E37: From Code to Inclusion: Navigating the Challenges of Mobile Accessibility

In this episode of the United in Accessibility podcast, Mark Steadman shares his transformation from an "arrogant dev" to a passionate accessibility advocate, emphasizing the importance of firsthand experiences with users with disabilities. The discussion highlights the growing significance of mobile accessibility, the disconnect between web and native mobile app accessibility approaches, and the need for more resources and standards in the field of mobile accessibility

Transcript

00:04 Speaker  

Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast. Today, we are excited to have Mark Steadman, Director of Accessibility Engineering at Fidelity Investments joining us. Mark is a seasoned web development professional known for his expertise in web and mobile accessibility, as well as accessibility automation. He is a certified NVDA expert, and a frequent speaker at major accessibility conferences, such as the M-Enabling Summit. Mark's extensive experience includes building, designing and implementing accessibility testing tools within Fortune 50 and 100 companies. Mark's dedication to advancing accessibility through JavaScript frameworks and automation testing solutions reflects his commitment to making digital content accessible to all. Gain invaluable insights from Mark, a leader driving positive change in the accessibility landscape on the United in Accessibility podcast.

01:03 Sam Evans  

Hello, this is Sam Evans with IAAP. And I am here today with Mark Stedman, one of my favorite accessibility champions, and he is an expert in all thing’s mobile accessibility. That's my assessment. So, but Mark has always been a great leader, teacher and a mentor for folks. So, Mark, if you want to take a moment to introduce yourself, then we'll get started today talking about mobile accessibility and other things in the accessibility realm.

01:34 Mark Steadman  

Sounds awesome. Thanks, Sam. Yeah, I'm Mark Steadman, I am the Director of software engineering for digital accessibility. at Fidelity Investments, I lead the mobile initiative, at Fidelity for about the last two years, I'm now taking a higher role leading our engineers in both the web and the mobile space, mobile always has my heart behind the stage, it's just because it's one of those things, it's really awesome. And I'd say, I'm using air quotes, no one can see it on there, but newer to the accessibility field has always been there. But it's really been a journey for me kind of getting into this role, being able to kind of own the accessibility of place up from a mobile standpoint. And in my spare time, on top of just the job that I do day to day, I do advocacy in the space, I write articles all the time, whether it's mobile based articles, or successfully automation. That's also one of my big things that I write for a lot of times, we'll talk way more about this Sam we get into it, but a lot of my passion comes from the fact that I was once a dev, that was that arrogant dev that sits there and says No way, I'm not going to do accessibility. That's just another thing I have to do. Why are you making me do this. And so, a lot of my passion is derived from that Bolson automation space, and the mobile space. On my free time I love to write, I love to talk on conferences for this, you know, again, it doesn't come from a place of, you know, I want the spotlight comes from a place of I was in a lot of these folks’ shoes, where I was at first who didn't know, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to get there, and I was taken under the wings of a lot of people to do it and so now I'm where I'm at. And I love every second of it.

03:10 Sam Evans  

Mark, you said something that kind of piqued my interest. It's that in your original dev Lifeworld. So, I was going to ask you about your accessibility journey. But I think you may have already introduced it, where you're working in a development role. And somebody introduced accessibility as a task. I think it's really interesting because I think the people that are really passionate about accessibility for the reasons for disability inclusion, approach it from I understand why I need to do this because it's my own personal ethics and we need to do this for to serve people versus a checklist of yet another thing we have to do in our you know, on our, our long list of things. Can you speak to a little bit about that part of your accessibility journey? What caused you to be able to pivot? Was it a person or was it yours you investigated and discovered?

03:58 Mark Steadman  

So pretty much if anybody's ever heard me talk before, I say this one every single time and I will tell the story until I retire. So, when I first started my career, I was a web dev actually. I went directly to State Farm just to make the punchline for everybody. I live in Normal Illinois. Yes, that's not a typo or misspeaking, Normal Illinois, so I was a web dove and early in my career, I got tasked with building an agent locator. And it was this really cool one you could go to it. It actually was designed with accessibility in mind. Now mind you, I didn't know that. But it was designed with accessibility in mind. And so, when I was building this, it had like a Google Maps integration and underneath it had a list view of all the agents that was the accessibility version. Um, you could just go directly through it. You didn't have to use the map. You could see all the details you did on the map, all that fun stuff. So, I fly through get it done, like record time or look like a I'm going to make a world champion developer let's go and when I say it's done, I get this accessibility audit 256, I don't forget the number, 256 individuals not repeated individual issues. The person who did the audit on that was Birkir Gunnarsson, who is now my teammate at Fidelity and then my excessively mentor’s whole time. So, I essentially took that, and I was like, What the hell? Like, accessibility for this stuff like, what are you talking about? And so, at that time, where I go back to, I was at arrogant dove, accessibility, never dev team was really integrated at State Farm. It was just kind of like a, hey, when you get your stuff done, you're going to get this audit, you have to fix this stuff. But there was never that, like, why are we doing this or that kind of like moment of like, this is why we've made this investment into it. At the time, there was this investment because of Aota. Because they can test stuff that was in Canada. But again, same concept, we just got to do stuff, we got to get out the door, what go does go and it wasn't, there's no real build up behind why we need to do these things. Right. So, at that time, I just said, okay, I'm going to get frustrated, we get mad. So, like, tell me what this is and so it was Birkir here it was Tim Harshbarger is Christopher Kelly. There are multiple people I met at State Farm. I sat with multiple different users, screen reader users, keyboard only users. And literally like that week, I think I came home and told my wife like, whoa, like, it's some of those things, you kind of have to have like a moment of impact to be like, Whoa, like, the stuff that I just made, that I said was beautiful, golden, it's going to be lovely, we're going to be awesome, right? It was hurting people. And knowing that now, I looked like a total Ding Dong for just throwing stuff out those horrendously put together. But that's where my own lived experience comes from, and why I'm so passionate from the former developer instilling me but like from that former developer seat is not everybody has that moment of impact that I had, right to like, sit with someone see those things, but what I learned from that is, is all the things that the teams that I was working with and on were doing wrong, right. Like, I had no clue what accessibility was. But we were doing initiatives for like two and a half years on that team. But I had no clue, right? And so, some of those things, I kind of learned that kind of built up next to it, okay, in my head, how can I help kind of build these things up and kind of take my experience with it. So, it just so happened at that time at State Farm, there's an open accessibility team. So, I went to accessibility team and felt like, this really interests me, let's go. And the mobile side of it opened up to me then too, because at the time, it was all web content. But went to the team, they're like, we need somebody who can learn mobile development, I did mobile development. Now I was in college, but it was, you know, dust off the back of the brain and start like moving forward testing, to get myself going. So same cup of concept. Once I was on a team, I kind of started just learning mobile accessibility from experts that are in the field, I've had tons of mentors who have been awesome to me. And now kind of at that point in my career sharing that stuff back to the community as well. So that's kind of my first starting point for my journey was that moment of impact. And then just kind of slowly, following the path was put in front of me to get into mobile accessibility, and also my advocacy for developers’ accessibility.

08:38 Sam Evans  

Mark, you describe something and the way I describe it, when I had a really a really an opportunity, then I didn't realize how powerful it would be for me years later on, I would call side by side or over the shoulder learning from actual people with disabilities. And watch, listen and observe what the realities are for what their input is, what the output is to their assistive technology of choice, versus what's presented to people who can use a mouse and have eyes that can watch things on a screen. How impactful do you think it is to have that side by side or over the shoulder or real-life experience learning from and with a person with disability when it comes to development, engineering, tech and accessibility?

09:23 Mark Steadman  

I would almost say it's immeasurable. The impact of that is so powerful to just sit and just see how someone interacts with it. Like, even from my standpoint, when I first started looking at users who are using screen readers, this is unreal. Like, it's like I it's eye opening, but it's also at the same time looking at from like, my development side of things, like I'm a terrible coder. Like, I can deal with some of these things without making like my garbage code, I could fix a lot of these things. But there's also a lot that came into play both from like mobile and from a website and things like keyboard and that's just something I don't even think about. From that side of things like keyboard only when it came to iOS it was voice control. Like, I looked at that and I was like, oh, you mean, it's not just voiceover like, I can say, show numbers, and it'll show me all the buttons, I can tap on there. And so, it's kind of like that widening of, it's not just this bottleneck is do we run into this, I run into a lot to where we do have folks who, some folks who sit with actual users, and then they'll go back and kind of share their experience, what they share is like, oh, this person was using a screen reader. And it was really cool. Well, then what that does they all everybody at the screen reader user, who we should be developing for? It's like, oh, no, no, there's a wide range of assistive technologies, both on desktop and on mobile devices that are being used, that we're not even aware of sometimes. And so, the impact is so large, because you can see how different users interact with the content you create. 

10:54 Sam Evans  

That was the most powerful aha moment for me to say, I need to step outside of my perspective and the biggest thing, which I it was very simple at the time, and this kind of segue into mobile accessibility in a minute is it. We depend on whoever is delivering, whether that's he was the developer code, or engineers, or the agents or the product managers, we don't get to choose what kind of technology people have access to or choose to use. And so that kind of reiterates the need to have that holistic approach to cross technologies, cross user experience, cross browser, cross operating system, so I know it regularly there's jokes that you see online or read that say, well, but we're not testing it on your system. Yeah, product anyway, it's up to the other people. So, part of that I think segues a little bit into the rise of mobile accessibility and mobile apps and mobile engagement. Since there are many people who in across the digital divide socio economic, whatever reason, may not have desktops, very few people have desktops any more than in the corporate world, or laptops of their own. They may be using working and living on tablets in smart devices, or even looks detects, you know, IoT devices, internet of things. So mobile accessibility and use of mobile devices has risen greatly. So that's, I believe, why mobile accessibility following suit has come into the spotlight. So, I'll ask you and let you speak about this. But is there a challenge in mobile accessibility with the low to no code, things that happen out there that have a big barrier to accessibility?

12:39 Mark Steadman  

So, this podcast is only an hour, right? So, we can go for days on this, but I will tell you about the big disconnects that I've seen. So, number one, kind of like the rise of that you were talking about, right? Was more, that sound so funky, but like everybody kind of tends to listen to the pandemic, right? We're all home, everybody's using their own personal machines, their own devices, but what you saw a lot more during the pandemic was sites not having mobile aspects. So mobile sites, not mobile applications, but native mobile applications. But I'll use Reddit as an example. You go to read its website; it will literally say in a pop up download our app. They are essentially just saying downloaded because our mobile website probably isn't the best. So, use our app. Okay, cool. So how many other websites are doing that? Well, just me being me. I went looked, I went and just looked at probably 30 different websites, 21 of them ended up having that same pop up. These are our exons. We check it out hurrah. Yeah, right. But they didn't realize is that then opens you up to Okay, cool. Now you're going to have users with all varying types of users using your applications now. And so, what that led into is the next big pain point, which is the disconnect between I don't say disconnect, it's, it's just like a misunderstanding for things. Is, where do you go to for standards? What do you do when it comes to native mobile applications versus web applications? And so, the misconception a lot of times is we tend to look at it and the accessibility field is okay. So, yes, the native mobile application, and but we can apply what's on a mobile website to a native mobile application? What I'll say is, is yes and no. Because no mobile applications inherently work totally differently than what an actual site does, right. So, you're still getting in a mobile web browser HTML, right? If you're using a native mobile application, it's an iOS, you're getting UI kit or Swift UI. If you're an Android and Android view, you're getting Jetpack Compose. Those are two different native frameworks, respectively, for the different operating systems, and they work inherently differently from accessibility tree perspective, all of that stuff. And so, the disconnect was everybody was trying to make content accessible in a mobile application, like it was a website, and what that actually lent itself to in a lot of spaces just and this is just conversation I've had with multiple different excessively advocates across the industry is, we end up with a lot of user feedback across multiple different avenues of WoW, is this a website? Or is this a native mobile application? Because I expect the native mobile application to do this, you all are making to do this, that doesn't make any sense to me, because this is a native app, and I expect it to behave this way. And so, disconnecting a lot of times is okay, how do we speed this up? How do we get these accessible because now all of a sudden, we're forcing the user not forcing us but telling us that they should use their application. So, what do we do? And truth be told Sam, there are very few resources out there that can tell you what to do to make mobile applications successful. So that again, goes back to that's my own passion for this too, is, there isn't a lot of there. And when I first got it, that was the first thing I saw. And this was back in 2014, when native moles weren’t as resounding as they are right now. But that's one of the big pain points is everybody's trying to say, okay, give me give me standards, where do I go, I got I got something, right. It kind of lends itself to mobile applications that are a little bit like, made accessible, like it's a website, but that's not what users want, when they go into it, right? But it has started a lot of good conversations, which we'll talk more about, as we get going here with like building native mobile standards and all that. And then the last disconnect, I want to say disconnect. It's more just like the oomph to get this thing going a little bit more, was, there's a couple of court decisions that came out. And I don't know if there's, I don't know if there's a lot of awareness of this one. But there was one specifically in Oklahoma, that came up this to the Oklahoma that make their native their actual native applications accessible. And so, when that one came out, I saw that I was like, woohoo, that is a big one. Because now there's one out there that says native mobile application and it's specifically called out like the application not a mobile website, which is different than some of the other ones that's been out there. That now starts to kind of kickstart a little bit unfortunately, it's going to take some time, but that kind of started the Kickstart to Okay. Oh, like, we got to get going. Well, why? Because everyone's kind of pointed back to from a native mobile accessibility side of things. Well, hey, is there anything written? You know, in law that says like, we have to do this, right? Yeah, look at WCAG, but that says web doesn't say native right? Guidelines. So, what is so now there is, and there's starting to be a few more that are out there as well. I know there was one for a kiosk suit years ago, but the kiosks are made in what Android, right. So again, you can make that connects from that side of things, too and so those three things have been like kind of the I say, fuel in the fire, but like some of the things have been disconnected, also kind of like Kick starters for the mobile accessibility. Like, I guess, resurgence over like the last few years has been those things. But those disconnects have been a huge issue across the board. 

18:03 Sam Evans  

So, there's some humor in some of our circles and accessibility about way Aria that the way is not the starting point. You know, Aria is not starting from people who are just getting started because it takes a little bit of background knowledge. So, I'm saying Wait, WAI is in the web is that was just for context for anybody that's listening or reading. So where do I go to learn? And I'm lucky to be able to reference people in industry that are happy to share public information, but is there a background is there you said there's something starting? Is that happening with W3C as a working group? That's something that's in a process that's going to be collectively, you know, contributed to by people that are, that are leaving the way now?

18:47 Mark Steadman  

Yeah. So, there is a W3C group that is specifically meeting trying to build native mobile accessibility guidelines. So, some of the things that I was saying before some of the things that we've run into in the past, so I can say this verbatim, we built our own standards internally where I work, and we had to, because of the same thing I talked about. The moment a native mobile or mobile dev sees web, they go, nope. Like, that's web has nothing to do with that, right. And so, they're trying to parse it out, getting rid of web from all of it and making it native specific. And so, if that group can put together the awesomeness that is a native mobile accessibility standard, that'd be great. However, if anybody who's listening to this needs a starting point, there actually are a couple of starting native mobile guidelines that are out there free right now. The BBC has one. It's really good at getting the basics from accessibility side of things for mobile applications that we need to start there. Just search BBC native mobile accessibility guidelines. That's got a great start. The accessibility company events actually open source, but they call it MCAG. So, the Mobile Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's totally open source. So, they're looking for things like contributions and everything like that to look at and kind of build up their standards. They did a great job of really doing the same thing as that working groups trying to officially get done with like breaking it down just for mobile. So, if you look at it, it actually does a really awesome job of like, laying out nice and neat. Like, hey, in mobile terms, this is what we mean by this, instead of being like, hey, 131 and four relationships, right? We're like, hey, what does that mean? Like? Does that mean free. So, if you're looking for a starting point for standards, there's two out there that are really good. And believe it or not, when I was doing my presentation for ACCESSU my teammate, Richard Gunderson, contributed to the BBC guidelines. And I was like, wait, what? I didn't know that. So, my own mentor actually contributed to that even for the mobile guidelines. But when you're talking knowledge, they asked me three years ago, I would have said, they don't go to Stack Overflow, is what I would say, if you're looking for stuff because there's a lot there's a lot of misguided information out there. There's a lot of folks in the accessibility we tried to get out there and you know, course correct a lot of that which mad respect to them, but there is a lot of a lot of misguided information on there. However, there are a lot of resources that exist out here now. So, what's really cool when I've seen a rise of is individual contributors. So, I, I read about mobile accessibility stuff, but there's also other contributors out there as well. That right on sites like dev.to, that are dev specific things, but if you're looking just for a starting point of there's a site, it's called app.org. And apps, native mobile accessible company, they have a complete guide for mobile accessibility. Stuff from top to bottom, whether it's Android iOS, I think they even have some of the other frameworks out there too, like React Native and things like that. They just revamped their site. It is awesome. Like it is a great knowledge base, if there's ever any questions all their content is looked at approved, they're successfully experts behind it like native mobile accessible experts behind it. That is your knowledge base to go to if you're going to go to any. And have you ever missed, I didn't say there's a couple other ones out there two websites with Mobaley, which I think is macrosomic making. And then two open-source things from CVS. That's iOS, there's a swift iOS project, that actually from a code standpoint, shows you how to fix things, how you actually make them accessible. And then there's just one they just released. That's for Android for the new Android framework, jetpack compose 2. So, if you're a developer, there's two GitHub repos out there that showcase those things as well. All at fault. I can't live out design either, Sam. So, I got to say design, too. So, I told your app to correct me. No, it's Eway. So Eway has an annotations kit for designers that's specific to native mobiles, I have had a chance to mess around with it is awesome. It does a really good job of giving designers kind of like the annotations and tags to help developers out to make sure the content is accessible. So, if you're looking for something to use, like you don't want to build one internally or don't know where to start. That's a great starting point for designers. 

22:54 Speaker  

With the adoption of WCAG 2.1. in many countries, there is an increased demand for Web Developers, Designers and other Professionals with knowledge of Web Accessibility Standards and guidelines. With this growth comes the need for an objectively verified level of expertise. The Web Accessibility Specialist exam will provide individuals and employers with the ability to assess web accessibility competence, complete the WAS and CPACC exam to earn the special designation of Certified Professional in web accessibility.

23:30 Sam Evans  

So, Mark has just summarized a TED talk in a few minutes about your resource binds for mid-2024 for mobile accessibility, but that's what's really great about people who are passionate about this and want to share their knowledge and help grow. I'm going to throw in a Star Wars reference from a colleague of ours, Danny Boudreau, who came to one of our sessions many years ago at CSUN to talk about, you know, the Jedi approach to things and as a Jedi that the force you know, we need to not have a disturbance in the force, but we need to keep growing our Jedi are strong, our masters. And so, in the accessibility world, I think that I think that I think we could consider you and Danny both part of that Jedi, you know, Jedi forth bringing it up the younglings that are learning the next generations. For those of you we're Mark, and I are talking on a video but in his office behind him he has a great collection of Star Wars memorabilia, and he has some really beautiful lightsabers on his wall behind him. And I think those are some Funko Pops behind I can't quite see. But yeah, anyhow, so and in the DEI space right now that's happening around the world justice Equity, Diversity Inclusion Jedi that usually is on you revolution has a t shirt and sweatshirts that have lightsabers that represent those J E D I letters so need to get you one of those shirts if you don't have one mark.

25:00 Mark Steadman  

Oh, I need one. I've been looking for one of those I couldn't find it around the only one that I found, while I made but I didn't have a chance to like to put down was we talked about semantics earlier, but like semantic HTML, and then like native elements for native applications, and I put it around the Mandalorian elements. This is this is the way so, you know, using semantics is the way to do it. But I haven't had a chance to finalize that out there, I should get those out there. I'm scared Stars Wars are going to come after me.

25:31 Sam Evans  

If you could give people who are just starting in native mobile application development, or people who maybe have a few years in, what do you think developers in this arena should know to most enhance the accessibility of their mobile applications as they develop? Are there a few key elements to think about for people that are just getting started, and then maybe perhaps, some more advanced considerations for people that are a little further in?

25:58 Mark Steadman  

Yep. So, if you are just starting out with the most basic things, you can do two things, take advantage of the automated pieces that come with them. tools that come with the integrated development environments, respectively, so Xcode for iOS and Android Studio for Android, take advantage of the tools that are there. In Xcode, you can take any application, so you can take your phone as it is right now and go to any app. If you have Xcode up, you can use the accessible inspector on any application, you do not have to have the source code, you could have any old app you have on your phone and use the accessibility inspector and the audit function in it to get the main issue. Now mind those automated issues. Again, you're talking to an automation advocate, I'm going to be the realist in the room, it's going to be the lower 25%. I get that. But actually, I'll share this when I did my last talk, the one thing that I did is I actually went out to just the commercial applications that were in the Google Play Store and the App Store and took those 25 apps, I just went through them and just really quickly went through and just test the voiceover different various differences to technologies. Of those 25%, a little bit, the automation can get of those issues that I found closer to 60% of the issues were those issues. So, the basics are not even being met in those applications. And so, if you're a developer just starting out, take advantage. If you're in Xcode, take advantage of the accessible inspector yes, you're going to probably lose your mind you are using it because it is buggy, and it's a pain in the butt to use, I get that. But the audit function has about five or six checks, you can use the inspector to see does it has a proper trapped role, doesn't have a label all of that stuff, you can use that and there's plenty of tutorials actually out there from Apple, how to use it. So, take advantage if you're an Android Studio, use the Google Accessibility Standard. Again, not many issues that's going to catch however, it does catch those issues that we see over and over and over out there. And so, if you're just starting out, start with the tools. And on top of that, there's other things inside of Android Studio yet they do an add on for Xcode. But there's Linters. So, Linters are just static code analyzers. So, as I develop, I'll get feedback. So for anybody who's not familiar, as I start developing, if I am building out just a piece of text about that, right, and I choose not to use, and native elements, I choose not to use a button and I put a tap gesture on it, if I use some of the rules that are out there, such as like swift lint has two accessibility rules. I know everybody on everybody listening is going to grow when I say this, they're off by default. But if you turn them on, if I'm misusing that are using a different semantic element than what it should be using. It'll help you make that accessible. There are some constraints, I get that you should probably use a native element. However, if you're constrained by something, this will actually tell you in line in the code, hey, this is missing a trait it does not have a trade of button or link. One of the applications I looked at 60 scrolling view rows of buttons on repeat, no treat of button. So, it just announced text, text text. So, nobody knows that that's actually if you fix that code, right then in there, all 60 those are fixed done. Just using a Linter. You have to do an install for that. Now iOS and Android, Android Studio, they have one built in the accessibly test framework is built into it. So, you get that by default. They're all warnings for the most part, by default. However, if your team decides to flip the switch and say you want to make them hard, say like, hey, I can’t make cope with these Lintian issues that exist. They're really good. They are especially in Android view. You just got some new ones in there, too. They're not as robust as the old school stuff, I think the Android view way of doing it, but if you're starting off, that is the way to go is start basic use the automation pieces because on top of that, it helps you learn as you develop. That's the thing that I never got, as a developer. I never, I never got to learn as I went and that's the part that I miss out on. That's where I tell developers, any of these automation tools, they're not going to slow you down, they're going to let you do your thing, but you're also going to learn as you go. And that what that tends to lead to Sam is developer saying: "Uh this is interesting. " I didn't know about this, and then your kind of opened that up a little bit. And then even if you just get one, now you have a champion on team, they start to kind of grow that a little bit more. And you get that one person who kind of has that Aha, even though it's not sitting with an actual user, it's more of it. I'm interested in this. Let's go right. So, if you're starting off, that's where I start with the automation. Now, if you're talking to a developer who's been doing this and has kind of been jamming a bit in the accessibility space, or knows a little bit about accessibility, the big things that we tend to see over and over again, in the mobile space are no headings, there's no headings to navigate large chunks of content. So, I have a piece of text that is above a group of content and logically breaks it up, that needs to be a heading, if you want feedback from every user who uses native mobile applications is a voiceover talkback user. It is for love all is good, let me skip around and give me headings. Because it does not make sense to me. And the number of applications that are overly complex that have zero is unreal, not even one in their views that they have in native application. So, headings are a big one, properly grouping content is a huge one, I can give an example hope what I'm about to do, like yes, talking about love visualization. So, imagine, almost like a list of items similar to what you get when you kind of go to menu in iOS or Android. But you got a logo on the left, you had information in the middle, and he had like an arrow that showcases like, hey, you can tap this and move forward, right? What tends to happen is when developers build that content, and as I swipe through, it'll go logo, text, icon. And that icon then is the button or the item that you tap to go to the next view, group it so I swipe through one individual item, all that content reads, and then the tap event is tied to that. There are so many apps that don't do that and it's really cumbersome. Mobile applications are supposed to be a lot more concise, and compact and easier to go through. And so, when you make it harder for somebody who's using something like voiceover or talkback to go through hallway, like it is a pain in the butt to go through every one of those things. And even if I use, explore by touch and just use my finger to move around, every one of those things is a faultable item from accessibility. And so, it's really difficult to navigate. So, grouping that content is a really big one. And then the last thing, oh, let's see, what would I say the last one. So, I'm going through the 12 principles that I had in my head, which I'm not going to share here, because if you want to hear those 12 principles you should come to me enabling and come jam at the workshop that we're going to do. So 

32:40 Sam Evans  

Mark will have a three-hour workshop where you can get one on one time with the brain of Mark and colleague.

32:47 Mark Steadman  

Oh, yeah, so I'm going to hold off on all those ones that are the only other one that I would say then too on top of that is this is going to sound funky, but ensure your content resizes. So, I can say verbatim, do not restrict the scalability of text in your application. Yes, every developer listening I know designers come up with this a lot of times and say that's the design, there is pushback you might have to have on this one, but it's an interesting thing working in the financial space and then working previously at Deque systems like working with multiple different companies. Where a tendency is, is resized text hits a lot harder from a almost like buying standpoint, because a lot of these folks who are maybe like higher up leaders, things like that. Are, they're getting older, that hopefully I said that's the last thing, but yeah, so yeah,

33:40 Sam Evans  

 Yes. We’ve all aged, we're changing.

33:42 Mark Steadman  

Yes, I bring it in, so my dad, he zooms super far into his phone, he's well into his upper 60s. And so, when he uses applications, the first thing he says is God, can't see anything. Right. And so, a lot of the generation that has a lot of wealth is going from into, you know, 57 nice range. They are using precise text, they are making their fonts larger, and we don't think about every day because like I said, the big thing that we look for a lot of times is Hey, voiceover Talkback, right resize text is huge. The amount of people that resize their phones and have their content resize is massive and so having that in your app is not that different isn't. But a lot of times we don't even test the scalability of it. See if I can't even scale at all. And a lot of apps don't do that whatsoever. There's a lot of applications that do really well. And there's no excuses because Amazon is one of the most complex apps ever. And they resize really well in a lot of their spaces. And so, it just comes down to having those conversations with design, making sure that you actually allow the content to scale, because that's kind of the next step. But those three things are huge things we see over and over. Not necessarily starting point one but if you've been in the accessibility, you know, accessible, you've been doing the automation pieces, and you want more those are the big three things I would say to hit on native applications.

34:59 Sam Evans  

Do you think I'm going to go back to a kind of a core tenet we talked about think people don't consider, but on mobile apps is there you you've looked at a lot of them outside of ones that you're working on. But how often do you think it's still prevalent? Is it a design consideration for mobile apps that use of color alone to indicate changes is still something people are not considering? And this is not heavy code. This is just designing basics, right? So.

35:24 Mark Steadman  

Yeah, the short and sweet answer, Sam is Oh, yeah. Use of color is all over like. And what's really funny is, I've had this conversation with multiple people one time, like a few years back, the generalized concept with native apps is they should be simpler, right? Like, I should be able to simplify a gigantic website into something that's a little bit easier to consume. Well, a principle in that is you don't have as much space. So, what do you do? Right? So, use of color is not even thought of from accessibility perspective, they just say, oh, hey, I've got less space. So, let's say, I am in my bank account, my bank account shows I'm in the red. So, I'm just going to show cases red, right? I don't have space to show like, hey, you're down this much my like, we're just going to be red. That's all over the place still. And again, like I said, it goes through a concept of a we got to simplify, you know, much space look, narrow that down and we tend to see that a lot, a lot, a lot. Even in a couple of like commercial applications, like store applications. I don't remember. I won't say what specific one, I don't remember what it was, but if something was out of stock used red as a circle, to say it's out of stock.

36:34 Sam Evans  

I see it a lot. It's kind of I understand the concept of I'm trying to make it as simple as possible, with fewer elements, but I see the lack of understanding that color alone is a good indicator of things. But

36:47 Mark Steadman  

Oh, yeah.

36:48 Sam Evans  

 I would think that's not a complex code element on. I don't know, but I would think that it is not a complex element of mobile app development. So, good to know that it consistently is not happening across those and good opportunity, perhaps that is one simple thing that people could change. That would be perhaps less daunting. 

37:09 Mark Steadman  

Yeah. And color alone is one of those simple ones, I'll say it's one of my simplified ones, you have four of them now, but if you want the other eight, you have to come to my talk.

37:21 Sam Evans  

So, you’re going to come to us this fall in October, G3ict. Is, is our larger organization. IAAP is the networking education and certification realm of G3ict. But we host the enabling summit each year now in October. So, Mark, you've come to him enabling a few times. As I'm going to say this, you can take that or not, but I think you're a major leader in the accessibility space and in the profession, and I'm always happy to refer people to you to your teachings and your knowledge and information you share, but how do you feel about? Or do you have perspectives about M- Enabling as an interactive engagement opportunity for people in the profession? 

38:05 Mark Steadman  

Oh, my gosh, yeah. So, I would say when I saw you last year, as an example. So, when I went to M-Enabling when I'll tell you this, when I was attending, I really was like, you know, it's kind of like the politics stuff, kind of like the law, like, you know, your kind of DOJ and stuff. So, when I came last year, it was some of the best collaboration, best conversations, it's a lot easier to talk to folks at M-enabling, I think, just because of the structure of it, it's not too big, but it's not too small. So, it's like the perfect size to be able to find folks approaching them for help. I appreciate your words, Sam, for saying that I am an accessible leader, because, like, I still talk to people and walk up to them. Sometimes I'm like, I'm nervous to talk to this person. But I don't feel that in any way. Just because that's the vibe is, it's open, you can talk to anybody about anything on the panel setups, all that it's really awesome, because there's great conversations that happen across the board and so if you're looking for something that's really open for anybody to talk about anything accessibility wise, I mean, if you go from laws to PDF, the mobile accessibility hack all the way down to anything else you can think of, it's a super open environment. And like I said, it's not too big. Um, so it's not like this massive thing. I have that person's time with somebody else. But I think it's very open. And it's a really good discussion place to talk accessibility kind of bounce ideas off each other. So, I left with three ideas for what we should be doing mobile and my company right now. When I left, ah, that's a good idea. Like I don't even think y'all know that you just gave me a really good idea. So, if you have the opportunity, I will go. It's a wonderful conference, and it really has some of the best experts that are in the field and shameless plug, it's got a mobile accessibility workshop. It's going to be pretty awesome if you want to learn more about mobile accessibility, but yeah, I loved every minute of it. have literally like the perfect size per venue just to kind of have those conversations come in with a learning mentality and leave with a lot of things that can actually help you in your day-to-day jobs. 

40:10 Sam Evans  

And I think Mark, you, you put it in, in its origin story. M-Enabling was originally around legislative policy and thing, but it's as the accessibility progression has grown beyond telecommunications, we do find a lot more practitioners, leaders and B2B and so I think that there's good opportunities for people to bring back information from M-Enabling that will help them grow their accessibility, maturity and governance. So hopefully, people do walk away, and it takes him at least three or four things that they can put into play immediately. So yeah. So that's, we'll stop talking about M-Enabling. But we have a few minutes left together. But Mark, do you have anything that you'd like to impart, you've already shared so much, though. But are there any upcoming projects that you're working on? So, I know you're working? I mean, not necessarily at work. But do you have any Steadman specializations like that, you want to mention things that are coming up projects, conferences, or other endeavors that you're excited about? 

41:12 Mark Steadman  

Again, I'll just shamelessly plug M-Enabling one more time into this because I'm super excited. So, we have a SIM fly mobile accessibility piece, I'm super excited about going around here I did at ACCESSU too, and it was eight hours long, this one's going to be a little bit shorter. So, it's going to be nice, not marked routine, 25 bottles of water so that I don't catch mouth dryness to say go halfway through. I'm actually a couple things personally, I'm actually starting my own YouTube channel, believe it or not, and I'm super excited about, it's going to be called Steady a11y, yes, direct pawn of my name, but study accessibility. I'm actually super excited about that. It's more. For me, Sam, it's more of just an outlet, I have so many ideas, and so many things that I want to do. And I love writing. But this is kind of this, that timeframe where I want to get into more showcasing. So, like showing how those things work. All those it'll be Web, it'll be mobile, it'll be mostly Web, it'll be more automation stuff, anything like that. But I've got that coming up, I'm going to start trying to post this summer, I have two kids that are under four. So, you never know how that changes really quickly. But I am super excited for that, because I have this gigantic backlog of series that I want to do. And again, I'm in control that I can kind of control that content. So, if you're looking for that accessibility on YouTube, I'm, I'm super-duper excited to kind of have my own venue to showcase knowledge. And then I've got probably two to three more articles from mobile accessibility that I'm in the process of writing, I'm just polishing them up a lot more than I wanted to I kind of I kind of on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I kind of like, threw together a three part series on web automation. And I was like, this is awesome. I should do this for mobile automation now too. So, I'm going to, I'm going to do the same thing. for that. It's just kind of a super like, I need to rush to get this out the door who's got we got like writing stuff down for that. But those are the big things that I'm actually super-duper excited about. 

43:11 Sam Evans  

So that'll be like Mark Steadman show and tell, because you will show us and tell us how it works. And we'll get the Mark study accessibility insights on that. So that'll be okay. We'll make sure we get that URL from you so that we can post it up with our notes. So, Mark, it's always a treat for me. I always learn a lot from you every time we chat. And I appreciate your willingness to share, to teach, to mentor and your excitement, enthusiasm for growing accessibility, whether that's web based or native mobile apps, or whatever comes to us in the future with AR and VR. I know you'll be ahead of the curve. So, Mark, thank you so much for joining us today and joining us on IAAP Podcast. 

43:55 Mark Steadman  

Absolutely. It's always a pleasure. Thank you, Sam, for having me.

44:00 Speaker  

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