Announcer: Welcome to TPGI's Real People, Real Stories podcast where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place. Mark Miller: Welcome to Real Stories, Real people podcast brought to you by TPGI. I am your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor. If you're enjoying the Real People, Real Stories podcast, share it. Tell someone about it. Hey, even linked to it from your accessible website. Mark Miller: Well, thanks everyone for listening. I'm glad to be back with all of you. And I'm also really happy to introduce two wonderful guests that we have today. Charlotte Dales. Hopefully I did that right. Charlotte Dales: Dales. Mark Miller: Dales. Oh my gosh. I tried to practice at a bunch of times. Charlotte Dales and Aubrey Northam, who are from an organization called Inclusivity. I think I messed that up. Inclusively. Marissa: That's it. Mark Miller: I practiced this right before we started, I still can't get it right. It is [crosstalk 00:01:07] Charlotte Dales: Yeah, you jinxed it. You over-thought it. Mark Miller: I over thought it. Exactly right. So Charlotte and Aubrey, welcome. As you can tell, your host is not a perfect human being here, but is very happy to have you on. And also I want to make sure I introduce our lovely producer, Marissa, who is here with us today. So Inclusively, got it that time. Got it that time. Is a professional network connecting candidates with disabilities, right? Is that the best way to say it, Charlotte? Charlotte Dales: Yeah. We're connecting candidates with disabilities with employers who are looking to diversify their pipeline as well as unlock untapped talent pools. Mark Miller: Beautiful, beautiful. And I have to say that I looked briefly, skimmed through both of your resumes, but Charlotte, looking through yours. This is not your first gig. You did a whole bunch of stuff leading up to this, including working for some pretty impressive companies or organizations, I guess, like Deutsche Bank. So can you just walk us through how you go from this professional setting that you're in and develop this desire to create something like this? Charlotte Dales: Yeah. So I started out working at Deutsche Bank right out of college. I wanted to move to London and ended up getting ... Knew I needed to get into the finance world to get my Visa sponsored. So started applying to jobs in finance over in London. And so I started out there and was there for five years and ended up quitting my job and starting my first company with one of my best friends there. Had no experience in technology or really anything that we were doing. I had no experience in, was just 24, 25 years old, and didn't really have any responsibilities or fear. Charlotte Dales: And so jumped straight in. We started a mobile payment app for restaurants and bars, and we ended up growing that to about 200 restaurants in London and sold that to Amex, American Express, at the end of 2017. And it was around that time that my cousin became the first licensed esthetician in the state of Florida with down syndrome. So she gives facials at a local salon. And pretty much after getting my first facial from her, I knew this would be my next company. It was just incredibly clear what the potential was she was told she had in terms of her career and what she was actually able to achieve was completely different. And so how can we use technology to bridge that gap? Mark Miller: Yeah, I mean, I love it first off when true professionals get into this kind of thing, because when you have an altruistic goal, business does get in the way. And if you don't understand that you don't understand how to get around it. It's maybe the same thing that you're talking about with, was it your cousin that you said? Charlotte Dales: Yeah. Mark Miller: Yeah, your cousin. People are telling her that there's all these barriers to maybe being an esthetician because of her Downs. Charlotte Dales: [inaudible 00:04:43], yeah. Mark Miller: Yeah. But they're just obstacles to get around, to work around and to wheel your way through. And I think that when somebody comes at it like you have with a business background, you really have the tools in place to get around those things. So I love to hear that. And it just really makes sense that it's a lead to success here. Mark Miller: And so obviously it's this relationship with your cousin and she becomes almost a mentor to you because of what ... She. It's a she, right? Charlotte Dales: Yes. Mark Miller: What's her name, by the way? Charlotte Dales: Cameron Delgado. Yeah. Mark Miller: So Cameron has these obstacles, she's told she can't do something. She does it anyways and you go, holy moly, this is amazing. And she becomes this inspiration for you. And so what is her take on all this? She must be flipped around and just super proud of you. Charlotte Dales: Yeah, Cameron has always been super impressive. She's the epitome of never giving up, chasing your dreams, and she's just incredibly contagious, her zest for life. And I think, she understands ... I don't know if she even realizes the more successful we get, how much her story is going to impact so many more people. And I'm actually going to see her tomorrow, and I'm excited, it's fun to give her updates and have her be a part of the journey as well. Mark Miller: That's amazing. So before we get too much deeper into that, Aubrey, somehow you joined this organization. So tell me your story and your background and how the two of you came together to do this. Aubrey Northam: Yeah, yeah. Of course. So I got into web development by way of graphic design, actually. So straight out of college, got into the design scene and realized that I was interested in web development equally as a career choice for me. So as I went down that road, I was a little bit naturally inclined towards caring about that user experience process, just as much as the functionality of what you put into engineering. Aubrey Northam: So that became a natural part of what I really enjoyed working on in my software development career. So as the industry grew, accessibility became a natural subject of attention for the industry. So a lot of it was self-taught, picking up accessibility skills for engineering here and there. And as clients came into our software agency, I work with a group called Mobilex, based out of Richmond, Virginia. And as more and more clients came with their attention focused on this accessibility space, the more I learned and self-taught in that topic. Aubrey Northam: So when Inclusively came on board and partnered with our team, it was a really natural fit. And it's been a huge learning opportunity for me personally to work on a project where I can really dive in to web accessibility and learn about the testing and the solutions that I never really would have had the resources to dedicate to, otherwise. Mark Miller: Nice. Did you hear that Marcy? She got Inclusively right the first time. Marissa: Yeah, I know. Well, that's because she's a Richmonder, and Richmonders are obviously the most brilliant. Hello? Charlotte Dales: We're all Richmonders on here, besides Mark. Mark Miller: What was that, the Sesame Street thing, one of these things doesn't belong, [crosstalk 00:08:53] That's me. I'm that guy. I'm up in the [crosstalk 00:08:55]. Marissa: You're the odd man out. Mark Miller: I'm not in Richmond, Virginia. So thanks for that, Aubrey. I mean, what a wonderful pathway. And it's interesting because I am always telling people that accessibility really is user experience for people with disabilities. That's all it is. We shouldn't say that's all it is, but that's what it is. And if you really care about user experience, and you care about user experience for everyone, and it sounds like at a very early stage in your career that really dawned on you and you thought, "Man, this is the way to go." So how does this now merge you with Charlotte and this effort? How did you guys meet? Charlotte Dales: So I was living over in London the past 10 years, and my husband, we moved to Richmond for my husband's job, and I started this company while I was over in London. It was virtual. Once I found out we were moving to Richmond, I started to try and build somewhat of a startup network there. And there was a man who I met that has a son with the disability who found out what I was doing, because I must have been trying to talk to anyone and everyone who would listen to me in Richmond. And he reached out to me and said, "I want to help you. "And he said, "Because I have a son with a disability, I wouldn't be comfortable investing in and monetizing anything in this space. However, I believe business is what's going to push it forward." Charlotte Dales: And so what he did instead was just open up tons and tons of doors for me. So Mobilex was a company he's worked with a lot. So many people that I'm working with now are just somehow connected to him. And so Mobilex was one of those people. So it's kind of serendipitous that I guess Aubrey, and the rest of the team are already interested in this space, and we just got connected that way. So, yeah. Mark Miller: That's great. That's great. Well, it sounds like connections are important in business and it sounds like this guy was really almost a hub for you. That was fortunate. So did any of your experiences in London, I mean, that's a pretty cool thing for a young person to go do in the first place is uproot and say, "Hey, I'm going to start my career off in a whole other country." How did that experience in London really affect you, and is there anything that ... I mean, I think the world opens up. I was overseas, the world opens up and it's a bigger place and a more manageable place when you- Charlotte Dales: Yeah. I do think so. I'd love to say I was very thoughtful about my career, but ultimately I studied abroad in London and just loved it and figured out a way to get myself back there. And then starting a company there, looking back now, was not smart. To start a company in one of the most expensive cities in the world where you have no family, not a huge network, not a huge investor network. And London's just also a tougher place to raise money as a startup, et cetera. Charlotte Dales: So for my first venture, I feel like we put every barrier in front of us that we could have. But thankfully we got out alive, and I think it really positioned me well for this company to try and do it right. We've still made loads of mistakes, but I do think being abroad and just really, almost being plopped in the middle of nowhere, with not a huge network and having to build it all from the ground up, it expedited this company. I just knew how to get everything together. And I think if I had lived in the states for those 10 years, a lot of things might've come a little bit easier. So I think it's through those challenges that- Mark Miller: Well, we decided early on that all this is about just busting through barriers. So why not start it in a city that's way more difficult than [crosstalk 00:13:11]. You know what I mean? Charlotte Dales: Your hardest case scenario and then everything else is easier. Mark Miller: It's a total theme. We don't care about all those difficulties. Figure out a way around it. Marissa: So Charlotte, tell me about your business model. If I were a company and I wanted to hire somebody with a disability, then how would I go about doing that using your company? Charlotte Dales: So we operate under a traditional SAS agreement. So unlike traditional recruiters, we're not trying to make a cut of every single person that's hired, which we believe is more aligned with the community itself. It means that we don't care if a company downloads every single candidate in our database and puts it in their own. That's actually a good thing for the community. It means they're now within these career portals that are within companies. Charlotte Dales: So the way we're priced is, based on how many jobs do you want to post on our platform at any given time, it just tiers up on pricing. And then we have different training modules and other things that are add on services, but the core of the platform is a tech SAS platform. Marissa: Well, okay. So it's almost like a Monster.com or Indeed or something. Okay. Mark Miller: Specific to people with disabilities. So Aubrey, what has it meant to you to be able to take this passion that you have for accessible design, accessible coding and development and work on such a project that really is ... This is important for everyone. I mean, what we do is a business. What Marissa and I at TPGI is help the average company that is providing a product to the world, be accessible. But you've lucked out and landed on a company that's really serving that community of people with disabilities. How has that affected you in your career path? Aubrey Northam: Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's been a huge opportunity. You can always take software engineering infinite ways as a career, but I always like to take on projects that at the end of the day add meaning to someone's life or make someone day a little bit easier than it would have been otherwise. Aubrey Northam: And it's definitely the case with Inclusively. We always say that our user base really sets us apart as our biggest strength. And that's true for the engineering side of things as well. Really, we have lots of testing partners and software tools that we use to achieve the goal of providing an accessible web experience and a unique job matching platform for our users. But honestly, our user base is so diverse and so inclusive, coming to the table with different screen reader tools and things like that that they use that we don't even have access to, like a testing pool like that. And this user base really is our testing pool. So not only do we welcome feedback from that user base, but we really solicit it as well as a way to grow our platform and make it better for everyone who's going to be using it. Mark Miller: That's fantastic. And I think just hearing the two of you talk, it really does illustrate that blend of business with an altruistic goal and if the two are really married together properly, then you can truly achieve something. Mark Miller: One of the things that I know is that you guys have to have stories where the users of your platform, that people that benefited from all this, have reached back out to you and said, "Hey, I don't think I could have done this before, or thanks to you guys." Do you have any really cool stories that have come over your desk from this user base? Charlotte Dales: I mean, one of them is, they didn't even come to us, they just wrote it on LinkedIn and we saw it. But I guess one of our candidates had been looking for a job for about, I think six to nine months, was laid off during the pandemic and said she had, I think done 500 applications. And after 30 days on our site, had been placed. And that's an incredible story. And I love to say that we do that type of work every single day. That's definitely one of the best that I've heard. Charlotte Dales: But I think what was the coolest part was that she didn't come to us and say, "Thank you." She was like, "Everyone needs to see this. People need to understand what I went through and then how we were able to help." So that's one of my favorite stories, because it's the theme of what we're talking about. You just have to keep going. And I feel like so many times in doing this company and my companies in the past, it's really hard. And there's many, many times where you really are like, "This is the end of the road." And it's so fortunate that I have my cousin and this community to always think about. I think about what they do, and it's like, "Okay, I can get through this." Everyone is overcoming challenges that they're either being told they can't overcome or that they think they can overcome. And you just, you can always find a way forward as long as you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Mark Miller: Right. Do you find that you wake up in the morning and you're like, "Ah, I'm a little tired. I don't feel like doing this today." And then you think about somebody like your cousin and you're like, "Okay, nevermind." Charlotte Dales: Yeah. I think just whenever I'm getting really stressed about the company, it's so nice to think about her and just, I don't know. I feel really lucky in that I wake up so excited every day. And I've had jobs in the past where I don't feel like that. And I think that when you, as you said, when you get to put two things together, which is doing something good in the world and doing business, it's a great motivator. Charlotte Dales: And when I sold my last company, I said I would never start another company again, unless it was to do something good in the world. Because literally, at times you're not doing anything but thinking about that for years straight. And so, my last company was helping people get restaurant reservations. Not as meaningful. A little harder to grind it out. Mark Miller: If I get hungry, I appreciate it. Yeah. I agree with that. And I think, I mean, not to speak for Marissa, but Marissa and I, we come to work and we work for a company that helps the world in a similar way, and you certainly can get bogged down in your day. And it is a business at the end of the day and you are working and have all the same stresses and challenges you would in any other business. But when you do get that moment to step back and take a breath and remember what you're doing, you go like, "Oh, okay, well this is worth it." This is way better having all those things go on, but feeling good about the results of it rather than helping people book a restaurant reservation. Charlotte Dales: Yeah. And I do think that not everyone is as fortunate as us to all get to work at these companies where it's really transparently doing better for the world, or at least trying to. However, I do think what we've seen with our employers, a lot of them are banks and tech companies and they'll have missions beyond just the core business. But I do think being able to diversify our talent pool, like incorporate more people into it and focus on actually creating opportunities for people who haven't had them. You can make any job meaningful by just doing that. So I think that's a thing that we always try to ... There's, I think, an Accenture report that said that companies with a well-run diversity and disability program have 30% higher retention for their overall employees, not just those candidates with disabilities. And I think a lot of that has to do with, it's just creating more meaning in people's everyday life. Marissa: [crosstalk 00:22:04] I wanted to ask you about that. Do you have a preponderance of a certain type of job that employers are looking for? Or is it a variety? I mean, you mentioned Accenture and I know that a lot of companies are focused on hiring a more neurodiverse workforce because there's a lot of people out there who are very well positioned to do certain types of jobs with certain types of disabilities. Charlotte Dales: Yeah. I mean, so it's a blessing and a curse. I think that we don't want people to think that if you have a neurodiversity program and you're able to place really high functioning people with autism into tech roles that you've done your job. That's this much of a very small portion of the population of [crosstalk 00:22:53]. Charlotte Dales: However, it does bring to light a lot of things to people that actually people with disabilities have a lot of talents beyond people maybe who don't. And so our goal is really to replicate that use case, but in way more scenarios. So, we do place a lot of tech roles. We place a lot of customer support. We have some roles that we've made a lot of progress towards. But our whole point is that anyone with a disability can do any job at your company, it just depends on what that disability is. So we really try not to have people focus on cherry picking jobs for this demographic, because that just will continue to marginalize certain people into certain roles, versus just really looking at what skills do you have, what accommodations do you need? And then from the employers perspective, what skills do you need, what accommodations can you make, and just strip disability out of the middle of that. Mark Miller: I like the way you said that. And I think listening to you talk, Charlotte, it's like, you guys are a double whammy. When you think about it on the surface of your business, you think, "Oh, this is great. They're helping people with disabilities," which of course is probably the foundation of what you wanted to do. But you're also helping, to your earlier point, these businesses. You're running a great business and a business that helps a lot of people. And then you're helping these other businesses do the same, to your point in their way. They may manufacture widgets, like who cares, but they can be a better business overall by being inclusive to people with disabilities. And you guys are a facilitator of that. So it's like, you've got both ends of the spectrum being that you're helping. It's really cool. Really cool. And by the way, a simple concept, right? It's not [crosstalk 00:24:55] Charlotte Dales: I think that every day. I'm like, "How did someone else not already do this a long time ago? Mark Miller: It's not like you invented this new technology for a wheelchair with gyroscopic ... It was just like, "Let's take people who want to work and match them with people who need people to work for them." And let's do that with this group of people that has disabilities because you know, Charlotte, that they can, they can do a lot more than maybe somebody else might realize. That was just the glue that put those two things together. So I think it's just brilliant, existing model, nothing nutty about it. It was just you wanting to put this together and doing it and what an impact. Marissa: You make it sound so easy, Mark. [crosstalk 00:25:47] Charlotte Dales: The hard part, and this is just learning, but so many people focus on the person with the disability, and what skills they have, and what training they need. And it's all about how do we get them into the companies. But so much of it is just the company culture changing certain parts of their interview process, learning more about accommodations. Charlotte Dales: I didn't even know that there would be an accommodation team at the company I worked at. And if I'm hiring people, I should know that. But these organizations are so big, so how do you scalably train, a whole existing company on what are the best practices to interview and make sure that not just your company is inclusive, but your interview processes are inclusive. Because if they're not inclusive, no one's getting past that. Marissa: And you offer training about stuff like that? Charlotte Dales: Yeah. So that kind of just happened as we started selling in. We just realized people needed it. So we've been creating some of our own training, we work with partners. A lot of what is the issue in this space, too, is that there's so many great providers, content, resources, training programs, but it's also fragmented. We just, we're bringing so many of these things just together so that when companies are looking for certain assistive technologies, et cetera, they can just find everything in one place. Marissa: Oh, nice. Mark Miller: And so that your training program and your help and all that sort of thing, it happens both on the organization side and on the candidate side. Charlotte Dales: Yeah. But we're just using partners. So we're aggregating existing training programs on our platform. We're not actually doing the training because there's already all these amazing organizations out there. It's just, you find them when maybe your local agency is just giving you the same five recommendations they've been giving people for 20 years. Mark Miller: And that's brilliant. And that's what I'm talking about. And I think Marissa, you bring you a good point. I make it sound so easy. And in one sense it is. But in another sense, one of the hardest things to do is take an existing model and existing resources like you have, and say, "We're going to just tweak it this much and create a whole ..." That takes a certain kind of mind. And it's really not easy to do that. I think because that platform already exists, some people are already used to the way it works and already used to the way it serves people, it takes somebody special to go, "You know what, we're going to tweak these things about a hiring platform, about monster.com or Indeed, or any of these things, that concept and create this." Mark Miller: And then you can see it in your mind, Charlotte, that you sit there and go like, "Hey, let's not reinvent the wheel. These things already exist. So we're going to make slight changes in what's already existing out there to aggregate that into our environment so that people can take better advantage of it." So I think it's actually very hard to do, although it looks easy and it's also, if I can say it, just brilliant. You have to have a certain mind that thinks that way and makes these small adjustments to make such a big impact. Charlotte Dales: Well, and I think one of the things too, that just makes us really different from the core is, we are building this with accessibility, from the source code level. Every other job platform is having to retrofit their massive platforms to be accessible. And they're trying to do overlays and other things. And that's one thing with Aubrey, we've been through many providers, many different services, and ultimately at the end of the day, as Aubrey said, we just had to start building it, and getting people to test it, and then fixing it and have real users doing it. Otherwise, the AI is just not sophisticated enough to automate all of this right now. Charlotte Dales: And I think you want to be able to do quick fixes, but you really can't. You have to have real people telling you. And I think a lot of the automated technology, it's compliance, tick the box, but the actual user experience isn't that great for the end user. And they'll only know that if people with disabilities are using their site. Marissa: Can you take that message and tell that to everybody ever? Charlotte Dales: I'll send you, we forced or did a report on all the accessible technologies, and we were quoted in there saying that. But honestly, we learned that on our own, just because we were trying to use those. We thought this is the most efficient way, but we just kept getting bad feedback. Mark Miller: Everybody wants an easy button. Charlotte Dales: And the intention is right. It is more scalable, but there's a difference between being compliant and having a good user experience. Mark Miller: Yeah. And we always say that compliance, conformance to the wicked guidelines is a baseline. It's a beginning. If you're not reasonably conforming to the guidelines, don't do a usability study because you're not even far enough along for that. And I'm thinking more of somebody that's retrofitting or a bigger organization than you guys. You guys had a real advantage to be able to think about it at the beginning. Mark Miller: But get yourself at that baseline conformance to the guidelines, and then absolutely. And find a way to maintain that, because that's not easy for the average organization to maintain that. And then absolutely, bring the people with disabilities in and have them bring it up to that high level of really good user experience that only somebody trying to use it and telling you how they would prefer it to be better, can give you. Charlotte Dales: So anytime we're doing any type of big, new feature, big rollout, we are going to our partner and we get them to do a manual audit of everything. Mark Miller: That's brilliant. Well, any last things that you guys want to add that we didn't cover that you think is real important to know? Aubrey Northam: I would add just on the same topic, a lot of companies get obstructed when they're thinking about making a website or a business accessible in the web space. And it's so simple, thinking about a physical building, and the same logic can be applied. And it's helpful to be reminded that it's not really a finish line that we view perfect compliance. We're always evolving, just like every business evolves for its users. And it's really about the goal of evolving with your users more so than a finish line for being inclusive and being compliant. Charlotte Dales: Better to roll things out, make mistakes, and then remediate them quickly then to ignore it altogether. Marissa: Yeah, for sure. Mark Miller: Well, it's like any other bug. You're not going to be perfect. I think we talked about in the beginning when I messed up on everything. You're not going to be perfect, but you do need a method to find the errors and quickly correct them. And that, I think Aubrey you said it the best, there's just no finish line. It's an ongoing process. You can make your mistakes. What do you have in place to catch those and fix them quickly and all that kind of stuff? So very well said. Well, thank you, guys. Marissa: Yeah, thank you. Charlotte Dales: Thank you. Aubrey Northam: Thank you. Mark Miller: We wish you nothing but a huge amount of success, both for your sake and for your cousin's sake. Charlotte Dales: Yeah. For all of our sakes [crosstalk 00:34:00] in this space. Mark Miller: Everybody. Yeah. It's absolutely wonderful. And we're just super glad that you're out there doing it. Charlotte Dales: Thanks. Mark Miller: Yeah. All right. Well, we have to wrap it up. So this is Mark Miller thanking Charlotte, Aubrey, and Marissa, and reminding you to keep it accessible. Announcer: This podcast has been brought to you by TPGI, the experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for more Real People, Real Stories podcasts coming soon.