Episode 3
If You Don’t Test with Real Users, You Don’t Know What You’ve Built
Lisa Riemers shares her journey from marketing and communications into accessibility-focused content design. As an independent consultant, she works across organizations to improve how messages are structured, understood, and delivered. She discusses the importance of user testing, plain language, and bridging technical and communication teams. Lisa also explores how accessible communication builds trust, why it’s a business advantage, and how AI is reshaping the future of content and accessibility work.
Transcript
Hello, it's Joe Welinske once again, bringing another episode of
Digital Accessibility:The People Behind the Progress.
Digital Accessibility:And today I'm pleased to be chatting with Lisa Riemers.
Digital Accessibility:Hello, Lisa, how are you today?
Digital Accessibility:Hi, Joe. Um, I am good today, thanks.
Digital Accessibility:Thanks for having me. Well, for me it's the, uh, morning in Bellingham, Washington,
Digital Accessibility:which is about 80 miles north of Seattle.
Digital Accessibility:Uh, where are you talking to us from?
Digital Accessibility:I am dialing in late afternoon from Southeast London in the UK.
Digital Accessibility:Well, it's always great to have, uh, international guests, so thanks for, uh,
Digital Accessibility:electing to be, uh, part of this.
Digital Accessibility:Uh, as, uh, your usual, uh, why don't you t start by telling us a little bit, uh,
Digital Accessibility:about the type of work that you're involved in?
Digital Accessibility:Sure. Um,
Digital Accessibility:so I'm an independent communications and content consultant.
Digital Accessibility:Um, I tend to work with businesses and complicated organizations,
Digital Accessibility:trying to help them improve the way they speak to their employees,
Digital Accessibility:to their customers, and make sure that they're presenting their messages in the most
Digital Accessibility:accessible way. Um, I started out in
Digital Accessibility:a more classic kind of marketing role, um, looking at how to communicate with people
Digital Accessibility:via various channels, and I think over the years specialized in more
Digital Accessibility:digital channels and then actually making sure that your messages actually
Digital Accessibility:reach everyone. Um, so it's been a bit of a wibbly-wobbly career to get here.
Digital Accessibility:Um, but yeah, I tend to say that I bridge the gap between technical, comms,
Digital Accessibility:and product teams because I've, I've done a bit of all of it along the way.
Digital Accessibility:Well, yeah, it's definitely, uh, an interesting combination.
Digital Accessibility:Uh, maybe you could, uh, talk a little bit
Digital Accessibility:more about the types of things that you do. So, uh, what would typically be, uh,
Digital Accessibility:a work week like for you? What types of activities do you find that you
Digital Accessibility:get yourself involved with?
Digital Accessibility:So one of the best things about being independent is that it can really vary.
Digital Accessibility:Um, I've done things from quite big, in-depth, long-term contracts with government
Digital Accessibility:departments, um, looking at their internal platforms, like their
Digital Accessibility:intranets and part of their digital workplace,
Digital Accessibility:looking at, um, looking at it from a user experience point of view,
Digital Accessibility:looking at it from a really clear content design perspective,
Digital Accessibility:uh, looking at the platforms that
Digital Accessibility:are being used to make sure that they actually meet the needs both of users and the
Digital Accessibility:organization. Um, I've recently been really hands-on doing a bunch of work on
Digital Accessibility:SharePoint with a client, so actually getting down into
Digital Accessibility:seeing what SharePoint can do with some of the more modern web parts to make a
Digital Accessibility:really clear—it's been quite terrifying, really, because SharePoint gets a lot of
Digital Accessibility:hate, and there's so many vendors that have products that sit on top of it.
Digital Accessibility:But I think recently we've found that there's a lot more flexibility that's been
Digital Accessibility:built back in, so actually building out content, testing it with users,
Digital Accessibility:trying to understand, um, the kind of user journeys.
Digital Accessibility:Um, but then next week—in fact, later this week—I'm going to be doing some
Digital Accessibility:training for a client looking at, um, helping content designers with their
Digital Accessibility:communication skills and thinking about storytelling and how to actually articulate
Digital Accessibility:the value that content brings to a project.
Digital Accessibility:So, and next week after that I'm going to be talking at a conference with my
Digital Accessibility:co-author Matisse Hammel-Nielis.
Digital Accessibility:Um, so last year one of the massive projects that I worked on was writing
Digital Accessibility:a—co-writing a book with Matisse about accessible communication.
Digital Accessibility:And so next week she'll be here in the UK with me for the first time.
Digital Accessibility:We're going to be speaking at a conference called Camp Digital up in Manchester.
Digital Accessibility:Then the following week we'll be speaking at a conference called Access Given
Digital Accessibility:in Newcastle. And in between we're going to be trying to actually get some of the
Digital Accessibility:accessibility folks and the content folks that we know together to celebrate it.
Digital Accessibility:Well, it sounds like you're, uh, pretty busy.
Digital Accessibility:Uh, uh, how did you find your way, uh, into this area?
Digital Accessibility:Maybe, uh, take us back, uh, be—maybe before you got involved in accessibility,
Digital Accessibility:uh, lived life, work life, uh, what were the, uh, uh, you know,
Digital Accessibility:what—what's some of your background in general?
Digital Accessibility:Sure. Well, so I first—well,
Digital Accessibility:I first started out thinking I wanted to go into maybe teaching or design,
Digital Accessibility:and I found that I really like helping people understand things but not necessarily
Digital Accessibility:children. Um, so working with small kids wasn't really something that I wanted to do
Digital Accessibility:on a daily basis. But so I started out doing some training, um,
Digital Accessibility:like a training role, and then
Digital Accessibility:I had a role which started off as admin. Then I got
Digital Accessibility:into—I got a little bit more marketing experience there.
Digital Accessibility:Um, I remember when I—when I finished my—when I was trying to leave the training
Digital Accessibility:gig, um, I went to an agency and I said,"I'd really like to get into marketing and
Digital Accessibility:communications."And they said,"Did you study it?""No.""Did you—do you have any
Digital Accessibility:qualifications in it?""No.""Do you have any experience in it?""No.""Okay,
Digital Accessibility:well you're not going to get a job in it.
Digital Accessibility:But we do have an opportunity.
Digital Accessibility:You could go and answer the phone at this lovely little company down the road."So
Digital Accessibility:I took—I took a temp job, um, which was literally answering the phone
Digital Accessibility:for a mortgage company. And while I was there, got really interested in the
Digital Accessibility:emails that were coming out from our team, trying to understand
Digital Accessibility:more about the products that we were making—that we were selling.
Digital Accessibility:I got involved with the product team who were actually building the case management
Digital Accessibility:system we were using, and it was a startup, so I got a really wide range of,
Digital Accessibility:um, I got exposed to, like, all the different roles around the organization.
Digital Accessibility:I was really lucky. And the marketing manager there was really patient as well,
Digital Accessibility:and I had a lot of questions for him, and he kept answering.
Digital Accessibility:So I managed to move into a sort of particular marketing role there, um,
Digital Accessibility:and then after that went into more of just the communication side of things.
Digital Accessibility:Then I got involved in this massive website project.
Digital Accessibility:So years ago I worked for, um, a global company called G4S, and I was in the
Digital Accessibility:UK part of the business, and they were doing this massive project to bring
Digital Accessibility:106 different country websites into one content management system.
Digital Accessibility:And I was only in a small UK part of the business, but
Digital Accessibility:everybody else there kind of took a step back.
Digital Accessibility:Um, it was something, you know, we're talking sort of over
Digital Accessibility:15 years ago, thinking about, um, digital still being seen as a brave new
Digital Accessibility:frontier, and lots of people there weren't that comfortable with it.
Digital Accessibility:But I really—I got really excited by the project and got really heavily involved
Digital Accessibility:with it and thought,"Maybe actually digital is where I want to be."
Digital Accessibility:And so I specialized more in digital.
Digital Accessibility:So I did a massive website project, and I'd also done a little bit on their
Digital Accessibility:internal intranet, and I moved on to my next role, which was just as a digital
Digital Accessibility:content person or a digital—it was web and intranet officer was my job title.
Digital Accessibility:And so I launched a company intranet and then a company—and the company's website.
Digital Accessibility:And as part of that work, um, we got involved in actually getting users to test what
Digital Accessibility:we were doing. So the fact that it was an intranet made it slightly easier for us
Digital Accessibility:because we worked with the people who were the users.
Digital Accessibility:So a lot of the time when we're working on digital products we say,"Well,
Digital Accessibility:we're not the user. It doesn't matter what we think."But actually when we went
Digital Accessibility:broader than the central team who were working on it,
Digital Accessibility:at this—there was a real lightbulb moment because there was
Digital Accessibility:a lady who worked with us who, um, she—she worked for the
Digital Accessibility:chief financial officer, and she was saying that our intranet,
Digital Accessibility:our new project that we'd been working on for a while, was terrible.
Digital Accessibility:And she had the ear of the CFO, and the fact that she was being—she was being so
Digital Accessibility:vocal about it, I wanted to go and talk to her to see what the problem was
Digital Accessibility:because everyone else thought it was brilliant.
Digital Accessibility:And when I went and sat with her and saw how she was using the site,
Digital Accessibility:her screen was zoomed in really far, and so all she could see was maybe kind of
Digital Accessibility:about 400 pixels wide's worth of the homepage.
Digital Accessibility:So she thought what our thing for quick links was, was the whole homepage.
Digital Accessibility:And it was a real—she was a self-confessed, uh, technophobe.
Digital Accessibility:She didn't have a mobile.
Digital Accessibility:She said,"If you need to call me, you can call me at my desk, or you can call me at
Digital Accessibility:home. You don't need to talk to me in between."Um,
Digital Accessibility:and she'd basically zoomed in one day because she didn't have her reading glasses,
Digital Accessibility:and then either she—she was quite happy with it being zoomed in that way,
Digital Accessibility:and she didn't kind of zoom back out again and didn't really know how to.
Digital Accessibility:Um, so what I—what we did for that was we actually brought her into some of the
Digital Accessibility:workshops where we were working with our suppliers to get a more balanced view
Digital Accessibility:of people that have other, um, needs than the central
Digital Accessibility:team. And so I feel like that was the first moment where I realized that some people
Digital Accessibility:have completely different access needs, and it can really—you get a much better
Digital Accessibility:project, a much better product at the end if you involve people
Digital Accessibility:with, like, actual users and a broad range of users in your testing.
Digital Accessibility:Um, so after that I did a little bit of community management work
Digital Accessibility:because we'd also rolled out an internal social network.
Digital Accessibility:Then I went back and did an intranet project.
Digital Accessibility:As part of that work I was like,"A lot of this feels like product management
Digital Accessibility:and product ownership,"because a lot of the time I was working with the
Digital Accessibility:digital and IT teams rather than being in communications,
Digital Accessibility:which is where I'd started out. And so I tried a stint as a product owner as well,
Digital Accessibility:and it was quite interesting seeing it from the other side of things, actually then
Digital Accessibility:getting hand—doing proper user testing and actually going through
Digital Accessibility:using more formal user research methods rather than just getting everyone in a room
Digital Accessibility:together. And so I did a little stint after that
Digital Accessibility:going back to marketing, but for an intranet software provider.
Digital Accessibility:And when I left there I went freelance, and I've been doing a bit of everything ever
Digital Accessibility:since. And, uh, um, what was, uh,
Digital Accessibility:what—what was, uh, the, uh, time that, uh, brought you into,
Digital Accessibility:uh, actively working with, uh, accessibility techniques?
Digital Accessibility:So we'd started using aspects of that.
Digital Accessibility:When I worked for—as a product owner we—I was much more aware of, um,
Digital Accessibility:the accessibility legislation in the UK, so I started becoming more aware of it.
Digital Accessibility:And I already had a bit of knowledge about it, I know,
Digital Accessibility:because I used to train our—our teams on how to use our tools better,
Digital Accessibility:and I had some real super basic knowledge, which, you know,
Digital Accessibility:when you think back now and you think,"I thought I knew stuff then,
Digital Accessibility:and now I think I still don't know anything."But, um,
Digital Accessibility:looking at, you know, making sure that your images have got alternative
Digital Accessibility:text, making sure that you've got meaningful headings, making sure that people
Digital Accessibility:can navigate your product without, um, using a mouse, like,
Digital Accessibility:we—we—we factored that in then.
Digital Accessibility:But I think, um,
Digital Accessibility:when the companies that I was working for—so actually when I was working at the
Digital Accessibility:intranet software provider, they had also done a lot of user testing with, um,
Digital Accessibility:they would do it—they were supplying the UK government, so a lot of
Digital Accessibility:their—a lot of their clients were UK government or, um, departments.
Digital Accessibility:And the 2018 public sector accessibility regulations that were coming into
Digital Accessibility:effect in the UK made—made sure that people in the public sector
Digital Accessibility:were even more aware of this than they were previously.
Digital Accessibility:Um, I was—I then one of my contracts since I've been independent was,
Digital Accessibility:um, for the Department for International Trade as it was then in the UK.
Digital Accessibility:And while I was there there was a big push towards making sure our platforms and our
Digital Accessibility:internal sites were accessible because those regulations were coming into effect
Digital Accessibility:with real specific guidance, um, that the Government Digital Service was also
Digital Accessibility:very focused on. And I think sometimes
Digital Accessibility:I—I still think in the UK actually that the public sector is much more advanced
Digital Accessibility:in thinking about accessibility for their users than the private sector is in a lot
Digital Accessibility:of cases, which in some ways makes sense because
Digital Accessibility:as a—as a government department you can't discriminate about who
Digital Accessibility:uses your services because everybody has to be able to use them.
Digital Accessibility:And in the private sector I think people still hold on to a bit of a myth.
Digital Accessibility:Like, I've—I've spoken to so many people over the last few years who said,
Digital Accessibility:"Well, I don't think these are a—a blind user's going to use my software,
Digital Accessibility:so I don't know why I need to think about that."
Digital Accessibility:And I think there's a real lack of understanding about how accessibility impacts
Digital Accessibility:everybody and how it's not just an edge case and
Digital Accessibility:how it's a missed business opportunity as well as excluding people
Digital Accessibility:who would otherwise be able to use your services.
Digital Accessibility:Now, what are some of the things that you have coming up?
Digital Accessibility:Do you have some, uh, new things that you're excited about?
Digital Accessibility:Uh, you mentioned the book. So yeah, we've—it's—it's been fantastic,
Digital Accessibility:um, being able to write the book that I wish I'd had 10 years ago.
Digital Accessibility:Working with Matisse I've learned so much more about making content accessible.
Digital Accessibility:And we actually met when we at the IABC World Conference back in 2022,
Digital Accessibility:which is the International Association of Business Communicators.
Digital Accessibility:And at the time I'd been doing some work on PDFs or trying to avoid
Digital Accessibility:PDFs and trying to explain to people why PDFs aren't always that accessible.
Digital Accessibility:And she did a talk about how to make PDFs accessible, which kind of blew my mind
Digital Accessibility:because it went against everything I'd been taught in the UK.
Digital Accessibility:So writing that book together with Matisse over the last couple of years
Digital Accessibility:has really made me think—see things in a new light.
Digital Accessibility:Um, and she's coming to the UK, so we'll be in the UK for the first
Digital Accessibility:time together in June. I'm going to be going to Toronto, which is where she lives,
Digital Accessibility:which is also where the IABC World Conference is this year.
Digital Accessibility:So that's going to feel, um, what, four years on after we first met?
Digital Accessibility:That's quite—quite the, uh,
Digital Accessibility:accelerated accessibility journey over the last few years.
Digital Accessibility:Um, and we're looking forward to continuing to help people understand more about how
Digital Accessibility:it—it builds trust in your audience.
Digital Accessibility:It helps—it helps make things clearer for everybody.
Digital Accessibility:And it's not just the right thing to do.
Digital Accessibility:As you said, it's not—it's not like we're talking about a checkbox thing here.
Digital Accessibility:We're trying to make communications and content excellent for everybody.
Digital Accessibility:So I'm looking forward to continuing that work with her.
Digital Accessibility:And, uh, as you, uh, you know,
Digital Accessibility:continue on with your work, uh, are there any, uh, you know, new areas that you're
Digital Accessibility:looking toward getting involved in, or are there any things that
Digital Accessibility:you yourself are interested in—in learning about and—and—and growing more?
Digital Accessibility:I think for me one of the things that's really
Digital Accessibility:important from an accessibility point of view is that—is the whole piece around
Digital Accessibility:plain language, which is the area that I started out when we were writing the book
Digital Accessibility:together. Plain language felt like the place that was, um, the most relevant for
Digital Accessibility:me because it's something that I've done for the longest.
Digital Accessibility:But something that I found speaking to people
Digital Accessibility:at conferences recently—and actually I did a talk at the Taxonomy Bootcamp in London
Digital Accessibility:last week—and there's the—there's plain language and being able to
Digital Accessibility:articulate what it is you do and why you do it and what the benefits are,
Digital Accessibility:not just the features, particularly when we're thinking about AI.
Digital Accessibility:I've spoken to so many people who are afraid that, um, well, rightly so.
Digital Accessibility:I've spoken to people who have been laid off because their companies have said,
Digital Accessibility:"Well, actually we don't need a whole team to do this now.
Digital Accessibility:We can just use a couple of people to sense check this stuff,
Digital Accessibility:and we're just going to use a large language model for this."But
Digital Accessibility:I feel like AI has so many potential benefits and opportunities for people
Digital Accessibility:in this area, but so many potential
Digital Accessibility:pitfalls, um, traps that people can fall into.
Digital Accessibility:And also, so it's—I'm trying—I'm looking forward to helping people
Digital Accessibility:articulate what they do better and be better at storytelling so that they don't get
Digital Accessibility:AI'd out of a job because no one in their organisation gets what they do.
Digital Accessibility:I think that plain language is really important, talking to your colleagues and
Digital Accessibility:being able to celebrate your successes and keep articulating where you're doing a
Digital Accessibility:really good job. Because a lot of the time when we're working in this sort of arena,
Digital Accessibility:I feel like people fall into two camps: either we're just going to get quietly on
Digital Accessibility:with it in the background and know that we're doing good work,
Digital Accessibility:or people that get burnt out from having lots of arguments every day.
Digital Accessibility:And I think there's some kind of middle ground there about
Digital Accessibility:actually being able to keep talking about it, which I—I really want to
Digital Accessibility:learn better—learn better myself and help other people do that too.
Digital Accessibility:Well, I'm glad you brought up the aspect of plain language because that certainly
Digital Accessibility:makes, uh, uh, information more accessible to
Digital Accessibility:everyone across the full spectrum of abilities.
Digital Accessibility:Yeah. And I think one of the things that I found interesting is we've—that even—so
Digital Accessibility:even lawyers prefer plain language despite
Digital Accessibility:some of the legal documents that you might have read.
Digital Accessibility:And coming up, there's now an ISO standard for plain legalese,
Digital Accessibility:which I find fascinating because it seems—it's—there's still such a big
Digital Accessibility:sell for some—some people that this is a good thing for everybody,
Digital Accessibility:but nobody's ever reading your information under perfect conditions.
Digital Accessibility:You know, we've all got a cognitive load to bear, particularly when
Digital Accessibility:there's lots going on around us.
Digital Accessibility:Um, so yeah, it's still trying to—it feels like an—it's not an argument,
Digital Accessibility:as my parents would say. It's a discussion.
Digital Accessibility:No, it feels like something that—it—it feels like something that's so
Digital Accessibility:important for us all to have as a skill.
Digital Accessibility:Um, and it's quite easy to fall into the kind of traps of the
Digital Accessibility:jargon and the lingo to see as a kind of a shortcut.
Digital Accessibility:But what it actually means is that you might not be—you might be using the same
Digital Accessibility:words but not meaning the same things.
Digital Accessibility:Well, uh, it's been, uh, great taking a few minutes to, uh, chat with you, Lisa,
Digital Accessibility:about your work and the things you've been involved in.
Digital Accessibility:So I appreciate you, uh, being part of this podcast.
Digital Accessibility:Thank you so much for having me, Joe.
Digital Accessibility:It's been really interesting talking to you too.
Digital Accessibility:All right. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
Digital Accessibility:Bye.
