Showcase Series: Accessibility with Rae Hinton

Last time, we wrapped up our series on the REACH Apprenticeship program by talking with?Judith Lung, the first blind engineer at LinkedIn. During her interview, Judith discussed the power of accessible technology. Today, we're diving deeper into the Accessibility program at LinkedIn by talking to Rae Hinton , Senior Compliance Manager at LinkedIn, about her work leading the AccessIn program.

Can you start by introducing yourself - what you do at LinkedIn and what's something not on your LinkedIn profile?

I'm Rae. I'm a Senior Lead Compliance Manager at LinkedIn. As one part of my job, I handle things like compliance training and policies, and in the other half of my job, I focus on our accessibility program. One of the teams I help lead, AccessIn, is a cross-functional group of engineers, designers, compliance and product managers that ensures that all of our products can be used by people with disabilities. Now my remit is expanding to also focus on how our own employees with disabilities can be successful at LinkedIn. It's a lot of finding bugs, talking to engineering teams, and making sure disability inclusion is part of our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging strategy to ensure that everybody is included. I’m also the incoming Global Co-Chair for our EnableIn Employee Resource Group, which means that I get to scale our efforts for employees with disabilities even further across the company.

And then not on my LinkedIn profile - I'm like a mega huge nerd, I go to Comic-Con every year and I used to play Magic: The Gathering competitively. I still play it from time to time - maybe more frequently that I'd like to admit.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the area of accessibility and what led you to join the accessibility program?

I was actually kind of thrown into accessibility before I even really knew what it was. My VP at LinkedIn, Amyn Thawer , decided this was an area where we could do better, and so he tasked me with creating the program from the ground up. I was starting to build it without really having a true understanding of the topic and so I educated myself and ended up falling in love with it.?

I have a disability myself, too. It's an invisible one - it's Panic Disorder, which means that I have random panic attacks. When I was younger, it was really, really bad; like in high school, I missed out on my senior year and had to be tutored at home because I was having them every day. That's my tie to the disability community alongside my sibling who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I never felt comfortable sharing such a vulnerable piece of myself at work but I’ve learned that all of us face disability in some form in our lives, so we should embrace our differences and create cultures that are inclusive of the full human experience. Meeting so many people with disabilities, getting involved in our Employee Resource Group, enabling safe discussions and making so many friends who are in that space has just turned this into something that I really, really love and I'm honored to work on.

What is the impact of making accessible products?

Our vision at LinkedIn is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our impact is immense - I’d argue that we can literally change the world by making LinkedIn the most inclusive platform on the planet! When you create products with accessibility in mind, you open up a new world of possibilities for people with disabilities by removing the barriers that may be preventing them from fully participating. And when you’re building an accessibility feature, it's actually not just for people with disabilities - it benefits everybody across the board. If we think about things like captioning for example: that was built for somebody who's deaf so that they can read what's happening, but it also benefits somebody who's maybe a non-native English speaker who wants to be able to read as they listen. Captions help somebody who's in a noisy environment. They help somebody if they just don't want to turn the sound on on their device, or they even help me if I don't want to sort through my bag to find my headphones. It just makes it more usable for everybody. Our R&D teams recently added auto-captions to LinkedIn Live and Audio Events, which is a huge win.

Another great example is font sizing support. When you make your font larger or smaller in your phone’s accessibility settings, that font size carries over into the LinkedIn app. It sounds simple, but it took our Engineering teams working around the clock to implement it. And, once we did, we found out that almost 40% of our members on Android are using that feature now, so it’s not just people with disabilities - it's benefiting 40% of our members, both with and without disabilities, who want a larger or smaller font.

Do you have any advice for people who are trying to build accessible products or want to learn more?

I would say there aren't enough accessible products; it's a place where a lot of companies need to focus and it's a really good field to get into if you want to create change. I would say that a great way to start is just listening. There's a sentiment in the disability community which is “nothing for us without us”. If you’re building a product, the important thing to do is really to get feedback from people with disabilities right along that journey so that you're not just coming up with an idea and creating a product in a vacuum without really understanding the impact. Then I would say training is available anywhere, like LinkedIn Learning or Microsoft’s virtual Ability Summit. Lastly, I would say we have amazing LinkedIn live sessions every now and then. I recently did a session to show our LinkedIn creators how to create inclusive content; my team member, Donny Gabai, did one about demystifying accessibility tools; and our inclusive design advocate, Jeff Zundel, just did a session about how to design with accessibility in mind. So always keep an eye out for those too!

Be sure to check out our next Showcase Series where we’ll continue the discussion about the?Accessibility Champions Program at LinkedIn.

Want to see more posts like this? Check out our past Showcase Series posts HERE