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About the Meetup
Learn more about WordPress Accessibility Meetup
Watch the Recording
If you missed the meetup or would like a recap, watch the video below or read the transcript. If you have questions about what was covered in this meetup please tweet us @EqualizeDigital on Twitter or join our Facebook group for WordPress Accessibility.
Links Mentioned in This Video
The following resources were discussed or shared in the chat at this Meetup:
- WordPress Accessibility Facebook Group
- Equalize Digital Website
- Equalize Digital on Twitter
- WordPress VIP Website
- WordPress VIP on Twitter
- Upcoming Meetup: So, You Want an Accessibility Score? – Karl Groves
- Save the Date: WordPress Accessibility Day
- Joe Dolson’s Website
- Joe Dolson on Twitter
- Overlay Fact Sheet
- Honor the ADA: Avoid Web Accessibility Quick-Fix Overlays
- Mark McGuire’s Website
- Mark McGuire on Twitter
- Alicia Jarvis’ Website
- Alicia Jarvis on Twitter
- Devin Gutierrez’s Website
- Devin Gutierrez on Twitter
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Read the Transcript
>> AMBER HINDS: All right. Just because I want to have enough time for our panel discussion and the awesome information that we’re going to be shared, I’m going to get started with some announcements. We’re going to do a few other announcements that we normally do if you’ve been at a WordPress meetup only because I want to make sure that we have enough time to answer questions.
Just a real quick, if you’re not familiar with me, I’m Amber Hinds. I’m the CEO of Equalize Digital. We’re a certified B Corp. We specialize in WordPress accessibility. We have a plugin called Accessibility Checker that puts reports in your admin dashboard. We are the lead organizer for this meetup. We have a sponsor today that I want to thank, WordPress VIP. Wordpress VIP has generously covered the cost of both our live captions and our ASL interpretation today so that we can ensure that this is as accessible as possible for everyone to attend and participate today.
If you’re not familiar with them, WordPress VIP is an agile content platform leading a powerful enterprise ecosystem. They have fully managed purpose-built platform that powers content for Facebook, Salesforce, Slack and others. They bring teams together within WordPress and do enterprise-grade support and security. You can learn more about them at wpvip.com. Also, you can find them on Twitter at WordPressvip.
I highly recommend that you go out and tweet at them and say thank you. We always like to encourage people to thank our sponsors for helping us make this more accessible. Please tweet them a thank you and let them know how important it is that they helped to cover this because it’s great. Paula did share a link to their Twitter handle in the chat as well.
We have two upcoming events. One, our next official meetup during a normal meetup slot will be on Thursday, June 2nd at 10:00 AM central time. During that meetup, Karl Groves will be talking about if or how you can actually give an accessibility score like you see in Lighthouse or Wave or something like that, where it says it’s 100% or 50% accessible to a website. It’ll be very interesting, if you’re interested in trying to figure out how you can measure the accessibility of a website and report on that.
I’m going to add a spotlight to Joe Dolson, which I think worked. There we go. He should have popped up for everyone. If you’re not familiar with Joe, Joe is big in the WordPress accessibility space, and he is the lead organizer of WordPress Accessibility Day along with me, and he’s going to talk a little bit about that.
>> JOE DOLSON: Thank you very much for coming here today. Amber and I are super excited. We just launched the new website for the 2022 WordPress Accessibility Day. You can find that and follow it at wpaccessibility.day. I realized, just as I was planning my comments here for this today, that I was going to have to spell that out so that you wouldn’t think it was a German website.
We’re really setting our goals high this year. Everybody had a very difficult 2021, and we did not manage to put together a WP Accessibility Day that year. Now, we’re getting our stuff going. We’re really going to rock this. We’ve set some high goals. We’re going to plan on having live captioning for everything, just like we did in 2020. We’re planning on adding ASL interpretation as well. If we can meet our stretch goals for budgeting, we’re going to try and have live translation. We want to make this as globally an accessible event as we possibly can.
Look at our website. If you want to support us financially, make a donation or become a sponsor. If you want to get involved, we have forms for getting interested in being a volunteer or submitting speaker talks down the road. I think those are supposed to– we’re going to start asking for those in July. Amber nodded, so I’m going to say that I was right.
>> AMBER: I think it’s July. Yes, I think it’s the beginning of July. We’re going to put out speaker, a call [crosstalk]
>> JOE: We’ve had a lot of dates floating around, so it’s around then. Follow us on Twitter. You can follow us at twitter.com/wpaccessibility, where we’ll share all sorts of information about the events coming up as well as all of the usual WordPress Accessibility goodness that we share through that email, through that Twitter account. I hope you look forward to it. I hope to see you all there on November 2nd. We’re going to start at 10:00 AM central. That’s 1300 UTC, and it’s going to be loads of fun. No, that’s 1500 UTC. I lied. That is 1500. I need to get my offsets right. All right.
>> AMBER: Great. Well, thank you, Joe. Let’s see. I’m going to add spotlights for our panelists now and just make sure that I have everyone up, which it kind of varies people alphabetically. Give me one second while I find you in the list. I have had moments where I definitely think we need to switch to Zoom webinars. Here we go. All right.
I’m excited to introduce and I’m going to let them introduce themselves, Mark McGuire and Alicia Jarvis. Devin will hopefully be joining us. He is also a student, and so he had something come up sort of last minute, but he is hoping to call in from his phone and join us. I am very excited with the two panelists we have. I know we’ll have a great event even if he is unable to join in. Starting with Mark, do you want to introduce yourself to the group and tell us about your background?
>> TIFFANY (INTERPRETER): Yes, and I’m going to have the interpreter voice for me. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here today. This is wonderful. Before I go ahead and introduce myself, just want to share some wonderful news about WordPress and in relationship to accessibility platforms. The caption and the ASL interpreters, hearing that you guys are going to provide those is wonderful because I know, for myself as a deaf individual, I prefer to communicate through sign instead of spoken English, and I prefer an ASL interpreter instead of captions but I do use captions as an assistant so that I can fully understand and fill in any gaps that might be there in the communication.
I just think that’s wonderful information to hear that you’ve shared with us today. I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Mark McGuire. I identify as– my pronouns are he, him, his. I identify as culturally deaf or a culturally deaf person. I prefer sign language to communicate. I can speak for myself. Let me think. I can’t remember at this moment, but I am a certified professional web accessibility individual. I’m certified from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, IAAP.
Because of that, I do a lot of work with varying industries, different clients who are in need of assistance in terms of accessibility and so I work with many different individuals and groups. I do a lot of design development and I also am planning on doing some trainings that would tie all of those things together because I really love WordPress and I really feel fortunate to have that platform. I’d like to be instrumental in moving that needle to more accessibility because, often, there are avenues for improvement, so I’m happy to be here.
>> AMBER: Thank you. We’re glad to have you here as well, Mark. Alicia, would you like to introduce yourself and your background?
>> ALICIA JARVIS: Sure. Hi, my name is Alicia Jarvis. I’m from Toronto Canada. I’m a senior product manager working on the accessibility portfolio at Bell Canada. My pronouns are she and her. I have dark brown hair and brown eyes and, today, I’m wearing my dark blue Nothing About Us Without Us t-shirts. Right now, I’m sitting in my home office. I do have over 12 years of experience in accessibility.
Actually, my accessibility journey started at Bell in 2009. I was an intern working on the accessibility portfolio then and then my contract ended in 2011 and I moved on to work in a couple of banks. The Royal Bank of Canada and Scotiabank working on various accessibility initiatives and inclusive design initiatives. I’m also certified with the IAAP. I’m also certified accessibility professional.
>> AMBER: Great, thank you. Would either of you and maybe you can start, Alicia, since you’re unmuted right now. Would you like to talk about your experience with disabilities and how it impacts your experience on the web?
>> ALICIA: Sure. I do have short arms and I identify as an amputee or limb different. My experience with the web, as an adult, I really don’t have any really big accommodations or anything like that. I use an external keyboard and mouse, so working on a laptop without the external keyboard or mouse is a little bit challenging and difficult for me so I do prefer having that external stuff.
When I was a kid, the dexterity in my hands and fingers were not as it is today. I tried to have different assistive technologies and also my electric arms where, with an artificial arm, typing on a keyboard is actually very difficult because the fingers at least back then didn’t move independently so you had to hold something like a stylus or pencil. At the time, I held an upside-down pencil to actually press keys on the keyboard with my electric arms.
>> AMBER: Mark, do want to tell us a little bit about how your deafness might impact your experience on the web?
>> MARK MCGUIRE: [inaudible] talk myself because it’s kind of hard [inaudible] time for me and that would be awesome. I was born deaf with bilateral hearing loss. I was fortunate to have parents who were motivated to give me the best educational opportunity growing up. I learned how to talk in sign language and sign at the same time.
It did put on a little bit of a challenge in terms of learning because of the different ways information was presented to me, in the form of touch, from book we are reading, in the form of lip reading, watching my teacher teach me how to talk, speech therapy. Then learning from my teacher for the job, he taught me sign language, so I did basically reinforced the information. Then we slowly found out that sign language was the best form of perception, perceiving information for me which kind of tied into the web content, accessibility guideline principles in a perceivable– being the base of the four principles of accessibility.
[inaudible] between the [inaudible] That’s my disability. To be clear, I am a member of the deaf community that identify themselves in terms of cultural identity, with sign language, we [inaudible] language or everything else. I [inaudible] keep coming to the confrontation from the different [inaudible]. We are coming into the confrontation from [inaudible] the introduction of some more [inaudible] jobs.
We like assistive technology such as [inaudible] and accommodating such as an ASL interpreter to facilitate communication between people. Everything I told is just more that being me as someone who is able to use many tools as possible but I [inaudible] to make myself to using the keyboard because I know that the [inaudible] accessibility making sure we can use the keyboard to access the internet. By working with people with disability, I’m learning a lot about different creative solutions that works for the individuals compared to [inaudible]. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question.
>> AMBER: Yes, I think so. Actually, I just saw we had an iPhone come in and I’m wondering if that’s Devin. Devin, if that is you, feel free to unmute and say hello and I will pull you into the conversation because it’s not labeled so it just says iPhone.
>> DEVIN GUTIERREZ: Hello? Is it working?
>> AMBER: Yes. Hi Devin. Are you able to do video or no video?
>> DEVIN: I can do video, however, I’m in the passenger seat of a car so I’m not sure how good it would look.
>> AMBER: If you do do video, that will allow me to add a spotlight on you. I can’t do it if you don’t turn your video on.
>> DEVIN: Okay, I can–
>> AMBER: There we go. Okay. Let me spotlight you real quick for everyone. Devin, so we were just– I think I did it. Try again. There we go. All right. We were just introducing ourselves and talking a little bit about how disabilities or experience with disability has impacted our experience on the web. Would you want to introduce yourself and give a little intro?
>> DEVIN: Sure. My name is Devin Gutierrez. I’m a totally blind music producer and musician. I have an album out. I’m also a computer geek. Well, I don’t really know how to program a computer. I understand all the lingo so I can communicate or at least try to communicate with the people who make websites and programs and things and give them a pretty good user perspective on how their accessibility is doing and how usable and friendly their website or software is.
>> AMBER: Great. I was going to ask a question of all of you. Was there ever a time that the inaccessibility of content on the web or website itself stopped you from engaging with a business? Because I feel like there are a lot of times businesses think it doesn’t matter, or it doesn’t impact them, or they don’t have people in their audience. I’m curious if any of you had personal experiences with that? Would you want to start Devin since you were just speaking?
>> DEVIN: I mean, well, I could talk about how the inaccessibility of certain websites to include a majority of the social media networks. I could argue impede my access to my own business as a musician, because a lot of the websites for those social media platforms are not necessarily screen reader accessible, which means it’s very difficult for me to independently promote my work and the songs that I do and the places I’ll be playing, et cetera.
Beyond that, I mean, I’ve had plenty of websites that I haven’t been able to go to simply because they were inaccessible that have stopped me from like purchasing products or any other number of things. I mean, yes, that happen all the time, basically what I’m trying to say, I guess.
>> AMBER: It’s way more common than it should be.
>> DEVIN: Correct.
>> AMBER: Yes. Alicia or Mark, have either of had experience with that that’s made you want to stop patronizing a business or not patronize a business?
>> ALICIA: Yes. I’ll name it, Domino’s. I used to get my pizza from Domino’s all the time. I have, especially more recently, made conscious decisions on where I spend my money and making sure that the organizations that I am supporting coincide with my values. Dominoes was one that I just moved to a different pizza place for those pizzas.
>> MARK: Yes. [inaudible] every day but even last [inaudible] of the website but basing it in terms of, basically when they post videos online without caption or have– I’m sorry, we have a dog outside. Video without caption or photo recording and website without trying to [inaudible] what would be inside basically that, when the experience, other one I’d say WordPress. But [inaudible] experience, WordPress for me is simply going to type and move on to the next website. It happens every day, especially on social media where we are uploading content almost every second all over the world without making it accessible. Yes.
>> AMBER: What do you think, if people are struggling with where to start, whether they’re a designer, a developer, or a business owner, what do you think are the most important things that could be done? Or are there maybe a top three or five things that you think people could start with that would make a big difference for people? Do you want to start with that, Mark, and give your opinion? I know you also– we have some accessibility expertise here, too, beyond just personal experience.
>> MARK: [inaudible] how we just say [inaudible] go teach your partner, go teach your friend, whatever, it is about to share with the world what’s going on. If anything, it shows how babies grow into adult, they basically [inaudible] with something like that. One forward movement in time into adulthood. If you can site with more about [inaudible] such a big content [inaudible]. It can be a template for what you want to convey information in different medium like video or imaging. Both of which are also inaccessible.
If you have a touch to work with, whether it’s like a Word document or something you write down on paper, it’s just something that allow you to work and copy all that into other medium that are not accessible. There might be some more work involved like with the imaging adding, like an automotive touch to the image where applicable in alternative task.
You can be as descriptive as possible, but, I don’t know, not about this. But for the most part, screen readers do have– good screen readers do allow people who use them to cut off the alternative task after a certain number of character.
[inaudible] 150 characters and you’re writing alternative tasks for 300 characters, it’s going to get cut up, so use that to your advantages to describe the image a little bit more– with the word, concise, C-O-N-C-I-S-E.
>> AMBER: Concisely?
>> MARK: Concise, yes. Then outside of the image, providing image description in detail, if you want to go that route. That’s the number one thing, you can do it for imaging. Number one thing you can do for people who have color contrast issue to make sure you provide enough contrast and all of the element on your website. Whether the logo, whether the night time, whether it’s your font, because that’s the number one issue online, but not color contrast. Those two, three color contrast automated task. I don’t know what the big, most common issue is, but those two are great starting points.
>> AMBER: Yes. Alicia, do you have thoughts about other top things that people could start with?
>> ALICIA: Yes. I would start with putting your mouse in a bucket and just using your keyboard only for a day or whatever. Test your stuff. Test other people’s stuff with a keyboard. Also, get out of the building. Go and talk to your users, go and talk to people. Understand what you’re building or what you’re designing, and who are you designing it for. I think that’s a really good question, especially now as we move into more sophisticated technology, we need to really understand as designers what we are designing and question that, and question who are we designing for and why.
>> AMBER: How about you, Devin? Do you have thoughts on top things people could start with or anything different you’d add that you think makes a big difference on the web?
>> DEVIN: Well, if you really want to make things accessible, the easiest thing I recommend is simplify. No burger menus, no animations, no flashy graphics, no 300,000 megabytes of JavaScript. Just a website that provides the information for your business that you need, is because of its simplicity already going to be much more easy to make accessible than if you have all kinds of crazy animations and other stuff going on on the page. Keep it simple and it’ll stay accessible.
>> AMBER: Yes. I think that’s a really good point. We spend a lot of time trying to encourage our clients that they don’t need sliders. Whereas, I think they’re starting to realize that and it’s not as bad as it was maybe five years ago, where every website had a slider at the very top of it. I still feel there’s this desire for people to think it needs to have movement and crazy things going on in order to look like a professional design, maybe isn’t the case in reality.
On the other hand, are their key examples of things not to do that you see really commonly? I know, Mark, you talked a little bit about all text being missing or bad color contrast. Are there other things that would be good to highlight? Anyone, feel free to jump in.
>> ALICIA: Carousels. I see that more often than I would like, and really they’re just a bad experience for everybody. You don’t even have to think about accessibility. Who really clicks on those things, I don’t understand. I think sometimes designers want to do something new and unique and creative, but really sticking to the basics of your components and not trying to design something that doesn’t really make sense semantically.
I’ve seen buttons that behave like radio buttons or some sort of control that I actually didn’t even know what it was or what it was supposed to do. So really working with your developers and your team, to make sure that whatever you’re designing actually makes sense and not going and doing creative things for the sake of creativity.
>> AMBER: Let’s see. Caroline asks in the chat, do you think carousels are bad in general or just ones that move automatically?
>> ALICIA: Think that they’re bad in general. If you actually look at the click through rate on most carousels, most people, they don’t get a very good click through rate. They discourage people from actually engaging with the content instead of what most people think they do, they think, “Oh, users are going to actually engage more,” but really it’s the opposite that happens. If you are going to use a carousel, yes, please, make sure that you can stop and pause it, and it is user controlled, but it’s an overall not great experience for everyone.
>> AMBER: Devin, there was a question following up on your statement about, you called them burger menus, which I think were hamburger menus. They’re wondering, what’s the alternative to that? Are you more talking about hamburger menus on a desktop website versus a mobile website? Could you share some extra thoughts about that?
>> DEVIN: I mean, it’s more common. Sorry for the wind. By the way, I’m walking to a building to teach my class in a few minutes. I’ve seen them– of course, it’s more common I think with desktop versions. I wouldn’t be surprised if mobile websites had that. I haven’t actually seen very many of them. I was just citing them as an example. The alternative [crosstalk] combo boxes, radio buttons. There’s other ways to have people choose options or to show people different content that don’t involve that.
>> AMBER: Do you have any thoughts on that, Mark? I know I’ve seen some times where there are hamburger menus or hidden menus on even desktop computers, and it’s really challenging with just the keyboard. I don’t know if you have experience with that.
>> MARK: Practically, it came about as the way to become creative from a touch base website, where everything was more or less a linking text from one thing to another. We eventually came up with additional web technology. It’s just like a button which allow to perform a function within the web page itself without having to navigate to another web page. That function itself will open, I don’t know, the module the right way to you. That module will pull down with direct menu option to taking you where you want to go.
It was a way to save screen space because when the web became more available– but those of you who are familiar with it in the ’90s or early 2002, we had smartphone that was smaller than what we have today, like a little [inaudible]. They were trying to maximize the screen really easily at the time. However, they did not realize it was encoded in the right tab, main button inaccessible for people using assistive technology to ask us what could be [inaudible] on a regular [inaudible] website.
We have come along where we still have to code with accessibility in mind, whereby to code with accessibility first in mind. There are ways to make hamburger menu accessible but are they usable? As we’re adapting, we encourage you to reach out to people, like Devin and other people who will give you their own first hand on experience. Again, just like with carousel, what Alicia was talking about carousels, I don’t know, I would force myself to throw away the mouse, as Alicia said, and that navigate with the keyboard by using the Tab key, and sometime running navigate with the Tab key [inaudible] into the carousel. That kind of went into carousel in accessibility. I just thought, if you really need it in the best place because there are lot of ways to make a really useable website without the painting, design, at least to keep eyeball down the web page, for a lack of a better word, but I do hope that answer your question.
>> AMBER: Yes, I think so. I saw some conversations in the chat also about it. Wendy pointed out, if you have a user who’s really zoomed on the page, it might be hard to find the small three line marks if they don’t get bigger. I know what I’ve personally seen with regards to a lot of those elements, particularly if they’re created in a page builder and WordPress is, you mentioned having the code underlying.
Sometimes it’s not actually a button. It’s just a span and you can’t even focus on it with a keyboard and open that menu. That’s a challenge, too. Let’s see. If a business has problems on their websites, are there ways that they can make it easier for people to contact them or get help? Do you like seeing accessibility statements? Are there phone forms, live chat? Are any of those better than others or are some really worse than others? Alicia, do you want to start with this one?
>> ALICIA: Oh, sure. I think having a really diverse communication strategy is key. Is that I wouldn’t say that like one mode of communication is better or worse than others, although with one caveat, which is an IVR system, which is the the traditional telephone system that you press one or a number of options, that seems to be my least favorite way of communicating with any business.
I think accessibility statements are really good as that first level of communication out to your customers and users to give them a baseline of what you’re thinking about, how you’re approaching accessibility, and what you intend to do. Then from there, integrating feedback or the ability to handle user feedback through your normal communication channels that you would have for anybody else really including social media, text messaging, email, whatever your communication strategy is.
>> AMBER: Devin, do you have thoughts about ways that you like to communicate with businesses if you find a problem on their website?
>> DEVIN: Usually, I would just email them and see if they’re willing to open up a dialogue about, “Hey, this is broken.” However, I haven’t necessarily succeeded with that line of contact in a lot of situations. I am actually succeeding in one scenario. I mean, it wasn’t a website, but it was an app that I was using for technical theater productions at the shops where I’m helping out. It was about the accessibility of that program with the screen reader on the Mac. I actually got a response from the developer, and I’m now helping to test the new version for accessibility features, which is pretty cool.
>> AMBER: That is really awesome that they actually are taking initiative.
>> DEVIN: I mean, yes, the response is pretty quick and they’re like, “Yes, this is something we wanna take seriously. Please have our next test build of our software and see if it works for you.”
>> AMBER: That’s great.
>> DEVIN: It was one of the first times I ever had a successful reach out to a company and had them bite back.
>> AMBER: Honestly, one of the biggest things is people just paying attention to their customer feedback and not setting it aside.
>> DEVIN: Yes, that’s very important. You want to feel listened to. You want to be able to come to a company and say, “Hey, love your product, but here’s some things you could make better,” and you want to be able to then come away with the things fixed or on the way. You don’t want to just hear, “Oh, we’ll consider it,” and then be forgotten. A lot of things tend to get lost in the, “We’ll consider it,” phase.
>> AMBER: It’s really important for, I think, companies and development shops to have a process in place for what do you do when you hear. When you receive feedback, how do you log it and then how do you ensure that it gets followed up on and not lost.
>> DEVIN: Yes.
>> AMBER: Mark, do you have thoughts about this, communicating and keeping track of problems that are open issues and need to be resolved?
>> MARK: Yes. I’ve worked in operation to Archer bank management software company in the past. I’m currently consulting with a healthcare engagement company that envisions communication with over many customers. At least, just say having an accessibility statement, it’s a great sighting point. The other thing about way past feedback, is you can create a menu that you can put in the better of your website, and it will do play a link to the accessibility statement page and keep that everywhere on your website.
As far as the communication channel goes, what Devin said about not getting any response or momentum within the company, that’s a common problem and does where it depends on the side of your website. Whether you have the website for your own business or a manager in the website for another business to set up a good communication channel from the accessibility segment to the email, thus someone here is going to take responsibility for communicating with, what they’re reporting the issue.
That patient will be able to more or less advocate, and– Excuse me. Sometime having a sip of water helps. That patient will basically will respond to better advocate on the website EJ behalf to do website design it, and develop it, but to what’s happening. One of the problems I have, one more problem, but one of the feedback I have received from design [inaudible] develop it is that they don’t have enough information of to what the problem is.
I doesn’t mention that Amber gave money money. Basically, like, as I mentioned before, Amber gave money, turned to a throw up mobile device that help now I think, John, and that also helped [inaudible] This is where they can identify whether hitting on that code involved with the Amber gave money was some cage Java group with [inaudible] to announce that Amber gave money out to many with the list of patients. Otherwise, if we pay, I have a problem with the menu, but I didn’t really have- the development team topics you take part in. If you have 10 different way people can talk, if you have Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, telephone, email. It going to be difficult to spend time and resources and everyone is being responded to which I recommend keeping your open channel for accessibility if you’re to run with two maybe three method of communication. They put an email, they put what message on social network, they put a telephone card first time. Just 10 different way for people to try and reach out. Yes, have someone mention their resolution, but it depend on what question you have been paid and how you can assign or distribute a ticket to restart them.
>> AMBER: Yes, and I think some of it too is prioritizing. Filing for your team that this is a priority and it doesn’t just go in our queue maybe we put it at the head of other features and testing part of your process is really important. I’m curious– Oh, go ahead, Devin.
>> DEVIN: One thing I say, I wanted to note down quick. You said, “Before other features,” but what I would point out to the team is that accessibility isn’t a feature. Accessibility is a design choice. Accessibility is a design choice to be inclusive. If you have to think of it like a feature where you’re having to decide whether or not it’s critical enough then you need to relook at the definition of accessibility and inclusion and see if you’re modeling that for everybody else, but what you’re doing as a company. I mean accessibility shouldn’t be optional it should be a part of your design philosophy if you want to include as many people as possible.
>> AMBER: Yes, and I appreciate you stepping up on me on that because that was not a good word choice. I think what I meant to say you should be accessible before you add new features, but you’re right accessibility is not a feature it’s not a nice to have, right?
>> DEVIN: Right. Yes, that was just my main point. Definitely need our accessibility.
>> AMBER: A question that we get a lot and comes up sometimes at the meet up and I see online a lot is are there any quick fix solutions? Are overlay as a good option because there are some that companies do that? Maybe Devin you want to start on that front if you have any thoughts about accessibility overlays.
>> DEVIN: Well, allow me to choose my words carefully because the people who maybe manage the organizations that talk about the overlays. They’re not like really being talked about in a negative light and they have been known to be quite litigious about it. Put it this way, I have not personally seen an overlay that has added any accessibility to the site that couldn’t have been gotten through functionality otherwise already existing in a screen reader. Do with that what you will. I do not, personally, see any value in them, but obviously, my opinions are my own, et cetera, et cetera.
>> AMBER: Alicia, what do you think about quick fixes or overlays?
>> ALICIA: I think that if you’re looking for a quick fix for accessibility then you really don’t understand what and who you’re designing for because I think that any user experience or design, regardless of if we’re talking about accessibility or anything, there’s a reason why designers exist, there’s a reason why it’s a profession, and if you’re looking for a quick fix then I usually get it afterwards and you’re spending a lot more money to fix it later.
Instead of looking for a quick fix, I would say spend the time and money to really do it right in the first place. I equate it to buying a car, is that when you’re looking for a car you want something that’s dependable, you want something that’s safe, you want something that meets all the criteria that you’re looking for. You wouldn’t just buy a car from a wrecker dealer, like something off the street that is unsafe and whatever because it’s just a car. I approach the same way with whatever I’m designing or building is you want to build and design a quality product and that’s the end goal.
>> AMBER: I will say, so Catherine asked in the chat, “What is an overlay?” Mark, shared a link to the overlay fact sheet. So, overlayfactsheet.com, and that explains more about it. Just really quickly for people who are not aware, it is a javascript tool that you– It’s like SAS solutions normally that you can add to your website. In our last couple of minutes, does anyone have any extra information about website accessibility that they want to leave our audience, or designers, or developers with that they really want them to know? Mark, do you want to start?
>> MARK: I think, basically, say that there is a lot of information out there about web accessibility [inaudible] but make path accessible with how they pull up the link, but basing on your feed, Google button very fast, you’re seeing accessibility section with the bulk of information in that. May be going 12,000 provide some information about this draft. There is a lot of information, and don’t be overwhelmed.
Should take it one step at a time, and should be aware that there are legal ramifications if you don’t make your website accessible. If you’re not sure whether something would be accessible or not, don’t worry and get some feedback from the accessibility community. You can often find them on social networks using the #A11Y which is a– I can not say the word, it’s an acronym for accessibility. I think that’s a great sighting point to get around accessible content and gain with the [inaudible] everything there you didn’t create your website with. Find out what’s accessible and what’s not. That way you have a track record of what you work on. Yes, I think that’s it.
>> AMBER: Yes, I appreciate that it’s one step at a time. Devin, do you have any last thoughts?
>> DEVIN: The last thing I would say is basically just accessibility, everybody needs accessibility eventually. Someone’s going to reach for a pair of glasses. Someone has got to have an app on their phone that helps so hear better. Everybody uses accessibility in their own small way and if you can start thinking about what ways that accessibility might help you as a developer, or just a person using your technology, it may help you to understand how accessibility can help others use their equipment and live their life, which can help you understand how to design accessibility into the future.
>> AMBER: Yes, empathy is very important. Alicia, do you have any final thoughts?
>> ALICIA: Sure, I would say, don’t necessarily focus on compliance and legal. Realize that, that’s the floor, not the ceiling, and that this is really a chance for you to be innovative and creative, especially as a designer and a developer. We talked a lot about don’t go too crazy, don’t use elements that are not standard, but at the same time, I think if you do get out of the building and you start talking to your users, that you will really understand that this is a truly innovative and creative space. I encourage you to use that to your advantage, and not just go by compliance.
>> AMBER: Thank you, everyone. I think we will have a recording for this available in about a week, once we get corrected captions available for it. I’m going to have Mark, Alicia and Devin let me know the best way they want to share their social media, or if there’s another way for you to get in touch with them if you have follow-up questions, and we’ll make sure that that’s posted with the video. I think they’re all on LinkedIn and Twitter, is that right? Everyone is on LinkedIn and Twitter?
>> DEVIN: I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter, yes.
>> AMBER: Great. Thank you everyone for attending, and again, a huge shout out to WordPress VIP for sponsoring our captions and our ASL interpretation today. Please, don’t forget to go give them a thank you on Twitter to encourage them to want to sponsor. Again and check them out their website, wordpressvip.com. If you have any questions, you can get a hold of me between now and our next meetup in our WordPress Accessibility Facebook group. Have a great day everyone. Thank you.
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