Tech Heroes Podcast
Episode 118: Empowering Global Teams To Deliver Accessibility at Intuit
Hosted by Aliza Carpio
Guests Ted Drake, Reuben Evans and Sagar Barbhaya
where you can also catch up with past episodes
Episode Transcript
Aliza: Welcome to Tech Heroes podcast powered by Intuit. I'm your host, Aliza Carpio. I'm a tech evangelist, which means I work with technologists from across the globe to build an amazing tech culture at Intuit, and I'm a lover of all things nerdy.
This podcast is about technologists, the tech that they're obsessed with, and the work that they're passionate about. Tech Heroes is produced by Ashley Kros, and our editor is Mark Fasset, be sure to subscribe to Tech Heroes on Soundcloud or iTunes, so that you can hear more amazing stories from technologists. To be featured, or to nominate a tech hero, email us at Techheroes@Intuit.com. To learn more about careers at Intuit, please visit Intuit.com/careers.
Hello Sagar, Reuben and Ted, welcome to Tech Heroes podcast and great to see you.
How are all of you doing?
All: Thanks Aliza. We are doing very well. How are you doing?
Aliza: I'll maybe start with Sagar - you just said you're doing great. Ted, how are you doing, and then Reuben, how are you doing?
Ted: I'm doing fabulous.
Aliza: And then Reuben?
Reuben: Yeah I'm, I'm doing great as well.
Aliza: Yeah and I know this is later for you being out of London so I'm glad that you're doing well.
Before we get started with our chat I'd like to begin with introductions and we're going to go alphabetically.
So we'll start with Reuben then Sagar, then Ted, and it's going to be the same question but let's go for it. Reuben please introduce yourself and your role at Intuit. And if you could answer this question: We all evolve. What was your favorite childhood weekend hobby or fun activity? And what is your favorite today?
Reuben: Yeah I'm, Reuben I'm a Senior Software Engineer here at QuickBooks London - Intuit London. I have been in Intuit for three years and I work, kind of, mostly in tax and accounting. But I'm also the accessibility lead for Intuit in Europe.
Favorite childhood activity was probably cycling and getting out riding my bike for the weekend. And that's probably still my favorite today. But I spend most of my weekends helping my girlfriend run her candle business. So that takes up most of my weekends actually, in reality.
Aliza: So you're making candles now on the side as well?
Reuben: Yeah, I know way too much about soy wax and candles and 3D printing.
Aliza: That's really cool talk about being, you know, supporting a small business, great job. Reuben you said something about being a London lead for accessibility. Can you tell me what that is?
Reuben: Yes. All right, I'm an Accessibility Champion here at Intuit, part of the accessibility program. And here in London, we've got a kind of big community of Accessibility Champions across the business, but particularly within our product teams. And so, you know, what does it mean? Here it means testing with customers who, you know, for whom accessibility is particularly important and kind of teaching ourselves just everything we need to know as it comes up, to make sure that what we’re building is working for everyone.
Aliza: Thanks Reuben. Thanks for that intro, we're going to switch over to Sagar. So Sagar, please introduce yourself and your role at Intuit. And again, same question around your favorite childhood weekend hobby or fun activity and what is your favorite today?
Sagar: Thanks Aliza. Hey everyone, thank you for joining us today. I'm Sagar Barbhaya. I am currently a Staff Software Engineer at Intuit leading Intuit accessibility engineering. Also currently I'm a global co-lead for our disability-focused Employee Resource Group, which is known as the Intuit Abilities Network.
That's so true Aliza, we all evolve and change is the only constant right? So, I'm born and brought up in Mumbai, India. So maybe any season - weekdays, weekends - the one thing that I loved was outdoor sports and games with my friends in the apartment complex.
It was a blessing in disguise to be so active all the time, versus now, and I need to carve out some time to travel, which is my detox along with my photographic skills, you follow me on Instagram so you know.
Aliza: Yes, I do. Did you start photography, actually when you were younger or just like more, it's more recent?
Sagar: I started doing lockdown, apparently. Yeah, so I just go for it just for a walk near the park and try some photographic skills and that's when I bought expensive lenses and stuff and then did multiple trips. Went there, experimented with some landscape photography. Loved it. And drone photography that's one of my favorites. Yeah.
Aliza: So cool. Thank you Sagar. Ted let's shift over to you. So again, please introduce yourself, your role at Intuit and answer that same question around your favorite childhood weekend hobby or a fun activity and what is your favorite today?
Ted: So my name is Ted Drake and I'm the Global Accessibility and Inclusive Design Leader at Intuit.
As a child, in the canyon behind our house we had a bunch of old tree trunks and stumps that were thrown out.
And so we used to hide behind the tree trunks and throw rocks at each other, basically trying to knock each other out.
Aliza: Really really safe activity! Let's throw rocks at each other.
Okay, sorry, Ted, I hope you're not doing that anymore.
Ted: No, no, I guess I'm now just throwing tantrums and softball. I can't wait for the softball season to start again.
Sagar: Ted you forgot to mention that you love earthquakes, also.
Ted: Oh, I love earthquakes. I grew up in California. So I love earthquakes. I can't wait. You know, every time an earthquake hits I'm always excited.
Aliza: Oh my gosh, or as some young people call it the earth shakes. Good grief Ted, wow learn a little bit about you, even more thatI didn't know. How fun. Thanks everyone for sharing that.
So this next set of questions, let's just get right into it. We're going to start with you, Ted, then Sagar then Reuben, how did you find your way to the roles that you have today?
So, Ted.
Ted: I started because my background is in fine art, and I was working for the Museum of Fine Art in San Diego, and an opportunity came up to be the website manager.
I had been building websites on my own. So I understood how to build them.
And when I became the website manager for the museum that's when I was introduced to accessibility, because as a museum we need to make sure that the artwork is available to everybody.
From there I got into the early stages of web development, where we stopped making junk web pages and started going back to the web standards, CSS, HTML and JavaScript and that also increased accessibility.
So, becoming a standards-based web developer brought me some opportunities to move to Yahoo, where I co-founded the accessibility lab, and then to Intuit, so I've always come from a web development, accessibility as quality, having pride in what you're making, but also after meeting people that actually use assistive technology, you get a much better understanding of the impact you have- by reducing the barriers, and making our products better for everyone.
Aliza: Ted thank you. Now let's also hear from Sagar then Reuben. How did you find your way to this role?
Sagar: I would dumb mine more. So as I stumbled upon it, initially, then finding my way to it.. Aliza, you know, I was a co-op in 2014 and Aliza came to our Rochester Institute of Technology where I went to do my Master’s in computer science, and she was there for a recruitment drive, and I was a co-op in the San Diego office working on one of the products. And we were, we were in the scrum meeting sprint planning and our Scrum Master said that there is an accessibility bug filed by Ted Drake and Ted Drake was a new name to me, accessibility was named to me, it was just a 13 letter word to me.
And since I was doing a co-op I always wanted to gain more experience on front-end, back-end performance. So I said, hey, can you assign that ticket to me?
And that's when I got introduced to accessibility engineering Ted was very passionate and when he saw that I had a passion to learn more about accessibility and assistive technology, he started giving me more and more and more tasks. And that's how I ended up in accessibility, working with him since the last six years.
Aliza: So cool. And then, and then now you are where you are in this amazing partnership. Thank you Sagar. Reuben let's hear from you.
Reuben: Yeah, it's, um, it's kind of weird. When I left university I actually trained to be a teacher of physics and maths, and I quickly found out that that was not the career for me.
And I kind of fell into software engineering, a little bit by accident. I’d done a little bit at university but hadn't really thought about it as a career.
And after my first job for a couple of years I joined Intuit. A friend who had joined and told me how great it was as a, as a place to work. And so I joined, and then falling into kind of accessibility. This podcast is a little weird for me because it was actually an article that you wrote, where you’d interviewed Ted and Sagar about accessibility at Intuitwhich kind of triggered my journey into accessibility.
So, this podcast is kind of coming full circle.
Aliza: That’s pretty cool.
And not just yeah and just, I think the way in which kind of accessibility was spoken about is just making it so everyone can take part, just really spoke to me.
And, you know, we use the internet for so many things and the web for so many things and I can't imagine what I would do if I can’t access that.
So, that just kind of drove me.
Aliza: Wow, it's pretty cool to always hear from folks how they find themselves in the role that they are in and the journey that they've taken. Now before we go any further, Ted, you're the one who started this movement here. Let's start with the definition. When we say the word accessibility as it relates to software, what is meant by this?
Ted: To me, and this is something that I kind of developed over the years, accessibility to me is independence. It's the fact that anybody can do the task that they want to do.
They can, if it's on a webpage, they can send an invoice, if it's in a restaurant, they can order food, if, if it's a government building you know they can get their driver's license. Basically what we're saying is that don't put up any barriers keeping people from doing what they need to do. And in certain situations we may have to provide assistance, we may have to provide a little bit of extra help.
That's what accessibility is. The goal is essentially letting people accomplish what they want to do, become independent, prosper, be happy and don't do anything to block them.
Aliza: I love that you said that it's about independence. Sagar, and Reuben what would you add to that?
Sagar: Going like what Ted said, I would also like to say that when you try to incorporate accessibility, you are increasing the usability of your product as well. So, for instance, the innovations like voice control, autocorrect, lower sidewalk curbs, automatic door openers, we all use, but they we're all inspired by specific population and now it is catered to a larger community or like to most of the people. So I would say your usability is increasing when you incorporate accessibility.
Reuben: Yeah, I think that's, to me that's the biggest point that you, they're not separate- accessibility and building a great product aren’t separate - they're the same thing, and accessible product as a product that's easy to use, and that's what we always strive for, you know, when we build anything. So, yeah, to me it's, it's just kind of the ultimate expression of what we're aiming for anyway.
Aliza: I love how you said that that it's, they go hand in hand. So as an engineer or technologist who builds experiences on software, why should I ensure the experiences I build are accessible? And I'm going to start with Reuben, then Sagar then Ted on this.
Reuben: I think, going back to what Ted said that if your experience isn't accessible then you're excluding potential customers. And just from a very kind of business point of view, why would you ever decrease your potential customer base? And you know it, it's not it's not a very exciting reason to do it but it's a very basic one, it's a very fundamental one that everyone should be able to understand. I'm sure Sagar and Ted will have some better responses. Yeah.
Sagar: I always say this - that around 15% of the world population live with some kind of disability, and that disability can be tremors in hands, shaky head, right to like blindness and deafness. So, we also need to remember that at any point of time in your entire lifespan, you would be using some of the other assistive technology that was, that was built, and we have to always remember this - that your website is the front door of your business.
So you will let your users know that they are welcome, that you care about them, and that your business cares about quality and professionalism, when you incorporate accessibility.
Ted: And I'm going to bring it back to basics, when it comes to being accessible. What that essentially means is that if I put something on the screen that I can find it. That I know what it represents. And then I can interact with it. So if I'm going to put a button on a screen, the user should be able to find that button, they should know that clicking on that button with a keyboard or a mouse or talking to their computer will work, and they know what it represents. That's accessibility.
And there's really no reason why you want to hide content. You don't want to create a forum that only a few people can use, you want to create a forum that everyone can use. And when you create a forum or everything is clearly marked, that it works regardless of the technology that person's using, it's a better product, and it's going to grow in the future, you're not going to have to go back there and fix it.
When you know, someone comes out with a touchscreen, or someone tries to use it in their car, or we move to brain power computing, you know, we're just talking about fundamentals, and that's pretty, pretty easy to.
Aliza: It’s so powerful too. Go ahead Sagar.
Sagar: Adding on to Ted’s comment, I’d also like to say that as a, as an engineer, like when you're building a website, your main intention is that it should be, like, catering to most customers and your search engine optimization score should be as high as possible so that anyone searches for your website keyword, you will, they will get the website. How can you make your SEO score go up, is by making like link text unique, by adding a title to your page, by adding a good alternative text to your images, and that's when I said that accessibility will increase overall usability and also in additional bonuses, your search engine optimization score will go very high if you make most of the things you're making accessible.
Aliza: Thanks Sagar for that as well. Now Sagar, at university and I know for me it's freaking way back when. The topic of accessibility wasn't really taught. Can you share what is the trend now with this in the computer science curriculum?
Sagar: Definitely, even for me, Aliza, when I was studying, so many years back, I did not see much many professors talking about accessibility or research going on, especially in my school, but then I have been part of the university hiring and I went to RID three years back and I came to that topic of accessibility, like how big companies deal with accessibility and that’s when I realized that there is a whole lab, they call it like CAIR, Center for Accessibility and Inclusive Research. I was surprised and then I was called by two professors and asked to be on the team, where they were building a curriculum for accessibility for the next coming semesters.
So I was part of that committee and that's when I got to know that there are a lot of universities these days are talking about accessibility and they are, including this into their curriculum. So that was really great to see that progress.
Aliza: That's totally promising and talks about creating inclusiveness right? That's amazing.
Now Reuben and Sagar recently worked with a small group of engineers to develop a three - hour course on front-end for new engineers at Intuit. Can you tell us a bit about what you cover at a high level, and how you added the elements of accessibility best practices to it?
Reuben: Yeah, sure. So we, we had a mandate to train people in three hours on so that they could hit the ground running and they went back to their teams and started working the front end and at Intuit we have a few kind of internal tools and a specific tech stack and just, just some standard things that you need to know in order to be productive working the front end.
And what we decided to do is in that three hours we do a sprint. You know, we put new engineers into teams and, and they would do a sprint and they do a planning session at the start and a retro at the end, and a demo.
And what we decided to do is, make it accessibility a kind of core part of that, to really kind of back up the accessibility training that they've been through earlier in the week and show that it really was a kind of core part and fundamental part of building an experience at Intuit.
And so we have a sign up form that we'd mocked up, and we had to make it as inaccessible as possible. And we did test this - Sagar, do you want to talk about how we checked?
Sagar: Thanks Reuben. Yeah so it's always good to have a customer face or like customer video when you're talking about a customer problem statement right? So what we decided as Reuben was saying that we created a completely inaccessible form, and reached out to Brandon Biggs. So Brandon Biggs is one of the most, Intuit’s most, influential customer when it comes to accessibility, and we reached out to him saying he can you record a video of your screen when you're using your screen reader, just so that people understand how it is painful when it's an inaccessible form that customer has to go through.
So he recorded a video, he pointed out all of the problems that we incorporated. And then we created the same form, which had the same look and feel, but we were using Intuit design system components. So we really wanted to show our new hire or bootcamp participants that if you use some of the design system components that have been built for you, you do not need to worry about accessibility performance, security, etc, because that's all comes baked in. And that's how the powerful design system is.
And that was I think that video really played an important role like a before and after video and in the after video while Brandon was going through the experience he said, this is just a piece of cake, like, and that was, that was a catchy code that people really can relate to saying that if you really adopt all the design system component, you, you are making pages accessible.
Reuben: And those videos were from when Brandon went through the, it took him like four minutes to get through the first form, and like half a minute to get through the second one.
Sagar: So true. Yeah.
Aliza: What has been the feedback from the new engineers?
Reuben: I think they've, they love seeing every engineer love seeing people use their products.
And, and that's what we were able to do with Brandon is show them, you know, this is, this is what you've built over the last three hours. And here's a real person using it and look how much you've changed their life.
And it is that significant, we build important tools for people to, you know, manage their finances and making it easy for them to do that can change their life.
Aliza: Oh cool.
Sagar: Thanks, thanks to these sessions, they also feel that how much Intuit gives more importance to accessibility at, at any point of time, and also the video, which we showed can kind of give them empathy on why to build an accessible product, rather than worrying about some other stuff. Basically building customer empathy, was one of the main highlights from the, from the reviews that we got from the candidates.
Aliza: Thank you Sagar and Reuben. Now I'll switch things up a little bit, Ted and Sagar, what are the one to five things that you would teach today that are critical to making sure the experience you build is accessible to everyone?
Sagar: Ted, you want to go first?
Ted: Sure, I can start. The first thing I would do is - the first thing I always do is tell engineers to stop using their mouse. They have to set up their computers to use the keyboard, and they have to use their application without a mouse, even if it's just five minutes a week.
If you can get your application to work with a keyboard, then you're going to make a huge jump towards accessibility, because that means it's going to work for a screen reader, it's going to work for someone talking to their computer, someone that can only you know use one finger to touch a button.
So that's number one, use a keyboard, at least five minutes a week. Um, the second one I would recommend is you've got to meet your customers. You've got to go out and find out who your customers are and talk to them.
And don't go out and find customers that look and seem like yourself, you need to go out and find customers that are different in all different ways. So then you’re getting a broad experience of who's actually using your product. That's not just accessibility, that's the entire product development. So a lot of times, for instance, we had a colleague that was working on a privacy statement. And I said to him, go visit your grandmother and ask her to explain that privacy statement.
That's an easy way to test your products or your experience in different ways. And if she can understand your privacy statement, then you're golden, that's good.
Sagar: So, going to what Ted said, we basically concentrate more on theory, customer empathy and compassion and then we talk about coding practices because they can easily find online how to code something, but like empathy and compassion is one of the things that we mostly concentrate on. And also, universal design, why you need to think about universal design, inclusive design, and also sometimes we also talk about accessibility automation testing that is really important when, when you're adopting speed as a habit and you're pushing your code to production every other week. So, how can you detect more low hanging fruits, with an automation testing.
Aliza: It's pretty cool. Now, as we think about these practices, starting with Reuben and then asking also Sagar, and Ted to add to this. When you review someone's code or a team's code, what have you seen are the most common, maybe top 1 to 3 accessibility-related issues that they have to fix, and maybe also if you could share, can you share how you resolve them?
So we'll start with Reuben and then Sagar and Ted.
Reuben: Yeah, I think the first one goes back to what Ted said about keyboard testing, and it's the, they haven't keyboard tested it and you can't navigate around the page and you can't activate the buttons with your without using your mouse, that's that's the most kind of common issue. How to go in and kind of fix it? I normally recommend going back to basics with the HTML, and it's so easy to kind of forget about when, when you're given a complicated design that's easier to kind of visually match up some other way. But going back to HTML, nearly always solves your problem, and there's no need to get fancy with ARIA labels or other attributes. Just HTML out the box there's often a way to make that work.
Sagar: That's correct. Semantic HTML is one of the things that we mostly notice because we do have h1 h2 tags that is given by www and html5. Why are you using divs and CSS making it look like a header? And another thing that is very annoying is like a link without an actual href attribute. Because of that, you make your link completely inaccessible with keyboard and talking about how to resolve them so this is, this is one thing that I have learned from Ted in the past six years is when we find a ticket JIRA ticket to a specific team, saying that there is an accessibility bug, we just don't file tickets saying hey, “this is an accessibility bug This link is not accessible.”
We explain to them why it is important, how to fix them, we add the current code, we add the updated code, because we really do not want our engineers to get overwhelmed with accessibility tickets. We want them to power with all the tools, all the learnings and knowledge they require to fix those tickets. So that is one thing I always appreciate Ted's effort and now I also started filing tickets the same way.
Reuben: It's not easy, you know to always to figure out the right HTML, kind of, I remember I implemented a kind of sad face, neutral face, happy face survey component and I went in with one kind of view on on how to build that in HTML and represent it and Ted gave me a completely other way that I hadn't considered using radio buttons, so that there's often a couple of ways to achieve the same thing, but it's not always easy, but the most common ones, they usually are putting an alt tag on your image, an alt attribute or. Yeah. An href attribute actually on the link.
Ted: And Aliza, we just recently moved the accessibility team from the engineering department over to design. We're now part of Intuit Design System. And I think a lot of the accessibility issues we have go back to design and Billy Gregory famously said that “if you're not designing for everybody, you're designing for some people.” So it's some user experience, instead of user experience.
And so one of the things that we like to tell our designers is that if you don't provide accessibility specifications for, instance alternate text, how a button should look when it gets focus, what's the keyboard interaction on an accordion, or tab panel, then what you're essentially doing is you're only designing for the mouse user, and you're letting the engineer design for everybody else, and designers don't want to give up control of design. Designers want to control design; they want to create a beautiful experience for everyone.
And they just don't realize that they're only providing a user experience for some people. So one of the things that we try to do is go back to design and explain what's needed and requirements, so that when they pass the requirements on to the developer, the developer has the checklist. “Oh, I need to make that keyboard accessible because the design includes a focus state.”
“I need to make the tab panel work with arrow keys because the design specification requires arrow key navigation.”
“I need to use a heading level one, two and three because the design specification says, this is not just text that's bold, big. This is a heading text.”
So that's part of what we're also doing is going back before engineering and trying to include accessibility into the design specifications.
Aliza: Ted is that, I know I heard the term inclusive design. Is that the kind of conversations you're having is all around that inclusive design is that what is meant by that term?
Ted: You could say that inclusive design is that “how” we get to accessibility which is the “what”, but universal design is something that works for everybody.
A good example is you go to the airport and you're lugging all your luggage, and they have restrooms, and instead of the restrooms having doors they have basically an open space with like a barrier, and anybody can go around that barrier and go into the restrooms, there's no doors, there's no steps, it's universal everyone can use it.
Inclusive Design is where you take universal design but you make sure that everybody is a part of the design process. So you're interviewing people with disabilities. You're interviewing people that, you know, they work three jobs ,have two children, and they're a single parent. You're including the broad spectrum of people, so that when you complete your designs your designs are inclusive of everyone. And accessibility-first is a new way of doing it, that we do use within some of our designs. It's like focusing on the worst case scenario. If can make this work for some, if I can make a tax process work for someone with severe dyslexia, and they're still able to look at a W2 form and transfer the information into our forms, then it's probably going to be a lot easier for someone without dyslexia, to do the same process.
All of those three designs- universal, inclusive, and accessibility-first - lead to accessible products.
Aliza: I always learn so much from you all whenever we talk about accessibility.
Now Global Accessibility Awareness Day is in the month of May. What is this about and why is it important for all of us to recognize it? So, I'd love to hear from all of you.
Sagar: So, Global Accessibility Awareness Day is an awareness day, which is focused on digital access and inclusion for more than 1 billion people out there with disabilities and impairments.
So, I personally met the co founders Joe Devon and Jennison Asuncion. They both basically, Joe when we invited him last year for one of our Lunch and Learns on the GAAD 2020 and Jennison we invited him in 2019. So, I hear both of those stories and we can now see how much accessibility has grown, and it's a huge part of this growth process because of a proactive awareness drive by accessibility leaders around the globe.
This also gives us an opportunity to celebrate small business owners with disabilities and provide accessibility enthusiasts just to have a chat with our employees. Like as Ted was mentioning, have a no-mouse Monday, where employees can only work, the specific hour only with the keyboard. That's how they can get the importance of keyboard accessibility.
There are so many wonderful initiatives that happen all around the globe, and it only reinstates our commitment towards accessibility. So I can go on and on and on for GAAD so I might give a chance to Reuben and Ted to speak more about it.
Reuben: I think I'd say it's so important, because the first and biggest barrier to building accessible products is awareness of accessibility as a, as a challenge. And you know I I spoke to a friend recently who said, you know, blind people can't watch movies, and they can't watch them but they can experience them through an audio description track, which goes along with it and describes what's happening when there's no dialogue. And once they knew that, then they started kind of seeing that stuff everywhere or, you know, and then and they were fully onboard. It's, it's, it's rarely malice, that someone doesn't build an accessible product or an accessible experience. And it's just the hardest barrier to get over. And so that's why Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which gives us this opportunity, is so important.
Sagar: Also it fits in perfect with May being the Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Global Accessibility Awareness Day also in May.
Aliza: Oh, I didn't even know that. Thank you. Thanks Sagar, Ted, anything you'd add?
Ted: I would say before Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we had a very strong accessibility community around the world and every day we worked on making our products and experiences better and we work very closely together. We always share information back and forth. But it was sort of, every day was this push forward and Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a day for the community to come together and work together, and you'll see like for instance, ast year I did a presentation in India remotely about accessibility and artificial intelligence. This year I'm going to be doing a presentation in Hawaii with the National Federation for the Blind in Hawaii.
But we also brought people into Intuit, and it's about the community saying we're going to take this one day and we've got one big megaphone, and we're going to take that megaphone to amplify the voices of everybody in the community. This year at Intuit we're doing something like that where we've been collecting articles and presentations by our Accessibility Champions. We have about 900 Accessibility Champions at Intuit, people have gone through a basic level of training and empathy awareness. We're going to be publishing a series of articles, podcasts and everything throughout the month of May. And what's nice is that it's not one voice, but we're getting, you know, a dozen or more voices
Sagar: And also the Employee Resource Group that I lead - Intuit Abilities Network -, we are inviting one of the customers who is having a disability for the Prosperity Pop-up that is going to be on May 20 so it's fun that how this month of May and Global Accessibility Awareness Day brings in all kinds of activities throughout the month, which is focused on disability and such.
Aliza: I think community is definitely at the center of what you all are talking about. It's amazing. So, um, I'm going to start with Sagar and Ted, and Reuben please do add, what is your advice or message to organizations or companies out there who want to follow in your footsteps? And then if there are resources that are readily available also please do share that. So we'll start with Sagar and Ted and then Reuben please do add.
Sagar: I would say empathize like hell, and always, get into your customer's shoes. And that way, accessible development design will come naturally to them, as I was talking about empathy and compassion and, like, recognize, think about starting an accessibility champion program, like we do at Intuit so that you can recognize the folks that are working and putting effort and accessibility and kind of giving more encouragement and as you were mentioning, building a community of accessibility enthusiasts and champions within your company.
Aliza: Ted then Reuben
Ted: I want to highlight the importance of having a diverse workforce. This is especially important as we move into artificial intelligence, and it's critical that we have people that are building artificial intelligence that represent the broad spectrum of our communities. Please reach out to your universities, reach out to the disabled student services department at your universities and start recruiting candidates that are diverse, especially as we get into data science because you cannot create good artificial intelligence and data science based products if you're only using, you know, a very thin margin of the community as the engineers.
We recently did that with UC Berkeley and we have two interns coming in from UC Berkeley, that we’re really super excited about.
Aliza: Reuben would you add anything?
Reuben: I think the only thing I'd say is don't be afraid of having to be perfect. Building accessible products is a process. And you, you never, you never finished, you never done, it's never 100%. So that's it, but that's, that's okay, it's still good to start and make a difference, an improvement is an improvement. So, I would say, just get going.
And, and, you know, savor the wins, because they'll be some along the way. And before you know, you'll be two years down the line, and and your, your product will be transformed.
And we've seen examples of that here as well.
Aliza: I love that savoring the wins, thank you. Now all of you have been so amazing with your recommendations and they're all super practical but it really comes down to, you know, being in your customers’ shoes and having that empathy and building that in your organization. So thank you.
Now Reuben Ted and Sagar, we are now in the rapid fire portion of our podcast. This is actually meant to be fun, but I can understand that maybe it can be scary, but I want to make sure that y'all are ready for it. But here's the thing, I'm going to just be asking these quick questions, and it's always going to start off with Reuben, then Sagar then Ted and you just give me your one word answer. Okay. Are you all ready? Okay, so it's gonna go Reuben then Sagar than Ted. Okay, first one beach or forest?
Reuben: Forest
Sagar: Forest
Aliza: Ted?
Ted: Oh, we all answer this -, I'd say city.
Aliza: Wait, I had beach or forest!
Ted: I grew up in San Diego, so I'd have to say beach.
Aliza: Beach? Okay.
Next one again Reuben, Sagar then Ted. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry?
Reuben: Vanilla, I think.
Sagar: Strawberry
Ted: Chocolate
Aliza: Favorite language to code in?
Reuben: JavaScript
Sagar: Python
Ted: CSS
Aliza: Favorite all time movie or show? Reuben?
Reuben: Con Air with Nicolas Cage I think.
Sagar: Friends, I love Friends
Aliza: Ted?
Ted: A bit of a dichotomy. My favorite movie is the Passion of Joan of Arc, an old black and white classic. My favorite show was Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
Aliza: Okay, I gotta move on from that. Okay, next one: document, comedy, or mystery?
Reuben: I will go for mystery
Sagar: Mystery
Ted: Documentary
Aliza: Next question: Do you have a favorite quote or mantra by which you live by?
Reuben: I heard one over a decade ago now, which is “the opportunity of a lifetime must be taken within the lifetime of the opportunity,” which is hard to live by but good to aspire to.
Sagar: I think mine is very similar to Reuben “look back, only to see how far you have come along.”
Ted: I come from punk rock so it's ”talk minus action equals nothing.”
Aliza: Love it. Okay y'all have just inspired me, next one. Once COVID is over and it's safe to venture out what is the first thing you're going to do?
Reuben: A couple of holidays, I think, Japan, and the French Alps.
Sagar: I need to go and see Europe. I have never visited Europe, so I would be doing that.
Reuben: Yeah, come over!
Sagar: Yeah.
Ted: My friend and I are going to go to New Orleans for the 75th anniversary of the black hair convention. It's a, it's a celebration of African American hair and we're really looking forward to going there, it should be exciting.
Aliza: That’s pretty cool. I didn't even know that that existed. Okay, next question: What gives you energy, and what depletes it? So both sides.
Reuben: I'm gonna say exercise gives me energy and it also depletes it, just in different ways.
Sagar: I would say, being around my close friends and families really gives me more energy and I would say Zoom depletes it.
Ted: What gives me energy is when I help somebody fix a problem, and they get it, you know, it's that light bulb moment. And when I can help someone get to that light bulb moment that's what gives me energy, and what depletes it is probably, I get frustrated when I'm using - this is so geeky again - when I'm using a website or an application and forms don't work. And you're just our page doesn't work and I'm thinking to myself “god I can't stand bad design.” So getting frustrated by applications that that just, it's enough to make me walk away.
Aliza: Oh man. Okay, Next one, your favorite comfort food.
Reuben: Wow. Chicken pie, I think.
Sagar: Anything my mom cooks.
Aliza: Aww
Ted: Burritos.
Aliza: So true So Cal! So true. And then final one, your personal hero.
Reuben: Well, I don't know if I have a personal hero, I've got a lot of people I admire but um, I don't know if I'd call anyone, a hero. Too much pressure.
Sagar: I would say I would go with my mom. No one can beat her.
Aliza: Oh my god, my heart just…
Ted: Growing up in San Diego, there was a guy named Edward Lawson, and he liked to walk around neighborhoods and the police kept stopping him. So he took the police all the way to the Supreme Court, saying that he could walk in any neighborhood he wanted to and they didn't have the right to stop and frisk and demand identification. And this was a guy who was just your average person who just didn't want to be stopped and have his rights taken away.
And so, as a teenager, that's when Edward Lawson came forward and he's always been someone that, he probably has no idea that I even know about him, but he's someone I always admired.
Aliza: Thank you all for sharing. And I want to thank you all, thanks so much Reuben, Ted and Sagar. It was so amazing to connect with you today. How was it?
Sagar: Thanks Aliza. It was amazing. I was very anxious, but at the same time I knew that I'm just going to be sitting and talking to like the people I’m used to talking to like you, Ted and Reuben so, yeah.
Reuben: Yeah. It's scary, but it helps when you know you're amongst friends so.
Ted: We didn't even have a chance to make fun of Reuben being from London.
Aliza: Oh man, on another one and another one. Well, I want to wish you all big hugs and good vibes, always.
And with that said, thanks again for listening to Tech Heroes podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Soundcloud or iTunes so you don't miss out on any stories from these amazing tech heroes. To be featured or to nominate a tech hero, email us at Techheroes@intuit.com. To learn more about careers go to intuit.com/careers. Tech Heroes is a podcast and it is powered by Intuit. Our mission is to power prosperity around the world. I am Aliza Carpio and we’ll see you next time.