Latest / Podcasts By Donna Jodhan / Remarkable World Commentary Episode #47: Interview with Denis Boudreau, Founder, Inklusiv Communication

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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #47: Interview with Denis Boudreau, Founder, Inklusiv Communication · Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

0:13
Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J Jodhan, LLB, ACSP and MBA,
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invites you to listen to her biweekly podcast,
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Remarkable World Commentary here.
0:25
Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights,
0:28
perspectives, and more with her listeners.
0:31
Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids,
0:35
especially kids with disabilities.
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Donna is a blind advocate, author, site loss coach,
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dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur,
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law graduate, and podcast commentator.
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She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge,
0:53
skills, and expertise in access technology and information as someone who has been
0:59
internationally recognized for her work and roles,
1:02
she just wants to make things better than possible.
1:07
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary.
1:14
I am Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who
1:19
sees the world mainly through sound, touch and stubborn optimism.
1:26
I am a law graduate, accessibility consultant,
1:29
author, lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind.
1:36
You may know me from a few headline moments.
1:39
In November of 2010, I won the Landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian
1:45
government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian,
1:49
not just the sighted ones.
1:52
And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen
2:00
disability groups to turn equal access into federal law.
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And most recently, on June 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late
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Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to improving.
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Sorry to removing barriers.
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When I'm not in a courtroom or a committee room or pottery studio,
2:30
you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss,
2:34
producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their
2:40
gadgets talk back in plain language.
2:44
Everything I do circles one goal to turn accessibility from afterthought into everyday
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practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench where policy meets
3:00
lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.
3:06
Now, before we jump into today's conversation,
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let me shine a quick spotlight on today's guest,
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a change maker whose work is as every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to
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build. Denis Boudreau, I'd like to welcome you to my podcast.
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You have been my mentor, advisor and friend for the past few years,
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so welcome to my show.
3:37
Denis Boudreau: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay, so first off, I'd like to ask this question to you.
3:45
You have been working at the intersection of accessibility and cue and communication for
3:54
over two decades. And you founded inclusive communication back in 1999.
4:03
What originally drew you into this field and how has your mission evolved since those
4:11
early days?
4:14
Denis Boudreau: So accessibility to me was an absolute accident.
4:19
Probably one of the most the ones that I'm most grateful for in my entire career.
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I started off in 1997 as a web developer coding,
4:31
designing things, building web pages.
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And in the summer of 2000 project manager at the company that I was working with came up
4:41
to me and said, hey, we just found we just won this bid for a redesign of a website,
4:47
and it was for the the McGill University Hospital.
4:54
Like I the only the French name comes to mind right now, but University hospital in
4:58
Montreal and they, they have a a wing of the hospital dedicated to eye trauma.
5:04
And they're asking for a website that blind people can use,
5:07
figure something out. And, like, nobody knew what to do.
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And I had a reputation for being the person to go to when when people didn't know what to
5:15
do, I guess so they said, figured that out.
5:18
And and back then we were barely using Google.
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Right. It was still Northern Lights or AltaVista for the most part. So that's what I
5:25
did. I went online and then looked for websites for blind people and stuff like
5:30
that, and very quickly discovered the W3C, which I had did not know existed back then.
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And this this, this group that had created accessibility guidelines,
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so that drew my attention, started reading that,
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and it blew my mind, really.
5:47
And very quickly, I I started communicating when I was finding with my team,
5:54
and that turned into a bit of a, you know, a bit of a an article.
5:58
Daily article in our, in our intranet.
6:01
And at some point, I decided that I would take all of those little posts that I was
6:05
creating and share them on my own website.
6:07
And mind you, that was again 2000, so roughly two years before blogs became a
6:13
thing. And and the whole thing was in French.
6:16
And to my surprise, I started getting emails from different people in France,
6:21
in, in Belgium, in, in Canada, like French, French people,
6:26
French speaking people, some of them in my own city in Montreal.
6:31
About that work and, and started having those conversations and discovered a world that I
6:35
had, I had no idea about, really.
6:38
So, yeah. So absolute accident made a lot of friends through that.
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That's actually how I a couple years later, it's actually how I first heard about you.
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You were talking about that lawsuit in In 2010.
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The company that I was running back then with the three,
6:53
three partners we actually leaned on that work that you had done back then as a way to
7:01
try and convince the government that they needed to get their act together.
7:04
So it's always been part of of what I've been doing for as long as I can remember.
7:09
So that's how it really started.
7:11
Like it started with this, this absolute, you know,
7:16
unexpected turn at some point.
7:19
And it gave, it gave my work meaning at that point.
7:23
2000 I'd been like I said, I'd been doing that for about three years.
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The novelty of creating a new website for a big company at pretty much worn off by then.
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And I was a little bored with technology.
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I was a little older than most people on my team,
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so I guess a bit more serious.
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And I was finding that the you know, the web agency world was very superficial and
7:44
shallow. I was thinking of doing other things like,
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and some of the things that I was thinking, I was thinking about was like you know,
7:51
underwater welding, like very, very difficult. And in that world and when
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accessibility came around, it opened this new path or this it gave
8:02
purpose. And I just jumped in with both feet into that and never looked back.
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So that's really how it began.
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And then and then over the years, accessibility became more and more viable as
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a, as a practice because, as you well know in early 2000,
8:21
very few people actually knew or even cared about the topic.
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The space had not been done and people did not really understand.
8:29
And Aoda was not even something that people were talking about yet,
8:33
because that was only 2005.
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So it took a while before people started to catch up to the idea that that was actually
8:40
something that needed to be done. So, so over the years,
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it became a bigger part of what I was doing until it became all I was doing around 2005
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or 6 when I started working with the Quebec Quebec government building there for the
8:55
first iteration of their own government standard.
8:59
That led me to work with W3C.
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That led me to work with ISO for a while, and standardization became a big part of what
9:08
I do as a result of all of that.
9:10
And over the years, yeah, my business just kept evolving from working
9:14
primarily with designers and developers to working more and more with their leaders.
9:19
And now these days, it's definitely more about that.
9:22
It's it's inclusive leadership and communication so that you can lead a team or
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you can you can you can present to an audience,
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for instance, and make sure you're not leaving anybody behind.
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And that's the core of my business today.
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But in a nutshell, that's roughly what my trajectory has been.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So you practically stumbled into this you know.
9:44
Right.
9:45
Denis Boudreau: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
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Unexpected. But again, the best.
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The best thing that could have happened to me.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Great. So for listeners who may mean who may be new to the term,
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how do you define quotation inclusive communication and what problems does
10:08
inclusive solve for organizations that think of accessibility as only as a technical
10:17
challenge or a technical checklist?
10:21
Denis Boudreau: Yeah. So inclusive communication is a rather popular term these days.
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A lot of things for different people with, with all the diversity,
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equity and inclusion efforts, dei efforts that have been happening over the
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years it like the practice grew and grew.
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So I am very purposefully focused on disability inclusion,
10:48
neurodiversity visible or invisible disabilities.
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But that's really my focus.
10:53
So to me, inclusive communication means the act of of being in touch with your audiences,
11:02
with whatever they may be in a way that addresses the challenges that are typically
11:08
faced by people with disabilities.
11:09
So as an example I wrote a book a couple years ago called Inclusive Speaker.
11:14
The book was dedicated to communication specialist experts,
11:18
speakers, keynoters, you know, trainers, HR people,
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anyone who speaks in front of a group or speaks to a group or manages a group to help
11:26
them understand all the all the, the, the gaps that they have in their
11:30
communication. When you know, they assume that people can see,
11:33
they assume that people can hear, they assume that people can differentiate
11:37
colors or this and that.
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And how do you leave people behind all the time?
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So to me, that is a foundational aspect of what includes inclusive communication is in
11:46
the context of the workplace.
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When I work with leaders, it also means helping them understand how
11:53
they can revisit the way that they use language to bring people together instead of
12:02
othering some of their team members, for instance.
12:05
So that's roughly where I that's my that's my,
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my sandbox, if you will, those different areas.
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That means helping teams rethink how they write,
12:17
how they speak, how they design for actual people,
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and not just personas or, or theoretical, you know,
12:24
audience members and I help them build inclusive habits across,
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you know, different content platforms, things like that.
12:33
A lot of it is about clarity and plain language,
12:36
but it's always about accessibility at the end of the day.
12:41
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now you have said that 2020 to 45% of people can be excluded by the way we design
12:51
and communicate, communicate online from people with disabilities to older adults and
13:00
folks in limiting environment environments.
13:05
Can you unpack that number and talk about the hidden audiences companies are missing?
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Denis Boudreau: Sure. So so as you probably know Statistics Canada came up with data a couple years ago
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about how many Canadians were self-identifying as having a disability,
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one or more disabilities.
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That number was roughly 27%, 28%.
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So that's where we start, right?
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Like more than one out of every five person self-identifies with a disability as having a
13:39
disability.
13:40
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right?
13:41
Denis Boudreau: Not exclude. Include all the people who actually have no idea that they have a
13:45
disability. Yes. And and will probably never even find out.
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So it's already one out of five.
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One out of four even. I you you could easily say most of those are invisible.
13:57
So that's where we start.
14:00
And the statistics that are shared by Statistics Canada when you,
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when you flatten that out to the active population,
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so 16 to 64, that's roughly 20%.
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So we're really at one out of five out of.
14:14
Yeah. So 20% let's say we start with 20%.
14:17
And then of course, you know, our seniors as of as of my last,
14:23
the last time I checked was July 1st, 2024.
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So that data gets updated on July 1st every year.
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I haven't checked it this year yet, but last year it was roughly 19% of the
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population that was over the age of 65.
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So a distinct group, then the active population who lives with a disability,
14:41
one or more disabilities.
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So you can easily combine the two and say, hey,
14:44
those folks are not in the same demographic.
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And obviously anyone who's over the age of 65 experiences some type of deterioration in
14:56
their senses compared to when they were younger,
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so they're not necessarily disabled.
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Some of them are. Some of them would never consider themselves to be but some of them
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actually do develop over time.
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You know, challenges that are, that are significant enough that they
15:13
actually cause barriers for them.
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I mean, if I just speak for myself, I'm 54 and for the last nine years or so,
15:22
I really need glasses.
15:23
And from when, you know, one year to the next,
15:26
every other year, I probably have to update my prescription because the glasses aren't
15:31
that great anymore. And like, I'm slowly losing some of my my my sight,
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My hearing also is slowly deteriorating.
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My ability to sustain a cognitive effort for a long,
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long period of time is definitely also impacted.
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It used to be that when my kids would go to bed at night,
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I would push for another 2 or 3 hours of work regularly,
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still wake up around seven in the morning, and then go and do that again for another
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day. I can't do that anymore.
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So and like I said, I'm only 54, right?
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So my ability to do these things or to perceive the world around me has changed over
16:05
the years. So obviously as I get older, this is not going to get any better.
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So there's that. And even if someone doesn't perceive themselves as having a disability,
16:17
aging definitely affects our ability to see, hear,
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think, move, all of that.
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So it's somewhere in there is part of our demographic of people who benefit from
16:29
accessibility one way or another. On top of that,
16:33
because aging is a spectrum.
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And you know, skills and senses are also a spectrum on a spectrum.
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We have in Canada, about 18% of the population between the age of 50 and 69.
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So those are mixed with the other two groups.
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But those are people who may or may not have a disability but are in that age group where
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definitely aging is starting to have an impact on their ability to do things.
17:00
So when you play with these numbers and when you account for the fact that when you look
17:06
at the data from Statistics Canada, for instance,
17:08
where they say that roughly 5% of Canadians have a visual impairment or disability what
17:14
they really think of or talk about are people who are blind,
17:17
people who have low vision, people who need screen magnification,
17:20
people who might have some kind of an eye disease or deterioration, like, say,
17:24
macular degeneration or glaucoma or amblyopia or some or this or that,
17:29
but it does not include the 10% of men and one woman out of every 200 was colorblind,
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which is also happens to be my case when you when you add color blindness to the realm of
17:40
of challenges with visual impairments.
17:42
It definitely is more than 5% when you add to people who actually are deaf or hard of
17:49
hearing, those who just have a declining hearing,
17:53
then that's also more than, you know, 5%, 6%,
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I think is what the data shows.
17:59
So it's more than that.
18:00
But more importantly, when you look at issues related to or
18:05
challenges related to cognitive disabilities and or neurodiversity and,
18:11
or you know anxiety as an example, it's way more than the ten,
18:16
12, 13 ish percent that they're talking about.
18:19
When you look at dyslexia as an example, most American university estimate that it's
18:26
roughly 17% of the population.
18:28
So just that particular Situation in neurodiversity is way more than all of the
18:35
cognitive group that Statistics Canada actually talks about.
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That does not include anything about mental health.
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It doesn't include anything about anxiety.
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It doesn't include anything about pretty much anything. So saying or thinking that by
18:51
combining the 20% of people who are the active population,
18:55
the 20% I was talking about at the beginning,
18:57
those between the ages of 16 and 64 and people over the age of 65.
19:01
Two different groups. Again, we're already talking about 39% of people.
19:08
And then if you add to that, all the different groups that are clearly not
19:12
factored in, it's even more than that.
19:15
So it's a very it's a very conservative number to say that if you're if you are
19:19
trying to communicate and reach out the entire population,
19:22
like the larger public, you will be talking to people of pretty much
19:25
every age group, therefore 40% of them are likely to have some kind of a challenge that
19:33
can be addressed, or at least mitigated in to a certain extent by paying attention to
19:38
accessibility. And that's why my business exists. That's why people like me and you do
19:41
what we do.
19:43
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It's a picture that many people are unaware of.
19:47
And this is so good to to, you know, to highlight this
19:51
Denis Boudreau: Yeah. For sure. I mean, it's again, out of sight,
19:54
out of mind. When almost every single time when I talk to a client or I talk to someone
20:00
in a training session and and they're trying to understand how broad this is,
20:05
they equate you know, disability with someone who is blind,
20:10
someone who's in a wheelchair someone who's deaf,
20:13
maybe. But they very rarely consider the myriad of other conditions that also fall
20:19
under that big umbrella.
20:21
And and therefore they don't think about it.
20:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now you helped to co-author Quebec's first mandatory web accessibility standards for
20:36
government. And you have contributed to W3C education and outreach.
20:43
What are the top lessons from standards work that help leaders move from compliance on
20:51
paper to inclusion in practice?
20:58
Denis Boudreau: I think the biggest lesson that I can teach my clients in that sense,
21:05
or and that hopefully they understand, is that compliance does not equate inclusion.
21:12
Compliance is just the starting point.
21:14
It's the starting line for for for for inclusion.
21:19
It's the yeah, it's the starting point basically.
21:24
And Complaints without actual you know, organizational change,
21:31
culture change just doesn't stick to begin with.
21:35
The the real world, the real work is really aligning the intent of the organization,
21:41
the roles, and having accountability also built into it.
21:45
So that's that's the biggest lesson I think that that people will have,
21:51
because yes, you like your leaders in your typical organization,
21:55
will eventually want to invest in inclusion because they see the value.
21:59
They understand the business case.
22:01
And, you know, whether we like it or not, most organizations,
22:04
though, they will tell you that they do this because they're great social, corporate,
22:08
social citizens. They primarily do it because they see that there's financial incentives to
22:13
do so. So this is where we start for the most part.
22:15
The biggest difference, I think, between an advocate who works with
22:19
people you know, in the weeds, trying to make things work like you will
22:24
appeal to people's good nature and wanting to make a difference.
22:27
But when you're talking to those who look at spreadsheets and look at quarterly results,
22:33
you know it doesn't work as well.
22:34
So it has to be. It has.
22:36
You have to bring in the conversation around like,
22:38
what's in it for us in terms of an organization,
22:40
in terms of business. And of course, some of it is financial, some of it is
22:43
reputational, some of it is just avoiding legal challenges,
22:47
like all these different things. So I would say that leaders understand that
22:55
accessibility must be embedded into their goals and not just part of a checklist,
23:00
as you were saying, are those who typically succeed more,
23:04
who are more likely to make progress in any kind of significant way.
23:11
And also when everybody owns a piece of that outcome.
23:13
Right. So that accountability piece is incredibly important because again,
23:18
I mean, I very rarely met people who flat out would tell me,
23:22
I don't care about accessibility.
23:24
I don't care about people that are disabled.
23:26
I only care about money.
23:27
I mean, a lot of people think that, don't get me wrong. But those would actually
23:31
say it very few it couple times with very few.
23:35
So everyone is for virtue, right?
23:38
They all want to do the right thing as long as it's not too complicated,
23:42
as long as it doesn't impact them too much, and as long as it doesn't cost them too much.
23:45
So finding that that like threading that line and making sure that we can,
23:51
we can get them to a point where they actually see the value is is probably the
23:56
most important aspect with regards to that.
24:02
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now you hold the I a p c a credential, and you have trained tens of thousands
24:12
of people worldwide. Why should organizations care about certification and structured
24:21
training and how do you approach capability building so that it sticks after the workshop
24:31
is over?
24:34
Denis Boudreau: Well, I would say that certification primarily initially builds internal
24:42
credibility. It it establishes a common language,
24:46
a common set of expectations, so to speak.
24:50
When your people are certified, they have met a certain body of knowledge.
24:57
So there is an understanding in terms of what we're talking about.
25:01
Like we've defined the matter in a way that is collectively agreed upon.
25:09
That is probably the most interesting, interesting aspect or benefit of
25:14
certification. Individually speaking.
25:17
Yeah, it's a couple of acronyms to your name.
25:19
It's nice. But that doesn't bring you very far.
25:23
What it does, however, is when you have and especially in the field,
25:27
like accessibility where people are so passionate and and emotionally involved in
25:34
the topic, most people tend to over interpret rules all the time.
25:41
So when we think about the W3C rules around accessibility,
25:44
for instance, people think that, you know, all these things need to be done.
25:49
But when you really analyze what it is that is being asked in the wcaG guidelines the bar
25:57
is actually very low in a lot of cases.
25:59
We as practitioners have amplified what is expected because we interpret or
26:05
overinterpret what is what is being required.
26:09
So again, when you work with clients who are like,
26:12
I just don't want to get sued, tell me what I need to do and don't bother
26:16
me. With best practices, you have no choice but to go and really
26:19
analyze. Okay, so where do we really draw the line in terms of what this particular rule
26:25
dictates and what is just aspirational?
26:28
So when you have certification and everyone agrees on the same ballpark,
26:34
so to speak, then you minimize the risk of people having very different interpretations,
26:38
which becomes really important if you let's say you are an agency and you have a bunch of
26:44
people internally that are accessibility specialists,
26:47
and you work with your clients and your specialists or your experts are advising
26:53
these different clients about accessibility, you can't afford to have a bunch of people
26:57
saying different things or contradicting each other. And internally,
27:01
same thing. If you're in an organization, let's say you're a bank and you have you have
27:06
a commitment to accessibility, which you should because Accessible Canada
27:11
Act and everything. If you are working as an accessibility Team for your organization,
27:18
and you have different people coming to you, and different members of the team say
27:21
different things. Again, you will.
27:23
It's a surefire way to lose your credibility as a team.
27:26
Like you want consistency.
27:28
You want coherence. Certification technically will give you that.
27:32
So that that is certainly an important aspect of it.
27:37
And then when it comes to training, when you base it on these agreed upon
27:44
guidelines and what they mean, what you do is that you allow people to break
27:49
down very complex ideas, and then you present that into into
27:54
practical, repeatable actions that they can put into place,
27:58
whether it's about images or about keyboard access or this or that.
28:04
So yeah. So combining the reality or the, the vision,
28:07
let's say the clarity that certification provides with a training approach that leans
28:14
on that, what you what wear, it allows you to do basically is
28:17
progressively scaffold a skill set within the organization.
28:21
And that's something that I've discovered many years ago,
28:24
and that I've seen work very successfully with clients,
28:27
is that when you try to teach everyone about everything all at once,
28:33
everything comes one ear and out the other.
28:35
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, yes, yes.
28:37
Denis Boudreau: And when you when you accept that, yes, the goal is to be compliant.
28:41
The goal is to meet Aoda.
28:44
You know, four years ago for for level Double-A,
28:47
actually almost five years ago now.
28:49
So we're so behind. We need to get everything done today.
28:52
You're never going to get anywhere. But if you agree and if you accept rather that it's
28:57
going to take time and you need to build that skill set and you choose,
29:00
you choose to work with a smaller subset, but do it really well and then scaffold onto
29:06
that progressively. Your team will will learn and embed and integrate these concepts at a
29:13
much more reasonable rate or pace.
29:17
And then the likelihood of them actually being able to change how accessibility is
29:22
being handled or addressed internally will make a difference.
29:25
And then you can you can start actually enjoying and appreciating and witnessing
29:31
different wins that get you closer and closer to that goal.
29:36
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So it's like one step at a time, right?
29:38
Denis Boudreau: Absolutely. Like baby steps you know, progress over perfection.
29:43
Rome wasn't built in a day, like all these different things, right? So.
29:46
So all of these these metaphors are great, but,
29:49
yeah, if anyone who wants to do everything all at once will just get overwhelmed and and
29:56
sort of buried under everything that needs to be done,
29:59
and those who actually accept, take their time and do it well and do it
30:03
progressively will always come out on top at the end with better results.
30:10
Even more time.
30:11
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: All right. Go ahead, go ahead.
30:13
Denis Boudreau: I was, I said, even if it means more time.
30:16
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, that's that's the thing. You know, like some people say, oh, it's going to take
30:19
too long. Give me the whole shebang all at once.
30:21
But one step at a time.
30:23
I think it does a much better job.
30:25
Right?
30:26
Denis Boudreau: Yeah, exactly.
30:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well.
30:28
Denis Boudreau: You have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Before you can run.
30:31
That's basically it.
30:32
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Tell that to the toddler.
30:33
Is he. So tiny. Paint us a picture of a typical inclusive engagement.
30:43
If a leadership team team brings you in.
30:50
What does an audit or training arc look like from discovery to measurable results?
31:00
Denis Boudreau: Yeah, well, it does begin with that discovery.
31:03
It begins with interviews.
31:05
It begins with the assessments.
31:07
It begins with figuring out where these leaders are today where they think they want
31:14
to be and where they and identifying their biggest gaps.
31:19
Oftentimes it's gaps that you don't even know exist,
31:22
right? So these days, my typical assignment is very different than
31:26
what it was five years ago or 20 years ago, obviously.
31:30
But these days it's really about working with these these these leaders,
31:34
these executives and helping them understand what those gaps are and helping them see what
31:40
they don't yet see but have a feeling is hurting them.
31:46
You know, another stat that we can talk about that is very commonly shared is that roughly
31:52
20% of the workforce is neurodivergent or has an invisible disability.
31:57
So if you have 1000 employees, it's not unreasonable that anywhere between
32:04
150 and 200 of them would fit that profile.
32:07
If you have no idea that you have those folks on your team,
32:12
and you don't adapt any of your processes to maybe meet the needs or the expectations of
32:17
someone who is dyslexic as ADHD is colorblind.
32:23
Is on the autistic spectrum.
32:25
Autism spectrum. You will expect everyone to follow one way of working,
32:31
and we all know that one size fits all solutions don't work.
32:35
So once your leaders start to realize that that is probably happening in their
32:41
businesses as well, even though when they ask the question, nobody raises their hand,
32:44
because why would anyone ask themselves?
32:46
So to keep that for themselves until they feel very,
32:49
very comfortable and very safe in that environment,
32:53
the leaders need to be the ones doing the making.
32:57
The first the first gestures toward towards inclusion.
33:00
So I helped them see that we do an assessment together,
33:05
and that assessment allows me to place them on a maturity model.
33:08
So it's a scale going from 0 to 5.
33:11
And basically every step is like leveling up towards inclusion.
33:15
So we do that on the topic of disability inclusion first and then that will place them
33:22
somewhere in that maturity scale.
33:23
That maturity scale has been already been defined to say,
33:27
well, if you're at this level, you should be doing the following at the
33:30
moment. Are you doing those things or not?
33:32
If they are already doing that, then we can start building what comes next.
33:36
If they still have gaps compared to where they should be based on that scale,
33:40
then we'll work at bridging those gaps, like filling those gaps first,
33:45
and then we'll look at all the things that could also that should also be integrated
33:50
from previous stages that maybe they're not doing,
33:52
like we're backfilling all these things so that they can build again,
33:56
scaffold that, and build that foundation to be able to build a,
34:00
a stronger, more robust building, so to speak,
34:04
for accessibility. So so the the the engagement is in a part is helping them
34:10
identify where they are based.
34:11
Based on that. And then build a roadmap of where we could go next and let them see where
34:16
they could go to see if they actually want to go that far.
34:20
So help them see where we could go next based on their based on their priorities.
34:27
Then we can explore 15 other areas of leadership that is relevant to,
34:33
that are relevant to to disability inclusion.
34:35
And those are things like communication legislation,
34:39
etiquette stigma and bias, emergency preparedness digital accessibility,
34:46
you know, the workplace, like there's about 15 of those that I
34:50
typically will work with.
34:51
And so we'll choose any one of those those lanes,
34:54
if you will. And again, we'll just work towards coaching them further
34:59
down that path. So that turns into coaching sessions.
35:02
It turns into training sessions.
35:04
It turns into presentations.
35:07
It's about it's about sharing that knowledge and helping them integrate these concepts
35:12
into what they do so that when they speak with their teams,
35:15
their language changes, their demeanor changes,
35:19
their behavior changes.
35:20
And by doing so and demonstrating that they are serious about wanting to create a more
35:25
inclusive workplace, then their employees are going to start trusting that maybe they could
35:31
out themselves and disclose some disclose something about themselves.
35:35
And all of a sudden people start, you know, presenting themselves as being in
35:40
that statistic that was so low to begin with.
35:43
And what we know again is that and this is something that came out of the Return on
35:48
disability group in Toronto a couple years ago.
35:52
Richard Donovan was the one who led that that research.
35:56
And it was something along the lines of I think it was something like 90% of of Of
36:02
organizations who have a Dei policy toward diversity,
36:05
equity, and inclusion policy do not include disability as part of their protected
36:09
characteristics. So organizations are big on on Dei.
36:16
Well, maybe not as much as they used to, because the political climate in this last
36:19
year has been quite awful for that purpose.
36:22
But but a lot of organizations are still pushing for Dei,
36:26
but they'll do that in other equally important aspects such as,
36:31
you know, gender expression, race, religion,
36:34
sexuality, gender, like all these different things.
36:38
But disability is rarely in that conversation.
36:40
Yet disability is one of those areas that is completely,
36:44
completely transversal to everything else.
36:47
And yet it's not there because, again, most disabilities are invisible.
36:50
So people don't think about that. So that's that's what I do.
36:53
That's what I inclusive communication does is helping these leaders see those things bring
36:59
a light to that in reality, so that they can have a more informed,
37:03
more more, more conscious perspective on their workforce and their workplace so that
37:10
that workplace can fully contribute to the full extent of their potential,
37:14
regardless of what that potential is or whatever the limitations might be or
37:18
challenges might be.
37:20
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But do you think it's because that they are unaware of disability?
37:24
Or maybe it's disability is just a last minute reminder?
37:29
Like why do you think disability is not included to start with?
37:36
Denis Boudreau: I don't think that the vast majority of people mean well,
37:43
they're just busy, and it's not something that they think about because it's not part
37:46
of their reality. And yet most of us know at least a person or two who fits that profile.
37:53
Most of those people they just don't realize relates to disability.
37:57
So I, I think it's really just a question of being uninformed.
38:02
It's a question of not having been able to connect the dots as to what that means for
38:08
your business. It's a it's a question of not having understood that diversity is a
38:14
fantastic vector for inclusion and, you know,
38:17
innovation and creativity.
38:19
When you have a group of people that all look,
38:22
think and sound the same, you can't expect them to have diverse
38:27
opinions or perspectives on anything.
38:30
They will all have very similar ways of seeing the world,
38:33
because they all belong in the same kind of world.
38:36
And if you're a business, for instance, and you're selling a product
38:40
and you'd like to reach as many people as possible with to buy that product,
38:45
and your perspective is the perspective of a cisgendered white male,
38:51
you can't expect, expect that you're going to very naturally appeal to everyone out there
38:56
who is not like you. But if you have a team of people that come from different
39:00
perspectives, different groups, different beliefs,
39:04
different bunch of different things, then the likelihood of that team being able
39:10
to spot when something is probably not appropriate for this group or that group
39:14
means that you're less likely to make those mistakes.
39:16
It means that you're more likely to think about different ways to present your ideas
39:21
that will appeal to a larger group, because you have different representations in
39:25
that group as well. So just that should be should be significant enough for for a leader
39:31
to say, hey, you know what? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sell my shoes just to,
39:34
you know, white males in their 50s.
39:36
I'd like to sell my shoes to anyone who actually has feet.
39:39
So let's let's work with a broader perspective because of that.
39:44
Or in order to, to to to meet that goal.
39:49
And that's what it does. That's what that's what inclusion does. That's what diversity
39:52
does. So when leaders understand that they're already more open to the idea.
39:57
And then when you start adding other aspects to this,
40:00
like, you know, it would really be bad for your reputation if all of a sudden people
40:05
realize that you're so, you know, oblivious to different realities or
40:12
different groups or this or that, then all the risks that come with not paying
40:17
attention also add to the necessity of paying attention to these situations.
40:22
And like most other things, once you start pulling on that thread,
40:26
you realize that, oh wait, there's a lot more in there than I ever
40:29
thought about, and it becomes something that all of a sudden you make space for,
40:34
you make room for.
40:38
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Without naming names, if you can't share a case study where
40:44
inclusive communication led to a concrete, you know,
40:50
win, maybe higher conversions, Pure support calls or reduced legal risk.
41:00
What changed and how did you measure all of this?
41:06
Denis Boudreau: Well, it's a little bit of everything that I've said so far, right? I mean, I've worked
41:11
with a couple of banks as an example.
41:13
We're talking about banks earlier. So banks the recent years and you know,
41:20
banks are very traditional beasts, right?
41:22
I mean, they do things in a certain way.
41:25
It's a tried and true approach, and things tend to be very traditional.
41:30
And when it comes to accessibility, being traditional is saying,
41:33
hey, there's a deadline.
41:35
We need to do this, figure it out.
41:37
And then every year they realize that they haven't really done any progress.
41:41
And yeah, they made some progress here.
41:43
But then they broke that other thing over there or the website that they had worked on
41:47
as now being, you know, redesigned.
41:49
And the new version is worse than the previous one and it's always back to zero.
41:53
So I've had many experiences where I've come in and I've spoken with these leaders and
41:59
helped them understand that the reason why they're not making any tangible progress is
42:06
because everyone has a checklist as an example,
42:11
and they're doing these things, but they don't really understand what they're
42:13
doing. They just know that they need to put alt text on an image, for instance. So they
42:17
don't really pay attention to it. Nobody feels like it's part of their job.
42:21
So they're just being asked to do that every now and then. So there's a spot check for
42:24
this, but nobody really plans for it ahead of time.
42:26
So being able to bring the concept of, you know,
42:30
accessibility from the very early stages of conception and ideation in a project means
42:37
that you're going to pay attention to it as you go through every step of that project or
42:42
life cycle. So, I mean, I've, I've seen many,
42:46
many instances where accessibility was considered from the very beginning,
42:53
and as a result of that, the resulting product or the outcome for that
42:57
particular project was much more accessible than it would have been otherwise.
43:03
Again, it's the old metaphor of, you know, a blueberry muffin or a chocolate
43:07
chip cookie that everybody talks about, right? I mean, you can you can put together
43:11
a, like, dough for a cookie dough and bake it and then sprinkle a bunch of chocolate chips
43:17
on top of it at the end.
43:18
It's not going to be the same feeling as if those chocolate chips are actually baked into
43:21
the cookie in the oven.
43:23
Like sprinkle, sprinkle that on top of it or within are different things.
43:27
Accessibility is the exact same way.
43:29
You if you really think about accessibility from the very beginning,
43:32
every decision you will make will be instructed in part by accessibility.
43:36
And if you have if you have your, your, your checkpoints regularly to make sure
43:40
that we have not dropped the ball on those things,
43:42
inevitably it will become more accessible.
43:46
Inevitably, people will be assigned with responsibilities at their level in their
43:51
roles, and if those responsibilities are actually coherent with one another,
43:55
then you will start to see people actually speaking to each other and communicating
43:59
ideas or expectations about accessibility.
44:01
As an example, if you're a designer and you've heard about accessibility and colour
44:06
contrast, and you know that you need to pay attention to which colours you use together
44:09
because people like me might have a hard time reading the content. Otherwise,
44:13
if you've made that decision and you've put together a colour palette at the beginning of
44:17
for the project, that looks a certain way, then you want to make sure that when content
44:22
creators come in and they start writing content,
44:24
that they don't use combinations that would be bad for accessibility.
44:28
You'll say, yeah, you know, I know that you like that grey text on a
44:31
white background. Probably not a good idea.
44:33
Go for medium medium grey text instead.
44:35
It's going to be easier to read. Or if a developer comes in and wants to use different
44:41
portions of or assets of the of of the website to build a new page,
44:46
you will want to convey to them that they need to pay attention to this or that.
44:49
So when people start talking with each other and they communicate about accessibility,
44:54
then they also expand their own understanding of what that means and they understand why
44:58
they do it. So all those things are very tangible ways or examples of ways in which
45:05
success is translated into into the project at the end,
45:10
because they are suddenly paying attention to it,
45:13
which otherwise is never the case. I mean, if I go back ten,
45:16
15 years, pretty much every project that I would work on,
45:19
I would be called in at the very end of the project and they would say, hey, we're
45:22
launching our site in two weeks. We thought it would be great if you could take a look
45:25
for accessibility and tell us if we did well or not,
45:28
and what they're hoping is that you're going to tell them everything is perfect. And as
45:32
you start saying that it's not, then they say, oh, well, too bad,
45:35
we'll do we'll try to do better next time.
45:36
And that was basically my practice for about ten years.
45:41
I don't have that anymore.
45:42
Like, it's been a long time since I've had anyone come to me and said,
45:46
we just need a like a spot check at the end.
45:49
People have understood over the years, probably because they,
45:52
you know, they've hit that wall so many times before where they,
45:56
they didn't meet those goals or they had to to recognize that they had completely missed
46:00
the ball on that, that they that they planned for it earlier on in their process.
46:06
And that's a again, that's a good indication of success when it comes to accessibility.
46:11
I don't tend to measure measure success by whether or not a website is truly accessible,
46:16
because I've yet to see one that is perfectly accessible.
46:19
There's always something that doesn't work or something that gets broken while you try to
46:22
fix something else. But the closer you get to that goal,
46:27
the more people will be able to use it without dealing with any kind of barriers or
46:33
challenges that could otherwise be avoided.
46:35
And that, to me, is the real measure of success that the biggest,
46:39
the biggest boulders are out of the way.
46:41
And, you know, you have to walk around a couple of pebbles,
46:43
but those are manageable.
46:45
It's fine. And so yeah, I would say that that's one of the ways in
46:49
which I've seen it measured.
46:52
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now here's a personal question for me. It's not one of our interview questions.
46:56
I'm just wondering, does it depend on the type of company as to how they view
47:03
disability slash accessibility?
47:05
Like, for example, do you think an airline company views it differently from a bank?
47:16
Denis Boudreau: Not really. They're both they're both from the,
47:19
you know, private sector.
47:22
They both have goals that are first and foremost about profitability and making
47:26
money. So they're pretty much the same.
47:29
There is a difference between, say, a government organization and,
47:32
say, a bank or an airline company for sure.
47:36
When the goal is first and foremost to serve the population,
47:40
serve your, your community you're more likely to find people who want to do the right thing
47:47
naturally, because and oftentimes those are people who are also close to the practice of
47:53
UX, like user experience.
47:55
And they want to make sure that, you know, if they're going to be to be
47:58
building something, they would rather that everyone can use it.
48:02
That's how they're thinking about it, as opposed to someone who is in the private
48:06
sector will say, well, it's already costing us so much.
48:09
We want to make as much profit as possible. Let's not make it overly complicated by
48:12
including those people and by those people.
48:14
They think about, you know, the blind people and the that guy in the
48:18
wheelchair in the corner over there, that's that's what they're thinking about,
48:21
because they don't realize that it's actually a lot more people than that. And most of
48:25
those, those disabilities are invisible.
48:28
But once they start seeing that and they start seeing, like I was saying earlier,
48:32
the potential risk in terms of lost revenue, in terms of all the people that may never
48:37
even get to their website because for some reason it doesn't work for them.
48:42
They're starting to see the potential losses in sales,
48:44
and now they're starting to pay attention because of that. And if you can convince them
48:48
that the cost of making things more accessible is lower than the,
48:52
the, the, the lost revenue that will come from not doing that,
48:56
then they pay attention.
48:57
And when they realize that if they actually integrate that practice into their DNA,
49:02
into the organization, into their processes,
49:04
so that it's not going to be reinventing the wheel all the time, but that they can start
49:08
having practices that are built on accessibility,
49:11
and people just do it that way instead of doing it another way.
49:14
Then they also understand that there's going to be a learning curve. But as they get
49:18
better and better, as they get more mature, it's going to cost them less and less to do
49:22
it. And while it costs them less, it expands the how much of their audience
49:28
they can they can reach with that particular product or service.
49:31
So that's how you win them over.
49:33
But yeah, I mean, it depends on the type of organization I public versus private.
49:38
Definitely. Yeah. And then, you know, organizations that are focused on
49:43
people are more likely, obviously, to pay attention to accessibility.
49:47
And organizations that are fixed on numbers are less likely to do it.
49:51
I would say as a generalization.
49:55
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now the clock is telling me that we don't have that much time, but I'm very,
49:58
very interested to know what are your thoughts for the future?
50:02
Where do you see the landscape of disability slash accessibility going?
50:07
And, you know, for the younger generation, what advice would you give to them?
50:17
Denis Boudreau: So of course we can't talk about the future without talking about AI. So we're going to
50:21
start.
50:21
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, yes, yes.
50:26
Denis Boudreau: Most of us have played with tools like ChatGPT or Cloud or Gemini or Perplexity or
50:30
whatnot over the last three years.
50:33
Anyone who has some level of depth of expertise in a particular field and as I
50:40
tried these tools, I've found them to be great in a lot of cases,
50:44
but unreliable in other cases.
50:46
So to answer your question, I would say that for anyone who wants to get
50:50
into this field, of course AI is going to be a huge way or factor into you learning the
50:58
skill set and developing the expertise, but you have to also be able to learn it in
51:05
more traditional ways by talking to people who have done it before,
51:08
by by being in touch with people with disabilities and learning from their
51:12
experience, their experiences, their their needs,
51:15
their their frustrations, their expectations and all that.
51:18
Because AI alone won't give you that, that perspective or the the broadness of the
51:24
perspective. I do believe that with every passing year,
51:30
the digital space becomes more accessible very slowly,
51:34
painfully, slowly, but still a little bit better.
51:38
And I do believe also that we're we're not quite there yet.
51:43
But AI will also have a really significant impact on the tools that allow people to
51:49
build, design, create more accessible products using those technologies.
51:56
So that's all very positive.
51:58
But we will, before that, get through a period that we're already into
52:02
by, as a matter of fact, with different vendors selling or promising
52:07
different tools that are supposed to fix everything and yet won't do that.
52:10
I mean, one of the one of the conversations we could get into if we had more time,
52:14
I guess, would be all these accessibility overlays,
52:17
companies that that are that promise you that with this single line of JavaScript,
52:22
you're going to get your entire site compliant, which is absolute,
52:27
absolutely false. And we have, you know, hundreds of of testimonials of
52:34
people with disabilities saying that the use of those tools that actually makes things
52:37
harder for them. And we have, you know, at this point,
52:40
hundreds of companies that have been sued because despite having used those tools,
52:44
they're still not accessible and they're still very far from that goal of compliance.
52:49
So we have all these companies that are basically selling you whatever you want to
52:52
hear. And so, so, you know, that's that's a big problem that we have
52:58
today that will get better though.
53:00
I mean, it's a necessary evil.
53:01
I feel in the sense that for not all of them,
53:04
because some of those companies are just there to make a quick buck and, you know,
53:07
they won't be there five years from now. But some of those companies that actually mean to
53:11
do well and are really trying will eventually get to a point where their tools are going to
53:15
be more helpful than, than harmful, and that's going to help as
53:19
well. So when you combine AI to improve on the tools that end users are using screen
53:26
readers or whatnot that they're using, and you add to that other AIS that help
53:30
developers and designers create more accessible products,
53:33
as long as all of these different tools, speak a common language and agree on
53:37
different things. It will create more inclusive content out of the box and all of
53:42
that will help us. So I think that the future is bright in that sense.
53:47
I don't expect to see much of that before I retire.
53:50
So the next ten years or so, I think we'll get it'll get better,
53:54
but we're not going to get anywhere near perfect before then.
53:58
But I am, but I tend I also tend to be an optimistic by nature.
54:01
Right. So I choose to see the world that way.
54:04
Otherwise it would be way too depressing. But but the potential is there.
54:08
Let's put it this way. So yeah, I think it's I think it's a good thing. But
54:11
when you look at when you look at tools, like if you were new to accessibility and you
54:16
took anything that AI gives you at face value,
54:19
you would be giving very you know, ill advised recommendations to your clients.
54:26
So you can't just trust that you have to also reach out to your community,
54:30
find the community that where people actually know what they're talking about, and compare
54:35
what the tools tell you with those people, so that we can all educate those tools so
54:39
that they eventually are better and better at giving us actual truth and facts,
54:44
and not just made up nonsense.
54:48
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Danny, I'd like to thank you for having been on my podcast.
54:52
I think this has been a good educational interview,
54:56
you know, for me included.
54:57
I've learned a lot today.
54:58
I want to thank you for that.
55:00
And if at any time you would like to come back and,
55:03
you know, share more perspectives with us, please do not hesitate to reach out.
55:09
Denis Boudreau: Awesome. Well, it was great being here. I'm happy you invited me. Thank you.
55:16
Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at Donna at gmail.com.
55:22
Until next time.