Interview Highlight: Sarah Pulis and Andrew Arch - Intopia

Peter Greco chats with Sarah Pulis and Andrew Arch from Intopia about what they do and their recent work with the Human Rights Commission. Intopia is a leading digital accessibility and equitable design agency, who offer services across accessibility assessments, conformance reports, education, strategy, operations, and equitable research and design.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:04):
It's been a little while since we spoke about in type,
so let's correct that and speak to one of the
directors of police. Sarah, good to speak to you again.

S2 (00:14):
Thanks so much, Peter. Lovely to be here.

S1 (00:16):
It's certainly an old friend of the show, an old friend,
a long time friend of the show. Andrew. Andrew, great
to catch up with you again.

S3 (00:23):
Yes. It's been a while since I've been on Peter,
but good to be back.

S1 (00:25):
Well, get out of that. Easy enough. A long time, friend. Alright. Yeah, well, Sarah,
maybe you could just for those new listeners or people
that haven't heard of it. I haven't spoken about it
for a little while. Give us a bit of a
brief thumbnail sketch of what you do and who you are.

S2 (00:40):
Sure, absolutely. So Intopia is a, um, digital accessibility and
inclusive design agency. And so we really specialize in helping
organizations make sure their products are accessible and inclusive to everyone.
And of course, that does include people with disabilities and

(01:00):
also the blind community. Yeah, that's pretty much what we
do in a nutshell. show. But then there's a whole
range of things that that we kind of do as
part of that, everything from helping organizations specifically make the product,
you know, inclusive to helping, you know, particularly larger organizations.
How do they make accessibility business as usual, and how

(01:22):
do they do that at scale when you're likes of
a big bank or a big e-commerce, you know, sort of, uh, organization.
So there's a lot that definitely goes into it. And
we can help with everything pretty much.

S1 (01:34):
Well, Andrew, how long have you been around?

S3 (01:35):
Um, I've been in Tokyo. Not you personally.

S1 (01:37):
But in Tokyo. I'm going to say that's.

S2 (01:39):
A loaded question.

S3 (01:40):
I think it has been around for a bit over
nine years, nine and a half years now, and I've
been with them for, um, coming on for eight years. But, um, personally,
I've been doing this stuff since the mid late 1990s.

S1 (01:54):
If I remember our early chats about websites and how
inaccessible they might have, might have been. And hopefully that's
all getting better now. Andrew, you've been doing some really
great work recently with the Human Rights Commission.

S3 (02:05):
Yes, we certainly have. Um. Utopia was contracted to help
the Human Rights Commission update their advice under the Disability
Discrimination Act or things Digital. They had a note there,
which they've had a series of notes. The last one
before we did this update was a version 4.1 showing

(02:25):
that they'd been through many iterations. And I think the
first note came out in the very late 90s. The
last one referred specifically to the World Wide Web. Not
that anybody calls it that anymore. But as we all know,
digital is now ubiquitous. And so part of the requirement
was to pick up everything outside the World Wide Web

(02:47):
that's digital, and that the Disability Discrimination Act applies to. So, uh,
we've worked with them, um, for over a year, probably to, uh,
bring that new guidance, bring that new guidance.

S2 (03:03):
Sort of about 18 months to almost.

S3 (03:05):
Two years, closer to 18 months by the time it
was released. That's right.

S1 (03:09):
And they well, are they are you happy with the
finished product or is it kind of a live document?
There's always work to be done.

S3 (03:16):
There's always going to be work to be done because
the technology keeps changing. And hopefully the commission will, um,
pick that up and, uh, you know, produce small updates, um,
from time to time rather than waiting for a big
bang release of a brand new set of guidance. So, um,
you know, we think we structured the new guidance in

(03:37):
such a way that if a new standard comes out
from the World Wide Web Consortium, um, like the wcaG three, say, um,
in three years time, they can, you know, just apply
that in the section that talks about standards or new
standard comes out from standards Australia or the government releases
a new policy like their recent, um, digital experience policy.

S1 (03:58):
Now what about as far as uh, companies, organizations that, uh,
work with you? Sarah, do you go out looking for them?
Do they come to you? Are you kind of, um,
well recognized for the work that you can do and
hopefully improve their business? Because I guess that's part of
the the thing of being accessible is you kind of
make yourself more open to more people.

S2 (04:17):
Absolutely. Yeah. So we've got a really good reputation. And
actually the majority of our work is either, um, people
coming back to us who have worked with us before
or may have worked with us at one organisation or,
and move on to another, or they're referrals. So someone
who has worked with us then, you know, refers another

(04:38):
person on to us. So we actually do very little
what I'll call when I say active marketing, probably what
I should say is more that cold calling, you know,
where you're on the phone to people going, hey, you know,
I'm in topia. You know, we could help you like that.
We do nothing like that. We get so many enquiries
coming in that that's how we respond. But of course,

(04:59):
we're out there talking about accessibility. You know, whether it's
about the guidelines, you know, we've been talking about those
a lot. Of course, since their launch, we've been doing
some lunch and learns with some of the organizations they're
working with and that kind of thing. So, you know,
that's just one example, I guess, of how we're out
there sharing our knowledge and experience, which means then people
come to recognize us. And when they do need that

(05:22):
help and assistance, then they they do tend to come
to us and say, hey, we're at that point where
we do want to take this further. How can you
help us?

S1 (05:29):
Andrew Davis, that live with a disability, kind of know
this is important and kind of get it, if I
can put it that way. Do you think that the
wider community are aware of it, and also kind of
the more benefits, if you like, if they become more
accessible not just to people with disabilities or not just
to those people who might be blind or have low vision.
Kind of the the broader application of making themselves accessible

(05:50):
is something that more people are aware of.

S3 (05:53):
Definitely. And, you know, the decade, two decades plus that
I've been working in this area, the awareness has just
been growing and growing and growing, which is a delight
to see. And, you know, that's reflected obviously in Ethiopia's growth.
We went from when I joined, we were five of
us were now over 35. And that's an indication of
the awareness out there in the community about how important

(06:15):
this is to their business. And, you know, just to
just throw a number in there. Now, if we talk
about big numbers, like 21% of the population has a disability,
what does that really mean? Now it's greater than the
population of Sydney or the population of Melbourne. Is any
organisation really prepared to ignore the population of Melbourne? Where

(06:35):
I'm where I'm based? That's a big ask of their
marketing and their, you know, digital team to say Melbourne
doesn't matter. We'll just work with the rest of the country.

S1 (06:45):
I'm going to put that in the memory bank because
often I say that, oh, you know, any business that
can afford to alienate or not include 20% of the population,
like they must be going more than okay. But when
you put it like that, I mean, that kind of
makes it even more real, doesn't it? You know, you're
excluding Melbourne's population.

S3 (06:59):
Yeah, it gives some context around that 21%. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

S1 (07:04):
It's one of the questions people ask. Is it expensive
or how much is this going to cost? I guess
you can probably reply by saying, well, you know, can
you afford not to be that inclusive, but is that
is that a consideration these days?

S2 (07:15):
Oh, look, it is definitely a consideration. You know, businesses
are always weighing up, you know, where their profit margins are,
how much things are going to cost, what is that benefit,
that return on investment or that kind of thing. So,
you know, it is definitely a a common conversation. And
I think, you know, for us, like what we talk
about is, you know, all of those different things that

(07:37):
do impact businesses. And so, you know, it is good for,
you know, your customers. So, you know, when you do
build websites that are inclusive, it is actually just a
better experience for everyone. It's also not just that sort
of 21% who identify as having a disability, but you know,
it is anyone who might have a temporary disability or

(08:01):
find themselves in a situation that might actually, you know,
impact them or that kind of thing. So. Once again,
you know, there's lies, damn lies and statistics. And so
it's like. Yep. You know, there's that there's an aging
population and that kind of thing. It's also, you know,
great for your brand. And also if you've got competitors
that are not looking in this space, it's a competitive

(08:22):
advantage as well to, you know, look at this and go, hey,
you know, my competitors aren't really that accessible. Then there's
an untapped market there. So, you know, for us, we
really do talk about all of those different business benefits
and tailor that to also the the organizations in the
industry that they're in.

S1 (08:39):
Andrew, what about people that might want to kind of
get involved with making things more accessible? Do you offer
things in that area, courses or ways that people can
kind of learn for themselves?

S3 (08:48):
We do. I mean, that's that's one of our Sarah
mentioned right at the start about, you know, we do
a whole range of different things. And one of the
things we do offer is training either a group training
for a group inside an organization. We also have some
public training, and we also have some, you know, e-learning where,
you know, an organization can import it into their own
learning system. Now, typically the larger organizations like a large

(09:12):
government department or a large corporate. But that means that
you can learn at your own pace or you can,
you know, do learn on demand. Okay, I need to
know about X next week because of the project I'm
working on. They can dip into the learning at that
at that point. So yes, you know we that's one
of the things we do. Just coming back to you
know the advantages of inclusive design though. Now if you

(09:34):
think about it, how many people take advantage of those
curb cuts in the footpath these days? Just about everybody
appreciates them not having to trip over the gutter. Um,
even accessibility is much the same thing. You know, there's
lots of documentation out there that, you know, a large
part of the population now watch their TV or their

(09:54):
movie with captions turned on, because they just find it
easier to concentrate on it when they've got captions on
and they're listening to the dialogue. So there's, you know,
very much that broader benefit of Sarah was saying, of
inclusive design and accessibility.

S1 (10:08):
So one of the other cool things that you do
is you involve people with disabilities. You use them kind
of for testing. So you're kind of getting that lived
experience as well.

S2 (10:16):
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so that's definitely a core part of,
of what we do and something that we're always encouraging
organizations to do more of. Unfortunately, the reality is a
lot of organizations do when they're starting in accessibility, they
do tend to focus more on does it conform with
accessibility standards. But, you know, once they actually see, um,

(10:40):
you know, a person with lived experience interacting with their product,
you know, whatever that product is, it suddenly brings to
light to them, you know, first of all, the value
of that. Um, but also then that, um, you know, it's, um,
there's nothing like watching a person struggle to do something,
you know, to, to really drive home. You know what?

(11:01):
That you know what that experience is like, and we're
really clear with people that, uh, you know, just because
something is what we call technically accessible, i.e. it conforms
with standards, doesn't actually mean it's usable for people who
are actually using that product, which is why it is
so important to do user research and usability testing and

(11:22):
get that feedback from people with lived experience to truly understand,
you know, how how good your product is, basically.

S1 (11:30):
That's a great point, isn't it, Andrew? Because it's not
just a matter of sort of complying, but also, you know,
that it can be, uh, intuitive or, you know, user
friendly as well. Uh, you kind of almost can't, uh,
you know, you can't put a price on that.

S3 (11:43):
That's right. And, you know, I always tend to say
to people, if they're sort of humming and worrying about,
you know, it might be a bit costly to, um,
recruit some people with disability to do that usability testing.
Think about it as an investment, because typically we find
that if I've got, uh, you know, if I find
a very minor thing, I. I can usually find a

(12:03):
work way around it, but for some people with disabilities,
it becomes a major roadblock for them and means that
they can't actually proceed because of the nature of that. Um,
you know, it might be a technical, it might be
a usability issue, but, uh, you know, because of the
technology that they're using, they, you know, whether it be
a screen reader, whether it, you know, it's some sort

(12:24):
of alternative keyboard or something like that, you know, it
can become the, the, the thing that stops them progressing
any further. And they'll look for, you know, another place
to go and do their banking or their shopping or,
or whatever it is. So, you know, we find that
doing the usability testing with people with disabilities, especially with
assistive technologies, can identify a lot of little hiccups that

(12:47):
people like myself or Sarah might encounter and just jump
over them before they become major blockers for others. So
you know, it. It actually identifies a year or so
earlier things that can make it better for everybody, not
just for people with disability.

S1 (13:01):
Their customer life might be lost forever.

S3 (13:03):
That's right.

S1 (13:03):
Right. So if people want to find out more, you've
also got a website where people can get a lot
more information. You can sign up for your regular newsletters
and information that you put out, which is always very,
very interesting reading.

S2 (13:13):
Yeah, absolutely. It's very easy. It's intopia. That's our website,
so really easy to get to. If you are interested
in the guidelines that have been released from the Australian
Human Rights Commission, we also have some resources. So not
just the guidelines themselves, but you know, some resources like infographics.

(13:34):
Also the webinar that launched the guidelines and a Q&A
webinar that followed. So there's lots of resources on there
around the guidelines, but then also everything else we've got,
including the services we offer, but then also other free
resources too that would help you, you know, just do
things in a more accessible way.

S1 (13:52):
Andrew, great to catch up. I hope we speak again
in the not too distant future.

S3 (13:56):
Thanks, Peter.

S2 (13:57):
Thanks very much, Peter.

S1 (13:57):
That's Andrew Archer and also Sarah, police there from Intopia.
We'll put those details up with our show notes.