Marco:<\/i> I\u2019ve always cared deeply about accessibility, too\u2014I\u2019ve seen how it helps me and others, whether we\u2019re reading the news, connecting with friends, or just getting things done on the web. I also started contributing to the accessibility module before I actually joined the company 13 years ago, and that was a good way to get a sense of the culture; it\u2019s important to know you\u2019ll feel welcome when you\u2019re part of a minority group. To me, working here was an opportunity to make an impact on a large scale\u2014potentially hundred of millions of users.<\/p>\n
Morgan: <\/i>I came to Mozilla through education rather than tech; I worked as a teaching assistant and lecturer in computer science and am a big proponent of access to CS education and technology in general. I like accessibility work because it\u2019s focused on helping people, rather than just doing tech for tech\u2019s sake. In our world, you often hear browsers referred to as \u201cuser agents,\u201d and I think that\u2019s very apt; we facilitate people\u2019s connections to their online world, and we have a lot of power to make the internet easier to use.<\/p>\n
Asa:<\/i> Like Jamie and Marco, I started as a volunteer\u2014though that was a long time ago; I\u2019ve been with Mozilla 22 years now! I\u2019ve had lots of different roles, but I feel like I really found my niche with accessibility. Someone\u2019s demographics should never determine their online access, nor the quality of their experience. Plus, everyone faces situational or temporary disability at some point in their life. Maybe you have a broken arm and can\u2019t use your mouse, or you want to scroll through a recipe but your hands are covered in cake batter. Curb cuts in sidewalks were initially designed for people who use wheelchairs, but they ended up helping parents with strollers and delivery workers with dollies. Accessibility benefits all of us<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also such an exciting space to work in\u2014especially here. As Jamie said, we\u2019re trying to deliver experiences that are actually delightful. So much has gone undone for decades because people thought about accessibility in terms of doing the minimum. But when you take a broader view, there\u2019s a huge opportunity for innovative work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Who does your team collaborate with and how?<\/b><\/p>\n Jamie: <\/i>That\u2019s one of the interesting things about this team\u2014we get to work with people in every part of the company. It\u2019s a massive footprint across the entire code base. That does mean we have a lot to keep an eye on, but our automation efforts are helpful, and we\u2019re also working on formalizing some of our processes as Mozilla grows\u2014giving people documentation to help them figure out when to come to us, and what to give us, to get our help.<\/p>\n Marco: <\/i>That process has definitely changed\u2014it was more reactive a few years ago. A new feature would hit and then we\u2019d test it to figure out what didn\u2019t work. Now, people are reaching out to us and asking for help ahead of time, which is great. The earlier we get involved, the more solid things will be from an accessibility standpoint.<\/p>\n Asa: <\/i>Absolutely. Mozilla always had a good track record of shipping high-quality accessible experiences, but it often required pretty heroic efforts pretty late in the game. Recently, we\u2019ve gotten more involved in design and user research rather than just development and testing. This way, when a design document reaches an engineer, they don\u2019t have to wonder if the contrast will work for someone with low vision or whether we used colors that colorblind users\u2014who are close to five percent of the population\u2014can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also involved at the end of the cycle, all the way to marketing. Across the board, not just at Mozilla, there\u2019s often not enough communication about accessibility improvements, and that means some users miss out on features that could help them. So we help make sure accessibility is part of release notes and blog posts, as well.<\/p>\n Jamie:<\/i> We also collaborate beyond Mozilla\u2014sometimes that\u2019s with the people and organizations who build and maintain accessibility tools, and sometimes it\u2019s standards work. Mozilla\u2019s in a unique position to influence the future and make sure users with disabilities don\u2019t have to trade things like privacy in order to have online access.<\/p>\n And sometimes we collaborate with users themselves. One of the great things about Mozilla is that our software is open source, and our tracking and reporting systems are open, too. Anyone can use Bugzilla<\/a>, and people reach out on social media about things they think we should look at.<\/p>\n Morgan: <\/i>Yeah, we get a lot of information out of those casual interactions\u2014I get tagged in Twitter<\/a> threads all the time. When people know and trust you as someone they can go to with questions, that\u2019s really powerful. And as Jamie mentioned, we have the opportunity to make sure accessibility is something people in our industry are thinking about even beyond Mozilla\u2014I\u2019m part of the CSS working group, for example. As a browser company, there are a lot of standards we get to have a say in, and it\u2019s very gratifying to be able to represent users with disabilities in those conversations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tell us about some of the projects you\u2019ve worked on.<\/b><\/p>\n Morgan:<\/i> The increased support for VoiceOver this year has been a big improvement; we\u2019ve never really kept pace with Apple\u2019s updates in the past. Now we\u2019re bringing ourselves up to speed, but we\u2019re also optimizing\u2014thinking about how VoiceOver should ideally work, not just how it works in other browsers. Apple\u2019s products are largely closed-source, so it takes a lot of black box poking around. But it\u2019s been awesome, especially because I\u2019ve gotten to work with Marco, who has a perspective I don\u2019t on how a VoiceOver power user would want the technology to work.<\/p>\n Marco: <\/i>That project has been super exciting. As Morgan said, it\u2019s a lot of tinkering\u2014reverse engineering what Apple has done with Safari and how other browsers approach similar technologies\u2014but then improving on that, as well. And when you finally start to see things work that never did before, it\u2019s phenomenally rewarding. One year ago, even basic tasks were very slow. Now you can use VoiceOver for all kinds of things, including Gmail, Twitter, and Google Docs, and the difference is night and day.<\/p>\n Jamie: <\/i>One thing I like about the projects we take on is the huge amount of diversity. One day I\u2019ll be working on the UI, figuring out how to make the purpose of video controls clearer to someone using a screen reader, and the next day I\u2019m doing deep architectural engineering.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What are you looking forward to right now?<\/b><\/p>\n Marco: <\/i>One of my hopes for the next year or two is to develop or rework some models to make transitioning from desktop apps to web apps with a screen reader more seamless. As I get older, I\u2019m noticing all the context-switching takes an increasing toll on my concentration; you have to figure out the best way to manipulate each new element, and that\u2019s all the more difficult with speech because it\u2019s a sequential medium\u2014you can only get one piece of information at a time. There are some really complex, interesting questions there, and the answers will hopefully help lift the cognitive burden for users like me in the decades ahead.<\/p>\n Morgan:<\/i> I\u2019m looking forward to getting closer to VoiceOver API completeness\u2014or getting at least as far as we can given what Apple offers us. We\u2019re really happy with the progress we\u2019ve made so far, but there\u2019s always polishing and performance tweaks to be made. We\u2019re considering implementing custom rotors, for example, so VoiceOver users can natively access specific sets of Firefox commands or information on a web page. It\u2019s something no one does yet, but we\u2019re trying to figure it out.<\/p>\n Jamie:<\/i> A lot of my thinking right now is around the next generation of our Windows accessibility architecture. The majority of our users are on Windows, so it\u2019s been kept up relatively well\u2014but the web never stops changing and growing, and the architecture is starting to show its age and have some performance issues. Microsoft has released a new framework called UI Automation, and we\u2019re figuring out whether to adopt that and what the implications will be. It\u2019s an opportunity to reevaluate decisions that were made a decade ago or more in light of the modern web, which is scary but really exciting.<\/p>\n Asa: <\/i>It is. Because UI Automation is still a work in progress, it will mean a lot of give and take, working with Microsoft to get issues resolved. But it also means getting to push for an approach that\u2019s more flexible, expressive, and maybe faster.<\/p>\n In the shorter term, I\u2019m excited to find ways to support users with a wider range of disabilities. We\u2019ve already begun by moving beyond our initial focus on screen readers into low vision use cases, making layouts and controls more accessible. Next, I\u2019d like to do more for users who have cognitive disabilities, and those with impaired mobility. An amputee, for example, might use a single switch to navigate the web, and we support that on Android today. What would it take to bring that support to the desktop, or to develop gaze control, where your computer can move your mouse with the help of a computer that tracks your pupils? The more we can expand our work, the closer we are to creating an internet that really is accessible to all.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Interested in working with the Mozilla team? Check out our <\/b>open roles<\/b><\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mozilla\u2019s mission is making the online world open and accessible to all\u2014and that includes people with disabilities. Below, Accessibility team members Asa Dotzler (Senior Product Manager), Morgan Rae Reschenberg (Platform … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,290371,318942,451108],"tags":[50,303553],"coauthors":[306191],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/careers\/files\/2020\/12\/Jamie-Morgan-Eitan-300x452.jpg\")
Morgan and Jamie with their Accessibility teammate Eitan at Mozilla All Hands in Berlin<\/em><\/p>\n