10 years at Zoonou with William

Last month marked 10 years since William joined Zoonou.

A lot has changed since then. William is now our Head of Accessibility, leading a team of specialists and having played a big part in shaping and growing our accessibility services over the years.

We caught up with William to look back at where it all started, how they found their way into accessibility and what they're most proud of 10 years on.

How did accessibility become your thing?

Accessibility was something I kind of fell into. When I joined Zoonou, I had dreams of being part of our penetration testing team. I still secretly do - it’s the closest job to being a spy I can think of!

An opportunity came up to shadow the existing accessibility team and, despite still being in probation, I put myself forward and was fortunate enough to be included in the project.

From there, I spent a lot of time undertaking courses around accessibility in my own time and slowly learnt how to read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and identify the nuances in each success criterion.

I’ve always been quite an empathetic person and knowing that the work I was focusing on made a difference really helped drive me.

You’ve helped build our accessibility service from the ground up. What do you remember about those early days?

I think I began being heavily involved in the direction of the accessibility service from about 2017. The main person running it had left Zoonou for a career change, and I was already happy talking to clients and working with them to identify their needs, so I took the lead with these parts of the service.

At that point, there were three of us, and we only had one service - a WCAG 2.0 Level AA audit.

WCAG 2.1 was going into working draft around that time and I was really interested in ensuring we were future-proofing our clients against new requirements. So, naively, I started creating new test cases covering the potential updates.

As an aside: I really don’t recommend this. A lot of changes happen between one working draft and another. It’s great to remain aware of how the guidelines are developing but proceed with caution if you assume something you’ve read in a working draft will be there in the final recommendation.

Now you’re leading a team of 11 accessibility testers. Do you ever stop and think about how much it’s grown?

All the time. I consider myself and my team incredibly lucky that we’ve grown so much.

For many years, there were only ever three or so main accessibility testers, including myself. Around the time the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 came into force, the requirements for our services rocketed, with even greater growth following Covid.

One of the best parts about now being remote-first is that when we hire, we’re able to hire the right people no matter where they are in the country. We’ve been able to hire some really amazing people, both locally and nationally.

When hiring, I tend to look for people with the right aptitude and empathy, rather than focusing on their existing technical skills. Those skills can be developed, but I think it’s really important that people understand why accessibility matters, whether that comes from lived experience or a genuine desire to make things better for others.

The team themselves are fantastic. There are 11 of us now and the support we offer each other is second to none. I know that as a team we step up to support each other when things go wrong or if, for whatever reason, we’re just not quite 100%.

People across the team are also developing their own areas of expertise and taking more ownership of how these parts of the service grow, including document remediation, external training programmes, onboarding and internal training, and user testing.

You’ve seen accessibility change a lot over the last decade. What feels different now?

The work hasn’t changed greatly, but I feel the attitudes have changed and, as a result, I’ve seen an increase in the number of advocates for accessibility.

The bigger changes are around the corner. WCAG 3.0 will have a major impact and, from a testing point of view, it will shake up our current processes and approaches.

As we’re still quite far from seeing a final release, it’s unclear whether it will become the new standard for legal requirements across different national and international accessibility legislation. I worry we’ll end up in a two-tier system, where different (and potentially conflicting contrast - I’m looking at you) - requirements exist for websites providing services across multiple regions.

So, what would the William who joined Zoonou ten years ago think if they could see where they are today?

Oh, they’d be pretty happy with it and proud of what I’ve achieved so far.

After 10 years at Zoonou, William has helped shape not just our accessibility services, but the team and people behind them. Their kindness, patience and genuine care for others make Zoonou a better place to work.

Happy 10 years, William!