{"id":2100,"date":"2026-06-22T12:33:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2026-06-22T12:33:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:33:27","slug":"gareth-goes-fireside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/2026\/06\/22\/gareth-goes-fireside\/","title":{"rendered":"Gareth Goes Fireside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2102 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-22-112926.jpg\" alt=\"a11y wanker shirt for gareth\" width=\"434\" height=\"483\" srcset=\"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-22-112926.jpg 434w, https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-22-112926-270x300.jpg 270w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I first remember meeting Gareth Ford Williams on a plane over the atlantic circa 2015, he was travelling, like me to CSUN. I initially viewed him to be <em>mad as a cut snake<\/em>. Likeable, <em>bit of a wanker<\/em>. Over the intervening years my view of him has matured, I now see him as a <strong>massive<\/strong>, <em>but<\/em> <strong>likeable<\/strong> <strong>a11y wanker<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n2nD6Dqdoks?si=MBTMCEQBIsAbYqTp\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<details>\n<summary>Transcript<\/summary>\n<pre>Steve:\r\nWell, so welcome to the fireside, Gareth, we were going to meet the week before last but I was incommunicable, I just couldn't do it because as I said I was away and didn't have my professional recording equipment. So how are you? Just tell us, where are you coming from today?\r\n\r\nIs that your lounge room or is that a room?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo, no, no, this started I suppose in my work room during lockdown, it was my daughter's bedroom but she left home around lockdown time, she decided that might have it, just before I think it was just before lockdown, so she moved out and so I settled in here. I live in Ramsbottom, which most people have heard of it, no one knows where it is. Beautiful, it's the sort of name that you remember, isn't it?\r\n\r\nIt is, it means garlic valley, to do the local historian, so Rams is a form of mild garlic.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI always assumed it was going to be in North London where you live.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo, no, no, I've grown up and I'm still in Manchester and I'm still here.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAha, you're one of those, all the northerners. Yes, my family, as you know, I'm Australian, or you should know because I keep saying it, but the rest of my family come from Birmingham, except my mum, who was born in Wales, and yeah, I don't know if you know David Swallow, but he made the mistake once of questing my mother's heritage. She didn't like that.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHe's up in York, isn't he?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSorry? Does David, is he still up, is he in York or somewhere where he used to live?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, he lives in York. Yeah, I saw him recently, because we were all up in York for TL week. Nice.\r\n\r\nYeah, so it was nice to get in real life with all the people that I work with for the rest of the year virtually.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt's nice to see people from the shoulders, you know, see the rest of them.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo that's what you look like, you know, and it's the only thing then is you've got to put your, like, I'd have to put my trousers on, don't bother, it's all our mental image.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt just qualifies it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo you haven't said where is, oh, that's right, it's near Manchester.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, it's just north. If you go in Manchester, if you were in Manchester and you look north towards the hills and you'll see a little tower on a hill and we're just sort of below that and that tower is called Peel Tower. So Robert Peel, who invented the concept of the police, yeah, he was a local lad.\r\n\r\nAnd so we have Peel Tower here. And so we look to Manchester for the sunshine. It's a lot of precipitation, copious precipitation locally.\r\n\r\nIt's very damp. It's usually underneath a cloud of rain. We've got clouds now.\r\n\r\nIt's always clouds.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nCan you hear me now?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI can hear you. I heard you before.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI was just, I've just been doing some of my, I feel like a sort of master of the, of the keyboards here, you know, sort of changed it up by technology and shit. So you live quite near to Patrick then, in Preston.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, he's in Salford.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, he's in Preston, is he? I thought he was in Salford. Yeah, he got out of Salford and moved to a new place in Preston.\r\n\r\nWell, outside Preston, in Broughton, which is just, you know, I mean, outside, I mean, a mile or two.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, because Patrick and David were regulars at our GAAD events at the BBC, which were the most chaotic things you've ever seen in your life. They were absolute, absolute total chaos.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nFor some reason, I always, I always thought that you were London based and you worked for the BBC offices in London.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo, no. I don't know why. When I was at the BBC for 20 years, I got, I got a job there by accident.\r\n\r\nI didn't, there was no plan to work for the BBC. I went for, I was leaving an agency, because I worked in branding agencies in, and in the 1990s. And yeah, it was sort of early 2000s, probably about 2001, 2002.\r\n\r\nAnd I was looking for a change, looking for different things. Gin, my wife, she just said to me, look, it's been a long time since you've done an interview. Just apply for a load of stuff and do some interviews just for practice.\r\n\r\nGet into the swing of doing it and then go for something you really want. And one of the things that came up was a job at the BBC. So we applied for loads of stuff and I got selected for interview and, and I accidentally got offered a job and I didn't really want it.\r\n\r\nBut then, then they made it a little bit more attractive. It looked quite fun and interesting. And I really liked the guy that had interviewed me, who'd be my boss, a guy called John Ryan, who was really brilliant.\r\n\r\nHe was a, he was a fantastic boss. And it was for a really unusual position called Brand Manager North, which I always used to say it was because I was a brand manager at the BBC to start off with, but I'd always say in a Leeds accent. Sounds much better from Yorkshire when it was Brand Manager North and in all of the, well, what's your old Brand Manager North?\r\n\r\nBecause pretty much everyone else in marketing seemed to come from Chiswick, you know? And so, you know, it was, it was nice being a bit unusual. You know, it's got the diversity stats up, I think, sort of having someone from the north.\r\n\r\nAnd, and then accessibility all happened again by accident. There was no plan. It was, you know, having a chat with a guy that.\r\n\r\nI wasn't quite sure what he did, but I knew he worked in digital and I had a bit of a grump and we'll get to the story later on, but it was, I ended up, this role was created for me and it was going to move to London. And then they announced we're moving to Salford. So they just said, stay there, we'll come to you.\r\n\r\nOh, my. Which took two years. So I did a hell of a lot of commuting and then built the team.\r\n\r\nSo that was about 2004.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo you were there for a long time.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, I planned to stay for two years and accidentally stayed for 20, but I was enjoying myself too much. Nearly joined TPG twice. I got, I got offered two roles at TPG, well, off from Mike.\r\n\r\nAnd I always said to Mike, he said, as soon as you offer me something that looks more fun than what I'm doing, I'm with you because I'd love to work. I was like, it's the only other place I wanted to work at, you know, was with you.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, that was it for a lot of people.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nBut I was having a huge amount of fun.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI didn't know, but it would have been nice to work with you there as well.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt would have been fun. It would have been a lot of fun. But the time I was also having an enormous amount of fun, there was, I had a lot of trust that the BBC worked for some brilliant people and with an amazing community of people.\r\n\r\nAnd obviously, you know, a couple of them joined TPG as well. Hemi and Ian, who you now work with as well, and they were brilliant. And I was just, I just felt blessed working there.\r\n\r\nIt was just like brilliant. Then it all kind of fell apart very rapidly in myself. Why did that happen?\r\n\r\nIt's all down to a single, I mean, some people say that you don't work for organisations, you work for managers. And yeah, there was a person there that I ended up, they were just impossible to work with. And I've just had enough.\r\n\r\nI was very burnt out at the time. Covid was, it was a nightmare on the management side of it. That was really, really difficult because we were also doing support for all the disabled staff.\r\n\r\nAnd at the same time, they were doing a massive upgrade on desktop and everything was, oh, it was just absolute chaos and horror. And I'm really burnt out badly. And then the offer of redundancies came round and I was like a rat up a drainpipe.\r\n\r\nI was like, I've got to go. I can't, I can't cope with this any longer.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo it's the redundancy you get based on years served type thing.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYou do, you do.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd they were great.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThey were dead. They were brilliant about the whole thing. The process was brilliantly managed.\r\n\r\nAnd then after I left over a short period of time, the rest of the accessibility people all resigned as well. But now they're in very, very good hands. Well, they've been in a previous lot of very good hands.\r\n\r\nAnd now another pair of very good hands of Al Duggan, who's there. Do I know him? Yeah, you should do.\r\n\r\nWell, you should do. He's wonderful. I love Al, he's brilliant.\r\n\r\nHe's brilliant. He's but I work with him at the BBC. He was he was like an extension of the accessibility team.\r\n\r\nYeah, he was amazing.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWait, he appears on the on the Rogues Gallery. So I thought I'd throw in al. Ah, there you go.\r\n\r\nWhat they what what they call in Australia, Dorothy Dixer. Easy question.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, my God. Now I see I'm so facial blind and I can't remember anyone's name.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, I can't remember people's names.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI thought and I'm going to confess it before I met you. I thought you were two people. And I and I don't know whether this is just my neurodivergent ADHD head just screwing everything up, but I honestly thought you were two different people.\r\n\r\nAnd then then I met you and then. Well, I always reserve any any decision on that until I meet someone. But yeah, yeah, I was just I was quite pleasantly surprised and I thought, well, that's a lot easier than trying to remember these two different people.\r\n\r\nIt seemed incredibly similar. And I was like, is this name different? Because I thought I knew they were both called Steve and I had an idea.\r\n\r\nOne of them was probably called Faulkner. And I couldn't remember the name of the other.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, well, I'm sure. I don't really get out at all. Hey, I was going to ask you, I was going to ask you now, because I.\r\n\r\nThought you might have some interesting perspective on it, but you know, the recently there was the was the BAFTA awards. And there was the incident where the the guy with Tourette's was shouting out racial slurs.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI mean, what what's your take on that?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, it's difficult being on the outside of what happened and not being there, and, you know, often being within an organisation when stuff happens publicly, you end up hearing you end up with a lot more information that could be said publicly and all the rest of it. I thought there was a lot of things that I felt were deeply wrong about the way it was managed and handled in the first place. A not discussing beforehand where he would be comfortable to sit and and all the rest of it, placing him right near a microphone.\r\n\r\nIt's brilliant. I mean, it's just, you know. Yeah, I'm hoping that was just massive incompetence because, you know, yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI don't I don't think it was anything else. But whoever sat and did that was just a deeply incompetent individual. And, you know, and that's that's that's that happens.\r\n\r\nYou know, we we all make mistakes. We all do really stupid things. And that was a really stupid thing by whoever sat in there and organised.\r\n\r\nI don't think it was stupidity within the within within the world. I mean, just you just you switched on the TV now and it's just there's so much of it. Now, I'll come back to the thing about stupidity in a second from someone said something to me years ago.\r\n\r\nThat's always I have lots of little things, little mantras and sayings. I live my life by when I go, oh, I remember I put that together with that. And they always make me smile.\r\n\r\nBut I think the way it was handled afterwards was appalling when that was the worst. The people who were on the receiving end of that, there was no there was no real apology for the impact of that. There was no proper discussion about it.\r\n\r\nThere was it just seemed to be a PR mess.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I mean, I I just heard about it as something that I was aware of.\r\n\r\nBut it's not a story that I wanted to like get deeply. It just doesn't interest me that much. I mean, it interests me, but it's like I want to have that sort of, you know, hopefully people learn.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHopefully people learn from it. I mean, you've got to fall over and hurt your knees to find out that falling over can mean you hurt your knees. You know, hopefully this is a big learning experience for, you know, the production company, the people involved and for the organisations involved.\r\n\r\nYou know, I felt like that. But the handling afterwards was was absolutely.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo what happened to the to the guy, the person which he writes? It was a bloke, wasn't it?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. He's a Scottish chap.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI think if I remember rightly, obviously it sounded like a very traumatic experience for him.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt was it was traumatic experience and people will still be impacted. You know, you there and and there was an opportunity to talk about this, to open it up, to bring people together, to to deal with this afterwards. And it just seemed to be everyone went in the corner.\r\n\r\nThere were no real apologies given. And it was a mess afterwards. It was like no one really wanted to deal with it.\r\n\r\nYou know, and this is the thing with life. This this everything is all the interesting stuff of the things that no one wants to deal with. You know, no one wants to deal with digital accessibility properly.\r\n\r\nThe BBC is probably why I ended up with it, because I think I think, you know, I think probably someone said, who wants to deal with it? And everyone else took a step backwards and everyone go well done for volunteering. It was that it wasn't anything like that.\r\n\r\nBut if you know, I feel that there's a lot of that that happens. But the stupid thing I remember, there was a guy I worked for this fantastic advertising agency for a while in the 90s called Barrington Johnson Lorraine's, which is now something else I can't remember. But it was all it was owned by three guys.\r\n\r\nAnd one of the they were heading towards sort of bowing out and retiring out of it. And they were old school guys. And one of them I went for lunch with early on.\r\n\r\nAnd, you know, it was a big it was a big agency. I think it was the largest independent agency in the UK or outside of London or something at the time. It was it was huge.\r\n\r\nAnd he always used to try and fathom out the youngsters. And he gave me a lot of advice. And he asked me, you know, whether you thought you want a career in advertising.\r\n\r\nI said, I'm just turned up, mate. I got a clue. I'm just here paying rent.\r\n\r\nI've got nappies to buy, you know, it's that kind of, you know, and and he gave me a couple of bits of sound piece of advice. And one of them was he said the thing is, he said, you've got to always remember, he said, he said, you never underestimate fucking stupidity and ignorance of the general public. He went, if you ever underestimate it, you'll mess it up.\r\n\r\nHe said that just, you know, chicken tonight. He went, look at that. It's disgusting.\r\n\r\nIt's like glue in a jar. Give it a happy song. They'll buy it.\r\n\r\nWe won't be able to manufacture it. They just they just shovel it. And and he told me he said that all adverts as well have two things.\r\n\r\nHe said, this is how stupid there's two types of advert. One is say it, but just tell them the thing. Go here, buy that this much.\r\n\r\nThis is what it will do. Fact. And the other one, we've got really nothing to say about this.\r\n\r\nSo sing it. And and he went there even better. So give it a happy song, give it a funny joke, make it weird, whatever.\r\n\r\nBut do a thing and everyone will talk about it and go around singing the song and they'll buy it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd he went, that's the most successful things. It's just. And he said, that's it.\r\n\r\nThe stupidity of the general public. He went, don't underestimate it. And then you'll go far in advertising.\r\n\r\nAnd and then you see Brexit and, you know, the rise of reform and all the rest of it. And you just go, yeah, every single time I see something where you just go, why are we all thinking? And then I remember what he said to me and I just go, yeah, yeah, he's right.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI was stuck on the news today about the. That the court case just finished about the the guy that stabbed the other.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo, it's awful.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, but it was his family was saying, please don't use it as a, you know, as a platform for division and violence. And the first thing that Farage did was come out and of course, he does use it.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo it's dreadfully and people will buy it, you know, people lap it up and it appeals to sort of the baseness of human beings, you know, whether it's football teams or racism or whatever, it's my my gang versus your gang, you're different and we're going to have a fight over it. And it's just it's just unbelievably stupid. But we're very good at that as humans.\r\n\r\nWe're really clever at that. Yes, but I've got the most battered water bottle in the world and it's the Apple one.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYour Rose Gallery.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, God, here we go. At least I know who one of them will be. Well, you'll have a picture of me on there and I won't recognize myself.\r\n\r\nThis is going to be there'll be a trick one.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, I would get to get it. I mean, it's just for me to sort of say, you know, if you don't know who they are, then I can just say things about them. So it's the way it's just.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd then you get them on as guests.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nNow, hold on. Hold on. It just I don't know why.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nTechnology, mate. We don't work in it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nIt's sort of instantaneous. There we go. OK, there we go.\r\n\r\nThere we are. Oh, wow. So.\r\n\r\nCan you see who's on there? I have a. OK.\r\n\r\nOh, there we go, look. So top left, do you know who this person is?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThree of them I recognize and I can't think who the hell they are already.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOK, she's great.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo well, that's that's missed. Is that Mr. Swallow?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, he's always in the same place doing something different. But he's always in that same slot. This is the 18th time or the 19th.\r\n\r\nNow, the swallow, what is there is that when I was up in a tetralogical week, I was staying at a hotel and the hotel had this device, which was they basically rented out, rented out umbrellas so you can swipe your card. You could take an umbrella because the weather's always inclement. Now, Dave was just intrigued by this.\r\n\r\nHe wanted to know where he could buy into the company. I mean, be nice to have that sort of money just to be able to invest in things. But yeah, so that's what that is.\r\n\r\nNext up now.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, well, that's easy, isn't it? It's this is is that Mr. Lauke?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat is Mr. Lauke. It is back to front. It's me.\r\n\r\nIt's I've taken a screen. I've taken a selfie of me in the mirror.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI was going to say is he's looking a bit, you know, there's a bit too much going on on top by that. So I thought that's not that's not Mr. Pat Lauke at top is Mr. Lauke in the middle. Yes, he's like me.\r\n\r\nHe feels every raindrop, you know, every snowflake that lands. We feel it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd so you don't make. Well, it's back to front, but you can't see it. So but it says you don't make friends with WCAG.\r\n\r\nIt's a play on you don't make friends with salad from the Simpsons.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo, yeah, that's you're still doing the T-shirts. Oh, I'm still doing the T-shirts.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHave you ever done one that has offended as many people as mine? And I still I should have worn that. I should have worn that for this.\r\n\r\nYou invite me back. I'll get I'll dig the T-shirt out.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI, yeah, I don't know whether it's it's. Yeah, you. Who else bought it?\r\n\r\nPhil Sherry. You are. There's a number of people.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, and oh, God. His name's just gone right out of my head. He's the guy that he's he's he's.\r\n\r\nIt is Phil looks like a wizard lives up in the Northeast.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYes, yes.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd he's he's a second name's just got around my head. He's a brilliant guy. He's he's he did some work for us.\r\n\r\nOh, he's brilliant. He he built the HMRC as he was like architected their QA framework. And oh, yeah, he's he's phenomenal.\r\n\r\nIt's Phil's surname. It's gone right out of my head. Oh, this is it.\r\n\r\nI'm rubbish. I'll remember it in about three hours time. I'll just shout out a name randomly.\r\n\r\nOh, I forgot.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAll right.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWhat are you going on about now?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo, yeah, so there's Pat and that's one of the T-shirts that you can buy. I think I'm the only person who bought that one, which is quite the case for many of the T-shirts. So but but the popular.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. Unfortunately, that one I pulled was one of the more popular. But anyway, so, yeah, that's Pat.\r\n\r\nPat's always close to my heart. He went on. He's not around.\r\n\r\nAnd he Pat and Pat. Dave and I meet up every couple of months to chew the fat, chew the accessibility fat.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. Who's next? Well, that's Jonathan in it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo Jonathan, I'd now if we go back quite a long way. So Mr. Hassel and I go, when did we first meet? I think we met briefly a couple of times.\r\n\r\nHe was at the BBC. So he was like a editor working. There was a standards and guidelines team.\r\n\r\nSo the BBC had all of its own standards and guidelines. You know, we had our own accessibility. We kind of parted company with WCAG in about 2006 because it just didn't do what we needed it to do.\r\n\r\nAnd and and it wasn't doing it fast enough. And I had an enormous amount of pressure coming from the executive of, no, we're not going to wait for standards to turn up, fix the problem. And then so what we did, the reason why we had our own standards and guidelines was they were the beginning.\r\n\r\nThey always said this is for supplying or working for the BBC. This. But because money has gone into it and there was a policy of openness, we had to publish them publicly so people could see where the money had gone.\r\n\r\nAnd that's a lot of stuff that that they do is. Yeah, we we just build it and give it away. And here's how we do it.\r\n\r\nAnd so all of the things that were in the standards and guidelines weren't things that we tried to do. They were all things that we we were doing. And so they were retrospective.\r\n\r\nSo they were they were a reflection of practice, not a thing that we use. So no one read them because there was no point because we were always already doing it. And so it was a backwards facing thing.\r\n\r\nIt was it was more of a way of showing people this is our baseline. And they weren't about things to try and achieve. There was no AAA, AAA or anything like that.\r\n\r\nThis was just this is the minimum. So Jonathan, they had done was working as one of the standards and guidelines team. And I think it was just roughly about the time he was he was the BBC before me within that team, but roughly about the time that I joined, he went off and joined a project that was being run called BBC Jam.\r\n\r\nWhich is a brilliant idea, which is coming out of education. It was a huge millions and millions of pounds going behind it. And the idea was for the BBC to work with all of the educational software or lots of the educational software companies in Britain and build all of the stuff, all of the educational materials for whiteboards, for interactive whiteboards and in school and everything to make sure that commercial stuff doesn't end in that, you know, with loads of McDonald's branding or whatever.\r\n\r\nYou know, they didn't want that to get into schools. And Jonathan joined. And this was a massive flash platform, you know, basically because it was all interactive and games and stuff.\r\n\r\nAnd so he joined that project to try and build an accessibility capability within that. And they started doing lots of research. It was incredibly well funded.\r\n\r\nIt ran for a while because it took a long time to establish it and put it together, and it was a long place. And then it hit massive legal problems. And there was there was stuff that hadn't been done.\r\n\r\nDue diligence hadn't been done process wise by someone very high up. And the entire thing came tumbling down.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, that's a shame.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt was a huge shame. I mean, millions of pounds were wasted, but it was all very public. And it was it was incredibly embarrassing for the organisation.\r\n\r\nAnd suddenly loads of people out of work, loads of quite a few agencies, I think, hit the wall because of it, because they'd staffed up to deal with the work that had been promised with them. It was an absolute shit show. So Jonathan was caught up in all the rest of this.\r\n\r\nNow, at the time, there was a new guy who joined us, the head of UX from Razorfish called Richard D. Titus. Most people, nobody knew what the D stood for.\r\n\r\nHe was like six foot four Californian, you know, dude. And it always an incredibly expensive suits and very good shoes. So I remember is he was brilliant.\r\n\r\nAll of his shoes were spot on. It was.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, it's funny you say there's the guy from I think his name's Jake Abner\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, I know, Jake.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. I used to see him at CSUN and I'd take a picture of his shoes a number of times because he's with his permission.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSilver crocodile skin.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, he's wearing it as he.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, I went whale watching with him when we were there and he was wearing he was wearing reflective mirror crocodile shoes and a dayglow tangerine suit. I mean, if there were any whales out to sea, they could spot us a mile off.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd they're like, OK, it was like we're talking about Jake now.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nJake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's yeah, he's got a flair for the eccentric is.\r\n\r\nAnyway, so Richard joined Richard Titus and he basically created UX at the BBC. So there was lots of UX is split in teams. But he just said, no, we're going to create a team.\r\n\r\nI want everyone who's a designer has anything to do with design. You are all work for me. And and he just suddenly created, you know, an information architects, design, research, accessibility.\r\n\r\nThat's all stuff to do with people. You're all now working for me. And so I was running, you know, heading up the accessibility team at the time.\r\n\r\nThis is before Hennie and Ian. And so there was Lucy now. Pulicino was Dodd at the time.\r\n\r\nAndrew Strachan, who was an amazing engineer on broadcast access services side. Kevin Carey, who left the team to become chairman of the RNIB, which was a bit of a step up. There were some others as well.\r\n\r\nBut anyway, memories all over the place. I'm trying to remember who was there at the time. But anyway, so but what happened was there was another project called Project Canvas, which was starting.\r\n\r\nSo the BBC had got together with all the other broadcasters and British Telecom and all sorts. And he was going, we're going to build a new TV platform, which is going to be amazing. It's going to be connected.\r\n\r\nThis is about 2008, something like that. And it's going to be absolutely incredible. It's not a PC.\r\n\r\nIt's not a set up box. It's something in between. We don't know what it is yet, but it's it's got, you know, it's going to be the future of television.\r\n\r\nAnd they approached me and said, could you write the accessibility requirements for it? And I was like, OK, what is it? And we don't know.\r\n\r\nWe haven't built it yet. So it's like, all right, OK. Yeah.\r\n\r\nSo I was given the choice to go and work for this project, which became a platform called UView. So UView is now huge. It's in like five or six or seven million homes in the UK and all the rest of it.\r\n\r\nAnd it replaced BT's and it became consortium. The BBC basically built that. It was all paid for by by all of the other members of the consortium, so no public money went into it.\r\n\r\nBut there was over 100 BBC engineers and staff who went in there and built it. So I joined. I was offered I could either go and do that or I could work with Richard in that.\r\n\r\nAnd I said, well, actually, to work from the beginning. So I'd done iPlayer. So world's first long form VOD service thing.\r\n\r\nWe got that out the door with, you know, we'd made sure it was completely screen reader accessible apart from Jaws 8, because nothing could be made Jaws 8 accessible. It was an absolute terrible program. Yes, it was appalling.\r\n\r\nBut we did our best with Jaws 8 and then Jaws 9 came along and saved the day. So we got all of the subtitling out, audio description signed, because I was told when it went to launch, it had to be at least as accessible as television. So all of that was done.\r\n\r\nYou know, Kevin and myself, we'd worked on with all the design teams. We'd built the whole thing. So it was it it it worked.\r\n\r\nWe'd done a version two of it. I think there was a second release as well, which had moved into streaming. So it used to it was peer to peer then went to streaming.\r\n\r\nAnd then I got the chance to do a TV platform and I couldn't turn it up. And I'd already written a lot of the and worked on the help scheme boxes. Bless you for digital switch for digital switch over.\r\n\r\nSo I'd worked within that team on the digital switch over box. But this was an opportunity to do something much bigger. So I said, I want to go and do that.\r\n\r\nSo I went on attachment to on this project canvas, which became you view. And and they were, well, what what happens here? And I went, well, I've heard there's a guy being made redundant in in jam who sounds amazing.\r\n\r\nYou know, I don't know. I didn't really know Jonathan particularly well. And I was like, go and talk to him because, you know, he could run this.\r\n\r\nAnd so Jonathan then moved over. They merged accessibility and usability at the time for some reason into one team. I can't remember why, but that was eventually split out again.\r\n\r\nSo Jonathan was there for about 18 months, something like that. Maybe a bit longer. Bless you.\r\n\r\nCrikey.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, I know. I've got hay fever.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. Same here. Horrible, isn't it?\r\n\r\nI ate trees.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI never used to get it. It just started the last couple of years.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nBut but Jonathan joined in. And so, yeah, he stepped. We did.\r\n\r\nWe did do some work. We had this bizarre little project called the ATK, which I'll tell you all about over a over a glass of whiskey one day, which was which was. Yeah, because the weird thing is the BBC built the first overlays.\r\n\r\nRight. We have three. I didn't build the first one, but I was product owner of it.\r\n\r\nAnd I'm trying to remember the name of the guy that built it. It'll come back to me in a minute.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWhat happened to them, though?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWe didn't need them anymore. They were very, very good. The first one was called Betsy.\r\n\r\nIt was built in the 90s.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat sounds familiar.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, it was a genius thing because all of the all the layouts in early code were all tables based layouts. So no CSS anywhere on the site, anything like that. So so this one guy who was learning Perl script came out with this genius idea of building a server side engine that took all it took a page and stripped out the tables and then gave it a completely new structure and ranged it left and gave it CFAX colors, which you could change and nice big fonts and high contrast.\r\n\r\nAnd and so if you're using a magnifier because everything was anchored left, it was really easy to find. Everything had headings put into it. So it worked with early screen readers and all the rest of it.\r\n\r\nAnd so, you know, you just had a button on each of the page and it just passed the page, stripped it out. And and you could you could customize it. It was a great idea and it fixed the problem.\r\n\r\nWe eventually I had to eventually get rid of Betsy because she she she wasn't coping with complexity any longer. She'd got very old and very wonky and was doing weird things. We kept it going for a long time, not because necessarily because screen reader users were using it or magnifier using that.\r\n\r\nThe things had moved on and we'd also fixed a lot of the sites and stuff. So it was all working anyway with those machines. We just found out that we were having a huge amount of foreign traffic coming through it into newspages because there was a lot of that.\r\n\r\nAnd there still are a lot of countries that block the BBC's news output. And and people were finding these long string Perl script generated URLs were not being picked up by governments. And they were sharing news stories through government firewalls, through accessibility.\r\n\r\nAnd so we left it going. And then eventually what happened is that the World Service was put onto the dark web. And and so we killed off Betsy so you can find the whole of the World Service and dark web and telegram format and all sorts of stuff.\r\n\r\nIt all exists to go around government firewalls. And so we no need no no longer needed to do that. So, yeah, but we have this other one.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHassle had nothing to do with any of these.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, no, the third one was a prototype I started, which we thought about customization. And we were looking at cognitive accessibility. Yeah.\r\n\r\nAnd we were looking we looked at server side voicing. I think Sarah Proc, we had a long chat with them at one point, but it was just too expensive to it for a small website. A speaking page for someone who doesn't need a screen reader, just wants the article read to them, it's quite good.\r\n\r\nAnd Sarah Proc's voices were amazing. And but it was the scale was too big. The cost would have been enormous.\r\n\r\nAnd voicing at that point, you know, the licenses were extremely expensive. I mean, they're just all built in. It's cheap as chips now.\r\n\r\nBut in those days, it was phenomenal, phenomenally expensive. And so we couldn't do it. But we built in all sorts of other bits and pieces.\r\n\r\nAnd we were looking at people with Irlen syndrome and all sorts of stuff. And it was those edges that no one ever talks about.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, yeah, I mean, you know, the BBC National Broadcaster, you really got to think about.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nEveryone.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. And we didn't really. And this was like almost a research bit.\r\n\r\nSo Jonathan, I still work together on that. He did. iPlayer version three.\r\n\r\nI think it was that he ended up working on. And then I ended up working back on I play a four with Henny. But yeah, I mean, he was there for a while and then he left and set up his agency, Hassle Inclusion, Hassle Inclusion.\r\n\r\nYeah. So he's been going, you know, doing great guns as far as, you know, I'm aware.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI always like that how there's some people that do it. Dennis Lembree does it as well as done it. But Jonathan has to does it where he will.\r\n\r\nHe will talk about himself in the third person on it, you know, in a social media post. You know, it will be from him, but he'll say, Jonathan Hassel. Oh, you know, and it always just cracks me up.\r\n\r\nIt's like because Dennis Lembree has his WebAxe. He had easy chirp and easy to work. No, it wasn't easy.\r\n\r\nYeah. He said, no, but he had a he had an early he built a Twitter client that accessible to the client that was popular back in the early days. But it was it was called Easy Chirp.\r\n\r\nEasy Chirp, not easy to work. But anyway, so he's got a way he's got three different handles. And when he talks about what he talks about, like you say, you know, I always just find it weird.\r\n\r\nThat's all.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, I guess it's the only time you kind of do it is when you're writing your own biography because you've got to write someone else. And I hate doing it. It just I, I, I, I'm always sitting there.\r\n\r\nThere's this massive cringe for me doing it. I find it really I, I, I'm actually quite a shy person. I just my ADHD won't shut up.\r\n\r\nAnd, you know, how long my dyslexia doesn't like to be spoken about, but my ADHD won't shut up about it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYou know, how long have you been diagnosed to have diagnosis of ADHD?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, my God. Well, well, there's a weird thing. So I had a very I would call it a very privileged upbringing.\r\n\r\nSo my dad is since gone, he's no longer with us. But my dad was a drama therapist, one of the first in the UK back in the 1970s. But he was a headmaster of special schools.\r\n\r\nAnd I think he started off as a headmaster of a special school for the American forces down in Huntingdon or wherever. And then he got this job offer in Manchester to become the head of a school in the early 1970s called Ewing, Ewing School, which is gone now. And Ewing was a residential school and it had loads of kids in it.\r\n\r\nAll of them were aphasic and all of them had communication difficulties. All of them came from different authorities because the authorities couldn't cope with the needs of these kids. And, you know, and we were still, you know, now you would probably say a lot of them were autistic and various of the syndrome.\r\n\r\nThere was all the syndromes. I mean, it was a plethora of syndromes. And, you know, everything from there was one called Floating Harbour Syndrome.\r\n\r\nI don't know why that's stuck in there. It might be called something differently now. I need to look it up.\r\n\r\nBut it always sounded very the most poetic sounding syndrome I've ever heard.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBut there was there was what was the what were the characteristics of Floating Harbour Syndrome?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI can't remember. All I remember is its name. I remember my dad saying I was probably just a kid and I just always struck me and it just stuck in my head.\r\n\r\nKids with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and all sorts. But these kids lived there and we lived there, too. So from age two, I lived at Ewing School and and we had our tea over at the school and I went on school holidays with the kids and after school, we all school.\r\n\r\nNo, well, sometimes I was sat in lessons with them. We just got I remember I remember my mum taught there for a bit and she was teaching embroidery to the kids. My mum was embroiderer and there's me on a sewing machine doing machine embroidery with the kids in the school and we used to do the school discos and we went and played in the in the playground after school, you know, we all went out, played volleyball with Arthur Thomas and all the other characters that were there.\r\n\r\nAnd they were my mates. You know, we became friends. And it was I think it was a hugely privileged upbringing is being there because it kind of set me up to just deal with anything.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYou know, it's just people.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, yeah, I mean, so I never got diagnosed.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI mean, I was like the mildest case. So I think it was like, you know, nowadays when I when, you know, I don't call my conditions disabilities. They're just I think of them as characteristics.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. I know this thing about autism that it's not considered disability, it's just it's neurotypical. But then but ADHD can or why?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, everything anything can be disabling. You know, this is the situations when it's a massive pain in the ass. And I struggle with reading.\r\n\r\nI struggle to read everything three times because I'm not quite sure. First time, it's probably that's not what it says. Second time, it's probably close.\r\n\r\nThird time, I'm now filling in the gaps and it starts to make sense because my brain just does not process language very well. And you know how, you know, because dyslexic dyslexia is here. I was like pointing out my dyslexia is here and my ADHD is about here and here.\r\n\r\nSo it's the sort of visual word form area in that bit, because dyslexics, what happens is you read a word or you see a word, a collection of glyphs, you attach a sound to that word. Then you attach a meaning to the sound. Something goes wrong in the middle.\r\n\r\nAnd and the recognition of the glyphs to the audio, to the comprehension goes wonky because it's a developmental disorder of that part, this part is on my left, this part of the brain. And which is why sometimes you find not everyone, but you find a lot of dyslexics malaprop quite a lot, you know, or get slightly wrong words when they're talking.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nRight.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThey'll say a reflectory table instead of refectory. And I've heard that one or my favourite one. And was someone who kept saying knowledge suppository instead of repository.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nMy mum, I don't know whether my mum was dyslexic, but she used to. Yeah, she used to say incorrect.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, I just always knowledge suppository is always stuck with me and this person kept saying it. And I remember someone else in a meeting once saying, and all the good it will do, you may as well stick it up your ass. It's which I thought was lovely.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBut she used to say laying prostitute on the ground.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, this is that's exactly I love things like that. It's it's I'm just going to lie. I'm just going to lie prostitutes on the ground.\r\n\r\nYeah, you know, that is a mental image.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWe just went through this.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nLet's go for this. So Jonathan was there. He was very much part of that story.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd I did that picture of him. I don't know about your view of it, but it looks like he's going to jump out and bite me. So I it's Jonathan Hassell.\r\n\r\nDo you know who the next person is?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI know that face and I can't.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHer name is Amy Hoop and she was a recent guest on the fireside.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nRight. I think I watched it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nShe does design and she talks about about burnout and she's sort of accessibility adjacent, I'd say. But she's a friend of Hayden's. She she's well known from from speaking at various events, including State of the Browser, which I spoke at as well.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI've got a funny feeling we've met. You know, this is the problem is over all of these years. You meet so many people at these events or you see them speak or whatever.\r\n\r\nAnd it's like so familiar. Or I've read a blog or I've watched her do a presentation.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nDo I know you? Yeah, it just sort of all bleeds in, doesn't it?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, it's the same with the next guy. And I can't I can't think who the next guy is. And I'm like, oh, that's such a familiar shot.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThe yeah, this this is from many years ago. This is Alastair Campbell. Oh, God.\r\n\r\nYes, of course it is. Yes. Currently the.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, they were a supplier of mine. They were they were. Yeah, they were one of the agencies on the roster.\r\n\r\nBecause I set up design research at the BBC as well. So when Jonathan left, when I came back, I set up design research. And as a as a as an actual team on its own and and we we kind of, yeah, and set up the accessibility team.\r\n\r\nAnd there was this freelancer who was knocking around doing some work in on iPlayer and who I'd heard about and called Henny Swan may have heard of it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAh, yeah, yeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd Jason, I can't remember his name, who's creative director, came to see me from from iPlayer, which is brilliant. Contracts running out. Please, can we keep it?\r\n\r\nAnd I was like, well, it's a bit difficult, but we managed to wrangle it. And we got Henny in on a staff contract. And and as we built.\r\n\r\nSo it started out just me and her rebooting the team and building it up around that. And so Henny ended up working on iPlayer four. Was big stuff.\r\n\r\nSo she did three really big ticket things and we were there in my memory anyway. The things I remember most for was iPlayer four, which was phenomenal, which was the which was a huge leap forward in in everything. And just in the pure usability of it, it was it was such a brilliant it's not just Henny, the entire team, but she was very much involved in that.\r\n\r\nJason Fields, that's the name of the creative director. Great guy. And she also did.\r\n\r\nShe approached me with the idea of the mobile accessibility guidelines because we were kind of having a bit of a flip out at the time because the 2012 Olympics was turning up. The exec had decided that they wanted all of the all of the mobile applications to be accessible by the time the Olympics turned up. And no one had ever figured out how to do that.\r\n\r\nThere was nothing going on in WCAG. There was nothing going. We had no clues.\r\n\r\nAnd so, yeah, senior management. And this is where I'll bring in Al in a bit as well, because Al was absolutely central to all of that as well. And then she started working on a set of sort of principles, methodologies and approaches around inclusive design within iPlayer, which is then when she left, she asked me about it and said, can I take that work?\r\n\r\nWell, of course, it's yours. You know, yeah, you know, it's it's there. And then she then got involved with more people at TPG and they built out the inclusive design principles off the back of it, but that started out as her idea when she was working.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo that's where the inclusive. Yeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo Leonie and I think Hayden and others got involved. And stuff and they built out around it was a brilliant piece of work.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThen then it was withering on the vine at TPG and then they. Yeah, they moved it again and it's now in permanent sort of maintenance.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWhich is good.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI mean, it's yeah. So so Alistair Campbell. Yeah, he's he's he was at Nomensa and Nomensa were one of the first agencies we had working as design research agencies.\r\n\r\nThat's where we met for the first time. Yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThey've been bought by a big company now called Gain and so they're no longer Nomensa.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. Who hasn't?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nIt's me. We have.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nPlease. I'm for sale. Quite cheap.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, you see if the next guy is as Chris, I'm going to have a chat with him, I think, in about a week or so is time Mr. I never met Chris Pat.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNo, he's lovely.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI just it's he just looks. Well, out of it, they are really like that.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHe is he's got an amazing energy to him and and he'll give you a hug that's that's rib cracking. And he's one of the loveliest people.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHe's based in London, though, isn't he?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHe is. Yeah, he's he's up in Camden. And and Chris and I and we just it's the opposite as we met.\r\n\r\nAnd he's he's just got an extraordinary positive energy about him. You know, some people, you just hang out with him because you just go, I'm going to feel better about everything. But for now, with you, I'll feel better about the world.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, invite me to one of your your soirees. Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to go.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, if we get together, Chris is great. He comes up to Manchester every now and again, hangs out with me and Charlie.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWho's he work for? Does he work for Google? Google.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThat's right. So he's like he was heading up accessibility for Europe and the Middle East and North and Africa.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nRight. You know, he's he's people go to the Google office and they go they have some sort of they have an experience that they disability.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThat sounds terrible. That sounds. Yeah.\r\n\r\nIt's we come out, you know, scarred. It's they've got an amazing research lab there. Yeah, absolutely.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI haven't ever seen it.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI'm just you need to get yourself an invite in there. Get in.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. Well, I mean, I just I don't go to London very often.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nEven though even though I don't. Twenty five minutes on the train. It's not far.\r\n\r\nI mean, I live out in the back of Burke, you know, I live in the out of suburbs or the median, the. Middle suburbs of London anyway. So, yeah, so that's Chris.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, he's he's he's got an amazing background as well. And we were talking a lot about, you know, how a while back, how everyone should work as a waiter at some point in their life, because it it gives you such good training of dealing with some of the trickier characters that you deal with in corporate life, because people generally are usually nice. I mean, I've worked in, you know, as a barman and a salomon and all sorts of stuff in my past many, many years ago.\r\n\r\nAnd I've dealt with horrendously. And once you smile your way through it, deal with them, win them over and all that. It's a fantastic training ground for the trickiness.\r\n\r\nAnd he was an opera singer. Yeah, but he was he was an opera. And he was he was doing big shows.\r\n\r\nBut he was chorus line and back. He was like he was like he wasn't so he wasn't in the lead roles. And this is like acting.\r\n\r\nYou know, if you're in the back, you're never being paid anything. Only the leads get the money. And and and, you know, he's got a phenomenal singing voice on him.\r\n\r\nBut yeah, he then I get him on as a guest. I'll let him tell his story.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHe's got a brilliant story.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, he's really, really nice guy. So Charlie Turrell, who I I work with and we do stuff like that. So, yeah, it's the three of us get together and drink or two every now and again.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nVery nice. So next up, we mentioned before, Mr. Duggan.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. Now I can tell you a thing or two about how I'm going to tell you a thing or two about it, I mean, so when when I first started the whole accessibility thing, so they gave me free reign on a project that they didn't even know if it was going to get the permit. There was no permission to even building it.\r\n\r\nWe're building as prototype and that eventually became BBC iPlayer. So there was a guy called Ben Lavender, the two people invented it. Lots of people like to claim they invented iPlayer, but it's actually only two.\r\n\r\nThere's a guy called Ben Lavender and a guy called Tony Aggie. And Ben came up with this observation that loads of BBC content is being shared on BitTorrent. So why don't we Torrent our own?\r\n\r\nWhy don't we have our own Torrent platform? Why don't we why don't we just share and do a better user experience than that crap and then all the rest of it? And and Tony was the.\r\n\r\nIt was a really good friend of Ben's, but he was also controller of BBC.co.uk, became my boss and then he set up digital or ran digital at New York Public Library for a while. I don't know what Tony's up to these days, but brilliant. Absolutely real visionary.\r\n\r\nTons of pretty much everything the BBC is doing these days is probably based on something that Tony Aggie started back in the day. You know, he was just a thousand flowers bloom guy and and real faith in people as well. He listened to everyone and everyone credit.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nUnlike Al.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, no, Al. Right. So I was doing this and then I suddenly realized I couldn't scale.\r\n\r\nI couldn't. I've got a little team. There's four of us.\r\n\r\nWe're about the right size for iPlayer, but we can't scale. So I had this idea of reaching out, finding everyone out there in the organization. Everyone's pretty much in West 12 or West one in London at those days.\r\n\r\nI was pretty much commuting in from Manchester, living in London for two or three days a week and then working from Manchester the other two, three days a week. And so I was I was sort of living in your accommodation and most of it. I was we had to be fairly creative.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, no, I wasn't.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI've slept on I've slept on many, many a sofa. I slept on many a sofa and I was a student. I've lived in I've lived in squats in my past.\r\n\r\nI don't mind. I've got no airs and graces.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBut I said, like, yeah, now I'm older. I like I like to have.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, I won't go camping anymore. I can't do any of that crap. Yeah, yeah.\r\n\r\nBut yeah, so I I was sort of split between the two worlds because they were going, well, we can't if we relocate you and your family down here, we're all going to have to relocate you back up there again. And because, you know, we're all coming up to Manchester. And so what the hell is the point?\r\n\r\nSo I was one of there was a few people that were kind of we were we were winging it. And also I used to stay a lot. The BBC World Service used to have.\r\n\r\nWhere was it out now, which part of London? It's not far from Regent's Park from what I remember. But the BBC World Service had a training part to a training company, and they had these old Georgian houses that were about five or six stories high.\r\n\r\nThere was a whole row of them that were owned by World Service, which were in an incredibly decrepit state, and they were full of journalists from around the world who were coming to the BBC to be trained in journalism. And people are camping stoves in their rooms and all the rest of it. You know, it was full of the smells of the food of the world and had the worst breakfast in the canteen.\r\n\r\nIt was sliced white bread and and and margarine and packets of marmalade or marmalade and some stewed tea. That was that was what you got there. But it was really cheap.\r\n\r\nIt was like 15 quid a night or something to sleep there. So I lived in there quite a lot. And I met some amazing people because you went down to breakfast and you're surrounded by all of these people from different places.\r\n\r\nI like chatting to people and I met some extraordinary individuals. And, yeah, we're coming to the World Service would train people up and they would go back to their public service broadcasters wherever they are in the world and learn from the BBC. So so I used to live there quite a lot.\r\n\r\nAnd yeah, so I put I had this idea of reaching out and I got permission to and to email the entire division. And I said, look, what I'm going to do, we have a cup. There's a couple of boardrooms.\r\n\r\nThere was one main boardroom. What I'll do is I'll use part of my budget and get a lot of sandwiches and tea and I'll book the boardroom one lunchtime. And I sent out this email, said, look, I'm going to be in the boardroom in next Thursday.\r\n\r\nIf you're interested in accessibility, it doesn't mean you don't need to know anything about it. But if disability access and inclusion and stuff interests you. Come along and see me.\r\n\r\nI want to meet you, you know, and or if you want a free lunch because it's been paid for and I don't want it to go to waste. If you just want to turn up some free sandwiches there, there or a brew, or if you just feel sorry for me that I've got no friends and it's a bribe of people. This is what it said in the email.\r\n\r\nSomething along the lines of I have to bribe people to have lunch with me and then do that. And and that's when I met Al for the first time. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I met him.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHe came along with the sandwiches and the I don't know.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt was hammered. We couldn't get everyone in the room. There was so many people turned up.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat's good.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd I signed him up. That's where I met Ian Hamilton for the first time.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYou know? Yes.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThere was all sorts of games, games. Yeah, yeah. So Mike, Mike was talking to him a lot over a period of time.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo Ian and I get, you know, Games Accessibility Guidelines dot com. So Ian runs that by one of the original co-authors to that. So that was a job.\r\n\r\nBut so and he was doing the CBeebies games. So a long story short. So one of my grumbles at the BBC was my son, Zach, at the time was about five.\r\n\r\nAnd he was playing CBeebies games. He has cerebral palsy. But he was then moving up to CBeebies, which happens about six years old for kids, and he couldn't play any of the games.\r\n\r\nAnd I was just like, this is ridiculous. You know, why? Why are you making accessible games?\r\n\r\nSwitch accessible games for six year olds, but sold anyone over that age, you know, built from a brand manager point of view, that's building up a relationship and dropping them. Yeah, where's the continuity? This was my brand manager rant early on.\r\n\r\nAnd then I realized it was happening in more and more and more places. And there was no joined up thinking around disabled audiences. And then I took it to my boss, who was a guy called Tim Davey, who was the director of marketing.\r\n\r\nAnd he just went, this is ridiculous. This is an audience issue. And all of the accessibility, you know, that that start of it came from marketing where we said this is about people who paid their license fee and we're shortchanging them.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, yeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd and in the in the Royal Charter, it says the BBC for everyone and it doesn't caveat it doesn't say except them. So where the hell is the bias coming in? Where's this going wrong?\r\n\r\nHow do we fix this? So it was all and Tim Davey was the board level sponsor. Mark Thompson, when he got to him, he went, why the hell isn't this already happening?\r\n\r\nAnd Tony Aggie was a controller at bbc.co.uk who was dying to do something like this, but didn't have no one had a plan. So he asked me to create a plan. And they all knew that the problem existed.\r\n\r\nJust this loud mouth brand manager ended up.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBasically, Paul, there's someone to sell it, sell it internally and sell the concepts.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo two things that were amazing. So I ended up setting up working groups to build standards and guidelines around because I'm always the way I don't like and I don't like committee driven anything. I'm.\r\n\r\nWay too much of a Marxist for that. It's you know, I'm not a dictator, I'm not either. I don't go down that route, but I want things.\r\n\r\nI just prefer things to just be done, done quickly and done right and get the right people in the room and discussed and not to block things around it. I don't accept that. So I set up my own way of working within a bunch of working groups.\r\n\r\nI got permission to do this. I took over sort of a lot of the standards and guidelines work. One of them is the HTML standards group.\r\n\r\nAl was part of that. Al was was a curiosity because I think Al built the first page on the BBC infrastructure with CSS. Wow.\r\n\r\nI found out about it and I was like, what's going on? I think it was in education at the time and I was like that this is the stuff, why aren't we all doing it? And it was going risk, risk, risk.\r\n\r\nAnd we're like, what risk? What risk? Show me the risk.\r\n\r\nIt's different. We don't want change. And, you know, so Al got involved in that working group.\r\n\r\nThere are loads of other amazing people in that working group. But we had the simple way that I structured things is that we worked out what as many of the problem areas are and potentially what some of the questions are. And then we get the people that everyone agrees are the experts in those areas.\r\n\r\nSo, you know, I wanted to know who did when the devs talk about JavaScript, whose name do they mention?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYou know, it'd be Fraser Pierce or Michael Matthews or, you know, whoever. But I want to know the names and I'm going to go meet those people and then I'm going to persuade them to join the group because I need a subject. I need the subject experts in the room.\r\n\r\nThen I need to then give them the question to work on. Then we bring it back to the group, discuss it, tidy it up, make sure that there are no holes in it. Ted Page was another one that was in there.\r\n\r\nHe was amazing. He ended up going into document accessibility. But there was loads of these people and they were phenomenal.\r\n\r\nAnd then what my rule was is that there was all the different departments and teams could have someone in the room and they all had a vote. But if you don't turn up, you voted yes. You can't abstain.\r\n\r\nSo send someone else or you voted yes to what's going on. So turn up or I'll take it as approval. And you only get to vote no if you've got an objective reason why not.\r\n\r\nAnd and we ploughed through the work, the work incredibly fast rate. And then what we did is then it went out into the open into products. We then tested the living daylights out of it, learned, folded back that work, that data back into the working groups and improved it.\r\n\r\nSo then everything became data driven. And then once we figured it out and it was live in three or four places and it was working and we had real live user data to prove that it was working, it then became a guideline.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nReal one anecdotal observation, I mean, I have a Samsung TV or whatever it runs, Google, what whatever the Android operating system. But it has a iPlayer on there. It's got a lot like, you know, it's a Netflix app.\r\n\r\nI really it's it's really started to annoy me how they everything is a separate app. And you've got to sort of log out one to get into another.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, you know, that's the only place that TV manufacturers make any money anymore because all hardware sold at a loss. So, yeah, there's no money in hardware. And so and also the BBC has like a kit of parts.\r\n\r\nIt's like Netflix has a kit of parts and they give them to Samsung and Samsung has to build the app into their infrastructure. And then then you have the BBC, you had an accreditation team. So all of the which is based in Salford and there's like a wall of TVs on one of these floors with a load of engineers testing the living daylights out.\r\n\r\nAnd they're all pre-production models and they're all testing the implementations of iPlayer on the hardware and then giving feedback because they're going it's not going live until you fix X, Y and Z because there's contracts in it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI mean, the one thing that I know between iPlayer and the other commercial apps is that when you try to get out of iPlayer, it comes up with the dialogue. It says, do you want to stay or do you want to go? But the focus is on you want to go.\r\n\r\nIn all the other apps, it's honest, you want to stay. So it's just it's subtle, but I really like the fact that that that the iPlayer, you know, realizes that whoever's program that realized that by the time you've got to this dialogue, the chance that you want to leave, you know.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. Yeah. We're not going to block you.\r\n\r\nWe're just going to ask politely. There used to be Easter eggs. I need to go and check these out because I haven't checked them for years.\r\n\r\nThey were there up till not long ago. There were Easter eggs in iPlayer that you could find. So even even on I'm going to check I should have done this on desktop before.\r\n\r\nSo the desktop version or the browser based version of it, if you just type eight, eight, eight, then the CFAX eight eight eight comes up and it switch the subtitles on. That was in there for years. And also the volume goes up to 11.\r\n\r\nYeah, I thought that was that was always a little bit of spinal tap in there, really. And that was there from launch. So the volume always went up to 11 on iPlayer.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBut. Yeah, it is it is not I mean, I just the design and and you know, usability of these. TV apps just really gets on my nerves because there's some horrendous ones.\r\n\r\nIt's absolutely awful. And there's been a lot of money on these things. You just make them so so it's easy for people to use.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, I think there's a there's a there's a there's a couple of reasons. I've always guessed around this. I think there's a there's a thing that we don't talk about enough in accessibility terms because it's a really hard thing to quantify.\r\n\r\nBut, you know, you know, the whole balance of effort and reward. So people, if the reward is greater, people will make a will make a greater effort to it and will accept more difficulty because the reward is greater. So so if you're doing a tax return, the reward is incredibly low.\r\n\r\nAll right, because you hate the damn thing. The minute you turn, there's no happy reward at the end of it. Apart from even when it goes in, it's like, crap, did I mess that up?\r\n\r\nI don't know. Until you get feedback, you've no idea. It's a horrible thing.\r\n\r\nSo you have to be really, really, really good on the accessibility stuff because people are unhappy. They're already turned up on that. No one turns up happy to do a tax return tax return.\r\n\r\nGod, I've been looking forward to this part of my life. It never happens. So but if you then want to get to the latest episode of Doctor Who or whatever, you're a fan of you, you're more likely to to put up with a crappier experience and be still really happy because because the joy comes in the reward at the end of it.\r\n\r\nAnd so you can't compare the two things. It's a really if we do, because we work in this industry, we see the things, we understand the things, but mostly people don't. They don't think about them is is the same.\r\n\r\nAnd and I think the BBC was put a huge amount of effort into the usability. I think as well a lot with the other ones is because they're trying to push. They don't want you to leave, as you've already pointed.\r\n\r\nAnd they want you to they want you to not find the thing that you want easily because they want you to see a lot of other stuff, the serendipity built into it. So don't make it so hard. You can't find it, but don't make it so easy.\r\n\r\nYou don't find anything else.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nIt's like going to the supermarket when they change, move it around, change up the product lines in each lane.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAbsolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so then it's in your head and you go, oh, I'll check out the thing that I saw that looked interesting.\r\n\r\nAnd so it becomes more marketing time and more captive the longer the journey, as long as they're not as long as they're happy enough when they get there.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, it doesn't stop me. And like every time I use Netflix, it annoys me that I can't just keep pushing one button to get out. I've got to go up into a menu to go out.\r\n\r\nBut I know just what they do because they want people stay in Netflix. But it doesn't stop me going back to Netflix. It's just an annoyance.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt's an annoyance. And yeah, the BBC makes no money from my place. It has no, you know, no there's no benefit in them doing it.\r\n\r\nWhere, you know, the rest of them are commercial organisations. And so, you know, there's there's a reason for them to not let you go.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo, you know, it's not just the roads going on.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAll right. So the other one I think about, Al, the other thing that I have to give him credit for is it was pretty much him and Henny drove the whole mobile accessibility guideline stuff because, you know, it was Henny's baby in a lot of ways. But Al had become principal developer for the sport.\r\n\r\nAnd so he was leading the work. And the senior product management in sport said, we want all the 2012 Olympics to be accessible. I'll still argue from a broadcast and digital perspective, not a single Olympics has topped it since, you know, we did 17 channels of subtitling on every every single event was was broadcast in every stage in Red Button and you could find it on streams and all sorts of stuff.\r\n\r\nAnd it was phenomenal. And Al was a massive driving force within that. And he's now BBC.\r\n\r\nHe's now me. He's the new one.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, yeah, he's better than you. But oh, yeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, my God. Yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI mean, for God's sake.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt's that's not.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI don't know. I mean, I think that that's particularly good for you, but you know, but I mean, set that bar low, mate. You know, so, yeah, so he's now back at BBC.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI've been meaning to catch up with him because he's he's off at Salford every now and again and I've reached out to him a couple of times.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd I've got to go and I'm afraid we find out left.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt is. Well, he left when he left the BBC. He ended up and pretty much founding and setting up Gov.uk accessibility.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nbecause that was Gov.uk was pretty much all ex BBC people who were setting it up. Right. So there was two very senior product guys who set it up.\r\n\r\nAnd Tom Lucemore, he was another one of the team that was on the controller Internet team. I was on for a while, but. Yeah, it was it was where it all came out of.\r\n\r\nAnd and the amount of people that have always sent me, you know, what about the BBC's guidelines on forms? Why aren't they as good as the Gov.uk? And I was like, on the entire estate of the BBC, I think there are five forms.\r\n\r\nThat's it. Right. Like we don't do forms that their entire estate is forms, you know.\r\n\r\nSo they're brilliant. If you want forms, go to Gov.uk. If you want streaming, come to us.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, that's one of the things that I recently had to fill in by an attendance allowance for my brother. And I had the form, which I printed out and I had it there. And it was just so hard work, so much hard work to actually fill out the printed the printed form, you know, the actual document.\r\n\r\nAnd then they they set up in between when I first looked and the second time I looked, they got an online service, took me about 20 minutes. It was so much easier.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nBut the accessibility teams in across Gov.uk are amazing, absolutely amazing. And I really hope that we don't end up with the government screwing it up, which that of course they will do. You know, someone will come along and knows better and trash it all and then wonder why it's all gone, you know, it happens.\r\n\r\nAnd they've been, you know, there's some amazing people. There's some really good accessibility people in in those teams, which is saying. So, you know, so I've got a big, big shout out to Al actually, you know, the work that he did around on sport was amazing.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nLove me some Al. I'd like to catch up with him again. He doesn't live far from where I live.\r\n\r\nWell, he was living in Epsom, which is just a bit further down the road from me. But yeah, I'll have to catch up with him as well. So last year on Leasley or maybe Leasley on here, I don't know, is who?\r\n\r\nDo you know this person?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt's you've wonderfully squashed the image as well. I love the fact that, you know. Yeah, his face, why do I know that?\r\n\r\nWho is it?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nIt's it's Jeremy Keith. From clear left, he's.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, God, yeah, yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, no, no. He says, you know, on the speaker circuit rights owns.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI don't think we've ever met. I, I, I do know he's back. I've seen him on stuff and I've probably seen.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWell, I've met him and I enjoy spending time with you more than I do with him. But sorry, Jeremy. Yeah, no, no, no, it's fine.\r\n\r\nI think there's just for some reason there's some people that for no good reason that I have in my head that I don't gel with, you know. But but the funny thing is, as I've said, I mean, I can feel this with you because I've always liked your brand of madness. I felt the affinity with it.\r\n\r\nBut but over the years, you know, I've worked with Karl Groves, you know, I've been friends with with various people or known them. But until I got them on here and talked to them, I I felt like I just feel a renewed sense of positivity about people are talking to them.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAll right. Yeah. I'll send you some suggestions.\r\n\r\nYou need to get you need to get David Tisserand on. And he's one of my he's one of my favourites. I love David to bits.\r\n\r\nHe's just so one of the nicest people, again, you'll ever meet in the world.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nBrilliant. Yeah, he from. When he's at Ubisoft, yes, he's Billy's boss.\r\n\r\nI was going to get Billy on.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, yeah. Billy's great. First time I met David, we met at in in in California.\r\n\r\nIt was Ian Hamilton found out that we were both in the same hotel. Well, we worked out we were both at the same the same. We were both in the same place and messaged us very early in the morning and contacted us, you two need to meet.\r\n\r\nAnd so I was ended up messaging back. I was really still massively drunk from the night before. And I turned up in breakfast, early breakfast to meet this lovely French-Canadian bloke.\r\n\r\nAnd we held onto the same table together because the pair of us were absolutely steaming because we'd both been out till the early hours in the morning. And we were both hanging onto the table and trying to have a meeting.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd failing in every way, means or point. And it was one of the I just clicked with him. I just thought he was absolutely brilliant.\r\n\r\nBut he hadn't set up the accessibility team yet. He was wanting to do this and he just wanted to know, how did you do it? What do I need to do?\r\n\r\nAnd and I gave him some tips. I gave him a few things and he tried them out. And they seemed to work in and he built up from there.\r\n\r\nAnd he's done amazing things, which are very brave and very unusual. But I let him tell you the story. But yeah, there's yeah, he's a great guy.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI mean, we. TetraLogical did some work with Ubisoft and I think we've got a testimonial from David Tisserand, isn't it David?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSee, that's what I mean. I guess he goes on.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHe goes out. I don't know if he still goes to raves. But, you know, in this is where he's in Montreal, in Canada.\r\n\r\nYeah, because he's a he's big, big into it. Well, was it's into into the raves. And he was telling me once about a rave in the woods that he was at and this bear showed up because this is Canada and the bears just wandering around and everyone's having a great time.\r\n\r\nThe rave doesn't stop. There's just a bear there. This confused like.\r\n\r\nAnd I was just like, that's just the best rave I wanted to be there.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nI know that we could talk for we continue to talk, but I've got to cut it off soon because I'm dying to go to the toilet, but well, it's true. I told you about.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThere we go. There we go. Just clench those cheeks for another couple of days.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat's what I'm trying to do. Before I go, I wanted to ask you, so after you left the BBC, what are you you've got to keep it short, though. What are you doing?\r\n\r\nWhat are you doing now? You know what?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nBloody hell, that's such a massively complicated question.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHow do you make it a crust?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWell, the crust bit is I'm working with various companies to organisations to help them set up accessibility functions or supporting the development of a function. And it's usually with organisations that have products that don't sit underneath standard things. So my first gig was with Miro was to help them set up and I helped them find Philip Strain.\r\n\r\nI said, the first thing is you need to know is you don't need a web accessibility agency because this is not web accessibility. You know, this is an open world game that people come to collaborate in. And so we need to learn from gaming.\r\n\r\nWe need to understand the product and ask better questions than is it compliant? And that's not going to answer anything here because this is not compliant. And I was like, you need a design researcher who understands inclusive design.\r\n\r\nAnd we found Philip Strain from Spotify. I think he was at the time and build an R&D team because you're a part of the map. It just says here be dragons.\r\n\r\nNobody knows. And so they've been going from strength to strength. And so I'm doing work with we do work with Hayden.\r\n\r\nSo Hayden and I have both been supporting Kath Noonen in her work at Bentley because they make CAD systems. You know, what the hell? How do you make a CAD system accessible?\r\n\r\nAnd I'm doing work with all sorts of different bits that fall outside.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat's a name from the past.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYou need to get Kath on this.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, I should. I mean, every time I see her, it's always it's always really nice to see her. But I think I saw her a couple of years ago after the state of the browser, some.\r\n\r\nBut yeah, no, no, she's great.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nSo that's my crust up. But then I'm doing I've got some other work going on at the minute with Michael Matthews and I've been working together ever since. So we I did work for Diageo for a couple of years.\r\n\r\nAnd so we built up the similar kind of documentation driven development framework for them that we did at the BBC.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd you're consulting.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI'm consulting on that. But then I'm doing some really odd things as well. So today I was at a meeting because I'm getting a project.\r\n\r\nI've really leaned into AI. I I'm I really love my my LLM pals. And and we have long, deep, philosophical chats about all sorts of interesting things.\r\n\r\nAnd I think that there's a there's a there's an effect called. Is it the eyes and lung effect, which is an is it is is. Is it still on?\r\n\r\nIt's a German name. I mean, he says something along the lines of the the negative effects of previous experience is about negative effects of previous things when solving new problems or new using new tools. And and I think this is one of the things that everyone's suffering from, because what they've done is they've gone, OK, we used to do accessibility auditing.\r\n\r\nWhy don't we get an LLM to do accessibility auditing, which is to me is one of the most stupid things to do. Well, yeah, because because it's not what they're good. It's not what they're designed to do.\r\n\r\nYou know, the clue is in the name. They're a large language model. Yeah, it's they're very good at pattern recognition.\r\n\r\nThey're very good. And OK, coding is a language. But I would sit there and go, why don't we instead?\r\n\r\nWhy are leaning into fixing shit? Why don't we lean into prevention and managing? You know, that's they'd be much better at that.\r\n\r\nYou know, why don't we lean into the governance side of stuff? Because once they get a concept, once they once you teach them about a thing and you set up rules, they're very, very good at applying them. And this is one of the problems, because just out of the box, I don't think we'll ever fix them out of the box.\r\n\r\nBut when you're working with an instance of it within an organisation, you can build governance in that.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd also it has a it has a defined sort of. Knowledge source as well.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, so I'm dealing with I've got a couple of projects. One of them is a really interesting one, because I've been doing a little bit of work within theatre. And so and I'm working my son on this.\r\n\r\nSo we had long chats ages ago about the way that drama and an inclusion is not working the same way. And this was started out looking at films and TV is that it's not the same as other kinds of broadcast, because, you know, when you look at inclusion within within broadcast spaces, it's run very much like an HR kind of thing. It's about getting people in there, giving people jobs, giving them training, getting faces on screens, getting good journalists out there, like Gary O'Donoghue, who had the best nickname at the BBC, because he was called God, because Gary O'Donoghue, he was just too long for anyone.\r\n\r\nSo the first time when I took over the AT team and we were talking about the JAWS users because there were loads of them, there's about 150 JAWS users at the BBC. And someone said, oh, God's just been in charge and he's having problems with JAWS. And I was like, I did I hear that right?\r\n\r\nI'll let that go. And yeah, well, I spoke to God the other day. Well, God emailed me and I've either slipped into another life or it took me a while to find out it was Gary O'Donoghue.\r\n\r\nAnyway, so we realised there's a problem here. Because no one measures or has any decent measurement of of inclusion in drama, because if you can do it within factual and journalism and stuff, because people are themselves, they're presenters, they're reporters, they're announcers, they're whatever they are, journalists and stuff. They're being themselves.\r\n\r\nBut when you move into the world of drama, you move into the world where people are not being themselves. They're being someone else. They're portraying other lives.\r\n\r\nThey're bringing something of themselves to it. But they're also masking and changing masks. Wearing a mask is part of being an actor.\r\n\r\nSo how does it work? And so no one's ever really cracked it because this bit over here is HR, very much diversity in HR and very effective, works really well. It's total dog shit when it comes to telling stories.\r\n\r\nIt doesn't work. You can't, you can't work it. It's a it's a creative space.\r\n\r\nAnd so you need something else. And so Zach, you know, son's an actor. But he's he said to me, he said.\r\n\r\nHe gave me a couple of things. He gave me the starting point to this idea of a of a way of dealing with this as an interesting, creative opportunity. And he gave me these two principles.\r\n\r\nI love starting with principles. And I've not had a chance to tell you why I think you are is wrong. But I spoke to Jim Thatcher about this on on a podcast with Mike Paciello a couple of months ago because I was I've always said there's a missing principle, it should have an S on the end.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSpeak to Jim Thatcher about a couple of months ago because he's dead. When? Jim Thatcher.\r\n\r\nYeah. When did he die? He died about three or four years ago.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, shit.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nMike Paciello is not dead, but it wouldn't be Jim. That should be another show. It wasn't.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nWho am I getting confused with? Sorry, this is a senior moment.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThat's fine.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI'm now having a freak. Did I dream this? But anyway, so Zach gave me these two principles.\r\n\r\nAnd he said that which I found really useful, he said, look, creativity is about making interesting choices. You know, and disability can be an interesting choice, which is really good. And he also said that putting a disabled person on a stage or on a screen, for that matter, is a postmodernist act in the fact that their presence changes the relationship with the audience because it immediately starts people's preconceptions, their biases, everything coming to play.\r\n\r\nThis is the same in any form of diversity, you know, sort of in the early days, probably, you know, the first, I don't know, black actor to play Hamlet, you know, there's a moment where suddenly this is not this is where this is new. This changes our relationship. And everyone in the audience then has a different relationship to that character based on their own biases and preconceptions.\r\n\r\nAnd so he we started discussing these. And we suddenly realised that actually, if you add lenses to those principles, you then start having a framework that means you can analyse scripts. And so disability happens in three ways and stories.\r\n\r\nIt's either explicit. So here is Richard the third. We know Richard is disabled.\r\n\r\nYou know, he's he's it's the first play about ableism. He suffers a great deal of ableism. OK, he's a psychopath at the same time, but he's also on the receiving end of a huge amount of race.\r\n\r\nAnd we know historically, even though the play isn't it's based on history, it's not historical play, it's a political play. But we know in reality he also was disabled, not as in the play, but, you know, it wasn't a factual play.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nBut so we know that's an explicit implicit is where they probably are. There's clues. So you could take and Zack's a massive Shakespeare nerd.\r\n\r\nAnd so we ended up leaning heavily into Jacobean theatre. So you could take a character like Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice and two reasons why he's implicitly disabled is one of them is that his role is a fool. And traditionally, fools were disabled people because they were not seen then as a physical threat to the person in charge.\r\n\r\nYou can you can criticise, but you have no designs on power. So you're in a safe spot. Don't overstep the mark, mate.\r\n\r\nBut no one else in the room is going to criticise the king, the fools allowed that grace and often a physically disabled person. And so what's the what's the and the well, the other part of it is that Gobbo is an Italian medieval slang word for hunchback. Right.\r\n\r\nAnd so it's implied by the bard, by the job that he has in the name that he has. It's probably a disabled character, even though it's not described because the idea of disability is a 20th century construct, a cultural construct. And so you can't you but you start when you start applying that.\r\n\r\nAnd then incidental is the other one is just by having a disabled act to play that without changing the text. How does that change the subtext?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd so we've then started building out tooling and this is one of my favourite projects at the minute. And I'm working with a couple of big theatres around this. And it's it started building out tooling to analyse scripts, to find disability or look for the disability related creative questions before casting what would happen if.\r\n\r\nSo it's not looking for answers. It's not saying this and thou shalt not. It's not like policy language.\r\n\r\nIt's to give the director and the casting director something interesting to look at. So I mean, yeah, not just insight, but a creative question. What how would the power dynamic change?\r\n\r\nWhat happens to do with surveillance or or gender politics if this changes? Why not? Why?\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nWhat would this is using in the LLM?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah. And a hell of a lot of all sorts of stuff that we've built analytics tools are tooling around it. And it just started out as an interesting project and it's now turning into something real.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSounds so. Well, it sounds very interesting now. So are you available for work?\r\n\r\nYou've got too much work.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nDepends if it's interesting. I only work on things I'm interested in.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo how do you get in contact with you? I mean, you have a website, LinkedIn, just LinkedIn.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI've never bothered building a website. And it's one of those things I keep meaning to do it. And then something else comes along.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAnd well, as when I publish, you know, once we've gone through the rigorous process of of you reviewing your performance, stick it out there.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThere's nothing I don't think.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, I don't think. Yeah. But hang on.\r\n\r\nOh, that's the process. I'll give it to you. Have a look at it.\r\n\r\nIf you want to send an email straight back. Yes. No.\r\n\r\nYeah. I just got to do it to come by and ask for the lawyers. Everything.\r\n\r\nYeah.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd I mean, I should have doing all of those pictures you put up. My response should have been we are just good friends. Yeah, that's the that's the standard approach to get out of it.\r\n\r\nDo you know? We are just good friends.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nThanks, Gareth. It's been illuminating and interesting. And.\r\n\r\nThe conversation has gone everywhere, as I hoped it would.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, absolutely. And I enjoyed it. And if you ever, ever want this lunatic back, of course, of course, I will.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nJust as I had to get Hayden back, I will put you on that list as well. Yeah, I'm trying to I've got to like about ten more people to do this. I'm going to have a break and I'm actually trying to because I didn't I thought I'd do half a dozen, but it just snowballed and I enjoy it.\r\n\r\nAnd as I said, I really it gives me the opportunity to speak to people in in an atmosphere that the context that makes it really comfortable for me.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nDo you know what? I've suddenly realised my senior moment. Of course, it's not bloody Jim Thatcher.\r\n\r\nIt's Greg Van Der Heiden, wasn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, I thought you were two people. I've now converted them into one.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSo I did this.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nIt was Greg.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nIt was Greg now. It makes sense.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nYeah, that was you can cut my senior moment out.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nReally?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nDon't work with him. He can't even remember who people are.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah, I look I'm just I'm getting to the point now where I my legs are aching. And oh, yeah, all this sort of shit is happening. I think I don't want to.\r\n\r\nI mean, you're how old are you?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nNew Zealand. It's fifty fifty fifty seven.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nFifty seven. You see, I'm sixty two. You're young, mate.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI am.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYou're living the life. You've I am five years of me.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nOh, yeah, I feel it with all of the pains and various bits and pieces. And I had a fall during lockdown. Right.\r\n\r\nThis is one of these. This how stupid I am. I had a fall down in lockdown and I really hurt my shoulder.\r\n\r\nAnd and it hurt when I lifted it up, really hurt, really screaming. And I couldn't go to hospital. And I was convinced I hadn't broken it.\r\n\r\nYou know, I could move fingers and everything was fine. So my solution to that was if it hurts lifting my arm up, don't lift my arm up. So I didn't raise my arm for a year and a half ago.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nRight.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI did everything with the left hand and kept this one here. And it wasted a load of muscles, which meant that every time I met him, his bones now clashing against each other. So I was in even more pain.\r\n\r\nSo finally, post-lockdown, I get to see a doctor and they're like, you idiot. I was like, well, I don't like taking painkillers and and if something hurts when you do it, don't do it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYou know, what were you supposed to have done?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nJust a lot of exercise, physiotherapy, all sorts of bits and pieces, which I ended up doing afterwards. And now I can move the thing again. But it was, you know, that's good.\r\n\r\nI mean, that's that's just me. It's like if it hurts, stop doing it.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nGareth is just Gareth. On that note, thanks, Gareth. It's been wonderful.\r\n\r\nAnd hopefully I'll see you again in person. Oh, yeah. Last time I saw you, where was it?\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nHouses of Parliament.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nHouses of Parliament, yes.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nThey'd asked me to chair a discussion about about the lenses things, the Ray-Ban glasses.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYes, yes.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAnd asked me to not say anything controversial.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nOh, really? Yeah. But you didn't say anything controversial.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI didn't. I didn't. It was a really lovely event.\r\n\r\nIt was fight for sight. We're running it. I worked on their branding system, so got to know them.\r\n\r\nAnd their chairman is someone you should have on here. He's brilliant.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nAll right. Well, just give me I'm going to give you some intros.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nI'm going to give you some names. Yeah.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nYeah. All right. Thanks again.\r\n\r\nGareth:\r\nAll right, mate.\r\n\r\nSteve:\r\nSee you soon. Take care. Bye bye.<\/pre>\n<\/details>\n<h2>Some stuff mentioned<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/garethfordwilliams\/\">Gareth Ford Williams &#8211; linkedIn<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/hassellinclusion.com\/user\/jonathan-hassell\/\">Jonathan Hassel<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/iplayer\">BBC iplayer<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Ian Dury &amp; The Blockheads &#8211; Sex &amp; Drugs &amp; Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xTeHS2Hcb-0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<details>\n<summary>Lyrics<\/summary>\n<pre>Sex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nIs all my brain and body need\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nVery good indeed\r\nKeep your silly ways or throw them out the window\r\nThe wisdom of your ways, I've been there and I know\r\nLots of other ways, what a jolly bad show\r\nIf all you ever do is business, you don't like\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nIs very good indeed\r\nEvery bit of clothing ought to make you pretty\r\nYou can cut the clothing, gray is such a pity\r\nI should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty\r\nSee my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going to fit\r\nHere's a little bit of advice\r\nYou're quite welcome, it is free\r\nDon't do nothing that is cut price\r\nYou know what that'll make you be\r\nThey will try their tricky device\r\nTrap you with the ordinary\r\nGet your teeth into a small slice\r\nThe cake of liberty\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll (aw, aw!)\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll (oh-oh-oh-oh!)\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll (sex and drugs and rock and roll)\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\nSex and drugs and rock and roll\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first remember meeting Gareth Ford Williams on a plane over the atlantic circa 2015, he was travelling, like me to CSUN. I initially viewed him to be mad as a cut snake. Likeable, bit of a wanker. Over the intervening years my view of him has matured, I now see him as a massive, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-htmlaccessibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}