RAW FILE

DISABILITY:IN
OCTOBER 24, 2023
11:00 A.M. CST

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This text is being provided in a realtime format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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(Captioner standing by).
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  All right, it's noon, I think we can get started.  Let me share my screen again.
One more minute before we get started.  Just trying to get everybody in right now to the meeting.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Okay.  Great.  I think we can get started now.  Hello and welcome everyone to the Disability:IN Procure Access Building Block Series:  Update Supplier Of conduct and other procurement documents.  My name is Celeste Keanaaina with Disability:IN.  Our speakers today are Mike McCabe, Employer Accessibility Program at JPMorgan Chase and Kristian Burch, Director, Accessibility Program at Salesforce.  Before we begin I'll be running through housekeeping items.  As attendee you are in a mode meaning can you watch the participation and participate in the moderated Q&A.  You cannot share audio or video, so please feel free to submit your questions for our panel in the Q&A box any time during the conversation.  We'll do our best to answer your questions directly throughout the webinar.
ASL and live captioning are both being provided during today's webinar.  To start viewing the captioning, simply select the CC or Closed Caption icon in the meeting controls.  Feel free to simply select the closed captioning box to move its position in the meeting window.  We'll also post a StreamText link in the chat.  The ASL interpreter windows will be spotlighted during the duration of the webinar.  Also feel free to pin the interpreters.  If you need any assistance during the webinar, please feel free to reach out to me through the Q&A, chat, or email at Celeste@disability:IN.org.  Now I'm going to take down the housekeeping slide and play a short video for you.  One moment.
   >> JEFF WISSEL:  Celeste, I believe we lost the audio.
>> Recording in progress.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  Hi, everybody.  As you probably recognize from that short video, my name is Mike McCabe from JPMorgan Chase.  I am the PMO Lead in our Employee Experience Accessibility Team and I'm here today to interview Kristian Burch from Salesforce about what they're doing try to accomplish some of the goals that we laid out in this building block.  Kristian, can you introduce yourself.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  Thanks.  Hi, everybody.  I'm Kristian burve, Director of accessibility at Sales force and work in the Office of Accessibility a hub and spoke organization where we work to influence each team within Salesforce to add accessibility and inclusion into every aspect of their area of work.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  Thanks, Kristian.  Let's talk a little about what you have done at Salesforce so far and what you have still left to do with this building block.  When you started to update your procurement document, what teams did you have to work with to update this information about accessibility?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  So the teams that we ‑‑ first off, I was curious like what teams should I work with.  I want to start by saying the resources you shared in your video at the end without the Procure Access documentation available through Disability:IN, I wouldn't have had nearly the productive conversations I had with the teams or know necessarily even which teams to talk to.  Looking through the Procure Access documentation I knew I needed to talk to legal, I needed to talk to procurement, obviously, and we're in a unique position in the Office of Accessibility in that at the time the Office of Accessibility was within our legal organization.  Our Chief Legal Officer Amy Weaver now our Chief Financial Officer and we followed her over to the finance organization, but while we were in Legal, it really helped that we were all on the same team.  I think that was the intention of having the Office of Accessibility as part of Legal from the beginning anyway, is that we would really have the ability to work with the teams that would help us to push.  You know, it really helps when you say you're with Legal, even though I'm not a lawyer.
But that said, the Legal and Procurement teams work very, very closely, so I was able to partner with and find the right folks on our Procurement team, our Procurement Legal team, and the Procurement team, at the time also was led by Greg Cuffy our Chief Procurement Officer and he was the reason we have our Office of accessibility and the reason I reference that is organizations that don't have dedicated offices, look to executives, and try to start with your Procurement executive because they know how much impact you'll have in helping their organization provide more tools to the organization and different things being purchased.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  Once you figured out who you needed to talk to and started to have those conversations with them, how did the process go?  Were there any surprises along the way that you weren't expecting to hear from them?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  There was good surprises and some opportunity surprises.  A good surprise for me was one of the first questions that Legal asked and this wasn't even Procurement.  They asked, if we're going to ask our vendors to be committed to doing this work, what are we doing?  Right.
And it really turned the conversation into is Salesforce meeting the obligation to our customers and what commitments are we making, and are they meaningful commitments?  I went into this not wanting it to be a check‑box exercise and wanted impact.  They started talking about the impact we're having in our office with our products, so that was a really good surprise.
One of the tougher surprises was to get policy updated is a bit of a challenge in a large corporation.  You know, I think the Code of Conduct was a really great building block, no pun intended, for building this work that we're doing.  I think the Code of Conduct is one that we lead with and is publicly available.  It's one that our vendors all agree to adhere to, but the policy part of it was a bit of a surprise for me that it would be much more difficult to implement internal policy that would impact our internal teams that are out procuring technology, rather than just the vendors, right.  So a policy has implications to internal employees, and if you break policy, you know, that was one of the questions that Legal asked me.  Is, okay, so if we have a policy for this, what happens when someone breaks the policy?  What are the methodologies that we use to address the policy violation?  That was surprising.  I think if I had been prepared for that question, I would have been a lot more successful in that conversation.  But it gave me a lot to leave and think about, you know, when we do have policies and an employee is required to follow that policy about procuring accessible technology and what would I want to have happen if that employee didn't follow the policy, and how do we ‑‑ ‑‑ we always try to lead with a carrot and not a stick, so I think for us it's a matter of adjusting the repercussions of a violation of policy, one we're still working on.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  Okay.  Thanks.  So, now that you're through this process, you're a little more upfront with your vendors and asking them to commit to accessibility and in their products that they sell to you.  How has that shifted in conversations with negotiations with your vendors?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  You know, we've been able to be a lot more proactive, which is good.  I think that's the intention for a lot of this work, right.  You know, it's kind of the wild‑wild west in the procurement area in a lot of companies where most employees can procure any type of tool or technology, and if it's not centralized, then that can be a bit of a challenge for teams like ours that are trying to make it so we're procuring technology, and by having this language in our vendor code of conduct, has helped me go to the internal teams and ensure that they know that there is a requirement that they need to hold our vendors accountable to, and has helped us, you know, initially, right, it was still very reactive because we were still reaching out to teams that were procuring technology.  Since we've added this building block, our teams have started to ask us a lot more proactively, hey, we're looking at some technology, can we get a review?  What are your thoughts?
You know, it's a unique situation while working at Salesforce because we procure technology from a lot of smaller startups here in San Francisco and around the world, and often those smaller startups don't have accessibility knowledge, let alone the commitment to do the work.  You know, and we really feel that we have ‑‑ I was in a conversation with one of these startups, and they said that we want to do this work.  You know, this is something that we obviously hadn't thought about, and they were very appreciative that we were raising this to them.  And but it was completely inaccessible.  So I left it with a decision that the internal team that wanted to procure that technology said, what do we do?  Do we just shut the door?  They want to do better, they want to be accessible.
So we made a conscious decision that Salesforce is a leader in the tech space and we can't just shut the door on the small startups, so we want to work with them, right.  They need funding and they need customers, but we also have a responsibility to have, we have a responsibility to help the startups and know what it means to make accessible technology.  If Salesforce can do it, surely they can.  So we really took a step back and said, okay, we will procure the technology, so long as the vendor is committed to doing the work and able to show us meaningful progress against those commitments.
I mean I thought initially that it's going to take a lot of effort and resources to follow up with a lot of hand holding, but with this one particular vendor, it's actually been kind of nice and they met their commitment to sending us proactive quarterly updates on their progress.  Should I see those quarterly updates stop or should I have to ask for updates, then I think we'll have more conversation.  But we really have a responsibility to help these new technology companies know what it means to create accessible technology and know how to market that, and publish accessible conformance reports and make those available in an effort to also lesson their workload.  If they're proactive in sharing the ACR, I would have had a lot of my questions answered upfront.
You know, that said, I feel like Salesforce, also, we have not just a responsibility, but we also have a deep pocket book, right.  We can influence the leaders with vendors, you know, not just from a purchasing standpoint, but they kind of look up to Salesforce and they want to work with our executives and they want to learn what is Salesforce doing.  And so all of that to be said, if the partners are willing to commit to doing the work and provide us regular, meaningful updates against that work, we'll continue working with technology that might not be accessible from the get go.  You know, we're very ‑‑ but we also are very proactive about the communication when we do introduce technology to our employees, it has accessible barriers, we have an accessibility statement that talks about how accessible the tool is and where they might find barrier, and obviously that helps to prevent our colleagues with disabilities that might be impacted from getting excited about something and then going in only to find out late they're they can't use it, and we're a lot more proactive in that regard lately, which has been good.
And I think, you know, by not just shutting the door, because these tech startups aren't WCAG conforming, we're actually helping move the needle for a lot of the smaller organizations.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  So, you are in a bit of a unique position as both a very large seller of accessible products and large purchaser of accessibility products or products that you hope to be accessible.  What are the differences that you experience between, you know, what you're trying to do with your own products to make them more accessible, and how does that all hold together with the efforts that you're involved in with the Procure Access?  How has the Procure Access membership helped you with this?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  First, the difference for me is when I go into a conversation with our vendors, and by the way I'm in unique position and I don't think there are many folks that do both, I oversee the internal accessibility, so I'm working with people on our team that leads the digital accessibility teams to have conversations with vendors that sell us technology, but I've also been at Salesforce for 10 years so very much involved when we're selling our products to customers and they want to talk to Salesforce about what we're doing with our commitment to accessibility.
One of the big differences I've seen is when I go into conversations, I really want to know about roadmap, I want to know about what their knowledge is, you know, what the remediation processes are, do they have the right people to meet their commitments?  Do they have the right steps for us to report issues?
Conversely, when I'm in a meeting with a lot of customers, they want to know about percent level conformant, and they'll be telling me we need to hit 90% WCAG.  And we all know what does 90% mean?  Doesn't mean much when that can leave 10% of the success criteria that are absolute blockers, right.  A percentage to me is very concerning because to me that tells me you're only looking at it from potential a check‑box exercise, right.  If you're just trying to meet a certain percent conformant, that is not the right approach to talk about how accessible a piece of technology is.  Right.  Of course, an accessible conformance report should be very transparent around where the barriers are and how impactful those barriers could be to the main areas in the use of the product.  Simply going off of a percentage is, you know, very concerning.
I think times when I go in and talk to a vendor, I'm not there for a check‑box exercise.  We don't have time for that.  When I am involved with a vendor, it's very much a meaningful conversation.  There are times when I talk to a customer who potentially hired a third‑party audit firm to review their implementation of Salesforce, and I can tell when they've done the accessibility review from just a check‑box standpoint.  And while check‑box exercises do move the needle, right, because it holds organizations accountable and puts data behind it, for me I'm in this work for the reason of really truly helping employment for people with disabilities, and that is much more than a check‑box exercise, right.  We need conversations and we need to really understand where are our values, what are our commitments, and priorities, right.  I'm very proud when I talk to customers that I get to say that our product accessibility is literally one of the top priorities for the whole company.  From the CEO down.  We're not perfect, right.  Of course, there are accessibility barriers, you know, and there are WCAG success criteria that we are still not conformant with but we have the right people to meet the commitment and have an amazing accessibility, product accessibility team, and we have the right processes that that team has put together, and we have the right remediation steps.  So those are the thing that I go look for from our vendors, right, the people, the commitment, and remediation.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  I think we see a lot of the same in our experience as well when working with vendors.  We look for people that are committed to doing it.  We know not every piece of software is accessible when we bring it into ‑‑ fully accessible when we bring it in.  As long as they're committed and have a plan and we understand their processes, we feel a lot more comfortable about making those commitments, and so Kristian, again, I want to thank you.  That's great that you're sharing all of this information with us during this presentation on what Salesforce is doing.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  I apologize, Mike, and I think you also asked like specifically how Procure Access is?
   >> MIKE McCABE:  I apologize, you're right.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  I didn't catch the second part.  Because of the position that I'm in where I get to support both of our employees with disabilities as well as our customers with disabilities, you know, the partnerships that we have with our vendors, the work that we do to require accessibility commitments and progress has helped us not only influence the vendors we're working with, but go back to the very first question that Legal asked me, what are we doing?  And because of that, I was able to have internal conversations with our teams and say, hey, we want our vendors committed to accessibility we need to do a lot better.  It helps drive conversation with our products to do better by having holding people accountable we need to be more accountable.  So the relationships with people like yourself, Mike, and a lot of folks that we all get to work with, and really Procure Access has helped us provide more accessible technology to both our employees and our customers, and I know this work is very heavily involved around internal accessibility, but it is definitely also helped with the conversations I've had with our products and how we create them.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  Yeah.  And, again, you're right.  I apologize for jumping a little ahead there and not letting you answer a second part of that.  One of the key shared goals that we had when we looked at trying to launch this organization last year was how to make sure that the entire ecosystem on both sides for buyers and sellers is better to provide more accessible products and to make it a little bit more clarity around what state products are in as you're purchasing them.  It's great to see the commitment that Salesforce has on both sides of the equation.
Thanks, again, for sharing.  I do appreciate it.  I'm sure everybody else that joined us has.  I do want to mention that there is In the Last Building Block Series coming out on November 14th.  Keep an eye out for the invitation on that as well.  Thanks again to everybody, the captioners and interpreters that helped us with this presentation and with everybody else that was involved in helping us set it up.  We're going to open it up to Q&A now.  Celeste, do you want to let us know if there is anything out there?
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Yes.  Absolutely.  Thank you, Mike.  We have one question for Kristian.  How has Salesforce been on the procurement accessibility journey?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  I'm sorry.  Is the question how long?
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Yes, how long?  I'm sorry.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  Yeah, no problem.  I would say it's been three years.  Three years we started.  And to be very transparent, we do not have a policy yet.  Right.  This is something that we continue to work on.  Our Vendor Code of Conduct is what I go, my ammo but like Mike said in the beginning, we're still on this journey and I still want to create an internal purchasing policy, and I need to navigate that question that Legal has requested me again about what do we do when the policy is violated, whether intentionally or not intentionally.  Those are some of the things that I hadn't thought about that slowed our progress in this work.  This is going to be a never‑ending journey.  It's been three years that we've been doing this work, and one of our customers who is also part of Procure Access actually reached out to me and said hey, we would like to add accessibility language to the contract that we have with Salesforce, because we talk about holding our vendors to it.  And because of that relationship, we actually were able to go get the language that she wanted added to the cat contract.  You know, I worked with our internal legal teams.
So I think while this is three years in the making, there is still a lot to do.  And through our relationship, we'll see more and more of this contract language, master services agreement.  I very much have looked up to Microsoft.  I think at the time three years ago, it was before the official Procure Access initiative started, and there was still a lot of really great documentation on the Disability:IN website around all of this Better of Code of Conduct Purchasing Policies, and service agreement, and Microsoft led the way there and I used a lot of what they shared with Disability:IN to be able to have those conversations internally.  I envision this is something that we're working on even three years from now.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Thanks so much for sharing that, Kristian.  We have another question for both Mike and Kristian.  What guidance do you have for companies who are just getting started on their journey?
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  That last slide in Mike's video, the link to the Procure Access documentation, I think for me, I read through everything.  Even things like I'm not a procurement professional and never been involved in procurement, but I learned not just about accessible procurement, but I learned a lot about the steps that go into procurement, and for me having that education helped when I went in and out of those conversations a lot.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Wonderful.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  I would add a similar thing.  You know, we've been on our journey, again, my focus is on the employee applications that we use and not the ones that are customer facing directly.  So we've been on our journey for about five plus years now at JPMorgan Chase, and I think just being part of the overall Disability:IN organization and talking to peers at other firms, hearing the commitments of some of the leaders in the overall space like Microsoft and Google and others as leaders in this that helped launch the specific Procure Access initiative.
And then I think we've done a pretty good job at putting together some of the resources that are out there.  There is the Accessibility Toolkit, there are the Building Blocks themselves and the explanations, so hopefully these are good things that you can use just to figure out what the steps may be and how to get there and see examples of what other people have done.
I mean that's what we've tried to do at every step of the journey in ours, is just to learn from the experience that's out there.  You know, definitely working with people like Kristian and Jeff and others through this experience has helped us to understand a lot better how we can improve the process.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Yeah.  We have a good team.  That makes sense, Mike.  Another question for Kristian.  How did Salesforce initially add language in the contracts?  Was it added into every contract at once?  Or did it get added into the contracts over time?
Can't hear you Kristian.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  Thank you.  We are adding them at renewal time and then any new contract.  But renewals is really where, you know, I think that for me is an area that we need to get better about because renewal times can go by so quick.  Right.  The Account Team, hey, we got to get this contract renewed, they want to put it through quickly, and new technology goes through a lot more rigger being onboards, but renewals is where we could do better about getting in with the vendors.  Because it's easy when we know the vendors that have accessibility barriers because then we know what teams own that technology and we can get it embedded so the next time it renews, we can be more involved.  But I worry about the renewals that are happening through all the technology that's out there that we don't know about where there may be barriers.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  All right.  Let's see.  I'm not seeing any further questions in the chat at this point.  Mike, did you want to maybe wrap up.  Mike, you're on mute.
   >> MIKE McCABE:  I just want to thank Kristian, again, and everybody that helped us to pull this together and put the reminder out there that November 14th is the next in the series.  You know, definitely take a look at the resources that we've put together out there.
Again, we understand this can be a little overwhelming, you know, with all of the pieces of the puzzle that you need to put in place, but that's the whole idea of Procure Access, to leverage the experiences and the expertise from all the different firms involved and people involved that are committed to this to make it happen.  So, you know, hopefully that is at least a starting point for some people to get out there and take a look at the resources that are out there.
Again, thank you.  We appreciate it.  I guess we can close it out for today.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Thank you so much.
   >> KRISTIAN BURCH:  Thank you so much, Mike.
   >> CELESTE KEANAAINA:  Thank you, Kristian.  I really appreciate you guys coming on today and being part of the Procure Access Block Series.  Thank you to our audience.  Have a good day, everyone.
(session completed at 11:40 a.m. CST)

Services provided by:
      Caption First, Inc.	
      P.O. Box 3066        
      Monument, CO  80132
      800‑825‑5234
      www.captionfirst.com

***
This text is being provided in a realtime format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
***