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VO
Welcome to Dig In, the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Each week Jess Gaedeke chats with world class brand professionals to bring you the story behind the story of some of the most breakthrough innovations, marketing tactics, and campaigns.

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Jess
Well, welcome everybody to Dig In. I'm Jess Gaedeke and today I'm joined by someone who really pushes our industry to do better. We dig have been so inspired by her work and how she's rallied support around a very important consideration for our industry. So today I'm joined by Claire Ferrari, leader of the accessible UX Research practice at Verizon.

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Jess
So Claire, welcome. Thanks so much for joining today.

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Claire
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

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Jess
Well, let's start with having you tell us about your background and where you are now.

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Claire
Been a bit of a meandering, career path, but I, I started out as an art therapist. And then I went back to school for design. Got really into participatory design, which is where I learned a little bit more about, disability justice and accessibility and accessibility design. And that really kind of inspired me to, you know, focus a lot of my research on accessibility.

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Claire
And so I, started out as a generic UX researcher, but because of my, like, training background in rehab science and design have always kind of wanted to add in that, sort of topic area or expertise into the work that I do. And after a few years at Verizon, I applied for an internal grant and did a couple of projects that incorporated just kind of expanded recruit, so included participants with different disabilities to kind of prove the value of having a more representative sample of participants.

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Claire
And, you know, over the course of a couple of years, and kind of shopping around this notion that, you know, there's this huge intersection between accessibility and usability in general. I was given, I was given the ability to, to start a practice that's wholly dedicated to looking at the kind of intersection of accessibility and usability.

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Jess
That is so cool. And I love the origin and kind of where you started and how, to your point, you meandered through that, that career, path. So. Well, we're going to really dig into a lot of that. So let's, let's kind of go there in a moment. But first, I'd love to just throw an impromptu question your way.

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Jess
What is one book that you wish you could read again for the first time?

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Claire
A classic for me is Design Meets Disability. Like, I read that, in undergrad. So like 15 years ago. And I still think about it all the time, especially when I talk to stakeholders about the value of thinking about accessibility, because there seems to be just like this held belief or perceived tension between like, good design and accessibility.

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Claire
But that doesn't need to be, and is not the truth and this book by Graham Pullin, kind of dispels that myth that, good, flashy design can't be accessible.

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Jess
I love that. I can't wait to read that. Thanks for inspiring me to to look at something new, so I can't wait to see that. Speaking of inspiring, our listeners really do crave inspiration from other leaders, and I think one of the best ways to inspire is to tell a story. And you are integral in the development of the Accessible Insights Consortium.

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Jess
So I'd love for you to tell me about how did that idea originate, what inspired it, and really, what does that look like today?

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Claire
Sure. So again, as I mentioned before, I started out as like a generic UX researcher. And then when I was given the green light to go ahead and build this practice at Verizon, that's like dedicated to accessible UX. I found, just like a lot of the tools that we use and a lot of the vendors that we work with, didn't know a lot about accessibility or had like limited experience, in supporting, research participation by people with different disabilities.

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Claire
And so, yeah, I think I also recognize, like the kind of interdependence that we all have on each other in the research community, particularly in industry like, and the reliance we have on platforms and recruiting vendors. So you know, and knowing that our like, house was not completely in order and we need to do better kind of rather than making everybody else around us these this hard requirements about accessibility compliance like kind of like how can we move through this process and get better together was the kind of general inspiration behind it.

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Claire
But then I also, really got a lot of inspiration from another consortium, which is, a group called Teach Access. And I had, worked with them a while ago, but they're kind of a different type of consortium that brings together industry partners and, higher ed institutions to try to mend the accessible skills gap. So students that are graduating from engineering and design and just all kinds of programs that will land them in product development roles, don't graduate with a working knowledge or skills related to accessibility best practices.

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Claire
And so they get into these roles where that's like a requirement or they're going to need to know about accessibility and product development. So basically it's a call from industry. And these like big companies are involved. Adobe, Meta, Google, a whole host of these, these very large tech companies, to incentivize higher ed, educators to incorporate accessibility in their curriculum.

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Jess
So that's what inspired it. How did you kind of think about bringing that to our industry?

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Claire
Just again, like thinking about how all of these things are kind of interdependent like if, if industry requires it, then schools will better support it. And if we know that industry is going like it's going to give you a competitive edge. That's like motivating for students. It's just kind of like chicken or the egg. And we need to communicate the need for accessibility, on every part of this like interconnected web, which might be a really silly explanation.

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Claire
But yeah, I think just recognizing that there is, everybody has a role to play. And we are better together.

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Jess
That's a great way to put it and as you put this consortium together, were there any barriers? Is there any place where you had to kind of change course?

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Claire
I think the most challenging part was certainly not convincing our leadership because we, we have a fabulous, leadership team, Verizon in the research org. But I think getting through legal a lot of the hurdles that surrounded like antitrust and are we okay like inviting our direct competitors into this group. Which I think based on like the ethos of the consortium and getting better together and learning from each other and pushing the industry forward, it's not like, anti-competitive thing.

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Claire
In fact, it's pretty healthy for us to be working together on accessibility. But just kind of convincing legal counsel that that was the case.

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Jess
Yeah, definitely. What are some of the brands that are part of the consortium?

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Claire
On the client side, we have Verizon, Nissan, Voya Health and Financial, and we also have an accessibility consultancy group called Taman and Purina as well. Oh and sorry and Fandom if I did not mention that.

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Jess
Yeah. And it's such a nice diverse group of brands from different industries. And so how will you know the consortium is a success? What are some of the tangible outcomes or milestones that you guys will measure?

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Claire
So I think first of all, a big milestone that we're just coming up on now is the release of Toolkit, which is a work in process that kind of covers different aspects of the research process, from recruiting and representation to quant and qual design, implementation of research, which includes like how to select a platform and how to understand its support for accessibility.

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Claire
If we're doing like remote research or quant, and then also socialization. And so we have this toolkit that covers these like big broad areas in research. And so it's like seen as a starting point, like we want to actually release this so that we can get input from the broader community to kind of keep evolving it forward.

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Claire
And I'd say like each stage of the evolution of this toolkit, I think represents a milestone in the, you know, just engaging the community further. And having something like tangible that people can refer to, in order to inform their processes and their research practice. So that's huge. I would see it as a success if, we got more, platform providers involved.

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Claire
Certainly some of the bigger ones, like the survey platform providers and the mixed methods, usability testing, etc., kinds of platforms. If we got their kind of like full attention and participation, I think that would be a huge success.

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Jess
And obviously Dig and Upsiide. We care a lot about this. So we're doing what we can to, to make sure that we're, we're as accessible as possible and, and keep sort of pushing that envelope. I'm curious, too, Claire if you could give an example. Like I think you know the an appreciation for why accessibility matters. Hopefully most listeners have that.

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Jess
But can you give an example of the actual impact that your work will have? Like what can brands do better? What will consumers or customers experience differently? Make it real for us.

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Claire
According to the CDC, about, 24% of all adults in the United States have some form of disability. And that's like adults 18 through 65 that are non institutionalized. So that's like the largest minority group, that is inclusive of of every race, gender, ethnicity. You know, so it is quite a large section of the, sub group of the population, and that they're interacting with our brands and products and services all the time.

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Claire
And so it is really an opportunity to increase the, like, exposure of our products and services to, just a wider audience. It really, like making sure that our research instruments are accessible means that they're, like, less biased. If we're not capturing, feedback and, information from people with disabilities, like, we're, it's just it's again, introducing bias into our work.

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Claire
And also, it's a way that the companies that we support, can have a competitive edge. And, and, you know, a source of income that is not necessarily being tapped because our research isn't reflecting the needs and desires of this segment of the population.

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Jess
Yeah. It's a great example of, you know, there's some economic gain to be had. But at the heart of it it's about being accessible to more people. And meeting them where they are. So, so I love that. And what's your biggest takeaway from having created and leading the, the consortium?

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Claire
What's amazing is that there are so many, to me at least, so many pockets of people at different companies, whether it's supplier side or client side of people that are already doing this work and have so much to share. But also like a desire to kind of create this community of practice, and feel connected to a larger group because I think a lot of us work in silos at the big organizations, big companies that we're at.

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Claire
So there's there's a lot of passion. And there's a lot that can be learned from people that are working on this in this area already.

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Jess
Yeah. I think this thinking can be applied to a lot of different considerations. And it's really it's incredible what can happen when brands, you know, join forces. So, congrats to you and, and to the consortium for your, your exciting work. And so if we take that passion and maybe turn it to more you as an industry leader and a leader in your organization, what about accessibility within our discipline, within the market research discipline, what are some of your thoughts or some of the efforts that you've put forth, to make our discipline more inclusive?

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Claire
Yeah, I think that, there's underrepresentation of people with disabilities in, in the research field, and in lots of fields. It's not exclusive to research. But there's a lot of work that we can do to make our processes and platforms accessible to offer. So there's like the kind of the side which is about like the consumption and, you know, respondent, side of research.

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Claire
But then on the offering side, there's a lot of work that needs to be done, to make that like to make sure all the touchpoints in the research, design process are supporting access and use with assistive technologies. One of the, the most valuable, experiences I've had in the last few years has been, a partnership with the American Foundation for the blind.

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Claire
So very lucky to have, at Verizon, a, disability advisory board. And one of the members, is a man named Matthew Janusauskas, and he's the CTO at the American Foundation for the blind. And he oversees, in large part, this thing called the Talent Lab, which is a kind of teaching hospital model accreditation program that people with and without disabilities can go through, programing to learn all about accessibility in the product development process.

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Claire
And since kind of hooking up with him and kind of trying to come up with, ways that we could kind of collaborate, and learn from each other, we established an internship with the AFB’s Talent Lab. And so we've had now two rounds where we've had, an intern, an apprentice join our UX research team, and this is, like, the fastest, best way to, kind of stress test the accessibility of our processes and platforms.

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Claire
And have, you know, through the great patience and generosity of the interns, learned a lot about what we need to be doing, going forward in order to have, an authentically inclusive workforce at Verizon on our research team. It was a it was a very, like, mutually beneficial engagement or has been over the last like two rounds where the interns come in, learn a lot about UX research, conduct a project, and then we also learn about ourselves and where we need to strive to be more inclusive.

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Jess
Is there anything that you can share that you did learn as part of that intern program?

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Claire
About our own processes? Yeah, absolutely. So we learned that in like, group style syncs and standups. You know, the benefit for everybody, when we were showing images in our decks or PowerPoints, the the power and benefit of describing that imagery and what the kind of what we want people to glean from it. What was really cool is when we started doing that, we realized that the people who are joining by phone or have like bad internet connections are able to benefit from those descriptions as well.

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Claire
So not only was that intern who, had a visual impairment able to, you know, follow along with the meeting, but so too were people that were phoning in or had, bandwidth issues. So that was like a very important key takeaway. And we've continued, that practice, in our meetings.

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Jess
It's such a great reminder. And, you know, I think I mentioned when we chatted too I've been really heavy in recruiting lately and, just being mindful of that. Everyone's coming from a different place and and making sure that, you know, the interview process and the steps that we take is really respectful of all the different, you know, experiences that people have as part of, you know, being a candidate.

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Jess
It's just a place where I've put greater emphasis and I'm grateful to have had that experience, to be able to just kind of think about it differently. How would I approach this conversation if this person is coming from a different place? So I love those examples of things that, you know, push us to do better. It's better for the company and for the, the candidates or the interns in that example.

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Jess
Are there any new tools or technologies or things that are having a really big impact when it comes to accessibility?

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Claire
Absolutely. I mean, I just, the interns just wrapped a project that was looking at, AI imbued or AI powered technologies that, like support access. And there's a lot of really like game changing applications of AI specifically like image recognition and generating, like, descriptions, and like live updating descriptions. There are also a host of, like, low tech solutions that I've learned about, as part of this, like the consortium and talking to other researchers that are like really scrappy with their approach to conducting research.

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Claire
So like, we know that, the platforms that support UX research and specifically like usability testing with prototypes are not accessible. Oftentimes the prototypes are these like flat images with links embedded in them, and they don't behave, the way a live application would with, assistive technologies. But, I've learned from other researchers and adopted this practice myself as like, creating, like documents that mimic the hierarchy or the page structure of a live website.

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Claire
So just like using links and headings, and, and some interesting ways of like mimicking like live website behavior is just like a word doc or a Google document can do just fine and get tons of feedback about the intended structure and behavior of web pages so you can, you know, get insights really early on. Whereas before it was kind of thought like, it's not until much later, that you can actually solicit feedback from assistive tech users.

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Claire
So that's a huge one. Really exciting, low tech solution that, somebody shared with me recently was, for card swerving, which is a lot of interfaces use like drag and drop interactions, which, you know, in HCI there are a lot of drag and drop, interfaces in prototypes that can use like arrows and key commands.

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Claire
So that they would be accessible. But in our industry, I think these platforms are a little bit further behind. So kind of difficult to, to do, accessibly. But I know somebody that uses, Excel spreadsheets and drop down menus, to replicate the same, like bucketing exercises that you would in card sorts. And I think it's brilliant.

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Claire
Very low tech solution but like gets that to that like parity that you need to in order to get the feedback.

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Jess
I love that because it's contrast. So you've got the you know very tech forward AI driven things. But then I love the low tech options as well. What do you think is the ideal future when it comes to accessibility. How would you describe it?

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Claire
I would hope that in the future, all research incorporates perspectives and feedback from people with disabilities. Like regardless of like having a sort of specialized portfolio dedicated to accessible UX research. And also that our tools and platforms are born accessible so we don't have to kind of fight for, the platforms that are, you know, very common in our industry to kind of retroactively make the fixes that we need for our participants and our researchers.

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Claire

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Jess
I love that thought. Born with accessibility. I think that that's a great future state that we should all be shooting for. So let's go to the final dig. This is all about you as an individual, as a person, as a consumer. Even so, feel free to take off your Verizon hat if it makes sense. What's the last product or service that you bought on impulse?

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Claire
Oh my gosh. I, I am a compulsive, consignment buyer, so I do a lot of shopping on RealReal and I think I have 600 pairs of shoes.

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Jess
Very nice. Wow. Where do you keep all of them? That's a fun one. So name a category or brand or maybe a product that you could rationalize any price point for, you just have to have it in your life.

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Claire
It's interesting because I'm like a new categorize money saver. So, I like right now I can't think of anything because I'm trying to, you know, save money and, you know, maybe own a house one day, living in New York City, it's like, hard to rationalize, spending very much money on on things that aren't essential or, like, getting me towards that goal.

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Jess
What keeps you inspired at work?

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Claire
The people I work with, hands down. And that's like the people on my team, the people that show up to the consortium meetings and, like, teach me new things. The interns, my teammates, as well as the participants that I speak with. They're like, working with research participants on a daily basis that have disabilities is like, teaches me so much about technology and teaches me a lot about like, perseverance and, you know, just people in the world and what they deal with, when encountering brands and products and services, and what they need, just it makes it sort of like, really crystallizes and clarifies for me why I do the

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Claire
work that I do and why we should, like, continually strive for better, more accessible technologies because it makes such an impact on people's lives. Just on, you know, activities of daily living and, and just, yeah, expanding human abilities.

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Jess
Well, that sounds like a great spot to finish because that's a very inspirational and aspirational place that we all want to be. So thank you so much for sharing your work, Claire. We are lucky, the industry is lucky to have you and Verizon at the forefront of this. So thanks so much for joining today.

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Claire
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

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VO
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