Episode 6
Engage, Equip, Embed: The Path to Scalable Accessibility
Darren Rowan, who leads digital accessibility at Eli Lilly & Company, shares how lived experience shaped his path into accessibility leadership. He explains his “engage, equip, embed” framework for scaling accessibility across a global organization and reflects on the importance of speaking up about barriers. Darren also explores how AI and emerging technologies can make accessibility easier to implement and more impactful across teams, helping organizations move toward sustainable, embedded accessibility practices.
Transcript
Hello, I'm Joe Walensky, the host of the Digital Accessibility Podcast,
Speaker:The People Behind the Progress,
Speaker:and today I'm speaking with Darren Rowan. Hello, Darren, how are you today?
Speaker:Hi, Joe, I'm good, thank you. Youself?
Speaker:Yeah, it's very good.
Speaker:It's fairly early for me in my home office in Bellingham, Washington,
Speaker:which is about 80 miles north of Seattle. Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:I'm in England, so I'm about 25 miles southwest of London, so the end of my working day, really.
Speaker:I appreciate you getting involved.
Speaker:It's always great to have international guests
Speaker:to speak with me,
Speaker:and always the best place to start is if you could tell us a little bit about the nature
Speaker:of your work.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:So I lead digital accessibility at
Speaker:Eli Lilly & Company,
Speaker:Lilly for short.
Speaker:So we're a global medicines organization.
Speaker:As I said, I'm sat in the UK,
Speaker:but I lead on our strategy and the actual team that we have
Speaker:on that topic.
Speaker:So when I talk about digital accessibility,
Speaker:I usually do it with a framing of our three key strategic pillars,
Speaker:and they are engage, equip,
Speaker:and embed. Because I think it's really important that, first of all,
Speaker:people understand the why behind accessibility. Why is this important? How are people impacted?
Speaker:What are some of the barriers?
Speaker:And what a difference it makes to people when you are more proactive around the topic.
Speaker:So the engage aspect,
Speaker:when it comes to what my team does,
Speaker:is really help to bring that home in terms of both education,
Speaker:sometimes campaigns, sometimes events, etc., workshops, those types of things,
Speaker:where we can get into really deeper discussions around
Speaker:the topic and make people think differently, really,
Speaker:and have a bit of fun with the topic as well.
Speaker:I think the equip piece, really,
Speaker:is obviously once they've got that sort of passion to ignite themselves to do
Speaker:something about it, so they want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,
Speaker:then the equip piece, really, is where they get their hands on the tools,
Speaker:the techniques, maybe a deeper level of training that relates to their role.
Speaker:So we provide a lot of this internally on our own portal,
Speaker:but also, again,
Speaker:by sort of tailored sessions with people,
Speaker:enabling people to adopt some of the tools that are available depending on the role that
Speaker:they play as well in their teams.
Speaker:And then the third piece, really, embedding, is where the gold is, I suppose,
Speaker:is what we're all striving to do, I guess,
Speaker:is how do you make this thing
Speaker:called accessibility sustainable?
Speaker:How do you ensure it's scalable? And also,
Speaker:how do you ensure that it just becomes part of how people work,right, the business-as-usual piece?
Speaker:And that is undoubtedly the biggest challenge of all,
Speaker:but I think it's a good and, well, great goal to have in mind.
Speaker:And so, again, we do a lot of the work
Speaker:around partnering more closely with teams at that stage where we're really trying to
Speaker:help them think about the different stages through their development lifecycle,
Speaker:pointing out where there's real options or opportunities
Speaker:to start to build in accessibility into the way they work,
Speaker:but still being here to help them with
Speaker:some of the typical, what I might call, accessibility specialist tasks,
Speaker:like assessing the
Speaker:digital products that they own and
Speaker:providing some of the input around what they could be doing better in the future.
Speaker:Well, it's great to hear that your organization has such
Speaker:a clear blueprint of your
Speaker:main mission for accessibility.
Speaker:I'd like to hear more about the things that you're doing at your organization.
Speaker:It would help if we could start just learning a little bit more about you.
Speaker:Could you tell us a little bit about your background
Speaker:and how you found your way into accessibility?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:So I'm actually registered blind, or as you say in the US, legally blind.
Speaker:I've been so since the age of 18.
Speaker:So I'm in my mid-50s now,
Speaker:so quite a period of time where I've
Speaker:lived with that.
Speaker:I guess most of my life, I just got on with things.
Speaker:I went through a period of rehabilitation, reeducation,
Speaker:and then got myself back into
Speaker:work or into work as in a sort of professional career.
Speaker:It wasn't related to accessibility at all.
Speaker:A previous job before Lilly was working as a
Speaker:technical consultant
Speaker:providing support for other
Speaker:companies we were providing services to.
Speaker:And then even moving into Lilly,
Speaker:my focus was continuing doing some of that, started to work more in project management,
Speaker:program management, much bigger types of programs,
Speaker:probably less technical,
Speaker:more started to focus on the business
Speaker:side of things as well.
Speaker:So I really started to learn a lot more about the company in general.
Speaker:And then it was only around about, well,
Speaker:11 years ago, I suppose,
Speaker:that there was an opportunity,
Speaker:a diversity inclusion event that we had in the UK, but it was for leaders,
Speaker:really, across several countries, several parts of the world who came together.
Speaker:And they asked if we would
Speaker:run a session, a couple of colleagues,
Speaker:on disabilities.
Speaker:And I was more than happy to
Speaker:step up and help plan it.
Speaker:And I shared my personal story and my own experiences.
Speaker:And it was a real eye-opener for people as they started to hear
Speaker:the many challenges that you face on a daily basis,right?
Speaker:And go imagine back then,
Speaker:there was a lot less stuff that was available to people to make things accessible
Speaker:like you might have today in the Microsoft toolset, for example.
Speaker:And so in doing so,
Speaker:what people said at the end of that particular session was,
Speaker:"You guys have to create an employee resource group because there wasn't one outside
Speaker:of the US at that time for us." And so
Speaker:myself and a colleague,
Speaker:we created the Enable ERG,
Speaker:as it was called and still is back then.
Speaker:It was a small group of us, about three or four of us,
Speaker:who got round the virtual table
Speaker:and created this ERG.
Speaker:And now there's over 3,000 people in that ERG globally.
Speaker:So it went from strength to strength.
Speaker:And we did that,
Speaker:and I was leading that up until only about 18 months ago.
Speaker:But what I realized a few years in was we created a lot of interest
Speaker:and a lot of awareness around the topic of disability inclusion.
Speaker:But I felt like we should be doing more around taking an active
Speaker:role as a company.
Speaker:And so I proposed
Speaker:to an exec leader when I got the opportunity,
Speaker:when it happened to be in our headquarters in Indianapolis
Speaker:in around about 2018, that we should have a global disability strategy.
Speaker:And so I had this framework
Speaker:that I'd seen from the
Speaker:Business Disability Forum at the time
Speaker:and said, "Hey, this is what it could look like.
Speaker:What do you think?" And
Speaker:I was pleased to say that he agreed that we needed such a strategy.
Speaker:But like any good leader, what he was like,
Speaker:"There's a lot on the chart here.
Speaker:So what are you going to do to
Speaker:narrow that down? What's the one thing we should do?" So I just said,
Speaker:"Accessibility." So
Speaker:it really was that moment that was pivotal in terms of
Speaker:my own career and I think in terms of where we went to
Speaker:in Lilly because I combined my skills as a program manager and the discipline
Speaker:around that and my passion around disability inclusion accessibility
Speaker:into creating this program that we now call Access Lilly.
Speaker:And so the Access Lilly program was launched
Speaker:in 2020, and that includes various work streams like digital,
Speaker:which is the one I own,
Speaker:our built environment, facilities, communications,
Speaker:learning and development, procurement, and human resources.
Speaker:And so I kind of was overseeing that for quite some time
Speaker:until we eventually got to the stage where we were saying, "Hey,
Speaker:we need a digital accessibility team.
Speaker:We can't continue to
Speaker:grow as an organization without putting some dedicated professionals
Speaker:in place." And I was lucky enough to then be able to lead that team.
Speaker:And we've only been around since
Speaker:the start of 2023 as a team.
Speaker:But yeah, we've gone from strength to strength since we
Speaker:got professionals who
Speaker:know their stuff around this a lot more than I do, I have to say,
Speaker:because that's not my background.
Speaker:I'm not an ex-web developer or designer.
Speaker:As I said,
Speaker:I've worked on many IT
Speaker:sort of solutions in the past,
Speaker:but my skill set has been much more about
Speaker:strategy and program management.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:I appreciate you providing so much detail about your background
Speaker:and sharing your
Speaker:lived life being
Speaker:blind and finding your way into accessibility that way.
Speaker:You mentioned the work that you'd done
Speaker:in IT before you got into accessibility.
Speaker:I was wondering if you want to talk a little bit about
Speaker:just what that experience was
Speaker:for you personally,
Speaker:having to deal with a lot of technologies,
Speaker:yet having a disability that
Speaker:for a lot of people can get blocked in the profession that you chose to enter.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, today I use Fusion,
Speaker:so the combination of JAWS and ZoomTech,
Speaker:so I can blow stuff up to
Speaker:a very large size,
Speaker:like 12 times magnification if I need to,
Speaker:but I wouldn't be able to read
Speaker:things comfortably at that level.
Speaker:It's almost like a backup. If something really isn't accessible,
Speaker:at least I can lean into that and
Speaker:check that piece out.
Speaker:But I
Speaker:rely heavily on screen readers and always have.
Speaker:And of course, back then,
Speaker:as I was starting at Lilly or even before then,
Speaker:there was even less thought gone into the accessibility of
Speaker:many of the third-party products that
Speaker:I was using. And so you'reright.
Speaker:There was so much
Speaker:kind of barriers that you would face
Speaker:on a daily basis that actually
Speaker:you just became sort of
Speaker:accustomed to it,right?
Speaker:And I think that that's one of the big things that
Speaker:I realized when I did get the opportunity to speak up about
Speaker:my experiences,
Speaker:that I got so used to it, and yet the people I was talking to was like, "Well,
Speaker:that's not acceptable." And
Speaker:it was almost a moment where I'm like, "Oh, yeah, you'reright. That isn't acceptable,"right?
Speaker:These systems, these things that have been in place,
Speaker:that nobody's really
Speaker:speaking up about it,
Speaker:or nobody else in my mind was speaking up about it in my company.
Speaker:Clearly, there were other people talking in other companies around the world,
Speaker:but I wasn't involved in
Speaker:those kind of conversations.
Speaker:And it suddenly
Speaker:made me realize that
Speaker:I've got responsibility here.
Speaker:I've got some responsibility for myself, first of all,
Speaker:that I need to speak up more and explain to people about some of these barriers,
Speaker:even though they may seem somewhat
Speaker:insurmountable at the time because
Speaker:it's like, "Well, we don't even own this system, for example.
Speaker:So what do we do about it?" But
Speaker:I noticed as soon as I did start to explain to people and describe some of these issues, again,
Speaker:I got the same kind of responses.
Speaker:They were like, "Oh, we really should do something about this.
Speaker:We should speak to the vendor.
Speaker:We should speak to these people." Or if it was our own solution, it was like, "Well,
Speaker:thanks for telling me about that.
Speaker:What do you think we could do?" And so it's surprising, really,
Speaker:the amount of time that I'd spent
Speaker:working around issues, finding ways around working longer hours maybe at times,
Speaker:just leaning on colleagues at times where you didn't particularly want to,
Speaker:that the moment you speak up,
Speaker:it's almost like it's a shared problem.
Speaker:And I think that moment, to me, was the time that I realized, "Hey,
Speaker:I've not done myself any favors.
Speaker:Not only that, I've not done any favors for
Speaker:the people coming behind me." And so
Speaker:from that point onwards, you couldn't shut me up, really.
Speaker:So that's kind of why I ended up
Speaker:really helping to drive the whole disability inclusion
Speaker:stuff with the ERG and then
Speaker:the accessibility in the program and where I am today.
Speaker:Well, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that as well.
Speaker:It's just such a really
Speaker:interesting take to hear you be
Speaker:honest about what
Speaker:your own feelings were like,
Speaker:which maybe are different from how a lot of other people
Speaker:have thought about it and how it fuels the things that
Speaker:you're doing today.
Speaker:For me,
Speaker:I guess I would have been one of the people that would
Speaker:have been saying, "Well,
Speaker:this wasn'tright." Yet
Speaker:you had this perspective, which was, "Well, you just had to get on with it
Speaker:and get to where you are today." And so it's a very inspirational story.
Speaker:So yeah,
Speaker:I appreciate you sharing that here.
Speaker:Yeah, I guess there's part of you, Joe,
Speaker:that depends on
Speaker:maybe your own background and
Speaker:all those things. But there's part of you that goes, "Well,
Speaker:I don't want to be standing out as different." People do know the people who work with
Speaker:me who use the screen reader and magnification.
Speaker:And often people would ask like, "Oh,
Speaker:how does that work?" And I'd more than happily share with them and then tell them, "Well,
Speaker:it doesn't work too well on these things.
Speaker:And what do you do?" And like,
Speaker:"Wow, that must take so much more effort." And I just go, "Yeah,
Speaker:but that's what you've got to do,"right?
Speaker:And that was my attitude towards it.
Speaker:It's like, "You just got to find a way around it or through it." And the onus always
Speaker:felt it was on me because I hadn't really projected
Speaker:it out further to others.
Speaker:And as I said, as soon as you start to do that,
Speaker:in my opinion,
Speaker:I have very rarely had anybody
Speaker:say to me, "Oh, well,
Speaker:we're not going to do that," because nobody gets up in the morning and thinks like,
Speaker:"I want to create barriers." Most of these people have no idea these things have been
Speaker:barriers in the first place.
Speaker:And so there's that education piece that's so important. Hence the engage bit,right?
Speaker:That's what I found is when you get people
Speaker:just talking about it, first of all,
Speaker:and feeling they can ask you questions as well,
Speaker:then you bring them on with you. If you just went in there and said, "Oh,
Speaker:we have to do this because there's a compliance reason," it's really not that interesting.
Speaker:People will do it,
Speaker:but it's just another chore, another task.
Speaker:Whereas they really feel like they're making a difference to people,
Speaker:that's where you've got them there for the long ride.
Speaker:Well, now as a leader in your organization and evangelist,
Speaker:what are some of the things that you're excited about looking toward the future,
Speaker:either in accessibility in general
Speaker:or your organization?
Speaker:Are there any things that you're particularly
Speaker:passionate about or looking forward to
Speaker:as we move into the future?
Speaker:Well, I think there's probably not a meeting that doesn't go by when we're not talking
Speaker:about AI and how we're using it and adopting it and trying things out.
Speaker:And I do love this sort of experimentation phase that I feel like we're in at
Speaker:the moment. I've just been in discussions today about, "Hey,
Speaker:what could we do stuff with our PDFs,right,
Speaker:that could be made more accessible by
Speaker:running various prompts,
Speaker:creating projects in
Speaker:Claude and various other AI platforms?
Speaker:And what can we do around that that's just going to
Speaker:not only make them more accessible because we've got a lot of that content like many
Speaker:global organizations have,
Speaker:but also how do you make life easier for those people who want to do theright thing?"
Speaker:So it's okay bringing them along
Speaker:the journey, but not everybody can be an accessibility specialist.
Speaker:They've got their own jobs to contend with.
Speaker:And everybody wants to do theright thing, but you want to make it as simple as possible.
Speaker:So my whole kind of thing around the embedding and how do you really shift left with
Speaker:a lot of this really has to come down to how do you
Speaker:provide as much of the
Speaker:capability to them so it's
Speaker:as easy as possible for them to start to understand
Speaker:how accessible something is and what they can do to make
Speaker:a difference. So I think there's so much more to come because we know the AI stuff is
Speaker:only going to get better.
Speaker:Yes, we caveat that with
Speaker:we need to check the quality of it.
Speaker:We need to be testing it as
Speaker:we would do with any IT solution, to be fair,
Speaker:to make sure it's consistent because that's always a
Speaker:problem we find with it.
Speaker:But I do think that there's
Speaker:so much there.
Speaker:And as a blind person, I've been using AI for years.
Speaker:I've been using apps like Seeing AI and Be My Eyes and
Speaker:various other sort of tools like that.
Speaker:And I do actually think that generally, people with disabilities have been early adopters
Speaker:around the use of AI,
Speaker:whether it was captions or even
Speaker:self-driving cars,right?
Speaker:It's like I think Google's first one,
Speaker:the first driver in there was a
Speaker:blind person or the first passenger.
Speaker:So we've never been
Speaker:scared to get involved in this stuff.
Speaker:And we're always then asking more questions.
Speaker:Oh, so never satisfied with, "Oh, that's good. It does this.
Speaker:Can it do this?" and asking these questions,right?
Speaker:And the Meta Glasses is a great example.
Speaker:I'm a big fan of those.
Speaker:I don't have one today, but I've actually got two pairs.
Speaker:And I just think
Speaker:the ability to walk around now
Speaker:with wearables like glasses that look pretty cool as well
Speaker:and that you can get descriptions of things.
Speaker:And I've been trying them out with
Speaker:signage and helping you to
Speaker:navigate the world, as well as really enjoying the things I love, like listening to music,
Speaker:listening to audiobooks,
Speaker:all in one thing that just
Speaker:sits on top of your head is amazing.
Speaker:So I think that I'm really excited around how
Speaker:technology is such an enabler
Speaker:for people with disabilities.
Speaker:And I do think it just provides us more opportunities maybe to
Speaker:be able to do some of those things that in the past I thought were a real
Speaker:chore to get done.
Speaker:And now I can use AI,
Speaker:for example,
Speaker:to knock out some really nice slides that look pretty much as good as anybody else's.
Speaker:And I think that that's all just
Speaker:the benefits that I see with
Speaker:the kind of AI LLMs and
Speaker:where it's at today. So it's only going to get better in the future.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:those are some great insights
Speaker:about AI.
Speaker:Definitely, your perspective
Speaker:has given me a lot to think about.
Speaker:And yeah,
Speaker:I'm excited about it as well in terms of the technology.
Speaker:It is great to hear how
Speaker:you're feeling about that.
Speaker:And it's been
Speaker:just wonderful having a chance to
Speaker:chat with you, meet with you,
Speaker:talk a little bit about your journey.
Speaker:So thanks so much for
Speaker:electing to participate in this podcast.
Speaker:No problem, Joe. I'm a regular listener, so thank you.
Speaker:Allright. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
Speaker:Cheers.
