initiatives that go on behind the scenes that many of us aren't aware of um that we've discussed, but it's also really clear that there's still a lot that needs to be done and a lot that can be done at not much extra cost. Um so I think that's a perfect place to wrap this up.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Thank you very much for your chat. It's really good.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining me. It's um yeah, been really interesting. I've loved the conversation and I love the the couple of chats we've had before this, Hilary, as we've uh sort of narrowed down on the topics that we're going to discuss today. So thank you for joining me and for bringing all of the insights that you brought onto the show. Um and I hope for those that have been listening today, you found it equally as interesting. For anyone that's got any questions about anything that's accessibility accessibility related, I'm sure Hilary would be uh very open to talking through anything with you. Um we'll share a LinkedIn after this as well. Um so you reach out to and discuss anything you want. Um, but it's um certainly an important area and one that is clear that we shouldn't be overlooking.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Thanks for your time.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. And I'll see you all next time.
