Camera operator 1: Is there a way to mute it at all?
Brian: Ah yeah, hang on.
*Voice from watch*
Camera operator 2: Sometimes I think it does both and then it doesn’t.
Brian: Yeah.
Camera operator 1: I thought it was in my head.
Brian: Because I muted the phone, but I forgot to mute the watch.
Hi, I’m Brian Moore. I am a senior digital accessibility specialist at TD. I work in the digital channel ensuring that all of our apps and websites are accessible to all of our customers, and that they have a great experience interacting with us.
Jennifer Popkey, Diversity & Inclusion Talent Partner: Brian was actually my first hire at TD. We were looking for somebody on our digital accessibility team, and we know that people who are blind or low vision actually have the hardest time working with online apps or phone apps to be able to work independently.
Brian had the digital experience, the computer and background that we were looking for, and his lived experience being blind actually set him apart as the best person for the role because he brought the lived experience to make sure we were developing our products right the first time.
Brian: Approximately, and there’s a few variations in this number, but one in five people have some sort of disability, so that’s 20% of our customer base. Do we want to exclude them? Probably not.
During the pandemic, there’s this big migration to let’s make people not have to go to the branch and do everything digitally. Well, that’s fine, as long as we provide an experience that everyone can use. So we’ve put a lot of effort, for example, into making sure that all the Easy Apply processes are very accessible.
If you’re in product management, if you’re in testing, if you’re in development, if you’re in leadership, even we have to think about it from the beginning. It never works well as a sort of check box at the end of the process. When we’re making a product or building a service out for people, by our design, who are we including and who are we excluding?
The nice thing about working at TD is when I encounter an accessibility barrier and I often admittedly go look for them, even if we never hear them from a customer, I know who to talk to and I can get it done. The big thing is that it’s a shared responsibility. So regardless of your role in the organization, you have some role in accessibility.
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