For Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and as we continue our commitment to ensuring digital accessibility for everyone, we sat down with three Team8s who have been instrumental in educating, building empathy, and raising awareness on this journey of improving accessibility throughout our organization.

Glen Blow, Senior Contact Center Product Manager, Agent Experience

“As a Product Manager, I always aspire to do more than release features. When we work hard to include those users with additional needs, we can make a tremendous difference for individuals.”

8x8: Glen, what is the current landscape around accessibility in the CCaaS world?

Glen Blow (GB): The levels of attestation to WCAG standards vary somewhat in the CCaaS vendor landscape, and all of the major players in the Gartner Magic Quadrant will have some level of support. However, detailed investigation shows differing levels of compliance, often fragmented across products. For example, support for accessibility is usually much higher in the agents' applications compared with administration or customer journey orchestration applications.

The key drivers are compliance and marketplace. On the whole, compliance to accessibility standards is driven by vendors' need to support their customers in fulfilling their obligations. For example, in the United Kingdom, all services provided by public sector agencies must be fully accessible to all service users.

Similar standards exist in the various territories we serve, and they also extend obligations for private companies to provide accessible workspaces for employees (e.g., Ontarians with Disabilities Act).

8x8: As a Senior Product Manager looking after 8x8’s Contact Center solution, how do you work accessibility requirements into product enhancements?

GB: At 8x8, we've taken a phased approach to accessibility—a bit like trying to build a car to get a customer from A to B as quickly as we can. Initially, there was almost no support in CC products like Agent Workspace, so we needed to (metaphorically) build a basic, safe car to do the job. This is pretty straightforward without extensive user research for this initial stage, as the WCAG standards clearly articulate what's required.

The opportunity for providing a customer experience with real finesse for the end user comes when you consider assistive technologies, such as screen narrators that read out what you're focused on within the user interface and narrate key notifications that the user needs to be aware of. Voice command software can also significantly help users with a broader variety of accessibility needs utilize our applications.

So, having built the car, we now start adding those experiential touches. Engaging users with accessibility needs and getting their feedback is essential for 8x8 to not just tick a compliance box but truly live up to our commitment to inclusivity and providing equal opportunity to all.

8x8: What are some of the more outstanding enhancements you’ve made on the CC side, from an accessibility perspective?

GB: In Agent Workspace, we developed some beautiful innovations to help with accessibility. For example, when a user is viewing the “My Profile” section, we’ve made the text labels (settings, queues, etc.) convert to icons when the zoom reaches 200% or more, since there isn't sufficient space to present the text nicely.

In addition, a lot of hard work has gone into the “Aria labels” in the code. These are accessibility-specific parts of the code that help describe what an element does or how it is behaving. Getting these labels right maximizes the experience with screen narrators and voice command software applications, leading accessible users to feel truly empowered.

Illa Branco, Senior UX Researcher

“The more I learn how the world wasn't designed considering all users, the more I feel responsible to help. This empathy can be natural or trained, but in both cases I believe we should put it into practice in all we do.”

8x8: What are some common digital accessibility issues you’ve encountered as a UX researcher?

Illa Branco (IB): When working with communications technologies, we often face challenges related to the amount of information users have to deal with and how overwhelming that can be.

Visually, we carefully consider how the information is presented, colors, and other design elements that can increase stress and decrease mental well-being. Physically, we do a lot of usability testing to ensure our products work well with assistive technologies (like screen readers).

Additionally, working in the Contact Center environment has revealed accessibility challenges related to aspects that have to do with users’ cultural backgrounds or ethnicity. For example, English as the primary language in contact centers can result in transcriptions and whispers failing to work well because of users’ accents and dialects. This can make contact center agents feel inferior, even hurt, thus having a substantial negative impact on their mental and emotional well-being.

8x8: How do you identify users’ needs from an accessibility standpoint and then translate those findings into solutions?

IB: First, I do what anyone, independent of one’s background or field, can do—try to see the world with a new lens. When you become an advocate or an ally, you start to notice things you’ve failed to see before.

As a researcher, that can mean fomenting conversations in user interviews that might not be initially related to the main research question but still impact the users’ lives. It can also mean observing body language—when someone gets their face too close to the computer screen to look at your prototype, for example, it tells you that the font is too small. Facial expressions can also indicate sensitive or difficult situations, and it’s important to acknowledge them.

All this keeps me very alert and curious to understand our users' challenges; it also enables me to help our teams develop solutions.

8x8: How do you advocate for accessibility within your team and the larger UX community?

IB: I was the UX researcher chosen to get the CPACC certification at 8x8, and with that, I'll be able to apply and spread more knowledge across the UXR team and other departments. Additionally, as the researcher leading the process of defining our User Personas at 8x8, I made a case for including accessibility among the key information we mapped out for each persona.

Initially, the idea of looking into accessibility challenges seemed a bit out of the scope, especially compared to the information we usually research. But showing the outcomes and potential impact it can have on people's lives has made everyone understand the importance of paying attention to this aspect of our users' lives.

Outside 8x8, I collaborate with universities and have also become involved in initiatives to help professionals in different industries have a bigger impact in their respective fields, which has often been related to accessibility.

Kit Sparrow, Senior Accessibility Engineer II

“As someone with multiple invisible disabilities myself, I know the struggle of fighting to be heard. I advocate for accessibility not only for myself, but for people whose voices may not have or want the reach.”

8x8: As a Senior Accessibility Engineer, how do you advocate for accessibility within your team and across functions?

Kit Sparrow (KS): Building empathy is a huge step. You can write documentation, give presentations, and link to standards as a decent way to start building accessibility into your process, but I have found that nothing is as powerful as a real-world example.

My early career focused on User Experience, and I regularly moderated user research studies. The most eye-opening moments happened when developers sat in on a session and heard feedback directly from the people using the software—seeing real people with real names, faces, and stories struggle with something you have developed and encounter barriers that prevent them from doing their jobs brings about an entirely new perspective.

I think that makes engineers more empathetic and even more motivated to make the lives of those users better.

8x8: What actions did you take to make accessibility (more) accessible within the wider Engineering organization at 8x8?

KS: The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards we follow for accessibility are simultaneously dry and fuzzy, even for experts.

There are dozens of checklists out there and even more ways to interpret the standards. Therefore, one of the first actions I took was to create developer documentation that outlines some of the most commonly found challenges, such as lack of keyboard support, when and why to use ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications), and how to test for font resizing and zooming properly.

Alongside that, I put together many presentations to review accessibility as a whole—including information on different types of disabilities, not only by senses and abilities (hearing, vision, speech, cognition, mobility, etc.), but also by durations (temporary, situational, and permanent), which helps illustrate that enhanced accessibility benefits everyone.

Running demos on using different types of assistive technologies (like keyboard-only navigation, screen readers, and voice control) and the best android hearing apps has also proven effective in creating more awareness and building empathy.

8x8: What is one behavior you think anyone could practice consistently to make oneself more aware of one’s ability bias?

KS: There is one type of accessibility hardware that is common to everyone—the keyboard! Not all users are able (or prefer) to use a mouse, including people with mobility impairments, screen reader users, and power users. Keyboard support is one of the first items I check when auditing for accessibility and is generally a good indicator of whether the rest of a website will be accessible.

To fully understand what it means not to be able to use a mouse, there is one very simple thing anyone can do—set aside your mouse for a while and try to work on your computer by solely using the keyboard. The most commonly used keys for keyboard navigation are TAB, SHIFT TAB, SPACE, ENTER, and the arrow keys. Can you fill out a form on one of your favorite websites? Can you navigate a website?

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