Allison interviews Glenn Barfield from HCLTech about their expertise in offering accessibility as a service to companies. HCLTech aims to help large-scale organizations make their products more accessible and conform to national accessibility standards.
HCLTech assists companies in auditing and resolving accessibility issues with their websites, software, and applications. They guide companies through all phases, including design, development, remediation, verification, and sustaining of the accessibility of a company’s product.
HCLTech has the world’s largest accessibility team, with 1000 people trained in the U.S. Government’s Section 508 Trusted Tester program. 75 people with disabilities work at HCLTech to help bring direct accessibility experience and expertise into their service offerings.
Learn more at https://hcltech.com/
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Transcript of Interview:
Allison: I’ve walked up to the HCLTech booth to talk to Glenn Barfield and he’s got some stuff up here about designing accessibility into the products and I told him the best way to really do this is to bolt it on at the end and I found that always to be a tried-and-true method.
Glenn: Absolutely if you’re looking to waste money, time, create problems and basically sink your company and lose it to the competition, bolting it on at the last minute, the way to go! Yes!
Allison: All right, all right, all right. So HCLTech provides accessibility as a service, is that right? So you guys work with other companies to help them have accessible products?
Glenn: Correct, so a lot of companies they come to us initially and they’re in that kind of, we need to be accessible, we don’t know what we’re doing, please help us.
Allison: Maybe they got a Section 508 violation…
Glenn: Or somebody’s filing a lawsuit or they’re worried about the Accessibility Canada Act or European Accessibility Act. So we help them, we do the auditing, we give them the bugs, they fix them, we do the verification, help them with the VPAT, ACR, everything like that. But then we say, okay great, you’re not done. Some companies they think, okay we we fixed the problems, like you fixed a problem.
Allison: But it’s more like security, right? You got to keep designing it in?
Glenn: Exactly, you cannot assume that where you are now is what your product is going to be like in three months, six months or a year. Regulations will change, technology will change, your product will change, you need to stay up to date. So what we work with a lot of companies now is a lot of design work, a lot of development work, the remediation work, the verification work and then sustaining. And we will put together an entire team that works with their products. We actually have the world’s largest accessibility team. A thousand people have gone through the Trusted Testers Certification Program for the US government and have been certified by the US government as trusted testers for accessibility. We have 75 people who are people with disabilities on staff along with consultants.
Allison: How many did you say?
Glenn: 75 people with disabilities. We are literally the largest accessibility company that no one’s ever heard of. There’s a lot of competition we have, but what we’re looking for is the large-scale organizations, okay? The Microsofts, the Metas, the Googles, things like that. And we’re working with them to make their products accessible.
Allison: Now they could certainly, they have the money that they could build a team like this of their own, couldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they do that?
Glenn: Well for one thing, they have faced the problem in building a team up like that. It takes a lot of resources, it takes a lot of time, a lot of expertise. We’ve already got a team ready to go. The other problem is that they build a team like that and it works for right now, but then they go into a valley or they change their product or they do a reorg, they don’t need so many people, so they have to lay them off. But then again, six months later, they need them back, right? So what we’re able to do is say that’s fine. Scale up, scale down, scale up, scale down. We have the resources to do that and there’s no impact on you and there’s no impact on us because for our team that’s scaled down, those people go to work on a project for another company, right? So we can move people around. This gives us the advantage of seeing a lot of different products, a lot of different stages, builds up the expertise and experience that our people have.
Allison: I really like this idea because getting into those big companies and getting this stuff built from the ground up, and I know obviously I was joking at the beginning there, but I think it inspires everybody to keep that in the front and center focus, even if you’re just a one-woman shop writing an iPhone app, you’re thinking about these kinds of things now.
Glenn: Yeah, and the other thing too that we’ve seen a big change in is that a lot of people were initially worried, “Oh my gosh, we’re gonna get sued, we’re gonna be in trouble with the law, there’s violations against some regulation we have never heard of,” and there was kind of a stick hitting them, right? Now it’s shifted to a carrot situation where they’re looking at people with disabilities like, “Oh my gosh, they have money, they spend money, why?”
Allison: There’s also a lot of them.
Glenn: Yes, yes, millions, and it’s like, “My gosh, we’re not getting their money? What the heck is wrong with us?” So it’s become more of a carrot situation where companies are looking at people with disabilities as a demographic that in some cases has been ignored but is no longer being ignored, and we help them bring those people into their products. Basically any online application, any online product, we can help them make it accessible and bring those people into their world.
Allison: This is fantastic work. So if people wanted to learn more about what you do, the company is HCL Tech, how would they find out about the accessibility as a service piece?
Glenn: So they would go to hcltech.com, they can look for accessibility. I also have a QR code here, you guys can take a photograph of that, put that on your blog, on your post as well, and they can learn more about accessibility team. And also if you’re curious about another realm of accessibility, amputation. I am an amputee, I have a YouTube channel, and I’m… shameless plug here guys, shameless plug.
Allison: Okay, yeah. There it is. Look at that. That is so cool. So what do you do on your YouTube channel?
Glenn: So Amputee Outdoors on YouTube channel, I do a lot of hiking and backpacking in the Pacific Northwest up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, and what I’m trying to promote is the idea that if you’re a person with disabilities, that doesn’t cut you off from exploring nature. Now you may not be able to go hiking up mountains like what I do, but you can get out there, you can do things, you can explore, you can get into the world and be involved in the world and explore the world. Go for a nature walk, go for a walk anywhere, go for a roll anywhere, go out and explore and get out into the world, and that’s what I’m trying to promote with Amputee Outdoors.
Allison: Very cool. So look for Amputee Outdoors on YouTube.
Glenn: Yes, absolutely.
Allison: Very good. Thank you so much.
Glenn: Thank you very much, and enjoy CSUN. A lot of great products here. Some of them are our competition. They’re not as good as us, but we like having them around anyway.
Allison: There you go. Makes you stronger.
Glenn: Yep.
Thanks for posting this! I had a great time at CSUN and by the looks of it, you did too. 🙂