For Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024, we launched a new blog series where we invite Team8s who are driving the accessibility conversation within different parts of our organization to share the work they’ve been doing in this area.

Building on the first blog post in this series, this second post features Bart Bielawa, Engineering Manager, and Arturo Cullinane, Senior Software Engineer. Both Bart and Arturo have been involved hands-on in implementing accessibility enhancements in 8x8 Agent Workspace over the past year.

Bart Bielawa, Engineering Manager

“We need to shift our mindset to integrate accessibility as an inherent part of our definition of done and delivering top-quality code."

8x8: Looking at 8x8 Agent Workspace today, what are some of the most significant enhancements you and the team have made to the product from an accessibility standpoint?

Bart Bielawa (BB): From both an accessibility and a power user perspective, we've made substantial enhancements to Agent Workspace. For example, we've significantly improved keyboard navigation and font scaling, enabling agents to use the UI more efficiently and in a way that’s tailored to their specific needs, while respecting all aspects of Responsive Web Design and WCAG standards.

These updates ensure that all users, regardless of their abilities or work styles, can navigate and interact with the workspace comfortably and effectively.

8x8: What have been some of the biggest challenges for you and the team when implementing these enhancements?

BB: I would say that one big challenge we faced as a team was our diverse backgrounds, with many of us having previously worked at companies where accessibility considerations were often overlooked.

For some, grasping the full scope of accessibility was a learning curve, but having accessibility experts on our team has been invaluable. Today, we all take pride in embedding WCAG principles deeply into our core values.

8x8: Where do you think AI can best improve digital accessibility, notably in the CCaaS space?

BB: I have several ideas on how AI can positively impact CCaaS. For example, AI-powered speech-to-text technology can automatically transcribe spoken interactions, such as customer service calls or video conferences, into text in real time.

AI can also transcribe customer calls, enabling agents to refer back to conversations for accuracy and compliance. This transcription capability can also be utilized for generating captions in real time during live interactions, making communications more accessible for people with hearing impairments. The bright AI future is just around the corner.

8x8: What have been some of the most valuable lessons you and your team have learned from working on the accessibility side of the product?

BB: We recognized that ensuring accessibility isn't a one-time task. Accessibility is an ongoing commitment that requires a deeper understanding and a user-centric focus. We need to shift our mindset to integrate accessibility as an inherent part of our definition of done and delivering top-quality code.

This means prioritizing usability over aesthetics—don't get me wrong, we're passionate about beautiful design at 8x8, but sometimes it's about making compromises to ensure that everyone can effectively use our products. It's a cultural and procedural shift that emphasizes continuous improvement and empathy towards the needs of all users, regardless of ability.

Arturo Cullinane, Senior Software Engineer

“What we’ve all come to learn is that accessibility fixes are not always black and white solutions."

8x8: As an engineer working on 8x8 Agent Workspace, what has your experience been with implementing ARIA and other accessibility support systems in the code?

Arturo Cullinane (AC): Agent Workspace is a combination of many micro-frontends, mostly consisting of React JS library with a sprinkle of vanilla JS, HTML, CSS, and the odd legacy code base here and there. An interesting challenge was getting these micro-frontends to communicate with each other, particularly with correct keyboard tabbing order focus management.

Initially, it seemed that we had to bake accessibility into Agent Workspace, but with the massive training and the knowledge we now have on the team, we are ensuring that accessibility is considered from the onset in all aspects of our work. Documenting our findings as much as possible is a big part of that.

Now, to go back to that first phase of gradually engineering accessibility into the many features and capabilities that make up 8x8 Agent Workspace, our approach was iterative—at each stage, we focused on some key elements (such as keyboard navigation, logical tabbing ordering, font scaling, zooming, semantic HTML, and translations) and at playing nicely with assistive technologies (such as screen readers and voice control software).

8x8: When conducting accessibility testing, what tools do you use?

AC: There are several phases where accessibility testing tools come in very handy: at the auditing stage, when you run a WCAG audit through an existing website; during the implementation phase, when you want to test your implementations; and post-implementation, when QA engineers do one final round of testing.

There are specific tools we use to do accessibility testing, and they correspond to each phase. Axe DevTools (built by Deque) works as a Chrome browser extension that allows you to select different elements on your website (or the entire website) and runs automated accessibility tests against those elements. Screen reader software (like VoiceOver, which we use for Mac, or NVDA) allows us to go through particular user flows to see how user-friendly an application is to screen reader users, and also to identify potential blockers. The same goes with voice command software like VoiceControl, which we use for Mac.

We also use color contrast checkers (like color.adobe.com), which help us ensure that the foreground-background color text combinations we use meet the WCAG color contrast ratio requirements. Recently, we've also integrated linting tools for coding, like eslint-jsx-ally which helps developers catch accessibility errors right in their HTML—we’ve baked it in, so that it throws errors on Git commits, preventing the commit from happening if there are any accessibility concerns.

On top of that, our User Research (UXR) team is starting to make some headway into user accessibility testing with real people on our Agent Workspace user flows.

8x8: How do you collaborate with designers and stakeholders to make sure that accessibility requirements are met throughout the development process?

AC: Usually, our in-house accessibility guru Kit Sparrow would jump in to do WCAG audits and VPATs for our various products. However, in the case of Agent Workspace, where the product is mostly split between different micro-frontends, there is usually a small development team who is responsible for each particular micro-frontend. Once the WCAG audit is complete, typically in the form of a spreadsheet, we run through the list and create tickets, which are then added to the backlog.

We follow an Agile delivery framework, meaning we have development sprints that last two weeks, and every two weeks, we go through planning and decide as a team what needs to be done in the following sprint.

Occasionally we may spot accessibility issues simply by running through the application or by testing a particular user flow. In these cases, we generally create a ticket, which we then use as a reference point to discuss and identify the best course of action. Sometimes, this may require a conversation with the UX designers, especially when there is a fundamental concern in the user flow, or it may require a conversation with Kit Sparrow to validate our concerns or present alternative solutions.

What we’ve all come to learn is that accessibility fixes are not always black and white solutions.

8x8: What have been some of the most valuable lessons that you’ve learned, personally and professionally, from working on the accessibility side of the product?

AC: One major lesson is a greater sense of empathy for the struggles that people with disabilities can have when using the web and other technologies.

Technology and online services can be very liberating for people with disabilities—for example, being able to shop for groceries online, or to order an Uber. With that said, I believe that online services must be accessible to everyone, or we risk excluding people from daily tasks. Making a website compliant with WCAG guidelines is one of the first steps on a product’s journey to accessibility.

I believe that to be truly accessible, we need to embed accessibility into all stages of the product life cycle, from research and requirements gathering, to design, development, and testing. We also need to understand our users and the types of challenges they may face, and there is no better way to do that than by putting ourselves in the shoes of our end users when navigating the application and asking ourselves “does this make sense?” As someone told me when I joined 8x8, accessibility is a process, not a side project or even a retrofit. Good accessibility is also good usability and design, so let's be inclusive.

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