Raghavendra Satish Peri on the A11Y Insights Podcast
In the latest episode of A11Y Insights by Venngage, Raghavendra Satish Peri discusses his journey in the digital accessibility world. Raghavendra shares how his dedication to accessibility has shaped his work and offers invaluable insights into what it truly takes to make digital spaces usable for everyone.
This episode delves into the evolving role of AI in accessibility testing, the balance between compliance and true usability, and the actionable steps organizations can take to embed accessibility into their design and development processes right from the start.
Video Transcript
Welcome to Accessibility Insights today we have a special guest Ragha from DigitalAllYWelcome to the podcast Ragha
Thank you Eugene.
It’s a pleasure to have you here and for those of you who don’t know Ragha is the founder of DigitalA11Y. It’s a company and also a website with lots and lots of resources for digital accessibility, so yeah it’s a pleasure. I’ve been following you know, your work for a while and you know DigitalAllY is very well known in the space for being a great resource for those who are interested in learning more about digital accessibilities, in all things digital accessibilities
So maybe we can start a little bit about telling about you know, you giving us a little bit of how you got started in your journey into digital accessibility
So it’s a long story I forgot, I’m blind now, I’m 100% blind but back then when I was low vision in 2006 I was rejected from job and then all the corporate companies because I’m low vision and they don’t know about anything about screen readers back then and they don’t know about magnifiers and they said we don’t have accommodations, we need to talk to the diversity team and I don’t know what to do so. I was trying to find a job and couldn’t and I was graduating in few months. I was hanging out with one of my friends and he was building website back then and he said with Google AdSense you can make money. So I could home I started learning a Microsoft front page and I said okay I know now to make website, how do I get money. And he said no you need to host the website you need to do SEO, I came home started learning that and during this process a lot of things happened and one of the thing was that we collaborated with another web designer back then and we started selling the templates that we built.
And one particular UK based education organization came to us and said we need a 10-page website, we built it and while before the delivery they said is it accessible and we did not even know the word accessibility back then. It was the end of 2006 early 2007 Jan FeB time and I said okay let’s Google it again we with it we said okay we we should not use layout tables you should use alte text okay, headings we did very basic stuff very very basic stuff because we built it in my Microsoft front page and dream viewer were very good tools back then to do the static websites. We did very basic stuff, the client was happy, that’s when I first started with accessibility and then I started working on my own websites and digital platforms for the next 3-4 years. Drastically I became blind over a period of time, my eyesight started diminishing and I couldn’t manage my website servers and all that, so I said I need a job now, I need a real job and I went and retrained myself in learning screen reader, using the white cane, traveling alone and all the skills and that’s when I landed in IBM handling main frames operations but no it’s not interesting for me but during another event I’ve I was very active in the startup community and Technology circles, I went for a design thinking event where I met another fellow IBMer who said he’s part of the user experience team and he’s looking for someone to work in accessibility space and we got introduced on Friday and Monday I got introduced to his manager and I got hired in the accessibility team over there. So that’s the story
That’s wow that’s a really really good story so it’s a mix it’s really interesting to hear it’s a mix between your own personal experience and also your entrepreneurism and your you know when did you start DigitalA11Y and you know kind of went all into your own business.
So I was with IBM close to five years and I quit IBM, I moved to my city, I want to live with my parents before I leave the country because then I got an opportunity to work with Deque systems then when I joined Deque I was with Deque for seven years but DigitalA11Y domain I bought it in like about 10-11 years back and because I have a lot of domains you need to understand I come from that SEO and affiliate background back then so I used to any domain that I like I buy them so I hoarded I hoarded like you know hundreds of domains back then and having onepage websites or you know running ads on them. So my first love even if you ask someone as I’d say it’s digital marketing okay it’s all about design, user behavior, color psychology all this is fascinating for me because you know you this is where I used to live in that world. I bought the domain I kept it I wrote like you know three four articles I just left it uh back in 2018-19, early 2019 during a regular scan Health checkup they told that my kidneys are at 10% and I don’t know what to do I was on my job then I said okay. I started writing because in 2006 initially when I got started in web design and developments part I regularly started blogging I said I need to get back to blogging and I started writing both on my personal blog. I own a personal blog and I thought okay I have DigitalAllY let’s build this I and see so what I did is I started writing whatever I learned in accessibility in the simplified because understanding wcag guidelines were very difficult for me when I got started I said I’ll simplify in the language that I understood and me and another friend we both started writing and he used to curate and edit my content like he used to proof read and do that and it started growing since then and the full all in.
I went about three years back in 2021 I got through in a kidney transplant then I said okay I need break from the corporate life and now I do a lot of contract work and freelance work okay yeah and you’ve got you know as as you mentioned you’ve got lots and lots of experience you know both personally and also working with companies.
what are some of the most common accessory mistakes you see companies you know especially the bigger ones uh what do they make I mean obviously you don’t have to name names or anything but what are some of the common mistakes uh that companies make when it comes to digital accessibility now it is more mature uh back then you know all text is one color contrast is one and focus focus and reading order are huge huge red flags back then I’m talking about you know 10 years back even six years back also now it is more mature because the amount of tools that we have is uh a more robust I would say and the awareness and testing methodology has evolved now it’s easy to find good tutorials on how to perform an accessibility testing and uh record issues failures all that right back then there’s very little information the only resource that I know back then that is more robust and you know uh easy to understand and digestible is webbing what do I mean right yeah agree yeah they have great content and yeah 20 when I got started in 2011 2012 2013 fulltime uh virtually I used to live on web aim yeah I’ve met I’ve met some of the web aim guys they’re they’re they’re great yeah I’ve met them in a conference last year um so you spoke a little bit about the maturity of tools um and how things have changed now so we still see a lot of companies I mean despite despite the fact I yes it’s moved a lot I think webing does this you know survey or or research every every year and and they take like the top one million S I forget what is it the top one million one million yeah more than one million and it’s still still you know simple things like you said even the alt Tex and proper um it’s still a shocking amount of people fa I don’t remember the amount for Altex but it’s it’s still you know I want to say it’s May it’s definitely you know around maybe 30 to 50% still fails the Altex uh thing so there I think we’ve made great progress but there’s still a long way to go um and and obviously you know you you in in the Forefront of this uh how do you so tell us a little bit about how does digital Li help companies or organizations you know become more accessible so maybe speak a little bit about like the stuff U the services that you provide and and and the problems that you solve for uh for companies and organizations we do a lot of audits uh accessibility audits we do Consulting work where I know uh after an audit we spent a lot of time with the development and design teams uh with regard to how we can refactor or you know redesign that same widget in a simple experience uh because uh being someone uh with lived experience and uh when we do user testing we find a lot of things that are not see there’s a huge difference between what is compliant accessible conformant and usable and during my career I found a lot of things oh this is accessible it’s it passes wcag yeah it passes WC but it is not usable you know for me to find that button if it takes like 10 15 minutes if it it is not accessible for me so what’s the so so you bring a great Point yeah uh like being compliant is one thing and actually the usability is a different thing you know it could be it could it could check pass all the checkers all the especially all the automatic Checkers but once you expose it to real um real users with disabilities it fails right and and so what is your testing kind of a process look like how do you help companies test and how do you test you know internally you know when when you have a client yeah oh we have a run testing methodology uh what we do is we run it through keyboard then we run it through screen Readers first anyhow we run it with automation tool so we use both wave and we use a okay yeah yeah because those two are very well known in the industry just to see if the false positives and potentially violations uh sometimes we do use IBM equal accessibility toolkit to see how any issues that particular rule set is throwing then we run through manual audits a lot of manual work uh so one of thing that we realize is testing is easy after you you spent a lot of time you you know and doing accessibility auditing of websites audit is come second to none because like in if you’re if you’re taking checkpoints let’s just say in wcag you have like in till 2.2 you have 56 right now but uh On Any Given web page if there’s no video you have to remove all the five checkpoints of the video 1.2.1 to 2.5 because there’s no audio 1.4.2 also goes away so like in in in your mind’s eye I can see which all checkpoints are not valid anymore you have all these other checkpoints so you tab you shift Tab and and when you use screen data you use browse mode forms mode and you see if everything is working with the forms have labels all text and the errors are there the name rle value is proper because these are all the basic things and uh once we do all this we do record we have our own uh you know tool that uh to Auto how we report accessibility failures and uh we have own issue description library that we wrote and we use that and Report issues generally use Excel sheet uh to record issues and then we package it with an executive summary we give uh resources and other guidance so in the report okay um how about so I’m going to switch gears or not so you know we T you know we mainly covered website accessibility and you know as as you know you know I’m very involved in document accessibility um our you know vage the the the tool that we we create is mainly you know in the realm of document accessibility uh PDFs particularly um what is your experience with do maybe you know with document accessibly it seems to be a little bit more decentralized and there’s you know many many different creators using many many different tools creating you know PDFs you know not just PDFs but you know PowerPoints ex all kinds of documents and then they’re kind of all scattered everywhere uh on the website sometimes on social media um what what is your you know recommendation or or what is your experience dealing with document accessibility so my experience is more on creating documents rather than remediating so as you know you know a blind person like me cannot remediate a PDF right even in 2024 I need to rely on a cited person because the tag Tree in Adobe is not accessible and so what we do is I personally create all my doc documents in word document and I export them into PDF uh then you know I need to rely on a document remediation specialist to tell me if everything is accessible there you can do you can do everything and Export and still there might be something that goes again we come back to conformance versus usability it is readable with screen reader everything is okay but again is it does it pass the PDF pack Checker to tool no if it doesn’t then you know we need to do it that is one uh Gap that I’ve seen the other gap is uh you brought a very interesting point there so many tools you know whether it is word Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365 or you know you use figma or canva or anything you create all this uh content on all these platforms and you export either in Doc PowerPoint or PDF the major problem is uh a lot of users even the people who work with me my virtual assistant and some other uh people I know some of my design friends the developers they can get all those documents to me and when you ask about accessibility it is a huge learning for them curve there is a huge learning curve they have to LLY learn how to use the PowerPoint accessibility Checker see which one is not accessible they have to check the reading order it should be easy you know uh to upload that into a platform quickly it it gives you the tag tree how it is is it what are the accessibility failures in this particular document rearrange it and Export the P accessible wor yeah yeah To Tot totally um totally totally agree with you on that on that point I think I mean number one like it’s remediation is very very difficult because you’re addressing the problem at the end uh and as you know as as you mentioned you you need to address the problem at the start or end during the design process and having having right the right tools uh with the accessibility Checkers that can that can sort of it’s sort of like guard rails that can sort of like check check as you design so you don’t have to re design or recreate it after you’ve done after you’ve done the whole design uh which is the process right now so so I’m glad you you brought that up because that’s that is something that veng Gage is very heavily involved in and pretty and our tool you know allows you to do that right like that’s that’s the that’s the goal of it is to allow the Creator to create accessible designs from the start as opposed to relying on remediation at the end yeah that is the that should be the goal or you know you can upload the existing document and remediate it much faster right yeah yeah and and I agree with you with compliance versus uh actual screen reader experience I had a like yesterday we we had a document that we were testing and it failed the screen reader you know we were using jaws and and nvda was fine it was able to read uh and but the but the but the uh the spec the pdaa spec actually said you had to put this alt text in a hyperlink in a certain area but it doesn’t read a screen read doesn’t read it so but you had to put it there just so that it passed the PX Checker even though the screen reader never reads it so it was kind of one of those situations where you’re like yeah I’m putting it there because it’s for for packs to pass the compliance test but actually users won’t ever use it because the screen reader doesn’t read it that’s a problem yeah it’s it’s it’s I I think in those cases the I I don’t know how how the standards are written like do they consult with or whether the screen readers actually read the standards or not there seems to be a gap between screen readers and standards yeah there’s a gap you know like I when I use nvd Jaws or voice over there’s a huge gap when you come it when you use it on the web also because uh whatever is supported by one screen leader is not supported by the other or the browser or the yeah operating system so you have to really be a pro and go find which is it a really accessibility failure or is it the browser or the screen reader yeah so so which what is your preferate screen reader I mean I guess this is a personal you know kind of a personal choice do you use just one screen reader do you use several I use two I use so on mobile I use voice over I use iPhone okay and I’m not comfortable with Android if you ask me to to test yes I I’ll I’ll perform testing on Android but my day to-day I use an iPhone and uh I prefer screen is JAWS for day-to-day work but when testing uh I use NVDA for an audit okay
Why why the difference is it because NVDA is more commonly used because it’s free testing?
It’s more commonly used and just to see, so what I do is personally when I do perform testing I quickly run the page with JAWS and then I use NVDA also just to see yeah right and
Are you on on a on so I’m assuming you use a Windows computer do you ever test on a Mac just just curious?
No so when when I started uh so I got trained on so in 2008 when I started learning screen readers I got trained on JAWS then when NVDA came it was difficult for me to shift NVDA in 2013-2014 during that time NVDA was picking up very fast uh it was difficult for me. But you know slowly we moved I learned NVDA and it’s an experience there is some kind of you know I don’t know it it it maybe it is a blind thing or it is a personal experience for me and I checked with a lot of my friends who are also visually impaired and they said you know whoever gets trained on JAWS back then we still use JAWS as a primary so and I learned Voiceover. The only problem that I faced is uh back then I was not able to get a keyboard that is uh 100% keyboard and external one that fits with mac and because all the keys even today I use external keyboard I cannot use a laptop keyboard because my fingers are very Broad and my hands my body body structure is very broad so when I put when I use a laptop keyboard uh my wrists hurt and my fingers also hurt a lot.
That is definitely a very interesting the comment about hey whatever you train you get trained with that’s the one you end up using
Yeah I no I checked with a lot of friends in the circle and they’re like yeah we all use JAWS.
Yeah I think yeah it’s from our testing we we also test mainly with NVDA uh uh and then JAW is the secondary Jo secondary we almost you know once in a while we’ll have a user that asks us about about um about voiceover and then we’ll have to you know even though as an organization we use mac as a laptops all a lot of our testers and and we’re mainly a Mac based company uh but we are testing mainly on Windows because I think predominantly there there are a lot more windows users than mac users out there.
I agree I agree because in a lot of companies there’s everyone uses Mac uh because uh all design and development we prefer Mac
okay all right so since we’re at the we we’re we’re on the subject of screen with this I want to get your opinion on on AI have you uh I’m sure you have but but you know what is your experience with these new with the new AI tools out there you know like chat GPD for example that can you know describe a document a website or even an image quite well without it being you know compliant with with assess the standards um I think chat gbt Vision does really well they have an app as well called like be my eyes what is your experience using these you know fairly new AI tools I use them a lot the BMA AI I use it a lot uh to understand my surroundings uh I would say you know the AL T that it provides us more comprehensive than someone who a human writing it because in my experience when I ask so there are some uh a few weeks back me and my designer Monica Prasad uh we both was chatting about Ai and uh we saw the chat GPT for I said you know they provided this feature that you can upload the image and it explains and I said can be automate accessible bu your testing audit with chat GPT and we did some proof of concept and we were amazed he said you know why should I always rely on some cited person to explain how the visual aspect is I can take a screenshot give it to the AI and it explains how the nav is where the images are how many links where how the whole layout of the pages then I can perform the testing much more easier because if Let’s us say something is with CSS and did not come in my screen reader I know you know the screen reader did not read it and there’s a failure there wow that’s that’s that’s that’s amazing so you you use so you’re using it both personally the app B my eyes and also now you know at work experimenting with developing tools to help you test and do audit and S sites yes so because one one example I’ll tell you if you do resize text and Reflow uh I need to call someone and say okay uh I just mov this to 200% is there a Content that overlapped is it now can I use AI I take a screenshot give it to it and ask ask the chat G Vision to explain it and then in the followup prompt I can ask is there a Content that overlaps is there content that is lo and Chad gives you the right answer like do you how do you know dig it does okay it it it does uh there see I’m not saying it is perfect but it moves the needle significantly in my favor that you know maybe I’ll I’ll do 80% accurate I don’t have to wait for a site assist half day so that the site assist Works finishes their part of the accessibility audit comes to me and starts helping okay yeah let’s yeah let’s just put it this way you know the form Fields just have color there’s no text errors. I think Chatgpt Vision can explain it which color the form field is in then I know that there is a use of color over there
Got it got it that’s that’s uh that’s that is refreshing we hear very anti maybe anti is a strong word but anti- AI they they and and and they’re mainly sighted you know I would assume sighted users uh uh who really just have a negative I I guess perception of AI in general uh when when and but but uh but then again there are also people who use it you know people who are blind, people who have low vision who actually use Ai and they’re very you know the the feedback I get is that it’s really helpful uh they don’t have to rely on a human and yeah do do you find do you have you talked to people who are kind of how do you change someone’s mind when they’re like very anti or they have like a very negative perception of AI
I don’t change I so it’s all about you know we there’s a lot of talk. I run one of the largest accessibility Community here in India and we do meetups uh locally we meet for lunches we do meet for some snacks we talk we technology and notes on accessibility and all lot of stuff and everyone is like Will AI take AI take our jobs will AI take our jobs and I said there’s one one interesting thing you know if if AI takes accessibility jobs it will be the sighted jobs. Someone has to do the end user testing so we’ll be in the business still
That’s a good point very good
So I said don’t worry that is one and and there are people you know who don’t use any of these tools uh I use Chatgpt a lot like even for generating code, preparing tools, uh experimenting and it works very good for me like you know depending on how you prompt it it can write even accessible code to an extent like it it it it moves you the needle from 0 to 80/0 to 90 and you you need a real developer to get that last leg moving.
Yeah that’s that’s a that’s a good way of putting it, it’s it’s definitely 0-80 and 0-90 for for many for many many I would say at least basic task for sure sometimes it’s it’s zero you know sometimes it’s 0 to 99 for for a lot for like very basic tasks. I use chat GPT almost daily as well I don’t I don’t write code anymore I used to. But uh actually I use it to write database query so so I guess that’s some sort of code to query our database I don’t write it myself anymore I just get Chatgpt to write it it’s much easier
See the most used for us is, I used to rely earlier on you know human editors when I write content and it it used to take time. Now you give it to chatgpt in say correct English use, American tone or you know just I just say keep my writing style and just correct grammar and send because English is not our first language. While we speak English in India, we learned everything we we did all our education in English there’s always the difference and how communication in the East and the West is very different.
Yeah
It is it is a lot to do with culture also
Yes and and it’s great that yeah you go ahead sorry
No in that case chat it is great because it it it just bridges that gap right now. English is not going to be a barrier for a lot of them who are coming-upcoming from this side of the world.
I I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone said that yeah Chatgpt is helping bridge the gap between cultures, but you’re right now that you put it in context it’s it’s uh it helps, it definitely helps non-native speakers someone who doesn’t have a good grasp of of of let’s say English and if they want to communicate and we do that so you know we even in our company we have a lot of employees where English is not their first language and yeah and and we communicate mainly through written now, we’re a remote company everyone is writing no we we barely we do have meetings but we try not to have a lot of meetings because it takes up a lot of time and so most communication is written now so yeah I and I and I agree. I use I use Chatgpt to create content as well to correct my grammar and and very similar I grew up in Malaysia you know a British former British colony and and so definitely learn English to start but yeah there are some cultural differences and also some differences in the in the words you use and all that so yes.
Digital assessibility let’s you know the AI topic is great but I think digital accessibility if if I were a new organization so not a new, I was an organization new to digital accessibility right like you know for whatever reason I I you know did not take it seriously um what are some of the Practical steps I I could do ; how would you what would you suggest you know uh for someone or for an organization that’s new to digital accessity ; what are some of the small what like basic small starting steps they can take?
It depends on who is driving this in the organization first. Is it coming from the top, is it in the middle, is it someone in the lower end of the tier who is driving digital accessibility because we have seen all all kinds in my career uh someone who is driving it in the top what they do is they are focused on bringing in policy changes they bring in the uh you know building the core working groups then they appoint the leads for those core working groups who drive the initiatives. When it comes to the middle it’s always have been the product managers because compliance has become one part of their uh what do you call, I wouldn’t say job also it is something that they care for some people really care for accessibility on and inclusion. So either they learned it here or they learned it somewhere else uh I met some product managers who want to drive this well in an organization accessibility and inclusion is not really uh it’s an afterthought these product managers and program managers or leaders in the middle they drive it as a personal this thing and the lower tier what happens is there this employees with disabilities or Advocates of people with disability and accessibility they drive the initiatives. But I in my experience I have seen without the blessing from the top it doesn’t work because what happens is, the groups, you can take product managers developers designers uh they take accessibility like a developer what they do they run automation testing on every code that they write they output accessible code as much as they can and they try to teach uh their fellow peers who might not or might not follow again same with the design teams. But what happens is when these people leave or when you they move out of the organization that particular accessibility initiative doesn’t exist anymore. And we have seen this classic examples you know where the app is very accessible and the next major update after a year the app is not accessible at all. Why is it? Because the team that used to work on this app is doesn’t work anymore in that organization.
Yeah that’s
If you have if you have to start somewhere I would say you know you need to get the policies you need to get the right awareness sessions disability and uh sensitization empathy Labs then you need to create awareness then you need to do buddy system with disabled people they need to spend time with disabled people it’s not just like you know how I spent one hour with a blind person a motor disabled person it doesn’t work. You need to understand the personality what they like what they don’t like what they different people with disabilities of different personalities again you know you can’t say you know oh one person with blindness said this is good for us no. And then you do the design thinking you go back to the board then the tools audits all these will come into the place.
So so the it has to come from the top and I I think I agree I definitely agree with you on that as well it’s and I and and getting buying from upper management from the top is very very difficult do you; when when when people who are not who are lower sort of like at the more junior level come to your come to DigitalA11Y and say hey we want to make this product do you do you advise them to make sure they get buy in from upper management before you continue like is that part of or like how does because that is usually like a big a barrier too right like they you can have the person like a product manager or even a developer who really who know who has learned about necessity they’re kind of excited they want to do the right thing but they don’t necessarily have upper management blessing or budget and then and then they’re trying to do all these things and and we’ve seen it too uh and and and sometimes I wish I would like we you know we you know instead of just helping them and knowing that hey they probably won’t get very far maybe we could help them maneuver maneuver upstream to get some blessings from upper management.
We can do as much there’s a you know someone I come from an entrepreneur background so I have seen both sides correct you know you want to we all learned Lean Startup moving agile and all that you have to ship the product first because one of the lesson that you know in my entrepreneur circles they tell is the business exists then all the ideas will exist. You can do all these changes if you have the budget to pay your salaries for next month you know your server cost for next month. So they say you move first launching the product iterating it with because accessibility, for me personally in my experience uh accessibility is hard. You do it from start, you do it from the design phase it takes time to implement accessibility and when you do it retro like after you do it after you build something it’s much harder, very very harder to do development changes back in the product and uh that’s one reason that you know a lot of people because it’s a significant cost you do it from start it’s a cost but you know you avoid a lot of retro cost on that
Yeah a lot of rework yeah 100% agree agree with you there okay
And accessibility is hard you need to learn first it is hard you need to learn understand the success criteria you need to know the best practices you need to know which you know react components are accessible or which tool components are whether they have the right accessible calendar widget that works across the platform not there’s lot of things that goes in it.
Agreed it’s very very hard I think that’s why a lot of organizations struggle with with it it’s because it’s not a it’s not easy to do right it’s something that’s very and a lot of standard tools and you bring up you know a good point like like the calendar tools or even Form Tools even the most popular ones are not accessible like I I mean I I I see that all the time yeah yeah. So even big big companies that have been around for 20 years their products and they’re used by millions and millions of people their products are not accessible so
I agree
Yeah all right um we are almost at at the end is there anything any other questions I should have asked you that I didn’t
No I think it’s a good conversation we had so
Very very cool and yeah okay so I’m gonna uh kind of tell people how they can get in touch with you if they need help, how they get in touch with you or with your DigitalA11Y if they want if they need help with digital accessibility or if they have any questions yeah just tell our audience how can they get in touch with you.
Oh uh I’m very active on LinkedIn and my email is [email protected]
Yeah thank you very much Ragha really appreciate this
Thank you Eugene
This was great great thank you [Music]
If you’re passionate about creating inclusive digital experiences, this conversation is essential listening. Tune in to learn how accessibility is transforming and how we can make the digital world better for all.
