Regine Gilbert

Introducing Regine Gilbert

Regine Gilbert is a user experience designer based in New York City. She is a professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where she teaches user experience design to students in the Integrated Digital Media program. Regine has taught at General Assembly in New York City and is an alum of its part-time UX program. She has more than 10 years of experience in the tech arena with much focus on inclusion and accessibility. Regine has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place and is passionate about advocating for good user experience that starts and ends with the user. Find Regine on Twitter: @reg_inee.

Geertjan Wielenga: You're a designer, but you interact a lot with developers and you promote your vision of user interface (UI) design. Do you see yourself as an advocate?

Regine Gilbert: I feel that, as a user experience (UX) designer, I advocate for the user, ultimately, but that means not making things hard for the developer either.

Geertjan Wielenga: Do you see a very strong difference between designers and developers?

Regine Gilbert: I think there is a difference. At the end of the day, we all want to get our jobs done, but our perspectives are a little bit different. From a designer's perspective, we want something that will look good. From a developer's perspective, they want to get things done, but they also want to make things good for users, so we come together on that. There is much more collaboration than you might initially think.

Geertjan Wielenga: Would you describe yourself as an accessibility advocate, then?

Regine Gilbert: Yes, I would say that. I do my best to be aware and mindful of not only what I design but what I teach. As an educator, it's so important to get your students thinking about this.

I have had students in the past who were injured or had accidents that caused temporary and sometimes permanent disabilities. It changed their perspective on things when they experienced the challenges. Once you know something, you can't undo that. Moving forward, I hope that my students continue to learn about accessibility and continue to speak about it. I've worked with companies who don't really care about it. All I can do is plant seeds and hope that they grow at some point.

Geertjan Wielenga: How did you get into the work that you're doing?

Regine's career path

Regine Gilbert: I was working as a product manager in supply chains in the fashion world. I was a designer before that, but a different type of designer: a fashion designer. I really missed designing when I was a product manager. This was around 2013/14 and I paid attention to what was going on in the news. It was reported that everything was going digital. I decided that I wanted to go more toward the digital world too.

I started learning on my own. I decided to take a formal class in UX design at General Assembly and that led me on a path that I never expected to be on today.

I'm now writing a book on inclusive design and designing with accessibility in mind. Over the years, I have become an accessibility advocate, as you say. I not only create guidelines for the workplace but I also teach and incorporate accessibility into my classroom.

I was a certified project manager and a scrum master when I was doing project management. Getting an understanding of what people were programming has been very helpful in my career. I've taken classes on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but I don't sit there and code. I can look at code and say, "Okay, we can fix these things," and I'm not the person who sits there all day doing that.

Geertjan Wielenga: How did your particular interest in accessibility come about?

Regine Gilbert: I became very passionate about accessibility when I realized that it's not being taught in the curriculum. I remember when I took my first UX course and there was one slide on accessibility in a 12-week course. When I started teaching, I built in the accessibility topic early. I actually mention it in the first class.

We often exclude people with disabilities from the very beginning when we're making a product. I ask my students to complete an empathy exercise so that they start thinking about accessibility. Sometimes I bring people with disabilities into my classroom, so my students can do a design sprint, come up with an idea, and then pitch it to the person who they're building it for. They then get real feedback.

Geertjan Wielenga: You speak at conferences on these topics as well. What are some places you've spoken at recently?

Regine Gilbert: Most recently I spoke here in New York at General Assembly. I was on a panel talking about accessibility and design in digital products. I've also spoken in previous years in Boston at HOW Design, which is a very big design conference. I do little talks within the New York community about accessibility as well.

Geertjan Wielenga: Could you talk more about the book that you're writing?

Regine Gilbert: Yes, the book is geared toward designers, project managers, and people who have a general interest in accessibility. It addresses web content accessibility guidelines and incorporating accessibility into design systems, as well as covering past and future innovations to do with accessibility.

When I'm talking to my students, I ask, "Do you text? Well, texting was initially created for people who are deaf." Many people don't know that. Curb cuts were initially made for people with wheelchairs, but we all benefit from them. There are many innovations from the past that we use today.

Geertjan Wielenga: Typically, when we think about accessibility in terms of software, we automatically think about sight-related disabilities. Are there other disabilities that are related to accessibility and software?

Regine Gilbert: Yes, when thinking about accessibility there are four categories: visual, hearing, cognitive, and motor.

For example, one of the first things that I do is see whether I can keyboard through a site. If I can keyboard through it, am I able to see where I'm going? Not everyone can use a mouse.

If there's a video on a website, is there closed captioning available for that? Is there a transcript available? Can I turn on my screen reader? Will it read the page? What's the hierarchy of the page? Those are things that I've learned. I'm continuing to learn more from friends who have visual and hearing impairments.

Twitter is great for learning about what's going on and what people are talking about too. #a11Y is a numeronym for accessibility. Some people say, "Ally."

Different avenues in the IT industry

Geertjan Wielenga: This is very interesting from the point of view of this book. I'm trying to make the argument, among other things, that being involved in the IT industry isn't necessarily a dry day job of programming and being very code-oriented; there is also a range of other types of work that you can do. Do you agree that your work is an example of this?

Regine Gilbert: Yes, it's very interesting to think about. I teach UX design at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. The undergraduates work with a real-life client each semester.

"There are many areas in which accessibility is just not being addressed."

—Regine Gilbert

This semester, their real-life client was an accessibility consulting firm called Equal Entry. Each student was given a different topic area, ranging from creating accessibility awareness in Vietnam to making more accessible maps and creating accessibility awareness around virtual reality (VR). There are many areas in which accessibility is just not being addressed. Because VR and augmented reality (AR) are still so new, we have an opportunity to get accessibility awareness out there.

For the web, a lot of people are now talking about accessibility, especially because in the U.S. there have been many lawsuits around accessibility. People aren't talking about it in relation to these mixed realities just yet.

What I like to remind people of in my talks, especially in the U.S., is that we're an aging population. In this country, by the year 2035, which is 16 years away, we'll have more old people than young people. If we're not creating products for our older selves, what are we doing?

We're constantly on our devices, which means that low vision and blindness are probably going to rise. Are we creating these products to work with future sight problems? How can people who already have those disabilities use them now?

With my students, I ask, "Who do you think about the most?" They sit for a second and then realize that they think about themselves more than anyone else.

We think about ourselves the most, so when we're designing for someone else, we have to take ourselves out of that equation.

You should think about everyone who could use your product. You're not your user, basically. I have to keep reminding my students of this because even when they start to come up with solutions, they sometimes stop thinking about the user.

As designers and developers, I think we fall into that trap. When we're making this really cool thing, we stop thinking about who we're making it for. We get caught up in the fun that we're having making it.

Geertjan Wielenga: Would another way to approach it be to think about yourself with low vision, a hearing problem, or a limb missing?

Regine Gilbert: Yes. Microsoft has a really great inclusive design toolkit that I like to show people. It splits disabled people into being permanently disabled, temporarily disabled, or situationally disabled. For example, if someone is born with one arm, that's permanent. If someone has a broken arm, that's temporary. If someone is holding a baby, that's situational.

Thinking about disability from all contexts is important. You're creating this cool product, but what if somebody has a baby and they're trying to use it? I really like that perspective because it makes things more relatable. When you can relate, you can connect. When you can connect, you can understand. When you can understand, you can build better products.

Geertjan Wielenga: You mentioned VR and AR; where would accessibility fit there?

Regine Gilbert: One big thing that I learned at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference is that Microsoft is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) and accessibility. Ultimately, you have to get disabled people working in these areas alongside able-bodied people in order to create the best products.

"Co-designing will be the future when it comes to AR, VR, and AI."

—Regine Gilbert

From what I've seen, co-designing will be the future when it comes to AR, VR, and AI. There's no way to come up with better ideas than to incorporate the people who will be using the products into the development process. That's my hope for the future as well. There are already some companies, like Magic Leap, creating accessibility teams and thinking about it from the start.

Geertjan Wielenga: I was working with a group of developers some years ago. They were creating software to be used by farmers and one of the team members was actually a farmer. Is that similar?

Regine Gilbert: Yes, it helps immensely. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has done a good job of incorporating accessibility into a lot of its workflows, in part because it does hire people with disabilities and do thorough testing.

Geertjan Wielenga: What are some new developments happening in accessibility in general?

Accessibility awareness

Regine Gilbert: Firstly, people are becoming more aware of it. Secondly, there are organizations, like Teach Access here in the U.S., that are promoting incorporating accessibility into the classroom.

I'm biased because I just got a grant from Teach Access to incorporate accessibility into my curriculum. I've been doing that on my own, of course, but it's great to have the extra help.

I think accessibility is an education issue because I've taught computer science students and engineering students who had no knowledge of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. I asked, "You want to work in the web and mobile, but you don't know that there are these Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?"

Even designers have no idea that they exist. It's important to increase awareness. Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but these international standards have been put in place for the good of everyone. Everyone should be able to access the web.

Geertjan Wielenga: I work at Oracle as a product manager for a JavaScript toolkit. We're always talking about these topics and trying to integrate these guidelines. Can you incorporate accessibility outside of this type of large enterprise?

Regine Gilbert: 100%, yes. Look at small businesses; they have no idea that they need to adhere to these guidelines; they don't even know about them. It's just not something that's discussed.

Unfortunately, because of certain lawsuits that have occurred, which I referred to earlier, there are now federal guidelines around accessibility. The web is so new that lawmakers are trying to catch up. They've applied an old law to new tech, so this blanket rule has been implemented. Businesses that are just not aware may end up getting sued. That's been a catalyst for a lot of businesses to learn more.

"We're not helping people to feel good about using our products."

—Regine Gilbert

I think the bigger motivation should be not excluding anyone from being able to use your product. There's a wonderful book called Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, by Kat Holmes. She talks about inclusion but also exclusion. We all know what it's like to feel left out. In essence, that's what we're doing when we don't make things accessible. We're not helping people to feel good about using our products.

Geertjan Wielenga: Aside from being an educator at a university, you work inside companies as well. What kind of advice do you give?

Regine Gilbert: I have my own consulting business, so I work with companies big and small. I typically help them with overall UX and then provide some guidance around accessibility. I create guidelines around what's needed for their site and what the responsibilities are for each of the different teams.

For web copy, this could be having an understanding of what needs to go in the alt text and how you need to write certain things to send users in the right direction. For visual design, this could be making sure that you're creating the right color balance. For developers, it could be making sure that they have an understanding of where to test things and how to test them. For UX, you need to have an understanding of what's needed from an accessibility perspective.

Geertjan Wielenga: What's an example of something that needs to be provided?

Regine Gilbert: When creating a wireframe, most of the time there are details needed in terms of the interaction design. For example, when you're creating a password, you can choose to see your password or not see your password. What is that like if you're using a screen reader? For privacy concerns, would you want it to read the password? Those are the details that are often left out.

Geertjan Wielenga: Can you give any more examples that you might not think of immediately but are quite obvious when you think about them?

Regine Gilbert: One of the things that many accessibility consulting firms do is add a "skip to content" button at the very top of the screen. For example, there are plenty of power keyboard users and also people using screen readers. If they don't want to see or listen to all this content, then at the very top, when they first start to tab through, a button will appear that will allow them to skip all this other stuff and move to the content that they need.

Geertjan Wielenga: In applications, does this mean that the introductory text before the content needs to be as concise and specific as possible?

Regine Gilbert: Yes. Ultimately, as designers and developers, we want the user to get to the next thing so that they can accomplish their goal. If we're preventing that in any way, that's when we need to look at wireframes to make sure that all those interactions are clear.

Geertjan Wielenga: What's something new that you've recently learned?

Regine Gilbert: I mentioned the CSUN Assistive Technologies Conference earlier. It's been running for 34 years in California. It's been around for longer than the internet has been around, which is very cool.

Marcie Sutton is a developer and she did a presentation on CSS flexbox. She was talking about the web in the past and the present. The Space Jam website still exists. Do you remember the movie? The website is from 1996, but it's actually more accessible than what we have today! The movie Captain Marvel came out recently and it had a 90s look and feel to it, so the website did too. However, the backend was not as accessible as the old Space Jam website. We have to think about what's gone on in the last 20 years from a development and design standpoint. We have, in some ways, a less accessible world.

There's heavy use of JavaScript today, which isn't bad, but it's not that great for accessibility at times. We have moved away from semantic HTML.

Many people don't get to learn HTML and everything that you can do in it.

To answer your question, what's new is what's old in some ways. What can we do to make things better for the future? First things first, we can look at the past.

Geertjan Wielenga: 10 or 20 years ago, what we had available was less complex. Is that what made things more accessible?

"The simplest things still work."

—Regine Gilbert

Regine Gilbert: Yes, keeping it simple is the way to do things. Nobody likes a convoluted webpage where you can't figure out where to go. The simplest things still work. When you look at Craigslist, that's not changed; people can still use it. There are simple things that don't need to be made complex.

Geertjan Wielenga: Where do you see your role and your interests developing over the next few years?

Regine's future projects

Regine Gilbert: I definitely will be more focused on AI and mixed-reality worlds. I'm currently creating a UX course for mixed realities. The course will obviously have accessibility in it from the beginning, but I'm also going to be thinking about creating designs for an environment when 90% of the environment is uncontrollable.

What does it mean from a design perspective when you're not dealing with a static webpage or mobile app?

You have to think, are the people using this able to see? With AR, instead of having the visual, could there be something that people feel? There are other ways to think about it. We tend to think about things just from our sense of sight and hearing, but other senses could be utilized in these fields that we're not utilizing right now.

There's one VR that was created by some university students. I got to see it last year. It's designed for people who don't have mobility of their hands. Usually, with VR, you have to hold something in order to do the thing. With this VR application, you have the headset and instead of using your hands, you use your head to control where you go next. That's not only something that could be good for people who don't have mobility of their hands; it could be used by anybody.

We need to think about how our bodies physically work when we're dealing with some of these things. There are still people who get sick with VR. What's happening in our brains? I'll be doing more research around that in the next year and beyond.

I've had people in the past tell me that I should shame people or companies into doing better and I've always said, "That's not my job; I won't do that. I will work to create a level of awareness and to educate people."

Geertjan Wielenga: People involved in any field of advocacy tend to be so full of zeal that bringing a message across in an effective manner, and in the right tone, can be a challenge. Have you experienced that?

Regine Gilbert: I've been in companies where I've had strong opinions about accessibility and that just didn't work in my favor. That's how I learned about planting seeds. I'll say something and if people don't want to do it, I'll wait for a few weeks and then say it again. I will continue to say it. Eventually, if you repeat something enough, people will start to listen.

Geertjan Wielenga: Browbeating isn't effective, is it?

Regine Gilbert: It's not. We've all been in meetings where somebody was so insistent about their idea that they became completely closed off to hearing anyone else's idea. One thing I like to do is question things. If I'm trying to plant these seeds, I'll question the way that things are being done.

Geertjan Wielenga: Is there a danger of being seen as the accessibility person who only talks about accessibility?

Regine Gilbert: I don't worry about that. I hope that everybody will become an accessibility advocate. It's every person's responsibility, not just one person's job. People come to me and say, "Well, you're the expert."

I reply, "I'm not the expert. You're the expert because you're the developer, so you need to do this." I'm trying to get other people to realize what their responsibility is.

Geertjan Wielenga: Are you trying to make yourself obsolete, then?

Regine Gilbert: Basically, yes. One person can make a difference; we see it all the time.

Having a voice that people are willing to listen to is an opportunity for the greater good of humanity. Why would you want a group of people to feel left out? When you think about more than just yourself, it connects you to other people.

Geertjan Wielenga: Thank you, Regine Gilbert.