Meryl Evans
Progress Over Perfection in Accessibility
In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Meryl Evans champions 360° accessibility in design and culture 🔄, reveals why captions are about inclusion—not just convenience 💬, and shares how embracing progress over perfection can transform accessibility efforts for everyone 🌍.
Highlights include:
- Why progress over perfection is essential in accessibility
- What does it take to build a culture of accessibility?
- How do you carry the responsibility of being an advocate?
- What tactics help make accessibility feel achievable?
- Why equitable design matters for dignity and inclusion
Who is Meryl Evans?
Meryl is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) 🧠, a professional speaker 🎤, trainer, and accessibility marketing consultant who believes that accessibility is everyone’s responsibility ♿.
It’s this belief that’s led to her work for the disability community being recognised both near and far 🌏, including by the North Texas Disability Chamber and LinkedIn, where she was named one of the 12 Top LinkedIn Voices for Accessibility Advocacy 🏆.
Since 2000, Meryl has been a trusted source of digital marketing knowledge 💻, contributing to publications like The Dallas Morning News, PC Today, and MarketingProfs—oh, and she’s also been quoted in The Wall Street Journal 📰!
But it’s not just her writing people are after—it’s her voice. She’s given talks at TEDx, SXSW, and the American Marketing Association 🎙️, and has spoken for companies like Google, Pearson, and Workday 🚀.
She’s also the author of The Brilliant Outlook Pocketbook 📘 and co-author of Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites 💡.
And if that wasn’t enough, Meryl is a passionate volunteer 💪, contributing to the W3C’s Immersive Captions community group and XR Access, helping ensure that XR technology is accessible to people with disabilities 🤝.
Transcript
- Meryl Evans:
- Marvel movies had a deaf character and she also signed a friend of mine and I took igy with a thing from there. Well, she was able to detect everybody coming behind her or she thought what was happening behind her. I'm like, okay, that's a little government little too far. Yeah, I can feel vibration sometimes, but I will not be able to get that much information just from vibration. That's just not reacting.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and what we do at thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
- Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting the field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders.
- My guest today is Meryl Evans. Meryl is a certified professional in accessibility core competencies, a professional speaker, trainer and accessibility marketing consultant who believes that accessibility is everyone's responsibility. It's this belief that's led to her work for the disability community being recognised both near and far, including by the North Texas Disability Chamber and LinkedIn where she was named one of the 12 top LinkedIn voices for accessibility advocacy.
- Since 2000, Meryl has been a trusted source of digital marketing knowledge contributing to publications like the Dallas Morning News, PC Today, and Marketing Profs among many others. Oh, and she's also been quoted in the Wall Street Journal. But it's not just her writing that people are after, it's her voice. She's given talks at TEDx South by Southwest and the American Marketing Association and has spoken for companies like Google, Pearson and Workday.
- She's also the author of the Brilliant Outlook Pocketbook and co-author of Adapting to Web Standards CSS and Ajax for Big Sites. And if that wasn't enough, Meryl is a passionate volunteer contributing to the W three C's immersive captions, community group and XR access, ensuring that XR tech is accessible to people with disabilities.
- And now she's here with me for this conversation on Brave UX. Meryl, a very warm welcome to the show.
- Meryl Evans:
- Thank you for having me Brendan, and I'm ecstatic to enjoy our conversation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Me too, me too, Meryl. Very much. And I understand one of the fascinating things that I learned about you, which there were many, is that you have an IMDB profile because you featured in a film called BBS, the documentary. Now there may be some people that are listening to us today that don't know what A BBS is, so let's start there. What is A BBS and how did you come to be in a documentary about them?
- Meryl Evans:
- So BBS stands for a bulletin board system, basically a pre-internet, not before the internet. Some of your audience might remember Prodigy America Online. It was before that too. So you know how rough size though our forum where you can have conversations with people, community forum where you can call me on replies to people. So it was like that. It was kind of a distant back then and it was a great way to meet people and I really appreciated it because those were not with a teenager. It gave me a way to communicate with people without using a phone. I didn't have to call anybody to be part of the conversation. That's an amazing thing for me. I came to be MBB the documentary because Jason and got the creator of that and I connected, I can't remember how or well, but I told him my background was BBSs and how I ran one for a couple of years and how I met my spouse on A BBS. So I called the vendors internet dating because it was before the internet. BBS is not dating website. It was just a way we could meet each other
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Other than your spouse, which of course was a very important meeting through A BBS. Who else did you meet during that time of your life through the BBS systems?
- Meryl Evans:
- I'm trying to remember. I met people from mostly it's the North Texas area. When I got on a bb, I lived in Fort Worth. I grew up in Fort Worth. Texas and S were very local based at the time, so there was one of the BB artists had a picnic where you to meet people in person. So that's how I met my spouse and his roommates and it just went from there. When I moved to Washington DC I was on a couple of people yesterday and same thing, I met people in person. No one really stand down. I just met people from all walks of life.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And like you said, people can possibly hear Meryl that you have an accent and I think you described that accent better than I could. So I'll let you describe that accent for people. But you mentioned that one of the things that the BBS system allowed you to do was to engage in community with people and you were also someone who very early on in the age of the internet, I think sometime around the early 1990s joined the internet. Right. So this is post BBS via something called Internet in a Box. What was Internet in a Box?
- Meryl Evans:
- Okay. As you mentioned, you were acting about my accent. So my accent is one that you can't travel anywhere else to find it. I was born with it because I was born profoundly deaf. I usually mention it upfront just in case there are people who've never met me, so I forgot to mention that early on. So thank you for that reminder. And then that in the box, those were in the nineties and it was stuff, well it was on a deck, a square black dip, and you insert that into your computer, kind of like you do with USB devices now thumb drives and it set up your computer and modem so you could connect to the internet because it was complicated back then. So that's all I love. It was just a tour for connecting to the internet and things were, how do we define Back then it was very archaic, but today's standards. But it was very cool to be part of it early on
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you obviously took this involvement that you had with the internet early on and some people may have heard in your introduction that you have been a trusted source of digital marketing information and also in more recent years accessibility and the training and other services that you provide in that area. But back in 2007, as I mentioned in your introduction, you were the co-author of a book about front-end web development called Adapting to Web Standards, CSS and Ajax for big sites. I was really curious, how did that come to be? How did you go from Internet in a box in 1992 or three to becoming a co-author of a book such as that?
- Meryl Evans:
- Well, actually I became the coauthor Outlook 2007 for family d FFF book. I can't remember what year the D FFF book was, but during that timeframe in the 2001 to 2007 around there, I got to know a lot of publishers through online, I can't even remember how it came to be, but for the Outlook 2007, I knew the person who created the series and I believe she recommended me to be one of the authors of the series. And then the CFF was one of the co author and that one knew me and refer me to join them in that book. So it's your connection. I was very lucky to make,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I believe, and maybe my research or my memory's off here, but you came across Jeffrey Zeldman at some point in your travels.
- Meryl Evans:
- Yeah. Wow. I interviewed Jeffrey and the Champion. They were the co-founder of Web Accessibility Standards Project and the purpose was to encourage and establish web standards because even today if you use five different browsers, a website will look exactly the same on all five different browser. So they were trying to fix that so you are not having to programme for the different browser. Anyway, Molly, who was a very prolific offer, rest in peace first she passed away. I don't remember how we met, but it was my first professional writing assignment to interview Jeffrey and Steven for the article about Love Standards Project.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you've done a lot of writing since then. I mean, you mentioned that was your first professional writing job. You've written obviously books since then. You've probably done many interviews. I know that you've contributed to many different well-known publications over the years, both traditional media and also online media. But one of the more unusual topics that you've written about is Buffaloes. What exactly did you have to say to people about Buffaloes?
- Meryl Evans:
- Oh, that was really strange. I don't remember how the person found me, but he needed me to do an article on Buffaloes and it was just the matter of the mood person writing about it. That was probably the most obscure, unusual topic I've ever written about in my professional career. Still far off the mark of what I typically write about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do you remember any interesting facts or things
- Meryl Evans:
- About Buffalo? Not at all. And I never publication I worked for, wrote for with fellow magazine, which is I think pool table with the ball, the Q in the bar. Yes. I wrote for them a few years. They had awards for websites about beards and I would do the research to find website and give them a top website for Be yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Meryl people who may be watching the video version of this, even those that are listening can hear how clear and confident you are in a situation like this. Right. We've met each other once before here, but this is a recorded situation, right? This is not normal for most people. That wasn't always the case for you. Right. So how did taking a leap faith by producing a little marketing video back in 2018 change your career?
- Meryl Evans:
- One of my clients said that I should do video. Even though I was in digital marketing and I knew about the value of video, I was reluctant because of my accident. I hear from nowhere anybody can travel and I wasn't sure how people would respond. I know it's different and it just is, right? So I made a very short video clip and caption it and the response was just amazing. I got a lot of response. It was just a 22nd video asking a question, I can't even remember what the question is anymore. So that told me people were okay with my act and I just kept doing more and more videos over time. And then interesting thing, it was originally about I made videos about marketing because that's what I did. That's what I wanted people to hire me to do for them. But I found myself on the flip side of captioning for the first time in my life I was the creator of caption instead of the funeral of caption and doing so, I started making videos about why quiet captions matter. Just adding them not enough. And even looking at my original caption videos from the early days, I cringe because there were things that could have done better. And so that to speaking engagement, and again, that showed me people were cool with my after then they were interested in what I have to say. I've always been comfortable with public speaking, but again, I knew about the accent. So it was nice to get that confirm affirmation from people who invited me to speak and it snowballed from now,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I understand that not that long after. So a couple of years after you published that first video, this will be recent in people's memories, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and that what obviously overtly terrible time, that was for many of us, but I understand that there may have been at least a small silver lining in there for you and perhaps others in the deaf community and the way that it introduced a change in the technology that allowed us to all communicate what was the change that happened during COVID-19 in technology and how did that influence or impact your life?
- Meryl Evans:
- That's what Tel Talk is about. If anybody who runs the field before COVID-19 hit the one, not the video platform, people were using June GoToMeeting other platform or Skype, but they do not have caption. So I cannot rely on just the video alone. Yes, I never read, but it only catches so much about a third on average and a lot of misinformation. The fact that Covid hit and everybody was using video calls to communicate and collaborate, it forced the video company to start adding caption and by May and June of 2020 is when the three major platform had captioned. It was imperfect, but it was the start of it. Then many, many apps have come out that allow you to caption your video or they are video creation app that add a captioning functionality to the app. So that was a difference maker. Before that happened, I had hardly any meeting. Most of my collaboration was online through email and chat and so forth. After that I started having meetings and it was just so nice to be able to engage with people because there's a difference between engaging on video than the rest than the email. So that really helped my emotional state to feel and I felt more included and my thoughts mattered because I was able to be included
- Brendan Jarvis:
- In real time, not the asynchronous nature of an email or a chat conversation.
- Meryl Evans:
- Exactly. So yeah, it makes a big difference and I found some people are not the great communicators by email. The video offers another option.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now we are recording this today in a platform called Riverside and last week I realised probably it'll late in the game that Riverside doesn't do automated live captioning, but you're actually using, I think it's Chrome you mentioned today to take what I'm saying and to do live captioning for you on your end, how well has it been keeping up with my Kiwi accent so far?
- Meryl Evans:
- Pretty good. Actually. I did that at the open up the window with 11 caption and I put them over Chrome because Chrome was having problems, it kept getting delayed or something. So I got the Windows 11 and they've been doing really well that another game changer Windows Microsoft adding caption to the Windows operating system was Windows 11. Before that, I had to rely on Chrome and do, but the problem with that is if I wanted to caption a conversation that was not inside a browser, I couldn't. A caption Windows 11 operating system makes it possible. The caption even conversation, it can be in on the app, it can be in a browser, it can be live because it has a microphone. I was talking to somebody in my office and I turned on the microphone, but they could see the caption work and the life starting as well. So that was a huge game changer because it expanded my ability to caption beyond browser and June,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And if we wind the clock back a little, I think you mentioned in May or June, 2020 the three big video platforms, video calling platforms introduced live captioning and then back in 2022 as part of iOS 16 and Mac OS Ventura, apple introduced live captions into their os similar to, seems like Microsoft has done with Windows, but not everyone in the community was happy with what they released. What were the criticisms levelled against Apple and were they fair in your mind?
- Meryl Evans:
- I don't recall what the criticism were for Apple specifically. I do know that Apple is still not perfect yet even today, what I really appreciate about Apple will they think captions for their phone is they put it in better. So instead in the app, that is better. So we know they're not going to be perfect, they're going to have problem and now we, okay, I rather have to feature sooner than made even if it's not perfect, but Google, Android got my captions before Apple and they're better because they work better. Apple doesn't always work, it just depends on what it is started captioning and a lot of times it's like nothing happened, so that's really frustrating. You didn't even know criticism about captioning like Twitter, like captioning for video, it automatically caption any video. People were complaining. You can't edit the caption, but my point of view is progress over perfection. Like my short day is that look, they add a caption, at least we have to functionality now at some point. Don't let us be able to edit it. You got to be able to make progress stuff where it's an iterative practise. You keep working through the band. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What led you, because I've heard, and obviously you've got your shirt on at the moment, progress over perfection. What was it that you experienced or that you've come to believe that progress over perfection is a better way of approaching things like captioning in systems?
- Meryl Evans:
- It wasn't any one specific thing. I don't recall how it came to Brown, but Christopher Pat of Google and I have always somehow talked about progress of perfection when it comes to accessibility because accessibility is so big and people with disability in Africa are so passionate about it that they get frustrated when something's not acceptable or could be better and I'm like, we need to take a different approach. We need to look at things differently. People are so overwhelmed with getting started or making progress with accessibility. We need to look at it as an iterative process rather than something with the finish line. After all, nothing could be a hundred percent accessible. That's almost impossible because what makes something accessible for one person can make it in accessible for someone else and a perfect and damper a stepper one is dark and night mode. There are people who these test dark mode and there are not the people like me who don't like night mode. So you can't have both unless you make it an option. Thankfully a lot of stuff will have made it an option that you can chew, but if I'm giving a presentation and somebody doesn't like my colours, a lot of luck because they cannot control that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. I've heard you say before that accessibility is important because it gives people options and what I'm hearing you say there is that it's important to give options when you are implementing or making a product accessible because it's not a one size fits all type solution.
- Meryl Evans:
- Exactly. Absolutely. Even people have different preferences when it comes to caption, the best caption of the user preference, that's number one. But when you can't do that, then you fall on the captioning best practise, they most are most likely to make the majority of people happy. You'll never make a hundred percent of people happy because I have a hard of hearing friend who prefers transcripts of a caption. They're not the same thing. And I know a couple of people who like karaoke style caption with a youth at all because I cannot absorb the information. It feels like a game of hide and fake. My eyes are following the highlighted word that my brain is not absorbing. What a thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Before we move off captions, I understand that there is such a thing as overdoing captioning and captioning is clearly it's become one of your areas of expertise and advocacy and you've also spoken about before how you are a fan of the Stranger Things TV show and yet when you got to season four, because I think you'd binge watched seasons one to three and then you got to season four and you weren't very impressed with how they altered the way that they were captioning that particular season, what could they have done better? What did they do that they could have done differently or that they didn't do quite so well?
- Meryl Evans:
- The biggest thing was I never thought our complaint that is possible to caption too much the over caption. Now obviously I'm not talking dialogue because caption should always reflect dialogue, but it was how they were captioning the sound that weren't overboard because they were captioning. Every sound thing, like the littlest thing, like a can open on, I mean not a one second action. We don't need it because we see it happening on the screen and I'm telling you my eyes were in dark. Then after watching Feed and four because it became the caption show, I felt like I was reading the whole show instead of scanning the caption and caching the video. So what's interesting is it has a specific style and there was another show I was watching, I can't remember what it was, but I contacted someone and I asked them if still company did the caption for and they confirmed they did. So I recognised that style of captioning. I don't know, there's just something unique about them, plus they eat them more and come that everyone's not familiar with like Eldridge, I have no idea what Eldridge means even after looking it up, it's the Eldridge music. I don't know what that means and I have a pretty high level of vocabulary. So if there are words I don't get that the problem
- Capturing down should be out another because people from all walks of life of Washington caption, there was no prejudice on who watches the TV show or a movie. They may not be as educated as someone else or for whatever reason. So captioning should be easy to read, easy to scan and understand without putting a lot of effort. Basically the product that requires little effort on the viewer, they should be able to just read it and follow the action on the screen.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's quite insightful, at least personally for me because I had never previously considered that when it comes to captioning that it has to be intellectually is not the right word here, but accessible in a way that anybody without subject matter expertise can understand the content. So that's what you were speaking about there regarding the use of the term Aldrich, which I believe comes from d and d and I hadn't heard about it before. You'd raised it either and I looked into it as well. I would've had no idea what that meant. So that wasn't accessible for me as a viewer. And also you were speaking there about the captioning of sound and how over captioning in particular things that are happening on the screen that if you're able to see the screen you can intimate from what's happening, what the sounds may be, that that actually places a cognitive burden on people who need to rely on captions to enjoy and access and participate in the content. And there are two very insightful and specific areas of accessibility that I hadn't considered when it come to captioning before
- Meryl Evans:
- Me neither. Most people when they caption, they're not going to go overboard because there's a lot to do. So I appreciate the caption for wanting to level up, but captioning is not the place to get creative. My friend capturing it for information, not entertainment. And unfortunately with these and for a stranger thing, they became entertainment because everybody was talking about how cool they were, blah blah, blah. But caping them not meant to be work that way. Just like when you see sign language interpreters at a block concert, I'm sure you've seen the videos go viral with the signing and they're very animated. The purpose of that is for the people who use sign language for them. It's not something that's supposed to be a show for everybody. They're just like if you are watching UN and somebody translating for someone, you don't see that translator. They are in the background. They are, yes. But in the example that I'm giving the was like entertainment and by theme, token caption should be for information, not entertainment.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, very good point. Very good point. Merril, I want to come back now to the change in your career that happened several years ago now and that's when you became a more prominent advocate for people with disabilities and you've started to speak on behalf of a very diverse community, which of course you have acknowledged previously yourself about the diversity that exists within the community. That could seem like a rather daunting self-imposed obligation, right? Could seem like you are taking a lot of weight on your shoulders here. How do you think about the responsibility you've assumed for advocating for other people with disabilities?
- Meryl Evans:
- Sometimes I'm the only one in the room, so I have nothing to so many people's stories from a clock, the disability spectrum, and I hold them in my heart because there are just times when you are the only one in the room for whatever reason, it's not a lack of over sign. I could be the only speaker for an event, they just want one speaker. They don't want to speak up from every possible disability category. So I listen to those stories, I listen to the barriers and I keep those stories close to me because I know that no one can represent all the categories, all the disability. I can't even represent all deaf people either because we are just as diverse as anything else. But I have friends who prefer sign language, they prefer to communicate by using B language and I have nothing to their story than what they like, what they don't like, but that's just one thing where we are different. I speak but we have so much more in common in the barriers that we face as deaf people, not hearing fire alarms, that kind of thing. How lighting, there's many things we have in common and unfortunately difficult because there's a lot of conflict within disability unfortunately, and I try my best to kill and be friendly with everyone regardless of the preferences, truth is and disability because everyone matters.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Meryl, you mentioned how you listen to the stories of other people within the disability community and I'm really curious about your story and I understand that you are the youngest of three children, yet I heard you describe yourself somewhere as practically an only child of which I am, I'm an only child. That's another story. What did you mean by that?
- Meryl Evans:
- I am the youngest by 10 and 14 years old, so my sister went out the cars when I was three years old, so I have no memory of ever living with her. And my brother went off when I was seven, stole I would say 11 years of being in the house by myself. It's almost like being an only child.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And when you were a child, when you were alone in the house with your parents growing up, what approach did they take to helping you to navigate the world as a deaf person?
- Meryl Evans:
- So when they found out I was deaf, they talked to experts of course in the field and at the time all was the standard. They wanted me to learn how to speak and the breed. That was just the common thing. Unfortunately sometimes the community blamed parents. My parents were going based on experts. They may also blame experts for doing that as well. Again, it's based on the information they had at the time. So I don't believe in blaming anyone. Everybody was doing what they can with the information they had at the time, regardless if it was negative or whatever, not putting dwelling on it. Now, if I were to start over, I would love to be bilingual, not be fluent in language and a speaker that way have option in how I do things. So in growing up I was not exposed to people who spoke language regularly, so it never came to the point where I had someone in my life who was fluent in language learn and keep it up. It is just like I don't English. I took three years of Spanish in high school. I mean five days a week I learned Spanish, but even with that I still didn't become fluent. So language, a language just like Spanish and French was its own FinTech, so I really needed to have somebody in my life who was fluent to be able to learn that and keep it up. So it's just how my life worked out. It's not a bad or a good thing, it's just how things worked out.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- One of the things that I learned about you Meryl is that at high school you played volleyball and this is a competitive team-based sport, right? Which typically relies on verbal communication between the team in order to receive and set up the ball to be played. How did you and your team make that work?
- Meryl Evans:
- Well, suppose with my thing growing up, I started playing soccer when I was four or five years old at the tee bar at the basketball and volleyball and it wasn't until I was grown up cared of my own that I realised how lucky I was because I have heard stories from deaf people who could not play a sport because the organisation was a coach, not nothing them, which is unbelievable to me. I never ran into that. I was very, very lucky that way and my coach never treated me like a child. Well, I mean I was a child but a man, they didn't treat me as incapable and I was actually good at them in the sport and they put me out there. I have no idea how my team and I communicated especially I like using butter bones in a damper because you have a small court of six people in a very tight spot and somebody's got a cough for the ball and basketball as well. But all I can figure is maybe I just used my eyes a lot and kept my eyes open for what was going on because I can cast the smaller thing. That's my best guess.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I don't want to get into too much conjecture here, but I couldn't help but think about this over the last couple of days and I was curious to understand your perspective on whether or not you felt that playing in a team, the team comes to a nonverbal understanding of how to play together and how to work together, where to be, how each other moves and which plays they may receive. There's this kind of nonverbal language that exists within team sports and teams that have played together. Reflecting on your time playing team sports, do you get a sense that any of that came to play in a way that you were able to participate at such a great level, high level along with everybody else and not be treated any differently?
- Meryl Evans:
- I think you're right Brendan, that it was probably a team effort as well that we just had a number of array of being like one entity. I had to add a requirement of having to watch everything very carefully while going on.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I understand that there was a coach at one point called Coach Frank who you were quite fond of turning your hearing aids off when he was speaking.
- Meryl Evans:
- Yeah, I just that joke all the time. After a joke I posted, my dad called me over during soccer game and he was trading me for something. I don't know what I did and I basically turned out my hearing aid closed my eyes and my dad looked at the pen in the fan and sent me back out in the field. So it's just a little running joke. It didn't happen very often. I wasn't a Poco child, I was actually a very easy kid because I nothing, I didn't cut my room very clean. I've always been a neat freak my whole life.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You and I will get on really well then I'm also a particular neat freak. Hey Meryl, you mentioned your TEDx talk earlier and I mentioned that in your introduction as well. I think now you started that talk by playing a clip of a person speaking in Japanese. What were you trying to illustrate to the audience?
- Meryl Evans:
- Two different things. The one was to show them they're watching a video, they can't understand what they're saying because it's not in English and so that is my life person who speaks English and doesn't understand other people who speak English. So that was where I was going with it was a combination. I have a lot in common with people whose first language is not English and we run into these barriers, but my own more so because I can't understand other people who speak my same language so I have to down. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned in earlier Meryl around not learning a SL as a matter of circumstance. It was not the advice that was given to your parents at the time. It was a product of its time you learned rather as my way of looking at it in a rather impressive skill, which is to be able to read other people's lips. Now I understand there are limitations around that and I think you mentioned that it's really about 30% or 33% of the words a third that you can accurately spot by just watching someone's lips and that there also, I think you taught me through some of your material that there are some words that come across the same as they are enunciated or as the lips are moving. So there obviously it's not a perfect transcription if you like, of live conversation, but what influence did that skill have on your ability to build relationships with other people?
- Meryl Evans:
- Well, it gives me a way to communicate with people and that is very important in all of our communication is how we connect with people, period, end of story. And the reason that lip reading I, it's more like lip guessing because there are a lot of stone that look the same when you say it the way you pronounce them under lip and then that the example of mom, pop, pop and mop, I took that four different words that would look the same to A, so my implant helped me distinguish them by because of that hard B or stuff M, that kind of thing, how much I cash. I thought that my test talk depends on the person and the variable through all factors that come to play. So in our conversation we've got the video, we've got caption and we have a quiet space. I don't have other noises getting in the way of our conversation, so we're having a very good conversation when I'm capturing more, but in a standard situation when I'm out there, there noise in there and of course how people enunciate. Some people don't enunciate well, they mumble and that's very hard to understand, act, find and act them. So yes, you are a key react, but I've been following just fine in this setting, but if we were in a noisy setting, it would've been hurdle.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've previously said that one of the positives that's come out of the difficulty that you've experienced connecting with people or groups in particular in situations where it's more difficult to lip read because of outside noise or conversation that's bouncing around between different people is that you've become, and I'll use your own words now, good at spotting the quiet ones and bringing them into the conversation now that's a really beautiful thing, that ability to be able to spot the quiet people and bring them in. What surprised you the most over the years as a result of developing and using that skill?
- Meryl Evans:
- I can't say anything surprises me, but I just notice that to be excluded and I go out of my way to make sure everyone's included, but I'm also careful in how I include them. For example, if I'm in a meeting and someone hasn't spoken up and shared their thoughts, I don't just call them out. I'll say, Hey, you haven't spoken up. I would like to hear your thoughts. I won't do that because then people get anxiety when they're put on a spot like that. What I might do is send them a chat, a private chat and say, I would love to hear your thought if you want to share 'em with me or that kind of thing. So I put give people options just like I always ask for communication. I try to give people options as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's talk about options. I understand that there are many things that as a hearing person I take for granted, including when I'm ordering food at a drive-through, you once had a rather challenging experience while trying to do the same thing. What was that experience and what does it highlight about the importance of options?
- Meryl Evans:
- When I used to go the drive-through to get drinks at a famous place, I'm not going to name names, I just got in habit of repeating myself and hoped they hold me. And I worked most of the time really did it not work, but it was kind of stressful because I didn't know if they were cing me. I mean I can't work with the speaker, no videos, nothing. And now that changed a lot. One of my favourite things to do for a tweet is to go to the coffee shop, but I order a food app so no more do I have to worry about getting the order wrong or my name wrong because the app has it. And whenever I order a restaurant or coffee shop, I always avoid it changing up my order. People customise the order I have ordered that because that just makes it more complicated and it creates a greater chance of them getting the order wrong. I feel like I can do wrong, but usually when I go to a restaurant I put on the menu try to make myself clear, that kind of thing. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Meryl, you've previously said, and I'll quote you again now, we all have assumptions. It's human nature. As a deaf person, I've encountered many. That's why I believe in education. The more we know, the more we understand and respect each other. What's the biggest incorrect assumption about being a deaf person? You have personally encountered
- Meryl Evans:
- That? Easy everybody has done and I am fluent in some English and again, not a bad or a good thing, it's just how my life worked out and it surprises me that I'm still having to educate people about that because I have to thumb more deaf and heard of healing people who don't sign than those who do. And I was having a conversation with my spouse about that because even in my life I have met so many deaf and heard of healing people including group where they are asylum and I tell you most people don't know signs, it's just how things are. And so I was asking my staff why are people still making those assumption after so many years and some of education and awareness and we agreed that a lot of it is media entertainment. They keep portraying deaf people as Ninos who don't speak. They really have characters that are speakers who are deaf and or hard of people. I think that's part of the problem is Hollywood and theatre don't have a good accurate depiction of real people. Yeah, there are people whose sign and don't speak absolutely, but they do it that way. That thing like most of us are that way. They don't show the diversity.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I've just been watching, well the latest seasons of the Walking Dead, gosh, I almost forgot the show there.
- Meryl Evans:
- Oh
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's a bit scary and probably a little bit violent. That's one of my guilty pleasures. There's an actress in there, Lauren Ridloff I should say, and Lauren plays a deaf person. And you're right that Lauren's portrayed her character is portrayed as a person who uses I assume a SL given the setting as in Georgia as a primary way of communicating. So that's just one reference and I'm sure there are many others. And I was also thinking about this in terms of our local context here in New Zealand. So New Zealand has three official languages. It's got English, reo, which is the Maori language and New Zealand sign language is the third language. That's an official language of our country, but you're right, it's very much in that popular narrative. People aren't very conscious. That's not the only way in which deaf people learn to communicate.
- Meryl Evans:
- Exactly. There is true, even Marvel movies have a deaf character and she also signed a friend of mine and I took IGY with a thing from there where she was able to detect everybody coming behind her or she thought what was happening behind her. I'm like, okay, that's a little government little too far. Yeah, I can feel vibration sometimes, but I would not be able to get that much information just for vibration. That's just not reality. That's part of the problem.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's obviously a big gap to be closed here around people's perceptions of people who are deaf and what that's like and how they currently see things. In your experience, and perhaps you speak specifically or as broadly as you like, it's up to you, but in your experience as an advocate for accessibility, what approaches have you found to be the most effective in educating other people about disability or deafness? Maybe specifically in a way that builds understanding and respect amongst everyone involved.
- Meryl Evans:
- Mainly telling my story of the barriers I went into storytelling is very powerful, but that only works system oriented When you are dealing with decision makers, they want data, they want numbers and that's not always so easy to provide though. Like with caption, I focused on how captioning benefits everybody, but if you are getting feedback on the quality of the caption, you need to work with those who depend on it like me, deaf people and hurt of hearing people like me who depend on it. We will not be able to follow at all without caption as opposed to talking stuff like who always has the caption on because I like it. Those are different. Mi,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You spoke a little earlier on and when you started your previous response about decision makers and how they want to see numbers, and it's probably no secret to anyone listening to this episode that accessibility is not often a core corporate priority. What does it take for it to become a central part of an organization's culture?
- Meryl Evans:
- They want everything out that you want to change in a culture, you need a champion, you need an executive buy-in, in champion, and I always recommend having at least two for disability inclusion and the disability because I never want an executive leave the company and take the effort out with them. That's why it's so important to always have a second person in place that's stop number one. It's very hard to make the case if you don't have high leadership by him. Well, the are thing people can do at a team level, but it's that bigger challenge. Then if you get executive brand, the other thing is to have training on disability awareness and accessibility and there is not a onetime deal. It needs to be ongoing to like security. Security. Most companies I know require the employees to undergo security training once a year to make sure they don't become complacent, thank them with disability inclusion and adaptability is so big. Keep educating because it's too complicated but it's worth it because it make people more inclusive and besides the disability works for a lot of people and when the whole company think that this way they know or wishing more people by offering more option. So somebody prefer to read the article rather than watch the video. They can, if they like the video, great caption, they can watch it even though they don't have the sound on.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned how with training around accessibility that it needs to be not a one-off thing, that it's something that should be done over and over and I suspect it has to do with the fact that accessibility is easy, ignore or it's easy to backslide in the progress that's been made if that isn't happening on a regular basis. And part of me, correct me if I'm wrong or if you disagree, part of me thinks that has a parallel between a conversation I had on the podcast previously with Tammy Everett who's an expert in performance optimization for user experience and a lot of the performance optimization work that goes in, it has to be continuous because if you're deploying things through to a live environment over time and you're not keeping your eye on how performant those deployments are in six months time, you find that your experience is dramatically worse from a performance point of view than it was if you had been keeping an eye on things. And I suspect that it's similar with accessibility. Is that the gist of what you were getting at there or do you see things differently?
- Meryl Evans:
- No, that is a great example, a great comparison because I know as somebody who's had a website for many, many years, I know performance of my website goes up and down based on what I do to it. Accessibility is the same way. It doesn't take much to make a change and break adaptability, so it has to be continuous. Something you're always thinking about that another certain companies need to be doing is making adaptability part of the cultural part of the business and everyone's job. It's just different aspects. For website obviously that would be the product and web design team, they will have responsibility and marketing because marketing creates a lot of content. They need to know how to make those content accessible because not the web developer job, they can set up the framework, but if the marketers who create the heading in the article, so are they using the heading that are in the software with the H one, H two, H three or are they features changing the heading however they want? They making a bold, they're making a purple them putting it in an unreadable front that is taking away from the power of having heading that make it easier for a green reader to navigate a page without those having, it's harder to navigate.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's interesting hearing you describe that as well. And again, reflecting on my conversation with Tammy, she had a very similar description of the importance of performance was everyone's responsibility and didn't necessarily want it to become only one part of the organization's area of accountability and that the accountability for keeping an experienced performant should be shared. Again, she mentioned marketing and our conversation as well with marketing because marketing has so much to do as you've quite rightly pointed out with introducing new content into the experiences that are being delivered, particularly on websites and just how you just don't want people to not keep in mind the objective of keeping an experience accessible. They have to be accountable for it. It can't just be one person or one department's responsibility. Now that creates a degree of work. I mean let's be honest, it's everything we do to create an experience is work and it's just work to be doing in the terms of making an experience accessible. But it can also be perceived by some as being overwhelming as in they don't quite know how to get started or where to begin or how far they need to go. There are many questions people have even this far into the digital accessibility as a field. What strategies can organisations or tactics maybe can organisations use or people that are advocates or champions for accessibility use to make meaningful progress without becoming overwhelmed or without others in their organisations becoming overwhelmed?
- Meryl Evans:
- I like that example you gave with Tammy. So marketing would be responsable for a building images and it's very easy for an it must to be too heavy, too big first one have small, I knew there many years ago and I would post pictures, very small version of my pictures because I knew something made it lighter and it was the only way I knew how at the time. So unfortunately my pictures are terrible because they're smart, you can't see. But I was trying to keep the performance high so people need to be trained on how they can make the images lighter without sacrificing the size of the image. Same thing, not for festival. That's why just because you have an executive champion doesn't mean you can't have departmental champion as well.
- On top of that, everybody accessibility should be in everyone's job description. So even if you're the janitor, you need to make sure that the highway, the free of debris and items that get in the way of people's walking path, things like that and have role specific training as well. That's why a first as a training is ongoing because it's not just about awareness, but it also about learning what you need to do for your role to help your department be accessible to your employees and customers alike and vendors even. So every department needs to have somebody who focused on accessibility to ensure their department does what it needs to do to be accessible. And it's very tempting to talk about checklists. Those are good starting points, but they should not be the only thing because just because something compliant doesn't mean it's a good user to experience.
- And then Deborah enough to give is ramps. The Americans with Disabilities Act ramps the building. Now they don't tell you where those ramps need to be. They just say you need to have one. Well, a company could put it in the back of the building even though everybody comes in the front. So if you're making someone who uses the wheelchair go in the back, that's not a good user experience. So yes, they checked off, yes, we have ramp. You can't make good experience an item on the checklist because it looks good experience. That's where you get impact from people with disabilities. They can tell you what's the good experience. And one step of change many companies have made with the bathroom is they'll put the accessible bathroom up front instead of in the back. Most bathrooms will have to assess the bathroom in the back, but they'll starting to show up in the front. Those make more sense because they're not having to go far to get to their bathroom, which is the way it should be.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was thinking about that example you gave of the ramp at the back of the building as opposed to at the front where everybody else enters. And my suspicion is that listening to you talk, at least people with a disability already know that they have a disability. They don't need designers to make them feel less than other people by the way in which they create the experiences that they too have to engage with.
- Meryl Evans:
- Exactly. So I use the example of a restaurant. So somebody uses a wheelchair is going to dinner with a friend and family, but instead of going upfront with a friend and family, they're having to go in the back where the employees go in and that make them stick out, that make them feel isolated because they're having to go around good. There might be employees who use the ramp as well. That's why you want to have them in the front and the back. That even better than just putting it where everybody goes into the building. So absolutely that's why you involving people with that but makes us a difference. We notice these things and we can tell you these things that you prevent making us stick out when we don't need to.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- This is the difference between being compliant, which is a big word, and the accessibility orbit in terms of reaching W three C compliance, I understand or wic CAG compliance is one of those sort of benchmarks that some people aspire to and actually creating an experience that makes the world a better place for people. Those two things, they're not the same thing. Compliance is the minimum, right? And then there's exactly
- Meryl Evans:
- The bare minimum. So wood cang says that your logo does not have to be compliant. In other words, the contrast of your logo, if the colours are bad and poor, contrast that, okay, because it's your logo, your exempt from that. But really do you want your company's logo not to be vulnerable to some of the population you are missing out on them. For example, I was in a show and I noticed the logo was well on a green shirt. I told them that they're not going to be able to feel anybody who had any kind of low vision or colour or differences or whatever. I'm not going to be able to see 'em. And don't you want them to know what theatre is playing at so they know where to go to get tickets? That's the idea of why you want your logos to be compliant too, even though there an exception that it does not have to be. Look, I also have ratio for code contract. How strong of a contract between two overlap colour, even if you a lot of colour pair can pass the colour contrast ratio but not be a good user experience. Because I have put example up and people are surprised that some of 'em packed because they find their hurdles to read.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- If you think about a logo as there's a saying, the fish stinks from the head. And if you think about a logo, the logo is the head often in an experience or a projection of a company's brand into the world. And if you haven't got that accessible, then what does it say about your value on accessibility for the rest of the
- Meryl Evans:
- Things? Exactly right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was curious about a term that you've created and shared previously and that is 360 degree accessibility and I feel like we've been dancing around this, so I want to specifically ask you about it. What does 360 degree accessibility look like?
- Meryl Evans:
- It looks like that everything is looked at from an accessibility perspective. Too often Twitter in a silo, they think the team involved with web accessibility are just focused on things digital making no rub Dr. But guess what? If I am shopping, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to Amazon to do every time and I would print the QR code, I would drive up to the package store and ship it back. That is not digital. Therefore that process needs to be accessible to not just what digital. So interactions between customers, offline, online, whatever need to be accessible. So the restaurant will have a rough site and they most likely outsource to a digital company, but they have to think about those interactions that happen in the restaurant in person. When I order my drink in the app, fortunately I don't have to talk to anybody. I can just go and pick it up. But somebody else may have trouble because they can't get in the door because those wheelchair doesn't fit or there's not a ramp. That's what I mean about 350 degrees AccessAbility care and they need to think the full picture.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, speaking about silos, one of the catch cries I believe I've heard used by the disability community is nothing about us without us. And many of the people that'll be listening to today's episode are designers and will play a role in shaping experiences that will touch the lives of people with disabilities. You've previously been very quick to point out that one person cannot represent everyone with a disability, even as far as the deaf community goes. I think you touched on that earlier. You've said, and I'll quote you again now, when you've met one deaf person, you've met one deaf person. So I just want people to let that sink in for a second. So given that's the truth, how does diversity within the deaf community and among people with disabilities influence or how should it influence the approach that organisations or perhaps designers specifically take to involving communities? These communities when designing products,
- Meryl Evans:
- It's impossible to capture every possibility in terms of the spectrum, the disability spectrum, and we don't expect you to, but generally when you work with three, four, or five, you'll get enough to book as long as they're diverse. I mean, there are some nonprofit organisation for disability that target a specific area there, but there are deaf organisation that are very linguist focus and others that are not, and others that are open to all deaf people. So if you focus on just those who are standing with focused, those on who are just all focused, you're not going to get that diversity. So I've been trying to level up to nothing without us, period. Because it means you've hired a diversity of people with disabilities into your company so already there you need to talk to them as opposed to nothing about us, without us to think more a consulting basis like a focus group and not only part of the story, it's just better to involve us by having an annual company in the first place.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's talk about that in terms of the hiring conversation that goes on, and there are likely some hiring managers out there that are unsure about how to approach that conversation around accommodations in the workplace. In your experience, what kinds of questions can hiring managers ask or perhaps how can they ask those questions to ensure individuals feel more comfortable sharing their preferences and needs?
- Meryl Evans:
- It's a tricky one to answer because every country has their own laws that they have to comply with and they have to be careful because it requires someone to reveal something about them and they may not feel safe. That's why I talk about one of the most important things for companies to do is to create a cultural disability inclusion, how they include accessibility, everything. They think about accessibility in a job interview process. They think about accessibility in onboarding. It should be obvious when you go to the website, it should be obvious. When you look at the position description, there'll be some mention of accessibility, so there's not a thing the company can do to earn and build that trust that yes, we are an inclusive company and we want everyone to have what they need to do their job well, and I give the example, it's not always about a disability accommodation.
- I have a standing that because I can't sit around for a long time and hurt my legs and when I was sitting down, I was having to walk every hour to get my legs not hurt, and that was taking time away from work that was more than I wanted to be. Not that I was standing there. The only time I leave my office is when I need a real break, not because my leg was forcing me. So that is not a disability accommodation, it's how I'm more productive. For some reason, my leg, I'm not as productive when I'm sitting down because I'm having to get up to relieve my leg pain.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Maybe you're dreaming of being back on the volleyball court. That's all I can think of. But you're right, it sounds to me what you're saying is that it should be immediately obvious to anyone what the company values by looking at any of the ways that it communicates, particularly during the hiring process. It's not necessarily something that should be hidden or that the person who's interviewing should feel unsure about approaching a conversation or responding to a question that they're asked around how might they be the best productive person that they can be if they were hired.
- Meryl Evans:
- Exactly. When you have the torture name, when I get outstanding death and captioning, I am more likely to be more productive than when I don't have a standing desk and after the caption. I mean, isn't that the whole point? You want people to be as productive as possible, and I cannot fathom why any company would want to make the accommodation process difficult because that was achieve not a company lost a million dollar lawsuit for something they could have stopped in 10 minutes, and I opposed to bringing lawyers, lawyers in and fighting and taking it to court is a lot cheaper. A lot of people don't realise, not expense, not accommodation or expense them. In fact, most are free or low cost captions are not free. They weren't in the beginning. Companies do have to pay a cost for caption, but they've off data in a way though it doesn't cost anything to use them.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And if there's one thing that you'd expect executives in the business to understand, that's profit and loss and things that make you money and things that cost you money, unfortunately, I think we're going to need more examples of organisations that are not doing the right thing in order to help bring in the kind of change that is required. You need the carrot and the stick. I feel in this instance,
- Meryl Evans:
- And I interviewed with the company pretty that the, but when I got the interview email to set the interview up, I had to provide my phone number and schedule any automated. Now I'm like, oh, great. I need a video call because the phone call, it's just not a stressful situation for me. After I started up, then I got the email saying, if you need accommodation contact, and I'm like, that should have come first. That would've been less stressful. Anyway, I emailed them and they didn't get back to me until the day before the interview, but fortunately they will go to the interview to get more time to make it all happen. But that's a simple change of doing option in how you interview.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's an example of experience design, right? Like or service design. Someone has more than likely thought about the steps in that journey that someone who's a potential employee is going through. Sort of zoom out now, and for my final question, if we consider the designers listening to this, the people that have influenced in the way that experiences like that that you've just described, Meryl take place, the shape that they take. If you could encourage them to just take one action today as a result of listening to our conversation, what would that be?
- Meryl Evans:
- It would be, I would offer multiple ways to communicate or provide information and when they provide information and something or input like inputting information like a keyboard or those different ways, but that's just a fairly simple thing to offer. I appreciate comforting the offer multiple ways to contact tech support. That could be a phone call, it could be online chat, it could be an email. Those little things make a big difference.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Meryl, I really appreciate the brave, kindhearted and good humid way you've approached this conversation. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today,
- Meryl Evans:
- And thank you for having me and asking the question, Brendan, it showed that you care about getting those stories and answered out there so we can make change.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- 100%. You're absolutely right and welcome. Thank you, Merril. It's been my pleasure. If people want to connect with you and they want to keep up to date with all the wonderful things that you are contributing to the community, what is the best way for them to do that?
- Meryl Evans:
- They can visit in my website at meryl.net or find me on LinkedIn.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thank you Meryl, and to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that Meryl and I have covered will be in the show notes, including detailed chapters in particular on the YouTube video, so you can hop around to the places that interest you the most.
- Again, if you've enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX research, product management, design, and of course accessibility, don't forget to leave a review. Subscribe, so the podcast turns up every two weeks, and if you found that there was something in here today that you feel one other person at least would get value from, don't be afraid to pass the podcast along to them.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis. There's also a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes or head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz, and until next time, keep being brave.