E094 – Interview with Devon Persing – Part 1

Devon Persing tells us that the compliance model doesn't capture the whole picture of accessibility. And it feels like a separate thing from design/dev work. Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the accessibility rules podcast. This is episode 94. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's transcript, head out to the podcast website, https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Gatsby for sponsoring this episode. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Nic: This week I'm speaking with Devon Persing. Devon, thanks for joining me in this conversation around web accessibility. Devon: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's good to chat. It's been a while. Nic: You may know this by now, but I like to let guests introduce themselves. So in a brief elevator style pitch introduction, who's Devin Persing? Devon: Good question. Mostly I do accessibility work at Shopify. I also help run the accessibility meetup community in Seattle. And I also teach a workshop, at a place called the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle to, mostly UX certificate students but also members of the public, whoever comes in. So I do like teaching and a lot of training and a real lot of documentation these days. Nic: Documentation. Documentation about what? Devon: Well, something I've been trying to dig into more is trying to teach teams having to do with accessibility work. And I think a lot of accessibility education has focused around roles. What are designers supposed to do, what are devs supposed to do? And I think what then happens is we teach people stuff and then they don't know what to do with it in relation to their teammates and their projects. So one of the things I've been trying to focus on this year is just trying to bridge that gap, which is tricky because teams all work differently. But figuring out ways to kind of fit best practices or accessibility into teams, workflows, their rituals, their processes so it feels less like a discipline specific thing and more of a thing that everyone on a team is responsible for. Nic: Cool. Devon: So I ended up writing a lot of like Wiki type documentation or articles that I have been working on are more about doing daily work versus getting people on board. Nic: That sounds really cool, actually. It's funny, I'm a bit of a documentation geek. I love good documentation. And it sounds like you're doing that. Is it going to be something that's portable or really more Shopify oriented? Devon: I think portable. So a lot of it comes from work that has come from years of consulting. My colleague Scott Vinkle and I, who you also know, we do a lot of collaboration on training and teaching. And so a lot of the documentation we have has either been things we've made internally or things that have come from other workshops or programs we've done. So the information isn't new. It's more about just kind of packaging it in different ways for teams to learn about it when it makes sense, but also to try to adapt to different learning styles. A lot of it's written at this point, but we're also working on doing more video and doing other things that are more interactive, which is also nice teaching at SVC because I get to sort of try new material on people a few times a year and then bring it back into other teaching I do interna