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To those of you who have just entered, I just wanted to welcome you all. I think we're still getting started.

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I am going to put in the chat our accessibility dot org website for the accessibility summer camp.

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You can still register. It's going to happen June 17th, all virtual. We already have quite an exciting line up.

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We're going to be getting that program out soon,

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so be sure to register and check back and we'll just wait a few more minutes to think we'll get started.

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Mikes on. All right. Hello, everyone.

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We're having a little bit of a technical challenge. Give us just a minute, we'll get started should just a minute or two.

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Staring down my computer. Yeah, it's on and the cameras rolling.

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Again, I would just say, OK, I will go ahead and get started.

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Welcome to AC Live. This is episode two.

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We started this a month ago is our second episode. AC Live is brought to you by the Tech Concourse Syllabus, Waypoint Ventures, Innovative Educators,

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Open Elements, Blackboard, Accessible Learning, Gqom, Simple Syllabus and D2 L.

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Special thanks goes out to Mid-America Nazarene University and Stream Yard.

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Accessibile Summer Camp is a virtual conference on the 17th of June of 2022 this year.

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You can register for this event free event at accessibility that.

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Org that will be scrolling at the bottom of your screen throughout the broadcast.

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We're excited about our guests today, Marissa Van Stiver, and say that a couple of times.

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Who is the owner and developer? Our senior developer for caption coders that correct.

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And as an instructor at Wichita State University teaching digital marketing.

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Yes, our topic of discussion today is protecting your business and expanding the reach with digital accessibility.

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Marissa, tell us a little bit about you and your passion specifically in the field of accessibility.

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Oh, that's a hard one. I've been coding as a hobby since I was 13, and I didn't really even think about how people who view the world differently,

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literally and experience the world differently.

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Browse the internet until I started working for a publishing company and they we published all of the Scottish Government documents,

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so you can imagine it was really exciting. Documents that we were publishing,

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but we had a really big emphasis on accessibility and making sure that even these marine studies that you would think it's

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OK if not everybody can access that they wanted to make sure that anybody and everybody could access these documents.

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And so we had to go through as a digital engineer for the company.

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We did go through accessibility training and learn and use a screen reader that literally brought the internet back to us.

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That it was it was overwhelmingly eye-opening. There is so much out there that we don't even really have any concept of the we don't think

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about others and the people that are getting left out of huge portions of the internet.

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And this was I mean, this was 10 years ago, and we're just now seeing some of these features roll out into social media

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platforms and other places that we really should have had from the beginning.

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So when you think about how somebody interacts with the internet, we may have different abilities to you.

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And I guess it's just a huge thing for me to kind of look at it and go, OK,

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I don't like that this is the standard and I like this is where what I'm learning and I want to make this a standard,

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at least for my business and for my customers, so that they can they can reach everybody that they need to reach.

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I find it interesting that we, well, people in general don't even realize what they don't know right and left.

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That part of their life is affected by someone with some of those special needs.

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Low vision or somebody is deaf or their autism or whatever the case is.

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It's amazing how much it was eye opening for me.

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What is not out there and the difficulties that people have as they try to access all this information that we take for granted?

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Just what you said has resonated in my head. Right?

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Well, you think about let's look at a platform like TikTok that came out several years ago now but really exploded

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during COVID 19 quarantines and a customer base beyond the children and the young kids that were on it.

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But for so long, the only way to have any kind of closed captioning on TikTok was to use an external app and upload your video with certain captions.

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There was no way for somebody who was deaf or hard of hearing to interact with that at all for years,

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and we don't think about that and how it affects somebody and what they're missing out on.

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And even we, as brands are missing out on our customer base when we're not helping and making our content accessible.

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Sure. And how can you laugh at some of the stuff that's on TikTok if you even don't even know what they're saying?

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Right, exactly. And sometimes I want to watch TikTok when I'm in a doctor's office and I don't want to sound like simple things like that.

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So it benefits not just for folks that need that, but I know I use it.

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And I think I mentioned this in the last podcast. We did that.

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Those are helpful when I'm my vocabulary is limited, and so I need those so I can look up those words in the dictionary.

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So I found the television to give somebody a book report. But what I just read, and those helped me as well.

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So let's walk into the world of web websites and web development and all that kind of fun stuff.

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What are some of the roadblocks or issues that you see out there in the world of websites?

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Well, when you think about it, websites are very visual things. So somebody who has no vision or who has low vision, all of a sudden,

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how have you been thought about somebody who was blind for nearly one, how they would interact with the internet?

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Because at least in our current form, it is 100 percent visual.

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And so that roadblock there of how do you deliver content to somebody who literally cannot see it?

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And then you have the other pieces where how do you deliver video to somebody who literally cannot hear it?

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And, you know, even those who have low vision and color blindness?

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And we don't think about the fact that while we see those beautiful chosen hex color, somebody who's colorblind might see something totally different.

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And suddenly what you put on your website is illegible because the contrast ratio is not great enough.

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So there's a lot of these roadblocks.

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So I think that we don't even really we don't even consider we don't think about because again, it doesn't affect us directly.

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And until it does, you know, that's that's when it starts to become a thought.

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But then you have I mean, you have other things where somebody who is browsing, using only a keyboard, they have.

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I had a coworker who had arthritis and using a mouse was really difficult for her,

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so she needed to be able to use her keyboard for ninety nine percent of what she was doing on the internet.

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And we're terrible at making sure that we can tag and move through a website without needing a mouse and without being able to click.

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So there's a lot of these things that really we can we don't really think about and that come up even the words that we choose,

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we don't want somebody having to look up the dictionary.

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You know, we talk a lot about with writing copy, making it really simplistic, making it really easy for people to understand.

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And that's because you don't know who has dyslexia or some other kind of reading

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disorder or somebody who just doesn't have the same vocabulary that you do.

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You know, I read a lot. I know a lot of words. I like big words because that's what I'm used to.

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But I understand that not everybody in my audience wants to read that wants to have to look up a word to understand what I'm saying.

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And so part of accessibility to is, you know, bringing your speech down to something more.

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The fifth to seventh grade reading level. So it's easy to consume and easy to to get through.

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So maybe I read it the fifth and sixth grade level you are poking at me.

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I'm just I'm no, no, I never I never play scrabble because I lose in unbelievably well.

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That's and it's interesting that you talk about tap into a document or through a website.

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It's the same thing when I see that common PDF documents.

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If you don't build things in order that they're going to tab through it and the add things later,

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it remembers the order that you built it instead of the order that it needs to tap through.

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And if you don't know enough about accessibility or even have the concept of that, they're going to tab all over that form or that document.

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And then I have no no clue what you're talking about. Well, in PDFs, we're actually super accessible.

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I highly recommend that people don't use them unless they have to, because what ends up happening is not as hard or it's not.

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It's not really presented as text. It's gotten a whole lot better over the last 10 15 years, but sometimes is not seen as text, it's seen as images.

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And so, you know, the screen readers and assisted devices that people use to read documents to them they can't read.

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And then when you think about what it looks like on a phone, you have to punch in zero.

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It doesn't respond to the size.

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So one of the big things actually that I learned to do was to create iPads and oh, shoot with the Kindle version of Moby documents as well as PDFs,

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and you just deliver the content in multiple formats on those EPUB and those MOBI documents, those respondents learned the e-books.

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And so there are a lot more accessible. They let you almost build like a website.

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They're literally a package website so you can make far more accessible and it's easier to control those type things.

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And, you know, Adobe has come a long way. But so let's talk about.

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They a lot of Adobe products are used for the foldable form factor. And so how does that translate in the web world?

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Is it better to put a form in HTML or hybrid that's built in the web world?

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Or is it better to link them to a document that's a little bit easier to fill out?

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You know, I honestly would say that depends a little bit on the purpose of the document,

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but 90 percent of the time, I would say, to use an HTML based form.

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And that's because when you're when you're building up those forms,

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they can get help and assistance with filling those out because it's going to read not only the label to them,

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but you need to make sure there's a trend where you hide the label and you just put the nice little placeholder.

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So there's no that's really unacceptable. It looks great. But then there's nothing for the assisted screen readers to read back.

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And so it's a lot easier for somebody to interact with a live web page and allied web form and even tabbed content than it is through like a PDF.

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But when you have some security issues going on, and depending how you want to receive that information, it becomes it becomes kind of a.

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Twenty two, OK, this is what's best for this particular project,

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but a lot of the times I'd say a form is usually easier and even something like Google Forms is a great,

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easy way to gather that content that's not any more difficult to fill out with a PDF or syllable PDF document.

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Good to know. I mean, I'm not a web developer by any stretch of the imagination, and I use things like Wix and those kinds of platforms to.

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I just made Ukraine's a lot of that. But you know, I talk about the lack of the accessibility of work.

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That's great. We should talk after this meeting and work that out.

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But that's great. Let's talk about some of your frustrations with web design.

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We just talked about Wix. What a nightmare that is.

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Apparently, as it applies this accessibility, what are some of the frustrations you have with web design and trying to make things successful?

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You know, honestly, for me, I don't feel like I have the same frustrations because I'm so used to it.

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But I think one of the most points a lot of people miss out on is where I see people not doing probably comes into play more there.

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And that's things that are simple, like having alt text on images and, you know,

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making sure that every piece of content on the website that you need someone to be

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able to read is in text form and not a graphic because we can't pass a graphic.

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I was actually doing some research earlier today looking at Apple's accessibility page,

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and it was funny because I pull up the page like this does not feel very accessible.

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It's very highly designed. And what ends up happening when you focus more on design than being able to deliver content?

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That's a huge frustration for me because yes, it looks great. But are we really able to get people the information that they need to get from that?

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You know what? It's all really designed, and I think that's a big trend in the world right now,

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especially in the website world where we focus a lot more on the look and the.

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Ascetics, of something that we do on whether or not there actually is going to work not only for us, but for our customer base.

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So that's probably my biggest frustration, honestly, is just not putting putting the emphasis on this kind of stuff and not not

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thinking through who our customers are not doing what we can for our customers.

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Now that's a concept that's a common theme across.

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Most institutions around the world have found out that the engineers and or designers of products never talk to the end user about what they need.

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For instance, in the military, I'm an Air Force guy, so that's what I have my reference to.

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Some of the things that we're trying to maintain was next to impossible because the

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engineers didn't design it in a way that we can maintain it properly or more easily.

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And so my friend and so they would spend millions of dollars modifying equipment so they

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could make it maintainable when if they had talked to the end user in the first place,

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the folks that maintain those aircraft, you know, they could have designed that into it and saved millions of dollars.

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And I'm sure it's similar in the design world.

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If people would talk to the folks that actually use it and need it, all of the folks, not just the majority,

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then they can have that at the beginning because I know doing anything for accessibility.

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If you design it that way first, it's always easier to do it that way than it is to try to mitigate or change the document afterwards, especially PDF.

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Yes. Hundred percent. I'm having PTSD flashbacks to projects I did for the Scottish Government because, you know,

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we would get these beautifully designed PDF documents and even website designs that we would have to go, OK, that's not really accessible.

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And so then it was our job to try to turn that into something totally accessible.

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Yeah, it is. It's a lot harder. And what happens a lot of times I've done a lot of accessibility mitigation, which really becomes FCO mitigation too,

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because when we're designing for accessibility, we're making Google happy and we can get into that a little bit more later.

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But you know, it creates a lot of work where, you know, like I mentioned, adding alt tags to images.

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One of the simplest things you can do to make your website more accessible.

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And if you don't do that while you're uploading an image, then you potentially have 500 images to go back and tag and properly.

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And sometimes, too, you have to reapply the image because you need to rename it.

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And it creates more work and you're not thinking through all of the pieces that you need

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or even getting a design from a designer who doesn't think through the contrast ratios.

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And then they have to go back and change it because it doesn't have accessibility standards.

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You know, there's there's a lot of things like that where it's a whole lot easier to go into it with that concept.

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And it seems many customers a lot of money just in the upfront work because.

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You don't have to have anybody come in and fix it and spend time wasted time going

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back and redoing work that could have been done right the first time for sure.

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So it does take longer. Granted, when you design things and do all that accessibility work at the beginning,

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then it would without it that I get for the most part, yeah, a little bit.

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So when you're talking about all text and all that kind of stuff for a few years and I've had to mitigate PowerPoints before,

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you know, 50 pages, and many of those pages had the same image on all of them.

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So I had their alt text each one or all text one and then copy and paste them, if I could remember where that all went.

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So, yeah, I may take a little bit more time, but it's way more labor intensive to try to mitigate than it is to design.

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And honestly, once you get used to it, once you start thinking through accessibility from from the very beginning,

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it's gotten to a point for me where least to to centennial years. I know I'm coming up with a lot of words.

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It doesn't take me any more time. It actually takes me more time to not do it the right way because it has become so ingrained into my systems.

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And so it's one of those things where once you get used to it, it really it doesn't have a huge time investment.

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A lot of times it's just getting ahead of it and thinking through,

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you know who who are talking to and and honestly, you know what everybody's experience may be.

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So.

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I know that's one of the reasons why we the summer camp even started as we are trying to demonstrate the people that it's not as scary as you think.

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And it's not as hard as you think, especially and we're trying to change the culture to wear that.

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That's part of what we do. It's not an easy thing to do in a large institution, but we've made a lot of progress over the years, which is great.

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And the summer camp has helped us do that.

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Awareness and tools are the thing and reassuring folks that it's not all that scary, and it's actually some of it's actually quite fun to do so.

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It's interesting that. That the fear is out there, and I can understand it because ignorance causes fear.

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Right? Well, I mean, if you look at the time invested, but I'm sure that was spent and training the team that I was part of.

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You know, by the time I got there, it was a well oiled accessibility team.

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But at the time of us line to training each of us to be accessible, yeah, that took time.

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And I have to I have to do some research all of the time because standards change and because there's things that I'm like,

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you know, I feel like I have a research system. What am I missing? What am I forgetting?

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That kind of stuff happens all of the time. But what ends up, you know, to me, it's worth that time investment.

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And it's not scary at all, and it helps you and you just have to add them to your process.

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It has changed. It just tweaks a little bit of how you take care of things. Sure.

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So let's talk about and he alluded to some of these already.

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So let's talk about the five things we talked about this earlier when we had our little meeting before we did this broadcast.

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So five ways that people can easily do to bring their websites or things fully accessible.

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I'll briefly introduce each one of the five things we talked about and then kind of expound on a little bit.

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You talked about optics, but we will talk about that a little bit more so.

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So let's talk about optics. Yeah. So I'll text or alternative text.

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So I actually I taught a colleague's class yesterday at Wichita State,

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and we talked about alternative tech so that, you know, back in the old days, browsers do this a lot less.

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When an image can load,

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you would see that nice little broken image icon and then you literally you would see the text that was added as an alternative text.

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And that's what the original intention was. So the image was broken.

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The text would show you, OK, this is what about images, but it's an accessibility thing,

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because what happens if you're using a screen reader or any kind of assistive device to browse the internet,

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it literally has reading the page to you with a voice.

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And when they get to an image, the first thing that they're going to read is that alternative text.

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And so if there's no alternative text there,

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you already have removed knowledge from that customer as to what that graphic even is and a worst case scenario,

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what if it's a large infographic of some kind or, you know,

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has some kind of major value to your page and they've lost out on that value because you didn't add a simple description of what the image was?

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And you know, the secondary piece of that, too is your image file names.

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So if a screen reader doesn't find an old text in the tag, then you start to read out the file name.

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Well, the file name is image dash. Oh, one three five page.

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I mean, that's what it reads, and it's mind blowing. How many?

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How many pictures on the internet are named horribly, and that's what people are dealing with.

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They're just getting this terrible file. They read back to them and again tells them nothing.

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So all in all, text is easy. It's a simple description of what's in the image.

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So looking at it, like I double checked Apple's what looked like a terrible accessibility accessibility,

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and they had an alternative text tag magnify use of magnifying tool on an iPhone.

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Like, it literally just explains what that graphic. Sure.

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And what most people don't understand just has a secondary benefit because Google does not have a live person

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who has the same vision level that you and I do going through your website and determining your estimate.

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Based on that, it's going through with a robot. The robot cannot see.

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So it's reading that alternative text to understand what images to serve as a Google search result,

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whether or not it helps your SEO, your keywords and all that kind of stuff.

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They're getting that from the alt text and from the image.

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So it's one of those things where it's like, Yeah, it's great for accessibility, but let's put a selfish spin on it.

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It's also great for your SEO because Google is really looking at your website the same way someone with visual impairment status.

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So when you're focusing on making it better for them to really just making Google happy too,

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and all text is the lowest hanging fruit you can really go after, honestly with accessibility.

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Can you tell the audience that may be ignorant? Like some of us, SEO stands for search engine optimization.

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So like when you're looking to be ranked higher on Google more or less in their search results?

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OK, so let's talk about pictures, let's say an art class,

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and they have a picture that's very busy and they're trying to get somebody to talk about what they feel when they see what's in the image.

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Well, what are some tools that you can use to kind of sidestep that?

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Is it, do you put it, put a long narrative? This picture is doing this and this and this as opposed to all text.

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So what are some tools you can use the fact that when you have something a little more complex, even like an infographic,

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you want to keep that you want to have like a huge long alternative text, because that's a that's a lot to get.

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Read that. So keep it as short as possible. But then you can have below that image and you want to point out that it's an image description.

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So like just a really simple image description column, and then you can add more text below that.

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It's actually one of the most popular ways right now on Facebook to share a lot of those infographics and

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make them accessible because Facebook's alternative text is not great or losing sponsor opportunities here,

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by the way, Apple and Facebook. I'm just giving Apple sign.

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I said I just thought it was fine now, but like, it's a really easy way to describe what's in the image and that it gives it.

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Not only is it giving it to somebody who maybe wants to slide past the image, but read and really understand that better,

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but it's also giving somebody who's using a screen reader a different approach.

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No longer narrative about what's in that image. Okay, that's good.

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That's helpful because I know a lot of our interior design folks and our teachers,

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all that we'll run into that even the medical field, for that matter. Oh yeah, what trauma is going on in this picture?

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And so, yeah, short all text and then a description or something about it.

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Yeah, if it gets really complex, that's what the description works really well.

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And just make sure you know, data and you know, either how that as a caption just below the image or in the first paragraph below the image.

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Perfect. I know some people will put in their paragraph for what they're talking about and refer the image in there.

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This image and this is kind of what it's talking about. So they put it within their context of their material.

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So that seemed to work pretty well, too. So let's talk about page titles.

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Yeah. So like I said, the screen reader reads that reads everything back to your right.

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So the first thing it's going to do when you land on you, click on a new page.

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It's going to read the page title that you've just landed on.

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Now, if your page title is home, which probably 50 percent of the internet home pages are named home,

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it tells the person nothing about what they thought. So they clicked on a Google search result.

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Let's break that down a little bit. I've gotten a Google search result, and I know that I'm going to.

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I'm looking for an answer to this problem I have. Well, if the first thing I get right is just how in the business name.

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I'm not entirely sure if I'm in the right place because there's a little bit of a disconnect.

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So having a very specific page title that tells them, you know, a little bit about the page,

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either it's the main topic or the main problem they solve or the main keyword or key phrase and helps them to understand,

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Okay, I've gotten to the right place.

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And it's also again, really helpful for Google Google because Google looks that and it goes, Hey, this is what the page is about.

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And so that page title helps them navigate. This page is about this service.

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I know that they sell cat food on this page or, you know, this is where somebody can come and buy motorcycle parts or or whatever you're shopping for.

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So it gives a really quick, easy description and as reinforcement that I've landed in the right place,

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there probably are businesses that do sell cat food and automotive parts out west.

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I was, I was thinking, two different businesses. I have no idea why I read those.

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You know, you might run into a hair care and tire center at an airport.

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You know, who knows? I actually had a student in the class of my survey.

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They do fake businesses. And his was a barbershop at a bar and one which was actually quite genius.

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Like, really sad if he doesn't understand the things that come up.

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Color selection, and I have a couple of extra questions after you talk about that filmmaking to hard.

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OK, so color selection, we talked a lot about low vision, color blindness, that kind of thing, but even just somebody that gets older.

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We see colors differently. Monitors you and, you know, on an iPhone and iPad, we have a Retina display,

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and if you have a really crappy old monitor, the colors might not be as sharp.

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So it's not just about vision impairments and vision abilities, but it's also about just technology and making sure that we're adjusting for that.

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So when you have a really low contrast, you know where the colors are too close together on the color wheel.

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Basically, it becomes really hard for somebody you, especially with color blindness to even read.

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And so when you think about the background color and look, that color of the font is on top of that,

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you want it to be incredibly legible because you want them to read your copy.

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So there is a really easy tool that I use called the web, which I have a ton of really awesome accessibility tools.

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There's a contrast checker so I can plug in to my client's hex codes,

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and I can make sure that I'm using the right color combination that's going to be legible and it passes all of the standards down the board.

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I had a client of that.

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You know, she provided a lot of her own design work and she wanted this nice turquoise teal blue, and she wanted the text on top of it to be white.

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She's an attorney. I just show her. I'm like, So this doesn't pass any of the standards.

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It's not even a rated. It's not double. It is definitely not Triple-A rated like it's not an accessible color combination.

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But here's where it is now that that might kind of frustrate her because she likes the look of the white on the turquoise.

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Yes, but did she understand the value of one having making sure her business was

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accessible and to just making sure she wasn't cutting off part of her client base?

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Yes. So did she get exactly the look she wanted?

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No. But we got the look that was accessible to literally everybody who came and it grew on her over time.

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It was just a mindset shift. But whether it provides that tool and it's really easy to plug in the two colors and just know

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that you're going to be able to see it and that everybody is going to be able to see it,

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not just, Oh, this looks good to me, who's, you know, a twenty five year old designer with colors all day?

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You know, that happens a lot, too. We can't see the forest for the trees varied.

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We get used to that kind of stuff. And I have personally, I have a terrible color differentiation.

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I can't always notice, you know, slight changes in color.

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So it helps me to make sure that I'm staying. I'm on track with my color combinations, too.

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That's why I don't. I'm not a close designer.

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I wouldn't know what colors, though, with white or whatever.

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Yeah, my both parents have long complained about my lack of skill in that area, but I'm comfortable with it.

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I'm OK. I'll wear boring stuff.

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I'm good. So my question to follow up with the color is I know that sometimes things that flash people will use things that flash,

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whether it's, you know, a video or or text that goes across the screen because you want to get their attention.

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And I think of places like Super Car Guys, you know, maybe really annoying ads, they don't do that necessarily.

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But that just what reminded me of that, this is something that cause seizures is a thing.

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And what can what can you give us advice about what to avoid in that area?

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If anything, don't don't do it. What's it like, honestly? Sure.

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So back in the old days of age to come out, which this time still exists and works I tested a couple of years ago, it was called the the market tag,

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and it was just literally made up move across the screen and it was on like every single website because it was cool.

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I was 14. Okay, so we both still it was cool.

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The problem with those is it's not always going to treat it as quickly and they're not gonna be able to see that.

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But then you run into people who have any kind of sensory overload, not just, you know, epilepsy, but Aspergers autism.

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And when you're dealing with somebody who can get really easily triggered by flashing stuff, I mean,

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you probably remember when we used flash animated websites and those were the coolest,

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but they were terrible excessively because we had all of these things going all over the place.

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It's just a lot easier to keep everything minimal.

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And it's not just about accessibility, it's about legibility, which you know, goes into that, but it's also about page load time.

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With the more information, the more things that move and flash and go all over the place, the longer it's going to take your site to load.

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So while they can look really cool to some people, it can be a roadblock to somebody else.

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And so the best way to do that is if you really want to use something like that, do your research,

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make sure that you're kind of with them in the realm that you're not going too far out and, you know, and going to hard with it.

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And then also just maybe have somebody come in and look at it who's not connected to it at all and ask them, Does this bother you?

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Do you find this overwhelming? Like, you don't have to necessarily find somebody who has epilepsy,

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but just somebody who's maybe a little bit more sensitive to light or a little bit more sensitive to colors or anything like that?

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And if it bothers a normal person, you could only imagine what it's going to do to somebody who is more sensitive to that.

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Sure. Ever fall asleep, the TV on and the flashing light show, or whatever program starts after that been there?

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That's great advice and appreciate that avoiding those things that probably don't serve you well anyway, right?

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Yeah. I mean, and we we get really excited on the internet that we like.

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Like the marquee tech, we like cool things, especially designers and developers.

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But unless it's going to serve your end user in some way or bring attention to something really important.

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There's really no point in having it to begin with. Forget about HTML tags and headers.

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So this gets really technical, but how a website is built is where a lot of the accessibility comes into play.

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So the HTML tags themselves, Google and screen readers kind of use that to bash the content together so they know where and how.

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You know, what's important with the hierarchy is so when you use the proper tags,

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which are like sections, you're basically telling a screener, OK, this section here, this is one thought.

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And then this section here, this is one thought. When you're just using style tags, which a lot of website builders do with their code, they don't.

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They don't build with a proper structure. It doesn't tell a screen reader or Google anything about the structure of the website.

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Now the visual side of those things that you know, somebody who's building their own website through Wix or Squarespace,

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or anything where you have a little bit more control over that or the headlights, it's really easy way to mitigate the lack of proper HTML tags.

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So with your headlines,

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you have basically six headline sizes available to you everything from one heading one down to a heading six you're heading one is your main thought.

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It is your main headline on the page and there's only one Google.

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I mean, think about it like a college term paper. You have the topic for the page that is your heading one, and it should be the largest size wise.

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It should be very logical, of course, and it should be at the top of the screen.

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And you're telling not only Google, but you're telling your users this is the most important thing on this page.

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This is what we're going to tell you about. So it becomes a user experience issue, too.

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And then sections where you're introducing a new thought down the page and bringing in a new kind of topic,

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much like a college term paper, you have you have a section heading and that's you're heading to.

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And so below that, heading to anything that needs some kind of heading breakup below that, you can use those smaller headlines within one section.

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But when you move to that next section, you want to use another heading to what I see a lot to kind of break this down a bit further.

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When I see a lot of my clients who have DIY their site, they use whatever style they think looks nice.

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And a lot of times what ends up happening is they use the H one five times on the home page and they use it three times on every other page.

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What ends up happening is you're confusing people because they don't really know what the main topic is.

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They don't understand where that shift is. It's a visual breakup.

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But then it also is confusing for Google search, and it's confusing for screen readers because it doesn't give them a place to kind of.

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Take a breath and get to the next section.

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So there's a lot that goes into the code that really signals where that thought process is and what,

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you know how that moves on the page, if that makes sense. Sure.

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Oh, that's good. And the last last piece of that was the caption now.

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So. I mean, it's amazing to me. I'm really excited to see how far we've come even in the last two years of coaching, because a couple of years ago,

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the only way to caption something on social media was to use an external service and upload it.

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And now Instagram, Ticktalk, Twitter, Facebook. They all have some kind of captioning.

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Coming into the service with your website is really simple.

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For instance, if you use a YouTube video to go to a service like Rescan and have just an automated transcription made of any video content you have,

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it costs twenty five cents a minute. It's incredibly cheap and it's pretty accurate, especially if you do more than one.

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VIDEO The first one might be rough. After that, it starts to learn and that it gives you what's called an SRT file,

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and you can load that it creates those timed captions to the upload to go to YouTube or anywhere else that you're hosting that video.

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And then when somebody watches that on your website, they can turn on the closed captions and watch it silently.

373
00:40:35,330 --> 00:40:43,070
They or they have the ability to interact with it, even if the hard of hearing. But then you can also use a full transcription on your website.

374
00:40:43,070 --> 00:40:47,090
So if something comes to your website and you've got a 10 minute video, for instance,

375
00:40:47,090 --> 00:40:50,330
just like this podcast, you know, maybe somebody doesn't want to listen to it.

376
00:40:50,330 --> 00:40:56,720
Maybe they just want to read a transcript because they that's how they interact better with content, how they absorb content.

377
00:40:56,720 --> 00:41:01,520
So they have the ability to get that and a variety of ways.

378
00:41:01,520 --> 00:41:12,680
And for a lot of my clients that when we're doing more video content, especially educational video content, I recommend both captions and transcripts.

379
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:19,440
And because it gives people the option to interact with your content the way they are most comfortable.

380
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:24,390
That's good. What about? So if somebody has a YouTube account?

381
00:41:24,390 --> 00:41:29,130
I know YouTube will do the auto captioning, So how good is that?

382
00:41:29,130 --> 00:41:34,240
Is it? And how easy is it to edit those captions to?

383
00:41:34,240 --> 00:41:42,690
Because it always makes mistakes. Yeah, it does. You know, honestly, with YouTube, I'm not 100 percent sure because I knew I upload my captions.

384
00:41:42,690 --> 00:41:48,600
I prerecorded upload. OK. So with live captioning, you can't really do much to edit, but you can.

385
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:52,920
Facebook and some of the others will let you edit after the fact. Sure.

386
00:41:52,920 --> 00:42:02,470
Now, if you want to have really accurate casting, then you could pay a little bit more to how a human captured it, that services like roads or water.

387
00:42:02,470 --> 00:42:07,110
But, you know, even that machine learning read makes it really easy for you to go in and tweak it

388
00:42:07,110 --> 00:42:12,810
and watch your video and do it yourself for a little highlight where they say,

389
00:42:12,810 --> 00:42:16,440
Hey, this isn't quite. We don't think this is quite right.

390
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:22,020
We think we maybe missed this word. So it makes it really simple to go in and make that tweak for me.

391
00:42:22,020 --> 00:42:26,550
Even Premiere Pro just added live captioning to their system.

392
00:42:26,550 --> 00:42:34,410
So what I do my on my edit videos and premiere, I can now run my captions through that and edit it real easily.

393
00:42:34,410 --> 00:42:40,160
The nice thing is, all of this is getting to be a lot easier than it was even two years ago.

394
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:46,170
You know, I think I think COVID really opened up our eyes to the fact that, you know,

395
00:42:46,170 --> 00:42:55,530
the world is so online and there is a huge swath of people that interact with being online in a totally different way than what we do.

396
00:42:55,530 --> 00:42:59,040
Sure. And I think that's just my superstitions,

397
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:06,870
but I'm certain that COVID was put on the Earth to force us to do things like that because it really advanced a lot of things,

398
00:43:06,870 --> 00:43:08,550
just like the virtual environment,

399
00:43:08,550 --> 00:43:15,450
captioning, there's lots of things that we've had to do to make sure that we could still function in a world that if we had to stay at home,

400
00:43:15,450 --> 00:43:17,780
we could still do our jobs, we could still go to school.

401
00:43:17,780 --> 00:43:24,720
So I joke about that, but I'm a firm believer in those kinds of things that happen in our world.

402
00:43:24,720 --> 00:43:29,310
Force us to do things that we have just been putting off, which is great.

403
00:43:29,310 --> 00:43:40,680
I'm glad that because the air is improved tremendously throughout most of the applications that most of us nerds, we have procrastination issues.

404
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:45,810
So we have a deadline of that definitely helps to improve life.

405
00:43:45,810 --> 00:43:53,020
Sure. So, OK, so we talked about five easy things to do.

406
00:43:53,020 --> 00:44:01,310
What are five things and you alluded to some of them. Five things that people should absolutely avoid when they do websites.

407
00:44:01,310 --> 00:44:11,200
Well, absolutely avoid flashing colors. Honestly, that's the first thing that I would say, because you just you never know who's going to get there.

408
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:19,720
You can always have load issues that. You also want to avoid having just just a video with no captioning, no context.

409
00:44:19,720 --> 00:44:27,280
Nothing. I actually, in my lecture yesterday, looked at a website where there's just literally a headline in a video.

410
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:33,490
There's no context for the video. It opens up on YouTube. It tells me nothing, and then I have to turn a sound on it.

411
00:44:33,490 --> 00:44:42,670
There's a very frustrating experience. So, you know, making it really, really simple to interact with any kind of additional content like that,

412
00:44:42,670 --> 00:44:51,430
especially because we're getting so used to interacting with video content. But we still have people who don't want to or can't for some reason.

413
00:44:51,430 --> 00:44:57,940
Another thing to avoid, honestly, is using giant words and complex language.

414
00:44:57,940 --> 00:45:01,600
You know, we want to look at one from our customers point of view.

415
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:09,130
We want to use their terminology, not technical jargon, because especially, you know, I've built websites for engineering firms.

416
00:45:09,130 --> 00:45:20,650
You can imagine trying to bring engineering terminology down to something that even their customer base can understand and connect with is difficult.

417
00:45:20,650 --> 00:45:28,210
But it becomes again an accessibility thing because we want everybody to be able to interact with it even if they have dyslexia,

418
00:45:28,210 --> 00:45:33,910
even if they have a lower reading level. I did not point at any kind of device.

419
00:45:33,910 --> 00:45:44,470
I did a little bit I'm with because it was a gesture you don't honestly, even if they're just want to be able to scan it and read quickly.

420
00:45:44,470 --> 00:45:51,070
We look at accessibility from a standpoint of somebody who has impairments or different abilities than we do.

421
00:45:51,070 --> 00:45:57,620
But a lot of times it's just good user experience because we're making the whole process as easy as possible.

422
00:45:57,620 --> 00:46:10,690
Oh OK. So three, two more. Honestly, something I would never do is, you know, really busy background images with text on top.

423
00:46:10,690 --> 00:46:20,100
So when we talked about color contrast. What a lot of people want to do, because, you know, a solid block of color with a font on top is just,

424
00:46:20,100 --> 00:46:23,170
you know, just not really that interesting, right?

425
00:46:23,170 --> 00:46:32,160
And so we put a background image there because that brings a little bit more depth that brings a little bit more design feeling element to it.

426
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:37,320
But is that background image and all is busy or colorful in any way?

427
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:44,580
It can make it really hard to read the text on top. I see this a lot of times, even with patterns, people want to use this pattern.

428
00:46:44,580 --> 00:46:52,110
It's like, OK, I can barely read it and my vision is OK, like our contacts, but it's fine.

429
00:46:52,110 --> 00:46:58,800
Sure, you know. But then you think there again with screens and how they all pass information a little differently?

430
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:07,170
And a really easy way to mitigate that is to either put like a kind of a transparent box behind the text.

431
00:47:07,170 --> 00:47:12,510
That's a kind of contrast color that just makes it way easier to read.

432
00:47:12,510 --> 00:47:18,540
Or you can always add a black outline to white text, and that makes almost anything legible.

433
00:47:18,540 --> 00:47:29,900
So the best design wise, but you know, just keeping text off of images, generally speaking, is your easiest thing that you can avoid.

434
00:47:29,900 --> 00:47:36,330
And on that note, too, don't don't upload images to your website that have tons of text on them.

435
00:47:36,330 --> 00:47:41,580
Infographics are a really tricky area because, yes, they get shared really easily,

436
00:47:41,580 --> 00:47:48,060
and they're great for social media because we can put it on Pinterest. You can get it shared and reshared.

437
00:47:48,060 --> 00:47:57,630
Well, it's really hard to engage with the content in that graphic if you have any different abilities than, you know, than we do.

438
00:47:57,630 --> 00:48:07,290
And so when you don't want to have huge chunks of your website in images that are the should and could be taxed.

439
00:48:07,290 --> 00:48:18,390
So I work with my customers a lot to pull text out and to make that those kind of graphics and replace that with text as much as possible.

440
00:48:18,390 --> 00:48:24,160
It was actually something that Apple did. I thought it looked like they had images with text him and I tracked.

441
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:28,470
And no, they actually it was tax. It was really well laid out, really well designed.

442
00:48:28,470 --> 00:48:37,800
But like you can do in as I think a lot of web developers and coders especially get a little lazy and we'll just pull that

443
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:44,910
nice designed out piece and make it a graphic because we think that's OK and we'll add alt text and we think that's fine.

444
00:48:44,910 --> 00:48:51,720
But it's always better to default, to text first and image only if absolutely necessary.

445
00:48:51,720 --> 00:48:54,060
And I get frustrated watching movies, you know,

446
00:48:54,060 --> 00:48:59,340
and they they put that they're speaking in another language and they want the English subtitles down there.

447
00:48:59,340 --> 00:49:03,510
And that's the contrast between what's written and what the screen is.

448
00:49:03,510 --> 00:49:07,320
It makes it impossible to read. I guess so for us, what did he say?

449
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:11,130
What did he say went back and forth and I'm trying and sometimes I just can't read it so

450
00:49:11,130 --> 00:49:16,140
I can understand how somebody with limited vision would really be frustrated with that.

451
00:49:16,140 --> 00:49:21,660
Right. And I mean, I even turn on captions like 90 percent of the time when I watch movies at home now anyway,

452
00:49:21,660 --> 00:49:26,140
because sometimes the sound gets a little low or the sound off a little bit.

453
00:49:26,140 --> 00:49:33,690
And so we've gotten really good at having good quality. But yeah, sometimes they don't think through what that looks like.

454
00:49:33,690 --> 00:49:37,750
It is nice as the closed captioning on TV as a black background with white letters.

455
00:49:37,750 --> 00:49:43,290
Yes, they got that right, at least, at least in my experience.

456
00:49:43,290 --> 00:49:50,690
Yeah. Well, frustrating. OK, so let's let's walk into the application world.

457
00:49:50,690 --> 00:49:57,420
You know, like for Android and Apple applications or even Windows, you know, because Windows has devices as well.

458
00:49:57,420 --> 00:50:01,130
So let let's talk about the first one.

459
00:50:01,130 --> 00:50:09,170
So about YouTube just for fun. What what what are the positives and bad things they could probably improve on for accessibility?

460
00:50:09,170 --> 00:50:17,660
Honestly, YouTube is probably one of the best ones on the list. They've been doing captions and all of that for a lot longer than anybody else.

461
00:50:17,660 --> 00:50:21,710
Mm-Hmm. There is not a whole lot that they don't do well.

462
00:50:21,710 --> 00:50:27,590
The thing that they could improve on is having automated captions or services,

463
00:50:27,590 --> 00:50:31,550
because what ends up happening is so many people means we have no budgets.

464
00:50:31,550 --> 00:50:34,890
Even if it costs twenty five cents a minute around, you know,

465
00:50:34,890 --> 00:50:44,270
a creator is not necessarily going to know to do that or to want to spend five dollars, ten dollars for that transcription if it's a longer video.

466
00:50:44,270 --> 00:50:53,200
So YouTube and a lot of the programs like that could add in more of those automated captioning services and just build it into the system.

467
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:58,820
Probably the best solution, honestly. And they're giving us a little bit more audio control.

468
00:50:58,820 --> 00:51:02,960
But honestly, YouTube YouTube does have some of the best accessibility features.

469
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:06,800
I think of any of the third party apps. They've definitely been doing it longer.

470
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:15,160
Google has really long prioritized accessibility, so it's not that surprising that they are kind of ruling that part of the market.

471
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:22,430
YouTube part of Google now. Oh, you have a very long time. So I never pay attention was brought out who and all that kind of stuff.

472
00:51:22,430 --> 00:51:29,000
But I notice when I log in to Google that it remembers things that I watch and stuff.

473
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:34,040
Yeah, I don't always like that. But no, no, I'd like to say something else for change.

474
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:38,510
OK, let's start with tock. You talked a little bit about that before, and I know it's very popular.

475
00:51:38,510 --> 00:51:47,180
Yeah, TikTok's accessibility is still kind of that, you know, even with the auto captioning that they've added,

476
00:51:47,180 --> 00:51:54,920
they're still kind of hard to edit, at least in my experience. I've not been on tape and it's just a process.

477
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:59,000
It's a very similar process to Instagram, where you have to kind of go around.

478
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:04,760
You have to tweak it and move it around to where, I mean, you have control over it, but it still feels.

479
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:12,140
And when you think about tick tock and how it looks on your phone, you only have so much real estate, right with that.

480
00:52:12,140 --> 00:52:18,630
The problem is you have to find a place somewhere to put your captions that are not going to cover your description.

481
00:52:18,630 --> 00:52:21,750
Or cover anything else that actually legible.

482
00:52:21,750 --> 00:52:30,930
So they still have some ways to go with their captioning and there there are set up, honestly, I think, to need to be fully accessible.

483
00:52:30,930 --> 00:52:35,370
You know, it'd be nice if they just took everybody's auto and you can turn them off or on odd.

484
00:52:35,370 --> 00:52:42,330
And no, they're not going to be 100 percent accurate if they go about that way. Of course, but it's something else, but it's better, at least now.

485
00:52:42,330 --> 00:52:50,460
It's better because captions on Tik Tok, I mean, I kind of laughed it off even a year ago, like, you know, I would I would use an app.

486
00:52:50,460 --> 00:53:01,240
I jokingly tell people I literally switched to an apple for this app was a captions app that was free, which was amazing, and I would let me use that.

487
00:53:01,240 --> 00:53:05,720
That would create these really cool, stylized captions and.

488
00:53:05,720 --> 00:53:12,290
It was beautiful, but it was timed, everything worked really well, and a tick tock was like, Oh,

489
00:53:12,290 --> 00:53:17,900
you have these third parties, we don't need to do it, and they really like a video like they don't really understand.

490
00:53:17,900 --> 00:53:22,760
They were cutting off a huge part of the market. Now they've picked back up.

491
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:25,820
You know, we seem to be getting somewhere with that.

492
00:53:25,820 --> 00:53:32,090
But if there was a way to even to get transcripts or, you know, there's just a few things, a few bugs,

493
00:53:32,090 --> 00:53:37,460
I feel like they still need to kind of work through image and a little bit about Instagram.

494
00:53:37,460 --> 00:53:44,060
Let's go there. Instagram's gotten better. They just launched captions for stories only.

495
00:53:44,060 --> 00:53:50,720
So you have to drag it onto your video story video and you can edit it from there.

496
00:53:50,720 --> 00:53:58,130
So, I mean, this stuff again, cuts removes the need to have a third party app to do those.

497
00:53:58,130 --> 00:54:06,170
But there's not really anything yet that I know of that you can do for posts or for long for videos on Instagram.

498
00:54:06,170 --> 00:54:09,920
But it's slowly getting there over the last few months.

499
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:16,220
Now they are one of the only platforms that lets you add alt text to their images, though, which a lot of people don't even know they can do.

500
00:54:16,220 --> 00:54:21,020
Because you have to kind of click around and go find it and you're uploading.

501
00:54:21,020 --> 00:54:23,100
So they can. There's some of these pieces.

502
00:54:23,100 --> 00:54:31,520
A lot of these play a lot of these platforms, all these apps, they have this functionality, but it's so varied that nobody is using it.

503
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:40,520
So I think the biggest thing that Instagram could do is make it easier to use their accessible functionality, especially alt text.

504
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:47,420
It should be right there as you're uploading the image and said you have to kind of click and go and open up a secondary screen.

505
00:54:47,420 --> 00:54:51,290
And even I forget it where it is half the time, or if I'm using a scheduler,

506
00:54:51,290 --> 00:54:55,730
I can send the alt text to a scheduling outside to go back through and edit the image later.

507
00:54:55,730 --> 00:55:05,060
And it's just it's a hassle. So there's there's barriers to it that make it make it kind of difficult to use, but at least you can add all text.

508
00:55:05,060 --> 00:55:12,770
So somebody with vision impairments can actually interact with Instagram to to an extent, we're going to hit the big five.

509
00:55:12,770 --> 00:55:15,890
So let's hit Facebook Max and then Twitter after that.

510
00:55:15,890 --> 00:55:23,510
So Facebook, they have long had the ability to upload captions to their videos at least a few years now,

511
00:55:23,510 --> 00:55:29,930
and they are working on some live captioning with live videos and things like that.

512
00:55:29,930 --> 00:55:33,500
I wish I would want alt text.

513
00:55:33,500 --> 00:55:41,390
There are so many images and means and infographics they get shared on Facebook, and there's not really a way to add that.

514
00:55:41,390 --> 00:55:48,470
So I see a few of my friends doing that. Really care about accessibility is adding those image descriptions as part of the post.

515
00:55:48,470 --> 00:55:53,780
It's a way to get around it, but it's it's bulky. It doesn't look great, you know?

516
00:55:53,780 --> 00:55:58,280
But again, they test things out on Instagram and then they figure out how to roll it out on Facebook.

517
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:03,170
So who knows when some of these, some of these functionalities will hit Facebook?

518
00:56:03,170 --> 00:56:10,070
And you know, there's probably there's features on Facebook that you probably don't know about because they're buried as well and are hard to use.

519
00:56:10,070 --> 00:56:17,690
But they do pretty well with captioning. They just need to start adding some other features as well.

520
00:56:17,690 --> 00:56:23,510
And then Twitter. Twitter actually is probably one of the most accessible because it's just text.

521
00:56:23,510 --> 00:56:33,980
So you probably buy now that simply text is one of the easiest things to make accessible because it's can be utilized and we use in multiple ways.

522
00:56:33,980 --> 00:56:38,570
And I was going through a very list of accessibility features and they they allow captions.

523
00:56:38,570 --> 00:56:43,090
I believe they allow alt text on most of their images. So there's lots of ways like this.

524
00:56:43,090 --> 00:56:48,350
They've tried really hard to be an extensible platform, but you can change it.

525
00:56:48,350 --> 00:56:52,700
And much like the other, you can change to dark mode, change the contrast.

526
00:56:52,700 --> 00:56:57,120
Now you have some control over the visual, so it's a lot easier to read.

527
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:02,390
Interact with. All right, we're getting right through this.

528
00:57:02,390 --> 00:57:12,740
We're about out of time. If you were worried. So let's so let's let's just skip to the last question.

529
00:57:12,740 --> 00:57:22,400
I can't even tell you how great it's been to have you on AC live episode to your you've been part of the first few episodes that get us started,

530
00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:24,140
but this is fantastic information.

531
00:57:24,140 --> 00:57:30,440
I think the information that people are really going to be able to grasp on to and and to utilize, and it gives them some,

532
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:39,610
some push in the right direction to go, go, look here, go look there to find different ways to make websites successful.

533
00:57:39,610 --> 00:57:44,880
Know web aim is a great. Resource.

534
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:49,170
We actually had their founder as our keynote about three years ago,

535
00:57:49,170 --> 00:57:56,550
so it was fun to have her out and ever talk about the top 10 anxieties of making things accessible to really fun.

536
00:57:56,550 --> 00:58:05,160
If you could pick one topic ideas, thought or or or whatever that you would like people to take away from today's.

537
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:10,260
Live cast, what would that be? But it's not scary.

538
00:58:10,260 --> 00:58:15,330
This is not an overwhelming thing to be more accessible online.

539
00:58:15,330 --> 00:58:23,430
I think a lot of people think it's this huge cost prohibitive thing, but most like WordPress works well.

540
00:58:23,430 --> 00:58:29,010
Squarespace a lot of those platforms give you the ability to add all text really easily,

541
00:58:29,010 --> 00:58:38,640
give you the ability to follow these standards really easily, at least in part, and we're going to be more and more of an accessible world.

542
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:44,280
And so it's becoming where it wasn't that cost prohibitive before it's becoming less and less so.

543
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:53,280
So it's I just wish people take away with this one. It's important and to it's not it's not as hard as we think that it is to me.

544
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:58,680
Honestly, it almost feels overly simplistic to to make some of these small tweaks,

545
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:04,820
but to protect your business and also reach everybody that's in your audience.

546
00:59:04,820 --> 00:59:08,720
That's fantastic. I think I said, Marissa, this Marissa.

547
00:59:08,720 --> 00:59:12,740
Yes, they did have that set up just by reading it on here.

548
00:59:12,740 --> 00:59:18,350
But thank you again for joining us today. Copy that broadcast will be made available on accessibility.

549
00:59:18,350 --> 00:59:28,040
I thought the AC Live tab. You can also register for Accessibility Summer Camp on the same web page under registration.

550
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:35,570
You can also see our sponsors and the program will actually be up on the website here in the next week or so.

551
00:59:35,570 --> 00:59:39,020
We look forward to having you there. It's a free event.

552
00:59:39,020 --> 00:59:49,270
Come learn about things like what Marissa has talked about today tools, resources, just connections that you can make to.

553
00:59:49,270 --> 00:59:56,050
Really tackle this accessibility thing so that we can level the playing field and make all

554
00:59:56,050 --> 01:00:02,440
that everybody have as near the same experience as possible that all of us get to enjoy.

555
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:20,672
So thank you for joining us today. Have a great weekend and we'll see you on the next podcast.