Living Your Values & Building a Business That Outlasts You with Fable Co-Founder & Executive Chair, Alwar Pillai #142
Most digital products reflect the people who build them, not the people who use them.
That insight led Alwar Pillai to build Fable, a company with 70% of its workforce living with a disability - they’re a business that wholly promises to practice what they preach.
They’ve brought people with disabilities into the heart of product development for some of the most recognised brands in the world; Microsoft, Walmart, Meta and Figma to name but a few.
So how did Alwar build something that’s scaled true to her vision, and how has she navigated the journey from designer to Founder, to CEO, and back out again? Join us on this week’s episode of Extrology.
Lee and Alwar discuss:
Designing beyond the “average user”
The journey from compliance to usability in accessibility
Building Fable as a bridge between disabled users and tech giants
Leadership, succession, and letting go as a founder
AI bias and the future of inclusive products
Links & references
Alwar Pillai:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alwarpillai/
Fable:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/makeitfable/
Extrology:
https://www.instagram.com/extrologypodcast/
https://www.tiktok.com/@extrology
https://substack.com/@extrology
https://www.youtube.com/@extrology
Lee Cooper:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecooperrecruiter/
Get in touch: lee@extrology.com
Episode highlights:
“People often blame themselves… ‘Oh, I'm doing it wrong, I'm not using the app properly.’ But the reality was that the app wasn't designed for them and their needs.” - 1:40 - Alwar Pillai
“We as society are obsessed with averages… but the average is still not going to represent any single person.” - 5:20 - Alwar Pillai
“The people who experience the problem the most, the ones who experience the challenge the most, are the ones who should be part of solving that problem.” - 6:35 - Alwar Pillai
“Just meeting compliance doesn't mean you're solving the challenges that users experience, because there is a disconnect between compliance and user experience.” - 9:50 - Alwar Pillai
“Engineers have 10,000 things to do, you can't expect them to read pages and pages of guidelines. At the end of the day, accessibility is just basic usability. We wanted to make that connection to product teams that this is not a complex set of requirements.” - 22:50 - Alwar Pillai
“Around 70% of our team that self identify as living with a disability, we actually have people with disabilities at all levels of leadership in the organisation. From day one, it was really important for me that we walk the talk on inclusion.” - 24:00 - Alwar Pillai
“I do think it's important for companies to outlast founders, and I think startups often do not outlast their founders.” - 31:40 - Alwar Pillai
“Ultimately I would like accessibility to be the foundation of UX… I hope several decades from now, we're not talking about accessibility. I think that would be my goal, that it's just part of design” - - Alwar Pillai
Extrology is sponsored by Progresso Talent Partners who for more than 25 years have successfully delivered interim and permanent leadership talent to transform businesses and to hire the talent you need to enable your business to thrive: https://www.progressotalent.com/