80 Accessibility And Sustainability For The Web
We are joined by Mike Gifford(https://twitter.com/mgifford, Senior Strategist at Civic Actions(https://civicactions.com/)to talk about accessibility and sustainability on the web.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the-wild-built<br>- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57094295-termination-shock<br>- https://radioopensource.org/<br>- https://longnow.org/
Top Keywords
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- well 0.005
- sustainability 0.005
- able 0.004
- environmental 0.004
- page 0.004
- make 0.004
Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the show. Mike, thank you so much for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do? Certainly.
My name is Mike Gifford. I'm a senior strategist at Civic Actions. I am the accessibility practice lead. Also, active on on, issues of of sustainability as well. Largely, what I'm doing is is is being involved in in, work with our clients on trying to improve the accessibility of the, the work we're doing. But but since there's there's, since we're in a a climate crisis, also looking to find ways to, to take that that experience and that knowledge and bring it over into, sustainability as well.
What would you say is your personal why? The thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.
I I think that that a huge part of it is just realizing that we have so much potential right now. And this is this is an opportunity for us to go into to make a difference in order to to make the world a better place. Like, the although there's there's, really serious challenges facing, you know, us at this time, we've never had a better more potential to go off and to to improve our species and to be able to to figure out how to go off and work effectively together in order to to live more harmoniously on this planet. So it's it's that that that opportunity to to actually make a difference and and feel that there's there's space in order to go off and to create a a real significant change using digital technology.
Are there any videos, podcasts, books, or other media that you'd recommend to folks out there listening?
Absolutely. Actually, I I would say in terms of a book, there's a a book I was reading recently on the, the solar punk genre that's, that's, a song for the well built, and that's that's, an interesting sort of new new genre that's coming out that's, also on a climate tech perspective. Some people here may like, looking at at, Neil Stephenson and, his his book, Termination Shock that's that's, fairly recent. From a podcast perspective, I listen to quite a lot of podcasts, but, there's a there's an old one that I'm still quite fond of called Radio Open Source that that, doesn't actually touch on open source issues. And and, I'm also a Drupal accessibility maintainer, so very interested in open source and and how that whole community grows. But this this radio open source has a a lot of interesting interviews with with both about technology and society and culture. And, I'd also say there's a I'd say the the Long Mayo Foundation also has some great great, podcasts I enjoy listening to.
Actually, I I have a follow-up there. You mentioned a genre called solarpunk. I haven't heard that before. Could could you talk about what that is? So there's there's,
climate fiction that's a relatively new genre that you can you can read, and and Kim Stanley Robinson and others have have written within the the climate, so the climate fiction genre. But then there's climate forward fiction or solarpunk. So solarpunk is sort of that the vision of, well, what happens when we get through the the, environmental catastrophes that that, or the challenges that we're in right now? What would our society look like? How do we envision the possibility of people living together in a way beyond advanced capitalism? So it's, it's just sort of exploring ways of of of people living sustainably in the planet through fiction.
So potentially a bit, related to the subject we're gonna broach today then and maybe a good segue for us to hop into it. And, you know, we're gonna talk a bit about, well, accessibility and sustainability today. When we're talking about that first bit, accessibility, particularly on the web, what what does that mean to you?
So so it's essentially, making sure that that we're working to see that everyone can access digital tools. Like, right now, digital is is, is how people do their their work, their their, socializations, their engagement in politics. Everything is happening on a digital sphere and trying to make sure that that, that we're eliminating barriers so that everyone can participate fully in society. That that's really what I see as as the goal of, of accessibility at this point. It largely rolls up from a digital perspective into the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG. It's pronounced a bunch of different ways, but but that's a a group of standards that that, that have been, you know, evolved through the the World Wide Web consortiums, through the the the web accessibility initiative. And so that that group of standards is is largely what what global, global accessibility standards are built on. So whether that's the, section five zero eight in The US, whether it's the Accessible Canada Act in in Canada, or the the web accessibility directive in the in the in the European Union, all of them use that that got as a as a basis for for understanding the the the guidelines.
And the the standards that you're mentioning, what do they typically seek to do? So if someone maybe is approaching this conversation a little bit unfamiliar with what, like, the WCAG standards are meant for. Could you talk a bit about that? For sure.
So there's it's basically broken into to four broad pillars, trying to make sure that people can perceive, operate, understand, the the, the technology and the environment that they're they're engaging with within a robust framework. So so, yes, you need to be able to to see if you if you have, if you're a low vision person, you need to have high contrast fonts on your phone in order to be able to to see the text that's on there. But even if you don't have low vision, you should be able to go outside and look at your, your your phone in in a on a on a sunny day and be able to go off and find the address you're trying to get to. We shouldn't be assuming that people are are going to be using this technology in a, in a in a ideal light in light controlled environment. Microsoft put forward a really interesting, analysis or, yeah, reframing of accessibility and that there's there's people who have permanent disabilities, there's temporary disabilities, and there's also situational disabilities. So, people often think about situations where, where somebody is blind as and trying to accommodate the blind users, and and they're thinking about accessibility. It's it's an extreme use case of people that captures people's imagination. And there aren't that many blind people, so people don't think it's actually that important. On the other hand, if you look at people with disabilities, it's about a quarter of the population. So it's actually a significant, minority of the population that has some form identifies as having some form of of disability. But when you include temporary disabilities, like, say, you're getting your eyes tested and you have to go off and put, eye drops in your eyes and everything's blurry for for a few hours afterwards, or or you've got allergies like I do it today, and you're you're trying to go off into to see through somewhat blurry eyes, you know, that that's another type of disability, but it's temporary because it goes away when when, when the the when the pollen disappear. And also situational disabilities, things like, you know, being outside on a sunny day and trying to go off and to enjoy one of the last day beautiful days of fall before winter kicks in. Like, these are these are things that we we often try and do and and and our technology sometimes doesn't doesn't allow us to to be as as as productive as we could be.
In our conversation to prepare for this interview, we talked a bit about how accessibility can be one of those things that's often left off to the end of a project. Can you talk a bit about the the sort of impact or cost that choice has as opposed to being something that gets attention earlier on?
It's it's sort of like if you're if you're looking to go off and and and, you build a building and then add accessibility or requirements to the building, it's gonna be a lot more expensive because it'll probably be more expensive to retrofit an existing building, for accessibility than it would be to simply build it from scratch. Accessibility isn't just like throwing on a coat of paint. It's like it's like making the walls wider. And so, you know, there's different, criteria that need to be think thought of when you're developing it. So the earlier you can address accessibility in the design process, the more effectively it'll it will be, the more robust it will be, and the less it will cost. So trying to to to shift the accessibility left, and see that that that not only is it being, addressed early when you're thinking about the design process, but that everyone understands what their role is to try and build an accessible product. If it's really part of the process and part of the culture of the team that's building the the tool, then it's something that that actually will have have a a real high result of be of of being, accessible and reasonably affordable. If you get to the end of the project and then you're suddenly realizing that there's a whole bunch of accessibility stuff that nobody bothered to look at, well, you're gonna have to retrofit and redesign and rebuild everything that you've done before, and it's probably going to be fragile. It's probably going to be not as as as, as secure as it was previously. And it's also something that won't necessarily look as as as as as clear and and well designed as it was before because it was an afterthought that needed to be reconsidered. So there's some reasons.
You mentioned the idea of trying to inject it as a part of team process and culture. What what does that look like when a team has done that successfully?
So if it's if it's something, if a team actually builds the the, the process into their their, if they're building accessibility in their their process and they're going to be involved they're talking about accessibility in their scrums. They're going to be, doing automated testing throughout the the the process. They're they're going to, actually, do manual testing because they they will know that automated testing only gets you a certain portion of the way. You can't automate test all for all accessibility requirements. There'll be be, you'll be able to have conversations about, like, what is the purpose of this? What are we trying to accomplish here? You'll see, accessibility annotations in the design system so that that the the, the designers and the developers and the content maintainers can all sort of come to an agreement about what what semantically should be happening with this. And there'll also be elements where you'll be able to see more clearly, if you're if you're, looking at at support for for things like keyboard only users or, for that matter, tablet interfaces, trying to make sure that that more people are able to access it. And we're not assuming that everyone is accessing the technology that we're build building through the same interface, that that, you know, given that the the number of people who are using mobile devices, it's a bit shocking how many, how many interfaces are still built assuming that you're using the mouse. And and that's that's clearly not the case. Even if you don't have a disability, people are using their phones more and more in order to consume and produce content.
I hear you painting a picture of a a team that has a conversation about accessibility at every layer or part of its development process. So I think I heard you mention things that would imply that you're talking about it when you're preparing the work, when you're planning the work, when you're asking questions about it as you're implementing the work. If you're the sort of shop that puts together a test plan or something, it's like part Yeah. Of that test plan. If you do some QA, there there's, like, some portion of that. Am I am I hearing you correctly that it's kinda something that is in, like, all layers of your kind of iterative cycle. There's something about accessibility.
That's absolutely right, Ryan. And that every role has a responsibility. There there's a a value in having an accessibility lead in order to answer some of the the basic questions. But whether you're a, a project manager, a developer, a DevOps person, there's a QA person. Like, there's there's all kinds of ways in which accessibility plays into various different roles and and try to make sure that everyone understands what their responsibility is to to implement accessibility, to make sure that that's something that's not going to be that that there there that we're not gonna be overlooking things is is really quite important.
If there's some folks out there that are listening to this, you know, they're nodding along with us, maybe they're, you know, on their commute on the train or something, and they're finally like, yeah. Like, I I agree with this, and I I wanna try to do this at work. You know, I wanna be an accessibility champion. What what advice would you give them as they're getting started with that thought?
It really does help to have have support from leadership, making sure that there's there's there's some buy in from leadership that this is a direction that that that, the organization as a whole wants to go. If you don't have that, then then simply trying to go off and build a a network of of, of people who are talking about accessibility can be quite important. There are there are so many good newsletters out there that are producing new material on a on a weekly basis where you can simply subscribe to a newsletter and subscribe to a newsletter and reshare content into your internal Slack channel so that you can have have that as as a a discussion that you can you can sort of take that information and read that. It's really about how do you try and get people talking and asking about that. When we're looking at the hiring process at CivicActions, we really try and and, support we we look for people who have certifications. So whether that's the the DHS trusted tester or the IAAP, WAS, or CPACC. We're looking for people who've who've actually, done that. And so that's, again, something that you can you can do to try and make sure that you're bringing in people who have, have gone through the process of of, of really trying to learn about about accessibility and and becoming sort of recognized in their their knowledge.
Sustainability is the other part of the topic that we're looking to dig into today. When we talk about web sustainability,
what exactly are we referring to? We're we're essentially talking about the environmental impact of our digital lives, and the in specifically the web in in this particular instance. But, but our but we don't we don't think about the the environmental impact of the Internet, but the environmental impact of the Internet is actually quite vast. It's it's, on par with with the airline industry. But unlike the airline industry, the the digital world is growing at a at a at a at an exponential rate. So we know that the that, you know, when we're we're dealing with the the growth of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, all those things are are requiring greater and greater processing power, greater data, greater, you know, bandwidth, like, you know, just the impact of big data alone. Well, it has has a huge impact in terms of, you know, how is this information being stored? How is it being transferred? How is it being backed up? All that has environmental impacts, because they're, you know, stored in gigantic data centers. And and, yes, it's more environmentally friendly to go off and to to to store information in the cloud in an environment that is really designed for a single purpose than it is to store store it in a machine that's that's in your basement most of the time if in terms of of organizationals organizational capacities and organizational strengths. But, but I think that the the the challenge of of, of moving, you know, of the these data centers is is, a, they they're vast. To to build and maintain these these data centers, it takes a great deal of energy, and they're often not cooled or powered by renewable energy. So if most of our our, data centers are powered by dirty coal, then that's something that's going to have a, a long term impact on on, whether or not we're able to go off and transition to a renewable, economy. And and so so trying to go off into, to think about what is the source of our power, what is how is our our energy being, you know, produced and and and, and also looking at the devices that we have and, you know, our our our, you know, even trying to go off and make sure that our cell phones are designed so that they last five years instead of two. That's a design decision that that, that currently isn't well supported in the the manufacturers. You can't you can't build a, you can't buy a cell phone in North America that's designed to be repaired, really. Like, they're all about replacing them every, you know, two to three years. So how do we how do we extend that so that we're not having to go off into to to to produce and and dispose of so much, you know, valuable raw material?
So I guess in a way, even this very conversation that folks are listening to has some impact right on the climate. So in this case, we're starting with even our recording session we're doing right now where we're, you know, we're on a platform service that has a data center somewhere. Yeah. And then, you know, it's being sent off to some RSS feed once I, you know, stop procrastinating. And then at this episode, to be downloaded to a device that, as you're talking about with, you know, the right to repair a topic, perhaps is one that's not so easy to replace the battery. So it's a device that's on a, you know, a three year cycle instead of a five. It seems like, as a a digital citizen, you're you're gonna in some way kinda touch this topic
as you as you navigate your day is maybe what I'm hearing here. Absolutely. If you're if you're if if climate change is important to you and you're thinking about your impact, I mean, this is, digital still isn't likely to be your biggest single source of of, of impact. Probably still is going to be bigger if you're flying or if you're, draw if you're commuting into work. There's a lot more, there's a lot of advantages. Like, certainly, teleworking is a lot more environmentally friendly than than than driving a car into to your your office than, you know, and and managing it that way. It may not be better than than, than cycling or walking into work, but but still it's a, telecommuting has a lot of advantages because the the the even though it's a even though there is a carbon impact, it's much smaller than than other modes of of, of transportation. And it's also interesting to be looking for those those vendors that are really taking, an advanced stand on climate change issues. And and so Microsoft has done some wonderful things. Google has has made some great announcements. I think Zoom has has, has also tried to go off into, to make a, you know, commitment to reducing their their CO two emissions. Most of the the the big environmental, players most of the big, data digital players have have, have made some commitments on on climate change at this point. At least what they're going to do between between now and and 2050. Now mind you, you know, between now and 2050, that's that's a a lot of computers will be bought and sold, and and, you know, many, terawatts of of electricity will have been consumed in that time frame. But there certainly is an initial commitment to realize that this is something that that is is important.
If there's folks out there that are maybe they're trying to build right now, a thing that's gonna be used by a lot of people on the web, and they're listening to this and going, oh, well, maybe this is something I wanna think about. What what are some things they could try to seek to do to make sure what they're building isn't absolutely horrible with its with its impact?
If you're looking at at, just sort of basic awareness, there's a there's a couple really interesting tools out there. They're actually similar to the the tools that that are available for for accessibility. So, if you're if you're looking at accessibility, the WAVE toolbar is probably the most common tool that people know about to sort of look at and evaluate accessibility issues. For the for the web, one of the big big ones is, is the the the the the the the website carbon website carbon.com website, and the Green Web Foundation. Both of those are are really useful resources, for for information about both the the sourcing of of, of the the electricity for the data center that you're you're using, as well as the, essentially, the page size of the the, of the site. So if you're trying to get a sort of a rough sense of of how much carbon a page, consumes to go off into, to to load a page of data. Website carbon.com is is a is a great, a great sort of project for that. And the the team at Whole Grain Digital is behind sort of implementing that. They've they've done some really neat stuff as a digital agency, in The UK trying to go off and say, how do we how do we work to be a digital agency that that is sustainable and that is really trying to to to reduce our our environmental foot footprint and the environmental footprint of our clients. From a from a practical point of view, probably the most most useful thing to do would be to to start prioritizing the Google Lighthouse scores. So most of the developers in, in the the, The US are familiar with with the, Google Lighthouse, and and there's a lot of tools that are being built in for scanning, for page size, or performance. Look looking for for there's accessibility issues in there. There's SEO issues that are built into Google Lighthouse. But if you're able to focus in on the performance score and encourage people to to think about, what can be, what can we do to to start paying more attention to this? Can we get a 100% accessibility, and a 100% performance when we're trying to to evaluate that? And that may include thinking about things like the the broader user journey. So, if we can give our our our users a better user a better user experience, then then maybe that'll be something that that, that will actually reduce, the CO two load of the website. So if we can more easily help them find the information that they want without having to to click on a bunch of our pages, that may be a really useful way to go off and to to reduce the CO two. And, you know, the the, the the PWAs are a really great way to to, to try and and, support users, especially mobile users on on reducing their their, or speeding up their performance time and and making sure that they're able to go off and to use their devices more
effectively. It occurs to me this might be one of those rare situations where, like, the business concern, the user experience concern, and the, technical concern might all kind of agree on a thing without much. Right? Because, you know, if if a page loads faster, it sounds like that will in theory, it would load your costs since that's, like, less, load on whatever hosting service you're using, which means less environmental impact because you're using less power. But then also, people like it when pay when pages load faster. So potentially also a a better, user experience. And I hear you also talking about, you know, reducing interactions. Potentially, that can also lead to those sorts of improvements. Am I am I hearing that correctly? Or maybe this is, like, that rare nexus of agreement?
Absolutely. It it it definitely is an area where where there there there is a win win win if you're if you're looking for it and and you're able to go off and to align it. So, and it it it's, it's interesting looking at, you know, at what's happening in the federal government space in The US around the the, the the the the CX, sorry, customer experience executive order that went out last year. I think there's a there's a lot of opportunity in that to sort of say, well, how do we how do we actually improve the the, the performance of our websites? Because nobody likes a slow website. That that's not something that I like in in, you you know, downtown with a high speed Internet connection, and I really don't like it when I'm out at my cottage trying to go off and and, you know, browse browse the Internet from my phone. So so, again, how do we try and find those those situations so that that we can give everyone a good experience no matter what what level of bandwidth or technology they happen to have?
Yeah. It it does sound like, for example, if you are one of those folks that have, like, a lower power device or maybe you're just in a place with slightly more difficult network connectivity as far as performance goes. Maybe it's higher latency. Maybe there's less available bandwidth. It sounds like that itself can become a bit of an accessibility barrier. For sure. Has this been a problem that you've experienced in your work, and, have you sought to address that?
I I I do try and and and look for for allies in my in my work. How do we try and find ways that that we can, can support support, multiple projects and multiple targets? Because I think that that there there are often times where where what what gets the most traction is the the shiny flashy thing. So it's the the the the the sharp design, the the interesting interactions, the the the fascinating movies. And it's like, okay. Well, that's those are all neat. But, ultimately, what I wanna do is accomplish a task. And and as a user, I come to a website to accomplish the task. And if if I can if I can, have a better experience and make sure that that whether I have a disability or not, whether I'm connecting, you know, remotely or not, that I can I can try and and, yeah, concentrate that that into to a, I think that there's there's ways if we're able to work together, we can actually accomplish a lot more?
It sounds a bit like you're describing well, there there's a vocab term for this that I just not in my brain at the moment. But effectively, this idea of, like, you kinda progressively make something more complex depending on, like, the capabilities you detect that a device has. Progressive enhancement.
There it is. Yeah. So, yeah, progressive enhancement is a is a a great approach, right, where you're you're you're adding JavaScript to add more more dynamic elements. If you, if you know that that somebody is is interested in having animation, you add that animation. But but you you're making it optional so that you're not forcing that animations on pea on on people because, animations both take more bandwidth, but but they also can make people, you know, actually physically ill. So there's there's something called visually induced motion sickness that can can basically you know, you you can ruin somebody's day by giving them a parallax website when they're not expecting it. So, that's that's something that that that often web developers aren't thinking about because they're not aware of the implications that their design can have on other people. We've learned a lot about things like epilepsy and how how flashing lights have have, impacts on people with epilepsy, but that's just one type of of, visual stimulus can have an impact on on, on people's, cognitive, states of mind. So so we we are really quite complicated as as a as a species, and and, there's so much diversity out there and so much to learn, that that really this is a a great opportunity to try and say, well, how do we how do we communicate effectively to more people using these these amazing digital tools that we have right now? And so much of it just requires thinking about it and being intentional about how we're building this so that we're not trying to build a perfect interface, but we're just trying to build an interface that's better today than it was yesterday. That it's it's about progress versus perfection. So how do we how do we structure that into our our processes so that whether you're thinking about accessibility or sustainability, that we're we're looking at at at seeing this as a journey that we're going to be continually adding to? And and this is I think that that that, so much of the, I think so much of our society is is really already there. So so, for example, you don't expect that the operating system that that comes with your phone will be the one that you you have when when you know, when it throughout its entire life lifetime. You might upgrade your phone, you know, twenty, thirty, 40, 50 times in this the span of the the the ownership of that phone, just because there are security updates that need to get sent out on a regular basis. There's additional features that come out. That's just how the web works and then the Internet in general. So we should be able to go off and to think about that for for for everything that we're doing, that we're not actually releasing a final product, but we're just building the best release for now. And in the future, we will go off and try and make it more sustainable and more accessible so that we can have a better impact about the the services we're trying to deliver.
As folks are working on these incremental changes, where they're talking about things like performance, accessibility, sustainability, security, these are all things that require energy and advocacy on a on a project or a product to balance against. There's also then, like, kind of that functional feature stuff that becomes part of the product as well. What have you seen work as far as folks trying to figure out, like, the best balance for the right amount of time and energy for each one of these kind of complicated topics?
I mean, balance is a tricky one, and and, I think that that it's it is especially when you're you're looking at at, challenges where where where you you can't have a site you you can't not have security. That's something that's has got to be built into the website. But, likewise, I think you you can't not have accessibility. Just sort of thinking about, even the long term, the the long term implications of of the projects you're developing. So if you build in a project that doesn't have accessibility baked in, it's not gonna be as accessible for, for your SEO, or for that matter when you're trying to go off and and upgrade your systems so that it can engage with, Siri or Alexa or or Google Home. Like, all of those tools, all those machine tools need to have semantics built in. So if we can think about this as as as, you know, supporting both our future selves, but also the future, the future applications that we're trying to go off and support. So accessibility is is really something that we're we're investing in for the long term. And, and, you know, I think it comes down to to trying to to to help invest the team to learn so that that everyone sort of understands what the the the what the next load is or what but but also trying to say, how do we how do we, use open source tools to try and work with the community in order to to see that we're not trying to do this all on our own? That that if we're trying to to to think about accessibility, just as, within our own individual silos, it's it is going to be rather overwhelming. But, you know, but if we're able to say, okay. Well, we've got something like the USWDS, The US web design system, That's actually a fairly large community, that has already thought quite a lot about accessibility, that's thinking about performance. They haven't thought really about sustainability yet, but that's something that's that's coming, and that there's ways to to look at at, incorporation of of things like SVG graphics so that there's there's a better support for, for things like dark mode, which are good for accessibility, but also, really quite good for the environment. Because if you're able to to use a a dark screen, it will actually consume less power than a than a light background does, at least on on most monitors. And, so so, yeah, trying to think about ways that we can we can work collaboratively on these things so that that that that we're not simply, focused on what are our needs within our our particular silos, that we can we can learn from others, we can share with others, and we can we can, you know, find a way to to produce a, a digital experience that's really one that that's that's the the, the best for everyone.
If there's someone out there that say they're working on an existing project and this is something they're either they're listening to us and finding like, oh, man. It's time for this. Or maybe they've had this on their mind already. What advice would you give them as they're trying to maybe bring it raise it up as something of a higher priority in a project where maybe it hasn't always been there?
I I think that the the the it is useful to be part of a community. So, there's a a great Slack community and web community called climateaction.tech, and that that is a community that has, a lot of resources available. I think it's useful to to to ask questions in places like that. There's also an online conference called Sustainable UX that's, that's looking at sustainable design and and, efforts to try and and to to reduce our environmental foot, footprint of, through design. So so learning is is an is always the first step, but but also looking at, you know, what can you do? Like, if you can use a tool like the website carbon.com website to evaluate the work that you're doing, well, then you might sort of see, like, how are we doing comparatively? Are we better than average, or are we worse than average? And what kind of goals do we want to have? If we want to sort of think about the, from a performance perspective, what is our ideal page weight that we're targeting? Do we want to have a page weight that is, you know I mean, the average page weight of a of a website right now is about, I think, is about four megabytes, which is which is larger than the the average, it's it was larger than the initial download of the video game Doom. So if you've got something that, is an interactive game that many of us, you know, enjoyed at one point in our lives, and you've you've got the average web page being larger than that whole video game. We're we're doing something wrong. And, and I think that's you know, so much of that is is, like, thinking about, well, what libraries are we using? What third party applications we're using? What are the things we can get rid of? What are the the places that we can, we can think about, about reducing the the page weight, or the resources we're consuming so that we can, can can have a faster, better experience for all of our users and the planet itself for that matter.
And, of course, something I I heard in that in that that answer that really just got latched on in my brain is is that, example of the the size of doom. I I feel like that could now be a standard of measure. Like, how many dooms is this is this is this web page? I now, like, I wanna see a slide deck at work where, you know, someone's, like, has a chart of how many dooms each page is. That would be that that would brighten my day, I think. That's right. That'd be be be be quite entertaining to go off and have that that visual reference.
But but it's it is really interesting to have a goal to say, like, how much do we want to transfer? What is the what is the the, are there ways that we can collectively do often and say, what are our expectations? What what is what is a reasonable thing we should be expecting? And also sort of, well, what are the extremes? Like, I think that, the the the folks at Whole Game Digital did a, a low a low carbon website with, for Mercedes or something like that at for where they're producing an electric vehicle, I think, and they wanted to go off and have a, a nice a nice low vision or sorry, low low, low impact site that they were developing. But what was also visually interesting and it's and it's a fascinating constraint for designers to go off and say, okay. You have to build this website under, you know, 300 kilobytes. Go. What can you do with with CSS, SVGs, with text? Like, how do you make this visually interesting if you if you have that that constraint in that you can't simply, you know, upload your your 10 megabit background image or your your interactive videos that that, that load on on on, you know, on page load. Like, it's a you know, it it makes it much more challenging to go off and and for for designers to go off and create beautiful websites, but it certainly is possible and and, that a a good designer can make that happen. I am not a good designer, but that's
that that is not my skill set either, but it's I I get the publisher work with some really, really great ones, and, you definitely definitely wanna have access to that talent for this, it sounds like, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. During our prep conversation, we talked a bit about how all this might mean putting some fresh thinking into what it means to build, you know, a quality product in quotes there. Have you developed any hot takes about what that means since we chatted that time?
I think that that, that that it is interesting going going back to, there there's a there's a there's a thinker, who started, in the, I think, in the the fifties talking about sort of the in Japan's industrialization, Edward Demings, who who had all of these ideas about how to go off and create quality manufacturing and how to to how organizations needed to embrace work and workers, differently. And so that there's there's a real sense of embedding that that culture of quality into the, the work that that that a a whole team is doing in order to deliver, on a you need to deliver a really high standard quality product. And that thinking really helped our modern, industrial, development in terms of, like, standardized screws and nuts and making sure that cars were able to go off and to to confidently know that that you could assemble them, where each pace piece was, you know, essentially exactly identical up to a certain percentage of of of error. And, and I think that there's there's a lot, a lot of of those ideas about how to work effectively as a team, how to, engage, collaboratively in terms of of, of, you know, communicating error errors or processes that, that may may affect the the overall, work on a on a shop floor, or for that matter within the the workflow of a of a design team. You know, when we're we're thinking about our product life cycles, I think there's a lot that that digital has to learn on from these these, these older ideas of of building quality into to workmanship, and being able to reproduce that time and time again. So so I think going going back to to to Edward Demings is is a, is a really, useful beginning. But, but but also looking at things like, you know, what what is happening in the in The UK with how how the the the UK government is is implementing, service standards, what is being done, around, in the in the The US around, digital. Sorry. Accessibility.digital.gov and and looking at accessibility in Teams. And so, again, reinforcing those ideas that that accessibility isn't just something that sits on one person's shoulders, but something that a whole team needs to go off and to bear responsibility for. So those are at least some ideas around around how to to think about quality in a way that that is is different than we have, in the last twenty years, and things that we need to to to build that into how we're we're thinking about accessibility now. But also, we really we need to start quickly incorporating that into sustainability, as well because we just don't have the time to go off and to have another two decades of of bringing the the these learnings from from implementing quality systems from accessibility. We don't have that twenty years to go off and build that into sustainability. We need to really find ways to to prioritize and reduce the impact of our, our websites, you know, sooner because we we just don't have the time.
Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to join us here on Civic Tech Chat. I have no doubt folks are gonna listen to this conversation and take some interesting nuggets into their day.
Thank you very much, Ryan. This is wonderful.
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