What does accessibility design look like at the largest social media company in the world? According to this week’s guest, Tolu Adegbite, it’s a lot more than you may think! Between websites, apps, and devices, there are a lot of considerations to factor in, and Tolu’s unique background makes her well-equipped to solve these problems.
Tolu gave us a peek into the mood at Meta fresh off the launch of Threads, and she spoke about her day-to-day routine being on the company’s app design systems team. She also shared her story of starting out as a developer, and went into how recent current events inspired her to get more involved with including intersectionality as a key factor in her work. Tolu’s also writing her first book, so she talked about how she juggles that with also being a graduate student.
Tolu is a great example of how using your life experiences can shape your creative perspectives!
- Tolu Adegbite’s Website
- Tolu Adegbite on Instagram
- Tolu Adegbite on LinkedIn
- Tolu Adegbite on Threads
Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.
Tolu Adegbite:
Hi. My name is Tolu Adegbite. I’m a product designer. Currently in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And I work on inclusive design. Right now I work at Meta, specifically working on Facebook, the design system, and making that as inclusive as possible.
Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How has your year been going so far?
Tolu Adegbite:
My year so far has been really interesting. I think this year started off kind of tough. There were a lot of just layoffs happening in tech. I felt like everywhere I looked on social media, there were just like a lot of sad messages, layoffs people having to really rejig their lives. So I kind of took a step back. I got rid of most of my social media accounts, which is kind of ironic seeing as I work for a social media company, but I really needed to take some time out to get in a better headspace because of all the tough stuff that was going on. But now I’m definitely feeling a lot more optimistic. I feel like things are turning around, so I’m feeling good about the year from here on out.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, look, I can tell you as someone that also was laid off during that time, I know what you mean about sort of retreating from social media and just seeing all of that as it takes place. Because there was a period last year where I felt like there were layoffs happening every week for like a few months. And not in small numbers either. It’s like 200 people here, 1,000 people here, and it can be super demoralizing, especially if you’re somewhere and you’ve survived a layoff like that. Survivor’s guilt. It’s bad and social media just compounds upon it.
Tolu Adegbite:
Absolutely. I totally agree. I know so many people who experienced the same thing, but for the people who weren’t laid off, there definitely is that survivor’s guilt. Looking around, realizing that it could have just as easily have been you. It was a really unusual way to start the year, especially given last year was the complete opposite. Everyone and their dog had gotten a new job and was talking about it on LinkedIn.
Maurice Cherry:
And this is independent of, sort of, talks about layoffs. Social media as a concept has been in a tailspin this year, particularly with the advent of new services — and we’ll talk about Threads — but with the advent of new services and stuff like that, it’s causing a lot of people to sort of re-examine their relationship to social media. Like…we’ll just talk about it. Twitter is crumbling at the moment and people are looking at all these different alternatives to possibly go it could be on Spill, they could go on BlueSky, they could go on Mastodon, et cetera. And it’s causing some people to say, “you know what? What if I just divest altogether from social media and not use any of these new platforms?” It’s an interesting time to be a social media user, I think.
Tolu Adegbite:
It definitely is. I feel like for so long it’s been a source of a lot of community. I am a chronic lurker. So for years I would lurk on Twitter without ever having an account. But I don’t think you can even do that anymore. I definitely can’t see accounts now that I’m not currently on Twitter, so it’s definitely an interesting time. Definitely more difficult to look in from the outside if you are also a chronic lurker like I am.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Twitter is becoming a walled garden. Some of these other places are similarly like that, where maybe you can only see a couple of things, but you have to join. And it would be one thing if the social media were more inherently social, but then it’s like tied up with algorithms and data collection, and you’re just like, I just want to talk to my friends and see what they’re doing and look at cute pictures and all that sort of stuff.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, especially since the pandemic. I think social media started being a major source of interaction for me during those, what, like, years that we couldn’t really do much in Ontario. Our laws were pretty intense about lockdown. There was a point in time where you couldn’t even leave your apartment. You couldn’t go outside with anyone who you didn’t live with. So social media was pretty much as much as I interacted with my friends and people that I knew.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What do you want to try to accomplish for the rest of this year?
Tolu Adegbite:
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mindset and perspective on my career. I’m going to keep it short, but ultimately, I think as a Black woman growing up in this country, I’ve learned to present kind of a palatable version of myself. And I realize in the work world, it doesn’t always translate to where I want to go in my career and I’m having to show up differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that, and I’m really focused on my career this year, where I want it to go and how I think my skill set can kind of propel my career forward.
Maurice Cherry:
Can you expand on that a little bit?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m one of those people who I think, lived in a fantasy land. When I was a kid, I was in my head so much, so I really remember my childhood very well. And I remember as far back as grade one, grade two, sitting in class, feeling like I had to be really good. I don’t think I could put it to words back then, but there definitely was this feeling that in order for me to not be seen as a problematic child, that I had to present myself in a certain way. I had to be super smart. I had to always be raising my hand and giving answers. I had to be super nice to the people in my class. I just had to be the best student, a model student, and I’ve definitely taken that through with me today. I feel like I’m a compulsive people pleaser. And that doesn’t really translate well into the workplace, especially when you want to take on leadership roles.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. These companies will drain everything out of you and ask for more, so I know exactly what that feeling can be like of always trying to make sure that you’re showing up in the right way and doing the right things. And oftentimes, even if you’re doing that, just how you’re presented in the workplace, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to have a good effect, which can be a bit jarring, I think, especially if you’re early in your career, it can be a bit jarring because everything that you’ve been sort of told and seen has been to that point where that’s what you’re supposed to do, that’s what you’re being told that you have to present and do. And then you get in the workplace and they’re like…not so much. It doesn’t necessarily translate that way.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. Especially starting my career as a developer, I definitely did not think about this stuff nearly as much. But I feel like as a designer, half of your craft is just how you show up. You could have the most amazing ideas and innovative, I don’t know, ideas for apps and ideas. But if you don’t show up in the right way, if you’re not confident, no one is really going to take your idea on board as well as if you show up in a certain way, which is really interesting to me. Half of this job is just how you present yourself.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’m thinking of like ten to fifteen years ago, when conversations around Black folks in technology, particularly around this new area of tech with social media and stuff like that, and how those conversations have went about and how people are trying to present themselves and making sure that you were a part of all this. It’s kind of amazing that even now, after all of that, that these are still sort of such big concerns, because company culture — trust me when I tell you this — company culture has changed a lot. Like a lot, a lot since then, but yet these are still kind of these pervasive things that mostly people of color have to deal with.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. Now that you bring that up, I feel like life kind of exists as life before and after the pandemic, but similarly life before and after George Floyd. And I think I saw a complete kind of change in how I think about work, in what we’re allowed to say, what we’re not allowed to say after that. I feel like that completely changed my career. It was recent, but a lot of conversations have happened since then. A lot of conversations that I don’t think would have happened before George Floyd.
Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious about this because you’re in Canada and granted, you know what you’re mentioning, like with George Floyd and things, this is like…I wouldn’t say it’s a uniquely American issue, but certainly it’s something that people worldwide have been able to resonate with. I’m just kind of curious know, you being from Canada, growing up in Canada, and now having to sort of hear about these issues and see how it affects your workplace. Like, how does that make you feel?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, I think growing up in Canada is really interesting. Our proximity to the U.S. makes it so that sometimes I’m more aware of American news than I am of Canadian news. Our Canadian news sources are definitely talking about American news, but we definitely felt it up here too. I think there’s this perception that these are problems that are unique to America. They’re really not. Whenever I go to the U.S. and I meet Black folks, one thing that really strikes me is that very often I’m asked, “is there racism in Canada?” And it really breaks my heart in a way that the thought of Black Americans is like, is there a place out there where this doesn’t exist? And the answer is no, it exists up here too. But it’s definitely a different brand. I think Canadian culture kind of makes it more covert, it’s less out there than it is in America. But we definitely had those conversations. Definitely was a reckoning here too, but probably not to the extent that Americans dealt with.
Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. Well, I’m not going to stay on this. This is not a nationalist podcast about, you know, issues like this. I want to talk about you and your work, so let’s go into that. So you’re a product designer at Meta. Tell me more about kind of the work you’re doing there. You mentioned you’re on the, sort of, Facebook product. Like, talk to me about that.
Tolu Adegbite:
I know that when Meta came out as a brand, there was some confusion, but I’ll just explain it for folks who are listening. Meta is the parent umbrella company that is an umbrella over Facebook. WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, Reality Labs, all that stuff. So Meta is the parent company over Facebook. So yes, I work at Meta, but specifically, mostly on Facebook at this moment in time. And it’s been really interesting. I think there’s a very specific external perception, and we’re not going to talk about that too much. But I will say working at Facebook at Meta, one thing that I’ve been really surprised by is just the amount of attention that’s paid to accessibility and inclusive design. It’s definitely a bigger topic here than it’s been probably anywhere else I’ve worked, which is really incredible. Yeah, it’s really incredible. And I’m excited that I’m here at this point in my career that I don’t have to fight and explain why what I do is important and we’re just getting to the work and trying to make these products as accessible and inclusive as possible.
Maurice Cherry:
Tell me more about what does a typical day look like for you? Are you working with a team? Are you working remotely in the office? Like, what does that look like?
Tolu Adegbite:
So I work remotely from Toronto. There are several of us here, but not a lot. Most of my coworkers are in the U.S. on the West Coast, in California. But a typical day looks like…it looks like a lot of conversations with the design systems team; accessibility falls under that team. We do a lot of the typical stuff. We do crits, we talk about components, we talk about the future of our design system. But we spend a lot of time actually thinking about how to make these things considering the largest number of people. When you work on a product that touches billions of people, it really is a huge consideration and something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, I know you mentioned you’re not going to get too much into Facebook stuff. We’re not going to dive into that too much. But on the show a couple of episodes ago, I talked with Kevin Tufts. He’s a product designer. He works…I think he works moreso on the Instagram side from what he mentioned to me. But when we had talked before, this was prior to the release of Threads, which is an Instagram app very similar to Twitter in that it’s sort of this microblogging platform that you can basically put out…I mean, I’m saying “tweets”, but you can put out these small posts. It’s connected in a way to Instagram in that you can share to and from things like that. And that just came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s had massive appeal. I think there’s up to 30 million plus people that joined within the first 24 hours or so.
Knowing that, what is the internal mood at Facebook like? Because Facebook has taken some knocks. They’ve had layoffs, there’s been the whole thing about the metaverse, et cetera. But now it seems like Facebook’s got like a win in the win column. Like, what’s it like there?
Tolu Adegbite:
You know, internally the feeling is really optimistic. There’s some really tangible excitement and that’s a really nice feeling, especially after how things have been in the tech industry lately. You can tell people are really excited and it’s awesome. So many people are trying it out themselves, wanting to test, wanting to dog food, kind of to make sure everything’s working as it should. So it feels really awesome to see that kind of excitement and it definitely is energizing.
Maurice Cherry:
Does any of your work deal with Threads in any way?
Tolu Adegbite:
Not so much. It’s mostly falling under Instagram, so they kind of do their thing. But there definitely are conversations, especially when it comes to inclusive design concepts.
Maurice Cherry:
I’m going to be really interested to see how Threads and these other similar services are going to play out in the market over the next few years. It’s not the first time that there have been a number of Twitter-like clones that have come out trying to unseat Twitter. And I think I mentioned this actually, I don’t know if I mentioned this on the show — I might have mentioned it a couple of episodes ago — but right around like 2006, 2007 when Twitter was starting to sort of come out of its quote-unquote “beta phase”, but it was becoming more popular and more well known. There were a number of other services that tried to compete for that same market share. There was Yammer. There was Pownce. Jaiku. Oh, God…it’s Plurk. That’s what it was. Plurk is another one. And they were all kind of trying to sort of compete for that same space of like “we also want to be a microblogging platform.” And this is prior to what people know of Twitter as now. This was 2007, because Twitter had pivoted from this podcasting startup. Actually, I don’t know if a lot of people know that it started out as this podcasting startup called Odeo — O-D-E-O — and then they pivoted into this sort of microblogging-esque platform around 2006.
So I’m just curious to see how they will fare because a lot of those services now got bought by bigger companies and then they shut them down or they’re just super popular in other countries and not so much here in the U.S. I know people are trying to migrate to Threads, migrate to BlueSky, migrate to Mastodon, et cetera. I’m still kind of taking a wait-and-see approach to see where the masses go or where the conversation — or really where the culture — ends up moving towards. I mean culture in a broader sense, not just like Black folks, but where the general Internet culture is going to migrate towards because it eventually will settle honestly into one place. Like it’s not going to be, I think as splintered as it is right now.
Tolu Adegbite:
I hope that happens, you know, for the culture. I really do miss Black Twitter. That was amazing. I don’t know if it’s still happening because I can’t see Twitter, but I would be really happy if everyone ended up kind of in the same space. That would really be ideal for me.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, only time will tell. I think it’s way too early now for anyone to really be able to pontificate on who’s going to, quote unquote, win. Still a little early to tell.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, we can check back in in a bit and see where this all lands.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Speaking of that, Facebook’s coming up on its 20th anniversary next year. What do you think their place is now in this modern Internet age?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, that’s an interesting thought. I definitely remember when Facebook became a thing, probably when I was in elementary school, high school maybe. It’s interesting to see how it’s progressed now, how the audience has kind of like grown and changed and shifted. I think Mark Zuckerberg has been really good. historically, he’s made a lot of good bets. Things are going really well. He’s invested in the right places. And I think going forward it’s still going to remain like a powerhouse. There are billions of users, there’s a really big international presence, and I don’t think that’s necessarily going to change. My great aunt uses WhatsApp. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon, but I think we’ll definitely continue to see maybe things change, but I don’t really foresee it, I don’t know, going anywhere anytime soon.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, that international presence is also, you know, there’s all these other products that are not just Facebook. You mentioned WhatsApp I know there’s different versions of Facebook in other countries like Facebook Lite, et cetera, and…it’s not the number one website in the world by accident. In some places, Facebook is the internet. So to kind guess, you know, prematurely call it dying. Like I’ve heard a lot, certainly here in the like Facebook’s everywhere.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, it’s growing and changing. And I think Threads is a really big testament to the team being willing to kind of go where the audience needs them to grow with the audience and the base. So that’s pretty awesome to see.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, seeing that Facebook has that global footprint, let’s talk more about what you do in terms of accessibility. Can you kind of touch on how your work affects different products at Facebook?
Tolu Adegbite:
So I started out as a developer, like I mentioned before. Kind of fell into right out of school working on web accessibility, so finding accessibility issues, fixing them…, So when I say accessibility issues, I mean things like color contrast. If you go on a website and you can’t see the text because the color contrast is too low. Or visible focus indicators, if you’re pressing the Tab button to navigate through a form and you can’t see where your cursor is. So things like that eventually morphed into working on it from the product design angle.
But it’s been really energizing to come here and see that this is a focus area and be able to work on these parts of the app design system before they make it to people and starting at that stage. So there’s a small but passionate team working on that. And I kind of see my role on that team as coming from external places that talked about web accessibility and tried fixing it, working on it in multiple different ways. But these days one of the things I’m really most passionate about is inclusive design and specifically what intersectionality means in the context of all these things.
Maurice Cherry:
Talk about that a bit more.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. So I’ll tell you how I started thinking about that.
I worked at Shopify a few years ago, and while I was there, I wrote an article for the blog. I can’t really remember why it came to mind. Probably still the fallout of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protest in the U.S., but I was thinking a lot about what this means for accessibility. So there’s this awesome woman — she wrote this book called “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard.” She was the first deafblind person to ever graduate from Harvard Law, which is a pretty massive deal, in part because before she started at Harvard Law, there were not materials that existed for a deafblind person to make it through the program. Right? Like, they didn’t have access to braille for all their materials. They didn’t have, necessarily maybe, interpreters…things like that. And she got through it. I was really touched by her story, but also her social media presence. She talks a lot about her experience as a deafblind woman who is of African descent. She made a post in particular talking about how when she interacts with other blind people, they almost always assume that she’s white. And that really got me thinking. Why is that?
It got me thinking, especially [as] someone who works in inclusive design about things like alternative text. So, you know, when you go on a website and the image is broken and you see a little bit of text, like dog, you see that text. If someone has put an alternative text attribute, which basically is what someone using something like a screen reader would hear, when their screen reader hits that image, they would hear whatever alternative text you put on it. If you put any. And oftentimes if a website even has alternative text, it’s very basic. Let’s say we go on a news website and there’s, I don’t know, a picture of a farmer. It might say farmer standing on a field, but it won’t really say anything about what the farmer looks like. Typically when we do that, I guess in a society where white is kind of the majority is seen as the default, you kind of implicitly are sending the message that this person is white, right? Yeah, it really got me thinking.
I noodled on that for a really long time, and I thought about my own experiences in elementary school. I was one of those kids who had begged to stay inside at recess, so I’d go to the library and read by myself. I read a lot of books, and I actually didn’t read a single book with a Black main character probably until middle school. And up until that point, I kid you not, I just assumed that people didn’t write books about Black people. It never even occurred to me that I just wasn’t coming across books with Black main characters for a reason. And so I was like, “okay, this is absolutely an accessibility issue.” Let’s write an article about it.
And I did, and initially actually, it’s a little bit controversial. It initially was not approved to be published, which was interesting, but eventually the editorial team was like, “okay, we’ll publish it.” But my one condition was, “okay, we cannot publish it during Black History Month.” I’m not going to publish this during Black History Month because I don’t want this to be like a topic that we relegate to Black History Month and never again. But I wrote that article, and it was the first time I’ve ever gotten hate mail. So believe it or not, some folks from the inclusive design community, I’m assuming it was those folks who were reading it, some people made fake email accounts and just, like, sent me hate mail. And I was like, “wow, this is kind of wild, kind of offensive.” But I’m like, you know what? If this is upsetting people to the extent where they’re sending me hate mail about it and telling me that race is irrelevant to people who are blind, then it means that I need to talk a lot more about it.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, look, I can tell you, as someone that has done a podcast where I talk to Black designers, I can completely believe that you got sent hate mail because people are really shook by the acknowledgment of race. Like, what you’re saying is not pinpointing this on any specific person or people. You’re saying like, “this is a behavior that needs to be corrected for greater context.” And then people are sending you hate because you want clarification. It’s madness. But I can 100% believe that you got that, which I’m sorry to hear that you’ve gotten that, but unfortunately, I can believe it.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. And I guess people had very strong reactions. But I guess working in accessibility, you kind of have these rose-colored glasses — or I did — thinking that, okay, this is a space where we’re talking about exclusion. We’re talking about people who are from marginalized groups. There absolutely should be a conversation about this. And I was really surprised that that conversation wasn’t necessarily welcome, which tells me that the folks who have the loudest voices in this community are maybe from one marginalized group, but aren’t seeing the intersection with others. Like the experience of a white woman who is blind is going to be very different from Black African immigrant who is blind, who is deafblind. And I think having more conversations about that is really important. But I’ve just really learned that for some reason, these conversations have not been at the forefront of the inclusive design movement. That tells me I need to talk about it more.
Maurice Cherry:
Do you think that it’s getting better?
Tolu Adegbite:
I don’t think I’m seeing enough conversations happen about it. The vast majority of people I know who work in inclusive design are white people. And I inherently…obviously the people who are going to talk about this issue the best are the people who’ve experienced it, right? So I think getting more Black folks in the inclusive design community will make it so that those conversations happen more often. But of course, people who don’t experience kind of what happens at these intersections of multiple marginalized identities, of course they can’t talk about it. They definitely shouldn’t be silencing us either.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, we’ve talked a lot about. Your work, what you’re doing at Facebook, et cetera. Let’s kind of shift gears and learn more about you as a person, as a designer. Tell me about where you grew up. Are you originally from Toronto?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. So I was born in Nigeria in a place called Ilé-Ifẹ̀, and I moved here when I was about four years old, and I’ve lived in the greater Toronto area, like, Toronto, the towns in and outside of it ever since. So I definitely feel very Canadian. But at the same time, I think a lot about my culture. I speak Yoruba. My parents speak Yoruba. To me, we’re immigrants, and it’s something that I think a lot about. Even though I think people often don’t read me as an immigrant, maybe because of my accent, I think it’s still a very important part of my identity.
Maurice Cherry:
Were you exposed to a lot of design and stuff growing up?
Tolu Adegbite:
Absolutely not. I did not think this was a job, which is why I started out as a developer. I felt like that’s the closest I could get to making things online look nice. When I told my parents that I was going to do design, I think there was a bit of a freak out. My mom was like, “what are you going to design? Like, houses?” There definitely was a disconnect in what that meant. But yeah, it’s interesting what design actually means on the inside. It’s been really amazing, and I think there’s, like, nothing else I’d rather be doing.
Maurice Cherry:
Now you ended up going to the University of Toronto. Tell me about sort of, like, what your time was like there and whether it really kind of helped you once you got out there as a working designer.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, I went to U of T for my undergrad. I studied psychology. U of T was the first university I kind of knew of in Toronto. There’s kind of this joke in the Nigerian community that U of T, for some reason, is like, the only university Nigerian people in Nigeria know about. So when I was little, my dad would take us there, take us to downtown, and he asked me once, when I was like, maybe five or six years old, :which university are you going to go to?” And I looked around and we were at U of T. So I was like, “I’ll go to the University of Toronto.” And then I kind of did.
I think in my head I thought I would always go there because it’s just the one that I knew of. So that was really interesting. I learned so much studying psychology, and it’s probably very cliche because I know it’s, like, one of the most common undergrads that people take. But I learned so much about myself and the way that I look at the world in classes like sex roles and gender and cultural psychology, I just completely shifted my worldview. How I think of things, especially as an immigrant. When my parents and I argue, I look at it from a cultural psychology lens. Why are we arguing? It’s because our collectivistic versus individualistic outlooks on the world are colliding. So I think it definitely helped shift how I look at the world. And I think that’s been really important as a designer to not singularly look at things from this individualistic lens, but think of things from kind of how alternate cultures will look at things. And I think I definitely live in between two cultures, so maybe it makes it a little bit easier to shift my mindset.
Maurice Cherry:
And I would imagine, kind of with the work you’re doing with inclusive design and accessibility, that psychology background is probably super helpful.
Tolu Adegbite:
I’d like to think so. I definitely try to look at it from that perspective. But ultimately, there’s so many different disabilities that people have, you’re never going to understand necessarily where all your users are coming from. So I try to, I don’t know, stay humble, try to not fall into that all-knowing designer kind of stereotype.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, I think at least it probably gives you some empathy into knowing what those kind of different disabilities would be. So tell me about your early sort of post grad career. I know you ended up working for Publicis Sapient as a product designer and as a developer, and you were there for a little over three years. Talk to me about what that experience was like.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yes. So after undergrad, I was like, okay, psychology is awesome, but what am I going to do now? And I kind of just went online trying to find interesting things to do, and I was like, oh, web development looks cool. I could do that. So I studied web development for a year at Humber, and then I started working at Sapient as a web developer. That was really interesting in that I worked mostly on websites, on the digital side of things, worked on a lot of different things. But it was also my first time working with designers, UX designers and visual designers. And I just kind of spent a lot of time working with them. I felt like they were kind of like my people. We talked a lot about how users might think about their perspectives, and I was like, I kind of want to do this. I feel like I could do this. Eventually, I convinced my very supportive director to let me kind of dabble in both, and eventually I moved over to UX.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, usually when I think about designers that are working at an ad agency — that’s what Sapient is — it’s moreso, like visual design or art director or creative director. But you were working on the development side. So they had, like an in-house team, it sounds like.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, exactly. So we’d work on different accounts, creating their websites or digital campaigns, like mini microsites and things like that.
Maurice Cherry:
And you said this is your first time kind of working with UX designers and such; did that give you a greater sense of the type of work that you could be doing?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, I had no idea that that job even existed. I think I always have loved creativity. I love art. I took art in grade eleven. Grade twelve. I took art as often as I could. I would go to art classes. But there was this one art class I took where the teacher told me I had no technical talent, and I kind of believed her. So for years…
Maurice Cherry:
Damn.
Tolu Adegbite:
I know, right? She was kind of right. But for years, I felt like I couldn’t even broach that world. I didn’t draw anymore. I didn’t paint anymore. I was never very good, but there were fun things to do outside of work. But for the first time, I saw design through a lens of not necessarily being making pretty things, but working on creating products and functional things that could exist in the real world, in the digital world. And I felt like I was more able to do that. I’m not going to be able to produce a beautiful oil painting rendering of you, but I can definitely design a landing page or a form. So I think that kind of work really appeals to me. It feels very logical in a way that appeals to me, but also creative in that you’re bringing together these elements in a way that kind of makes sense for your audience. But to me, it’s like the most creative job, even though you’re not necessarily making anything visually, like, groundbreaking or anything.
Maurice Cherry:
Now back then, were you focused on inclusive design and accessibility, or is that something which kind of came about later on in your career?
Tolu Adegbite:
I think starting as a developer working on web accessibility, it definitely was the lens through which I always wanted to work in UX design, product design. And it was kind of how I made my case in that we didn’t have a lot of people who are specializing in accessibility, but even fewer who did that from the product design side of things. So I was able to make a case for that need on the team by working on things through that lens.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, after you were working at Sapient, you worked at Shopify for a while, which you kind of mentioned a bit earlier. Tell me about that experience. I’ve heard that their internal design culture there is really good. Is that what your experience was like?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, I felt like their culture was really intentional, and it kind of presented design through a different lens for me. Yet again, that’s when I started thinking of design not only looking like building interfaces, but building your team, building very intentional relationships with your partners in product management, in development. Yeah, definitely very intentional. Definitely lots of process behind the way that things were done. It was a really nice way to broaden my horizons I feel it was a really good experience.
Maurice Cherry:
And from a design perspective, what sort of things were you working on there at Shopify?
Tolu Adegbite:
At Shopify, I specifically worked on Shopify Fulfillment Network, which — rest in peace — they had a recent round of layoffs, which is basically shedding that part of the company. But it was kind of their answer to Amazon Fulfillment. It was enabling merchants, small merchants, to ship out things from warehouses from centralized locations. And I felt like design was just taken very seriously there.
I was working on a project to build, like, a system for the warehouse. And so I started by requesting a visit to the warehouse because I had never visited a warehouse before. And so I went to a warehouse. I worked there for a couple of days, chatted with all the folks on the ground and yeah, got to experience the warehouse through their eyes, I guess. And then I went to start doing the design work, but it felt like they took it so seriously. They actually listened to me. They actually let me experience what I was designing for. And that was really cool. That’s still, I think, one of the most maybe interesting projects I’ve worked on. I feel like it was kind of like that seminal project that I worked on that made me officially a designer.
Maurice Cherry:
I get what you’re saying. Yeah. Sometimes once you start to get that internal validation, or rather I would say, once you get that external validation from your team, that the work that you’re doing is making that impact, it does so much for morale. It does so much for sort of just building yourself up as a designer to know that you are making good decisions and that you’re doing good work.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, absolutely. I guess it brought that aspect of maybe what I love about psychology, getting to understand other people into it. It wasn’t just sitting in a room and I guess making decisions from afar.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now, you’re also currently working on a book about intersectionality and design, which we’ll get to. But before we talk about that, I’d love for you to kind of give your definition of inclusive design. What does it mean to you and why? Is it something that other designers should be sort of aware of as they work?
Tolu Adegbite:
I think inclusive design to me is going beyond just compliance and following accessibility laws and making sure you’re up to code. It’s about truly designing for a variety of experiences to make a good experience for the variety of users that you have, whether that’s users with disabilities or users without disabilities, maybe users with temporary or situational disabilities.
But for me, specifically, bringing intersectionality into it is what I thought of a lot after know those few rounds of hate mail. I think that word is so often kind of divorced from where it initially came, intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw, like, that whole thing was about the multiple types of oppression that Black women experience, right? Like the misogyny and the racism, how does that intersect to create a unique social experience for Black women? Let’s pivot and look at accessibility in that same way. How does being disabled and being a Black person, being a brown person, being an immigrant, how do those things intersect to create a unique experience of disability, of exclusion, but kind of bringing Black folks back into that conversation? I’ve had experiences where I’ve seen people use the word intersectionality, and never do they even mention Kimberlé Crenshaw or Black people, which I’m like….that’s wild. That’s where the word came from. So I think we need to have those conversations. I think we need to acknowledge where this word came from, what the concept means. Kimberlé Crenshaw…shout out to her. She is still making books. She’s still writing things. She’s still talking about this. We need to acknowledge where this term came from and what it actually means.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, how does this sort of factor into the work that you’re doing with your book? Is it kind of expounding on this in terms of design?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, I think what I’m hoping to do is have more conversations about this. Get people thinking about it, get people to understand that just like a lot of other places in tech in which we have kind of our dominant group in society, white men driving things, it’s the same thing in the disability movement right now, in the accessibility movement right now. And that needs to shift in order for the accessibility movement to truly be helpful for people who are not kind of the dominant societal group, right? People of color, immigrants are more likely to be disabled because of things like environmental racism, less access to essential health care. It absolutely is an important conversation to have because we make up so much of the body of disabled people in our countries.
Maurice Cherry:
I remember super early conversations around web accessibility back when I was — oh, God, I keep aging myself when I say these things — back when I was designing websites in 2005, and even just trying to advocate for alt text on images and being told that, “oh, well, that’s only for disabled people and they’re not really using the web and stuff like that.” And I know that a lot of the technology around accessibility has increased, especially as browsers have gotten better. but I remember when it was just like pulling teeth to get people to even consider accessibility when it came to their work. They just wanted to make interesting, cool stuff online and didn’t think about anybody, but just impressing, I don’t know, other designers or friends of theirs, not thinking about who the people were that could possibly be using the thing that you’re designing.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, and I think in some circles that’s still the situation, unfortunately. But I think a lot of people maybe don’t know people who are disabled or like a lot of folks don’t maybe or didn’t know people who are Black in the past and that kind of painted their worldview on who Black people are. But if you know people who are disabled like anyone else, people who are disabled just want to have their independence and be able to do things that everyone else does. So if we don’t make our banking website accessible, the consequence of that is…the real world consequence is that someone out there needs to trust a third party to handle their money, and that’s not really a situation that would be acceptable to anyone else. So why should we subject disabled people to that experience?
I definitely think that things like laws and getting sued and lawsuits are a big reason why people are starting to care. Companies are starting to care, net-net honestly, if that’s what gets them to make their websites accessible, that’s fine with me. Be nice if it came from a place of “this is what’s right,” but if it’s going to come from the law, that’s cool too.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Having that accountability is unfortunately the only way that some companies are going to make that happen. Like they have to be fined or otherwise censured in order for them to actually take it seriously.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, absolutely. And if that’s what gets us where we need to be and having the right conversations, I can live with that.
Maurice Cherry:
There’s a book on inclusive design written by Reginé Gilbert. She’s been on the show a few times actually, who wrote “Inclusive Design for a Digital World”. Really great book. If people are listening and they want to just learn more about this, they should check that out. But I’m super interested in seeing what your book is going to be like when it comes out because I think definitely what you mentioned with intersectionality and race as it relates to design is something that is still super important, especially during this current — I guess you could say in the U.S. — this current political climate. But I think it’s probably worldwide or starting to become worldwide as it relates to things like critical race theory and things like that, where things are being either rewritten or omitted that just leave race out of it or completely rewrite history in some odd ways. So I’m really going to be interested to see the reception that your book gets once it’s out.
Tolu Adegbite:
I am interested in seeing myself finish writing it. I’ll definitely keep you posted. I’m excited to have this conversation; hopefully get less hate mail this time. But yeah, the fact that people have reacted so strongly to conversations about that tells me that we need to have more of those conversations and it’s something that we’re not talking about enough right now. But we definitely have folks who are starting to build that conversation. So I’m excited to join the chat.
Maurice Cherry:
So between your product design work that you’re doing at Meta, you’re writing this book, I think you also mentioned a bit earlier that you’re in another educational program. Is that right?
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, that’s right. So I’m starting a Masters of Inclusive Design program at OCAD U. So kind of a funny name, but Ontario College of Art and Design…University? It recently became a university. I’m so so excited about that. It’s a really small program, but it’s been really foundational in the accessibility and inclusive design community. And I’m excited to be surrounded by people who’ve done a lot of thought in this area and just to absorb their knowledge and learn from them.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I know Dr. Dori Tunstall was the dean there. She just came out with a book recently called “Decolonizing Design”, but I think she recently stepped down. And there’s another Black woman or BIPOC woman that’s stepping up as dean, I think.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, Dori’s amazing. I ran into her on the street in Toronto once and I talked to her for a while and she was super nice, and I was like, a weirdo. But she played a huge part in the creation of this program, actually, and in making it actually truly inclusive. This program has, like, remote and asynchronous options. It has options for folks who have to work while doing the program. And I’ve never really come across a program quite like that. So when Dori says inclusive design, Dori means inclusive design.
Maurice Cherry:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I had her on the show back in…oh God, 2015. Maybe she’s like episode 107 or something like that. At the time, she was still teaching in Australia. She was still teaching at Swinburne. This is before she came back to North America. So it’s been amazing to see just her glow up and change and really how fiercely she’s advocated for decolonizing design and inclusivity in her work. It’s been really a powerful thing to see.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah. And it’s one thing to say it, but actually doing it and creating a course that’s actually centered around being inclusive and providing multiple ways of learning where you’re able to codesign your education, that’s just walking the walk. And I really admire that. I never come across another higher education program like that, and I hope other programs take note and we can see more options for inclusive education.
Maurice Cherry:
So, Tolu, what does your downtime look like? I mean, I imagine a lot of this work takes up a lot of just, like, brain space and things like that. What do you do in your downtime?
Tolu Adegbite:
I’m working on that. I feel like I’ve been called by people in my life a bit of a workaholic, and I’m trying to just find hobbies that do not necessarily relate to my work. I’ve been doing some photography lately, which is fun. I really love plants. Trying to spend more time outside, but also watching movies, shows. Again, I feel like you really can’t unsee inclusive design. Right now. I’m watching “I’m A Virgo” about a 13 foot tall Black man from Oakland trying to find his way in the world. So, yeah, I really enjoy things like that. I need to get out more. But I love movies. I love film.
Maurice Cherry:
I need to catch “I’m A Virgo.” I know it just came out, I think last month — we’re recording in July. This will air in September. But I think it came out like June-ish something like that. I need to check it out because I’ve heard it’s really good.
Tolu Adegbite:
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s amazing.
Maurice Cherry:
What are some pieces of advice that you kind of find yourself coming back to? This could be, like, life advice, career advice, et cetera.
Tolu Adegbite:
This sounds kind of silly, but I say this. I think this is a quote from Winston Churchill, who is otherwise very problematic, but “when you’re going through hell, keep going.” Honestly, whenever something weird happens, something demotivating happens, I just think of that and I find it incredibly motivating. If you’re in hell, why would you stop there? You got to keep going so you at least move yourself out of hell. I’m not saying I’m in hell, but I find that quote really motivating and I think of it often.
Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the mentors that have kind of helped you out in your career? And these could be peers as well, but who are some people that have really kind of helped you to get to where you are today?
Tolu Adegbite:
Oh, my gosh. Basically everyone you’ve talked to on this podcast. But I’ve been lucky enough to have some really amazing mentors in my time. The person who I worked with at my first company, Allison Walton, who got me started in web accessibility, amazing mentor. Zoltan Hawryluk, who I worked with as a developer, I got to dip some of him once a month. Just people who have been in the industry for a really long time have taught me so much. Tory Hargro, who works at Meta, has been such an incredible mentor to me. He’s amazing and he’s so accessible, even at his level, which is amazing. I work with a designer called Alexis Cotton, who has just been an incredible mentor to me. I’ve learned so much from her about how to show up. She’s a really unique and interesting person, and I feel really lucky to have access to all these people who have made themselves so available. And, yeah, it’s very humbling, and I don’t think I’d be doing the things I’m doing now if it wasn’t for those folks.
Maurice Cherry:
I’m going to text Tory and I’m going to let him know that I talked to you for the show. When you think back on your career and sort of what you’ve learned to get to this point, and I think you may have somewhat answered this earlier, but what are you still working on unlearning as you grow as a designer?
Tolu Adegbite:
I’m trying to unlearn that kind of being a wallflower, being humble, minimizing and shrinking myself to be palatable. I think it’s going to be a long process of unlearning. But, yeah, I’m trying to just show up more. I look around at my peers and kind of how they show up in rooms and how they take up space, and I’m like, I should take up that space too. And I think a lot of women struggle with this in general, but I want to take up more space, and I want to show up as that person who yeah. Who just puts themselves out there and doesn’t need to shrink themselves to make a version of them that they feel like is palatable to the people around them.
Maurice Cherry:
Do you have like, a dream project or something that you’d love to work on one day?
Tolu Adegbite:
Honestly, I can’t even think of one off the top of my head. My dream project is talking about inclusive design and intersectionality and where Black people, where people of color, where immigrants fit into this design story.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, as you look kind of into the future, of course, like you said, you’re still working on this book, you’re in this program. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Like, what does Tolu in 2028 going to be doing?
Tolu Adegbite:
I see myself deleting a lot of hate mail.
Maurice Cherry:
Hopefully more than that. Hopefully more than that.
Tolu Adegbite:
I see myself having more conversations about these things, about it becoming more of a mainstream conversation. I think in the larger tech community, we’re definitely at the point where we’re talking about needing more diverse representation. I’m really hoping we can talk about that in the inclusive design community as well. I see myself growing, helping other folks in the way people have helped me. It’s funny you mentioned that. I feel like ever since the pandemic, I’ve learned to think a lot more short term back then. Couldn’t even plan, like, two weeks ahead. And so right now I’m focusing a lot more on what’s on my plate.
Maurice Cherry:
Look, I’m right there with you. People ask me now about stuff to do in October, and I’m like, “do I want to do that in October? Where am I going to be in October?” So I think we’re all, in a lot of ways, still kind of trying to come out of this pandemic and think about the future. But it feels like with what you’re doing, your path is set. It feels like if you keep on this path now of working on inclusive design, I think you’ve got a bright future ahead. Especially as we look at things like Web3, the metaverse, other social media platforms, things of that nature. There’s just going to be more and more opportunities because the Web is expanding in a way to include everyone that it just hasn’t before. Because technology is changing.
Tolu Adegbite:
Yeah, there’s a new frontier. There’s the Wild West, where no one has ever done these things before. And there’s definitely a lot of conversations to be had about how to make these completely new things inclusive and accessible. I definitely am super excited about the people who are around me at Meta. There’s actually surprisingly a huge number of Black folks at Meta now, kind of starting with Tory. I think he was actually the first Black designer on Facebook, which is pretty wild. But I definitely look around work and I feel like there are the right people around to help on that path, the right mentors, and that feels really awesome.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and your work? Where can they find you online?
Tolu Adegbite:
My website is tolu.xyz. Tolu is T-O-L-U. My Threads handle/Instagram is the same — tolu.xyz. Email. I’m also on LinkedIn. You can’t find me really anywhere else. I’m trying to reduce the amount of things that I consume, so those are probably the best ways to find me. Also via email. Old-fashioned.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, you also have the distinction of being the first person on the show to mention that they can be found on Threads.
Tolu Adegbite:
That feels pretty awesome. Hopefully future guests will follow that trend.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, Tolu, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show. So great to learn more about you and about your you know, like I said, the web is expanding in many different, know, virtual reality, et cetera, and the work that you’re doing just speaks to the greater need to include everyone in the conversation. So I really hope that with the work that you’re doing that we are all moving forward and closer to fulfilling that goal. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
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