Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, I'm Kevin Dieny, your host, and welcome

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:03

to the Close The Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:04

Today, we're gonna be talking about how to make your website

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:07

more accessible to talk about this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:10

Talk about usability website accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:12

We have a really special guest and expert in this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:15

Someone who's been doing, who's, done a lot of this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:17

Her name is Amber Hinds, she is the CEO of Equalize Digital incorporated.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:22

They are a certified B corporation specializing in WordPress accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:27

They're the maker of accessibility checker plugin, and the lead organizer

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:30

of the WordPress accessibility meetup.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:33

And the WP accessibility day conference through her work at equalized digital,

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:38

Amber is striving to create a world where all people have equal access

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:41

to information and tools on the internet, regardless of their ability.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:46

Since 2010, she has led teams, building websites and web applications for

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:50

nonprofits K through twelves and higher education institutions, government

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:54

agencies, and businesses of all sizes.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:57

So welcome.

Amber Hinds: 00:00:59

Thanks for having me.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:00

I'm glad to be here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:01

This is one of those topics for me, personally, that I was like,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:04

man, I just don't know enough about this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:06

This is something that I looked at as like, this is common knowledge, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:10

sat next to web developers, web designers, and didn't hear much about this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:14

So if you don't mind, maybe ground us, like what is website accessibility,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:19

and maybe why isn't it as common knowledge that everyone is building

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:23

their websites, but that is like a priority or a forefront these days.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:27

Yeah, it, it is interesting, cuz if you're not in it or you maybe

Amber Hinds: 00:01:30

don't even think about it, you don't personally have a disability or you don't

Amber Hinds: 00:01:34

know someone who has a disability or maybe you don't spend a lot of time watching

Amber Hinds: 00:01:38

your grandma try to use the web right.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:41

You don't really realize.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:42

Cause I think a lot of us are just framed in our own.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:46

And, and, and honestly, I actually got an email from someone on Friday and they

Amber Hinds: 00:01:50

said, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the impact of this.

Amber Hinds: 00:01:55

Can you tell me how website accessibility helps with educational outcomes?

Amber Hinds: 00:02:00

And I'm just like, cause we're talking higher ed and I'm just like, well, if a

Amber Hinds: 00:02:05

blind person cannot apply to your college, Does that mean that they, because they

Amber Hinds: 00:02:10

can't submit the form on the website, does that mean that they have fewer

Amber Hinds: 00:02:14

possible educational opportunities?

Amber Hinds: 00:02:17

Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:02:18

Um, or if they can't read the textbook or they can't watch the video of

Amber Hinds: 00:02:22

the recorded class lecture because there's no captions and their deaf.

Amber Hinds: 00:02:26

Then obviously they're gonna be missing out on what a typically

Amber Hinds: 00:02:29

abled person would have.

Amber Hinds: 00:02:31

So website accessibility in some of those examples, I just gave it's really

Amber Hinds: 00:02:35

about making websites and the content on websites or the content on the

Amber Hinds: 00:02:41

internet work for everyone, including people who require different assistive

Amber Hinds: 00:02:49

devices to access the internet.

Amber Hinds: 00:02:51

So I mentioned deaf people need captions.

Amber Hinds: 00:02:54

Blind people use technologies called a screen reader to

Amber Hinds: 00:02:57

read out what they're seeing.

Amber Hinds: 00:02:58

And so there are certain things that could be done.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:00

A good example is providing an alternative text on an image

Amber Hinds: 00:03:05

to describe what an image is.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:06

So a blind person doesn't just hear image, they hear image and a description

Amber Hinds: 00:03:10

of what it is so they don't miss out on what a sided person would see.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:14

And then there's a lot of disabilities or even just situational limitations

Amber Hinds: 00:03:19

that we don't really think of commonly that do impact people's

Amber Hinds: 00:03:23

ability to engage with websites.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:24

So this could be anything from dyslexia, certain fonts or certain like paragraph

Amber Hinds: 00:03:31

withs on a webpage can make it really hard for someone with DYS dyslexia

Amber Hinds: 00:03:35

to read and understand the content color contrast comes up for people

Amber Hinds: 00:03:39

who are low vision and I will 100%.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:43

That I've been on my phone on a sunny day, outside on a website and be like,

Amber Hinds: 00:03:47

I can't even read this, this text because the color of the background

Amber Hinds: 00:03:51

and the color of the text is so similar that it's challenging for me.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:55

And I consider myself to have pretty good vision.

Amber Hinds: 00:03:57

Once I have my contacts in, you know, I mentioned to elderly people, another

Amber Hinds: 00:04:01

group that isn't really disabled, but benefits is language learners.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:05

So if you have a transcript for a podcast, for example, That

Amber Hinds: 00:04:11

can help someone who is deaf.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:14

It can help someone who is blind and deaf and they're using a

Amber Hinds: 00:04:17

refreshable braille display.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:18

So it would read that out.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:20

It also makes your podcast accessible to someone who needs to

Amber Hinds: 00:04:23

translate the content of the page.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:25

Cuz they could read it even if they can't understand the

Amber Hinds: 00:04:27

language that the podcast isn't.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:29

So there's just a, a lot of things that go into website accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:32

But unfortunately I.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:34

Most of us, if we just don't have that personal experience or a relationship with

Amber Hinds: 00:04:37

someone, we maybe don't think about it.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:39

And I do think unfortunately there have been a lot of website training

Amber Hinds: 00:04:44

courses that haven't touched on it.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:45

I think that's starting to change, but even some of those boot camps that

Amber Hinds: 00:04:48

developers go to, or if developers are self-taught online, if they don't come

Amber Hinds: 00:04:52

across that, then they don't know.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:54

And then they don't know to communicate to their clients.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:57

This is important.

Amber Hinds: 00:04:57

And here's why we should do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:59

That's really helpful because I I've, you know, from my

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:02

point of view, I was like, is there a reason we haven't been been told

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:05

like that this is such a big deal?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:06

Is that because there's a tool for it, maybe Google's browser or Firefox

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:11

or something, they just have a button that you press, and it makes the

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:14

whole webpage turn into braille.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:16

Or it turns in the turns, the whole website into like a

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:18

speech to text or a text to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:20

So going beyond that, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:23

Like those are tools maybe that are out there, but it's the business doing

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:26

something about it on their website so that they have more control right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:30

About how that information is presented so that it is understood properly.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:35

So that maybe thing covering areas that those, I don't know, default

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:39

tools, that those, that people have, those tools may not be able to cover.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:42

So it's going beyond just.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:45

Someone else will make a tool to make my website more accessible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:48

Uh, this is like the business doing something about it, right?

Amber Hinds: 00:05:51

Yeah.

Amber Hinds: 00:05:51

I, I think, you know, so there are some things that come up sometimes where

Amber Hinds: 00:05:55

businesses will ask about accessibility overlays, which you might have seen

Amber Hinds: 00:05:59

on a website, cuz they're kind of common where it puts a little icon.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:02

Sometimes it's a person of wheelchair.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:03

Sometimes it's.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:04

The like person with their arms and legs out, which is the accessibility symbol.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:07

And you can click on it.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:08

It opens this panel with all these different settings.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:11

And the idea there is maybe we can just use AI and computer

Amber Hinds: 00:06:15

to make websites successful.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:17

And there are some things that can be fixed, but there are a large number

Amber Hinds: 00:06:23

of items that can't, and that's.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:25

Typically when we see whether it's a lawsuit or a complaint from someone about

Amber Hinds: 00:06:30

the accessibility, they always say that the overlay is not a solution from a

Amber Hinds: 00:06:35

business perspective, there are things that have to happen in the actual code.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:40

So that comes into either working with your web developer or if you're

Amber Hinds: 00:06:43

building your own website, like carefully choosing the themes or the plugins that

Amber Hinds: 00:06:48

you put on that website in order to.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:51

You know, ensure that the code isn't causing problems, but there's

Amber Hinds: 00:06:54

a lot the businesses can do just in the content that they create.

Amber Hinds: 00:06:58

So a really great example of this is pretty much all of us.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:02

If we've edited our website, we've added a link and we highlight the text.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:06

Like we write it out, we highlight the text and then we, you know, click a

Amber Hinds: 00:07:09

little button in a toolbar to add link.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:11

And then we paste in the URL and it adds link.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:14

So that text that we have made the link, the anchor of the link.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:19

It needs to have meaning outside of the surrounding context, because people who

Amber Hinds: 00:07:24

are blind, especially, they may just hear all the links on the page and not actually

Amber Hinds: 00:07:30

know the text that came earlier in the sentence or in the heading above it.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:35

So a lot of times we see where people say, you know, to contact us,

Amber Hinds: 00:07:39

click here and they link the word.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:41

On their homepage.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:42

They might have four different buttons throughout the page to

Amber Hinds: 00:07:45

say, learn more and they all go to different places on their website.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:48

So what would happen is that a blind person would go there and

Amber Hinds: 00:07:51

they'd hear link, learn more link, learn more link, learn more, right.

Amber Hinds: 00:07:54

As opposed to link, learn more about us link, learn more about our products,

Amber Hinds: 00:07:59

link, learn more about our services.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:00

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:01

And so really thinking about how you can add your content in a meaningful

Amber Hinds: 00:08:06

way, because that's something, unfortunately, Assistive technology.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:09

Isn't gonna know how to fix.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:11

And so it does rely on the business owner or their contractor.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:16

If they're hiring this out, actually putting in some effort and it's

Amber Hinds: 00:08:20

not something that really is hard to do, in that example, right.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:24

It doesn't require code knowledge.

Amber Hinds: 00:08:26

It just requires the ability to be a little bit more thoughtful about your

Amber Hinds: 00:08:29

content as you add it to the website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:31

Like the front end side of it, where it's like, okay,

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:34

this is what needs to happen to make websites more accessible to people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:39

How does that run up against like the number of people who are, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:42

know, in that category where they would use the functionality of like

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:46

accessible parts of the website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:48

So is a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:50

I don't know what percentage, like, are we talking like very small percentage

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:54

of people or is there a decent amount of people who use the internet.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:58

Who, you know, maybe going to different businesses sites, obviously some

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:01

businesses, you know, maybe more than others, depending on what they

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:03

are, but is there a sizeable chunk of people who are using the internet

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:07

today who have, you know, a disability that would make use of some of

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:10

these, uh, accessible functionality?

Amber Hinds: 00:09:13

Yeah, so here in the United States, one in four

Amber Hinds: 00:09:16

adults, is considered disabled.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:19

Um, I think the number from the world health organization is about 25%.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:23

So it's around that.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:25

It might be closer to one in five, uh, but so it is a huge percent,

Amber Hinds: 00:09:30

and these are people who have money to patronize businesses.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:34

So working age, disabled adults in the United States represent over 490 billion

Amber Hinds: 00:09:40

in discretionary income, not just.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:43

Money that they have to spend on their rent, right?

Amber Hinds: 00:09:45

Like this is money.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:46

They can spend on whatever they want.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:47

So this is an audience, but I think it is a large audience.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:50

They are probably in your customer group.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:52

And you may not know it.

Amber Hinds: 00:09:54

If you haven't asked the questions or particularly if you're engaging

Amber Hinds: 00:09:57

with your customers just online and don't like, see them face to face.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:01

Or sometimes as I mentioned, people have hidden disabilities.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:05

I found out actually I was talking to someone and he

Amber Hinds: 00:10:08

just like mentioned as a side.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:11

Like later on after I talked to him many times that he was colorblind, I

Amber Hinds: 00:10:16

had no idea about colorblindness is actually very common, especially in men.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:19

And so he can't tell the difference between red and green.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:21

So if he's somewhere.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:24

Like, let's say he's on like some chat platform and he wants to see if, if

Amber Hinds: 00:10:28

like on a website and there's a chat and it's like showing you a dot and

Amber Hinds: 00:10:31

it's red because the person is on to help you or green because it's not.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:35

And it doesn't like change the shape or do anything else with no words next

Amber Hinds: 00:10:38

to it, like online or not available.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:40

He wouldn't know the difference.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:42

Like, can I live chat with them or not?

Amber Hinds: 00:10:44

Because it only uses a circle that's red or green and he can't tell the difference.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:48

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:48

So there's a lot of things where we don't even know.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:51

Where it can impact people.

Amber Hinds: 00:10:52

And from a business perspective, too, I think it's really important to think about

Amber Hinds: 00:10:57

serving everyone can increase the possible audience that you can sell to which

Amber Hinds: 00:11:02

can increase your bottom line revenue.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:04

There are a ton of accessibility fixes that actually improve the search

Amber Hinds: 00:11:09

engine optimization of your website.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:11

A lot of them, like I mentioned, adding the, a text, the

Amber Hinds: 00:11:14

descriptive text to image.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:16

That search engines use that to help learn what your page is about too.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:21

So Google is probably the most frequent and largest blind user of your website.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:27

They scan, they read the ACML content.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:29

They figure out what the page is about.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:30

They try to follow the links.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:31

They read those link anchors to see if it has meaning or not.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:35

So if you care about SEO and you care about how you rank accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:11:38

is gonna help with that, it'll bring more people to the website.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:41

And then once they're there.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:43

If they're actually able to do what they want, they're more likely to.

Amber Hinds: 00:11:46

They're less likely to leave immediately, which would give you

Amber Hinds: 00:11:48

a bad bounce rate score, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:51

Wow, so there's definitely like a lot of elements to this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:55

Like accessibility helps when people arrive on your site, kind of

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:00

figure out where the heck you are.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:01

It sort of helps them figure out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:03

Okay, what is it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:04

That's on the website so that they can understand, read it, comprehend it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:09

Maybe what's the next step I want to take.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:12

Right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:12

Because you know, a page, if I couldn't see what, what are the links?

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:15

I wouldn't know what to click on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:16

Mm-hmm so then I'm like tapping everything, you know?

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:18

And then at the same time, if I'm not seeing it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:20

Then it has then how is it being interpreted?

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:22

If I finally get through, if I finally land it on a page and I've gotten

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:26

through and get to where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to contact this business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:30

If I can't contact the business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:32

if I don't know how, if I don't see that that's a problem too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:35

So there's like, A couple big areas.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:37

I, I am hearing, which is like, you understand what's on the page.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:41

You kind of can figure out how to navigate to where you need to go.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:46

And then there's like a next step you can take that aligns

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:49

with what you want to take.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:50

If it's contacting them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:52

If it's getting an address, uh, a phone number or whatever

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:55

it is completing a Purchas.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:56

Yeah, those big, almost like milestone parts are just to me like

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:01

the basics, obviously our website's doing, trying to do a lot of things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:04

It's trying to communicate the message.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:06

It's trying to tell people and educate them, help them learn more

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:09

about them, help them to trust them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:11

And if, and if all of those things aren't happening because.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:15

It's just not a couple additional steps of accessibility haven't taken place.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:19

Then for that group, it's sort of like a complete whiff and miss it's, like, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:23

haven't even had a chance to interact with that visitor because they couldn't.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:28

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:28

There's no way they could interact.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:30

So those things seem very critical and very important to getting a website

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:36

to the point where it's accessible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:38

Is that, is that sort of like a about right.

Amber Hinds: 00:13:41

And I, I think the thing too is, especially when we talk about,

Amber Hinds: 00:13:44

you know, how do we, if we have an existing website, it's often you have

Amber Hinds: 00:13:48

a lot that you have to work through.

Amber Hinds: 00:13:50

So one of the things we'll talk about is let's get the homepage, let's fix

Amber Hinds: 00:13:54

problems on the homepage, fix problems in the header, in the footer, cuz

Amber Hinds: 00:13:57

these show up on every single page.

Amber Hinds: 00:13:59

Then the next thing we do is like, how do we make sure that the contact works?

Amber Hinds: 00:14:04

Because some people might say, well, I've never heard from someone,

Amber Hinds: 00:14:07

they have a problem on my website.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:09

But if they can't even get your contact information, how

Amber Hinds: 00:14:11

are they gonna tell you that?

Amber Hinds: 00:14:13

You know?

Amber Hinds: 00:14:13

And so they frequently will just leave and they'll just go

Amber Hinds: 00:14:16

by from somewhere else, right.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:18

Or contact a different service person.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:20

Um, another thing to keep in mind too, which is another one that we

Amber Hinds: 00:14:23

look at pretty early on is the privacy policy and those cooking notices.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:27

Because we are, depending on where your business is, California

Amber Hinds: 00:14:32

here in the United States.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:33

If you serve customers in Europe and you've got GDPR requirements,

Amber Hinds: 00:14:37

there are some really strict requirements around privacy policies.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:41

And I have seen cases where a blind person couldn't access the privacy policy

Amber Hinds: 00:14:45

or the terms of service for a customer.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:49

They couldn't access it.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:50

And.

Amber Hinds: 00:14:51

They then were able to actually have it thrown out and they said, guess what?

Amber Hinds: 00:14:56

This blind person is not required to abide by your terms of service

Amber Hinds: 00:15:00

or didn't agree to them because they weren't actually able to read those.

Amber Hinds: 00:15:05

So if you are really concerned about like the legal aspects, that's another

Amber Hinds: 00:15:10

place where it comes into play as well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:13

In your experience, like, because you've worked at, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:15

know, because you've done projects with higher education or, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:19

government institutions, I feel like it's very important in that sphere too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:24

The other side of this is like one of the things I, when I researched this topic,

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:27

I was like, okay, well, there's a lot of good pros and cons here in this topic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:32

And it was really interesting because.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:34

The pros are like, yeah, you should do this because it helps with what,

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:36

you know, you're gonna get more leads.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:37

You're gonna have more visitors on your site.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:39

You're gonna have people who actually understand what's going on on your website

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:41

now that a huge chunk, which I didn't realize, wow, that's a lot of people,

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:45

huge percentage that, you know, you could be obviously neglecting, but the

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:50

other side of this was like the cons.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:52

And I was like, okay, so these are some interesting cons.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:54

And the first one, the one that I saw the most common was business

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:58

owners or people saying, look, I've never had to worry about this up to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:03

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:03

So maybe I could just keep skating the line and not have

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:06

to keep worrying about it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:07

So that's sort of like something I maybe pass on to you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:10

If you haven't had to worry about this for the last 25 years, why all of a sudden,

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:15

let's say this year or next year should a business be considering let's make

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:19

this a priority to do something about, so why would they say now's the time?

Amber Hinds: 00:16:24

It is interesting because the web content accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:16:27

guidelines have been out there.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:29

Since the nineties so I've been out there for a long time.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:33

but you know, legislation and awareness is constantly shifting and changing.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:39

And also I'll say like how we use the internet is changing.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:43

So with COVID there was a huge shift to people buying online.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:50

And especially, I wanna say people with disabilities because they,

Amber Hinds: 00:16:54

they were the most at risk of going out into the community.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:58

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:16:59

And we're constantly inventing, you know, now you order food

Amber Hinds: 00:17:02

online and get it delivered to your house by someone who is not, you.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:06

And I mean, sure.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:07

Pizza places have been doing that for a long time.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:09

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:09

But, but beyond pizza places, like I don't remember that even

Amber Hinds: 00:17:13

happening in the early two thousands.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:14

Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:17:15

Some of it is the natural evolution of how we use the internet and our

Amber Hinds: 00:17:18

expectations for how businesses should engage with us as customers.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:23

And so businesses, I think, need to be aware of who their customers are

Amber Hinds: 00:17:28

and they need to be at the forefront.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:31

You know, if they wanna lead the pack and they wanna stand out against their

Amber Hinds: 00:17:34

competitors, reaching out and being open to new technologies is important to that.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:39

It's, you know, like at the very beginning, there are probably

Amber Hinds: 00:17:41

businesses that were like, why would I spend money on AdWords?

Amber Hinds: 00:17:44

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:46

I do the yellow pages and it works fine.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:49

And, and now the yellow pages doesn't exist anymore.

Amber Hinds: 00:17:51

So I think some of it is just like, it's part of the evolution of a

Amber Hinds: 00:17:55

marketing budget as technology changes and how people expect to

Amber Hinds: 00:17:59

engage with businesses changed.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:01

I will say that there are certain places around the world where

Amber Hinds: 00:18:05

the laws are becoming stricter and you need to be more aware.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:09

The Americans with disabilities act in the United States is the one that target.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:14

Businesses that are for-profit businesses.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:18

That's where it says things like you have to have a wheelchair

Amber Hinds: 00:18:20

ramp instead of stairs.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:21

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:22

But it has said, and for a while, businesses tried to argue when they

Amber Hinds: 00:18:26

would get sued under that for their website, that didn't apply to websites.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:29

But in March of this year, the justice department released a statement

Amber Hinds: 00:18:34

that said, oh no, we are confirming.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:36

The American with disabilities act does apply to websites of businesses.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:43

You have to be accessible.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:45

And they said also, it doesn't matter if you have, cuz one of the arguments was,

Amber Hinds: 00:18:48

well, I don't have a physical location.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:49

So it, the ADA doesn't fly to me and they said it doesn't matter.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:52

Your website is your physical location.

Amber Hinds: 00:18:55

so that's the thing you sort of need to pay attention to a little bit is

Amber Hinds: 00:18:58

how are the laws changing as well?

Amber Hinds: 00:19:00

Cuz I mean, Ontario is another big one sort of in our neck of the woods and they.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:05

they now require any business with more than 50 employees to submit an

Amber Hinds: 00:19:09

annual website accessibility report to the government to say the status

Amber Hinds: 00:19:13

of their website accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:15

And they're probably one of the more stricter locations worldwide,

Amber Hinds: 00:19:18

but there are all these laws and it's just like privacy laws change

Amber Hinds: 00:19:21

and you have to comply with it.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:23

You could decide not to.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:25

You could take that risk and then you need to ask yourself how much

Amber Hinds: 00:19:28

is my attorney, charge me per hour.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:31

and is it worth it?

Amber Hinds: 00:19:32

And probably it might be better to just, and then what always

Amber Hinds: 00:19:35

happens is the company gets sued.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:38

They maybe decide to settle cause their attorney's like,

Amber Hinds: 00:19:40

look, it's cheaper to settle.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:42

but the terms of the settlement always say they have, they, don't

Amber Hinds: 00:19:45

just like, I'm gonna pay you money.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:46

It's like, I'm gonna pay you money and I'm going to fix my website and I'm

Amber Hinds: 00:19:50

gonna agree to do it on this timeline.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:51

And here's some certain things that I'm gonna do.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:53

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:54

So either way you'll be fixing your website.

Amber Hinds: 00:19:57

It's just, you might have the attorney fee on top of that

Amber Hinds: 00:20:01

cost of fixing the website.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:02

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:02

So, so I think that's where businesses sort of have to.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:06

Decide.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:07

When does it make sense to invest in this?

Amber Hinds: 00:20:09

And there, there are ways, like I mentioned before doing the homepage

Amber Hinds: 00:20:13

than doing the condo, like it doesn't sometimes it makes sense to build

Amber Hinds: 00:20:16

a new website because it's so bad.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:18

And also maybe it's really old and it could be better optimized

Amber Hinds: 00:20:21

for conversions or design anyway.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:24

Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:20:24

Like maybe your business just needs a website.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:27

But it doesn't always have to be a new website.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:29

And so maybe it's like fix a page a month or two pages a

Amber Hinds: 00:20:33

month or something like that.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:34

And then we're gonna document.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:35

So if we do get a complaint, we can say, okay, here's what we're doing.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:39

And okay.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:40

You said you wanted captions on this one video that we made two years ago.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:43

Sure.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:44

We'll go add captions to that.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:45

I mean, that was what Harvard did when they got their caption.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:48

They said videos from this point forward will have captions.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:51

If people want captions.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:53

on an older video, they request it we'll do it within a week or something like it's

Amber Hinds: 00:20:56

legally in the terms of their settlement.

Amber Hinds: 00:20:58

Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:20:59

So there are ways that you can put together a process to help make

Amber Hinds: 00:21:03

things more accessible over time.

Amber Hinds: 00:21:05

That don't have to be incredibly overwhelming or like now we have to spend

Amber Hinds: 00:21:08

this massive amount on our website that we didn't prepare to budget for in one month.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:13

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a big deal about around it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:16

The, the other thing you just kind of mentioned too, which I wanted to ask

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:19

about a business is the sort of like at the end of the day, accountable and

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:23

responsible for the website, you know, for their website in some regards.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:26

So another thing that I had seen in speaking about the pros and cons earlier,

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:30

one of the cons parts was like, well, You know, I'm paying someone else to build

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:34

my website so a developer will do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:36

An agency will do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:37

Someone, someone who knows about all this stuff will do it and take care of that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:40

And, you know, it's just sort of assumed that website, creator, developer, builder,

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:45

whatever it is, the template, you know, whatever it is that they're doing takes

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:48

into account website accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:51

So is that the case or is it, you know, more or less the case that, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:55

business has to be very mindful about website accessibility when they make the

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:59

request or as part of what they get back?

Amber Hinds: 00:22:02

Yeah, I think, unfortunately it's not uniformly the

Amber Hinds: 00:22:05

case that any developer or any agency is going to know about accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:22:10

and be taking it into account.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:12

Um, I think that businesses probably need to think about it when they're

Amber Hinds: 00:22:18

interviewing and they need to make sure to ask about it when they're interviewing

Amber Hinds: 00:22:25

developers or agencies and be like, accessibility is important to me.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:30

What is your experience with accessibility?

Amber Hinds: 00:22:32

Because as I mentioned earlier, it's still not something that every developer knows.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:38

And, but honestly, I mean, I was talking to someone and one of his clients had

Amber Hinds: 00:22:42

just had their he's like a content person.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:44

One of his clients just hired a developer.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:46

They redid the whole website and he was like, they launched the website and

Amber Hinds: 00:22:49

they forgot to migrate all the blogs.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:51

I'd written them for.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:52

and they didn't create any redirects when they changed their page euros.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:55

So like this developer knew nothing about SEO, right.

Amber Hinds: 00:22:59

but they made a nice looking website.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:01

Only they lost all the content that was ranking organically in

Amber Hinds: 00:23:04

search engines in the process.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:06

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:06

so I think it's just part of your due diligence when you're hiring a

Amber Hinds: 00:23:09

developer or an agency, you know, think about what are the things that

Amber Hinds: 00:23:12

are important in the goals of your.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:14

And accessibility is one of them.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:16

You need to ask them, what is your accessibility experience or knowledge?

Amber Hinds: 00:23:19

And if they're a great developer and they don't know it, they'll be honest,

Amber Hinds: 00:23:23

but they'll have a solution for you.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:25

Like they'll say, okay, here's some tools that we can use, or here's

Amber Hinds: 00:23:28

a vendor that I wanna bring in to audit this portion of the website.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:32

I can still build it for you.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:33

And that's probably more likely the case.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:35

If you're hiring a freelancer or an individual, if you hire a bigger agency,

Amber Hinds: 00:23:40

then they're probably more likely to have someone in house, but not

Amber Hinds: 00:23:43

necessarily because there are a lot of agencies of different sizes out there.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:47

Uh, so I think as long as you ask about it, that's really gonna

Amber Hinds: 00:23:51

set you off on the right path and just make it clear, like this is

Amber Hinds: 00:23:53

non-negotiable and then they should be listing out in their statement of.

Amber Hinds: 00:23:58

Which items will be accessible.

Amber Hinds: 00:24:00

You want them to apply to at least the web content, accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:24:03

guidelines, 2.1, double a.

Amber Hinds: 00:24:06

And so they should say like the header, the footer, the pages

Amber Hinds: 00:24:09

we build, like whatever they're outlining and that should be in their

Amber Hinds: 00:24:12

contract so that you are guaranteed that they're gonna deliver that.

Amber Hinds: 00:24:16

And if they aren't willing to put it in their contract,

Amber Hinds: 00:24:18

then you need to ask them why.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:20

This is just like a very, let's say a very vanilla

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:23

question here, and, and it's sort of been an undercurrent, which is, in

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:27

my opinion, making the website more accessible, improves the customer

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:31

experience potential for the business, but that might be an assumption.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:35

So I just wanna make sure and clarify.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:37

If a business decides, okay, we want website accessibility, usability to be a

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:42

priority, make sure, you know, just make sure either if it's a developer, let's

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:45

make sure that it's in the contract.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:46

Let's make sure, like you've said, it's part of our build.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:49

Does making the website more accessible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:52

Does that generally improve engagement?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:55

The experience for everyone?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:57

Because another thing I've heard is if you make the website more accessible for

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:02

everybody else now, there's like all this stuff and clutter in the way now, like

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:07

maybe there's like buttons on there, like the overlay you've talked about before.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:10

Like now there's additional things I have to click through before I can

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:12

even just read what's on the page for the normal, the, the standard.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:16

Visitor.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:17

So is it an assumption to say, you know, if you make your website more

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:21

accessible, then customer experience across the board goes up than

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:23

improves or are there caveats to that?

Amber Hinds: 00:25:27

No, I think actually there's a lot of evidence that

Amber Hinds: 00:25:30

making the website more accessible makes it better for everyone.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:33

So those overlays, I don't recommend them.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:36

You don't need that on your homepage.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:37

A lot of people with disabilities do not like them and they've speak

Amber Hinds: 00:25:41

out pretty broadly about them.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:43

So I would advise don't do that.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:45

You don't need that extra garbage junking, his things up, right.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:48

There are things where we talk about.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:50

So I gave the example before about having learned more buttons that have extra.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:55

And now you're thinking I don't want, like, I want the

Amber Hinds: 00:25:57

visual to be learned more.

Amber Hinds: 00:25:59

Well, there are ways that you can hide and code either with hidden screen

Amber Hinds: 00:26:02

reader, text, or in an aria label that is just read out to the screen reader,

Amber Hinds: 00:26:07

which I know I just gave out a technical term there , but like, there are ways

Amber Hinds: 00:26:12

if you're working with a developer or agency that they can be like, we

Amber Hinds: 00:26:15

can make a sided person only see, learn more, but a person on a screen

Amber Hinds: 00:26:19

reader will hear learn more about us.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:21

Learn more about our service.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:22

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:23

So there are things you can do that, make it still have that

Amber Hinds: 00:26:26

nice visual that you want.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:28

I think the biggest complaint that we get from people on the accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:26:33

is the color contrast, because we have people that are like, I really want

Amber Hinds: 00:26:37

light blue buttons with white text

Amber Hinds: 00:26:40

And that is probably the hardest thing.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:42

Especially if a company they've had brand colors.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:47

for 10 years, you know, a long time and their logo and their

Amber Hinds: 00:26:52

brand palette was designed without any thought to accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:26:57

And so it's just something that we have a lot of conversations and ultimately you

Amber Hinds: 00:27:02

decide if you're going to do that or not.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:04

We always recommend that they do.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:05

Most of our customers always end.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:08

Switching.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:09

And the thing is, is it's not unusual for brands to refresh their color palette.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:13

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:13

And you don't necessarily only have to have these separate

Amber Hinds: 00:27:16

colors on the web because.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:18

Print color contrast matters in print too, for readabilities of

Amber Hinds: 00:27:22

your business cards or your flyers that you're handing out to people.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:27

So like it might be a good opportunity to just do a little refresh on your brand.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:32

As a whole, a lot of accessibility actually reduces JavaScript on

Amber Hinds: 00:27:35

the page, cuz there's not as much crazy movement and things opening.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:39

And so pages can load faster.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:42

Which means they'll be faster for people on mobile.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:44

They'll rank better in search because they'll have better core

Amber Hinds: 00:27:46

web vital scores with Google.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:49

And then, you know, we talked about like having more clearer user journeys,

Amber Hinds: 00:27:52

consistent navigation, things like that, that like funnel people where

Amber Hinds: 00:27:55

you wanna go, that works for everyone.

Amber Hinds: 00:27:57

And so really accessibility will make the website better for everyone and

Amber Hinds: 00:28:01

for the business in the long run.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:03

I kind of was making that assumption, but I'm glad that there's like

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:06

some clarity and some confirmation that yeah, it's for everyone, obviously there's

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:11

things about it that more people that certain people will find more use out of.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:15

But gosh, the difference that from my experience, the difference that

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:19

a clear readable high contrast, larger font size, the difference that

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:24

certain things make goes a long way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:27

And that's just for someone speaking, who doesn't have like a lot of.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:32

Certain impairments, like, you know, grateful that I don't have to, but the

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:35

another other parts of it, I'm like, you know, that may not last forever.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:39

at some point as you get older, certain things happen.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:41

And so making the website more accessible broadens the, to me broadens

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:46

the range of like it's potential so that it's just easier and more

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:50

functional for more and more people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:52

So let's say you're a business and you're like, okay, well,

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:55

this has been really interesting.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:56

How do I audit?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:59

How do I get, how do I check to see, okay, maybe my logo's off.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:04

Maybe my site isn't as accessible as I thought, is there a quick, easy way?

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:09

And then are there some places or things they could go to?

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:13

Get a more, you know, professional or, or a more valid, uh,

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:17

tweak of like, okay, yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:18

Your current website may not need too much to become more accessible or yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:22

You're gonna have to rebuild the whole site.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:24

, you know, like, are there some, I don't know, in the spectrum of like,

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:27

there, like a quick free tool and are there, there options for, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:29

know, evaluating that for businesses?

Amber Hinds: 00:29:31

Yeah, so, the best place to get started is with

Amber Hinds: 00:29:34

an automated scanning tool.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:35

It won't identify everything, but it will give you a good picture of

Amber Hinds: 00:29:39

where you could maybe get started.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:41

There is a free one that you can just use on their website, or they

Amber Hinds: 00:29:45

have browser extensions called wave.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:47

It's by web aim.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:49

A I M that one is quick and easy.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:52

You can go to their website, put in your homepage and it'll give you report, or

Amber Hinds: 00:29:55

you can install the browser extension.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:56

Then you, once you have that installed, you can use, uh, any website.

Amber Hinds: 00:29:59

So that's sort of fun and interesting.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:02

Um, I mean, you can put anything in, but it's handy on the,

Amber Hinds: 00:30:04

the browser extension side.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:05

If you have a WordPress website, We have a plugin called accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:30:10

checker that is free on wordpress.org.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:13

It does the same sort of thing as wave where it does the scans and it

Amber Hinds: 00:30:16

puts reports in your post-it screen.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:19

So as you're working on writing a blog post or editing a page on your

Amber Hinds: 00:30:22

website, it'll scan and it will flag things for you right there, sort

Amber Hinds: 00:30:26

of like your SEO tools might do.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:28

Uh, so that's a great way if you're trying to get your content people

Amber Hinds: 00:30:31

to start improving their practices.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:33

Cause they don't have to remember.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:34

Scan with a separate tool, like wave.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:37

And then if you're interested in like a full site scan, we have a pro

Amber Hinds: 00:30:39

version that would like scan literally everything and give you a picture of

Amber Hinds: 00:30:43

what your entire website looks like.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:45

But with our other one, you can do just like one page at a time, which

Amber Hinds: 00:30:49

might be enough just to get started.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:51

And then beyond that, once you've kind of done some of the automated checks,

Amber Hinds: 00:30:55

or if you see things in an automated check or that you're like, I don't

Amber Hinds: 00:30:57

really know what to do about this.

Amber Hinds: 00:30:59

Cuz that comes up, then I would recommend.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:02

Generally looking for an accessibility focused agency, a great resource for

Amber Hinds: 00:31:08

that is the international association of accessibility professionals.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:13

IAAP,, they have a directory that anyone can search that has all of their members.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:18

So anyone in there you're gonna know is experienced with accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:24

They might not all work on your, you know, some people are.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:27

I don't do Shopify or I don't do WordPress, or I don't write

Amber Hinds: 00:31:29

like those different things.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:31

So you might have to talk to a couple to find the, the right

Amber Hinds: 00:31:33

person and different companies work with different budget levels.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:36

But I think that would be the next step is to go to someone that you

Amber Hinds: 00:31:41

know, is experienced in accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:43

And they can do some of the more manual auditing and, and teach you

Amber Hinds: 00:31:48

what to look for for manual things.

Amber Hinds: 00:31:51

Another really great test that you can do to know how well your website works

Amber Hinds: 00:31:54

is, uh, take, take your mouse, turn it off, stick it in a drawer and try to do

Amber Hinds: 00:32:01

everything on your website that you would want your customers to do without a mass.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:10

So that would mean using the keyboard, the arrow keys and

Amber Hinds: 00:32:15

the return or the space bar key.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:18

And one of the first things that you'll notice when you do that.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:23

Do you even have, you should, when you tab through, you should have an

Amber Hinds: 00:32:26

outline around the elements that you're currently on when you're hitting tab.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:31

So you can tell where you are and a lot of websites, if they haven't styled

Amber Hinds: 00:32:36

appropriately, they don't have that.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:37

And so that'll be your first time.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:39

You're like I'm hitting tab and I can see the little URL changing

Amber Hinds: 00:32:42

in the bottom, but I can't see nothing's highlighted on my page.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:45

Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:32:45

Can you open your navigation menu and go to a different page on your website?

Amber Hinds: 00:32:49

Can you submit your forms?

Amber Hinds: 00:32:50

Can you buy, make a.

Amber Hinds: 00:32:52

Um, so these are all things that you can do on yourself now, whether or not

Amber Hinds: 00:32:55

you can fix that will depend on if you have development skills or an in-house

Amber Hinds: 00:33:00

developer or relationship already.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:01

But if you do have a relationship with developer, you could just go to them and

Amber Hinds: 00:33:04

be like, I need a focus state I did this.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:07

And I, and it, I can't tell where I am fix that.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:10

And they need developer whether they know accessibility or

Amber Hinds: 00:33:12

not, we'll be like, oh, okay.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:13

Yeah, I can.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:14

So I would say you can do some testing on your own, and then you

Amber Hinds: 00:33:17

probably wanna go to a professional.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:19

And then the gold star, once you've got all things fixed is

Amber Hinds: 00:33:22

you could even potentially work with users to do user testing.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:27

Which is really helpful on a lot of fronts because it's not always, it

Amber Hinds: 00:33:30

helps with accessibility problems, but it also will just help you with, like,

Amber Hinds: 00:33:34

you might not realize how users move through your website and you might

Amber Hinds: 00:33:37

be like, wow, we need to completely rewrite this whole section or right.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:40

Cause you can get feedback on a lot of user journey stuff.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:43

So if you have the budget.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:44

For that kind of like customer feedback.

Amber Hinds: 00:33:47

That can be really great as well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:48

One kind of a cool tip in there embedded in all that was something

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:52

you said at the beginning was, uh, with the extension to check your website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:56

But if it's an extension you could go to let's say your competitor's

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:59

website and be like, okay, let's see how accessible they are.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:02

So it, a self audit is really, really helpful, right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:05

It's like, okay, do I, am I, where do I stand?

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:07

Am I like in the, you know, the bronze, the silver, the gold.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:10

Am I not even in the, in the realm, , that's really helpful to, to give them

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:14

some idea of, okay, this is where I stand, but just checking out a few competitors

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:18

sounds are like, like a good idea.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:19

Interesting idea too.

Amber Hinds: 00:34:22

I think it's interesting.

Amber Hinds: 00:34:23

I, I warn people to be careful about that because so they're so web aim,

Amber Hinds: 00:34:28

the one who makes wave, they put out a report every year called the web

Amber Hinds: 00:34:31

aim million, where they scan the top 1 million websites by like traffic homepage.

Amber Hinds: 00:34:38

And I think the number right now is like 96% of them have

Amber Hinds: 00:34:42

easily detectable accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:34:45

Uh, now some problems are worse than others , but what that generally

Amber Hinds: 00:34:51

tells you is that measuring yourself against other websites is not a

Amber Hinds: 00:34:55

great standard to set . Right?

Amber Hinds: 00:34:59

Because.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:00

It's like, oh, okay.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:01

I only have 10 problems and they have 20.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:05

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:05

But at the same time, like your 10 problems might make your website unusable.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:09

I do think it's interesting.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:11

And 100% like your website will be better if you can get all those

Amber Hinds: 00:35:15

obvious things fixed and you have zero and they have 20, but, but there

Amber Hinds: 00:35:20

could be more that needs to be done.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:22

So one last thing here would be, we've been talking about the.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:27

Right, maybe like, uh, how the business is doing on its website with accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:31

But I also wanted to just make sure or confirm accessibility generally can

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:36

extend beyond just what's on the website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:39

Right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:39

Like it goes beyond that.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:41

Yeah, so one of the things we talk with our clients on when they come

Amber Hinds: 00:35:45

on is what is their general like culture of accessibility in their organization.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:51

So a really great example of this is let's say someone is having trouble.

Amber Hinds: 00:35:56

On your website and they call you and the receptionist answers the phone.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:01

And, and they're just like, I was trying to make an appointment on

Amber Hinds: 00:36:03

the website, but it wasn't working.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:05

And the receptionist is like, oh, okay, fine.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:07

I'll book it for you, which is awesome.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:08

And that's what they should do.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:10

But then they hang up the phone, they say, goodbye.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:12

The next thing that needs to happen is they need to flag to the web team

Amber Hinds: 00:36:17

or the marketing team or whoever it.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:18

That we got a phone call today from a person.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:21

They said they were trying to schedule an appointment and they

Amber Hinds: 00:36:24

couldn't, and this is a specific area.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:25

They said it got hung up.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:26

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:26

So they need to make, make sure to ask those person those

Amber Hinds: 00:36:29

questions and communicate it.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:30

And then the organization then needs to say, okay, what do we do?

Amber Hinds: 00:36:33

Because we've had this area report come in.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:36

So sort of like everyone.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:38

That could potentially engage with customers, needs to be

Amber Hinds: 00:36:41

aware about accessibility.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:43

They need to have a plan in place for what happens when we do hear about a problem.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:47

And, and then how does this work?

Amber Hinds: 00:36:49

Um, another thing that we've come across was organizations where they had their

Amber Hinds: 00:36:55

whole like user journey mapped out.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:57

They're like someone submits an inquiry form.

Amber Hinds: 00:36:59

And the next thing they do is they get an automated email telling them

Amber Hinds: 00:37:02

to, to schedule time for a phone call, not a zoom, like a phone.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:07

And that is the next step in our process.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:09

They have to have a phone call.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:11

And so we said to them, what if that person is deaf?

Amber Hinds: 00:37:14

And they're just like, I don't know, never thought about that.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:17

right.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:18

Like someone who literally cannot have a phone call with you.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:20

um, and in this instance there was a government agency

Amber Hinds: 00:37:22

that had to serve everyone.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:23

So we were like, okay, so you need to think about if they can't have

Amber Hinds: 00:37:27

a phone call putting something in the email, if you can't have a

Amber Hinds: 00:37:29

phone call, here's your alternative.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:31

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:32

Like maybe we do zoom and we turn on live captions or, or something like that.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:36

Right.

Amber Hinds: 00:37:36

So thinking about your whole customer journey, as they engage with your

Amber Hinds: 00:37:40

organization is really important because there's stuff outside of the website

Amber Hinds: 00:37:46

that happens that can cause problems or, you know, stop someone from being

Amber Hinds: 00:37:50

able to get served by your company.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:52

Wow, so there's a lot this is another one of those things where I

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:56

was like, man, I knew so little coming into this and now my mind is blown.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:00

There's just so much here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:02

There's so much to consider, and it's not just a small piece of, you know, the

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:07

corner of the abstract internet here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:09

We're talking about, this is a good chunk of people who are in this category.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:13

Probably an increasing number of people who are in these categories, maybe

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:16

even you , you know, hopefully not, but, uh, and it, it can happen, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:20

Like it, it could be me soon.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:22

So this is really important and really interesting stuff.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:25

And it has a business impact.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:28

It, it could be small.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:30

It could be like little things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:31

It could also be, you know, requiring quite a bit of, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:33

know, changes to a website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:35

But at the end of the day, the goal is really right, like accessibility, making

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:40

things more accessible, making them more usable, making it so that the foot you're

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:44

putting forward is being understood.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:47

Interpreted is, is helping people know where they need to go is giving them,

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:51

you know, the proper, if it's in the journey, you know, everything along

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:54

the way has been thought out and.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:57

It's not something that I would say you'd relegate and just hope

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:01

it gets done, or it it's something that you'd probably consider.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:06

In the realm of website in the realm of the business, the culture, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:10

how are we handling things like this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:11

How are we gonna handle, you know, limitations, disability.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:14

I even saw like when researching this like low speed internet is something

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:18

that has to be considered too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:20

And it's, I'd be like something necessarily disability, but it

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:22

is like a limitation, right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:23

Is something that someone is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:25

Could have, you know, their, their internet.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:27

Speed's not great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:28

Or they live in the mountains and it's like only by satellite internet and even,

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:31

and for some reason that's not always on when the satellite's up at the right time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:35

So there's like different odd, there's different things that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:38

You know, you want to encompass and you're like, well, maybe if

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:40

that's just like a tiny little fraction, maybe I'll ignore it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:43

But I think what we're trying to say here is this is a good chunk of people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:46

There's a lot of people that website AccessAbility helps and that it's

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:51

definitely worth considering.

Amber Hinds: 00:39:52

Yeah, there really is.

Amber Hinds: 00:39:53

I mean, it's, it's just, it helps everyone in, in the long run.

Amber Hinds: 00:39:56

It is, it is a great investment that will help the business succeed over time and

Amber Hinds: 00:40:03

it'll make their website last longer.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:05

I think.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:07

Yeah, that's a good point.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:08

Every business would love to hear that.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:09

Yeah, I think if you put more attention to detail into usability and

Amber Hinds: 00:40:12

things like that, then maybe you go from like every three years feeling like you

Amber Hinds: 00:40:16

need a redesign to being, to being able to get, you know, maybe double out of that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:21

Yeah, that's a big deal.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:22

We summarized quite a bit.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:23

Is there anything that we missed, anything that we didn't touch on or anything

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:27

you'd like to mention that we haven't, uh, talked about yet in regards to, you

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:30

know, making a website more accessible?

Amber Hinds: 00:40:31

No, I feel like this has been, it's been very thorough.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:34

I think, you know, one thing would be, you know, where do you get

Amber Hinds: 00:40:37

started if you wanna learn more?

Amber Hinds: 00:40:39

Um, and I did mention the, IAAP, they have a lot of training courses.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:44

There's a company out there called DQ.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:46

That they do a, a free conference every year called ACON and it's recorded.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:52

So you could go register for it.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:53

Now, it already happened in March, but you could watch all these different videos and

Amber Hinds: 00:40:57

they're not just like developer designer.

Amber Hinds: 00:40:59

Like they have marketers and they have people from different large companies.

Amber Hinds: 00:41:04

Talking about like, how did they change their organizational

Amber Hinds: 00:41:06

processes to support that?

Amber Hinds: 00:41:08

Like a lot of that.

Amber Hinds: 00:41:09

So that's a great resource.

Amber Hinds: 00:41:11

And then, uh, we run the WordPress success building meetup, which you mentioned in

Amber Hinds: 00:41:14

the beginning and that's twice a month on zoom and it's live captioned with

Amber Hinds: 00:41:18

the captioner so everyone can attend.

Amber Hinds: 00:41:21

And that's a great place to learn as well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:23

Yeah, that's awesome.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:24

I think if anything, you know, you could walk away from this being like, this

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:28

is all really fascinating and maybe wanna learn a little bit more, maybe

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:32

wanna see how much of an impact it may have in your business or your industry.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:35

I think some, some industries know like I've.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:38

I would talk to and work a lot with like an audiology company.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:41

And I think, you know, in that realm, definitely there's a lot

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:44

going on there that could benefit from, you know, accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:48

So, uh, Amber, thank you so much for coming on now is there's someone out there

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:53

who's listening and is like, I really want to, you know, connect with Amber.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:56

I wanna connect with the company.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:57

I wanna learn more.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:58

I wanna reach out if I have some questions about this, how can they

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:02

connect with you or your company and learn more about what you.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:06

Yep, so our website is equalizedigital.com.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:09

You can learn more about us there or download a free copy of our accessibility

Amber Hinds: 00:42:13

checker plugin for WordPress.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:15

Uh, the best way to get ahold of me is either in, we have a Facebook group.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:20

It's the WordPress accessibility Facebook group, or I'm on

Amber Hinds: 00:42:24

Twitter at @heyamberhinds.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:27

So thank you for coming on Amber.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:28

Thanks for enlightening us.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:29

And really, you know, especially for me, like helping educate me on all

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:34

this, that I didn't really have any idea what was, how deep all of this was.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:38

And for, you know, helping our listeners understand wow, what website accessibility

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:42

is, how can we can take some next steps and making our websites more accessible.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:46

So I really appreciate you coming on.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:47

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Amber Hinds: 00:42:48

It's been fun.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:50

Thank you listeners for checking it out today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:51

And I hope you feel encouraged to go check your website accessibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:55

See if it's up to par with the way you want it to be the way

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:57

your culture demands it to be.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:59

And maybe you could figure out something that you could do to make

Kevin Dieny: 00:43:02

your website more accessible, bring in more visitors, more business,

Kevin Dieny: 00:43:05

and help your business grow, so...