Did you know that making your educational content more accessible can enhance the learning experience for everyone? In this episode of The Visual Lounge, Matt Pierce sits down with accessibility advocate and CEO of Build Capable, Sarah Mercier, to explore the world of accessible learning design.

We hear about Sarah’s journey and insights on making educational content more accessible to all learners, when she realized just how important it is, and her tips for getting started with your own content.

She discusses how accessibility isn't just about accommodating specific disabilities, but about removing barriers for everyone. Sarah provides practical tips for content creators, such as incorporating closed captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions into video production. She encourages a "progress over perfection" approach and suggests starting with small steps and continuously improving accessibility practices.

Learning points from the episode include:

• 00:00 - 01:28 Introduction
• 01:28 - 07:20 Why is it important to get better at accessibility?
• 07:20 - 12:50 How to make accessibility a part of your practice
• 12:50 - 16:10 Getting started with accessibility and dealing with feedback
• 16:10 - 17:08 How to find out more about Sarah and her resources
• 17:08 - 17:32 Outro

Important links and mentions:

• Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahcmercier/
• Build Capable: https://buildcapable.com/

But we keep getting further and further away from remembering that we're teaching

people, and it's become more and more about the technology and less

about that opportunity to connect with people

and help them do a thing, help them learn a thing. And the

reason why I do this work is that I love seeing

the light bulb moment when you learn something new. You

know, it's like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know how to do this, and now

I know how to do it. And so I think that what has

happened is when you talk so much about the technology and you

forget that there's a person on the other end of it. Yeah.

Then you're missing a huge opportunity, and sometimes you're

actually working against yourself to do exactly the thing that you set out to

do. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon,

wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pearce, host of

visual Lounge. And today we're going to be talking about a very important subject,

accessibility. I've got Sarah Mercier with me. So, Sarah, welcome to the

visual arts. Thank you very much, Matt. It's so good to be here. So tell

us just briefly a little bit about yourself. My name is Sarah

Mercier. We did get that. And I run a

consulting company called build capable. We're based out of Austin, Texas,

but I live in Washington state and I love it there.

It's beautiful. And you collect? I do collect rocks now

since really since August of last year, and I tumble them

and then I give them to my friends, as you well know. I do, and

it's become in handy. Thank you so much. Yes, it has powers. So,

Sarah, you have been a speaker in a lot of different events, and you've

been talking a lot, especially lately, about accessibility. Yes,

I have. And so why is that something that you're keen on and

making sure people are learning more about it, getting better at it? Yes, that

is such a great question. I love answering this question. The main reason I love

answering this question is that the one thread that has always

been consistent in everything that I do, because I'm a tech nerd and I

love technology and I love to teach people about technology and how to use

it, to design training, to learning

experiences, whatever you want to call it, whatever jargon we want to use. But

the thing that I've always loved the most is that thread of

being able to design something that helps people learn something. Right?

I don't care what you use. You can use a mobile app, you can use

VR, you can use an email. It doesn't really matter to me. So much like

the mode, right? You know, camtasia

videos. Great. But what has happened,

I feel like, in more recent years,

AI, is that we keep getting further and further away

from remembering that we're teaching people, and it's become more and more about the

technology and less about that opportunity

to connect with people and help them do a thing, help them learn a thing.

And the reason why I do this work is that I

love seeing the light bulb moment when you

learn something new. You know, it's like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know how to

do this. Now I know how to do it. And so I think that what

has happened is when you talk so much about the technology and

you forget that there's a person on the other end of it,

then you're missing a huge opportunity, and sometimes you're

actually working against yourself to do exactly the thing that you set out to

do. And forever. I mean, I

started my first kind of experience

with accessibility, as most people think of accessibility, like helping

people learn that have access to training who might

have different disabilities, was back when I was working at

Carmax, and I trained folks in a classroom

environment that were either completely blind or had low

vision, and they were jaws users,

these jaws screen readers. And this is a long time

ago, right? And technology years, for sure. And

so I had all this experience over the years

using different types of technology to teach people

and in learning about how we can make things more accessible. But it was just

always kind of part of my work. It wasn't the thing that I talked

about, right. It was always just. It was just how I worked. And I was

very fortunate to go work for an organization

called learning ninjas, which is now build capable. And

in doing that work and working with other people who cared

so much about creating accessible learning

experiences, I found that I learned a lot about digital

accessibility, but I didn't really talk about it by itself. Right. I

just talked about it. Like, if I'm making a video, I just assumed people

knew. Make closed captions, right, and then give people

a transcript. It was kind of a. It was an assumption.

And what I found is that the more that we talk about

tools like AI, and it's like, oh, now AI can do this, and, you know,

this tool can do this. And I'm like, hold on a second. This is

really pretty garbage, right? Like, this is not.

You're not actually meeting your goals anymore. I felt like we keep getting further away

from that. And in a time where we're talking so much about robots

doing things for us, which also, as a nerd, I get very excited about.

I also want us to remember that there are people on the other end of

this, and those folks. It's not just folks who

have disabilities. You know, if I were to ask you

to imagine in your mind's eye what

you think about when you think about accessibility, people typically will tell

me, I think about someone who uses a screen reader, someone who's blind,

someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, someone who

uses a wheelchair or a cane, and you have these

mental pictures of what you think about with

accessibility. And people don't typically think about, oh, I'm in an

area with low bandwidth, or I don't have access to Internet, or they don't

necessarily think about, oh, I might have someone

that is dyslexic, who is colorblind, who has,

you know, uses a hearing aid, but isn't deaf

or hard, like, necessarily hard of hearing, but may have some other

reason why they're using that. They may be using a screen reader because

of, you know, some folks who have

autism, you know, or who are autistic. And this is all a

preference. So when you start to talk about different disabilities, folks prefer

different ways to refer to different disabilities. And so I got into all of

this, and I was like, there are so many opportunities to learn how

to be better designers. If you remember, you're designing for people,

how can we be a better designer?

And if you start to go down the rabbit hole of,

okay, is there someone in my target audience that

is, fill in the blank. You're going to wear yourself

out. You can't. And also, people are not going to disclose this

stuff to you. They're not necessarily going to tell you. I mean, Diane Elkin

says, okay, of course. Why would they? Right. I can't imagine a reason why I

wouldn't disclose a disability to my employer. But, you

know, you think about these things, and it is, it

is, it is an exercise in futility to try to

identify who has what disabilities and accommodate them.

A better practice is something that we can take from the field

of, let's say, ux, of user experience,

universal design. And what can I do to remove

barriers? So can I ask a question here? Because I do get the sense,

like, the one thing you said earlier was that it's just kind of become what

part of what you do? And I don't think that's true for most. Right. It

hasn't. Hasn't gotten injected like, oh, I always just do closed captions.

Right. That may be like, oh, well, hey, guess what? You gotta do closed captions,

because otherwise, as a business, you might get sued or you

might be in trouble. But what I'm wondering about with these

practices is what

can someone do to start getting to that point where it. Because

no one's going to disclose to me all the things that I need to do

for them. But what can I do to start making that just part of practice

that I get better at this? Because even if I'm not doing 100%, at least

if I'm doing zero now and I get to 10%

or 30%, I'm doing a lot. It's a lot better. It's not perfect.

We still need to keep working on it. But so what would you suggest? I

love this question. And you have also asked the

Pandora's box question, which is, I like whatever

answer I give you, there are a gazillion more things. Right? Of

course. So what I would tell folks, if you were to pick one

thing to get started, and let's focus on video, right? Yeah. That's a good place

to start. That's visual audio. Makes sense. Okay, so I suggest

that in your video storyboard,

you add the fields for your transcript. You're

already writing what your spoken

words will be, what visual cues you're going to use. Right.

So in your storyboard, can you go ahead in your scripting

and think about it, not just from the script for the video, but from

a transcript perspective, could you also describe

sounds? So like descriptive text, right? Yes.

Sounds that aren't spoken word, if there are any.

Let's say there aren't. Can you also describe the visuals that are happening on

the screen? Like, let's say it's an instructional video, and I'm describing

how to do something. Let's say I'm working with a machine

or a product, and I'm describing this product. Can I

think about that in my scripting as describing also what I'm

showing? And there are multiple ways to do that.

But thinking about it from how would I be consuming this video

if I couldn't see it? How could I also

be experiencing this video if I can't hear

it? Right? If I can only see? So I'm looking at closed captions,

vice, other side of that, do I need to create a video that

is giving me the descriptive,

basically an audio description of what is also happening on the

screen? There's music playing. Well, you wouldn't describe

that for you would in closed captioning. You would

do that in a transcript. Right. And you would. For

your audio, you would want to have a

spoken description of anything that's being demonstrated that somebody couldn't

see because, right. If you can't see the video, you can still hear

it. But what if I'm doing something, I'm showing something on the

video that's not being described aloud. Right. So there

are different ways you can do that. So you have to start to get into

this mindset or establish this mindset of how

might a person experience this video in different ways. So can

I do it without looking at it? Can I experience this without hearing

it? And the thing is, is that it's not just folks

that are deaf or hard of hearing or that are blind or visually low

vision. It is. I use closed captions all the time. I

have them always turned on, made by default. And it is

folks that are neurodiverse and

that can fall under dyslexia, autism spectrum. They

are all of these different things that you're never gonna know about some

people, ever. And sometimes they don't know that about themselves.

And so they just know, I can't, I can't with this

video. That's basically, I just can't, I can't with it. And so giving

people, Meryl Evans is an accessibility advocate,

and she talks about, and this is a universal design concept,

specifically universal design for learning. UDL is always

give two options. Give people two options, right? Give them two ways to

consume this information, if you will. And so just starting to get into that

mindset and working it into your design process, because if you start

doing this stuff later, then it's hard. Gotcha. Then it's time

consuming, then it's like, oh, I didn't think about it. Now I have to retrofit

this stuff to do it. And now it is a process.

You have to practice this constantly. And folks who've

been doing this for years, I've been doing this for a long time. I mess

up all the time. I learn something new all the time. I'll do a thing

and I'm like, oh, I never thought about it that way. Or somebody might give

some feedback and I'm like, oh, I never actually thought about that. And so I

take that and I do it the next time. Right? And so it's like you

could continue to evolve. So what I suggest to people is

like, just start to do a thing. Now, if you're not doing closed captions,

start making them. If you're not adding any kind of audio description to your

closed captions, start doing that. Right? If you're not

creating a transcript. Start doing that. Like, just start doing a thing.

And then you get that into your practice. Then you do the next thing. That's

the thing that's exciting. And everything that you do, it's like you're becoming a

better designer because you change your design process

based on what you learn from doing these things. It's super cool.

No, I love that. And you actually answered my

next question. Because even though I knew it was a Pandora's box, right? Yes.

Because the next question is like, well, gosh, how do you get started? And you

just. I love that. That this is iterative and you just gotta keep

improving, getting better here by a little bit, there a little bit of.

But it makes a big difference overall. Yes, it's a progress

over perfection approach. Again, I'm quoting Meryl Evans. But it

is, you know, I'm gonna do this thing now, acknowledging

that I'm not gonna do all the things. Yeah. And then I'm gonna

get really good at this thing, and then I'm gonna introduce the next thing. Because

what I can promise you is when you start doing one thing, people will start

to give you feedback and they'll be like, oh, that's cool. You have captions on

your videos. What about this? You know, the other thing I like

to prepare people for is when you do a

good thing for accessibility, inevitably someone will come

to you and be like, you did that thing completely wrong. You should have been

doing this and this and this. And what I would tell people is like, ignore

the haters, because those people,

they have good intentions. Right? And so I try to

encourage people that when folks give you that feedback, it's because

for folks who need this stuff, it is so incredibly frustrating

that we're in 2024 and they don't have access to

certain information today. Right. It gets so

frustrating. And so these folks were like, come on, you

know, tell me you already had the script. You couldn't give me a transcript that

I could download? Like, you couldn't run this through Otter AI and give

me a closed caption? Like, why? I don't understand why you

can't, why we're not thinking about this yet. And. But for somebody

who's never made that part of their practice or didn't even know and wasn't aware,

like, it's not a blame placing thing. It's just like, okay, you know

the thing. Be prepared because somebody inevitably may complain, but

you're doing the good thing. Like, you're doing the cool thing. So don't let that

get you discouraged, because there's so many people that we're all rooting for you, right?

Like those of us who are like, yes, yes, you did a good thing. And

it's like, now, now there's another thing that you can try.

But, you know, as training folks, we're

overwhelmed with stuff that we need to

learn. You need to learn ux, you need to learn visual design, you need to

be a programmer, you need to learn xapi, you need to learn how to use

this tool and that tool and videos and closed captions and alt text. And it's

just like, please, I just. We have a

little bit. And you also need to learn the thing that you need to teach

people. And it's just, it can be so overwhelming to

do this job. But the thing is, the reason we all do it is because

we love helping people learn something, right? Absolutely. And so I look at

it as just like, this opportunity, like, I want. So this is

a Sarah thing, but I want to be, like, the best possible designer I could

possibly be. I want to know. I want to know as much as I can.

And sometimes it gets discouraging when you don't know the thing or you don't know

how to do it well, but when you start to do it and practice it,

and then you start to get good at it, and then somebody's like, hey, how

did you do that thing? And you're like, oh, let me show you how I

did that thing. Then that's the thing that gets exciting, right? And so I just

hope that people will try, try something new. Try adding some

alt text to your images that you're gonna put in your next elearning or whatever.

Like, just start doing a thing, and then you've opened the box and you're

like, oh, and I could also try this thing and that thing, so love it.

Well, Sarah, I think that's a really good place for us to kind of wrap

up to try. If people want to learn more from

you, how can they connect with you? I have a great opportunity

for folks to actually jump into this.

So if you go to buildcapable.com. Okay. We'll list

that in the stuff below. Forward slash accessibility.

It takes you to the page that we have where we have an accessibility

primer, which is like ten things you can be doing and steps,

directions that you can download. We don't even, like, take your information. You can

sign up for our mailing list, and that's great. But you can access that and

just start. Go for it and then let us know how it works out for

you. And say that URL one more time. It is

buildcapable.com forward slash accessibility

perfect. And I'm sure if they wanted to connect more with you, they can find

you on LinkedIn and all that. I'm on, well, I'm not in all the places,

but I'm on LinkedIn for sure and on the website is a good place to

connect with me. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Yes, thanks, Matt. You bet. All

right, everybody, we are so grateful for Sarah and sharing this because I think this

is a thing that effort of trying, doing the iterative approach.

It's so aligned with what we talk about, particularly when we talk about images and

video. There's so much that we can do just to make it a little bit

better for everybody to help them out, take some time,

figure out what's the next thing you can do and iterate and then

level up every single day. Thanks, everybody.