Episode 1
Accessibility Isn’t Separate — It’s the Core of Good Design
Fabiana Lassandro shares her journey from web design student to accessibility engineer and educator. She discusses how accessibility transformed her perspective on development, the importance of embedding accessibility into design systems, and how teaching helps reinforce that accessibility is foundational—not optional. Fabiana also highlights the value of mentoring, explaining the “why” behind accessibility, and ensuring teams build inclusive experiences from the start.
Transcript
Hello, I'm Joe Welinske, the host of the Digital Accessibility Podcast, the people
Speaker:behind the progress where I have the fun job of talking to people
Speaker:who are accessibility professionals.
Speaker:And today I am speaking with Fabiana Lassandro.
Speaker:Hello, Fabiana, how are you today?
Speaker:I'm great, thank you. Thanks for inviting me over, I'm very excited.
Speaker:Well, I am in my home office in Bellingham, Washington, which is about
Speaker:80 miles north of Seattle. Where are you talking to us from?
Speaker:I'm from London, London area, let's say.
Speaker:Well, thanks for being part of this.
Speaker:We always appreciate having international guests as part of this program.
Speaker:And probably the best place to start is if you tell us a little bit about
Speaker:what you are involved with now.
Speaker:Yeah, so I'm an accessibility engineer,
Speaker:and alongside that I also teach at the university.
Speaker:And it's a nice combo, I think.
Speaker:You know, I have the chance to be practical and
Speaker:review code, so talk with engineers
Speaker:and designers that are already in their career, like after, you know,
Speaker:like a long experience in their job.
Speaker:And then on the other side I have the chance to
Speaker:explain accessibility to students that are starting in the web just now.
Speaker:They don't have yet habits or
Speaker:preconceptions about how we should do things,
Speaker:and it's really interesting for me to jump from one side to the other one.
Speaker:Well, it's good to hear about both your educational work
Speaker:and the things that you're doing as an engineer, and I would like to hear more about
Speaker:that. But why don't we go back in time, and
Speaker:you could tell me a little bit about your background and how you found your way into
Speaker:accessibility? Yeah, it's one of my favorite stories because
Speaker:it was, you know, like in a love relationship, it was like unexpected.
Speaker:I didn't see that coming.
Speaker:When I was attending my master's in web
Speaker:design, I never heard of accessibility
Speaker:before, and I didn't know that, you know,
Speaker:we developers or designers could build in a way or design
Speaker:in a way that could prevent people from accessing the products.
Speaker:I didn't thought about it, you know, I didn't think that that was
Speaker:possible. And then while studying,
Speaker:accessibility was pretty much part of the program, so it was included.
Speaker:It wasn't thought as a separate topic.
Speaker:So I realized that as a designer
Speaker:or developer I could have the chance to, you know, do my part
Speaker:and change things for the better in, you know, my side of my job.
Speaker:And from there then, when I joined, when I
Speaker:started my career as a front-end developer in BT,
Speaker:as part of a hackathon, I had the chance to contact Edin Kotnap with the
Speaker:accessibility team.
Speaker:And they were just running an accessibility mentorship
Speaker:in like a couple of weeks. The first, it was a pilot
Speaker:program, and I just thought, wow, this is, you know, the universe is
Speaker:speaking to me. So I attended the program for six months,
Speaker:and after that I had the chance to pick up
Speaker:the, there was an accessibility specialist role.
Speaker:So I, you know, interviewed for that and I got the job, and that was
Speaker:a turning point for me because I, you know, could learn how to audit
Speaker:products, reporting issues, and I was involved with
Speaker:training engineers, designers,
Speaker:work with the design system. So it was a great opportunity.
Speaker:From there I moved into a Ticketmaster,
Speaker:and I became an accessibility engineer.
Speaker:And there I could, you know, work at a scale, apply accessibility to
Speaker:the Ticketmaster platform, working,
Speaker:you know, with the design system.
Speaker:And yeah, so this was my journey.
Speaker:And then in a few weeks I'll move into a slightly different
Speaker:role. I will start working with Level Access
Speaker:as a solution engineer. So I will, you know, have the chance to talk with
Speaker:clients. So far I was working internally, like with
Speaker:internal stakeholders, so it will be a,
Speaker:I'm looking forward to the challenge, you know, like having an impact but
Speaker:with different clients instead of just with the products that are within the
Speaker:company that you work for. Well, congratulations on taking this next
Speaker:step. Thank you. Going back to what you mentioned earlier,
Speaker:you talked about a six-month program that you were involved in.
Speaker:Could you tell us a little bit more about what that was?
Speaker:Yeah, sure. So it was an internal program.
Speaker:The accessibility manager, then she became my
Speaker:line manager later on, she built with the help of the rest of the
Speaker:team this program that was essentially
Speaker:going through, now that I obtained
Speaker:a CPAC certificate, a WS certificate, I can see that that
Speaker:mentorship was trying to, you know, provide like
Speaker:a more accessible and a more engaging
Speaker:kind of material to essentially teach the same things that you could
Speaker:learn from the certificates that, you know,
Speaker:the CPAC and WS are trying to teach us.
Speaker:It was like the first steps to have
Speaker:a foundation on accessibility, and it was trying to merge both
Speaker:like the theoretical aspects but also the more practical
Speaker:bits because the idea was building knowledge
Speaker:for accessibility champions and eventually having the chance to
Speaker:hire part of them or at least have accessibility champions across the
Speaker:company. Well, it's great that you had that available to provide you with that
Speaker:internal training. In your work that you're still doing now,
Speaker:I believe you said as an engineer, could you talk a little bit more detail about
Speaker:what that consists of?
Speaker:It would be interesting to hear kind of what things that you're involved with
Speaker:either every day or every week, the things that take up a lot of your time.
Speaker:Yeah, so it's mainly about
Speaker:spreading accessibility knowledge.
Speaker:So if I have to say what is the core of it, and then it depends
Speaker:who I'm talking to, of course I do it in a different way.
Speaker:So part of my time, for example, could be dedicated to, there's a new
Speaker:component in the design system, we need to make sure that it is accessible.
Speaker:So I start
Speaker:conversations with the designers,
Speaker:we make sure that the accessibility criteria are part of the story that are written
Speaker:down, so that is designed, so accessibility is
Speaker:embedded since the design phase,
Speaker:and then there are accessibility criteria available for developers.
Speaker:I also wanted to provide the
Speaker:criteria like with the BDD format, so meaning that
Speaker:instead of just providing a bullet point list with fix this,
Speaker:fix that, but also walk through the developer,
Speaker:the scenarios, like when you do this, this is what's happening,
Speaker:so that's why we should fix it because, you know, the expected result is this
Speaker:disorder behavior.
Speaker:The idea was while providing criteria
Speaker:and saying what are the expectations, also try to explain why.
Speaker:So the idea behind that is next time
Speaker:when they're going to encounter a similar scenario,
Speaker:they know why we are fixing that and why we should take care of that specific
Speaker:functionality or fix or behavior.
Speaker:And that over time it was, we could see like a positive
Speaker:effect. We weren't introducing
Speaker:common issues anymore.
Speaker:So that was one of the things that I was doing really.
Speaker:I think the design system is one of my favorite projects because it just goes
Speaker:hand in hand with accessibility.
Speaker:It's one of the best places where we can start
Speaker:to, as we say in our,
Speaker:you know, in the accessibility community, to shift left, so to start
Speaker:introducing accessibility from the very beginning.
Speaker:And you also mentioned that you were involved in teaching, so what is that like?
Speaker:Yeah, I love it. So I really love teaching in general,
Speaker:having the chance to be in touch with the students and also
Speaker:refresh, it refreshed my experience when I was a student and
Speaker:what it means for the first time to come, you know,
Speaker:study what's the web and what it involves and what it is about.
Speaker:It just, you know, keeps my love and interest for the web
Speaker:alive. I can see myself when I was a student,
Speaker:so I love that part of this job.
Speaker:And then because it's about accessibility, which is what I'm passionate about,
Speaker:what I find rewarding is when
Speaker:with the students, while we are explaining what accessibility is about,
Speaker:like how we realize together that there's no, what I teach
Speaker:is part of the web design program.
Speaker:So when we realize that there's no web without accessibility,
Speaker:like accessibility is at the core of it and everything that they learned
Speaker:so far is just making sense,
Speaker:accessibility is just making sense as part of the web because it's
Speaker:meant to be for everyone. And it was when it was
Speaker:born, accessibility was embedded into it, and I think that the students are
Speaker:realizing that the risk is that by adding layers,
Speaker:and by that I mean adding complexity to a project, if you don't keep
Speaker:accessibility in mind, there's the risk that, you know, you just
Speaker:lose it on the way, and as you lose it on the way, there's the risk of
Speaker:also losing quality.
Speaker:And what was the program that you were teaching,
Speaker:or was it a university class?
Speaker:Yeah, so it's part of a module,
Speaker:Inclusive and Sustainable Web Design,
Speaker:and the module is part of the MA in Web Design and Content Planning
Speaker:at the University of Greenwich.
Speaker:And I did want to just go back to one of the things you mentioned about your
Speaker:work. You mentioned working with design systems,
Speaker:and that's always good to hear. It's a great way to bring accessibility into the
Speaker:design process.
Speaker:You know, how is that set up at your organization?
Speaker:Are you working within the design system directly,
Speaker:and how do you collaborate with the other designers?
Speaker:So as it works is that there's like a dedicated
Speaker:team to the design system,
Speaker:but then there are multiple developers
Speaker:that are picking up a component and developing it.
Speaker:It depends also if that component, you know, which is, what is
Speaker:the team that is going to use it the most.
Speaker:So what the design system, it benefits from different
Speaker:kinds of points of view, different developers that are working to the
Speaker:same, contributing to the same code base.
Speaker:And in terms of QA, so who is then
Speaker:checking the components, there's the responsible of the design
Speaker:system, the art director, and then I
Speaker:test it from the accessibility point of view to ensure consistency, to ensure that
Speaker:the accessibility criteria are implemented, and also that there are no
Speaker:clashes once you, you know, you test it with a keyboard
Speaker:or with a screen reader. Or, for example,
Speaker:sometimes when you use like a package,
Speaker:now there are different packages,right, when you work with React, like
Speaker:AriaKit, for example, it gives a lot of, you know,
Speaker:it's helpful, but sometimes it can introduce unexpected behavior just because
Speaker:your component is not exactly matching what was
Speaker:the component intended for. So in that
Speaker:time when you're reviewing, that's when things could start to
Speaker:become time-consuming and you need to do a lot of back and forth.
Speaker:So that's how we work.
Speaker:There's like a dedicated team, but then it's open to
Speaker:the rest, the bigger team to
Speaker:contribute to the design system.
Speaker:Oh, it's good to learn a little bit more about that and in your academic work
Speaker:and your background. And Fabiana, thank you for taking the time to
Speaker:talk about your journey into accessibility and the best of luck
Speaker:with your new position. Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker:Allright, thanks a lot. Bye. Thank you, bye-bye.
