Transcript: Building for the User Who Doesn't Sign the Check: Digital Accessibility with Gilad Gimon (Evinced)

Eyal David: [00:04] Hi friends, this is Eyal. You've reached Product Builder, where you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. This time we're joined by Gilad from Evinced, who'll talk about the company and the developing accessibility industry, and also about the part where Evinced helps its clients build products that are accessible — but for real. In addition, Gilad shares his path into product and insights about building a product for users who usually aren't the customer signing the check. Very interesting. And before we begin, if you enjoy listening to Product Builder, rate us five stars on Spotify. It gives me great feedback that the podcast delivers value to you, and it would also make me very happy. So come on, let's get started. Hi Gilad, how's it going? What's up? Gilad has joined us, VP Product at Evinced. Gilad and I also work together, worth noting, and he also comes from not far away. Evinced is right here now. Did you come on foot? Yes, literally on foot, and thanks for inviting me, it's fun to be here. Fun, thanks for coming.

Gilad Gimon: [01:04] So tell us in a nutshell, what does Evinced do? So we've been around about five years, we've raised 60 million dollars in total, and we basically build tools for developers, to help them come and build products that are accessible. We're in the world of Digital Accessibility, basically helping companies, engineering organizations, to come and build products that ultimately people with disabilities can use, through the Assistive Technologies out there, like Screen Reader, like Keyboard, and we help developers make sure their products are accessible, we basically do this by giving tools within the development process, it's part of the Software Development Lifecycle, as it's called, starting from the design stage, through coding, QA and automated tests, all the way to production, so that ultimately the world will be more accessible to people with disabilities, there are 15% of the world's population who have accessibility issues, it can be vision issues, not just blindness, also partial vision, people who don't see well and need to zoom in very large, color blindness. And Evinced's tools are very different from the tools that exist on the market,

Eyal David: [02:26] whether it's all the plugins that basically don't require any development, so here you really tackle the heart of the problem and fix it?

Gilad Gimon: [02:33] Yes, that's what's called shifting left, coming and solving the problems from the get-go, already at the development stage, and solving them at the root. And also, what kind of clients does Evinced have? So we work with the biggest clients in the world, we're totally Fortune 500, all our clients are Amazon and Netflix and ServiceNow and Capital One, Citibank, Progressive, Fidelity, all those giants? Amazon, yes, every client is a huge client, very big deals, 6 and 7 digits.

Eyal David: [03:08] That's it, and it's also worth noting that from these clients' side, there's really regulation they need to steer clear of,

Gilad Gimon: [03:15] and therefore they need to root out the problem, and they can't rely on it. Yes, that's basically the motivation here for accessibility — on one hand a regulatory matter with a standard, but beyond that it's also business, meaning, if now... there's, you know, your app, or your site... not supported by 15% of the population. Yes, but in the end these are people, you know, if the Add to Cart button isn't accessible to keyboard and screen reader, and you can only click it with a mouse, that means 15% of the world's population, theoretically, and not everyone has one — they can't use a mouse, so they can't convert, so even if it's only 2%, and not 15%, think how much... companies stake on 0.1% conversion.

Eyal David: [04:03] or for that matter, a customer who can't use the bank's services, absolutely. Yes. Okay, so Gilad, tell us a bit about your background — you actually started in 8200, so you did a sort of product there, right?

Gilad Gimon: [04:16] Yes, I did several roles there. My last role actually, when I was already in the career service, was product, so back then it wasn't yet called product in the title, because it wasn't yet in common use, totally product work, basically a project I led in the unit, and you know, with the unit, and in collaboration with Israel Aerospace Industries, a very large system we brought in, so it was all the aspects of product there. Just that it wasn't called product. Right, but in practice there were users, and you had to define how they use the product, and do demos for them, and work with them, do training for them, and on the other hand sit with the development team, and define how we want the product to look, and all the use cases, like, from A to Z, documentation, all the aspects of product work, except sales, which obviously doesn't exist in the army, so it was there.

Eyal David: [05:13] And then you basically continued a career in the fields of marketing, and as a data analyst you basically entered the industry.

Gilad Gimon: [05:19] Yes, after my degree, I basically started my career as a data analyst, which are also things I dealt with. A bit in my degree too, in terms of studies, and also on the basis of that from 8200, but in the end, through data analyst, from there I later got to product, and basically all my years before Evinced, I was actually in EdTech, in the field of personalization, meaning how you take big data, and produce from it insights and advertising or marketing activities, that are personalized. It was all around personalization.

Eyal David: [06:05] And then you moved to Evinced, basically to take over the product department at Evinced. Did you have prior knowledge or prior familiarity with the accessibility world?

Gilad Gimon: [06:13] Not at all. Not with the accessibility world, and not with products for developers. Like, I'm very experienced in B2B, in Business to Business, but not in B2D, in B2Developers, and also without a significant development background. So it was definitely a new world. But that's part of the challenge, and what was cool. And I think that in the end, even when I got into it, I said, okay, on one hand there's a challenge here and also a question, what can I contribute to products of this kind. But I think that in the end, product is product. And precisely when you come in very humble and go for the basics,

Eyal David: [06:56] it can give a very big advantage. So how did your entry into Evinced really look, when you went for the basics?

Gilad Gimon: [07:04] Yes, so in the end when I arrived the company was very small, we were about 15 people. And how many products were in the suite? It's basically a suite of products, also important to emphasize. Yes, right. Today we have ten products, so back then it was four. And it was all a bit of a jungle, because everything was built very fast, and there wasn't deep product work done on everything, and also it's a small company that moves fast, and not with many people, and you have to manage to start building the processes, both of planning, and of Backlog, and of ongoing management, of iterations, to build a Roadmap, there wasn't a Roadmap document, for that matter — until I arrived, I basically wrote it. It needed to be set up? Okay. Also regarding usage analytics. More work needed to be done in terms of the site, onboarding flows, meaning, the marketing activity too — more was needed there, and you really start from the basic in this context of, okay, let's take the product that requires the most significant treatment in terms of its UX, and start to organize things there, and do alignment between two products being worked on in UX, and that's also how you get into things. And then while you work on the UX, you also start to really understand the use cases well, and also the technical matters and the constraints, and start to really think about how to correctly build the architecture and the infra.

Eyal David: [08:45] It apparently worked well, because Evinced jumped from 4 products to 10 products, and raised more money afterward. So tell us Gilad, what do you do day-to-day? What does your day-to-day look like?

Gilad Gimon: [08:57] So today we, again, have a large and significant product team, that I'm very happy everyone is part of. Today there are eight people under me, and we're hiring more. So if someone's listening and interested, ping me. And basically we work all the time very very hard so that we succeed in advancing the roadmap, of each of these products, which of course have dependencies between them, because there are shared parts between the products, so there are dependencies in the technological context, and there are also dependencies in the context of resources. And very big clients, so there's also a lot of work with them, to come and help them advance their use cases, and support all kinds of requests that come from them, and from prospects, so that...

Eyal David: [09:53] there's tons to do? Challenging and interesting. Let's really do a touch base regarding the fact that you're hiring. What are really the most relevant skills you're looking for today in a PM? So I think it always depends on the company.

Gilad Gimon: [10:08] I think that today, in this respect, and throughout, what was important to me in the team we hired, is that there be people first of all very smart, very sharp, because things are complex, and you want to move fast, and you want the conversations to be really high quality, and there's also a very strong and sharp development team. So that's one aspect, you need deep technical understanding, because in the end the products are products for developers, and the technological challenges are very complex and unique, also I think in the world, in this market. So you need to really understand well how frontend developers work, and what their challenges are, both in web and in mobile. And you need to understand UX very well, because in the end developers surely have zero patience. So things need to be very sharp, very clear, very precise, both in the context of solving their use cases, and in the context of when they work in the system, how they can work with it, as you say, to get the value. That's it, and it's also worth saying, this is just an interesting asterisk about the field,

Eyal David: [11:23] that it's really a field that, for developers, isn't prioritized in some way, it's always competing with something. So it has to be sharp and simple and basically fast. It's a bit like security was... security, localization, all these fields that touch, I think, many aspects in the product, but...

Gilad Gimon: [11:44] yes, so the idea basically, our whole goal, is that we help organizations, an accessibility program, to come and solve this challenge, that in the end there's a barrier, because people, most developers, don't know accessibility, it's not something you learn at university, when you go and do a computer science degree. You usually learn one such course on web development, on html, and maybe there's one slide in it about needing accessibility and what an aria-label is, at best. And that's a challenge, and it's really a knowledge barrier, and part of what we do is come and help organizations, and also help developers understand the field better, by finding the problems for them, and giving them suggestions on how to fix them, automatically.

Eyal David: [12:33] So, great that you mentioned the different personas — maybe let's really pin this down for a moment, because it sounds like there's some separation here between who is the customer and who is the user, so let's put that aside for a second and come back to it. So if we go back for a second to skills, what about some soft skills you're looking for?

Gilad Gimon: [12:51] Yes, I think that... first of all, you need to be a great communicator. That's always, in every organization, in the end you work with a lot of different stakeholders, and you need to know how to communicate with each one in their language, on one hand with the developers, who need things very precise, and sometimes there are levels of complexity there that you need to help them simplify, and on the other hand it's with the clients, and people from there, some of whom can be ones who... ...very much understand, say, accessibility, but less the technological challenges, and some exactly the opposite.

Eyal David: [13:30] This really touches a bit on the personas, between the buyer and the user.

Gilad Gimon: [13:36] And in the end, sense of humor. I think that without this thing it's hard to get ahead in life.

Eyal David: [13:44] with that lightness. Okay, so with that lightness let's continue on. So basically, you made this transition, from data analyst to product. When did you decide you want to move to product? Was it known in advance — 8200, Technion, product?

Gilad Gimon: [14:00] How was it? Yes, I... there was deliberation at a certain stage, when I finished the army, and I was like... I did the Israel National Trail afterward, South America, and it was... I thought, okay, what to study? I think that really my period in the product role in 8200 really helped me understand that this is what interests me and this is what I love, the matrix work, being in a role that's very rounded, where you touch a lot of things, where you have very diverse interaction throughout the day, and also in your to-do list,

Eyal David: [14:36] and also with the people you talk to. What was the second alternative versus product?

Gilad Gimon: [14:42] I thought about a direction of biomedicine. Okay, okay, okay. Yes. I had an experience in high school, I researched yeast in a lab at the biology faculty, and it was a very formative experience for all kinds of directions.

Eyal David: [14:57] Okay. So apparently somewhere in the army you decided you want to be in product, and then the first roles basically led there?

Gilad Gimon: [15:05] Was that the idea? Or did you just start to feel out the tech world and... yes, I think starting in product as a first role in the industry isn't right, it's also very hard, of course, but I think it's also not right in principle. Meaning, basically when you start, it's better to start in a role that's more non-managerial, but one where you're part of a team, and that way you have the opportunity to come and learn, and also get to know this world. In the end, again, 12 years ago when I started this, it's not like I had much experience in high-tech, and in how this world works, and there are a lot of aspects to it, it's not just how much you understand code or that, it's also the conduct, and the ease, and all the things around it, and as a data analyst, I loved the position I had there at Pontis, because on one hand there was engagement with data, which interests me, and a lot of analytical abilities, and on the other hand it was marketing, so you have the marketing touch, and the business understanding, and the engagement with it, and how you influence people's state of mind, and all such things, and there were also all kinds of aspects there that are more product-oriented, of thinking and planning, how to correctly build the — back then it was an engine, a decision engine we built, and I got not only to use its results, but also to build it, and while there, you're also exposed to the B2B work, and how you manage clients, and all their aspects, and that's also interesting, and you learn from it, and also there, for me, there was a way to do more cross-functional roles, that help you understand that really this topic of product,

Eyal David: [16:55] is what interests me. So really, you basically did product work along the way — that's what they let you do.

Gilad Gimon: [17:02] So there were, yes, also aspects of product work along the way, and there were also things there, I was also there for some period as assistant to the CEO, and then also his special-assignments person, so there too I had all kinds of projects that were pure, defined as product, like I built a BI system for finance, together with some external person for example, and all kinds of such things, and work on a customer satisfaction survey, the first one done in the company, so it was a very interesting process, both organizationally, and really that takes — what you learn from the clients,

Eyal David: [17:39] what really interests you. And are there things like this, for example, that you take with you, until today basically?

Gilad Gimon: [17:45] Absolutely, I think even, say, NPS, Net Promoter Score, is something I used, say at Amobee, when we did sentiment analysis, so that was an example where I took something from one place, and implemented it in another place, because we said, okay, we know how to say, back then, we tried NLP analyses, and to understand sentiments, so okay, so you know now, to which extent a certain sentiment is positive or negative, and there's some score, and I'd say, okay, so it's positive, but now you want to analyze a lot, and you want to reach some single score, that will basically be a recommendation, by which you do some targeting activity. So I took the... the Net Promoter Score, and I said, okay, let's build a Net Sentiment Score, in a quite similar way, with all kinds of flavors I added. And I think that from every role, from everything I've done in life in my view — and I think it's true for everyone — you take and collect experiences, and then you use them at other points later on. It's also courses I took during my studies — I did a course in negotiation, that I think helps a lot, to understand, also to sometimes do business negotiation, and also sometimes it's... at the conversation level, if you want to advance something, with R&D or with some other function, to manage the communication in a way that's very constructive.

Eyal David: [19:19] We have a great episode about this, with Neta Meashtrom, worth listening to. And is there something you identify, that's basically your key skill, that you take with you throughout your whole career, that pushes you forward — your superpower?

Gilad Gimon: [19:36] I think that really the role is very rounded. I don't think there's one thing. I think constantly learning, and continuing to learn. I think coming and really thinking analytically, is something I love to do, and trying to look at what interests the other side. It's something that seems to me to help generally in life, but surely when you try to understand the psyche of your users, or the buyers, and what drives them, and what they want to do, and what their job to be done is,

Eyal David: [20:16] and build the product accordingly. So let's talk exactly about that. So if so, we're saying that at Evinced, the buyer isn't necessarily the user, and there are also apparently several layers of users worth talking about for a moment.

Gilad Gimon: [20:29] Let's talk about how you basically deal with this. Yes. I think this way I'll help explain a bit to someone who doesn't know, but in many places there's this — this tension between the buyer and the user. Not always the one who makes the decision, in B2B worlds of course, the one who makes the decision to buy or not buy, and who signs off on the budget, isn't in the end the end user who uses it — it happens with us, and it happens in tons of other industries too, also in the world of marketing, and also in the world of security, and in a lot of places in B2B. With us, the impact of this really is in understanding, for a moment, who our products are intended for. And of course, we have a product suite, and on one hand you want the developers to be the ones who use them, and do the accessibility tests. On the other hand, they're not the ones who make the decision of whether to buy or not buy the product. More than that, they also don't report to the one who makes this decision. Right. Usually what happens, again in our domain, there's an accessibility program for the organization, there's an accessibility manager, sometimes there are several experts who work, and they're the ones who try to advance this program, and that's their agenda. The developers' agenda is in the end to develop. And the idea is that basically, in order to be compliant, you need to develop it in a way that's correct. So now the question is who is your target audience? So on one hand you can't come and give something that developers — the users — won't want to use, even if now someone tells them, well, this is the product, because they'll simply push back, and in the end organizationally, politically, they... it just won't happen. Yes, they're a strong force, and it won't work, and in the end you want to help the accessibility manager move the needle. And moving the needle is by means of people using it, and really finding the problems as early as possible, and that way saving money for the organization, and the organization works more effectively, and more efficiently. And then now the question is, so wait, who do we actually also need to market the product to? If we're talking about the Development Community, or about the Accessibility Community, and how does it work? And also what do we even need to emphasize now, when we do the Product Marketing, and the product in general — what's the benefit? Is the benefit that there's Ease of Use here, or that we give Great Coverage, or that we really produce Impact around Time Saving. And there's some Flavoring here, so that in the end, according to who you're talking with in the organization, you emphasize different things, and of course the product in the end needs to check all the boxes. And it's important to also ask, what kind of users you talk to at the end of the day, the most? I think it depends, it really depends on which product — meaning, sometimes you ask the question. I think that the products that are more on the platform side, that basically centralize the reports, and give some kind of dashboard for the manager, so there you talk more with the people who are, yes, closer to Decision Makers, but on the other hand, now you talk about Coverage, so that's less interesting to the Decision Makers, it's less interesting to the Accessibility Experts, whom maybe the Decision Maker manages, also not always, and on the other hand, when you go and talk about the products, we have an SDK that we embed in automated tests, so there, with an Accessibility Expert, and also their manager, it's too technical for them, they're not in the loop at all, in the end they want to know that this thing is feasible or not, and there you need to convince the team of the Core Automation, the development team, who are now responsible for these automated tests — that these are tests that are very easy for them to implement, to deploy, within their existing Functional Tests, and that they'll see value from it very fast, and without you breaking anything for them along the way. Without moving their cheese too much. Yes. And basically,

Eyal David: [24:45] do you see this changing between sizes of companies, types of companies, or is it quite static for this audience?

Gilad Gimon: [24:51] We work mainly with very large companies, so there there's really already an established accessibility team, and Program. In smaller companies, and in companies like startups and such, who also bring a lot of interest in this thing, there's a question how much they're really ready and mature, in terms of really, in Hebrew, their maturity, to bring in such a project now, and how much they understand its importance. In the end, we're a not-cheap product that brings a lot of value, and it's very necessary value, surely these days — we didn't talk a bit about the business environment, but beyond that, the world being the regulatory one we mentioned, there are the business aspects, that you don't want to exclude populations, because you also want to see the Revenues from them; you can talk about the Brand Impact, and how it affects your Perception, but there's also a regulatory matter, that now new laws are coming in, by the Department of Justice in the United States, and also in Europe there's the European Accessibility Act, which is going to come into effect in 2025, and it's very similar to GDPR, in terms of the European Union's view of this thing, and now you really see European companies, of course catching themselves and saying, well, we have to raise the level here, really by several notches. And Israel is basically subject to the American standard? Israel is relatively very advanced, relative to the world in terms of legislation. Also in lawsuits, right? Yes. Now it's reached an absurd state, where idle lawyers look to make easy money, and throw class action lawsuits left and right, and just recently, a couple-three months ago, some district judge, I think, threw one such lawyer out on his ear, and greatly calmed the market — which tries to scare all kinds of falafel joints, and small online shops, that are really completely innocent, and are actually very ready to do whatever's needed for accessibility, but aren't necessarily familiar with the law that exists in the country. But broadly, the whole world works with the WCAG, with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and aligns according to this. Okay.

Eyal David: [27:14] We got a lot smarter. Gilad, I really want, also toward the end of the episode — do you have any recommendations? Reading recommendations, podcast recommendations, anything you consume? I listen from time to time.

Gilad Gimon: [27:29] For instance, also if someone wants to get into the accessibility world, maybe you have recommendations around that too? Yes. I think in the context of accessibility, first of all it's something that, first and foremost, is a mindset. As product people, it's something you need to think about. Really, the motto on accessibility is: essential for some, useful for all. Meaning, if your product is accessible, or the more accessible it is, it's also more usable for other people. For example, recording messages in WhatsApp — it's a feature that ostensibly was originally considered for people who can't type, right? Like, so you give them a voice control option and such. But in practice it's very convenient for everyone. And for all of us, basically if you think about it, that there are some accessibility issues, it can be very very temporary. Yes, I'm holding a baby in my arms, so I can't type right now. And then I'd prefer to do something else. I'm currently driving, so I'd prefer, if I have a button that can read the message to me, rather than me needing to read it, and risk having an accident. So that's generally why accessibility is interesting, and it's really proven. It improves the experience and the products. Every digital product, in impact. By the way, also physical products — there are all kinds of developments made recently, there's, for example, how to open bags of chips if you only have one hand. How? All kinds of ways — they really changed the shape of the packaging, I know, at one of the companies. Think about it even at that level: the more accessible the products are, in the end you provide a better experience for your customers. That's first and foremost. Beyond that, on a personal level, there's a book that I, we talked about it earlier, in the context of negotiation — I highly recommend it, in many aspects of life. It's called Getting to Yes, it's a book I read already two or three years ago, but I think it really gives the foundation, how to negotiate with people, not necessarily in a business context — it can be, even with your wife, so to speak. With the kids? Yes, with the kids it's, like, the heaviest negotiation there is. Because they're terrorists.

Eyal David: [29:53] So Gilad, how does one get in touch with you? On LinkedIn. Available?

Gilad Gimon: [29:59] Yes, welcome to reach out. You can also read content you've published, or actually get to Evinced's page, if you want to get a bit more into accessibility, or to see a jobs page. Yes, we also have — open to everyone — a knowledge base, and also documentation on our products, that exists there. So you can come, and read, and take interest, if you're into it.

Eyal David: [30:23] Excellent. Gilad, thank you very much. Thank you, it was great.

Gilad Gimon: [30:29] Come on, bye bye.