The Art of Communicating Accessibly Lines of Communication Kemet Dugue Driver Onboarding 1

The Problem: Inaccessible Communication Problems Designer Product Manager Engineer (different team) Data Science Engineer (same team) Engineer ● Misunderstandings ● Project Delays & Increased Costs ● Reduced Innovation ● Impaired Decision Making ● Reduced Collaboration ● And so many more…. 2

The Solution: Accessible Communication Benefits Designer Product Manager Engineer (different team) Data Science Engineer (same team) Engineer ● Enhanced Understanding ● Improved Collaboration ● Increased Innovation ● Faster Decision Making ● Career Advancement ● And so many more…. 3

Strategies & Tips ● Know Your Audience “Redux” in frontend meeting, “global state management” in stack-agnostic meeting ● Use plain Language (Assume Firehose is the name of the service) “Calling Firehose’s createDocument endpoint to create a document” → “ Communicating with the document service for document creation ● Visual Aids ( & Screenshots) 4

Strategies & Tips ● Use Concrete Examples Redux state → just an object with keys and values ● Avoid Information Overload “QA is reserved for feature testing testing, however there are cases……” → “QA is reserved for feature testing” ● Be Patient and Empathetic No consumers in the dead letter queue 5

A caveat… 6

Resources for getting started 7

Resources for getting started “How to Communicate More Effectively” (David Glassanos) - article “Smart Brevity” (Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz) “Words That Work” (Dr. Frank Luntz) 8