Laura Silva is the VP of Accessible UX Design at Bank of America and shares with us what a day in her life looks like. Her background wasn’t always rooted in accessibility, but after a few life events, she felt inclined to help those who are often forgotten.
In this episode, you’ll learn how you can look out for those with different accessibility needs, whether they be physical or mental, temporal or permanent.
We also get to answer a few questions that come in from the audience, which contributed to a great episode.
*This episode of Designed Today was recorded a couple of months back in front of a live virtual audience in association with Product Hive.*
Find Laura:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lausilvah/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurasilvah/
Resources:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
https://www.a11yproject.com/checklist/
https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
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Dillon Winspear (00:00:00):
Welcome back. You’re listening to Episode 95 of Design today. I’m your host Dillon Winspear, and my mission is to help you improve your UX game from beginning to end. Whether you’re fresh out of school or five years in, my goal is to help you figure out the next steps to excel in your career. Today’s episode features a new friend of mine, Laura Silva. And part of what makes today’s episode a little bit more unique is that this episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience a couple of months back. This unique opportunity that allowed us to field some questions that were submitted, and do a fun little Q&A session at the end of the episode. So stay tuned for that. Before we get into the episode, I just wanted to take a moment and pause with where we are at. Episode 95! We are five episodes away from hitting one of the biggest milestones that I never set out to even hit. Episode 100 will launch on December 1st. And I wanted to sneak and tell you that I am planning something big. I want to have some sort of big celebration for all those who’ve been a part of this journey, and for you the listeners who have tuned in, and even for a few of you who have been here from the beginning almost two and a half years ago. Thank you so much, your support means the world to me. Everything that you do, you know the simple things like you know, liking an episode or commenting on an episode, sharing it, rating it, reviewing it, it warms my heart and it means a lot. Now to my guest, Laura is the VP of accessibility at Bank of America. And today, she’s going to share so many great thoughts and insights on accessibility, and how you can design a better world for people who are just flat out often forgotten. Laura is also a huge advocate for diversity and human rights. Her Instagram account is a great follow. And she is someone who I’m proud to say that I’m associated with. So without further ado, let’s get into this episode of Design today. Massive thank you to Laura, for joining us on this episode.
Laura Silva (00:02:09):
Hello.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:12):
Hi Laura. So what people need to know before we get into this episode is that you and I have actually been talking for a couple months. This has been a long time coming for both of us. So, kind of how the story worked out is; I heard Laura’s name or saw Laura’s name the first time right around the George Floyd protests. And she had posted a couple things on LinkedIn, one of the many things that she’s had that’s gone viral over the last few months. And after reading some for comments, I was like this is a person who I absolutely need to talk with. And she was inundated with messages at that time. And fortunately, she somehow found mine in her inbox and got back to me. And you know, we’ve exchanged a handful of messages. She agreed to do a podcast recording with me. We were going to do that about, was it a month or so ago? Yeah. And then long story short, David Shawntel approached and said, hey, can we turn this into a product type event? And you know, absolutely, Laura was kind enough to do that. And here we are today. So before we get into everything, Laura, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself for the people who have not become familiar with you yet. And I want you to share a little bit about your background and how you became passionate about accessibility.
Laura Silva (00:03:34):
Yeah, all right. So Hello, everyone. My name is Laura Silva. I am originally from Bogota, Colombia. But I’ve been in United States for a long time. I call this country my home. And I got into design by way of my university. I am a graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design. And I graduated with a bachelor’s in writing, so I’m actually a writer, like my diploma, it says writing. But that’s a beautiful design, right? You don’t really need to go to school to be a designer, I think we are all designers in our own little ways all the time. And I currently work for Bank of America, I am their vice president of accessibility UX design lead, a very long title. And pretty much what I do is, you know, work with different themes to make sure that their designs and their approach to design is accessible for people that have you know, cognitive, hearing, mobility disabilities, or people who might not have an access in some way. And this is something that I get into it a couple of years back. I and my dad, we became paraplegic, and that’s how I realized that this was the space in and of itself. I think we are aware that there are people that have limitations, but I think designers are not aware of how we sometimes are the cause of the of that innovation. And so, what I have dedicated my career so far is to become a bridge in technology and people and have people actually embrace the technology and have the technology adapt to the people rather than the people adapting to it. And that’s kind of the work that I do at the bank. And I did it back at Amazon, I’m in the search team, Royal College, and now I’m here. And it’s been, you know, quite an experience going from a shopping site, like I’m going to a bank. And, you know, going from just focusing on Amazon search to now focusing on the entirety of customer experience over the bank. So, it’s been growth, you know, for sure.
Dillon Winspear (00:06:21):
So when did your dad become a paraplegic? In all the conversations that we had, I did not know that.
Laura Silva (00:06:26):
Yeah. In 2016.
Dillon Winspear (00:06:34):
Okay. So you were already involved in the accessibility world at that point, right?
Laura Silva (00:06:38):
No, no, I was in the UX. Yeah, I wasn’t the UX at that point. And then when he became paraplegic, my brother and I had to start learning about what that meant, and what his situations were. And, you know, I flew home to Florida, then apparently, and have to buy a different special bed and change the bathroom and move things out of the way and pick up a carpet for his wheelchair. So we had to actually start learning about the experience and then I started realizing that it’s more than just the extreme. We think about blind people, people buying the pleasure of going wheelchairs. And that’s all that we realized that accessibility is, but then I realized that accessibility is good design. Like #00:07:37#, for example, for me, I still use subtitles for every single thing that I watch. And not just because English is not my first language, but because they’re just accent that I don’t understand. Or sometimes I just want to eat chips on the couch and the sound, let me hear you know what I’m saying? So that’s an accessibility guideline, if it’s subtitles, but I use it. And so many other people use it to learn different languages. That’s how I learned English, for example, using a caption. So, you know, I start realizing that accessibility was more than just ABA guidelines, or you know, what we think about it, color contrast, it’s more than that. It is understanding the differences and the intersectionality of our customers and knowing that not everybody is at the same level, you know, and not everybody understand tech the same way. Not everybody understands the pattern the same way and that’s how I hadn’t, pretty much.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:45):
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But again, part of the story that I was not familiar with, thank you for sharing that. How did you find yourself in a role with Bank of America? I mean, Bank of America is a company that everyone’s going to recognize. But how did you find yourself in a VP position with them so quickly and early in your career?
Laura Silva (00:09:04):
Hard work. There’s nothing luck about it, it’s definitely not a shred of luck. You just work, you know, I met my senior manager at a conference called Afro Tech, which is a conference for black people in tech that has happened already three times in San Francisco and last year was in Auckland, and I was working for Amazon at that time. And I approached Bank of America, their booth, and I started talking to them, and I ended up talking to the person by chance. Now, I call it by chance-, to quit now my senior manager and a black man that you know, understand that things are not always designed for everybody, just by the nature of history in and of itself. I didn’t have to explain to him why making things accessible for people was a necessity. You know, just him being in his position, understand then also, but being a black man, he feels it. So that’s kind of how I got it. And then they approached me and said, well, do you want to work in the space? And I said, okay.
Dillon Winspear (00:10:32):
Well, as you and I’ve been preparing for this conversation, we talked a lot about how-. Well actually, this was something that came up in our very first conversation you said and shared with me that you feel like your success in this industry in such a short period of time, is because of your unique characteristics. Do you mind jumping into a little bit and sharing what that actually means?
Laura Silva (00:10:55):
Yeah, so you know, a lot of people use our differences with the phrase, in spite of, and I see it is because that’s how I approach my life. Like, I wouldn’t be in a disability, if it wasn’t because I am a person who understand that not everybody speaks English. And I wouldn’t be in design, in the diversity and inclusion aspect of design. If it wasn’t because I am a black woman, if it wasn’t because I am a dreamer, I’m a DACA recipient. If it wasn’t because, I wouldn’t be in this space. Not in spite of, it’s because of and I think I’m proud of my roots, I’m proud of all the work that I’ve done to get to this place, I’m proud of the fact that I can now you know, that there is someone out there that can point to me and said, hey, there’s a VP at a bank that has an accent, you know, or there’s Vp in a bank that use her natural hair, wears hoops. There’s a VP at a been a bank that has piercings and tattoos, and she’s Colombian, and she has the same color of skin as I do. That’s why I’m doing this because I don’t want the next generation to look at this space of design and see it as a just wider male. I want to see who they are and understand that it is because of who they are, that they belong in this space, that this space was maybe not made for them. But it is changing, and it’s shifting to include them and whatever space they don’t feel welcome, they can then just go on do their own space. That’s kind of why I want people to realize that it is because of who I am, that I am in this place that I am.
Dillon Winspear (00:13:05):
Do you feel like you’ve always had that mindset? I mean, because for a lot of people that are listening, that are going to find themselves, you know, on the fringe, maybe they’re a minority in some aspect or another, I think it is going to become really natural to say like, no, I’ve got an uphill battle, I’ve got to accomplish these things because of but you’ve taken this attitude of, in spite of, or I’m sorry, I flipped that around. People are going to think that in spite of I’ve got this uphill battle and you flip that around and said, what’s because of? Have you always had that mindset or how can someone develop that mindset?
Laura Silva (00:13:37):
I grew up in Bogota, Colombia. Bogota is the capital of Colombia and Bogota, if anybody has ever been-. Bogota is like Utah, Bogota is like Wisconsin, Bogota is like Seattle, Bogota is like middle of America. So it’s cold anyway, and I’m not that. So I grew up knowing that very clearly knowing and that I was different than the rest. My dad is black and my mum is white and the men in the middle of Colombia where there is a lot of, you know, mixed people but then they move to the capital. And besides my dad, I only saw people that look like me once a year when I went to vacation to see my grandma. So I was very aware of the fact that I look different. I went to a 3000 girls’ school and I was one of three black girls in that whole school. So it’s very hard not to notice that your skin is different or that your hair is different, and they made sure that I knew that I was different. Racism and colorism is not just an American concept, it’s a universal concept. So they make sure that you know that you’re different, and because of that, I think I had to develop a thick skin from a very early age, and I think that’s where it came from. When I got to United States, I knew that I was an immigrant. And I knew that we were here in asylum, seeking asylum. So I knew that I didn’t have the privilege of someone who was American. So from the beginning, I already understood that there were things that were going to be different, and I was 12 years old, and I didn’t speak English. So I was like, okay, that’s another difference that I know I have. So it is understanding the reality of my life that gave me kind of like the thick skin to just go about it. I don’t know how someone can develop this attitude of like, you know, goal getter, I think that comes out of hustling and surviving. And I don’t think the counter point that unless you do these things, there’s no other way, like, less I learned English, and I wasn’t going to go to college, unless I went into tech, I wasn’t going to find unless I-, you know, so it comes out of survival and need. So you know, that’s kind of the way that I can-. It’s like if somebody ever tried to learn Spanish, right? Just out of fun, you might take them maybe like a year to write. Fly to Colombia tomorrow, and live there, you pick it up in two weeks, because you have to survive. So I think that’s kind of like the attitude that I have.
Dillon Winspear (00:17:00):
Well, I would like to fly to Colombia tomorrow. I don’t think that’s going to be happening anytime soon. But one day, when that opportunity does present itself, I would like to take that opportunity. And the same thing with you, right, we talked about having you come out here to Utah. That’s something that we’re going to have to experience at some point in the future. But one of the things that you said, kind of reminded me of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, right? If you have the mindset that you can learn, you can grow, you can adapt, as opposed to, you’re stuck with this fixed set of skills that have been given to you or apply to you or, you know, the box that you’ve been placed in. Does the mindset of a growth mindset will allow you to then see these in a different light? I think its kind of what you’re saying.
Laura Silva (00:17:49):
Yeah, but also, you know, it also depends on the circumstances, because there’s a lot of people who, you know, cannot see the way out, you know, it’s not just enough, we just believe in. Opportunities also have to be available for people to have that growth, right. That’s why there’s so many people in poverty, so many families in poverty that cannot break the cycle. The opportunity is unavailable, because their school don’t get funding, because their internships, all our own paid, and they cannot afford to have an unpaid internship. Because they don’t have the technology at home to apply for whatever, because they don’t have a library in their communities that they can use a free computer is also consensual. My dad made sure that we were in a space in South Florida when we landed here, that will allow me to have an education that was good enough. And allow for me to go to the library, and go rent our books and videos for free with a library card. And, you know, we were putting a situation when we landed here when I was able to, you know, kind of like, pull myself by my own bootstraps, right? But also, we forget that a lot of people don’t have boots. And it’s very important that we distinguish that opportunities are not equal, and they’re not up there for grabbing. Opportunities are precisely putting places for certain people to obtain. And even less we diversify the opportunities that then people can match their mindset with the actual action.
Dillon Winspear (00:19:45):
Well, I love how you phrase that, you know, one of the words that you use there, multiple times was opportunities. And for people who are listening to this going like I thought we’re going to be talking about accessibility. One of the things that I love that you called out last time you and I chatted was that who you are and how you approach accessibility is tied so closely to each other. And I think one of those time bonds is opportunities, right? You are taking advantage of the opportunities that you’ve that you’ve been given. And you’re also working to present more opportunities for yourself, in the same time, those who experience different disabilities and whatever the sense that may be, they lack some of those opportunities. And so someone who stands in to champion accessibility, you’re providing those opportunities for people who’ve not been able to get it. Is that accurate?
Laura Silva (00:20:36):
Yeah, I mean, like I told you, there’s no way for me to differentiate, like who I am to what I’m do is impossible. Like, I couldn’t just, you know, be a carpenter, like, if you just match, you know, it doesn’t match. I said, because my grandpa was one, he doesn’t match who by who I am. I have to do something that can actually push me through every day, it is harder waking up every day to go to work, it’s hard to wake up when you don’t have something that actually push you to do so. You know, I’m not married, I don’t have kids. So I don’t have that push of like, you know, for my kids, or stuff. So to me, everything that I do is for myself, and I realized that was too short, that was too little for who I am and who I was, when I first realized that I could do something not just for myself, but for others and that’s when accessibility came. It’s just by you, looking at your designs, and realizing, okay, we need to provide contextual alt tags, we need to look at the color contrast, we need to understand how a screen reader will behave with experience. You are giving someone the opportunity to be independent, to open up their computers and look at their browsing and going through their own Bank of America account and look it up for themselves, you know, and call in and set up a business or set up a savings account for a loan or buy a house or, you know, set up a student loan contact for a kid, but it is you know, you give people that opportunity, it becomes more than just good design on out of nice design. Nice design is empty. Who cares about beautiful design? If half of the population can use it, you have to look at your experience for more than just you, you’re not designing for you. You’re designing for everybody else and everybody else wear glasses, have arthritis, doesn’t speak English, read at a six level, English does half of the population. That’s just the reality of where we are and how we are and besides design cannot be empty. Otherwise, then it’s not user experience, then you just design.
Dillon Winspear (00:23:20):
Yeah. Can you share a little bit more about what a day in the life looks like as a VP of accessibility? What is the team dynamics? Who do you work with? And how do you guys actually get into the nuts and bolts of accessibility on a day to day basis?
Laura Silva (00:23:35):
Yeah, so my team is small. I’m the only UX lead in that team. And the majority of my team are ADA analysts, meaning they’re people that get their design from their experience, the wireframe from a designer, and they going in and look at it and put in guideline for accessibility for ADA guideline based WCAG 2.1, the latest one. I go a step above, and I work with the UX leads. So the people that create the component that will create the systems and I help systematize the accessibility of those components that way. There is less work for designers and less work for my team, kind of like that shift left approach. And, you know, part of that is create training for designers, create recommendations and just meeting, there’s a lot of meetings I mean, a lot of meetings every single day just looking at alright, let’s look at all the buttons and what all the buttons having come in and let’s make sure that the color contrast the alt text, the experience, the swiping. All of that is systematized so that any designer can just take it and know that he has so much visibility built in. And you know, we work with developers, and we work with a QA team. And it’s pretty much just like, I couldn’t do my work without an analyst, and I’m trying to make the data analyst work easier. And that’s kind of how it works. It will be very-, majority women. So it’s pretty awesome, because who run the world?
Dillon Winspear (00:25:36):
I’m not going to fight you on that one. You know, I like that you said you approach the accessibility in the components, right? You get there at the top levels before everything is distributed? Are there things that you’ve seen, in your years of experience, mistakes designers are often making that lead to accessibility issues and that componentry?
Laura Silva (00:25:58):
I think the mistakes come from lack of awareness. So for example, things do not behave the same way when you using a screen reader on your phone? Because screen reader is based on tab. So it reads the screen to the user based on what you know, kind of like, look at it, like a ruler in a textbook. So you start, that’s how it reads. I am, for example, these notions swiping doesn’t behave that way, what is going to do that? So if your whole experience is based on someone swiping, then your whole experience is not going to work with someone who is using a screen reader, and someone who is in a screen reader is not someone who is just blind. It could be someone who have some kind of contrast issue, or someone like my dad, who can see, but cannot use his hands. So they see it that is there, but they cannot use it, because the experience has to be carded, so that the swiping now can be used instead of you know, once you’ve been trying to in script it on-, it behaves like a button. But that’s a conscious decision the designer have to tell the developer. So I think the mistakes come less, it comes from this lack of awareness of how other people live their lives. I think they come from just a little bit of privilege, right? The ones we get off our high horse, we start realizing that not everybody has the same experiences that we do. And I think that’s kind of like, you know, what I see the most, but designers understand what color contract is, UX writers understand that things needs to be contextual, needs to make sense. Now, let’s put it all together. So like, it makes sense.
Dillon Winspear (00:28:14):
You know, what’s funny is you actually brought this to mind as you’re sharing that. I jump on dribble, you know, at least once or twice a week, and I started looking at really pretty mocks. But that’s all they are, is they’re really pretty mocks. And I look at these and I go like, well, that’s really great. But what are the functionality here? That’s not going to work because of this, or that’s not going to work because of this. And now, as you’re talking through this, I’m going like, oh, that just brings a whole other level of something to think through is like, you look at those really pretty dribble marks. And there’s probably not a whole lot of consideration for accessibility in those right?
Laura Silva (00:28:50):
For sure.
Dillon Winspear (00:28:52):
Have you looked at those marks and thought the same thing to yourself?
Laura Silva (00:28:55):
Yeah, sometimes, you know, I go on Dribble, I go on Behance, and I go on LinkedIn, because a lot of designers are both on Behance and LinkedIn, and a lot of the stuff you know, I remember wanting was like, some guy posted these series of buttons. Buttons just follow me around. This thing of buttons, and they were like, which one you guys like the most? And they were just like, there was no stroke, there was no clear call to action, which is a bunch of loud like, that’s a bug that will be that. Oh, like I wrote like none because it’s neither accessible. And they came back to me with like toucher. They were like, what do you mean? I’m like, dude, did you check the color control? No, because I did and that thing doesn’t even pass. That’s why I don’t care. Like that’s what I said. I don’t care if your thing is pretty, Pretty design? Who cares about pretty design? I want this to work, and to work for as many people as impossible to make everything work for everyone, I understand that our team understand that, but if there’s something that we know, like color contrast, or stroke, for better readability, then just put in practice. You know, who cares if your thing is pretty?
Dillon Winspear (00:30:31):
Well, one of the things that we talk about pretty often, and it’s almost become buzzword at this point is the idea that, you know, designers, product managers, they need to have empathy for their end user, right? How do you or what tips do you have for designers, product managers to begin to deploy empathy for maybe an accessibility challenge that they don’t have? What would you recommend that they do?
Laura Silva (00:30:55):
I think the first bar would be to, if they’re able, in their research thing, to create guidelines for them, researchers to engage with people with disabilities, because we need data and data is important. And we need anecdotal data, when it comes to accessibility. We need someone to tell you, man, I have to tap 200 times to add something to my cart. And that’s a stroke quote right there. You know, like that, I think that will be the first step. And I know that researchers for some reason are scares, they like unicorns in team. So I know #00:31:39# will have researchers in their team, but we all have YouTube, and we all can turn on YouTube and type: how does the screener work? or what type of color out of color contrast each of the people have? Why do people use captions, and we can just google how to make your designs accessible? And I promise you medium has a lot of resources that you can read on easy checklist for designers to make it accessible to a way. I know a lot of people don’t have. What Bank of America has, right, like a theme dedicated for accessibility, and there’s a lot of small design firm, but you can’t google guidelines of that. Medium is inundated with resources. And on YouTube, you can actually see how people interact with their phones and how people interact with the different assistive technology methods to actually be in this space. So just be a little bit inquisitive, right? Have a little bit of like, how will this work? Like how? Who else will use this? And also do look around you and try to go outside of your own little bubble and look around you and understand what things in the city has been created for other people. And that might give you a little cue on your designs, like ramps were brought in because of wheelchair accessibility or the buttons, you know, so you don’t have to open the door right now. Everybody using them, right? Everybody’s pushing their button, so they don’t have to touch doors. Things like that start giving you a clue that the world not just behave the same that you’re experiencing.
Dillon Winspear (00:33:40):
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because this is kind of a shout out to a couple of people who I work with, a couple friends. But there are a lot of people who are working in the digital space, right. And in the digital space, there are products out there and they’re becoming more abundant for people who want to throw a plugin on their Chrome browser and experience a website with different color blindnesses. You know, jump on it and experience your website, experience your product with one of these plugins on and see how that contrast works out for you. You know-.
Laura Silva (00:34:13):
Your phone, your iPhone or your Android have this voice over screen reader. Turn it on, and start listening to how people behave and how people interact with your product all the time and you will want to get a headache because it’s different and it’s smart and you will be overwhelmed. But that’s part of the experience. Now you know, okay, the voice screen reader itself is intense. And now if I don’t, you know, give contextual day. Now just not only going to be intense, but you also want to be used because then the image on is this image. Who cares about the image? Tell me what the image is showing, that is when contextual all tags come into place. They’re like, it isn’t there, I mean, I’m young, I didn’t create accessibility or, you know, I just kind of like fade, alright, let’s put on my thinking cap and let’s learn about this phase. And I’m constantly learning because the guideline keeps on changing. 2.2 is about to come in November, and there’s more guideline that you have to be aware, and you’re not going to do 100% right. And some things are not going to be able to be done based on, you know, business practical or just not enough money to put it in place, but at least do know.
Dillon Winspear (00:35:45):
Yep, I want to jump into one more question that I have for you. And then we’ll get jump into some of the questions that have come in, as you and I have chatted. The last question I was going to ask you is, if you find yourself working for a company that hasn’t put emphasis on accessibility, where do we begin, you know, especially when products are already so large and so robust or filled out? Where do you begin, in order to make accessibility an emphasis? Or maybe even, how do you begin to get your executive staff or your stakeholders to emphasize accessibility and product? Where do we start?
Laura Silva (00:36:20):
Yeah, so that is similar to what I experienced when I was at Amazon. In Amazon search, we’re redesigning over render platforms. So what a perfect time for us to look at every single component. And right at that time was when my dad had that accident. So then I asked a question, I was like, how are we handling accessibility? And we didn’t have those guidelines in place. So I know exactly what you mean. Though, I just put in some data, that’s the easiest way for people to realize the scope of this space is by research, how many people in the states have some type of visual disability, what is the money around this space, the buying capability around accessibility. And it depends on what type of you know entity, you working on, but I could say if, today based on this conversation, any designer is like, I am very aware of accessibility, and I want to do better. It starts from today, today on just start looking at your colors, and you start checking the color contrast analyzing on Google, and you start looking at the color today. And then you know, or if you’re a designer, start learning about area idea. And you start you know, realizing how to work with native or react or whatever, MLA or whatever it is that you use, and how did you put that into place is hard, it’s a hard space, because you have to do a kind of what I do, go from my component base go from a system way. And that means there’s a lot of money behind them, there’s a lot of body behind that work, but you can just start on your own space, you can just start by writing your red line, you can let your developer know, hey, I want these buttons down this way, or one this image to say this, and the way that developers can just input all text and you know, you can start small, and by starting small, you built in that space that is more accessible. And if you want to be under committed to it, and the developer is committed to it, the researcher is committed to it, then it’s much easier to change thing and when it’s kind of like a group effort, then one person. I can afford to that.
Dillon Winspear (00:39:05):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I like what you said also pre seen it in this episode where we talked about starting at the componentry level too, right? If you can fix it there, then it will slowly start to get dispersed throughout the business as well.
Laura Silva (00:39:17):
100%, yeah. If you’re lucky enough to be in the system team, and you can say hey, guys, we’re going to have from now on, look at all our buttons, look at our link, look at all our accordion, let’s look at x y and z and let’s create some guideline. Then just you know, it will trickle down, the only place where trickle down actually works is not economics, it’s in design. You’re going to trickle down the information to your designs. You start from the top, and then now, any button the designer will use has, you know, the rest of #00:39:59# will do it. I can name button just because we just have medium buttons and that’s why it works with everything. Everything goes green in your headers. Imagine every single component is being read out loud. So how would you want it to be read? If you were the person that needed some type of justice because you don’t know-. My dad, prior to November 23, he was a healthy, vibrant guy. And then on the 24th, he wasn’t. If I lose my vision tomorrow, I have to rely on screen reader. So I want to make sure that there is someone out there like me, who knows that that might also happen. And put in the guidelines for the future me or for the older me, or the person like my brother who has arthritis, or someone who loses their glasses tomorrow, and I have contact if I don’t, if I can find my contact, I turn on this screen reader, so I can know what time is it. So it is just understand that you’re designing for what a phase that is more just nicer to be. This is the future that you want to live in.
Dillon Winspear (00:41:25):
Yep, absolutely. Well, cool. I appreciate you sharing that. I want to jump into some of these questions. There’s a handful of questions that have come in, as you and I’ve been talking. So I want to go back and pull for a couple of them with the remaining 10, 15 minutes we’ve got here. So one of the questions that came in here; are their processes for accessibility that you’ve put into place before something gets released that you could share? I mean, you’ve talked a little bit about, you know, getting into the components, you talked about that. But is there a checklist that you go through before something gets released?
Laura Silva (00:41:58):
Want to put the guidance in the design, of course, they get coded. Anything more in that, you give them give them QA, with technology. So the best part of the process will be, is not just enough for you to design it, you have to test it with the technology that you’re going to use.
Dillon Winspear (00:42:23):
Do you have a checklist of what you test for? Like we’re looking for this, this, this and this?
Laura Silva (00:42:29):
Yes, we have a very long test group for the QA team to look at, but it’s more of like, you know, does the color contrast pass the ratio? Is there contextual tags? Can someone you know, is their legend read at the whole sentence? And can they be experienced in job? In voiceover. If we look today all that analogy, and then we go down the list. But there’s definitely a laid out. No, I gladly share with the team. I’m not of course the Bank of America checklist. But I shared with the team some of the resources that I found online for people that can use their own checklist and you know, after they input their accessibility guidelines
Dillon Winspear (00:43:24):
That’s a great idea. We’ll end up posting this episode later on. So for anyone who wants to go listen to it afterwards, they can get that. And I’ll include those links that you want to share in the show notes of that episode. Another question that came in, I love this one. This one came in from Natalie, she asked, and this is when you and I were talking about what the makeup of your team looks like, she asked; do you know how it happened that so many of your co-workers are women?
Laura Silva (00:43:48):
Cause we’re just badass. But I honestly do not know. Yes, I do know, intentionally by my manager to hire women. That’s how you get women in your team because you hire them. It’s just that intentional decision to say, we want women in this thing. The fact that there’s more women, I think he just like being around women, smart women. But I don’t know how we got to be more women but if diversity and inclusion is an intentional act-.
Dillon Winspear (00:44:28):
It’s a intentional decision there.
Laura Silva (00:44:30):
So yeah, he made sure that there were more women.
Dillon Winspear (00:44:35):
Yeah, that’s awesome. There’s another question that came in about what websites do you recommend for color testing? I don’t know if you know any off the top of your head, but again, we can include those in show notes.
Laura Silva (00:44:50):
Color Contrast Analyzer, just put down in Google “Color Contrast Anaylzer” and the first link will be the one that you can output and it will show you, and that’s the one that I like the most because you can put your front color though, you know the text color, again, the background color, and it will show you is your ADA compliant based on double A or triple A, or the guideline are different based on text and objects. So the color, the border of a link will be hard and different than the color of a text and the contrast color between the background so, and that site color contrast analyzer will show you all that, and it will just clearly give you pass or not pass on that one. That’s the one I like them all.
Dillon Winspear (00:45:41):
Yeah, cool. I’m pulling up, there’s a couple that popped up in the chat and a couple that popped up in the QA. So I’m jumping over to QA now. Brooke says obviously, there’s so much to do with design in terms of accessibility, but in the interest of time, are you able to share your top three best practices that designers should keep top of mind?
Laura Silva (00:46:03):
Color! Do not rely on color, just on color. Know that a lot of people cannot see color. So what all the indications of interaction can you put for the person to understand that there is interaction happening? Give guidance for images. Otherwise, someone with a screen reader will only hear image. So if your image is part of your experience, give guidelines for the developers to give contextual expert of that image. And I think a third one, just going down my list, use a screen reader on your phone so that you understand how people interact with it. So you’re not going to turn it on, and tap, tap, tap, and learn and hear how someone interacts with it. And also, maybe Google, what also are the type of accessibility? These abilities that people have, what is cognitive disabilities? What is mobility disabilities? What is visual, what is auditory? What is temporary, momentary, permanent? Like, learn on those part. That’s just as important as in kerning, just as much as understanding, you know, what is the best experience or whatever.
Dillon Winspear (00:47:36):
These are great questions, by the way, and I love that there’s still a couple more coming in. Like I said, super good questions. Doug asked; have you created a persona or personas that exhibited accessibility characteristics?
Laura Silva (00:47:50):
Yes, so our team do have a persona that have one or more of the disabilities in the list, though we have persona that are color blind and a deaf mute, have a hearing, we have personas that have anxiety, we have personas that have dyslexia, we have personas that suffer from seizures, is the images flash, a really bright color, it’s things like that for videos, we have personas for that. And that’s part of you know, go and learn #00:48:32#, and that way you can create a persona for yourself.
Dillon Winspear (00:48:38):
Cool. I like that. I think I’m missing one. Okay, I scroll back up, I found it. Shantel asked; is there a difference in designing for web versus designing for native mobile?
Laura Silva (00:48:52):
There are differences in guideline because one experience a user some mouse or keyboard and the other one is solely on touch. So there are some guideline like swiping doesn’t exist on web as it does on mobile. So that you know just like designing for web and designing for mobile is the friend just there are some different islands for though but color contrast is pretty much the same, all text is pretty much the same. If you go to a wcag.com and that’s going to give you the holistic lives of-. Good luck with that. With the long list of all the guidance that they are, but I look up and learn and keep learning and I have to go back and recheck. But if you are going to see that the majority 70% of everything and there are some differences based on the experience in and of itself.
Dillon Winspear (00:49:54):
Very cool. Well, we are about at time and I want to give people an opportunity to find out where they can reach out to you and connect with you further. So, here’s your opportunity to plug. How would you like people to reach out and ask more questions from you?
Laura Silva (00:50:10):
You can find me on LinkedIn, Laura Silva or my you know, my URL is lausilvah and that’s my medium. Lausilvah is my Instagram lausilvah, I’m on LinkedIn lausilvah. If again, feel free to just google my name it’s not that common. So you’ll definitely find me.
Dillon Winspear (00:50:41):
You just made a scream just like Google me. Say that, you’ve made it. I want to shamelessly just go out there and say that I have been following you on LinkedIn and on Instagram now for a couple months. And I have been enlightened as I’ve been following along. As I mentioned at the very beginning, I just mentioned this briefly. But you’ve had a handful of posts that have gone viral over the last few months. And one of the things that I absolutely love about Laura for those who are listening is that she is not afraid to speak her mind. And to help educate the people who are uneducated, and start reading some of the responses to some really ignorant comments on her posts, Laura jumps right in there, and will share it how it needs to be shared. And I’m not going to go into the details of that right now. She does an excellent job responding to people who need to be responded to.
Laura Silva (00:51:35):
My number one rule for self-care is just not to push information to people that do not want to learn, you know, the number one rule for self-care. However, you got to come on me correctly. Because I have stamina. Okay, I have generation information behind me, I got data, and nothing comes from the heart you just come from this is factual and documented, and a lot of things is misinformation that is dangerous to be shared and recreated. Like, you know, the fact that people say that undocumented people are using United States resources. I am undocumented, I am a DACA recipient, I’m a dreamer. So technically, I am undocumented, and let me tell you, I pay a lot of taxes, and I don’t get social security, or section 8, or food stamps, or if I lose my job, I don’t get an employment. So things like that are some of the stuff that I think are dangerous for people not to know. And if there’s something that I know, for a fact that I am not afraid of correcting you. Of course, the other extreme of people just being ignorant and mean and nasty, and I’m just like, I’m not going to waste my time and energy on you. But if there’s people who generally do want to learn or like, honestly miss informed, because part of growing up is on learning, all the things that you thought were correct, I will happily will come and help that, and you know. So I just know that the future is for those who can assert their own fault, the future is for those of us who know that they don’t know everything, the future is for those who wants to make it a better place. And if I can help, you know, shed light on something, I’ll happily do, so, if you do respect me, just put in your shoes, just stop out there, because people aren’t going to do nothing. People jump in and respond and they’re start tagging their people, companies and people just, I don’t know, that’s on you, my friend. If you want to join and destroy your future that’s on you, the internet leads, whatever, I’m just going to keep saying Black Lives Matter and pay black women what they’re worth and that’s when you want to show your ads out there.
Dillon Winspear (00:54:24):
So as you can tell, whoever’s listening is going to be a lot of excitement if you follow her on LinkedIn, if you follow her on Instagram, it’s definitely a place where you can get a look at some of them, maybe you’ve not been exposed to, so I definitely encourage for them to check you out to follow you there. Laura, thank you so much for your time. This has been as much fun as I thought it was going to be. So we’ve had enough of these conversations. I knew this was going to be a blast. Thank you so much.
Laura Silva (00:54:51):
I love it. No, thank you so much. I thank you for everyone who listening. Thank you for inviting me. I’m just happy that there are people who wants to make this world a better place. So let’s say it takes all of us. It takes every single one of us. So please keep listening and restart the board and fill out your cencus for me. Thanks.
Dillon Winspear (00:55:22):
That’s a wrap on another episode. Thank you for choosing to listen to Designed Today. Check out our website at DesignedToday.com. There, you’ll find all of our past episodes, resources, links to join our slack community, and even an option to sign up for a career coaching session with me. If this episode has provided any level of value to you, then consider subscribing. There’s so much more to come with episodes launching every single Tuesday. If you’re already subscribed, then thank you. Consider leaving a rating or review, share this episode with a friend or co-worker. As always, your support means a ton and it goes a long way. Until next time, this is Dillon Winspear, encouraging you to keep pushing and design something new today.
