Transcript Background Music: Announcer: Welcome to The Podcast to be Named Later, where we explore the world a conversation at a time. Sit back and enjoy. Here are your hosts, Chris and Kelly. Kelly: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the podcast to be named later. My co-host Chris is off on vacation, enjoying the sun a little bit of time at the lake and all of that and I'm here working at the microphone and I have the pleasure of. Having one of my former coworkers at Microsoft by the name of Erica Chase joined me today. Erica works as an accessibility designer on the Power BI team and in my interactions with Erica I found her to be really insightful and I learned a lot. Erica, thanks and welcome to the podcast. Erica: Thank you, Kelly. I'm super happy to be here. Kelly: Well, let's dive right in with the first kind of big thing. I mentioned that you're an accessibility designer, but you know, before I worked in the software business, I never really heard this term designer when it came to software. So can you give us kind of just a sense of? Of what? The role of a designer is just in general 1st and then maybe we'll talk about different types of designers, but what exactly in general does a designer do? Erica: So I'm gonna talk particularly about product design because that's where I have the most experience. And so a lot of what we do is we we take a lot of user feedback, customer feedback, ideas from program managers and product managers and synthesize all that information. Into the user interface and the user experience of any given piece. Of software so. So, you know, we might get customer feedback that you know they they want a certain feature and so it's up to the designers then to be that kind of first line of defense of what does that feature look like, how does it work, how do people interact with it? Is that the way they even want to interact with it? So we might go get additional feedback based on the designs that we have. Sometimes we have to spec out particular interactions, how you might work through the user flow of something, and then at the end of it, once we have all the information one. We've put all of the different components and buttons and headings and everything, put them all on the page. We give those to developers and then they build that into the software itself. Kelly: So could you go into a little more detail about even that, I mean, so I I'm over here and I tell you that I'd really like it if this program. You know, let me. Click on something. Walk me through like, let's just say that we're making a hypothetical program to let's make it easy and we'll play bingo, you know? So we got a nice little card with bingo and some numbers. You click on what might you do as a designer? To turn that into from, you know, Kelly over here saying, hey, I want a game to play bingo online, to some kind of a design. Can you just give me an idea of some of the tasks you might do? Erica: Yeah, yeah. So first we, we'd be most likely. To start pretty big and just find out. OK. So Kelly wants to play bingo. So we know high level, we need some kind of. Board, we need something to call out the difference. You know, just kind of. The high level. Tasks that a user might want to. Do in order to play bingo. And then once we have that defined, then we'll start getting a little bit more granular and we'll create something. Called a wireframe. And basically in in a design visually that's just a bunch of big Gray boxes that represent what different parts of the design would be. So we go, OK, we have, let's say a little thing on the left that's calling out the different bingo numbers. Maybe it's scrolling, you know, just let's say it's off to the left and then in the center we'll have the bingo card. Itself, we can assume that's what is it. A5 by. Five grid, so we might just have some Gray boxes for that in the middle and then, you know, kind of depending on their needs, maybe a box for chat or comments or you know log in, log out those kinds of things and just kind of get the the basic layout. Then we're going to start getting even more granular and a lot of times companies will have a design system that you have to work within. So that will define things like color schemes and fonts and kind of expected layouts of pages and. And that's assuming that that exists. If not, then it'd be up to the designer. And say OK, this is. The kind of look and feel that I think that this should have, and so then we'll say, OK, the bingo card, let's say is white and has black text and that text is the aerial font style, and then we'll we'll start doing that. And then once we have kind of the visual design laid out based on that information, then we will decide the interactions of it. So like you said. You wanted to. Let's say just click on one of the numbers we heard B5. Now we need to go click on another thing that will be like a user flow that we define. And so that's kind of the the basic process and then you know, we might hear from users like, OK well this the the white is is too bright. Can we make it off white and then we'll take that feedback and kind of rework it. But for the most part, yeah, we're just starting really big, really wide with what the task the user wants to. Do is and then go all the way as narrow as. What exactly does this look like? What are the font sizes, the colors, all of those different things? Kelly: Where does the term wireframe come from if you know? Erica: I actually don't know. That's a really good question that I should look up, but basically it it just means that you're you don't have the full like we kind of talk about in terms of fidelity like a wireframe is very low fidelity. It's literally just, you know, Gray boxes or you might even see like. An X through something that's going to be an image. It might actually come from a lot of times you'll see these things as they have like even like darker borders. Like if you like, were to sketch it on a piece of paper. So it's just like these kind of thin. Black lines denoting different like. Borders of things. So it might come from that, but honestly I. Don't know. Kelly: You talked about. OK, if I want to click on one of these numbers or pick one of these numbers in some. Way that that's a user interaction. How do you represent that when you're building a design like do you build a different picture with each state of the interaction? Or is there something else that you do functionally and I'll explain why I'm asking that when we go a little bit further, but I'm just curious what are the physics and mechanics of? How you represent a user interaction? Erica: Yeah. So sometimes it is exactly that where we'll have multiple screens denoting different stages in the process. So you know, I might have kind of a blank screen where where no numbers have been called yet and no numbers have been selected on the bingo card. And then the next stage of that might be that that B5 is called. And then I have I have stand to be 5 on the card and we'll have the visual representation of that. And then usually we'll have either a note or even sometimes we'll have like the little mouse cursor itself or keyboard focus or something like that. To in the design itself to say this. Is what the. User did and this is the outcome of. They did that. Sometimes we won't go so far as having different screens for every visual interaction, but we might just have a note below that says no. If a user selects B5, it will change the the number on the card to the style. And then just kind of do it in little chunks like that? Kelly: So let's jump back cause I always like to dive in and then step back a minute. Where'd you learn design and what got you into it? Erica: So I actually had a kind of a wild journey to to get where I'm at today. I actually started learning graphic design when I was in high school. I took an AP digital art class when I was like 14 or 15, and so we were doing a lot of work in like Photoshop and Illustrator. And I started doing. A bunch of posters for different local Chicago punk bands and did that basically all the way through. And just kind of loved that creation of art, but from a digital method because I was never good at drawing or painting so, but it was very good at using the computer. So I really enjoyed doing that. And so when I went to college, I originally majored in visual communication, which was effectively their version, the NIU. Version of graphic design. And and after two years it was a lot of, like, fine art, drawing, painting, 3D sculpting for a graphic design degree, and that just didn't feel super right for me. But I also I loved numbers. I loved computers. So I actually then changed my major to mathematics with the concentration in computer science. Originally intending then to be a software engineer, which I did for a little bit as an intern in. College and that's actually where I learned accessibility as a concept was during that Intel. And then once I graduated, I had enough experience from all these different places where I got a job as an interaction designer at a sports company in Chicago called STATS. And so I did a lot of rewriting their HTML and CSS and trying to basically we would take sports content and we would make it match the website that it was being put into so. We'd have statistics and. You know, different charts and graphs and then I'd have to change all the colors and the styling to map. The clients website and so I. Did that for about a. Year and a half. And then they kind of dissolved the position I was in. Kelly: OK, we're going to hit pause for a second. Erica: Oh, yeah. Kelly: We're going to hit pause for a second because you've kind of dropped in a couple of facts that I didn't realize already that I got to follow up on. Erica: Yeah, of course. Kelly: You said that you actually learned accessibility in your internship. Erica: Yep, Yep. So it would have been 2016. Kelly: Where was your internship? Erica: It was at an education company in Chicago called I believe they're called frontline education at the time. And so they did all of the applicant tracking software for all of the school districts in the country. And so they were in the middle of a lawsuit with. One of the college systems in the state of Illinois and basically we're like, hey, we need to fix all of the accessibility issue. And so that's where I started doing the research and and rewrote a lot of the HTML for them to address the accessibility concerns that they. Kelly: Had that had to be quite an experience because in just my own encountering of people that end up in some sort of computer. Science degree in any fashion. It's rare to get any exposure to accessibility, even today. Erica: Yeah, it was totally a fluke. Because I had gone through at that point, I was almost done with my computer science. Part of my degree at NIU and it accessibility never come up. Once I actually didn't even learn a lot of the front end development technology, I had to learn that on my own. Like while I was working at Starbucks, I was in the back. Learning HTML just to to kind of broaden my skill set. And so when I got into this position, they were like, hey, we, we have these excessive issues. We need someone to fix them. Can you do that? And I was, you know, 20 so. I'm like, OK. Yeah, I'll do it. And basically on the fly, just had to completely learn accessibility on my own, but I'm glad I did because it it it was a great opportunity. But yeah, it was. I had never learned in college like I basically was just Googling things really quickly, trying to to fix a lot of these issues. Kelly: So and just another thing, if I heard you correctly, you said you worked for stats. Erica: Yep, Yep. Now I they're called stats. Performed but when I work there, they're just stats. Kelly: That's the. And is that I could be wrong, but is it are we talking in the main like sports stats company that can collect stats on everything? Erica: Yeah, that's the one. Kelly: Like any pretty much any broadcaster article you read has content from that company. Erica: Yeah, yeah. And and I believe it's the same one. I haven't been involved in the in the sports world in a few years. But yeah, or like we used to, I'm a big Bears fan, so we'd watch Bears games and they would, you know, have, like the stats logo pop up. Kelly: Ohh, hold on, man. Hold on. We gotta stop. Hey, we you just said a bad word on my podcast, Erica. Erica: Ohh no no, I'm so sorry. Kelly: Packers. Come on. Erica: I'm from Chicago. I gotta wrap the bears. Kelly: OK, I'll get. I'll let you get away with it only because, like, you're an accessibility expert in my experience. So we'll. We'll we'll forgive the Bears fan. I'm not. It's kind of funny that. The Bears and the Packers in the sports world have a really long rivalry. That's cool. Speaker Yeah. So. Kelly: I like to take these tangents sometimes really, and because you surprised me with two things I did. You know, so there'll be more and that's really a probably a great foundation and probably actually working on sports and statistics is probably explains why you were understood tables and such so well, so well in my experience as well. Erica: Yeah, it it helped a ton because we I was on a sports widget solution which was actually almost entirely tables there we had a couple couple lists of of like player names and those. Kinds of things, but. For the most part, it was all team data and team stats that you know, we we have reporters and people who go and collect the data and bring it back to us. And then that was my job at the time, was to basically. Organize all of that data. Into tables so that it would make sense for everyone to consume that information. Kelly: Well, boy, I'll tell you if the Microsoft gig ever stops working, there's a load of opportunity to go out and convince the sports world to take accessibility more seriously. Many sports sites are just filled with and riddled with accessibility challenges. But anyway. So you ohh sorry, go ahead. OK. Erica: No, no, it's OK. But yeah, that's I actually have used a few sports sites as examples of I do a lot of trainings on on accessible design and I use sport sites as an example, a lot of websites that are just too loud, too much and they a lot of times don't follow a lot of standard conventions. They're colors all over the place. And they have auto plane videos and navigations a nightmare and and so yes, I would love to to be. Able to fix sports. Kelly: I I mentioned on my Mastodon feed, there's always something new wrinkle that comes up in accessibility, and you mentioned the auto playing videos. It used to be that a lot of sites you go to, OK, they'd start blasting a video and they have the audio jacked up. Well, I guess the new wrinkle that's actually makes it worse. If you don't see in particular, now they still play the video. But the off the audio is often muted, so you don't know the videos playing and then you wonder, especially on a mobile device, why the performance is so sluggish and stuff, and it's like, come on man, just don't start anything automatically. Erica: Yeah, I did that at I. Was at Walgreens today waiting on my prescription. And I was scrolling through Twitter and they have auto playing videos and they accidentally tapped on one. They didn't mean to. And when you tap on it then it starts playing the audio. So I'm in the middle of the Walgreens and it's just blasting some video. I'm like, oh, no. Kelly: So you you learned this design and you, you know, you did what you said, jumping back after my little tangent I if I was a baseball runner, I'd be out of the baseline on probably every play because I'd want to go explore all kinds of stuff. Yep, but you started to learn design and you mentioned something else that I'd like wonder if you could talk about a little bit. Erica, you you used the term design system? And you mentioned that might have things like color and all that. Is that where if we loop in your other you know the other part of your title accessibility, would a design system also include accessibility? Erica: In my experience, it's more be a design system itself is comprised of components that are accessible in and of themselves. So for example the the design system we use now, all of the the different buttons and. You know any use of color, anything like that? We vetted before and went into the design system to make sure that the contrast was was good to go, that, you know, things had outlined where they should be or that even the interaction themselves that you know, we know this has the correct rules and states for all the different things we do, all that work before it even gets to the design systems that when the design. System is ready. Designers and engineers can grab any of the components and it will be accessible by default. That's the goal. Kelly: That's the goal. How do you handle? And this isn't necessarily just about Microsoft at all, because I'm not asking you to speak for the all of Microsoft, but I'm curious. Because one of the one of the things ever since I've worked in accessibility that people always say, and I think what you're saying is a little bit of the same thing even at maybe at a different level though is well you know. If you use custom controls, you're going to have challenges with accessibility, and so you're always encouraged to use common controls from whatever they are. What I hear you saying is a good design system. For accessibility, will include components that have already been vetted for accessibility, and but what I've often seen is that works for a little while, and then wherever it comes from and we'll, we'll get to this in a little more detail. But somebody comes up with something and they say I just have to have this. And it like. If you will breaks all the rules, they say I can't have one of these prefab things from whether it's a control that's already existing or something out of the design system, how do you balance all of that in the software world, if that makes sense? Erica: And that's been something that's I've worked in, in finance and education and retail and sports and and big data and and that is something that comes up in every single industry is you know. That kind of need for custom components, and sometimes it's a matter of just saying no. Maybe we think of a different way to do. This using components. We already. Have that's kind of the the ideal solution, but sometimes it's. OK. Yes, we based on user feedback based on customer trends and and things like that. We know there is a need for this thing that we have not defined yet. Is this something that's reusable that we can now put in the design system? To use later or is. This truly A1 off situation that have an education a ton where we'd have different. Labs and things where it was like, OK. It only exists for this course. But it still needs to be accessible. And so those be times where we just have to kind of dedicate the extra time and and effort to ensuring that that experience is accessible. Kelly: Again, not asking you to speak for the entire technology industry, but I'm going to pick an example that is a personal frustration of mine. Why does every website, especially in the I would say in the travel industry, why do you think anyway they feel like they all need to make their own version of some kind of a date picker? Erica: Oh my God. I know, and I wish I wish they wouldn't, but. Everyone also wants to be cutting edge. They want to go OK, we. You know. This airline we we have decided that we want to be. The you know, we want to get people to buy flights the fastest. We want to get people to buy the flights that are the most expensive, like they, they always have that bottom line and so. I I don't know. I wish they they wouldn't keep doing unique things because I think standard HTML date picker is. Not that bad. But I'm sure sure they have their reasons to get people to stay on the site longer or to whatever to to meet the bottom line. Kelly: But it is just interesting that is one in particular that. You know, I'm old enough that when I started booking airline reservations, it was actually used this thing. What was this? American Airlines had this. I think they ran a big back end reservation system and you could pretty much type your whole reservation in one text box. Then then maybe it moved to individual text boxes and now it's like. Crazy controls for each piece of the date, sometimes and. Erica: Yeah, I just had to look. Kelly: This the challenging part is often. Erica: Yeah, I just had to book one through. I think I was going through a night and I have to fly from West Palm Beach to Boston and then from Boston to Chicago and then from Chicago back to West Palm Beach. And every single part of that was its own unique text input. And every time you did one flight and a lot of these flights are broken up into two because just what's available. So then you have to go through a whole date picker experience and choose your times and choose your flights for every individual flight ends up being 6 flights. It's a nightmare. Kelly: Back on the accessibility and the design system. So let's say that you you have the system with all these components. Part of what we do in this podcast sometimes is is, you know, Erica, I don't see not some of my listeners don't see some do. But my co-host Chris and I talk about sports and stuff, and he'll often like visually break down some plays. I'm curious again. When we talk about accessibility and some of those standard components, you know if I say list box, radio button, checkbox, grid table, all the other vocabulary that I'm you know anybody in accessibility is familiar with within the design system or just within software design. I'm assuming that maybe you can help educate me that visually those same kind of controls, if you will can look vastly different or is are they mostly the same and it's just a little variation or is there a ton of difference between say a list box on? Well, you know, we'll say united.com or Walmart. Erica: List box and so radio buttons, checkboxes. Those are pretty universally look the same everywhere. I've seen them that those are pretty clear cut where you've got the little circles for the radio buttons. You can only select one checkboxes. You can multi select that. That's all I. Think pretty straightforward list boxes are a super interesting. Because, I mean, even when I write out accessibility specs, I'm using list boxes for things that you know. Sometimes it is just a list of items that you can you select one of them and and you. Know move on. That way sometimes I'm using list boxes to denote, you know, 8 bars in a bar chart. And visually that doesn't look anything like a list, but programmatically it makes most sense. It makes the most sense for that thing to be a list. So sometimes for the the more I guess, like Loosey Goosey kind of kind of roles, you can apply them a million different ways that are all going to look visually entirely different. And so then we focus a lot on like context. Setting of like. Yes, this is a list box, but it's a list box within a bar chart. And so that I hope you know kind of helps set that context a little better for things like that. Kelly: Sure. Do you find especially for those that aren't familiar before I ask my question, could you maybe give a kind of an overview of what power BI's kind of claim to fame or what it's used for? Erica: Yeah, yeah. So Power BI is basically it's a a data visualization tool. That can also take it takes data from from SQL servers. It takes data from Excel sheets. It takes data from you know any kind of of streaming data flow that that someone might have and basically takes all that data and and you can go through the modeling experience to set relationships between different pieces of data and and do. It that way. Or you can just copy and paste an entire excel sheet and throw it in power BI and. At the end. Of the day, what you do with that data is you create data visualizations. So like I mentioned, bar charts. That's a type of visualization. You might create column charts, tables. These are all visual representations of data, and we throw those onto what we call the canvas, and so an author, someone who's creating a power BI report can take all of those different pieces of data, and all of those different types of data visualizations and arrange them into a report and the. Part stands for Business intelligence, and so a lot of times it's business data and business analytics that. BI developers are then giving back to their leadership team to show different trends of of things. In their company. Kelly: Do you have a sense there's an old cliche or often used statement of? A pictures worth 1000 words. Is is this visualized? I'm really just curious. I mean, is this visualization of data really impactful? Erica: I think so. I I am. I like. I like things at a glance. I have ADHD and so I want. I want information fast and so that's why I like datavis just as a concept because it helps me kind of see trends and see outliers and see interesting piece of information. Without having to necessarily, you know, try to organize that from like a a table or an excel sheet of all that. Same data. So I I personally like it for that reason, and I think a lot of other people do too. So I I think it's very helpful. Kelly: You you mentioned for accessibility like for example you know representing the bar chart as a list box and I'm I'm curious where you feel overall again, not not just Microsoft but the interest. I mean there's different companies, Microsoft I know. In the time I was working with you has done some work in investigation in this space company called Highcharts has done some space, but do you think that we've where do you think we are as far as? Making data visualizations not just quote technically accessible, but usable like do you think we're at the beginning, the middle, the end? If you have a sense. Erica: Yeah, I'd. I'd say I think we're. Not quite. At the very beginning, I think we've. We've done a. Lot of work to. And I say we as the the industry as a whole, I think we've, we've done a lot to you know try to at least get the information of what the users want, what do they expect and and get that data and and try to work it into the most not the most successful experience, but also the most desirable experience. But we're still. In the very, very early stages of that, I think there is a lot of. Interesting things we can do. With summaries with you and I have talked before about sonification, I think that's a really interesting route to go. So many things to coming out with AI and ways we can summarize data that way. You know, I think there's a lot of interesting things we can do and we're we're at the forefront of that for sure. Kelly: Yeah, it's really been kind of interesting for me. In this space, so just to give you an example recently so. Apple in their weather app. They so apples have, for example, maps that you could touch for a while and move your finger around and hear things like roads or businesses. But recently here in the Midwest, as you probably know, we had really bad air quality problems and it was interesting because. Not too long ago, Apple started to actually make some of the data of the map overlays available through voiceover, so it was really for the first time I was able to drag my finger around the weather app. And not only like get a sense of where geographically the cities were. But also the air quality numbers they support this for precipitation, temperature and air quality numbers, and it's really been interesting to even have that experience on my phone and kind of, you know, see over here where I am, you know, the air quality is 200. But if I go. Up north, a little bit in Wisconsin, you know, especially when it was starting to get better, where I could see that further north, it was already, you know, back down to the 80s through. Much so I I do think there's a lot that can be explored in in these arenas, and I I look forward to what the entire industry will do. Erica: And that's I didn't know Apple had done that. That's super interesting. I'll have to play. Around with that, that's they. They're always doing some really cool stuff, I think. Kelly: I think that I mean, I think everybody is, you know, trying to solve these challenges in, in, in different ways and it's good to see all the other arenas. I know that you know, again, I worked with you on. Power BI tables and things like that. And I think that they were really moved the needle on a complicated experience. I want to jump back to the design stage, just understand the vocabulary of how you work and things. So just technically, what tools and stuff are designers using when you said like they're making these wire frames and drawing pictures and annotating and everything else, what what are some of the tools that you use to do that? Erica: So I actually learned back when I was at sad side transitioned from interaction design to product design and that's where I was exposed to a program called Sketch. And then here at Microsoft, and I believe when I was at U.S. bank as well, we used a program called Figma and Figma sketch our work. Almost identically in that you're given a a very large canvas, just a blank canvas, and you can create different components within that and they're they're called frames. Is kind of the the smaller part of the canvas that you're working with in and so. Within any of these programs, you can take. Basically someone will have have created the design system somewhere in, let's say in figma and so then as a designer I can go and grab each different component from the design system and put it onto my canvas. So I might be tasked to create a home page. And so I'll need different cards. I'll need navigation. I'll need, you know, a place for the URL to go. Like kind of just the basic stuff that that goes on a. Web page and. I can grab each of those individual components. And basically drag them into the canvas I'm working on and then that's how I'll build this home page for a website. And so they also support things like variables where, you know, I might have an active button or an active button and those will look differently. So it's really a robust. Both of them are really robust programs to create these different designs. Kelly: When you do this, and again this we're we're talking just in general, but so you drag these components all around and and make you know your wire frames and your pictures of everything. How, in general, does that get communicated, say, to other people throughout the system so they know that? You know this box needs to be this control, or especially for accessibility. You said that. The design system is ideally already picking components that are accessible. So how does that work? So that because one of the things I've always heard is is that you know, someplace we have to transfer the transform these pictures into to code. And for accessibility, we need to make sure that that transformation represents it all accurately. How does when you're picking these things and laying all this out, how does that work for accessibility like? So that a developer knows what to do. Erica: Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes we like our our design system is connected to something called storybook. And Storybook has all of the matching components. But in their, I guess like like web-based format. So if I have. A button in the design in the. Storybook. There's the. Same button that has all of the. Roles in States and properties and everything set up in that storybook. And so that's, that's probably the the most robust way to to navigate between the two. But like we worked on together when I first started a lot of times. Companies and and even we didn't have it for a long time, don't have that. Same 1:00 to 1:00. Storybook to figma relationship? And so at that point, we have to define accessibility ourselves and and at Microsoft, that's up to the designer. And so we create what are called accessibility spec. And so we we basically duplicate the design that we've created and segment, we duplicate that over to somewhere else in the same figma file and we'll draw little boxes around each different component. So let's go back to the button we. Have a submit button draw a little box around it. Number that one off. To the side, we'll have notes 4 #1. And say OK, this is a button, it has a name of submit, it has a roll of button and it's currently in an active state. And so we'll just. Write all of that in text. So when the developers get that they know OK, I have to put role equals button, I have to put Aria label equals submit and and do those things to make sure that the end result is accessible as the design intended to be. Kelly: You've mentioned even in your own career, you've kind of had different designer roles. And I realize that sometimes titles are a little bit, you know, changeable and things, but. So you said you're an accessibility designer to. Now you how many, not how many. But can you give us an idea within, let's just say a larger software company, how many different types of design roles there might be like accessibility, interaction or just some of the different kinds of types of designers? Think about software development. Erica: Yeah, yeah. So a lot of times at big companies, the kind of main type of designer you'll see is called. A product designer. And those are also often called UI UX designers and sometimes with UI being user interface and UX being user experience. Sometimes companies will also divide that out into two holes where you'll have UI designers. And UX designers and those are the ones like all of the work that I've been talking about. That's a lot of what they focus on interaction design. Varies completely company by company and sometimes they are UX designers sometimes like when I was an interaction designer, I actually worked primarily in HTML and CSS. I was mostly like a UI developer at that point, so there's a lot of overlap there. We talked earlier about content design, which they. Work within the the design system, but also the style guide of the company and they're the ones who basically write all of the text that you see in the UI and they are incredibly work with so many content content designers who just. The style guide like the back of their hand and they're able to, you know, match the voice of the the product and match the voice that the customers expect and and they're incredible. And then what I do, which is accessibility design also varies a lot company by company. I've done similar roles at other companies where. I was considered a accessibility consultant or a UX accessibility consultant, and so that's a lot of what I do now is I work one-on-one with designers and we create those accessibility specs together where we're writing the the roles and the properties and everything of these different components. And then I also focus a lot on evangelism and training and, you know, making making sure everyone feels comfortable with accessibility because it it can be very scary. So yeah, those are those are kind of the main types you'll see. And there's there's also of course, graphic design where they'll often do things like. Pillows or iconography, or just kind of, you know, basic web page design, things like that. So yeah, those are, I think, probably the types of design you'll types of designers you'll most commonly see. Kelly: So it's obviously. A lot of a lot of thought and effort goes into, you know, all aspects of this experience, not just the. The graphics, but I mean, you know, you talked about all the way down to the language and things like that. Are there examples Erica of design? I'm sure some of your work would stand out for you, but other things of design that you've kind of experienced in your software career that. You're like, you know, that's that's just impressive. Or they really knocked it out of the park with that experience or design that, you know, come to mind. Erica: Yeah. Yeah. I think like I mentioned, I worked in finance for a long time and I was at U.S. bank for a short term contract and I really admired. The way they. Did their just design strategy and they very similarly had a lot of components. Everything written out, but their designers would would meet constantly to have conversations about design and to work with accessibility consultants and to work with engineers. And it was so collaborative and. And product was, you know, I think really a lot of times intuitively for the things that I saw. Like I think I think they're doing a great job on the design end. And then separately too, just even outside of of work I play, I play a lot of video games and. I think there. Are so many cool innovations in the video game UI, both from accessibility and just kind of in in the experience itself like I've. Playing the new Zelda game on Nintendo. Switch and just the the puzzle design of the different dungeons and and the way you complete the different. Trains and challenges and everything like I think they just. Put so much. Thought and effort into. Making it fun but also challenging and I think that's that's a really hard line to walk. So I I love love good video game design too. Kelly: We'll hear a phrase sometimes called. Pixel perfect in the software industry. I guess can you really tell like you know, give us a sense of what level of detail it just jumps out at you like, you know, I'll hear designers talk about a line being one pixel thick or two pixel thick. Or and emotionally there's sometimes a part of me that says, Wow. That you can, you know, focus at that level of detail. I just want you to at least get these high level thing of roles, correct. So and I'm I I think part of it is I I don't have that appreciation at a a. An emotional interaction level, but can you talk a little bit more about the level of preciseness and entail that it really does take to make a good design? Is it that single line thickness, double thickness that level? Erica: Sometimes, yeah. And it's funny you mentioned that because I used to. If any of my my friends from stats listen to this, they'll they'll make fun of me. But you know, we used to sit in these these pods of like 8 to 10 engineers to 1 product owner and one designer and so. They would call me over sometimes like Eric. Can you? Can you take a look at this and trying to build this this table for better data. And so I'd go and I'd take a look and I go, oh, the the margins on this are are two pixels too wide. You got to get in a little bit and they laugh and be like, how can you even see that? But when something like. A table is so. Aligned in the content that's there where even if the you know the numbers or the edges of the rows, if they're even one or two pixels off it, it makes you feel off like like something's wrong. You can't quite place what it is, but it just feels wrong. And so sometimes like. Yeah, it absolutely requires that level of detail to create that cohesive experience for the end user. For something that you know. Isn't that aligned like? You know, just kind of just a general web page. You know, if there are a lot of shopping pages, a lot of images and things kind of bopping around, it won't be as important for something like that because the user probably won't see it. So it really just depends on the kind of content and and what's going. In there but. A lot of companies they'll have in their design. They'll have the grid set up and so I think it's stats. We worked on an 8 pixel grid and so the spacing for everything was. Either 816-2432 pixels apart from each other and it was always a multiple of 8 and so that helped create that cohesive feeling of OK, all these things are supposed to be here. It feels right, it feels good because working within that grid, so sometimes, yes, sometimes it's not as important. But I I prefer a good grid. Kelly: I'm old enough that you know, and when I went to school my formal college degree was in journalism and there was always a phrase back then that you wanted to get your story to be quote above the fold, you know, in a printed newspaper. That's when you know, you kind of. Hit it if you could get something not only on the front page, but. Above the fold. I know that in the software business, again one of those things that I hear a lot, but. You know, I don't experience it because of how I, you know, interact, but a lot of time and effort is kind of put into drawing people's attention to certain areas. You talk a little bit of more about that. Like, you know, you might have a screen, that's whatever, you know, 25 inch screen or whatever size even on the phone. I mean, what are some of the techniques or tricks or not? Or how do you get people to look at a certain area or draw their attention to where you want, not where necessarily they're inclined to look or what? Just talk a little bit more if you can about how that all works. Erica: Yeah, yeah, I. Think it's a good balance, and of course we use above the fold to. Mean anything that? That you can see on, you know, I guess, like a standard resolution screen without having to scroll. And so we're like, OK, we need to get all of this, this good content above the fold and and anything else can fall below. That's fine. But I think it's a. The balance of using components and using layouts that a user expects, so you know navigation should should be at the top end. You know, then you have your your main content in the center and you might have some supplementary content on on either side and you know, like a a column format. I think that's important just to kind of set user expectations and then the things you draw attention to a lot of times will just be entirely in the styling, so. You know, using a different color to call something out. There's a clothing website that I was just. On that, you know, all of their main colors for the site are beige and brown and black and Gray and just very neutral. And they might use a blue or red to call out a sale, and so that just different color that you don't expect to see is immediately going to draw your eye something with a larger font size than all the other content on the page. That's where. It's going to draw your eye. And so you're also generally reading from left to right, top to bottom, and so putting the things that you really want users to see in the top left is going to have way more impact and actually grab those user attention than something that's in the bottom right of the page. So I think it's just all these different techniques of use what's expected, but then also subvert those expectations in order to draw attention there. Kelly: And I think for accessibility, that's why if you talk to people with disabilities often, especially screen readers, we'll talk about the closest equivalent. We kind of have and is using effective heading structure and things because we don't want to read through the whole web page either. Erica: Do you want to skim it? Kelly: You know. Before I asked my last couple of questions, I want to get to a couple of really important questions that we haven't covered. Erica that I got to have your answers on. So you mentioned you're from Chicago Cubs or Sox I? Erica: OK, I am in a in a a mixed family. We have both Cubs and Sox fans. I am primarily myself, a Sox fan. Kelly: Wow, OK. Erica: It was OK, to be fair, I. Mostly from from the north side, but you can see a Sox game for like 15 bucks. So I was always at Sox games. Kelly: Definitely cheaper than afternoon at Wrigley. But I I remember the. So it's funny when we talked about Cubs or Sox again back in the 80s. You know, there was like 3 super stations when Cable first came out and used to watch Cubs cub games from Wrigley Field and all the Kerry Kerry like to have a few beers. I think during this broadcast the Cub Games. Erica: Cubs games are fun. They're fun to go to. I've been to a few but. I gotta I gotta. Wrap my socks. Kelly: That's funny, because right. I mean, I'm from Wisconsin and the Brewers fan and used to be a obviously, we've always had a rivalry in Chicago. It used to be the White Sox when the Brewers were in the American League, then they moved over to the National League, and now it's the Cubs all the time. Alright, well, so we got urine. Erica: And I I think that. Kelly: So I'm one of those. Oh, go ahead. Erica: No, I was going to say I've. Been to I've been to a Cubs Brewers game and you. You feel that rivalry, you. You you feel. The heat while you're there. Kelly: Oh yeah, no, it's one of the reasons I do enjoy live sporting events. There's just, you know, there's an energy in the crowd. Most of the rivalries are good and people just have a good time with each other. And that energy, you know, when it's really going on is it's just exciting. The same reason why I enjoy live music. Erica: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Kelly: All right, my other Chicago question for you. Best pizza. Erica: Oh man, I so I am a terrible Chicagoan. I do not like Chicago deep dish pizza, I think. It's it's too wet. It's like a a cheese soup. So I actually like a lot of the it's too much. I do like, I like Giordano's in general just for like their their Tavern style pizzas. Kelly: Yeah, now you're talking. Erica: They're probably my favorite. Yeah, they're my favorite Tavern style, but up in Wrigley, so across from Wrigley Field, there's a concert venue called the The Metro. And so I've. And hundreds of shows at the Metro and next to the Metro is this little pizza place called Big G's. And they have these giant slices, like definitely bigger than, like at least my head made my whole upper body and they do all of these fun, different flavors. They had a tortellini pizza. They have a great Mac and cheese. So they're actually my favorite place to go. Kelly: See, that's why I asked these kind of questions because you always find the answer that's not the standard, you know, Lumo, Notis or Giordano's. You learn about something new because now I've got another place to check out. The next time I go to Chicago. Erica: Yes, big G's. And also if you're in a place that has a demos, demos is also very good. Kelly: Erica well, thanks for those tips on Chicago. When you know, you obviously have learned a lot about accessibility. Are there any tips you would give you know people that are coming to the software industry when maybe they're encountering folks that are less familiar? Familiar with accessibility then yourself. About how accessibility issues or experiences or desired outcomes can be most effectively communicated so that people kind of. Get a sense of what you're trying to convey without having to, you know, give them a PhD on accessibility. Erica: Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, the the biggest thing is you and I have talked a lot at Microsoft about about equity and and parity and I think that's really the biggest thing. And the thing that I try to convey to people who aren't necessarily doing the the nitty gritty tactical stuff, but thinking more about accessibility as a concept. Is, you know it, whatever experience you're having, whether you're disabled or not. You also have to be empathetic and think about the experiences of people who are who have different disabilities and who don't have the same experience that you're having. And so if if you're able to see something on the page, what does it mean to hear the audio of that same thing? What does it mean to? You know, if you are not color blind and you see all these different colors on the page, how is that information communicated to someone who cannot perceive those colors? And so just kind of that thinking about that equitable experience and the different parts and. Of that, and then also to I mean like I mentioned accessibility is there's so many different details and and things to memorize and things to research and things. To know and something that I try to work out. With people a lot with is. I don't want it to be scary. I don't want it to feel that overwhelming and that you know. Oh, there's too much to do. I can't do it. I don't know this because at the end of the day, what we want is progress. We want to make it better than it was before you got there. It's not going. To be perfect, it's, you know, we're trying to to meet all these different guidelines or requirements and laws and legal standards. At the end of the day, just can you make it better? That's all we're looking for. So, yeah, I think it's it's a great field to be in. It's super fascinating, but it's it's a lot of work. And so I just want, I want people to know that it doesn't have to be scary. It's just. Yeah, do your best. Kelly: Before I let you go, Erica, let me ask you, are there other things you were hoping to convey to folks that I haven't asked you about or any sort of last thoughts you have before I come back with maybe one final question or two? Erica: No, I think I think you've covered a lot of it. You know I. I love working accessibility and I love working in design. I love working with designers and so you know, I just want to express my gratitude to all of the the wonderful people gotten to work with, who have helped me along in my career and and taught me so much. And you know, that's a huge thing, is just just talking to people just, you know. Learning about their experiences and you know what? How they're living their lives and how it's different from yours. I think it's. Super important when design and accessibility just to to have that background from other people to work with. I think that's great. Kelly: You just mentioned learning any any favorite websites, books and knowledge sources. That and and there may not be because often it changes but any go to resources you like to use for excessive. Erica: Yeah, I definitely always recommend accessibility for everyone by Laura Kolberg. It's a book that I bought when I was first starting to learn accessibility and the way she covers all of the different, you know, ways to think about it and including design and and all of that I think is just incredible. And and then I like a lot of DQS trainings. I think they they cover a lot of good parts about accessibility for designers, accessibility for engineers, accessibility in general. I think they have a lot of great resources. And then otherwise I just. Try to to keep up on WIC hag and Section 508 and thought dates there. And that's really like my my baseline for what's expected because they have understanding docs and everything. I think they're they're great and super thorough and kind of match everyone's expectations. So I generally try to stick with what, what wiki. Those two. Kelly: Erica, I've, you know, you started out by teaching me a few more things about yourself, and I've learned a lot more along the way. I want to thank you immensely for sharing your time with me and our podcast listeners. I found this again fascinating to learn. More about even though I've, you know, I've worked in the field just to really get a chance to ask, you know, how does some of that magic happen on the design side and? I really think until I worked in the software business, I didn't have even my own sense of what really happens. You know, to make software at some levels and you've, you know, firmed up that knowledge again or allowed me to share it with listener. So I can't thank you enough for you spending your time with me and. You know, I've told you this in person. When we worked together. For the work and education and just approachable Ness, you've brought to the accessibility space. It's always great to work with you and catch up with you. Erica: Thank you. Yeah, and thank you so much for having me. This was great. It was great to talk to you again. We we really miss you on on on Power BI and Microsoft. So yeah, thanks for having me. And and let me get to talk about this stuff. It's my favorite thing to talk about. So I really appreciate it. Kelly: Well, thank you, Erica, and thank you everyone for listening to this edition of the podcast to be named later.