Rejecting the rejection of DEIA with AccessNow’s Maayan Ziv

We first talked to Maayan Ziv on The BetaKit Podcast almost five years ago about the perils of bad design.

It was right after her company, AccessNow, had won a Governor General’s Innovation Award. Not much of the tech we use every day is well designed, and Ziv noted that accessibility can be an inclusive design tool: a concept that allows people to be included and ensure their needs are met.

Think of it all as DEIA, or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. It’s a bit of a loaded term and Ziv unpacks it this week on the podcast, claiming that accessibility is not often included in conversations about inclusion.

“It feels like my inclusion was optional, and that is a scary message to be told. ‘We were doing you a favour by letting you in the room.’”

We are also in a time when the concept of DEI is under attack. Or as Ziv put it in a recent LinkedIn post, “DEIA is being blamed for everything from bad business decisions to plane crashes.” The scapegoatting has been particularly loud from our neighbours to the south, with documents obtained by The Washington Post detailing plans the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) developed to purge federal agencies of DEI workers and offices.

And Canada? Canada doesn’t have a DOGE (yet), but some tech leaders are calling for it. That development, alongside Canada’s largest tech company dismantling its Equitable Commerce team and DEI-focused programs, has prompted others in Canadian tech to draft and sign an open letter explicitly stating that a DEI rollback is the “wrong direction for Canada.”

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Back to Ziv, who has been working in the accessibility space for more than a decade. As she says, “long enough to know that even the smallest progress takes a fight.” I asked her back on the podcast to discuss why she feels that fight is “slipping through our fingers,” and her response to governments, corporations, and fellow tech leaders currently sending the message that inclusion is optional.

Let’s dig in.

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Edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy Maayan Ziv via LinkedIn.