Vue.js Global conference: An interview with Maria Lamardo

what is up welcome back to the channel so in this video i am interviewing maria lamardo um i clearly didn't pronounce that the right way but she'll correct me at the first question of the interview so this series of videos is done in collaboration with the refugees global event this is from the same organizers as the excellent 5gs amsterdam conference so we are collaborating so i am basically interviewing a bunch of the speakers we talk about their talk a bit technically um and then after that i ask the questions that i want to ask the speakers myself so this way um i get to do really cool interviews with great people and the conference organizers can like cut out a little part and that's a nice promotional material about the talks that the the speakers give so in this interview as i said i'm talking to maria we talk about her unconventional path into tech we talk about her talk that is all about accessibility and forms which is generally quite complex and it's a great conversation it moved very fast i didn't realize we already spent 25 minutes on it when we were done so without further ado this is the interview with maria lamardo welcome maria how are you good how are you oh good um thanks so much for joining here in this conference and slash interview talk i'm super happy to have you so your name doesn't sound american or maybe a little can you tell me how to pronounce it first of all because i've probably not said it properly in our introduction and also talk about where it comes from sure so my name is maria lamardo i am originally from venezuela though i do have italian descent so that's actually where my last name is from ah there you go and were you born in the u.s no i was born in venezuela and then i came to the us in 2001. okay and did you have to learn english or did you just learn that as a child already i definitely had to learn english i think it's funny because growing up we had like the english classes and that was like my least favorite class i remember when my parents told us we were moving to the us i'm like no now it's i cannot escape it i have to oh no you have to go english well you sound very american to me then again i'm from europe so a lot of english sounds good to me um so let's talk about the conference because we're we're doing this interview in context of the fuji as global conference so can you talk about like your talk and what it's about yeah so i'm going to be going over accessible forms so how to create forms in an accessible way so that all your users can go and fill out the forms especially users who are using assistive technology like keyboard and screen readers and things like that um to be able to navigate and fill out your forms wow it sounds like a small topic but i think it's actually pretty big because there's a lot of ways you can use forms right yeah especially for like the advanced forms it can get pretty complicated so what to use in advanced form um things that are kind of conditional or things that are required if another field has already been filled out and is required so making sure that um the focus and management is handled correctly there um that the design also supports accessibility features and things like that um so yeah okay so um if if you had to do like a little elevator pitch like this is a cfp right generally you say okay this is the talk what you just did but what will what will the audience learn when they um see your talk well you definitely want all your users to be able to fill out the forms especially if it's an important crucial form to your application like trying to sign up right create an account um so just making sure that all your users can go through it and actually submit the form the way that you intended for your applications to be used um so like if you're not considering um accessibility in your forms you're going to be missing out in a lot of users who are just not going to be able to navigate your form and i think it's one billion people in around the world have some sort of disability that's 15 of the entire world population and they account for yeah it's a huge number yes and they yeah and then people with disabilities and their families account for they have a spending power of six trillion dollars so again it's a big big number and a lot of companies should care about so if you're building an application that has forms please consider um how keyboard kind of plays into this yeah exactly and how do you consider people that have really slow devices or almost no internet you have to able to click that buy button or to do a checkout right so are you taking care of that in your talk as well as like maybe no javascript or it hasn't loaded yet and these kind of things oh i i wasn't thinking about doing that but i will definitely add it after this conversation thank you there you go because i see that pretty often like i always say my team is like okay build it for no javascript and they're like yeah but everybody has javascript and then i always say they don't have javascript until they have it right especially with those new react bundles that are huge and it has to hydrate and all of that stuff what if it hasn't hydrated yet and you have to click that button nothing happens it's a very sad form right yeah luckily i feel like a lot of accessibility issues inside forms are handled by the correct use of the semantic elements right so like a little bit is html heavy i would say um so i think like if you're using the correct element for the job you are going to be able to have a better experience for those users without javascript yeah exactly and how do you intend to handle error messages because i know some people might be colorblind and if you put a red box around the input they haven't seen that so how do you deal with that yeah so there's a couple of things like you can use styling like that like the red border and maybe like give it a hint of red like inside the input but then you definitely want to create like the error messages right underneath each input field that has the error and then if an user is trying to submit the form say that the second field or something has an error as soon as you submit the form you want to call focus back into that specific input so that the user um can see the error message especially users who are using like screen magnifi magnification tools um they're able to clearly see what is being asked of them to kind of fix okay yeah exactly this is always what's hard and oh i have so many annoying questions for you how about i am on my iphone right and you kind of often have it on an iphone that the menu bar pops open like that if you or your keyboard i mean and then your field might be in focus but you didn't want to zoom or it's still a desktop website like how do you deal with that kind of stuff is there any way to deal with that well i would say just making sure that um your input fields are correct semantically would take a lot i would take care of a lot of this so making sure that you're using like inputs and then the type of input that you have um it should kind of take care of that um scrolling behavior yeah exactly and uh what is your opinion on you you kind of see it often nowadays that a password field has a little eye icon on the side so when you click that you can see your password and then generally they don't have two passwords field anymore to validate that you actually typed in the right password what do you think about this stuff is it actually accessible um so there are a lot of things about password and i think i talked to clients a lot about like where they should have to even write out the requirements for the password um so sometimes you'll see like a little icon that you have to pop open so that you could see all the requirements but then you have to like remember all of these requirements before you kind of put them in um so a couple of things about password just like making sure that um you're able to see all of the requirements and even provide like a ui like check as you meet each of those requirements so that it's a lot easier to keep track of and i really like um having two um two different confirming password fields i guess um that way you can kind of see um even the the length of the password and things like that that they're the same yeah exactly it's pretty important okay so i won't not ask anymore because i'm assuming you're gonna do all of that in your talk and we want people to actually see your talk right so um how about we dive in because well i know you a little bit but not all the viewers do and i know that your path into technology or into being a developer was i would say quite unique not to me personally but that's another story but would you mind explaining a little bit what happened and how you got into it and then after that like how did you get so good at what you do like i'm really impressed by that but let's first start with the base story if you wouldn't mind sure thanks um so before i started my path into development right i i am still a board certified assistant behavior analyst so what that means is i used to provide behavioral therapy for people with developmental disabilities um and it's something that i like just love so much it was like such a passion and it was such a fulfilling feel just to be able to like interact with people one-on-one and like see the difference that you were having in people's lives and like entire families right um and then about three years ago i got really really sick all of a sudden i had never had really um too many issues with health before um and then it pretty much hit me within like three weeks i was kind of in bed right like i couldn't get out of bed um and it was like a rare autoimmune disease that attacked my muscles my joints everything nobody could really figure it out um so you know kind of jumping from specialists to specialists it was really really scary um and of course i had to kind of take medical leave from my work um i was having a hard time just moving and my husband is a back-end developer and he was you know very like hey you know you could do from bed like we didn't know how this was going to kind of work out so then he really encouraged me to try to learn how to program because he's like that's definitely something you could do remotely if you just cannot leave the house luckily i as i started i really really enjoyed it i really like the problem solving aspect of it but i still felt like it was missing that um fulfillment part that i was getting in my previous career and it wasn't until i took a i was taking a udacity scholarship course and then they had a section on accessibility and i remember like i saw that and i was like oh my gosh that's like exactly what i was looking for like it's kind of bringing my previous passion into this field and like being able to find that fulfillment and like helping people like have better experiences right and that's something that i saw in my previous field that's like as we struggled finding not only the devices that were accessible but then the applications within those devices had to also function in a certain way and they just didn't and it was like a source of frustration not only for the individual but for the families that had a hard time communicating um right so i i feel very lucky to have found this and that i um found kind of like a second passion that is also very fulfilling for me yeah wow what a story and so it kind of in a short time turned your life completely around i can imagine you are quite scared like what what just happened to me and i need to get out of this and yeah it's crazy and um what actually what strikes me on this also is like so before you were kind of in the helping people's fear and what i've learned and i'm actually quite similar to you i used to be a nurse and now i do tech stuff um but there's not that many people that have um a technical brain when while they do that other type of work and so for some reason you just took this udemy class and you had your husband and you're you're actually able to snap into that and do that work and so how is that feeling for you to to learn like that i have always been a pretty big nerd i've always loved studying i've always loved taking tests like my first class in college was like multivariable calculus just for fun i didn't even need it to graduate or anything um so i've always just like really enjoyed problem solving i've really enjoyed like just studying for the hell of it like to me like the most relaxing like environment is like quiet i'm about to take a test oh so like learning for me that was like super fun i had um so many notes like i just love taking notes taking classes so for me it was like really really fun um of course it wasn't something that i was pushed to on until i got sick i felt like my previous field was also challenging in different ways and there were a lot of problems to solve they were just kind of different wow that's just awesome and the fact that you just pulled through that and and made such a successful career now in such a short time because i've been like i'm a dinosaur in this industry and i'm slowly ramping up and you're like doing this for like three years so um if you look at like your twitter feed and the amount of conference you speak at but also just normal work that's pretty busy right and on the other side you're also still having some health issues so what is your secret to be able to deal with all of that to me you're just you're just a badass but there might be more right and do you have anything about that well first i appreciate you saying that um well yes i do maintain a very very busy um life um and it's you know i really enjoy it it's not something that it's a drag right like i just really enjoy doing this work therefore i do it um yeah so at work i'll put in my hours at work then i finish that then i do like my community organizing and things like that i'm working on the accessibility docs review three as well which has been awesome like just kind of being able to deep dive more into accessibility i absolutely love that um but i yeah i maintain a very busy schedule um i've recently since the pandemic started working out which is something that i haven't been able to do in about three years actually and i'm really excited luckily i've been able to kind of keep my symptoms down um but you know as you've seen um sometimes they kind of flare up and go away every so often but um luckily i'm able to kind of maintain a healthy diet and just slowly getting back into working out which has been amazing oh this is awesome so a quick maybe more complex question but do you think it's also part of your own mindset that you are sometimes with more issues and sometimes with less and maybe during the pandemic you're actually now in a better mindset and you do you therefore maybe have less issues and you're able to do sports again which i can imagine is awesome if you could not do that before yeah i think that might be true i remember like when the pandemic hit um i've been so busy before like especially with traveling and conferences it's just been like back to back to back and when the pandemic hit of course it's very scary and you know it's a bad situation to be in um but some of the positives i guess just looking i i always start to look at the positive things as they come out um on this has been life has slowed down a little bit for me right which has also helped me just kind of focus on my own health a little bit more um like started working out and things like that just kind of giving myself some time to get into better habits um and that has absolutely helped me so um this was a couple of months ago when you were in amsterdam we were backstage and it was the second day of the conference and we all went out partying and stuff like that and i was sitting next to you we hadn't spoken yet i think and you stood up and you had some it was not the easiest standing up um that's just what it is right that's what you have yeah and then there's this one guy i don't remember who it was but he just joked like do you have like a big hangover from the party and then you came back with some quite witty amazing thing that you said i don't exactly remember but do you have to deal with this kind of stuff quite often um well i guess luckily and non-luckily right like i have i guess like an invisible disease like you cannot see it unless i'm like invisible pain sometimes um which is kind of what happened there and i mean it doesn't bother me when people make comments like that because i mean it is really rare right and i and i don't expect people to just automatically go into that mindset of like oh wow she must be really sick or like you know that that's not as common as like oh maybe you party too much last night um so like i i i kind of see that as like oh this is an opportunity to me to for me to be able to hey let's bring this up let's talk about it let's let's show you how like different people might have completely different um experiences and they might be going through something that you might not even be able to relate to um so like yeah to me it was like hey no actually i have this disease you know and this is what happens sometimes and it's more like an opportunity to like educate someone and like just show them um different things right like just different experiences from people yeah exactly and actually to me it almost seems like it enriches your life because you're able now to explain and also give people a different viewpoint of whatever they normally do right so i think it's well it can be challenging at times but i think it's also pretty cool that you are now able to do that right right and so also like people sorry no go on go on um people just have like different things that they're kind of carrying through their life right like different struggles and they might be very internal so i think it's kind of good to kind of break down those walls a little bit and show a little bit of vulnerability because i think we're all kind of trying to hide a little bit of that and i think it's um refreshing to see not full not everybody's like full struggle but little glimpses of it here and there so that it's like no you know like it's it's not like a perfect life right for anybody no exactly um so um you have gone through this whole ordeal and you actually came out really well um great career speaking everywhere um if you had a tip for someone who wanted to switch their fields maybe not forced the way you did but maybe they're thinking on it what would be the thing that um you would tell them to do i would say don't be afraid to admit that you don't know things and learn from that um so i was especially like starting out the way i did um i'm just kind of going really really fast i remember seeing my people who were way more advanced than i was and i would be like oh you should come at meetup or like talk at this conference or and they were like no i i don't know enough or like no i'm not there yet um but then i i kind of was like well like don't be afraid to just kind of put yourself out there like i i've been able to do that and like i'm not saying i'm like the best person there is about um the topics that i speak about but um i kind of put myself out there and like doing so um i feel like has made me a better developer like even when i make mistakes on presentations like i will learn from that right and i'll next time i'll teach you better and like just kind of continue continue to grow so that would be my advice like don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way that will only make you better and learn faster cool i i couldn't agree more but not everybody is like that because to us as developers a little bit it's to me it's like failure is just iteration right so over time you learn more and more and to me i always say especially my job is like yeah it's just a website about lipstick like it's it's not a heart rate monitor from philips right so we can fail and then just step up and go like you do with forms when i build a form now i get frustrated i already feel it even though it shouldn't be that hard right but luckily we have few gs and we have you writing some docs so that's cool so um is there something that you are good at that nobody really knows about outside of your direct family um well i'm really good at crochet and crap like crafting um yeah so i like to make projects here and there and i think that's something that i really liked about um as i started my career front end was like making a bunch of little projects that like if i spend an hour on this it's gonna keep getting better and better and better and like visually change um so i i found that very exciting yeah for example the wall behind you did you do that yourself yes actually um when we first moved in i decided like at 12 at night one day i was like let's paint this so we stayed up on like four in the morning painting this wall and i made this little bunny oh yeah it's really cute and so did you basically just put like tape down and then go from there nice yeah yeah we did a lot of that um so if you had a billboard that like everybody would see on their way to work right like millions of people what would you write on it for them to read um something like um like be the reason why somebody smiles today i think that's really good um so kind of breaking that like bring happiness to yourself by like making somebody else happy i think if we just kind of keep passing that forward i think society would be better as a whole oh wow it's actually true um i think there's a bunch of research on people who are the most happy is actually people that help others like you can be as rich as you want but when if you're alone if you don't have a purpose like that right so um yeah that's actually pretty profound and i look at that myself a little bit too because um my wife actually has very similar things to you it's not the same but it's close and um i always have people like okay so i am the other i'm like your husband i live next to it and like how does that work and actually what i tell them is like my life is not worse by this i actually have the chance to care for someone and a lot of people don't have that chance to actually be there for someone and it makes her stronger but me for sure also so what you're saying actually it resonates with me so that's great last question a little lighter so i know you go to a lot of conferences right so what do you do with all the stickers so i actually gather way more stickers than i need for my own personal use and then um i do run a couple of local meetups in my area so i'm always like just passing out any swag that i can get from any conferences okay so you pass them around yeah i tend to do the same like um in 4gs amsterdam actually i think i took like 20 next stickers and i gave them to everybody who works on next so at least they have the feeling because i want everybody to go there but it's not always possible so you give stuff yeah exactly so um we're keeping it relatively short well 25 minutes not that short but i want to thank you for opening up like this and showing your story and i think um if you can do that people that have less issues can definitely do it there's a chance for everybody as long as you just persevere so that's great thanks for sharing your story thank you so much tim it was great talking to you i um i actually hope to see you soon i really wish i could travel again but we cannot i cannot come to the us just yet i know soon soon we will see each other again i have a i have a plan to go to new york there's a bunch of friends there and then maybe i can just move around and see some people all right so thank you very much and um i hope to see you soon cheers alright you too bye