Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy entrepreneurs engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective solutions for achieving a professional sound and appearance. I'm Matthew Passi, your host and a 15 year veteran in the podcasting space. We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and hardware that can elevate the quality of your show. Tune in weekly for insightful interviews with tech creators, behind the scenes studio tours, and
strategies for podcasting success. Head to podcasting tech dot com to subscribe to this show on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your podcast. Gonna talk about something that we not a lot of podcasters really address, and it's something that more of us should be thinking about, the idea of accessibility with our digital content. And joining us to talk about that is Maxwell Ivy, known as the Blind blogger.
He also runs the accessibility advantage. You can find out the accessibilityadvantage.com. And for as long as I've known Maxwell, which has been a few years since we first met at a Map Con here in South Jersey, maybe 5 years ago, He has always been out there trying to help podcasters make their content more accessible so that everybody can enjoy what it is that you were doing, and we are excited to chat with him about that today. Maxwell, thank you for joining
us. Oh, thank you, Matthew. I'm happy to be here. It's always great when I get to spend time with one of my one of my favorite leaders of the podcast industry, so thank you. Oh, is that person here? I don't see them. Well, I I I wanna definitely talk about accessibility. I wanna talk about all the different things that podcasters can and should be doing, but, you know, the blind blogger is such a unique moniker for
someone to have. Tell us a little bit how you started with that and where you're at these days with your with your digital media, adventure. Right. So you know that I started
life as a car loaner. After my dad's death I transitioned to brokering used rides on the Internet, as social media came along I was building a community there and as a former shorthand, people on LinkedIn and Facebook just referred to me as the blind blogger because in 2009, 'ten, along in there, there weren't a lot of people with disabilities period on the Internet and very few of them were putting
themselves out there as openly as I was. You know, I like to tell people I wasn't the the most talented, most
prolific, or most consistent, but I was the most shameless. So people knew me and they hung that name on me and it stuck and when I decided to start a second website to talk more about being a blonde entrepreneur, it was the natural choice and it stuck with me and, you know, the only thing I regret about the blind blogger is, in some cases, it's a little limiting, but I think I've finally found the right balance with the old and the new. I just tell people, Hey,
I'm the blind blogger of Maxwell Ivy. Now let's talk about accessibility, because the truth, the truth is I've been talking about accessibility for years. It's just I'm surprised you and everybody else didn't tell me that that was what I was doing while I was doing it because up until 4 years ago, I really didn't realize just how much of an impact I was having, how big an advocate I was for making the Internet and content on the Internet
more inclusive. And it was only as I started to get work thrown at me, basically, in the area of writing on the subject of accessibility that I realized, wait a minute. I've been doing this stuff for 17 years now and I am the expert. And it's about time I lean into that role and start to be recognized for it more directly and get paid for it, of course.
We always wanna get paid for our good work. Before we jump into the the work of accessibility specifically and and what you've been doing over at the Accessibility Advantage, because we do like to talk about technology and equipment and tools, I'm wondering what has been some of the best innovations, specifically in podcasting as far as equipment that allows you to have a show and and be successful with your content creation journey?
Well, I hate to to spoil such a great question, but, I am not a high-tech person and even living vicariously through my friends with disabilities who are high-tech persons, there haven't been a lot of of big time innovations that have made having a podcast easier. I do have one thing that I'm using right now that I really love, although it's not
as smart as it advertises itself to be. I have an interlink 360 video camera, and it uses artificial intelligence to stay focused on my face and keep me centered in the camera view. Now, it took over an hour with a sighted person to configure it where it actually knows what it's supposed to do and when it's supposed to do it, but it does work really well now. So I can move forward and back and side and it'll still have me in focus. And this is important because I don't have complete
control of my space. And as a blind person, one of the most important things to you is consistency. How do you create a consistent workspace or a consistent routine? And so I can't guarantee the furniture will be in the same place every time, but now I have a camera where I don't have to worry about that anymore.
So that's that's an innovation. I would say that some of the new microphones that I haven't gotten to try yet are probably using artificial intelligence, and, I would also say just more people getting involved and becoming familiar with accessibility so that I don't have to spend as much time getting them up to speed as to what I need. And, you know, speaking of technology, I think you were there at the event where I won that, that very nice,
microphone at Joe's event. I took it home and I used it twice, and then it broke, and a while after I posted those 2 episodes, people said, you know, Max, we loved your interviews, but the audio wasn't synced. The volume we'd have to raise the volume to, hear your guest and then we'd have to lower it so you didn't blast us out of the room.
So, sometimes technology can be very challenging if you have a disability, but I feel like, Zoom, Google Meet, and the other meeting platforms have done a good job of helping the the novice and the disabled balance their their sound quality so that people can really enjoy the audio and concentrate solely on the message. And and, certainly, there's a lot of post production tools as well that will fix a lot of problems, that might come up with, when you have difficulties in
recording your your content. So let's let's talk about accessibility in the podcasting space. And, you know, I I think people are gonna hear this and they're gonna think, well, podcasts are an audio medium, you know, what is the big challenge for a blind blogger
to listen to a podcast? Tell us what are the biggest hurdles that you come across when either you're trying to find specific content or you've landed on a specific show or network or program, but, you know, there are other things that would be done better to make your your experience enjoying it, a little bit smoother. Right. So I'm gonna come with this from 2 points. I'm gonna start with the positive, what podcast hosts can be doing that will help them take advantage of accessibility to build
a better connection with their audience. One of the big trends in podcasting is people recording in video and then outputting the audio. The problem is, is depending on who you ask, anywhere from 70 to 85 percent of your audience is only going to listen to your podcast. So they don't have the advantage of your video. So the one thing that would really help your audience
is if you would do what is called an audio description. That's where you tell them a little bit about what you look like, your background,
what you're wearing, what your set looks like. If you have a dog or a cat that thinks it's part of the show and will make an occasional appearance describing them, but more importantly, if there are head shakes, if there are facial expressions, if there are things that happen during the video recording that you think to yourself, if I had seen that happen, it would have affected me emotionally,
or it would have entertained me, or made me laugh, or something. If I had seen that, it would have affected the way I, experienced this show, then you want to describe those things as they happen as best as you can. Sometimes you'll have
to describe them afterwards. Sometimes you may wanna put it in the in the post production show notes, but these are the kind of things that your audience who, by the way, they're just as blind as I am, most of them, they can't appreciate what was going on on screen while you were recording this audio that you're outputting to your player. So I highly encourage people to do an audio description. If at the end of this recording you want me to do mine for you
to give them an example, I could do that. That's one thing I would say because it allows you to build a stronger connection with your audience, which leads to more loyal listeners, which leads to downloads, reviews, and, hopefully, email subscribers are people who will buy whatever it is you're selling the next time you have something to sell. So that's
Let's let's not wait. Let's let's get a sample of an audio description now so that while we're thinking about it, people can understand what it is that you're referring to. Well, I was hoping you would say that, but you being the host, I didn't wanna step over. So so I am a 59 year old white Caucasian male, and I say that because I'm a pale person. I have medium length brown curly hair, brown eyes. I'm
wearing a white blue button down dress shirt, black tie. I'm sitting in a generic office chair, in my bedroom, which also doubles as my recording space. I have my back background blacked out or blurred out, whatever the big kids' term for it is, so there's nothing back there. No dogs, cats, children, etcetera. No, no monograms or, logos on my clothing, no visible tattoos. Those are the kind of things you would want to describe for people in the
beginning of your introduction. And, of course, for me, since I have a disability, at the end, I would mention that I am almost totally blind having retinitis pigmentosa, otherwise known as RP. Okay. Thank you for sharing all that with us and and explaining what a good visual, what a good audio description is for a podcast, something that maybe more people can be, thinking
about in the future. So what was your your second point on this front as far as trying to enjoy podcasts, you know, with accessibility challenges? Right. So the the most important thing is your player and where they're gonna find your player. So if you're using one of the top podcasting platforms, the odds are their players' buttons are going to be accessible. I have not been on any of the majors where that's been the
case. It probably will be more likely to be the case with a with a free hosting provider or with somebody who is new to the industry as a hosting provider, but you do want to check and see if the buttons are properly labeled. It's easier if you have access to a screen reader or if you use a product like WAVES or the free checker at audioeye.com. Either of those can help you determine if your website or your player's website is accessible, at least for the most part, probably about 70%, 60%.
It'll sell you, you know, at least that much of it whether it's right or wrong. So your podcast player being able to pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, being able to share your content by clicking the buttons, or by subscribing to whatever their favorite platform is, those things need to be tested. And then the website where you locate it. You want to make
the podcast player on your website. I would say it should be the only thing on the page, unless you're using a plugin that allows you to embed your player on your homepage and then have it display the latest episode within that player, which I understand a lot of people do that now as well. In that case, you just want to make sure that there are as few elements on the home page as possible alongside
the player. So when people use adaptive technology, whether it is somebody who is slightly visually impaired that has a screen magnifier, or somebody who's more impaired like me that uses a screen reader, or you're talking about hearing impaired, or people using automated switch devices because they have a lack of limbs or motor control, regardless, it takes people like me longer
to navigate your websites. So the simpler design that you have, the fewer elements that you use on any one page, the better, because the the fewer things I have to pass through in order to find the one thing that I came to your website to do, which as a podcaster,
that one thing should be your podcast. So if I have to navigate through 3 different pages or if I have to navigate through 25 links before I find the link to this week's episode or the player for where I can listen to any of your episodes, that's just making things harder for me and for people like me. So that's why I was was talking about adaptive technology and in some cases the adaptive technology also can can lead to some some help for, people that are are wanting to bring more
traction to their website. Because after you talk about navigating a website and focusing on a simple clean design with a minimal number of elements, one of the next things you're gonna
talk about is image. Because as podcasters, we've all got artwork for our shows, we've got artwork for our episodes, we've got artwork for our profile on our home page, and all those images need to have the alternative text tag that describes the image for people using a screen reader, but those descriptions are also indexed by Alexa, Google, Siri, all the major search engines are indexing those and the only problem I have when I tell people about that
is they want to stuff keywords into their image descriptions. So I tell people you have a 150 to a 180 characters depending on the search engine that will actually be indexed. So let's try to split that in half and have half be the name of your company and what you do and the other half be what's actually in the image, and that way you get the best of both
worlds. You can drive traffic, and I am sure that you probably spent a lot of time, effort, stress, and maybe even a fair bit of money into creating the images that are on your website. So why not make sure that everybody visiting your website can appreciate them? You know, you were talking about what our page should look like. Is it best practices or would it be advisable if somebody has the resources to almost make, like, a separate page that would be more accessible
friendly versus their main podcast listening page? Just because, you know, there's there's something about the design and form and function that people look for when they want to create a website. But also, you know, what is best for the entire audience so that everybody can enjoy the content and not get bogged down in, you know, tons of details and and, you know, tons of these, accessibility features kinda overloading our circuits with all
the different things that we have on the site. Right. Well, I personally don't believe that anyone
should be creating a second version of your site. I know that the larger corporations like, like Audible and Amazon, I know that they do it, but I often find that the version they've created specifically for people using adaptive equipment turned out to be not all that great and some of that's because they don't have the right people providing information to the developers on their team and some of it is just lack of time or
funds or lack of care. I also don't believe that people should have to install a plug in or a widget on their website to make it accessible. The truth is, most things, other than the alt text descriptions and the audio descriptions for videos and audio files, other than those, everything you do to improve accessibility is stuff that you should be doing to improve the user experience of everybody else that visits your website anyway. Okay. That's that is fair. What
about when it comes to transcripts? How often do you find yourself using those? I don't personally use them that much unless there's something in the episode that I plan on using in a later talk or presentation of some kind, but they are targeted to me. Transcripts are great for people that have a hearing disability, but transcripts and closed captions are one of those things that have a large benefit to the able-bodied
community. Here's a statistic that I recently found where people under the age of 35, that 37% of that group will not watch a video on any platform unless that video has closed captions. Now, we both know that's because they're most likely gonna be watching some of those videos when they shouldn't be watching those videos, and they don't want people
overhearing them. But that's the truth. There's a large part of the society that is depending on closed captions because it just fits their lifestyle and the same thing applies with audio descriptions. I have sighted people who will tell me, you know, Max, if I have a good audio description during a movie or a TV show, once they discover that they're there on their TVs, if I have a good audio description, I don't have
to look at the TV. I can go do other stuff. I can follow the plot and, in some cases, can even follow the plot better because the narrators will tell about stuff on the screen that maybe you missed because your focus was not totally on the screen for that 1 or 2 seconds where you needed to see something in the corner of the screen or whatever. So, I would say that those types of things, they make life easier for a lot of your people who don't have
a disability. Another good example is the text, size, font, color contrast on your website and on your on your website pages. If you take a, if you take a high contrast color, like say black on white or black on yellow, and you give the user the opportunity to invert the text so that you have a white text on black background, that becomes much more easy to read and to navigate in very bright or very dark light for people who don't have a vision issue. That is absolutely
fair. And I do see a lot of folks who are, switching over to dark mode often when they're at their computer. And so I could see why that would just be something good for people to think about even if they're not necessarily thinking about full accessibility, you know, concerns and whatnot. So what is it like to work with you? If somebody's hearing this and they're thinking, you know, man, Maxwell's got a great point. There's a lot of
these things that we should be doing, but we just don't know how to. How do they work with you? What does engagement look like? Well, it starts with reviewing their current platform, whether that's a website, an app, or their podcast, and seeing where they're at now, giving them a breakdown of where they stand on the issues, and giving them a prioritized list of what needs to be done right now, you know, what are what are things that are basic necessities of accessibility that have to happen,
or what are things that we can work on later. I'm definitely a big fan of doing this at the the speed that the website owners team can handle as far as time and money.
And sometimes what we have to do is we have to say, okay, these things we can't fix now, but what we can do is we can come up with workarounds that we can teach to users who have a disability, and we can make those available either on the website or put a post a note that if they if they send us an email or click a button, then we can make those available to them so they can navigate the accessibility issues in the short term while the owner works on that.
Then once those are corrected, then we can go on to something else that needs to be done. We can also reevaluate things that have been improved to make sure that later additions to the website haven't compromised the accessibility that we just built. I firmly believe that accessibility is a progress and not a perfection, and so it's, it is, it is one of those things where you're gonna work through it and hopefully get to the point where you're in the high 90s
percent of accessibility. And thanks to my education, you understand how adaptive check users will navigate the Internet, so you'll be able to maintain it and avoid
causing problems to it going going forward. One other thing I do that most people in this field, I feel like they're they're dropping the ball for their clients is the disability community, we love to support businesses that are making effort to be inclusive, but most business owners, for some reason, are reluctant to proclaim, announce, share with the world the
efforts that they're putting in to being inclusive. I don't want I don't I don't have any idea what their reasons are, but I just know that they just don't feel right talking about the work they've done or the work they've
had done. So, during the process I'll do blog posts, social media posts, we'll do podcast episodes for some clients because it isn't just about improving the accessibility because, you know, part of the point is making it accessible because it'll make it easier for everybody else that will visit your website or your or your products or services. But a big part of this is improving the lives of people with disabilities, and it really doesn't
improve their lives if they don't know about it. So evaluation, advice on correction, reevaluation, promotion, that's what it looks like to work with Max. And if you would like to do so, the accessibilityadvantage.com. We are chatting with Maxwell Ivy, the blind blogger. Max, before we let you go, I have a couple questions that we like to ask everybody on the show. And, of course, this first question is basically the main topic of our entire conversation. Podcasting space where we
could improve upon? Are there things that you would like to see done better, whether it's on creation, distribution, marketing, anything like that? I think it's the same answer I would give if we were talking about the broadcast media. We need more
people with disabilities in front of cameras and microphones. We need more attention and more spotlights being placed on those people because there are lots of blind, deaf, hearing impaired, paraplegic, quadriplegic, lots of people with disabilities out there who have podcasts or are in the process of starting podcasts, but there still aren't a lot of, what's that expression, faces that look like mine are out there in the podcasting world.
So I think that would be something that would be an improvement. More people with disabilities on stages at conferences would help, but there again, that's part with the event organizers and it's part with the disabled people because y'all can't say yes to us if
we don't ask, you know? So I would say those would be the kind of things I would think about and, I just want to drop in a short little plug here for the for Chris Krivitsas and his team at FOD Fest Expo including Nick Bad with us because, they invited me to record a video they will be posting shortly to help their presenters understand how to create more accessible and inclusive slides and QR codes. And as part of that, I also
told them about doing audio descriptions. So Podfest in January, there's a organization that's making the effort to have their event be inclusive, so I wanna get their name out there if that's okay. Absolutely. I love Chris. I've always been a fan of his and the work that he's done, and I've always enjoyed my times at Podfest Conferences and actually hoping that I got my chance to go down, this year in January to go, check out the the latest one that they are working on. So,
always happy to give Chris and his team a shout out. They do some really, really great work. Alright. This one is, a little probably gonna be a little bit trickier as well, but is there any technology that you would like to get your hands on that would help you with podcasting? Whether it's whether it's something that exists that, you know, just might be out of your budget or something maybe that somebody needs to create for you?
I think there are 2 things I wanna get my hands on for different reasons. The number one thing on my wish list is a digital braille display and what the way they work is you connect them with your your desktop or your mobile devices by bluetooth and they use a series of magnets and metal pins to simulate braille characters, and the reason I want one is because
when I record my podcast, I have to memorize all this stuff. I have to create tricks for myself so that I can remember all this stuff, But if I had access to a digital braille display, I would be able to read whatever I needed to read to refresh my memory on while I'm interviewing or being interviewed without the screen reader, that computer voice,
getting in the middle of the conversation. So that's like my number one thing, and then my my second thing would be I would really like to to find a, a camera that would allow me to do better as far as recording events when I'm away from my house. I've spoken at a couple of conferences where I don't have videos of great talks because they weren't recording and it's not really easy for me to set up to
record. So having a mobile ad source for recording video and or audio would be the second thing on my list. You know, I'm gonna have a nice chat with you right after this conversation about just such an idea, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully, we can help you
out on that front. Alright. I like that. I I hope you can. And, lastly, is there a podcast in your playlist right now that you are listening to that, you know, no matter what is happening, when the new episode comes out, episode comes out, you're stopping what you're listening to or dropping everything to go check it out? It can be more than 1 podcast, too. Okay. The easy one is one called Your Own Pay. It's done by a good friend of mine named Michael Babcock from Oregon.
He's been in the disability space for probably 35 years or more and the reason I like it is because he's got all the scoop on all the latest technology and how that can be used or not be used by people with disabilities. He's the only guy in my community who is also an expert on Android as well as iOS when it comes to accessibility, and so he's continuing to be in my ear telling me, Max, you know Android's almost there, you need to start thinking about
switching from your iPhone. So, your own pay is one of them and then, I would say the, for I can't think of the name of the podcast, but I always listen to Alex Sethilippo's podcast. Oh, yes. Alex is from PodMatch, Success Stories or ah, man, what is this podcast? You know what? Yeah. I know. It bothers me, and I I deserves to hear, he deserves the credit for his podcast. And pull his name up on LinkedIn. It's right there in his profile. Yeah. Oh, podcasting made simple. There you go. So Alex
Sanfilippo at Podcasts Made Simple. He's he's been a mentor and a friend, and his podcast always includes such great guests and they they share stuff that you're like, okay, this this should be a good interview. And then you listen to it, you're like, wait a minute. That was so much more than I ever thought I was gonna get from this particular guest. I mean, he, he just rings them dry or they, they come in and empty their, their, their brains for
them. I don't know how it works. I just know that, you know, that you just you just get so much every time you listen to one of his guests. Yeah. Alex is someone who, is doing a lot of very interesting things in the space and already chatting with him, trying to make sure we can get him on the show. So very glad you brought him up as well as our buddy, Chris Karmitza. So I'm I'm trying to get him on my show too because I've I've been the accessibility adviser
to PodLottery at PodMatch now for a few years. And, you know, the, in his case, it's been longer than it probably would have been because they're continuing to grow and build upon what they started at, but, the thing about PodMatch is, I'm really impressed with the, not just the work they've done to make it accessible, but the the point of their heart as far as they really want this to be the best thing for podcasters, including podcasters who just have a disability and people with disabilities
who want to be guests. So, you know, I've been I've been helping him out for a while now and, I want him to come on my podcast to talk about accessibility on his platform. And he's like, Max, check back with me in December. What? Okay. His, his tag guy is a gentleman named Jesse, and I don't know Jesse's last name. I'm sorry. But but I I I spend a lot of time back and forth with Jesse. I've been trying to get him on my podcast as well to talk about Pod
Match and accessibility. And so far, I'm still in the, you know, just keep checking back with us, Max. When our schedule's open, we'll come. You know? So He is he is a rather busy guy, and the next chance I get to chat with him, I'll I'll nudge him to, you know, go on your podcast as well and, you know, make an appearance there. Once again, we've been chatting with Maxwell Ivy, the blind blogger, also an accessibility advantage. You can go to the
accessibility advantage .com to check out the great work that he does. And just, you know, think about Max. He's out here trying to enjoy content, and he's not trying to make you pay an arm and a leg, you know, for your content to be more user friendly. He just wants it so that everybody can can enjoy it and, you know, share with the rest of the world. So, Max, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us and for doing
what it is that you do. Well, thank you, Matthew. I appreciate you making a spot for me on the show and for understanding the value value or the prevent the potential value of accessibility to your audience. So thank you for that. Thanks for joining us today on podcasting tech. There are links to all the hardware and software that help power our guest content and podcasting tech available in the show notes and on our website at podcastingtech.com.
You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and review while you're there. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on Podcasting Tech.