Shruti Kapoor

00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Kent C. Dodds and I'm joined by my friend Shruti Kapoor. How are you, Shruti? I'm doing great, Kent. How are you? I'm awesome. I'm so excited that you're coming. You have been to one of my conferences before, RemixConf, where you were an emcee and you were lovely and wonderful there and it was so fun and we all got to dance

00:19 and it was great. And now I'm so excited to have you at Epic Web Conf for, as a speaker, I'm very excited to have you. Yeah, I'm so excited to come. When you announced that you're going to be hosting a conference, I was like, heck yeah. I know RemixConf was awesome, so this is going to be epic.

00:40 Yes, yes. Oh, it's good and honestly, it's people like you that make it epic and so I'm very glad that you're coming. I'm very excited to have you there. So before we get too far into things, I think people would love to get to know you a little bit. So can you give us a little idea of who you are

00:58 and what things you're into? Yeah, so hello everyone. I am Shruti Kapoor. I have been working as a front-end engineer for over a decade now. I am a content creator, I'm an educator. I also am an Epic Web instructor

01:14 and I'm teaching accessibility there. So the talk that I'm going to be doing at Epic Web is kind of an extension of the articles that I've written on Epic Web, which is when I will show you how to build an accessible web app from the get-go. So you're not baking it in towards the end,

01:32 but you're thinking about it as you're building it and kind of building an accessible design thinking instead of slapping it towards the end. So that's what I'm going to be talking about. Other than speaking at conferences and making people dance at conferences, I also create educational content on YouTube,

01:50 which you can find on my channel at ShrutiKapoor08. Awesome, yeah, you've been very active in creating things. I see that you're running Twitter spaces a lot and everything too, or X spaces, I think we're supposed to call them now. And yeah, you have some professional experience

02:10 with accessibility over there at Slack. Do you want to tell us about that a little bit? Yeah, so at Slack, I am working as an accessibility engineer on the design systems team of Slack, which basically means that all of the components you see at Slack have been already tested to ensure that they are accessible. And while working in this team,

02:29 I learned a lot of things that I felt are very nuanced and not something that you would learn from a tutorial. There's a lot that goes into building an accessible web app, but it often doesn't get talked about enough. It's more than just building ARIA labels and ARIA rules. There's a lot of UX that goes into it as well.

02:47 Like when you place focus on an element, where should the focus land? When you first load a page, where should the focus land? How are your labels getting announced? So there's a lot of nuanced information in accessibility and the world of accessibility development is so complex. I thought I knew front end, and then I started doing accessibility development.

03:06 I was like, okay, I feel like I don't know HTML. I don't know React. I don't know JavaScript. I don't know what I know. So I had this moment of like learning, you know that moment when you feel like you know everything and you know here, but then you feel like you know nothing, but you actually know something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was at that moment, I was like, okay, I feel like we should talk about this a lot more

03:25 outside of just Slack, because accessible applications are very hard to do right. Oftentimes we do kind of a sloppy way of building accessible applications. We put tabindex and everything and call it a day, but there's a lot more thought that goes into building a really good application that can be accessible for everybody and inclusive for everybody.

03:44 So yeah, I'm super passionate about the work that I do at Slack, and I think it gives me a lot of joy in building stuff for people who are otherwise marginalized. And when we build an accessible app or when we build an inclusive app, we're not just benefiting a marginalized community. We're actually creating an inclusive web for everyone

04:03 where everyone can benefit. I really appreciate that. I'm really looking forward to seeing your talk. It's titled Building Accessible Web Apps. So it's kind of a general thing. What are you really planning on focusing on for the talk? Yeah, so I have actually been live streaming a real estate app.

04:24 And what I'm going to show people is that, when we build an application, this is not something that we think of. So I'm going to put myself on the spot and I'm going to show, look how sucky this is, but we're going to make this better. I built this app, I rendered the React components, but I didn't think about accessibility. So let's fix it. So I'm going to show people how to test with keyboard,

04:42 and I'm going to show people how to test with screen reader, and then I'm going to show them how to fix it. So I'm going to do all of that within 25 minutes of a talk. So wish me luck. Yeah, good luck. That is a lot to do, but I think we get accessibility talks pretty often, but we don't often see, okay, well,

05:01 like, okay, I know where to use ARIA labels and where not to, and I know where like all these roles and whatever, but we don't see, okay, how does that impact the tools that people use when they're using your website? And so I think that'll be really helpful for you to demonstrate how these tools are used and how to use these tools to test things.

05:20 So I'm very much looking forward to that. And of course, looking forward to seeing you at the conference. So you're traveling from the Northeast, right? In the US, you're in Seattle, is that right? Yes, yes. So you travel all over the world.

05:37 You go all the way back to India and you go to Europe and all over the United States. So what is it that motivates you to leave the home? Because you're very successful in your YouTube stuff and your X-Spaces and everything, and online articles that you write and everything.

05:55 Why put forth the extra effort to go and see people in person? Yeah, I feel like every time I travel to a new location that's outside of the US, I first meet a lot of people from a different culture that are not just US-based, but also just getting to know people who are building applications that are different

06:14 from the ones that people in the US are building. I think people in the US are building a lot of AI-focused applications. But when you move around the world, people, like when we went to India, there were a lot of people who were doing small startup stuff and a lot of people who had come from these smaller companies and what kind of tools they were building. So you get to know different industries around the world. So that's really helpful.

06:33 I think it's also a very humbling moment when you feel like you are very successful in your own country and then you move to another country and people are like, who are you again? And then you're like, okay, looks like I have some work to do. Looks like I have some more knowledge to impart. So I think I really like that. But also I think it gives you a chance to go meet other people that you may not meet in your network if you are just within your own city

06:54 or within your own country. So I think that is also a really wonderful part of networking, but also getting to know people outside of your comfort zone. So I really like that. Yeah, and is there anything that is motivating you to come to Epic Web Conf specifically? Because you probably have to say no to some other opportunities

07:14 or you see another CFP and you're like, ah, I just have to decide if I'm gonna do that one because there are just so many. So what is it about Epic Web Conf that's drawing you to Utah? I think the biggest thing that I really liked about Remix Conf that I know you and Ryan portrayed was the sense of belonging

07:34 and the sense of kind of this inclusive culture where everybody was respected. People were really kind. I remember the little things that the organizers had put, like there was lip balm for everybody and there was mint for everybody. It was like these small things that made you feel really appreciated as a speaker, but also as an emcee, but also as an attendee.

07:54 And then towards the end, you guys were like, oh, we have these extra hoodies. Why don't you just come and grab? I think it's just like these little things, like you may call them swag items, but it's about taking care of people and making them feel included, making them feel appreciated, which I really admire. Also Salt Lake City is a beautiful city.

08:12 So I hop on the plane every chance I have to get there. It's so beautiful. I think Utah in general is so beautiful. But I think it's the fact that I felt so appreciated and valued in Remix Conf that I knew that Epic Conf is gonna be same. Yeah, I definitely hope so. Let me know if it's not,

08:30 because that is definitely a goal for us. So Shruti, while we're there, we have extended breaks. That's one of the important things, like pretty much the reason of the conference is to bring people together. And so we give you plenty of time to meet people and get to know them. Lunch is two hours long, for example.

08:48 So we have lots of time for people to meet you and get to know you. What are some topics that somebody could come to you and talk with you about that would get you really excited and interested in talking with them? Yeah, if you're building an accessible app or if you're having a challenge building an accessible app at your work,

09:05 I would love to know what you're working on, what kind of challenges you're facing. If you've ever used the accessibility features at Slack or are curious about how Slack handles accessibility and how we take care of accessibility in such a big org that has millions of users, that would be really exciting for me to talk about because I love talking about my work,

09:24 but also how we do accessibility testing at work because it's more than just the tools you use. It's also talking to real users and what kind of questions you ask and what kind of feedback you get and how you incorporate that because you can't take everything, but you have to take something. So how do you prioritize the feedback that you get? I think that is something that I would be really passionate about talking. Outside of just accessibility,

09:44 I'm also a React content creator, so educator. So one thing that I would love to talk about if you're interested in is React. So talk about what React features are you using? Have you used React 19? What excites you about React 19? What bothers you about React? If you're a new engineer who's trying to learn React

10:02 and you're like, oh my God, there is so much. What is that bothers you? Also, there's other things that a lot of people don't usually come and share, which is imposter syndrome in tech. You come to a conference this big and you feel like, oh my God, one day I wish I could get up on the stage, but right now I feel like I'm not good enough. And I want to tell you, you are good enough.

10:23 You just need a mentor to help you get there and apply to your first conference, create a CFP. So if you're interested in speaking at a conference, even Epic Web, come and talk to me. Wow, so many things to talk with Shruti about, people. You've got to come and meet her. She's lovely, awesome time to chat with her.

10:41 And I'm very excited to have you in Salt Lake City again in March for Epic Web Conf. Thank you so much and we'll see you there. Thank you, I'm so excited to come. Thanks, bye everybody. Bye.