Episode 9 - Abdulrafiu Izuafa

We're back after a short Easter break and with a phenomenal episode. Mike is joined by Abdulrafiu Izuafa (aka Abdul) who has a real passion for accessibility and making sure that projects include it right from the start.

Based in Nigeria he is working to build community that is inclusive and really takes his passion as an a11y to the core. 

Thanks for listening folks. Please connect with us and follow us (you know, the usual - Like, Share, Follow 😉) in all the places below:

YouTube: https:/www.youtube.com/@365a11y
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/365-a11y
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@365a11y

And on all major podcast platforms

All podcast content is © 2026 Mike Hartley / 365 a11y

Transcript

Mike Hartley (00:00)
Hello everybody, welcome to 365 ally the podcast as I'm sure you know by now my name is Mike Hartley and I am your host for this podcast and For this episode. I am really really thrilled to be joined from Nigeria By Abdul Abdul welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on

Why don't you tell our lovely audience and wonderful people out there a bit about yourself, what you do, who you are. Go for it.

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (00:34)
Hi Mike, thanks. My name is Abdul Refiu. I reside in Nigeria and I'm a Microsoft in the M365 space. I currently work as a Senior AI slash ML Consultant for Onyx Data in the United Kingdom. I work remotely. I work centers across building AI systems, advocating for accessibility projects and making sure that in most projects, on most...

companies the product is built

Accessibility is not an afterthought, it's majorly about it being a default in terms of design. So I've worked on several projects across accessibility, I've spoken about accessibility, I've written blogs, articles, white papers, just trying to push the narrative that accessibility and inclusion should always be in the minds, in the design, in the process, the pipeline of everything designers or developers do. Yeah, that's just a bit about me.

Mike Hartley (01:28)
Love it. Love it. Yes. Yes. Something that I definitely shout about and talk about an awful lot. Get it in there right at the beginning. So yeah, no, brilliant. Well, it is absolutely wonderful to meet you and to welcome you to the podcast. So I guess...

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (01:28)
you

Mike Hartley (01:51)
Good start point is what does accessibility mean to you?

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (01:55)
Well, that's, I would say that's a very, very grassroots question because I mean, accessibility is a very, very delicate topic in terms of PWD, persons with disabilities. So, I think accessibility is just making sure that

anybody, any person is able to get something or not. So I think that's just is really in terms of what they can assess, how they can assess it and the satisfaction they get from assessing it. So I grew up in Nigeria. I grew up in Nigeria in a remote town in a state and then I moved to the country's capitals and then I realized that a lot of PWDs, a lot of deaf and blind persons

are often neglected in the digital space. So that resulted me to join a fellowship where I had to build a news accessibility platform to kind of get these people into the news space because news was a critical matter then in Nigeria and a lot of these places are left behind. I mean, even up to now, a lot of news platforms do not still have sign language interpreters, a lot of newsrooms do not still have...

captions for their videos, still do not have alt text on their images. They see a lot of gap in the accessibility space. I feel accessibility to me isn't just something that is fancy, it's not your fancy technical term. It's just how you are thinking about everybody or just the people who you would like to have use your product or use your service.

and in what way can they actually assess it. So most of the time, feel it's accessibility in most, especially for persons who do not consider themselves a person with ability, because I feel no one, no PWD or no person or nobody who has an issue or a disability should be considered disabled. So I feel everyone who is working on

a project or anyone is working on the service that is going to reach the wider world, should consider that these people are not just an edge case. because sometimes we feel if I build a product and then I have 50,000 people using it and I'm generating a huge revenue, the persons with disability, let's say the deaf community can be about, I mean, currently in the world,

over 1.3 billion people living with disabilities and then most persons feel like it's an edge case. If 1.3 billion people are living with disabilities, it shouldn't be an edge case anymore. That's literally a size of a continent. That's the population of most continents. So, and then if you're thinking about the margin in terms of profits revenue, products usage, produce accessibility, if you consider as the first thought, a default setting.

you are mostly reducing the barrier for people to access it. So in accessibility, there is some attempt called the curb-cut effect. So I think it originated sometime in the United States where wheelchair users had some issue with the side road works. And then they had to petition the government to create a platform for them to move through it.

And I currently that same platform is serving a lot of people. That's to show you that if you are building for persons with disabilities, recreating accessibility and inclusion, you are more or less helping a wider population. So for example, the initial idea of closed captioning on videos is to allow persons who are deaf to actually know what is going on. But today I use closed captioning. Let's say for example, there's a language barrier or

I just do not have the time to listen to the audio. can't decide to use closed captioning. Persons who use voice translations, I could be busy in my home and then need the voice translation service to translate for me. So most of the time, it's not really about building for a smaller population. Building for persons with disabilities is you enabling a larger population. And I feel everybody

everybody who have an issue with accessibility or just the people who look like you and have what you have, most of the time it's just you try to build a solution that solves their problem. And I also feel that accessibility is something that should always be the first concern in everything going on. And I'm very proud, I'm very glad that Microsoft is doing a lot of work in the accessibility space, the ability called AirSubmit.

I've seen a lot of digital solutions being brought in, both from the Magic Cup and around Microsoft services. So I've been trying my best to explore in what ways Microsoft advocacy for accessibility in its entirety. And I feel a lot of work is being done to make sure that no one is actually excluded. And a lot of these places only with disabilities are most times, or a lot of the times included in the first stage of the design process or the pipeline of

using the product down from the design stage to the end of life stage. I don't know if I've said a lot, but then I feel that's what accessibility means to me. It should just be about thinking about how a person is able to assess it's seeing or not. So if they're to assess it's fine. They have accessibility to it. But if they're not able to assess it, that's you excluding them.

Mike Hartley (07:40)
No, no, I love that.

I also love, right back when you were starting, you talked not just about everybody being able to access it and how they're able to access it, but you talked about their satisfaction and that. And I think that's an element that is really overlooked quite often is, well,

not only do we need to make sure that people can access stuff and they can use it, but they enjoy the experience because it should be well...

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (08:12)
Cheers.

Mike Hartley (08:15)
If somebody without a disability or without a disability in that area can use it and enjoy it, then why shouldn't somebody who is affected by something not treated in that same way? So no, I loved that. thought that was fantastic because it is just something that people don't...

don't often think about is that emotional element behind it as well as just the technical access of it all. So, no, that's brilliant. In your daily life then, doing what you do and being such a real strong advocate,

What's accessibility look like in your daily life then for you?

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (09:03)
I feel accessibility is majorly built on the foundation of usability. Because like you said, the satisfaction, the cognitive emotion, the heuristic, a lot of things that have to do with how you feel about your product is what makes it accessible. I I live in Nigeria and then I deal with accessibility issues almost every day, every time, constantly.

out. Today power goes out randomly, data is expensive for some students in my community. Choosing between data and food is a really big thing because I mean if you have money to get data for your work and then you haven't fed for a while that's also an accessibility gap in terms of what the government is providing or making seamless or efficient for its citizens.

to use to access resources. And a lot of these platforms assume that if you have fast Wi-Fi and then you have the most up-to-date phone, the latest model, so they just kind of leave out people who probably are borrowing or sharing their time with their mates or people who are still using older models of phones, people who their apps can't even be installed on their phone.

So a lot of these issues are things I face every day. And one of the critical thing about accessibility in my daily life was when I was building a news accessibility platform, then I also undergo a user research study to understand my users, the user personas, the user journeys, the user stories and everything. And then I actually sat down with deaf and blind people to try and understand their own points of view. And then a lot of them could not really assess news. A lot of them could not really watch

watch news TVs, they could not really access the information most of these newsrooms are dishing out. And then I had to start, I actually sat with a lot of them, the visually impaired, the deaf persons, to try to understand what they are doing to enable theirself, make these things accessible to them. And it was a big eye-opening for me because I realized that these solutions, they exist. I mean,

There's one solution doing one thing, another solution doing one thing, that kind of like scatters all over the place. And then even though there is already a gap in terms of them accessing these tools, there's now another issue of trying to understand how to use them. So the center of the project, the user-accessible platform, was to build, to aggregate these tools together to make sure that it's a central platform that makes news accessible to persons with disabilities.

And kind of worked because we got a lot of positive reviews, people are trying to log the platform. And then the project is not really stable right now, but then it was a big success to me and to my teammates because I believe we're able to impact a lot of lives considering the fact that these are daily issues a lot of these therefore blind people face and they're often ignored. I know a lot of newsrooms are trying their best to bring in sign language into our printers, but then they see a major gap in the different

modus or mediums of transmitting this information to them. And like I said, there are over 1.3 billion people globally living with disabilities. It's not a small group, it's not an edge case, it's literally, like I said, the size of a continent. So if we're talking about technology, if we're talking about AI in its scale, a lot of these are just not built for them because I found a lot of ways that LGBT have not enabled accessibility for persons with disabilities.

created different case studies, I've written white papers narrating the experience that persons with disabilities face using a lot of these platforms and how they are not enabling an environment for them to thrive. And I carry this thing in most of the things I build. I try and make sure that accessibility is the first thought of everything I do. And it kind of works everywhere I go. where I'm working, when I'm on calls, when I'm in meetings, every single thing, I try and bring in accessibility. So for example,

If I'm in a meeting, try and enable captioning, I try and record this, try and enable live translations because I feel there could be someone in the crowd that kind of have one disability or the other that I am not aware of because I shouldn't be blinded by the fact that, I am a normal human being, I don't have any issue, and then expect everyone to be like me. So in every single thing I do,

I bring in that accessibility concept or the principle of making sure that no one is actually left behind. So whether it's with building a product, I said, talking to persons, I try and make sure that there's an understanding and there's a means of communication in terms of including them in every single thing I do. just a question, I accessibility impacts every single thing that happens in my life. And then sometimes it happens unconsciously, sometimes it happens intentionally.

It just flows because it's something that I've been advocating for for a very, very long time. And I feel like a lot of people should also draw in their attention into making sure that a lot of digital products, especially in the AI space currently, I feel like there's a huge, there are a lot of challenges going on with the way AI is growing that is making people with disabilities not able to have that maximum satisfaction they can get.

Mike Hartley (14:25)
Brilliant, no, brilliant. No, that's awesome. Thank you for that. And I mean, yeah, you mentioned AI and the role of AI.

I guess really sort of kind of looking at a couple of different things with AI because we have to talk about AI. Of course we do. We've got to. You can't not talk about AI now. But I guess so from your perspective, mean, what do you see the impact of AI as being?

right now on accessibility and then what would you hope or what do you think AI is going to bring to accessibility in the future as we move forward with all this wonderful agentic future that we're living in now?

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (15:21)
Well, I feel AI is, I mean AI have its side effects, AI have its own disadvantages, but then I feel AI has actually enabled a lot of these accessibility products beyond comprehension because before now, think a lot of, let's say I'm in newsroom, I would also hire a lot of news.

sign language interpreters to interpret for me and everything. But then currently AI is enabling some of all these things. I mean, currently there's sign language interpreters, they closed captioning or submitted recording and everything. So AI in its own, it's doing its best, but then the problem is how it's being used. Because regardless, for example, TrajBTC doesn't assume itself that, can't assume itself that,

The person using me as a stable internet, the person using me is not deaf, the person using me is not blind. So I feel by default setting, there should be a sense of awareness. There should be a context of understanding for the person using that product. And AI is enabling that in its own way, but then the way we use it is what really matters. So I feel AI actually helps positively. I use AI to build the news accessibility platform. I use AI to build a lot of features, a lot of things.

I also, previous runs of the Microsoft ImagineCorp, one of their core solution, I can't really recall the name, was built entirely on AI, and it has to do with sign language, and everything. So AI is doing a lot of work, because before now, if you are trying to build for the persons with disabilities, if I try to create accessibility and inclusion, it's more harder, because you start to be thinking about how to make this accessible, how to...

embed closed captioning, how to add alt text. But now you can just click a button. I mean, if I'm working on Microsoft Word, for example, there's an accessibility checker that literally tells me, the image I've added, there's no alt text. And then it kind of recommends an alt text for me to impute inside that image. So without AI, I would have to be thinking, what do I have to write to make this understandable?

to the other audience that might not have access to visually see this. So AI is also making a lot of processes. AI is making development simpler than ever. But then I feel there's still a lot of edge cases because I was researching on why AIs and foundational LLM modules like charge efficiency, cloud and the rest should not identify people faces. And then I realized that there is a huge problem

terms of the data being trained, being used to train this AI, there's a huge problem in how this AI is being represented in the other diversity of people, whether it's black persons, whether it's persons with disabilities, use bias in their training data. And then from there, I realized that some persons are being neglected, because the people using this AI believe that the certain audience that deserves it

should not should ideally just be known because for example if i'm getting a tool for a deaf person i would if i'm not deaf i would have to go and meet that deaf person and ask you're deaf how would you like to assess this what works for you best but then most of these ai platforms most of these ai companies they assume that everyone using their product should be well off should be stable should be normal should be everything and then they do not really consider the side effects it would have for

the marginalized communities, the persons trying so hard to create a voice in the community. for example, tragedy, we see as a lot of issues identifying black persons. mean, the black population also have a lot of challenges using this AI. There's a lot of cases going on around the world about how it's categorizes them, how it's made by us, the training data set. So I feel the people training with this AI, the people building on AI,

I'm not including the people that actually need this AI to be accessible to them. So I've never seen anywhere which I didn't see release an article or publicly came out and said, for our next AI model, we brought in a deaf person, we brought in a blind person, we brought in different kinds of persons to let them tell us what they would want this AI to enable for them. So we can add it to our training pipeline. I've not seen that. I don't know if they've done that.

But then it's to show you how huge the problem is because these people are not being included. These persons are not being included in lots of processes. And then we expect that, okay, because AI app is good part, AI can translate for you, AI can caption for you, AI can everything for you. We expect this, it should be a default set, default functionality for these people to use. But then we are lacking the sense of context to how these people actually use it.

Because if I'm in blind per se, I would not know what this platform is enabling for me. If there's no obvious feature that, okay, this is what you need to click or do to make this work for you. If there's no setting or there's no medium for me to actually make this accessible for me, I feel that's a huge gap. And then I know you talked about with the future of accessibility in AI. think I also heard something about that. And the way the agent AI systems are moving in the world today.

Mike Hartley (20:39)
Yeah.

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (20:42)
I feel tech currently is not just, I think tech is not just a theory aspect. There's a lot of work being done right now in tech. There's read time translations, there's adaptive interfaces, there's AI that adjusts to your specific needs. A lot of all these tools, they exist, but the problem was never technology. I don't feel like the problem was ever technology. The problem was who was in the room, because like I said, people build the chat room, people build the cloud, people build the...

a lot of these AI models, they do not really understand what the persons with disabilities actually want. And if everyone is actually building AI that comes from the same background, there would be no need to actually think about persons with disabilities. Because, for example, you are building AI for, let's say, people in the United States. Everybody is building on that same model. That would mean they'll be the same experience. No one would ever have to worry whether the power would stay on.

No one would ever have to worry if the people in the United States are different from people in Africa. They are going to keep building for themselves, for purpose, not for because of what they know. They just build simply because they feel since there's already a foundation laid, we should continue building on that. So I feel technology is not really the issue because anyone can wake up any day and say, OK, this is an innovative concept. can build on this.

And I feel we actually need people that, I actually need people who have actually experienced these barriers. I people with disabilities that can actually build the solution. So whether we interact with them, whether we include them in our processes, whether we interview them, whether we survey them, they should not always be an afterthought. And from the very first day, like I said, a lot of these pieces should be included in the design process. I mean,

When I spoke with some MVPs within the Microsoft community recently, a lot of them asked to... Because there was a community conference we had in the Microsoft MVP community where we just unanimously decided accessibility should always be a default. It should not be a feature that you have to both own later. Because if you think about it, it's just like if you make accessibility an afterthought, it's harder for you to integrate.

and implement because for example, let's say I'm building a feature on Uber for example, and then I release that feature to the public. If I'm building it as an afterthought, as it is bit as an afterthought, I'll start thinking about, oh, what do I need to do to make this accessible? Do I need to change this? Do I need to add contrast? Do I need to make it brighter? Do I need to add this functionality? It's harder because as you took it as a first design principle, you'd already know, oh, this is what I need to do. The engineering team, they don't need to

I treat on the design, the engineering team is going to, I treat on the development. And then by doing so, you are already involving people with disabilities in the actual design process. Not after you've shipped those features, because if you're written, from the very first time you wrote the first line of code, if you consider accessibility as a first thought of design, a default setting, you'll never think about making it accessible for anyone after. As long as, for example, let's say I'm building a streaming platform, I include closed caption.

I would never expect anyone to come after me and say, oh, why is there no closed captioning in this? And then I will start to be battling, how do I need to integrate this? What do I need to do? Oh, did we miss this? But then if it's a default setting, your product is going to flow. mean, a lot of users are going to be satisfied that, oh, this is actually an innovative concept. Oh, I do not necessarily have to listen to the audios. I can read the closed captioning and everything. So I want just to get to the point. I feel...

For people living with disabilities, especially in Nigeria, should not be a short form of information. should not be a scenario where they are not able to access information the way the general population do. And I feel like there's opportunity everywhere else, the way there's opportunity for people who are abled and people who are normal. And I think it's possible now because, like I said, technology is not the problem.

everyone has access to their love amazing things happening right now AI is performing best than ever and I feel like it just has to take it's attentionality purpose and making sure that you're taking those people who are disabled into hearts in everything you're designing and I feel like if I were building through this principle no one would actually ever be lesbian and I feel like the way accessibility is going I feel like it's going to reach a stage where

will no longer be able to differentiate people that are actually disabled and people that are actually able because seamlessly, I mean, there's meta AI, meta Ray-Ban glasses, there are a lot of technology products, a lot of innovative products going right now. And then I feel like the future is going to reach a stage where you'll be working beside someone and you know that that person is deaf because there are lot of technologies that have been built to enable that person belongs to the society. So I feel it's just left for us to pick out

what is already exist, the technology, think about the problem that actually needs to be solved and then build on it. I think that's the major thing we actually have to address if our building is really safe for the future in this AI agentic era.

Mike Hartley (26:15)
Brilliant. ⁓ I'm just sat here. I'm loving your passion. loving your enthusiasm and the thinking that you've got behind all this. Anybody who knows me knows it's very unusual for me to sit and to just be quiet and listen and not say anything and...

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (26:16)
Really.

Mike Hartley (26:36)
And no, it's brilliant just hearing that enthusiasm and those ideas.

I think one thing that I've kind of picked up, because you've mentioned it a few times really, and my brain's kind of whirring away in the background as it does, is this whole thing of, well...

having closed captions, having sign language, having things presented in a way by default for a user without them having to...

It's almost as if we need a.

almost a preferences passport for accessibility that allows people to set up a

a secure ID that

they can then say, yeah, I prefer my content with subtitles and I would prefer signing if available. And then all of your media companies, your Netflix's, your Disney pluses, your news outlets, when people log in, they can link up to this.

Passport scheme to say well here are my preferences so that you don't have to do it on everything you go on to I mean it really annoys me because whenever I Log into a new service. I like to have closed captions I'm not deaf But it's been proven that

closed captions, they help with your concentration. They help you take in more of the content. And I mean, let's be honest, there's more than enough distractions around us at the moment. and something like 80 % of people who use closed captions are not deaf. They're just in situations where they might prefer them might be in the bedroom.

they don't want to wake the partner up. So they have the closed captions on or things like that. And it really frustrates me that every time I log into a service or I mean my phone or my laptop will log me out of stuff and then I'll log back in and it'll be like, great. It's forgotten that I like subtitles on. Brilliant.

Or I log into a program, it's like, great, it's forgotten that I like dark mode, not light mode and all these sorts of things. it's just those paper cut effects that on their own, a paper cut is really annoying. It's frustrating and it aches a bit. But if you get lots of paper cuts, it gets really painful. And that's the kind of thing that people are dealing with.

Especially as there are so many different services and every single one of them requires you to log into something and it's just like, yeah. So no, no, that's fantastic. I guess really,

That just really kind of leaves me to just say a massive thank you to you. It has been really entertaining. It's been encouraging. I love talking to people to hear their passion and their enthusiasm for accessibility and...

You've got it in bucket loads. It is so fantastic to hear. And I love the sound of the things that you're doing to make sure that accessibility is just there from the word go. So no, brilliant. Abdul, thank you so, so much for taking time to...

to sit with me and chat to me. It has been wonderful talking to you. yeah, and folks on that note, I will say have a great day, great evening, great night, whatever time you're listening to this. Don't forget to make sure you.

Do the usual, like, subscribe, follow, share, all those wonderful things that we're all expected to do these days. But please keep following 365 Ally. There's so much more coming along that's being planned. So much good stuff with amazing people like Abdul and just getting more and more people sharing their stories and building out a fantastic community where

we can work together to make accessibility the default. So I will catch you all on the next episode, folks. Thank you very much and goodbye.

Abdulrafiu Izuafa (31:13)
Bye.