AXSChat Podcast with Chris LaChance, Accessible Design Systems, Sr. UX Manager & Design Ops Lead at Pegasystems

Chris has over 20 years of experience working with government agencies worldwide, international brands, neighbourhood businesses, mom-and-pop’s, and everything in between. In his current role at Pega, he is a UX Manager, and the Design Ops Lead. He helps drive their design system, Constellation, toward accessibility out-of-the-box for Fortune 100 companies.

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This is a draft transcript produced live at the event and corrected for spelling and basic errors. It is not a commercial transcript. AXSCHAT Chris La Chance

NEIL: 0:07

Hello and welcome to Axschat. I'm delighted that we are joined today by Chris La Chance, who is a UX designer with Pega Systems. Pega are a US based software company. They work with lots of very large organisations. So, Christ, welcome to Axschat. It's great to have you with us. Tell us a little bit about your role and your interest in accessibility and designing to make things better for people?

CHRIS: 0:30

Yeah, thanks Neil. My name is Chris La Chance, like you said. I do a lot of things. I'm on the product UX team over at Pega, responsible for working on the design system. I do some design operations, helping enable people how to use the design system, create education sources to empower people internally, to help people understand that, impart the principles and design methodologies we are using there. I also manage a team. I do quite a bit of different roles within the group, and I do consulting for different other UX things internally. We trying to bring the dispirit design groups together as well to have conversations across the organisation. We just rolled out Figma, for example, doing this big collaborative effort probably, the beginning of this year. It took the whole company coming together to do that. I was able to help coordinate and get that out the door for Pega. So, we have moved to Figma full time, which is an exciting thing too.

ANTONIO: 1:24

So, Chris, let me starts with the hostilities here, sometimes when we talk with people in UX and we talk about accessibility, they often say oh, accessibility that has nothing to do with my job, that's something completely different. So, my question is, what led you here?

CHRIS: 1:43

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I've been doing design for 20 years. I started doing a lot of macra media flash stuff. We did some really cool animation things for big car companies, very exciting, when the iPhone came out Flash died obviously. We had to then pivot from a Flash technology to move towards HTML. I had to kind of make that pivot, understand how to do design in a very code semantic way. About that same time, we also started doing a lot more user experience research. There were sometimes where we actually put together products, designs etc. and they just weren't working well. So, we had to go into the field to test. As we were testing specific things, in fact there's one funny story, where I had recommended the specific Java script pattern to the designers and hey, we got to be able to check on this thing, to pull to see if it's doing XY or Z, out in the field, testing with some of the agents, we were working with at the time and as I'm walking around visiting each station to see how they're using and enjoying the product and walking through that experience with them what is working and what is not, the guy fires up the product and it starts screeching. The computer starts screeching as he fires up our product and I couldn't believe, what is happening, like why does your computer sound so terrible he is like, I don't know, like last week, when I started firing up like all these tabs the computer started screaming at me and one was things I had realised then was that was the JavaScript had overloaded it's processor in his computer, sent his fan into a tizzy and made him shriek during his workday and I realised that as a designer, I'm making some people's lives terrible. And I didn't realise how ignorant I was to that. About this same time, as I started learning the semantic code, I realised I was excluding a larger group that doesn't often get talked about in design, usually, especially back probably about ten or 15 years ago, a lot of the design was very visual based. If it looks great it goes out the door, it works at one resolution. Responsive design works at the iPhone side. It works at the desktop size. This is the desktop size and that's it. That is not acceptable. And I didn't realise what a problem I was causing. As I started having kids, I started having kids, I had a kid that has very serious dyslexia disability. We had to get him into special training to work through it and Realising the impact of design, education systems, education platforms and just how the occurrence standard of getting things done, it made me really invest very deeply into understanding this audience in this group, honestly that really hadn't got much attention, or at least from my perception hadn't got much attention like these are real issues. Nobody is designing for these issues. Over time, I did learn that there were people that cared, and I started following and learning from those people. So, that is kind of my journey. It's been awesome as I've moved into this space. I've had friends that recently had visual impairments and they are able to see less and less. And there are some of the learnings I was able to do like I was able to help them set up an accessible experience on their Chromebooks for their kids so they can actually now help their kids with their schoolwork. So, it's been a really rewarding pivot in my design career for sure.

DEBRA: 4:58

Chris, I really think that's a very interesting story. I was a designer in the past as well and a programmer and it's amazing how I learned too. I remember the first website that I designed which was gorgeous, it just blew around the room. I asked a gentlemen who worked at the NSA as a director who happened to also be blind, what he thought of it and he said, well, wow Debra, my screen reader can read your name but that's it. Once again, that was a long time ago, but I was like oh, well that's not good. But it's really pretty, if you could see it, you could see how pretty it was but, I know over these years, I've been in the field a long time, long enough to have carpal syndrome surgery right, like a lot of us do, but you know, how did you when did you realise or how does accessibility really blend UX in a way that adds the most value because, I still, it's not, I find that UX people are heavily engaged in accessibility conversations and back and forth now but it was not that way. And, I also don't know Chris, if I'm assuming that it's that way now, because I'm in the accessibility field, not the UX field but what have you seen with that? Are you seeing that it's something that, you can't do UX if you don't have accessibility and I believe maybe vice versa and I think they are both the same. I mean the things, anyway but what do you think? And what do your peers think?

CHRIS: 6:40

Yeah, so it was an interesting journey, I would say when I first started working on this, even pitching to stakeholder’s PO's, other designers even, the importance of this. It was kind of yeah, that's nice but those aren't the people using our product. I had to do a lot of legwork with many others, including previous co-workers that you guys all know Beatrice and you have had on this Podcast before, we had to do a lot of work as an internal collective to come together and start pitching the need for accessibility and design. Had to do a lot of saying, hey it's part of international standards, it's part of being able to sell a product and reinforcing that year, after year, after year in this role and I've been here for eight years at Pega, has made a huge difference and I can talk about that in a minute in terms of our company. In terms of the design field though, I am seeing, and it's very encouraging to see, far more design conversations happening in things like a smashing magazine, which is a very large UX publication, very heavily actually this last couple of weeks pushing accessibility specific things around table accessibility. Accessibility of how to work with design aspects. And it goes beyond contrast. It goes into the actual principles of accessibility. One of the things, at least internally that we are doing for design is we have kind of set a standard. We were fortunate during the pandemic and not everyone had the same level of opportunity. We are just about to kick off a design system and so we were able to set some clear principles out of the design system from the get-go where we did first look to semantic Wikag specific design principles to follow as part of that design system. And for us that's made a huge difference. It's solved a lot of questions, the principles in accessibility guidance aren't just for blind people, as it's often unfortunately presented. There is a lot of awesome very powerful well thought out design principles, UX principles specifically in these standards that people have gone largely unnoticed for years until recently. So, that's what I am seeing. I'm seeing a much more greater awareness at least in the design community that this is a really big deal.

NEIL: 9:07

Great. And I am really interested in the stuff you have talked about in terms of dyslexia. So, hands up I'm dyslexic ADHD was part of the cognitive accessibility task force at W3C for a number of years and I think you're right, you know, a lot of the stuff that we talk about in terms of cognitive accessibility has a huge overlap with usability and UX and actually that proved quite challenging to get some of the stuff that we wanted into the guidelines because some of it was subjective and it was personalisation and about how people experience things and it wasn't, you know yes or no, in the same way that it can be for you know, how you design for inter operationbility with assistive technologies. So, I think that that has come on a long way in the last few years and I think that there is a greater understanding and I've observed it, I've been working in the assistive tech field for a couple of decades and the sort of design of stuff and the understanding that we need to design for people with multiple different ways of interacting, regardless of whether disability has come on in leaps and bounds and a credit to organisations like Microsoft for creating their sort of inclusive design principles where they clearly show, the sort of temporary and situational disabilities as well which help people understand that this is not just about impairments, it's about how people are doing stuff in a particular context and so, you know, interesting we have mentioned often talked about car driver's being blind because functionally they are, in terms of being able to operate the other things in their car whether that be a phone or the buttons down below, you know. I actually still quite like owning old cars because they still have physical buttons where your muscle memory can actually operate systems, whereas with touchscreen cars at the moment, it's problematic because you are drawn to actually looking and I know there is a movement away in the really top end cars. I'm a big fan of Mercedes and I went to Mercedes world, and they were sitting in some of their highly expensive cost of house kind of priced type cars, and they have got voice and gesture control and you don't have to touch anything, and you know that still is probably a decade away from people's mainstream experience of driving. So, in the meantime we really need to think about the situational disabilities that people face when we are designing systems.

CHRIS: 12:21

Yeah, that's a huge one. Just the other day, I went to the eye doctor, they dilated my eyes, I came back to work and checked some email, and the screen was so bright, I was like, I can't even work right now, it's giving me a migraine. And so, I turned it to dark mode which was great but one of the apps I was using, the email still stayed in light mode, so I actually had to go to the web experience to move everything to dark mode there because it actually was truly in dark mode. That is sometimes what I think, as I'm working with designers, some get it and some don't, this is not just for a specific group. This could be for you tomorrow.

DEBRA: 12:55

Or today.

CHRIS: 12:57

Or today.

DEBRA: 12:58

It's like hello, design for people, people are complicated, they are nuanced.

CHRIS: 13:05

And from day to day even.

DEBRA: 13:06

Design for people, we're not designing for human beings, and saying, oh no, you're blind so you don't count. You have Down Syndrome, you have dyslexia, no, we all have something. It's just part of being a human being. Design for humans and I'm just losing my patience with designers. Design for humans. But to be fair to designers, they are doing what their corporations or employers are telling them to do. I understand that but we need more people to be like you, Chris. Design for human beings’ people don't say that anymore. Oh well, nobody that is blind works here. What? Well that's a problem. Let's talk about that. Sorry.

NEIL: 13:53

I'm smiling because I saw a huge amount of interaction on a post on Twitter the other day and it was someone had taken a picture of, I think it was a pizza box and they had written in big Sharpie, 200 degrees for 15 minutes and then they went 19-year-old packaging designers. This is what the majority of the population needs. And I just thought that that was just so true. I mean because you know people are designing these things and not thinking about the population that are using it. It's like what do they want to see? Maybe I want to see what, you know whether they have used xanthan gum in the creation of the pizza dough, but actually what I'm more likely to want is, what temperature do I put it on at and for how long?

DEBRA: 14:46

And I don't want to see your gigantic logo on my shampoo bottle, what I'd really like is for you to put big letters saying, it's shampoo because I can't see, I don't wear my glasses in the shower. So, yeah, I think we are tired of this, and I don't care, I won't name your brand who you're saying you're making your packaging accessibility to me, but I can't see if it's shampoo or conditioner. So, Chris what are you all doing to fix that?

CHRIS: 15:16

Yeah. So little things we did have been very successful for our group is one, understanding the impact of like what accessibility requires, if we are not designing for accessibility in mind, we are making designs that are essentially illegal in certain jurisdictions, like against the law, that's a problem. Number two is we can't sell designs in certain jurisdictions, certain applications, in certain jurisdictions because they are not accessible. If we don't do this, we don't sell our product internationally. That to me is one of the things that we have amplified over and over again. Especially the stakeholders like, we don't have time for accessibility, it's like no, you don't have time not to sell your product overseas. That's a problem. So, we have had those conversations. Finding likeminded individuals across organisations has been helpful and pulling together groups to make that stuff happen has been huge. A big victory this year, the first time ever, after being at this company for eight years, I have seen on this new release of our product, we have more accessibility stories at the top of the list to get done than other stuff. Like, it's a very, very exciting thing to see. And some of the other POs across organisations is why are there so many accessibility stories? It's like because we have to do this to sell our product. It's important, I get it we do need new features over here. But like, if we don't do this we don't sell. That's a big problem. So, we have had those conversations and we work together and find ways to do it like, hey, maybe, you want this new thing, let's do this new thing and the accessibility go with it right from the get-go. Partnering is actually showing you care about their desires by helping them understand that we have to do this legally. So, that's been huge.

DEBRA: 17:04

Right. And, I know that Antonio is going next but it's frustrating that here in the United States, we think of these issues way too much compliance based, so that's just compliance and legislation based, but we are also making progress. Antonio, over to you I apologise.

ANTONIO: 17:23

I'm curious to understand what initiatives you are doing to scale this within your organisation and to get a more frequent buy in from your senior executives.

CHRIS: 17:37

Yeah, so, the interesting thing was is that part of the initial task force, I didn't ask for it to be pulled together it was another accessibility person within our organisation that's also passionate about it said, hey let's get a task force together, come back to product, here's what we want from product and we were able to get that back to them saying, we want somebody to lead accessibility as a PM that has a representation, has a voice, can pull together a team and manage that process. That has been great we have actually pulled someone on board for that who is fantastic, they're doing a great job. We have been able to hire people with lived experience so they can test things together as a group. We are not just relying on third party vendors although that's important too. So, we have made these efforts. And honestly our clients asking and demanding that we do this is another huge thing that's helped move the needle.

ANTONIO: 18:29

Do you see that marketing departments are able to translate the good value that they are delivering here into the message of your organisation?

CHRIS: 18:40

We have done a little bit of that. I don't think we have possibly done enough. I also think that we would like to see a much more robust level of support before ploughing full on down that path. The interesting thing is that we don't just provide a user application, we are also doing the authoring experience too. We want both of those things to be able to handle this. Okay, we're looking to standards, like not just Wikag, but A Tech, when some authors something it's accessible by default type scenarios. So, yeah, that's with the marketing angle, it is something that as we feel that things are really, really solid we will make a stronger push for. Again, that's probably up to accessibility PM of when they do that. I do know that we have added accessibility courses for education system, for learning so clients’ customers partners can learn how we do that in the product etc. So, there are definitely initiatives happening much more publicly than we used to. That's great to know. I think that one thing that we all, as people that have been doing this for a while encourage people to do is actually start talking about it because you're never going to don't be afraid to talk about it. Right? There is always something broken, right? There is always going to be something that's imperfect. So, if you don't give it the light of day then you know, then people don't know about it and actually you know, things like Axschat. We started it just deliberately to highlight the work that people are doing. Awesome.

NEIL: 20:22

Because as lots of people say, you know we are not going to reach perfection and people talk about progress over perfection and that's what you're doing right now. You know the fact that you're creating the education pieces and by the way, please send me the link so that I can make sure that the people in our organisation know about them so that we can train people up. You know, we are encouraging our suppliers to provide us with accessibility best practice. We are encouraging through procurement and other means as well to try and make sure that it's something that supports the accessibility teams in our partners by, asking the question and it's better as it comes through procurement than from the accessibility team, you know. Just somehow holds a bit more weight when they hold the purse strings.

CHRIS: 21:24

I wish we would just do it because it's the right thing to do.

NEIL: 21:30

But I think that you know, in any organisation, people yourself that are passionate and there are people that have other agendas and I think that you have to take a multistranded approach to accessibility to address it across an organisation and we, you know, we really focus on trying to address it through lots of different ways. So, through working in partnership in terms of accessibility team, to accessibility team, participating in conferences and education initiatives and embedding it in our request for purchase. Embedding it in the sort of demands that we make of our partners and suppliers because you know, these are complex organisations, your organisation, several thousand people, a hundred and ten thousand, the combined customer base of the people that we are serving with your product is going to be millions of people.

CHRIS: 22:31

That's why I want that authoring experience to be accessible as well as the end user experience.

NEIL: 22:38

Absolutely Atag is, if anything the more important and more misunderstand of the two standards, because really you know, the structure, once you have got the structure of the work site all right and that frequently does happen, you know the accessibility team and the web developers go and do a great job and they launch the website and it's lovely and accessible and then they let lose all of their colleagues to create content and three months later you come back and you relook at the accessibility of the website and it's littered with errors. So, getting it in the workflow is really super important.

CHRIS: 23:22

Like mandating like certain things have headings. It's a required field, you can't build that section without having that heading. That's a very simple fix. Let's do that. That kind of thing.

NEIL: 23:36

Yeah. Great.

DEBRA: 23:37

So, Chris have you found that I like that that UX team has been working with the accessibility team. And I also, as an advocate, like you have an accessibility team. I know I was really mad when Musk came in and cut all the DEI and so many other people. But just the accessibility team too because we need technology to be accessible. This is not a nice to have. So that was discouraging.

CHRIS: 24:13

It is because there is an audience there, like even from a business standpoint like, why would you do that? It helps you at least, like what is the stat at least 15% of the global population, you have lost 15% of your audience by cutting that team.

DEBRA: 24:29

I think it's higher. I think also we can say, and I think sometimes we confuse people with these states. We know that, well the WHO just said, in their report they said, 1.3 billion. So, we are always shifting with the numbers because we don’t know for sure. But the reality is we can say 15%, but if we go to the States one in four Americans identify as having a disability. That's 25%. And I think that that is not even the right way to look at it anymore. I was talking to a gentlemen that was building the metaverse, building one of the metaverse, and I was like you yourself are going to fall off this bell-shaped curve. Designers are only doing it for and I know that it's shifting but I think we, I just am discouraged by technologist and I am a technologist because I understand the powers that be tell us what we have to do in technology, but people like you, Chris stepping up and saying, I know I'm UX but how do I do UX without getting involved in the accessibility conversations I should be supporting the other team members, which is why we love Beatrice, you know. And so, I love that it's overlapping and coming together. But I still don't understand why, designers as a whole aren't really stepping up and saying okay, we are going to take control of this. We are telling you what to do, we have to do what you're telling us because you’re paying us. We want to make sure this is being designed for humans because we can pick everything apart. Let's pick Neil. Okay Neil has ADHD, Neil has dyslexia, Neil has a sick sense of humour, Neil has whatever right. But Neil is a professional that's just trying to do his job and if technology is accessible to him or to Antonio or to me or to you, Chris, I just think that these arguments well, no blind people work here, or this is only 15%, it's ridiculous, stop right now and start designing so that human beings can use it because sometimes we can't see, sometimes we can't hear, sometimes we can't use our hands, sometimes it's too noisy. So, sometimes I get discouraged that we are still having these same conversations of, you got to do it, it's the right thing to do. No. If you’re going to build technology, you should build it so that humans can work it period.

CHRIS: 26:55

You're designing is not done if you haven't considered the people that need to use it. It's just not done.

DEBRA: 27:01

And don't assume that it's only for 15% because by the way 80% of people with disability that have disabilities are invisible. 80%.

CHRIS: 27:09

Right. Yeah.

DEBRA: 27:11

And only 20% of people that have disabilities are born with those disabilities, like my daughter with Down Syndrome. Like your daughter, Chris with dyslexia, which I know we have decided dyslexia is a disability but actually people, 65% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia. It almost killed Richard Branson when he jumped out of an aeroplane, which was stupid, I don't think you should jump out of aeroplanes, but he pulled the wrong cord because he is dyslexic. Luckily a trainer was close to him.

CHRIS: 27:42

I didn't hear that story.

DEBRA: 27:43

Right and pulled the correct cord, or we wouldn't have Richard with us anymore. So, yeah, it gives us a lot of hope that you're in the conversation, the Beatrices of the world is in the conversation. But what we do Chris to convince designers that they really, I don't know can we say, should have a bit more purpose in their designs, so that even if your employer doesn't tell you to do it that you're at least thinking about it because that's seems like what you have done, Chris.

CHRIS: 28:13

I think there is a fear of doing it wrong potentially. Potentially being uninclusive and rolling the design out. Not knowing where to start. Feeling, and honestly this is something I've to paint outside with code to show how the labels will read back and test those things live. I think there is a fear, especially in junior designers or maybe even senior ones too. I don't know how I'm going to do this right; I'm not going to think about that, I'm just going to give that to the accessibility team to handle.

DEBRA: 28:45

Right.

CHRIS: 28:47

And I don't think it's a lack of caring, I think it's a lack of I don't know how to start.

DEBRA: 28:53

And I don't want to mess up because I know if I mess up, they are coming after me which, are we have a very, very, very vocal community around the world. So, and we see it happening all the time. I think that's a really good answer and that's a fair answer. Thank you for being honest with that.

CHRIS: 29:09

I just don't think they don't care.

DEBRA: 29:11

I know, I know. But I cared as a designer I just didn't know. That was a long time ago.

NEIL: 29:20

I think that there is a lack of you know, education around accessibility in teaching about design and design systems and that is slowly changing. In fact, I think it's starting to ramp up but, you know, there is a lot of people that were design and not taught about accessibility at all. A lot of people were taught about coding and systems that were not taught about accessibility. It's a fundamental and it should be in the courses as a core component of everybody's education.

DEBRA: 29:57

And UX. UX also Neil, UX and accessibility included.

NEIL: 30:03

Absolutely. The assumption is...

CHRIS: 30:08

Yeah. You go first.

NEIL: 30:10

I was going to say that the assumption is make it accessibility you're going to make it fugly and that's not the case. I think you can make beautiful and intuitive and functional things and actually the constraints of what generate the challenge and the innovation.

CHRIS: 30:30

That's the pioneering aspect, like you know as we hit these basic standards there are things that aren't yet done, they aren't yet explored, data visualisation is an equivalent experience issue that's not being solved, that's not okay to tell someone, for example that you just follow the table of results to understand the story of the data. We need better people, we need innovation, on things like innovation so that everyone can understand that story quickly. Just as quickly as each other and be able to make those key decisions, without have to sift through tables of data. Like there are areas that design could really step up and be very exciting and make some really big differences. Yeah. I think that there is a really good example of where a team did some great work and that's Colourbox.IO which was the lift team and they realised that everybody was using slightly different shades of the pinks of lift and that they weren't necessarily accessibility, and they built an algorithm that enabled people to build colour pallets that worked. I just think that is a great example, they built a tool that had utility well beyond accessibility and well beyond branding. And you can find these areas that create these win, win scenarios, where you're really doing something cutting edge. We have to deal with that because you can theme the end user experiences as a client , as a brand. One of the things we have to do in the experience is do these two colours that are often used together, you're going to feel contrast. We do have libraries like the polish library, I believe is the right name of it, will auto detect, at one time to build to make sure your text colour is enough contrast over the background button colour you’ve chosen. It will make those decisions on the fly. But that is part of like, we have to do this at scale, especially at app builder programmes. We have to figure out ways to provide default accessible experience, even in the theming that's critical.

NEIL: 32:35

Yeah. So autonic design and component level design, when you have these low code and no code systems is super important because people are putting them together and without you having built it in the first place, then it's all going to fail. Chris, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. I'm really looking forward to us chatting on Twitter. I need to thank MyClearText for keeping us captioned and we'll be talking about some exciting news coming up in the next few weeks about some new supporters. So, thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure.

CHRIS: 33:17

Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.